The following interview is a conversation we had with Parry Bedi, CEO of Tingono, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $7 Million Raised to Help Companies Boost Net Revenue Retention
Brett
Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders who are on the front lines building it. In each episode, we’ll speak with a visionary Founder who’s building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We’ll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I’m your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Front Lines Media. Now let’s dive right into today’s episode. Hey, everyone, and thanks for listening. Today I’m speaking with Parry Bedi, CEO and Co-Founder of Tingono, a revenue retention platform that’s raised nearly 7 million in funding. Perry, thanks for chatting with me today.
Parry Bedi
Thank you, Brett. Thank you for having me.
Brett
Yeah, no problem at all. So before we begin talking about what you’re building, let’s start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Parry Bedi
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m an engineer by training, and I started my career at Microsoft, and I did that for a few years. I got a little bit bored, so I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So like many people I know, I ended up at business school. At business school I met who finally became my Co-Founder. And after business school, we both ended up starting our first machine learning company, and that was acquired by Forrester. And once our earnout was over, were like, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So ended up starting to go nice.
Brett
And how long were you there at Forester then, after the acquisition?
Parry Bedi
Two and a half, almost three years.
Brett
Was that painful staying there after you were acquired or what was that experience like?
Parry Bedi
No, not really. I think it was actually I don’t know if my experience is unique, but I actually really enjoyed it. So I think they took the product, they took the company, all of us went to Forrester, and one great thing they did was let us run on our own, more or less. Right. So there were certain things you have to be integrated with a bigger company, but otherwise you have a lot of freedom, which was very important for me. So I really enjoyed the freedom. I liked making an impact, so overall, it was a great time I had, but at the end of the day, I love creating things from scratch. So that was the impetus for us, like, okay, let’s move on.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. And before we dive deeper into what you’re building, there one thing we like to always ask on these interviews to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder is what is the number one book that’s had the greatest impact on you as a Founder?
Parry Bedi
I would have to say that good to great by Jim Collins. Like, starting something from scratch means you have to be at least ten times better than the incumbents, right? Because you don’t have the advantages such as brand resources. So a lot of the concepts in the book, like for example, assembling the right team from the first get go, they really make sense in the hindsight. So I think I’ve really enjoyed that book.
Brett
Nice.
Brett
Such an amazing book. Cool. Well, let’s dive into what you’re building today. So what’s the origin story behind the company and what do you guys do?
Parry Bedi
Yeah, so like were talking about right, at Forester I was running this business division and SaaS business, right. So like any other SaaS business, were really concerned about customer churn and also how to achieve expansion with our existing customer base. But when I’ll go to my customer success team, I’m like, hey, who are the customers that likely to churn? Now these are smart people, but what I would get back are anecdotal stories basically like, oh, I spoke to this customer, maybe they’ll turn, I’ll go to our head of sales and I’m like, hey, who can we upsell to? How do we expand this account? They’re like, oh, I had a dinner with this person or they sent me an email.
Parry Bedi
So I think this account is likely to we can upsell it to but there was no data driven way for me to put my finger onto and say like, okay, these are the accounts, this is the way we’re going to approach it. So that kind of led to Genesis of Tingono. So where we said like, okay, there has to be a data driven way, there has to be a much more scientific way to do these things. And then I started talking to a whole bunch of other SaaS companies and it seemed like the problem is real and that would led to Tingono. And obviously once the earnout was over, me and my Co-Founder said, okay, this is what we’re going to devote next five to ten years on.
Brett
Did you take any time off? Did you have like a week or a month or a couple of months vacation there or did you just jump right in?
Parry Bedi
I don’t know. I think we jumped right in. It was really like, it was a.
Brett
Worldwide nice, that’s awesome. And when it comes to market categories, how do you think about market categories? Is this something that’s part of an existing category or a totally new one?
Parry Bedi
That’s an interesting question because we squarely fit within SaaS. But what has happened over the last few years is what I like to think of as progression of data. So the first cut was like, companies didn’t have enough data, right? But now if you ask anyone, they’re all swimming in data. So once the data started coming in for firms, the first generation of apps which were built were like your salesforce and they said and you could answer questions like, hey, who is my customer with the highest MRR? Then second gen was basically tools like CDPs and Data warehouses, segments, snowflake. So these were built to give you kind of like a view of your customer which was where you could answer questions such as hey, who’s my customer with highest MRR but logs the most ticket.
Parry Bedi
We think that is still limited and that’s where king owner comes in. It’s the third generation is the way I like to think about it, where we give you a holistic view of your entire customer journey and then you can answer questions such as who’s my customer with lowest MRR but is still not likely to turn and the converse like who I can upsell to?
Brett
Got it?
Brett
Okay, that makes a lot of sense and where are you seeing the most adoption right now? Who’s adopting and buying this product from you?
Parry Bedi
So it’s mostly our target market. It is the SaaS companies with recurring revenue who have kind of like standard go to market apps, so salesforce pendo for product analytics segment, so on and so forth. But do have certain historic data because we do two things really well. Number one is we can identify leading indicators of churn for you and recommend actions to eliminate those. And then secondly identify leading indicators of expansion and help you execute on those. But the way we do it is we stitch together all your data which is now today sitting in siloed apps into one cohesive entity and then run predictions on it.
Brett
Interesting. And I see on your website it says ML driven revenue growth is here with machine learning with artificial intelligence. I feel like those are terms and words that are used a lot by companies and it’s probably very difficult to break through the noise and stand out there. So what are you guys doing then to separate yourselves from all the others that are making so much noise around these technologies and these buzzwords, so to speak?
Parry Bedi
So I think it’s funny Brett, that you asked that question because we had a similar experience with my last machine learning company too. Because at that time everybody was like, oh, we’re doing machine learning. But at the end of the day, what they were doing was some of the competitors, what they were doing was rules based systems which is basically traditional programming on steroids. So yes, you’re absolutely right, it is still hard to distinguish and for a lot of people to see like, okay, is this company really truly doing machine learning or not? I think the proof is in the pudding. I know my Co-Founder actually wrote a blog piece about how do you identify if someone is doing machine learning or not, like a vendor is doing it or not.
Parry Bedi
But I think at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. So product itself, like how you look at the data, what are the insights you generate? Can you do that in a human manner or do you really need machines to do it? From the marketing perspective, I think it is just telling your story. It is telling your story and then obviously it’s the team.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
Makes sense. One thing I have to call out from your website that I really love and it just really shows. It’s different from all these others or all the other websites out there is your copywriting is so good. That section on the site that says, so you have this friend and this friend is in charge of revenue retention. I love that. It’s so unique.
Parry Bedi
Thank you. I would definitely give that feedback to our marketing team. They put in a lot of work and hard work into it. Thank you.
Brett
Yeah, no problem. Now let’s talk about traction. So are there any numbers that you can share with us in terms of how much traction you’ve seen so far?
Parry Bedi
So we’re still in our early stages and today we’re working with what we like to think of like design partners. So handful of design partners, so I can’t really share their names yet, but what they’re helping us with is we build our product with them. So one of the things I did and I kind of like look back and say like, oh, why did I do that? It was with my last company, we just actually kind of went into a shell and spent like a year building things out. Typical engineer, let’s get going. But this time around but last time when we did that, we launched the product and we realized, oh, we’re missing these key things. So this time around we’re taking it a little bit different tactics. We’re working with the partners, building the product out.
Parry Bedi
And as we build it, the goal is to not only build a great product, but also really add value to our customers. So one metric I can share is that for one of our design partners, we help them identify what you call additional revenue opportunities, which were almost 20% above what they were seeing on their own.
Brett
Wow.
Brett
And a lot of our audience probably knows the term design partners and that seems to come up a lot when it comes to early stage startups. Could you define what a design partner is?
Parry Bedi
So in my perspective, a design partner is someone who is willing to spend time with you and give you feedback as you build the product. So, for example, we are still very early company and when we started on this journey, we had nothing. We literally had this concept in our head and ideas about how we’re going to execute it. So then we talked to these companies who have real life data. So they gave us access to their data. They help us validate the insights we are generating and then spending time with us discussing like, okay, does this feature make sense for you? Is this user experience something you’re looking for? So it’s basically a partnership.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
And then what’s their incentive to do that? Are they just early adopters of technology and want to experiment and test new things or why do you think design partners are open to doing that? Because I’m sure it takes a lot of time on their end. Right?
Parry Bedi
That is right. So it is something about adoption and being ahead of the curve, but I think at the end of the day, it’s also about the value they get out there. So I personally like, we’re in B. Two B space. That’s what I understand really well. I don’t think as a company you would spend that time with someone if you don’t see the value. So I think what they’re looking for is, can I get this value from your company which I cannot get anywhere else? I think that’s what it boils down to.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
Makes sense. And what would you say has been your greatest challenge as you brought this idea to market so far?
Parry Bedi
Started? Life is always highs and lows. So I think the biggest challenge has been building a really great team from the scratch we got. And as you know, the market has been really hard for talent, especially the kind of talent we need. But we got a little bit lucky that some of the folks who were with us on the journey last time came along. So we had this kernel of the team, but then augmenting it and bringing on the people who are the right fit for the stage of the company has been somewhat of a challenge.
Brett
And are you seeing hiring talent getting easier or more difficult in the last couple of months with the downturn and some of these big tech companies doing layoffs? Have you seen any changes with that?
Parry Bedi
It’s kind of hard to say because I think it’s always really difficult to get the right set of folks because no matter what the economy does, in some ways because those people will always be in high demand. So I personally haven’t seen a fundamental shift in that. For example, my personal perspective is I generally never, and I have never done this, never hire for a particular skill. I always hire for talent because skills get obsolete very quickly. So if you’re looking for really talented people and those who have this like, get up and go, they’ll always be in really high demand. So I don’t think it has changed fundamentally, at least for us.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And now this is your second startup. You had a successful exit. So I’m wondering what motivates you and what excites you most about the work you get to do every day?
Parry Bedi
Yeah, I think it’s something like I was mentioning earlier, it is the feeling of creating something from scratch. To give you an example, what was it like a couple of months in the journey and the team was just were sitting, were having a product discussion and the team started discussing this one feature they thought would add a lot of value to the customer in a very specific way.
Brett
Right.
Parry Bedi
We’re enterprise system. But they were talking about the details and I was sitting there being part of that meeting and I’m like, wow, this was just a concept in my head like six weeks ago. And now these super smart people, the people I really respect, are talking about it like it is real. I think that thrill, that excitement you get, it’s very hard to get in a traditional corporate job.
Brett
Got it.
Brett
That makes a lot of sense. Nice. And if we zoom out into the future, what would you say is the five year vision for the company?
Parry Bedi
So if you look at the evolution of SaaS right. With SaaS came predictable revenue and now what? Our promise is that we will help you turn this predictable revenue, which is at the end of the day, is the real driver for valuation and growth of a company. So our promise is that zooming ahead, we would enable you to turn this predictable revenue into predictable growth. And that’s what we are doing today. The future, I think, would end up being much more like automated. So it’s all orchestration and automation. So at the end of the day, imagine a future where you are going at a certain velocity. A lot of that is automated for you. That’s what we are aiming for.
Brett
All right. Well, unfortunately, that’s all we’re going to have time to cover for today. But before we wrap up, if people want to follow along with your journey, where’s the best place for them to go?
Parry Bedi
Yeah, absolutely. So we are very active on LinkedIn, so please follow us there. Or you can go to our website and subscribe to our blog or just reach out to me at parry@tingono.com. I’m happy to have a conversation.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thanks so much for your time here and look forward to seeing you execute on this vision. Let’s keep in touch.
Parry Bedi
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Brett
Take care now.
Parry Bedi
You too. Bye. You subscribe our.
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