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Sunil Dutt - Startup Lessons in Channel Design · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Sunil.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Great, alex, it's great to be here.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, excited to have you on.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe, for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are, where you've come from.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, alex.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: So my name is Sunil Dutt.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I'm with a wonderful company called DevRev Dev for Development, rev for Revenue but we'll talk a little bit more about that later on.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I've been in the startup game now for almost 20 years.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: My career started quite early with a company called Symantec that you might know from the antivirus.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You know the good old days when our biggest worry was the I love you virus.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: How the world has changed.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: I was responsible for introducing a lot of the acquired startup technologies and pushing them into the market Been at WebSense.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: From there they got acquired, had a great run after that at Nutanix, a company in cloud infrastructure.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I spent about six and a half years there, went to Salt Security, which is a leader in API security, and I'm now with DevRev.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: So altogether, you know really a startup person building ecosystems and channels and partnerships in a minute.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So now you're a man of to my own heart, because I think the most interesting career you can have is basically building, which feels like constant firefighting.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's most interesting about DevRev is you've hit the jackpot, in a sense, because you've got an enormous TAM.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: The challenge with building an enormous TAM is how do you build a channel to go after everything from small startups all the way up to large enterprise?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: So, from a channel perspective, how are you handling that?
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: How do you target those different customer segments?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's spot on right.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It's not easy, that it's very fragmented, the channel ecosystem, not only from a localization perspective and a language perspective, but also from a market verticalization perspective.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: You have a lot of partners that focus on certain segments in the market or certain verticals as well, so that makes it a little bit easier to kind of grasp.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Where do you want to focus your attention, based on what the product can do today and what impact you can have.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It doesn't always make it very easy, but you don't want to boil the ocean, but you want to start small but at the same time, think big and prepare for the future to come, assuming that you're going to have a successful company.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: So if I relate this to, for instance, DevRev, but also at previous companies which you typically see with American vendors when they come to Europe and I'm sure every channel manager has been through the same motion we want to onboard as many partners as quick as possible because we don't think we have the benefit of scale.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: My personal belief is that's the wrong way of doing this, Simply because of the nature of EMEA.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Although it's a vast region, at the same time we're very small and if you oversaturate the ecosystem.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: With too many partners too quickly, you'll get channel conflicts, you get margin erosion, you don't have enough business to distribute.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: In the first place, and particularly if you're in a space where you're offering disruptive technology, you need to have partners that are willing to take a thought leadership position and are willing to educate the market and invest in that run as well.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So it narrows it down quite quickly once you set the right expectation for partners and you take your first steps from there 100%.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And it's so funny all founders and all sort of business leaders understand the same sort of direction and strategy when it comes to direct, and then they throw it all out of the window when it comes to indirect.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Because we all have heard and we all deeply understand scale, what's working.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And then we start building a channel and we go brilliant, let's go and get loads of partners.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And you go, but you don't know which partners, what partners, how they need, what assets we need to do to enable them, how they're going to generate demand consistently.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And yet everyone just goes far and wide because there's no perceived cost to onboarding a partner.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: But the operational cost of onboarding partners is enormous, let alone what then happens when some of your partners are quite successful and you start introducing all this conflict and then you start having to work backwards.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It becomes an absolute sort of mire to wade yourself through.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Is that a sort of something you're taking into consideration really from the outset of channel design, or is that something you sort of landed upon as you've grown?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Like Nutanix and DevRev, very customer-centric, customer-obsessive companies, and you apply the same thing to partners.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day, partners are going to be your customers as well.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Right, you need to treat them as such, with the same delight and the same white-glove treatment and with the same respect that these partners most probably have been offering a competitive incumbent technology for the past 10 plus years, maybe even more.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: So you need to be very sensitive about that.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: If a partner understands that they need to start driving a little bit more innovation because there are new technologies in the market that are going to change the world, they want to have a thought leadership position, but at the same time, they don't want to lose credibility with the customers that they already serviced with a technology that was maybe a little bit now in the incumbent space.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: So you need to be very sensitive about that from day one.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: So that only makes sense that you have a smaller ecosystem to start with, where you have a very high intensity in terms of the relationship that you're building with these partners, because these partners that come on board early on will also be very impactful in the way that you develop your products.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Moving forward, and specifically for EMEA, you know that we are a complex well, let's call it a complex region for the typical American vendor, with all the rules and regulations and compliance and all that good stuff.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: The input that you get from these partners are going to be super important to incorporate in a product as well.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So having that sensitivity in the beginning, being vulnerable in the beginning as well, is key to being successful with these partners in EMEA.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I love that vulnerability point.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I think when I was at Zoom, we grew like crazy because of COVID, which you can imagine was like the greatest tailwind of all time, and then, yeah, we had to sort of openly go to partners and be like, look, we are growing too quickly and so operationally we are complicated to deal with because we weren't designed to handle now the influx of partners and business that we're now experiencing.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And so that vulnerability and that sort of openness, that's what breeds trust, especially when things inevitably, as you're building a nascent or scaling channel, inevitably things do go wrong.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And if you've sort of marched in with your you know, your lovely Zoom branded t-shirt and your cap and the confidence that comes with repping a brand like that, yeah, that just sows distrust over a while because you start to break those relationships down.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I can imagine that sort of building not only your personal brand but your channel brand, coming with vulnerability first, is critical to that sort of long-term vision.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Because you know, as a startup, you're in full learning mode.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: We realize that we're working with partners that have a ton of experience that can teach us a lot about how to build the region together with them, either into specific segments or into, specifically, their customer base, because they have a very narrow focus on it.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Either way is fine, but we're learning a lot from partners.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: We are definitely not coming in and saying, hey, this is how we're going to do it and it's our way, or the highway.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: You don't do that in a marriage.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: You don't do that in a marriage.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: You don't do that in a partnership.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: And honestly and you know I don't want to get all sentimental about this and too poetic, but we do see it as a marriage.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: You know there's going to be great times.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: There's going to be less great times.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The way that we come out of it together stronger.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: That's what's going to drive the success for long term.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: No-transcript.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: You don't go for breadth of marriage, you go for depth, right?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You go and pick one person that you're going to go and speak hopefully that you go and, as my wife listens to this podcast one person, obviously, that you're going to go and spend the rest of your life with.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about how that view around depth rather than breadth is influencing the sort of partnerships and how much time and effort you focus in on making a few partners successful.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a great question and it really comes back to quality, right.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: We want to make sure that we have partners that we can make successful with our technology and vice versa, and you can only do that if you have a high quality relationship with a partner that understands the playing field as well.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: There are not many of them out there and you know, kind of coming back to what I mentioned before, it automagically narrows itself down because there's only a limited amount of partners that's willing to take a step into a space where they need to be a thought leader.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Because you know, we very much realize that it's a heavy lift.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: You're taking on board a new technology out of all the gazillion technologies that are available, so you're placing your bet and you're going to double down on it.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: So for us it's super important that these partners feel that we acknowledge that investment and that we're here to take them by the hand all the way.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: You cannot do that if you have 100 partners on board.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense and you want to give a limited amount of partners the first mover advantage.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: The first mover advantage loses value if you do that with tens of partners.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: So it kind of automagically comes down to the fact that let's start small.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It kind of automagically comes down to the fact that let's start small, but we need to think big.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: What I mean with think big is prepare for the future, understand and be super transparent to these partners as well that eventually we'll get to a point where we have a growth ambition together, collectively with the ecosystem that we have today.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Be very transparent and open in a conversation that we will be adding new partners to make sure that we facilitate that growth right, but then you do that in a transparent fashion and don't surprise your existing ecosystem, and honesty is key.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: You know you spoke about trust.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: We have a saying here in the Netherlands, in Dutch, if you translate it to English, it says we have a saying here in the Netherlands, in Dutch, if you translate it to English, it says trust comes to you by foot, but it leaves you by horse, right.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So trust is key, trust alignment and then it leads to growth 100%.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that is so important when you're building trust is also picking the right horse right, not to continue the analogy, but there are some instances where you're going to be choosing a value-added reseller versus you're going to be choosing a systems integrator.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about why those two types of partners in particular are something that you look at and why you would choose one over another, or what the benefits are of working with both.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It comes down to segmentation.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: We all know the infamous pyramid of enterprise mid-market, sb, small businesses Typically giants dance with giants.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So if we're looking at the SIs or the global SIs, they're typically servicing and that's their sweet spot the very top of the pyramid.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: So they have the framework agreements in place in that space.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: They are doing a lot of outsourcing.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: They are also insourcing a lot of their consultants into those companies as well.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: So it's inevitable in that space that you need to be working with those types of companies that fully understand the dynamics and the complexity of those larger enterprises.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: So if you go a little bit down in the pyramid from a segmentation perspective, you get more towards the VAR space that are working with.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Those types of companies are delivering a lot of managed services as well in those spaces.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: So they have a very tight relationship with these customer environments, know them from the back of their hand and drive a total different type of value for us there.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It's a different market segment, different space.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: So I think every type of partner, depending on where you place them, have a right of existence in a certain point in the segmentation pyramid.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: It's key for us to make sure that we are evenly spread out and not over saturating and not being underrepresented either in any part of that specific segment.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I hope that answers your question no, that that that's perfect, because I I think your your analogy and I've always heard elephants dance with elephants, not giants dance with diamonds but I think we're saying the same thing um, I think the analogy analogy there that's so critical is that customer obsession right, I've had a few people from AWS.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It's amazing to hear you also talk about Nutanix and Devra being so customer obsessed and that critical understanding about not only are we building a product that works so well for our customers, but we're building a go-to-market that aligns well with that.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Then, organically and strategically, you build this segmentation that is best for that type of customer and you're working backwards from customer requirements right, that's so logical in terms of building a channel that is going to provide that value first strategy.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It's not easy, though, right, I mean the way that we explain it back.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like we are taking a textbook and we just need to go through the textbook and then the rest of the result is kind of guaranteed.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: We know how to do it, we understand the mechanics, you know, and even if you've done this a couple of times and you have the benefit of having the right relationships within these partners, it's still a heavy lift.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Right, onboarding every partner and you know this is a sales cycle by itself that can take a long time, because it's not only for us important to be part of the portfolio of the partner, because if you remain to be that, you will be a transactional fulfillment play, and that's not what we're looking for.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Right, you want to be embedded in the core strategy of the partner so that it resonates throughout the whole organization and that you are actually an enabler to bring the partner somewhere where they want to be as a company as well, towards the near future.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Right, and I think that is a key differentiator and you apply this to customers as well, you know, in their customer journey and all the positive business outcomes that you want them to have based on your solution.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: The same thing goes for a partner.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So if we have a conversation with a partner that says, oh wow, this is cool tech and I want to be part of it, but there's no impact, then that's something that we would have to walk away from today, you know, and we'll have an honest conversation because there's no us making them successful story there for their personal goals.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one of the things that's so challenging in the position you are, especially when we're talking about going through that almost qualification from a partner perspective is AI is such an emerging technology.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Emerging technology and I know the words really have been around for a long time, but we're really at the precipice now of a new movement in terms of this new product category that didn't exist really five years ago is going to become one of the major dominant categories over the next sort of three to five years.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: How are you sort of qualifying that partners are able to keep up with how new and innovative your product is and what are the sort of disruptions that come with building a program and a channel around technology that just has had no foundation ever?
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it immediately raises a big pain point, alex, because the majority of the partners that we're talking to and when you're introducing innovative, disruptive technology, it means that you are going to displace a very strong incumbent and that means that this partner probably has a longstanding relationship with this incumbent and has been making a lot of money with this incumbent as well.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: And if you kind of pick that apart and break it into pieces, you'll see that part of that money is on the resale of the actual product.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: But a big chunk of that money and mainly the margin is on fixing the complexity that that product created.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: So there's a big chunk of services revenue that innovative technology is probably going to automate away.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: I've seen that happening with Nutanix, for instance, where partners were making a ton of money on putting together server storage, compute networking with tie rips and then spit and duct tape.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: But I mean that was a huge services revenue generator.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: We automated that away.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: So we had to have a conversation with partners that were willing to elevate their services higher up the stack.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: The same thing now happens with DevRef.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: We're basically automating away a lot of complexity that the incumbent technologies are today creating.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: So even though a partner is inclined to work with us and has a great profile in terms of innovation and being a thought leader in the space.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: But if they're not open to having a conversation of how do we look at the risk of your current revenue stream on a services level and how do we get that higher of the stack, how do we allow you to redefine services, then it becomes a tough partnership.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: We will always be in a conflicting mode.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: So, to answer your question, how do you make sure that you're working with those right partners?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: The services conversation needs to happen immediately, even though we will not deliver services today through partners.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Right, we're actually in the process of building that program, part of the program.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: But it will happen, it's inevitable.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: But you need to have the conversation today because you don't want to be in that conflicting situation so, again, I I think there's a sort of through theme that's coming out of this design, right, the first is, hey, it's predicated on trust, and if you've got to deliver that bad news, delivering it up front, honestly and openly, without being asked it, that's what breeds trust.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And and and there's a sort of cynical thing in there as well right, it's not just morally correct, which obviously is morally correct, but it's also cynically, it's smart because we're not going to burn any time with a partner.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: If that services revenue is required today, right, and so it allows you to do almost a harder level of qualification and we can work back to those partners in a year, two years, three years, once you know the market has deemed them ready for for, for their investment, their investment and the opportunity to come with you.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I think is really important is I can imagine your messaging around the almost from a tech evangelist perspective about this incoming opportunity hey, we've got this cool technology, catch the wave now and early.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: How do you sort of bring that and trust together so you not feel like you're selling snake oil, but you are being honest and cogent to where we are today versus where we will be?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: How do you sort of thread the needle there when you're bringing partners on board?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point, Alex.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: So I actually I took a lot of time thinking about this.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: You know, once a partner if I were a partner and I would get on board with a technology like DevRev and then, fortunately, having the background of working with some other innovative technologies that were displacing incumbents.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I had the fortunate experience of going through it before this and a lot of learning experiences along the way as well.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: But what I've done, I've summarized for myself what are the potential risks for a company that has built a lot of success on selling incumbent technologies.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: How do you try to understand what it means for them to then all of a sudden turn to something new that's going to displace a lot of the stuff that they've sold before?
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: And it has a lot of implications, right, it has financial implications, it has credibility implications I mean, the list just goes on and on.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: So what I do is I've made a list of nine points.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I won't blur them out now, but nine points that I have to discuss with a partner.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Have you thought about this?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Do you understand that?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: It will mean X, y, z, how are you going to deal with this?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Right, and it forces them to think beyond the cool tech.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: We need to jump on the AI hype and hope.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: You know, these guys had a great run with Nutanix and DevRev is going to be great as well.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Of course, all of that is important, but you need to make them over aware of how it's going to impact and transform their own business.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: And what I also discuss with partners is why not using the technology yourself internally?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Because the body language of a partner towards a customer changes so much if they're talking from personal experience, you know compared to any type of enablement that you can do with a partner, partners themselves are working with technologies with the same incumbents and that is also part of the conversation, right?
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: So they basically become aware of what the technology can do speaking out of personal experience, instead of me educating them 100%.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I give the same sort of a mentor, a lot of young salespeople, young channel people, and I give them all the same piece of feedback once they start running a team.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: A manager's job for their sales team is to generate one thing which is belief.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Right, and you're really talking there from experience as well.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: There is, we can do all the sales decks and all the snazzy stuff and, hey, we are setting the world on fire.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Look how great we are.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: And then there's the other thing which is no, no, I use this every day and it's really really good.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And that intrinsic belief it just carries through from a rep so much better.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Because they go no, no, this has actually been really helpful for us, right, and that was the first thing I did at zoom right.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about giving away licenses because, hey, it was like, no, no, just use the tech, it's better, I promise.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: And and there is such a level of security and confidence that just trust me, just play with it, it'll work.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: And then, and you speak to them weeks later, they're like, yeah, no, we've, we've got it.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: This, this is, this is good, this is clever, and so, yeah, if you can instill belief in your reps, if you can still believe in your channel.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: That's really fundamental to driving success absolutely, you know, and and how fast the pace then takes off from that moment is, um, how fast can they adapt right and and move quickly, lean in, uh, to bring this to market?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And you know it really differs per partner.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Some want to be a little bit more cautious about it for various reasons.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: You know, and we totally understand, there are some incumbents in play that they are making money off of.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: You don't want to frustrate anything immediately and fortunately, you know, if you look at DevRev specifically, it's not a rip and replace technology.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: You know the philosophy of DevRevrev and it's the same at nutanix.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: We believe in coexistence.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Um, right, because you can coexist with incumbent technologies.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: The good thing for us and the less good thing for the incumbent technologies is that gradually, over time, customers start to realize that they actually don't need the incumbent anymore.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Right, but we're not proactively pushing for that, right, it's what customers find themselves excellent and so maybe pivoting slightly.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I just touched on mentorship and I'm I'm always really fascinated by people who've had a sort of very stellar career and have rapidly risen through the ranks, because I always find there's a couple of through threads around their career that really help them.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Usually they got some help along the way to help sort of pick them up and put them into position.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe, zooming out Suneel slightly For someone who's keen to replicate your rise, managed to catch onto a rocket ship, has landed on what seemingly is going to be another one.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: What's the sort of advice that you'd give yourself from five, 10 years ago?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Help our listeners understand how to position themselves into these companies, how to really deliver that continuous impact over a long time.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: That's a great question, by the way, and there are many ways to answer that question.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Well, there are many answers, but they all have something to do with each other.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I would say a couple of things from an attitude perspective, which is super important.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: You know, if you're working with a startup company, make sure that you radiate that you are a missionary and not so much a mercenary, because it's tough, it looks great and it looks super romantic.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: You know, from the outside, all the linkedin posts and everybody's high energy knife between the teeth and foam on the lips, and we're moving forward and that's absolutely the case.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: But it's still a very, very heavy lift and if you are only in the game for the money and not for the actual accomplishment, yeah, you're gonna have a very tough ride and also during the hiring process, it's going to be a tough conversation to have right.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: So really make sure that you're doing this out of personal interest.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It has to be personal.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So I think that would be the first thing.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: The second thing would be, you know, also from an attitude perspective, make sure that you have to be humble.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: In a space where you're driving innovation and being disruptive, you have to have respect for the initial players in the market that built the space in the first place, right?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: So always tell the story from your own strength and never go bashing any competitors.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: That's not the right way to build a business, right?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: So that would be another thing that I'd like to point out.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: You know, humbleness is going to be very, very important in driving that, and eventually, you know, alex, it comes down to the attitude and the aptitude.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's it, even though you're coming from a different industry or a different space.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at myself I'm now in DevRev in the CX space and working with AI.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: My background is more cybersecurity focused and a strong focus on cloud technologies and infrastructure, but you need to have the aptitude and attitude to make it your own right.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of studying involved, and that also adds up to the heavy lift, right?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: You need to hit the ground running as fast as possible, because you're a startup business.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: You can't lose any time.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: So as long as you can articulate that that's something that you consciously want to do and that you're crazy enough to do that, then you should be in a good place to have some great conversations.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: So now I think that's excellent advice.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sort of half smirking at that.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: It looks great from the outside.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: In my grandma, when I joined Zoom, zoom finally knew what I did.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It's a joke that we often share on this podcast.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: She had no idea what I did.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: What's this thing?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Channel video.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: That doesn't make sense.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Then then zoom happened.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: She's like oh, now I know, um, but it was just carnage.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: It was left to right up to down carnage.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Nothing worked.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It was always on fire.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: It was incredible.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: But that that sort of mentality and attitude thing you know I've always prided myself on.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You know people will be alex, get stuff done, like if you give it to him, it gets done.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: But that philosophy of just like it's not someone else's problem, it's always my problem, I.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: It's something I really sort of hammer into my, my team, because I just think if I ever hear someone be like that's's not my job, I'm like, oh, you can't be here, right, cause that's not the culture that we want, that's the witness, not the type of people we want, and I've never really sort of put it into that sort of attitude bucket, but it is always that how do I go the extra mile for the customer, for my team, for the person beside me, cause if you get that right, it sort of doesn't matter how good your product is or your strategy.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: You will get there, it's just perseverance.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: At some point we will work out the formula and we will get it right, and then you just experience this huge hockey stick absolutely grit.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Grit is going to be key, yeah yeah, there are.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: There are only two.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: There are only two outcomes right, which is success, or giving up too soon, right, it's just keep going and we'll get there.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So now, that's been wonderful.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing all that, uh, information.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And hey, because I do have a great attitude and I like to box smart um, we always like to ask our current guest who they think we should have on next.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Who did you have in mind?
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: so I have in mind, uh, a fellow called jaco brandt um.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: He's currently leading the channels at akamai um and jaco has been a great mentor to me.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: You know, back in the day when I was still working at semantic um, I used to report into him I I learned a lot about channels, building channels, building the rapport with partners, structurizing your channel ecosystem, et cetera.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: All that good stuff.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: I've learned a lot from him and I'm still learning a lot.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: I consider him to be a great friend of mine as well, but he is a great channel veteran in the market.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: That would be a great asset to your show.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Awesome, jaco, we're coming for you.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Sunil, thank you so much for coming on.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Likewise, Alex Really appreciate it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much and yeah, we'll be in touch.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks everybody.