SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Future Ventures Podcast on Scaling with Clarity. On today's show, we have Nirash Singh, founder and CEO of Big Binary in Nito. Nirash has spent more than a decade building a remote version software company focused on quality, engineering, open source culture, and sustainable growth long before remote work became mainstream. Through Nito, he is now challenging the SaaS industry by building affordable alternatives to bloated enterprise tools while rethinking pricing, pricing product simplicity and the future of software in the AI year. Today we're going to explore sustainable entrepreneurship, remote first culture, AI's impact on software, and why simplicity may become the biggest competitive advantage in SaaS. Nirash, welcome to the stage. And uh is SaaS dead?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

First of all, yeah, thank you for having me here. Um no, SaaS is not dead, so we'll talk about it. Yes, it's nowhere close to being dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah. Um, so why don't we start with uh by double-clicking who is Nirash? How did you come to do and what you do it now?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Yeah, so uh as you mentioned in the intro, I've been running a Big Bang, the consulting company, for the last close to be and 15 years now. And um all our engineers are based out of India, and one differentiating factor we started from the very beginning was slightly higher quality of engineers, and that has uh served us well for the last 15 years, and the last four or five years we have been building uh slightly, slowly. Uh Neto, not a hypergrowth story, uh, definitely, but um, all the years that we built software for others, we learned a few lessons, we saw some of the frictions, and we are trying to solve it in our own way. Uh, only time will tell, like uh if that works out or not. But so far we are having um fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

That's amazing. Um, were you based out of Miami when when you started to build the the company, or were you based out of India? And then kind of like I I mean, I'm assuming that some of the heritage kind of helped you as to why uh like why you you've decided to build remote first.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, so the I am from India, but I started building it when I was in DC area, and after that I moved to Miami, then I moved to Bay Area, then came back to Miami. So all this throughout I had been here, but uh I mean the India's multi-billion dollar company, Inforces TCS, they have built it with the ingenious-based art of India. And the way I saw it 15 years ago was that every day that you are waking up, the next day, the bridge between the companies are like a physical distance will actually is melting away. It might not be visible on that particular day, that particular week. And for me, like the slightly jarring moment was when a friend of mine was working at Oracle, he said that he's in Oracle Tower one and Oracle Tower two. Uh, it takes so much time to go to the office. Uh, in between the different meeting rooms, they have a remote call. And I'm like, okay, so here people are coming to the office, and in the office they are doing remote calls, right? Yeah, and I thought, hmm, okay, I mean that's the way things are going, and more and more tools will come. And that's exactly what happened at that time. There was no Zoom, nothing like that. Um, so I thought that okay, we'll get started with the team in India and we'll continue to build on top of it so that we get better at uh managing the remote team. Um, that's how I think that started here.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

What's been the hardest thing about uh building a remote team? I mean, I I now there's so many different companies that uh that they're offering remote support to remote workers, and I mean, certainly like our own company, we have an uh a remote team in Buenos Aires that we've had for the last five years and a remote team in Dominican Republic. So for us, it's it is the same. But um for for the people that maybe just kind of tow in with the idea, what what what advice do you have for them?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I mean, first of all, everybody has to figure things out for themselves because every company has their own culture, what they want. I feel like in the beginning, uh the biggest thing, not just the beginning, like first year, could be this, uh, especially for the people who are in the leadership position, this sense of um like control. It feels like you have no idea what people are doing because they are remote, right? Yeah, and when you're used to seeing people in the office, and then when people go remote, they try to bring the same culture to remote. For example, um, let's say not having writing everything. So, what happens is in the office you tend to talk to people. Well, in the remote world, if you try to talk, then you are on the Zoom call all the time, and that's not very productive. So you need to change your culture and start writing a little bit more. Um, either that's on Slack or GitHub or your own uh wiki or your own project management tool somewhere, but writing has to be part of more uh of the culture, and uh making this change, like when you're going from office to remote, bringing about all this change, all these things together, it becomes a little bit um uh chaotic. Can be.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

For sure. Are there um kind of like what does your technology stack look like in terms of enabling the remote first uh coucher? Are you on Atlassian products? Kind of like how do you keep the level of communication coordination amongst the federated teams?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, so for us, everything is on GitHub. GitHub is the source of truth and Slack, but unlike other companies, we don't we our motto is that the way I said it, nothing important should happen in Slack. Important in the sense that Slack is for hey, uh, can uh let's say some for some reason you need to have a call for something, or is it hey, I'm not able to find the document. Where is the document? It's a document, but the discussion should not happen in Slack at all. Anytime things are going slightly more involved, we just create a GitHub issue. The reason is that GitHub has the longevity. Uh, Slack can have the longevity, but you need to be on the paid plan and you need to be at search. But um, we are intentionally not on the paid plan, we have been using it for years because I don't want people to be don't want to be searching. I want people to be aware that Slack is not a source of truth. And the main reason for that is uh I feel like the tools that you use that has an impact on how you work. For example, Slack is not good for discussion, not because Slack is there or or um uh uh you will not be able to search, it's the expectation. Search is chat. Chat, what does chat mean? That hey, two people are chat are typing, or Maxim is waiting, like it's not waiting, but I know that I'm chatting with you. So I cannot write a long paragraph, right? I mean, I can, but that's not the norm. You chat with people, and chatting is gets in the way of thinking. And I love email and github. The reason for that is that there is no instant, there's no expectation that things need to be instant. I can take my time, and many times what happens is that I'm writing something, and then in my mind, something comes up. So I pause, I look at the ceiling, then I rewrite it, and then I say, shit, okay, then wait, okay, I need to check this. And that friction, that slowness is good. That slowness is good. We are not in a digging a ditch business. We are in the creative economy, we are in the information economy. We need to think, and the whole purpose, the reason why the other person is asking some question, you are chatting. Why are you chatting? You're chatting because there is an information gap. That person knows something that you don't know, or you know something, that person does not know how to bridge this gap. How, if you're receiving the message, then well, you need to receive the message and then you need to ask the question thoughtfully. If you have the answer, you need to think about many times. I tried this thing and it becomes so long, I said, no, no, no, let's just put it in the wiki. And then I post it on the wiki and then I post a link to it. But the moment I post the link to it, I click on it and I said, okay, I need to edit it. So take time, but those things will not happen if you're using Slack.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, uh, I couldn't agree more. I think that uh critical thinking is um hugely undervalued task, and at the moment, like we're almost like we're outsourcing thinking to LLMs. Um, and so I mean it for for a reason there's a saying slow down to speed up. Um by slowing down your thought process, you end up coming up with a with a much more creative or much more thoughtful response. Um, so I couldn't agree more with everything that you're saying. Um it's it's super important for for people to slow down.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Um and and if you use the right tool, then that tool forces you to slow down. Like if you you're not going to write one-liner uh GitHub. I mean you can, but typically you use it for you take the space to express yourself. Over there in in Slack, the same thing you will split it across five lines because you're chatting and there is expectation that there should be some message. So, yes, that's why we use Slack only to point to other things, but not necessarily to discuss.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Makes sense. Um, Niras, you've talked about borrowing heavily from the intuition of open source community. What specific principles from open source um have shaped the couch and operations of Big Binary as well as Neto?

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Uh I will say a lot. Uh so the history is that before I started Big Binary, I was working uh somewhere uh in DC uh and waiting for my green card to come. And at that time, I at nighttime I had some uh mental firepower available, so I started contributing to uh Ruby on Rails. And I would be getting a lot more energy out of those contributions, would be learning from people, and I would see that my goodness, smart people are getting together, they're discussing everything over mailing list. At that time, there was no GitHub. Um talking about pre-GitHub era, and we will be sending patches and receiving patches and things like that, and still the work was happening while at my daytime job in the office. We have so many meetings, then we'll have a lunch together, half the team, because they will go for lunch in the cafeteria. There you'll talk about the projects and things like that. Then there is a coffee break, still you're talking and the meetings, and the work is not happening, and things are not going fast enough. Um, so I really like this style of open source where you're discussing things and moving fast and making concrete decisions and things like that. And there's no assigned leader as such, whoever shows the most interest, whoever pushes more for a particular feature. Okay, you you take the ball and you run with it. Um, so we and also the important thing is that there are no meetings, right? And there are only mailing lists, you can post the message. So from there, I got the culture of writing. And when it came to uh Big Binary, we pretty much instituted the same thing. Yes, not unlike open source thing, in open source world, you can't have a meeting at all. Here we will have meeting as the last resort, but first you try out uh posting the messages, seeing the other person, the house, the person is responding, and I think that's very fruitful because by the time you jump into the meeting, you have not solved the problem. That's why you're having the meeting. In the meantime, two, three back and forths has happened. When I talk about that, then some of my friends have said that okay, it might have been easier that you jump in a call and first time you solve the problem. It's not the same because first time when you jump into the problem call, you're talking about you have not yet experienced those problems. You yeah, the the thing that we would have discussed in the first time through the GitHub messages, those things you're talking. It's not like you go through the full thread because it takes time to process things you ask this question, you discuss. Oh, I see then. So things are sequential. So by the time you get on a call, there is more context available for you to discuss and able to bring. So, anyway, so unlike uh open source world, we will have the call, but call as the last resort, a strong writing culture, uh making uh GitHub pull requests and things like that. So you can see even today, 15 years later, GitHub is our source of truth, all because of this open source culture. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Um, if if we're just to veer off a little bit off course, but continue down the open source path. Do you have a prediction as to what LLM models are going to be successful, open source or closed?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

It's very hard to predict at this time what will happen. But one thing is very sure that the value of open source software has uh rather than unfortunately, I feel like getting enhanced, it has become diminished. Because if LLM can write the code for me, I don't need to include the whole uh of uh uh the open source thing. Another thing about the open source is that well, they are battle tested and all the things is great, but maybe you need just a piece of that. So what happens? But you end up bringing the whole thing, right? Because that thing is is not really a small that you will hand type it, but uh you will uh opt for a particular library and then you will use certain parts of the library, but um still you're bringing in the whole library into the system. In the case of LLM, well, they're just writing the code for you directly. So certain parts of uh open source you don't need to bring in, that means they will be less used. Um so they are definitely feels like the going forward open source. I mean, there are a lot of open source tools like FFMEG and uh and uh VS Code and all those things, and tons of React, et cetera, they'll continue to be popular and do well. But um, yeah, LLMs for smaller and minor things that for smaller utility libraries, I feel like LLM will just inline you in your code base and you don't need those libraries.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Uh nearash, um like you early in the conversation you pointed out in terms of hacking, in terms of how do you how do you speed up things by having the chat, having the communication, surface the issues, surface the context. So when you're in a meeting, you're actually dealing and resolving the issues. Um but I've also through um through some of the research that they've done, I found one thing fascinated your willingness to keep engineers on the bench rather than maximizing utilization. Like I I came from uh from the big four. I spent 13 years, 13 years between Ernst and Young and and Deloitte. And it was like a badge of honor. Like, how many hours are you gonna put? Like 60, 70, 80, 90 hours. I've had a week with 100 hours. Um, why is that strategically important to you? Like, is it like the soak time, the think time for people to to have the ability to think? Kind of like walk me through your thinking.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, so the once again, the important thing for me is that you're in the creative world. So in the creative world, your mind mind needs to be sharp. And how many hours can you sustain in a day? Uh, maybe for a day, maybe for a week, maybe two weeks, but beyond that, yeah, you cannot. I mean, as you as I keep saying, you're not digging a ditch. If you are doing a some kind of march or you're in a military march, you can do that for a couple of months. But here, more than two weeks, it will be extremely difficult. So, yeah, I'm aware of uh all these uh companies for Wall Street and Big Four pushing people for longer hours, and not necessarily, I feel like if that's a very healthy uh thing to do. People tend to make an and another thing is a narrative. Like when people are saying that they are working 14, 16 hours, some people for some time they are doing it, and I do it, but if in if it goes beyond one week now, you are doing you're living your life also in this 14 to 16 hours, which is necessary, but it's just that you are in the office or you're in the work mode for a longer period of time, so it seems like that you're working 16 hours. It's very hard to work those many hours, yeah. And and in the end, what is the ultimate goal? You are trying to put out something which is uh are you going to make uh another clone thing like which has already been repeated number of times, or are you trying to build something which is truly creative and you're proud of it and you're thinking it through and it can be answerable to uh to questions that are okay, I thought through this angle, that angle. So for that, you need to have not only work sustainable place, but also you need some bench time too, so that I mean I'm running a consulting company. Consultants need to try out new things so that we can advise our clients that hey, we tried this thing that did not work, we tried this thing that did not work. Uh and and we need to do it that on our own time because if you do it on the client, then well, it's like we are learning. That's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

You know, it uh I mean absolutely it makes sense. Um I'm I'm I'm curious, and and and and I think this is very much um um underwriting, underpinning your focus on quality engineering. Like you you you need to have this time. It's kind of like when like to use an analogy when you're writing a letter or when you're writing a paper, um, the first draft is a pretty pretty bad draft, and then as you go through the editing process, it becomes better and better and better. And so it's the same thing if you're constantly just chugging away, like you're not going to produce like the like the highest quality product you can. But I I'm I'm curious. Um given you focus on uh quality, given you focus on creativity, kind of like when you're thinking about building products, um, how do you think about like uh the user experience, the user interface? How do you ingest creativity? Like obviously you can pull libraries with with uh like high fidelity designs, but but you're repeating kind of like what's done, like how do you think about like uh you know coloring outside of the uh outside of the lines or or thinking outside of the box?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

I am not the best person to answer the question because I don't think out of the box too much. Here is what I am trying to do when we are building the needy product. We go through the like uh there are people who just think and they can vision come to them and they build a great and beautiful product, not me. What I like is to go through multiple iterations. The first version is extremely important, which is it should serve my needs. Like what's the point of building something which is beautiful and beautifully uh beautifully user experience when I don't even need that thing or I need that thing very rarely, right? So, first thing is it needs to be a utility, something that you use are using, or your friends, or your hopefully potential customers, they are going to use and benefit from it. That's the single most important thing. It needs to be uh a utility, a good utility tool. And and and after that, once we start seeing, then we start seeing that oh, I see, when I type it, then this is not this thing doesn't happen, or time and again I need to do this thing, and this needs to this is taking me three clicks. Well, why don't we surface it here, bring some shortcuts and things like that? So I feel like it goes through multiple iterations, and then it gets better. At least that's how I see things. I'm not saying that that's for everybody. There are people who are really smart at hey, this needs to be built. That's not me. I go through so this is the reason why we build a lot of products, early iterations, put it out there, something sticks, something doesn't stick, and something we ourselves are very excited about it. But guess what? After six months, we are not using it, so it's very hard to predict like which one will stick, which will not stick. Forget about the what used customers will like. We don't like it, and that's okay. That's okay in the sense that that's how human nature is. We buy books, we buy dresses, we buy our toys. Everybody has a different kind of toy. Uh they buy, and then okay, after you bought it and you brought it home, okay, it's sitting on the shelf for a very long time, right? Because it was impulse buying at that time. Similarly, we also do impulse software development. As that I have come to know about impulse buying and impulse building software, now I try to tame it. I said, okay, no new ideas unless I have marinated on that idea for a couple of weeks. If two weeks later I'm still excited about it, let's do it. And then we do it and still I'm not excited about it either during the development or when it's done and it's on the side and we are not paying attention to it. Um yeah, so as far as the uh uh UX and other improvements are concerned, the first thing is that we need to use it and then. to implement got it got it um when you're uh ideating do you like you it said you want to give it two weeks time do you like just use the index cards do you do figma designs kind of like kind of like what's your pro uh process uh filtering what must be done versus what's nice to done or kind of like what ideas do you pursue versus what ideas do you uh bin no no no so first say that's why the first version like v1 is like it you don't need any i figma nothing is needed why because you're going to get to the heart of the matter uh matter which needs to be done for example right now this uh um month we started building nitosign uh why i was not looking for into sign but if you look at our community members everybody is asking for it hey can I we have a docusign alternative docusign is very expensive docusign is very expensive I said fine okay after yeah listening to them for more than a year we decided to build it so we decided to take up the work early this month as thing and our goal is that by the end of this month we should be uh we are currently using a few products ourselves we should be uh getting out of it so in one month just deliver it it's for us right so UX does not matter the important thing is that it should be functional it should be stable it should be working so that starting uh June 1st we are using our stories and then starting June we will start uh improving it uh so first thing is that just what we are building just it it should work and for that Figma and all the things we don't have time for it because we don't know if it will work or not will we like it or not will we use it or not so just get a version quickly out there.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Once it's out there next then after that we start improving things and then we'll see sometimes Figma uh depending on the need we do it but I just feel like in general moving at a faster speed and getting things done and the product production and then get a feel for it right there and then if needed we will adjust things uh near actually this is a good segue into um um uh a question that that that that that is is renting space in my mind kind of near is taking on crowded SaaS categories like you you mentioned uh sign uh forms ticketing scheduling there's different things that you guys are doing and most people would say that those markets are already won uh I mean like um like this they say for example the the sign product like even Google came up with a product early in the year that that you can use to to sign documents why do you believe that there's still opportunity there kind of like what's driving you to like why a customer is asking for it because you're you're doing a smart thing and you're listening to your customer feedback and if there's demand you're gonna build it if there's no demand they're not gonna build it correct correct uh so multiple things one is that just because Google is building it to Google has a large audience they can push it but it doesn't mean that everybody gets it and everybody is necessarily happy with it.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Uh so why the customers are asking for it because they are like for example I will more than um the uh signature I will say um calendarly uh alternative NeitoCal so Google came out with a scheduling software but it does not meet the needs of most of the people I mean I told our own sorts of people maybe like two people they switched because it's just there in the Google calendar they very rarely use it. But for majority of the people it does not have enough uh bells and whistles same thing with Google form and I'm happy that Google form gets the job for millions if not billions of people but if the moment you need something more for example uh conditional uh uh statements so if you want forms based on conditional and if that is one feature if Google form adds I feel like a lot of these forms companies will be out of business or their business will be reduced a lot but Google hasn't added so far and people uh they're building it another thing is that the one big company can serve the needs of the people but these days our life is such uh so much uh works on the uh online world that you need particular uh feature to make it work and the big companies they just throw it out there and they are um and that's nothing wrong in them they just said they want something which works for most of the people but if you need something else then probably you need to cater to something else and like you need some other products to to meet hey I need this particular feature and they're not responsive right big companies they throw it out there something is not working or uh customer support etc they are not going to entertain so that would be another reason.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

I mean for the big companies I think that the the the graveyard the features and products that they have it's it's pretty big right um for them something has to have like massive commercial success otherwise why bother for them whereas for niche players it may make perfect sense to have it and even after success they shut down things which seems like they're commercially successful and they still they shut down right yeah so so so yeah so that that's a problem and another thing is that people sometimes they like the human touch they somebody they can reach out in case there's something is not working so that could be a bit of a problem yeah um so that's why and uh talking about the uh crowded space uh I feel like uh is it's it's a it's it's a unique take on the software industry where people um uh kind of sometimes this idea of working on something oh which is already done before yeah see the if you look at the humanity most of the things that are built outside the software industry you step out of your building and you see there's a mechanic somebody is building things which the the grocery store guy somebody's baking bread somebody's baking um uh uh uh cake and things majority of the things are not truly innovative and how many people are there who are truly innovative in the world who can do this kind of thing it's great to listen to the speech of that making your dent in the universe the reality is that majority of the people will not be able to make the dent in fact my what I encourage our people our people to come in contact is that first thing is that you need to get to financial freedom meaning that you get to work on the things you want to work and that's a very very very successful life eight billion plus people are there on this world half of the billion four billion people live on two dollars a day you have already made very good life for yourself after that you can start thinking of making a dent in case you want to think otherwise just being a good society good uh society member good citizen of the world is good enough i mean maybe my I'm not that ambitious as Silicon Valley people where I have to make my dent and another thing about the innovation if you take a look at it this the person who innovates and the person who are making incremental improvement the people who make incremental improvement they don't get all the glory so for my example would be car let's say the car so Henry Ford made the car and he gets all the glory but after that say Honda and Toyota they came and they get some recognition for pushing but not as much as um that the guy who actually started the thing but Honda and and look at all over the world a lot of car manufacturing companies are there and Honda did I'm I'm sure they did some and a lot of things innovative but mostly they're not they're known for incremental improvement but over the period of 20 years look at Honda and Toyota cars they have become so reliable do we want to drive the car which was by Hunt by Ford 20 years ago and not so reliable?

SPEAKER_01 30:06

No. So what's wrong with like for example let's say iPhone iPhone it was truly innovative product created by Apple but Samsung did pretty well and they are also printing billions of dollars by after seeing iPhone and they kind of cloned as fast as possible and as accurately as possible right and in in some cases innovated on top of it and Apple had to do the catch up so yes it's nothing wrong in being in the crowded market and doing incremental improvement i mean you will have your shot in the uh in the world and you will be able to shine and that's that's good enough. Yeah and I'm not smart enough to figure out that oh this is a truly innovative thing I'm not that kind of guy and I'm okay with it it's it's fine I will see in the crowded market yeah uh and we'll try to make uh a small we can maybe start first goal is that one one percent of the market share then we'll go from 10 to 5% and 10% another problem I see is that if you truly find something innovative guess what you have to go all in any other guy yeah exactly if you take VG money you have to do there nothing wrong with VC money etc but now you need to go all in meaning that personally your personal life you will have to sacrifice there's no doubt about it and do so that's why it also depends on the temperament of the founder. Do you want to go in all in etc I don't want to go in all in all in means it's too risky. What is that and a lot of people go all in they work hard for four five years and it doesn't work out.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Now now what so good for the people who want to do those kinds of things world definitely needs those people and I appreciate because I benefit from all the work and the risk they take but I'm not going to be one of them no makes I mean everything you're saying absolutely makes sense we you and I think very much alike I I'm a Lin Si Sigma practitioner like as because I spent the last 25 years advising companies and founders and like I mean you're giving examples around the Japanese that like Toyota invented the Toyota quality system right like the like in Lin Six Sigma the word that's used for waste it's called Mura. It's a Japanese word like but if you make incremental improvements day after day after day those stack up significantly um and disruptive innovation really it doesn't happen all that often and um you need to have range of experiences in order and stitch them together in order to come up with something that's truly disruptive new markets new new ideas new like you you're creating new industries but that's more rare than not and it I mean you gave an example around the iPhone yes uh in some ways this was really innovative but a lot of the components already pre-existed so uh I guess the innovative part was them assembling them um they of course there were new components but Apple is not known for being the pioneer po Apple is known for being a fast follower correct yeah so yeah 100% agree yeah and and there is a room for innovation at your own level in every single Apple as you rightly said is good at assembling things they picked up Steve Jobs learned so many things from the Bell Labs and other things but guess what he's able to like uh airpod there have been airpods before them and they came but still they were able to put their mark it's a quality product they put it with good US so that's their mark that's their innovation and uh so it doesn't actually has to be everything doesn't have to be zero to one I was I was I mean I I completely agree with you I I've heard the statistics I wish they remember the numbers but if the um um airpod business was a standalone business it would be in the fortune five hundred it's that big just off one product so oh my god that's that's that's un that's unbelievable but that's the power of building something which is um uh connecting with the user very well and thinking it through and then and taking your time and so they are not the first in the market but still they are able to as you said they are able they if it's an independent business it will be fortunate so doing things right and so yeah that is the in the DNA of Apple so that's yeah that's good. So walk me through your about your vision around the different things that you're building I mean you're building colony competitor you're building DocuSign competitor uh they're not massive products but they're niche products like how do how do you see the the software market evolving like I mean we opened up the conversation with like kind of like you know software is eight in the world that was kind of like uh the A6D and C guys back in 2000 and early 2000s to now like SAS is death is this the SaaS apocalypse kind of like what is your vision in terms of kind of like where the software industry is going yeah so I feel like software industry is definitely up for some changes and bright sort of changes because one of the things that I realized is that software is a very powerful thing because of the low margin uh cost but the cost over the period of time last 15 years if you look at it it has not gone down it's mostly going up and we can look at the data of public literature companies like Freshworks, Asana etc uh look at them like they are the how much money they are spending on sales and marketing more than 50% of their revenue so they they take the revenue um from their customers and more than 50% of that money they in they turn back and give it to Google.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

So that and when I say Google it means the Google instruments and other things for the all these kind of ads and then so these ads etc and the cost of acquiring the customer just adds up to the cost and for that well where will the money come from they start charging more and more and so because of that the SaaS pricing has gone a little bit out of back i mean it's extremely uh it's very very high and and that is continuing even today AI has proven its it's its value in the IT space in spite of that are we seeing the price reduction no we are not seeing but hey we have added i AI thing so we are jacking up the price really I think that thought that your developers were more productive so ideally the price should come up in fact that's how we launched NitoCal on product hunt when we launched we had the write up typical write up etc here and there but till the last time I was not feeling like it like who will read this kind of crap so at the last moment um I just ripped up all the things just sat down and I wrote that C and I listed it. Nobody listed I listed that there are 30 scheduling link software because I had a list of the comparators right yeah so I said that these are the list of 31 then why am I building 30 first player well I'm building the 31st player there's nothing difference because Calendly type any scheduling software cannot can do what what how can you differentiate not much feature wise is exactly the same thing. Then why am I building I'm building it because I'm pissed at the pricing my question is that by definition if something is 31st product is serving the same needs by definition it's it's a commodity now the question is that is that is that if it's a commodity I'm charging commodity price my price is five dollars thirty dollars for the whole year the question is that if others are also commodity why they are charging luxury prices yeah so I wrote that thing and that resonated with people and that's how it made it to product hunt and also like it was we were in the top whatever top two three and also it made it to hacker news for a while because I believe what people liked over there was that I told the truth that hey this is a commodity market why they are charging the luxury prices and we don't really know is it like the forces of economics uh do not apply over here I don't think so it's just that the whoever the it's I feel like a lot of bad advice from the people from the new founders who keep getting from the uh Silicon Valley people and other gurus that oh keep charging more keep charging more dude new software always has bugs and you are competing with say Docker sign or calendar you're charging the same price or maybe two dollars less why would I use it? It just doesn't make sense to me yeah yeah you need to prove yourself in the market somehow and then maybe you can reduce the price or increase the price. We have taken the stand from the very beginning that we are going to I'm not very good at marketing and I'm not going to do marketing. So rather than having any marketing person or marketing doing any kind of thing etc what we do is build more software just and those softwares are as affordable as possible and hopefully they act as our marketing tools. Now question the why to build all the software so I think of example of one of my uncles in India who is a chiropractor and after working for another various companies for 18 years he started his own shop. So I think about him uh the hypothetically that if somebody is a chiropractor in the US or anywhere in the world is starting his or her own business, what would the person need? And then I made the list and the list is like 70 80 items and unbelievable the person has to buy a domain okay so I'm not going to build a domain provider but somebody is providing that service right go to daddy name cheap etc but the person has to and then personally a website well you can go to Squarespace, Wix, lovable things then you need customer support then you need uh in your own project planner tools etc then you need the marketing thing you need communication to the person over there so loom or need to record kind of thing etc and then some sort of CRM then so you go through the list and one by one it just keeps adding up okay one person fine but the moment you go not from one to two but three or four is the magic number where you need a now intercommunication tool you need or this person is on leave this person not a payroll taxes planning you go through the list and the list is 70 80 items so I thought okay that is our code the person needs an email person needs a Google Doc person needs a Google like not Google a document system and and uh Google Sheet alternative and things like that. Now are we going to build a Google email alternative today? No not today but I'm just saying that these are the list uh and somebody uh is selling digital download software etc so they need a bunch of other things etc so these are the so our goal here is uh is in fact my team members have stopped me but otherwise uh the tagline on it was going to be just enough software or adequate enough so adequate software like I want to build just enough that okay this thing gets a job done move on to other product because what I want to cater is that that the small business who is running the um his or her own shop they have tons of things to do which is catering to their own customer taking the well-being of the customer and all these digital things they they need to be on the side but now they need to have an intercom account and then intercom will say your payment then you have a Zen desk or then you have notion they are not talking to each other or you they will say oh yeah they I know software I'm a software engineer integrate it dude I know how integration works integration breaks oh which one you have misconfigured then the employee has left but then you are still being charged three months later you will realize it oh so that that's that's much that through need to simplify this thing and the stand is different from say type form which is doing the form and they have been type form has been business for 12 or 14 years. What do you think their engineers shipped last week not something that I or you needed because they are type form is a category leader today because they nailed the basic things in the first year or second year or third year. Yeah so now in the next 10 years they are building it for the the fortune 500 because that's where the money is nothing wrong with that and then I might do the same thing. What I'm saying is that the the as they move towards Fortune 500 what happens the complexity creeps in I am we are a consulting company we set up uh uh software on build software for others recently I had to log into intercom it was I actually genuinely found it a bit hard to consider it because they had added so many features in the last 18 months since I had not created a new account and I had to multiple times chat with their customer support to figure things out. So what happens is that they these are mono products are like they build one product and they keep on it. So as they move up the rank on a higher and higher the lower level people who are paying less money they pay the cost in terms of money and complexity and less attention the last one less attention is the single most important thing you are one guy or three person team who's paying $18 per month you are paying $60 which is a lot of money for you for them not so much. Yeah they don't paradize you so then what happens so that and because of this thing even though number of softwares are so many in the SaaSpace that gives an opportunity for new players to come into the market like Nito that is the business And nobody is doing anything wrong there. I don't think Intercom is that wrong or Typeform is that wrong. What is a successful business means your revenue keeps going up? I mean, how can you make your revenue work? The fastest way is cater to the businesses who have millions and billions of dollars, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Makes sense. Uh can I just ask you, like for your perspective? Um Anthropic is clearly going after the enterprise market, and now they're going into the SMB space there, like with their super apps and things like that. Um they are clearly have captured the imagination of the investment community, but also like they have shifted the position from number two to number one over overtaking um uh open AI. Now, if if if if I'm thinking about this, like um software has has its role, like uh super apps or kind of like what on Tropic or the Cloud suite of products can do, it has its role. Are you at all worried about kind of like what Anthropic is doing, or uh or are you thinking like they're not pricing the cost of inference, they're not pricing the true cost. So, yeah, maybe it's cheap now, but this thing cannot sustain, this thing cannot be continuously funded with venture capital money. So at some point, um the the music will stop and um they will have to price it to what it actually costs.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

I'm not worried about it because of my belief that what you said is that is one realistic possibility. While on while my personal belief is that it will be the other way around, the inference cost is going to go down. Why over time because because the there is up and anthropic recently increased their whatever their revenue from 3 billion to 20 billion or something like that. So much money is there. What happens? All the world's billions of dollars on research and development that is directed towards this new endeavor, right? Where the money is to be made. So, what will happen is that the at least possible, there's a possibility, nobody knows there's a possibility that because of all this investment, there is some breakthrough, and now the inference cost goes down. In fact, I feel like I'm pretty excited about Apple's change of cards. The new CEO is from hardware division. I personally think that the Apple is very well positioned if they are like look at their M series chips, they're so good, so much better than uh the Intel chips that we were or ARM chips we were using before that. Similarly, if Apple is able to come up with better sets of hardware, better uh software and all the chips, etc., well, the laptops will be able to do, and then anthropic will not be able to answer the question. But obviously, it all depends on what will happen. We don't know about the future, but no matter what is the future, whether it goes this way or that way, the AI is great and very powerful thing, which is great. But your software is so generic that if AI can devour it, then it's very hard for your existence. You have to have certain taste, certain peculiarities, something you are so good at, so special. Uh and that is not easy to meet. And I'm not saying that I will be able to meet because as I said, that I first like to solve a particular problem, then move into the user experience. That is where our product, like Neto Cal is right now. We have solved the problem, but now for the last two, three months, we are just moving around things, moving around text. It might seem like a simple thing from outside, but no, that those have uh uh um affect people directly in general. Now, is using AI can solve all of those problems? It needs to be seen, but maybe they will be able to do it. Then in that case, AI is so powerful. Then what can I do? I mean, I don't know, then majority of the software will be obsolete, and my software will be obsolete too. Then in that case, what can I do? Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

Interesting. I know we come in at uh um at a time. Any in any final words of wisdom, kind of like what uh what should company do to position itself for success? Um what like you said, you need to have a differentiated product, differentiated offering is something that's the solves real problems. Like from your perspective, what are kind of the modes that are left to companies to explore? Um, because AI can replicate things. Uh it's not perfect, but it can replicate things. What what what yeah, what's your advice?

SPEAKER_01 48:40

I don't know, but everybody has to figure out their own what's um like look at TypeFone, they have their interface. They started this thing over one question at a time, that is their different companies have different things. I don't really know, but in this point of time for Nito, we are putting a lot of emphasis on customer support, not through AI. That's why if I ask any question in Nito, not a single question is answered by AI. We want to talk to the customers and get a feel for it because people have nuances. I mean, chat GPT came four or five years ago. Look at the customer support AI software. Every software that we deal with, we are screaming, can I talk to a human being? It's not yet at that point. So I'm trying to talk to the customers, solve the problem in such a way to bean their trust so that tomorrow if the AI comes and does solve the problem, then well, they will stick with us. And secondly, unlike other companies, why they are saying the SaaS is dead? Because SAS companies have been charging so much that it's easier to white code. I am charging $30 a year for NitoCard, $30 a year, and uh that's less than the price of a monthly subscription for Calendly. Exactly. So that's why I'm saying that if you go with the AI, you can go with the AI and AI will put things, or you can white code it, which will have a lot of bugs and things like that, because I wipe coded things and there will be bugs. So one way you can position yourself is uh so last point, but I will say is I always remember this point from Jason Fried of Basecamp, which I really really appreciate. Is that he says that yes, yes, that he says that yes, you have competitors, but your true competitor is always your own cost. I said, Okay, then please elaborate. So your own cost, what is your own like what is a business? A business is you have a revenue and expense. As long as your expenses are less than revenue, nobody can take you out of business, right? So advice that you talked about is that everybody watch out your cost. If you can keep your cost low, you are in the business, and we are trying to do the same thing, like keeping our cost low, keeping our pricing low, and in between still trying to make the company work.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Yeah, I I I completely agree. I mean, I mean, I have a feeling that uh you look up to uh to base campus as a model to follow, and they're definitely the OGs, um, never taken external money, um, and have built a really, really successful business doing uh doing what they do. Um, this has been a fantastic conversation, Niraj. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, if somebody wants to to connect, follow you, um, how do they do though? How do they do so?

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Yeah, so just go to LinkedIn, search for Neraj Sing uh Big Bandary. I'm also on Twitter. Uh and or you just email me, neraj at bigboundary.com, and you can check out nito.com. They also contact us. You ask any support question, that's me and my team members replying to the questions.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

That's amazing. That I I have to check out some of these products because we like in subscription fees for some of these products, we're paying a lot more money than what Nito is saying that it offers.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, check it out, and yeah, let me know. And that's exactly what we are claiming that these software will be. And the another thing is that I like to say is that we are not trying to be the category leader. There is, we are trying to make our business work. And if and we have not outsourced, but we are letting our users, community members, tell others about the need to because we literally have nobody going and and and evangelizing the product, etc. But they are doing a fantastic job because people are surprised that I don't know. I mean, how can you be in the business? A lot of some I get the question that okay, I want to use it, but will you go out of business? And I'm like, I said that at least not for the next two years, that definitely, because yeah, I have that much money reserved. And I think after that, I don't want to lie to anyone, but and and I'm not here in the business of selling the company at least for the next two years, and um yeah, just trying to build the company and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

Yeah, I mean, you your strategy is very differentiated. Like you're not focusing on sales like growth, you're focusing on product-led growth and community-led growth. Let the product in the community be the sales force behind the the growth of the company.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

I I would add to that, let the pricing, because I and I've gotten the pushback of people saying, Oh, pricing, so you're competing, it's a race to the bottom. And I'm like, race to the bottom. I mean, if you're taking isn't that no, so okay, I could be commodity and I am commodity, but isn't that the hallmark of capitalism? Isn't that why capitalism is celebrated? Because people will compete and the price will go down. But when it comes to the competition, then the the Silicon Valley gurus say that, oh, this is for suckers, losers. Are you kidding me? I mean, they are championing capitalism, but the it's a hallmark of capitalism. And the second thing I will say is that look at Walmart. I mean, they have the tagline is always low prices. That's like their tagline is always low prices, but uh, and Walmart is doing fine.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Yeah, so I think it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

Yeah, so fantastic. Uh Nirish, pleasure to have you on the podcast. Um uh lots of words of wisdom in terms of how to build a product and what you can do in terms of building a remote, uh remote team. So I really appreciate uh the guidance and insights that you shared.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Cool. Thanks, Maxim. It was fun having you uh in the podcast.