February 11, 2025 • 42 mins
Dan Balcauski speaks with Vivek Bhaskaran, founder and CEO of QuestionPro. Vivek shares how he bootstrapped QuestionPro from zero to $32 million in ARR, serving over 20 million users without raising external capital. They discuss Vivek's entrepreneurial journey, from selling cigarettes in Russia to building a successful portfolio of companies. Vivek emphasizes the significance of hustle, transparency, and unorthodox growth tactics like M&A in scaling a SaaS business.
03:34 Journey from Cigarettes to Software
05:42 The Birth and Growth of QuestionPro
06:32 Challenges and Growth Plateaus
20:24 The Decision to Bootstrap
21:46 The Importance of Sleep and Health
22:53 Strategies for Successful M&A
28:50 Structuring Deals for Bootstrapped Companies
31:47 Lessons from Creating a Separate Brand
Guest Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivekbhaskaran/
https://www.questionpro.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan Balcauski (00:20):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets the podcast that
brings you the inside storiesfrom the leaders of the best
scale up.
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to speak withVivek Bhaskaran.
Vivek is the founder and CEO ofQuestionPro, which he's
bootstrapped from zero to 32million in a RR while serving
over 20 million users.
He built an impressive portfolioof successful companies,
including Idea Scale, Trita QCard, and Spatial Chat.
(00:42):
Particularly remarkable is thathe's achieved this growth
without raising externalcapital.
He's also created meaningfulopportunities for over a
thousand employees across his 20year journey.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Vivek to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
Vivek Bhaskaran (00:53):
Hi, Dan.
How you doing?
Glad to be here.
Dan Balcauski (00:55):
I am very excited for our conversation today.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and I think our audience
will get a lot outta thisconversation.
Before we dive into QuestionProand your journey in that, I
wanna know a little bit moreabout you and I think, we all
have these moments in our lifethat are kind of
transformational, the change ourperspective, our worldview.
(01:17):
I like to think of him as asuperhero transformation moment.
You're Peter Parker, normal highschool student.
You get bit by a radioactivespider.
You wake up the next day, you'reSpider-Man.
What moment has that been foryou in your journey?
Vivek Bhaskaran (01:29):
Ah, good question.
I think I think when I was in myf very first business that I
started was in I was a studentin Russia actually, after high
school.
After high school I left India.
Originally from India.
I was in Russia, and then Istarted my own business, I
think, and we used to buy likecigarettes in bulk and sell
cigarettes in the dorm rooms.
(01:50):
On packs really.
So that's kind of, that was myvery first, and that's when I
got into the notion of actuallydoing business of, it was just a
pretty simple retail business.
I guess you buy it in bulk andsell it.
And, and cigarettes is, I guesscigarettes or cigarettes.
And it was back in 95, 96, Ithink.
Yeah.
96.
So that was kinda my aha momentabout business in general, I
(02:12):
would argue.
So it's like, oh, because I grewup in a family where my dad
worked for the same company.
He worked for the coal miningcompany throughout his entire
career slash life.
My mom worked for, another oiland gas company throughout her
life.
And a pretty career kind ofemployees, I guess.
And that's when I realized like,ah, shit, I'm not gonna be an
employee.
I guess I'm gonna, I'm gonna bean entrepreneur.
So, so that was at least thebeginnings of can, I thought
(02:32):
that, oh, there's another way todo this.
So that's, in a nutshell thatwas one, one of the, one
Dan Balcauski (02:36):
That is,
Vivek Bhaskaran (02:37):
moments.
Dan Balcauski (02:37):
yeah, that is for sure.
I think the most unique answerI've ever heard to that
question.
What what led you to go fromIndia to Russia?
I.
Vivek Bhaskaran (02:46):
Yeah, so I did not after I, I really wanted to
do computer science slashcomputer engineering.
I was kind of like my dad hadbought home a computer, so I
was, fooling around with it.
In high school.
I really wanted to do that, butI couldn't get into any of the
IIT, so I, back in India backthen when you had to, I guess,
be in the top.
I guess 0.1% of the populationto actually get into, get
computer science as a course.
(03:08):
Clearly I was not so I couldn'tget in.
So if I couldn't get in and thenI said, fuck it.
Let me try do something else.
And Russia was open up and theywanted inter transfer students
and so I kinda applied for itand I.
Got admission in some randomcollege in Russia and said, I'm
gonna go to Russia now.
I think I was 18.
In hindsight I was like, oh,it's gonna ballsy move.
But anyway, at the time I waslike, I just wanna get out.
I just wanna do it.
(03:29):
I wasn't thinking, oh, you're18.
You don't think too hard.
You just do things.
So it's good that way.
Dan Balcauski (03:34):
Oh my God.
So how does you go from sellingcigarettes into the, what has
been your journey into thesoftware world, I guess from
from the time selling cigarettesin your dorm room?
Vivek Bhaskaran (03:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, I mean, the naturalprogression of cigarettes
would've been made cigarettes,drugs and cocaine, I guess.
But I didn't, clearly I didn'tdo that.
So, so no.
Anyway, so yeah, now that wasjust a, that was just a means to
an end.
So I kinda came to the States.
I came to actually, believe itor not I went to BYUI came to
the state transfer to BYU, whichis a, it's a modern school in
Dan Balcauski (04:03):
Fantastic program.
Yeah.
Vivek Bhaskaran (04:04):
Yeah.
So, and BYU has been a great,kind of, it's, from my
perspective, it was, it wasreally good.
It was like, fooling around,screwing around, doing all kinds
of dumb shit in Moscow to comingto Provo, Utah.
I was like, get your headtogether and work and study.
That's all I did for like, threeyears.
And that's where I got into,obviously computer science,
computer programming.
I did a lot of, side, sidehustles jobs.
(04:24):
E-commerce was booming at thetime, and, dot com was booming.
Basically everybody wanted tomove everything online really.
This was back in 2000, early twothousands, and I think I built
the very first, kind of likemortgage application.
I also worked for a companycalled E Utah, which is the e,
the government portal for.
The state of Utah, that was thefirst, like you could buy a
hunting and fishing license on,I mean, today it seems kind of
obvious but you know, back in2000 you had to go to, I think
(04:47):
you had to go to Walmart orsomething to buy a hunting and
fishing license.
Literally you had to go to astore.
There's no way you could buy ahunting and fishing license.
And we moved that thing entirething online.
So that's kind of how I got intocomputers and tech and
everything else.
And then in 2000.
Five is when I decided, and thenI was doing consulting work.
And then 2 0 5 I decided likeenough of consulting.
Consulting is great if you thinkabout it, like you'd make
actually, you make a lot ofmoney.
(05:07):
Honestly, in consulting, you domake a lot of money.
When the going is good.
But then it's ups and downs.
And more importantly for me as aconsultant, you don't own
anything, right?
You build something, you buildit.
Obviously for a client.
So even if you're massivelysuccessful, you don't get the
kind of the sheer joy of ownownership, if you will.
I really wanna build a productand so that's when I, on file, I
started QuestionPro and that'skind of been, never looked back
(05:29):
since then.
So that's been my kind ofjourney into tech, I guess.
So that's kinda from sellingcigarettes to, I guess to, to,
to te
Dan Balcauski (05:37):
We are all very grateful that you did not take
the natural path of sellingcigarettes into into a deeper
crime.
So, I wanna talk more aboutQuestionPro.
To give our audience a littlebit of context.
Could you give us kind of the32nd elevator pitch for what is
QuestionPro?
Where does it play?
Vivek Bhaskaran (05:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
we are an online researchplatform, so think of it we
really target three differentICPs.
Number one is consumer insightsand market research.
People, within companies thatare trying to figure out what
to, what the market is thinkingabout them.
Number two is customerexperience.
So what your customers arethinking about you.
So.
And that's how, that's kinda thesecond part of our business and
third part of our business, howemployees think about you.
(06:11):
So think about it from thecontext of surveys.
We built a core survey platform,and then we look at it in the
context of, how the marketthinks about you, how customers
think about you and howemployees think about you.
So the three different ICPs inan enterprise.
And that's who we sell toprimarily, and that's kinda our
business.
Dan Balcauski (06:27):
And I appreciate that overview.
And I wanna talk, shift a littlebit here into, This program is
called SAIC Secrets.
And look, every CEO faceschallenges along the way.
Is there a specific challengeQuestionPros face during its
growth That's.
You thought was particularlydifficult to overcome a moment
that really has kinda shapedwhat the company is today.
Vivek Bhaskaran (06:48):
Yeah, multiple, first of all, multiple
challenges.
To say that it's one, it'sgonna, fundamentally factually
incorrect.
In fact, we are facing now onenow, right now, at the end of
the year.
We didn't grow, we didn't growtoo much this year.
So again, we gotta figure outwhat to do.
But I think when we were, Ithink we had two or three
inflection points.
Number one is when we were aboutthree, three and a half million
dollars we were kind of stuck inthat about three to 4 million
(07:10):
bucks in revenue.
So we grew from like.
2005 to 2010, we grew from likezero to about four or 5 million
bucks, or four, three and ahalf,$4 million.
Really, within four or fiveyears.
I was pretty happy with it.
I was like, yeah, things aregoing really well.
But then we got stuck in 2008,2009, 2010 at that number.
And it's not that we were nottrying hard, we were just like,
obviously I was doing everythingI knew how to do.
(07:31):
And we realized that, one of themistakes I had made is like, and
I've seen a bunch of my otherfriends also make, is like, we
were trying to do differentthings and then each of them had
a different brand.
And one of the, one of themistakes I made as I created two
or three different brands withinthe ecosystem itself, and I had
QuestionPro.
I, I wanted to go up market, Iwanted go to the enterprise.
I created a new brand calledSurvey Analytics and so on.
So that.
In hindsight was a huge mistake.
(07:52):
In terms of like, I think Ithink my, my, building a brand
building, building a company,building a brand is so difficult
that building two of them islike 10 f.
It's not twice as moredifficult.
I think it's 10 times becauseyou deviate your energy from one
and da, da, da, da, all thatstuff, you know that really
well.
So even if you're buildingmultiple products, you can build
multiple products, but make surethat the brand is the core brand
(08:12):
that you are kind of leaninginto because people can
associate you with the brandand.
Brand development is like one ofthe most hardest and the
challenging most, it's just likepeople is very, very difficult
to do.
And and we have a great example,even in my own business.
I mean, SurveyMonkey had a greatbrand and they kind of changed
to Momentum and then they had tochange back to SurveyMonkey.
So it's kind is one of the, Ithink HBR at some point is gonna
do a case study around it.
(08:33):
Like they had a great brand, butthey kinda said they want, Hey,
we want to be part of ai.
Train and things kinda change toment and nobody really
understood what momentum meant.
And then they, oh, shit.
Then they's spent about a coupleof years and they moved back to
SurveyMonkey.
But so to me, brand is like a,it's a very core concept that,
and it, most people get caughtup with, oh, it's a good brand.
I mean, you can make anything.
Look, apple is an, apple is agreat brand.
(08:53):
I mean, it's a fruit.
You, a brand is whatever youmake out of it really.
Right?
How you, what you make out ofit.
So, to me, going back to yourquestion.
I think I made a huge mistake.
And that, and there's a materialeconomic consequence to that,
that, dissipated our energy.
And we struggled quite a bitbetween 2000 and, and 2014 to
kind of grow the business.
And then we finally, in 2015, wekind of combined the two
(09:13):
businesses back together andkind of unified our m same
brand.
And then we got some, we got.
We got stuck at, in 2015, at2000 10, 2 15, we only grew from
like, four to about 6 million.
And then in 2016 we startedgrowing again.
We went from six to 10, 10 to11, and then we got stuck again.
11, 12 million also, again,separate issue, but again, that
got you.
Every few years we get, we havea growth spur and then we get
(09:34):
stuck and then we have anothergrowth spurt
Dan Balcauski (09:36):
I absolutely love this answer because and we
haven't, you and I haven'ttalked about this, but the
reason for this podcast, thereason for being is because of
exactly what you just described,is that, there's, I think a lot
of ink spilled around, the zeroto one journey and three guys in
a garage, finding product marketfit.
People thinking like, oh, that'sthe end of the story.
(09:57):
Like, we've got some customers,we found a model, and then I
just see this over and over ofthese companies who get stuck at
5 million or get stuck at 10.
And this is one of the reasonswhy I love talking to people
like you is because, obviously,that happened to you as well,
but you've broke through it.
You've, it sounds like you'vegone through this a couple of
times.
I'm curious, like, as you've hitthese growth plateaus.
(10:18):
Maybe it's the brand decision ormaybe it's, things that you've
learned over time.
How did you, how have you goneabout sort of diagnosing, like
what's going on?
It sounds like sort of with thebenefit of hindsight, you'd now
sort of realize like, okay, the,in the brand example you're
saying like it diverted ourattention and, it was, too few
resources between too manyinitiatives spread too thin, I
guess, but that, it sounds likethat's happened a couple times.
(10:41):
Is there a way that you've sortof been able to diagnose when
you've hit these growthplateaus?
Kind of what's going on?
Like, okay, is this a macroissue?
Is it something we're doinginternally?
Is this like, like, how do youthink about that?
Vivek Bhaskaran (10:53):
Good question.
First of all, I love the thankyou for coining the term growth
plateau.
I love that shit.
I mean, I actually, I, I don'tknow if it's coined, but you
should totally own it because ithappens to almost everybody
every so often really.
Right?
Because people don't talk aboutit.
People just say, Hey, look,we've been growing, and then,
shit, we are not been growing.
And so going back to your point,I'm trying to, honestly, I wish
I could tell you that I ha Ihave a formula, but you know, e
(11:14):
every time you have a year ofbad growth.
Until long you make materialchanges, orthogonal changes.
My kind of current belief isthat you'll have another year
of, mediocre growthrealistically.
Right.
So, and that's when you, atthree years of mediocre growth
will, create this growth plateauthat you're talking about.
Right.
And it, and I actually thinkthat this is especially true for
(11:37):
kind of bootstrap companiesversus uh, see in a bootstrap
company, things are generallyorganic really, right?
There's no, there is no, if youthink about it, when you raise
funding, there's a stepfunction.
Right.
So you know, you get a bunch ofcash, then you say like, look,
you gotta do somethingdifferent.
So there's a natural stepfunction in the business that
said, look, you've got a bunchof cash, you gotta upgrade your
chief product officer.
You know the guy who started thecompany, he is really not a CPO.
(11:59):
Then you gotta upgrade.
I'm just making up that randomexcuse.
But there's always a stepfunction, right?
So, because whereas when you'reorganically growing the
business, there is no stepfunction.
You have to create that stepfunction.
You have to be the changereally.
So, so going back to your point.
I think the parameters that Iwould try to look for in
hindsight as well as right nowwould be if you have had a bad
(12:20):
year, first of all, do notattribute it to macroeconomic
issues.
Right?
So that's I don't buy that.
I think that's bullshit.
I think that's kind of likepunting the ball.
I think that's what I personallythink, right?
If somebody says like, ah,macroeconomic issues, then like,
okay, look, the macroeconomic isgonna be the macroeconomic.
It's your job within thismacroeconomic condition to grow.
That's what, that'sfundamentally my belief.
(12:40):
At its very core.
So I would say, looking at ifyou have a flat growth here,
what changes are you making?
Right?
And most people get caught up inthis idea like, ah, we gotta go
left, we gotta go right.
And obviously you have debatearound whether to go left or
right, but more often than notis like.
I don't give a fuck, just goleft or right.
Really just don't be there.
That's a bigger problem thantrying to debate whether to go
(13:02):
this to where to go left orright.
So one thing you'll have to makea decision if you have like a
bad year, is like, what are youdoing completely differently
this year into the next year?
So that is, to me is afundamental construct that has
helped kinda us move.
'cause we have to like reallyauto thing.
They have to say like, look,we've had a couple of bad years.
We have to do something.
No gany at a minimum, ganydifferent.
(13:23):
Now you don't have to turn, youhave turn the
Dan Balcauski (13:25):
We will unpack that a little bit.
You've said that termorthogonally different, like
what does that mean to you?
Vivek Bhaskaran (13:28):
so thinking like, for example, when we got
stuck in that 10, 10, 10,$12million range we did a, not a
huge acquisition, but a materialacquisition.
We bought a company that wasmaking three and a half million
bucks in revenue.
So we were at, we grew from 12to.
14 and then we bought in threeand a half on top.
So you know, that year we grewfrom 12 to 19, basically.
Right.
So that created momentum really.
Right.
And normally you'd say like mostcompanies, and we are bootstrap,
(13:51):
we don't have that kind of cash,we don't go out, even think
about m and a.
Right?
So you're like, oh shit man,this is not part of our.
Most companies don't think aboutit that way, but that was an
orthogonal thought process tosay, Hey, can we just go buy
somebody and add revenue to usand create momentum?
Which normally, honestly, Iwouldn't think about it that
way.
But then, we said like, well,we're not able to grow
organically, so let us try to dosomething that we have never
(14:12):
done before.
And we did that and we able to,we were to somewhat.
Pull it off.
And that was, that createdanother Strat of Momentum that
got us from like in the 10 12range to the 20 range.
Then we went to 24, then 28,then 32.
And so that's kind of, that kindof created a little bit of
momentum over there at thatpoint.
Dan Balcauski (14:27):
you're hinting at this a bit in that, I think one
of the hardest decisions thatfounders CEOs face is kind of
knowing when to stay the courseversus knowing when to change
direction.
I guess, how.
How do you personallydistinguish between when to push
through versus, when to makethese changes?
Are there, metrics or milestonesthat you're trying to look at?
Vivek Bhaskaran (14:50):
A little bit is, I mean, I index on growth
really.
I think fundamentally my beliefis that if you're not growing
then there's something wrong inthe system.
Simple, right?
I don't know what's some wrong,there's something wrong in the
system.
So, so this year we'll have apretty low growth here, for
example.
And we gonna make somesignificant changes.
We I'm already.
Prepping for those technicalchanges and, and we took a, take
a look at the metrics andlargely I'm, we're fairly data
(15:11):
driven I think and a little bitof gut obviously.
So it's like, it can't be fullydata driven then it.
It's it's not gonna work.
At least that's my opinion.
So, so the point really is like,okay, so, you look at the data
and then you go with your gut tosay but the most important thing
that I would say is like everytime I've said like, look shit,
we gotta make a fucking change.
That's it.
Even internally, because a lotof the.
(15:32):
A lot of the pushback and theconversations are gonna be
internal conversations, notexternal conversations.
More often than not, at least myexperience being like there's
internal, oh yeah, we've beendoing this, we should stick the
course for another, anotheryear, another few months,
another quarter, really.
Right?
And I have certain benchmarksand principal like, look, if
it's not grown by 15 months, ifthere's no progress in 15
months, three more months ain'tgonna make a difference.
(15:53):
I mean, we've given I, unlessyou kind of say like, we've
gotta stop doing what we aredoing.
Right.
So my, my, my thought processreally is stop doing what you're
doing right.
That forces you to kind of makethat orthogonal change, which
is, I keep alluding to, which isthen at least you can say like,
okay, we're gonna go live, we'renot gonna do what we did.
So usually my benchmark is like,12 to 15 months is like, when,
(16:13):
okay we are, this is notworking.
We've given it a good shot.
So that's kinda at least mypersonal benchmark.
I mean, a lot of our friends Iknow like, they give less and
they give more, but that's amore of a personal kind of
choice.
I think it's a little bit of apersonal choice.
Like, yeah, I give it a shot forlike, 12 months.
A year is a good number.
It's kind of random number.
I would argue it's a year is agood number.
Again, depending on the size andcontext of the problem, but I
(16:34):
mean, give yourself some timeand then hold yourself
accountable to that time,really.
Right.
So like, okay, we're gonna giveourselves this time and if it
doesn't work, we gotta make somechanges.
So that's another way to kind ofiterating through that.
Dan Balcauski (16:44):
And then I think with the, whether with the brand
situation, which was earlier onor you mentioned this
acquisition around the 11, 12million mark, I guess kind of
looking at.
One of those situations, kindalooking at what was kind of the
key to sort of breaking through,because you've talked this
couple times of like being anindecision, these internal
conversations of left or right,but eventually you did make the
(17:06):
sort of the you made thedecision.
Like as you kind of look atthat, like what do you think was
the key to sort of like finallyunwinding that log jam?
Vivek Bhaskaran (17:15):
Yeah, so great.
I love it that you put it as alog jam.
It is a log jam.
'cause you're like, fuck it.
God dammit, I'm working my assoff.
Shit's still not working.
Right.
A good kinda a good kinda way Ithink about it that, that has
helped me is like, imagine I,and I tell this to all the folks
who work with me also, like,like imagine you got fired today
and you got hired tomorrow forthe exact same fucking job.
(17:38):
What would you do?
Just, that's it.
This is what consultants do.
If you think about it,consultants don't have the
baggage history.
I've made a bunch of decisionsthroughout, like le let's say in
the last four years, I've made abunch of stupid decisions,
right?
A consultant comes in and says,well, I don't give a shit.
I'm the new guy.
This is what we're gonna doObjectively.
You look at the business, youlook at what's going on, look at
(17:58):
the market and say, Hey, here'swhat we need to do.
Right.
You don't have the baggage ofthe last four years of bad
decisions that you've made orgood decision.
It doesn't even matter really.
So another way to look at it islike, if you were fired today
and you got rehired day aftertomorrow, what would you do?
Now you're the new CEO simple.
You don't have the baggage ofall the 15 decisions of 20
decisions you've made in thelast one year or two years, five
(18:20):
years, realistically.
Right?
And that helps you in your, atleast helps me, lemme tell you.
That helps me like rethink whatI'm doing.
Right.
It's almost like unlearningcertain things and okay, look,
here's where we are.
We are at 32 million bucks.
We need to get to a hundredmillion.
What are we doing today?
Objectively not based on wherewe've come from and all that
stuff.
We can talk about 20 years, da,da, da, da, all the brand stuff,
but that's all water under thebridge where, you know, if I
(18:43):
just go out and private equitycompanies do this all day long,
they're like, look, you'll justget a new guy.
He'll come and do what?
You know what does it take to gofrom 30 to a hundred?
That's the only question thatmatters.
It really doesn't.
Nobody gives a shit how you cameto 30.
Literally that doesn't evenmatter.
Right?
Like we are where we are.
How are we gonna get to ahundred?
That's the only question in anyeverybody's head.
So that kinda rethinking andretraining your brain is kinda
(19:05):
where, I try to do that in thatcontext.
I kind of physically say like,look, if I got fired tomorrow
and I got hired as a, CEO ofanother 30 million business,
what would I do?
And my goal is to get to ahundred.
That's what you know, and let'smake all those decisions based
on that context.
So I think that's the way Ithink about it, that's one way
of thinking about it.
Maybe not the only way, butthat's at least one way of
thinking about it.
Dan Balcauski (19:25):
Yeah.
Well, because there, it's a,there's so much, sunk cost
fallacy is one thing that comesto mind.
There's, and then there's justemotional baggage, right?
There's like, well, I've put allthis, I've put all this work in
making it the way things are.
And then like, what does it sayabout me if I can't?
Make it work hard.
Like if we just work harder.
If I go a different direction,does that mean I, I couldn't
(19:46):
work hard enough to make theother thing work?
Does that mean my strategy wasflawed before?
'cause I thought this was gonnabe the thing that broke it.
And I love that because you'rekind of clearing the decks of
all that.
You're just like, look, thatthat's in the past.
You cannot change that.
New person comes in and that newperson can be you.
There's
Vivek Bhaskaran (20:03):
But if you think about it, that's why a lot
of like, public, bigger,companies like, they, they do
change management because ofthis one reason, because this,
again, new management comes inand they're like, we don't care
what you guys made.
Whether you use Salesforce,HubSpot, I don't give a shit.
This is what we're gonna do.
If you think about these kind,random conversations, chew up a
lot of our energy and it's like,oh, we said we'd do this or we
gotta do it.
Dan Balcauski (20:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you've mentioned a fewtimes the fact that,
impressively, you guys havescaled QuestionPro to 30 million
without external funding.
I'm curious, like what drovethat decision to bootstrap?
Originally I.
Vivek Bhaskaran (20:37):
To be brutally honest bro, I didn't even know
that I could raise money.
I'm not even gonna fuck withyou.
I literally, I like, literallylike, like this was 2005 in
Seattle I just built.
And look, I'm a softwaredeveloper so I can build
anything I want, really?
So it's like the, and then webuilt it and then we were like,
oh shit, we gotta get.
Fucking customers, right?
I'm like, and we were like, howdo we, like, we were looking at
each other, like, how do we findcustomers, guys?
And we had no, we had no ideawhat to do.
(20:58):
And, but SEO was, SEO was noteven SEO at the time, but we
knew how to get, we were like,oh, look, if, if you get number
one on Google, we'll findcustomers.
I mean, they'll find us and weare good to go.
And so we got into that.
And so one thing led to theother and we quickly made, we
start getting inbound customers.
We, we got good at SEO before.
SEO was a sexy thing.
And so, so going back to yourpoint.
So we kind got to three,$4million, even without thinking
(21:21):
about it.
And then we were like, oh shit,we are already making money.
I why go know waste our, why go?
And we decided not to raisemoney.
And then we know kept growingand then we got stuck and da da
da.
But every time we've thoughtabout raising money, we've kind
of said also that, look, there'sno free money in this planet.
Simple.
It's got its own set of, it'sgot its own set of kind strings
attached to it.
And and we decided, well.
(21:42):
No, I mean, we will hustleharder and try to make it work.
So that's kind, I mean, ittaking us longer time, but that
actually I'm pretty happy withit.
It's fine.
It's, I sleep well at night, sothat's also part of what I live
for, so.
Dan Balcauski (21:53):
Yes.
If you're not sleeping well atnight nothing else.
Everything else kind of doesn'tmatter at the end of, at the end
of it right.
Kind of your health, your sleepand happy family.
And then if those things aren'tworking it doesn't matter how
much money you have in the bankbut you mentioned before you've.
You've done m and a and I wouldsay like, a lot of founders
assume, rightly or wrongly, thata significant m and a is
impossible without venturefunding.
(22:14):
And yet you've obviouslycompleted several deals.
And then I guess also there's a,common narrative going around
right now that, m and a is, oh,it's really difficult right now,
et cetera.
I guess, what did, what wouldyou say to, to either of those,
Vivek Bhaskaran (22:27):
Well first of all, first of all, I'm an
entrepreneur, so no, don't sayno to me, right?
I fundamentally believe this,right?
So if you say you cannot dosomething, I'm just, I'll just
fucking do it just to prove youwrong.
Just I'm that kind of anasshole, right?
We all have that, like, yeah,that's at least.
So if you can't sell cigarettesand like, ah, could fuck you,
man, I'm gonna figure out a wayto say, I know buy and sell
cigarettes and make a buck inbetween,
Dan Balcauski (22:46):
gonna move to Russia and sell cigarettes.
Vivek Bhaskaran (22:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Think about it like, that's thechallenge.
Going back to your point, reallylike, look.
M and a, like everything else islike, a lot of it is opportunity
and opportunistic is like, andyou never know when people wanna
sell the company what theirpersonal motivations are.
We've bought a bunch ofcompanies where we've absorbed
them.
They want to be part of a largerbusiness realistically, and they
want to be part of a GM of alarger business.
(23:09):
So that's that's one motivatingfactor realistically, a lot of
times.
A lot of times it's like, okay,we built some amazing tech, be
it, we have no distributionengine.
That's gonna be anothermotivating factor.
So my analysis is that, look,yes, you're right.
I mean, there is a fundamentaloverarching concept, that like,
look, you cannot do m and a.
It's like saying like, Hey, youneed a 10 x engineer, you gotta
pay a million bucks.
(23:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Google pays a million bucks forengineers.
That doesn't mean, you, thereare amazing 10 X engineers that
are not, that you don't have topay a million bucks for
realistically.
Right.
So the, so this narrative.
That you cannot do m and a.
First of all, I don't believe init, right.
I mean, okay.
And MA and you're right.
In certain cases, it's simplynot gonna work.
If you in a company that isfunded, and typically we've, we,
we've done m and a withtypically, at least we've done m
(23:52):
and a with founders directly.
So one of the, one of the cha,one of the, one of the benefits
that, you lean into yourbenefits, right?
You lean into your strengths.
What are our strengths?
Yes.
We are not, we don't have ashitload of cash.
We are not, we are not.
KKR or BlackRock, so we are notthat.
But no, we are honest and we canmake a decision fast.
That's our, that is our kind oflike, key.
That's our, at least my keydriver, right?
So you can walk in and say like,look, I know I'm, we think this
(24:15):
is a good idea.
We are not gonna be able to payyou what you really, obviously
what you want, but here's whatwe can pay you and you can make
a decision.
And this is what we believe in.
That's it.
Right?
And you either, yeah, you cansay like, Hey, this is not gonna
work for us, or it's gonna workfor us.
So, and you can go through thatmotion a couple of times and
then you get, you, you actuallyland deals.
You land certain things or like,you know what, actually I don't
care about the, it's not aboutthe amount of optimizing
(24:37):
everybody thinks it's aboutoptimizing the.
The value the transaction price.
But it's not, it's not actuallynot a hundred percent.
Most, more often than not, it'sabout more often.
Again, I would say like 80% ofthe time it's optimizing the
transaction price.
But there are 20% of the timewhere like, like the optimizing,
optimizing the transaction priceis not the primary driver for
both parties.
In that case it's like, hey,combined effort, combine, one
(24:57):
plus two, can we make it threeor more than three, obviously.
So, so, so those are the onesthat.
I cannot, those are the onesthat I can close.
You could argue that there arebunch of thems, and for the
amount of deals we've done,we've not also done a bunch of
deals.
But the ones it can be done.
The point, my point is like, tobasically say like, oh, it
cannot be done.
It's kind of throwing up, it,throwing your hands up in the
air.
(25:17):
And again, things have to, youhave, it's not that your timing,
timing has to be right, right.
Some people, some person like,look, I'm done with this, I'm,
now I can take$1 today,$2tomorrow, and$3 day after
tomorrow, I can make that work.
And then that's how actuallymost deals are done.
Anyway, so, so we've we havestumbled into it.
We, we experiment with a few andthen it.
It worked and then we kind ofdid more.
And then now we are kind of, andI would say that I don't feel
(25:39):
uncomfortable making, making adeal.
It has its own set of issues andconsequences and, distractions
and everything else, but it canbe done.
That's my point.
Dan Balcauski (25:47):
So it can be done.
And then I think you, you said acouple things in there, which
one is the ability to makedecisions quickly can put you in
an advantage in some of theseprocesses.
But you have, and you have donea few of them, and you said,
things like, not necessarilymaximizing the transaction
prices is always kind of, highon the list of the buyer or
seller, probably the, theseller's list or there may maybe
other things.
(26:08):
I guess having gone through thisprocess several times, I guess,
are there sort of things you'velearned about good ways to sort
of, structure these, As sort ofa bootstrap
Vivek Bhaskaran (26:17):
Yeah, a absolutely.
I mean, and this is whyeverybody will structure it the
same.
It's not even, I would say likefail fast.
Like come to the most importantdecision in any m and a
conversation is the price tag.
Okay.
Simple, right?
That's kind of let that, and soif you, if there's no ence on
price tag and price tag is, inmy mind, it is kinda almost
randomized, right?
I mean, people can say like,look, hey this, but you know,
(26:39):
look, I'm an engineer, so youcan put an Excel spreadsheet
together and do all thesemodeling and then multiply that
by a random number in the end,and then so, come on, relax,
right?
I mean,
Dan Balcauski (26:48):
Said more fiction has been written in Excel than
all word processors combined.
Vivek Bhaskaran (26:52):
That's a goal.
That's a good one, dude.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
Yes, I know exactly what you'retalking about.
So, so somebody even comes like,oh, here's the benchmark for all
SaaS companies.
Da da.
I'm like, I don't care what thebenchmark for SaaS companies
are.
Like.
They're publicly held SaaScompanies who gives you shit.
It is gonna irrelevantconversation, right?
The benchmark that matters is,you wanna sell, I wanna buy, and
here's the price tag thatmatters.
Is this good enough for you?
(27:13):
And the store.
That's, that, that's about theonly benchmark that actually
matters, right?
So coming to that and coming tothat, and I think, coming to
that and I play like, look, alot of companies who, you know,
a lot of founders, my strengthare really, I talked founder to
founder nine, nine out of 10times realistically, I'm like,
look, you wanna sell, I wannabuy and let's talk about it
directly.
Let's cut out the middleman.
(27:35):
Cut, cut out everybody, first ofall, and I'll tell you how much
I can pay you and.
And why I believe this way andyou can have a different
viewpoint, right, Dan?
Like, lemme put it this way.
You can have a differentviewpoint that doesn't make you
wrong.
And my me right or me wrong.
And you're right, we have adifferent viewpoint.
We have different points of viewon the same subject and we have
different, we have, yeah,different, fundamentally I do
(27:55):
believe that different points ofview is emanated from the fact
that.
You, we have asymmetricinformation, you know a lot
about certain things.
I know a lot about a differentset of sort of things, really,
if you think about it.
And then we are trying to mergethese things together and we may
or may not be able to merge.
And so, so I, the things that Ido is like, I try to get to a
number really fast and I talkabout valuation before I talk
(28:15):
about all the otherconversations, right?
That is, at least to me atleast, I mean, I respect your
time and I respect.
I wanna kind of be optimizedabout this and if we are like
apples and oranges apart, likewe're really, really far apart,
you think it's worth 10 million?
I think it's worth one.
We we're really far apart.
Alright, it's cool, but we foundthat out in like two
conversations.
We didn't spend four months,fooling around in Excel
spreadsheets and I come backwith a$1 million number and you
(28:37):
come back with a 10 millionnumber.
Like, okay, so let's have that,let's have that brass tack
conversations upfront ratherthan having that conversation
after six months.
And then that becomes now thatnow we've wasted six months.
When we are completely farapart.
Dan Balcauski (28:49):
Got it, I don't wanna ask or ask you to disclose
any sort of private information,but let's say for the purposes
of argument, right?
Like, you're a bootstrapcompany, right?
So you've got a certain amountof cash flow.
And so assuming you don't wantto take out, you don't want to
become a leverage buyout shopand load up every, everything
with debt and et cetera.
Right.
Let's say, you're clipping alongat what, 20 million and you see
a company that's like, Hey, Iwanna buy, and we both agree
(29:10):
that it's five.
Right.
Or some amount that's like,okay, given cash flow, this
we're gonna have to getcreative.
Like, I guess, have you thoughtabout, or have you figured out
ways to sort of structure thosedeals such that like within the
framework of a constraints ofcash flow and a bootstrap
company that they're both sidesget what they want within the
sort of constraints that you'refaced with, without saying like,
well, I've got this giant
Vivek Bhaskaran (29:30):
I mean, Yeah.
there's certain things that arefundamentally like, like if we
are acquiring company that islike upside down.
Like when I say upside down, Imean like cashflow, cashflow
negative.
Really like that.
That is very, very difficult.
I've never been able to make itwork realistically for me.
Right.
And I tell them upfront like,look we run a 20% even diverged,
so anything we buy has to.
Kinda like match that.
(29:52):
If they don't match that, theybetter match that in, my CFO
would be like, dude, if you buya dollar that is less than 20%
EBITDA margin, we have to findthat the extra, it's a Basic
math.
I gotta go find somebody elseto, they have to produce 22% if
you're producing 18.
If I get a dollar for 18%margin, gotta produce 22%.
So, so first is like, we look,I, if it is cashflow negative,
(30:13):
then I'm okay.
Fine.
I mean, I, it is not.
It's not a bad idea or a goodidea.
It's just like, I cannot do thedeal, really.
And Now then the questionbecomes, is cash cashflow
positive?
It's making XX we are at this.
And then, combined, can we getmore?
Right?
They piggyback off of us.
And then, and that is the kindof.
A cumulative effect combined.
Can we get it?
More Can the revenue?
Let's say like, a good examplewould be like, somebody's making
(30:35):
3 million bucks right now and300 K in profit right now.
So that would be a kind of likea, yeah, we can digest that.
Like we know how much, how doyou structure it?
Well, they want to get paid,whatever they want to get paid.
If they say like, oh, we want 3million bucks.
I'm like, okay, we may not beable to pay 3 million bucks,
upfront, but we'll pay you 800 Kupfront.
And then another 1.2, 1.1, 1.5,whatever it is, structure that,
tructure that.
So you get your three, you getyour money.
(30:57):
But you, but both of us have tobelieve that this business, that
3 million bucks actually gets tofive or 6 million bucks over the
next three years.
Right, and that, and you canparticipate on that ride.
And then we have certainbenefits.
We have a global footprint wecan sell globally, blah, blah,
blah.
I mean, there's gotta be somekind of value, the model to our
other method to that madness.
And if it does work then it'sworth doing the deal
realistically on both sides,then it's worth doing the deal.
(31:19):
And that's how I've structuredit.
At least that has worked for me.
And a few folks that have joinedme in this journey also.
Dan Balcauski (31:25):
Thank you for outlining that.
And so it's, yeah, so helping tostructure those payouts so that,
cash flow wise, they make sensebecause that's the big Variable.
It's not just, it's not just thep and l, but also the cash flow
that, you have to watch out forwhen you don't have a, giant
backer whether it's venturecapital, private equity, right?
Writing your big checks on thebackend to just outlay all at
once.
I wanna go back to something yousaid we were talking about
(31:45):
earlier in the conversation.
And you talked about this ideaor this experiment that you ran
around creating a entirelyseparate.
Brand.
And obviously, with the benefitof hindsight, et cetera, you
realize that was a mistake.
I'm, I am curious kind of whatdrove you to that decision in
the first place?
Because this is actually asurprisingly common thing that I
(32:08):
hear people out there.
Thinking about doing.
And so I think that there's proeven though this is sort of a
mistake, I would wanna kind ofunderstand the thought process a
little bit more of like, whatwere you trying to accomplish?
Did it help you in any way?
And then I guess you, you saidit was a bad idea, I guess, how
you sort of realized that.
But let's go to the front partof that.
Vivek Bhaskaran (32:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So this was back in 2010.
I really believe that we wantedto go up market, we wanna go
into the enterprise, right?
So, and at the time I believethat the enterprise brand is
completely distinct than theconsumer and brand really.
Right?
There was like ExactTarget andMailChimp.
There was sif.
Let's say the drop, there wasmosey and then there's EMC.
Really back then, at least mostpeople don't know what e EMC is
(32:49):
today.
But, so if you think about it,back in, throughout, throughout
2000 to 2010 there was distinctand enterprise sales motion, and
then there's a distinct consumersales motion, realistically.
So I thought that we needed twodifferent brands.
For that.
And that's why I created a newbrand.
And then once I created a newbrand, I'm like, yeah, let's
start up as a separate companyaltogether.
And I was just fucking evendumb, so on, so forth.
(33:11):
Okay, now.
Alright.
So I think the notion that like,okay, look, we want to create,
so obviously the, like you said,surprisingly, you've heard about
this conversation.
Many times it's probablybecause, like, okay, we are
doing this, but we wanna dosomething different.
Right?
That's the, that's thefundamental kind of, first
principle that you can thinkabout.
So I'm doing X, but I wannastart doing Y now.
(33:32):
The question really is.
Why, why is so different?
That's why, the second thing isso different that we will do it
as a separate company, separatebrand, separate.
It's not related to this.
Right.
And I think that's kind of the,that's how that was.
At least my way of thinkingabout it is like, okay, look, I
wanna go into the enterprise andI'm at consumer, so I need a
different brand for that.
And the way to operate that isgonna be completely different.
(33:52):
Dah, dah.
That's how I convinced myself.
That's how I created it.
And then you realize later onthat like, look, first of all.
You can have a single businesswith the same brand that, caters
to the consumer as well ascaters to the enterprise.
And you could argue, the,consumerization of it and all
this stuff came along and, itmade, it, made it possible.
And maybe that's the thing atleast for me, I would say like
that was my thinking process.
(34:12):
Going back to your question.
Which is like, why did youcreate a new brand?
Because I thought the new thingthat I was trying to do was
completely different than thecurrent thing that I'm doing,
and so therefore I needed a newbrand.
Once I decided I'm gonna have anew brand, then I decided it's
gotta be a separate company,which is again, a stupid idea,
and then have a separate groupof people working on it again.
So that, that created its ownset of challenges.
I didn't under anticipate theset of challenges that would
(34:33):
create, right.
I mean, it seemed like, inpaper, like communism in paper,
everything sounds good andfucking, and you get to do it,
they're like, god dammit, it'skind of crazy.
So.
Dan Balcauski (34:44):
So, yes.
So, so creating a new brand inB2B to capture enterprise versus
a more transactional like, likecommunism looks good on paper,
does not work at practice.
I guess, with the benefit ofhindsight, if you could go back
and kind of talk to yourself atthat point in time and sort of
advise, be like, Hey, like, Iknow you're trying to sell up
market.
Don't create this goat newbrand, here's what I sort of
(35:06):
advise you to do instead.
What would be your advice to,
Vivek Bhaskaran (35:09):
Yeah, just create a division in the
company.
That's it.
Just create a separate divisionin the company.
That's it.
You know you and have a separateperson running it and kinda like
have that, I say it out, youdon't have to create a new brand
that, because the brand, Ireally believe is the brand Halo
effect matters quite a bit.
And so, yeah.
You just say like, look, yeah.
I get it.
Fundamentally, that was a goodidea.
Like the core construct is notdebatable.
The core construct of having a,having, yes, we need a new group
(35:32):
of people selling selling intothe enterprise.
And even on multiple productsand the way you sell product one
versus.
The way we've decided this also,like we think about, I talked to
you about three different ICPs'cause, and I have three
different sales teams actuallythat sell into the SAPs, but
report up to the same VP ofsales realistically.
Right.
So the, so, so it's kinda like,have, there, there is, I mean
there's a, practical need forisolation, but there's also
(35:53):
kinda like, balance that out tokinda like, having not like all
these isolated things.
So, so going back to your point,I think, you know what I would
tell myself, would be like, Hey.
The core construct, there's nopoint debating the core
construct, but theimplementation of that construct
can be in one or two differentways.
One is to have a separatedivision in the company that,
and have se a separate GM thatruns that division.
(36:15):
That's it.
Right.
It's not that complicated.
You, yeah.
You could tell it's, we are notIBM, but Yeah.
You can create a different kindof segment within the company
and say, Hey, you go.
You go chase after theenterprise business and you can
do this and here's the benefitsfor you and get that done.
And I isolate that out andthat's how I would do it.
In hindsight, if I did it thatway, I think we would have been
at least much more successful.
We have not last four or fiveyears at the time.
(36:36):
But it's fine.
It's, it is what it is,
Dan Balcauski (36:38):
yeah.
Yeah.
Well, well, well hopefully withyour hard earned wisdom, you've
maybe saved someone else four orfive years of going down the
wrong path.
For, cause I for like, whateverreason, like, I, I think I had,
I have hypothesis.
Season of why this is so common,because I think at B2C, it's
done quite often, right?
You have Lexus and Toyota,you've got Black and Decker and
Bosch.
You've got, Was it Luxotticaowns, 20 every single brand of
(36:58):
sunglasses that you ever buyexcept for Warby Parker right.
And so people are like, oh, wellthese consumer guys are doing,
and you have p and g House ofbrands, but it's just it, it's,
yeah, it's just generally notrequired.
And it's undervalued.
For and yeah.
And then it can, especially whenyou're Yeah.
A small company, it's hardenough to get one brand, one
business model to work, letalone multiple and just ends up
(37:19):
in all the sadness that
Vivek Bhaskaran (37:20):
gave myself the same thank you for bringing
that.
I literally gave myself the samestupid fucking excuse around
Lexus and Toyota.
I'm like, oh, Lexus, Toyota todo it.
We should be able to do it.
Like, I'm like, yeah, no, that,and I think you're right.
Your core hypothesis is in, onthe consumer.
You can't, you can pull off ahouse of brands, but on B2B,
it's like.
It's almost, I don't think it'spossible literally right in, in
B2B and you have to kind offundamentally think, like, I
(37:43):
know, is this a different kindof a, if you're and most SaaS
software is B2B stuff.
Most not all,
Dan Balcauski (37:48):
I would say the one minor exception.
And I haven't, I haven't,researched this thoroughly, but
I have been part of companiesthat have done this, which is,
if you do m and a and so youacquire an entire other company,
like say it's like, Hey, we'regonna go acquire the super low
end competitor of ours.
We're gonna just leave it.
We're gonna, it's gonna be afully owned subsidiary and just
(38:09):
gonna kind of leave it there onits own.
And now we own both but we'renot, but the, the people in the
current business aren't gonnaworry about it.
And now we've got this othercompany kind of just there and
we just leave it there as like adefender, low end brand.
I've seen that kind of thingwork, but you're not, but also
that tends to be when you're ata much larger scale
Vivek Bhaskaran (38:26):
much much larger scale.
Yeah, exactly.
No, yeah.
At a much, much larger scale.
I mean, Medallia for example, Icompete with them a little bit.
They've bought a bunch ofdifferent companies they've kind
of kept some of the brands kindaof like as is, but most of them
they've kind of like, buyMedallia or something.
There's also this concept of thecore brand.
The core brand has to be strong.
And Intuit has done this withIntuit, MailChimp, da da da da.
Intuit is a very strong, they'rebuilding Intuit as the core
(38:47):
brand really.
Right?
And TurboTax and Intuit and allthat stuff.
So.
Dan Balcauski (38:50):
Well, Vivek, I could talk to you all day, but
it the be wanna be respectful ofyour time and our audience's
time.
This has been a super funconversation.
I want to close out with acouple of rapid fire closeout
questions.
Are you ready?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:00):
Shoot away, brother.
Dan Balcauski (39:02):
Awesome.
If we have the opportunity toremove the mosquito from the
planet, should we do it?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:07):
Yes.
If you can.
Kill kills almost half the, thenumber one cause of death in, in
the planet are mosquitoes.
So if we can figure it out Idoubt we can, but you know, if
we can, if somebody figures itout, we should do it.
Dan Balcauski (39:19):
Awesome.
What book has most shifted yourperspective?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:23):
Principles by Ray Dalio.
I think his concept of a radicaltransparency has really hit me,
and I, that's why, I, we talkeda little bit about before, I
don't really give a shit.
I say what I wanna say, and I,even internally, externally, I'm
the same guy and I, we, forexample, like.
All our revenue numbers arepublic inside, inside the
company.
Every team that makes, you cango do the dashboard, you can go
figure out, what, which team hasmade how much money to the date
(39:45):
down to the t.
So I do believe in, transparencycreates efficiency.
So I think I, I learned thatfrom that book Principles by Ray
Dalio.
So it was a pretty frat book,but, you can read the condensed
version of it, but basicallyit's like, more transparency is
better no matter what.
That's kind of like A-T-L-D-R.
Dan Balcauski (40:01):
Principles by Ray Dalio, add to your bookshelf.
Look, nobody of any success getsthere alone, and I believe that
you are successful.
You're all the way to 30.
I know you're not to a hundredyet, but you know, then once you
get to a hundred, there's gonnabe another number behind that.
Has there been a close mentorleader who's really helped you
on your journey?
Vivek Bhaskaran (40:18):
I think a couple of them not just one, but
a few of them, and these guysare I'd say like more.
More in the traditional sensementors, these guys have, taken
the time and patience to kindof, listen to me mouth off about
all kinds of stupid shit andthen give me, gimme their
opinion.
So, a friend of mine over herein the Bay Area called Rahm, and
then also my former boss, Dwaynethese guys have been very
instrumental in terms of, justlistening to me.
(40:40):
That's it.
I'd say like these two guys havebeen they're still one of my
best friends.
I, it's mentor, friends, family,everything put together.
I would say like, we go skiingwith them, but they also, I
think they have the patience tolisten to me and call my
bullshit.
So that's that's kind of the keything.
Dan Balcauski (40:54):
Awesome.
If I gave you a billboard andyou could put any advice on
there for other B2B SaaS CEOstrying to scale their companies,
what would your billboard say?
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:03):
Good one.
Ah shit man.
Let me think.
Hustle harder.
I'd say like that's it, it'slike I still believe in like
kind of grinding it out.
I think that's, and I've alwaysbelieved in it and I will
continue believe in it.
It's like hard work and, workethic beats talent.
I would probably argue if youhad given me, guy with get
better work ethic, then bettertalent, or I'm like, ah, I'll
take a work at the guy.
(41:24):
'cause eventually all the talentwould.
Mediocre work ethic stilldoesn't, I don't believe that at
least.
So, but you know, for differentpeople, I have different
viewpoints on this, but so yeah,hustle harder is probably what I
would put,
Dan Balcauski (41:35):
Hustle harder.
Vivek if listeners want toconnect with you, learn more
about QuestionPro, how can theydo that?
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:40):
Yeah, it is on LinkedIn.
I'm not on Twitter or fa fuckingnot on Facebook for sure.
So, so,
Dan Balcauski (41:46):
Amen.
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:47):
So, so yeah.
So just LinkedIn my is search onLinkedIn for V on I can't, I
think LinkedIn has a handle.
So anyway, so we password onLinkedIn?
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn'cause that's been my thing.
And I feel it's kind of get theright balance between social
versus business versus that'sgonna, at least for me, at
least, it works.
I would argue Twitter does not.
And Facebook is a fucking shitshow.
(42:07):
Anyway, so I'm, I'm so glad, I'mso happy.
I'm gonna tell you, I'm so happythat I never got onto Facebook,
so I'm like, I don't have to getout of Facebook because I never
got on the goddamn thing tobegin with.
So.
Dan Balcauski (42:18):
Well, I'll put link to your LinkedIn handle in
the show notes.
For listeners, everyone thatwraps up this episode of Sask
Galy here, thank you to Vivekfor sharing his journey,
insights, and valuable tips.
For our listeners who found thisconversation as enlightening as
I to remember, subscribe, showup, miss out on future episodes.
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets the podcast that
brings you the inside storiesfrom the leaders of the best
scale up.
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to speak withVivek Bhaskaran.
Vivek is the founder and CEO ofQuestionPro, which he's
bootstrapped from zero to 32million in a RR while serving
over 20 million users.
He built an impressive portfolioof successful companies,
including Idea Scale, Trita QCard, and Spatial Chat.
(00:42):
Particularly remarkable is thathe's achieved this growth
without raising externalcapital.
He's also created meaningfulopportunities for over a
thousand employees across his 20year journey.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Vivek to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
Vivek Bhaskaran (00:53):
Hi, Dan.
How you doing?
Glad to be here.
Dan Balcauski (00:55):
I am very excited for our conversation today.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and I think our audience
will get a lot outta thisconversation.
Before we dive into QuestionProand your journey in that, I
wanna know a little bit moreabout you and I think, we all
have these moments in our lifethat are kind of
transformational, the change ourperspective, our worldview.
(01:17):
I like to think of him as asuperhero transformation moment.
You're Peter Parker, normal highschool student.
You get bit by a radioactivespider.
You wake up the next day, you'reSpider-Man.
What moment has that been foryou in your journey?
Vivek Bhaskaran (01:29):
Ah, good question.
I think I think when I was in myf very first business that I
started was in I was a studentin Russia actually, after high
school.
After high school I left India.
Originally from India.
I was in Russia, and then Istarted my own business, I
think, and we used to buy likecigarettes in bulk and sell
cigarettes in the dorm rooms.
(01:50):
On packs really.
So that's kind of, that was myvery first, and that's when I
got into the notion of actuallydoing business of, it was just a
pretty simple retail business.
I guess you buy it in bulk andsell it.
And, and cigarettes is, I guesscigarettes or cigarettes.
And it was back in 95, 96, Ithink.
Yeah.
96.
So that was kinda my aha momentabout business in general, I
(02:12):
would argue.
So it's like, oh, because I grewup in a family where my dad
worked for the same company.
He worked for the coal miningcompany throughout his entire
career slash life.
My mom worked for, another oiland gas company throughout her
life.
And a pretty career kind ofemployees, I guess.
And that's when I realized like,ah, shit, I'm not gonna be an
employee.
I guess I'm gonna, I'm gonna bean entrepreneur.
So, so that was at least thebeginnings of can, I thought
(02:32):
that, oh, there's another way todo this.
So that's, in a nutshell thatwas one, one of the, one
Dan Balcauski (02:36):
That is,
Vivek Bhaskaran (02:37):
moments.
Dan Balcauski (02:37):
yeah, that is for sure.
I think the most unique answerI've ever heard to that
question.
What what led you to go fromIndia to Russia?
I.
Vivek Bhaskaran (02:46):
Yeah, so I did not after I, I really wanted to
do computer science slashcomputer engineering.
I was kind of like my dad hadbought home a computer, so I
was, fooling around with it.
In high school.
I really wanted to do that, butI couldn't get into any of the
IIT, so I, back in India backthen when you had to, I guess,
be in the top.
I guess 0.1% of the populationto actually get into, get
computer science as a course.
(03:08):
Clearly I was not so I couldn'tget in.
So if I couldn't get in and thenI said, fuck it.
Let me try do something else.
And Russia was open up and theywanted inter transfer students
and so I kinda applied for itand I.
Got admission in some randomcollege in Russia and said, I'm
gonna go to Russia now.
I think I was 18.
In hindsight I was like, oh,it's gonna ballsy move.
But anyway, at the time I waslike, I just wanna get out.
I just wanna do it.
(03:29):
I wasn't thinking, oh, you're18.
You don't think too hard.
You just do things.
So it's good that way.
Dan Balcauski (03:34):
Oh my God.
So how does you go from sellingcigarettes into the, what has
been your journey into thesoftware world, I guess from
from the time selling cigarettesin your dorm room?
Vivek Bhaskaran (03:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, I mean, the naturalprogression of cigarettes
would've been made cigarettes,drugs and cocaine, I guess.
But I didn't, clearly I didn'tdo that.
So, so no.
Anyway, so yeah, now that wasjust a, that was just a means to
an end.
So I kinda came to the States.
I came to actually, believe itor not I went to BYUI came to
the state transfer to BYU, whichis a, it's a modern school in
Dan Balcauski (04:03):
Fantastic program.
Yeah.
Vivek Bhaskaran (04:04):
Yeah.
So, and BYU has been a great,kind of, it's, from my
perspective, it was, it wasreally good.
It was like, fooling around,screwing around, doing all kinds
of dumb shit in Moscow to comingto Provo, Utah.
I was like, get your headtogether and work and study.
That's all I did for like, threeyears.
And that's where I got into,obviously computer science,
computer programming.
I did a lot of, side, sidehustles jobs.
(04:24):
E-commerce was booming at thetime, and, dot com was booming.
Basically everybody wanted tomove everything online really.
This was back in 2000, early twothousands, and I think I built
the very first, kind of likemortgage application.
I also worked for a companycalled E Utah, which is the e,
the government portal for.
The state of Utah, that was thefirst, like you could buy a
hunting and fishing license on,I mean, today it seems kind of
obvious but you know, back in2000 you had to go to, I think
(04:47):
you had to go to Walmart orsomething to buy a hunting and
fishing license.
Literally you had to go to astore.
There's no way you could buy ahunting and fishing license.
And we moved that thing entirething online.
So that's kind of how I got intocomputers and tech and
everything else.
And then in 2000.
Five is when I decided, and thenI was doing consulting work.
And then 2 0 5 I decided likeenough of consulting.
Consulting is great if you thinkabout it, like you'd make
actually, you make a lot ofmoney.
(05:07):
Honestly, in consulting, you domake a lot of money.
When the going is good.
But then it's ups and downs.
And more importantly for me as aconsultant, you don't own
anything, right?
You build something, you buildit.
Obviously for a client.
So even if you're massivelysuccessful, you don't get the
kind of the sheer joy of ownownership, if you will.
I really wanna build a productand so that's when I, on file, I
started QuestionPro and that'skind of been, never looked back
(05:29):
since then.
So that's been my kind ofjourney into tech, I guess.
So that's kinda from sellingcigarettes to, I guess to, to,
to te
Dan Balcauski (05:37):
We are all very grateful that you did not take
the natural path of sellingcigarettes into into a deeper
crime.
So, I wanna talk more aboutQuestionPro.
To give our audience a littlebit of context.
Could you give us kind of the32nd elevator pitch for what is
QuestionPro?
Where does it play?
Vivek Bhaskaran (05:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
we are an online researchplatform, so think of it we
really target three differentICPs.
Number one is consumer insightsand market research.
People, within companies thatare trying to figure out what
to, what the market is thinkingabout them.
Number two is customerexperience.
So what your customers arethinking about you.
So.
And that's how, that's kinda thesecond part of our business and
third part of our business, howemployees think about you.
(06:11):
So think about it from thecontext of surveys.
We built a core survey platform,and then we look at it in the
context of, how the marketthinks about you, how customers
think about you and howemployees think about you.
So the three different ICPs inan enterprise.
And that's who we sell toprimarily, and that's kinda our
business.
Dan Balcauski (06:27):
And I appreciate that overview.
And I wanna talk, shift a littlebit here into, This program is
called SAIC Secrets.
And look, every CEO faceschallenges along the way.
Is there a specific challengeQuestionPros face during its
growth That's.
You thought was particularlydifficult to overcome a moment
that really has kinda shapedwhat the company is today.
Vivek Bhaskaran (06:48):
Yeah, multiple, first of all, multiple
challenges.
To say that it's one, it'sgonna, fundamentally factually
incorrect.
In fact, we are facing now onenow, right now, at the end of
the year.
We didn't grow, we didn't growtoo much this year.
So again, we gotta figure outwhat to do.
But I think when we were, Ithink we had two or three
inflection points.
Number one is when we were aboutthree, three and a half million
dollars we were kind of stuck inthat about three to 4 million
(07:10):
bucks in revenue.
So we grew from like.
2005 to 2010, we grew from likezero to about four or 5 million
bucks, or four, three and ahalf,$4 million.
Really, within four or fiveyears.
I was pretty happy with it.
I was like, yeah, things aregoing really well.
But then we got stuck in 2008,2009, 2010 at that number.
And it's not that we were nottrying hard, we were just like,
obviously I was doing everythingI knew how to do.
(07:31):
And we realized that, one of themistakes I had made is like, and
I've seen a bunch of my otherfriends also make, is like, we
were trying to do differentthings and then each of them had
a different brand.
And one of the, one of themistakes I made as I created two
or three different brands withinthe ecosystem itself, and I had
QuestionPro.
I, I wanted to go up market, Iwanted go to the enterprise.
I created a new brand calledSurvey Analytics and so on.
So that.
In hindsight was a huge mistake.
(07:52):
In terms of like, I think Ithink my, my, building a brand
building, building a company,building a brand is so difficult
that building two of them islike 10 f.
It's not twice as moredifficult.
I think it's 10 times becauseyou deviate your energy from one
and da, da, da, da, all thatstuff, you know that really
well.
So even if you're buildingmultiple products, you can build
multiple products, but make surethat the brand is the core brand
(08:12):
that you are kind of leaninginto because people can
associate you with the brandand.
Brand development is like one ofthe most hardest and the
challenging most, it's just likepeople is very, very difficult
to do.
And and we have a great example,even in my own business.
I mean, SurveyMonkey had a greatbrand and they kind of changed
to Momentum and then they had tochange back to SurveyMonkey.
So it's kind is one of the, Ithink HBR at some point is gonna
do a case study around it.
(08:33):
Like they had a great brand, butthey kinda said they want, Hey,
we want to be part of ai.
Train and things kinda change toment and nobody really
understood what momentum meant.
And then they, oh, shit.
Then they's spent about a coupleof years and they moved back to
SurveyMonkey.
But so to me, brand is like a,it's a very core concept that,
and it, most people get caughtup with, oh, it's a good brand.
I mean, you can make anything.
Look, apple is an, apple is agreat brand.
(08:53):
I mean, it's a fruit.
You, a brand is whatever youmake out of it really.
Right?
How you, what you make out ofit.
So, to me, going back to yourquestion.
I think I made a huge mistake.
And that, and there's a materialeconomic consequence to that,
that, dissipated our energy.
And we struggled quite a bitbetween 2000 and, and 2014 to
kind of grow the business.
And then we finally, in 2015, wekind of combined the two
(09:13):
businesses back together andkind of unified our m same
brand.
And then we got some, we got.
We got stuck at, in 2015, at2000 10, 2 15, we only grew from
like, four to about 6 million.
And then in 2016 we startedgrowing again.
We went from six to 10, 10 to11, and then we got stuck again.
11, 12 million also, again,separate issue, but again, that
got you.
Every few years we get, we havea growth spur and then we get
(09:34):
stuck and then we have anothergrowth spurt
Dan Balcauski (09:36):
I absolutely love this answer because and we
haven't, you and I haven'ttalked about this, but the
reason for this podcast, thereason for being is because of
exactly what you just described,is that, there's, I think a lot
of ink spilled around, the zeroto one journey and three guys in
a garage, finding product marketfit.
People thinking like, oh, that'sthe end of the story.
(09:57):
Like, we've got some customers,we found a model, and then I
just see this over and over ofthese companies who get stuck at
5 million or get stuck at 10.
And this is one of the reasonswhy I love talking to people
like you is because, obviously,that happened to you as well,
but you've broke through it.
You've, it sounds like you'vegone through this a couple of
times.
I'm curious, like, as you've hitthese growth plateaus.
(10:18):
Maybe it's the brand decision ormaybe it's, things that you've
learned over time.
How did you, how have you goneabout sort of diagnosing, like
what's going on?
It sounds like sort of with thebenefit of hindsight, you'd now
sort of realize like, okay, the,in the brand example you're
saying like it diverted ourattention and, it was, too few
resources between too manyinitiatives spread too thin, I
guess, but that, it sounds likethat's happened a couple times.
(10:41):
Is there a way that you've sortof been able to diagnose when
you've hit these growthplateaus?
Kind of what's going on?
Like, okay, is this a macroissue?
Is it something we're doinginternally?
Is this like, like, how do youthink about that?
Vivek Bhaskaran (10:53):
Good question.
First of all, I love the thankyou for coining the term growth
plateau.
I love that shit.
I mean, I actually, I, I don'tknow if it's coined, but you
should totally own it because ithappens to almost everybody
every so often really.
Right?
Because people don't talk aboutit.
People just say, Hey, look,we've been growing, and then,
shit, we are not been growing.
And so going back to your point,I'm trying to, honestly, I wish
I could tell you that I ha Ihave a formula, but you know, e
(11:14):
every time you have a year ofbad growth.
Until long you make materialchanges, orthogonal changes.
My kind of current belief isthat you'll have another year
of, mediocre growthrealistically.
Right.
So, and that's when you, atthree years of mediocre growth
will, create this growth plateauthat you're talking about.
Right.
And it, and I actually thinkthat this is especially true for
(11:37):
kind of bootstrap companiesversus uh, see in a bootstrap
company, things are generallyorganic really, right?
There's no, there is no, if youthink about it, when you raise
funding, there's a stepfunction.
Right.
So you know, you get a bunch ofcash, then you say like, look,
you gotta do somethingdifferent.
So there's a natural stepfunction in the business that
said, look, you've got a bunchof cash, you gotta upgrade your
chief product officer.
You know the guy who started thecompany, he is really not a CPO.
(11:59):
Then you gotta upgrade.
I'm just making up that randomexcuse.
But there's always a stepfunction, right?
So, because whereas when you'reorganically growing the
business, there is no stepfunction.
You have to create that stepfunction.
You have to be the changereally.
So, so going back to your point.
I think the parameters that Iwould try to look for in
hindsight as well as right nowwould be if you have had a bad
(12:20):
year, first of all, do notattribute it to macroeconomic
issues.
Right?
So that's I don't buy that.
I think that's bullshit.
I think that's kind of likepunting the ball.
I think that's what I personallythink, right?
If somebody says like, ah,macroeconomic issues, then like,
okay, look, the macroeconomic isgonna be the macroeconomic.
It's your job within thismacroeconomic condition to grow.
That's what, that'sfundamentally my belief.
(12:40):
At its very core.
So I would say, looking at ifyou have a flat growth here,
what changes are you making?
Right?
And most people get caught up inthis idea like, ah, we gotta go
left, we gotta go right.
And obviously you have debatearound whether to go left or
right, but more often than notis like.
I don't give a fuck, just goleft or right.
Really just don't be there.
That's a bigger problem thantrying to debate whether to go
(13:02):
this to where to go left orright.
So one thing you'll have to makea decision if you have like a
bad year, is like, what are youdoing completely differently
this year into the next year?
So that is, to me is afundamental construct that has
helped kinda us move.
'cause we have to like reallyauto thing.
They have to say like, look,we've had a couple of bad years.
We have to do something.
No gany at a minimum, ganydifferent.
(13:23):
Now you don't have to turn, youhave turn the
Dan Balcauski (13:25):
We will unpack that a little bit.
You've said that termorthogonally different, like
what does that mean to you?
Vivek Bhaskaran (13:28):
so thinking like, for example, when we got
stuck in that 10, 10, 10,$12million range we did a, not a
huge acquisition, but a materialacquisition.
We bought a company that wasmaking three and a half million
bucks in revenue.
So we were at, we grew from 12to.
14 and then we bought in threeand a half on top.
So you know, that year we grewfrom 12 to 19, basically.
Right.
So that created momentum really.
Right.
And normally you'd say like mostcompanies, and we are bootstrap,
(13:51):
we don't have that kind of cash,we don't go out, even think
about m and a.
Right?
So you're like, oh shit man,this is not part of our.
Most companies don't think aboutit that way, but that was an
orthogonal thought process tosay, Hey, can we just go buy
somebody and add revenue to usand create momentum?
Which normally, honestly, Iwouldn't think about it that
way.
But then, we said like, well,we're not able to grow
organically, so let us try to dosomething that we have never
(14:12):
done before.
And we did that and we able to,we were to somewhat.
Pull it off.
And that was, that createdanother Strat of Momentum that
got us from like in the 10 12range to the 20 range.
Then we went to 24, then 28,then 32.
And so that's kind of, that kindof created a little bit of
momentum over there at thatpoint.
Dan Balcauski (14:27):
you're hinting at this a bit in that, I think one
of the hardest decisions thatfounders CEOs face is kind of
knowing when to stay the courseversus knowing when to change
direction.
I guess, how.
How do you personallydistinguish between when to push
through versus, when to makethese changes?
Are there, metrics or milestonesthat you're trying to look at?
Vivek Bhaskaran (14:50):
A little bit is, I mean, I index on growth
really.
I think fundamentally my beliefis that if you're not growing
then there's something wrong inthe system.
Simple, right?
I don't know what's some wrong,there's something wrong in the
system.
So, so this year we'll have apretty low growth here, for
example.
And we gonna make somesignificant changes.
We I'm already.
Prepping for those technicalchanges and, and we took a, take
a look at the metrics andlargely I'm, we're fairly data
(15:11):
driven I think and a little bitof gut obviously.
So it's like, it can't be fullydata driven then it.
It's it's not gonna work.
At least that's my opinion.
So, so the point really is like,okay, so, you look at the data
and then you go with your gut tosay but the most important thing
that I would say is like everytime I've said like, look shit,
we gotta make a fucking change.
That's it.
Even internally, because a lotof the.
(15:32):
A lot of the pushback and theconversations are gonna be
internal conversations, notexternal conversations.
More often than not, at least myexperience being like there's
internal, oh yeah, we've beendoing this, we should stick the
course for another, anotheryear, another few months,
another quarter, really.
Right?
And I have certain benchmarksand principal like, look, if
it's not grown by 15 months, ifthere's no progress in 15
months, three more months ain'tgonna make a difference.
(15:53):
I mean, we've given I, unlessyou kind of say like, we've
gotta stop doing what we aredoing.
Right.
So my, my, my thought processreally is stop doing what you're
doing right.
That forces you to kind of makethat orthogonal change, which
is, I keep alluding to, which isthen at least you can say like,
okay, we're gonna go live, we'renot gonna do what we did.
So usually my benchmark is like,12 to 15 months is like, when,
(16:13):
okay we are, this is notworking.
We've given it a good shot.
So that's kinda at least mypersonal benchmark.
I mean, a lot of our friends Iknow like, they give less and
they give more, but that's amore of a personal kind of
choice.
I think it's a little bit of apersonal choice.
Like, yeah, I give it a shot forlike, 12 months.
A year is a good number.
It's kind of random number.
I would argue it's a year is agood number.
Again, depending on the size andcontext of the problem, but I
(16:34):
mean, give yourself some timeand then hold yourself
accountable to that time,really.
Right.
So like, okay, we're gonna giveourselves this time and if it
doesn't work, we gotta make somechanges.
So that's another way to kind ofiterating through that.
Dan Balcauski (16:44):
And then I think with the, whether with the brand
situation, which was earlier onor you mentioned this
acquisition around the 11, 12million mark, I guess kind of
looking at.
One of those situations, kindalooking at what was kind of the
key to sort of breaking through,because you've talked this
couple times of like being anindecision, these internal
conversations of left or right,but eventually you did make the
(17:06):
sort of the you made thedecision.
Like as you kind of look atthat, like what do you think was
the key to sort of like finallyunwinding that log jam?
Vivek Bhaskaran (17:15):
Yeah, so great.
I love it that you put it as alog jam.
It is a log jam.
'cause you're like, fuck it.
God dammit, I'm working my assoff.
Shit's still not working.
Right.
A good kinda a good kinda way Ithink about it that, that has
helped me is like, imagine I,and I tell this to all the folks
who work with me also, like,like imagine you got fired today
and you got hired tomorrow forthe exact same fucking job.
(17:38):
What would you do?
Just, that's it.
This is what consultants do.
If you think about it,consultants don't have the
baggage history.
I've made a bunch of decisionsthroughout, like le let's say in
the last four years, I've made abunch of stupid decisions,
right?
A consultant comes in and says,well, I don't give a shit.
I'm the new guy.
This is what we're gonna doObjectively.
You look at the business, youlook at what's going on, look at
(17:58):
the market and say, Hey, here'swhat we need to do.
Right.
You don't have the baggage ofthe last four years of bad
decisions that you've made orgood decision.
It doesn't even matter really.
So another way to look at it islike, if you were fired today
and you got rehired day aftertomorrow, what would you do?
Now you're the new CEO simple.
You don't have the baggage ofall the 15 decisions of 20
decisions you've made in thelast one year or two years, five
(18:20):
years, realistically.
Right?
And that helps you in your, atleast helps me, lemme tell you.
That helps me like rethink whatI'm doing.
Right.
It's almost like unlearningcertain things and okay, look,
here's where we are.
We are at 32 million bucks.
We need to get to a hundredmillion.
What are we doing today?
Objectively not based on wherewe've come from and all that
stuff.
We can talk about 20 years, da,da, da, da, all the brand stuff,
but that's all water under thebridge where, you know, if I
(18:43):
just go out and private equitycompanies do this all day long,
they're like, look, you'll justget a new guy.
He'll come and do what?
You know what does it take to gofrom 30 to a hundred?
That's the only question thatmatters.
It really doesn't.
Nobody gives a shit how you cameto 30.
Literally that doesn't evenmatter.
Right?
Like we are where we are.
How are we gonna get to ahundred?
That's the only question in anyeverybody's head.
So that kinda rethinking andretraining your brain is kinda
(19:05):
where, I try to do that in thatcontext.
I kind of physically say like,look, if I got fired tomorrow
and I got hired as a, CEO ofanother 30 million business,
what would I do?
And my goal is to get to ahundred.
That's what you know, and let'smake all those decisions based
on that context.
So I think that's the way Ithink about it, that's one way
of thinking about it.
Maybe not the only way, butthat's at least one way of
thinking about it.
Dan Balcauski (19:25):
Yeah.
Well, because there, it's a,there's so much, sunk cost
fallacy is one thing that comesto mind.
There's, and then there's justemotional baggage, right?
There's like, well, I've put allthis, I've put all this work in
making it the way things are.
And then like, what does it sayabout me if I can't?
Make it work hard.
Like if we just work harder.
If I go a different direction,does that mean I, I couldn't
(19:46):
work hard enough to make theother thing work?
Does that mean my strategy wasflawed before?
'cause I thought this was gonnabe the thing that broke it.
And I love that because you'rekind of clearing the decks of
all that.
You're just like, look, thatthat's in the past.
You cannot change that.
New person comes in and that newperson can be you.
There's
Vivek Bhaskaran (20:03):
But if you think about it, that's why a lot
of like, public, bigger,companies like, they, they do
change management because ofthis one reason, because this,
again, new management comes inand they're like, we don't care
what you guys made.
Whether you use Salesforce,HubSpot, I don't give a shit.
This is what we're gonna do.
If you think about these kind,random conversations, chew up a
lot of our energy and it's like,oh, we said we'd do this or we
gotta do it.
Dan Balcauski (20:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you've mentioned a fewtimes the fact that,
impressively, you guys havescaled QuestionPro to 30 million
without external funding.
I'm curious, like what drovethat decision to bootstrap?
Originally I.
Vivek Bhaskaran (20:37):
To be brutally honest bro, I didn't even know
that I could raise money.
I'm not even gonna fuck withyou.
I literally, I like, literallylike, like this was 2005 in
Seattle I just built.
And look, I'm a softwaredeveloper so I can build
anything I want, really?
So it's like the, and then webuilt it and then we were like,
oh shit, we gotta get.
Fucking customers, right?
I'm like, and we were like, howdo we, like, we were looking at
each other, like, how do we findcustomers, guys?
And we had no, we had no ideawhat to do.
(20:58):
And, but SEO was, SEO was noteven SEO at the time, but we
knew how to get, we were like,oh, look, if, if you get number
one on Google, we'll findcustomers.
I mean, they'll find us and weare good to go.
And so we got into that.
And so one thing led to theother and we quickly made, we
start getting inbound customers.
We, we got good at SEO before.
SEO was a sexy thing.
And so, so going back to yourpoint.
So we kind got to three,$4million, even without thinking
(21:21):
about it.
And then we were like, oh shit,we are already making money.
I why go know waste our, why go?
And we decided not to raisemoney.
And then we know kept growingand then we got stuck and da da
da.
But every time we've thoughtabout raising money, we've kind
of said also that, look, there'sno free money in this planet.
Simple.
It's got its own set of, it'sgot its own set of kind strings
attached to it.
And and we decided, well.
(21:42):
No, I mean, we will hustleharder and try to make it work.
So that's kind, I mean, ittaking us longer time, but that
actually I'm pretty happy withit.
It's fine.
It's, I sleep well at night, sothat's also part of what I live
for, so.
Dan Balcauski (21:53):
Yes.
If you're not sleeping well atnight nothing else.
Everything else kind of doesn'tmatter at the end of, at the end
of it right.
Kind of your health, your sleepand happy family.
And then if those things aren'tworking it doesn't matter how
much money you have in the bankbut you mentioned before you've.
You've done m and a and I wouldsay like, a lot of founders
assume, rightly or wrongly, thata significant m and a is
impossible without venturefunding.
(22:14):
And yet you've obviouslycompleted several deals.
And then I guess also there's a,common narrative going around
right now that, m and a is, oh,it's really difficult right now,
et cetera.
I guess, what did, what wouldyou say to, to either of those,
Vivek Bhaskaran (22:27):
Well first of all, first of all, I'm an
entrepreneur, so no, don't sayno to me, right?
I fundamentally believe this,right?
So if you say you cannot dosomething, I'm just, I'll just
fucking do it just to prove youwrong.
Just I'm that kind of anasshole, right?
We all have that, like, yeah,that's at least.
So if you can't sell cigarettesand like, ah, could fuck you,
man, I'm gonna figure out a wayto say, I know buy and sell
cigarettes and make a buck inbetween,
Dan Balcauski (22:46):
gonna move to Russia and sell cigarettes.
Vivek Bhaskaran (22:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Think about it like, that's thechallenge.
Going back to your point, reallylike, look.
M and a, like everything else islike, a lot of it is opportunity
and opportunistic is like, andyou never know when people wanna
sell the company what theirpersonal motivations are.
We've bought a bunch ofcompanies where we've absorbed
them.
They want to be part of a largerbusiness realistically, and they
want to be part of a GM of alarger business.
(23:09):
So that's that's one motivatingfactor realistically, a lot of
times.
A lot of times it's like, okay,we built some amazing tech, be
it, we have no distributionengine.
That's gonna be anothermotivating factor.
So my analysis is that, look,yes, you're right.
I mean, there is a fundamentaloverarching concept, that like,
look, you cannot do m and a.
It's like saying like, Hey, youneed a 10 x engineer, you gotta
pay a million bucks.
(23:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Google pays a million bucks forengineers.
That doesn't mean, you, thereare amazing 10 X engineers that
are not, that you don't have topay a million bucks for
realistically.
Right.
So the, so this narrative.
That you cannot do m and a.
First of all, I don't believe init, right.
I mean, okay.
And MA and you're right.
In certain cases, it's simplynot gonna work.
If you in a company that isfunded, and typically we've, we,
we've done m and a withtypically, at least we've done m
(23:52):
and a with founders directly.
So one of the, one of the cha,one of the, one of the benefits
that, you lean into yourbenefits, right?
You lean into your strengths.
What are our strengths?
Yes.
We are not, we don't have ashitload of cash.
We are not, we are not.
KKR or BlackRock, so we are notthat.
But no, we are honest and we canmake a decision fast.
That's our, that is our kind oflike, key.
That's our, at least my keydriver, right?
So you can walk in and say like,look, I know I'm, we think this
(24:15):
is a good idea.
We are not gonna be able to payyou what you really, obviously
what you want, but here's whatwe can pay you and you can make
a decision.
And this is what we believe in.
That's it.
Right?
And you either, yeah, you cansay like, Hey, this is not gonna
work for us, or it's gonna workfor us.
So, and you can go through thatmotion a couple of times and
then you get, you, you actuallyland deals.
You land certain things or like,you know what, actually I don't
care about the, it's not aboutthe amount of optimizing
(24:37):
everybody thinks it's aboutoptimizing the.
The value the transaction price.
But it's not, it's not actuallynot a hundred percent.
Most, more often than not, it'sabout more often.
Again, I would say like 80% ofthe time it's optimizing the
transaction price.
But there are 20% of the timewhere like, like the optimizing,
optimizing the transaction priceis not the primary driver for
both parties.
In that case it's like, hey,combined effort, combine, one
(24:57):
plus two, can we make it threeor more than three, obviously.
So, so, so those are the onesthat.
I cannot, those are the onesthat I can close.
You could argue that there arebunch of thems, and for the
amount of deals we've done,we've not also done a bunch of
deals.
But the ones it can be done.
The point, my point is like, tobasically say like, oh, it
cannot be done.
It's kind of throwing up, it,throwing your hands up in the
air.
(25:17):
And again, things have to, youhave, it's not that your timing,
timing has to be right, right.
Some people, some person like,look, I'm done with this, I'm,
now I can take$1 today,$2tomorrow, and$3 day after
tomorrow, I can make that work.
And then that's how actuallymost deals are done.
Anyway, so, so we've we havestumbled into it.
We, we experiment with a few andthen it.
It worked and then we kind ofdid more.
And then now we are kind of, andI would say that I don't feel
(25:39):
uncomfortable making, making adeal.
It has its own set of issues andconsequences and, distractions
and everything else, but it canbe done.
That's my point.
Dan Balcauski (25:47):
So it can be done.
And then I think you, you said acouple things in there, which
one is the ability to makedecisions quickly can put you in
an advantage in some of theseprocesses.
But you have, and you have donea few of them, and you said,
things like, not necessarilymaximizing the transaction
prices is always kind of, highon the list of the buyer or
seller, probably the, theseller's list or there may maybe
other things.
(26:08):
I guess having gone through thisprocess several times, I guess,
are there sort of things you'velearned about good ways to sort
of, structure these, As sort ofa bootstrap
Vivek Bhaskaran (26:17):
Yeah, a absolutely.
I mean, and this is whyeverybody will structure it the
same.
It's not even, I would say likefail fast.
Like come to the most importantdecision in any m and a
conversation is the price tag.
Okay.
Simple, right?
That's kind of let that, and soif you, if there's no ence on
price tag and price tag is, inmy mind, it is kinda almost
randomized, right?
I mean, people can say like,look, hey this, but you know,
(26:39):
look, I'm an engineer, so youcan put an Excel spreadsheet
together and do all thesemodeling and then multiply that
by a random number in the end,and then so, come on, relax,
right?
I mean,
Dan Balcauski (26:48):
Said more fiction has been written in Excel than
all word processors combined.
Vivek Bhaskaran (26:52):
That's a goal.
That's a good one, dude.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
Yes, I know exactly what you'retalking about.
So, so somebody even comes like,oh, here's the benchmark for all
SaaS companies.
Da da.
I'm like, I don't care what thebenchmark for SaaS companies
are.
Like.
They're publicly held SaaScompanies who gives you shit.
It is gonna irrelevantconversation, right?
The benchmark that matters is,you wanna sell, I wanna buy, and
here's the price tag thatmatters.
Is this good enough for you?
(27:13):
And the store.
That's, that, that's about theonly benchmark that actually
matters, right?
So coming to that and coming tothat, and I think, coming to
that and I play like, look, alot of companies who, you know,
a lot of founders, my strengthare really, I talked founder to
founder nine, nine out of 10times realistically, I'm like,
look, you wanna sell, I wannabuy and let's talk about it
directly.
Let's cut out the middleman.
(27:35):
Cut, cut out everybody, first ofall, and I'll tell you how much
I can pay you and.
And why I believe this way andyou can have a different
viewpoint, right, Dan?
Like, lemme put it this way.
You can have a differentviewpoint that doesn't make you
wrong.
And my me right or me wrong.
And you're right, we have adifferent viewpoint.
We have different points of viewon the same subject and we have
different, we have, yeah,different, fundamentally I do
(27:55):
believe that different points ofview is emanated from the fact
that.
You, we have asymmetricinformation, you know a lot
about certain things.
I know a lot about a differentset of sort of things, really,
if you think about it.
And then we are trying to mergethese things together and we may
or may not be able to merge.
And so, so I, the things that Ido is like, I try to get to a
number really fast and I talkabout valuation before I talk
(28:15):
about all the otherconversations, right?
That is, at least to me atleast, I mean, I respect your
time and I respect.
I wanna kind of be optimizedabout this and if we are like
apples and oranges apart, likewe're really, really far apart,
you think it's worth 10 million?
I think it's worth one.
We we're really far apart.
Alright, it's cool, but we foundthat out in like two
conversations.
We didn't spend four months,fooling around in Excel
spreadsheets and I come backwith a$1 million number and you
(28:37):
come back with a 10 millionnumber.
Like, okay, so let's have that,let's have that brass tack
conversations upfront ratherthan having that conversation
after six months.
And then that becomes now thatnow we've wasted six months.
When we are completely farapart.
Dan Balcauski (28:49):
Got it, I don't wanna ask or ask you to disclose
any sort of private information,but let's say for the purposes
of argument, right?
Like, you're a bootstrapcompany, right?
So you've got a certain amountof cash flow.
And so assuming you don't wantto take out, you don't want to
become a leverage buyout shopand load up every, everything
with debt and et cetera.
Right.
Let's say, you're clipping alongat what, 20 million and you see
a company that's like, Hey, Iwanna buy, and we both agree
(29:10):
that it's five.
Right.
Or some amount that's like,okay, given cash flow, this
we're gonna have to getcreative.
Like, I guess, have you thoughtabout, or have you figured out
ways to sort of structure thosedeals such that like within the
framework of a constraints ofcash flow and a bootstrap
company that they're both sidesget what they want within the
sort of constraints that you'refaced with, without saying like,
well, I've got this giant
Vivek Bhaskaran (29:30):
I mean, Yeah.
there's certain things that arefundamentally like, like if we
are acquiring company that islike upside down.
Like when I say upside down, Imean like cashflow, cashflow
negative.
Really like that.
That is very, very difficult.
I've never been able to make itwork realistically for me.
Right.
And I tell them upfront like,look we run a 20% even diverged,
so anything we buy has to.
Kinda like match that.
(29:52):
If they don't match that, theybetter match that in, my CFO
would be like, dude, if you buya dollar that is less than 20%
EBITDA margin, we have to findthat the extra, it's a Basic
math.
I gotta go find somebody elseto, they have to produce 22% if
you're producing 18.
If I get a dollar for 18%margin, gotta produce 22%.
So, so first is like, we look,I, if it is cashflow negative,
(30:13):
then I'm okay.
Fine.
I mean, I, it is not.
It's not a bad idea or a goodidea.
It's just like, I cannot do thedeal, really.
And Now then the questionbecomes, is cash cashflow
positive?
It's making XX we are at this.
And then, combined, can we getmore?
Right?
They piggyback off of us.
And then, and that is the kindof.
A cumulative effect combined.
Can we get it?
More Can the revenue?
Let's say like, a good examplewould be like, somebody's making
(30:35):
3 million bucks right now and300 K in profit right now.
So that would be a kind of likea, yeah, we can digest that.
Like we know how much, how doyou structure it?
Well, they want to get paid,whatever they want to get paid.
If they say like, oh, we want 3million bucks.
I'm like, okay, we may not beable to pay 3 million bucks,
upfront, but we'll pay you 800 Kupfront.
And then another 1.2, 1.1, 1.5,whatever it is, structure that,
tructure that.
So you get your three, you getyour money.
(30:57):
But you, but both of us have tobelieve that this business, that
3 million bucks actually gets tofive or 6 million bucks over the
next three years.
Right, and that, and you canparticipate on that ride.
And then we have certainbenefits.
We have a global footprint wecan sell globally, blah, blah,
blah.
I mean, there's gotta be somekind of value, the model to our
other method to that madness.
And if it does work then it'sworth doing the deal
realistically on both sides,then it's worth doing the deal.
(31:19):
And that's how I've structuredit.
At least that has worked for me.
And a few folks that have joinedme in this journey also.
Dan Balcauski (31:25):
Thank you for outlining that.
And so it's, yeah, so helping tostructure those payouts so that,
cash flow wise, they make sensebecause that's the big Variable.
It's not just, it's not just thep and l, but also the cash flow
that, you have to watch out forwhen you don't have a, giant
backer whether it's venturecapital, private equity, right?
Writing your big checks on thebackend to just outlay all at
once.
I wanna go back to something yousaid we were talking about
(31:45):
earlier in the conversation.
And you talked about this ideaor this experiment that you ran
around creating a entirelyseparate.
Brand.
And obviously, with the benefitof hindsight, et cetera, you
realize that was a mistake.
I'm, I am curious kind of whatdrove you to that decision in
the first place?
Because this is actually asurprisingly common thing that I
(32:08):
hear people out there.
Thinking about doing.
And so I think that there's proeven though this is sort of a
mistake, I would wanna kind ofunderstand the thought process a
little bit more of like, whatwere you trying to accomplish?
Did it help you in any way?
And then I guess you, you saidit was a bad idea, I guess, how
you sort of realized that.
But let's go to the front partof that.
Vivek Bhaskaran (32:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So this was back in 2010.
I really believe that we wantedto go up market, we wanna go
into the enterprise, right?
So, and at the time I believethat the enterprise brand is
completely distinct than theconsumer and brand really.
Right?
There was like ExactTarget andMailChimp.
There was sif.
Let's say the drop, there wasmosey and then there's EMC.
Really back then, at least mostpeople don't know what e EMC is
(32:49):
today.
But, so if you think about it,back in, throughout, throughout
2000 to 2010 there was distinctand enterprise sales motion, and
then there's a distinct consumersales motion, realistically.
So I thought that we needed twodifferent brands.
For that.
And that's why I created a newbrand.
And then once I created a newbrand, I'm like, yeah, let's
start up as a separate companyaltogether.
And I was just fucking evendumb, so on, so forth.
(33:11):
Okay, now.
Alright.
So I think the notion that like,okay, look, we want to create,
so obviously the, like you said,surprisingly, you've heard about
this conversation.
Many times it's probablybecause, like, okay, we are
doing this, but we wanna dosomething different.
Right?
That's the, that's thefundamental kind of, first
principle that you can thinkabout.
So I'm doing X, but I wannastart doing Y now.
(33:32):
The question really is.
Why, why is so different?
That's why, the second thing isso different that we will do it
as a separate company, separatebrand, separate.
It's not related to this.
Right.
And I think that's kind of the,that's how that was.
At least my way of thinkingabout it is like, okay, look, I
wanna go into the enterprise andI'm at consumer, so I need a
different brand for that.
And the way to operate that isgonna be completely different.
(33:52):
Dah, dah.
That's how I convinced myself.
That's how I created it.
And then you realize later onthat like, look, first of all.
You can have a single businesswith the same brand that, caters
to the consumer as well ascaters to the enterprise.
And you could argue, the,consumerization of it and all
this stuff came along and, itmade, it, made it possible.
And maybe that's the thing atleast for me, I would say like
that was my thinking process.
(34:12):
Going back to your question.
Which is like, why did youcreate a new brand?
Because I thought the new thingthat I was trying to do was
completely different than thecurrent thing that I'm doing,
and so therefore I needed a newbrand.
Once I decided I'm gonna have anew brand, then I decided it's
gotta be a separate company,which is again, a stupid idea,
and then have a separate groupof people working on it again.
So that, that created its ownset of challenges.
I didn't under anticipate theset of challenges that would
(34:33):
create, right.
I mean, it seemed like, inpaper, like communism in paper,
everything sounds good andfucking, and you get to do it,
they're like, god dammit, it'skind of crazy.
So.
Dan Balcauski (34:44):
So, yes.
So, so creating a new brand inB2B to capture enterprise versus
a more transactional like, likecommunism looks good on paper,
does not work at practice.
I guess, with the benefit ofhindsight, if you could go back
and kind of talk to yourself atthat point in time and sort of
advise, be like, Hey, like, Iknow you're trying to sell up
market.
Don't create this goat newbrand, here's what I sort of
(35:06):
advise you to do instead.
What would be your advice to,
Vivek Bhaskaran (35:09):
Yeah, just create a division in the
company.
That's it.
Just create a separate divisionin the company.
That's it.
You know you and have a separateperson running it and kinda like
have that, I say it out, youdon't have to create a new brand
that, because the brand, Ireally believe is the brand Halo
effect matters quite a bit.
And so, yeah.
You just say like, look, yeah.
I get it.
Fundamentally, that was a goodidea.
Like the core construct is notdebatable.
The core construct of having a,having, yes, we need a new group
(35:32):
of people selling selling intothe enterprise.
And even on multiple productsand the way you sell product one
versus.
The way we've decided this also,like we think about, I talked to
you about three different ICPs'cause, and I have three
different sales teams actuallythat sell into the SAPs, but
report up to the same VP ofsales realistically.
Right.
So the, so, so it's kinda like,have, there, there is, I mean
there's a, practical need forisolation, but there's also
(35:53):
kinda like, balance that out tokinda like, having not like all
these isolated things.
So, so going back to your point,I think, you know what I would
tell myself, would be like, Hey.
The core construct, there's nopoint debating the core
construct, but theimplementation of that construct
can be in one or two differentways.
One is to have a separatedivision in the company that,
and have se a separate GM thatruns that division.
(36:15):
That's it.
Right.
It's not that complicated.
You, yeah.
You could tell it's, we are notIBM, but Yeah.
You can create a different kindof segment within the company
and say, Hey, you go.
You go chase after theenterprise business and you can
do this and here's the benefitsfor you and get that done.
And I isolate that out andthat's how I would do it.
In hindsight, if I did it thatway, I think we would have been
at least much more successful.
We have not last four or fiveyears at the time.
(36:36):
But it's fine.
It's, it is what it is,
Dan Balcauski (36:38):
yeah.
Yeah.
Well, well, well hopefully withyour hard earned wisdom, you've
maybe saved someone else four orfive years of going down the
wrong path.
For, cause I for like, whateverreason, like, I, I think I had,
I have hypothesis.
Season of why this is so common,because I think at B2C, it's
done quite often, right?
You have Lexus and Toyota,you've got Black and Decker and
Bosch.
You've got, Was it Luxotticaowns, 20 every single brand of
(36:58):
sunglasses that you ever buyexcept for Warby Parker right.
And so people are like, oh, wellthese consumer guys are doing,
and you have p and g House ofbrands, but it's just it, it's,
yeah, it's just generally notrequired.
And it's undervalued.
For and yeah.
And then it can, especially whenyou're Yeah.
A small company, it's hardenough to get one brand, one
business model to work, letalone multiple and just ends up
(37:19):
in all the sadness that
Vivek Bhaskaran (37:20):
gave myself the same thank you for bringing
that.
I literally gave myself the samestupid fucking excuse around
Lexus and Toyota.
I'm like, oh, Lexus, Toyota todo it.
We should be able to do it.
Like, I'm like, yeah, no, that,and I think you're right.
Your core hypothesis is in, onthe consumer.
You can't, you can pull off ahouse of brands, but on B2B,
it's like.
It's almost, I don't think it'spossible literally right in, in
B2B and you have to kind offundamentally think, like, I
(37:43):
know, is this a different kindof a, if you're and most SaaS
software is B2B stuff.
Most not all,
Dan Balcauski (37:48):
I would say the one minor exception.
And I haven't, I haven't,researched this thoroughly, but
I have been part of companiesthat have done this, which is,
if you do m and a and so youacquire an entire other company,
like say it's like, Hey, we'regonna go acquire the super low
end competitor of ours.
We're gonna just leave it.
We're gonna, it's gonna be afully owned subsidiary and just
(38:09):
gonna kind of leave it there onits own.
And now we own both but we'renot, but the, the people in the
current business aren't gonnaworry about it.
And now we've got this othercompany kind of just there and
we just leave it there as like adefender, low end brand.
I've seen that kind of thingwork, but you're not, but also
that tends to be when you're ata much larger scale
Vivek Bhaskaran (38:26):
much much larger scale.
Yeah, exactly.
No, yeah.
At a much, much larger scale.
I mean, Medallia for example, Icompete with them a little bit.
They've bought a bunch ofdifferent companies they've kind
of kept some of the brands kindaof like as is, but most of them
they've kind of like, buyMedallia or something.
There's also this concept of thecore brand.
The core brand has to be strong.
And Intuit has done this withIntuit, MailChimp, da da da da.
Intuit is a very strong, they'rebuilding Intuit as the core
(38:47):
brand really.
Right?
And TurboTax and Intuit and allthat stuff.
So.
Dan Balcauski (38:50):
Well, Vivek, I could talk to you all day, but
it the be wanna be respectful ofyour time and our audience's
time.
This has been a super funconversation.
I want to close out with acouple of rapid fire closeout
questions.
Are you ready?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:00):
Shoot away, brother.
Dan Balcauski (39:02):
Awesome.
If we have the opportunity toremove the mosquito from the
planet, should we do it?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:07):
Yes.
If you can.
Kill kills almost half the, thenumber one cause of death in, in
the planet are mosquitoes.
So if we can figure it out Idoubt we can, but you know, if
we can, if somebody figures itout, we should do it.
Dan Balcauski (39:19):
Awesome.
What book has most shifted yourperspective?
Vivek Bhaskaran (39:23):
Principles by Ray Dalio.
I think his concept of a radicaltransparency has really hit me,
and I, that's why, I, we talkeda little bit about before, I
don't really give a shit.
I say what I wanna say, and I,even internally, externally, I'm
the same guy and I, we, forexample, like.
All our revenue numbers arepublic inside, inside the
company.
Every team that makes, you cango do the dashboard, you can go
figure out, what, which team hasmade how much money to the date
(39:45):
down to the t.
So I do believe in, transparencycreates efficiency.
So I think I, I learned thatfrom that book Principles by Ray
Dalio.
So it was a pretty frat book,but, you can read the condensed
version of it, but basicallyit's like, more transparency is
better no matter what.
That's kind of like A-T-L-D-R.
Dan Balcauski (40:01):
Principles by Ray Dalio, add to your bookshelf.
Look, nobody of any success getsthere alone, and I believe that
you are successful.
You're all the way to 30.
I know you're not to a hundredyet, but you know, then once you
get to a hundred, there's gonnabe another number behind that.
Has there been a close mentorleader who's really helped you
on your journey?
Vivek Bhaskaran (40:18):
I think a couple of them not just one, but
a few of them, and these guysare I'd say like more.
More in the traditional sensementors, these guys have, taken
the time and patience to kindof, listen to me mouth off about
all kinds of stupid shit andthen give me, gimme their
opinion.
So, a friend of mine over herein the Bay Area called Rahm, and
then also my former boss, Dwaynethese guys have been very
instrumental in terms of, justlistening to me.
(40:40):
That's it.
I'd say like these two guys havebeen they're still one of my
best friends.
I, it's mentor, friends, family,everything put together.
I would say like, we go skiingwith them, but they also, I
think they have the patience tolisten to me and call my
bullshit.
So that's that's kind of the keything.
Dan Balcauski (40:54):
Awesome.
If I gave you a billboard andyou could put any advice on
there for other B2B SaaS CEOstrying to scale their companies,
what would your billboard say?
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:03):
Good one.
Ah shit man.
Let me think.
Hustle harder.
I'd say like that's it, it'slike I still believe in like
kind of grinding it out.
I think that's, and I've alwaysbelieved in it and I will
continue believe in it.
It's like hard work and, workethic beats talent.
I would probably argue if youhad given me, guy with get
better work ethic, then bettertalent, or I'm like, ah, I'll
take a work at the guy.
(41:24):
'cause eventually all the talentwould.
Mediocre work ethic stilldoesn't, I don't believe that at
least.
So, but you know, for differentpeople, I have different
viewpoints on this, but so yeah,hustle harder is probably what I
would put,
Dan Balcauski (41:35):
Hustle harder.
Vivek if listeners want toconnect with you, learn more
about QuestionPro, how can theydo that?
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:40):
Yeah, it is on LinkedIn.
I'm not on Twitter or fa fuckingnot on Facebook for sure.
So, so,
Dan Balcauski (41:46):
Amen.
Vivek Bhaskaran (41:47):
So, so yeah.
So just LinkedIn my is search onLinkedIn for V on I can't, I
think LinkedIn has a handle.
So anyway, so we password onLinkedIn?
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn'cause that's been my thing.
And I feel it's kind of get theright balance between social
versus business versus that'sgonna, at least for me, at
least, it works.
I would argue Twitter does not.
And Facebook is a fucking shitshow.
(42:07):
Anyway, so I'm, I'm so glad, I'mso happy.
I'm gonna tell you, I'm so happythat I never got onto Facebook,
so I'm like, I don't have to getout of Facebook because I never
got on the goddamn thing tobegin with.
So.
Dan Balcauski (42:18):
Well, I'll put link to your LinkedIn handle in
the show notes.
For listeners, everyone thatwraps up this episode of Sask
Galy here, thank you to Vivekfor sharing his journey,
insights, and valuable tips.
For our listeners who found thisconversation as enlightening as
I to remember, subscribe, showup, miss out on future episodes.
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