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Simplifying HR Via Blockchain | Kartik Mandaville of Springworks
101 Plays4 years ago
In this edition of The Spotlight, Akshay Datt talks with Kartik Mandaville, Founder and CEO, Springworks, a Bengaluru-based HR Tech start-up that is simplifying the HR function.
An alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Kartik worked for Science, a US-based venture capitalist and private equity firm, before starting Springworks in 2014. Springworks is a unique Blockchain portfolio company, which is building a professional reputation network using AI and Blockchain technology to eliminate frauds from user profiles.
Tune in to this episode to hear Kartik speak about how Springworks with its unique products is revolutionizing the HR landscape.
Key takeaways:
- The whole CMU experience.
- Verification via Blockchain
- Springworks’ product portfolio
- How to build a winning company culture?
Recommended
Transcript
Startup vs Corporate Mindset
00:00:00
Speaker
You have to get your hands dirty. You can't do a start-up with a corporate mindset. When people tell me that I can't do something, I will do whatever it takes to prove them. Life may not compensate you. One is your learning and one is your learning. Fundamentally, each has always been good.
Introduction of Podcast & Guest
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Akshay Dutt, and you're listening to Spotlight, a podcast in which I speak to disruptive startup founders. Hi, I'm Karthik, founder and CEO of SpringWorks. Have you heard of the 10x developer myth? It's a Silicon Valley myth which says that there are some developers who are 10 times as productive as the normal developer.
Karthik's Early Journey
00:00:48
Speaker
And while I don't know if this is true or not, but Karthik is probably as close to being a 10x developer as possible. He learned to code when he was just six years old. And while in college, he built a Facebook app which he monetized and used that to fund his education.
00:01:07
Speaker
He got into Carnegie Mellon University, which is probably amongst the best in the world for a postgraduate course in computer science. He got into science, which is a leading incubator and VC. And probably that early success in life is what caused a few fumbles at this point of life, where he ended up being the CEO and founder of a company for which he raised funds, but which did not find product market fit.
00:01:38
Speaker
So this is when he decided to come back to India and rebuild from the ashes.
Founding SpringWorks and HR Tech Focus
00:01:44
Speaker
And what he rebuilt from the ashes is SpringWorks, which is amongst the leading HR tech companies, not just in India, but globally with an India specific product in background verification and global products around employee engagement and retention.
00:02:03
Speaker
So here's Karthik talking about that journey of rebuilding from the ashes to create SpringWorks 2.0. So Karthik, what's your origin story? Yeah, this final semester capstone project. So again, very wonderful idea where you just literally get time to do whatever you want, as long as there's an approval from a professor or you have a professor as a mentor. So I said, I want to do something on the lines of hiring.
00:02:31
Speaker
Before this, science used to hire both US and India for companies, mostly tech folks. Hiring is so broken. We have Google driverless cars. I've gone to Google office and saw the driverless car. This is the world I want to live in. Until that age, I did not know how to drive. I guess I only learned actually last year after COVID.
00:02:55
Speaker
It's unsafe to go in an Uber and that's the only reason I learned and only because my wife told me to do it. Otherwise, I would not have learned. Because till then, I was, I guess, beating for driverless cars. So, yeah, I just felt like this is how the world should
Challenges in Management and Vision
00:03:12
Speaker
be. So, I was just very fascinated by that. And, you know, it's like, okay, if this is possible, why can't hiring be better? Why can't we match?
00:03:22
Speaker
people with job descriptions better, my country auto-rank them, my country auto-filter them, stuff like that. So we did our first version, you know, scraped kind of GitHub completely, built all the developer profiles, I think called it like higher a genius or higher a geeky genius type of thing, and said, companies can come in or see the entire GitHub user base and make an offer or reach out to them. And GitHub at that time was very open, emails were allowed and APIs were there.
00:03:52
Speaker
and we were able to find a fit based on what language they've put it in and things like that. That was my Gatsjian project. We did a couple of preschool presentations, some local competitions there, one some or some. My professor there used to force us through a lot of user research case studies.
00:04:14
Speaker
It done like I think 40, 50. There's one good thing with CMU is like you reach out to any person in the world and say, student from Carnegie Mellon looking for a user research interview, everyone replies because people want to help students. It's a good brand stuff like that, right? So got connected to the top companies. You got connected to the hiring managers and interviewed them on problems in hiring. Just, you know, what are your problems? You know, would this make sense? How would you approach it? How much would you pay?
00:04:43
Speaker
As in, we had a list of questions because I had done this business course. This was my first, I guess, a real startup. I had no registration, none of that stuff. But I still had no sales DNA. I was not able to sell anywhere to anyone, make zero money, none of that stuff. And I didn't really know what I was doing wrong. And then I just told this CEO of MySpace, Mike Jones,
00:05:09
Speaker
And this is what I'm exploring. What should I do? How should I take this forward? It's like, Karthik, you've been with us. At this time, I was still a full-time employee of science. Full-time student of CMU. And I was doing this on the site. Like, Karthik, you just come. We'll fund you. We'll find a CEO. Because you need a CNC. You will not be able to do this from here on. And let's just do it together.
00:05:32
Speaker
And Visa is taking care, otherwise Visa in the US at that point was very hard. If you were to do your own company and stuff like that, right? Like, yeah, these guys will handle the Visa, trust with them. There were seven of us. Everyone wanted to do it. It was like a dream, right? Start your own company in 2014. And in CMU, we had all these guys at Kura in Facebook, all of them coming into pictures, right?
00:06:00
Speaker
Like when he entered college
Hackathons and Lessons Learned
00:06:02
Speaker
in August 26, I think August when the college started, the first company to interview for internships came on September 4th.
00:06:13
Speaker
Like, it's been one week. I've not studied, you've not learned anything. What do you expect me to do? How do you even judge me? They're like, they're not coming towards CMS, they're coming to that CMS filter. So they'll come here first, right? Like, okay. And, you know, I did a lot of interviews, you know, all the top funds field at most. I think I got through Apple.
00:06:35
Speaker
But he added Facebook, all of them failed, most of them, you know, I think probably 50, 60 rejections. And then Seema taught us a lot, how do you do a lightning pitch? One page resume, wear a suit, all of that fancy stuff, right? So I did this, as you go through Apple, but then I ended up deciding to work at Science, okay? But I went to New York, actually, for a very interesting interview. And that founder was very nice.
00:07:04
Speaker
to this new incoming class of interns who were there for an interview. You spend more time at work than anything else in life. So regardless of the salary, just choose the place you work because that is most important. Because if you don't choose the place well, you will just not be happy in life, no matter how much money you have. I think that kind of stuck me in self-worth.
00:07:28
Speaker
I used to do all these hackathons when I used to go to New York with hackathons. With most of them, she made a lot of money. I ended up going to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, thrice for hackathons. We've got flights and all of that paid. I went to Qatar, Doha, hackathons. A lot of international hackathons was a lot of fun that way. I actually went to
00:07:54
Speaker
kind of Dropbox office for like immigration reform hackathon. And then there I met Mark Zuckerberg and Drew Houston, all these, you know, Dropbox here and Facebook here. And then I ended up winning that hackathon as well. I was
Startup Success and Challenges
00:08:08
Speaker
like a fan boy. So hackathons were my thing, you know, I've won a lot of them and it's fine to do. So yeah, yeah, it's back to the Capstone project.
00:08:22
Speaker
which two signs and said, okay, now this is what I want to do. He said, yes, let's do it, I'll find a CEO. And he just happened to have a good business person who would be the perfect CEO for what I would want to do. And he said, let's fund it, we'll give you 250K, come and work it out. Four out of seven folks decided to convince me and three more people.
00:08:44
Speaker
All of us came in here and then, you know, all of us did everything wrong. Yes, yes. All non-Indians, all of them, three Chinese and one, you know, Taiwanese. Since we are two Chinese, one Taiwanese and one, you know, me. And we did the typical thing, you know, like every single person had the same amount of shares, right?
00:09:06
Speaker
And that is what is taught that should never be done. But we did that. As we saw this come. But how would you have done it differently? Because you are all on paper. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's not like any of you are bringing in more experience or some sort of, you know, like, say someone has already done one startup with a track record of an exit or I mean, there's none of that. Correct, correct. Yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
I think there are ways, right? I think how much skin in, you know, in the game you put, or maybe everyone starts at a lower base, but people will stick around more, you know, get more. So that's what people say, or just, you know, kind of, can you put in some money from your side, or can you take a lower salary? How much effort you put in stuff like that, right? Who's taking the most risk? I think there are ways, because we were seven of us, right? All of us were shareholders in the company, and that's very bad to do. And three of them did not even, you know,
00:10:04
Speaker
come to, say, California to even start the company because they were too scared of Visa and more money. So they went to Google and Apple in one of the top companies. Obviously, all very super smart people. It is what it is. And then, like, 2015 or end of 2015, I think, the other three also left. But they continue to have that stake in the business, okay?
Transition to CEO and VC Pitching
00:10:28
Speaker
Obviously, right? Because you vested in, and I had
00:10:32
Speaker
Armed with this negotiation knowledge with this business school, I had forced, as in Mike Jones, one of those VCs, to west us before the startup officially starts. To say that we have worked for six months on this capstone project, so we should have already wested something. In hindsight, that was the worst possible decision, because I'm in it till now, but the others have left it. So now it is what it is.
00:10:58
Speaker
So long back in 2014-2015, there was this guy who was the CEO of the company. He taught a lot from a business side. He went literally zero to say $50,000 a month within nine months of starting.
00:11:17
Speaker
And we just had everyone who wanted to use our SpaceX was a customer. We were invited to the SpaceX office. I think not even there, probably at that point. A lot of these kind of early stage companies, a lot of them were our clients, but then LinkedIn kind of hinted. So we built a job engine, so use LinkedIn's API. So if you say connect with us, we are able to get all your connections.
00:11:44
Speaker
and then we find someone in your connection who's a good fit for this job, it's a flip card, right? Because we have the flip card job description. We have all your connections, profiles, be able to match and find a good fit, right? We say, okay, now whatever Karthik, you have this one person in your network, why don't you refer that person? If this person gets an interview, you get paid $15, $20, right? So then when company gets a form referral, you know, passive candidate, they're able to convert to an active candidate, and you get some money, and the person ends up getting a nice shorter than an interview, right?
00:12:15
Speaker
So worked well, and then LinkedIn kind of, I think, hinted to us. So we had some acquisition at We Hire Talks. They hinted multiple times. I was like eight months out of college, like, no way. I just want to build it. This is fun. Why would I want to get acquired? Had that catered against no large companies at that point. And then they shut down the API. So they just shut down the API. And overnight, they sent a C and B in our season desist.
00:12:42
Speaker
You are using an API, no longer a target. So overnight, our business kind of went from... But you also had the GitHub part of the business. Yeah. So there was no network there. So GitHub was only kind of one way reach out, so it becomes an email that has cold email and all of that stuff. So it becomes like any other software.
00:13:04
Speaker
Right now, I think the only real software which has done this is Talent Bin, which is acquired by Monster, which is like a Google for people, right? So it kind of sprout as in sources from every single source, right? You're traveling and put over all the sources, now combines it, has one unified profile. People are able to search. Employers are able to now do mass emails, stuff like that, right? So Talent Bin kind of works very well effectively. It was acquired by Monster, but not a big exit by any comparison. So, yeah, I did this.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, so it came to zero. My CEO also quit. One other founder, my classmate quit. Hey, yeah, this is too hard. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to keep going. I got promoted from the CTO to CEO. I reached to every single investor you can think of. Access to Sequoia, and recently. Because I got a meeting with everyone. I had the CMU brand. I had the Hackathon brand. People want to talk to tech geeks.
00:14:03
Speaker
Science, Mike Jones was obviously there.
Business Model Exploration
00:14:06
Speaker
I was just going to go to the Sandhill Road, stuff like that, like on to say every day, multiple times a day. What was your pitch? Pitch was, you know, kind of simplify recruiting. I want to make more, as in, I think, initial pitch was like, we want to democratize recruiting, right? We want to have every single person becomes a recruiter, right? Everyone has, like, if I were to ask you, do you know someone for this, you know, JS job?
00:14:32
Speaker
I'm sure I know, but I don't know him, right? But if I say, okay, give me your network, let me comb through it and find a person who has a fit. But yeah, I'm sure, right? So everyone knows someone, we just don't know who is looking for a job now, you know, as in who is a good fit, because we don't just have a thousand people network in our minds, right? We're not able to search. Obviously with LinkedIn, the API is much easier without it is almost impossible. So probably till date, no one has been able to solve this.
00:14:59
Speaker
then I tried a product around it, but they also ended up shelving it for a variety of different reasons. But anyway, my pitch was I want to do something different than recruiting. I want to use AI to simplify the recruiter's job. We tried stack ranking, give us 100, give us a job description, stack rank them.
00:15:19
Speaker
give you the basically say for second third fourth, right? So save your recruiters sometime. We said, you know, we became an agency now. So I used to refer because I had a very good developer networks used to refer my friends to these jobs. And then the US you get 25% of the first year salaries. They're offering like 100k, 25k. So I made a lot of money for the company just by referring my friends to these hot positions and get 25, you know, take 30, 35k. It's all like, okay,
00:15:48
Speaker
You know, can we do this with tech? I said yes, but obviously the answer was no, right? Because it was just limited to my network and how much can I do, right? Or like say, network of my friends, right? And then we tried Facebook, a bunch of other sources. No one really has that rich data, right? Except even till date, LinkedIn is the only one which really has this data, right? But it's an unsolved problem. How do employers reach to passive candidates? It's someone everyone wants to know, right?
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, so this was a pitch pitch to every single VC everyone ended up saying it was like and then everyone was very happy but it just never followed up right so that is the other thing no one says no like VCs don't say no they just say good good right but if they don't say yes that means it's a no that is just another warning I had right yeah so it was a complete no was very
00:16:37
Speaker
was probably the hardest time. Then two other founders quit. We changed business model, tried a bunch of things. Got a new, I guess, co-founder. Even though it was like newer one, but still got a new person, called him the co-founder. I had a bunch of sales people, tried an agency model, a bunch of other things. Nothing really stuck on. And I think in February 2016, I said, okay, it's too much time. Not working out.
00:17:07
Speaker
I think $5K, $10,000 in the bank. I'm done.
Blockchain in Background Verification
00:17:12
Speaker
I just don't have anything else to do. I said, okay, now let's let everyone go. I was probably the only one in the company, not really taking a salary and stuff like that. But to call it the science question, I was seeing what other companies were doing. There was this other company growing very well, and they wanted to grow their tech team.
00:17:35
Speaker
we were not able to grow that effectively, sustainably in the US. So they said, OK, Karthik, why don't you work with us? Why don't you help me look after tech, call things tech, right? So yeah, it makes sense. I like to go out to India for this. Yeah, actually, maybe this is what I want to do when India was obviously hot upcoming, like the culture here always.
00:18:00
Speaker
was not very fascinated by the US culture. And this was the start of ecosystem 2016, Flipkarts and all of that. Okay, let me go back. And I went back and worked on this company. Now, literally for like, I think 18 to 20 months, built a full team. And meanwhile, I was trying to get my company back, right, something or the other, started a consulting shop, picked up some projects, you know, from people I know in the US, hired some people, I was kind of
00:18:30
Speaker
Advising, consulting, and I had folks who were connecting with the coding. So I found very smart folks who helped me, built up an office, learned all of that, scaled teams, whatever. This is like a pure services. Yeah. Yeah. So on the one side, I was pure services consulting, but on the other side where I was doing my actual full-time job, that was like I was the tech lead or something. They didn't object to you doing a side gig?
00:19:00
Speaker
No, so just because of the science question, because they are the only other people on the board. They're very comfortable. They're like, yeah, Karthik, you've actually not given up on your company, because a typical thing will be, you just close it off and say, you know, it is a failure. It is what it is. We tried our best. But you're like, you want to take, you want to do one of the shots and you want to give up yet.
00:19:23
Speaker
So the legal entity remained the same? Exactly the same. Spring rolling can still stay the same. And how did you handle the stake part? Did the ownership come to you? No, folks had it. As an until date, they have some. So as in some people, eventually, last year or two years ago, I bought back some of them with profits from Spring Roll only.
00:19:48
Speaker
So anyway, in the consulting. Why didn't you just start a new LLP? Because you were at zero. So now, I mean, now you're paying money to people for a stake, to buy their stake for which they didn't do anything. And then I would not say don't do anything. I would say, yeah, listen, they helped. They also kind of took their best shot. But at the same time, until date, I just feel an obligation because I raised money, and then we raised about 600k or something.
00:20:17
Speaker
And I was the face of it, but the majority part of it. I was like, I want to raise. I think this is the idea. I'm like, I just don't want to call it in the quit type. And I don't want to start something new. And then these people feel left out. And I was like, maybe I'll do something in the HR industry only. And I just don't want to, if I start a new one and then everyone kind of gets cut out, I would think that I'm cheating them. That's not something I want to do.
00:20:46
Speaker
They trusted me when no one else was there to trust me, as simple as that. I should just honor that trust. If they're okay with a two-year break, I'm okay with it. So everyone's very comfortable and flexible with that. So I ended up doing that in, I think, 2017 or, I guess, 2018. I started actually rebuilding spin-roll around blockchain, background verification.
00:21:13
Speaker
So that is what I was doing on the site. Now we had a consulting business, which is giving us spring roll, good revenue. And I was doing my full-time job. And then I was doing this on the site, right? Started rebuilding. Then I said, okay, I'm doing this job at Namath Media, and I will go full-time on my startup now because I have enough cash with me. And the company has some cash as well. So I'm going to hire people and explore this blockchain idea, blockchain back verification.
00:21:44
Speaker
So start to tell me about that idea. What exactly is this blockchain back verification? So, you know how employee verification runs, right? I'm sure you understand how every company hires, you know, kind of runs a background check on the person. Most people don't do it before hire, some people do it after you've joined, but everyone in the world has to do it. And also compliance and other reasons. So like, and this
00:22:10
Speaker
is you go from Google to Facebook, to Apple, every time you redo this book, right? So it's just once, right? So I'm like, with, and, you know, with the auction, you can do it once, or with digital signatures, you can do it once, and reuse that verification again, to save both time and money for the company, right? And you save time and money for you, and then you are able to pass on that savings to the company. Yeah, this is a, seems like a nice use case. And I had previously done,
00:22:39
Speaker
a Bitcoin exchange with science in 2013. There was no Ethereum, none of this blockchain stuff. I had dabbled in Bitcoin and CMU. It was one of those cases where I used to mine Litecoin on my computer, because it was that easy. Hashing power is not there. The format of the computer was $56, did not even think about it. Now, it would have been maybe
00:23:05
Speaker
around 30, 40, 50K. So I lost all of that stuff. Because just for a fun perspective, at that point, which is what programmable money. So this is something, money, which can be programmed. And the philosophy is that it's all decentralized. It's internet, no need for any kind of decentralized parties. So you kind of cool and it's a key thing. So I had some background there.
00:23:34
Speaker
So I was like, okay, let me, you know, and now Ethereum has launched, which is the first time you could do something other than money. You will pay about applications. Let me try this out. It sounds like an interesting use case. And we built a B2B use case on this. We actually signed up CRED as our first customer. They were less than 10 employees. You know, I had
00:23:58
Speaker
previously been connected to Kunal Shah because I was part of this Bangalore startup and I had done like an AMA with him and I just had him as a Facebook friend. I'm like, you know, I started this new thing, you know, for background verification, do you want to, you know, run your employees through this, you know, background check, right? Like, yeah, we have, you know, less than 10, you know, let's explore, let me connect you to our HR. And we had, we were on Excel sheets, we had literally nothing.
00:24:24
Speaker
And we had built a blockchain piece, but from an HR side, nothing. All Excel and stuff like that. Google Forms. And he gave us a leap of faith. And he said, yeah, I'll work with you guys. This is interesting. We were doing it differently than the odd bridge and these type of companies. So I said, yeah, let me explore this. And we got them as a first client. How did you start doing it? Do the verification part of it. Isn't that a very manual work?
00:24:53
Speaker
What all does that involve? Like if you need to do an address, like you need to send someone to check the address.
Decentralized Verification Vision
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah. So we, as an email, initially we were like with multiple vendors, like one or two vendors who were already doing this and slowly we started kind of, you know, productizing as much as possible. So now we have a way of digitally, you know, verifying addresses without sending a person.
00:25:13
Speaker
ID, we have direct connections, you know, the government databases, employment, we have our own tool to do trip campaigns, right? So then traditionally, employment verification is a person on the other side, picking on the phone, calling or emailing. We're like, makes no sense. This is literally a customer customer marketing, right? It's a trip campaign at the end of the day, right? Can we automate it? Yes, right. We automated that, right? Same thing on education, to the extent possible, I would not say it's 100% not done. It is
00:25:43
Speaker
a lot more which we can do, but it will probably never be 100% done because there is an ops element. Slowly, initially we were outsourcing everything and slowly, slowly started rebuilding our in-house ops team. I had a role to play. I would not say blockchain. Blockchain to me has always been another piece of technology. Actually, for the longest time, we did not even talk about blockchain with our clients because this is that time where RBI and all of them were there.
00:26:13
Speaker
or this Bitcoin founder got arrested and stuff. Yeah, it's scary. Let's not do this because enterprise companies or S&P companies are a bit marketable. They will go anything with crypto, not even touching. They will be like 10 feet away type of thing. So that's how we started building it.
00:26:33
Speaker
Now we work with the likes of Flipkart, Razorpay, Apollo, GodRidge, all of them are our clients. So pretty big business. This is a growing business. 2018-19 itself, from the industry, overall revenue was around 650 crores. So now it probably is around 1,500 crores. So it's growing very quickly because people are changing jobs. More and more companies are doing background verifications more
00:27:02
Speaker
You know, and then, yeah, the companies also, they also want verification. So we've not done a lot of white blue collar verification. We've tried to stay away from them because that's a very non tech business, right? Because it's a lot of language and all of those things. We've tried to stay away from it as much as possible. So even in Tripkart, they have white collar blue collar, but we've only kind of, you know, so wished for them, you know, their white collar stuff as of now.
00:27:30
Speaker
But let's see what happens in the future. So this is how we started growing this type of business. So I want to understand the role of blockchain here. So how a traditional background verification agency would work is that they would have a client, the client would send them every week like these are the new hires. And then they would start like their workflow to do the verification and then they would send back a report. Maybe that data of people they verify would be somewhere on their system like a spreadsheet or something like that.
00:27:58
Speaker
So, how does blockchain make this different for you? Yeah, so one is, you know, from, so one is you're kind of placing all of the sheets on a kind of a web app, right? So it's kind of, it's seamless real-time reports. Right now, you can wait for like, say, four weeks for all the text to get done before you get a report on it. So like interim reports, so you get it as soon as ID is instant for us, right? All API based.
00:28:23
Speaker
OCR, things like that. So that's all the non-blockchain piece. Where blockchain actually comes in is one is for digital signatures, consent. If you think about it, what is an Edo e-sign or a docu-sign? It is basically a docu-sign certifying that Karthik has signed this document. That's all. Instead of our work, let's just build our own signature platform and this signed consent is actually seen on chain. And it's not a consent.
00:28:51
Speaker
right, some consent by the candidate, only by the candidates. And then when verification is done, right, so this verification also stays on chain, you know, in a hash format, obviously, which says, like, it's like how degrees should traditionally be and should actually be given on chain, right, which is like, okay, this person graduating in Carnegie Mellon, this state of the state, this college, this department. And once it's there,
00:29:14
Speaker
and you don't have to do that verification again because that's the power of it. So that is what this is only digital signatures. But that could anyways stay in your web app that verification data like he's verified. Then it's us verifying and it's us certifying.
00:29:31
Speaker
with the blockchain, you kind of remove yourself as a picture. So this is the piece of digital signature. So tomorrow, a company could come and ask that candidate for that whatever code is there of the blockchain. And they can replay. Eventually, this brand is not a spring verifier. This does not even exist.
00:29:57
Speaker
That's key because if you think about it, all of this is a waste of money. This is only happening because of inefficiencies. Why is background verification happening? It's just because of an inefficiency in the system. It does not need it. It should not be required.
00:30:10
Speaker
If the Indian government's vision of the Sadhar and Digi-Lockerism was actually done properly and there was enough adoption, you would not even need any verification. Why would you need? Indian government has done it, right? So eventually... What is this Digi-Locker initiative? The Indian government has this where, you know, in your app, you can download an app and add your bank card and other card, you know, like code certificate and say CBSE 10th and 12th marks, but then they centralize, you know, verify it from a database, right?
00:30:38
Speaker
So then you just show an app to anyone, there's a QR code and they can scan for the authenticity of it. So that's the concept we are not having any of this kind of digital operation. So like land record should be on this education certificate, employment certificate.
00:30:55
Speaker
So that was our goal as well, right? So as an eventually, we will replace ourselves. We will not need it. Actually, you don't even need verification from the employer. All you actually go a step further, you need from the people working there. I am looking at now Facebook. Facebook, verifying me, is actually putting Facebook in power, which is not correct, right? Because I may not have left on the best of the best. They may take a month, two months, the company may have shut down. Lots of reason, right? I should be verifying other people who worked with
00:31:25
Speaker
at Facebook at the same time. That becomes a true use case of blockchain. One is blockchain is two things. One is this digital signature, which is how do you certify or verify this thing. And then second is, what is the consensus minimum mechanism? Why is it better or why is it different than a distributed database? What I said will now consent and verification can be done with a distributed database.
00:31:54
Speaker
But if you take it a step further, where you're actually decentralizing it, where every person is a verifier in essence, then you don't even need, you have to rely on a blockchain, a public blockchain, something like that. There is incentives now to remove spam, incentives to kind of keep bad actors away, which is the essence of Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? It is finally a ledger entry.
00:32:21
Speaker
without having an RBI certified that I gave you 100 apiece. And how does that happen? Because there are so many people verifying that. And then the biggest change, I can fork Bitcoin and run it on my own, but no one is going to trust me. They're always going with the longest possible change. That's the goal here as well. So I don't think we've achieved the vision even close to what we wanted to do. So we're still there. So what you're saying is that
00:32:51
Speaker
There could be like such a system could exist in which everybody is part of that blockchain. And like a question could go to that pool saying that did he work at Facebook? And if majority of people say yes, he worked, then it is verified that he worked at Facebook. So his employment verification is done like that through a peer verified system. And everything education is also done like this. You know, have you gone to Manipar? You know, your folks have verified.
00:33:19
Speaker
And then you go a step further, you verify your skills. What are the reference checks? It's exactly this. In the future, we want to rely more on these cohort-based courses and references and skills and on-the-job training than anything else. So this is exactly what will happen because people-backed verification is removing all centralized parties.
00:33:41
Speaker
Like in India, education universities run a scam. If you want to go, have you ever tried getting a degree from your college? They'll ask you for 1,500 rupees. I paid you all the fees to do this degree. And now you're asking me one more to print a piece of paper and put a stamp? That's just wrong. It's just ethically morally wrong. There needs to be a better way for this. So as an employee,
00:34:06
Speaker
multiple people have tried, but it's not yet been there because it's doing this with skills because they are like doing crowdsourcing of like what are his top skills 100% but the challenge there is if the data stays 1% so I have a long beef with no LinkedIn because
00:34:26
Speaker
We're all using it. We're all contributing. We're all geeing some from it. But finally, you're helping that network build. Tomorrow, one fine day, they say, yeah, you have 1.5 lakh followers on LinkedIn. But if you want to post new content, you have to pay $10.
00:34:40
Speaker
What do you do? You can't go overnight. So web 2 was, don't be evil. That was Google's philosophy. Don't be evil not to their employees or to the world. Web 3 blockchain is like, can't be evil. Because it's not possible. Technologically not possible. So I actually fundamentally believe. So things like even say Google Photos, for example, right now,
00:35:05
Speaker
You know how the evolution has happened. Web one was where you should download like say Picasa, you know, or get on your CD, put it on your laptop, run a photo editing software, save all your photos. Web two was Google Photos, right? Nothing stays on your laptop. That problem is just a connecting piece, right? To the internet. Everything stays on cloud. You're able to do everything you want on cloud. I think web three will be our next version. Like your phone, your software stays on cloud.
00:35:33
Speaker
The data actually never ever leaves, not may stay on cloud or on your phone, but the keys to that data only stay with you. Right now, hypothetically, Google gets, your photos are lost. And we know at some point or the other, something like that will happen. You know, even with Facebook and all it does happen in this new world. Now, when this kind of happens, your phone will be your key.
00:35:58
Speaker
as in phone or whatever, it's just natural that Apple at some point or Google at some point will launch a wallet on the phone, authenticate by your face or finger, whatever it is. And that is becomes your encryption key for everything. So literally, you have the keys people will be running private servers, right? Okay, I know my data is saved in these five servers,
Empowering Creators with Blockchain
00:36:21
Speaker
right? And I'm, you know, I'm gonna
00:36:23
Speaker
nominating my 10 friends. If I'm in the hospital for some reason, seven out of 10 friends can come together and recover my keys. All of those things, mechanisms are built in. That is what will happen in the future. I will not rely on a Google type of authority to say, okay, you have access to my everything. Then I was thinking of getting a baby monitor.
00:36:49
Speaker
This is so scary to get a baby monitor and then have it connected to a cloud and everything is available. There's too many cases to attack. That is just going to change and I think at some point, you literally have a box in your house and that's where that is your cloud. You have redundancies and all of those are built in, but I think that is what will end up happening. I think that's a very futuristic vision.
00:37:15
Speaker
Samsung launched a blockchain phone, I think three years ago. I don't know what is the adoption, but I think some point or the other, these type of things will happen. Probably if Facebook does it, but they're a metaverse thing, right? Then if Facebook say overnight, can we get 1.5 billion blockchain users because WhatsApp becomes a wallet? Done, right? And that becomes a gateway to everything. It can happen easily. When or if? It's just a question for them, right?
00:37:40
Speaker
So anyway, so back to us is like, this is how I think the eventual way of verification will be like, and hiring will become that simple. We're like, yeah, you know, I'm seeing someone's on chain, you know, blockchain, as you may have done all of these 10, 15 things. And I think you have references, your endorsements.
00:37:59
Speaker
either traditional signatures or whatnot. I don't want to do five rounds of interviews. All I want to do is a quick call and get hired. Why do I want to assess your technical skills? Developer interviews or even other. A developer goes through the same exact round 10 times. Every single company is doing the same exact thing. Why does this happen? Why can't that be on a better way?
00:38:25
Speaker
social reasons for this to exist, you can start with that. But I think at some point candidates will be in a very candidate talent driven market. They're like, I am not going to do this, right? Which is why a re-level by an academy also exists, right? Or hacker rank, this was a philosophy. I will build my hacker rank profile, I will solve those kind of things. You will get my hacker rank, pass me two rounds of interviews. I don't want to do this.
00:38:47
Speaker
of candidates will demand, right? Like, you know, if someone is 10 years experience, you say, oh, go do five interviews at my series, we start like, I'm not doing it, right? Obviously, it's Google, then things are different. So I think things like will this with things like this will just happen. So even the candidates scores or whatever on various tests and assignments would also be on the blockchain.
00:39:09
Speaker
Definitely. So may not be completely visible, obviously with privacy built in, right? So obviously the candidate has all these agents. If he or she wants to share, you can share, right? So I think that is how it will end up happening. This still sounds a lot like LinkedIn except like a decentralized LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn has most of these things. You can add schools, you can add all of this. It may not have that adoption as of now, but as in for cutting down interviews, but they have definitely tried.
00:39:36
Speaker
But decentralization is where it comes in. Right now, if I have to message you on LinkedIn, I have to pay $10 to LinkedIn to message you. You get zero out of it. I just want to change. It's just natural this creator economy kicks in. I am Karthik. I have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn.
00:39:56
Speaker
I want to get paid. This is me. I know people have monetized that with a cohort based course on influencers, but you literally giving them value. I'm giving value to them every single day, but not able to monetize that at all. Some people have tried it in the past where you say, book a call with me for 15 minutes for $15, $1 per minute. There have been multiple experiments. Some have failed. Some have been successful.
00:40:21
Speaker
There are obviously the extreme versions with Black Mirror where you walk into a hotel and you have your Black Mirror score and then whatever that score is, you get a special upgrade or you get to participate in that community. I don't know if you will ever reach there, but we're already kind of getting there. If you're a Twitter influencer, say of 1 million followers, walk into any hotel and pitch it in the right way, you'll get the best possible room upgrade and all of that.
00:40:50
Speaker
I think we're already there. People say we're not there, but that's just being non-trivialistic. All this just becomes 10 times better with the blockchain
SpringWorks' Dual Focus
00:41:00
Speaker
world. Because you have that creator economy built up. And you're not relying on one party. It's global from day one. You're not at the mercy of a centralized company. They change their monitor. LinkedIn does not make committed revenue targets. Now, next year, we're going to charge every influencer for paying $10. Twitter is now doing it with a blue.
00:41:19
Speaker
doing subscription surveys. It's good and bad for them. But at some point, there will be a different solution for all of this. What is it? How does it come as yet to be seen? So from a business perspective, like specifically SpringWorks perspective, so there are two parts that you're building. One part is like a traditional business where you're making money, which is verification as a service.
00:41:44
Speaker
And the second part which you are doing almost like a philanthropic thing is you're putting it on the blockchain so that tomorrow nobody needs to pay money for verification again. Yeah, kind of replacing us, yes. That's pure philanthropy. There's no long-term asset value of that what you're putting on the blockchain.
00:42:07
Speaker
No, so they will be a token around it. So they will, right now there is nothing, but, you know, I think in an ideal world, they'll be like a token economy built around it. Right. So where like, they'll be like, they'll be like, say a spring coin, for example, or something. Exactly. Yeah. So we, we had, we tried with that was not really work, but we'll try with it again, like a spring coin where, you know, like that is kind of used as a transaction fee.
00:42:32
Speaker
to set up a new profiles, verify someone, who you pay in spring coins. And then because there are limited number of coins, the coin value increases. So it's not a new one. You would hold a large pool of those coins. So therefore, because we will be the initial creators. Yes. Yes. 100%. Eventually, every single user, every single profile creator gets a certain point. So everyone is going to incentivize to push this network forward and stuff like that. And people are incentivized to get on it because then just creating a profile will make them earn a coin.
00:43:02
Speaker
Exactly. And then you are incentivized to get an early because maybe now you get one and then a year later you get 0.5 or two years later you get 0.1, right? All that early, you know? And that is how the token needs to be there because it's obviously not for philanthropic reason. It will never work. I don't completely believe in this DAO world and completely decentralized versions of it because I think you still need an
00:43:31
Speaker
For lack of a better term, you need a centralized party or someone driving it forward, but with the right incentives and mechanisms built in. As a God forbid, I will not stop doing this. I end up dying. This should not stop. It should just still run. Maybe what will happen is a big portion of the tokens were with me, so those are now lost forever. But someone else could just fork it and reuse the same type of data.
00:44:00
Speaker
But that's the thing with Bitcoin as well, right? And it exists without any person. But that, obviously, proportionality and all of the initial folks have pushed it, adopted it, and all stuff like that, right? So I think the same kind of vision. But then how it felt, please. Why didn't your token experiment take off? You said you experimented. What happened? Yeah. So multiple reasons. We launched on the Ethereum blockchain in 20, I think, 17.
00:44:26
Speaker
I, there was to kind of say, set up a profile, you have to pay like around say, $20, $50. And say, if I tell you, you know, you had to set up a LinkedIn profile or you had like a book experience and you had to pay $10, no one is going to do that, right? That is one. Second is, you know, the adoption for a blockchain, you know, project is still very hard because you set up a wallet, a long string of characters, save it, and you can never lose it.
00:44:55
Speaker
You have it, you write it on a piece of paper. Otherwise, if you lose this, this is not like a password where you can recover. There's no recovery in blockchain. It's lost in blockchain. I think the consumer version is still not built well. Even now, if you see, it's 2021, 2022.
00:45:12
Speaker
Most of the blockchain apps are from a finance perspective, right? Where as a new, so Western, you're making money. And so you'll obviously put in that effort, you know, real consumer applications. Only now, I think yesterday or the day before, Brave, which is like a Chrome offshoot.
00:45:29
Speaker
very Firefox on it, they built a browser wallet. So that becomes very powerful. That thing is, okay, every single application now does not need to do their own logins, passwords, email, nothing of that stuff, right? The browser takes care of all of that. Is it good enough? Is it decent less enough? It may not be because it's brave. I don't know how much they have, but they're definitely open source and write principles, but obviously I'm not going to be evaluated.
00:45:54
Speaker
So I think now it's different. So that was the other reason we failed. And then I think lack of focus as well. We're like, okay, B2B is kicking off well, so let's just focus on it. India's crypto situation was also bad. Like at some point, it wasn't completely banned. And I guess most of our employees at that point had tokens. I was like, what do we do to take it from them? And then it's not just my risk, but their risk as well. What do we do? At some point, it was like,
00:46:21
Speaker
Out of that, okay, holding crypto is also going to be legal. It's not that you can declare and be safe, but it's just holding itself is legal. No idea how they will ever implement and stuff like that. But it's very scary. So we, I guess, chickened out and said, okay, no, no, no.
00:46:40
Speaker
not touching now.
Employee Engagement Tools
00:46:43
Speaker
Let's focus on our BGB now working well. We have these kind of customers that's going to put blockchain on the back burner. We still use it as a technology piece, right? And this is growing, signed up customers, our teams are growing even from 0 to 50, 200 and now around 200. We launched a couple of more HR products as well. Your bread and butter comes from background verification as a service. And what do you charge for that?
00:47:09
Speaker
So it depends on the checks and, you know, verification, but like ID probably starts to say, I think, 49, 99 rupees, employment, education, school cases, you know, practice as well, civil checks, global database. So it really depends. But generally, most companies are doing this master verify, which is like 1199 rupees. So 1199 per person.
00:47:39
Speaker
kind of covers like ID, code, address, where if last two employments, one education. And this service background verification, how much of your top line comes from this? I'm guessing all of it or you have other? No, no, no, this is, yeah, this is one of the ones we have other which is, you know, one of these new product lines we have, and we still run our consulting business, you know, the one I started like in 2016. So that is actually from a top line perspective, that is probably the biggest one, you know,
00:48:08
Speaker
But we have these products also have this is not really fast and by the verification on site. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. It's kind of good and bad But yeah, and we have other doing products and one is a year old and the other is probably six which are purely says Okay, so tell me about these products Yeah, so more than the employee engagement post higher space. So we were like no and then BTV is
00:48:33
Speaker
It's nice, but it's a lot of non-tech as well. It's not SaaS, there's a lot of scenes there. There is a product play, but it's not a lot of product. There's probably better than most, but I think there's quite a bit we can do. The market is growing as well, which is good, which is not the case. It's two, three years ago. We can say, let's focus on the post-hire. Now the focus in HR and employee perspective also seems
00:49:04
Speaker
How do I hire faster and better? Because it has gotten very crazy. How do I retain? How do I build my culture? How do I teach my employees? Especially post-pandemic and even present before that. So employing engagement, we have engaged with, which is like a watch recognition piece. So I took this traditional way of recognizing once a year performance reviews
00:49:32
Speaker
more instant, right? So you do something nice today. You get recognized by your peer, it gets not only to Amazon gift card, it's posted to your role. Everyone else is able to see that social gratification, right? So it's that instant now feedback to attach to a company value. So not waiting for a month, not waiting for a quarter or not waiting for the end of the year. One or three employees see your company because London are appreciative. So the benefit is that
00:50:01
Speaker
You are able to do it. You are able to democratize the law. So it's pure, non-stop-down. And every person gets a certain amount of points to record that. A lot of enterprises do this. They do it over email.
00:50:13
Speaker
They do it with a lot of approvals. And it's centralized. There needs to be a boss or an HR who... Someone who needs to approve. Or even initiate. So here we are doing a snack, which is the office. Even if you are completely in office or hybrid, whatever it is, you are using that for people. So that is really becoming a communication channel. So we use that word. And traditional way is send an email, which
00:50:40
Speaker
goes out to your entire list. People say, oh, now Congrats, Congrats, Congrats. It's a lot of email thread. It's like inside Slack with chips and employees and people react, plus ones and stuff like that. So a lot more engaging than other ways. That's one. Second is... And this is purely built on Slack, like it's a Slack. Okay. Okay. Teams also allows these extensions. So it's like a channel or a chat bot inside.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, app or a bot, Slack calls it apps, Teams calls it, I think, a bot plus an extension. And then the other feature here is like, how do you listen to employees effectively? People don't really do feedback surveys, people do 360. Again, once a year, once a quarter, employees want to be heard, employees want their feedback to be taken seriously. Employees want their feedback to managers. Managers want their feedback to grow better. How does that even happen?
00:51:39
Speaker
that HRs end up sending these traditional surveys, whatever HRMS, Google forms, server monkey, long surveys, the context switch from email to go there, fill up a page, and you're willing to do it. And we said, okay, can we do what now CX consumer customer automation experience, which has done with chatbots and in-page surveys,
00:52:05
Speaker
do the same thing for employees, which is employee experience. So we did inside Slack, inside like a bot, you're talking to, so you feel like you're talking to a person, but you're actually answering this. So you get the insights, you're able to get say 75% of the sponsors within like say an hour or two hours, but something else would be a lot of reminders, please do this, please do that, and it takes a lot more time. You feel like you're answering one question now, just one after the other, almost like a quiz type of thing. It feels a lot more fun to do this.
00:52:35
Speaker
That's what we've built. Some additional features like recognizing people on their work anniversary, recognizing what their loyalty, celebrating those days, some admin controls, stuff like that. I feel at some point, the conversation will, I think all education market will shift towards
00:52:57
Speaker
culture. How do I retain better? Money is not going to be the only thing. Even the hottest company, the most funded company has the same attention problems, less than no unfunded one. But they also have this. The culture is not great. Employer branding is not there. People are not being heard. There's no recognition, appreciation. People are not going to wait for a year to get a hike. Now you can do that, keep on six months by getting another job. Why would you wait for a year?
00:53:26
Speaker
So all of these things are going to increase. So then, um, we also have one more product line, which is like, uh, uh, or on team morning, similar, uh, it's like, how are you going to break these silos seals and there does not have any. And the listening product to listen to employee feedback that is again on slack and team only. Yes, yes, yes. So we have taken a conscious call on these lack and deans.
00:53:53
Speaker
I think if you're not on Slack and Teams, you're not an ideal, typical customer for us. You probably are not the one who's scared so much about employees right now. And then the experience is on there because of web email experience is already broken. And there's not much you can do, even if you're on WhatsApp, it's not much you can do. Slack and Teams is going to forgive.
00:54:18
Speaker
But companies using G Suite, Google has this chat product also, although it's not as good. But can you build for that also? Is that enough? We actually tested it out. Very, very limited. One of the featured ads there as well, a very small version of what we built. But yeah, it's just very limited scope. They have not yet opened it up, but I have a feeling they will. So whether you are 100% right, Cisco is doing it, Zoom is also doing it. Zoom has its flat competitors with Zoom chat.
00:54:48
Speaker
very few people use it, but they won't already have it. So where you can have channels and apps and bots and all of that, I will practice there as well. So I think a lot of, if you think about it, all of these companies will end up building Facebook as a workplace product. It's exactly like Slack or
Global Expansion Challenges
00:55:04
Speaker
Netflix. So I think all of them will end up building something and it will only get powerful with apps. Why is Slack so much more widely used? Maybe at this point, obviously, Microsoft is there because of the enterprise subscription.
00:55:19
Speaker
But before that, it was only the reason was the ecosystem of integration was very easy to bring in. Salesforce, CRMs, and payment, and sales team look at it as a pay-in-wise, stipend-wise, getting you higher onboarding, all of this integration was very, very hard.
00:55:39
Speaker
which is not the case with other platforms. I think everyone else will also end up at the same place, right? Zoom and Microsoft Teams and Cisco and Google Chat and Facebook and a bunch of others. Zoho has also something. So I think ecosystem is all, communication platform is very similar. We obviously want to go after the one which is the biggest, right? And once we've now, I guess, covered a significant portion of this. We can think about something else, but right now it's a distraction.
00:56:07
Speaker
Got it. Okay. And the team-burning product? Yeah, so that's not true. Yeah. So that is, you know, like breaking these kind of silos, right? So you have seen, seen, and they've seen, which are never documented each other, right? How do you, they don't have any work with each other in the office. They would have kind of met at like a coffee station or like a food spoil table or something. That does not happen in a hybrid or a remote setup. How do you break these silos? So we build like a virtual coffee type of thing, right? So connect.
00:56:36
Speaker
Randomly connected people, keep them in an icebreaker set of questions, have something to talk about. Otherwise, it's me and you getting one of the awkward video call and people by nature are not, as in we are all social animals, but we need something to break the ice. So that's how we do it. So breaking those silos, getting people closer together. And then fun games, like we have a 50,000 question bank, which is kind of updated, say James Bond, Thanksgiving, and Diwali, and whatnot.
00:57:05
Speaker
where you can play games together. It's more to kind of take the headache from HR and say, you know, you set it up and you forget it. We get your 25, 40%, 50% of the company engaged on it. Like we show a quick three second GIF of a movie. So I'll just give fun things, fictionaries and stuff like that. It kind of gets... Built for an audience or global audience? Oh no, global. As in we have way more global customers like Kura, Shopify,
00:57:33
Speaker
All of them use it. There are customers in India, but in India, the challenge right now is that people think this is as a fun product, so they don't really want to pay for it. There are probably a lot of companies in India using us, most of the unicorns use us, but it's a free plan. We have a free minimum product. The feature on the Slack store, no rank one for almost a year.
00:57:56
Speaker
But globally, people see this as a value. I have a budget now for employee engagement and team bonding. Earlier, you should take out people, whatever, on food and stuff like that. Now, this is doing some part of the job, which is getting people closer. It's not a lot of my personal work that you can require. You can do customer questions. You can do multiple formats as you get nice fancy reports. And this is also on Slack and team only, this team burning up. Okay.
00:58:22
Speaker
This is actually also on Google chat, but we took a step back and have not really done anything because the experience is just not there. So only Slack continues. Because now it's on your phone, on your laptop, don't have to install anything. Only the admin installs. Everyone else is able to play, right? So my perspective is very easy to engage. It's the easiest possible thing an HR can do. And you get some good, quick rewards. People have said,
00:59:02
Speaker
So these products are largely getting more traction outside India than in India and the background verification is pure India.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah, so we have tried in the US, but I think it's still there, but we'll not fail. We'll probably roll it back. I think we've failed. The US is a very different beast. Compliance is very huge. Something completely underestimated and not great thing about it. Compliance is very, very hard. You have to know who complains in day one. US compliance is a lot harder. Every state has its own tools. Every city has its own rules.
00:59:35
Speaker
And in US, you don't go to a SaaS company or like a third party for a packet verification. It's all integrated with your HRMS. In India, we're not yet there. And then HRMSs won't even happen. So their entry is very hard because you have to be very big, very well-funded to get an entry to these HRMSs. And otherwise, they don't even entertain you. So Checkher is obviously the market leader there. Does very well. But obviously, it's a big market.
01:00:05
Speaker
I think there is a way to solve it. I just don't have the answer and now we don't want to focus on it as of now because this is going very well. So this is India background verification for all practical purposes. The other two are everywhere is definitely very global.
Blockchain's Broader Impact
01:00:21
Speaker
Engaged with, I think, we'll see a lot more global. When I say global, more English speaking.
01:00:27
Speaker
I think engage with we probably see a lot of customers also use it because I think given this reason we see funding happening in India, which means talent shortage is real, we are leaving companies faster, employer branding is becoming, then it's not just a gimmick, it's becoming real. Listening to employers, how do you build?
01:00:50
Speaker
feedback culture, how do you build a revolution culture, that is becoming increasingly more important. So I think companies in India will also start thinking about this. Because maybe not at the 50 employee stage, maybe at 100 employees, why I'm seeing people leave and no matter how much money you offer, they're not sticking around. So there are other reasons. And what are the pricing for this? Like $1 per user per month, something like that.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, so it's $2 per user per month for engagement. And then Trivia comes out to be around, say, $92 per user per month, something like that. So it depends on active users. We only charge for the people who are active users. So we can incentivize as a counter. OK. I can see on your website you also have this recruitment applicant tracking system.
01:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So another thing which we built, I think a while back two years ago, it's a free to use applicant tracking software. The goal for this was to build a funnel or a lead gen for our rest of our businesses. This kind of organically growing, we spend I think zero dollars on marketing. And I fundamentally believe ATS at some point will go to zero. ATS is something that started from $100,000 to $100,000.
01:02:03
Speaker
Now we have these no code ATS is like, it's not like I'm like taking pretty much to a lot of the, we just go down to zero at some point, right? Um, and like, let's just start there. Let's get out for free, get these kinds of holy stage companies and zero to 50 hundred employees. Beyond that, we're not a fit and we're very clear. You have to go to like, uh, you need a lot more integration. You need a lot more compliances. You need not a lot more than automation triggers and stuff like that, which we don't have.
01:02:32
Speaker
Let's focus on this when people don't like it and get organic usage and then we kind of get a lead gen through for our other businesses. So what is your top line going to be like this year? How much revenue are you doing now? 4, 4.1, 3.2.
01:02:51
Speaker
Okay. Do you plan to do fundraise? I don't think you need to know because you have that services business. Even these products are kind of profitable, so we don't want to. And for multiple reasons, one is fundamentally, if you were to give me say $10 million today, I don't know where I would apply. And I am a very strong... And if I don't have the answer, I just don't want to make money for it.
01:03:20
Speaker
And if I don't strongly believe in it, I'm like, it doesn't make sense. That's one. Second is we have a lot of flexibility the way we want to work. We want to be remote. We believe a lot in asynchronous work is asynchronous.
01:03:34
Speaker
And it comes at certain costs, right? You can't go with the speed of, you know, VC funded, you know, you can't be like 30, 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, working on Saturdays, Sundays, right? There's more that's nice in a lot of ways, but there are certain disadvantages, like you can't have that hustle and bustle of typical office, right? So which comes at some speed for sure, right? We don't want to do that. I don't want to do it personally. Folks in the company don't want to do it. That's not the culture we want.
01:04:01
Speaker
That's the second reason. The third is I think the overall HR tech industry, at least in the last five, six years, has not seen any VC product company. All we know that we belong was probably the only one in the last five, six years in India.
01:04:20
Speaker
decently arranged. How many? You can count on your fingers. Obviously, InsureTech will have so many. Fintech will have hundreds. Now, there are more. But I'm thinking five years, 2015, 2020, even in the US, there are some lattices there. There is like, obviously, the big workday, and indeed, it's apparent. There's not that many compared to other typical industries, because the buyers are very few.
01:04:45
Speaker
In an HR tech company, you can't sell to an influencer. You end up selling to a group there, or a little bit too big buyers. Unless, you know, whatever sales force and stuff like them have come into this space. So I think fundamentally, this is not a very... And the same cycles are also long compared to the other where you are selling to the HR, which is not the easiest place to sell. I'm sure you understand, given being in this space.
01:05:16
Speaker
So I don't know for most of these reasons, I just don't believe we are. I think the biggest reason is like people will give me this, whatever file of cash, whatever I do with it, I just don't have an answer. And I want the flexibility we have in terms of how we want to work, the pace at which we work is also very important and what we want to do with it. So I think I am still kind of, you know,
01:05:43
Speaker
kind of, I guess, fond of this blockchain idea, so I would want to come back. If it's a big PC game, I'm like, yeah, you know, take this, you don't have to be TV growing, cut everything else out, focus on one thing, just do that, do that, and go, no, 2X, 3X, 4X, you know, like from last year, this year, we already 4Xed, can you go to, can you 4X it again, can you 10X it again, can you hire 10 more salespeople, right? No, as in, I don't know if that's what I would want to do, you know,
01:06:12
Speaker
as a 5-10 year company. So this seems like a good time to launch it again. I think because of Solana and all the cost has come down significantly. Correct. With Ethereum, Solana, L2 chains, Polygon, Matik, all of them are definitely coming down. I think the cost has come down. I think the consumer adoption is still a question mark. And as a new application, I don't think
01:06:38
Speaker
We can really do that, because we can't do so many things. And this already is a very hard problem. I think the adoption still needs. So maybe there's this brave wallet that will happen. I have a strong feeling in the next six months, one year, we will see a lot more wallet adoption, just as in wallet providers.
Asynchronous Work Culture
01:06:57
Speaker
And it will be more natively indicated. Maybe Apple is the one. Google is the one. Or maybe Chrome comes up. Chrome comes up with a wallet. Overnight, you have
01:07:07
Speaker
whatever, 100 million, 1 million wallets, right? Right now, MetaMask, which is by far the biggest wallet, is about 20 million active users or something, right? What is that in compared to like a, you know, like, is that your overall, you know, address of the market's too small, right? Right, right. I'll tell this people building of any type use case, then yeah, you can, that is more than enough to build something that are very large, right, and which is what people have done. But the utility-wise, still, now we are still
01:07:37
Speaker
I guess months or years away from the blockchain world. Because if I were to ask you, okay, have you made any blockchain, you'd probably say yes. But have you seen any real utility? You'd probably say no. NFTs are cool. There's some utility now which we are kind of owning a piece of art.
01:07:55
Speaker
But that is what it is. At least there's a lot more to it. I think at some point, we'll have these kind of NFTs, but non-transferable NFTs. We call them entities. There are other standards for it. Say you went to Stanford, we have that with you, and get into Stanford. You can't sell, but it's a token-gated community. You go to Facebook, other token, get into those communities.
01:08:24
Speaker
you brand it, now you have it to showcase it. So it's just natural because right now what is happening is- These tokens, for this to happen, there needs to be a consumer wallet first so that the tokens can reside there. Correct. And you can use it across different apps. Because right now it happens in alumni and it's very powerful. But it's all controlled by the college. Unless you do it separately, then how do you get it? I want it to be a run. I want it to be a run. And then how do you even reach out to those people? There's no list.
01:08:53
Speaker
And then how do you verify if these people actually go on? There's none of that stuff. So I think at some point, these things will happen. And there'll be a lot more interoperable with the apps. A lot of it is just a talk now. I think a lot of it will just end up being executed. But there'll be a lot more interoperable. I built a billion followers on Twitter. Can I take this to a new network?
01:09:20
Speaker
I should get the first preference because I'll be able to bring them a lot more value. I can take them with me, whatever. I think things like that will happen. How it happens, I think, is still going to need to be seen. So my last question to you. How have you changed from when you were at Manipal today? Yeah, so I think a lot of aspects, obviously. I think one of them would be like from
01:09:50
Speaker
from tech to like actually more on the business, you know, product side is what I have, you know, it's probably done the biggest change. So, and then I, I would, you know, if I would, I'll leave a code 100% of the time now, it's probably like 10% of the time.
01:10:05
Speaker
I think that thinking of tech and solve everything has changed. I'm like, no, it is not the case. You can't just build and then expect people to come. I think I've understood the real way of building. I'm like, what is the problem you're solving? What is the solution? What is the market software? I didn't validate it and stuff. I think that has been, by far, the biggest thing. The second is understanding people, how to work with them. I think, to me, that is very exciting.
01:10:35
Speaker
Now, as in, you know, in our company, as well, the dream is to completely be completely async, right? We used to have a standard every day. We moved to one day a week. It was like, why do you need to have a standard standard is all getting on a meeting and talking about what you did yesterday, what you will do today. Remove all that, automate all of that for tools, right? Jira is automated, automatic. All of these can be done. Talk about blockers, talk about extra decisions, talk about things you want to discuss, right? So remove the need for meetings and be more async, right? You want to,
01:11:05
Speaker
Talk to someone for a call. Don't say, hey, let's chat. That's wrong. It's wrong for that person. It's wrong for you. This is what I want to talk about. This is the urgency. This is what I have done. You have a doubt. Send a voice. How many people do you have right now at SpringWorks? 220. And how often do you have now these company-wide meetings and stuff like that?
01:11:32
Speaker
Company-wide town halls, we probably do once a quarter. But I do a weekly update across what's on top of my mind or metrics and stuff. Which would be like with a core team or a leadership team? No, no, to everyone, actually. So everyone in the company. And so I believe in this async thing, right? Can we do it through a video note, an audio note, right? Okay. Eliminate the interviews also, if you think about it, like you said, right? And use the force meetings, get in a meeting.
01:12:01
Speaker
First 15 minutes you get a piece of paper, don't talk. Because agenda is an agenda for a meeting, structured meeting is very helpful. Otherwise, meetings are 10 people into 30 minutes. We're all wasted. Do it in an async structured way. Do voice notes, do video notes. We have all these technologies there. So why do we need to get on a call? Obviously, sometimes calls are very useful for brainstorming because you don't get that on an asynchronous way. So use that time. Can't be doing calls or anything.
01:12:30
Speaker
I think that's the way it works. And it's kind of helping. We are 4.8 on Glassdoor with around 225 reviews, probably the highest in this country. So it's helping people like it, people like the way we work, they like the culture. But like any other company, we have people leaving us as well. But we actually have people coming back as well. Like, no, I went to this company and the culture was too bad. I can't work there.
01:12:58
Speaker
for everything people ask for a call. Now, this is a better way of working. I want to be in our remote. I want to be more productive. And because here you are truly removing yourself from the picture, right? You're removing the dependency on your end. You're saying you work at your own time. And that is how, in five years down the line, you will not look at a company. You will do three companies together, right? And you will be so, so structured. You'll be like, okay, I work best at 12 midnight to 3 AM or 4 AM. That is when I want to work.
01:13:28
Speaker
No one else has a need. I'll get on a call and talk to that. But that's one hour a day. Not nine hours a day and stuff like that. So I think getting there, I think it is going to happen at some point. So I think we just want to be ahead there. And we think it's definitely the
Remote Work Myths Debunked
01:13:46
Speaker
way to go. So a lot of focus on employee culture and employee productivity, how we work is very, very important.
01:13:53
Speaker
So in a way, like the biggest perk a company can offer its employees is being asynchronous or making work. 100%. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. You ask any person who's working in a motor, what is your biggest pet peeve? Too many meetings, 20 video calls, don't work in a motor.
01:14:12
Speaker
He sings songs for all of that. You ask, OK, let them all go to the office, right? Ask after a year. But there would be one type of employee who would crave that social experience of feeling connected. I think it's a myth. This is how we are tuned. It's the problem of society. Talk to our parents. You create social connections.
01:14:34
Speaker
They work in the office for 12 hours. No, they were afraid us. We had friends outside of work. Where are they going? We don't have friends outside of work. We don't order our hobbies. Nothing. Whatever you do outside of work, no one does anything. That's wrong. That's just how this society has ended up being. You have to kind of get back there.
01:14:53
Speaker
Yes, we will crave, because as in everyone craved on social connection in the pandemic, and people said no, this is the fault of the remote. No, that is not the fault of the remote. You are not able to get out anywhere. No, it's the problem of how you work. Now, later, you'll be able to travel to different places. OK, you can't travel. Make friends around you. Go out, play, practice a hobby. You can't follow that with an office.
Remote Work and Urban Living
01:15:16
Speaker
And then it would be fine. You know, first you have two years, but in the moment you have a family, you start eating, commute.
01:15:23
Speaker
It's just not worth it. And in the authors, you have people coming to you constantly. Hey, can I ask you a question of five minutes? Just five minutes won't take much time. How many times has it happened? Almost every day.
01:15:36
Speaker
It's never five minutes. We all know that it's five minutes and five minutes to get there. Five minutes, five minutes to end, five minutes to get back to your work. Half non context switching is the biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Open office skills. If you read about like, you know, we all went to this open offices from closed off, you know, closed cubicles to open cubicles. And it was like, Oh, this is a new age. What ended up happening is open offices or headphones, noise cancellation headphones. I said better.
01:16:03
Speaker
It actually is the same thing as what we were doing earlier. I think we are going to definitely get a real shock when companies start the mode, which seems to be like in the next few months and give it like six months, 20 months. Our cities are so congested. Look at Delhi, look at that. As an iron, we know about these two cities very well, but look at how they are. Just look at gesture. How long can we keep doing this?
01:16:32
Speaker
infrastructure at the place where it can't be improved. Only get worse,
Critique of Hybrid Work Models
01:16:38
Speaker
right? So I think remote is the only real solution. We take it out of these metrics, go to smaller cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities, go to small cities
01:16:57
Speaker
Every, everyone has different stages in life. That's probably fine. But I think at some point, like, no, no, no, this is not what I want. I can't be spending three hours of my day in traffic and then work in the office for 10. So I have a feeling we will get to this, kind of get back to remote very quickly. At some point and hybrid, I have the same pet peeve with hybrid, like, okay, the folks on the office, it's fine. One of the folks were remote. They have the biggest form, right?
01:17:27
Speaker
A hybrid, I agree with you, is completely useless. I mean, you're trying to ride two boats. Yes. Just does not make sense. Staying in the same city, you can say four days in the office, three days in the office. That's fine. You're just trying to save commute. But if you say everyone has to come at the same time, your team has to come at the same three days, then it's not really flexible.
Talent-Driven Market Evolution
01:17:51
Speaker
So let's see now.
01:17:54
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's becoming more candidate, talent-driven market. So they are the ones who are driving decisions. Every day is kind of the equation is now the ball is shifting towards their side. So they'll be the ones driving it. Companies may not want to drive it, but they have to do it. Just want to work with them. So I think that's just going to be how it is. People are increasingly leaving, studying their own courses. Top engineers are like, I will be teaching and doing my own cohort-based course.
01:18:22
Speaker
I'll be doing freelancing. How many engineers are doing freelancing on the site? I think that will just end up happening more and more. This was the spotlight presented by the podium. To listen to more such interesting conversations log on to the podium.in