The following interview is a conversation we had with Jag Lamba, Founder & CEO of Certa, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $52 Million Raised to Build the Future of Third-Party Management
Jag Lamba
Thanks for having me, Brett.
Brett
Not a problem. I’m super excited for our conversation here. Let’s go ahead and just kick off with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Jag Lamba
Sure. I started my career as an engineer and then I joined McKinsey Consulting. Went to business school in the middle and then of that was sort of the bulk of my career. And then I did some private equity and I really missed building products, so decided to start a company and that’s what brought me to Certa.
Brett
What was your time like at McKinsey?
Jag Lamba
The greatest thing about McKinsey is the quality and the intellect of the people you work with. Right. So it’s exhilarating to work with incredibly smart, driven people. Loved that part of it. The consulting did not fully resonate with me. I think I’m more of a builder and I like to go deeper than consulting allowed me. And I just hated the travel, unfortunately, the travel is like, you know, travel is an absolute killer for consultants.
Brett
Yeah, I can imagine it. A lot of my friends were in consulting, that was a issue that they cited as well. So you definitely see that when it comes to founders who inspire you, who’s the most inspirational Founder that comes to mind?
Jag Lamba
It was Bezos for a bit, but now I don’t think anyone for me comes close to Satya. Incredible. I mean, its hard enough to make changes in a small company and turn things around. Hes been able to turn around this massive ship, almost like a mini country, and improve the culture, improve the product quality and the pace of innovation. So just bringing about that level of transformation might be unparalleled in history. So I’m in awe of him and I try to emulate him as much as possible.
Brett
Yeah, I feel the same way. And especially the past year, it’s like, wow, he’s had quite the year. I know Time magazine just named Taylor Swift, I think, person of the year, but he had to be up there in the running, at least. It’s been a pretty crazy year.
Jag Lamba
Just look at the acquisitions. Also that he’s made everything from GitHub to LinkedIn and open air dorm acquisition, but seems pretty close to it. You certainly have the influence there. I don’t know how someone can be so transformative while being empathetic and being so strategic in terms of acquisition. See a few steps beyond what anyone else can see. I’m in awe of that guy.
Brett
Yeah. 100% agree. What about books that have really inspired you along the way? And we tend to kind of turn away, like, the big, obvious books, like, the hard thing about hard things. Of course, every Founder got value out of that book. But taking a layer deeper, what are books that have really shaped you as an individual and as a person?
Jag Lamba
I think lately, one of the books that I really loved, and it stayed with me for a bit, are red notice. It’s basically. Yeah. Bill Browder. Yeah. And it takes so much courage to do what he did. I mean, to stand up against some of the most powerful, in some ways, ruthless folks in the world, and just incredible what he’s done. I think there was another book that I’m missing the name right now. It was about the escape from North Korea. So, yeah, I love that, man. Again, I think it’s. It’s by this lady called Naomi. Yon me park. Yon me park. And I absolutely love that book. You know, just the sheer courage and, you know, survival instinct and being able to do that without having, you know, sort of that victim mentality, you know, just overcoming the odds. Just extreme. Extreme.
Jag Lamba
It’s very inspiring. I think it’s called in order to live.
Brett
I’ve not read that yet, but I’ll.
Jag Lamba
Add that to my list.
Brett
And on the first one, I am a big fan of red notice. I read that probably a couple of years ago, and it’s pretty insane. Just before everything happened to him, the premise of his business was so insane. Everybody into Russia, and you take that stance and essentially do. I think it was greenmailing. He was doing what everyone here was doing in the eighties, early nineties. To do that in Russia is pretty insane, and I’m sure it was quite the adventure.
Jag Lamba
Yeah. I also read the freezing order, which came out last year, which is just a more detailed account, and also an account beyond goes into the old magnet sky act and everything, how he made that happen. And I enjoyed that as much. He’s got a really nice way of storytelling, something so significant. Yeah, incredible. I mean, and some of my business is around that. Right, Certa? So it also feels so relevant. We enable companies to comply with all these global sanctions. So we have these global companies that use Certa software to comply with these global regulations, global sanctions around their supply chain, partner networks, etcetera. So that’s why all the more relevant to me, because the terminology and some of the cases I see with my.
Brett
Clients, things are perfect segue to dive a bit deeper into the company. Take us back to 2015. It looks like that’s when the company was founded. What was going on in your world that you uncovered this compliance problem and found out this problem existed?
Jag Lamba
Yeah. So what we do is third party risk compliance and ESG. What that means is basically, in layman’s terms, we enable companies to safely and efficiently work with all their third parties. A company basically is a large network of third parties. And by third parties mean the company and their vendors, their partners, their distributors and their customers. So companies are constantly working with all these third parties. And while I was at McKinsey, I noticed that it was really painful. This is such a big basic process for a deal company, but the amount of regulation, information security, privacy needs, reputation impact, ESG needs. There were just so many rising needs that it was really becoming hard for people to work with, suppliers, partners, customers, et cetera. This is basically what explains the infamous procurement and compliance bottleneck.
Jag Lamba
You can take three to six months if you want to work with a large company. So this seemed like a big point of friction overall in the business ecosystem, and its just a classic efficiency problem that it felt like worth solving. So as soon as I started focusing on this problem, were able to get some incredible large enterprises who basically raised their hand and said, yeah, well, partner with you, Jack, if you want to solve this problem. That’s how it started.
Brett
What did they see in you to say, yeah, Jag seems legit. Let’s try to solve this big, massive problem that probably comes with a lot of risk and a lot of liability. Why do you think that they put their trust in you early on?
Jag Lamba
What I felt at that time was that I wasn’t going to let my customers down if they took a chance on me. I felt really strongly from every part of me that I knew that they were taking a risk on a new company. And I had this commitment inside me. I said, I’m not going to let my clients down. And that may have come across in my discussions with them, and it could have come across as just this commitment, but also in my speed of responses, in my flexibility in understanding them, in how quickly during the initial evaluation process, newborn able to evolve the product based on exactly what they were asking for. So all that probably resonated with some clients, but it’s the classic puzzle, because to try to build a company, a large company, you need a big market.
Jag Lamba
But in the big market there are only a few buyers who basically are of the innovator Persona, who are basically willing to take a chance on a new company, a new technology, etcetera. So that’s what’s hard for entrepreneurs, because often we can reach a really great market, but it’s not easy to find those innovators in that market that also fits your ICP ideal company profile or ideal customer profile. So for me, there was a lot of hustle that enabled me to reach some of those people, and then I was completely committed to making them successful.
Brett
And how did you go about finding and identifying them in the first place?
Jag Lamba
It was just a lot of meetings, man. I took every favor that I could from every friend, every investor, every former colleague, former classmates, and even potential investors. So one of the initial clients actually was Uber. And Uber was an intro through angel investor who actually ended up passing on us, but still made this amazing intro that were able to take forward and build a relationship with the team at Uber. And you could imagine for a company of our size, in just starting off, it was such a big deal to work with Uber and help them create all these supplier and partner relationships globally. So I just yield every relationship that I had, I called in every favor that I could.
Brett
Did it feel like it was working right away, or how long did it take until it started to really feel like you were gaining traction and that there was a viable business and a viable product?
Jag Lamba
It definitely took over three years. I feel like this was viable business and production. So I could tell that the problem existed immediately, just based on the number of meetings I was getting with clients and the seniority of these meetings, seniority of the clients that I was able to meet. So im like, okay, the problem seems real. Then the next step was, did I just get lucky by talking to a few clients or is this universal? So then the next step was, okay, it seems like a broad, universal problem. That was the next confirmatory test. Then we actually completely redeveloped the product. Once we fully understood the problem, then we knew, okay, what is the solution that would actually meet the need? So we had an initial make it mvp solution. And most companies at some point need to completely rebuild the product.
Jag Lamba
So we did that, and then once we re did the product, it really took off.
Brett
How do you think about the market category today? Is it third party risk management? Is it something else?
Jag Lamba
How do you think about category? The closest category is third party risk management. However, I see like the existing companies in that category are pretty limiting. So theyre limiting in the way that theyre mainly, third party risk management mainly focuses on the suppliers. With our clients, they need a solution that works also for partners and customers. Secondly, the existing of third party risk management solutions are basically SaaS applications. But what this needs actually is a complete platform that enables users or clients to build SaaS applications to build their applications. So what this needed is like a no code, low code platform which enabled multiple functions within the client to build their own ideal apps, which are all still interconnected and form the digital backbone of how companies work with their third parties.
Jag Lamba
But because there’s so much personalization configuration required, I just feel like the way companies are going to market was just very limiting. So that’s why we call ourselves third party lifecycle management versus just third party risk management, because we just do a lot more than that. I mean, also, you may remember I’d mentioned we redeveloped the product from the ground up. And the way we redeveloped the product was in a very elegant layered architecture. So what that’s enabled us to do now is easily layer on a generative AI layer on top of our platform. So all the no code, low code features are now available via simple natural language, which is so far ahead of what any of our competitors are able to do.
Brett
What role do analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester play in your overall go to market?
Jag Lamba
As a B2B software firm focused on enterprises, analysts play a big role. So you have to talk to the gardeners and the foresters of the world. However, similar to what’s happening in social media, it’s also happening with analysts. So what’s happening in our world is that in addition to the gardeners and the foresters of the world, there are individual independent analysts who have become pretty widely followed by our clients. So there’s a compliance analyst called Michael Rasmussen who’s pretty widely followed by the compliance community. There’s a procurement analyst by the name of Doctor Eloise Epstein, who’s very widely followed by the procurement community. So that’s been the change, Brett, where there’s some individual analysts who become almost as well known as the analyst firms.
Jag Lamba
It’s similar to like the MrBeast phenomenon where, you know, with my ten year old, you know, MrBeast is as popular as, you know, Brad Pitt. Right. You know, or Paramount Studios.
Brett
Makes sense. The individual rises above the organization.
Jag Lamba
Yeah, yeah. It’s happening with the analysts as well, not just with the YouTubers.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. This show is brought to you byFront Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. What have you learned outside of that? As you’ve had conversations with analyst firms, what have you learned? And the reason I ask is that’s kind of a black box for a lot of founders who are selling into the enterprise. They don’t even know where to begin when it comes to analyst relations.
Brett
So what are some of those lessons that you’ve learned throughout your interaction with them?
Jag Lamba
Yeah, I mean, with the analyst forum, Brett, it’s a fairly simple sequence of steps. So what every Founder must do, especially those selling into the enterprise, is there’s something called a vendor briefing at these analysts forums that’s free for everybody. So everybody should go to these analyst forums and do a vendor briefing. Now if you want feedback on your briefing and you want them to in some ways guide you, then you need to pay for that. And that makes sense as you get closer to CDZ because that usually costs definitely north of 50,000 a year. So as you get closer to early CDJ, then it makes sense to find who are the most active analyst forums in your space and then collaborate with them to basically give you feedback on your messaging, on your differentiation, et cetera.
Jag Lamba
And that also allows you to build more of a relationship with the analyst. And then pitching to individuals is a bit easier, they’re more accessible and yeah, I mean, I enjoy that part also pitching to individuals as well.
Brett
When we look at marketing in general, how would you define or describe your general marketing philosophy?
Jag Lamba
The marketing philosophy is customer education. What we have is something very innovative. What we think is extremely ten times more advanced than most other solutions. And the challenge for us is to just educate prospects on that. So thats basically what marketing is now that applies to every aspect of the customer lifecycle. Journey. So everything from raising awareness to helping them once they are in the buying motion, helping them understand the differences of what Serda can do to all the sales enablement if you build enabling the sales team. So for B2B SaaS, I really think that’s the best and the only way to look at marketing. It’s not about branding, if you will, it’s all about education. It’s about raising awareness.
Brett
What are you doing to rise above all the noise that’s out there in the market?
Jag Lamba
Yeah, it’s really hard. I haven’t found a magic formula for that. There are a few things that I think can happen. One is building an active social media profile. We really worked on LinkedIn to engage your audience, to add value to your audience beyond what your product can do, just in terms of best practices, et cetera. That definitely helps. Number two, storytelling and copywriting is gold, right? So that’s just the art of marketing, if you will. And then I think beyond that, doing all the basic blocking and tackling the Google Ads, et cetera, just to make sure that if someone is already in the buying journey for a product similar to yours, you make sure you reach them.
Jag Lamba
And then there are intermediaries like beyond the analyst firms, there are system integrators, consulting firms and other partners who can play a pretty critical role in this as well. So just in terms of marketing and education, we put a pretty strong emphasis on educating even the intermediate. So I haven’t totally figured this out, if you will. We’re still figuring this out and rising above the noise.
Brett
Looking through your website, it does seem like the messaging is very crisp and very clear, and it seems like you guys are doing all of the right things. Did you have any experience in marketing beforehand? Did you hire an agency? Did you bring on a great cmo? How did you get your marketing to.
Jag Lamba
The level that it’s at today? It’s all about the team. For me, it’s just so much more important to get the right team. The agency is like. I think many folks use this analogy of lasers versus just a light bulb to light up a room. Agencies are lasers. They can come in, they can help for a project, but they’re not going to be the one who will sustain you, spreading your message and sharing your message. It’s always going to be the team. And so you have to rely on and build like an incredible team. And we’ve been lucky enough to be able to do that in our marketing team. I don’t know what else to add to this. It’s all about hiring the right team. And I found that to be true in every function, not just in marketing, even in engineering.
Jag Lamba
I’m always opposed to outsourcing things, outsourcing work to agencies, even in sdrs. As you know, there are a lot of companies that will book meetings with you. I’m opposed to that. I think a firm needs to own these capabilities and that’s the only sustainable way. I think as a laser it works to just get an agency in for one of these purposes. But anything more than three months I think is a mistake.
Brett
I always wonder how many meetings these sdrs actually get booked. And also like the brand risk and brand harm, because I get so many. And I’m sure your inbox is just filled with these. I probably get like 30 or 40 a day and they’re completely unrelated to any problem that I have or even my industry. I have to wonder how effective those people actually are.
Jag Lamba
Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s the class of SDR. I’ll just pray and pray. Right. And that’s the danger of hiring an agency. It’s bad, right? I mean, I think you really need to own. The only way to do outreach effectively is in a highly targeted manner. So we’re lucky that we focus on the largest enterprises only, which means it’s classic account based marketing. So that’s what makes it easier for us to not be spammy. But I have a lot of sympathy for folks who are just trying to do outreach and especially sympathy for folks who, not just the firms, but also the people, because its one of the hardest jobs in an enterprise, man, just outreach. So I think the only way i’ve found is extremely targeted, extremely personalized, otherwise you risk harming your brand.
Brett
Makes sense and totally agree. What do you think has been the most important and impactful decision that youve made today?
Jag Lamba
I don’t know who I was listening to recently. I think it was Brian from Airbnb, Brad Jesky. I think he said a sustainable advantage of a company is just a series of decisions and problems. You solve the initial idea of what it is, but then it’s just a constant series of decisions that you take and judgments that you make that basically builds the snowball effect. If you’re doing things and if you’re doing majority of the things well, then it builds a snowball effect and thats what builds a company. And that really resonated with me. So its kind of like a lot of decisions ongoing at the stage we are at now, which is post cdp. It really is all about the people. Its just shocking to me how important and how impactful a good hire can be and vice versa.
Brett
Right.
Jag Lamba
How impactful a misfit hire can be. So, I mean, for me, if I look at the most impactful decisions, I think they’ve all been about getting the right people into the company. Beyond the people decisions, I think there are a few good things that we did, I think a few positive things. The one we really, we invested in building a great deep product, so we didn’t go to market too early with something shallow. So what that meant is we’ve been able to successfully deploy Serda at every single client we’ve sold Sarda to. So we’ve not let the clients down, which has created a good reputation for us. I mean, often clients come to us after doing the research that said, well, you guys deliver. Yeah, for sure we deliver.
Jag Lamba
I think the other thing, theres architecture decisions that we took that were really good, but some of them of course, come down to the people who built the product and Im trying to see what else was super impactful. I think in terms of go to market, being more focused has helped. So at some point we decided that were going to focus on the enterprise and not the mid market because you have to be focused. Even the enterprise is too big, even enterprises just being more focused. I think maybe the last thing that comes to mind is focusing on your strengths is important. They’re quite important.
Jag Lamba
So what we realized is that our strength was solving this big problem, which is third party management, risk compliance and ESG for large enterprises and the product, were just like, okay, well lets just focus on that because thats big enough. And of course you can go to the SMB and mid sized firms later in your journey. Why not focus on just the enterprise went up.
Brett
As I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 50 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Jag Lamba
A few lessons. Right. So one, ongoing relationships and ongoing, you know, updates are super impactful in fundraising. So fundraising works well if you can stay in touch with a few investors, maybe quarterly, et cetera, who might be interested in your space and enable them to track you. And you can also benefit from that relationship because sometimes theyll make interest for you. So for example, at the CDs B, once we started the process, were able to reach out to a significant number of folks because were in touch with them already. It was a surprise to them. So were able to raise. Thats why even in this tough market.
Jag Lamba
Secondly, for me, having a great CFO was quite helpful because especially at post CDJ stage companies, investors need a lot of metrics, and a great CFO knows how to find the data to provide the right data and the right messaging and the right narrative to the investors related to that. That was super helpful for me. And thirdly, we iterated on the story quite a bit. We made the story or the company story. We made it relatable in two ways. One, we showed impact to their clients, and in other ways we use analogies. For example, Certa is like the workday, but for companies instead of people. So those analogies really help investors understand you because they’re trying to understand your business in a pretty short period of time. So those analogies are super helpful.
Jag Lamba
For example, in workday as well, it’s one system to manage all the logistics and the compliance and all the risk mitigation related to your people. And that’s what we do for companies that our clients work with globally.
Brett
Final question for you before we wrap up here, let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building?
Jag Lamba
Yeah, that companies will be able to onboard and work with each other with one click. So it will still meet all the compliance needs, it will still be safe, so meet all the risk mitigation fraud checks. But it would be as easy as one click. So it would be as easy as accepting a LinkedIn connection.
Brett
Amazing. Love the vision. All right, Jack, we are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in and they want to follow along with your journey, where should they go?
Jag Lamba
The best place is LinkedIn. So basically, I’m Jag Lamba, and my, if you will handle the LinkedIn equivalent of handle is J Lamba. J L A M B A. So would love to connect with folks and share knowledge and generally, I mean, of course, a lot of the founders are going through the same journey and it’s good to see people around and say hello.
Brett
Amazing. Jack, thanks so much for taking time to chat. This has been a lot of fun.
Jag Lamba
Thanks, Brett.
Brett
Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you byFront Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for category visioners on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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