Mastering Silicon Valley Sales/Ankur Srivastava - Confidence, Curiosity, Cloud Marketplaces ~ Spark of Ages Ep 21 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the
Spark of Ages podcast.
For the next hour, we'regoing to be discussing one
of three central pillars ofgo to market, which is sales.

(00:24):
And as most of you alreadyknow, sales is often about
having your own company.
At the right place at the righttime with the right customer.
But what I'm fascinated aboutis how much the sales process
has changed, especially in theworld of technology here in
Silicon Valley and specificallyhow SAS marketplaces like
Amazon web services or AWShave fundamentally changed

(00:46):
how startups work and thrive.
Our guest today, AnkurSrivastava, is someone who can
speak to these dynamics and howthey've changed so radically
over the last 15 years.
Together we'll explore howthe advent of cloud computing
and how his former companyAWS or Amazon web services
grew to be such a dominantmarketplace, which really
enabled the rapid innovationand invention that technology

(01:09):
companies here in Silicon Valleyand worldwide are known for.
So some of the key takeawaysyou can expect from this
episode, how entrepreneurscan expand their skills
and become better at sales.
A brief overview of how AWSand cloud have changed the
startup ecosystem, the powerof marketplaces for companies.
looking for growthopportunities.
As always, I'm your host, RajivParikh and the CEO and founder

(01:31):
of Position Squared, an AIdriven growth marketing company
based here in Silicon Valley.
I'm fascinated by how bigworld changing movements
go from the spark of anidea to an innovation
that reshapes our lives.
In every episode, we do a deepdive with our guests about
what led them to their ownEureka moments and how they're
going about executing it.
And perhaps most importantly,how do they get other people to

(01:51):
believe in them so that theiridea could also someday be.
A spark for the ages.
If you like what you hear,please take a moment to rate it.
Your feedback iswhat drives our show.
So take 30 secondsand say hello.

(02:13):
I'm core.
Welcome to the spark of ages.

Ankur Srivastava (02:16):
Wow.
Rajiv, that was probably one ofthe best intros I've ever heard.
So thank you so much.
It's exciting to be here.
He's

Sandeep Parikh (02:21):
already using his sales tactics on you.
I can tell.
I can tell.
He's buttering you up.
I've

Ankur Sriv (02:26):
got nothing to sell.

It's not a very tall order for you, Ankur.
I've always told people thatas a former salesperson or
reform salesperson myself,uh, one of the things that
I respect from you is yourability to motivate, inspire,
and drive people to make change.
And that's what I want to getfrom you today, because I think

(02:49):
there's so much that we canlearn from your background.
Not only.
In sales, in technology, butalso just how you've thought
of all these great ideasthat are making you stand out
from, from so many others.
And it's from what I've seenfrom you personally, as well as
how people interact with you.
So here's my first question.
Do you think being a greatsalesperson is something

(03:09):
you are born to do?
Is it the right kind ofthing that with the right
kind of training experience,you can be great at it?
Or is it something else?

Uh, it's a great question.
I think, uh, inherently if youhave curiosity about people.
people.
Um, I think you may consideryourself Somebody that
could potentially enterthe line of selling or
sales as a result of that.
I inherently am just avery curious individual.

(03:38):
I want to know everythingabout a person.
If you gave me a book today andI had to read that book and I
went down each chapter or page,I have to close my eyes, create
a character, imagine what thatcharacter looks like, Create a
facial expression, a tonality,and then create a storyline.
But if I stood across from you,Raji, even in a conversation as,
uh, we have so many times, I canactually take in your emotions.

(04:00):
I could take inyour eye movements.
I could take your bodylanguage, your tonality.
I could see your, your energy.
I could know when you'reexcited, when you're sad about
something, and I can adjustmy behavior according to that.
And so those were thingsthat I always had as a skill.
And then once I was ableto mimic that, uh, behavior
or, or, or show that I wasable to represent it back.

(04:21):
I think the natural thing thathappened was I was able to
gain trust with that person.
And once I had trust,uh, then you could
formulate a relationship.
And I think once all threeof those factors came into
play, that really aligned youto become sort of a trusted
advisor to that person and thenbe able to represent either
ideology solutions or approachesthat maybe In consideration

(04:46):
for them to, to look at.
And so that was really kind oflike my formula for becoming
a salesperson, a salesprofessional, if you would.

So this is, you know, now, now I'm
getting up in years here andI, and I'm, I'm down in LA.
You know, I'm the youngerbrother here and I'm not in
the Silicon Valley universe,but I sort of realized
I'm also a salesperson,even though I'm an artist.
Like, aren't we kindof all salespeople?
Like there's probablysomething to Would you
say there's something toadmitting that early on, no

(05:13):
matter what field you go intoand, and maybe sharpening
and honing those skills?

Ankur Srivas (05:17):
A hundred percent.
If you think about whathappens when you're born
as a kid, you naturally aretaught to ask for things.
Mom, I want that.
Dad, I want this.
And what happens iswe as parents actually
eventually shut a lot ofthose muscle memories down.
We go, no, not, youcan't have that.
Sorry, not available.
And what these kids are doingare simply negotiating with you.

(05:38):
So you are absolutely right,Sundeep, that it is an inherent
trait that you already have.
And then you get to your 20s andpeople pay hundreds of thousands
of dollars for negotiationclasses to just get to that no
again, or to be able to justsay, Hey, I want this thing.
And so one of the things, um,that I do with even, I'm a
girl dad, I have two daughters.

(05:58):
Um, I really wanted to makesure it wasn't a fast no
that we got to wheneverthey wanted something.
It does happen once in awhile where I'm just like,
I'm just not going to happen.
But most of the time No, youcannot run into the street.
You cannot run, exactly.
But most of the time Come win

me over.

Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you're like, okay, so sell

me on this second piece of cake you want.
Which by the way,

ice cream they always win on, right?
So I'm not a big sweets guy.
But guess what?
Every night there isice cream in the house.
So, uh, they, they winon that because they
keep negotiating with me.
And eventually they get toa point where they win on
the negotiation, they givesomething, and then I have
to give that, uh, up as well.
So, it's a, it'san amazing trait.

(06:38):
Uh, to harness from thebeginning instead of saying
no, but to actually curate itto say, well, what is it that
you're going to compromise on?
Uh, I think it's agreat skill to build.
So you're absolutely right.
It is, it is inherently in usand it should not be subsided
and it should be continued tonurture in a different way.

When you first got into it, you were
talking about First, let meunderstand who you are, almost
understanding that person'semotional state, understanding
where they're coming from,how they're facing you.
And it's one of those thingsthat they could teach you
some of this, but someof this is just something
you learn and feel, right?
You get in, you sit with someoneand you sense who they are.
You're open to it.
Like you said, I'm listening.

(07:13):
It's not just listening.
You're open to their feelings.
And that allows you to buildthat initial sense of trust.
Is that how youtypically come in?
Like, you know.
Yeah.
Save you would advise yourfavorite salespeople when you're
training them to become great.
Is that part of that trainingis like, Hey, don't just
launch into your frickingpitch, get into the skin
of the other person.

I think, uh, there's a balance of
being real with knowingwhat you're talking about.
So when you pair your.
Authentic self with theknowledge base that you possess.
That's when you become a trulya great trusted advisor that
can influence a decision.
And that is what I think isthe definition of a great sales
person is, uh, is somebody whois authentic, who is able to,

(07:55):
you know, represent a knowledgebase and then guide that
customer very prescriptivelyand in a trustworthy way
to the end state that theyare convinced is authentic.
Um, something that's a value addfor them and that's something I
didn't, I, I had certain skillsets, but I don't think those
skill sets were the combinationof the skill sets that make me

(08:16):
or made me a great sales leader.
They had to be refined.
So companies where I got to workwith like companies like Oracle,
IBM and EMC, I would say thosewere institutions where, you
know, a lot of money was spent.
We learning negotiation.
I was born in India and inIndia, one of the things
that happened was, you know,we're taught constantly as a
culture to respect hierarchy.
You know, if you think aboutit, there's a concept of

(08:38):
like touch people's feetas soon as you come in.
So most of your time is spentlooking down at people's feet.
As soon as you come in,you're like, this is
an authority figure.
You are here in the hierarchy.
Look down, touch their feet.
And when you look into theentire hierarchy, um, there are
uncles and aunts and chachasand chachis and kaka and khakis.
There is a lot of hierarchy.

(08:58):
There's a lot oftitles that exist.
So right off the bat, you'realready kind of working to
understand, uh, how are yougoing to operate within this
entire ecosystem and thenwhen you come to the U S and
when I came to the U S atthe age of 11, you may run
into an adult, uh, somebodywho's, you know, American.
And the first thing they tellyou is, hi, my name is Ben.
Hi, my name is Kathy.

(09:19):
And so you constantlydebate, do I call them Ben
or do I call them Kathy ordo I call them uncle or do
I call them auntie or Mr.
Ben or Mr.
Kathy?
So you have to shed alot of those constructs
down completely.
And that I think was one ofthe hardest things to do in my
upbringing when I came to the U.
S.
And so a lot of my teenageryears were spent understanding

(09:39):
how do I refer to theseadults and in what manner.
Their names, is it Mr.
or Mrs., do I show themrespect or am I American?
And so once I finally understoodthat and I got into a corporate
role, Oracle was a great place.
Oracle was just like, look,you have to understand that
you are a solution provider.
You are solving theirpain point and problem.

(09:59):
You can still berespectful in the tonality
and all these things.
But you have to be ableto come off assertive.
You have to be able to createyourself as an equal so that
they trust you and respectyou, and then hit them with
the value prop that you'rebringing to the table.
And so that kind of started thejourney of really transforming
that mindset and kind ofshedding out some of the muscle

(10:19):
memories that I had built.
And I, and honestly, relearningnegotiation all over again too.

Encore real quick.
What do you think Separates thegreat salesperson from everyone
else from what you've seen.

I think the great sales people that
I've met are truly customerobsessed and always make
sure the customer wins.
Um, and I, I think sometimesthey have to be able to
come back to even the, thecompanies that they're.
Employed by or the productsthat they're representing
and be able to very elegantlypush back and say, this isn't

(10:52):
the right thing and actuallyhave the best interest
of the customers at hand.
None of that was truerthan AWS and they're having
a leadership principlecalled customer obsession.
I think it's a, it's an LPthat you see often touted,
but rarely practiced.
And I saw that practice quitefrequently over there where
a lot of folks were like,no, we're actually going to.
Not pursue this deal becauseit doesn't align with the

(11:14):
customer's budget or timeline.
And what we'd rather do isactually focus on getting
the tech really accuratelydeveloped, uh, with the
customer for their productso that when they are ready
to consume these services, itmakes the best amount of sense.
That's why it's considered aworld class organization, right?
Because they actuallydefer revenue often for
where, where the customers.

(11:34):
Um, uh, current state maybe, andwhat happens as a result of is
often they'll pick up a biggertransaction or more of the chunk
of the product development ontheir infrastructure because
they're sacrificing the smallerpiece just so you know, they
can gain the customer's trust.
So I,

so it's that whole stemming from customer
obsession or customerobsessed organization.
If a person's a reallygood salesperson, they,
are they the one saying tothe company, are they open
to saying to the company?
Hey, you know what?
This is not workingout like they're not.
You know, sometimes you're sodriven to hit a number that
you're going to do anythingyou can to make it happen.
But then sometimes you haveto say to yourself, Yeah, even

(12:12):
if I make this number, I'mgoing to screw things up later.
And you have to have thefreedom so that your boss
isn't always watching.
You are making the call.
Is that part of that?

Let me tell you, some of the best sales
people that I've seen willstop a sales cycle in the
middle of its transactionbecause they know it's not
going to represent the rightoutcome for the customer.
Because it's a lot harderand emotionally draining to
unwind that deal after you'vepromised them the world and
it doesn't deliver even closeto anything, than to actually

(12:42):
say we're going to pause.
And really understand what isit that you're looking for?
And is our product capableof even delivering the
moment I understood thatpart, that is where I had
the biggest aha moment in mysales career, that I could
actually keep the relationshipgoing with this customer by
actually representing theirinterests, truly back to
the product management team.

(13:02):
And actually, by the way, acompany should be learning.
From the customer, how theirproduct could get better.
Of course, you know, youwant repeatable use cases.
You don't want the same.
You don't want like aFrankenstein approach.
But if a customer is teachingyou something that makes
your product better and youhear it about five times
and you could make it intoa repeatable use case.

(13:23):
You should leanin on that, right?
Do you have

an example of that?
I

do.
That you can speak to?

I know it's, I know it's hard.
You don't want to give awayconfidential information, but.

Well, I can talk about like when I
was doing my company SwarmSales, we went in front of a
lot of customers to actuallyhave discussions about.
A use case that wewanted to build out.
I think it was basically anearly on onboarding component.
Initially we wanted to buildsomething that was just kind of
our own approach, but then weactually got feedback from, you
know, some of the customers interms of what they wanted to see

(13:51):
from an onboarding experience.
So for example, They wantedemail, like a login integration
with Gmail at that time.
This was in 2016.
They wanted to be able toupload data and have it be
very quickly mapped out.
They wanted to be able to seeanalytics that were available
in terms of who checked outtheir listing and how frequently
they just checked it out.
And then be able to reach out tothose users and actually invite

(14:12):
them to bid on their campaign.
And so those were allthings built by customer use
cases and customer inputs.
And what we realized thatwas when we could introduce
those feature sets, it becamea lot more sticky and, uh,
there was more openness inthe engagement that we were
providing, of course, inlarger companies like AWS, you
know, the product teams are.

(14:34):
They go and work very closelywith the customers constantly
before they even roll aproduct out into production.
And so when I was there, youknow, my team constantly worked
with our product managers toactually validate use cases
and then ultimately decideif we were going to roll them
out into production or not.
My only request, you know,from our product teams,

(14:56):
whichever capacity I've everhad a chance to work with
them, is that, you know, Theyalways come with a little bit
of, of built out hypotheses.
They have data in linewith what, you know, what
they're trying to validate.
And then ultimately what isthe right customer persona
that they want to pursue?
And I think what you'llfind as a result of that
is it earns a lot of trust.

Yeah, I was just gonna say it
just seems to always comeback to trust, right?
Like if you're gonna havea long term relationship
with this client, right?
Then can't break theirtrust too early on by just
selling them a bill of goods.
Sounds like you gotta, yougotta actually listen to them.
Crazy.
And, uh, and then, and thenpitch those ideas up the chain
when it makes sense to you.
Okay, can I ask a, uh,uh, a naive question?

(15:37):
Back when you were at AWS, whatwas like a day in the life?

So I would say AWS was my dream job.
How I got to AWS wasjust as interesting.
I was running a startup Ihad just exited as a CEO.
You know, it was acomplete deconstruction
of me as an individualand as a professional.
And, I'd written an openletter to Jeff Bezos,
which said, you know what?
Every startup deserves a chance.
And I talked about, uh, thisis in 2018, the power of

(16:05):
marketplaces and a gentlemanby the Chris Cruz, who I'd
worked with at IBM briefly, um,got his hands on that letter
and he was heading up AWSmarketplace and he called me
and he says, you know, talk alittle bit about that letter.
And then I specificallysaid, you know, every
startup that's being built.
Needs to be able to scale usinga marketplace, uh, platform.
And so he said, do you wantto come and work for us?

(16:26):
And I said, yeah,uh, I would love to.
And so I joined and every dayafter that, uh, they gave me
seven segments to, to focus onDNB, ISV, game startups, SMB
in Canada and Latin America.
And every day, um, we had tosuccinctly figure out how to
take customers, And, uh, ISVs,uh, these are companies that

(16:48):
are built on top of the AWSinfrastructure or hyperscaler
and be able to get them to crossengage and ultimately review the
product, test it out and thendeploy it and then purchase it.
And during the course ofthose five years, I got
to build a team of peoplewho I admire tremendously.
I would say these were peoplethat are smarter than me, who

(17:09):
I got a chance to see whatthey brought to the table and
learn from every single day.
And what the day in life lookedlike was every single day
we focused in on a customerengagement with an ISV and
just saw what And how canwe remove friction from it?
Sorry.
Can I stop just with that?

Just ask to ask what is an ISV?

Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry.
They're, they're independentsoftware vendors.
And what that means is thatthese are companies like
Datadog, Snowflakes, thatare basically built on top
of AWS's infrastructure.
But have their own products,services typically delivered as
a SaaS solution for customersto use to solve enterprise
problems that they need.

(17:49):
Rajiv, you alreadyknew that, right?
Just to make it

simple.
So, so here we go.
ISV, software vendor,independent software
vendor, in the old days.
Not too long ago, you wouldbuy the memory as a floppy
disk or you would buy thatand they would put it on your
local computer or a localor a server if you were in a
network and you as a companycontrolled all of that yourself.

(18:11):
Right.
Then along came this notion of,SAS, many say that was, well,
there's the internet, right?
Where you can get accessto many computers and
many applications on manycomputers that came along.
Then there became thenotion of not just can
I access informationoff of all these places?
I can get it.
I can actually getmy application from

(18:31):
somewhere out there that'snot controlled by me.
And that's this notion of SASor software as a service, S A
A S, two capitals on each end.
And that was pioneered byour friends at Salesforce.
Right where they took thenotion of a sales automation
or CRM, customer relationshipmanagement system, basically
initially where you putall your sales records.

(18:51):
Contact records in one place.
And then Amazon came along.
They said, wow, we're doingall this stuff in e commerce.
We're enabling people to buyall this stuff that are online.
Why can't we, as part ofmaking it more scalable,
more distributable, wecan take some of these
things that we've built.
We can share it withother customers.

(19:12):
And so Jeff Bezos isrunning the company.
This guy named Andy Jassy, whoactually was in the same class
with me in business school.
They collaborated on this notionof AWS, Amazon Web Services.
Let's take the differentsoftware, the different
capabilities, compute, storage,and then eventually software
and enable people to just buyit with a credit card, right?

(19:34):
Incrementally.
So before you'd have to buy,even if you bought some,
whenever you did a startupor any kind of company,
you'd have to buy a bunchof hardware and you'd put it
in your data center and thenyou'd offer it to people.
If you're distributing thatservice over the internet,
but then Amazon took it astep further and said, no,
you can just buy it from us.
And you don't have tohave a minimum price.

(19:54):
Just swipe your card andstart up, buy a bunch of
compute, buy a bunch of discs,buy a bunch of database.
And they're off and running.
So Encore smartly sees in thisworld that not only can Amazon
web services offer this computethat they build themselves,
but, or offer the companiescan actually take that.
What they're building, likehe was talking about Snowflake

(20:17):
and MongoDB or the securityservices, they're already
running on Amazon web services.
Why not open that up toeveryone buying through Amazon?
Just like if I'm sellingshoes or I'm selling gear on
Amazon, I can go from eitherAmazon, buying it from Amazon
or buying it from Amazonthrough another supplier.

(20:38):
That's the, that's thisamazing innovation, right?
That you were seeing early.

Yeah.
I mean, when I was doing mycompany, I had seen the power
of marketplaces, but, uh,eight of this marketplace,
you know, did, has, uh, hasexisted for over 12 years.
So when I joined thejourney, it was already
something that existed.
What I had a chance to do wasreally shape the actual go
to market with those sevensegments, a higher team, and
really drive prescriptiveengagements between the

(21:04):
multiple ISVs that werelisted in marketplace.
And then the customerreaction to it.
And, uh, the buyer centricapproach was a very
interesting approach.
And ironically, you know,uh, I wasn't selling anything
because there was nothing tosell within AWS marketplace
per se, you are simply tryingto get them to connect and
it's the hardest thing todo is when you sell nothing,

(21:26):
you are basically selling thevision, the dream, the, the
ability to be more proficientand be able to see value.
And I think that is thehardest thing to sell.
But.
It is also the moment of trust.
I still remember when Iengaged with, uh, one of
our customers, a procurementleader, uh, who was sitting

(21:47):
across from a colleague ofmine, Aaron Saxena and I.
And she kept saying somethingand I kept saying something and
we were talking past each other.
And then we just pausedand asked her like, can you
just show us what you see?
And she showed us her screen.
And we were like, Ohmy God, we're telling
you to do something.
You don't even haveaccess to this stuff.
We later found out thatthat existed multiple times.

(22:08):
But once you, once you realizethat, you know, your customers
are on a different stage ofthis journey, because sometimes
working for a particularcompany, you could be so
far ahead from an innovationperspective, you have to
realize that there's still.
Starting to just adopt theservice that you're building,
that's when your empathy levelsbecome really high and learning
to pause and say, Do you get it?

(22:29):
Can I help you spendmore time getting it?
And applying patience becomeslike a key attribute to success.

I think that's one of the hardest things.
This becomes a lot ofthis you think is obvious.
Right?
When you come from afar, youthink, Oh, I can just buy
a bunch of compute with mycredit card and I can run it.
And then when you actuallylook at people and what
they're building, theirsoftware, whatever software
they're building, a database,or it could be even a Cut a

(22:56):
customer service application.
It could be your invoicingapplication and then all of
a sudden you realize like noNo, like for them to actually
offer it on my system.
It's gonna take a bunch of workIt's not as just Oh just send
your disk over and we'll runit on this compute and go And
I think that was some of thewhen you said you had nothing
to sell that was part of it partof your jobs To persuade these

(23:18):
people not persuade but helpthem understand the benefits
Of being in this marketplacebecause in the end they can get
so many things that they can'tget by doing it on their own.

It goes back to trust, right?
It's a, it's a componentthat you have to apply.
And it also goes back to myearlier point about really being
knowledgeable about the journey.
And then there's anotherAmazon LP called Are Right
A Lot, which means that youshould be right in the way
you kind of prescriptivelyguide them to an outcome.

(23:49):
And so we had enough datapoints to say we were right.
So you could take a littlebit of an authority figure
stance without being, justbeing a complete a hole.
But I think, uh, beingable to at least drive
them to that outcome.
Is that another LP?
Don't be an a hole.
Don't be an a hole.
That's not an a hole.
Yeah.
But what happens as a result ofthat is you definitely, I think,
what I really enjoyed was, youknow, Um, paired with customer

(24:11):
obsession, you know, beingable to be data driven and then
kind of drive that journey veryprescriptively gave us a lot of
opportunity to be successful.
So, um, yeah, I, I think it's a,it's a pretty cool, uh, way to
look at things and marketplacesto your point are amazing, like
I am obsessed with marketplaces,um, I'll give you an example.
Consumer marketplaceshave existed for a long

(24:32):
time, eBay's of the world.
But, you know, today, whereyou have to get one person
to spend 1, and it requires alot of time and effort to be
able to do that over and overin enterprise marketplaces,
you can get one organizationto spend millions of dollars.
That's not whatI'm obsessed about.
What I'm obsessed aboutis the fact that they're

(24:53):
paying that money to solvea bigger problem, right?
So those problems becomequite apparent and you
can, you can actually.
Capture some prettygood returns on it too.
When she sold it.
Let

me give you a, uh, share a little bit of
data that I was able to getfrom our friends at, at Amazon
web services, all public.
And then I'm going to ask Ankurthis really cool question.
Currently, not only didAnkur build a billion dollar
business under himself andhis team by enabling all these
software firms to take fulladvantage of the marketplace,
here's some stuff, 4, 000plus software vendors, ISVs,

(25:26):
300 plus data providers.
1300 plus channel providers,15, 000 listings in over 30
countries, 70 categories, 300,000 active subscribers, and 2.
5 million active subscriptions.
We are talking about tensof billions of dollars
committed year to year.
And I think it's somethinglike 300 billion plus dollars

(25:49):
committed to these hyperscalers.
Amazon web services,Google, uh, cloud services,
Azure, and Oracle.
So just an amazing amount thathas shifted to this world.
So just giving you asense of perspective of
how big this has become.
And it's because it's somuch easier than before when
you had to buy stuff and.
Rack it and stackit and, and grow it.

(26:10):
What is some of the pain pointsthat you see when the startups
go and they think about whatare startups dealing with
when you are at AWS in termsof getting them, helping them
make the switch to, to listthemselves on the marketplace
and take full advantage of it?

So, that's a great question.
So today, I think, uh, whenyou look at a startup today
and you look at unit economics,that a startup typically is
indexed on customer acquisitioncost, your burn rate.
Um, being able to look at,you know, um, even your
churn metrics, all of thosemetrics can be very well or
maintained through marketplaces.

(26:47):
I personally believe thatbecause there are two sides
of the marketplaces thatare constantly in play.
One is the buying aspect ofit, where you are a buyer.
Of third party services.
And then the second is,uh, the selling aspect of
it, where you are a seller.
And I can't tell you howmany times I have to go
and remind people that theyare a buyer and a seller.

(27:11):
And somebody says to me, well,I sell a consumer product, so I
am not a marketplace candidate.
And I have to say, well, youprobably generate a lot of data.
And as you pointed outtoday, there are over 300.
Plus data providersin marketplace.
I think that number may beupdated, but you could see that
everybody today is a creatorof data or a consumer of data.

(27:32):
So you're absolutelyalways going to be a
buyer and a seller.
And I think where I indexon a lot of the conversation
is when you talk to CEOs,they're like, we want to
use marketplace to sell.
Of course, that's great.
Uh, there are some mechanismsthat are quite well built
in marketplaces that canaccelerate the selling part
and companies like AWS areinnovating really fast with

(27:54):
their partner ecosystemsto actually facilitate
faster access to customers.
Uh, product engagement withthose customers and ultimately
conversion to, you know, apaid environment so that that
streamlines your customeracquisition costs, but there's
also something called arenewal piece, which is just
as important once you'vesold that particular product.

(28:15):
Cloud marketplaces actuallyallow you to allocate that spend
to a particular hyperscalerbudget, as you pointed out.
There's 300 billion committedto it, so why would you, as a
startup, try to go find yourown budget and get that place?
Instead, get yourself committedto one of those, um, one of
those cloud marketplace, orsorry, hyperscaler budgets.

(28:36):
Um, it was interesting, I was ina meeting recently and somebody
said, Why, you know, what doyou think happens with all
the spend management software?
And I don't think Ieven thought about it.
I said, spend managementexists because somebody
didn't manage their spend.
So what we're in today isthe era of spend allocation.
And that means if you'renot going to be able to find
your budget in one of thesehyperscalers, you probably

(28:59):
have a target on you.
And so the way the renewalswork is if you haven't shifted
yourself under one of thosehyperscaler commitments.
You have a target on you and ifa CFO is going down the row, uh,
the row on the expense books andsees you as a, a 2 million or
3 million spend, they're goingto go back to that internal
stakeholder and say, Hey, whydid I just make a 200 million

(29:21):
commitment to one of thesehyperscalers and I still have
an outlier cost for 2 million.
Chop it off.
Go find this servicefrom the hyperscaler and
subscribe to it, right?

Because it's so much easier, right?
You go to the hyperscaler and.
The good part is you alreadyhave a major contract with them.
All the security stuffis taken care of.
All the governancestuff is taken care of.
All the contractualstuff is taken care of.
I think this speeds up theprocess by like 30, 40%, right.
In terms of being able to buy,being able to sell and buy.
And I see this as a big problem.

(29:52):
A lot of people don't seethat they build their website.
They build these connections.
They don't see that there'sso many ways to improve
the sales cycle like this.
And then once you're signedup, like you say, you're part
of this underlying budgetthat is harder to unpack.
Then it could be if you justhave a separate line item
that you have to go fight.
And

then, you know, let's talk about
the cost of sales metric,which is just as high today.
Companies are spending anywherefrom your SAS provider,
anywhere from 30 to 45%, maybeeven 52%, uh, to be able to
acquire those new customers.
That means you're making money,but you're putting a big chunk
of it back to acquire newcustomers in cloud marketplaces.
Your margins are aboutone to 3%, right?
Is what you're paying.

(30:28):
So because your renewalsare now protected under.
Uh, the hyperscaler budget,you actually have to
spend less time trying topreserve those renewables.
Your internal stakeholder couldcontinue to use that product
and create more dependency onit without it constantly being
scrutinized as an out of budgetor as an outlier function.
So that becomes a prettyinteresting component

(30:48):
that I don't think a lotof people invest into.
If I was to ever build astartup or go into being
an entrepreneur, if I wasto stand in front of CEOs
and tell them what to do, Iwould, Maniacally focus on
building a cloud marketplacestrategy as a first strategy,
both as a buyer and a seller.
And if you're only buildingfor one, you're missing out
on the massive amount ofsavings, um, that exists

(31:11):
on, on the other side.

That's amazing.
So now like Amazon or AWS isnumber one, and now there's
a situation where there's.
AWS pioneered this, thenalong came then Microsoft
with Azure and there's Oracleand I know IBM is doing
the regulated marketplace.
You want to justcomment on that world?
Cause you're not there anymore.
You can be, you cantalk about it freely.

Yeah.
I mean, you know, I got a chanceto have a front row seat to
the innovation and I think,uh, Publicly, it's available
that AWS has 70 percent of themarket share when it comes down
to the cloud marketplace space.
You know, the customersgoing back to it are really
the ones driving the demand.
And so today you have, youknow, AWS as a cloud marketplace

(31:53):
to point GCP is right there.
Azure is, I think, number two.
But there are actually ninecloud marketplaces that exist.
And if you think about whatthose cloud marketplaces
look like, Salesforce,for example, is probably
one of the largest ones.
Where within their app exchange,they have a ton of ice is listed

Rajiv Parik (32:11):
salesforce as well.
Yeah.

So I personally have my own
view on what I think cloudmarketplaces need to be able
to do one is You know, theyall need to be able to list.
So today, all nine provide thatcapability and list their ISV.
These are software vendors thathave some type of integration
into the service that they theyprovide, which can help drive
the utilization of that service.

(32:34):
The second thing that allof these cloud marketplaces
need to do is transact,and there are three of them
that do that today, whichis AWS, Azure and GCP.
The third is they all need tobe able to provide some level
of data back to the customersand their ISV partners.
That's a little bit of arestrictive thing because
of just privacy issuesthat exist and then, of

(32:56):
course, workflows as well.
And so that is the opportunityarea for the next two that I
don't think exists right now.
And I think that's where themarket should be trending.
Uh, very, very soon on that,

I'll throw some more numbers up
at our audience here.
So, uh, back in 1999, 15 percentof all it spend was on cloud.
The number todayin 2024, it's 60%.
So it's, it's pretty massive.
Actually, it feels like morethan that, but the trend

(33:29):
is definitely that way.
My friends who.
Are in senior spots at someof these companies are talking
about now with AI, how they'resecuring pretty massive
infrastructure deals, evenbefore the apps are built.
So there's a lot going on here.
So now let's shift alittle bit on core.
You've talked about how bigthis is, how exciting it is,
how this helps innovationwith a lot of startups.

(33:50):
One of the cool parts aboutpresenting at the AWS partner
marketplace event that I didthe other day was seeing how
many cool companies were comingup out of nowhere and literally
building themselves overnight.
Let's shift into what got you.
To move down this path,you know, did you know
you always wanted towork with tech companies?
And how'd you discover thatthat this was your gig?

It's funny.
I think there was somethingprobably preordinating
it And I am a big Bigbeliever in signs that the
world kind of gives you.
Uh, and in 2016, I launchedmy own marketplace and I
think it was just because Isaw a problem that existed
and I thought marketplacecould solve that problem.

(34:31):
I actually didn't know Iwas building a marketplace
when I first started.
A good friend of mine, RobertChetwani, came in and said, uh,
you're building a marketplace.
And I was like, Oh, interesting.
And then he kind of taught me,you know, sort of a flat, like
the, the flywheel effects andhow to look at the analytics
and data as a result of that.
Um, and so once I startedthat, um, in 2016, I had zero
experience in marketplace.

(34:52):
Today, I sit in front ofyou with eight years of
marketplace experience.
Comparatively to what I learnedfrom, Uh, the dynamics of a
consumer marketplace, hybridenterprise marketplace to
where I got a chance to operatea portion of eight of list
marketplace was extremelyexciting and I would never
pivot off of it because I'mjust constantly so excited

(35:13):
about the value chain thatit brings to the table.
And if I look at myPrevious, uh, state
where I was a sales guy.
Now I get the power of beingable to, if you look at sales
cycles, you know, which areidentification, demo, pilot,
infosec, legal procurement,uh, ultimately deployment,
and then, uh, fulfillment,excuse me, and then renewal, I

(35:35):
can impact every one of thosestages through marketplaces.
And so when I was working withmy team, we got to literally
influence each one of thosestages and successfully
graduate customers to a purchasedecision and successfully
graduate ISVs to a deal.
And so when we saw itsuccinctly come together
and somebody clicks a buttonand completes a transaction,

(35:58):
that's magic, right?

Is that like the bye moment?
Like, is that your big thrill?
Like, I don't know aboutyou, but like for me, One of
the things I love learningabout is revolutions, right?
And what creates a movement?
And then in sales, it'sthat moment of buy.
I'm upset.
I love figuring outwhat makes that click.
What about you, Ankur?
I know you're that guy.

It's exciting.
I'm not going to lie to you.
Like, it's pretty excitingwhen the buy moment happened.
I've seen, you know, eightfigure, nine figure deals
happen with a click of a button.
And I always go, man, whois that, you know, sales
rep that did all that workto that click of a button?
It's a pretty excitingthing to experience when,
uh, you help an ISV who'sdelivered their value prop.

(36:42):
And a customer who's readyto engage, come together and
complete the transaction.

What do you think, what do you
think drives that moment?
Like, do you, you know,I, I want to almost in
a way, slow down that.
And it could be thebuy moment of a ISV.
It could be a buy moment ofsomeone saying yes to a date.
It could be the buymoment of beyond that.
There's, there's all kindsof these buy moments.
And I just wonder, do youlike sit back and say, I
wonder, you know, like what.
Needs to come together,like the personal, the

(37:09):
emotional business, everyoneconnecting together.
There's like a magic in it.

So listen, if a customer is engaging with
an ISV or a vendor to reviewthe pilot, their solution, the
customer has a major pain point.
And when they find thatboth the ISV and the
customer can come togetherand solve that pain point,
that is the Eureka moment.
And I think what's happenedin the past is because sales

(37:34):
cycles are so dated, or decisionmaking processes internally
within the company are so dated,that by the time they actually
get to the actual signatures,There's been so much time lost.
There's been so much buyer'sremorse, or there's been so
much thought processes thathappened that you now have
indecision that kicks in.
And if you truly solvea problem, then they

(37:54):
should be able to trulytransact at that moment.
Now, I'm not saying thatgovernance be sacrificed
and processes be sacrificed,but I think there is a
path to innovation andacceleration that exists.
And that has been really the.
The key to marketplaces thatI've found, like when you can
actually accelerate InfoSec,which is 144 questions

(38:15):
spreadsheet that goes intoa black hole, or you can
now in your accelerate theprocurement process, where
you're trying to become avendor in a large corporation.
And it takes, you know, A lotof hours, months or weeks for
you to be able to do that.
And you can acceleratethat to marketplaces.
That's, that's the buy moment.
That's the exciting part thatyou have a decision maker who's

(38:38):
able to solve the problem anda vendor who has a solution
that solves the problem comingtogether and being able to
place and attack the problemis that really key moment.

That's cool.
Let's talk a little bit aboutyour favorite, um, Technology
or there are by, by moments,even beyond the marketplace,
you meet someone at a barand you get them to go on a
date with you, have a drinkwith you, or, you know, you,
you have a podcast, right?
Call, uh, this seasondivorce, right?

That's right.
Yeah.

There are by moments there.
Like what, what gets youexcited about all these things?
Like what, what captivates you?

I think one of my favorite things in
the world is being able toconvince an individual to see.
Um, well, first to understandthem and then to be
able to align with them.
And I think, uh, you know,getting people to really get
to believing in themselvesis one of the biggest things.

(39:33):
One of the things that peopleoften don't buy is themselves.
And so being able to actuallyhave them understand who they
are and be able to reallysee their value that I see in
them and make that sort of acenterpiece of my engagement
with them is typically whensomebody will commit to engaging
with me a little bit further.
Further and, um, in therecent days, understanding

(39:56):
people and then beingable to really sell them.
Back on themselves hasbeen one of my biggest, I
think, like sales effort.
Like it's been awesome.
It's amazing how manytimes people undervalue
themselves for me.
That buy moment is that decisionthat they're about to make.
It's not the purchase.
It's the actual ability tobelieve in themselves to say

(40:18):
they are doing the right thing.
That's a big piece.
Um, to your comment about Desi.
And divorce.
Yeah.
So as you know, I'm divorced.
I was divorced.
I got divorced aboutthree years ago.
It was a journey anda half that happened.
But one of the things thatI really didn't want to
lose as a part of thatdivorce process was myself.
I had to sell myselfback to me and say,

(40:40):
Hey, listen, I like you.
I love you.
You want to preserve this guy.
A because I, I I wanted to goachieve a lot of things, but I
also didn't want to lose myselffor my daughters who are my
North Star metrics every day.
And so, being able topreserve that, that mindset
and that ideology was anumber one thing for me.

(41:00):
I met this good friend of mine,Ateesh Singh, who had actually
gone through a divorce himself.
Um, and somethingcrazy happened.
Ateesh would actuallysell me And I was like,
that's incredible thatyou could do that.
So I'd never met someonewho actually had similar
traits, uh, like, like myself.
And Atisha was obviously,like I said, was going
through a divorce himself.
What we did was we did somethingcompletely different that guys

(41:23):
would do instead of going outand just being, uh, degenerates
and like partying and all thatstuff, which you naturally want
to do right after the divorce.

Little bit of degenerating Zocat.

Oh, I mean, I did do it, so
let me just take it back.
A little bit ofthat did take place.
But I think we reallyquickly realized there's
nothing at the end of that.
And where we wanted to be wascome back to a state where
we were making healthierdecisions, but it required us
to be vulnerable with each otherand talk about like how we're
feeling and say like, okay,what do you want to work on?
What do you want to not work on?

(41:54):
What do we need to shed?
What do we need to do?
And we realized that we couldactually hang out with each
other as two males who arebrown in a Desi community and
actually talk about thingsthat we weren't talking about.
Like, how is yourfamily reacting?
How are you feeling?
Are you, are you about to get.
Sad.
Yeah, I mean, in the,

yeah, in the Desi or Indian community,
while there are more divorces,it's not considered a,
it's pretty taboo, right?
It's tough.
It's a tough one.
And so you guys actually,you guys actually decided to
go headlong into it and helppeople understand that this is
a normal, this happens in life.

Yeah.
And what we found as a resultof that, with men who had
gone through divorce orwere going through divorce,
what approaches on the side.
Like, almost like they wereselling us drugs and be like,
Hey, I, I watched your podcastand we're like, you could say it
openly, you could talk about it.
It's okay.
It's not a big deal.
And so the other piecethat we realized is a lot
of men, men specificallysit in their divorce.

(42:51):
Women can formulate acommunity and hang out
with their community.
There's an amazing supportstructure that women can
create for each other.
Mented to becomemore Lone Rangers.
And that's where youbecome more isolated.
And that's where you becomemore prone to depression,
sadness, you know, anddrinking and all these things.
So when we realized thatwe needed to formulate this
community, where we talked aboutthese things and told people,

(43:12):
invest in your mind, investin your body, invest in your
soul, become better dads, gobecome a better representative
of the world, like of your,you know, your community.
If you want to adoptreligion, that's fine.
Like, it's okay.
But don't go into thisdestructive behavior where
you haven't healed and nowstart to date someone and
cause this ripple effectwhere you leave somebody
else who's healthy damaged.

(43:34):
And so it really came down toas a rep, like as a, as a, as a
way for us to really representthe healing process for men and
to actually do it, we both hadto be more vulnerable to do it.
And so it's been,it's, it's great.

I've listened to it.
Of course, I'm still married,but I still still married
and will always be married.
At least that's what I say.
Uh, I've, I've learned alot from it because I find
your wife, send it to you.
He's like, you shouldlisten to this, honey.
Yeah, let's not go there.
Um, I listened to it becauseit was my friend putting on
the podcast and I really, causeI, and I wanted to understand

(44:07):
like what got them to do itand how they could turn what
I originally thought couldbe one episode into many and
and how they could reallydelve into all these into
this understanding acceptance,the feeling the rebuilding.
And I think the way you phraseit now, you were rebuilding
yourself in this process andthat made you a better person.
And now you wanted to helpothers get to the same point
through their own method.

Yeah.
And by the way,one of the key is.
To really find peace, like,you know, you don't want to
be in hate and turmoil becausethere's just destruction
that happens continuously.
It's about healingand moving forward.
And then actually beingvulnerable when you show up.
I think so many people goon first dates and they
ask this question, whichis like, what are you into?
What, you know, what arethe things that you like?

(44:49):
Now we get into the hardconversation of like, tell
me what are your traumas, howdid you work through them, and
what are you doing to fix it?
So then I can decide how Iwant to show up for you and
engage with you moving forward.
And it's okay if it's too much,maybe it's not the right time.
But if it is the righttime, At least you know what
I'm working on and we canpartner to figure that out.
Right.
And so that's where the, the,the podcast I think really

(45:13):
indexes fun fact for you.
We are big advocatesof marriage.
Like I would get marriedagain with the right person.
And so we, I, I, I totallybelieve in love, a total
romantic, but maybe not, youknow, that maybe that wasn't
my person, but that's okay.
Uh, she gave me twobeautiful daughters and
I appreciate that part.
But now moving forward,I do feel my heart's

(45:34):
opened and I feel like I'mavailable emotionally to
meet the right person andengage in a healthy way.

And that's awesome.
I love that.
Okay.
You now we are goingto play the spark

tank.
Yeah.
So,

so

on course seems like you're doing
a lot of self healing.
And you, you know, you sayyou're ready, but I'm not sure
that you're ready for this.
Um, so I'm going towelcome the listeners back.
My, our fellow entrepreneurs anddigital hustlers to the spark
tank, uh, where two foundersenter in one accidentally
reveals that their burn rateis higher than a SpaceX launch.
Uh, today we are putting yourknowledge of sales to the test.

(46:13):
So in one corner, we'vegot my brother Rajiv.
And normally I say somethingdeprecating here about him
and how he's going to betrounced by the challenger.
But in this case, I actuallyknow that my brother is
pretty awesome at sales.
He's actually quitegood at sales.
But here's the rub.
In corner two, we've got Encore,okay, who my brother actually
describes as the best salesleader he's ever been around.

(46:33):
Okay, so I don't know.
Is this, is this a manipulationtactic, uh, to set himself
up as the underdog?
I'm not sure.
We'll find out.
Alright, so right now I'mgoing to present to you
three statements aboutsales, two of which are true,
and one is a fabricationdesigned to sound like sales.
So can you separate thegenuine strategies from the
cleverly disguised fakes?

(46:54):
Uh, get ready to flex yoursales savvy and prove that
you're not just a masterof persuasion, but also a
discerning judge of the truth.
You ready to get started?
I'm ready.
Let's do this.
Bring it on.
Let's go.
Okay, so I'm gonnaread three statements.
You're gonna pick whichnumber, one, two, or three.
Uh, you think is the falsestatement and then on the
count of three, you're goingto reveal one, two, or three

(47:15):
at the same time, so youcan't cheat off each other.

So wait a minute, I'm going
to reveal which one isthe false statement.

Which one is the false statement that is correct.
True.
Got it.
All right.
We're going to start with theclassics of sales techniques.
Okay.
So you've heard ofthese techniques before.
Probably the famous examplehere, the foot in the
door technique, right?
Involves getting a smallcommitment from the customer
first and then makes themmore likely to agree on a
large request later Okay,so that's that's just the
example Alright, so hereare three other techniques.

(47:42):
One of these is nota real technique.
Number one, the door in theface technique So this involves
starting with a large requestthat is likely to be rejected
and then following up withthe smaller more reasonable
request Entry number two, The,but you are free technique.
Now this involves getting theperson, giving the person a
sense of freedom and autonomywhile making a request.

(48:04):
Now this can make themmore likely to comply.
And then entry number threeis the chameleon clothes.
This involves mirroring thecustomer's body language
and speech patterns tobuild rapport and trust.
So which of these do youthink is a not true, you
know, or not so practicedtechnique that it has a name?

(48:24):
So is it number one, thefoot in the door technique,
number two, the butt you arefree technique, or number
three, the chameleon clothes?
Answers is Wait, wait, number

one is door in the face, right?
Door in the face.
That's right.
Foot in the door byputting a door in the face.
Ready?
Ready?
Three,

two, one.
Okay, you both thinkthat the door in the face
technique is not true.
Well, guess what?
You couldn't bewronger, the two of you.
So I'm sorry, uh, that's right.
This technique isa true technique.
I think it's number two.
If it's not numberone, it's number two.
This is a true technique,uh, uh, that is, so the whole

(48:58):
idea is it works because thesecond request seems such
more, much more reasonablein comparison to the first.
The person feels a sense ofrelief and is more likely
to say, yeah, say yes.
For example, the example givenhere is the Watergate scandal.
So during the investigation,prosecutors initially
asked for access to all ofPresident Nixon's tapes, a
request the lawyers refused.
But then they asked forspecific tapes, which the

(49:19):
lawyers eventually agreedto, which eventually
led to the resignation.
Just seemed more reasonable,they were able to give.
So yes, in fact, Rajiv,you're doubly wrong.
Uh, because it wasn't numbertwo, the, but you are free
technique is a technique thatincreases compliance rates by up
to 50 percent compared to simplymaking requests by saying,
you know, Hey, you're freeto choose whatever you want.
You can walk out this door.

(49:39):
No problem.
Go to that other car dealership.
No worries.
Gives them a senseof freedom, right?
So the chameleon clothes whilemirroring is part of being,
you know, building rapport,there's no established sales
technique with this name.
So, thus, it's the plausible,but maybe, you know, you'll,
you guys can start one.
Interesting.

We're going to create one now.
We're going to do that.

Yeah.
I don't know.
The chameleon clothesjust sounds bad.
So, I don't know.

I feel like, I feel like that's the best thing
is to mirror the other person,the, is to adopt the style of
the other person because itmakes them more comfortable.
Well, I think you do

mirror a lot of the, the behavior,
but I think, uh, I couldsee why you wouldn't want it
in a close because then itwould come off a little bit.
So it's, so

it's, it's often a, uh, like a psychotherapist
or a therapist technique.
So it's more of that thanit is a sales technique.
So

I actually use, I should have known
that cause I did use it, uh,you know, when we're, we're
doing marriage counseling.
So that should have beensomething, the mirroring
I should have used.
So, okay.
All right.
Hey,

Don't worry, we're expanding.
We're moving out.
Okay.
We're moving actuallyback in time to ancient
global trade hubs.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the true market.
Yeah.
This is the, these are theoriginal, the OG marketplaces.
Okay.
So Greece.
So testing your historyhere, uh, at Trajan market

(51:06):
market in ancient Rome, youmight discover the literal
meaning to the word bankrupt.
Which has surprisinglya violent origin.
It was from when a merchantcouldn't pay their debts, his
Banco or his money table wasbroken or ruptured, rendering
him unable to continue trading.
So that is wherethe term bankrupt.
Came from maybe allegedlywe'll see that's number one.

(51:29):
Number two is located in ancientEgypt The Bazaar of Ramses
was renowned for exotic spicestextiles and luxury goods Now
legend has it Cleopatra herselfonce purchased a live crocodile
here as a gift for JuliusCaesar or number three If you
say Marco at the Grand Bazaarin Constantinople You might
hear Polo shouted back to youby Marco Polo himself Yes, this

(51:53):
incredible market was renownedfor its variety of goods, and
that even attracted Marco Polo,the famed Venetian traveler.
And he was said to have beenawestruck by the sheer size
and diversity of the market,where he would often get lost.
So Which is false.
Number one, the ancient Romanplace where bankrupts happen.
Number two, Cleopatra buyinga crocodile in ancient Egypt.

(52:14):
Or number three, finding MarcoPolo at the Grand Bazaar.
Here we go.
Three, two, one.
David.
Okay, you both said two.
Alright.
And guess what?
Two is correct.
So congratulations.
You guys both get a point.
That is true, Cleopatra.
It is.
Yeah.
I probably didn'tbuy a crocodile.
Okay.
Yeah, so that's,yeah, I was like,

I, I mean, how would you even
just, I buy, I don't know.
I don't know.
Do the Nile havecrocodiles in them?
I don't.
I haven't researched it.
I

Sandeep P (52:41):
mean, I know exactly.
Well, your instinctswere correct.
Congratulations.
You both get a point here andYeah, it's kind of cool that
bankruptcy, at least for me,I was like, oh, that's what
bank, okay, I didn't realizethat, but yeah, I was that,
that, that seemed to make sense.
Yeah.
Also, the Marco Polo piece is

a pretty, yeah, the Marco Polo piece
is a pretty cool piece,too, knowing that Marco Polo
himself would yell back Polo.
That's cool.

Well, I don't know about you, that
was a little bit of color.
Potentially.
But he certainly enjoyedthis, uh, this one,
uh, this one market.
Alright, shifting your brainsa little bit more, okay?
We're going to the worldof, uh, actual businesses.
And this is, this is theround I'm calling the, is
that even legal ventures?
So you've got to determinewhich of these three
businesses or sort of businesscategories does not exist.

(53:24):
Two of these.
Actually do exist, eventhough they're kind of absurd.
All right, here we go.
Entry number one,professional mourners.
In some cultures, theseindividuals are hired to, uh,
attend funerals and createa sense of grief and loss.
Even if they have no personalconnection to the deceased.
Number two, rent a chicken.
This service allows you to renta pair of chickens coop and

(53:47):
all the necessary supplies toexperience farm, fresh eggs.
Without the long termcommitment of all that
clucking number three, acelebrity impersonator escort.
So this service allows youto rent a lookalike of your
favorite celebrity to accompanyyou to attend events or simply
hang out with providing theillusion of fame and fortune,

(54:07):
or just a funny, silly storyto impress your friends.
Two of these are real.
Okay.
Professional mourners.
Number two, rent a chicken.
Number three.
Celebrity impersonator escorts.
Which of these doyou think is false?
Here we go.
Ready?

Oh, hang on.
Oh, hold on.
Let me just make sureI'm still laughing.
Lock

in, lock it in.

Okay.
All right.

You're still thinking about all those
chickens are going to run.
All right, here we go.
3, 2, 1.
Okay.
You both chose three.
Now, because this is, uh,we, we give sort of away
court advantage here.
Rajiv, I'm, I'm goingto force you to, to pick
something else so that,uh, we can have a winner.
Go ahead.
All right.

(54:46):
Run to chicken.
Okay.
So the winner of thisgame and now finally
taking back the reins.
Cause Rajiv, I was on anice little streak there.
Uh, it's not been shatteredbecause the winner is uncorred.
That's right.
It is celebrityimpersonator escorts.

(55:07):
Of course the guest always wins.
Yeah.
It was a little bit of anasterisk there, but yeah,
you can in fact run tochicken or someone to cry.
In fact, you know, Rajiv, sinceyou just lost, we can, we can
get you a professional mourner.
Yeah, uh, so that can, thatcan help me with my chickens.
All right, Ankur, youhave survived Spark Tank.
Congratulations.

I loved it.
This was very insightful.

All right.
That was really good.
Do I have time fora question or two?
Yeah.
Close this out.
I'm going to give you a choiceof what you want to answer.
You get one, or you cananswer both, but really quick.

Okay.

We know you're starting something new next.
You don't have to tell uswhat it is, but I have a
feeling it has somethingto do with marketplaces.
Want to give us a quickshot at what it is?
And is that yourpersonal moonshot?
And if not, what isyour personal moonshot?

I'm thinking of starting something I've
been kind of out of, youknow, the game for just under
a month and I think overa month and it's been just
mostly focused on a lot ofself healing and reflection
on what I want to do next.
And yeah, of course, to apoint, if I did something,
it would probably be inthe marketplace space.
I think where I am right now is.

(56:17):
Pretty much, uh, formulatingthat idea and making sure
that it is something thattakes into effect that last
eight years of experience thatI've gathered in marketplace.
And I would say that for thefirst time ever in my life,
I have the right opportunityto go take a big risk.
And so to answer your question,it would be my moonshot

(56:37):
and I have to get it right.
And so, um, but the, butthat's why for the first time
ever I'm applying patienceand just stepping back.
You know, not rushing intoanything, letting it come
to me naturally, reallyformulating it before I even
start thinking about whatis it that I pursue for me.
All right,

I'm going to give you one more.
If you have a favorite lifemotto that you'd like to
share with your friends,your kids, what would it be?

Everybody in life will often look
at things as a process.
And so when they see itas a process, they'll only
build into that process.
But it's when you see somethingas a problem is when you
completely reinvent it.
See things as a problemso you can reinvent it.

There you go.
Very good.
Very prophetic.
And how about this one?
When you see people,I've seen you do this.
You always find somethingnice about them.
Even if you meet someonerandomly anywhere,
why do you do it?

I can detect energy.
Um, and often, um, the wayI've built, I index on.
The most positive thing abouta particular person, I can
always find the most positivethings about people and make
that the centerpiece of how Iengage with them and, uh, and
then just, uh, make them feellike they're the most important

(58:01):
person that I've met at thatone moment because they are,
and as I pointed out at thebeginning of the, the podcast,
I can learn so much from them.
And so when I actually cansee that beauty in them.
And get them to realize that Ican sense that beauty in them,
I can get them to deconstructand be vulnerable and then

(58:22):
share insights back with me thathave just so much revelations
and learning and insights.
That helped me grow and becomemore knowledgeable, right?
So that is, uh, that is atrick to my trait, which
is that, uh, I find beautyin everything and everyone.

There you go.
A great trait to have.
Okay.
Encore.
We love having you here today.
We've all learned so much.
I think you've taken thisamazing life journey and
I'm so glad you couldshare that with us today.
Thank you for joining.

Thank you for having me, uh, total privilege.
And I really enjoyed this.
Thank you.
This was a lot of fun.

I took, this was so much fun.
Um, of course, great guy.
He's so, uh, well meaningwell thought through
about who he is about andwhat he's trying to do.
And I think that's what makesfor great sales leaders is
not your ability to just be,you know, eloquent and make
a pitch in a way that soundsgood, but to truly connect with

(59:29):
people at multiple levels andalign the emotional state, the
personal state, the professionalstate and what you're trying
to do for your company.
And so that's his great gift,and he does it well with
his coworkers, with his.
Managers and his customersand his friends and it's one
of the gifts that he has.

(59:50):
And so it's, it's what I reallyenjoy when I get to hang out
with him is that super positive,connective nature of it.

You know, one thing I want to take away is
this whole concept of, you know,finding the best in the people
that you're hanging out with.
I got the advice prettyrecently about, you know,
doing standup, which is ifyou want to do something, if
you want to be a creator ofsomething, whether it's standup
film or whatever it is thatyour business is or whatever.
I think, uh, rather thanlooking for the critique

(01:00:17):
in those things, look forthe things that you love.
You can't be a critic, youknow, you can't be a stand up
critic and a stand up comedian,really, is, it was the point.
And I feel like that applies to,to people, you know, if you want
to be in the business of people.
Then rather than looking forall the things to criticize,
look for the thing to reallycelebrate in somebody and
reflect that back to them.
And, and, and clearlyit builds trust.

(01:00:37):
It builds a relationshipvery quickly.
So I really loved that piece.
I thought that was really cool.

Rajiv Parikh (01:00:41):
And I know in a way, if you take it to the
point of a marketplace, whatyou're doing is you're creating
a place where those connectionscan mutually reinforce.
And they reinforce amongsttwo people are transacting
and multiple people.
It in fact, creates a community.
If you really thinkabout it deeply, that's
what it's all about.
You create this mutuallyreinforcing community of

(01:01:03):
people who can act together.
It's hard to set up, it'shard to put together, and
then it brings great soulstogether, which is my motto.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod,please take a moment
to rate it and comment.
You can find us on Apple,Spotify, YouTube, and

Sandeep Parikh (01:01:18):
everywhere podcasts can be found.
This show is produced by myself,Sundeep Parikh, and Anand
Shah, production assistantsby Taryn Talley, and edited by
Sean Maher and Aidan McGarvey.

I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh, from Position
Squared, an AI centricgrowth marketing company
based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.
com.

Sandeep Parikh (01:01:40):
This has been an f'n funny production.

We'll catch you next time, and remember
folks, be ever curious.

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Mastering Silicon Valley Sales/Ankur Srivastava - Confidence, Curiosity, Cloud Marketplaces ~ Spark of Ages Ep 21

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mastering Silicon Valley Sales/Ankur Srivastava - Confidence, Curiosity, Cloud Marketplaces ~ Spark of Ages Ep 21