The following interview is a conversation we had with Raghu Gollamudi, CEO and Co-Founder of Included, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $5.4 Million Raised to Build the Future of HR Analytics.
Raghu Gollamudi
Hey Brett, how are you?
Brett
I’m doing great and I’m super excited to chat with you, sir. Thanks so much for joining. Now, I’d love to kick things off with just a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah, again, thanks a lot, Brett, for having me on this podcast. Really appreciate it. So, yeah, a little bit about me. So I’m Ragu Golamuri. I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of Included AI. So I moved to this country 24 years ago. Wow, it’s been a long time. And I moved from India and I did my bachelor’s of engineering in telecommunication india. So my nature is more like an ecosystem nature. I like to build stuff. And what made me realize is that software is a great way to build stuff fast and see quick realization, right? So the other areas are like, you need to spend a lot of time in research and development and understand the outcomes. But software is like right up in soft code. You get the output immediately.
Raghu Gollamudi
So that was something, the instant gratification was something that attracted me towards software. And once I graduated, I started my job as a software developer india. And then I moved to the US. And I was working in Silicon Valley for three years following the startup dream because I’m a builder and I’m an inquisitive nature kind of a guy. And this was in 2000, and that’s when you saw the whole.com crash. So this company was like, in eight months, the stock price went from $1,000 to the company shut down. That’s my story in startup field. So then after that, I was getting older, getting to 27, 30 years old, and my parents were like, hey, you need to start focusing on your retirement, start saving money and get a real job.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So that’s when I moved to Microsoft in Seattle and I worked in Microsoft for ten years, learned a lot. Amazing company, complex organization structure, how to navigate all that good stuff. And again, after ten years, the startup itch came back to me and I joined shippable as a CTO and then moved to Integral Software, which I co founded. And I was a CTO. And then finally I’m Co-Founder of my own company, Included a, and the CEO of the company. So pretty interesting space. And as I said, one of the things I remember in my childhood was my uncle used to live in Toledo, Ohio. At that time I was thinking Toledo is like Hollywood of the west as a kid. And from India, that’s my lens to the US through him. So he brought me a Walkman, right?
Raghu Gollamudi
And I was like, okay, this Walkman is great. I have the small headphones and the cassette player and all that cool stuff. But my intention was to somehow figure out how to get a boombox out of this Walkman, so become a humble background. The only electronic device I had in my house was a television. So what I did was I opened up the television and I connected the Walkman to the speakers of the television. When I was doing that whole experimentation, I blew up the fuse. And at that time india, buying a television was a pretty expensive work. It’s not cheap to get a television then. So then my dad, as you know, the usual, he got super pissed at me. And then again, I learned how to fix a fuse. Fix a fuse and made a boombox.
Brett
Out of it, right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So again, the key thing that I’m trying to tell you is that love to build stuff, love to build things from nothing and try to create something out of it. And that’s what drew me to startups and this space.
Brett
Now let’s talk a little bit about your time at Microsoft. So you mentioned there you learned a lot of things. If you had to pick like one big thing that you learned or maybe one big takeaway that you walked away with, what would you say that is?
Raghu Gollamudi
Oh, Microsoft is big time into people and culture, right? So they believe in their people, they believe in promoting culture within the organization. So I used to be in a lot of trainings that were diversity, equity and inclusion focused, where they taught me. I mean, I have my own prejudice and I have my own internal bias and I didn’t know about it. And Microsoft gave me that avenue to go into these kind of trainings and understand where I fall short and gave me tools to equip me to figure out how to essentially recognize that I’m doing. And so I could become a better manager and a better people leader. So that’s something I really love about Microsoft. Of course, technology innovation, given they are amazing at that.
Raghu Gollamudi
But the people piece or the leadership piece is something I really value that I learned from Microsoft.
Brett
Do you think they’re going to win the AI wars here with all their investments in OpenAI?
Raghu Gollamudi
I don’t know. I mean, Satya Nadala took a big bet. He is super aggressive, which I really love about him. I mean, he overturned the company from Steve Bahmer’s era.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
And I still repent myself because when Satya Nadala took over Microsoft, that’s when I quit. Right. And the stock price was at the bottom most and now it’s like a $3 trillion company. So I lost a lot leaving Microsoft. But having said that, from the AI battle that you’ve mentioned, I feel that they are poised very well and companies need to take risk, they need to take calculated risk and that’s what Satya is doing. So I really appreciate his leadership for that.
Brett
Yeah.
Brett
To me it’s just been very fun to watch. It’s almost like you’re watching professional know, seeing Microsoft come out and seeing these talks and having them talked about as a challenger to Google. Maybe it’s just in my head, but I just always kind of thought Google was always going to be like the leader. And then all of a sudden in a few weeks time they were talking about, is Google dead? Is the search engine dead? And that’s just cool and exciting to see, I think from a business perspective.
Brett
You bet.
Raghu Gollamudi
I mean, in the end it’s like a startup, right? Startup, you make decisions fast. It might not be the perfect decision, but you still have to make a decision and move and make things happen. And I see that kind of a culture coming up and creeping up in Microsoft right now, which is amazing.
Brett
Yeah, totally agree. Now a few other questions we’d like to ask. And the goal here is just to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder. And because we just talked about Microsoft, it can’t be Microsoft related. So what CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
Raghu Gollamudi
Good question. I mean, my journey in the startup is making me admire different ceos at different stages of my startup journey.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
But from the pure perspective of impact and having a social impact, I really admired this person. He’s from India. His name is Arunachalam Virganathan. So the reason I really admire him is because I’m here. I don’t have that many constraints. So I’m well off, I started a company, and now I have my investors money. I’m investing that, and I’m figuring out how to get the best ROI through this product journey that I’m building. But this guy india, born in a poor family, born to a poor family. He lost his dad at the age of like 14, and now he’s not able to go to school, he has to support his mom. And when he gets married, he sees that his wife is using essentially unclean rags as sanitary napkin and newspaper, old newspapers.
Raghu Gollamudi
And that’s because sanitary napkins from, if you want to get brand names, are super expensive. So what he does is with all these constraints, he comes up with a poc, a proof of concept sanitary pad. And the challenge he has is the other constraint is, india, talking about menstruation is a taboo. So now he’s not able to find test subjects to try it out, right? So now he works with his wife and his sisters to try things out. And again, at the same time, they help him out for some time, and they quit helping him. So what this guy does is he takes animal blood and he puts it into his pants to test it out, right? And then eventually he realizes that the material he’s using is not right. And so he sources the right material, and then he creates this.
Raghu Gollamudi
Essentially, it’s a machine that helps in manufacturing low cost sanitary napkins. So that machine essentially costs like $800. But if you go to a brand manufacturer, the same machine costs like $35 million.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So this guy is able to do that, and he’s able to sell it across the whole of India. And now he’s doing the same thing across the world. So the reason why this story resonates with me that much, and he’s also called as a padma. There’s movies being made about him, too. The reason why this resonates is because within the constraints, he’s able to think creatively and work around it and still be able to deliver an innovation and actually save lives, right? So in rural India, women were dying because of the sanitary conditions. So this guy was able to unhygienic conditions. This guy was able to actually bring something and help them and actually increase life expectancy is something amazing. So, yeah, he’s a guy I really admire.
Brett
I’ve not heard of him, but I love doing this podcast for the reason of obviously get to speak with cool founders, but also just get to learn about new ceos and new entrepreneurs that I haven’t heard of before. So I’ll go deep on him and go research him further.
Raghu Gollamudi
After this interview, I will share you that information.
Brett
Sounds perfect. Now, another question we like to ask is about books and the way we like to frame this. This idea came from an author named Ryan Holiday, and he calls it a quickbook. So a quick book is a book that rocks you to your core. It really changes how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quickbooks come to mind for you?
Raghu Gollamudi
I mean, there are many books that instigated me, like beta 30 to one. I mean, Marshall, like what got you here won’t get you there, all that good stuff. But the two books that really resonated with me one by lifetime, which I admire, is, I mean, Mohandas Karanchan Gandhi is my story. The story of my experience is truth. So what essentially that book talks about is leadership roles and leadership principles and experimentation.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
How do you use these two things? And you can use these two things for multiple aspects. One, you can use it for startups, you can use it for greater good, for humanity and all the good stuff. And I learn a lot from that aspect. So that’s one book. The second book which I’m actively implementing right now for reading is Jeffrey Moore’s crossing the casin. So that’s something that I need because GTM becomes pretty not an easy, what is a aspect to tackle for a startup, like Included? So that’s something that I enjoy reading and try to implement at my company.
Brett
Yeah, I love that book. And I also love how old the book is. It’s from what, like the 80s or 90s or something like that. And it’s crazy that it’s still so accurate and still applies today, despite how much it feels like technology has changed. But at the end of the day, I guess selling and marketing technology is the same thing. It doesn’t really matter when that time period is, it seems.
Raghu Gollamudi
You bet. I mean, the classification of innovators, early adopters and later the market aspect totally resonates. It still exists.
Brett
Let’s switch gears now and let’s dive deeper into the company. So tell us about Included AI. What does the product do and what problem does it solve?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah, let me start with what problem does it solve? And then I’ll get into what the product does. So this is going to be an elevator pitch where you’re going from zero floor to like 300 floor. It’s going to be a little bit long if you look at HR team, right? So the HR and the HR analytics team member, they’re spending numerous hours creating reports and dashboards for their business partners. Business partners can be business leadership team, or their managers, et cetera. And the challenge is they’re giving data to them. So what ends up happening is the people are consuming these reports, they ask for more information so that they can get to the insights. So this becomes like a never ending cycle where they’re asking the HR team to create more and more reports so that they’re able to generate insights.
Raghu Gollamudi
So now that is the key problem that I saw happening in the current people analytics space. And that is what was the idea for Included, where now we are essentially building an AI powered HR analytics platform that provides insights and actionable recommendations out of the box.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So that is, whatever I said is something known as a prescriptive analytics. So we are at that stage of prescriptive analytics and what we do is we also use generative AI, like chat, GPT, to summarize this insights of recommendations, so that it can be easily consumed by leaders. So that’s what we do.
Brett
And can you give us an idea of the types of companies you work with and you’re seeing adoption with?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah, so that’s where the crossing mechanism comes in. So we are going for companies that are early adopters. So remitly was our first company and remittly tends to work with startups who are innovating in any space. So HR space is where I met Kimbo, who’s our DI leader at Remedley, and she loved that we are bringing data into the equation and she fostered the relationship. And now we are essentially like a design partner with remedy, building the product with them. So the company that we go after are companies that are between 500 to 1000 employees who are growing, and they have this problem of not understanding their people data. So they are a good fit for us. And that’s where we’re seeing most of.
Brett
The sale happen and what’s the competitive landscape look like? So if they’re not currently using Included AI, who are they using? Or maybe like, what category of tools are they using? Is people analytics another category of tools that’s out there? Or is people analytics a tool that you created and they’re just using you?
Raghu Gollamudi
No. So people analytics is a category that’s out there. So prior to people analytics, it was called business intelligence. Right? And if you see historically, business intelligence applications were created in clouds. So you build a team of bi developers and they would create their application. So similarly, that’s what we are seeing internally right now, is in our customer base. Most of the people analytics or HR analytics solutions are built in house where they hire a head of people analytics. They have one more person, and now this small team is expected to build a kick ass. What is the application that’s able to provide all these rich features, which does not happen.
Raghu Gollamudi
So that’s why you’re seeing the current problem where it is done manually by two people team, and they’re in this constant churn of reports, so that they are able to provide more and more data to the stakeholders, as opposed to providing insights and actionable recommendations.
Brett
What are some of the actionable tips that would come from that data and from the people analytics?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah, the many.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So one of the use cases that our customer used us for was audit and calibration. So one of the challenges they had was when managers calibrate their employees, they wanted to make sure that there was no bias introduced into that. So now, if you look at it from a DEI angle, diverse inclusion angle, there’s so many facets to an employee, demographic information or dimension information. So there is, you have race and gender and disability status and all that good stuff. That’s one angle to it, and also LGBTQIA plus. But there’s also other aspect where I might be a remote employee, I might be working in a different location, I might be an employee who’s part time because I went through pregnancy. So there’s so many different variables that come into the picture. And usually in calibration, you see recency bias kicking in.
Raghu Gollamudi
So that’s where we come in and we look at historical data, we look at how the employee performed prior today, and we are able to come up with hotspots where we feel that the employee calibration rating was not done correctly. This exercise never happened before because you have, like, around 8000 different dimensionality that you need to slice through to understand where the hotspots are. And now with ML, we are able to do that. And so for this customer, prior to Included, they were only looking at one dimension, which is gender. And now we are able to look at like 300 different dimensions. And we came up with like 8000 different combinations, and we found 30 hotspots where they went and actually changed a calibration rating of eight employees.
Brett
Wow, that’s super fascinating.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So that’s one example, so you can do so many things. Other example is, how do I retain employees? I want to know, can you predict and tell me if there’s an attrition risk associated with my top performers? So we do that. So we look at historical data, we analyze why people are leaving and then we go and look for lookalike employees, and then we’re able to predict their attrition risk. So now managers can now figure out what they need to do to retain those employees as opposed to losing them.
Brett
And what’s it looking at there? Is it looking at their LinkedIn to see if they’ve changed, open to work, or what types of data is it looking at to make that determination that it’s a high churn or high risk of churn employee?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So it depends, right? So every organization has different characteristics of why employees leave. Some organizations you might find employees leaving or women employees leaving because they don’t get promoted beyond a certain level, or it can be some other company. We saw, this is pretty weird scenario where, or interesting scenario where we saw people leaving the organization when they hit an age of 26.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
Now, this is something that we could have never known unless and until we learned from their historical data, right? So every organization reasons are different, and that’s where our ML model comes in and learns from the data as opposed to bringing in our own bias into the equation.
Brett
That makes a lot of sense.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a 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 about product market fit? Do you think you’ve reached product market fit? Are you close to product market fit? What are your views there?
Raghu Gollamudi
So product market fit is the most difficult aspect for a startup. And I’m happy to say that, yes, we have reached a product market fit. And we have iterated multiple times through our journey. And now we are in a place where we have an MVP. And the best part is when our prospects say that they don’t need us to explain because the product speaks for itself. That is a moment I feel that we have hit our MVP and that’s where we are right now. So the includers journey was something like this. So we started off with DI recruitment because that is where the market needs were. And we built a data backed, action oriented system that sent nudges to the recruiters saying what they have to do so that they could increase the probability of a diverse hire.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So essentially we gave them recommendations on what they need to do at every stage in the recruitment funnel so that they could increase a probability of a diverse hire. Our customers saw a 30% increase in offers per woman within like 1st 90 days of using our product right now. Then came the economic downturn and all of our customers stopped hiring. And the best thing that happened to us was they saw what we could do and they came and they approached us and told us that, hey, you know what? Can you do the same thing that you did for recruitment, for retention and calibration for employees.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So that made us move into the employee side of the house. And right now I’m super happy to say that the MVP that we built is resonating for our existing customers and also is resonating for all the leads that we’re getting in. And I want to thank Laura Chandan, who are my co-founders, and also Constantine, who’s my CTO, for making this happen in a very short time.
Brett
And can you talk to us about growth? Are there any numbers or metrics that you can share? Our audience always loves to hear any metrics that are available.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So from growth angles, since we crystallized on an MVP, we are seeing a 150% growth quarter over quarter. So that’s why we’re seeing. And that’s because our MVP is resonating with our customers. And also we are doing a great job in landing high quality deals. And that’s because we have a small but mighty SDR team, a sales development representative team, and we are on track to essentially close our first quarter million dollar deal. Right. And all of this is happening in last, like, I would say, two months or 60 days of us coming to a good mvp.
Brett
And what do you attribute to that? Success and growth. Obviously, any Founder listening in wants to grow like that. What are you doing from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective outside of the sdrs to achieve that growth?
Raghu Gollamudi
Oh, man. You said outside of sdrs. Actually, the thing that’s working is sdrs for us. Right. So here’s the deal.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
There’s so much noise in the market and everybody uses the term insights very loosely and how we can raise above the noise and be there. So all of this thing just started for us. It’s been like 60 days into journey. So we are still learning and figuring things out, but the things that really is working for us is twofold. The first aspect is rostered introductions.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So getting introductions through our customers and our customers are willing and more than happy to introduce us to their networks. So that’s really working. And of course, the second thing that’s working is, believe it or not, cold calling.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So I hate getting sales calls, but that is working for us. So we see that when we send out emails, outbound emails, actually, we churned out so much content for our website, we churned out so many outbound email campaigns. The problem that we are facing is that the buyer, who is essentially CsROs, right, chief human resource officer, they don’t have time to read these emails or they don’t have time to go and read content. So the thing that is working out for us is our SDR being tactful in figuring out when to reach out to these icps that we are targeting. And cold calling, surprisingly, is working out for us because they ask us questions, we answer and they make a quick decision of where to take a meeting on.
Brett
Interesting to hear. I feel like I hear cold calling is dead, but I’ve also been hearing that for ten years. But it continues to obviously be a big channel for companies. So that’s good to know that it’s still alive and well or in certain cases, it can be done well and effectively. That’s crazy.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yes, it is working. The key thing is segmentation is very important. So if you don’t segment, then, yes, cold calling will go, will fall on space. So segmentation is key for all of those things.
Brett
How have you seen your positioning and messaging really evolve then over the last couple of years?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So when we started off as a DeI technology company. So little background there. When I sold my previous company to one trust and I was thinking of what I need to do next. That coincided with George Floyd’s murder. And I saw how the nation stepped up against it. And I was shaken, too, by what happened. And it got etched into my mind that I need to do something from Dei Angle. I didn’t know what.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
I know that I’m a problem solver. I know that I want to get into the space of DEi, but what I should do is where the gap was. So that’s when I met my co-founders, Laura Claus and Chandra Angola. They all believed in the cause. And I reached out to Kim Boo. She is the head of DI and ESG at Remitly. So started interviewing her and through her started interviewing many other DI leaders. And what coincided with that timeframe was the fastest growing C suite segment. Two years ago was the chief diversity officer segment.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
And that’s because the answer called George Floyd. So every company were figuring out or scrambling to figure out, have this role filled in so that they’ll have a statement made through that role.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
And this was like a deja vu moment for me because at Integra Software, which is a data privacy company, when we started off, the fastest growing role that time or the fastest. Yeah, the fastest growing role that time was the chief privacy officers. Because GDPR came in, every company was scrambling. They hired a chief privacy officer and the goal was for that person to figure out how to strategize and make it happen.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So it was exactly the same moment for me. So that’s when I said, okay, let me found a company. Let me find Included. That was the genesis of Included. And then we built a database recruitment software, essentially a Di recruitment software to help companies improve the probability of a diverse hire into the organization. So that was the genesis of Included. And then, as I said, we pivoted. And then now we are into HR analytics. And the reason why I believe that’s the right move is because Di tech by itself does not make sense because Di tech needs to be embedded into the HR analytics aspect.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So into HR tech. So Di tech should not be a standalone aspect. And because of that move, even our DI leaders are able to now piggyback on the budget that is available under Chros and VP of talent so that they’re able to get even their what to say features and their value prop, part of the HR antics platform. That’s where we shine a lot.
Brett
That’s super interesting. That makes sense. So it sounds like in 2020 or when was that? Like June 2020. That’s when Di started to really come up. It was almost its own division. It’s had its own leader. Now it sounds like it’s been merged together and now it’s all part of HR. Is that correct?
Raghu Gollamudi
It’s not merged. Still, that debate is going on where the leader would say report under, but the tech stack is merged. The tech stack is owned by HR. There is no separate Dei tech stack.
Brett
That makes a lot of sense. Are you seeing a lot of other tools then that were launched around that same time merge as well? Because I think there was a lot of think like that was like the entrepreneurs and the venture capitalist response when George Floyd’s horrific event happened. It was, okay, let’s launch companies and let’s throw money at this problem to try to solve it. So are you seeing a lot of those companies also follow a similar path?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So many of the companies that launched that time was mostly on survey based companies.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So engagement and understanding what the sentiments are for women and black and brown employees within the organization in LGBTQI plus. But very few companies started with data bagged principles, and Included is one of those companies that focus on data bagged or Di tech aspects. So we are the first company. We are the company that coined the word Di tech.
Brett
And let’s talk a little bit about the AI component here. So, AI, I’ve heard a little bit about that. As you can maybe imagine, there’s been a few companies on the show in the last few months that have talked about AI. Just kidding. Of course, AI is everywhere. I knew AI had blown up when my mom, who’s like, I think she’s 65, she texted me and asked me about Chat GPT. That was how I knew AI was really getting into the mainstream. So there’s just a lot of noise with AI. There’s a lot of companies with AI. There’s a lot of funding going through or going into AI companies. What are you doing to educate the market and make sure that they really understand that your AI is different from everything else that’s out there?
Raghu Gollamudi
I mean, million dollar question, right? So my belief is that AI should not be black box, and it needs to be explainable, right? So once you make it explainable, then it’s easy for people to trust. So that is the fundamental approach when we design our product and our features is everything needs to be explainable. So, for instance, when I talk about employee attrition risk prediction, so we use an AI model, an ML model, to predict that. And we also explain all the reasons why we think employee X is attrition is high. What is the attrition score is high compared to employee Y, whose attrition score is low.
Raghu Gollamudi
So we have like ten different variables that we look at, and we have weightage associated with each of those variables, and we show them so that when HR person is looking at it or a manager is looking at that, they clearly understand why include is saying what it is saying, right? So explainability becomes very critical. The second thing also, what we do is there are a lot of companies that make decision, use AI and make decision on behalf of the user, right? That is a danger area because you don’t know whether it’s learning the right thing and is it doing the right decision. So what we do is it’s more like a complementary feature as opposed to automatic decision making feature. So in case of calibration ratings, right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So we use our ML and AI to show where the hotspots are, and then we let the HR person or the manager look at it and then make a decision on whether they want to actually change something or not. So decision making process is still there. But what we have done is we have made them efficient. Previously, if somebody had to do the same work, it would take like three months just to go through 300 different dimensions and 8000 combinations. Now we are able to do the whole thing. We have compressed the whole thing to like five minutes.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So that’s how we are using AI to maximize efficiency. That’s how I’m looking at it. And that’s what we keep preaching to our customers as opposed to saying that we are automatic decision making system. And many of our customers use us to audit their process. So they use applications that have AI to make automatic decision process, like reviewing of candidates.
Brett
Right.
Raghu Gollamudi
So part of recruitment process, one of the biggest challenges recruiters have is they get like 3000 applicants and now how do they swift through that? How do they know that there are women applicants in that funnel? So it’s a lot of challenges there, right? So they use AI to make decisions on their behalf and now all of a sudden they’re only going to see like two or 20 applicants that they need to focus on. But what happens to the rest of the 2080 applicants? They don’t even get a chance.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So that’s where our product comes in and we audit it. And we say that, hey, you know what? You’re only reviewing men for this role and your AI is not doing the right thing there. So here are the women applicants that you’re not reviewed. Go review them. So we bring the review rates equal. So we’re giving equity for all applications as opposed to just few getting a shot at the job. So they use us to audit essentially.
Brett
That makes a lot of sense.
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah.
Brett
Now, switching gears here a little bit, let’s talk about money or talk about.
Raghu Gollamudi
Funding, I should say.
Brett
So I mentioned there in the intro you’ve raised 5.4 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising in this journey so far?
Raghu Gollamudi
I mean, different stages require different kinds of parameters.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So when you’re in your pre seed and seed stage, it’s predominantly the founding team and the capability to build a product and execute. So that’s what investors look at. Because if you have a great team, then throw a problem at them, they’ll figure out how to build something out of it that’s going to be useful for a customer base. So that’s where the focus is going to be. But once you go from c to a, it’s all about. I found a product market fit. Now I am figuring out a way to scale it and sell more of it. So that is a journey that I’m on right now. I’m embarking on the journey. So it’s all about more numbers. Like how you said, what is your quarter over quarter growth?
Raghu Gollamudi
So those are the kind of things that matter right now, and that’s where the focus is. But having said that, more than fundraising, the thing that I truly believe that every Founder needs to be aware is cash.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
So don’t burn through cash. So the biggest challenge that I had was during this whole course of two and a half years, there have been multiple times where I felt I had a good product market fit, and multiple times during the time I thought I need to scale. And I did scale one time and it fell flat because customers were not resonating with what we built. So having a good structure around validating your product market fit and then seeing few deals go through Founder let sales, and then figuring out how to scale it, is that wise that I would give to everybody? Cash is king. So hold on to the cash.
Brett
Let’s imagine you were starting the company again today from scratch. What would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to yourself?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah, that’s the same thing.
Brett
Right?
Raghu Gollamudi
That’s exactly what I was going to give myself is ragu. Don’t get overexcited. When something you feel is good, validate it. Make sure that customers are resonating with it. Make sure that you’re able to. Me personally, I’m able to sell it multiple times and then focus on scale and expansion story. Until then, it’s all about hustling and understanding the real customer pain point. Staying close to customer and making sure that their pain points are met through the value you’re providing through the platform is critical.
Brett
Final couple of questions here before we wrap up. Since we’re almost on time, what excites you most about the work you get to do every day?
Raghu Gollamudi
I love the fact that every day I walk in, I would say every hour I’m post with a new kind of a problem, right? I never thought in my life that I will work on contracts where I’ll be sitting and talking about liability insurance and all that good stuff. So everything, this is not my strength. And every day I come in, I learn something new and I have to solve something new, right? So the problem solving in me is keeping me excited to come to work every day. And the best part is my team supports me. My team is like they just don’t accept what I say. They challenge me and they push my boundaries, which is great, because I believe that it takes a village to be successful, and it takes a village for Included to be successful, too.
Raghu Gollamudi
So problem solving and my team are the two things that keep me excited to come to work every day.
Brett
And final question here. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s that big picture vision? What are you trying to build?
Raghu Gollamudi
Yeah. So right now, Peter peels by zero to one. So right now, I’m not building a zero to one. I’m building more of better, efficient people analytics. And my vision for Included is that it’ll become a zero to one or a category creator, because we will eventually transition into a people experience space. And for that to happen, we need to have a foundation, and that’s what we’re building right now. And the goal is that we’ll end up providing equitable experiences for every employee in an organization so that they can realize their full potential. So every individual is different, the needs are different to be successful.
Raghu Gollamudi
And I want to build a platform that’s able to understand that, provide the right experience to the manager about the employee, to the employee about what they need to do to be successful so that they’re able to succeed at their job. And what that will result in is companies can see a boost in employee morale and productivity, and that will maximize the profit. So key thing is, how do you provide equitable experiences which is uniquely tailored for every employee? That’s where I want to get to.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision and I love everything that you’re building, and I love the problem that you’re solving. Now, we are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap. Before we wrap, though, if there’s any founders listening in who want to follow along with your journey, or perhaps they’re early adopters themselves, where should they go?
Raghu Gollamudi
They can reach out to me at Ragu Raghu at includer AI, and that’s the best way to get in touch with me.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat, talk about what you’re building, and share some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate you taking the time.
Raghu Gollamudi
Likewise, Brett. Thanks a lot for having me on the show. Really appreciate it.
Brett
No problem. Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front 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 Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.