Great to chat with Priya Vijayakumar Co-founder and CEO at WattIQ! WattIQ connects thousands of unconnected electrical assets, enabling better utilization and energy usage of any electrical device! We discussed silent energy consumption assets, the ups and downs when starting a company, how to build customer trust, the issues with manufactured obsolescence and more!
If interested in speaking to WattIQ, please email info@wattiq.io
Download Podcast Here: https://plinkhq.com/i/1518148418
Remember, If you want to support the podcast please rate and review 5 stars on Apple, Thanks so much!
James
The unedited podcast transcript is below
James McWalter
Hello today speaking with Priya Vijayakumar cofounder and Ceo at WattIQ, welcome to the podcast Priya great to start. Could you tell us a little bit about what iqueue.
Priya Vijayakumar
Thank you James lovely to be here.
Priya Vijayakumar
Sure So You know we formed what Iq with this mission to enable enterprises to be to become more um asset efficient and energy Efficient. We live in a world that were very resource intensive. Many industries are very resource intensive. And we believe it’s sort of the lack of data into understanding how your existing assets are utilized. Their condition. Their energy Consumption. You know, sort of their overall management throughou throughout the entire life cycle those inefficiencies. Obviously combined with sort of an over-consumption model that’s driven many industries right? I think that’s created tremendous inefficiencies in businesses as well as just the burden on our resources right? and we think by closing those data gaps I think we can. Transition to a far more efficient industry.
James McWalter
And I guess when did you first kind of start encountering those data gaps and thinking that oh this might be something. That’s so a potential startup right.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, well actually you know I started my career in traditional manufacturing like aerospace right? So which is you know there are so many data Silos or lack of data even in very traditional industries which is really was. Big driver behind this industrial internet of things right? that was supposed to be sort of this next industrial revolution that was really intended to happen fell a little bit short of expect far short of expectations in many cases. So I think I’ve always seen the inefficiencies that have existed in traditional industries.
James McWalter
Right.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, but how do you kind of close that chasm that’s existed between Silicon Valley and the industrial world right? So overcoming some technology barriers and I think years ago when I was when I started out in this internet of things space. We did things like asset tracking. You know everyone needed to know.
Priya Vijayakumar
Where their assets were and there was a lot of value behind that. But really the bigger problem that Cisco themselves had valued at two point one trillion dollars of economic value was understanding asset utilization. We couldn’t solve it.
Priya Vijayakumar
And so it was always these elusive use case and I think a few years ago sort of you have this aha moments right? You come across a technology that’s being applied for a different purpose in this case, the technology was being applied for energy monitoring I mean you see smart plugs in the home people were just trying to power off shut up. Shut down equipment when they were not in use but you always have to find the balance between great technology solving a problem and delivering value right? You need that combat you know that perfect storm to happen in order for something to take off and so sorry, go ahead.
Priya Vijayakumar
No, and that’s sort of what brought this along is I think there was this use case at the back of my head that I had not been able to solve in my early days in Iot and it just sort of nagged at me all along and then I came across this technology that that’s what kind of spawned this whole thing. Um, and to take that original technology application and form a new business that could you know go solve these problems that had been elusive.
James McWalter
And so once you kind of were like okay this is a interesting technology to to focus on this particular problem set. What did that kind of first you know step look like was it starting to build an Mvp was it talking to users something else and.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, you know I think I come from a product background right? So My pet peeve has always been building a product without understanding the problem you’re solving and understanding the end user so you can either go down this extreme path of not being able to make a product. Vision until you know every little thing about the end user but it’s usually a good balance right? You have to understand the problem you’re solving find an end early adopter who’s willing and we were fortunate to have one of the leading Pharma companies be an early adopter. They were planning to do a lot of things manually and we’re like.
James McWalter
Fifth. Wreck.
Priya Vijayakumar
I Don’t think you can do this manually I think we need a product for this. So that’s how we began our journey right? So um, and and the way we worked is I think we focus on delivering value to the customer. What is then you know what we people say minimum viable product. But.
James McWalter
Right.
Priya Vijayakumar
How much confidence can you have in solving that problem. You know you want to try and solve it at least 70% of the way because your product is evolving so it gives users the confidence. Yep, you’re 70 % of the way here to solve my problem and you’re going to keep building the rest of it right? because if you aim. I think um as our cto likes to say perfection is the enemy of good right? So if you aim for perfection on your and Mvp. You will never get to mature your product and our product matured tremendously because we’re able to get it to a point we could deliver value to the customer and.
Priya Vijayakumar
You know you don’t want to do a half -baked product either. That’s really important because you’ll frustrate the customer. But then we worked very rapidly to continue to evolve the product and even expand our solution offerings just within like the first eighteen months of want you and so that I think. Being obsessed with delivering value to the customer is what helped us evolve our product really quickly along with like an amazing team behind it that makes the magic happen.
James McWalter
Yeah, no absolutely and and in in that kind of iterative. You know as you were kind of iterating on the product were there any you know, kind of I guess pivots along the way as you’re kind of working through those different product iterations.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah I can tell you I mean we started the company by acquiring sort of the technology from a company called Ibis Networks right who were using this technology to monitor and shut off equipment. The first evolution was how do we do this remotely. And fortunately that happened just before the beginning of the pandemic because a lot of hardware solutions especially in the enterprise you end up having to go on site to do deployments is a complexity around that and we knew we knew we had to create a consumer like simplicity still meet all the enterprise.
Priya Vijayakumar
You know, security reliability requirements but still I mean the end user experience has to be very consumer like our first It’s not a pivot. The first evolution I would say is we had to go and make this incredibly simple for the end user. The second was we actually had to go build. Software to now build out all these algorithms because all we had was power data before I mean collecting data is a first important point so having a stable system that can collect the data to enable you to do machine learning. That’s a second piece right? The first piece was to make sure that we could collect the data. Um, with completeness. Yeah that’s how we began and then we rapidly expanded our solutions. You know we started out just trying to give insights into how equipment is used then we started expanding to additional sensors and now we could tell you the health of your freezer. You know this freezer looks like it’s going to fail. Um, so kind of starting to get into equipment condition monitoring and that came because we worked closely with customers. We tested concepts and they would tell us why are you guys not offering this in the marketplace even in a very crowded marketplace right? So I think that was really important you focus on delivering value to the customer.
.
Priya Vijayakumar
And keep up with evolving your product then it just kind of takes a natural path from there right? as opposed to building a product and throwing it over the wall and selling a widget.
James McWalter
Yeah, absolutely there’s there’s a framework that I can’t remember who came up with it. But basically if you describe the current method of solving a problem and have that user rank it. Yeah between 1 and 10 and they may say something like this is like a 3 out of 10 you don’t need a 10 out of 10 to actually solve that you. Basically you need to be 3 subjective units better and the classic one is you know getting a cab a taxicabb is like a 3 out of 10 experience and an uber is like a 6 or 7 out of 10. It’s not a perfect experience by any means but still that was enough to kind of have this kind of booming company.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, oh who right? right.
James McWalter
And I think like that that’s a lesson that it sounds like you guys kind of ingrained as part of that process.
Priya Vijayakumar
It It is and you know the product development is a very imperfect process right? I think the mistake a lot of early stage startups do make is they get too far removed from the customer too early because they’re selling through a channel. For example. So They lose visibility to how the end user is actually using the product particularly when you have a hardware component and that can make or break how you grow your business right? Um, and so we find that to be really important for us to stay close to the customers. And make sure we understand how they’re using the product how we can continue I mean some of this is very intuitive when you live in a purely software world right? Everyone’s like oh I know how many times somebody has used a feature. It’s not so obvious in an Enterprise world where there’s also a hardware component involved. Ah because there are a whole set of new challenges.
James McWalter
Absolutely and you mentioned this like data collection piece and I think it’s something a lot of startups who focus on the enterprise struggle with is the data collection right? And in previous companies I’ve involved in you know you go the the company’s very excited like oh this is a great product and then it’s like we’ll spend six months trying to.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah.
James McWalter
Navigate the company’s yeah, internal you know rules to be able to get some sort of data that we can actually do something with um I Guess how how do you kind of have that approach you know and and any kind of insights along the way.
Priya Vijayakumar
What who who? yep. All right, you’re gonna let me share my secret source now. Okay, so so the first thing is like I said I’ll take a simple example, you know when people talk about predictive monitoring and you know I worked in aircraft engines where you could put.
James McWalter
Ah, ask nicely? yeah.
Priya Vijayakumar
Every sensor you can imagine on an aircraft engine right? and people collected tons of information. They missed the most basic point if you don’t build that engine straight and round it’s going to fail pretty quickly in the field right? So what is the data that you can get with minimal friction for the customers. So we started by making sure that we didn’t touch any proprietary data. We solved this problem by staying off customers wi-fi networks not touching proprietary data to enable us to deliver that first level of value once you do that. Then it gets easier to now say can I go have all your historical data on this right? because if I can’t demonstrate value until I’ve collected six months of data. That’s the fastest way to stop a sales cycle. So and when we started this we didn’t um, start out because we knew. Sea level and all these big enterprise companies who were just going to give us a free pass right? It didn’t happen. We had to do this purely on delivering value to the end customer. So. It’s a much bigger challenge when you don’t have somebody just opening a door for you. You know whether it’s a channel partner or whether it’s you know. Somebody higher up in the organization and that forces you to be innovative right? because you go how can I deliver value to the customer with minimal friction and once you do that then they get I mean customers now ask us to get propriety data from the equipment and so it’s a different conversation right? once once you’ve. Established value and built trust then you can expand into more complex solutions that classically would be much harder to sell as an initial solution.
James McWalter
Yeah I love that you know one of the things having had that experience if we’re trying to get data out of different enterprises. Um, yeah to very much focus on what are other sources get creative as you say there might be public sources. There might be ah you know various Apis that you can kind of plug into.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, will.
James McWalter
And honestly, what a lot of problems. You know, especially large enterprises when people are reliant on you know 30 year old Erp systems and excel like ah the ability to just pull some stuff together often will solve a problem. Not again for the whole organization like eventually you need these very complicated deployments.
Priya Vijayakumar
Over.
James McWalter
But in the early days as you said you know you can actually find that little that little kind of wedge really solve it well and then and then you’re basically just building trust in the organization as you kind of kind of move through it. Um I guess like you look at. But.
Priya Vijayakumar
And we made it very I was gonna say make but made it very simple for customers to experience the technology we would use cellular Modems to send data to the cloud right? So we don’t even need to get on your network and that way customers got to experience their data and and I know it’s not always possible with.
Priya Vijayakumar
Every type of solution. But these are things that we did differently instead of saying and we would do it as a free pilot for some of our larger customers right? because we felt confident in the value that we were going to deliver and that also makes it easier for the businesses to justify making these deep. Investments in it security reviews and so on because you know that is an investment The company’s making and so it’s It’s a you know it’s a partnership right? anytime you are a startup working with large enterprises. It’s a partnership you have to be committed to. Delivering on what you say you’re going to deliver right? And you’re you’re building a long term Relationship. You’re not making a transactional sale.
James McWalter
And no absolutely um, and yeah, right and like any large relationship has to be built on trust right? and and and kind of go set that kind of core element I guess in terms of like where what iqueue is today. Let’s say I you know listen to this podcast I be like oh this is something that would be great for my for my organization.
James McWalter
What are the kind of steps to kind of get get somebody set up with your product.
14:01.67
Priya Vijayakumar
It’s actually very simple right? typically somebody would reach out to us and we would look at sort of the types of equipment. We focus on the use cases I should backtrack a little bit. We have multiple use cases that we support with the data everything from optimizing throughput. Ah, you know analytical labs to driving procurement decisions or service contract decisions and all the way to space planning right? when you have lots of electrical equipment. So we always start with what’s the use case. That’s most pressing for the customer our european customers space is a big deal. Energy is a big deal. Right? So the priorities can shift depending on who the customer is and we start with that then figure out the right assets that we should put on an initial pilot or an initial program for them to get the data because we might support 9 different use cases. But for that customer. There might be 2 on that list. That’s most. You know, critical today.
James McWalter
You know when would a you know customer start seeing that kind of early value get and get very kind of excited about. That kind of yeah the problem being solved in that particular way.
Priya Vijayakumar
I jokingly and affectionately tell our customers in thirty days if we can’t show you value. Dinner is on me I haven’t paid for dinner yet. So and that’s because I think here’s another important thing. Um, you know we do use machine learning. But.
James McWalter
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, without disclosing too much. We use machine learning models that let us give us insight within seeing equipment kind of being active within a couple of weeks right which is another important piece. We’re not telling customers wait six months before you can start seeing inside. So while nobody’s necessarily going to make a business. Vision based on thirty days of data they start seeing the trends of oh somebody’s actually not using this or I can see that this piece of equipment is demonstrating a lot of anomalies. You know that we thought there was something happening here and with every single customer within the. 30 irty days we have shown them something that goes I had no idea this was happening um and that is important right in technology adoption. There’s no consumer product today that we buy that we don’t have a reaction within the first fifteen minutes of using that product even less. But in enterprises, it’s sort of taken for granted like oh you just have to live with a crappy product for six months and just power through it and I think that and that can change I think we can have take philosophies from consumer product development and apply it to the enterprise world to create a whole different experience.
James McWalter
Yeah, absolutely that the kind of consumerization of ah of I t right? like that that phrase around our consumerization of the enterprise. It’s something. Yeah, younger listeners might think everything you you know, looks like slack or something similar, but these are all very new, very emergent and um, you know.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, urges none.
Priya Vijayakumar
What.
James McWalter
Using some of these ah very old school windows 95 things at the beginning of my career those are still being used and many many companies like kind of across the world and you know as I kind of looked at at your website you know and there’s this mentioned of the you know the key element of the smart plug and how that kind of interacts as you know.
Priya Vijayakumar
Who.
James McWalter
Basically the the conduits to this information and and all those kind of things as you’re kind of deploying those and and starting to pull in that data and you’re seeing that thirty days data and then eventually the six months data. What are the I guess have it the customers been very surprised by some of the insights is there. You know, particular insights that. You know you don’t maybe find that as surprising right now but the customers typically do yeah.
Priya Vijayakumar
So obviously the first one is they might have theories about how frequently equipment is used and they tend to be sort of blown away when they realize it’s not even in the 10% range. You know there are weeks that something is not used. We’ve sometimes done deployments where that equipment that we’re monitoring is not even turned on during that entire period right? So that’s you know that’s from a utilization perspective I think people have been shocked from an energy perspective when you take things like minus eighty freezers right? which everyone heard about for storing vaccines.
James McWalter
Yeah.
Priya Vijayakumar
Some of these freezers consume more upwards of 30% of excess energy as they age because they’re not always maintained properly right? and they’re just sort of blown away by the energy consumption. You know a new freezer with certain equipment oems. There’s also a big difference between equipment. And oems that data was not always visible people. Sold you on a datasheet not actual field data right? Very few people sell you on field data and so what they would see is some equipment oems models were consuming two and a half x what the datasheet was claiming to do.
Priya Vijayakumar
In other cases you could have a minus eighty freezer that’s only consuming Eight Kilowatts Kilowatt hours per day and another one that’s consuming you know upwards of 20 even though comparable models. So. I think having that data you know because there are certain pieces of equipment. You can’t turn off like a freezer you can’t turn it off but knowing that you’re using those assets efficiently or maintaining it properly has huge energy implications right? and space utilization implications. So I think usually those and we always.
Priya Vijayakumar
You know when you put some of the aging freezeers. It always makes her an interesting story in terms of how recovery to set point temperatures are happening and so that’s sort of how the some of the initial astonishment comes because they’ve had a hunch about some of these things but they’re still amazed at how much opportunity there is to. Share equipment right? The kind of the shared asset economy and and and and know a lot of our customers are in in Pharma Life Sciences Biotech so they’re very data driven and so to be able to see the data behind this makes for a much easier conversation than What I would call like an emotional procurement decision I have budget I don’t want to lose it. But I really don’t understand the implications of buying a product that now has to be housed in an area with very demanding hvac requirements people are going to be coming on site to maintain that piece of equipment.
Priya Vijayakumar
Need reagents or consumables to maintain that equipment. So there’s a whole cascading carbon impact throughout its lifecycle that most people don’t even think about right? We as consumers. Don’t even think about it because we just we consume.
James McWalter
Right? Absolutely and even thinking of about the example of the piece of equipment that wasn’t turned on in thirty days and I’m sure some you know some facilities operations managers like do we need a second one you know and and that that could potentially be bought as as well.
Priya Vijayakumar
Please.
Priya Vijayakumar
Right? Oh the ability to go ahead now I’s in the ability to sell a lot of this equipment right? So you would never buy a car that you didn’t know the mileage on the car imagine trying to resell equipment saying well trust us this was used by a big pharma that doesn’t mean anything.
James McWalter
Ah I think it got good none of no.
Priya Vijayakumar
Right? So you can actually extend the life of a lot of these products by providing what I call like a lab fax inside right? This is how it was maintained. This is a mileage on it and that could really go a long way for somebody buying it as ah, um as an after market or you know.
2
James McWalter
Yeah, and absolutely and as you’re talking there i’ kind of thinking through like what does a company see today when they don’t have what likeq and basically the only signal I get is the energy bill or some related something where there’s no granularity and it’s like oh energy bill seems to be going up or.
Priya Vijayakumar
Product.
James McWalter
Energy bill is like fluctuating in a weird way but there is thousands potentially millions of inputs into energy bill. Especially if you large facility that that’s manufacturing you know vaccines or or various pharmaceuticals and so on and being able to actually get to the ground your level of like oh.
James McWalter
Most of the increase is accounted for by these 3 freezers in the corner. Um, because we just didn’t maintain them or whatever it may be um I think that is ah yeah I think a lot of the problems around inefficiency are often. You have a fairly opaque process. And transparreency is often brought in as a way to kind of just for sake of doing it but it nearly always just makes our dramatically increases efficiency because like oh actually we were just like kind of stumbling Along. We didn’t really know what we’re doing and then all of a sudden. It’s like okay now we have some very very clear action items that we have if we want to. You know hit the bottom line in a positive way.
Priya Vijayakumar
And and it’s sort of shocking right? because in the manufacturing world data has been so critical to improving processes in manufacturing right? It’s it’s just inherent in good manufacturing. It’s not the case outside of manufacturing right? We people do capital expenditures. They buy. How do you justify today. Let’s even take an office space somebody comes and says I need a new printer. How do you justify you? You don’t know it’s just you’re relying on the person saying yep we need it and we’re going to believe you that you need it now multiply that. By hundreds of millions to billions of dollars that these industries are spending and these industries are growing very rapidly so they also need new space. So yeah, if you if I mean our data shows us we could probably take 20 to 30% of equipment.
Priya Vijayakumar
Away and nobody is going to cry. You know this is not a scarcity mode. This is this is what cracks us up because we’re trained to have this scarcity mode if you take things away but there’s just so much waste in our system right? Whether it’s food whether it’s fast fashion. There’s just tremendous waste in the overall system.
Priya Vijayakumar
And so when you take a lot of this away. You don’t really as long as you have the data to get to what you need. There is no scarcity right? and I think some companies are better than others are doing it. But as you know when lots of money floods into a certain industry.. There is no consideration I think there’s a lot of emphasis. Now being placed because of the lots of conversations happening around climate change and definitely some of the companies are leading the space in not just buying their way out through carbon credits. You know, actually taking meaningful action. Um.
James McWalter
You you like you’re you’re still admitting guys. You actually have to do something.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, and and so I I think the changes are starting to happen and but part of it is. We’re also fueling industries whose business models are built on overconsumption right? So I’m a big believer in a product as a service model. Our job is not to sell more plugs. Right? So if we want to increase value. We better figure out another big problem to solve for the customer if our model was just to sell more hardware. We would figure out how to obsolete the hardware that we’ve sold to you in eighteen months which is what happens in a lot of industries right? Whether it’s infusion pumps.
Priya Vijayakumar
It’s not like infusion pump technology in Hospitals has like gone through some dramatic you know curve like the chip industry but they’re replaced every year you know.
James McWalter
And all the Nobel prize winning infusion cur you know awards we’re giving out right.
Priya Vijayakumar
Right? But yet they’re replaced every twelve months oh because of a software upgrade. What is such a travesty right? So this is where I think you know you need regulation to happen. But you also need industry leaders to change that behavior because yes it doesn’t mean that we don’t we stop. But we can consume more responsibly shift the value proposition from you know, vendors and I always come back to the aircraft engine model in the early days they would give away an aircraft engine and make all their money on off to market right? So they were happy to have.
Priya Vijayakumar
So a ferrari like engine that constantly needed repairs when ge came in with this model of power by the hour well guess what? you don’t want to build ah an engine that needs repairs all the time you want it to stay on wing as long as possible. So it changed design philosophies right. So I think that’s also an industry shift that has to happen but that happens by the end users changing their buying behavior as long as we keep buying whether it’s plastics or whether it’s electronics people keep selling because that’s. What the business model is they’re counting on us to upgrade our product every year
James McWalter
Yeah it’s so interesting. You know we have this manufactured obsolescence. Yeah model across across the board right? and you know people upgrade their phones every you know every couple of years Um, because you know I’ve definitely gone through periods where my phone is like 3 years old and it just yes, it just stops it just. Just can handle things in the same way and like I haven’t changed my use like I’m I’m just doing you know the same 10 boring things on on my phone as I did for last few years. Um, but it does eventually stop. You know we do we definitely on on the positive side are seeing more subscription models kind of coming in. But even just this is slightly different. But even ah, there’s some utilities in the United States who are working toward subscription pricing for their energy bills right? and figuring out through getting lots of data that like okay, let’s just charge somebody $50 a month or $100 a month or whatever it is and they will absorb. Yeah, the spikes and so on that that occur and as we’re seeing with you know. And dramatically ah variant energy bills today you know that model right now I think would be like something that that people would actually love right because it’s kind of like an inflation hedge and so I think as you said like as we are if we can shift business models. You actually start to have these kind of positive feedback loops around. The the wastefulness of the industries that were kind of switching around in the first place.
Priya Vijayakumar
And ultimately you’re going to deliver more value to your end customer right? because you have to understand how your end customers using your product. What’s the difference between a tesla and the early days of the car manufacturers right? remember when you get a. Ah, a warranty notice months after it was issued right? and they have no clue how people were actually using their cars. It was just there was this huge separation between the end user and the people who actually manufactured the cars Tesla knows far more than you want to about how you drive your car right. But you see but then they built a whole different business and industry because of it right? because of that Data. So I think we have it on the flip side. We have a responsibility for using data Correctly, right responsibly. But I think it helps you deliver more value to the customer when you do focus on delivering a. Service as opposed to selling a widget I think it’s a very it’s um, fundamentally a mind shift change within a lot of these big corporations that have historically sold a widget and I think you’ve you’ve probably heard for years right? Everyone’s trying to move up the value stacks. We Want to stop being a. Selling a screwdriver and we want to sell you a smart screwdriver to do what right? So it’s It’s just you have to change your mindset.. It’s not just you make something smart and all of the sudden you’re delivering a service. Um.
James McWalter
Yes.
James McWalter
it yeah, it yeah it has to go back to again being our conversation like you have to solve an actual an actual problem and I guess like in terms of where what iq is today you know where where things and what are the kind of you know next 1 or 2 year goals for for what iq.
Priya Vijayakumar
Problem.
Priya Vijayakumar
I think you know we’ve we started initially kind of heavily focused in research labs right? We are now expanding in Europe I think the insights that we can get obviously the first part is get your foundation right? right? No, he wants to build on top of a crummy foundation. So we.
Priya Vijayakumar
Hunkered down got a foundation right? and we’re now expanding the solution capabilities in the coming and we’ll be announcing some of that in the coming months but right now a lot of growth happening in Europe primarily driven by energy. But I think for the biggest thing for us really at the end of the day is for. Consumers within the enterprise or you know consumers at home to be better educated about what is the carbon lifecycle impact of a procurement choice I’m making so we’re hoping for more transparency from the industry on what the carbon footprint of products they’re making. And feed that into the whole life cycle right? and to really start seeing the needle move in a significant way and that’s really the big thing for us and we’re starting to see that we obviously want to see that at scale. But I and I think there’s lots of opportunity for collaboration in the industry. It’s a huge problem right? I don’t think we need to be the only ones. Working in this space to solve it. So I think it’s a huge problem and it’ll be great to see more emphasis on you know, optimizing our resources. We. We talk about a lot of futuristic things which are also important but we just cannot continue to. Be as wasteful as we’ve historically been It’s just not viable. It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest renewable technology down the road.
James McWalter
Yeah I think what’s one of the really fascinating aspects is how the portfolio of sustainability is shifting in the enterprise especially over the last couple of years right? It used to be the sustainability department was like this little kind of corner. The 3 people.
Priya Vijayakumar
6 walking line.
James McWalter
And when I first started of getting into this space a couple years ago I was talking to some sustainability people actually in the fashion industry and they’re also so lonely they’re just like sitting in corners and I was like there should be like ah kind of like an a group of sustainability fashion folks now. It’s amazing right now there’s like all these organizations and then there’s a lot of collaboration and community happening.
Priya Vijayakumar
Of when.
James McWalter
Um, but even just a couple short years ago. It was like oh just I’m the only 1 working you know, working working at the firm to try to improve things. But now we are definitely shifting into you know, basically right now I think it’s now on the side of the Cfo right? The Cfo now cares about these things in this kind of interesting way and.
Priya Vijayakumar
Name.
James McWalter
You know the Ceo does at larger enterprises in some degree because if Cfo cares the Ceo does to a certain degree but it’s still not like the primary like focus of the Ceo and I think that is the shift over the next decade we’re going to continue to see you know as both the risk and reward are risk and return elements of. These various kind of sustainability and climate impacts happen across these enterprises. It’s just become more and more central to how things are run.
Priya Vijayakumar
And then I I also think sustainability was always There’s always been this approach like oh we’re going to save the planet There’s really no benefit to the business right? And so I think it’s a combination of reframing what your responsibility as a business is. It’s not just to be profitable but also have a societal impact right? So I think that’s 1 thing and and the and the younger generation that’s important to them when they join a company right? that you will have something more meaningful and it’s not just the younger generation to be fair I think there’s a mind shift. Change. That’s happened through ah through multiple generations right? where it’s not purely profit driven as the only metric for a company but I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive right? So we have great sustainability benefits from delivering our solution but even bigger benefits from an operational efficiency perspective right. So I think there is lots of solutions out there that is a win-win for the business and also meeting your sustainability goals.
James McWalter
Yeah, no absolutely and couldn’t agree more and I guess in in terms of you know for yourself. Um, you know building a company taking a technology that existed and and divert. Yeah moving it into this new direction over the last few years I guess anything that surprised you about you know trying you know, becoming a Ceo leading a company. Ah you know any discoveries you made along the way.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, you’ll have lots of days where you what we’ll probably be the only the co-founders that the once really only once convinced because you know you’re taking technologies that have existed and to demonstrate that you can deliver value. Sometimes it feels pretty lonely right? until you start getting that momentum which we’re seeing um, but I I think it’s exciting because what makes me get up every day is solving a problem hearing like amazing feedback from customers right? that we’ve solved a problem for them.
James McWalter
Is it.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, seeing us evolve as a company. We’re a pretty small company. You know, solving some really big problems and so that’s what makes me get up every day is just that conviction that we can do this and and I think as you know for most founders will tell you in the early days ah if unless you’re part of a main bandwagon right? You’re like on the crypto bandwagon. It’s going to be a pretty lonely journey until you start demonstrating that products market fit and traction and so I think that’s probably been the most exciting part for us is that we have the conviction that we could solve these problems and now that’s.
Priya Vijayakumar
Being validated by all some of the large customers adopting large customers who are typically very conservative with tech New Technologies adopting our solution right? and so that’s that’s the most exciting part.
James McWalter
Yeah there’s there’s a big mindset shift from me personally and I’ve heard it from a lot of other kind of entrepreneurs through the podcast about moving from a feeling a know as rejection to curiosity right? where it’s like okay you. Every day as a founder you just especially in the early days just like a no no after no no from customers. No from investors no from potential hires. Just no, no, no, no, no and exactly it’s like I’m just going to hear a lot of dose today and then you know in previous kind of things I’ve worked on I but like oh I’d feel like a little bit I’d put my bit defensive.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, yeah.
Priya Vijayakumar
Ah, it’s like your middle name.
Priya Vijayakumar
Ah, yeah, with.
James McWalter
Have my backup a little bit and be like okay that no is a reflection on me or it’s sort you know and then now it’s much more like oh like I I Absolutely thought that this would be a perfect yeah product for this particular customer and they said no, it’s like why and it’s like it’s so exciting to find out and it’s like.
Priya Vijayakumar
Um, why exactly.
James McWalter
And sometimes it’s it’s ah it’s a really good reason. Sometimes it’s like we just we dont need you know byproducts in January right? that or whatever it may be. You know.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, um I think I always take every no as an opportunity to evolve either your narrative right? or it’s your product and and it’s because at the end. Day when you when you begin this journey as a founder you are the one who believes in what you’re doing right and people mistake investor investment as validation that you have a viable idea that’s complete Crap. There’s lots of like garbage startups that I Wealthf funded like.
James McWalter
Yeah, it’s like youre you you raise a sort of money. It’s like now I have actually have to build a company I.
Priya Vijayakumar
Yeah, exactly So. No I mean I just said to somebody last time I said we wanted to build a viable business. Not just a venture backed business right? That’s different because you have to deliver value in order to build a viable business and have cost structures that can scale. It. Easy to create the illusion of one day I’ll figure out what this business model could be right? So um, and and so it it is a journey.. It’s not and it’s as everyone knows being a founder is a bit of a rollercoaster right? There are these amazing days and then there are Days. You’re like why am I doing this again, but. I Think overall for us. It’s just we have amazing customers. They have been I mean we’re very fortunate. They’re amazing collaborators. They they’re very encouraging. They let us experiment right? and expand our portfolio. So. And that’s very enriching right? because they don’t treat us like a vendor. It really is a collaboration and so I think that’s been a big part of culturally who we are as a business right? We obsess about delivering value to the customer and I think that just naturally comes out in our interactions with customers. And I think the customers have reciprocated even though they’re really big. They’ve been very supportive of us so and that for me is very fulfilling right? and I see the team growing in their capability and I would have moments I’d come back to the team and go I didn’t know we could do that. So ah.
James McWalter
You Yeah that that the pleasant surprise is I like that’s always that I saw you come in here like Wow like I was at home and this happened without me. You know.
Priya Vijayakumar
And they’re like you can’t sell it yet.
Priya Vijayakumar
It is pretty cool. We have an amazing team and I have an amazing co-founder I’m very blessed.
James McWalter
Absolutely well Priya this has been such a great conversation really enjoyed the chat before we finish up is there anything I should have asked you but but do not.
Priya Vijayakumar
I think you’ve been very good about covering sort of the broad spectrum. You know we’re probably excited maybe to highlight that we’re going to be. We’re growing significantly in Europe and so we’re definitely looking for some great channel partners to work with who who. Finally have share similar values in terms of solving the customer’s problems. That’s really important to us. So I think that’s kind of the next exciting phase of our journey and this has been a great conversation as well. So thank you.
James McWalter
Thank Priya and we’ll include some contact information in the show notes have a great yesterday.
Priya Vijayakumar
Thank you you 2