“Technical founders don’t realize how much difference good business design can make”
[This is the first in our Founder Talk series wherein we’ll share the learnings, motivations, and experiences of founders whose companies got acquired by Freshworks or who otherwise happened to join Freshworks at an interesting point in their journey.]
Once you have been in a startup, you “always have this energy,” believes Senthil Kanthaswamy, business unit leader at Freshworks who is currently busy building and scaling Freshteam.
Senthil should know: before Freshworks, he had been a part of two startups. One was Frilp, a social recommendation app where he was a cofounder; it was acquired by Freshworks in 2015. The other was a software provider for K-12 schools, GlobalScholar, where he worked as a product manager.
At GlobalScholar, Senthil had a “fantastic learning” in go-to-market and identifying opportunities—something he put to ample use when he and a couple of his friends started Frilp in 2012.
Recalling those days, Senthil says that he used to discuss a lot of startup ideas with his college friends. One of those friends, Shyam, eventually quit his job with Goldman Sachs in the US and joined him at GlobalScholar. A year later, they had matured some of their ideas and right when GlobalScholar was getting acquired (by Scantron Corp.), decided to quit and start Frilp. (Shyam is Shanmuga Anandaraman, who is currently director of social impact at Freshworks.)
At Frilp, Senthil’s “great learning” was about “how the market trumps everything else”, besides understanding the nitty gritty of building a good team.
Freshworks’ acquisition of Frilp makes for interesting reading. When the startup was looking to raise its next round of funding, a bunch of acquisition options were also presented to the founders. “We had different companies that showed interest, including Flipkart, Amazon, Intuit, and Times Internet,” says Senthil.
It so happened that the team went to consult Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshworks, who was one of Frilp’s angel investors, about the fund raise. “One option that was not on the list was Freshworks…so yeah, we got acquired by Freshworks [then still known as Freshdesk],” says Senthil. “Because there’s a lot of synergy, there’s a lot of ‘heart’ in the company.”
Senthil got a chance to join the Freshworks leadership team and, as he puts it, “it has been a crazy journey since then.” Freshworks has grown roughly 10x in terms of number of employees.
The Frilp team knew Freshworks was the best option for them to be able to translate what they intended to do. “A lot of trust comes into play in an acquisition, and when you work with Girish, he ensures that it is always a win-win,” says Senthil.
Senthil is of the view that had they chosen to go with a big company, they would have been “a small fish in a big pond”. What Girish told him at that time was this: “Amazon may have a big brand…but hey, let’s join hands to create the next Amazon out of India.”
The decision, in hindsight, has turned out well. “When you look back at life as in what it meant to you, it’s not just the acquisition but the role that you have played in creating one of the biggest software brands out of India; it’s something you can feel proud of. That is something we could never contest,” he says.
Senthil has fond memories of his early days at Freshworks, when the company was small enough for everyone to crowd around Girish for the all-hands meetings.
“As the company grew, one of the hard things to do was to get an accurate pulse of the people and what they cared about,” he says. “One of the many things we built was this Ask Me Anything (AMA) module: people could ask questions on this platform and the rest of the people could vote on those questions (which would help the company figure out what was on top of mind for most people).”
Senthil also reminisces about the Acquired Founders Group and its activities. “We used to meet at each other’s house, and all those meetings used to be so much fun. It’s a closed-knit group and we share a lot of stuff among ourselves, including our learning. I think it has been deeply impactful for almost all the founders who came to Freshworks through acquisitions,” he says.
Talking about CHAT, the Freshworks culture code, he says, ““The spirit of CHAT is to treat Freshworks like your own company and to treat the people who work here as friends. It’s not just free food and the fancy office; a happy work environment is also a lot about giving people problems to solve and opportunities to grow.”
Senthil feels that Freshworks has also been able to keep the spirit of entrepreneurship alive despite the humongous growth the company has been witnessing. “A lot of units are run like startups wherein Freshworks acts like an ecosystem,” he says. “The decision-making is fast, with high ownership.”
The same holds true for the unit Senthil heads and for which he has high hopes: Freshteam, the smart HR software for growing businesses. That’s where much of his energy goes these days.
Watch the complete Founder Talk video by clicking below and know more about Senthil’s entrepreneurial journey and his evolving role at Freshworks:
Cover Image: Vignesh Rajan
Video editing: Arjun Pillai
