AMA #1 Answers to Ask me Anything

A little Background:

This AMA was done with the help of good folks at LinkedIn. The Post soliciting questions was live from 18th sept to 25th sept 2018.There were a lot of questions that came in and i have tried to answer as many as i could. This has resulted in a little longish read, so apologies for that. I also would want to Thank you for your questions. Some were very difficult to answer, and required some thought.Below are the answers. And I would request you to remember, it's my perspective, and i too am learning.

Nikhil Sharma Asks

What can be an ace strategy to maximise lead generations and also address customer privacy issues?

Answer :? You need to focus on following to build the right strategy and reduce privacy concerns

(1)  Who does it: If you are depending on others for lead gen, there will always be privacy issues. People will take shortcuts, unless they are large, policy driven companies with much to lose if unethical practices emerge aka FB.

(2)  How you do it : If your entire process can be a self-contained machine led system, no issues on privacy front

(3)  How you tell it : Sometimes privacy concerns are also perception issues. If you build good customer communication about your approach, created transparent practices, then you will build trust that goes far.

(4)  My Opinion: Mostly its one rogue agent that spoils it for everyone. One over enthusiastic manager who wants that sale and will bombard the mail to even un-subscribed users, sending them to panic. One engineer trying to show better returns on an algorithm. One business trying to sell to everyone on the platform through ethical or unethical means. So you need to convince people that you are not that rogue agent, and you have to show why they can trust you.

So do it yourself if you can, do it using an automated engine which runs on its own, focus on PR and perception management as well.

Abhimanyu Chowhan Asks

Hello Satyarth Priyedarshi, from the point of starting up, what are the habits you think are a must in order to excel personally and professionally.

Answer :?Both professional and personal is actually more on personal control. All humans are learning systems and most work related stuff can be taught by someone external, its the internal things that each one has to discover. The sooner you start on the journey, the better.

(1)    Disciplined mind: - Disciplined mind is one which has control over itself. It can do things that are necessary over ones which it likes or wants to do.Let go of the impulsive thought. Channel impulses through some filtration. Most mistakes are done in seconds, and their impact felt over lifetimes. A disciplined mind doesn’t take rash decisions, but steps back, thinks and acts for the merit of things.

(2)    Patience: - It doesn’t rain based on your need, but it rains often in rainy season. Some things have their own time, pace and cycles. Understanding when,what can be done and when what cannot be done is important. Patience doesn’t mean that you should always sit back waiting for right time. But on some occasions you should figure waiting time into your plan.

(3)    Humility: Real Humility is priceless and few have it. To develop real humility, you should have had tonnes of failures under your belt and been mature to forgive people. Most get by with fake humility and most accept the fake humility equally well. Humility appeals to people’s ego and oils the wheel of social interaction. It reduces the number of people standing in your way or competing with you. Call it accumulating well-wishers if you will. If people like you, they will want to see you succeed and therefore help you. They will go out of the way to partner in your success. This is a multiplier.

(4)    Consistency: - Whatever formula you choose to travel on your path to success, you have to be consistent with it. Consistency helps people predict you, and helps them adjust to you. Consistency also helps them see you as a risk free bet. Being a known equation is under rated.

(5)    Foresight: - For any action large or small, make a habit of thinking in Immediate, short term, long term impact from multiple viewpoints. Also evaluate in terms of resource needed, time required, people who can do it, what are the other options to do it, and even why should you do it using a particular option. Sometimes choosing not to do something is equally powerful.

(6)    Resilience:- The earth doesn’t give up gold on your first strike. But also remember, that there has to be gold for earth to give up where you strike. So how you handle failure and move forward is probably the best skill out of all the above. One of lines around this i love is "Winners never quit, and quitters never win. But those who never win and never quit are fools"

(7) Bias for action :- All thought and no hard work will not get you anywhere. So always have a bias for action. And have multiple reasons to support it. Don't even get out of bed until you have at least two good reasons to do it.

Sawan Nathwani Asks (Picking up only one question)

3 top skills a CMO ought to have

Answer :? I feel there are many skills required, but if i had to bucket them in 3, i would like to say

(1)    Communication (Message) : Marketing is communicating with people to convince them to take an action. So you have to be a champion at formulating a message. This skill will help you get most out of teams, clients and customers.

(2)    Understand people (Audience): Knowing People and what motivates them. Be it customers (or segments) , team members or clients. This combined with your knowledge of tools will and communication give you insights and strategy as well as capability to execute. Leadership also falls under this bucket.

(3)    Understanding of business, tools and environment (medium): This means understanding money as you may have to spend it, understanding advertising systems, associated technology, knowing the players in the system, the theory and practice of it.When to use what and how, research methods, statistical models, segmenting approaches etc. You get the point.

Shubham Shukla Asks

Which area having max scope for startup to get success?

Answer :?I don't know what you mean by success. Many founders look for a good life AKA money while others treat Impact as the metric for success.

(1)    Case I – If you are simply looking for and idea that will get you immediate funding and a newspaper coverage then keep watching sites like TechCrunch and ycombinator. They have regular listing of startups with the problem they are solving. Just start a company doing Indian version of those things. Easy for investor to fund you and easy for you to cite a parallel to your idea that got funded.

(2)    Case II – If you are looking for Impact – This is a little harder to do, as this generally comes out of insight. Insight comes from experience. Experience comes from spending time doing things and understanding the rationale behind them. If you are young and don't have experience, you can also borrow it from others and internalise it. However its not the same, but will work for you. So if there is something that you see can be done in a better way AND people will pay for it. Go ahead and do it. Even if you fail, you would have succeeded. Because you can learn from failure and apply yourself again and again till you succeed, and this success will leave a legacy.

Neil H Asks

What are your thoughts on learning and development with Technology / Product companies? How can we ensure absorption of technology and knowledge at optimum level both for customers and employees ?

Answer :Learning and development depends on the size of the organization and resource availability. Smaller organizations therefore leave it to the ambition of their employees. Sometimes smaller organizations also use employee hiring as a strategy to bring in new blood and new ways of working. If you want to focus on Learning and Development as a culture, there are multiple ways based on your resource commitment.

(1)    Low resource strategies : Making a team member responsible for teams learning goals. You can rotate responsibility as most employees think of this as a thankless job. This person can share relevant reads every day to the group and everyone gets updated on important stuff on a daily basis. Some really important and persistent trends can be picked up and external agency can come in and do the training or introduction. The clients and customers are updated using (1) One on one contact (2) Common mailers to highlight interesting trends. You can also allow employees to reimburse their Linkedin Learning/Lynda or other learning websites expenses to a level.

(2)    Mid Resource strategies – This requires creating a dedicated team focused on Learning and development needs of (say 50) people. This team can organize learning events, mailers and talks on a regular basis based on requirements.They also manage a small library for employees. For external customers, this team accepts resources and creates media or coordinates with marketing for reachout.

(3)    High Resource strategy – A full Fledged learning and resource centre with Do-It-Yourself programs earning internal credits/badges. Programs can be developed internally or on request from external partners.

Most employees think of learning and development activities as either unnecessary interruption in their daily lives, or as welcome vacations. Both are two extremes. So selling the concept of learning is equally important. Usually scare tactics around redundancy if they don't learn up helps focus. :)

Chandra Sekharan Asks

Future of job chance for Indians in india and abroad

Answer :?Job chances for Indians is a dicey subject and hard to predict. Overall, I see the following, irrespective of markets

(1) Ample jobs for people under 30 -People till the age of 30 will have ample jobs across the spectrum with decent expendable incomes. I expect them to be fueling the consumer economy in coming decades.

(2) Jobs at the bottom of the pyramid will grow as knowledge becomes democratized- The number of over all jobs will grow at the bottom of the pyramid. This means jobs in unorganized sector, informal economy and entry level salaried jobs. This will be because of democratized learning which will break boundaries. Knowledge will not be in the hands of privileged few who can pay for it. This will grow the grassroot level entrepreneurs as well as salaried skilled operations jobs (like Delivery, packaging etc).

(3) Average age of forced retirement will come down to 40 as knowledge gets commoditized – I have friends at age 50, who are virtually unemployable. I am 37 now and I think I will be unemployable by 45. For people 10 years younger than me (say 27) this age is going to be 40. I am not saying there will not be jobs, but there will be no jobs at a higher salary once you hit 40. You will have to take a salary cut or move to a company lower on the totem pole to keep working. For masses, an upward growth will be finished in terms of esteem (combination of salary + Brand you work for). Major reason being the privileged knowledge that allowed you to charge a premium is being democratised and there are enough ambitious people willing to learn and make their lives better. Also this knowledge is increasingly getting into intelligent systems making managers redundant, and it will keep on happening at accelerated pace. I wrote in the previous point that knowledge is being democratised, but it's also being commoditized. All you need is one specialist to make an education system that can teach masses using AI and VR. Most processes are hard set now and automatically monitored with tools like sales force etc. So now you don’t need as many administrative managers as you needed before. Org structures are being flattened everywhere, and new graduates are being given more responsibility as now, their mistakes are not as costly with a software monitoring performance. Also, young graduates are able to put in more hours and charge less. So I think this will result in 1 out of 10 senior people remaining around to build and educate the system right. Rest 9 will have nothing to contribute. Corollary being that a company which is not doing this, will not survive for long and will be disrupted. Then that 1 job will be gone as well.

(4)    Increase in Startups by senior employees: - This is going to result into a new flux of startups by people from mid 30’s to mid 50’s. Its only logical that if you have people who were heading businesses, and are now unemployed will work for themselves.The same democratised and commoditised learning also works in upskilling them. The same low salaried grads replacing them can also be hired by them. This class of leaders will soon realize that all the reasons that work against them can also work for them.They can also hire cheap resources, take loans, take risks, give better presentations, and in all likelihood create more mature solutions out of their years of experience. From a VC's perspective, they have a known variable to back which works out to have a better success rate.

(5)    This displacement will cause even more disruption to established businesses: - When senior employees leave to create businesses, more often than not, they fragment the industry. This happens because the business ideas are a combination of (a) Small opportunity size good for a startup but small for corporate (b) Operational parts that were outsourced to vendors (c) Improvements which the corporate was not working on due to legacy issues or lack of vision (d) New avenues which were in a corporations road map and the leaders knew. Such businesses disrupt established corporates and compete with them for the same share of client's wallet. The proactive corporates head down to R&D and create new products to sell or increase their advertising spend to smother the startup with money. But whichever way you look at it, the over all industry benefits and the country even more so.

(6) Depression if none of the above happens at scale : If none of what I say above happens, then we will be looking at an economic depression event (mark that i am not saying recession, which lasts for smaller periods). This will happen if people from age 35 to 50 are working at salary bands which are close together. If salaries don’t grow and new businesses don’t start, spending is curtailed and demand depresses and then the economy doesn’t grow. This cascades pretty quickly into depression.

Danish Ahmed asks

How would you approach people higher up the ladder to be your mentor on LinkedIn? What strategy would you practice to get a coffee meeting with them? 

Answer :?Using Linkedin to grow network is the right step, but doing it in the right manner is also important. You only get few chances to make an impression, but that is also the number of chances you get to lose an impression.

(1)    Not everyone is free to have coffee: First and foremost is to understand that not everyone is free to have coffee. If they are they may have a small window of opportunity to even have coffee, and they might want to maximize the benefit out of it by having coffee with different people.

(2)    So that leaves us people who have time: Well, for people who have time and generally engaged on Linkedin, getting them for coffee is an entire tutorial in itself. But mostly it boils down to

a.       They will meet you if you are an ideological match.

b.       So make sure your profile says the right things. If the person seems conservative, and you have an extreme tattoo on your profile pic, may be not.

c.        First engage and gauge their interest areas before sending out a message. If the person doesn’t respond anywhere on the platform, they are likely not to repond to your direct message as well. Go the the profile page, check recent activity, and see if the person is even active on Linkedin.

d.       See what interests the person and spend some time getting to know them and having a virtual chat. Its also smart to do that because a coffee is precious. You wouldn’t want to spend coffee time exploring the basics. Also it may turn out, that this was not the right person to have coffee anyways. Perception can be deceptive, even more so on social.

e.       Don’t sell. At least not to the wrong person and not immediately. Paraphrasing shakespeare from hamlet "For unsolicited sales pitch oft loses both itself and a potential friend". People sniff business development people a mile away. If they have been gracious enough to connect with you, respect that. If you build a relationship strong enough over time, that can take a question or two around sales, go for it. But primarily save the relationship.

f.   Work on your message but also be genuine -Don’t send a copy paste message a mile long to introduce yourself. Just tells people that you look at them as a lead, and no one likes that. Don't send a 200 word message even if you thought that it was the most optimized message to describe yourself. Keep the communication natural, short and original. Don’t treat your details as data that was to be dumped on the other person.

g.   Be polite and read between the lines -Last word is that always be polite, humble and take a hint. I come across many people who just simply can’t take no for an answer and get into a long diatribe explaining "why they thought so", or giving emotional reasons etc. You have to realize that if the person has expressed his/her wishes respecting that works in your favor. The most important thing is to keep the communication line open, either on a chat or in person.

Dhruv Goel Asks

Dear Mr Priyedarshi, Glad you started AMA. Do you think employees' emotional state (due to both personal/professional setups) affect the organization's overall productivity? I mean, are organizations really concerned about this or is this just a hyped discussion? (edited)

Answer :?Yes, emotional state does affect productivity. A rude/emotional/angry employee makes other employees lose focus and makes the work environment unpleasant. No one wants to work in such a work environment and it affects productivity.

Most organizations are concerned about employee emotional state (Unless its one of "Always be selling" orgs). I think what organizations really care about are “Incidents”. I have seen that organizations rarely take pre-emptive corrective steps about employee emotional state and wait for data.

An emotional employee will result in an unpleasant incident creating a data point that things are not okay demanding action and resolution. There are some types of orgs, which take lateral steps by creating internal helplines, and consulting structures.

Specially orgs dealing in high pressure environments like police, emergency responders, army etc fare better in stress management. Other organizations with lower fund availability consciously develop and hire managers who are high on emotional quotient, take extra care to design the workplace to be accommodative and HRBPs who are Ninjas (Say call centers, software development, sales organizations). Orgs with explicit budgets focus on team building exercises to generate team bonding or engagement events.

A simple dinner and drinks outside or a weekend getaway can be a good way for employees to blow off steam, humanize their co-workers bringing them together and provide a safe environment for emotional outbursts reducing impact on productivity.

Suyog Zelawat Asks

Which Strategy you choose and why: A Company X is Slashing prices like anything to gain more market share and incurring loses to stay in the market. A Company Y is strict in their pricing game is loosing business due to heavy discounting by competitors as industry suffers from profitability.

Answer :?It depends. Partly because the question assumes that pricing is the only factor that decides if a business will live or die. It's not that simple.

(1) How about funding or cost of doing business or business model? Suppose you had 10 rupees and you were taking losses of 0 rupee to grow at 5%, while I had 50 rupees and I was taking losses of 1 rupee to grow at 15%. Who do you think will win in the long run? Suppose you were making a product at 10 rupees, selling it at 11 rupees taking zero loss, while I was making a product at 9 rupees, selling it for 10 rupees and spending 2 rupees in marketing and taking a loss of 1 rupee. Who do you think will survive?

(2)    You have to evaluate the entire value chain and not just prices. You have to look at cost of doing business, you have to look at market share and growth trajectory and you have to look at the funds availability or the runway. I will give you an example. Suppose there are two armies facing each other. Army X has 50 soldiers and each volley sends 10 bullets to target (1 bullet per 5 soldiers). Army Y has 25 soldiers but sends 10 bullets in each volley (1 bullet per 2.5 soldiers). Army Y is twice as efficient as Army X for each soldier. But if they face each other, lets see what happens. After the first volley, Army X has 40 soldiers and Army Y has 15 soldiers. After the second volley Army X will have 34 soldiers and Army Y will have 7 Soldiers. After third volley Army X will have 31 soldiers and Army Y will have 0 soldier. So in a firefight, superior numbers sometimes overcome inefficiency.

Nilesh Mange Asks

Hello, would like to know what goes into deciding which event to sponsor? Also, how many event proposals do you actually get and read in a day/month on an average. Thank you for your time in providing guidance to the younger lot.

Answer :?If you were using your own money to sponsor an event then what will you look at? Most probably some of the following,

(1) Previous experience  - Probably how your experience was in the past

(3) Reputations - Does the event deliver as promised and you will ask people who have sponsored it in the past. Does the organizer make good use of money, or is it wasted.

(4) Relevance - If the event is relevant to you

(5) Reason - If you are doing it for branding or to gain customers and if the event delivers enough on both fronts to your requirements?

(6) Size - Most probably if you were to get 5 million customers, you would avoid events with 50K people all together because it will take the same amount of time as an event with 1 million people coming in. So either you would delegate it to someone who focuses on that area, or you would anyways have covered the audience using other means and would skip the event altogether.

(7) Audience - Finally who is the event for and who is attending it. A small event with prime minister attending it cannot be same as a small event of same size being held in a college. Can it be?

Radhika Agarwal Asks

Hello sir, First of all thanks a lot for an opportunity like this. I am a graduate in Journalism and Mass Communications & doing a job in a mid-raise company as a digital marketing executive, was seeking an advice regarding my future prospects in the same. My keen interest lies in the field of marketing and I see myself in the corporate world in the years down the line. As for my education, I'm really confused as for what to do which will not only support my keen interest in the field and help me get a good corporate job but also expand my knowledge in the field and expose me to different perspectives on the same. I need your advice on what qualifications are important, and what degree should I go for? Which institutes should I consider? Or what should be the right path for a thriving career in marketing? Your view on the same would be extremely helpful. Regards. (edited)

Answer :?This is one of the question that comes up often. What degrees to get to get a job. Hearing it almost feels like what should I buy so that I get that job.

Well first thing is that you should assess your own capabilities in terms of language, knowledge, willingness to work hard and then see what is the college that you can achieve with that. You can also spend some time growing yourself to match a college’s requirement. Sometimes you will also find that there are colleges which will not accept you for the lack of a long proven success trajectory.

What I am saying is that if you can score a 100 percentile in CAT, then the question is moot. You should go and join any of the IIMs as they will take you in a heartbeat. Probably then you will be trying to see if you can qualify for any global ones ranked better than Indian ones. If you cannot get that CAT score, then match your capability with a college, and aim a little higher than that.

Now this answer is good if you believe that getting into an MBA college is a good way to build a career for YOU. I will also tell you at this point that I am a graduate of IIPS. Chances are that you may not have heard of the college. So I believe that what you know and what you have done means more. Probably because I have been lucky or because that has worked for me.

So if you are not able to get into a college that you set your sights on, the world doesn’t end. Some paths will close, but if you are aiming for a good life, you will have that. Sometimes we get so stuck up on chasing a road that we forget that we chose the road because it was taking us to a destination. So don’t focus only on the path, also focus on the goal, for there are many ways to hit that.

For instance, you can also start your own business. Government has "Stand-Up India" program for women entrepreneurs which provides collateral free loans for up to 1Cr. I sometimes tell students to evaluate if taking a loan of 20 lakhs to get in a college was better than spending 20 Lakhs on your own business.

I sincerely believe that a majority of students in today's colleges would be making more if they invested 20L in a business at the age of 21. They could have gained valuable experience and after running a business for 5 years, could have gone and joined any college in the World.

Only 5% Indians are employed in formal sector. And there are more millionaires living life in the other 95%. So that should mean something, No? There is a saying in sanskrit "Veer Bhogya Vasundhara", means the spoils of this earth are for the brave to enjoy. This means being brave by taking risk and working hard at it. With the present economic scenario, a job is not as secure as you might think it to be.

Ashim Khan asks

Are we really into something called the "startup bubble" right now? I mean, the news of fundings and big investments is all over the place. Is it actually going to make VCs rich? Or it's something like the recent bit on hype but only lasting for a longer period?

Answer :?I will ask you to first think that where is the VC money coming from.

Its coming mostly from abroad.

Its mostly coming from owners of traditional businesses (majority), Pension funds and new millionaires from digital businesses.

But if you look at overall corpus flowing into India in form of FDI, VC capital is miniscule. So, no, we are not in a startup bubble. People started moving money into India at a greater rate after the 2008 crash. They are doing so because India is providing better returns and it will continue to do so for the next 40 years. And a part of that money will always be high risk high return money (VC). VC money is the chutney of the total FDI and is only talked about more as it gets disproportionate news coverage.

Where or how VC moeny gets invested changes over time. I believe that as global economy slows down for the next cycle (It’s a cycle always) VC money will be cautious. When global markets see next upswing, the VC money will again seem to be reckless.But its not actually reckless, there is a method to madness. That’s the nature of things.

If you think that VC’s are fools, that is not so. They have seen this entire boom and bust since 1975 multiple times in American markets, and our market is modeled on that. You see when VC funds raise money from investors, they do so with the promise of return in say 5-10 years (it varies based on their mandate). When the economy is in upswing, they are able to raise more money in more number of funds. They raise more money because their income is based on the amount of fund they manage and then the returns they get on the money. So more money available to VC is good. If investment turns bad, that just impacts their next fund raise.

Now if VCs are cautious, then that means it will take them 2 years out of 5 to spend that money. This means the money on an average will only be loaned out for 4 years on an average. So it becomes important for VCs to spend the money as early as possible after fundraise so that the money starts working and growing. Some money also has to be kept aside for later rounds (called dry powder).

The strategy to disburse this money in such a short amount of time seems reckless in the first year or so. Because they have to signal the market that there is money to be distributed, a lot of people already in the game get a lot. This creates news coverage. You look at the news coverage and think, what? this guy got funded for THIS idea. I definitely can do much better. It causes all the to-be-entrepreneurs sitting on the fence with an idea to jump in the market with their own companies and the money is distributed quickly.

Think of Uber surge pricing as seen from drivers side. When the drivers see that there is a lot of money to be made, they immediately start the meter and jump into the market bringing the price down and finding the ride difficult. The driver who was already in the market when surge hits, gets the highest fares. Drivers who look at the surge and then jump generally get a lower fare, but still higher than normal. If the price was not right, only the neediest ones would be plying a cab, and rest would be doing whatever they do.

Ragul Chandrasekaran Asks

Where do you see food delivery business in next 2 years? How to bring in loyal customers?

Answer :?There is nothing called customer loyalty. At least not in India.

Customer loyalty or perception of it appears when two businesses are providing similar value basket for a similar cost to the customer. In such a market, the customer sticks to the basket of offerings it considers desirable. I say value basket, because the sum total of values is same, they are just different.

Think of two restaurants, one might be selling rice for 100 rupees and another might be selling roti for 100 rupees. The value they provide is filling a hungry stomach. A customer buying rice is not buying so out of loyalty, but because of preference. If the restaurant started thinking of it as loyalty, that would be foolishness, as the moment the next restaurant offering cheaper rice comes up, this customer will be gone.

Food delivery is a low skill and low entry barrier business for people working in it. It has been on for long enough to be commoditized. The biggest reason being google maps routing algorithm and other derivatives now easily available in the market. So when a business is commoditized, that is the time when consolidation happens. After some time the next cycle starts where a niche customer base grows out of the consolidated business fuelled by greater spending power demanding a differentiated service and ready to pay a premium for it.

That cycle is aching to start in India, after foodpanda getting acquired, swiggy expanding, Tiny Owl shutting down and uber eats growing. In the new cycle established player like swiggy and zomato will get the most customers, but this will be the time for new players to come in as well.

For any other players trying to get in, tier 2 and 3 towns look like a good opportunity. As this tier2/3 market grows the bigger beasts will roll in, either they will have to keep taking in losses or exit by selling out. I see this cycle happening in next 3 years.

For a new business entering right now, the important thing here would be to build a big data base of delivered customers as soon as possible, raise as much money as possible and grow quickly to fill out geographies. For a new player now it is also going to be important to spend money in creating a new differentiated value basket for longevity.

Hitesh Kumar Singh Asks (Picking up only one question)

Should the Algorithm/ AI decision capabilities be the sole proprietorship of the company or should it be made public for transparency & to avoid bias... Your expert views Satyarth Priyedarshi, From the business perspective (legal aspects may be parked & given rest for some time ??)

Answer :?This is something that’s at heart of an ongoing debate and I will recommend a book called “Outnumbered” by David Sumpter. You can also find his talks on youtube. He calls this a “Black Box society”. If hasn’t shown its impact yet in India, but in US there are prison parole systems being run via an algorithm called COMPAS, and there is a constant outcry if the algo is biased against black people.

So it depends on a case to case basis. If the algorithm is doing something that a person responsible to people were doing, then the algo should be transparent. If the algo is being run as a service under certain contractual obligation and people have an option to not use it, then it can remain private. In other words, if people (government) own the algo then it should be open. If its owned by a private entity, then its as per their wish.

Vir Karamchandani asks

What keeps you going?

Questions like these. Otherwise it makes me stop and ponder and write something witty :)

Chaitanya Patel asks

What do you think of Brand Safety with your product marketing? How will you ensure your digital and ATL ads are brand safe?

Answer :?With a name like Taboola, I can see your challenge. Unfortunately, the answer is not easy.

I would recommend using extensive manual research on negative phrases, build your own dictionary and apply it on every opportunity. Its going to be costly and intensive but that is the way. Also you won’t be able to advertise with partners who don’t support extensive lists.

If you have tonnes of money, then go all out in a sustained branding exercise using offline and curated digital locations with a known face to aid recall and avoid keyword based adverts and displays altogether. I am sure there is nothing new in this answer, and you might have known all this, but I hope it may settle any dilemmas if you had.

Krishna Kulkarni asks

Would you recommend an API-based business model for a core-tech startup? If the tech is novel, should someone monetize it by building APIs OR build other layers to make it a one-stop solution (easier to sell)?

Answer :?It depends on what does the Tech Do and who is the user and how much money do you have. Usually I recommend building something that monetizes easily, so that you can bootstrap and carry more ownership value.

Going to customers is easy to sell, but also expensive to build and market. Usually it requires funds which dilutes holding. Focusing on monetization not only helps you live longer, but also makes the funding cheaper from external sources as now you can raise on your terms.

Just take care that the API’s you lend out have decent clauses to help you exit. Better still will be to restrict some aspect of your tech to B2B, so that when you launch B2C, you have advantage over your API. Once you are established in both markets, you can release the restrictions.

Tejas Tharu Asks

Hi, Satyarth Sir. Thank you for this opportunity. 1) How to make a transition from a service based to a product based organization, and how to justify skill-sets if there is no prior experience? 2) What would be your advice to the young leaders, who have recently started their corporate career? 3) Are you offering mentor-ship to young leaders? If Yes, how one can be a part of the same.

Answer :?Answering only one question in the interest of time. If making the transition is really rooted in reality, then try to get interviews with companies.

Apply across a spectrum from known brands to startups formed yesterday and see where the buck stops. Start from there, and grow to the desired brand over years by working hard, updating yourself, building a string of success stories.

But it cant be done overnight. You can only do it if you are committed and therefore i ask you to ask yourself again. Is your strategy rooted in reality? Sometimes people stop growing or a particular department seems too powerful inside the org, and people think, if i was in product, i would have an easy life.

But each job has its own walls to constrict you as well as for you to break. So before thinking about a life changing event, which you will be explaining for years to come, really really look inside you and understand its motivations first.

Chethan Kowndinya 

Hello Sir, We are a non-profit organization and do not raise charity. Please suggest us a product or service that we can sell to monetize and support our cause. 

Answer :?I am not sure what your strengths as an organization are and any strategy should always be rooted in strength. So I will say that “Not enough data to compute”.

Pankaj Singh asks

Dear Sir, If you have to run a company based on primarily 3 things. what would be those and why? 

Answer :?I think this is relatively easy

(1)    Customer focus

(2)    Profitability

(3)    Ethics and Social Responsibility

Somesh Saurabh asks

Greetings Sir! Being a Fresher from non-coding background, how would you suggest to start my journey towards realm of dara science. I am deeply interested in this field and I know I can do this if given a right track. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks.

Answer :?If you are really interested, then I would suggest doing some online courses while doing a job. Doing a job is important because as easily you have been drawn to this new and popular field, you may also draw out.

And if that happens, you would want a backup and a career profile that was continuous. Responsibilities don’t go away and wasted time doesn’t come back. Now that caution has been levied, just hit any of the online courses and start watching and implementing.

Get in touch with practitioners and professors for tips on the side on resources and projects that you should be doing to grow your skills. Once you have decent skills that you have built on dummy data, head on to Kaggle. See where it takes you. (There are millions of sites now providing free courses and data sets, so will not compete with google)

Rohan Parhar asks

Hello.. What are you thoughts on Influencer Marketing!? In today's day and age a celebrities social media following seems to be the only criteria, also what other modes can one try under this style of marketing?

Answer :?Influencer marketing is worlds oldest marketing technique. It used to be called word of mouth and endorsements, where your influencers were your family and friends till someone decided to create a new term for it. So it has always been there, and with a new name, it will remain as well.

Earlier the celebrity had to appear on a paid media like newspaper and TV to appear and tell you that they like it, and now they can shout out from their own Instagram and twitter accounts. The word of mouth has now been given a new name called “Viral” marketing.

I feel that content based message in any day or age is the most solid strategy. Influencers are humans too and they can’t always push 100% commercial messages. If they do, they are anyways useless, as they are no better than endorsements and their followers know that too.

So every free message is an opportunity for you to plug yourself. If you work on the content quality in such a level that people feel pride in sharing it, and the reader feels thankful in receiving it, you have done your job. No one can stop you from attaining virality then.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and shouldn't be construed to represent views of any of my employers, present or past.

Satyarth