Freshworks

Why we picked it The live version of an Indian origin channel at scale: 500 plus channel partners in 80 plus countries, 400 plus technology integrations, and four partner tracks stated plainly.

Freshworks Partner Program

From Freshworks 5 min read

Why we picked it Bet on people, not pedigree, written by the founder who built a NASDAQ listed sales org out of Chennai by hiring off campus. The clearest answer to Indian founders who claim the GTM talent does not exist here.

7 lessons from building an India-based global SaaS business

From Freshworks by Girish Mathrubootham 10 min read

• The trigger was a Hacker News comment on a Zendesk price rise saying someone could take all their customers.
• Freshdesk went after that opening by offering to match Zendesk customers' remaining contracts for free.
• Hired on demonstrated work, not credentials: one early hire's whole qualification was a helpdesk he had built on GitHub.
• Think and act like a global company while you are still a team of 10.

Why we picked it A plain reference for the retention metric set (retention rate, revenue churn, CLTV, NPS) with formulas, from an Indian SaaS company that sells to both SMB and enterprise.

What is Customer Retention? Key Metrics and Strategies

From Freshworks 14 min read

• Acquiring a new customer can cost up to five times more than keeping an existing one.
• Customer retention rate = (ending customers minus new customers) divided by starting customers, times 100.
• Email existing customers every two to three weeks, and treat six months of no purchase as a churn signal.

Why we picked it Roberge's hiring formula in short form: the five traits that actually correlated with performance at HubSpot, and the finding that classic closing and aggressiveness correlated negatively. Read this before you read the book.

A 12-minute summary of The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge

From Freshworks 12 min read

• Roberge added 450 sales and support people, 10,000+ customers in 60 countries, and 100M in revenue over 7 years.
• His central claim: world-class sales hiring is the biggest single driver of sales success.
• Coach one skill per rep per month rather than trying to fix everything at once.
• To fight churn, pay half the commission at the sale and half after the customer stays four months.

Why we picked it The founder's own account of entering an existing category (help desk) against Zendesk rather than inventing a new one, and winning on price and simplicity for SMBs. The clearest India example of segment choice beating category invention.

The Freshdesk Story: Where and How it All Started

From Freshworks by Girish Mathrubootham 9 min read

• The idea came from a Hacker News comment about Zendesk raising prices 60 to 300 percent.
• The founders quit in October 2010 and ran a six person team on roughly 5K dollars a month, paying 30 to 50 percent of market salary.
• About 350 to 400 dollars of ads across Google, Facebook and LinkedIn produced more than 150 valid signups.
• Talking to SMB customers pushed multiple support emails, SLAs and business hours ahead of social integrations.

Why we picked it The dated timeline you need to check the story against: founded 13 October 2010, first customer June 2011, 100 customers in 103 days, 100 million ARR in June 2018.

A golden birthday: Turning 13 on the 13th

From Freshworks by Sanjay Gupta About 6 min read

• Freshworks signed its first customer, a college in Australia 9,000 km away, in June 2011.
• It reached 100 customers in 103 days.
• It hit 100 million dollars of ARR in June 2018 and IPO'd on Nasdaq in September 2021.
• Its first office outside India opened in San Bruno, California, only in the second half of 2014.