Product10x is a deep tech accelerator for early-stage Enterprise SaaS startups. It focuses on product-led growth by tapping into its one-on-one founder advisory and operator roles. Product10x co-creates Enterprise SaaS startups using AI, and product-led growth expertise, by focusing on Digital Health, Education Technology, HR Tech, and Future of Work industries.
Suresh Madhuvarsu, the founding partner of Product10x, has more than fifteen years of experience with Enterprise SaaS and mobile products that scaled to over $100M in revenue over five years. Suresh was also part of acquisitions by Oracle & Software AG. Suresh built several emerging technology innovation product teams, scaling groups of engineers and product managers across the world. These enterprise-level products leverage the technology of IoT, drones, blockchain, AI, and chatbots.
In 2006 Suresh founded a startup called WizKidz that focused on social networking for kids. The company promoted social interactions for parents to help them find the best local trainers or mentors for whatever kids wanted to learn. "Think of it as Yelp for kids," says Suresh. As a technical founder, he built the "best product" possible. WizKidz grew to 2500+ users in a matter of 12 months, raising over $100k in funding from friends and family while also focusing on sales and marketing. The team kept the company afloat for 18 months before the financial downturn hit the economy and they had to move on with lots of lessons.
Next, Suresh joined two super early-stage startups: JackBe and Skire, both with operations in the Bay Area. As an early employee, he greatly contributed to the growth of both companies. During these experiences, Suresh learned how to build products and teams, and most importantly how to validate products with customers.
Industry veterans and successful people always talk about how important it is to focus. The trick, however, is deciding what to focus on when you have a thousand important tasks to complete every day. In addition, when adding new leaders to a company, it is challenging to let go of some of your tasks. "At times you will be doing things that other leaders are supposed to be doing. But you must decide where everyone needs to spend their energies, continuously learning and course-correcting when necessary," says Suresh.
One of Suresh's mentors advised him to always look for breadth and depth to completely understand and solve a problem. Looking into the breadth of a problem helps you connect the dots and assemble the right team, and understanding the depth of a problem helps you estimate its complexity. Suresh applies this breadth and depth approach to almost every business situation. Some founders focus only on the breadth and getting the big picture, whereas others become experts in one technical area. Using both approaches in tandem, Suresh is able to solve all business and product challenges that he faces.
One simple mantra for Product10x is continuous learning through empathy. This is harder than it appears, but he is a firm believer in emphasizing empathy as a culture and leading by example with it in an organization. All players must listen to each other and respect the agreed-upon vision while sharing common goals. This then radiates out to the customers, where hearing and understanding their challenges is crucial for how the company can help them today.
A decade ago software was eating the world and now AI is eating the software. Suresh has worked in several traditional industries such as Automotive, Manufacturing, Utilities, Construction, and HR Tech, and he sees how these industries are getting disrupted by AI and automation. Although this technology is in its infancy stage, the current results are outstanding. Product10x contributes to this space by collaborating with some of the portfolio companies, providing the right financial learning based on user reading habits and financial behaviors. As an example, one of Product10x's portfolio startups provides great customer insights when they are shopping on a website while helping the business owners to cross and upsell. Similarly, another portfolio company helps increase construction safety by using computer vision and predictive models.
Product10x believes that the combination of AI and the Cloud will help companies automate their traditional business processes and help to focus on innovation rather than on continuous operations.
Suresh can foresee Product10x evolving into a micro-VC and a co-creation company that helps founders create successful deep tech startups. You can't ignore the news about successful organizations like Asana, Slack, Datadog, Airtable, and Calendly growing into billion-dollar companies. Product10x, however, is focused on helping founders build $250+ million dollar companies, thriving from the right support from industry experts along with the right GTM strategy.
The company's goal is simple; help build successful deep tech and SaaS startups in the Digital Health, EduTech, HRTech, and Future of Work industries.
According to Suresh, it is crucial to understand your customers' problems before trying to solve them. This empathy is not solely related to understanding customer problems, but necessary to be a great leader within the organization. Building a team is difficult, but the ability to understand and think in the shoes of others is extremely important for building a great team that understands the vision. In early-stage startups, every employee must be a leader to bring in maximum productivity and thus contributing to making users successful.
"Lastly, recruiting is the most important task for you as a leader. Your vision and the company roadmap are the tools you have to influence other leaders to join your company. Remember that every employee that you bring on has the power to make it or break it. Hire in a deliberate fashion, bringing in the best talent that matches your vision during the initial days of the startup," says Suresh.
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