Goldcast: From Failed Cold Emails to Scaling Beyond $10M ARR – with Palash Soni [420]

This is a machine-generated transcript.
Omer: Palash, welcome to the show.

Palash: Very glad to be here. Omer.

Omer: Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

Palash: I do. I do. It's a, it's a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, which is like our, our odyssey in India, it's called, which actually translates to, you have the right to work, but not, you should not expect the fruits out of it.

Which is something that my grandfather used to use a lot in childhood and it kind of contributed to making me alcoholic.

Omer: So you, you have the right and duty to work, but should not expect the fruits of that work.

Palash: Yes. That's kind of pretty deep. It is. That, that whole book is pretty deep. Yeah.

Omer: Cool. So, so tell us about Goldcast.

What does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

Palash: Yeah so Goldcast is a video campaign platform meant for B2B marketers to create, amplify, and distribute content. So we help marketers from, from companies all the way up to, you know, 200 people, startups, all the way up to like workday and towards these together enterprises to run events, webinars, podcasts, and then turn that content into other types of content like shop form clips, blog posts, and and emails, et cetera.

And then distribute and measure that across the customer buying Jerry. So the problem we are solving is that we provide one consolidated platform to help marketers do video. I, at a very high scale and quality which is generally a hard problem.

Omer: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And give us a sense of the size of the business.

Where are you in terms of revenue, customers size of team?

Palash: Yeah. We are north of eight figures in ARR. So that's revenue. We have 125 employees, so that's 60% in India, 40% in the us. And then 400 customers.

Omer: Awesome. And you are based in Boston?

Palash: I'm based in Boston.

Omer: Other side of the country from me.

And you've raised I think just around 40 million so far.

Palash: Correct. That's over three dots.

Omer: Great. And you guys founded this business in 2020, so it's been about four. May of 2020. Yeah. You've been busy for the last four years or so. Oh, very busy. All right, so we're gonna get into that. So why don't we, yeah, let's start with like, you know, 20 19, 20 20.

Like where did the idea come from? How, how did you get started with this business?

Palash: Yeah. So I'll go to 2019, which is when I decided. That I want to become an entrepreneur. And that time I was working at my last company, which had the market in the us. I was a PM based in India, and I realized that kind of doesn't work because I'm too far from my market.

So I decided to come to business school and use that as an area to explore ideas. So I was just, I just had a, a Google sheet of ideas. That I wanted to explore in business school, and I found my co-founders here as well. So they were also people with the same mindset and there are not many people coming to business school to start up.

So we found each other and started jamming. This idea was actually an opportunistic pet at that time. This was around, can say April of 2020 when we started thinking about this COVID had hit. It was apparent that digital events will become a thing, but we spent two months at the time when everyone was building to, to kind of hone in on what should the approach be so that this can become a big and sustainable business.

Omer: Great. Okay. So you, did any of you have any experience building a, a startup or working in a startup prior to that?

Palash: So I was working at, I would not say a startup, but a growth stage company. And I had. Put in one attempt before for eight, nine months, and that absolutely bombed. So I had some learnings from that time.

My other co-founder, he was@jet.com when it was just started, so from that time up to the time it, it got sold to Walmart. He spent time there. So he was a startup engineer. My third co-founder, KiOR, he was a classic preschool guy, BCG, and some strategy roles. Never did actual real work, but only in big companies, but he turned out to be very good at it.

Omer: Awesome. Okay, so you, you got, you've got this idea, you start sort of building it, and how did you. Validate the idea. Did you do, you know, go out and start finding customers and, and doing interviews or build a landing page and see if you could get people signing up? Like what was, how did you guys get started?

Palash: Yeah, so when we, when this opportunity opened up this market had already become pretty hot and crowded. 'cause there was nothing much to do right. During the pandemic then to do digital events. So. We realized that if we go like super horizontal, we'll get killed. And also that probably might not be sustainable because we, I kind of saw that in my last company where we were trying to do too much in a very broad s swat of market and ended up not being like super good at anything.

So we went in with the hypothesis that was a very simple to understand hypothesis that came from my own experience that marketing channels have to be inherently measurable for them to be sticky. And so we said, okay, let's make a digital events platform that has measurability built into what it's doing.

And there there are two personas doing events that, that need that. That's one is B2B marketers and others is trade shows. So we, we built a hypothesis first and built a pitch as to what the product will do. And then we started cold emailing people. So we did like, that was out of necessity because we didn't have a network here in the us.

So we just cold emailed a lot of folks. We tried to find common connections, so any, any Harvard Business School alums or our undergrad alums who are in the Bay Area, et cetera, and, and see who would bite and give us feedback.

Omer: And, and what kind of response did you get? Like how easy or hard was it to get a reply from people, I guess.

Palash: So we kind of used that as an indicator for what market is designating more. So we, I think we sent roughly like 200 emails, half to trade show organizers and, and bodies in that. And then other half to what were field marketers, right? People who were doing events already and were reliant on events in companies and we got a good response rate from field marketers.

So they would be like, okay, I'm interested in checking it out. This is a relevant. Thing that speaks to me. In trade shows we did not get as much and and even on the calls we were seeing that they were probably not in tune with what we were thinking. So that traction was some kind of an indicator for us too, that where the, the market actually could like,

Omer: and what, what was the what was the offer in the email?

Like, did you have anything to show them at the time?

Palash: Yes. No. Actually, no. We just had an offer which said, Hey, this is, you know, we are actually, we used, played the student card at that time, said we had three students at, at Harvard Business School. We are, we see this thing in the digital event space, that we can build a product for you that can help you create measurability across your digital events and get a seat at the revenue table by showing that impact to your CMO and, that was also a message that I think after two or three conversations got refined so early on it was very simple that we can help you throw events and measure it. And then when we started talking to people, we realized, oh, they actually want to show what the impact is because it's very hard for event marketers to show that versus say, digital marketers site, we're doing ads on LinkedIn.

Very measurable. So we started anchoring on that and then that was. That was the thing. We were asking feedback. We were not selling anything. We said, we have some early ideas. We want your feedback, advice. And yeah, that, that was it

Omer: Actually, that's, that's quite smart. I mean, it wasn't a huge sample set of, you know, 200 emails, but there was clearly like one ICP or or segment of the market that seemed more interested and one clearly wasn't at the time.

So that was great. And then as you start to have these conversations. How long did it take for you to get to the point where you landed those first 10 customers? Like, and, and what was, what was that journey like?

Palash: Oh, so from this point it took us a lot of time. Actually, we started doing this in May, and then we got our first customer end of January in 2020.

One. Yeah. Which was a pretty long time given that there was an immediate need for something like this, and that was a whole process of struggle.

Omer: Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first customer,

Palash: the first paying, first paying like big con annual contract customer came in end of Jan 21

Omer: and like number one, like why do you think it took that long to land that customer?

Was it because, you know, the, it was, it was kind of a product issue. The product wasn't ready or something? Or was it. More about finding the right type of customer. Like, you know, we, we find lots of people who, who look at a product or an idea and they think, you know, they'll tell you it's great and they love it and whatever, and then, you know, once you kind of ask them to buy, they, they ghost you.

Palash: It was a mix of both of 'em, Omer. So we started with this idea of measurability and we were like, okay, let's go hard on integrations and analytics. So we built a product that was out there. We took two, two and a half months to do that. And and then we had a lot of emphasis on integrations and analytics and dashboards.

We had some basic versions of that. And when we, and then we had some customers who were like, okay, yeah, we use it, then you have it. Please bring it to us. And when we brought it to them, they would not buy it. They would either be. A little non-committal or not take it. And that time that the market we were going after was startups, so 50 people or less like series A seed state startups.

And we thought it's easier to get in with them. They are more innovative, have less barrier to use new things, and. After not getting any traction, we started thinking maybe this is not a product that should be built. Because the, the market was already heating up at that time. There were multiple players with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding at that time.

And the fault lines were not clear. And we started at one point, like very deeply thinking whether we should pivot out of building a full events platform and just do integrations, right? That can plug into other events platforms. I. There was a very deep discussion in our team because not getting any traction was causing some kind of demoralization to the, to US founders, right?

And to like the three, four people we had. So we ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons, but that turned out to be a good call. What was actually inherent in the inherently problematic in the product, which I discounted heavily early on was that its CUI was not good. So I was in the classic camp of PMs who thought UI was always secondary, but in our product, the UI was the, the space, right?

The venue where events were happening. And people did not want their venue to look like what we looked like at that time. And I felt like people were always saying that, telling it to our face in some ways, in nicer ways, probably than they should have been. But, I always discounted that. And and at some point we were, we made that decision saying, okay, let's like change the ui.

So we worked day and night and changed the UI completely in five weeks. That sort of turned turned something that helped get some initial traction.

Omer: Yeah, I mean, looking back at this in the way that you explained it, makes a lot of sense, right? Because if, if you're giving, if you're giving a marketer, let's say, like some kind of tool and they're gonna be using it, I don't know, some social media scheduling tool, right?

They don't really care how nice it looks, as long as it makes their job easier, right? But in this case, the product was gonna be. Their customers would be seeing the product. Right. And so they, there's a higher expectation. But I'm curious, like you said, they were telling you in different ways that the UI was the possibly the issue, and you, you were discounting that.

At the time. How did you figure out that the UI really was the issue? And then committed to, you know, the next five or six weeks to rehaul this thing. Like it wasn't just a hunch, right? Something happened that, that made you guys think, okay, this is really why we are having problems.

Palash: Yeah, absolutely. So when we when we decided to not just be an integrations product we realize that there's something wrong, right?

Because the need for this is apparent. It's. Out there. Why are we not getting action? Why are people not using us? Why are they being non-committal? And one other hack that we used at that time to get some early customers is to bring on some advisors. So we deliberately targeted people who were sort of mid-level, so director ish type people in good roles who, who have an idea of the landscape of the market.

They gave them equity in the company saying, okay, you help us navigate this early phase and if we are successful then, then you know, you, you'll make money. And the main thing I think that was motivating for them is that they wanted to be associated to, to startups and, and give that advice, which is not an option that was easily available to people in corporates at that time.

I think it's probably more common now. So a lot of them started telling us, so one of our advisors she was in, in, in a large enterprise and she always used to peel it, our ui and I always thought that maybe it's her personal preference, but then I started going and talking to people again and saying, okay, if not this, then why?

What is causing this blocker? And they would always say, this, this, this, you. Then I started listening that, okay, it's, it is probably the ui. It doesn't look great. And I could not probably empathize with that first, but I think it, the, the, the extreme push of not having traction made us take that call.

Honestly, it wasn't actually while we were even overhauling clear to us that this will solve the problem. But now if I look back at everything that we know, even today, we get feedback from customers in our NPS say, okay, this product looks great. And that's why I bought it.

Omer: I think I love what you just said that.

The extreme pressure of not getting traction made you pay more attention to what people were saying.

Palash: Yeah, yeah, right. I was probably a little too little too dogmatic about what I thought the market should want than actually listening to what they wanted, which was a lot simpler, just about a ui. Okay,

Omer: great.

So you, you, you guys spent the next five, six weeks, you said you significantly improved the, the ui and then what happened? Was there a. Immediate turnaround in terms of the way people were reacting?

Palash: Yes. So we already had some people that, that initial set of people who responded to us, a lot of them were startup folks, and we started showing it to them and we could see that reaction.

Right. That was different. And they were like, wow. Yeah. I, I, I want, I want to try it out. And so some marketers started trying it out. And at that time we did not have a backend, so trying it out meant like speaking to someone in the company and giving them an email of what their event should look like, and then we will build it for them.

It was very manual, very cumbersome. But we did that for the first few customers and, and then we, one thing that we realized was that. There was, within that set, there were a couple of companies that were bigger and we did not anticipate that they will bite. But they started getting, you know, in touch with us and, and, and one of them was actually PagerDuty.

So that there was a lot of, and that deal did not come through because they had a lot of security stuff that we were not qualified to do. But that gave us a signal that, okay, this is. Probably something that bigger companies would want more than smaller startups, because they have, they have to figure out their marketing first.

Bigger companies have figured that out and they, they want to scale. So as a happenstance, what happened is one of our investors underscored, they were using the product when the UI changed and and the founders of Drift David canceled. He was a speaker and he saw the platform. He was like, wow, this looks great.

And we reached out to him, sent an email twice, he didn't respond. Third time he responded and said, okay, let me run it by our marketing team. And their marketing, because he sent the email, they took it seriously. And then one thing led to another. They actually tried us for a pilot, and that was like a turning corner because once drifted an event with us, they became a customer.

And then a lot of marketers saw us in their event because it was a MarTech company. And, and then we started getting a lot of bound after that.

Omer: I wanna go back to something you said earlier that you didn't have a backend and customers had to talk to your team, and then you were building basically a custom experience for every customer.

Can you just explain exactly what was going on?

Palash: Yeah, well that, so, because we were in so much rush to, to get something right there, we were almost desperate. We. We had a, what I would say, like an API type of thing where we would write stuff up and then we make an API call, well my co-founder is doing that in the backend.

And then a, an instance will pop up where you can log in, have speakers talk something similar to Riverside, right? So we were doing all of that setup in the backend manually. Like a customer could not go and do it themselves. And I. The only reason I pushed for that at that time was because I realized that our, our hypothesis are probably, they're, they're not really corrected unless like the rubber hits the road, we are not getting the right signals and, and something is am missed.

So I wanted to get the product out as, as soon as possible, just get people to use it. And I, I guess that was another signal that like, who is willing to use it because. Bigger companies were like, yeah, this looks great. I already have an audience that, that wanted, that want to attend that events. And I'm fine bearing with this, this state for now a little bit.

We built it eventually, but it was, it, that early part was like a deliberate trade off we made because we just wanted to get the product out.

Omer: I, I wonder if that turned out to be a blessing in disguise because you, you, you were attracting some of these bigger customers and a lot of them. They, they don't want the self-serve experience.

Right? They want to be about talking to someone at the company and feel like they're getting some kind of custom solution. And, and you guys were doing that anyway, but not by design.

Palash: Yeah, I think so. There, there's some aspect of that also. And bear in mind, those companies were also not like, these were companies with.

Say 50 to 300 employees, right? That was the range that we were talking about. And yes, they were happy with some of the handholding, but I think what we also learned in that handholding time is that if events are inherently a stressful thing, if you're doing a live event, your reputation is at stake because if something goes down, then you look bad in front of your CMO or whoever or your audience.

And so people wanted that someone is there who can. Run the ship with them and make them, make them successful in that like 2, 3, 4 hours when the event is happening. So that was also something that acted in our favor. But eventually we built it because people were like, okay, now it's time.

Omer: Now, when we were chatting earlier, you, you were talking about some of the struggles that you had.

In, in terms of navigating the target market and figuring out exactly who your, your ICP was. Yeah. Can can you talk a little bit about that? Like what was the, what was the hardest part of, of, you know, where, where, where were you struggling with, with figuring out your ICP?

Palash: So we had, we did this in multiple parts, like the very first time we.

We were trying to fish out like where the initial interest is. It was clear that the initial interest is in B2B companies. And it was kind of a, a counter decision at that time and. Everything was a market. Any kind of event was a market. And it was easy to make money actually, in this market. But we wanted to deliberately be focused because we knew that chickens will come to roost eventually things will churn, and we want to be in a, in a corner which has, which is going to be sustainable.

So we knew, which was B2B but within that, whether it should be like early startups or should it be like late stage startups, who exactly is in those companies? That was a process of like. Constant discovery that I explained, right? So we started with small startups first. So we had a couple of customers who said, okay, we'll do pilots with you.

And and then when we brought the product to them, they were non-committal and they were like, okay, whatever. And and that led to a lot of realizations and and in this whole time we were always trying to push the product out in whatever way in the hands of customers and see who is. Who is actually more interested or, or rather like pulling it out of her hands.

And that is how we figured out It's like slightly bigger companies, companies who have gotten some semblance of marketing already figured out. So yeah, that was, it was just like the initial founder rehearsal. I, I am always trying to figure out how to put it better, but it was just like a lot of hustle from me and my co-founder just trying to speak to as many people Sure.

To as many people there. And see how it works.

Omer: So, so what I, I, I wanna try and figure out like how you, you arrived at that, that conclusion in that ICP Was this, were you systematically trying to talk to different groups of people? Like the example you gave earlier where you said, you know, we had 200 emails and we sort of basically did a split test, or was it more about, it was a bit more random and, and all kinds of people were coming and, and you were just like.

Just looking for signals.

Palash: Yes. So beyond the early exploration, it was sort of it. So we, once we had a section which seemed to be interested, we took the product out to them, they didn't like it, then we changed their ui and then we went to them and they were still not that like extreme push, I think what sort of was the signal at that time?

Like, who's willing to pay us an annual contract? That was a signal because we wanted this to be a SaaS business. A hundred percent. We, we were not interested in like one time that kind of stuff. And, and the payment was what? Like the willingness to pay our, enter a conversation where we can talk about, this was a big signal for us because at that time it was, it was also hard to like figure out who was.

Really had the intent, right? Early customers everyone wanted to do events at that time, but who was willing to like bear with a, a half big product without a backend and willing to give us an annual contract that was signal. So it was more itrate after that. I wish in hindsight that I had a systematic approach.

But if one thing we got right was that we always had a hypothesis for wherever we were digging in. So the hypothesis was measurability. Then the second was that the, the product needs to be more engaging, better ui. Then the third was let someone have a repeatable events program. And and, and that's how we arrived at the at the target market.

We, we were tempted to go slightly randomly, so we were getting pulled by communities, for example, right? Lots of communities doing events. They wanted, they wanted a product and, and we just said no because we could not see that repeatability happening in the future.

Omer: Let, let's talk about growth and, and how you grew the business.

So you explained how you got some of the early customers. And obviously landing a customer like Drift. Great. That, that, that gives you a lot of, you know, you're basically getting in front of all your potential target customers by just letting them run their events. Right. It's awesome. Beyond that, like how did you start to build some kind of, you know, customer acquisition engine and like, what, what were the, the growth channels that have worked best, the best for you?

May, maybe let's talk about getting to the first million in a RR first. Like, what were you, what did you do to, to get to that big milestone?

Palash: Yeah. Over, so the first million was honestly just founder sales. It was. Me, my co-founder, Keho, and there was one intern who ended up staying us for three years. She was the three of us were doing it and it was a lot of just cold emailing, outbounding, getting intros, finding people who are willing to be advisors, and then making intros.

There was a lot of, in the first 1 million the other thing that was working in our favor was once Drift started us, we started getting some inbound. So it was not. It was not all just outbound, but it was like a fair amount of outbound. Then once we started seeing repeatability, which was around like I would say 700, 800 K in is when we brought on our first growth marketer who ended up being the head of marketing.

Omer: Okay, great. So, so founder sales hustle cold email gets you to that. The gets you to seven figures in a RR and then. What about beyond that?

Palash: Yeah, beyond that, I, we, we started, we could see that this obviously is not scalable. What, what Khaw is doing outbound. So we brought in a, a marketer and, and the great thing about her was that she discovered us through an event.

So she was in an event and she was like, oh wow, this looks cool. And she applied for that role and and that's how we got her in. So. At that time, we had no marketing team, so to speak, of it was just me and my co-founder, and and there could be, there were many ways in which we could spend the money.

I, we could do a lot of things. Her thing was that, A, we need to p to show the world how to do events very well, because everyone is doing it, but it's not a thing that people have been doing forever. So we need to be the thought leaders. I'm showing how to do it very well in the context of B2B marketers.

Like what do B2B marketers need to do from the start to end? So, and the way to do that is to do our own events and be the thought partner, thought leader. And we were like, okay, that kind of sounds good, but it sounds like a long, long term investment and something that will not work for us in the short term.

But that ended up being our largest channel in many non-intuitive base. So for example a lot of folks who, who attend that events, we see a recurring pattern. Of people attending our events and they are sort of like a community in many ways. And that, that group also was like the seeding of our Event Marketers Club community, which we established, but the e Event Marketers Club and our own events, kind of our, our community channel that keeps that engagement high.

And what it does is it keeps us top of mind. It keeps us in what we call the zeitgeist of marketers. And because we have done it so many times, we are kind of in front of people. And we are doing it repeatedly. So that, that is our biggest channel actually. There's a clear coordination to how much attendees we get in an event and what pipeline we get in a, in a quarter.

Omer: So you, you are doing events about how to do events,

Palash: that that was the big thing, right? How to do great digital events, webinars, and what are the different use cases? What should we do before, after and then we. Started talking about more broader topics that are relevant to our persona, which is a director of dimension or a content marketer.

But it was always like very specific to B2B marketers that is relevant to them now.

Omer: Got it. So when I think about this, this thing, you, you already had some concerns that this would not be a short term. ROI. It would be maybe a, you know, like, like people think about SEO, it's like, do I wanna do SEO? It's, I need leads now, not in 12 months time or something.

So you had that concern. Then when it comes to running events, there's always the concern about, you know, can I. Can I do, am I able to demonstrate what, what the return on investment, what the ROI was, you guys have got that covered, right? 'cause you're talking about measurability and, and all of that stuff.

And then the other issue often is like just you, you promote these events and like nobody turns up or you have like one person on the other end or something, right? So did you have those kinds of challenges and also. Did it really take a long, how or how long did it take for you to get to a point where you were like, no, I think this thing is working, this, this thing is worth continuing to do.

Palash: Yeah, that's a, that's a great point, Omer. So we, we often had the challenge, right? We would do something and not a lot of people would show up. And it just happens today, right? We, we throw an event or we, we do a webinar, not many people show up. And what we realize is the key is to like keep on, keep at it.

Also use that as a signal for what is working and what's not working. So what we ended up figuring out through all of this is that ultimately what works best for us is, is some kind of like a weekly or biweekly series that is talking to a persona where we can bring great speakers in and allow people to interact with them.

So that is a big draw for events where they can, they can actively reengage with that person, ask questions, and, and, and chat with them live on stage. Which is, which is something that you cannot do on a podcast. So that is one we bring in like the top people say in in demand gen or events and have people talk to them.

The second thing that works for us is a, a lightning strike kind of virtual summit. So if we are doing a product launch or there's some big team like AI or something, we, we do a lightning strike. Sort around where we have lots of marketing going in to that conference and that involves a lot of things like having a speakers mobilize and, and market that event, us doing it like us doing raffles and draws and things like that.

There's a lot of ticks and chat ticks that we figured out work. And it took probably, I would say it took three quarters for it to, for us to have confidence that it works. So it was giving us engagement early on and we were seeing some signals, but I think there were a couple of things that, that sort of made us continue investing was one that it, we were seeing some repeat people attend, which made us think that there's value in the content.

And the second thing was. That this itself gave us a lot of content that we could then use in other places, so we could put it on the website and it blogs from it. It's a great source of content in general. So it made our lives easier on the content side.

Omer: Okay. So you weren't just thinking about this as a, as a live event, you were saying, okay, we could, we we're basic.

It's basically a also a way to generate a bunch of content because once we've recorded this, we can repurpose it, you know, with a platform on video or do whatever else we want to do with it. Was. You, you said it took about three quarters for it to you, you felt con, you know, confident about it working.

What was the, the inflection point? Did something happen? Did you get to a place where it was like, okay, we've really nailed how to do these types of events, which is why we are now starting to see you know, leads or, or, you know, customers coming through this channel. Like, what, what happened around that time?

Palash: I, so one of the turning points of her was like the, with figuring out this playbook, right? So once we had, once we saw that there's increasing attendance, there's increasing engagement what kind of topics resonate, what cadence resonates? We, we started seeing a correlation with. The pipeline that we were generating so that like, when we started becoming more sophisticated, we had Salesforce by then and, and HubSpot in installed and everything.

We saw that the attendees in the last quarter correlate to the pipeline that comes in the next quarter. So that's, that's when the second thing we started seeing, which is probably unique to us, but could work for any kind of startup, is that people who we were bringing on, they were our persona ultimately, right?

So these were CMOs or, or head of events, folks like that. And they could see the product and they could see that we were a thoughtful, you know, thought leader in this space. And when the time was right, they started raising their hand to say, okay, you know, we, we want to evaluate, go, we wanna look at it, we wanna replace our current product or webinar platform with cold cast.

And that started happening too. So that was a big driver for why we thought this is a good.

Omer: So you mentioned that a couple of times about, about customers coming and saying, okay, we wanna switch to u using this from whatever we were using. You talked about the, the competitive landscape was pretty aggressive, right?

Because there was a lot of investment, a lot of players, a lot of activity happening. How, how did you figure out how to position goal cast? In that space. So you obviously, you had the hypothesis about the measurability and, and doing that, but was it also about like, you know, were you, were you, were you having to like, kind of persuade people why your platform was better than something that they were using already or.

Where they basically, through the conversations, you were already figuring out where the biggest gaps were. And I just, because I, I often hear about, I had a conversation with a group of founders this morning who were in that situation saying, you know, they, they tell me they're using another product and, and I asked them about all problems they have and they go, no, it's fine.

Palash: That's a great question, Omer. So the answer to this question has surprisingly changed a lot and that has impacted a lot of our strategy. So when we started, our main use case was digital events, right. Large conferences. And at that time, that was some kind of a greenfield market. So for the first one year, we enjoyed that success, right?

And we got to almost 2 million in revenue. And it was, Greenfield was good at, after one year the market started settling. Right? And the realization was at that time that. A big use case for, for digital events platforms is webinars, right? Webinars has, al had always been there, but now people were doing more of them.

And, and that space had not seen any innovation in of its own, so it was kind of getting tucked in. And so now we were in this, the dilemma that if we have to build a sustainable, scalable business and sticky customers. We have to replace a webinar platform because there's always one, right? No one is coming in and using Goldcast for the first time.

It's like no one gets on the notion the first time. They'll try something like Google Doc right First and then then try Notion or clickup or all those. So that became a challenge and and so our go to market from that time. Changed to saying, okay, let's go after companies that are already using Zoom that are already using another incumbent in this space.

There were two or three incumbents in the webinar space, including Zoom, and so we started, started going after them, and then it became a rip and replace motion. And our value prop at that time was that we can. We can do both, right? We can do big events and we can do webinars also. So we have both In one platform, there's higher degree of measurability, and the UI is great, so you'll get more engagement at hands.

More engagement means more pipeline for you. This worked for us up to a certain time, but then we realized we will have the same problem, right? There's not enough people in the market, especially as you know, the market started crashing and the priority shifted for marketers from. Doing things better because everything was, like, there was a lot of money out there to sort of, in defense mode, marketers started going in defense mode.

The pa the, the products were being crunched and like people were fear for their job all the time. So then they would not wake up and think, oh, I need to replace my webinar platform. And, that led to like the, the bigger sort of evolution pivot that we made last year. Because yeah, it was very, it it was not scalable to operate in, in a complete ground field environment, in this kind of market.

Omer: Yeah. So let's, let's talk about that. So I think it was last year sometime 2023 that you, you were around the 5 million. And you started to sense that there was an issue and that there was a churn problem.

Palash: Yeah.

Omer: Right. So just, just kind of lay that out for us. Like what, what was going on? What was some of the, the signs that you were seeing that was kind of raising a red flag for you?

Palash: Yes. So churn was definitely there. Like churn is always a signal of something. And we were still growing fast enough that the churn was not hitting us in, in a very bad way. So we were still growing, but I could see, like, I could do the math that the churn percentage probably will remain the same, but the, the, the, the new sales percentage is probably not gonna keep up.

So we will hit a wall. And also we started getting this feeling that. That Okay. If a, it's taking a lot of money to sell. So our, our burn was pretty high at that time. Our cat payback was probably like 30 months plus. And that is justifiable if you are a cybersecurity company where retention is probably a database.

But our retention was not there. Even though we were growing, I could see that there's something off here and something is probably not working as well. And as a VC back company, we have, we are committed to like 50, a hundred, one 50% growth every year. Right. I could just not see how the, the math could work in that.

So we started thinking about, okay, what is the next stage of the company? And that's something we had always thought about, that this is a veg into the data MyTech stack. We were like 5 million, right? We were still getting a feedback and, and that, and, and so we started looking at like what customers are the most successful.

And and then a lot of customers at that time were pulling us in two directions. One was like, okay, you become an events platform fully where you start doing in-person conferences as well. But that had the same problem, right? Where that the churn would be high because you're doing a big conference once a year where you need the product next year.

You've forgotten about it. And and so we decided not to pursue that. We kind of tipped our feet there, but didn't do much. But the, the customers who were very sticky and successful treated this as a content channel. For them, digital events were content and they were always asking us about, okay, what can I do with the, the video that is already out there?

How can I host it on website? How can I get more views and qls, all of that, that led to the line of inquiry that we eventually pursued and became what we are today.

Omer: I wanna, I want to dig a little bit deeper into that. So you, you, you made this top down decision and you, you decided that you were going to kind of become this multi.

Product company. What kind of change did that require you to make as, as a business and as a team?

Palash: Oh, that's a great question. It's, it's, it was a massive change and probably I underestimated that. So in the first quarter when we said, okay, this is something that we want to pursue, we want to at least look at we sort of went.

Backing to the, the early like hustle moments. So when my co-founder, CTO, he built a prototype in like four or five weeks that was working. And all it did was it take, took your recording, cut it up into clips that's what it did. And we started showing it to people saying, okay, if you are worried about your on demand views, why not like make people watch clips instead of like a full video?

Because that's what people are doing nowadays. And we could see that excitement and so that, that, that. Gave us confidence, okay, this can be a part of the product. So we initially built it as a, an add-on so it was very feature poor. It was a tab in the product and and we put it out and then we started seeing some traction around it.

But it wasn't enough traction for us to like make that decision completely. But I could, I had this wall coming up, which I could see that we will hit and we will. We will crash because momentum will go. And that is very hard to come off. If you lose momentum. And we didn't have enough data points here to say that this is going to succeed or this is the right inquiry.

But at that time, I had started building this thesis that what a f We started becoming an end-to-end video platform, which does the. The whole thing. Not just events, but events and then working with this content, editing it, which is the second product that we did, and then hosting it, which is something you do on a Vimeo or a, those kind of platforms.

And you could also record like you do on other website and, and do it all in one platform. And that was, it sounded like a good thesis, but that meant. Huge amount of complexities because now we were, like, our whole team was talking about events before and now they have to talk about video content of which events is one part.

And, and so that was one Second thing is that we also, this we, we, we thought that if we do this, then we run into the same brownfield problem because a lot of aspects of this thing are already there, right? So there's, there's a competitor and recording. There's people are using hosting tools for ages and while the whole value prop is interesting.

How are we going to batch in because people are not gonna replace four tools with us. I just, just normally. So we decided to build that content repurposing product out separately into a bottoms up free trial product. So that led to a full scale sort of go go-to market motion confusion because we are now PLG.

So early on we were like full top down. Now we had a free trial product. And so people, so once we were, when we were pushing for these decisions, I, I was getting a immense amount of pushback from my team because they were probably not seeing the wall that I could see. We were hit. So things were going fine, not awesome but and there was just too much change, right?

Too much change on a, what looked like a pretty risky kind of pet. So that change management is something that we are going through. Even today we are still training our people how to talk about us. We are still figuring out what that like whole product portfolio looks like, but we have a lot more confidence now and we are, we are sure like what direction we have to go in, but I had to almost like use the Vito card once every quarter of an Olympic decision.

In, in these stands.

Omer: So the, the they, they're kind of like, are they like four standalone products? Like somebody can come along and just say, oh, can I use you guys for hosting? But not the other stuff

Palash: You technically can, but the, the idea now is, and this is also a process of, early on, the plan was to have four standalone products, but now what we have come to is that you come in, use this content repurposing product for free, and that will have some limited recording and hosting capabilities.

Because events are high stakes. We still want them to be like ated. But you can use these things for free and then when you like it, we imagine with this, and then we sell you the full platform.

Omer: I mean, you said we're still figuring this out and, and kind of moving, but you know, you were 2023, you were hitting 5 million a r worrying about this problem.

We are now. October, 2024 and you're, you've doubled revenue, you're over 10 million a rrr. So something worked from that. The, you, you, you, you talked about like the, the kind of figuring out how to talk to, to customers, like, just, just tell me a little bit about that because I, I'm guessing like, you know, even though you.

You know, you, you, you had a decent customer base. It wasn't like you had hundreds of thousands of customers. Right. But you must have still been recognized as the events platform.

Palash: Yeah.

Omer: Right. And then you have to now basically kind of retrain, reeducate, kind of, you know, there's a whole bunch of like changes that come from that.

Palash: Oh yeah, absolutely. Omer. That's so a couple of things. One is there's confidence in the thesis itself, which. Early on I had to just push for it because we were not small enough where we could just do some things as founders and put it in front. We had to like get the whole thing aligned and, and so I had to use my CEO card to do that in the early days.

Then we actually had a pretty, pretty big quarter last quarter, and what we saw was that a wind rates have doubled in some segments in like enterprises, et cetera. And that was largely because we have this like whole content thesis. So when people come in now they. They see that it's, it's a different kind of product, right?

It's like a content video, content product instead of just events. And and that, that excites people. And we, and, and we have, I think, be trained ourselves doing this again and again to see what is real excitement from what is like not. Exception, and it was real excitement, right? People were willing to go through that pain and look at and give us more time.

So, and our wind rates double that. That was one. But yes. Now the, the broader challenge we have is that we needed to unseat our perception as a digital to events platform and become a video platform. That's also a work in progress, but big learning there is that. We can say whatever in the market, but ultimately our perception is went by what our customers say.

So we are being annoying to our customers, right? Not to give us case studies and go on social media, post about us and do whatever we can for the, to have the customers talk about us. So that's a big push right now in the company.

Omer: Got it. Great. Okay. We should wrap up and get onto the lightning round.

But before we do that, just got one more question. One of the other growth channels that. Has worked well for, for you guys, has been word of mouth, which is great. But then you, when we were talking, you also said to me, well, I think we invested a bit too much in support and customer success and we were a bit too maniacal on, you know, kind of focusing on like NPS.

I was like, well, we've gotta talk about that because it's like, well. Isn't that how you got the word of mouth and, and people happy and and so on. So why do you, why do you feel like you overinvested?

Palash: Yeah. No, actually, I, we, we, we used to think we overinvest there and that was because, because the events are inly stressful.

So we wanted people to have that like hands-on support. At one point when we were trying to validate whether events are the right investment, one other thing which we did was we started asking in our sales calls, like, how did you hear about us? And people would give us some reasons. And, and a lot of that was like, oh, I attended this webinar event that you did and really liked what you guys, and then checked it out.

People were talking about it. Some, some bit of word of mouth at that point also. And I think people, what they, they repeatedly said in those. Conversations to other like customers was that they have great support. They listen to us, they hear us, and there's always someone responding within 30 seconds.

So I, we, we were like, okay, let's upscale this investment. So we, at that time, we had a support team of four people, which was already high for a startup of our size. We now, we then double it to eight people. So we were, we were used to respond in two minutes. Now we respond in 30 seconds. That sounds almost, that sounds almost not.

We that, that, that sounds almost too much. But if we treat it as like CAC investment then we have to do it just to get customers happy to then have them recommend us.

Omer: Okay. Got it. Got it. Yeah, I misunderstood that. That makes, that makes a ton of sense. Now it's like, yeah. I should, I should try contacting your support and see how long it takes.

Yes, please do. And gimme feedback. 30 seconds. That was, that was 35. Okay, great. Let's wrap up. So let's get onto the the lightning round. I've got seven quick five questions for you. You ready? Yeah. Let's do it. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

Palash: Yeah, it's it's that the, the market ultimately matters more than anything else.

You can have a great team and awesome strategy. If the market is not great, I, I, I think people are gonna turn it on and I think I used to have the belief that great execution or like great founders can turn a market around, but I, I don't believe that anymore. I think that the market has to have good characteristics for success.

Omer: What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Palash: Yeah, it's it's this book called The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni. It sounds like making title, but it's one of the best books I have, I have read. So it's like one hour. The best sort of people management book that's very specific to CEOs.

Cool.

Omer: What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

Palash: Yeah, it's it's this concept called idea maze. That, that Balaji has coin, but like great founders I, I think, are able to navigate the idea, ma, they're able to, they know the history of the market, they understand the market.

Its landscapes so well that their intuition kind of helps them think. Which which way, you know, there's treasure in which way there's that. It's, it's very hard to like model that just come, it's, it just a thing that like great founders inculcate by just being like super deep with customers in the market.

Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

Palash: Yeah. Being off social media, I am, I'm on LinkedIn because I have to be for business, but I'm off everything else and that's so good for my mental health.

Omer: What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

Palash: Yeah, I, if given time and money, I would love to build like a deep tech venture studio where I can work on multiple companies and like the very cutting edge science that solves real problems.

So like plastics or, or re like reduction of. Greenhouse gases or nation scale, sea to water pipelines, those kind of things.

Omer: Cool. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Palash: Oh, I'm, I'm big into amusement parks. I, I just went to LA and spent like 12 hours there in, in Universal Studios.

I think I'm the bigger kid than any other kid.

Omer: And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

Palash: Yeah. I'm a, I'm a very deeply curious person, so I, I read a lot. Read by doing dishes while coming to office whenever I get time. A lot of science fiction history, sorry, science history and evolution, all of that.

And I want to sort of put everything to you. So I read a lot of evolutionary psychology. I try to like, see everything in that lens. That's a big passion.

Omer: Cool. Thank you so much for joining me, Pash. It's been a pleasure. Great, great to unpack the story. I think we, I, I think we did a pretty good job to cover a lot of stuff in a relatively short amount of time to, to tell your story and hopefully give our listeners some.

Some ideas, some inspiration, some actionable insights that they can take away and, and apply into their own startups. If people want to check out Goldcast, they can go to Goldcast.io and if folks wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Palash: LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn.

Omer: Cool. Okay. We'll include a link to your, your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Great. Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and I wish you and the team the best of success.

Palash: Awesome. Thanks so much. Very great to be here. My pleasure.

Omer: Cheers.