About us

Living And Breathing The Startup Life

Entrepreneurship does not come easy. 

 

I started my career in big corporations, within the large telecom systems. But very quickly realized that I wanted to start my own company some day - but I had no idea what I was going to be up against.

 

The best way to learn, was to start working for smaller tech companies, both public and private - early stage to recent IPOs. This gave me a great perspective on what works, and what doesn't. But starting my own company was an order of magnitude more complex.

 

In 2007 I took the plunge and co-founded a fintech start-up. We had the picture perfect story of a startup: raised multiple rounds, grew a global team, had path breaking products, made the big news, spun off companies and finally went through a succesful M&A transaction. 

 

After that first one - I did it again, with my second venture. Got major enterprise clients, developed amazing and cutting edge technology, and a diversified portfolio of product offerings that spanned multiple verticals.

 

The headlines always looked great, but no one sees the ups and downs that happen behind the scenes. The twists and turns it takes to get that first product market fit. The go to market strategy that looks great on paper, but falls flat when executed. The first deal, where you spend multiple sleepless nights, trying to negotiate a decent outcome, as you have laid out all your chips on the table, and you know that time is not on your side. That VC funding round, which never happens on time. Or sometimes even the most dramatic market events that make you pause and develop a business pivot - such as financial crisis (2008) or a global pandemic (2020).

 

And then there is the flip side, where the product market fit is amazing, and now you need to figure out how you are going to rinse and repeat the tactics and sales strategy at scale to maximize the outcome. The pricing strategies that you will need to deploy to cater to a wide variety of clients. The messaging and presence that you will need to create to get the word out further. And the wide variety of internal tools and processes you will need to put in place in order to keep track of every thing that is suddenly happening in your business - across all functions.

 

 

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Along my startup journey, I started to help out fellow entrepreneurs, through mentorship and advice, either personally or through incubators and accelerators - and I started noticing these common themes develop when the companies were especially at the crucial ZERO to 1 stage.

 

The story was mostly similar - an amazing technologist has an idea, brings together a team of developers, and they create a first version of a product while raising some seed money. Now they are about a year or two into their existence - they feel the product is in good shape - and they are now starting to look for their first business hire to take things to market. They hire a succesful senior sales person / marketer from a succesful company, and wait to see amazing things happen. But things don't move.

 

WHY?

 

There are several factors as to WHY this is happening. First - this is the stage where sales need to be Founder led. Someone may be able to open a door, but the founder needs to convince the customer to buy. Second, the company has not thought through the buyer persona or their needs. They feel that they have the most amazing product, so it makes complete sense for the buyer to adopt it immediately. Third, a lot of companies fail to understand how to navigate larger enterprises, and how to get a product into their approval process - which can take months to a year sometimes. Fourth, the demos, the collateral, the messaging, the use cases, and the associated documentation does not exist - and it is unclear to the end customer on what or how they would adopt this new product. 

 

 

This is the area I focus on most. Its what excites me, and where I feel I can bring in the knowledge and experience of my last 30 years in the tech industry - to help founders get from ZERO to 1.

 

That is how AMplif.IO was born.

Amitaabh Malhotra

Founder and President