Spark of Ages
In every episode, we’re going to do a deep dive with our guest about what led them to their own 'eureka' moments, how they went about executing it, and perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea could also someday become a Spark for the Ages.
Spark of Ages
Mastering Silicon Valley Sales/Ankur Srivastava - Confidence, Curiosity, Cloud Marketplaces ~ Spark of Ages Ep 21
Join us on the Spark of Ages podcast as we unlock the secrets behind Silicon Valley's sales success with our insightful guest, Ankur Srivastava. Ankur takes us through the transformative power of cloud computing and SaaS marketplaces, particularly Amazon Web Services (AWS), in fostering startup growth. Discover how AWS has enabled rapid innovation for technology companies worldwide and gain valuable tips on developing your sales skills through curiosity and a deep understanding of human behavior.
Transitioning between cultures can be daunting, especially in a corporate setting. Ankur shares his personal journey from the hierarchical environment he grew up with in India to the American workplace, highlighting the importance of balancing respect with assertiveness. Learn how customer obsession, a core principle at AWS, can drive long-term trust and bigger deals.
And we'll learn about the world of independent software vendors (ISVs) and the pivotal role AWS plays in their success. Ankur brings his extensive experience as he emphasizes the importance of removing friction from customer engagements and building talented teams. Discover the strategic advantages of leveraging cloud marketplaces to optimize unit economics, and the thrill of "buy moments" that drive successful transactions. As Ankur reflects on his journey and philosophy, you'll find inspiration in his ability to view challenges as opportunities for reinvention and the value of fostering deep connections in the tech community.
Ankur Srivastava LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankursrivas/
Ankur Srivastava Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ankur_srivas_og/
Producer: Anand Shah & Sandeep Parikh
Technical Director & Sound Designer: Sandeep Parikh, Omar Najam
Executive Producers: Sandeep Parikh & Anand Shah
Associate Producers: Taryn Talley
Editor: Sean Meagher & Aidan McGarvey
Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. For the next hour, we're going to be discussing one of three central pillars of go to market, which is sales. And as most of you already know, sales is often about having your own company. At the right place at the right time with the right customer. But what I'm fascinated about is how much the sales process has changed, especially in the world of technology here in Silicon Valley and specifically how SAS marketplaces like Amazon web services or AWS have fundamentally changed how startups work and thrive. Our guest today, Ankur Srivastava, is someone who can speak to these dynamics and how they've changed so radically over the last 15 years. Together we'll explore how the advent of cloud computing and how his former company AWS or Amazon web services grew to be such a dominant marketplace, which really enabled the rapid innovation and invention that technology companies here in Silicon Valley and worldwide are known for. So some of the key takeaways you can expect from this episode, how entrepreneurs can expand their skills and become better at sales. A brief overview of how AWS and cloud have changed the startup ecosystem, the power of marketplaces for companies. looking for growth opportunities. As always, I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh and the CEO and founder of Position Squared, an AI driven growth marketing company based here in Silicon Valley. I'm fascinated by how big world changing movements go from the spark of an idea to an innovation that reshapes our lives. In every episode, we do a deep dive with our guests about what led them to their own Eureka moments and how they're going about executing it. And perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea could also someday be. A spark for the ages. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate it. Your feedback is what drives our show. So take 30 seconds and say hello. I'm core. Welcome to the spark of ages.
Ankur Srivastava:Wow. Rajiv, that was probably one of the best intros I've ever heard. So thank you so much. It's exciting to be here. He's
Sandeep Parikh:already using his sales tactics on you. I can tell. I can tell. He's buttering you up. I've
Ankur Srivastava:got nothing to sell.
Rajiv Parikh:It's not a very tall order for you, Ankur. I've always told people that as a former salesperson or reform salesperson myself, uh, one of the things that I respect from you is your ability to motivate, inspire, and drive people to make change. And that's what I want to get from you today, because I think there's so much that we can learn from your background. Not only. In sales, in technology, but also just how you've thought of all these great ideas that are making you stand out from, from so many others. And it's from what I've seen from you personally, as well as how people interact with you. So here's my first question. Do you think being a great salesperson is something you are born to do? Is it the right kind of thing that with the right kind of training experience, you can be great at it? Or is it something else?
Ankur Srivastava:Uh, it's a great question. I think, uh, inherently if you have curiosity about people. people. Um, I think you may consider yourself Somebody that could potentially enter the line of selling or sales as a result of that. I inherently am just a very curious individual. I want to know everything about a person. If you gave me a book today and I had to read that book and I went down each chapter or page, I have to close my eyes, create a character, imagine what that character looks like, Create a facial expression, a tonality, and then create a storyline. But if I stood across from you, Raji, even in a conversation as, uh, we have so many times, I can actually take in your emotions. I could take in your eye movements. I could take your body language, your tonality. I could see your, your energy. I could know when you're excited, when you're sad about something, and I can adjust my behavior according to that. And so those were things that I always had as a skill. And then once I was able to mimic that, uh, behavior or, or, or show that I was able to represent it back. I think the natural thing that happened was I was able to gain trust with that person. And once I had trust, uh, then you could formulate a relationship. And I think once all three of those factors came into play, that really aligned you to become sort of a trusted advisor to that person and then be able to represent either ideology solutions or approaches that maybe In consideration for them to, to look at. And so that was really kind of like my formula for becoming a salesperson, a sales professional, if you would.
Sandeep Parikh:So this is, you know, now, now I'm getting up in years here and I, and I'm, I'm down in LA. You know, I'm the younger brother here and I'm not in the Silicon Valley universe, but I sort of realized I'm also a salesperson, even though I'm an artist. Like, aren't we kind of all salespeople? Like there's probably something to Would you say there's something to admitting that early on, no matter what field you go into and, and maybe sharpening and honing those skills?
Ankur Srivastava:A hundred percent. If you think about what happens when you're born as a kid, you naturally are taught to ask for things. Mom, I want that. Dad, I want this. And what happens is we as parents actually eventually shut a lot of those muscle memories down. We go, no, not, you can't have that. Sorry, not available. And what these kids are doing are simply negotiating with you. So you are absolutely right, Sundeep, that it is an inherent trait that you already have. And then you get to your 20s and people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for negotiation classes to just get to that no again, or to be able to just say, Hey, I want this thing. And so one of the things, um, that I do with even, I'm a girl dad, I have two daughters. Um, I really wanted to make sure it wasn't a fast no that we got to whenever they wanted something. It does happen once in a while where I'm just like, I'm just not going to happen. But most of the time No, you cannot run into the street. You cannot run, exactly. But most of the time Come win
Sandeep Parikh:me over.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're like, okay, so sell
Sandeep Parikh:me on this second piece of cake you want. Which by the way,
Ankur Srivastava:ice cream they always win on, right? So I'm not a big sweets guy. But guess what? Every night there is ice cream in the house. So, uh, they, they win on that because they keep negotiating with me. And eventually they get to a point where they win on the negotiation, they give something, and then I have to give that, uh, up as well. So, it's a, it's an amazing trait. Uh, to harness from the beginning instead of saying no, but to actually curate it to say, well, what is it that you're going to compromise on? Uh, I think it's a great skill to build. So you're absolutely right. It is, it is inherently in us and it should not be subsided and it should be continued to nurture in a different way.
Rajiv Parikh:When you first got into it, you were talking about First, let me understand who you are, almost understanding that person's emotional state, understanding where they're coming from, how they're facing you. And it's one of those things that they could teach you some of this, but some of this is just something you learn and feel, right? You get in, you sit with someone and you sense who they are. You're open to it. Like you said, I'm listening. It's not just listening. You're open to their feelings. And that allows you to build that initial sense of trust. Is that how you typically come in? Like, you know. Yeah. Save you would advise your favorite salespeople when you're training them to become great. Is that part of that training is like, Hey, don't just launch into your fricking pitch, get into the skin of the other person.
Ankur Srivastava:I think, uh, there's a balance of being real with knowing what you're talking about. So when you pair your. Authentic self with the knowledge base that you possess. That's when you become a truly a great trusted advisor that can influence a decision. And that is what I think is the definition of a great sales person is, uh, is somebody who is authentic, who is able to, you know, represent a knowledge base and then guide that customer very prescriptively and in a trustworthy way to the end state that they are convinced is authentic. Um, something that's a value add for them and that's something I didn't, I, I had certain skill sets, but I don't think those skill sets were the combination of the skill sets that make me or made me a great sales leader. They had to be refined. So companies where I got to work with like companies like Oracle, IBM and EMC, I would say those were institutions where, you know, a lot of money was spent. We learning negotiation. I was born in India and in India, one of the things that happened was, you know, we're taught constantly as a culture to respect hierarchy. You know, if you think about it, there's a concept of like touch people's feet as soon as you come in. So most of your time is spent looking down at people's feet. As soon as you come in, you're like, this is an authority figure. You are here in the hierarchy. Look down, touch their feet. And when you look into the entire hierarchy, um, there are uncles and aunts and chachas and chachis and kaka and khakis. There is a lot of hierarchy. There's a lot of titles that exist. So right off the bat, you're already kind of working to understand, uh, how are you going to operate within this entire ecosystem and then when you come to the U S and when I came to the U S at the age of 11, you may run into an adult, uh, somebody who's, you know, American. And the first thing they tell you is, hi, my name is Ben. Hi, my name is Kathy. And so you constantly debate, do I call them Ben or do I call them Kathy or do I call them uncle or do I call them auntie or Mr. Ben or Mr. Kathy? So you have to shed a lot of those constructs down completely. And that I think was one of the hardest things to do in my upbringing when I came to the U. S. And so a lot of my teenager years were spent understanding how do I refer to these adults and in what manner. Their names, is it Mr. or Mrs., do I show them respect or am I American? And so once I finally understood that and I got into a corporate role, Oracle was a great place. Oracle was just like, look, you have to understand that you are a solution provider. You are solving their pain point and problem. You can still be respectful in the tonality and all these things. But you have to be able to come off assertive. You have to be able to create yourself as an equal so that they trust you and respect you, and then hit them with the value prop that you're bringing to the table. And so that kind of started the journey of really transforming that mindset and kind of shedding out some of the muscle memories that I had built. And I, and honestly, relearning negotiation all over again too.
Rajiv Parikh:Encore real quick. What do you think Separates the great salesperson from everyone else from what you've seen.
Ankur Srivastava:I think the great sales people that I've met are truly customer obsessed and always make sure the customer wins. Um, and I, I think sometimes they have to be able to come back to even the, the companies that they're. Employed by or the products that they're representing and be able to very elegantly push back and say, this isn't the right thing and actually have the best interest of the customers at hand. None of that was truer than AWS and they're having a leadership principle called customer obsession. I think it's a, it's an LP that you see often touted, but rarely practiced. And I saw that practice quite frequently over there where a lot of folks were like, no, we're actually going to. Not pursue this deal because it doesn't align with the customer's budget or timeline. And what we'd rather do is actually focus on getting the tech really accurately developed, uh, with the customer for their product so that when they are ready to consume these services, it makes the best amount of sense. That's why it's considered a world class organization, right? Because they actually defer revenue often for where, where the customers. Um, uh, current state maybe, and what happens as a result of is often they'll pick up a bigger transaction or more of the chunk of the product development on their infrastructure because they're sacrificing the smaller piece just so you know, they can gain the customer's trust. So I,
Rajiv Parikh:so it's that whole stemming from customer obsession or customer obsessed organization. If a person's a really good salesperson, they, are they the one saying to the company, are they open to saying to the company? Hey, you know what? This is not working out like they're not. You know, sometimes you're so driven to hit a number that you're going to do anything you can to make it happen. But then sometimes you have to say to yourself, Yeah, even if I make this number, I'm going to screw things up later. And you have to have the freedom so that your boss isn't always watching. You are making the call. Is that part of that?
Ankur Srivastava:Let me tell you, some of the best sales people that I've seen will stop a sales cycle in the middle of its transaction because they know it's not going to represent the right outcome for the customer. Because it's a lot harder and emotionally draining to unwind that deal after you've promised them the world and it doesn't deliver even close to anything, than to actually say we're going to pause. And really understand what is it that you're looking for? And is our product capable of even delivering the moment I understood that part, that is where I had the biggest aha moment in my sales career, that I could actually keep the relationship going with this customer by actually representing their interests, truly back to the product management team. And actually, by the way, a company should be learning. From the customer, how their product could get better. Of course, you know, you want repeatable use cases. You don't want the same. You don't want like a Frankenstein approach. But if a customer is teaching you something that makes your product better and you hear it about five times and you could make it into a repeatable use case. You should lean in on that, right? Do you have
Rajiv Parikh:an example of that? I
Ankur Srivastava:do. That you can speak to?
Rajiv Parikh:I know it's, I know it's hard. You don't want to give away confidential information, but.
Ankur Srivastava:Well, I can talk about like when I was doing my company Swarm Sales, we went in front of a lot of customers to actually have discussions about. A use case that we wanted to build out. I think it was basically an early on onboarding component. Initially we wanted to build something that was just kind of our own approach, but then we actually got feedback from, you know, some of the customers in terms of what they wanted to see from an onboarding experience. So for example, They wanted email, like a login integration with Gmail at that time. This was in 2016. They wanted to be able to upload data and have it be very quickly mapped out. They wanted to be able to see analytics that were available in terms of who checked out their listing and how frequently they just checked it out. And then be able to reach out to those users and actually invite them to bid on their campaign. And so those were all things built by customer use cases and customer inputs. And what we realized that was when we could introduce those feature sets, it became a lot more sticky and, uh, there was more openness in the engagement that we were providing, of course, in larger companies like AWS, you know, the product teams are. They go and work very closely with the customers constantly before they even roll a product out into production. And so when I was there, you know, my team constantly worked with our product managers to actually validate use cases and then ultimately decide if we were going to roll them out into production or not. My only request, you know, from our product teams, whichever capacity I've ever had a chance to work with them, is that, you know, They always come with a little bit of, of built out hypotheses. They have data in line with what, you know, what they're trying to validate. And then ultimately what is the right customer persona that they want to pursue? And I think what you'll find as a result of that is it earns a lot of trust.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah, I was just gonna say it just seems to always come back to trust, right? Like if you're gonna have a long term relationship with this client, right? Then can't break their trust too early on by just selling them a bill of goods. Sounds like you gotta, you gotta actually listen to them. Crazy. And, uh, and then, and then pitch those ideas up the chain when it makes sense to you. Okay, can I ask a, uh, uh, a naive question? Back when you were at AWS, what was like a day in the life?
Ankur Srivastava:So I would say AWS was my dream job. How I got to AWS was just as interesting. I was running a startup I had just exited as a CEO. You know, it was a complete deconstruction of me as an individual and as a professional. And, I'd written an open letter to Jeff Bezos, which said, you know what? Every startup deserves a chance. And I talked about, uh, this is in 2018, the power of marketplaces and a gentleman by the Chris Cruz, who I'd worked with at IBM briefly, um, got his hands on that letter and he was heading up AWS marketplace and he called me and he says, you know, talk a little bit about that letter. And then I specifically said, you know, every startup that's being built. Needs to be able to scale using a marketplace, uh, platform. And so he said, do you want to come and work for us? And I said, yeah, uh, I would love to. And so I joined and every day after that, uh, they gave me seven segments to, to focus on DNB, ISV, game startups, SMB in Canada and Latin America. And every day, um, we had to succinctly figure out how to take customers, And, uh, ISVs, uh, these are companies that are built on top of the AWS infrastructure or hyperscaler and be able to get them to cross engage and ultimately review the product, test it out and then deploy it and then purchase it. And during the course of those five years, I got to build a team of people who I admire tremendously. I would say these were people that are smarter than me, who I got a chance to see what they brought to the table and learn from every single day. And what the day in life looked like was every single day we focused in on a customer engagement with an ISV and just saw what And how can we remove friction from it? Sorry. Can I stop just with that?
Sandeep Parikh:Just ask to ask what is an ISV?
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. They're, they're independent software vendors. And what that means is that these are companies like Datadog, Snowflakes, that are basically built on top of AWS's infrastructure. But have their own products, services typically delivered as a SaaS solution for customers to use to solve enterprise problems that they need. Rajiv, you already knew that, right? Just to make it
Rajiv Parikh:simple. So, so here we go. ISV, software vendor, independent software vendor, in the old days. Not too long ago, you would buy the memory as a floppy disk or you would buy that and they would put it on your local computer or a local or a server if you were in a network and you as a company controlled all of that yourself. Right. Then along came this notion of, SAS, many say that was, well, there's the internet, right? Where you can get access to many computers and many applications on many computers that came along. Then there became the notion of not just can I access information off of all these places? I can get it. I can actually get my application from somewhere out there that's not controlled by me. And that's this notion of SAS or software as a service, S A A S, two capitals on each end. And that was pioneered by our friends at Salesforce. Right where they took the notion of a sales automation or CRM, customer relationship management system, basically initially where you put all your sales records. Contact records in one place. And then Amazon came along. They said, wow, we're doing all this stuff in e commerce. We're enabling people to buy all this stuff that are online. Why can't we, as part of making it more scalable, more distributable, we can take some of these things that we've built. We can share it with other customers. And so Jeff Bezos is running the company. This guy named Andy Jassy, who actually was in the same class with me in business school. They collaborated on this notion of AWS, Amazon Web Services. Let's take the different software, the different capabilities, compute, storage, and then eventually software and enable people to just buy it with a credit card, right? Incrementally. So before you'd have to buy, even if you bought some, whenever you did a startup or any kind of company, you'd have to buy a bunch of hardware and you'd put it in your data center and then you'd offer it to people. If you're distributing that service over the internet, but then Amazon took it a step further and said, no, you can just buy it from us. And you don't have to have a minimum price. Just swipe your card and start up, buy a bunch of compute, buy a bunch of discs, buy a bunch of database. And they're off and running. So Encore smartly sees in this world that not only can Amazon web services offer this compute that they build themselves, but, or offer the companies can actually take that. What they're building, like he was talking about Snowflake and MongoDB or the security services, they're already running on Amazon web services. Why not open that up to everyone buying through Amazon? Just like if I'm selling shoes or I'm selling gear on Amazon, I can go from either Amazon, buying it from Amazon or buying it from Amazon through another supplier. That's the, that's this amazing innovation, right? That you were seeing early.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. I mean, when I was doing my company, I had seen the power of marketplaces, but, uh, eight of this marketplace, you know, did, has, uh, has existed for over 12 years. So when I joined the journey, it was already something that existed. What I had a chance to do was really shape the actual go to market with those seven segments, a higher team, and really drive prescriptive engagements between the multiple ISVs that were listed in marketplace. And then the customer reaction to it. And, uh, the buyer centric approach was a very interesting approach. And ironically, you know, uh, I wasn't selling anything because there was nothing to sell within AWS marketplace per se, you are simply trying to get them to connect and it's the hardest thing to do is when you sell nothing, you are basically selling the vision, the dream, the, the ability to be more proficient and be able to see value. And I think that is the hardest thing to sell. But. It is also the moment of trust. I still remember when I engaged with, uh, one of our customers, a procurement leader, uh, who was sitting across from a colleague of mine, Aaron Saxena and I. And she kept saying something and I kept saying something and we were talking past each other. And then we just paused and asked her like, can you just show us what you see? And she showed us her screen. And we were like, Oh my God, we're telling you to do something. You don't even have access to this stuff. We later found out that that existed multiple times. But once you, once you realize that, you know, your customers are on a different stage of this journey, because sometimes working for a particular company, you could be so far ahead from an innovation perspective, you have to realize that there's still. Starting to just adopt the service that you're building, that's when your empathy levels become really high and learning to pause and say, Do you get it? Can I help you spend more time getting it? And applying patience becomes like a key attribute to success.
Rajiv Parikh:I think that's one of the hardest things. This becomes a lot of this you think is obvious. Right? When you come from afar, you think, Oh, I can just buy a bunch of compute with my credit card and I can run it. And then when you actually look at people and what they're building, their software, whatever software they're building, a database, or it could be even a Cut a customer service application. It could be your invoicing application and then all of a sudden you realize like no No, like for them to actually offer it on my system. It's gonna take a bunch of work It's not as just Oh just send your disk over and we'll run it on this compute and go And I think that was some of the when you said you had nothing to sell that was part of it part of your jobs To persuade these people not persuade but help them understand the benefits Of being in this marketplace because in the end they can get so many things that they can't get by doing it on their own.
Ankur Srivastava:It goes back to trust, right? It's a, it's a component that you have to apply. And it also goes back to my earlier point about really being knowledgeable about the journey. And then there's another Amazon LP called Are Right A Lot, which means that you should be right in the way you kind of prescriptively guide them to an outcome. And so we had enough data points to say we were right. So you could take a little bit of an authority figure stance without being, just being a complete a hole. But I think, uh, being able to at least drive them to that outcome. Is that another LP? Don't be an a hole. Don't be an a hole. That's not an a hole. Yeah. But what happens as a result of that is you definitely, I think, what I really enjoyed was, you know, Um, paired with customer obsession, you know, being able to be data driven and then kind of drive that journey very prescriptively gave us a lot of opportunity to be successful. So, um, yeah, I, I think it's a, it's a pretty cool, uh, way to look at things and marketplaces to your point are amazing, like I am obsessed with marketplaces, um, I'll give you an example. Consumer marketplaces have existed for a long time, eBay's of the world. But, you know, today, where you have to get one person to spend 1, and it requires a lot of time and effort to be able to do that over and over in enterprise marketplaces, you can get one organization to spend millions of dollars. That's not what I'm obsessed about. What I'm obsessed about is the fact that they're paying that money to solve a bigger problem, right? So those problems become quite apparent and you can, you can actually. Capture some pretty good returns on it too. When she sold it. Let
Rajiv Parikh:me give you a, uh, share a little bit of data that I was able to get from our friends at, at Amazon web services, all public. And then I'm going to ask Ankur this really cool question. Currently, not only did Ankur build a billion dollar business under himself and his team by enabling all these software firms to take full advantage of the marketplace, here's some stuff, 4, 000 plus software vendors, ISVs, 300 plus data providers. 1300 plus channel providers, 15, 000 listings in over 30 countries, 70 categories, 300, 000 active subscribers, and 2. 5 million active subscriptions. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars committed year to year. And I think it's something like 300 billion plus dollars committed to these hyperscalers. Amazon web services, Google, uh, cloud services, Azure, and Oracle. So just an amazing amount that has shifted to this world. So just giving you a sense of perspective of how big this has become. And it's because it's so much easier than before when you had to buy stuff and. Rack it and stack it and, and grow it. What is some of the pain points that you see when the startups go and they think about what are startups dealing with when you are at AWS in terms of getting them, helping them make the switch to, to list themselves on the marketplace and take full advantage of it?
Ankur Srivastava:So, that's a great question. So today, I think, uh, when you look at a startup today and you look at unit economics, that a startup typically is indexed on customer acquisition cost, your burn rate. Um, being able to look at, you know, um, even your churn metrics, all of those metrics can be very well or maintained through marketplaces. I personally believe that because there are two sides of the marketplaces that are constantly in play. One is the buying aspect of it, where you are a buyer. Of third party services. And then the second is, uh, the selling aspect of it, where you are a seller. And I can't tell you how many times I have to go and remind people that they are a buyer and a seller. And somebody says to me, well, I sell a consumer product, so I am not a marketplace candidate. And I have to say, well, you probably generate a lot of data. And as you pointed out today, there are over 300. Plus data providers in marketplace. I think that number may be updated, but you could see that everybody today is a creator of data or a consumer of data. So you're absolutely always going to be a buyer and a seller. And I think where I index on a lot of the conversation is when you talk to CEOs, they're like, we want to use marketplace to sell. Of course, that's great. Uh, there are some mechanisms that are quite well built in marketplaces that can accelerate the selling part and companies like AWS are innovating really fast with their partner ecosystems to actually facilitate faster access to customers. Uh, product engagement with those customers and ultimately conversion to, you know, a paid environment so that that streamlines your customer acquisition costs, but there's also something called a renewal piece, which is just as important once you've sold that particular product. Cloud marketplaces actually allow you to allocate that spend to a particular hyperscaler budget, as you pointed out. There's 300 billion committed to it, so why would you, as a startup, try to go find your own budget and get that place? Instead, get yourself committed to one of those, um, one of those cloud marketplace, or sorry, hyperscaler budgets. Um, it was interesting, I was in a meeting recently and somebody said, Why, you know, what do you think happens with all the spend management software? And I don't think I even thought about it. I said, spend management exists because somebody didn't manage their spend. So what we're in today is the era of spend allocation. And that means if you're not going to be able to find your budget in one of these hyperscalers, you probably have a target on you. And so the way the renewals work is if you haven't shifted yourself under one of those hyperscaler commitments. You have a target on you and if a CFO is going down the row, uh, the row on the expense books and sees you as a, a 2 million or 3 million spend, they're going to go back to that internal stakeholder and say, Hey, why did I just make a 200 million commitment to one of these hyperscalers and I still have an outlier cost for 2 million. Chop it off. Go find this service from the hyperscaler and subscribe to it, right?
Rajiv Parikh:Because it's so much easier, right? You go to the hyperscaler and. The good part is you already have a major contract with them. All the security stuff is taken care of. All the governance stuff is taken care of. All the contractual stuff is taken care of. I think this speeds up the process by like 30, 40%, right. In terms of being able to buy, being able to sell and buy. And I see this as a big problem. A lot of people don't see that they build their website. They build these connections. They don't see that there's so many ways to improve the sales cycle like this. And then once you're signed up, like you say, you're part of this underlying budget that is harder to unpack. Then it could be if you just have a separate line item that you have to go fight. And
Ankur Srivastava:then, you know, let's talk about the cost of sales metric, which is just as high today. Companies are spending anywhere from your SAS provider, anywhere from 30 to 45%, maybe even 52%, uh, to be able to acquire those new customers. That means you're making money, but you're putting a big chunk of it back to acquire new customers in cloud marketplaces. Your margins are about one to 3%, right? Is what you're paying. So because your renewals are now protected under. Uh, the hyperscaler budget, you actually have to spend less time trying to preserve those renewables. Your internal stakeholder could continue to use that product and create more dependency on it without it constantly being scrutinized as an out of budget or as an outlier function. So that becomes a pretty interesting component that I don't think a lot of people invest into. If I was to ever build a startup or go into being an entrepreneur, if I was to stand in front of CEOs and tell them what to do, I would, Maniacally focus on building a cloud marketplace strategy as a first strategy, both as a buyer and a seller. And if you're only building for one, you're missing out on the massive amount of savings, um, that exists on, on the other side.
Rajiv Parikh:That's amazing. So now like Amazon or AWS is number one, and now there's a situation where there's. AWS pioneered this, then along came then Microsoft with Azure and there's Oracle and I know IBM is doing the regulated marketplace. You want to just comment on that world? Cause you're not there anymore. You can be, you can talk about it freely.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. I mean, you know, I got a chance to have a front row seat to the innovation and I think, uh, Publicly, it's available that AWS has 70 percent of the market share when it comes down to the cloud marketplace space. You know, the customers going back to it are really the ones driving the demand. And so today you have, you know, AWS as a cloud marketplace to point GCP is right there. Azure is, I think, number two. But there are actually nine cloud marketplaces that exist. And if you think about what those cloud marketplaces look like, Salesforce, for example, is probably one of the largest ones. Where within their app exchange, they have a ton of ice is listed
Rajiv Parikh:salesforce as well. Yeah.
Ankur Srivastava:So I personally have my own view on what I think cloud marketplaces need to be able to do one is You know, they all need to be able to list. So today, all nine provide that capability and list their ISV. These are software vendors that have some type of integration into the service that they they provide, which can help drive the utilization of that service. The second thing that all of these cloud marketplaces need to do is transact, and there are three of them that do that today, which is AWS, Azure and GCP. The third is they all need to be able to provide some level of data back to the customers and their ISV partners. That's a little bit of a restrictive thing because of just privacy issues that exist and then, of course, workflows as well. And so that is the opportunity area for the next two that I don't think exists right now. And I think that's where the market should be trending. Uh, very, very soon on that,
Rajiv Parikh:I'll throw some more numbers up at our audience here. So, uh, back in 1999, 15 percent of all it spend was on cloud. The number today in 2024, it's 60%. So it's, it's pretty massive. Actually, it feels like more than that, but the trend is definitely that way. My friends who. Are in senior spots at some of these companies are talking about now with AI, how they're securing pretty massive infrastructure deals, even before the apps are built. So there's a lot going on here. So now let's shift a little bit on core. You've talked about how big this is, how exciting it is, how this helps innovation with a lot of startups. One of the cool parts about presenting at the AWS partner marketplace event that I did the other day was seeing how many cool companies were coming up out of nowhere and literally building themselves overnight. Let's shift into what got you. To move down this path, you know, did you know you always wanted to work with tech companies? And how'd you discover that that this was your gig?
Ankur Srivastava:It's funny. I think there was something probably preordinating it And I am a big Big believer in signs that the world kind of gives you. Uh, and in 2016, I launched my own marketplace and I think it was just because I saw a problem that existed and I thought marketplace could solve that problem. I actually didn't know I was building a marketplace when I first started. A good friend of mine, Robert Chetwani, came in and said, uh, you're building a marketplace. And I was like, Oh, interesting. And then he kind of taught me, you know, sort of a flat, like the, the flywheel effects and how to look at the analytics and data as a result of that. Um, and so once I started that, um, in 2016, I had zero experience in marketplace. Today, I sit in front of you with eight years of marketplace experience. Comparatively to what I learned from, Uh, the dynamics of a consumer marketplace, hybrid enterprise marketplace to where I got a chance to operate a portion of eight of list marketplace was extremely exciting and I would never pivot off of it because I'm just constantly so excited about the value chain that it brings to the table. And if I look at my Previous, uh, state where I was a sales guy. Now I get the power of being able to, if you look at sales cycles, you know, which are identification, demo, pilot, infosec, legal procurement, uh, ultimately deployment, and then, uh, fulfillment, excuse me, and then renewal, I can impact every one of those stages through marketplaces. And so when I was working with my team, we got to literally influence each one of those stages and successfully graduate customers to a purchase decision and successfully graduate ISVs to a deal. And so when we saw it succinctly come together and somebody clicks a button and completes a transaction, that's magic, right?
Rajiv Parikh:Is that like the bye moment? Like, is that your big thrill? Like, I don't know about you, but like for me, One of the things I love learning about is revolutions, right? And what creates a movement? And then in sales, it's that moment of buy. I'm upset. I love figuring out what makes that click. What about you, Ankur? I know you're that guy.
Ankur Srivastava:It's exciting. I'm not going to lie to you. Like, it's pretty exciting when the buy moment happened. I've seen, you know, eight figure, nine figure deals happen with a click of a button. And I always go, man, who is that, you know, sales rep that did all that work to that click of a button? It's a pretty exciting thing to experience when, uh, you help an ISV who's delivered their value prop. And a customer who's ready to engage, come together and complete the transaction.
Rajiv Parikh:What do you think, what do you think drives that moment? Like, do you, you know, I, I want to almost in a way, slow down that. And it could be the buy moment of a ISV. It could be a buy moment of someone saying yes to a date. It could be the buy moment of beyond that. There's, there's all kinds of these buy moments. And I just wonder, do you like sit back and say, I wonder, you know, like what. Needs to come together, like the personal, the emotional business, everyone connecting together. There's like a magic in it.
Ankur Srivastava:So listen, if a customer is engaging with an ISV or a vendor to review the pilot, their solution, the customer has a major pain point. And when they find that both the ISV and the customer can come together and solve that pain point, that is the Eureka moment. And I think what's happened in the past is because sales cycles are so dated, or decision making processes internally within the company are so dated, that by the time they actually get to the actual signatures, There's been so much time lost. There's been so much buyer's remorse, or there's been so much thought processes that happened that you now have indecision that kicks in. And if you truly solve a problem, then they should be able to truly transact at that moment. Now, I'm not saying that governance be sacrificed and processes be sacrificed, but I think there is a path to innovation and acceleration that exists. And that has been really the. The key to marketplaces that I've found, like when you can actually accelerate InfoSec, which is 144 questions spreadsheet that goes into a black hole, or you can now in your accelerate the procurement process, where you're trying to become a vendor in a large corporation. And it takes, you know, A lot of hours, months or weeks for you to be able to do that. And you can accelerate that to marketplaces. That's, that's the buy moment. That's the exciting part that you have a decision maker who's able to solve the problem and a vendor who has a solution that solves the problem coming together and being able to place and attack the problem is that really key moment.
Rajiv Parikh:That's cool. Let's talk a little bit about your favorite, um, Technology or there are by, by moments, even beyond the marketplace, you meet someone at a bar and you get them to go on a date with you, have a drink with you, or, you know, you, you have a podcast, right? Call, uh, this season divorce, right?
Ankur Srivastava:That's right. Yeah.
Rajiv Parikh:There are by moments there. Like what, what gets you excited about all these things? Like what, what captivates you?
Ankur Srivastava:I think one of my favorite things in the world is being able to convince an individual to see. Um, well, first to understand them and then to be able to align with them. And I think, uh, you know, getting people to really get to believing in themselves is one of the biggest things. One of the things that people often don't buy is themselves. And so being able to actually have them understand who they are and be able to really see their value that I see in them and make that sort of a centerpiece of my engagement with them is typically when somebody will commit to engaging with me a little bit further. Further and, um, in the recent days, understanding people and then being able to really sell them. Back on themselves has been one of my biggest, I think, like sales effort. Like it's been awesome. It's amazing how many times people undervalue themselves for me. That buy moment is that decision that they're about to make. It's not the purchase. It's the actual ability to believe in themselves to say they are doing the right thing. That's a big piece. Um, to your comment about Desi. And divorce. Yeah. So as you know, I'm divorced. I was divorced. I got divorced about three years ago. It was a journey and a half that happened. But one of the things that I really didn't want to lose as a part of that divorce process was myself. I had to sell myself back to me and say, Hey, listen, I like you. I love you. You want to preserve this guy. A because I, I I wanted to go achieve a lot of things, but I also didn't want to lose myself for my daughters who are my North Star metrics every day. And so, being able to preserve that, that mindset and that ideology was a number one thing for me. I met this good friend of mine, Ateesh Singh, who had actually gone through a divorce himself. Um, and something crazy happened. Ateesh would actually sell me And I was like, that's incredible that you could do that. So I'd never met someone who actually had similar traits, uh, like, like myself. And Atisha was obviously, like I said, was going through a divorce himself. What we did was we did something completely different that guys would do instead of going out and just being, uh, degenerates and like partying and all that stuff, which you naturally want to do right after the divorce.
Rajiv Parikh:Little bit of degenerating Zocat.
Ankur Srivastava:Oh, I mean, I did do it, so let me just take it back. A little bit of that did take place. But I think we really quickly realized there's nothing at the end of that. And where we wanted to be was come back to a state where we were making healthier decisions, but it required us to be vulnerable with each other and talk about like how we're feeling and say like, okay, what do you want to work on? What do you want to not work on? What do we need to shed? What do we need to do? And we realized that we could actually hang out with each other as two males who are brown in a Desi community and actually talk about things that we weren't talking about. Like, how is your family reacting? How are you feeling? Are you, are you about to get. Sad. Yeah, I mean, in the,
Rajiv Parikh:yeah, in the Desi or Indian community, while there are more divorces, it's not considered a, it's pretty taboo, right? It's tough. It's a tough one. And so you guys actually, you guys actually decided to go headlong into it and help people understand that this is a normal, this happens in life.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. And what we found as a result of that, with men who had gone through divorce or were going through divorce, what approaches on the side. Like, almost like they were selling us drugs and be like, Hey, I, I watched your podcast and we're like, you could say it openly, you could talk about it. It's okay. It's not a big deal. And so the other piece that we realized is a lot of men, men specifically sit in their divorce. Women can formulate a community and hang out with their community. There's an amazing support structure that women can create for each other. Mented to become more Lone Rangers. And that's where you become more isolated. And that's where you become more prone to depression, sadness, you know, and drinking and all these things. So when we realized that we needed to formulate this community, where we talked about these things and told people, invest in your mind, invest in your body, invest in your soul, become better dads, go become a better representative of the world, like of your, you know, your community. If you want to adopt religion, that's fine. Like, it's okay. But don't go into this destructive behavior where you haven't healed and now start to date someone and cause this ripple effect where you leave somebody else who's healthy damaged. And so it really came down to as a rep, like as a, as a, as a way for us to really represent the healing process for men and to actually do it, we both had to be more vulnerable to do it. And so it's been, it's, it's great.
Rajiv Parikh:I've listened to it. Of course, I'm still married, but I still still married and will always be married. At least that's what I say. Uh, I've, I've learned a lot from it because I find your wife, send it to you. He's like, you should listen to this, honey. Yeah, let's not go there. Um, I listened to it because it was my friend putting on the podcast and I really, cause I, and I wanted to understand like what got them to do it and how they could turn what I originally thought could be one episode into many and and how they could really delve into all these into this understanding acceptance, the feeling the rebuilding. And I think the way you phrase it now, you were rebuilding yourself in this process and that made you a better person. And now you wanted to help others get to the same point through their own method.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. And by the way, one of the key is. To really find peace, like, you know, you don't want to be in hate and turmoil because there's just destruction that happens continuously. It's about healing and moving forward. And then actually being vulnerable when you show up. I think so many people go on first dates and they ask this question, which is like, what are you into? What, you know, what are the things that you like? Now we get into the hard conversation of like, tell me what are your traumas, how did you work through them, and what are you doing to fix it? So then I can decide how I want to show up for you and engage with you moving forward. And it's okay if it's too much, maybe it's not the right time. But if it is the right time, At least you know what I'm working on and we can partner to figure that out. Right. And so that's where the, the, the podcast I think really indexes fun fact for you. We are big advocates of marriage. Like I would get married again with the right person. And so we, I, I, I totally believe in love, a total romantic, but maybe not, you know, that maybe that wasn't my person, but that's okay. Uh, she gave me two beautiful daughters and I appreciate that part. But now moving forward, I do feel my heart's opened and I feel like I'm available emotionally to meet the right person and engage in a healthy way.
Rajiv Parikh:And that's awesome. I love that. Okay. You now we are going to play the spark
Sandeep Parikh:tank. Yeah. So,
Rajiv Parikh:so
Sandeep Parikh:on course seems like you're doing a lot of self healing. And you, you know, you say you're ready, but I'm not sure that you're ready for this. Um, so I'm going to welcome the listeners back. My, our fellow entrepreneurs and digital hustlers to the spark tank, uh, where two founders enter in one accidentally reveals that their burn rate is higher than a SpaceX launch. Uh, today we are putting your knowledge of sales to the test. So in one corner, we've got my brother Rajiv. And normally I say something deprecating here about him and how he's going to be trounced by the challenger. But in this case, I actually know that my brother is pretty awesome at sales. He's actually quite good at sales. But here's the rub. In corner two, we've got Encore, okay, who my brother actually describes as the best sales leader he's ever been around. Okay, so I don't know. Is this, is this a manipulation tactic, uh, to set himself up as the underdog? I'm not sure. We'll find out. Alright, so right now I'm going to present to you three statements about sales, two of which are true, and one is a fabrication designed to sound like sales. So can you separate the genuine strategies from the cleverly disguised fakes? Uh, get ready to flex your sales savvy and prove that you're not just a master of persuasion, but also a discerning judge of the truth. You ready to get started? I'm ready. Let's do this. Bring it on. Let's go. Okay, so I'm gonna read three statements. You're gonna pick which number, one, two, or three. Uh, you think is the false statement and then on the count of three, you're going to reveal one, two, or three at the same time, so you can't cheat off each other.
Ankur Srivastava:So wait a minute, I'm going to reveal which one is the false statement.
Sandeep Parikh:Which one is the false statement that is correct. True. Got it. All right. We're going to start with the classics of sales techniques. Okay. So you've heard of these techniques before. Probably the famous example here, the foot in the door technique, right? Involves getting a small commitment from the customer first and then makes them more likely to agree on a large request later Okay, so that's that's just the example Alright, so here are three other techniques. One of these is not a real technique. Number one, the door in the face technique So this involves starting with a large request that is likely to be rejected and then following up with the smaller more reasonable request Entry number two, The, but you are free technique. Now this involves getting the person, giving the person a sense of freedom and autonomy while making a request. Now this can make them more likely to comply. And then entry number three is the chameleon clothes. This involves mirroring the customer's body language and speech patterns to build rapport and trust. So which of these do you think is a not true, you know, or not so practiced technique that it has a name? So is it number one, the foot in the door technique, number two, the butt you are free technique, or number three, the chameleon clothes? Answers is Wait, wait, number
Rajiv Parikh:one is door in the face, right? Door in the face. That's right. Foot in the door by putting a door in the face. Ready? Ready? Three,
Sandeep Parikh:two, one. Okay, you both think that the door in the face technique is not true. Well, guess what? You couldn't be wronger, the two of you. So I'm sorry, uh, that's right. This technique is a true technique. I think it's number two. If it's not number one, it's number two. This is a true technique, uh, uh, that is, so the whole idea is it works because the second request seems such more, much more reasonable in comparison to the first. The person feels a sense of relief and is more likely to say, yeah, say yes. For example, the example given here is the Watergate scandal. So during the investigation, prosecutors initially asked for access to all of President Nixon's tapes, a request the lawyers refused. But then they asked for specific tapes, which the lawyers eventually agreed to, which eventually led to the resignation. Just seemed more reasonable, they were able to give. So yes, in fact, Rajiv, you're doubly wrong. Uh, because it wasn't number two, the, but you are free technique is a technique that increases compliance rates by up to 50 percent compared to simply making requests by saying, you know, Hey, you're free to choose whatever you want. You can walk out this door. No problem. Go to that other car dealership. No worries. Gives them a sense of freedom, right? So the chameleon clothes while mirroring is part of being, you know, building rapport, there's no established sales technique with this name. So, thus, it's the plausible, but maybe, you know, you'll, you guys can start one. Interesting.
Rajiv Parikh:We're going to create one now. We're going to do that.
Ankur Srivastava:Yeah. I don't know. The chameleon clothes just sounds bad. So, I don't know.
Rajiv Parikh:I feel like, I feel like that's the best thing is to mirror the other person, the, is to adopt the style of the other person because it makes them more comfortable. Well, I think you do
Ankur Srivastava:mirror a lot of the, the behavior, but I think, uh, I could see why you wouldn't want it in a close because then it would come off a little bit. So it's, so
Sandeep Parikh:it's, it's often a, uh, like a psychotherapist or a therapist technique. So it's more of that than it is a sales technique. So
Ankur Srivastava:I actually use, I should have known that cause I did use it, uh, you know, when we're, we're doing marriage counseling. So that should have been something, the mirroring I should have used. So, okay. All right. Hey,
Sandeep Parikh:Don't worry, we're expanding. We're moving out. Okay. We're moving actually back in time to ancient global trade hubs. Okay. Yeah. So the true market. Yeah. This is the, these are the original, the OG marketplaces. Okay. So Greece. So testing your history here, uh, at Trajan market market in ancient Rome, you might discover the literal meaning to the word bankrupt. Which has surprisingly a violent origin. It was from when a merchant couldn't pay their debts, his Banco or his money table was broken or ruptured, rendering him unable to continue trading. So that is where the term bankrupt. Came from maybe allegedly we'll see that's number one. Number two is located in ancient Egypt The Bazaar of Ramses was renowned for exotic spices textiles and luxury goods Now legend has it Cleopatra herself once purchased a live crocodile here as a gift for Julius Caesar or number three If you say Marco at the Grand Bazaar in Constantinople You might hear Polo shouted back to you by Marco Polo himself Yes, this incredible market was renowned for its variety of goods, and that even attracted Marco Polo, the famed Venetian traveler. And he was said to have been awestruck by the sheer size and diversity of the market, where he would often get lost. So Which is false. Number one, the ancient Roman place where bankrupts happen. Number two, Cleopatra buying a crocodile in ancient Egypt. Or number three, finding Marco Polo at the Grand Bazaar. Here we go. Three, two, one. David. Okay, you both said two. Alright. And guess what? Two is correct. So congratulations. You guys both get a point. That is true, Cleopatra. It is. Yeah. I probably didn't buy a crocodile. Okay. Yeah, so that's, yeah, I was like,
Ankur Srivastava:I, I mean, how would you even just, I buy, I don't know. I don't know. Do the Nile have crocodiles in them? I don't. I haven't researched it. I
Sandeep Parikh:mean, I know exactly. Well, your instincts were correct. Congratulations. You both get a point here and Yeah, it's kind of cool that bankruptcy, at least for me, I was like, oh, that's what bank, okay, I didn't realize that, but yeah, I was that, that, that seemed to make sense. Yeah. Also, the Marco Polo piece is
Ankur Srivastava:a pretty, yeah, the Marco Polo piece is a pretty cool piece, too, knowing that Marco Polo himself would yell back Polo. That's cool.
Sandeep Parikh:Well, I don't know about you, that was a little bit of color. Potentially. But he certainly enjoyed this, uh, this one, uh, this one market. Alright, shifting your brains a little bit more, okay? We're going to the world of, uh, actual businesses. And this is, this is the round I'm calling the, is that even legal ventures? So you've got to determine which of these three businesses or sort of business categories does not exist. Two of these. Actually do exist, even though they're kind of absurd. All right, here we go. Entry number one, professional mourners. In some cultures, these individuals are hired to, uh, attend funerals and create a sense of grief and loss. Even if they have no personal connection to the deceased. Number two, rent a chicken. This service allows you to rent a pair of chickens coop and all the necessary supplies to experience farm, fresh eggs. Without the long term commitment of all that clucking number three, a celebrity impersonator escort. So this service allows you to rent a lookalike of your favorite celebrity to accompany you to attend events or simply hang out with providing the illusion of fame and fortune, or just a funny, silly story to impress your friends. Two of these are real. Okay. Professional mourners. Number two, rent a chicken. Number three. Celebrity impersonator escorts. Which of these do you think is false? Here we go. Ready?
Ankur Srivastava:Oh, hang on. Oh, hold on. Let me just make sure I'm still laughing. Lock
Sandeep Parikh:in, lock it in.
Ankur Srivastava:Okay. All right.
Sandeep Parikh:You're still thinking about all those chickens are going to run. All right, here we go. 3, 2, 1. Okay. You both chose three. Now, because this is, uh, we, we give sort of away court advantage here. Rajiv, I'm, I'm going to force you to, to pick something else so that, uh, we can have a winner. Go ahead. All right. Run to chicken. Okay. So the winner of this game and now finally taking back the reins. Cause Rajiv, I was on a nice little streak there. Uh, it's not been shattered because the winner is uncorred. That's right. It is celebrity impersonator escorts. Of course the guest always wins. Yeah. It was a little bit of an asterisk there, but yeah, you can in fact run to chicken or someone to cry. In fact, you know, Rajiv, since you just lost, we can, we can get you a professional mourner. Yeah, uh, so that can, that can help me with my chickens. All right, Ankur, you have survived Spark Tank. Congratulations.
Ankur Srivastava:I loved it. This was very insightful.
Rajiv Parikh:All right. That was really good. Do I have time for a question or two? Yeah. Close this out. I'm going to give you a choice of what you want to answer. You get one, or you can answer both, but really quick.
Ankur Srivastava:Okay.
Rajiv Parikh:We know you're starting something new next. You don't have to tell us what it is, but I have a feeling it has something to do with marketplaces. Want to give us a quick shot at what it is? And is that your personal moonshot? And if not, what is your personal moonshot?
Ankur Srivastava:I'm thinking of starting something I've been kind of out of, you know, the game for just under a month and I think over a month and it's been just mostly focused on a lot of self healing and reflection on what I want to do next. And yeah, of course, to a point, if I did something, it would probably be in the marketplace space. I think where I am right now is. Pretty much, uh, formulating that idea and making sure that it is something that takes into effect that last eight years of experience that I've gathered in marketplace. And I would say that for the first time ever in my life, I have the right opportunity to go take a big risk. And so to answer your question, it would be my moonshot and I have to get it right. And so, um, but the, but that's why for the first time ever I'm applying patience and just stepping back. You know, not rushing into anything, letting it come to me naturally, really formulating it before I even start thinking about what is it that I pursue for me. All right,
Rajiv Parikh:I'm going to give you one more. If you have a favorite life motto that you'd like to share with your friends, your kids, what would it be?
Ankur Srivastava:Everybody in life will often look at things as a process. And so when they see it as a process, they'll only build into that process. But it's when you see something as a problem is when you completely reinvent it. See things as a problem so you can reinvent it.
Rajiv Parikh:There you go. Very good. Very prophetic. And how about this one? When you see people, I've seen you do this. You always find something nice about them. Even if you meet someone randomly anywhere, why do you do it?
Ankur Srivastava:I can detect energy. Um, and often, um, the way I've built, I index on. The most positive thing about a particular person, I can always find the most positive things about people and make that the centerpiece of how I engage with them and, uh, and then just, uh, make them feel like they're the most important person that I've met at that one moment because they are, and as I pointed out at the beginning of the, the podcast, I can learn so much from them. And so when I actually can see that beauty in them. And get them to realize that I can sense that beauty in them, I can get them to deconstruct and be vulnerable and then share insights back with me that have just so much revelations and learning and insights. That helped me grow and become more knowledgeable, right? So that is, uh, that is a trick to my trait, which is that, uh, I find beauty in everything and everyone.
Rajiv Parikh:There you go. A great trait to have. Okay. Encore. We love having you here today. We've all learned so much. I think you've taken this amazing life journey and I'm so glad you could share that with us today. Thank you for joining.
Ankur Srivastava:Thank you for having me, uh, total privilege. And I really enjoyed this. Thank you. This was a lot of fun.
Rajiv Parikh:I took, this was so much fun. Um, of course, great guy. He's so, uh, well meaning well thought through about who he is about and what he's trying to do. And I think that's what makes for great sales leaders is not your ability to just be, you know, eloquent and make a pitch in a way that sounds good, but to truly connect with people at multiple levels and align the emotional state, the personal state, the professional state and what you're trying to do for your company. And so that's his great gift, and he does it well with his coworkers, with his. Managers and his customers and his friends and it's one of the gifts that he has. And so it's, it's what I really enjoy when I get to hang out with him is that super positive, connective nature of it.
Sandeep Parikh:You know, one thing I want to take away is this whole concept of, you know, finding the best in the people that you're hanging out with. I got the advice pretty recently about, you know, doing standup, which is if you want to do something, if you want to be a creator of something, whether it's standup film or whatever it is that your business is or whatever. I think, uh, rather than looking for the critique in those things, look for the things that you love. You can't be a critic, you know, you can't be a stand up critic and a stand up comedian, really, is, it was the point. And I feel like that applies to, to people, you know, if you want to be in the business of people. Then rather than looking for all the things to criticize, look for the thing to really celebrate in somebody and reflect that back to them. And, and, and clearly it builds trust. It builds a relationship very quickly. So I really loved that piece. I thought that was really cool.
Rajiv Parikh:And I know in a way, if you take it to the point of a marketplace, what you're doing is you're creating a place where those connections can mutually reinforce. And they reinforce amongst two people are transacting and multiple people. It in fact, creates a community. If you really think about it deeply, that's what it's all about. You create this mutually reinforcing community of people who can act together. It's hard to set up, it's hard to put together, and then it brings great souls together, which is my motto. So thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and
Sandeep Parikh:everywhere podcasts can be found. This show is produced by myself, Sundeep Parikh, and Anand Shah, production assistants by Taryn Talley, and edited by Sean Maher and Aidan McGarvey.
Rajiv Parikh:I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh, from Position Squared, an AI centric growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Come visit us at position2. com.
Sandeep Parikh:This has been an f'n funny production.
Rajiv Parikh:We'll catch you next time, and remember folks, be ever curious.