Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Hey there listeners, this is stream 98 Utsav and I are chatting with Ishan Rakshit today of Shopflow and Assortment. Ishan, firstly, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Thanks, Ruf. Thanks. What has been happening in life lately? Quite a lot actually. So two months ago, I moved to New York. So just to get used to the life here, but yeah, no, things have been great for both Shopflow and Assortment.

Dhruv Sharma: Do you want to tell us a little bit about Shopflow and Assortment and what's the difference between the two and, you know, the journey with, with Shopflow?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Sure thing. So Shopflow actually got started in 2022. I think right when, after the pandemic, we saw like a surge of people starting their own brands and a lot of comfort being built in India on transacting online, especially directly from the brand's website or apps. And we felt like if commerce was getting unbundled there, good software plays would be needed to allow the brands to get the right infrastructure for growth. So that's when we started picking up conversion as a problem statement, built a checkout and said, okay, let's just build an identity network to power personalized checkouts a lot faster. I think that was like first couple of years, we got like good 400, 500 brands sort of bringing their data together and being able to allow people to check out faster. The next couple of years, we just doubled down on the overall growth infrastructure thesis saying that, okay, what are the other tools needed that could just better the experience? So discounts, rewards, upsells, cross-sells, post-purchase experiences, all of that end up getting built out by Shopflow. And I think by the end of four years, which ended right last month, since we launched, we have reached around 1100 brands, 1200 brands, which are using our services. And there are a good amount of 65, 70 million users who have transacted through and that's a sort of user base we're working on. Assortment actually is very different. Assortment is on the retention and lifecycle side of the equation. So think of once you have a subscriber base or user base, typically for consumer tech or B2C companies, how do you sort of extract more value out of them? How do you deliver more value to them is a job which typically has been the role of a lifecycle marketer or a retention marketer. When we started dabbling with AI, as well as we used a lot of data in Shopflow to sort of build personalization, we started realizing that not all companies might be there where they need to be when it comes to data and marketing coming together. So these were like two different boxes in a company and they won't really talk to each other. There would be a lot of coordination, tax and whatnot. And that's when we felt like, okay, let's just give marketers the power and the access of customer data directly with them. And that's when AI came in really beautifully that, hey, I mean, I don't want to expose you to a library and figure out what book you want. Let me give you the librarian as well. And then AI could sort of guide you to the right strategy, right data point, right campaign, right message, etc. to be sent to the right user. So that's the thesis with Sortment. It's still WIP, but we're super bullish on that.

Utsav Somani: And what is the agentic part of this thing? And what is broken in lifecycle marketing management that you saw that that's an opportunity for Sortment to go after?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Yeah, no, I think that's a fair one. Nothing was as such broken and everything looked great when you look at it. I think the question started coming from when you only focus on the constraints that marketing teams work with, they would be coming up with 10 ideas, five would get shot down because the effort to build a business case around it is too much. Out of the five, three would get shot down by tech or data teams because they might not have the data pipeline set or the event might be corrupted or some gap would be there. And out of the two, one gets executed because they can only do so much in human time. We're just saying that all these three drop offs need to be questioned again, because now with AI, you don't need to depend on people, you can get access to that data, you can get things faster. Perhaps instead of just two experiments that you were doing every month, why not do 20? If AI can set that experiment, build that hypothesis, validate it for you and give you that result itself, why not sort of do more? I think that's the question people have started asking now and they're realizing that perhaps there was so much more meat to sort of get out of the existing pie and I think they're now sort of grabbing it because AI is making it possible.

Utsav Somani: So who is accountable in this case? I mean, if something damages the brand or the cluster that the brand is built, who is owning the outcome? Is there a human layer involved in this or agents are young, wild and free?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): I think this is where it differs a lot from, because we've been tracking a lot of the other spaces, right? AI has done brilliantly for developers for very different reasons. AI has done brilliantly for data analytics. It has done well for customer support. And the more customer facing the team is where AI is getting in, the more human in the loop expectation is there because you can't actually, as you said, you can't let them run wild and free because there are repercussions on brand, legal and so on and so forth. As well as there is someone's neck on the line because as you said, someone needs to deliver that metric as well. In those cases it's best to sort of build the infrastructure allowing for the human in the loop. And we have done that today as well. So our expectation is that someone who comes from a growth mindset or a product marketing or a lifecycle marketing mindset and is responsible for a metric comes in, sets the guardrails also on Sortment. Sortment always has an approval flow, will have a Slack notification delivered to your team inbox or a channel where you can see what it's working on. So it's not running wild and free, it's just giving you leverage that you needed and now you have. So it's a little different than, let's say in engineering, you can actually run wild and free to solve a problem because their neck is not on the line for a metric. Here things are a little different, so we are treating it differently as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Shayan, I'm maybe going to ask you two questions at once. One was your transition from being a VC to a founder, what was that experience like for you personally? That's number one. And number two is you were in India earlier, you're in the US now, we have brands that sell directly to consumers here, we have brands that sell directly to consumers there. Are there any glaring differences in the customer experience from the consumer standpoint? And then conversely, when you think about the brands, how are the problem statements different in India vis-a-vis the US?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Sure, I think the second one is very interesting, but let me cover the first one quickly. I think the transition for me was very eye-opening, and again, as a VC, perhaps I didn't realize it then, but you don't get to go into the depths of a problem statement so much. And you don't appreciate how impactful customer insight can be and truly amort what it can create. I feel like that was the biggest learning where I realized that, I think even with just spending like two months on an idea creates such a lot of difference. And you get so invested in it, and you feel like you have something unique that everyone else does not know, versus obviously, as a VC or a consultant, in my previous stint before VC, I was a consultant, you're just sort of looking at obviously, just multiple pieces altogether. So I think that was the biggest shift for me. And then obviously, for the first time I was managing teams, for the first time I was sort of being, picking up so much responsibility, obviously, at that age as well. And again, I'm not saying I'm too old, but at least like four or five years ago, that was a very big difference for me. But it taught me a lot. It taught me how to have a stupidity filter on ideas. It taught me how to not waste time on the wrong things. So I think I truly enjoyed the two years and learned a lot. And I do feel that there is a lot that has trickled down into my experience here as a co-founder that has helped me in my daily life as well. To your second question, I think with engagement and growth, etc, I feel like people have a very different perception, driven by very different needs in Indian versus US companies. And I don't, I haven't cracked why that's so, but for example, the cost to acquire versus cost to retain equation differs a lot in both those geographies. Brand plays a very different role in conference rooms. You perhaps can throw an ad which might not cut the quality bar, and people will still be happy for it if you did it at a cap of two rupees in India. I don't think that will fly here. The customer expectations are extremely high. And it's largely because perhaps there is not a lot of variance in the customer persona compared to what typically consumer tech companies have in India, both in terms of tier city there being in cultures, languages, etc. I think that's a little more sharper, more nature for each company, and hence they don't have to sort of deal with large bands to account for variety of expectation as well. I think what that ends up doing is, here it's a lot more structured practice on engagement and growth. In India, it kind of has blurry lines with product, marketing, performance, growth, so on and so forth. So I think those are like large overarching differences. Somehow it culturally trickles down into whether that team even has a budget, whether it has a seat on the table, how much influence it has on the roadmap. I do see that being a lot stronger in companies, consumer tech companies in the US. In India, there are a few companies, probably I can count 20 or 30 of them, who might have a structured growth team and a budget and give it so much importance so that it can materially dictate roadmaps.

Utsav Somani: What's the right metric to track for this category? More campaigns, higher attention, revenue lift, or some other impact metric that you're tracking and discussing with the brands that you're onboarding?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): I think most brands have a different part of the funnel, which is the biggest problem. So that's what we start with. I can't really paint the entire category or subscriptions with the same brush. But for example, with a gaming company, we're solving for the time to first deposit and how do I bring it down? It's a real money gaming app, for example. For a financial services slash tax filing sort of a company, it's conversion rates. But you have a base of people who are going to due for taxes. How do you sort of make them file on time basis your campaigns? So it's very different parts of the funnel where either the revenue attribution is extremely high or it's been a pain for them to improve. I think they pick that up and we sort of help them focus on that instead versus saying that, hey, you know what? Sortment is best for renewal rates or whatnot. We don't do that.

Utsav Somani: But do you want to highlight maybe one or two case studies or favorite brands? At least anything that's publicly disclosable?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): I think we work with this company called Brightbridge, which does tax filing for non-profits. That's an interesting one. They have multiple sort of states that they cater to in the US and a huge base. So I think what they used to do was probably like 10s or 20s of campaigns every month and then restrict their workflows to that. What they are now doing is that actually probably more than 500 or 1000 campaigns right now. And the team size has halved. So I think that's the delta that I was talking about that there is now no limit to increase the number of things you can do which were otherwise humanly possible because you don't need to sort of worry about being on top of everything all the time. We're working with that. I think the real money gaming app that we just posted a case study of as well is an Indian company which is building for the US. It's called Toast. So we work with the teams there. And I think what's interesting is they have like six games and they expect people to put some credits and then start kind of playing those games for their winnings. But there is a very interesting behavior on in how much time people actually pay the first deposit and what will prompt them to come back for another one. And it's not easy for people to hypothesize because it's so dependent on win rate. If I didn't win on my first deposit, I'm not going to deposit again. I'm not going to lose my money again. So I think those are very interesting problem statements where you need AI to look at data and help you with supplementary hypothesis, which perhaps you were not capable of doing also in the first place. So I think those are a couple of them that we have just released, but there are a good set of 10 to 15 customers who we're live with.

Dhruv Sharma: I'm curious, Sushant, in the US, given that you're there now, does having a combination of Shopify and Stripe make it very, very interesting for new companies and new teams to find and navigate problem statements, just given how broad their surface areas are in their respective domains? So it does.

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): I think, again, what you're alluding to is there is a strong enablement sort of ecosystem that makes it a lot easier.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, but show infrastructure that somehow keeps getting better and better and better.

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Yeah, yeah. In fact, I was talking to a founder very recently and what they are building is they're now disrupting Shopify itself and saying that who needs a store builder if I can do it all using cloud code. So I feel like that's that entire enablement ecosystem is being redefined now. Perhaps today people rely more on Vercel than on something else and so on and so forth.

Utsav Somani: So I think I exist in this e-commerce enablement thing like does more data or does having more clients make your product better?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): I think Shopify would definitely seen that happen largely because one, it's almost like it's a GTM booster dose of sorts, right? Like when a brand realizes that their personalization is being powered by data built on multiple users, you almost feel you're capable of giving a repeat experience to 80-90% of your users immediately. And especially for e-commerce, this makes a lot of sense because they're not going to see that user ever again in at least the next 12 months. So what they can do, they have to do in this session right now. And that's where the data and what impact it has on personalization is a lot more crucial than let's say a mobile app company, which perhaps will only want to focus on their data because it's more relevant.

Utsav Somani: So maybe one final question, I was going to bring Suhas in, but maybe one final question for Ishaan before we have Suhas on as well and we jam together for a bit. If Sortment works as it's working and continues on this trajectory and you move from a WIP to PMF stage, in your words, what part of the marketing stack will be moved?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): That's an interesting one. So there are two parts to it, Utsav. One is there is a software stack that we are directly plugging in, for example, which is the engagement part of the world. We are looking at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot Marketing, Braze, Iterable, Moengage, etc. I think that's where it's a direct overlap and a complete sort of replacement. What we are seeing people is something very interesting. They're saying that, hey, because our model is not that we'll take a copy of data like some of these traditional platforms I've mentioned, we actually run directly on the data warehouses. So you just plug in your snowflake and you're good to go of sorts. So a lot of analysis can also happen here. So I've started seeing people moving out of their old looker dashboards and metavases of the world and starting to do analysis using the agents on Sortment itself.

Dhruv Sharma: That was the question I was going to ask you. Is that why you guys made like a warehouse native design, like a conscious choice for Sortment?

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): Yeah, honestly, it started not keeping AI in mind very early on. We were just curious on what happens when all the data becomes accessible all at once. And it was only a little later when we started realizing, OK, it just works beautifully for agents because they don't need to get bottlenecked on data teams and tech teams deciding what data should be sent. They can just go and pick and choose whatever they need. So it just fit perfectly. But it was not something that was so premeditated as well.

Utsav Somani: All right. Let's bring Suhas on as well for a full four-way jam.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): You had Ishan before I did, so all the intellectual stuff he can cover.

Utsav Somani: No, he mentioned to Dhruv and me that he knows you as well. So we thought, why not get two product minds to come and chat with us for a bit? And then, of course, we'll spend time with you alone as well, Suhas.

Dhruv Sharma: I have the first question, which is, just to keep things light, Suhas, while you're talking with us, how many agents do you have running a background?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I have another laptop right next to me.

Dhruv Sharma: Do you keep it cracked open these days while you walk around?

Utsav Somani: I haven't got it there yet. There's only this one hand that you can put on the screen so that it doesn't shut and they're like different colors also.

Dhruv Sharma: Oh, yeah. Age-related accessories, new market opportunities.

Utsav Somani: A lot of them, a lot of them. I think, coming to a more serious question, how does a first-time builder decide on what not to build and what do first-time builders get wrong, typically, in both your experiences?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): To be very honest, I think the world has changed in the last two years. I think earlier, you would have had to spend a lot more time, in my opinion at least, talking to users. I mean, it's still important, no doubt. But I feel like the cost of building and the time to building has reduced right now. So I think at least over the last two years, I'd say spend as much time as you can experimenting, pushing as much out there and see what sticks. I think that's how I'm looking at a lot of experiments, especially I'm spending more time on the consumer side. I think I'm seeing a lot more of this happen there. That said, as easy as it is becoming to build, I think the bottleneck now becomes on, hey, what exactly should we be building? Because today, feature load is the next big risk that everyone is going to be facing. Your consumers, your buyers, they are still the same. They haven't changed in two years. Adoption was always a challenge in B2B. You can throw as many new features as you can build today at them. They're still going to be using just that 20% sliver. I think, yes, there is a huge advantage in experimenting. The cost of building, etc. has gone down for sure. But one thing I think everyone will soon realize is your buyers and your consumers are still the same. Yes, you can make the journeys easier. You can make their lives easier. But you build a hundred different things and send them where they're still going to be using those two things of your product.

Dhruv Sharma: The natural question is, what should PMs be doing to contain that feature load? For one release, you deprecate two features or something?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think that's where the role becomes that much more important. Essentially, everyone's question. If you talk to a lot of founders, you're hosting multiple of them every single week. Everyone's mind is now stuck on, hey, what exactly do we build and what part of it are we not going to get overlapped by the hyperscalers or the new fang right now? I feel like PM's role goes back to where it originated. There was this entire COVID pandemic where everyone was a PM. And I'm glad that happened because now the real role starts now. Their skills, everything that they picked up. The real value is...

Utsav Somani: That's why we need communities like yours to succeed. That's good, I think. But I think, I mean, sorry, I mean, Ishaan, we've not given you a chance to speak. But now we'll have this thing where build and sell. Those two things are the key characteristics as well. So do you think in the future that's coming up, like, we're easier to build, but harder to sell. So you think having distribution is an advantage? Or what advantage can first-time builders build for themselves when they're easy to build, but how do you sell?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think I completely agree with that, right? Like them build and sell are probably going to be only two roles left in the market. You're seeing the advent of all this FDs that are coming up. That is essentially technical for what would have earlier been, I think, solution engineers. This is a new VC connotation, a new term that's come through. But it's essentially that, hey, now go get closer to the customers, figure out what they want, go get much closer to them and figure out, okay, hey, how do we get more integrated into their workflows? That's probably the only way. On the build side, I don't think like great engineers, I don't think their roles are going anywhere. Yes, models are getting better. Great, great tools around us, no doubt, right? The tooling has been a huge enabler, but I think if you're a great engineer, you're always going to be in demand for the next decade. I don't think that's going away anywhere. PMs, yes, their role shifts into one of these two, right? Either you go super deep into figuring out what to build, get your hands dirty, get into more prototyping, etc. Or you're seeing a lot of them now start moving into, you know, growth roles, slightly more GM kind of role, forward deployed roles. You're seeing that evolve now into two clear distinctions.

Utsav Somani: Vishal, put your ex-VC hat on and give us a contrarian view here now.

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): No, actually, I'll put my current founder hat on. I still have a little contrarian view to put there. No, I think, I feel like, one, the times are changing so fast, right? FD today might not be relevant tomorrow also. Because I've seen how the process of building an AI product has changed and evolved, right? There was a time where we used to think of prompt engineers, like what the hell happened to them? And people tried becoming great at prompting and whatnot. Tons of YouTube channels became making so much money on that. Now, then agents came and there were tools like relevance and N10. Like, I don't know who's using N10 anymore. So, I think the world is changing very fast. I'm already starting to see the frontier model itself becoming a lot more better. And I think the bet is to be placed on that itself. That perhaps not a lot of architecture and FD-ship needs to be done to make an AI work perfectly for a company. I think, in my understanding, it's a temporary bridge that's required so that enterprises can adopt AI. It's not a sign of the times changing, largely in my understanding. That's one part. The other part is, I think there is build and sell. I think it's a sequence which is also changing a lot as well. Because now you can build anything in any much time as you're given. The value of selling right and selling fast has increased. Which is where, as Suhas said, people still need to be close to the customer. But perhaps they don't need to have a fully functional product. Especially if the product is AI. It's a lot easier to just say that, okay, this is how you want this AI to react and add value to your life. Let me quickly make it happen and deliver it to you in a form factor that works for you. I think that sequence is changing. I'm seeing a lot of companies doing that sell before you build. Especially in mid-market and enterprise products. Where pitches are required in any ways. The enterprise sales time hasn't changed with AI anyway. So that's the second part to it. I think the third, which I think Suhas you mentioned, on the roles of people, which is product manager, etc. I agree. I feel like there is a need to not being just a product manager anymore. I feel a lot of these overlap roles or cusp roles are coming up. Designers have to become design engineers. Product managers perhaps have to become product engineers as well. Or come closer to sales and become forward deployed in some way. So I think those kind of things, I agree. I think they're necessary because of the ways sales and customer success are also changing with AI expectations.

Dhruv Sharma: This actually reminds me of a Jensen quote and also brings up a question. His quote is, the job of an engineer is to solve problems. The task of an engineer is to write code. The job of an engineer is not to write code. And engineers have been abstracting for decades now, right? Who writes assembly anymore? So this is just yet another layer of abstraction. Maybe the most visible one. The question though is, it's not just engineers who are turbocharged by AI, right? I mean, so us even product managers are turbocharged by AI. We don't have any design representation in the house, but designers are turbocharged by AI. So everyone is equally turbocharged. How did the dynamics between those teams inside relatively large organizations start to change and some input you have from the field?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think to be very honest, I think design as a category, if you say product and design, I think we have yet to see a lot happen on the design front. We partner with a lot of those industry leading companies there, but I'm calling it out right now. I feel like there's enough happening on the coding side. Product, yes, for sure, right? Like the role itself is evolving. On the design front, I still feel this lacking. So I think 2026, 2027 is going to be the year. You're seeing a lot of the upstarts. You're seeing, you know, we were, you're seeing, which is now known, you're seeing paper. You're seeing, of course, Figma has conflict coming up. So a lot of interesting updates there. That is from a, you know, just a transition point in terms of, okay, where are we as an AI tooling market? From a role perspective, I think I concur with you. I think there is definite convergence, right? Like now, how does that play out? How much of the role of an engineer and product come together or a design product eng come together? I think that's TBD right now. Models have evolved so fast, right? Like what I was thinking last year will take maybe three, four, five years. Today, many people, nine out of 10 PMs I knew in my circle are all sitting inside of cloud code, right? Like, so I feel like what tooling will you build? Every PM is sitting inside of cloud code itself. What other tools exist? And like Ishan said, I mean, even with sortment, right? Some of the stuff that he mentioned, I've been a very tiny part of their journey since the beginning, right? So this is very different from even where they started. And now they are evolving into something much bigger and a much shorter period of time in terms of even a vision. I feel like that is going to become very interesting to see, okay, hey, what really sticks, right? That was where I started as well. I think I'm also very curious to see, okay, the timelines are like moving much faster than I had honestly thought, right? That is something and much harder from a founder's job. I feel like, okay, yes, there are a certain set of companies that are accelerating so quickly. And then I'm also in the room. You all probably have way more experience. And of course, Ishan, your background as well. I think as a VC, I think your job also gets much harder because you're bucketing and thinking everything is supposed to now grow at the pace of an anthropic and everything else is maybe not there yet, right? So how do you underwrite? I think founder jobs are definitely getting harder. Okay, hey, what do we really go out there and build? But yeah, it's a fun little market from my vantage point.

Utsav Somani: We've been discussing that we'll eventually end up turning to farming as a future career. If things keep on progressing like this, where the tech overlords or terminator comes to reality.

Dhruv Sharma: We took a trip to Darjeeling for some practice as well. I guess your friends are there.

Utsav Somani: How is that so fun? Oh man, we learned so much from the Alt Carbon guys. And Dhruv says it best where he says that you really have to see it in action. Like I think you can hear about, read about theory and everything that we discuss on the show and otherwise. But I think once you see it in action, the Darjeeling Climate Action Lab by Alt Carbon, fantastic set of team, fantastic set of founders. I mean, it's just phenomenal. But where is India on the global map right now in terms of startup conversation? Given that, of course, Ishan, you've shifted to NY, New York recently. Suhas, I'm guessing there are many global participants in your community as well. So where are you seeing India's position in the global conversation right now related to startups and tech?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Well, a small update from myself. I'm, Ishan's on the East Coast. I'm spending more time on the West Coast as well. But Ishan, I think we've had this conversation.

Utsav Somani: Covered with your perspectives then.

Dhruv Sharma: And in IST, that's the best part.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Yeah, we're right now. I think that is always, that's not going to change. I think for at least the near future, I think there's going to be a lot more movement in this corridor. But Ishan, I think we've had this conversation before. What do you think? And then maybe I'll chip in.

Utsav Somani: He's deferred it to Ishan, basically.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): The intellectual stuff comes with Ishan and then I do a plus one there.

Ishan Rakshit (Shopflo, Sortment): So I think what's, again, I feel like most changes fortunately, unfortunately are driven by the direction of capital. You can't avoid that. I think people will feel ballsy to build something if they see that they're going to get the support both from a ecosystem capital and obviously infrastructure standpoint as well. I think there's exciting stuff happening on all sides of the world. It's just that, as you said in the previous question, I feel like the piece which will bite back basis geography cuts is going to be distribution. Because I do feel that obviously it's become easier to build product. It's also going to become and becoming easier to distribute products and hopefully with sortment retain people on those products as well. But what's going to be very difficult is to now figure out how do you cut the clutter? Because you're building something in India and you want to sort of distribute it beyond India. How do you sort of cut the clutter basis versus the hundreds of people who are also building there and have access to that geography, distributing it locally? I think that competition has just amped up by a fair margin. So at least that's the piece, at least I'm hearing from application layer startups at least. I feel like there is a very different geopolitical play across more infra and underneath layers of the cake, or at least an application layer. I feel like the distribution friction has gone up and there is an insane number of people who are now really picking the geography first and then deciding what else to do next.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Yeah, yeah, two, three examples. Maybe I'll just add in there. I think at campus, I think I spent a little bit more time on the cybersecurity side and currently working with one or two of them came across this community called CyberStats. Not sure, have you guys heard about this one? This is a corridor that exists between Tel Aviv and the Bay Area from VCs to market makers to angels to CISOs, all part of the community. If you are someone who comes out of their defense academy, many of them serve and then come out and build their companies in Tel Aviv. You have a great support network there, right? Because once you come out, if you have CISOs in that network, right, they are willing to give you those. Of course, you get them involved as there is an entire article on this, whichever school of thought you are on, but they get involved, maybe get them on board as advisors, angels. They give you an opportunity to come on board as a design partner, a series of investors, again, sitting in that community. So once you have 10, 12, 15 good logos on board, you have your next round there. I feel like that corridor, I tried talking to a lot of people, but I'm very, very interested if someone's building this corridor for AI and for the diaspora. I know a lot of people trying, but I still haven't seen or come across anything that strong, right? And yes, maybe they picked it for a certain vertical. Maybe another vertical comes out of here. But that is one thing I'm very, very excited about.

Utsav Somani: But aren't you seeing a lot of the Indian VCs actually going back to YC demo days? Because in the middle, I think during COVID, there was a phase when nobody was investing in YC companies. Indian founders were not going to YC because I think there was such a big boom of capital coming into India. But now I think with this whole AI wave, I think a lot more founders are applying to YC because of what Ishan also mentioned that they want to be closer to the market where they're building and selling, which happens to be US for now, for most of the year.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): You have multiple unicorns under your investing belt, right? My question to you is very simple. What is our right to win? There are 2,000 plus VCs. There are 18,000 VCs in America, maybe 2,000 very prominent ones in SF alone, right? What is the right to win for an Indian VC who's going there for a week during YC demo day and coming back? Yes, there are the bigger ones, who've set up offices there. Nexus has been amazing with Vishnu Abhishek, who've been there for a decade plus, right? How feasible is it for someone to go from here, invest in two out of 50, 100 companies in that batch and actually pick the right ones and come back?

Utsav Somani: That's actually very interesting, Dhruv. We should bring somebody on who's spent time at YC demo day and I think get their perspective on what do they think their right to win is? Like what do they pitch to founders? Like Suhas, have you heard any answers to this?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Actually, I want you to get... I wanna know what are they thinking in there, right? Like I want more of that activity. I'm a huge believer of the corridor, right? But I really want to know. And once we get that answer, then maybe we as a community work towards enabling more of it. So I really want to know. Okay, those are the three points I'll take forward.

Utsav Somani: Ishan, Whisper and right now just like, I mean send silent whispers to like Elevation team that, hey guys, how are you winning YC deals? What are you pitching to founders?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Credits to Elevation. They have Krishna there, right? So they have a, they've hired someone else also. So they have at least, till now it was a lone warrior, I'd say. But now they have- Even Team 15 has opened up an office, like physical presence there. So they're not just- They're hiring four, five people now.

Dhruv Sharma: You can't do it without that, right? Otherwise it'll be like an IPL player showing up at the NFL Superbowl. Let's play.

Utsav Somani: All right guys, I've gotten a nudge from our showrunner that we're, I mean, over time. So basically I think to switch to just Suhas so that we can chat about TPF as well. Ishan, thank you so much for coming on the show. That's all the time, Ishan.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Just before you hop off, congratulations. I think I wanted to definitely call that out on the part and super- Yeah, congrats on the solid exit.

Utsav Somani: I mean, Bindlabs, I think that's a great, great place for shop flow. Thank you so much, folks. Cheers. Thank you for coming on the show. Bye-bye. All right, Suhas, we got chatting about everything. You have good insights into everything that you've built, but I think that comes from and stems from the time that you spend closely with your community. So let's introduce the community. What does the ProductFolks do?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): So I think today ProductFolks is one of APAC's largest builder community with over 240,000 members. Started almost seven years ago. It's completely volunteer-driven, so I think never expected it to become what it is today. But I think the foundations are in place and I think very, very excited to now help the next set of builders, one, get into or prepare better for this entire AI wave that we're all chatting about. And second, for those who've already been part of the community for the last couple of years, how do we enable, equip them better, both on the career side, someone who wants to pursue that, and a lot of them now starting to build their own company. So how do we support them, at least in that early phase of the journey, right? Not categorizing it as a minus one to zero or a zero to one, but before the first institutional round comes in, I think that's where we want to play a helping hand.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, I run a community offline as well. And what metrics do you track or what is the product of the community? Like, do you define yourself with one single thing or it's a combination of certain things like events and other things and career opportunities and just generally a certain number of things under the umbrella?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think I've gotten this question a lot of time and I still don't have the best answer. But recently, I think, again, someone co-tweeted Naval's tweet and I've bookmarked that and kept where it said, it's very unmeasurable, right? While you're building a community. I think David Spinks has probably co-tweeted this. So I've bookmarked that and kept. But in our case, we've tried it all, right? Like there were tools like ComServe, Thredo that came in between. We were one of the beta partners, tried getting all this data in place. We have, for example, a funnel which starts with the website newsletter, it goes into a Slack, it's almost 66,000 members right now. We run 128 WhatsApp groups and then comes the entire offline. We have six, seven different IPs that we run and anywhere between 35 to 40 events every single month across 20 different cities, right? So lots happening in the community across that funnel. The best we have, I mean, again, like I said, I don't have like a clear metric here to measure. But one thing I've realized is, I think the community should exist for someone and in the way they want to engage with it rather than being forced upon it, right? Many people, for example, have found value when we are hosting Australia's Doshi or Lenny Raczycki or VP from Meta across the globe, right? Because they don't have access to that. Now, they might not be the most active in our dinner series, which is just for leaders, right? So they cannot be present across both. But are they still finding value? Both are finding different value from the community. So I think what we're trying to do is now one, we've created different cohorts in the community and we're trying to ensure that, okay, for each part of the community, we're able to figure out what they are looking forward to and how we can equip them best. Below one fit or one thing fit all, no, doesn't work out. Is everyone going to be engaged in the same way? Maybe not, right? But I think the best way we found it, okay, hey, we might not be able to help everyone, but one particular thing that we're doing is not going to help everyone as well, right? So how do we find though the sweet middle is where we are at right now.

Dhruv Sharma: Guys, as someone who doesn't run a community, what I'm learning is that there is no easy way to measure. So I'll tell you what my next thing is going to be. It's going to be a vote for communities, which will measure vibes in us as long as they're immaculate, we're doing just fine.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Well, this has come up multiple times. You should check actually, Komsoy raised over $60 million to build this out. And they were on a very interesting trajectory for different reasons.

Dhruv Sharma: So how do I know for a fact that a TPF has, or the product folks has inspired many other communities, right? Why don't you give, why don't you talk a little bit about that and give a shout out to the ones that you've mentored, advised, or remain in touch with?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): We haven't mentored any communities as such, but I think wherever possible, we try collaborating with a lot of them. We look up to a lot of them. We've tried to help as many as we can, right? There are folks from our community who've gone on to then build different communities. There are people who've been hired as community folks on different communities. But I've always believed that, you know, we are still like in one niche, right? Yes, we've grown in numbers, but we're still one part. And there should exist hundreds of more communities like TPF. Like if you see the Bay Area today, then whatever you say, it's just, just talk about SF, right? It's seven by seven miles, that's all. It's the radius of, like you guys are in Gurgaon, for example, it's not even like two sectors of Gurgaon, maybe, right? Like that is how much SF is. And just imagine the density, the number of events that happen every single week, right? It's 10X of Bangalore. We think, okay, Bangalore has so much happening for it. So I think in theory of relativity, I think there should be hundreds of more communities that exist, hundreds of more quality curated events. So I think serendipity increases that way. Many people who don't have access, these are opportunities for them to essentially learn, absorb from each other and get access to things that maybe people who are a little bit more privileged early in their journey had access to, right? Like, I think that's what I believe. And that's what I feel like hundreds of more communities like TPF should exist, will exist. And I'm seeing a lot happened right now. So I'm very, very excited. I feel we were a little early. I'm truly actually very excited about 2026 and onwards.

Dhruv Sharma: You know, it's very nice. You said privilege. You remember there was Shuvya at Lightspeed, right? I once saw a tweet from her and just bookmarked it where she said, you know, guys, it's not a small world. It's just a concentration of privilege. And for some reason, yeah.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, we should bring that up here, actually. That's a great, great point. Deep, deep, deep. Suhas, there's a question for you from Rahul on our YouTube chat. So I'm going to ask you, what does, I mean, the question says, what does he think about synthetic user simulation space? Yeah, agents acting like target users, which helps you decide what to build for your specific audience.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think it's an interesting space. I don't know if, I think we've chatted earlier as well, but I think that's an interesting category. I've seen two, three teams now build in this. My only worry is how much of it, how close can it get to actual human thinking, right? There are so many data points, which if it can be captured and if it can be modeled, I think would be very powerful and very different use cases. My only worry in that category is how close can it really get to how humans behave and respond. The closer we can get, I think there's a huge, huge leap in just user testing, early feedback, et cetera.

Dhruv Sharma: In fact, whoever asked that question, I think a very, very smart question, good answer too. Suhas, how's the face of user research starting to change, by the way, because of AI?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): So in between, I felt like this role is shrinking. Like there was layoffs, especially of user researchers, if you see from LinkedIn data per se. And I would have thought, okay, maybe people and this role probably is not gonna exist or it might just go into a design or a product role, right? It might just convert. But I think over the last one or two quarters, I'm seeing a lot of AI work happening in there, right? Lots of companies coming and trying to do user plus AI. So I think maybe, would I call it a resurgence? I don't know. I don't know if there was a temporary blip in this entire ecosystem, but right now I'm seeing lots of exciting work being done here. So next two quarters, next four quarters, I think lots of interesting startups launching in this space, people who've raised some money. Resurgence for sure. I think that's probably the easiest way to put it. Important again, because I think what we spoke earlier, probably getting closer to, hey, what are we building? Why are we building? Is it even really useful, right? So maybe that's probably why there's this resurgence surfacing.

Utsav Somani: So I think a related question is how does the role, I mean, the new world of like these AI PMs getting ready, like how the junior folks are coming into the world of startups and tech, thinking about becoming a junior PM. And also to think about getting ready for the AI native world. And I think these words also keep coming up like product and taste and all of these words. So how does this all fit in? I mean, a lot of people have started talking about agency and taste. Those are the two words that keep coming up when you talk about agency. Sorry, yeah.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): That was a good question actually.

Utsav Somani: I think we smash off a couple of things, but I would love to get your take on how juniors can prepare or fresh graduates can prepare for the world ahead.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Absolutely. I think, see, one thing is every PM is now an AI PM, right? Like by definition, there is no world outside of that. Some will get more deeper on the infrasight. Some will be using AI to ease their work, et cetera. I think the ones who are stuck are the messy middle. The ones who are early into their career, they are gonna be native by default, right? They are in fact picking up skills a lot faster. And in general, if you see org designs, it is impacting a lot of the middle layer, right? Like the senior ones, maybe lesser roles, but they are still out there figuring out what needs, et cetera, road mapping. There are a lot of resurgence of, okay, here the junior one, because we want more people on the IC side. In fact, you're seeing a lot of director, managers, et cetera, jumping back into IC, senior, senior folks, right? You might've seen some of those tweets also where the CTO of Workday, for example, jumping back into like a- Correct, right, MTS role. So I think that's similar, I feel in product as well. One, I think something that is maybe just, again, a transitionary phase is for the junior folks, the number of roles that existed in that pandemic boom, right, the 21, 22, that hasn't come back yet, right? Like, especially if you see, okay, master's students right now, everyone who's graduating in the Bay Area, there used to be a lot of absorption by the big four, right? Like the Googles, Metas, et cetera, on the early, that hasn't happened. So I think that is a transitionary phase now, whether that exists a year or two years and where the roles open up. So if that doesn't happen, I think it's gonna be hard for them to break in. On the skills front, I still feel like they are way more equipped than someone who's been there in the six, like six years into the industry and trying to pick up some of these skills, right? So I think from a skills point of view, I'd say they are still a lot more enabled than a lot more senior folks. Temporarily, breaking in is a little harder. You have to do, I think there are lots of interesting articles these days on the third door and figuring out ways outside of the traditional job board. In a world that is constrained by the visa, I think those still are very, very limited, at least for the Indian diaspora who's coming here to study. But in general, I think I believe in a lot more okay, and that's where it ties back into your agency taste, because you can showcase some of these skills and come back via the third door. But temporarily, it is a little hard to break in, at least all the constraints that we're seeing, whether that lasts a year or two years, I don't know how that eases out and where that eases out. Skills wise, I think they are a lot more equipped, right? I'm seeing some of the younger folks come out with the beautifully designed X, Y, Z. So yeah, the sharper execution for sure. The product sense takes time, right? That is how many of the courses you do, et cetera. That is something that will take time.

Utsav Somani: Where you see younger builders in the world of AI?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Typically, have you seen age 10 downwards? 100%, ages dropping. I think some of your VC friends will also agree that they're going closer to the premier colleges in India to find their next set of investments. So I feel like the median has definitely gone down. I think we're seeing a lot more activity happen on the younger side. And very, very sharp folks coming out there, very fearless, fearless I'd say is the word that I use for building, right? Some of these people in college going out there building very ambitious ideas. So I think lots to learn for me also from them.

Dhruv Sharma: So back to this question for people who are in the market looking for new roles, right? And of course, everyone has to find an answer for themselves. But just one question, what are the roles looking like inside of large organizations and then small organizations? People will decide for themselves, but how do they vary at this point in time?

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): See, smaller organizations, what we spoke about, there's this new role called the AI builder, right? Which is either a product person going to that and an engineer going to that. There's a huge, huge demand for great AI engineers. That's a demand, but definitely bigger, small companies looking for AI builders, which is where I feel like there's a good opportunity for PMs, et cetera, also to jump in. Good PMMs are very hard to find. So if you're a good growth guy who can go in, and if you are interested in startups, right directly to a founder, everyone is looking for a good growth guy, right? So if you ask me, top three roles from my personal opinion right now, all three are very highly in demand. You pick where your skillset aligns a lot more, where your personal interest also lies, right? Where are you getting excited to get up every morning and crank out those next 15, 16 hours on? So these three, if you're young in your career, you're figuring out, okay, where do I spend my time? I think these are the three roles you optimize for. And all of that also depends on yours, yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: On the downside and on the risks, of course, if you're a big company, the roles could get axed. And if you're at a small company, the company itself could go belly up. So those are the trade- offs that you have to navigate.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I think that has happened through multiple cycles, right? I don't think there's a first cycle. We're seeing something like that.

Dhruv Sharma: People cycle through, yeah.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Yeah, yeah. So I think the new roles are coming through, new startups are getting funded. So I think figure out where that next bet is. All of those who've now, like a lot of Diaspora who's sold companies raised like 50, 60, 70, $80 million seed rounds, right? Figure a way to get it. And I think the third door article is something that also maybe you should link in the description. I think went viral a little bit, I think last week. Beautiful article for at least young folks trying to get in.

Utsav Somani: All right, we'll look into it. But as a final closing question, we're almost at the end of time. What does the next year look like for TPF? And as a personal learning from you, maybe a quick one, two line learning that you can share with me on, how do you reward good behavior because you're a volunteer led organization and a community. So how do you reward good behavior within the community? So next one year for TPF, good behavior reward.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Okay, awesome. Next one year, I think two different things. One on a personal front, I just got done with my stint at Stanford. So met very, very ambitious folks that want to spend a little bit more time exploring this ecosystem. And of course, distilling some of what I learned here back to our community. But I think I've met three very interesting startups and I'm excited about that. And want to get the community also involved in more such opportunities, right? So one, I'm trying to bridge that gap. Second, I think consumer AI as a wave, in my opinion, still hasn't landed. There are very interesting things happening. There's pokey, there's time, there are interesting stuff, but there is a huge opportunity that lies ahead. So that's one space I'm exploring. Third, from a TPF point of view, there are two not stars right now. One, can we be that community? I don't think there's a playbook for this, but can we be that community that started in India and is truly going global from here, right? Over the last one and a half years, we've spent some foundations trying to get, you know, city chapters active across the top 30 tech cities. We are maybe 18 to 24 months away till we can truly say, okay, hey, we have very active presence across these 30 cities. That is number one. Second, like I was sharing earlier, I think we've done a lot of grassroots work to help people break in, right? And do different spaces in tech. But folks who joined us six and a half, seven years back are now mid-career. Mid-career folks are now senior. Senior folks are now leadership, right? So can we do enough for the other three cohorts, right? So that's why I think we've been spending a lot of time, one, reaching out to VCs and slightly larger companies here trying to understand, okay, hey, what can we do together? Lots of supper clubs, lots of leadership dinners. We would have done over, I think it's maybe 20 weeks into this year, we would have done at least 55 dinners so far across six cities, right? So I think we're trying to spend a lot more time. Okay, hey, we've done a lot of work at the grassroots, but can we do enough for the other cohorts of the community? And I feel like there is that gap, I think, inspired by you as well. I think you guys are doing fantastic work for a certain community at the offline. We're trying to do that a little bit more for the senior operator side. So that is, I think, from a focus point of view. The last question, I think you asked on, what was it? You had one more part of it, no?

Utsav Somani: The rewarding good behavior within the community, the volunteer aspect of things.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): One thing I think that's worked for us is regardless of how senior you are, you join as a contributor to a community, right? Like there are 19 different initiatives today running. It doesn't matter what your background is, you come contribute to a certain project. If you have more bandwidth, if you have interest in the way, you know, this community function, you go on to lead that particular initiative. If you have more time, more interest, more bandwidth, then you're going to lead multiple projects. Once you lead multiple projects, you're part of something we call the organizing team. And then again, just as a matter of, okay, how much more your time, bandwidth and initiative, which is agency life, we have something called the core committee, right? So I think there is a, it looks, everyone's a volunteer by the way, that no doubt, but I think we've just built a way so that at least the ones who are putting in a lot more time, they get a chance to grow within the community itself. And, you know, they have helped so many people. So can we now, we feel like, okay, now we should be spending, now that we have a little bit more network in the community, can we actually help them get to where their goals are also? So our work then becomes focusing on, okay, how do we help these? We're a team of almost 40 members right now. So how do we help them get to their goals?

Utsav Somani: Idea just came to me. So maybe we can bring the offline members next Jan or Feb to SF. I think everybody wants to get AI built, but I think maybe we can do like a four night motion thing in SF and people can club it with other things that they want to do meetings for. I think that can be something that maybe we tie up with you guys for and do together as a co- host.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): I'd love to start working on the structure already. I can send you some stuff that I've noted down. But yeah, I think that'll be a great idea for sure.

Dhruv Sharma: Dean's closing on a live stream.

Utsav Somani: We'll invite the Q and guests also and like make it a TPS slash offline slash TON thing. So this is fun. Have a wonderful day ahead. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Suhas Motwani (The Product Folks): Thank you so much for hosting me. This was amazing. And you guys are doing like the most exciting, like the, I wouldn't call it a podcast, but I think this is one of the only ones that I end up following. So I love the format. I love the folks that you guys end up hosting and I'm very excited for your journey as well.

Utsav Somani: Thanks for not calling it a podcast. Made my day. Cheers. Have a wonderful day. And thank you so much. I'm wishing you all the best. Thanks so much. All right, listeners. That's it from us today. That was a good fun jam with a couple of friends. We'll see you on Friday at four o'clock for stream number 99. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.