Episode 7

 
Matt: Hello, and welcome to Working on Something New the podcast for and about makers and founders. I'm your host, Matt Johnson and I'm myself a founder and product manager.

Thanks for joining us for another episode where we interview a maker about their journey, their project, and their vision for the future. 

Working on Something New is powered by my company. Taskable: unified tasks and calendar for all day productivity. Taskable is productivity software that helps you manage your most valuable resource - your time - by integrating with the tools you already use to bring everything into one place, helping you plan your priorities and time block your calendar. Find us at taskablehq.com.

For this week's episode, we interviewed Priyanka Sundar. Priyanka is based in Sacramento, California, and is the founder of Casa. The collaborative workspace for sales reps to share with their prospective buyers and other internal stakeholders. So they can close deals quicker.

Priyanka and I discuss when to think about making a pivot. The importance of having passion for solving a problem as a founder. And how being on track to be a professional athlete helps you when starting a company. Let's kick things off

 Well, thanks for joining us. Can you just give us your name and what you're working on.

Priyanka Sundhar: great. Yeah, I'm Prianca. I'm one of the founders of Casa and we're a collaborative workspace for sales reps to share with their perspective buyers and their other internal stakeholders so that they can close deals quicker.

Matt: Nice. And from my understanding cost is the first iteration of, of your project. And you have not worked on anything else prior to this, is that correct?

Priyanka Sundhar: Totally totally.

Matt: No, no. Pivots what.

Priyanka Sundhar: had this vision since I was a kid. No, no yeah, lots of pivots for sure. I I've like been doing this since 20, 20 now, like right when COVID started. So like I started in the consumer space and then pivoted into like the B2B world this year. And this is kind of.

Second pivot, pivoted product in the soft space.

Matt: So, yeah. Can you, can you just give us sort of that journey? Like, so what was the first product you worked on and then how did that sort of transform into the second product? And then now into, I guess the third product that you sort of have pivoted towards.

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah, I so I had had this idea ever since, like I was in college where I actually literally had you know, This idea for a social media application for, you know, people to debate who had different perspectives. And it was a video based application and that's really like what got me into becoming a founder in the first place.

So I, I really like got into startups just to kind of start that idea. But when I left my job after COVID I was like a very naive first time founder. So I was like, yeah, like, Get into the consumer world. We launched the app and we did end up raising some money from angel investors. But, you know, I, I learned a lot from the process once we got it in beta though it was, you know, it just wasn't like as sticky as expected, which a lot of, you know, it happens when you launch products and, you know, I learned that process.

But after that, you know, I had been a software sales rep. I was just like trying to figure out what to do. And I had to kind of make a choice of whether I wanted to like, maybe go into the creator space and build something for creators. But, you know, I think I made a, a better decision to kind of solve a problem that, you know, I was a lot more familiar with, like I'm a previous software sales rep, so that's kind of where my head started focusing on.

And, and, you know, it's definitely been been, you know, a better journey since I would say.

Matt: yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I was working in like a consumer. Like, what would you say was your biggest challenge there? 

Priyanka Sundhar: Well, I think it was actually kind of interesting because like coming from a, a sales background, I feel like I, I kind of had somewhat of an understanding of like the software sales cycle. And I had been like a first sales hire at a startup. So I kind of saw like how their revenue motion got kicked off.

And then with, with relics, I. You know, we had a really kind of exciting consumer idea in the sense that like people with different perspectives could debate, but that like translating that into, you know, really fast growth and then, you know, seeing a revenue model through, I, I was just kind of, you know, we launched in beta and we weren't seeing that like, skyrocketed, like.

The user growth. And then you, you know, I was kind of at the, at a point where I was like, I tried a couple different revenue models with like debate teams, just like contacting you know, different organizations, but it was just like an industry. I think I, I, I felt like I didn't know much about, and that was really where those, the pivot came from.

Oh, I think the audio just turned off. I don't know.

Matt: So one thing I'm, I'm I've was I'm really impressed by is the fact that you and, and Dak as well, like are able to make pivots really quickly and make that decision. It seems like at least from the outside, I'm sure it probably is a lot more excruciating you know, while you're doing it, but.

What, what do you, when do you decide to make the pivot? Like what, what's the thing that you say, okay, now, now we realize that we can't, we, we need to move on to a new idea or, or sort of pivot into something else, you know, is there something that jumps out at you and that's when you say, okay, now, now is the time to do it.

Priyanka Sundhar: For sure. Yeah. And that's so funny that you say that because it's like, literally on the inside, it's like crippling. It it's a lot. Cause you're like, oh my God, like, am I making the right decision? Like I remember with Worley specifically, it was a really hard like emotionally draining. I feel like decision in a way, cuz I, you know, cuz you're taught to like.

I feel like you're taught to keep going with things in life, right? Like you're, you're taught not to give up on things. And then when you kind of have to like, switch your mentality a little bit, that gets a little challenging. Cuz you start to feel like internally, like, well I'm just like giving up on something.

Like I'm not like, you know so with world, like what's really interesting was I watched this YC video actually and they have. A startup school video on this and it, it, he, he kind of framed the decision as you know, how do you see the next three months of your startup? If you feel like you could achieve more growth with the pivot and you compare it to, you know, what progress you think you could make with your current project, then you should be switching.

And that's really where I think it, it came from like now with. This is two pivots that we've done so far, but it's those like both times I've felt that way, you know? And I've been able to kind of say, okay, I think that, you know, pivoting to something else, we can actually make more progress.

Matt: Gotcha. Yeah, that's, that's really tough. It's, it's hard to really, I mean, there's a lot to be said for start, you know, trying to picture, you know, three months down the line, five months, you know, a year down the line and, and there's a lot of there's a lot you can really UN like, you know, learn about yourself or learn about your product when you actually do that.

Like, how do I envision a world where this product. You know, going, being really is really successful. And, and if you it's really, if you can envision that, you know, a few months down the line or a year down the line, that's a really good indication that maybe maybe something's broken or, or you need to make some changes.

And I think a lot of people are just so stuck in the moment that you can't. It's it's really hard to do that. You're stuck in the moment. You wanna just make the same work, but if you really took a step back and sort of future gaze you'd realize, well, I don't know if there's really a future for this. But yeah, it's, it's hard to do.

Like I I've definitely been there myself.

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah. It, it really well it's just so it, yeah, and to it, it's just hard. It really is hard. Like you, you know, start companies and you have this like big dream, you know, and it's, it's a lot more than just like, oh yeah. I'm, you know, just kind of playing around with this. Like I think for a lot of founders, it really is like, I, I, you know, you feel a connection, like to what you're, what you're building, like what you're working on and like the improvement you.

The, in that in the world. But another thing that, that, you know, just kind of comes to mind, which is kind of interesting is I remember like working at a startup, one thing that I think is really interesting and it ties into pivoting is just like setting really clear, like success metrics around like what you're launching and like time boxing that.

I've I just found that like working at the previous startup I worked at, there was like one specific situation where we like launched a new initiative. And it was like, you know, geared toward like PLG moving the company more towards PLG. So we wanted to like try giving away a little tiny piece of our product for free.

And then like we're all sitting at this table, like, yeah. Okay. Like we're gonna give it away for free. And like, sales is onboard, like marketing's onboard. You know, and we all were like, It was a really fast initiative, but we all were like, okay, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. And then a couple months go by and then we're meeting about this whole thing and everyone's like, yeah.

You know, like, how'd it go? And we're all kind of just sitting there like silently, like I think it went like, like, you know, we didn't really know because there was no like really specific benchmarks. And I think like when I first started even with burics like sometimes, you know, when you do things, you just.

Wanna see how it goes, but I think setting really clear success metrics beforehand, make it really easy because then you can go, oh, well, this is clearly what success meant. I can compare against that. And you know, you have something quantitative to tie, like some of your really. Decisions to cuz it's better to say like, oh yeah, I'm pivoting.

Because like in my gut I felt it was right. And I don't think we can make progress versus maybe like, okay, we tried this, you know, four month release. We thought we were gonna get, you know, one user to really love the product we couldn't. You know, and, and here's why.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I've I definitely found that very, very helpful. When we, you know, we made a, a small pivot at taskable like towards this time blocking feature and we kind of said, oh, we want to get to like X, you know, monthly recurring revenue within, you know, three months or six months or whatever, the, whatever that goal was.

I think it was three months. And, you know, we didn't quite hit that goal, but. We were at least able to look back and say, wow, we really actually made a lot of progress towards that. A lot more progress than we had been making previously. And so, you know, you know, it wasn't as successful as we like wanted to be, but we set the stretch goal, but we all, but we definitely made progress towards that goal.

And so, you know, it's Def it was definitely the right thing to do. Cause it is hard to sort of, you know, it's, it is hard to forecast precisely where you're gonna get to. But if, as long as you sort of see some progress towards that at the end of the day, I think that that tells you that you're on the right path.

Priyanka Sundhar: exactly. Cause you know, you're in this startup world where it's like, you don't wanna like over plan things obviously. Right? Like you're not doing this like big like quarterly forecast, but yeah, exactly. I think just having like an idea of, okay, like this is the metric that we're focused on or, you know, like very specific KPI is definitely, definitely a super helpful.

Matt: Yeah. So, so yeah. Now on the sort of the third iteration, so first was warlock the the social sort of debate network. Then you went to demo genie, which was the personal doing personalized demos and now Casa. So how do you, like, how do you go, how do you start to validate a new idea, especially?

So you're pivoting something new. What does that transition look like between, you know, say a demo genie to Casa and how did you sort of, how did you make that transition? How did you decide. Casa was the thing that you wanted to pivot to. Did it come out of demo genie or was it something completely new that you sort of landed on just from your own experience?

Priyanka Sundhar: I think with demo genie to Casa was probably like a better pivot case study, I guess, if you were to say, cause I would definitely, I feel like pivoting from industry to industry is probably not as like effective and I definitely wouldn't like recommend it. Cuz you know, you don't learn as much like you should definitely I think focus on, you know, like one specific user or like one specific customer.

So you know, I think with demo genie, we. We were kind of, so, so I was at a place where, you know, I'd done a video social media application, and I felt that, you know, we were, we started talking to sales reps because that's what that's the direction we wanted to go. Like I had been a previous software sales rep.

And then my, my co-founder who's also, you know, a software sales rep. We both wanting to just focus on like what we knew. So we just went out, started talking to a lot of. Sales reps. And, you know, one thing that just kept popping up was like, oh, you know, I'm trying to like stand out in the in the inbox.

Like I'm like reaching out to all these different, you know prospects and I'm trying to like get deals closed, but I need like a way to like stand out and make my process a little bit more streamlined. And a lot of people were also focused on just reduc. Their sales cycle, just because you know that for the companies like that helps 'em because you know, it reduces their CAC.

So I we kind of created this like solution and we tested it. We just had a loo SDK. Like I know you used it. And we. We went super lean. Like we really built no new technology. A lot of it was just like building, you know, taking like open libraries you know, and existing frameworks, like react flow to create like a flow map.

But we just took existing technologies and try to package something together and try it and test it out. And we sold for it up front. So like before we launched, we had you know, about. A thousand dollars like in contract signed already. So just some revenue you know, to kind of keep us, keep us going and, you know, help us cover like a couple of little expenses.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I did. I did, I do use, I still use the product and I, I loved it and it's, it's, it's always always from the outside looking in, you think, oh wow, they're doing really, you know, everything's going really, really well over there. And you always, you always sort of assume everyone's sort of on fire when you sort of are on the outside looking in.

So it was surprising that you, you y'all decided. To switch it up, which again, like it goes back to me, like I said earlier, I'm, I'm really impressed with your ability to sort of make those tough decisions. You know, you've built a, you did build a great product, but you recognized, you sort of recognized, okay, this isn't the thing though.

It's, it may be a great product and there's a lot of potential for this, but, you know, we have a, there's a better idea out there that we can work on. You know, much to my sugar. Cause I, I do like using the product, but but yeah, I, I, I, I respect, I respect the pivot. So, yeah, so I guess sort of switching towards you know, some of the lessons you've learned as a founder along the way What, you know, what is like the one thing, the one takeaway you've had from this, you know, now I guess two plus years of, of being a founder and, you know what, what's something that you look back on as sort of, you know, that, that big mistake that you made that you'd wanna avoid and, or, and, and maybe also the thing that you you've done really well, that you're sort of proud of that, you know, you didn't have to learn a, a hard lesson along the way on.

Priyanka Sundhar: Hmm, that's a really good question. Wow. Yeah, I guess, you know, the thing I probably wouldn't have done, it's really hard cuz I think that weird weirdly enough, that naiveness, it got me to jump into being a founder in general. I think, you know, and it's weird. Cause like then you get into it and you're like, oh , this is harder than I thought.

But I I think to be honest with you, probably that one of the biggest mistakes was just. Falling in love with the product, the product, and you know, just trying to like wedge your, your product, like, cuz it is really not like a product like a company, I think nowadays in like 20, 22. It it's so little about like the actual, like specific you.

How the product looks like perfectly. And it's more about like that holistic customer experience, right? Like from literally like when they touch your website or like when they interact with you first to when they, you know, feel the product, but there's so much more you know, to this journey, I think into like that, that buyers or customers, or, you know, potential prospects experience when they're like touching your website and, and when they're like touching what your company does that.

I just would, you know, instead of like building a product as a first time founder, I would, you know, talk to 50, 60 people before I build, you know, the, the product.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's a, that's always good advice that I'm always impressed by people who have managed. They, they get a lot ton of traction sort of right off the bat before product's even built and it just show. And there's just so much signal that you get from that when you're talking to 50 people and.

You know, 40 of them are like, I'll buy this right now. Like where can I put my credit card in? And that's, that's huge indication of, you know, that's something worth working on as opposed to you talk to 50 people and they're like, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Let me like, gimme your website when you launch. And that's, that's a lot less, you know, good information.

Priyanka Sundhar: Sure. For sure. 

Matt: Well, and I, I also liked what you, you mentioned sort of the negativity of, of jumping in and being a, being a founder, because we we've talked about it in the past, that sort of catch 22, where, you know, the only people sort of willing to be founders are the ones that are. Or crazy enough to do it.

Priyanka Sundhar: Right.

Matt: so I mean, do you, do you sort of see yourself as a founder, you know, say Casa goes really well and in, and in 10 years you have an exit, do you see yourself sort of continuing to be a founder? Is, is that what you wanna continue doing like, you know, forever or is, do you sort of see yourself going back to more sales role ever, or what's, what's sort of your, your long term vision.

Priyanka Sundhar: For sure. I'm a, yeah. I'm, I'm I'm holding on. I, no, I, I just love this, right? Like I think that this is just such an amazing. It's an opportunity for sure. You know, because I. You obviously, everyone's like on a timeline, you know, and including me, right? Like you're literally living off of, you know, whatever state you saved and, you know, scraps.

But I, you know, however long I can do it, I, I will do it cuz I, I love it. I think it's just an amazing it's amazing. Like to see something come to light and then. To, to add value to people's lives. I think it's just a really incredible process. Obviously we're, we're launching at Casa, so that's why we're you know, we're, we're actually launching next week.

But you know, relaunching, so yeah. I wanna keep doing this for as long as I can.

Matt: Yeah. Nice. You did have sort of a, a different career path when you were growing up. So you, you started, you started out playing tennis and like that was potentially gonna be your career path is this might be like, this is sort of like a cheesy question, I suppose, but it feels like having like that discipline to be someone who has the potential to be.

A professional athlete, you know, you can translate that to being a founder. Do you, do you find that to be the case at all? Like, are you sort of, do you think that, that the ability to make that commitment helps you? And is that, is that similar to tennis as it is to being a founder?

Priyanka Sundhar: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I think like sometimes the hardest part is just like making a decision of like what exactly you wanna commit your time to like initially, right. Like it's hard, I think for all of us to go, okay. Like what do we exactly wanna do? But yeah, I think like. With sports, just like the ups and downs, like just, you know, really emotionally like putting your heart on your sleeve or something and just like wanting it to work out and you know, like losing a lot or, you know, not because you don't, you can't win every day.

Right? Like even the best athletes in the world, like don't, don't win every day. And I think it's like, yeah, definitely the perseverance is, is super similar. I think in like both, both paths.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I imagine it's I mean, I, I I've obviously never come close to being a professional athlete, but I imagine it's that sort of, that feeling you have as a founder where certain days you feel like you're a genius and certain days you feel like a complete idiot. And actually that might not even, that might be like within five minutes of each other.

I'm sure that's similar, you know, as, as an athlete coming up where some days you're on fire and some days you can't, you can't win a match and you feel like, oh, maybe I'm like, am I no good at this sport somehow? Or am I no good at being a founder? And, and so you have to sort of deal with that, that rollercoaster of the highs and the lows.

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah, for sure. And it, it is kind of like all consuming, I think, which is like the hard part about it, because it's like, you, you know, as much as I think, like you want to go and just like, turn this off completely. It, I, it's hard cuz you're just like putting so much of yourself into it. You know, with, with both things.

So I definitely see the, see the similarities. But that's why I have so much respect for, for founders too. Like who are just doing this journey? Cuz I think it really shows, you know, like it, it brings out like a characteristic in people that's, you know, thinking they're like thinking beyond just like themselves, right.

It's like something that you're doing for a lot of people. And it, it takes a lot, I think, to just like make the jump and do it.

Matt: Yeah, definitely. So you mentioned you're, you're launching cost of next week. And you've launched a couple products now. Like what, what goes, like, what do you sort of consider a launch? Like what does that mean to you? Cause I know that there's that great YC video where Kala talks about, you know, how to launch over and over again, which I really love.

I feel like when you think about it from the outside, it's like, oh, a launch is like, you have this big splashy thing. And like every, you know, everyone knows about it. And, and then you're like introduce to the world, but doesn't always, it doesn't quite work like that. Cuz generally when you launch initially, like, you know, no one, no one is even noticing.

So like what do you, you know, and then, you know, obviously you continue to sort of gain traction, but like what does it mean to you to launch? Is that just putting the product out there to the first customer or, or what does that look.

Priyanka Sundhar: That's so funny that you asked that question, cuz I I've literally been thinking about how like I completely have just like I'm I don't even think about launching the same way at all in any way, shape or form. Like I think with Warick I was like, oh yeah, maybe I could do like an event or something like that.

Which is like wrong but now, and it's so funny cuz now I'm like, oh wow, like how's stupid. Like I, you know, I we're launching to two people basically like how we did it would be just spent like a month talking to like. 40 sales reps. And just like talking to, you know, doing super, super moms tests, like in-depth, you know, user interviews, you, you recommended that book to me.

But yeah, we just did like super in-depth user interviews. Which is funny, cuz it almost ties into like the sales cycle where you're like qualifying your. Prospect before you do like a demo or another call with them. And we just asked like a bunch of questions and then we scored you know, all the, the feedback that we got and every user that gave us feedback.

And you know, we're, we're going back to the ones that like we scored, attend to, and we're just like launching to two users. So we just have like, You know, two onboarding calls for the first week and then like the next week we're just gonna increase it. And just onboard like four users. So like totally different, right?

Like when you put your like on the mindset, it's like, oh, I'm just, you know, launching this to two users versus like, I'm launching, like, it's a big deal. I'm like, you know, this is it.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you really I feel like a lot of people don't launch, cuz they're like afraid to put themselves out there. And then once you do, and you know, most of the time when you launch something, it's, you're not gonna get a reception. No, one's gonna, you know, it's gonna fall flat and you need to iterate or work harder or whatever.

And so people just wait too long, but I think, you know, you don't need to launch. I mean, it's, it's quite a bit different, I suppose, when you're launching more L a consumer social product, you know, you do, there needs to be a lot of, you know a liquidity or whatever you wanna call it on the platform.

There needs to be a lot of people sort of willing to interact, but when you're launching a B2B product like yours, you know, it could just be one person and you start there and then see how that works and go to the next one. So so I guess there there's a lot of differences there, but. But definitely just getting something out there is, is so critical as opposed to just waiting until you have everything pixel.

Perfect. And, and thinking that your launch is like the, this is the one time you get a chance at it and you can't do it again, like with, with taskable we launched. Yeah. We would consider ourselves having launched like 10 times. We launched again, as recently as earlier this year on, you know, and did a product hunt launch and, and felt like that was sort of our relaunch, cuz we, you know, we kind of pivoted and stuff like that.

So you get a lot of sort of bites at it. So, you know, you'll launch these two customers and then. You'll launch again into sort of, you know, the next tranch and, and you can, can keep, keep sort of continually doing that.

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah, it's really, it's just like so interesting. How. From the outside end. Like people think about it so differently. Like everyone just thinks about launching so differently. But then I think when you get into actually launching products and doing this and seeing users like touch like one day old products, you know, it, it, it can't be perfect at the beginning.

You know, so it's, I think it's just best to have like a very, you know, that a focused group of people that are really giving you feedback and helping you grow.

Matt: Yeah. So going back to what we talked about earlier, you know, having, you know, wanting to sort of future gays and think about. You know what this looks like in a few months or a few years, like if you could like transport yourself five years from now and say cost is the one and there's, you know, you don't have, you don't pivot again, or this is the product that sort of gets you to that, you know, that VC trajectory.

And what does that look like? You know, what kind of role do you think of for yourself and, and what is the sort of, what does the company look like? What does the product look like?

Priyanka Sundhar: Wow. That's a, yeah, that's an interesting question. I think with Casa five years from now, So our goal is, is to help sales people. Cuz you know, I was a sales rep and we have I, I would say like in five years from now we'd want Casa to be integrated in hundreds of sales teams, like as as many sales teams as possible.

My whole goal, you know, I, I I think with this mine and my co-founders like, we kind of see this as something to streamline the entire B2B buying experience. So something that salespeople can. You know, share with potential customers really early in the sales cycle as almost like a shared plan that you're working with and collaborating with on you know, so that you can get the deal closed, but then also, you know, transition that really effectively to customer success.

So I think just having like entire. Sales customer success teams, which anyways, I think if you look at like a lot of the trends with product led growth, these roles are really like merging weirdly into like one of both where sales reps are now, like having to take people who have already touched the product and have already like seen a trial, you know, and then qualify them and get them to you know, the next stages of the sales cycle.

So I think, you know, I, I really. See the product, right? That the, the vision for it would be that it's, it's really ingrained in like, you know, the end to end experience of a lot of SaaS companies. And then, you know, when you're buying software, it's just kind of, you're buying it through a plan. You're buying it more asynchronously.

You're buying it through touching a product early, instead of like what I think a lot of us sales rep for top, which is like gate the product do like a really in-depth 30 minute discovery call. Don't show them anything. Don't tell them pricing then, you know, Have them come on a demo call and, you know, we, we are just kind of taught to do certain things that sometimes elongate the whole process.

Matt: Yeah. Gotcha. And so, so you have this experience in, in software sales. Did you find that you were passionate about this space? I, I asked because, you know, I saw Patrick Callon. We, we went to talk or he, or we sort of had the seminar with him, I guess you'd call it. We talked about how he, you know, he wasn't passionate.

You know, about payments, but he became passionate about it. Do you find that you were already, like when you worked in sales, were you sort of passionate about software sales and that you found it was easy to sort of transition into making a product about software sales? Did you find that because you had that experience there, it was easier to get started on a product there and that as you start to build the product, you become more and more passionate about that space.

Priyanka Sundhar: I think for me. So I, I, I, I think, okay. I love sales because I'm like, Competitor. I have a very competitive nature, like at heart. So I love, you know, I usually I find that, you know, I can connect well with other sales reps because I love the fact that they're kind of just like, you know, dive head first into these startups and go, okay, like, I'll be, you know, I'll, I'll go commission, like I'll believe in the company.

You know, and where it's at. So. I definitely, I think I like the, a lot of traits of like, you know, sales reps and just like people that, you know, I get to talk to in this experience, which makes it a lot more fun. But I think it more so than even sales, it's just really like an efficiency thing. Cause like

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Priyanka Sundhar: It's it's really strange, but it's like, I love sales, but I also love the idea of just thinking about how something is inefficient and making it more efficient. And I guess like weirdly enough my first job, I just landed in sales. Like it was not something that I was really intending to get into. It was more of a, like, I was super desperate to get a job at a startup and like

Matt: They're in sales. You can, you can talk, you can talk to people. You'll be in sales.

Priyanka Sundhar: Right. Exactly. I mean, they could have, yeah, they could have put me in like any department and, but at that point I was like, yeah, yeah, no, I'll, I'll sell. And you know, I just kind of got into it, but the, the being like the first stills hire, I think it was kind of weird because we were developing a lot of.

Process is that, you know, we're kind of gonna exist in the company from the ground up. And you know, you just kind of saw some of these like inefficiencies really closely because you know, you, we could like change the process and tweak it. So me and my old boss, you know, we'd always like, think of really creative, like tools to use like checklists, you know?

Cause a lot of the times it was just. It's a funny thing to, to think about, but it's like, we'd just be like, well, you know, we're sitting here, like we're demoing the product. Like we can, maybe there's maybe ways to like, make this a little bit more effective. Cuz a lot of the times like our customers, we just felt like they were waiting you know, in the sales process.

Like,

Matt: Yeah.

Priyanka Sundhar: so I think just like that, I see a lot of transformation in that process and that's what really makes it exciting for me.

Matt: Yeah, that's really interesting, interesting point. I think it's that you're not, you don't necessarily need to be even passionate about the space, but more. You know, the, the, the value you're providing, like the efficiency you're providing. And I find that for myself as well. Like I love to, you know, I, I've done a bit of freelancing, you know, prior to certain tasks where I, I dive into like an organization and it's like, oh, you, you need, you can sort of make this so much more efficient process.

And it was like, you know, I was doing that with like a fashion sort of tech business. And I, I don't care, obviously do not care a little, anything about fashion. But just that process of being able to help them make up their process more efficient similar with the data science consultancy, helping them make their process more efficient was just that it could have been literally anything.

You know, that at least I agreed with morally, but it was more about, I just love to see how. There's a process taking place and it's not as efficient as it could be and we can sort of solve these problems and yeah, it doesn't necessarily need to be about, you know, what industry you're in. So yeah, similarly, I guess with, with building a product, you, you just wanna make the world more efficient and it could be sales reps.

And maybe this product somehow is application to marketing people and you can make their process more efficient. And that's really where the passion lies, I guess.

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's so funny cuz it's like, I. In the same vein that like founders are of course, like really excited about their products and really excited to like, you know, create super like lots of value in the world for that end customer. I also think like founders sometimes can just be the people who are like the most agitated by like inefficiency

Matt: Yeah

Yeah, that's probably, that's probably a motivating factor for Mo for so many people. It's just like, I like this process is stupid. Like there should be, there needs to be a better thing and like, I guess I'll be the person to do it.

Priyanka Sundhar: right, right now. Okay.

Matt: Cool.

Any, any questions I ask? I didn't ask you that I should ask you.

Priyanka Sundhar: Gosh questions. I mean, you covered some really good ones. I have to say. Like, I feel like, yeah, you covered some, some of the really good ones. Yeah.

Matt: There you go. Awesome. So a, a plus interview skills. I appreciate the feedback.

Priyanka Sundhar: Seriously.

Matt: How can people find you? How can people find Casa, your, your Twitters and socials and web and stuff like that?

Priyanka Sundhar: I'm a little bit of a reclusive. Yeah. No, well I have, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah. So I'm on There's no, like cute thing to do on LinkedIn. So I guess I'm Prianca my name on LinkedIn. 

Matt: To it.

Priyanka Sundhar: yeah. Right. You can it is a long name. But also join casa.com. So for sure, like we're launching soon. So if you need a collaborative workspace, you know, you need to reduce your sales cycle a little bit.

You should definitely try it out.

Matt: And who just on that note, who is the exact right person to go find Casa? Like what type of company, what, what role do they have, who should be sort of seeking you all out?

Priyanka Sundhar: Yeah. So right now we are open to, you know, helping founders that are actively like, you know, founder selling you know, would love to kind of help them out also you know, just sales reps, specifically, like just account executives who are at a team at this point, you know, we're probably doing teams of like one to 10.

Sales reps. But then, you know, in a few weeks we're expanding our beta, so we'll be expanding to a little bit broader teams.

Matt: Okay. Cool. Well, awesome. Thank you very much for taking the time to chat. It was, it was good talking as always and and best of luck.

 that's it for this week's episode. Thanks to priyanka for joining. us If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to give us a follow or review on your favorite podcasting app. You can also follow me on Twitter @mattcrail or @wosnpod. You can find all the episodes of the podcast at wosn.taskablehq.com. 

Working on Something New is powered by Taskable: integrated tasks and calendar for all day productivity. Start a seven day free trial at taskablehq.com. Thanks everyone out there for listening we'll catch you next week