Getting Your First Customers Is Awkward | Here’s How to Do It.

Hey Alka, welcome to Day 1000. Hi, thanks for having me. Super stoked to have a chat with you. I feel a lot of founders, especially in India, would love to be in your shoes one day. You've worked in a very strategic role in India in the earlier parts of your career. You've then moved abroad, worked in hyperscale startups, being one of the founder members, and now you launched your own company. super stoked to kind of unpack all of that but let's start with an introduction could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the company let's start with the introduction i'm originally from india born brought up raised to a family of professors and as a result of which didn't have a lot of options on what i had to study so studied engineering it was very much decided that i'll become a professor too i'll become an academician but i think I went outside India to do my master's and I think it changed the trajectory a little where I realized that I can be data and tech driven but I can play different roles and that's how I got introduced to the world of startups somewhere in that journey my first gig itself was in an early stage startup called Nearby worked with some of the brilliant minds of the country I feel and I think after that I realized that you know the world is your paradise you can go anywhere and learn and the idea was always to be in the zero to one space because i was just chasing learning and i still do think i chase learning moved to southeast asia with a ride-hailing company called graph at that time they were just ride-hailing then they expanded into the food business where i played a pivotal role in expansion across southeast asia then moved into their fintech universe which was payments, insurance and investment. Did that for a while and the company got big. I think it's not the room I choose I want to be in. I want to go back to a zero to one space. So join another fintech early days, third employee, scaled the company to 500 people. We raised $80 million there. We were servicing 7 million users. Did that for four years. And I think at the end of the fourth year, there was a very massive burnout that hit me. It was eight years of almost very hyper growth rolls back to back. So took a nice eat, pray, love break in Bali and realized I would love to go back to building, but this time build for myself and not for others' vision and others' ways of building. And that's how I ended up building Podium. Podium is a peer discovery and connections platform for working women in Singapore today. We have 400 plus paying members. We recently closed the last round in Q4. Interestingly, more than... 70% of the round came from our own customers who tried the product, loved it and eventually invested. So that's about me. Fantastic. No, I think it's a phenomenal journey and raising from your community is very, very cool. I recently, you know, have observed this happening in a lot of community businesses, even in India. And I think people really feel a stronger part of it. So let's start with, you know, the first 30 days probably of you building, you know, podium. And I believe you've done zero to ones multiple times. So you could give a broader answer as well. it's very hard to get customers when you're starting something new and I would love to know from you when you were building this out on day zero, how did you get your first customers? Zero to one is I feel like now interesting because you feel like you're in the part of experimentation. So I think for Podium it was literally getting comfortable to sell to everyone I knew in my universe from close friends to people I've worked with. people who I met at a party, I would go and tell them about Podium and convince them to attend an event. So I think our first, not first 30, I think our first 100 members came from just asking our friends to try what we are doing, give us honest feedback. It's very uncomfortable to do it, especially because, you know, you have your own identity, something you've built that you're a leader somewhere or you're working somewhere. Now, all of a sudden, you have to remove that and shake that identity off and go and ask someone. hey would you spend your time and energy on something i'm building and i think that's how the first few hundred came in and i think that also is the reason how we grew later on so we grew also because of referral and this is very centric to say a community based or a d2c business also i think will fall in the same place is that you get your friends to try and if you're trying and if they are ready to spend their money on a service that you are building They will eventually refer it to their friends and their friends. So podium grew almost 85% through word of mouth because of this. That's one thing I would say. I think second thing was also what we did well. I think in hindsight, which I feel like protected us a little is that we were not trying to be ice cream for everyone. We just wanted to do one thing well for one age group. So initially I remember we were only targeting women in 30s, period. Women in 30s. these women in 30s and I think to a place where we started getting scolded or like we started getting a lot of feedback on why aren't you building for women in all age groups and I think the specificity allowed us to build a product that at least reached some level of traction very quickly because you know the problem you know who the customer is and you know what to sell so being very specific help I think you know word of mouth asking friends and having a laser sharp focus on like an ICP is I think generally very good advice but People struggle coming up with an ICP on day zero. They often feel they have a scalable idea so potentially anybody could use it. And zoning in on that ICP is a little hard because you're always feeling FOMO, you know, whenever you're getting a lead which is outside that ICP. So first, what's your general decision framework to decide this is the ICP? Is it more gut or is it data driven? And secondly, how do you handle leads coming in outside your ICP? in the earlier stage of your business when you know revenue is important we also had this we also said yes to a lot of things that then learn to say no to a lot of things i feel like let me take a step back i think there are three types of founders usually people who get into this bag this madness by choice i would say there are three types of people number one people who are subjective matter experts in something and they know it in and out and they just go ahead and build something like if in my old universe if i would have built something in fraud abuse or data systems that's my subject matter expertise because i spent a lot of time and energy on someone else's dime on building something for them. I think the second kind are people who feel like there's a market opportunity gap and they're just keen to build and there's some trend which is rising like for example in 2020 in the world there was a crypto universe that was going now there's an AI universe and now there is a evolved agentic universe we are in. So I feel like that's the second kind of builders and the third kind of builders are I call them Delulu passionates which is me which is people who just fall in love with a problem that they generally want to solve and this might type it. I feel like in the first two, first category, it is very easy for them to know because they know what problem they're solving, who's the customer, they will be able to make a say to them very easily. I think the second ones are like the optimistic folks because they have gotten into a bandwagon where they're learning on the go. So I think they will go through the journey, which I think the journey of what I also went through in some ways was... We said yes to every money opportunity that came in, which meant like hosting a book lodge. And I said yes to it. I still feel like why did we say yes? But we said yes to it because our idea was that anything that keeps the company afloat and gets the money in the bank, we would do it. And sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes the money that one 10,000 cheque really would pay for three months of payroll, you just bite the bullet and you do it. I will say it's not idealistic, but it's very practical. And I think for the third category where you're building from a place of passion, which is where I was also, I think slowly once you are, when you start getting burnt with that passion, you start to learn to say no. So I think for me was the two parts where we said yes to many things and then realized, okay, it helped save the company to get it where it was. And the second part was when you're like, okay, this is not fitting with the vision where we are. Maybe this customer may not be what we want to service today. They might be someone I will be able to service. two years from now and you just accept it as part of your constraints and move on i would say lovely i think really really well articulated i think i got this approach of three types of builders for the first time and i really resonate with what you said it really depends on you know your approach to to this particular problem i want to now hop on the thing you're the luxury early stage founders don't have so you just accept it like i don't uh I feel like even in my journey today, I might be saying yes to a lot of things, which I will say no to in two years from now. So saying no is a luxury you get, which is earned with time, I would say. Correct. Correct. I think the last, you know, caveat is very, very critical because it's very easy to hear feedback from a lot of people who scale their companies to hear, you know, focus is critical. But when you understand how they did their zero to one, you know, you'll realize so many more things. Now I'll jump into the second part of our conversation, which is founders have a lot of temptation to grow fast. News. encourages that, VCs encourage that. If you don't grow fast, what's the point of you being in a startup is the general advice which comes in. And that's why, be it through funding or many other things, you end up making a lot of spends you regret. Thinking if I throw some money here, I'll get more ROI, more speed. Could you share any spends you regret? so far in your journey? We did time funding. I don't think we went a lot of sides. But I would say this, because I think I have years of experience to bank this on a little, is two things I would say. Number one, I feel like a lot of times the whole VC game is too glorified. That you raise money, then you go and raise the next round euro. I think the last decade has polled how capital is taken in the market. So I would say this is something I've built as a theory in the last two years, is there's no right way of building. today you could be building like a good bootstrap business and maybe the margins are low and then it's an maybe the margins are very high and it's unscathable but it is still a dhanda which is making money and i think we have especially in india i think we discount this a lot is a good business is a good business which makes money it is growing at an x rate per month may not be at the 100x rates that uh the venture capital folks want. But if that's a good business, I want to just call this out for anybody who's starting a business is that there's not one way to build a business. You could be working somewhere and also moonlighting till you figure out your product market fit. You could also be someone who went all out and built something. You could also be a sole proprietor who's trying to engage their services into a business today, which is, which does not look scalable, but maybe at someday you will become the Lenny Ratchesky of the world and you will be the content creation. engine in some way. So that's one call out, I would say. I think my second call out is in terms of expenses. Money should only be taken when necessary. It is an unnecessary evil in the journey. I think seeing the two companies and two hyper growths, K-Labs, is that you will, when you take that much capital, the targets follow and the valuation justification is very real. So what you would do, what anyone would do is you would throw money at the problem and people at the problem. To get good people, you'll pay great money. You are lucky if they are great people, they don't make mistakes. Sometimes great people don't have great situations around them that they're not able to make the right decisions. And as a result of which companies would lose money. I think we've made a lot of mistakes in rushing things to the market too quickly. Not doing risk assessments properly or not validating from the users what do they want and just gone out and ran digital marketing ads. So there was a month, I remember, in one of my cakes where we were running a million dollars. in ads every month and just to realize after three months the product itself doesn't have doesn't have pmf like you spend three million to learn your product doesn't have pmf is a expensive mistake i call it right fantastic so i think understanding pmf and then doubling down on ad spends is something which most people don't do is the biggest takeaway and that's why i think be very careful with your money and understand that you know vcs proudly say only nine out of ten companies succeed which is not really true actually if you think about it like being somebody who has a lot of SMEs in their family. I can say that it takes 30 years sometimes to build a highly profitable company which can help you, you know, which can help you have a legacy level of funds. But people give up too fast because the notion is that within 12-15 months, you don't make growth, you don't do growth, you know, that's a bad idea. And people shut it. So really, you know, second what you said here as well. Next up comes, you know, a conversation we need to have on. channels of acquisition. So every business has a very nuanced approach on what channels work for them. And that's why it's generally a trial and error you need to do, which ends up costing money and time to figure this out. So the idea was to try and see if anybody is building a community today, if they can learn from you on what seems to be like a good channel of acquisition. So in your first few hundred days, could you tell us what were some underrated channels of acquisition and what are some overrated channels of acquisition? Okay, so I'll tell you how I think about this and then I think it'll segue into the answer. I feel like growth, I call this a growth universe in general and I feel like growth universe is like a toolbox. There are some things which are like screwdrivers, there are some things like a hammer and there are some things which are more like minute detail oriented cleaning stuff. So I feel like in your journey of building a business, you need to use all your toolkits. And these toolkits may look different for different people, but there's a toolkit you build and everybody's going to use. So our 2025, say the first six, nine months of building, 100 days, word of mouth reference worked really well. But then we realized word of mouth will only take you so far. But if you don't have a good Instagram page in today's universe to show that you look... legit. It doesn't need to have big followers. It doesn't need to have, it just needs to have that vibe that this looks legit in some ways. So then you get, you work on your Instagram organic in some ways, or even on organic, it's like just putting your stuff, putting yourself. Then I think in the next place came, there's no way to be referral, to be incentivized because the good faith referral, which happened because of knowing the founders dies. Now you like a product, but you need to be incentivized to refer more. Refer linearly, yes, but refer compoundingly, you need something. So you need to build something in from technology over there. If you're a hot problem that everybody is solving, then your organic and your SEO and now in today's world, AI SEO, whatever they're calling it, should be solved in some ways because that's when people start searching for you. Then becomes the next problem. Are you in the right places at the right time? Where I think in my 18 months or like 20, whatever, 20 plus months of building, 24 months plus of building podium, I feel like influencer channel doesn't work. It's a very... contrary take because I feel like people have gone away from the journey of my favorite influencer or like the worship to the influencer universe is dead. Now it's like people are entering into the era of people wanting to be a little imperfect, not real and I think very soon we will work out of this also because now everybody is trying to be that. in some ways. Influences didn't work for Podium even though we tried. Because we have a physical product, they can actually come to an event, share an experience, be honest and something to share. So we feel like influencers didn't work. Digital marketing does work. I think paid channels do work. But I think paid channels should come in when you feel like you have nothing else because that's your accelerator. Your product is ready. You feel like you don't have enough. first few experiments yes pay and do it but i feel like if you have like we only use we will only use instagram we've used it recently but we will only use instagram more when our app is ready it's working seamlessly the journey is defined because then you can quickly justify your dollar value spent to actual value created in the business as compared to testing for testing you're trying your digital ads but i've also seen one thing is we've tried ads for a newer products to just get feelers from the market that i think is called experimentation budget which you can park so yeah that's how we've done our growth good things good channels i still believe in organic referral direct searches brand direct searches these are the three very old school way of building i would say yeah got it yeah i think throwing a wide net in the start is smart where as you said there are multiple tools each having its own purpose which you should at least employ you never know what may work for you you know till you try it and then you keep on optimizing that right and i think what i learned is that probably influencer is a little bit overrated while you know generally referrals and direct is underrated still for that you obviously have to create a fantastic product experience and really care for your customers and that's how you incentivize that which is obviously the hardest part But I think that totally works. So, Subhap, I think, you know, these are the three questions we ask, you know, all our guests and thank you for, you know, so beautifully articulating each and every one of them. As a parting thought, Alka, I'd like to ask you, I think the most important question, right, which is getting through these days is the hardest, right? I recently was talking to somebody who said, you know, starting a company is like going to the gym. And I was like, Not really because you can see progress after 10-15 days, after 1-2 months. Here sometimes it's been a year and you're like nothing is working, you know, and then something may come up. So you've done many zero to ones obviously you're in your, you know, you're I think finishing the first thousand days very soon. So what's kind of kept you going and what's your advice to founders to stay resilient. I say you should bury something in the process of building. Like when you're thinking about starting to build one, I think you should think about it from a, and maybe I'm a romantic, so take this with a pinch of salt. I think you should think about it from a long term play with like right quantifiers. Like I had my first check on, will this business make money on my 18th month? My next one was at my 24th month. My next one now is on my three and a half year mark. There are different marks at which I just have these chats with myself. But long-term thinking on buying into the problem is very important because, which is why I said that there are three types of builders. The third type of builders generally last. Otherwise, or the first to get a lot of success and they last. Because for lasting something which is not going to give you 9 out of 10 days more headache than happiness, you really need to be married to it. For example, I'm married to, when I started, I was married to the process of building. And now I'm married to my customers in a way and the pain point in a way that I live it. So I'm like, okay, this is how they're thinking. So I'm also thinking like this. So I think slowly you need to know whether you're married to, you need to know what you're married to. Are you married to success? Are you married to validation? And whatever you're married to, your reasons could be right. Whatever you're married to, you just know this is what I'm married to. And you ensure that marriage is intact. You do everything to maintain that marriage and everything else falls in place. So for me, it is I'm married to the process of building very heavily. So I genuinely wake up every morning feeling it's going to be fun. Let's do this. I feel like you need to, yeah, it's a very inherent drive in place. And some days are low, I will call it out. And for that, I have a small hack, which I tell everybody, if I could tell every founder to have this is, I have a company-wide document, which I call a happy place document. Whenever something good happens in the company, whether it is somebody did a great job, a product got launched in record time, or... feedback from customer was amazing. Somebody wrote something nice on LinkedIn, a voice note, all of it goes into this public space. Whenever you have a shit day, you just go through it so that it feels like, okay, today was shit. Temporarily life is shit, but permanently it's not that shit. So yeah. You really realize that, you know, in your low days, when you have to keep on going, how important vision is. When you're starting up, writing your vision, vision document, it seems a little too abstract and vague, but... you then do realize that, okay, you know, you really have to believe in what you're doing because it's going to take a long, long time, 10 years at the minimum, often I've seen. So, so fantastic, Alka, thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts. This is the end of the conversation. I hope you had a good time. Yeah, this was a good chat. I've not had one of these in a while. I feel like too busy building. So yeah, this feels good. Superb, superb. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. And for everybody who's joined till the end, thank you so much. If you'd like to hear another founder come in and share their experience, please subscribe to our channels. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

In this episode, Alka Gupta shares a practical and honest guide to building a startup from 0 to 1, including how to get your first customers, find product-market fit, and grow without wasting money.

From working at hyper-growth startups like Grab to building her own company, Podium, Alka breaks down what actually works in the early stages of a startup.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to get your first 100 customers in a startup
- The reality of startup growth from 0 to 1
- How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Why word-of-mouth marketing is powerful early on
- Common startup mistakes founders make
- When to use paid marketing vs organic growth
- The truth about VC funding and scaling pressure

If you're a founder, entrepreneur, or someone starting a business, this episode is a must-watch for understanding startup growth strategy, customer acquisition, and building from scratch.
 Subscribe for more insights on startups, marketing, and growth.

Like, comment and subscribe for more conversations with industry leaders shaping the future of marketing.

#businessgrowth  #businesstips  #Podcast #Day1000 #IndeiFolio

LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/company/indiefolio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indiefolionetwork/
Website: https://home.indiefolio.com/