Disclaimer: This is an auto-generated transcript of the interview above & it’s not spell-checked at all.
To enjoy the real interview experience I recommend to watch the interview on YouTube🎬 or listen to the podcast version🎧.
Udit Goenka
The generative A.I. was built so that everyone can grow. Everyone can scale. Everyone can present themselves. And everyone can communicate. That’s where the whole generative comes in.
Sam Hartmann
Welcome to the never employed chat. My name is Sam and to interview people who make a living beyond salaried jobs, entrepreneurs, business owners and investors so that we can learn from their stories together. There are many great ways to make a living and even more ways to wealth and never employed. We encourage you to think of alternatives to employment jobs.
Sam Hartmann
What would you do if a salary job was simply no option?
Udit Goenka
My name is Udit Goenka and I currently run two brands under my one holding company known as Little Southern Corporation. Under that, I want to go brands right now. The first one is Petron, which is a SaaS marketplace, and the second one is firstly the start I o which is an even outreaching good. So those are the two startups or brands, I would say.
Udit Goenka
I don’t know at the moment. The brand is the second largest mass marketplace in the world right now and one of the largest mass market live in India for early stage SaaS companies and facilities. The newborn baby, which came out of my last failure. So my last is something that I rebuilt with my new CTO on my new co-founder last year in May, and we launched the product on 19th of May and it’s been about like eight, nine months so far.
Udit Goenka
You’re doing very, very well with that as well. So those are the two brands are running right now for lose out of the core company, V-Class by ourself at the feels tech company. So anything that revolves around sales is what we do.
Sam Hartmann
Okay. And then I wonder what what’s your background? Do you have a tech background? A marketing background? What’s your background?
Udit Goenka
So I started my career as a freelance and graphic designer. I self-taught myself everything, learn everything from YouTube, read books. And prior to that, I was very heavy into gaming. I don’t know if you remember this game known as Ragnarok. It used to be a very popular RPG game, and with one of the first RPG games out there that that came out back 17 or 18 years ago, and people were just crazy.
Udit Goenka
Thor I was like one of those addicts who would like to display that RPG game on all day long. And apparently that’s when I learned how to build teams, how to work with teams, because it was a team building game. It wasn’t a photo game. So and that’s what really intrigued me how to build it ain’t because Ragnarok was building away, but it was open source and anyone could deploy Ragnarok on their own.
Udit Goenka
So and under Alonzo, basically. So I wasn’t one of the popular servers and they would run forums and they would always run contest like build up your designs and you would win something or would give you some time. But I will give you some extra tokens and things like that. And then you are a 14, 15 year old kid.
Udit Goenka
You’re not really to make money, at least not 17, 18 years ago because the entrepreneurship in the startup world did not really exist about 15, 17, 18 years ago. So I would say, well, that’s cool if I can do a better design and things like that. So I started researching how to make them and I found few videos and they said that you go to loan for a shop and then you got to learn Illustrator art to make those designs.
Udit Goenka
So that you can then submit. And they would upload that on the, on the sound files and it was like for everyone. So I would like very quickly I started learning them, started making some of the designs and submitted them. People loved my design and eventually then I started posting a lot of my graphical work on Orkut. Back then it used to be Oracle Dotcom, which used to be as big as Facebook and doesn’t exist anymore.
Udit Goenka
So it wasn’t a lot of money to buy anything with it. And people were like, What are you doing? This is very interesting. People would pay you for all of these things. And I was like as a 15, 16 year old kid, then I was like, Who the heck would pay me for designs? So one of my friend told me that you should start freelancing.
Udit Goenka
And my next question was, what is freelancing? Because it was the very first time in my life I heard the word freelancing, and eventually I ended up landing my very first customer. It was from Israel. He asked me to design a logo and started my journey from there. After I got into designing, I was like building a website, designing websites, not building a website.
Udit Goenka
And then my next immediate question was How can I build a website from the design? I don’t want to stop myself from just designing it on Photoshop. I want to actually see it being clicked and got to go to next page. So I was always curious about the next thing and this is when I started learning HTML, CSS, and once I did that, then I came across the all application system that you could also build an application.
Udit Goenka
It would have database. And I was like, How do you do that? So then I would spend all my time and meanwhile my it was great came in, but I just scored 50% because I was spending my time and working and designing and gaming and all of these things. So my dream of becoming a software engineer was completely shattered because at 50% interest rate, which is like the most it is, it is like a high school basically in other countries.
Udit Goenka
So that’s the most important issue. If you screw that up, it’s very unlikely that you landed a good college and that is exactly what happened. I got invites from some very crappy college to lose offering getting. I said, No, I’m not going to do that. So I went into my roots and most of my family run businesses. So I took almost, which was very natural progression for me and that’s when I spent a lot more time because finance is relatively lot more easy for me because most of the Indians are very good with numbers in general.
Udit Goenka
So there was very smooth for me that I would like spend a lot more time on, on just learning how to code and things like that. And that’s where I learned to build applications and I ended up building my first project. I ended up working and building up my very first startup with my first co-founder was didn’t make girlfriend funding the current startup.
Udit Goenka
So that’s how I started my journey. But when I was building up my for startup, my co-founder told me that if you are you you will become a good marketing salesperson, then you are a developer. And I was like, No, I don’t like that because I was a very heavy introvert. It wasn’t even great. Now I have two personalities.
Udit Goenka
When I’m not working, I am heavy introvert, but when I am working, I am in a very extrovert personality and I would talk about everything. But if we all just meet randomly, I would probably just sit in a corner. I would not be like very outspoken. And that’s something I had developed over years, basically. So he told me, You just trust me.
Udit Goenka
You are a very likable character in general. And I asked him, What do you mean by likable character? Because if someone is telling us about about you, it’s kind of like hard to understand. Well, you really are, unless someone really tells you so. He told me that, do that. Just trust me and I’ll take care of the take.
Udit Goenka
I’ll take care of everything else. And I was like, All right, let’s give it a try. Give it a try for six months. And he told me, You will be the face of the company, you will be the feel, and I’ll handle everything else behind the scene. I’m like, okay, six months. We give it a try. If it works out, it works out.
Udit Goenka
And this is when I flew down to us for the very first time. I think I was a 21 year old kid. I flew down over there. My English was broken. I still remember it took me a month just to walk into a subway and ask them how to make myself. It was that difficult for me. I didn’t.
Udit Goenka
I did not even know of like something like something existed. So I said, remember when I ordered my very first Starbucks, I went into it into the store with like full of confidence. And when they asked me, What kind of coffee do you own? I was clueless because there was probably like 30 options. I was like, Which coffee should I get?
Udit Goenka
Because the only name of coffee that I’ve heard in India was cappuccino. And then this regular coffee trade, just like a creamer and coffee, and you mix it and you drink it, right? We even call out the filter coffee. So they told me something very fancy name and they called it like Americano. I was like, All right, let’s do that.
Udit Goenka
And I have noticed for Black Coffee how a sip. So certainly made. And I was like, I regretted spending $5 on that, but it’ll just throw it away. Like, so since then, you know, my journey has been out there. I’ve learned a lot, learn how to communicate. And since then I’ve never looked back and I’ve become so much better with a marketer and sales person than I was in their develop.
Udit Goenka
I thought, that’s been my journey and if if we connect all of those dots of my life, but generally it involves everything, right from understanding design, UI, UX development, marketing, sales. So when I look back and connecting the dots, as Steve Jobs always says, that once you’re in your in your thirties and if you connect all your dots back, you will realize you are meant to be where you are and you will be doing what you are doing.
Udit Goenka
So why not connect all those dots? I realized that that’s my core strength, you know, like understanding back to the core and then also able to understand how to sell softwares. That’s been my journey.
Sam Hartmann
And you covered so, so many interesting topics already. That’s that’s really cool. But yeah, as you described. So it sounds like you learned many, many different skills from many different perspectives. So that eventually helped you to build the skill set which you need to run successful startups.
Udit Goenka
So I have always been someone who believes in curiosity and not passion. So you will never know your passion if you’re not curious about that next thing and you will not learn new things. So I have always been that character or of an individual that if something new comes in a generally excites me and I want to learn that as long as it resembles to what I’m doing, I would learn that right?
Udit Goenka
So let’s say that if something new comes in around a cooking recipe that I am not invested in, I’m not going to go with it. But now if a new software comes out, I am like dried out. I want to see how it worked. I want to see how we can use this to drive more. Was curious to learn about new things.
Udit Goenka
So I think that’s where whenever it came to learning new stuff it was never too much of a problem or a hassle for me, since I have always self-taught myself how to learn new things just by watching videos and reading books even right now, learning new things is comparatively far more eager in general for me.
Sam Hartmann
When we are already there learning new things and learning new technology as you probably try to teach and do some stuff already. So yeah, so opinions on that I think.
Udit Goenka
Absolutely. In fact, I was using opening about a year and a half ago because we rent the drone. It was a lot of like opening app based software they were launching on a resource platform. So we usually discover new things we fostered in the general public, and activity is just like a compilation of our opening. I in a more like conversational manner basically.
Udit Goenka
So I definitely feel it has such a big opportunity for people and it opened the door to an opportunity for businesses who cannot afford expensive copywriter, and yet they want to express themselves, they want to build content, they want to share content, and also at the same time for developing countries. But English is not the first language. I think it’s a great way for them to present themselves in the best possible manner, in the most budget.
Udit Goenka
We, we so technologies are born in that way because it brings equality in the society.
Sam Hartmann
But how doesn’t people in developing countries? That’s a very interesting point for me.
Udit Goenka
In developing countries, usually what happens is you will not find the best of the best talents. And if they are the best of the best talent, it’s usually acquired by some of the funded startups or a very nice company because they can afford to pay for the best talents. But when it comes to small businesses, they generally tend to shy away because it would cause them quite a lot.
Udit Goenka
And small businesses are already struggling with margins. They are already loan revenue, and for them to invest about 30, 40% of their entire revenue on just one person, that’s not justifiable. On a business point of view. So for them having such technologies so very helpful that they can easily build things, they can grow things and at the same time, at a very affordable cost, which is of electability, comes in.
Udit Goenka
And in general, a generative AI comes in right to the whole generative A.I. was built so that everyone can grow, everyone can scale, everyone can present themselves and everyone can communicate. That’s where the whole generative comes into picture.
Sam Hartmann
I personally, for for pitch ground office sales do do you use some kind of AI technology yourself or do you, as you said, market these other platforms? Do we use it?
Udit Goenka
Also, we are using open air directly of the elevator on smartphones that we train our own data models on Da Vinci right now, Da Vinci images, which is typically Chad. Jeopardy, jeopardy! 3.5 as as open as is so we’ve just built our own stuff because we need to launch a strong start that we cannot rely on something like Jeopardy because it’s going to give more of a generic answer.
Udit Goenka
What is we want things to be done? RB So we are still using open air, but we have just built a layer on it. So we keep on supplying new prompts to just be in the air so that the output that we get is more specific to our needs.
Sam Hartmann
And then in which way or for which part of the business do you use that actually?
Udit Goenka
Oh, absolutely everything. Right, from ads to social media to creating ideas, brainstorming ideas. Brainstorming strategies are coming up with like webinar topics strategies pretty much everything, you name it. We are using it for pretty much everything now.
Sam Hartmann
Okay. And then, then how how does this look in practice? And if you say things like brainstorm timing and so it’s like, do you just prompt like, yeah, open for.
Udit Goenka
You this. Give me an idea. That’s it.
Sam Hartmann
Okay, that’s, that’s really cool.
Udit Goenka
It saves time, you know, because if I sit with my team and try to brainstorm, they’ll probably take a week to come up with ideas. And what I can just do, I initial brainstorm and see if I can find some nice, good ideas. If I can, then I use those ideas to sort of like further implementing it and then take it to the team level.
Udit Goenka
And then we start working on the implementation strategies rather than figuring out the focus on how do we implement it. And that’s why we’re able to produce the kind of result which such a small team.
Sam Hartmann
Do you think that it’s a problem that the data may be limited to to a certain time level? I don’t know about the data with which you work, but I think what people talk about referring to CBT, for example, is that it only can look backwards and doesn’t have the like very up to date data.
Udit Goenka
That is, if you are doing research level data and if you required a third level data and you want to use that research level data. So for example, if I if I ask Chargeability with the prompt, what are the revenue of that industry, then they’ll probably give me data on 21. But if I’m asking them, give me five topics to make a about in SAS and that’s I don’t need data, I need ideas.
Udit Goenka
So we have to understand both of them why we need to use certain technology in certain way, but then there are ways where there are again software available there. It also use a third world API which is again an additional platform that was created in real time and then supply that to tangibly. And you can I mean, there are services out there where you can just get the latest data out there so you don’t have to wait for something that our technologies are available already for that.
Sam Hartmann
Yeah, that’s awesome. And you probably also promote some of these. Yeah. Startups and like companies who provide these kind of services. I’m pitch grant already, right?
Udit Goenka
Yeah. So we keep on getting a lot of our listed startups so fast, startups who are coming up with amazing ideas all the time and they keep on launching because usually what we do is when they come on page down, we have a half a million users worldwide who are using our platform and buying from our platform. So it just make your visibility and life a lot more easier because people know that, okay, that’s a good offer.
Udit Goenka
If it does, come on, page down, it’s probably a very high level of due diligence done on the platform. So it builds a trust right away and it just gives you the audience right away. So usually 4 to 5 companies and small size companies, they trimmed down their growth period from like two years, three years to just six months.
Udit Goenka
Basically, that’s a lot of time. FIELD But we are community led, which means that we have built a community around a page growing there. We tracked a lot with our community and they have very high level of transparency in terms of what happens, what what what did they do? Everything, everything. Literally everything. So our growth is community led.
Udit Goenka
Our tagline is follow visit.
Sam Hartmann
Scott How did this generally develop connected to your past? How did you get from just being curious to building your start ups and to pitch grow and eventually?
Udit Goenka
So our building community initially was a little far more easier for me because if you don’t live in my first gig, I’d previously thought of ventures before my third venture failed miserably. So I had customers from the past who were connected with me on LinkedIn of men most primarily that most of them were on Facebook. So I ended up building up a Facebook group.
Udit Goenka
Then when we started and we used out of the growth, the driving growth factor as well and built an entire community with it. And then we also had a very small active community on WhatsApp. On top of that, which recently started when WhatsApp community was released.
Sam Hartmann
For people who want to start some kind of business, do you have a general advice for people? What are important skills to to be an entrepreneur?
Udit Goenka
I think the most important skill is to have perseverance. That’s the most important skill and get ready to work. 24 seven Because entrepreneurship is a 24 seven job, it’s not a 9 to 5 job, right? So if you are looking to quit your job and if you want to get into entrepreneurship, don’t leave, don’t do shortcuts. There is you you learn achieve growth when you when you offer shortcuts.
Udit Goenka
Right. It’s a long path. And you need to enjoy every day. You need to enjoy the whole journey. You will have 90 out of 100 days. Every hundred days you will have four days when you will see hypergrowth and 96 days you will probably be there now hundred during the initial time. Right. But then four days before incredible that it will outweigh the the downfall.
Udit Goenka
So that’s what is going to happen. Now imagine if you quit on the 96 day and the next four days what your current day. So that’s why entrepreneurship is long term. It’s not short term. So you need to give time. So what I would generally advise someone who was who had a job, don’t quit your job and start your business as a side hustle and one job side hustle income for passive your salary.
Udit Goenka
That’s when you will be in a position to just quit. Meanwhile, work on your personal branding, keep building content. Kimberly UserBase. Kimberly Community. You don’t need to rush because you don’t have a pressure to make money and it’s really because you’re already making money where a job so despair you have about what like 24 hours a day. If you’re working for 8 hours, you have another 16 hours left.
Udit Goenka
Now, put in another 8 hours into building up your side, hustle on maybe just four or 5 hours a day for the rest of the day in your head and and other stuff, whatever you want to do. But you can easily pull off 4 hours or 5 hours of additional work. And also you train yourself for working long hours because when you get into full time, you’ll probably not work for just a typical 8 hours anymore.
Udit Goenka
You’ll be putting in and pushing in 12 to 15 hours, at least for the first three or four years. So be ready for all of these things. It might sound very easy and fancy when everyone talks about starting your own business, but the reality, it’s not easy, right? You will have to give up on a lot of friends, a lot of family, a lot of sacrifices that you make during your initial days and you’re able to do that will reap huge benefits in five years of time.
Sam Hartmann
Very, very important words from my point of view. You address this to two people who are already working like salaried jobs. What would you say for people who just left college or something else and who don’t have jobs yet, who maybe even have the safety of their parents house or things like that.
Udit Goenka
Again, get a job. Don’t start with entrepreneurship right away. The reason behind that is you will make a lot of mistakes when you lose a job. You learn from other people’s mistakes and you learn on and you make mistakes on other people’s money. So life is too short to be making mistakes on your own. So your entire 20th should go into working for three kinds of different companies, right?
Udit Goenka
From 19 to 22 or 23. Work for a bootstrap book with a bootstrap startup, right? Because you will learn how to optimize business for margins from 23 to 27. Look for a funded company, especially someone who is just the E, especially look for that company directly with the founder. Because you will learn how to use money to drive growth because optimization is not the key.
Udit Goenka
You’ve already learned how to optimize, how you know how to spend the money to drive user base. And from 27 to 30, which is an incentive for us. Look for a corporate, a big MNC, a big corporate, because when you’re working in a corporate for four years, you will connect with other corporates, you will potentially find your future co over there because to get into the mentees or let’s say to get into Google alone, you have to crack a lot of.
Udit Goenka
Forbes Right. To get into Microsoft, to get into Facebook. It’s not easy. They have the most rigorous, tough hiring process. So if someone has just passed that hiring process itself, then it says would give you that. The other person is very vigilant in nature and they can handle the heat, they can handle the pressure on top of that.
Udit Goenka
So and when you’re building any company, you need that kind of people. So you probably find your future family more, then you’ll be the last connection. But more importantly, you will build a lot of enterprise connections. And when you start your business, you know, you now know how to optimize your business for margins. You know how to use money to drive users in the best possible way and in the best way to spend money and thought you already have enterprise connects.
Udit Goenka
You can pitch them your product on day one and drive growth because enterprise deals only happens if you know them. If you build them, chances are they might even not respond unless you have the right person and you connect and they have the problem. Then in that right generally when it comes to enterprise sales, you will need connect.
Udit Goenka
That’s when enterprises move faster. And I tell you to all the startups that we work with at Baytown, Enterprise guides the revenue and small businesses drives the brand. So you need to understand why you need bought and that’s how you will leverage and grow. You need if you spend ten years understanding these things, you’ll realize that when you build your start up eateries, you will have a far better chance of being successful rather than failing multiple times.
Udit Goenka
And then probably one will be a jackpot. But why do you want to do that when there is a much better formula of learning things and learning on other people’s money, learning with other people, and learning from the best people in the industry as well. Because your manager, your boss is probably has way more knowledge, way bigger network and you can tap into those network which otherwise is impossible for you to do that.
Udit Goenka
So this is what I would recommend to anyone who is just coming out of the college right now, going this path and chances of you being successful and making a lot of money by your 40 is a lot higher. And also when you’re also looking to raise capital, you look creatively. By the way, you have a fantastic portfolio.
Udit Goenka
Your your CV looks so amazing that investors would want to invest in you even if you’re not from an Ivy League like Stanford or Harvard, they will still want to fund you because they have seen the the growth curve in your past. And usually investors, especially early stage investors, they don’t care about what you are building. They care about do you have the potential to execute and grow?
Udit Goenka
That’s what they built upon. So this is a formula, I would say, that had the highest chance of making the success.
Sam Hartmann
So does this mean that you wouldn’t even start to try building a startup before your thirties and instead use your twenties just to learn and network?
Udit Goenka
Absolutely. That’s a time because you have a lot of energy. Remember in your twenties you have the highest level of energy in your body. As a human, you can run around, you can travel a lot, but the moment you hit 33, your energy level will drop. That’s just human body in general. When you’re in your forties, your energy level will drop further.
Udit Goenka
You will want to travel less. Even if you can travel, you will want to travel less, right? You will want to just sit back, relax. You want to spend more time with your family, but when you’re in your twenties, you are hungry to drive growth. And also the theme time. Remember doing your twenties, you don’t have any typical responsibility on your shoulder because you don’t have a family.
Udit Goenka
You’re not married during your early twenties. Generally people marry like in the late twenties or early thirties or maybe likely thirties. So when you don’t have responsibility, your expenses are quite low and that stage you’re probably just paying for your rent for and probably that’s it, you just being for these things. So when there’s a lesser responsibility, you can spend the time to just invest the money at the same time.
Udit Goenka
For that, when you actually start a startup, you will also have over a million or 2 million or 3 million sitting in your bank account are probably invested at different stocks or probably just index funds. And when you wanted to start, you don’t even need risk capital. You can just continue bootstrapping because you have made that money in the past.
Udit Goenka
That’s how you do it. So don’t even bother starting stakes. No. Again, this ten years that you’re going to invest will help you build a better business.
Sam Hartmann
That’s really, really impressive words, honestly. And this teaches what are your plans for 2023 and the coming years?
Udit Goenka
So what needs to be goal is to release on your version of business. You know that we have been working on for some time. I released and continue growing on that. So I’m one of those entrepreneurs who has a clear vision that I want to stick around with this project for at least the next ten, 15 years. Right.
Udit Goenka
Because if you look at anyone, what made it big have been involved with that project for at least ten, 15 years and before that you got to have like an extreme luck when someone comes and acquires you or something like that at a very high valuation. But you have created so much hype about the company, so we don’t want to do any of those things.
Udit Goenka
Plus for me, particularly the very purpose driven brand, because then my last sort of feel, that is what inspired me to be on in the first place. So I have a lot of emotions that as with this particular brand or project, I would say I thought, it’s not just like a company for me. It’s not just a brand for me.
Udit Goenka
It’s it’s a very purpose driven brand. So we want to continue growing on that. We want to continue working on that, leveraging on that. And that’s that’s what we want to do. Just keep on distributing because we feel that we can help a lot more companies and founders to our platform.
Sam Hartmann
Is there any challenges you’re currently facing, anything where people may eventually help you?
Udit Goenka
I think for every founder, they typically have just one challenge, which is to build a good team and get good people on board, right. So that’s a typical challenge that even we face, right, to keep on getting good people whom we can work with, who can help with broad finding good people in general to work with is hard.
Sam Hartmann
Then if people think that they’re suited to work with you, where can they find you?
Udit Goenka
You can just reach out to me on LinkedIn to it. I’m very active on those platforms. They’re going to reach out to me. There are so many people who would reach out and just see. Even if we don’t have leading position, they’ll just say like, Oh, we want to work with you. The kind of knowledge you have, the experience you have.
Udit Goenka
I’m not going to stick around for a while, but I would love to work with you for a couple of years to learn. And New York with that, because I always prefer someone being truthful because we are we have a very modern thought process. Right. As compared to that traditional thought process of thinking is probably just going to work for two years.
Udit Goenka
I wouldn’t even bother. What if someone giving their two years is a lot of time? You should think of it eight two years is a huge time. So as long as they are committed to what they want to do when they are ready to help and has the right attitude, I think skills can be taught, talent can be talked to someone.
Udit Goenka
But your attitude in general, no one can teach you your values, your ethics towards being truthful. Those are the things that no company can teach you. That’s something that completely comes from the upbringing, how your parents have really grown you as a person, how you evolve as a person. So those are the main things that we look at when we are looking to hire anyone in gender.
Sam Hartmann
And then I hope that you connect to great people that way. And thanks a lot for taking the time.
Udit Goenka
What is a. Pleasure’s all mine. Thank you.
Sam Hartmann
Thank you for taking part in this never input shut. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more interviews with business owners and investors or simply listen to the audio version in your favorite podcast directory. Make sure to follow me on all your preferred social media platforms so that you never miss life changing business tips. You find me on every platform with the account name Sam Hartman.
Sam Hartmann
Com Start a business, become successful and tell me about it. See you next time.