Hiren Hasmukh - Teqtivity

Teqtivity: From Failed Hardware Pivot to 7-Figure SaaS Success – with Hiren Hasmukh [428]

Teqtivity: From Failed Hardware Pivot to 7-Figure SaaS Success

Hiren Hasmukh is the founder and CEO of Teqtivity, an IT asset management solution that helps companies manage their laptops, tablets, phones, and other technology assets.

In 2018, Hiren launched a hardware company called TechCube, where he invested $400,000 of his own money to build smart lockers that would help engineering departments loan out test devices.

For two years, he and his wife personally assembled these lockers, bootstrapping the business while developing the backend software they needed to manage the devices.

When the pandemic hit, companies stopped buying hardware solutions. Rather than give up, Hiren made the difficult decision to pivot and focus on the backend software they'd built, which he believed could become a standalone product.

The pivot took six months with just two developers, but they quickly landed their first customer through an RFP bid, which helped them validate their new direction.

But competing as a bootstrapped company against well-funded players in the IT asset management space wasn't easy, which meant they had to work harder to build trust and prove themselves worthy of enterprise customers.

Then came their biggest challenge yet – a data breach that affected one of their customers and put their entire business at risk.

Instead of making excuses, Hiren focused on being transparent with customers and strengthening their security. This approach worked – they managed to keep their customers and continued growing.

Today, Teqtivity generates seven-figure ARR with a team of 22 people and remains bootstrapped, despite regular interest from VCs and PE firms.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How Hiren made the tough call to pivot away from hardware despite investing $400,000 of his personal savings
  • Why maintaining separate codebases for different customers became their secret weapon against bigger competitors
  • How they compete against well-funded competitors by being creative with their marketing budget and Google Ads spend
  • What specific strategies helped them rebuild trust and keep customers after experiencing a serious data breach
  • Why Hiren chose to stay bootstrapped even when he had opportunities to raise venture capital

I hope you enjoy it.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Omer: Hiren, welcome to the show.

[00:00:01] Hiren: Hey, Omer, thank you for having me.

[00:00:03] Omer: My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[00:00:09] Hiren: Yeah, for sure. The, the quote that comes to mind is mind, no matter. It's something that my brother used to say a lot and you know, might not be business related, but something that's always stuck with me when, you know, going through the ups and downs of

[00:00:21] Whether it's business or life. So yeah.

[00:00:23] Omer: Love it. So tell us about Teqtivity. What does the product do? Who's it for and what's the main problem you're hoping to solve?

[00:00:32] Hiren: Yeah, the Teqtivity is an IT asset management solution. Primarily focused on helping IT departments manage all of their assets. You know, your

[00:00:41] Laptops tablets, phones et cetera that are either in stories they're given out to employees, they're installed within various rooms around the company. So now with it being our primary user of the product, what we're also focused on is focused helping companies not be silos and actually work together as a full organization.

[00:01:02] So, you know, we have features and . Benefits for other departments such as hr, security, procurement, finance, et cetera. So they, they can all work together. Yeah. Save the company money, be compliant, be secure and just work together cohesively.

[00:01:16] Omer: Cool. And give us a sense of the size of the business.

[00:01:19] Where, where are you in terms of revenue, customers size of team?

[00:01:23] Hiren: In terms of revenue, we're in the low seven figure range in ar, ar. We're a small team. We have around 22 members, most of them being in the product and technology department. And then mighty team, a small but mighty growth team.

[00:01:36] Omer: Good. So the business was founded in 2018. Why don't we go back to around that time in terms of . You know, what were you doing at the time? How, where did the idea come from, sort of before you launched the business?

[00:01:50] Hiren: Right. The idea actually started out as a hardware company. We developed a product called the Techcube, which is the Smart Locker solution.

[00:01:58] The, we saw a need for mainly engineering departments where a, an engineer needed a phone to loan out to do some software testing, and then they just drop it back off. The, the issue that we saw was. Engineers would go to help desk, they'll probably wait or put in a ticket and they just have to wait until somebody can help them and give them that device.

[00:02:17] The locker would make it easy for them to, you know, go to the locker and turn their email address, select which phone they wanted, and take it out and, you know, go and complete their project. So we started out as the hardware company, Techcube and as we were building the actual tool . , the, there was a backend part of it where it management could see who's taking what devices out when they're taking it out and what they need to return.

[00:02:41] So slowly over time, we saw a need for additional features, reports, integrations for the backend portion of it. And as we were growing the company, we realized that the hardware portion, it was . It was getting very expensive to, to, to to manage. You know, the cost of r and d manufacturing, marketing was, was expensive.

[00:03:03] Then Covid hit companies just didn't wanna look into a locker solution at that point. So we kind of pivoted into just focusing more on the software side. As we saw, there's also, you know, there's also a need for a more affordable and agile system. In the space. So we pivoted into a more of a software company and have been focusing on that, on that ever since.

[00:03:25] Omer: Did you have a background in hardware before you decided to build that first business?

[00:03:30] Hiren: I, I did not. , so had a friend of mine that came in, helped us out, kind of gave us some advice on what to do put us in touch with some manufacturers locally. And we were literally building these lockers by ourselves.

[00:03:42] My wife helped me out at a locker. We're a bootstrap company, so together we were putting these lockers together. It, it was a lot of work but we learned a lot from, you know, from doing it.

[00:03:51] Omer: And, and how long did you work on that hardware product before you eventually decided to pivot?

[00:03:58] Hiren: It was around two years.

[00:03:59] Omer: And, and do you, do you recall like how much money you put into that business?

[00:04:03] Hiren: Into TechCube. We're starting that one around 400,000 of your own money. Yes.

[00:04:08] Omer: And so you, you launch this hardware business without a background in hardware, and I know it's, it's a hard thing to do. Sorry, the pun. Right. But it's, it's a hard thing to do anyway, and you're bootstrapping, you're investing your own money into this thing, and then about two years later you decide.

[00:04:28] We need to pivot and you, you said you, you know, you shifted to kind of the software focused business, but I think that's an incredibly difficult thing for any founder to do. You might know deep down. That you need to pivot, but this other voice in your head is saying maybe you can keep going. Maybe that big breakthrough is just around the corner.

[00:04:51] Maybe that big deal is just, you know, gonna close tomorrow and I've invested so much of my own personal money, my savings into this and, and I'm basically end up throwing a lot of that away if I have to pivot and, and in many ways restart. So j can just share a little bit about what was going through your mind, because I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision to make, to pivot.

[00:05:16] Hiren: Yeah, definitely wasn't easy. I mean, I, I still think about it. You know, what we were doing back then, how much we were spending you know, on the r and d and the marketing and, you know, doing events. The, the, the number is still here, in the back of my mind. But as . We started growing the software we started talking to more people, some even some, some of our prospects.

[00:05:34] You know, it, it kind of helped you know, with that loss in terms of, you know, the financial loss that we had and the time and the effort that we put into it by getting the good feedback of what we're building and our vision of the software from prospects and people in the industry. So that, that did definitely help.

[00:05:52] We still have the locker as one of our products. We still market it a little bit. We're actually coming out with a V3 this month. So there, there are, there is some movement around it. The focus has definitely been on that software. And yeah, it was, it was a tough pivot for us, but it was necessary and something we had to do after, you know, really thinking about it and seeing what we could do with the software, having that software background versus doing the the hardware side of things.

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[00:06:56] Book your free one hour strategy session with their leadership team before the end of March at gearheart.io. That's gearheart.io so. How did you figure out what that pivot was gonna be like? You talked about the, okay, we, we wanna move to, to kind of a, a software business. A SaaS business. But having, having kind of gone through this, these two years invested all of this money and.

[00:07:24] Like, how did you, how did you get a certain level of confidence that what you were going to pivot to was gonna be the right move? Like, did you go out and, and you know, talk to more customers? Did you try and pre-sell the product? What, what did you do to get more confidence in this pivot?

[00:07:43] Hiren: Yeah, for sure.

[00:07:43] So we, as part of the locker, you know, we had the backend portal that had the management capabilities. So I had a, the base of like an IT asset management solution. So you know, naturally just talking to prospects, talking to some other IT directors as of it full safety procurement supply chain. Just showing them a brief overview of the portal and what we had that would ga that could manage the locker.

[00:08:06] That gave us the confidence to say, okay, let's take the software and run with it. And, and just, just make that , make that pivot and make it work. Right. And as we started adding more features and integrations to it that really, I. You know, help just grow the cu grow the product and then, you know, show some customers and get some RFP bids out there, and kind of get that confidence going in terms of growing up.

[00:08:27] Omer: Okay. And how long did it take to build this software? Like you said, w was it like, okay, we've kind of already got the bones of it and I. It, it's not gonna take too long to, to kind of repackage this as a standalone product. And beyond that, how long did it take to land that first customer?

[00:08:43] Hiren: Yeah, it took I would say once we had the, the base software with that was connected to the locker, turning that into the IT asset management platform.

[00:08:51] It was around six months and two developers that were working full time at that, at that moment.

[00:08:57] Omer: And then the first customer, how long did it take to learn them?

[00:09:00] Hiren: Right after the six months we had our first customer.

[00:09:02] Omer: So how, how did that happen? Were, were you basically like selling while you were building the product?

[00:09:06] Hiren: We were selling? So that customer actually we had met at a conference. They knew we were working on the locker and we did a demo at their previous company that they were working at to demo the locker. When they shifted to their new position, they added an RFP out for an it s management solution.

[00:09:21] And luckily we ended up winning the bid. And I've been a customer of ours ever since.

[00:09:26] Omer: Okay. Now, I'm guessing that you weren't the only IT asset management solution out there in the market. Right. Like I, I, I don't know this area deeply, but I do know that it's pretty competitive. There are some big, well-funded players in this space.

[00:09:46] So figuring out what you're gonna go and build is, is one thing. The second thing is figuring out where you position yourself in the market and why customers should choose you instead of all these other options that they have. How, how did you figure that out? Like where, where best to position yourselves and how you could.

[00:10:05] You know, have a kind of a clear story on what you, you know, how you were gonna be differentiated or better or different than what was already out there.

[00:10:11] Hiren: Yeah. We definitely had to build a lot of trust with our prospects and our customers. There, there's a lot of big players in the IT asset management industry.

[00:10:19] A lot of them being heavily funded. And then you have a new player in the game that's like us who's bootstrapped you know, we we're new. It, it's hard for, you know, larger organizations to just. Move forward with a, a new SaaS provider, right? So we took a, a slow approach in terms of building the company and building that trust by, you know, making sure we have good support.

[00:10:40] We have an excellent product con. When our prospects reach out to us, if they're feeling a little uneasy, we'll actually connect them with a current customer. They can, you know, get a review of us outside of, you know, communicating with us. And that's helped a lot in terms of closing some deals where we'll just get our prospects and customers together in, in a room or in a meeting.

[00:10:59] Omer: So I think it's great being able to get a customer onto the phone with a prospect and do the selling for you. Why would they do that? Like what's, what's in it for them? How, how, how did you kind of figure this out? Like it's, you know, it's hard enough to go to a customer for many, many companies and get a testimonial, right?

[00:11:18] But then to say, oh, can you get on the phone with a prospect and basically sell the product for me? That's kind of quite a, quite an ask.

[00:11:25] Hiren: Yeah. I mean, to be honest we really take pride in our customer support. And our development processes. So with, with our, with our system it's an agile tool to where every customer gets their own version of Teqtivity and we build onto it, you know, for them and their processes.

[00:11:40] So, you know, with, with that part of our business you know, we've built a lot of trust with our current customers and, you know, we have relationships with them where, you know, we'll message each other on Slack. And part of that is we wanna help our customers. We're not just a SaaS provider, we're not just a, a solution.

[00:11:57] We really want to help our customers and that, that relationship and that trust we've built with them has helped us, you know, get to a point where we can call them and ask them for you know, these meetings with prospects and they're hap, you know, they're happy to do it.

[00:12:10] Omer: I, I know one of the other things that really sort of helped you get that initial momentum was

[00:12:15] Going out there and, and targeting early adopters. And, you know, companies who are more wi, you know, more willing to take risks, try new things, innovate, that sort of stuff. And, and in many ways, for many, many early stage startups, that's, that's a smart thing to, to do. The challenge always is figuring out, you know, who those early adopters are, how to reach them.

[00:12:37] So how did you go about figuring that out and who these people were and how to reach them? Yeah. With a lot of people, they actually came to us. You know, we had, we have a lot of referrals a lot of word of mouth. And then people who are leaving their position, you know, they move to another company, they actually contact us and basically follow Teqtivity and implement it into their current solution or their current company.

[00:13:02] Hiren: . And what we're seeing a lot is there's a lot of people who leave the, the larger organizations and they're going into smaller startups that are, you know, earlier our earlier adopters companies that are growing very quickly that need a tool in place, you know, quickly and efficiently. So that's how we're really able to get some of those smaller companies on board as well.

[00:13:20] Omer: So do you think it's, I mean. Your customers obviously love the product, otherwise, you know, they wouldn't be selling it for you and wanting to move on somewhere else and, and kind of recommending it to new companies and so on. What, what do you think it is about the product that you've, well, is it the product or is it the support?

[00:13:39] Because you said, oh, you know, support's kind of a big priority for us, so, so is it, is it like, Hey, the product we've really, you know, we, we kind of really figured out how to build the right thing or solve the right problems in the right way, or it's like we really kind of . You know, over optimize for support and make sure that we're, we're helping them do a great job.

[00:14:03] Like what is it that makes, you know, the customers that love your product, what, what is it that that gets them to that point? I, I feel it's a balance of both. We, we have a great product. You know, I'm gonna be biased here, but we, I think we have one of the best products out there. And to, you know.

[00:14:17] Hiren: To, to get to where we are. We had to provide that customer support to build that trust, right? So we really try to find the balance in both. You know, our engineering team has done a really great job in terms of building our product, the integration, the workflows, everything that IT departments in various organizations, sizes, industries need.

[00:14:35] And then our support team, our growth team . They do a fantastic job in working with our customers and our prospects, making sure that they're happy, right. So we, we, I think we found a really good balance between the two.

[00:14:47] Omer: You, you mentioned something earlier about how you customize the product for each customer.

[00:14:53] Talk a little bit more about that, because, you know, on the one hand, yeah, customization is great. On the other hand, it sounds like a nightmare. So I'm just trying to figure out how you deliver that in a way that you can still continue to grow and scale. We have our base product of Teqtivity, which has all of the basic functions and functionalities that you need to yeah, manage your IT assets.

[00:15:12] Hiren: And then what we noticed as we were growing is that every IT department works. They work differently. They have their own processes, their managers have their own philosophies on how they should do things what they should do. And then when you throw in other departments like hr, security, compliance, they also have their own ideas.

[00:15:27] So instead of a one size fits all type of product, . The vision that I had was, let's have this one base product that has, you know, a great set of features and then allow our customer to give us feedback on how they work on a day-to-day basis. What type of reporting that they need for you know, management teams, operation teams procurement teams, et cetera.

[00:15:47] And we will kind of build that in. And then as organizations grow, for example, if you're working with a startup that, you know. All of a sudden gets funding. They add, you know, a couple thousand new employees, you know, they're gonna have new tools, they're gonna have new workflows, new managers. We wanna also adapt our pro software to fit their growing needs as well.

[00:16:07] So instead of you know, here's the software, take it and, you know, you'll stuck with the features that we give you. The idea was to allow them to request new features, new integrations, and that's really helped with the growth of the company. Because they just, they love that. And we're very quick at what we built.

[00:16:24] And they, you know, we have a quick turnaround time in terms of requests and features that, that, that our customers need. Right. But when you build these, these features, are you, are you building them for all customers or are you building this kind of multi-tenant kind of Frankenstein ? It's, yeah. It's, it's kind of bespoke for our customers.

[00:16:43] You know, some of our larger enterprise level customers have very specific needs in terms of, you know, security features that we want. Another smaller customer probably would not need. that feature or workflow. And that's why that was, you know, one of the reasons of having a system that's, you know, completely separate for every single customer.

[00:17:02] That way, you know, we have customer A over here, we can build a completely different version of Teqtivity and customer B can have their own workflows and processes. There are integrations and workflows that will will launch to everybody. But most of the time when it's something that's a very specific request, it'll only be for that one customer.

[00:17:20] Omer: So are you managing like multiple code bases for different customers?

[00:17:24] Hiren: Yeah.

[00:17:25] Omer: Wow. And and how big is your dev team?

[00:17:27] Hiren: Our dev team right now is 16 people.

[00:17:30] Omer: Wow. So how do you think that's gonna play out as you start to you know, move towards, you know, an eight figure business? A lot more customers, a lot more requirements.

[00:17:42] Like, is it, is this manageable? Is this scalable?

[00:17:45] Hiren: Yeah, we've actually you know, we're, we're talking internally about being able to modularize the, the tool to where, you know, we can still have the base product . And then have like, you know, plugins that we can add in to make things a lot quicker and easier when we're, you know, building new features.

[00:17:57] So there are plans on our roadmap for this year to, to help with that.

[00:18:02] Omer: Let's, let's talk a little bit about like, grow growth, right? So you, you talked about how you, you got the first customer you met at a, at an event. What about the first 10? Where, where did they come from? I know you, you mentioned word of mouth referrals.

[00:18:15] There's a. As a big driver and it still is today, but you know, in those early days you, you didn't have any customers. So how were you finding them? How did you get the first 10?

[00:18:24] Hiren: Yeah, so the, like I mentioned, word of mouth referrals is, was a and still is a, a heavy driver of traffic to us. I know on the other side we, we did use, or we still do Google AdWords to drive traffic to our website to, to generate leads and prospects.

[00:18:38] And what we ended up doing was . Focusing on some of the lower level keywords the ones that don't cost as much versus, you know, the. It Asset management keyword is like 60 to $70 per click, which as a bootstrap company is not affordable for us. But we found, you know, all of the, the lawn tail keywords, the, the low volume ones where people are still searching for them and our competitors are actually not going after those keywords.

[00:19:03] So we, we found a niche in Google AdWords to where we can still get some, drive some traffic, not spend too much money and bring in some leads.

[00:19:10] Omer: Gimme an example of that without giving away too much of what you're targeting and stuff like that, but just . Gimme an example of a, you know, a long tail keyword that a customer might be searching for and come across your ad.

[00:19:21] Hiren: Yeah. It, it might be more related to, like a question they're asking, right? What is it asset management or, you know, the benefits of it, asset management things like that versus just that specific it asset management keyword.

[00:19:33] Omer: So I'm guessing the, when you go after those long tail keywords, the, the cost per click is a lot less than going after words like it asset management and 60, $80 a click is kind of crazy. But probably you are also gonna get a lot of clicks for people where the, there's no buying intent perhaps, maybe at that point. Right. So how, how are you dealing with that? Do you, do you get a lot of people kind of just they just wanna know what it asset management is, but they're not actually looking for a solution or ready to buy yet. And typically, like in this space, how long does it take to, you know, for someone to kinda get to a point where they're looking to, to the point where they make a decision and, and buy a product?

[00:20:14] Hiren: Yeah, so for the folks that you know, they're. They're not, you know, the, the buyer at the moment. You know, we run our typical retargeting campaigns to make sure that our eyes are our, you know, brand is still in their eyes to help with our brand awareness. And then for the ones that do end up contacting us it's usually a, a couple of months sales process to, to get them from filling out the form to actually implementing.

[00:20:36] Omer: Yeah. So I'm still, I'm still trying to figure out like, like . The, like, how do you manage that, that situation with Google AdWords? Because those type of long tail keywords, if there's not buying intent you could, it feels like you could just be wasting a lot of money on just clicks that aren't ever gonna go anywhere, right?

[00:20:54] Hiren: Yeah, yeah. We, we, you could say that. But at the end of the day, what we gain from that is a visitor to our website. Then the, they're retargeting at that point, right? So part of what we're we wanna do is increase our brand awareness. You know, we're, we're competing against these, you know, big, big companies that have, you know, heavy funding.

[00:21:13] If we, if we talk about it, asset management and Silicon Valley for example you know, there'll be two or three names that everybody knows about. So for somebody to type in, you know, what is it? Asset management. For us, that means, okay, it is somebody who is in that field. They're looking at least for that topic.

[00:21:29] Even if they don't fill out our form and contact us as a buyer, at least they see our brand, they see our name, and then later on they'll, they'll see our ads, they're retargeting. So yeah, we kind of get that benefit of the, the brand awareness at the same time for a, a lower cost of a click versus, you know, putting out, you know, really heavy ads and spending a lot on, on ad spend.

[00:21:50] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. So, so roughly like, how much, how much money are you spending? What's, what kind of budget do you, do you kinda allocate for AdWords

[00:21:59] Hiren: right now in terms of ad spend? Between Google Ads, we're doing some LinkedIn now it's 2,500 a month.

[00:22:05] Omer: Okay. All right. So it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's a, some modest amount.

[00:22:09] You're not going crazy here.

[00:22:11] Hiren: Yeah. It, it's a, it's a small amount compared, compared to what our competitors are doing. You know, it's. It's not much, but we're, we're getting some good, good leads out of it. So

[00:22:20] Omer: the, the, the other kind of growth channel you, you tried and put some, a fair amount of investment into or, or try to get right, was like event marketing that didn't work out as well as you thought it would.

[00:22:34] So I wanna talk a little bit about that because I think there's some useful lessons there. So , maybe let just start at the top and just say like, what, what was the hypothesis around events and what did you decide to go and do?

[00:22:48] Hiren: Yeah, so we, we've we've attended several events with in the IT space, you know, having a booth sponsoring events you know, having our team out there.

[00:22:56] The idea was, you know, we're, we're in the room with our target audience. They're all IT people. They're in it asset management, they're in some kind of, you know, that space. So the idea is, you know, it's a room full of prospects at the end of the day, right. It is a great place to talk to people and, and try to sell our product, but ultimately didn't really work out for us in, in the long term.

[00:23:15] It to, honestly, to me it was, it was a lot of wasteful spending and we, we saw our competitors also attending these events. So we thought, okay, if they're there, we should be there too. You know, but then we think, okay, well they have the big budgets, they can spend it and not worry about it later on down the line.

[00:23:32] And that's ultimately ended up, you know, for us, not. Wanting to do events again in the future. 'cause it was really no ROI for us at the end of the day.

[00:23:42] Omer: So were you, were you just like attending events and kind of handing out swag and stuff like that? Or were you like, you know, paying for a booth and, and kind of going all in and as I.

[00:23:52] As, as kind of on, on, on kind of the floor in terms of trying to talk to customers and do demos and what, what, what kind of approach did you take?

[00:23:59] Hiren: Yeah, I mean, we're going all in. We have we've had booths set up. We're giving out swag got presentations on our booth. You know, we're trying to get people to sign up for demos.

[00:24:07] We, we, we've, you know, we've had people come up to us, they, they get really excited about getting a demo you know, after we get back and, I would say we've had zero follow up from anybody who's ever said that they, they wanted to have a demo and that they need a tool. And you know, it's really discouraging when, you know, that happens not just in, in one conference, but multiple.

[00:24:27] So you know, at the end of the day it's like, do we really want to keep doing these? So we, you know, we're we wasting time, we could spend those four days and, and that money doing something else.

[00:24:36] Omer: How, how many events did you take a crack at before you, you decided to pull the plug?

[00:24:40] Hiren: So we did so the first few years we did one a year, and then last year we did four different events.

[00:24:47] We are doing one this year. We know this one will work out. It's a very specific niche and industry. We're already, you know, working well with some of the, the leaders at the the organization. And we've actually had some . Prospects come in through it. But other than that some of the bigger conferences we're just gonna pass this year.

[00:25:03] Omer: One of the things we talked about earlier, before we started recording was this idea that, you know, you said we were doing . Events. But then you notice that, that, you know, all the, your competitors were talking about kind of, you know, using similar buzzwords and, and by taking a similar approach to them, you were just blending in instead of standing out.

[00:25:27] And I, I thought I was a insightful observation. Just talk a little bit more about that because I think there's some useful lessons here. 'cause it's very easy to look at what's happening in the market and say, well, that's what we should be doing. 'cause they're doing that.

[00:25:39] Hiren: We're, yeah, we're getting into this mindset of, okay, the competitor is aligning themselves this way.

[00:25:44] This is our messaging on their branding and you know, their booth and table. So in our mind it's like, okay, it works. It must work for them if they're doing it right. So we kind of follow the same train of thought and, and do something similar instead of . Doing things our way where we wanna be disruptive and, you know, get a different message out there so we can get those eyes and, and, you know, grab that attention.

[00:26:05] So, you know, that that did hurt us where we were, you know, kind of blending in like you said. And yeah, it wasn't the approach we should have taken at the time. So it was a learning, you know, lesson for us when it came to doing these events and setting up the boost and the marketing material.

[00:26:19] Omer: Has, has that also influenced the way you do your

[00:26:21] Your general marketing and your messaging and the way you, are, you, you talk about the product or, or kind of buzzwords you try to avoid or like

[00:26:31] Hiren: Yeah. We actually we, we have a rule with our marketing team not to use buzzwords. We actually have a blog post and a LinkedIn post about how as a company we don't want to use buzzwords and

[00:26:43] Just it jargon that every other competitor talks about. 'cause a lot of the time in our eyes, it's, it's just, it's just fluff. We we're, we wanna help our customers. We, we don't wanna just sell them on, on some fantasy, right? So it, it actually is actually a role within our company and our marketing team to, to stay off all buzzwords and, and jargon.

[00:27:02] Is in even our, if you look at our socials, we're trying to be different with our graphics and our messaging around what we're doing. Just trying to . Get that attention out there.

[00:27:11] Omer: I think the other thing you mentioned was like, hey, you know, one of the lessons from events was it's better to be talking to more prospects who are ready to buy than ones that, you know, you just kind of come across at, at sort of these events that, that you know, are, are, are kind of interested, but it's not really a serious decision that they're considering right now.

[00:27:31] Why, why did that, why do you, why do you think that was kind of an an issue at events? I mean, I'm sure there are people who are going to these events for the reason to kind of consider alternative solutions or, you know, maybe their, IT asset management is kind of a, a mess right now and they're trying to figure out how to solve that or, or could do a better job at it.

[00:27:49] Hiren: Yeah. I, I feel that there's a few things around it. Sometimes they might not be the decision maker. They're just sent to this conference to go learn about new products and tools, and then they don't really follow up after that point. Some of the conferences, especially the larger ones, are more of a social event, so, you know, you'll get excited.

[00:28:04] You'll meet a new vendor, you'll say, Hey, we'll, we'll, we'll connect afterwards. But it's just really not a serious conversation in their minds at the end, end of the day. And then . We're also, when it comes to you know, it asset management in this industry, a lot of companies already have a tool in place.

[00:28:18] So even if we do talk to a prospect at an event we, we realize like they have something in place, they don't wanna move it, they don't wanna shift things around. I. It's expensive for them to do that, or they're just stuck with what they have and they don't have any decision making authority on even making a switch to a new provider.

[00:28:33] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. So like who, who is your, who's your ICP? Is there, is there a particular persona or somebody in the organization that you think is like that now, you know, okay, this is the person I should be talking to.

[00:28:46] Hiren: Yeah, it's typically like you're head of it, it manager . , depending on the size of the company, we might even get to that CTO level.

[00:28:53] Some, some of the smaller companies, our CTO will make some of those decisions as well. But usually that, that it director, head of it, it manager is, is our main target.

[00:29:03] Omer: And then so is that when you were at events, you would, most of the time those were not necessarily the people you were talking to?

[00:29:09] Hiren: Yeah, sometimes it actually, you mean there were some where they were the IT asset manager. . Really? Yeah, . Like, okay, this is exciting. We've got like six different IT asset managers wanting to, to schedule a demo after we get back. And they, after that, they just ghost us and go silent.

[00:29:26] Omer: And I bet, and, and it turned out that they weren't the decision makers, is that what you're saying?

[00:29:30] Hiren: It, I, I guess not. I mean, I, I don't know. They . Just never responded, .

[00:29:36] Omer: Wow. Okay. Alright, cool. So I think some good, good, good lessons there about events. You know, it, it's, you know, I think in many ways, like when, when you, when you kind of described the event piece and, and you know, we were chatting earlier, it was like, it sounds like a good plan.

[00:29:49] Right. Like you're, you're getting out there, you're going where your custom potential customers are. You are spreading the word about tivity. You're there, be the face of the company, do the demos. What sounds like sounds like a great way to, to reach customers, but it's interesting that it turned out to be a completely the opposite in terms of a, a growth driver.

[00:30:10] Hiren: Yeah. And that, that, that helped also with just learning. About where we know how we could budget things out a little better, right? So if we know, okay, we're spending $10,000 on a particular event what could we do with that 10,000 somewhere else, right? Whether it's a LinkedIn, LinkedIn ads, Google Ads or even bringing on additional resource to help with our marketing efforts.

[00:30:33] Or a sales person, right? An SDR. So you know now whenever an opportunity comes away, whether it's . An event or sponsoring something or you know, paid publications, for example. We'll look at things in more detail and put together our pros and cons and opportunity costs and, you know, everything before we even pull a trigger on anything.

[00:30:53] So you know, the, we did learn a lot from all of these different, you know, methods that we've tried in the past.

[00:30:58] Omer: So if, if events were such a, a, a failure, why are you doing another event this year?

[00:31:03] Hiren: There's one event, our growth manager really wants to do it but he's also made a lot of good contacts there.

[00:31:08] We've actually had several prospects. We're doing multiple demos and we're doing a pilot program for a particular industry education. So we're, we're looking to see how we can get our solution into a lot of schools. We already have some on board that we're working with. When it comes to like high schools middle schools, you know, they give out tablets, they give out Chromebooks to the students.

[00:31:30] They're not tracking anything. There's a lot that that goes missing. There's, you know, there's damage equipment out there. There's lost equipment. So we're, we're working on a plan to where we can help a lot of you know, schools with their IT asset management. So that one I'm okay with and the, the cost of, we're actually not setting up a booth there.

[00:31:49] We're actually speaking at the event.

[00:31:51] Omer: You, we, we talked about. You know, you kind of figuring out how to build a great product support. You obviously have been doing the right things where you, you've got customers willing to get on the phone and talk to prospects and, and tell them, you know, how much they love using Teqtivity.

[00:32:05] Building, building trust and a brand is super important, and especially if you're bootstrapped and com, you know, in a, in a, in a market dominated by some very big, well-funded players. That reputation and, and credibility is like so important. And then I think it was like two years ago, you, you had a, a data breach which affected one of your customers.

[00:32:30] Like, so tell, tell me about what happened there and like how much of an issue it was.

[00:32:33] Hiren: Yeah. We a couple years ago we did have a data breach where information from one of our customers was, was leaked. . To be honest, that was probably one of worst times of my life going through that. You know, we, we lost a lot of trust with, you know, that current customer.

[00:32:49] But you know, other, other, we had to notify other customers that, you know, something did happen. All of their data was safe. But at the end of the day, you know, everybody's still questioning our company. We're a small company. We're we're bootstrapped. And you know, why should they keep trusting us?

[00:33:04] . But you know, we, we really learned a lot in terms of our security posture, how to, you know, navigate through situations like that. And then also . , building that trust back up with that particular customer and some of the others that were questioning us at that point. Did, did you lose that customer?

[00:33:19] We still have them.

[00:33:20] Omer: Nice, nice. So kind of looking back at that experience now, you obviously looked at the, the, the security issues and, and what, you know, you guys needed to do a better job with. But what do you think helped you to keep that customer to rebuild? The trust? Like if someone's like in that situation today, like what are some of the lessons they can take away from, from your experience there?

[00:33:44] Hiren: Yeah. To so the first thing that we did was they, they actually moved the software on-prem to their own server. So that way, yeah, less risk of their data being loose again. And then just working with them on, you know, clearing things up. And to be honest they're so integrated with our product.

[00:34:01] Internally with multiple departments, it was very, it would've been very difficult for them to even you know, get rid of the tool. But over time since then, you know, we've worked closely with them on building new features you know, adding more to it, more value to it, but at the same time showing them that, you know, our, our servers are also secure by going through SOC 2 approval showing them pen tests showing them more reporting around what we're doing on our security side of things.

[00:34:26] Omer: Do, do you find that you have to jump through a lot of like those kinds of security hoops when you're, you're bringing on.

[00:34:31] New customers. I mean, I know, and just in the IT space, there's gotta be like, you know, you gotta be SOC compliant, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And, and I've, I've, I've talked to founders who were like, you know, yeah, we, we were kind of like doing really well with this potential customer and then they give us like this 200 page document that we've gotta kind of go through.

[00:34:49] Right. Is that something that you have to deal with?

[00:34:51] Hiren: Yeah. It, it's normal. The, the larger the company, the, the, the more chance of them doing a, you know, security audit, security questionnaire. Some of the smaller companies have, you know, they've been okay just signing vendors. But as part of like SOC or iso, you're, you're supposed to vet your vendors.

[00:35:06] So we know that it's part of the process. So when now we're prepared for it every time whether it's a, an Excel file or a portal that we have to answer questions in. But we know we have our pen test, we have our SOC 2 report that we could always provide. So we're, we're confident now that, you know,

[00:35:23] Our prospects won't really question us in terms of our security. There's a lot that, a lot of evidence that we could show that we are secure and, you know, maintaining that over time.

[00:35:31] Omer: Great. So you've, you know, you've gone from the hardware business to software business. You've, you've hit, you know, the first million in ARR, you, you're a seven figure ARR business today. Still bootstrapped. Have you thought about raising money? Has that been something that you've considered?

[00:35:49] Hiren: I've considered it. I think about it, you know, sometimes I actually do take on calls whenever you know, VCs or PE PEs come out and, you know, they wanna learn more about the product or invest in it.

[00:36:01] At this moment. I, I'm happy with where we're at with bootstrapping. You know, we're, like I mentioned how, you know, we, we, we build our product based on our customer's needs. Being bootstrap gives us that flexibility and agility to do whatever we want, right? If we have investors or you know, other people that we have to, you know, answer to essentially, then we kind of lose some of that.

[00:36:21] I feel so I'd rather stay bootstrapped at this moment and. Just grow naturally and organically.

[00:36:27] Omer: Do you, do you feel like you would be able to grow faster if you had funding?

[00:36:32] Hiren: I'm sure we could. Yeah.

[00:36:33] Omer: But, but you're happy, you, you're happy with what you, you, how you're growing.

[00:36:36] Hiren: I'm happy with it. Plus there's also I would say like fear in the back of my mind, right?

[00:36:41] I've gone through multiple businesses in the past as well with other partners, other people that, you know, haven't taken off where I've done most of the work and. It hasn't gone anywhere, right? Or they've just failed. The, the fear would be, and then with the locker situation, right? We, we put so much money into it.

[00:36:57] It was a big financial hit. The fear is that we take money from somebody and it just doesn't work out. And I still have that feeling as well all the time. So yes, we could get funding. There's a lot of people that reach out to us all the time. But then it's like, okay, we have to make sure that we perform at that level.

[00:37:14] And I feel like I. We're not at a place yet to where I, I know that we can you know, take a bunch of money and then get to where we want to be. Right? So once I know we hit that, you know, that the, the, the point that I wanna be at, I think we could I just don't want to end up taking money and then risking it, right?

[00:37:31] So.

[00:37:32] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. That's very pragmatic. That's good. All right. We, we, we should we should wrap up. Let's get onto the, the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you. Ready? Sounds good. Okay. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:37:47] Hiren: Yeah, I would say you know, the stay focused and patient.

[00:37:49] The success doesn't come overnight, but at the same time be prepared to, you know, pivot if you need to. Make some changes.

[00:37:56] Omer: What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:37:59] Hiren: One of my favorites has been Zero to Sold Arvid, Arvid Kahl. That book really helped me kind of validate the direction when we were building the company and the product in terms of, you know, are we doing things the right way when we're we're growing.

[00:38:12] Omer: Yeah, Arvid is a great guy. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:38:18] Hiren: Yeah, just be passionate about what you're doing. You wanna wake up in the morning feeling good about the company, the direction it's going and, and the challenges that you're gonna be facing.

[00:38:26] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:38:30] Hiren: I think I'm old school. I love my notepad, my notepad that I fill out every day with everything that I need to do. So yeah, that, that's, that's really it for me.

[00:38:39] Omer: What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[00:38:43] Hiren: I. Yeah, if I had time I would love to help kids in India in smaller villages with like, education and it, that's something that I would in the future I would love to get involved with.

[00:38:51] Omer: Cool. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[00:38:55] Hiren: So I. I can say is there's a lot of memes you'll see about people who run and they like to talk about.

[00:39:01] I just ran a marathon. I love to run. And I'm actually planning out my 2025 run schedule. So should have some, some runs on the book soon.

[00:39:09] Omer: Nice. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:39:14] Hiren: Yeah, outside of work. I spend a lot of time volunteering for the Huntington's Disease Society of America.

[00:39:19] They're a national nonprofit that helps families that are affected by HD Huntington's disease. So my brother passed away with the, with the disease in 2012. Been involved with 'em since 2011. Helping with fundraising raising awareness and helping our local families in the LA area with support. .

[00:39:36] Omer: Great. Love that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure talking about the, the business. I, I, I love the kind of the, the, the journey from building this, this hardware business. The, the, the pivot, how you've gone and you know made that transition after having put in a lot of your own personal money into, into the business.

[00:40:00] And then also you know, getting, getting some, some traction in a, in a pretty, pretty competitive space where, you know, you, you've got some players who are extremely well funded and you know, kind of, sort of carving out a niche for yourself as a bootstrap business in that space is, is pretty impressive.

[00:40:15] Hiren: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

[00:40:18] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. It's my pleasure. So if people wanna check out Teqtivity, they can go to teqtivity.com and that's tech with a teqtivity.com. And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:40:33] Hiren: Yeah, they can email me. I'm my open, open book for contacting, so it's hiren@teqtivity.com.

[00:40:39] Omer: Awesome. Thanks man. It's been a pleasure and I wish you and the team the, the best of success.

[00:40:44] Hiren: Awesome. Thank you.

[00:40:45] Omer: Cheers.

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