Sedai’s Product-Led Growth Journey: When to Show vs. When to Tell
Most startups selling autonomous systems try to demonstrate maximum capability from day one. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Sedai founder Suresh Mathew revealed a counterintuitive approach: deliberately limiting their system’s autonomy to build trust.
The Controlled Autonomy Paradox
“We are an autonomous system. At the same time, we don’t let you run autonomous in the first two weeks,” Suresh explained. “The first two weeks is for the system to learn and recommend certain things. Those are the things that your teams will evaluate.” This measured approach has helped Sedai secure over 20 enterprise customers for their autonomous cloud management platform.
Understanding the Stakes
The caution makes sense when you understand what’s at stake for Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). “Their life typically is looking for opportunities to save, looking for customer calls or complaints and look for the root cause, fix the root cause and do this root cause analysis and get going,” Suresh shared.
The complexity of their work creates both opportunity and risk. “You’re not managing tens of services anymore. You have hundreds of services to manage as an SRE,” he noted. “Now if you look at the whole thing, it has become a risky job now and many a times it becomes boring as well.”
The Tesla Model of Trust-Building
Sedai’s approach mirrors successful autonomous vehicle strategies. “Taking that left and right has to be driven by the machine themselves. So it is a lot safer and the journey is a lot more comfortable,” Suresh explained. “I’m not talking about just Tesla as a company, generally the autonomous industry, it’s trying to really help humanity. It’s never trying to replace anyone.”
From Evaluation to Activation
During the initial two-week period, Sedai focuses on demonstrating value through recommendations rather than autonomous actions. This allows teams to validate the system’s decision-making while maintaining complete control. As Suresh noted, “The most important thing is you will take your operators out of harm’s way.”
Transforming Cost into Investment
Rather than positioning their solution as a quick fix, Sedai frames it as a strategic investment. “With autonomous systems it becomes a modernization initiative,” Suresh explained. “The good thing here is you’re not just optimizing for that day, you are now optimized forever.”
The Evolution of Trust
The market’s perception of autonomous systems has evolved significantly. “Autonomy was considered risky at one point. Now that’s safer than being automated,” Suresh observed. “Being autonomous and autonomous is not cool or new anymore. It is becoming the norm now.”
Scaling Through Proof
This careful approach to autonomy has enabled Sedai to expand their footprint. “We started with Serverless. We are now into ECS. We are on Kubernetes. We started being on storage,” Suresh shared, outlining their growth across cloud native platforms.
The Community Factor
Product-led growth isn’t just about the product—it’s about the ecosystem around it. “Community plays a key role in our success,” Suresh emphasized. “The good thing about this community is everybody is trying to build the system or make this safer… We take it very seriously and we are actively meeting that community.”
For B2B tech founders selling innovative solutions, especially those involving automation or AI, Sedai’s journey offers valuable lessons. Success isn’t just about what your technology can do—it’s about how you introduce those capabilities in a way that builds trust and confidence.
The key is finding the right balance between demonstrating value and maintaining customer control. Sometimes, the best way to accelerate adoption is to start more slowly, proving value before asking for trust. In enterprise sales, especially with transformative technologies, trust isn’t given—it’s earned through careful orchestration of product capabilities, customer control, and demonstrated results.