Dive into the latest episode of the B2B Go to Market Leaders podcast, where Kathri Mariappan, the founder of Hippo Video, a B2B SaaS company. Kathri, with a rich background in engineering and over 16 years of experience in product management at Zoho, shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the pivotal moments that shaped his approach to building and marketing products. This blog post delves into the key themes and insights from the episode, offering actionable advice for entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Kathri emphasizes that a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is much more than just sales and marketing. It begins where product development ends. Once a product is ready, the focus shifts to effectively communicating the problem it solves, the positioning message, and understanding the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). These foundational elements are crucial for successful sales and marketing efforts.
Kathri’s journey with Hippo Video exemplifies the power of clarity, focus, and continuous learning to achieve business success.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Narrow Your ICP for GTM Growth: Tactics with Hippo Video CEO Kathri Mariappan
Signature Question: How do you view and define Go To Market?
Yeah. so go to market. it’s not only sales and marketing to me. It starts where the product ends, right? So once the product is ready.
So how do you get to the market? How do you talk about what is the problem you’re trying to solve? How we are trying to solve. What is the positioning message? how we are building the ICP, understanding the ICP. Those are the key things that come before the sales and marketing. Right? So once you are fixing all of these, then the sales and marketing becomes much more focused and much easier. So I say the GTM starts from where the product ends.
Yeah. No, definitely. And it’s good you and important that it started with the ICP. What that pain point is because it’s an ocean in itself, right? And it’s an ongoing journey. ICP how you position, how you talk about that, Whether the message is resonating or not, the pricing, the offers, plus also the go-to-market aspects, which is okay now that you have a strong hypothesis on which segment and the persona and how are you going to structure the marketing motion? How are you going to structure the sales and customer success and so on?
Yes, yes, yes, it’s it’s very important to, actually fix those parts of it.
Then, I would call the bamboo shoots. Right. So there are the icebergs. So there are a lot of things inside. What you see outside is only sales and marketing. But there is a huge thing you need to fix for your team to be successful.
Yeah. For sure. I’m sure we’ll dive into a lot of these, sub-branches in our conversation going forward. So taking a big picture, just stepping, back a bit, why don’t you share with the listeners your career journey what really led you to start Hippo, and what you do today?
Yes. So, I’m an engineer by education, but, I’ve been a product builder all along in my career. I was with Zoho for more than 16 years, and my co-founders are also. So we were good friends at Zoho, working between 2000 and 2016, where I was building the HR suite of products. The Zoho People and the Zoho Recruit, kind of products took it to million-dollar revenues. And while my other two founders were primarily into, tech, then into product, one of them had some patents in, DB research, all of this.
So we came together and thought, okay, why can’t we start an organization where we felt the need for videos is the important aspect? So in 2016 itself, we felt, that videos are an important aspect of any communication or any engagement when it comes to business. So that’s where we started off with Hippo Video, primarily into LMS. Then we pivoted into marketing. Now we are focusing more on sales and marketing together. As an AI, we have reinvented ourselves this year. And the uptick is really good. So it’s been a very long journey. but a roller coaster, one, of course, in entrepreneurship was that. Yeah. And, we have been enjoying this journey for quite a long.
Very cool. you did mention, I mean, we’ll definitely deep dive into Hippo and what you do and who you sell to and all those. But before that, you said you spent a lot of time at Zoho, and you started your career as an engineer. So talk to us about that transition from engineering to product management.
Yeah. so I started off as an engineer, but by, I would say cross as what you call, sheer, coincidence, I went into pre-sales engineering, so I was building some POCs for, bigger customers to help them understand how, the product, that we were trying to sell could meet their needs. So that is where I was introduced to this product concept, right? how do you solutions for your customers? Before that, it was only engineering, right? You understand only the code. That is some, prod given. You just work with it. But that pre-sales engineering actually gave me that exposure into how do you solution for your customer. So you have some vanilla products. How do you solve it for the customer’s pain? Solve it. really? Well. So that gave me a lot of, enthusiasm. That product is the way forward. Then I moved into training, where I saw that.
I mean, that was a very important point that you hit over there. So you said you were in engineering, but then you transitioned into pre-sales, and that’s where you got the whole product concept and how to solve and structure it.
Right. But what led you to a pre-sales? Was it like a natural, hey, no one is doing this job at Zoho? That’s where I have to do it. Or what led you to that transition?
Okay. that’s why I said, coincidence or like, my boss Girish, was, founder of FreshBooks, was, asked to form a team on the pre-sales because that was a new team that we, he brought out. So we were my other co-founder, myself, and a couple of other people were picked from different teams to join that team, given the different backgrounds within AD. And then it was called. So that’s how we were picked and, brought into that team. So that’s how the journey started.
Cool. Yeah. That’s good. So you were picked by the founder to be part of the pre-sales, and that’s when you went into the whole sales discovery. The POCs paid pilots and eventually. Yes, getting into the Negotiation and sales office.
Yes yes yes yes, that’s how it all started.
But it’s been a very good journey. because, I would say anyone, at Zoho, via, they have a culture where any new engineer also joins. They will be put into the support team, basically to understand what the customer is asking, and what the prospect is asking. So it’s kind of outside in. So you have to get it. So we were primarily focused on the outside aspect of it. Right? The POC is the quick pivot finding the quicker value and giving feedback to the product team. It was a very good one and a half years. they are building those quick POC demos. So it gave me a lot of ground to learn.
Yeah. And then it sounds like it was actually a natural transition for you because in pre-sales you are giving feedback to the product and then it was a natural transition progression to hey, why don’t I become the product manager? Why? And shaping the requirements for the roadmap and things like that. Is that how it went? Right?
So in between I had a very good stint in training.
So I was, in the pre-sales, kind of a bridge between the product and listening, to customers. But in training, I was, asked to train the customers, also asking them what the product is, how they can. So that also brought me good exposure to that thinking as well. So it was previously how do I, stitch my product for that solution? Now, when I started training, they asked a lot of questions, and all of these, started making me think how a solution should be built itself. So that transition was very important, I would say.
So can you give an example? I mean, you bring it up intuitively, I get it, even the listeners would get it. But just give an example. So when you were doing training and when the customers were asking about a specific problem or a feature in Zoho CRM, that led you to how to build and prioritize a feature and how to message a message. Also, can you give a concrete example? So so it.
Was it the pre-era of CRM? We had a product called a webinar. So that is where I was doing the training. So it’s it’s an API product you may call it but it has a lot of endpoints where you can plug in, and make it work in the telecom world. So when we were actually meeting the customers, we really understood how the stack is there, how they are actually solving their end-user problems, and how our product is going to enable them and seamlessly provide those solutions.
That understanding is what we were missing kind of domain knowledge back into the system. We were building it as a stack, but there is always this connection to the end customer, right? Not our immediate customer, but the end consumer. So that point of view actually brought in a lot of feedback into the system. How, say, performance metrics should be built as an important aspect because that is where the lag is going to happen. So a lot of feedback, we were able to give it back to the product teams.
Understood. Got it. So as you’re doing training, that leads you to your next role, which is product management.
Yes. Yes.
Got it. And then somehow, magically. Yeah. Do you want to share something about that? Product management.
So the product management aspect of it, that’s when the Zoho started, was started. So, so we, I was part of a development management team as well. and then I was moved into the Zoho, fold, which was actually formed then. So there, they asked us to build different things, and understand What are the different problems in the market. How do you solve it from a Zoho SaaS perspective? So I picked the promise as one of the solutions we should go after, and it was very interesting to learn through that process right from scratch. How do you build a thesis? How do you build? This is how you want to solve the problem. Of course, there were a lot of iterations. We never had the first step.
Right? but it gave us a lot of understanding of how to do discovery, how to do customer calls, and how to understand their pain. going to a lot of conferences, learning it from there. So that was a huge, journey of building it from scratch. Right? I was not from a background. Right. So, how do you understand what is what are the key things you should do? Once we entered in, I understood it was not a simple lake or something. It’s a huge, huge ocean in itself. Right. So that’s a huge learning.
Yeah. So whose decision was it? Or the business case or the champion behind pursuing HMMs in the first place? Was it you or Girish or a combination of the leadership team?
So it’s a combination of the leadership team. And one thing at Zoho is you will always be given a free hand to understand the market from a very different perspective. So the recruitment part was one thing I believe we should build. So I brought in that, case study to the management, and they were really interested to see how this could solve it alongside, the people, what we call the head terms.
So that was not a mandate from the management. But once you started talking to people, you understood there is an adjacent problem that needs to be solved, which is recruitment. So that’s how I started building the Zoho Recruit as well.
So I’m trying to connect the dots here. So Zoho is primarily CRM. And then what led you to that edge and problems around recruitment and HMMs? I’m trying to connect the dots.
Okay, so Zoho has around 40 different products for the business. So CRM is one of it. Yeah. So that is an office suite that is a financial suite. Then that is this entire suite. So all that started at the same time, and Zoho CRM is our flagship product.
Got it. So it’s almost like an ERP.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. For the small and medium business. Correct.
Got it. So end to end for all the different functionality users.
Yeah, exactly.
So HR, finance, sales, marketing, yes.
Everything campaigns, everything was there.
And you had the no code, low code, everything put together. It was there. And now they are selling it as one single package called Zoho One if I’m right. Previously we were selling it as different products for the same customers or different customers, but now they have kind of merged it all together.
Okay, so that was a good education for me or course correction for me into understanding Zoho and Pigeon Hole into only a CRM versus an ERP. Yeah. So you identified the adjacent problem, which is a recruiting economist. So how did it go about the discovery and the thesis?
Yeah. so it was more of, okay, a couple of calls when we went to the mass, etc.. There were a couple of customers from the staffing industry. So they were trying to do workforce management of their remote employees then, okay. Because people would have been deployed to different customers. They wanted to track it. And so one of them was.
This time frame.
Know that, what I’m talking about is the 2007 eight time period.
Oh, wow.
Okay. Way before. Yeah.
Way before. Way before. So there we were talking. So they came up with the problem of, more attrition, more people to be hired, but they were finding it very tough and how they are trying to solve it now with spreadsheets, all of these things. That’s when I went and understood the recruitment market. There was a biggie called Bullhorn. Even now, it’s there. So we understood what they are trying to build for the enterprises, and how it can be scaled down for the SMBs and the middle market. what are the key things we need to do? So it was an iterative process. Build it along with the customer. That’s what we started off with.
Understood. Then, there is the 0 to 1 journey for HMMs. How long did it take, like from idea conception to customer discovery to beta to actual pipeline and then revenue?
So I would say, the product building itself was around 18 months. Then we had a good long journey to build it together into the 0 to 1 journey.
Yeah. So it was like two and a half to three years.
Totally got it. And what was the run rate when you left Zoho?
So that’s a private organization. I’m not supposed to disclose that, but. But it was multi-million dollar.
Okay. Fair enough. So that’s where now extending and extrapolating. So that gave you the confidence to run and become a founder. Is that yes? Yes yes okay. Yeah. So the transition is about to Hippo.
Yeah.
Yeah. So
At Zoho when we, when I was building the site and the recruitment product, one key, another adjacent problem we saw everywhere is the onboarding. Like, you have the recruitment, then you have the autonomous to manage the talent, all of these skills, etc.. But there is a there was a bigger gap of onboarding the employee into the system, training them, skilling them to the needs. Right. That was a gap. So that gap when only we were discussing. So that’s where we started a hippo.
With the videos and centerpiece. We always believe training is an important aspect where video could play and very, very important engagement role. So we started off with the video as the centerpiece for the elements, and we started building around it. so that’s where this whole journey started off. We started off as an LMS, and we built it for one and a half years with quizzing products, tooling, surveys. All of these together on the videos was a new thing. We started building that.
Yeah, actually, we are going a bit too fast. There are a lot of important nuances around the emotional journey because as an employee, you are pretty much quote-unquote in a comfort zone. But then what is that moment like when you decided to pursue a founder path? What are the struggles and how did you convince yourself and your family to do that?
So, entrepreneurship was always a dream for us. Anyone? the three founders, how we want to do it one day, we need to do it.
So that was there, but it was on the back of the mind, etc.. Yeah, a couple of triggers happened. One of the important triggers was, of course, fresh work, starting, starting fresh ones, and doing well. So it was a good inspiration for us. Then we had charge be coming out and doing so. That gave us confidence. You could also come out and build. So that was the inspiration aspect of it. And as for and.
This was during the time frame of build in India, but sell to the world. That was all the movement that was going on. Yes.
Yeah. 2015 and 2015 is. Yeah. 14 and 15 where we were discussing all of these. So that is where we felt, okay, we, we, we can build the confidence by these inspiration. What to build was okay. Extending my autonomous journey. In the recruitment journey, we found that is a path we can pick it up. But the convincing part it involved like we were in the midlife, right? So I was 40 then, so I had two kids.
So how do you manage your children’s education, their future. So there was a lot of convincing to do within the family to help them understand this could be a better angle towards it, where the passion meets the economy. Economical value adds that. Yeah, so that took some time. Help them understand how other people are doing it, how we can safeguard ourselves. that was the most important part, I would say, for any entrepreneur to take care like I have a two year to three year, independence. I would say so that their family does not depend on you for that 2 to 3 years. So if we could build that, then that becomes a, peace of mind for you to run into this entrepreneurship journey.
Fair enough. And then how was the fundraising journey like for you?
So it was really tough then. Okay. in fact, we were rejected by a lot of, x when we went ahead with the Ms., thesis because that time, unfortunately, elements were all failing. The education market was failing in 20 1415.
Yeah. So there were not bigger takers. So what we did was we spawned a smaller product out of that with video alone as the key aspect, not just focused on autonomous or, learning management, but a vanilla video product that can do anything for anyone. with respect to video creation. So, thanks to my guidance from my, on a mentor as well. So we were confident. Okay, let’s launch that in product and see what what is uptake? So once we did that, we found that, videos could be a larger part of it and horizontal platform rather than an vertical focused one. And that opened doors for, funding, I should say.
And how long was this iteration in the pivot? I mean, these are like massive pivots. I mean, massive in the sense you are still a small team so you can afford to do all these things. Was it like across like a couple of months, weeks.
So we worked in 2016 and we launched this pivot in 2017 or so.
So it was like 12 to 14 months. So we built the LMS for the first nine months. Then we launched it took some initial traction like around 11 to 12 months, then two months. We did this pivot, I would say.
Understood. Did you raise angel funding by then or it was just.
No, no, it was it was bootstrapped then. Yeah. Once we launched this vanilla video product. Then only we went for funding.
Understood. Okay. And did you have customers by then? Paying customers?
We had our small SMEs from, very different parts of the world. Yes, we did have, but they were paying very smaller amount because, that video product was kind of, a record yourself. They called the screens, played back, send it across emails. Those were the use cases. We were, focused, attacking them. So. Okay.
So similar to what? Lume. I mean, Lume became famous around that.
Lume. Yeah. Lume came at that same time period, and we were chugging along with them, for the initial, 8 to 9 months.
But they took the free route, we went the, payment or into the SMEs. So that was the divergence, I would say. They were like a free product for the first three years or so. Right? Yeah.
Cool. And so now we are in the time frame of what, 2017, 18? 19?
Yes. The 18 and 19, I would say.
Okay. And, yeah, yeah. Talk to us about the journey of Hippo and. Yeah, fundraising is everything.
Yes. So once we started, building this as a vanilla horizontal product, one natural, distraction was too many feature requests, too many ISPs coming into the system, like, there was education, there were marketing, there were salespeople, there were, support people. there were, freelancers. YouTubers. Yeah, a lot of them were using our product like, we had around, 1 million or 1.5 million downloads of our extension itself in that period.
And how do we get the word out? I mean, that’s a big number.
So Chrome extension, the Chrome extension helped us, become a very good distribution channel.
Understood. Okay.
So it was it was, that period where Chrome extension became an important aspect of any B2B system or B2B ecosystem. So that became a very good distribution channel. We had like around 1000, 2500 signups per day itself, but for our product.
But how did users learn about the existence of Hippo? I mean, yes, so good to have a Chrome.
I would, I would attribute all to the chrome and some part of SEO, but Chrome extension. we did a very good SEO approach there for the screen recorder, for the webcam recorder. All of this album was there. So we were there and we was there. So we three were actually vying for the top spot there. Got it. So so one week we’ll be there, one week will be there. So it was kind of running around. But that game is a lot of traffic.
Understood. Yeah. So having a Chrome extension plugin helped build that.
I mean it was an inbuilt organic distribution channel for you guys.
Yes, yes. And naturally it brought in its own distractions. Right. So we had lot many feature requests somewhere asking for education. So we built something for Chromebooks. We built a integration into their Google schools or something. We started building that. Then there were something, hey, how do I bring in my hosting all of these other things for the marketing? So we started building the player. So it was distraction. Of course, I should say that one one and half years, we were busy, building so many things. Right. But it did not turn out into revenue because we were spread across.
Was it intentional? I mean, I say intentional was because you were at a seed funded, seed funding stage around that time. And your primary goal, if I were to guess, would have been traction usage versus revenue.
Yeah. Yeah. So, even in that. Right, we should have focused. So, in hindsight looking back, we should have focused on one particular market.
We should not have a very diverse, feature set. loon did a good job there. The focus immediately went into B2B, but B2C can use it. But they were not building anything for the B2C world, right? But we were across education, B2C, and B2B. So that kind of, made us busy. We were building a lot of things, but we were not able to convert that into revenue. So that was a bigger, lag there. So in 2019 or so, we started understanding, you know, this is not the way forward. We should focus on one particular segment of it, be it marketing or sales into the B2B. so that’s where we started shifting ourselves towards something called ICP. We never understood that as an ICP. We believe we should focus on one particular segment. So that was the shift. We did it in 2019 when we kind of moved only into sales and marketing and left the other things for just free. We will not build anything. So that was a hard learning, I should say.
Understood. So I’m more out of curiosity. I would assume at that stage you’d have a set of advisors and your investors being a sounding board. So was that an appropriate channel? Was it helpful or did you get the feedback from them, but then you decided not to go down that path? What was that conflict or dynamic like?
So the conflict was of course alone. Okay, so Loop was the free version of it, but we had a paid version, so we had a lot of discussions to understand whether we should stay free. Yeah. Or move for revenue. so that was a very hard discussion we had and, in hindsight, we should have remained free because we were at 300, 400 K downloads. They were at like 700 K, 800 K downloads. Then now they are at 20 million, right? So that’s how they have grown. But we took a pivot there. We said no we will focus on revenue. So that I think now yes we could have made a different decision. But it is what it is.
Right that point of time, we decide, how do you scale? So we one important thing, right. one biggest learning there was Lumos confidently going into the free. Okay. We were wondering what was their end point. We we were never told about this traction story. You can build it later. That kind of story was never there in the Indian market then. marketing. So had we known about it, there is a path towards it where you can monetize a little later based on adoption and understanding. Yeah. Like what we did. we could have gone that path. But all we were taught is like we should go the revenue path, be SMB or mid-market, start making some revenue. That’s what we were learning in the Indian market. Right. Got it. So that that exposure to the new terms, new way of business models was not available to us. So the aware about business models was a clean, lag we had, I would say wonderful.
Actually, that’s a good transition into the next segment.
We’re already talking about that, right? Clearly, you’re seeing a lot of ups and downs throughout your go-to-market journey, and you’ve already shared a lot of nuggets. But if you were to pick a story, a deep dive into both a success story and a failure story. Let’s say, I’ll leave it to you whether you want to start with a failure story or a success story. But let’s deep dive into one scenario now.
Yeah, I’ll continue with this failure story of this business model. Right? Yeah. So that brought in a lot of, would you say, financial stress within the organization we had to build at the same time the revenues were what we are getting were meager. So that decision of GTM was a big failure on our part, I should say. And in fact, we had one person, in our team who was very prominent, about whom we said we should go ahead with that, but we were not able to hear to that because we we could not envision how that business model is going to make money later.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. So business model is a key aspect of GTM, right? That’s where you align yourself with how you want to do it. Yeah. Right. So we took the other business model. So that actually struck us badly because of Lumos scaling. But we were kind of stuck there. We dropped all the other aspects of it. And we started focusing on, the sales and marketing aspect of it. that brought in a huge gap in how Lume became the B2B. So even lumens become a verb there right now. Correct. So, we were actually, and hand with them, but somewhere we felt, no, we should not go that way. So. Right. I would say that was a big mistake as far as the business model is concerned because that would have driven us into a very different GTM model. Right. how do you work on, the free networking effect? They were very good at networking effects. Yeah. So they had like, after you record five videos, you have to bring in someone to record the sixth video.
They had a lot of networking effects built into it. We thought, okay, that’s not the way to do it. So the business model determines how you want to do the GTM. Yeah. So that was a big failure as far as the success is concerned. Again, I would pick the same, story that I left, right, right where we pivoted into sales and marketing. We started focusing more and more on sales, and dropped the marketing. So that focus of ICP gave us that, good uptick when the, Covid hit. So that two, two and a half years were a good journey for us, where we were able to double down ourselves into the sales, the sales, ICP, especially the SDR and the EAS. So that brought us a lot of focus for us on what we want to build inside the product that reflected on our GTM, that reflected on our GTM notion of SEO, or how you want to onboard your influencers. So that actually channeled all our energy towards one single.
Yeah.
So how.
Did you it had to?
You raise a very important point. I mean, people keep talking about all the accomplished founders and business builders. They always say to start with a niche because riches are in the niches. And narrow your ICP. Go down narrow first, but too narrow. You need to go broad because you don’t know which of your ISPs and which of your offers will find traction. You don’t know that part. So how did you narrow it down to sales? I mean, what led you to narrow it down to sales? Like what is that thought process like?
Yeah. So there were two important things I would say. Right. so when you said you ought to go broader to become narrow, right? So that is a boon and a bane, I would say, for a horizontal product like us, say, if you have picked a very vertical focus product, then you know what you want to build from day one. Yeah, but you know, you are very horizontal in nature.
You have to try 3 or 4 things parallel. Should I build it for marketing? Should I build it for sales or within sales itself? Should it be for a software-oriented industry or any other industry? So that kind of becomes a bane in what to build, and how to iterate quickly. Bonus you had multiple options, right? You could survive if one market fails the other market. So that is the boon part of it. That’s all we have been surveying for eight years, right? Yes. So it’s a boon and a bane. that so you ought to be very careful when you are building horizontal product. I would say even then you have to pick a niche quickly. So that part we lagged hugely. He took it took like three years to settle down into sales. Right. So that’s a huge lag there. So that’s a key takeaway for me, as an entrepreneur. And I believe that should be passed on to the other people who believe we should be very arrogant in nature. No, don’t go for it.
It could be harassment later. But pick a niche, build it, then prove revenue. Then whatever. Financing. If you want financing or bootstrap whatever you are, then you can expand into other areas. Right. So so that’s a good learning there. Now how did we settle on sales? It was a very interesting thing. It was purely based on data. So we as I said right. We had 800 signups per day or 1500 signups on the weekdays, all of these. So we started digging into the data, how people are using it, and who are they.
Can we identify them? We do not have tools like Clearbit, etc. then. So we did our own research. We took the data. We went and understood, some calls when somebody asked for customer support, we go on a call, understood what kind of videos they were recording. Why are they recording? Yeah. One interesting thing that came up was Doctor Outreach.
So that’s where we kind of double down into that particular niche of serving the market for the IT and the internet software companies.
And this also coincided with Covid around that. Yes. Yeah.
So we launched our sales product on 20 19th November in Salesforce. Dreamforce.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then five months of COVID hit April. So we doubled down on that.
Understood. So 2020 through for the next one, 2 or 3 years.
I would say two and a half years. Yeah. Two. And I would say it was a good journey. But 23 of course, you know, all the financing dropped off the market had a big hit. Even now, it has not come up with the orders coming in. So that transition was a different story. I’ll come back to you later. But these two years, it was a very good journey because once we picked the ICP, we understood how to reach out to them, what content to write, and how to onboard influencers. Influencers played an important role in our initial uptake into that journey, because we had a video as a biggie there, so it had a lot of integrations, all of this, so we had to crack through that.
So initially once we fixed the ECP, it became very laser-focused for us to build that quick GTM motion, be it building round tables or etc. It was it was clearly laid out. Of course, there were multiple experiments within that. GTM how do you want to go a mid-market or above mid-market or SMB? Those were the journeys we had. We had some experience. But within that segment, within that, ICP understood.
And then so you’re focusing on SDR and ESE as your ICP, and then you’re constantly getting data as to, okay, which geographies, which industries, whether small, medium or mid-market was enterprise. And so eventually, I mean big takeaways. And this is what I want to reinforce to the listeners as well. Right? When we talk about go to market. Even when we started this recording, we always said go to market is constantly evolving. That’s number one. It’s a living entity and it goes back to ICP. And even knowing your ICP is a constant journey.
You also brought up an important point, which is once you nail your ICP and your focus that will determine and drive your content, your overall go-to-market, your different channels like the influencers that you mentioned, and even your pricing.
Yes, yes, it made a lot of difference for us. It brought in a lot of clarity from top to bottom. The previous 1 or 2 years, we were kind of always in flux. That actually plays a very detrimental role for the organization itself. But the clarity brings in a lot of motion, a lot of, momentum. So I would say focus on that. ICP will bring in a lot of clarity downstream, even to the product. So I would say that’s the key aspect of it. You fix on one ICP, it may fail or it may win, but at least you know the clarity. Then you can decide. You can have some set milestones, then you can switch to the other ICP. If this is not working, fixing one ICP is the best way forward.
Yeah, and what are the typical use cases? And when SDR, an alias, used Hippo like was it pre-sales for sales?
So it was kind of the cold. Outreach is the important use case people were using it for. And photo ops got it for the outreach, bringing them to meetings. All of this and the EAS were using it more of like, a bottom-of-the-funnel engagement of sharing documents, shouting demos, all of these. So a year where kind of cold outreach follow-ups, all of these. They were using it. And the key is they’re using it in the bottom of the funnel of sending out contact documents as a video or, sending demos, all of these custom demos. All of these, they were doing it.
Got it. So what what were your ISPs like? The stress and ease. Why did they love your product versus alternatives like Loom and Vineyard?
Yeah. So, there are a couple of interesting things, right? And the ICB also it also includes industry, right?
At one point in time when we took the data, there were a total of 120 industries that were using out. Right. There were product companies that were in our industry. There were thousands of them using it. There were hundreds. There were even tens. But you had like 120 industries. So we had to narrow it down to the top 2 or 3. And typically it was professional services and internet software companies all of these. So we kind of focused on that and the insurance or the financial segment alone. So once we decided on that, then we took the customer journey with them. Understood what they were trying to achieve with it. So one example, I would say the sales page, as we call it, the videos earlier. All right. Even everyone, including Zoom. Everyone. we used to send the video, on a page with nothing there. So we call it the video page. But once we started talking to the SDR, everything, the video page was a segue from the email to some page.
Right. And people don’t come back. So they have to stay there. They have to watch under it. So that became a good canvas for them to be branded, and sell whatever other things they need to send collateral. So that brought in a huge approach. So in fact, we were the first or second to build those sales pages in the video market itself. Nice. So everybody followed that. So that was a good learning. So once we built that it became a sticky point for the end customers. Right. So they can learn everything about that outreach from there. So yeah they don’t have to go back to the email. There were a lot of drops. When people switch back to emails they don’t switch. Right. So those were our learnings. So this ICP brought in that confidence to dig deeper into their workflows rather than not stick at the top of the workflow load. Can you build it across their engagement points? Yeah. So we built in LinkedIn web ground sorry web backgrounds.
All of these came because when we were talking to them these were the pain points. This is what I first do. This is what I can do. So can I build the video journey through their workflows itself? Right. And we integrate it into HubSpot Salesforce outreach so people can create videos from there. So we were again the first of it. We did deeper integration. So that’s why I said that brought out a lot of clarity for us.
Yeah, yeah.
You also bring up another important point, which is the whole I mean, it doesn’t depend if you, I mean, it doesn’t really matter if you want to call it a job to be done framework or whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, for this SDR a, in the different day-to-day tasks, which of those are you really simplifying or adding value?
Yes, yes. So one key thing I would like to bring in as an anecdote, not as a GTM, is understanding these frameworks would have always been helpful to us.
So we were doing it and then learning how this is what they call it. Yeah, but it should have been the other way around. I felt so right. So we should know what is gdb we should know what is GTM perspective of what is upstream and downstream. So those kinds of things we were kind of doing a trial and error versus understanding that this is how you should do things, right? So. So, that that yeah, that’s a hard learning we had. Yeah.
And of course, and of course, I mean, for mature organizations, they do these quarterly or annual workshops, our, off-sites. And that’s where a lot of these things, they bring in consultants like me, like for example, I am going to help like an enterprise level, a company in early, like next year, like in February, March timeframe to help them plan their 2025 growth motion. Right. And that’s where I’m going to bring in and educate them around. These are different best practices. These are different frameworks.
And the output of that would be the blueprint they’ll go and execute for the next 3 or 4 quarters.
Yes.
So that is the big missing point I would say. So we were never there about the challenger model. Mid-pack model. Those were all hindsight when we started doing them, we understood these are the things we should look at. Then fine-tune it. Actually, we should have adopted it earlier. Yeah, of course, they are not perfect, but at least it gives you a guideline, right? How to do it structurally correct. We were not very structured. So that was a bigger lag there.
Understood. So how is Hippo and where are you guys right now? I mean looks like you are in another iteration of your go-to-market journey so you can spend a couple of minutes just talking about that.
Yes.
So, one important aspect we found in the 22 and 23 journey was adoption. So though we were the best-fit product for that ICP, the adoption rate was less than 50%.
Assume an edge. A team of 100 have bought our product. Less than 4050 people only were using the product. So people were still really, camera shy or they did not have the time, or it took longer time for them to be perfect on the video and send it across. It became a very big adoption problem. So we brought in templates. We brought in some lip sync AI in 2022 itself. We brought in that are trying to solve this problem. So all of this where they’re trying to connect that need. But the boom of AI, clearly, helped us overcome this barrier to the creation of videos. so that was a re-inventing part for us. So we had the downstream of it hosting, personalization, and interactivity. The creation was always, hit or miss. We created templates. We had some, smaller lip sync models, but all of these, it was not making a cut. But with the Genii now we have brought in text to video. We have brought in avatars. Your custom avatars.
We are the only ones we have, walking, talking avatars, moving authors. So that brought in a huge, transition on how we perceived this video adoption itself. So this year, we kind of reinvented ourselves as an AI video platform, focusing on creation, hosting, and personalization as a holistic platform. And we are solving it. And here again, that’s a good learning where we found the physical world companies.
I would say the companies that sell physical products or services were quick to adopt this AI, along with the delivery models and the personalization, like your hospitality, which includes your travel, your restaurants, and your hotels. then you had automotive, manufacturing, and real estate. All of these are our core ISPs. Now, we do have the software companies use our product, in that, what do you call the SDR motion, etc? But these companies are lapping it up. like anything for us. and say, hey, this is solving my biggest problem of showcasing my physical product, physical services. So that’s a good journey.
And it’s a good reinvention. We have done.
So. So talk to us about one use case or one example of like you mentioned hospitality industry. So how are they using your newest incarnation of the Hippo AI product?
Yeah.
So again it’s a learning right. it’s a wonderful learning. We had a couple of, hospitality companies who manage like 8000 hotels, use our product again in that cold outreach. But when we went on a call, there was one interesting, nugget they left. What was? It was 50% of, bigger hotels comes, revenue comes from, what do they call it as mice, meeting, convention events, basically group bookings, right, for conferences, etc.. Yeah. In that sales cycle is where they were trying to include videos like putting the GM space and sending an invite, mail, etc. but a couple of things they were struggling with one, the virtual tours of their hotels, which is an important aspect in any meeting booking event. And the proposals were these. And so those two came to us saying, hey, these are key, pain points.
We are now stuck with text or PDFs etc. Yeah. And they were not engaging. They were very cumbersome to create. So we have now automated all of those into videos. So all your virtual tools are very automated. Now you have ten meeting rooms. Now this particular group wants typical types of meeting rooms then creating virtual tours about those meeting rooms and that just in facilities were done in minutes now. Yeah. So that was one bigger use case. We call it mice and Smurf in the hospitality industry. That is their core focus area, the B2B. Then you have the B2C like welcoming videos, talking about the things to do in that particular place once you go to that, city. So those kind of things also, we do it on the B2C. So these two are the important aspects of hospitality.
Very interesting. Yeah. I’m eager to see how this journey plays out and bring you and the team more success for sure in the very near future. Yeah. Yes. So being respectful and mindful of the time, we are now entering the last phase of this conversation and it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 15 minutes.
Yeah.
Time just flew.
Yes.
So yes it was good.
Discussing it is always a good sign. so going back again, big picture who are like the couple of people who played an influential role in your career and mentoring.
Of course. the biggest mentors, the Zoe entity as such. Yeah, right. There are multiple people there who, have already kind of molded us, into who we are. And of course, my mentor. so and then you have other peers and friends, right? The peer community. So I would say the SAS Boomi community is a good, learning ground that they were able to understand, like whatever I told. Right. The frameworks I did not learn through all of this. I learned it from them. So there were a lot of sessions going on. So that became and we had a surge, which was Sequoia, the community. So those things so I would say the founder community is a good learning ground.
Very good.
And then if you were to turn back the clock and go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self on day one of your go-to-market journey?
I would say foremost fix the ICP, fix the positioning.
What do you want to solve it? That’s a yeah.
Yeah for sure. And that’s a good way to end. I would add one more thing, which is to always keep in mind and be aware that go to market is a constantly evolving journey. I mean, it’s never fixed, never perfect. Even though you said fix, you go with that and then constantly.
You can iterate later, you can iterate later. Don’t go without anything like who you want to solve, what problem you want to solve, how much they’re going to pay, how long they are going to use it, and what is the stickiness of the product. If you don’t understand a particular niche, then you are lost. You may fail in your first attempt, but it gives you a sense of accomplishment saying these are the things I should correct when you actually take the next ICP. But without that ICP you are spread across. So absolutely I would.