This is a post by Jesse Pujji. Jessi a serial entrepreneur that lives in the US. He has:
- Bootstrapped to an 8-figure exist with his previous startup, Ampush
- Is currently building GatewayX, a venture studio that he plans to bootstrap to $1B+
- Executive Chairman & Founder of GrowthAssistant.com
- ex-McKinsey Consultant
Guest Author: Jesse Pujji
A villager from rural India turned a rough draft of a networking app into a $5+ BILLION SaaS Giant Here’s the true story of how he’s bootstrapping a 100-year startup and giving it all back.
1/ Sridhar Vembu grew up the son of a farmer in a small village outside Thanjavur. He dreamed of going to IIT and then the USA. He did both. Got his PHD at Princeton. Went to work at Qualcomm, and took a professorship in Australia. 2 weeks after moving, he quit…
2/ It was 1996. India wasn’t the tech powerhouse it is today, but the talent was there. His friend from IIT, Tony Thomas, had written a rough draft of new networking software and needed help selling it. Sridhar joined him as Chief Evangelist and AdventNet was born…
3/ They found a niche selling to Japanese electronics manufacturers. Vembu loved learning about the 100+ year old companies they were working with. He began to develop his vision for how AdventNet could grow for centuries. When a VC approached in 2000, he stopped the deal…
4/ It required them to exit and liquidate at the end of 7 years. That went against everything he was building. He never considered outside money again. When the markets crashed in 2001/2002 and took them from 150 customers to 3, they had enough in the bank to survive and pivot.
5/ 2003 saw them launch ManageEngine, which quickly became the premier IT ops suite for middle market and enterprise customers, including over 60% of the Fortune 500. They had found a winning formula: • Lower Cost • Largest Product Suite • Massive Indian Engineering Base
6/ Vembu knew cloud and SaaS were the future, so they started building an office suite to reach the consumer market. When Google docs launched in 2005, he pivoted again. “It was easier to compete with Salesforce than Google, so we built a CRM”
7/ The target market was the small office or SOHO (small office, home office) – SOHO .com wasn’t available though… Zoho .com was close enough but expensive. The team pushed him to buy it. Zoho Docs & CRM were born…
8/ They focused on outcompeting with the breadth and cost of their offerings, fueled by a massive engineering team. In 2007 Salesforce, the market leader, had 100 engineers. Zoho had 600. Today, Zoho hires and trains 100s of engineers direct from HS through their Schools.
9/ Zoho Schools of Learning pay their students to attend while training them in the most important skills for software development. Today, 15% of Zoho’s staff doesn’t have a degree. Those talented engineers are retained through a combo of location and a massive R&D budget.
10/ Zoho Schools are in Tamil Nadu, India and allow their students to remain nearby their often rural families. Engineers are problem solvers, and Zoho is always solving new problems. As part of their 100+ year strategy, they reinvest 50% of profits into new projects!
11/ Profits stay high because Zoho spends 5% of what their competitors do on marketing. They let their products speak for themselves. They love to market in unconventional ways, like trolling Salesforce in 2013 by crashing their global user conference…
12/ That branding (alongside a great product) has paid off big time, as Zoho continues to grow at a ~30% each year. In 2021, they reached over 60MM users and $650MM+ in revenue
13/ That continued hypergrowth is a direct result of investing in the company… Both team and product. “Zoho runs on Zoho” With the launch of Zoho One, they offer everything a company needs at $1/employee/month – consolidating their core offerings. Not bad for a farm boy.
14/ @svembu is one of my favorite entrepreneurs! • A bootstrapped billionaire • Will not sell • Invests in people and community Some of my favorite quotes: “Beware times when money looks too easy” “We’re social distancing from the bubble” “I’m an experimental economist”
15/ Sources
- https://smh.com.au/business/small-business/barefoot-billionaire-sridhar-vembu-built-a-tech-giant-you-ve-never-heard-of-20190415-p51e8i.html…
- https://forbesindia.com/article/big-bet/cover-story-sridhar-vembus-vision-from-the-village/59833/1…
- https://startuptalky.com/zoho-success-story/…
- https://fubbi.co/zoho-built-billion-dollar-business/…
- https://fridaymagazine.ae/life-culture/people-profiles/why-silicon-valley-billionaire-sridhar-vembu-returned-to-rural-india-1.2310751…
- http://brahminsforsociety.com/tamil/2017/01/11/the-bootstrapped-buddhist-how-sridhar-vembu-built-zoho/…
- https://zoho.com/blog/crm/dont-call-it-guerrilla-marketing-how-zoho-helped-salesforce-com-customers-at-dreamforce.html
16/ Why I love this story, it’s a reminder that: 1. Cash is king 2. Product teams beat sales teams 3. You can do it all in house 4. Culture builds companies And that anyone anywhere can do it…
If you enjoyed this, RT the whole thread and follow me @jspujji for more. I’m building the largest community of entrepreneurs growing off their own profits!
Check out the original tweet here.
