Gratitude Post: Geektrust

Geektrust was one of our first clients when we started Lmntree in 2016. My friend Clair Sebastian had just joined this startup, and she reached out asking for some marketing help. I had never met a tech startup before. Big global tech companies with 1000s of employees in cubicles in techparks, yes. But a home-grown startup whose website said, “You won't have to enter the job market ever again” was a first.

So I went over to their quaint little office in HSR, had a surprising un-meeting-like meeting, came back home, and found myself researching and writing up a document laying out how I thought this company should go about marketing at this stage. The document was wholly inspired by Krishnan Nair’s article on why he left Thoughtworks and started his own company . Specifically this paragraph:

Imagine 100 developers being able to fulfill their true potential, building & influencing kickass products. Imagine these developers, who are cocooned in India’s large services companies, currently building services & platforms for customers they’ll never see, coming forward to build products that shape India’s software industry.

That was the start of a 7-year long journey of hyper-experimentation, wearing every hat there was to wear, learning, helping grow the company and growing with it, and exploring our own potential as professionals and as a business. The experience has been priceless.

As Geektrust entered a hyper-growth phase in 2021, Asif and I committed to spend 80% of our time to the work that lay ahead. If previously we pushed ourselves in the areas of content and beating the algorithms that ruled our marketing campaigns, now we were presented with the opportunity to hire, streamline and train the sales team, set up a marketing team in-house, incept events as a revenue-making division of Geektrust, launch a formal community space, work on the UX journey during the product revamp and much more. Earlier this year, Geektrust decided to go back to the workshop to sort of re-look at their product and how it can leverage the latest advances in the field of AI, and how it can stay in business relevantly in a scenario where companies aren’t hiring developers.

This turning point of Geektrust coincided with our full-time commitment coming to a close as well. In advertising, it’s normal for clients to come and go, work on a brand for a few months/years, move on to the next one, sometimes there are emotions and sometimes there’s only relief. Saying goodbye to Geektrust, even if a temporary one, has been the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my career of 2 decades. But like all goodbyes, it’s the start of something new too. What that is, I hope to write about in the days to come.

While there have been 100s of rave reviews from developers and companies, I believe Geektrust has more to do in the industry and reach its full potential. There are greater things to come. Asif C.K and I would like to take this post to show our deep gratitude and wish the team at Geektrust all the very best in the next adventure in the World of Potential.

A lot of people helped Lmntree in our work with Geektrust over the past 7 years. I’d like to thank each and every one of you.

• Starting with Arun Mandru who worked on the brand identity, and the very first campaign with Sherene Varghese . Arun came back years later to be the design backbone of the marketing team while simultaneously doing a whole bunch of other things. How he does this, I have no clue. Without Arun and his team, the madness of the last two years, especially of events, couldn’t have been contained at all.

Avinash Rebello for two years of all kinds of wild and the sane ideas, and for knowing which one to use when. The New Resume, the World of Potential and Code Gym are brilliant ideas that I hope will be explored to their full potential someday. Thank you for all the fun with asking the right questions tirelessly, going out of your way to listen or explain patiently as required and going back to the drawing board until we hit the nail on the head, nothing less. It’s been two years of delightfully excruciatingly painful births which are much appreciated by advertising folk who are connoisseurs of the creative pain.

Asif C.K for all the reality checks, pushing the boundaries, inculcating the culture of thinking digital-first and audience-first, and never getting tired of being the one to raise the bar and call out the BS under extreme pressure. Also, for fighting all my battles with facebook and google “marketing experts”, and most importantly providing the lifeblood of delivering hundreds of campaigns that exceeded expectations in quality of conversions. Also for saving me from dealing with the constant UI changes of ad platforms and being the source of energy behind some heavy scenes.

Abhishek Naidu for taking over the long-form content mantle from me for a whole year and taking Dev Stories to new heights along with many other pieces and series of content. For all the enlightening long talks about the recruitment industry too!

• The always-reliable Kunj Shah (who can sort of read my mind at times) for stepping in at a critical time in 2018-19 to deliver a beautiful campaign with Jayanarayanan Kakkara who has been a friend and well-wisher of Lmntree.

Arun Gopinath for starting off our event comms back in 2018 and helping with a bunch of tactical campaigns that we just couldn’t get right with other designers we tried working with (which also includes me on Canva, lol).

Pawan M. for stepping in to help with blog posts when we launched our first big event, and pushing us to explore podcasts, video interviews and more.

Sajedah Kasim for taking her immense experience of heading tech company marketing teams and using it to shape the comms of 100s of companies onboarded by Geektrust. We didn’t have a role to suit her level of experience at the time that she was looking out, and she trusted us to come on board as B2B content head. And she has been the life of our meetings - nothing can replace the kind of conversations, honesty and humour she brought into our team.

Dennis Anthony for taking over events from me and running it well, always pushing for whacky ideas, trying to bridge the gap between real-world events and virtual events, and for your courage + initiative to question and change everything.

• Minu Salila for doing some great data analysis which interning with L-m-n-tree that helped us take the decision to go into events with full-force.
• Mihir Saksena , Bharath BT , Anu Susan Thomas , Devansh Mehta and Poornima Kesavan who all trusted us and joined Geektrust at a critical time. If I’ve missed anyone out, it’s because I’m suffering from a cold in old-ish age, please excuse.
• Last but not the least, Srinidhi TG , Akanksha P, Mayank Gupta, Preeti Sharma and 20+ other members of the Geektrust community whom I've bugged over the years to write content, guest-talk at events, lead discussions, moderate discord, create coding challenges and more. I've really enjoyed talking to you, writing your Dev Stories and learning from the way you approach life, problem solving or work.

Always grateful to Krishnan Nair , Sneha Jain and Dhanush Gopinath for trusting Lmntree with your baby all these years. And to Clair Sebastian for being my friend and inducting me into the world of tech startups which has been life-changing for me.