Raise & Exit
Raise and Exit is the podcast for founders navigating the path to raising capital and selling their company. Host Edgar Baum sits down with investors, operators, and dealmakers to unpack the real stories behind successful raises, exits, and the lessons learned along the way. Whether you're planning to fundraise, considering an exit, or just want to think like an acquirer or investor, this show gives you the insider knowledge to make smarter decisions and avoid costly mistakes.
Raise & Exit
RnE036 Jonathan Taylor & Ganesh Harinath
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🚀 Building a startup to sell into enterprise sounds exciting… until you realize how hard it actually is. In this episode of Raise and Exit, we sit down with Ganesh (CEO) and Jonathan Taylor (CBO) from Fiducia AI—two operators who have built inside enterprise and are now building startups for it.
💥 What they share is real, practical insight most founders miss:
✨ Why having a great product is NOT enough to win enterprise deals
🤝 How partnerships (like IBM & Shopify) unlock growth faster than going solo
⚡ Why speed matters more than ever (think: live deployments in 48 hours)
👀 Who really makes decisions vs. who signs the check
🌍 How AI is shifting from hype to real customer experience
🔥 The biggest takeaway? It’s not about building everything yourself anymore. The winners are those who plug into ecosystems and move faster than everyone else.
🎯 If you’re a founder, investor, or operator navigating growth in today’s market—this episode is for you.
🔔 Subscribe for more conversations on fundraising, scaling, and exits
💬 Comment: Would you build for enterprise… or go around it?
Talk about solutions. It's super important to start to understand the problem that we want to solve. That's one. And two, it's also super important to actually get integrated with at least one or two customers as we start to build the solution. That's super important. And for Fiducia, it's just a blessing for us. One on the consumer side. We've been working with customers as we continue to build the product. These are stories which hit already tech crash.
SPEAKER_01It's easier to build a platform with POC that you can show results. And like Kinev said, we really focus on that experience that we want to put the experience in the hands of the customer so they can actually experience and feel it right there on the spot and just not a PowerPoint PDF presentation or anything like that. It's something that's real, comes to life, difficult. I would say the challenges there will be understanding, you know, how the companies are operating in terms of the tech partnerships they have right now.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the latest episode of the Raise and Exit Podcast for founders, investors, private equity, angels, who knows, to be able to go and get the insights that they want and need months, if not years, in advance. We are talking with people that are starting companies, selling companies, investing in companies, buying companies to be able to go and gain insights that are right along those themes. Today we have a double bill. We got Ganesh and Jonathan from Fiducia, and we're going to go into a very interesting theme today because this is about leveraging enterprise experience to launch a startup to sell to enterprise. Wait, what's going on here? Ganesh and Jonathan, over to you. Please introduce yourselves. Please introduce Fiducia and the seed of what I've got implanted as a conversation today. And please describe your company and what you're up to.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful, Edgar. Thank you. This is not confusing at all, but this is the honest truth. I'm Ganesh Haringath, I'm founder and CEO of Fiducia AI. I've been doing software for 25 plus years, but I've been focused on AI for over 15 years. Before Fiducia, I was the vice president and chief technology officer at Verizon, Verizon Media, and my focus was to actually build enterprise data and AI applications. So this is sitting in an enterprise, building solutions to deploy in a different enterprise and driving revenue. And it's a privilege, pleasure, and honor to be part of the Verizon Verizon Media journey, but also my wonderful team around me. What did we do? We built amazing products, but we got to a point where we were driving hundred million dollars year over year, right? And uh it's non-trivial being in an enterprise. Taking that experience is we started Fiducia. At Fiducia, we specifically focus on a problem, and the problem is how can we increase the value of the marketing dollars that are already being spent by any brand, small, medium, or large? When you sum it up, it's multi-trillion dollars. Yeah, we want to build uh solutions to increase those values, and how are we going to achieve that through defining next generation brand engagement and fan engagement? And we'll we'll talk through the details as we go through, but that's a little introduction. But appreciate it. Very important point that you actually mentioned: how can you go back and then sell it to enterprise and live the enterprise life? So there are a lot of things that we have to pay attention when it comes to data and AI, and uh having a compelling capability that you can actually go live in a very small footprint as a SaaS within a short duration, is what we have templatized today, which we'll talk more in detail. So, with that, I will to Jonathan Taylor, who's the chief business officer at Fiducia AI. It's a privilege and pleasure to really continue the journey uh together with uh Jetty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for having us on today. Uh, Jonathan Taylor, I have about 20 years' experience primarily around emerging tech. So I've been working with um small startups and everything and guiding the path into the enterprise environment. And so I have watched the evolution of the enterprise from not wanting to work with startups or didn't know how to work with startups to the process internally to have a quicker ramp up program to get startups involved in the um ecosystems that they have. They have a lot of legacy systems, a lot of legacy employees to help ramp up and speed up on the process. So we all know we have limited runway when you do an initial startup, and so those enterprise deals have to fit that runway. So it's been you know wonderful to see big companies adapt. You're seeing new positions, the innovation teams that come in there. They look at the problems that they want solved from small startups that can help grow and everything and adapt quickly and everything like that. And I think we've seen this whole Asiatic era with AI, you know, people experimenting and exploring that. And so it's really a fun um opportunity to work with Ganesh and kind of build that story on this whole thing being transformed in the US right now and around the world.
SPEAKER_02That's fantastic. So, gentlemen, you've you've kind of touched upon something, just even in the introduction of yourself that's there, which is that evolution that has been happening in the marketplace. And I think there's look, there's something like three million companies per year started in the United States. I don't even know what that number is globally, it must be in excess of tens of millions or something like that. And there's this huge aspiration to be able to go and sell to enterprise. And and look, people are trying to solve problems all the time. But one of the questions that I always find arises is is the small company the right solution to solve a big company's problem? And what I'm very excited about is around the fact that you've been on both sides. You've been in large enterprise, selling to large enterprise, but you've also seen the gaps that are there. So, as a both of you with multi-decade experience, what are you seeing are the things that earlier stage companies struggle with or are blind to to be able to get credible on their enterprise focused growth curve?
SPEAKER_00I think uh to me, the way how I actually see it is we talk about solution. It's super important to start to understand the problem that we want to solve. That's one and two, it's also super important to actually get integrated with at least one or two customers as we start to build the solution, right? That's super important. And for Friday, it's just a blessing for us. One on the consumer side, we've been working with customers as we continue to build the product. There are these are stories which hit already tech crunch, right? On the other hand, it's a blessing to really work with uh work and partner with IBM primarily, starting to understand the enterprise use case. So you're not building anything blind, you're actually building something meaningful. And what we believe in is when you go to a conversation to a customer, no more slides. You just show them what you can do. And there's nothing beyond that to actually crack that conversation into actual implementation.
SPEAKER_02So this is this is a really interesting point. And and maybe, Jonathan, you talked about you know you have 20 years plus an emerging tech, right? And I think we are in that era now, right? We can go and run a more than functional relative to standards from 10 years ago, POC, using an AI interface to be able to go and build that. So, Jonathan, maybe you can share a little bit about how look, it's be it's more viable to go and come up with a an emerging tech solution, put it in front of an enterprise, but how has it also made the circumstances harder?
SPEAKER_01I guess it's easier to build a platform with POC that you can show results. And like Ganesh said, we really focus on that experience that we want to put the experience in the hands of the customer so they can actually experience and feel it right there on the spot, and just not a PowerPoint PDF presentation or anything like that. It's something that's real, comes alive, difficult. I would say the challenges there will be understanding, you know, how the companies are operating in terms of the tech partnerships they have right now. So it's much easier to for them say you're in this ecosystem that we're building right now, and if you're part of that ecosystem, much easier than saying, Oh, we're coming from a different ecosystem for them from that standpoint. So it's like, well, if you're if you were with them, this is a yes, but you're over here, so now we have to slow the process down. But if you find a way to get over here, then it speeds it up. So I think that's one of the challenges is identifying, you know, from the customer, who are they working with, what bigger bigger tech companies they're partnering with, uh such a could they make a good partnership and everything like that and like get out of touch? You know, IBM's been a wonderful partner for us, has opened a lot of doors, particularly, you know, IBM is an it's it's identified as an enterprise and everything. And so it's been very good for us to have that capability, have the resources to communication with IBM and share the insights with that, and then they get fun to work with a startup, right? You know, this is IBM, you know, working with a startup, right? So, what's the challenge to get new new companies to work with IBM technologies that they can take to market that people can use in the marketplace? And so for us, sharing our technology, sharing that experience with customers in real time, and if we really deploy POCs very quickly, those are very important points now because everybody wants that experience. You can download an app right now, you can test things out pretty quickly, a lot of products and everything. And you know, being able to have similar experiences at an enterprise level is very important.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's you know it's it's something that you're kind of pointing to there, which is the management of the expectations. Like Ganesh, you went and talked about hey, you could have a multi-trillion dollar opportunity if you go and hit enterprise, you hit mid-market, you hit small business. But the paths to market are very different, the unit economics are different, the expectations are different. Going back to that whole dynamic of a startup going and selling to enterprise, an observation I've been noticing in the marketplace today is look, we're able to done right, and I gotta really emphasize the done right part here. You can really go and have an AI-augmented, venture-backed, hyperscaling uh ecosystem today. Like, look at the amount of you know, DECA unicorns that have emerged in the past four years alone that are there, that have been fed by that structure. But one thing that I've noticed with all of them is that none of them have been able to go and have that growth through a direct penetration into the enterprise customer base. They have all had to leverage a partner ecosystem, a hyperscaler ecosystem, some kind of a substrate to be able to go in. And that to me is what Fiducia seems to be doing with that initial IBM setup. So can you kind of maybe delve into the balancing act between getting that initial customer trying to pursue enterprise or trying to go and get the buy-in of the ecosystem that allows you to get to that enterprise customer that reduces friction? So you're not in procurement for 18 months or something like that. Because I think that's a chicken or the egg of the current era. So maybe back to you, gentlemen, on what you have experienced with that since you've been on both sides of the ledger.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll I'll just give a little background in terms of how we actually play with data, which is very important, right? So one, we refrain to use the term AI, but because it's not about AI, it's about the problem that you want to solve. We want to actually build uh visual experiences, both in uh in the consumer side and enterprise side. I'll actually reflect what exactly it means. A visual, what does visual browser mean in today's world? Right? So we experimented that with highest in fashion, luxury retail. Kate Barton is one of the brand. We took technology and blended technology with fashion, and it really went very well during a fashion show. That's the highest, and we made it to tech tech crunch, and the story is all over the place, right? That's on the consumer side. And what was the differentiation? Did we ask them for transactional data? No. We use the publicly available data for Kate Barton and actually built an amazing site. Look at that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00And then we don't talk about AI, we talk about experiences. Everything that you touch and feel is AI powered. Now you take similar experiences into a partner like IBM. The first friction with any enterprise conversation is you really need to have those agreements in place. How long does it take? So those are in place, and now we are actually discussing exactly what those use cases are, where we want to go. Very, very different strategy. And also it's so comforting for us to be on IBM cloud using IBM technologies, right? It's a story that we're actually trying to build together, trying to solve problems. It's not about AI anymore, it's about what is the problem that we want to solve today.
SPEAKER_02It's it's so interesting because I would say this is a much more symbiotic ecosystem environment today than I can imagine in my near 30-year professional career. I just can't believe I said near 30 years. This is nuts. Uh, okay, that's for another day. But I I think there's something to what you're going and saying, though. It's that bilateral structure that is there, right? Because large enterprise companies would not be able to go and even incubate what Fiducia is building because it's too small to get attention from leadership. But the upside is big enough that they should be interested in it. So, Jonathan, what like as you've been working, what has changed and what has stayed the same in emerging tech as principles that people should be ready to retire and double down on?
SPEAKER_01I'd say the biggest change in emerging tech is the buyer, the customer. The customer is younger.
SPEAKER_02Okay, say more about that.
SPEAKER_01So the customer is gonna be probably under 40 years old, and they will be the buyer. So somebody who's been in the business 30 years in the business and everything, they're passing the towards somebody who's been in the business 15, 20 years to evaluate the emerging tech.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um now because they're using it, they're born with it, they understand it better, and you know, working with enterprise customers, it's kind of cool. We always ask, do you have children? Because the children now are testing it out. So if the kids are liking it, that's their their pull part. It's like this experience, visual experience now is multi-generational and everything. And so the for new employees are are being brought in to test it. Their kids are being brought in to test it now of all this and everything. This is how they're judging everything in tech. So this is probably the biggest change in everything of who's using it because they're going, this is for them and everything. And so that's how we're looking at the customer has changed, the buyer profile has changed, the decision makers and stuff. The person who writes a check has been in business for 30 years, but the follow-up to that check writing, they're younger.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I there's two things that are coming out here because I'm smiling because I I just earlier this week I went and saw this really, really great video of kind of how that intergenerational divide. So is the teenage daughter of this Chinese family who speaks English but the parents don't gets to on to negotiate an international trade deal on behalf of their procurement company or something like that. That's there. I'm like, like, this is friggin' awesome. But what you're pointing to there is the same thing. And like, who do you go to to get that information that you might not be thinking about as you're going and selling? But the other point that I think is so good that you went and pointed to is who cuts the check versus who makes the decision. And I think this is one of the biggest failures I've seen professionally in B2B sales, is that people try and get to the most senior person to go and get an endorsement, forgetting that that person may literally just go and delegate everything out, and you need to find out who is actually the influencer, who's the actual person that is gonna go and give a go-no-go to the short list, let alone the final sale. How has that changed the past few years? And since you were on the buying side of it as what at one point too, Ganesh, right, in terms of being in the rise in media having to buy, how have you learned from being a buyer to switching to how you are a seller? And Jonathan, please add to that too.
SPEAKER_00I think you said something very important. So you you mentioned, oh, uh, people writing the check and the influencers. So when you go and then look at any enterprise ecosystem, no doubt the check would be written by the highest, who might be like me. But it is so important to understand the entire ecosystem. That doesn't happen just like that. It's the influencers with whom they actually have the conversations, their views are important. Just like JT mentioned, that ecosystem is actually changing, and it's across any application, any class of application that we actually build as we move forward. So, no doubt, we focus on brand engagement. It's really required we focus more on Gen Z when we actually try to think about features. But look what's happening, everything is changing, and the way how you engage with any application would be very, very different. And it's already probably started, right? And now when you actually try to stitch all these things together, it's super important to actually keep in mind the ecosystem that is going to actually sign off on what you are presenting, who they are. Are you really solving the problem in the way that they want? Right? The anger generation, uh, quick, accurate, and I want to move on to the next one. You try to factor all those things into one screen and make it happen. These are the new class of applications that we actually start to evolve because you can't go search, you're asking in a very natural language across any application. Today we are on in brand engagement, we're trying to experiment this, but it's not going to be applicable anywhere. So it's the beginning of the next class or next generation of application where the human interaction or interface is drastically going to change. And uh it's it's very exciting, it's super exciting. I'll have JT uh add his view.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I would say the other thing take a look at is when you go through the enterprise sales process. We all know it's gonna be long in terms of you know, months and everything, um, by quarters and such of that. And then once you get the deal done, signed, then typical enterprise just locates more months on top of deployment and everything like that. And so you have a whole gender control shift. Like, we're not waiting months and everything. We want it now. We want to start playing with the toys and everything as such. And I think for Ganesh and our experience and everything, been focusing on that time, timing part of it, is that we mentioned Kate Barton. We were able to get her collection from the New York Fashion Show up and running on our platform in 48 hours. But what does you get in 48 hours? Well, you got IBM Watson X, you got IBM Object Cloud Storage and IBM Cloud and a bunch of other IBM technologies all wrapped up, deployed very quickly, and they can see that result. So not waiting 10 weeks out after they signed the contract and everything, they're getting it within a couple days.
SPEAKER_02So you're pointing to something which is you know, there's that that old adage of look, I can give it to you fast, I can give it to you cheap, or I can give it to you high quality. Pick two of the three. Yes, and I am I think we are we're not there yet. I just gotta put that as a disclaimer right now. But I think the opportunity to get to fast, cheap, high quality in certain spaces becomes possible, right? Like the digital AI augmented environments, portions of the buying cycle, sales cycle, uptime cycle, uh, RD cycle, that can happen, right? Um, you know, you're not you're still not gonna be able to go and get you know fast, cheap, high quality jet engines built by I don't know, Boeing or somebody else, uh, or I guess Rolls Royce or something like that. But I think that there are areas where that can become a legitimate expectation. So on that note, then how is that changing from your perspective the capital race situation for early stage companies?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think every startup is different and their philosophies are different too, right? We can share our journey. So since we have seen it all, both JT and I, we have past experiences. We always value to build scale in our journey, right? Yeah. We have product and features. We had different variations of the product that we had, but we could not see scale. Now what we have is scale, we got the scale for us. Scale was important. So when the money comes in, we want to use that to multiply, we don't want to use that to investigate, right? Totally different way how we actually think. And just to give you an example, what did we do? No doubt we are working with IBM, but take Kate Burton's example. We took it live in 48 hours on Shopify. What does it mean? There are 5 million brands, not the 5 million brands on Shopify. That's our scale. And now it's a blessing to be with IBM. We are starting to exercise all this, and it's it's an inflection point for Fiducia at this point in time, where we have an amazing product. Every touch is AI powered, but we don't say AI anywhere at all. It's all about experiences. And uh this is where I would like to share how we look at our journey 1x, 10x, and 100x. 1x is skate button for us. 10x is the agencies that we actually work with, they work with uh tens of brands, and 100x or 1000x is IBM. I think they're starting to excel in all three areas. It's a very, very different strategy, and then how how people think when they actually start to build a company?
SPEAKER_02So, so question for you both, then, because look, we've talked about the fact that you can't you need to go and find that partner ecosystem to be able to scale into enterprise, but by a certain extent to scale to anybody, mid-market, SMB, etc. What how do you see the role of almost like a partner-driven go-to-market, almost like a co-branded, not even just two brands, but multiple brands, right? Like, look, you got Fiducia, you got Shopify, you got IBM. You may have another one or two brands that are there circumstantially to be able to bring it to life. Because if you think about it, most companies today are actually not just. Generalist, right? I think we had a whole generalist ecosystem. You went and had those campuses where you had large enterprises, cross-training. I'm I'm a former PNG. They had a lot of internal training and they continue to in marketing and finance and business development, demand generation, etc. But I think in today's environment, companies are becoming very, very good inside a domain, but then they become really great by partnering other with others that are good inside complementary domains. So maybe you can give a perspective on how that is changing the scaling of companies, the founding of companies, and hitting that 110, 100x uh analogy that you use, Ganesh.
SPEAKER_00I'll give two examples. So one is technology partnership, uh, right, and then this the second is this is pure business partnership. When Fiducia goes and then works with an agency that's a pure business partnership, we actually are starting to scale through this channel as well, right? What does it mean? So any marketing agency can work with Fiducia to take this and then apply to their brands. With IBM, and then there are a few other smaller companies that we are actually starting to work with. There's a lot of technology partnership. So Fiducia is not focused on building platform and core components. Fiducia is focusing on partnering with these uh companies which already have established platforms. So that's a technology partnership which is really going very, very well for us. But besides that, a conscious choice for us in making this decision was we were able to see joint GTM.
SPEAKER_02So that so you I I love it you went to that because that I was gonna put that out as a point, which is look, one of the biggest struggles that I go and see in the marketplace today is some cost fallacy. Oh, we've already gone and spent $20 million on this thing, or we already spent $400,000 on this thing. We want to get you know more out of it. Well, the reality is it's dead. Right? Like you're gonna have to go and you know, flog that horse to go and get more out of it, right? But I think what you're pointing to is the other side of it, which is hey, you've already realized value in what you've gotten done. We can go and give you more value from this as a partner, right? We're not here to replace, we're here to leverage and augment. How is that different in the marketplace now versus what I would say is even our recent frame of reference, as as recent as four to five years ago? Like, what are you seeing, Jonathan, as different in that you don't really need to spend much more? You just need to allow, you need to let us leverage what you've already built. How is that changing in the marketplace today?
SPEAKER_01I would say it's changing that you're focusing on distribution of established relationships.
SPEAKER_02So unpack that a bit more. Is that enterprise-to-enterprise relationships? Like, is that hey, I used to work at X company, now I go back to that company to go and get help? Or is that is that something else if you're an earlier stage company, try to pursue enterprise relationships?
SPEAKER_01For early stage companies, you look at the where the enterprises are are buying technology. You find out where they're buying and everything. So you have who's it who are the partnerships they're building, ecosystem, what are the enterprises they're using, and then you go and say, these are the top 20 companies I want to get involved in, right? What's the what's the similar technology stack that they have all the same? And now you want to ride that relationship into the top 20 companies that you can you know get your beach head in and expand and everything like that. And then you have conversations with other players, expanding to other you know, enterprise clients and things like that. And Gandesh says you have your partner go to market, hey, you got 20 of our accounts, you got 10 of our largest accounts. We want to take you and go to market and expand that within our reach and everything.
SPEAKER_02So this is a slightly interesting thing because look, we've had a multi-decade practice, uh, heavily led by kind of like the PE and buy-out domain, which is we're gonna buy this company, we're gonna start scaling it, find some efficiencies, then we're gonna buy a bolt-on, we're gonna pay a premium, assume that our sales team can cross-sell it, etc. But I think what you're actually pointing to there, Jonathan, is a slightly different model. It's it's a bit more fluid. It's may maybe doesn't have the same ownership structure in place, but it may actually serve the customer better by having a set of long-term intertwined commercial relationships, partnerships, but not under one giant private equity-led or you know, Fortune 500-led acquisition umbrella. Is that an accurate assessment of where things are going today? Or do you think that we're still gonna go and have a consolidation into some large companies of these types of ecosystems?
SPEAKER_01I think we have to let things play out a little bit more in the marketplace. I think the big companies, everybody's trying to identify what they're gonna do in that space, you know, and like Kinesh says, every company's a different journey, different, you know, solutions, different solving different points, and everything like that. So each company will have to, uh technology-wise, we'll have to identify that. So if your primary customers developers, maybe you set up a website and they're paying $20 a month, or maybe you have you're integrated and you're gonna be activating these technologies that align with a partner ecosystem and that customer base as well, and everything. Because you found you found the pain point between this company and their customer base. Now you're gonna solve that so your solution will solve that problem.
SPEAKER_02I love it, I love it. So to close things out, I have two questions, short answers from each of you. One is what is something that you used to be right about in that it was no good? Like you don't do this in building a business, but because of how things have changed the past few years, you're like, okay, I gotta now admit that what I was right about before, I would be wrong about today. And the second thing that I have is what is something that you picked up on early on in your career that you realize is way more important than you thought at the time?
SPEAKER_00For me, the first one is a very easy answer. At Verizon, but just because of the data sensitivity, we always believed on-prem, we slowly moved it onto the cloud.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Today that doesn't work out. You have to start to have the mindset is your data protected wherever it is, and who is that we want to work with, right? And we have a very different approach than how we want to really build that fort, and then we want to build application. So that was that's my first response. Answer to your first question, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Very, very easy and very simple. And and uh the second the second one, uh, if I understand right, let me go back and then uh repeat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what is something that you found valuable early in your career that you realize is even more important today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I always believed actually connecting the dots, right, to really solve a problem. You can move fast. And today, that is the template. That is the template. So we don't want to actually solve problems, we want to see how we can actually connect the dots to solve the problem. Completely different how you build the problem. But I also want to share something astronomically different that's starting to happen right now. Please you don't write code, you write prompts to solve the problem. This is like talking specifically open claw. Yeah, you have different services, you don't write code. The prompt stitches everything dynamically when when uh when a when a question is asked. It's just fascinating how things are changing.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. Love it. Jonathan, how about you? What's your answer to those?
SPEAKER_01I would say the biggest change would be when I first started technology sales, attending events, live person events, as such, and you had booths and everything, and people will come and everything like that, and that was like your customer acquisition strategy, doesn't work anymore. The booth is now for customer retention. So you're inviting your customers to your booth and you're showing them in person what you're doing, what you're building, you're having that conversation as that. It's not um acquisition anymore. So you're gonna use it for retention as such. If you're gonna go to an event now and you want to do customer acquisition as such, it's now that you know, find it in it, do a dinner party, do something that's fun with those people, you can invite them to some place as such. Maybe you can get on stage and a speaker, you have that visibility if you're gonna focus on customer acquisition. So it's kind of changed that way. The booth is something that can be, if you have enough customers, that makes sense, retention. And usually the partners are right, because partners have customer events, things like that, and they will host you. You can be maybe at an event with them and things like that as well, and then their customers come see what they're doing, and that helps they have that booth at a live event, or maybe it's one of their own exhibits as such, then you can use that for customer acquisition. But the standalone booth for customer acquisition that you did 10 years ago, that's not gonna work anymore. The pick up customers and stuff because everybody's looking at the ROI of these events, these booths and everything, as such. You're not gonna get the ROI if you're thinking it's gonna be customer acquisition. You've got to rethink how am I gonna meet new people, how am I gonna get in front of the people and stuff like that. And so you want to be, you know, something unique, post a dinner, invite people, you're reaching out to them, go and get on stage and speak and everything like that. You create that visibility that people see you, and then they can come up to you and ask questions and things like that, maybe join a panel as such. So that's what kind of would be the big change in everything. And we're adopting that with what we're doing right now. It's like, well, it's at events and everything, but we're not gonna have a booth.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I I I think that's so insightful. Um, what's something from early on in your career that you realize is now even more important than you thought?
SPEAKER_01Relationships.
SPEAKER_03Mmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Relationships are very, very key. Um, because I have watched relationships get promotions, relationships change companies, and they bring their technology people with you.
SPEAKER_02I I love that. What a great summary. Gentlemen, I I find it fascinating in terms of what you're going and building. Uh, from viewers, listeners, you gotta go and check out what Fiducia's up to because I think it's such a fascinating conversation of an enterprise great startup, uh, and I think a model to emulate. So, on that note, gentlemen, thank you so much for being on the Raise and Exit podcast and sharing your wisdom.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Edward. Pleasure. Thank you. Cheers.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I in hindsight, I would have wanted to go and emphasize a heck of a lot more on the topic of brand. It's a professional and personal passion of mine. Yeah, uh, but it's a bit more adjacent to what I do with Raise and Exit on the valuation and transaction side. But I it was just a sub like a subliminal layer across everything you're talking about, right? Jonathan, relationships, that's your personal brand, right? Having that credibility, personal brand, those partnerships. That is, hey, hold on, we got five different companies that are endorsing this company. Maybe I should actually give consideration to buying what they're selling, or you know, hold off from dismissing them because they're young and small. So that was like a big thing that I got from that one. But like, what did you guys just get from where this conversation went today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think it's it's very very interesting how you made us think as well, right? So you were actually very keen on uh how the enterprise experiences would actually help to build this journey. I never got asked that before. So it's always looked at like a startup, but yeah, not an not a lot of emphasis on how. And also you actually you you refreshed our thoughts in terms of how the new new and next generation applications would be built, right? You just can't keep saying AI, AI, AI, everything. It's assumed that AI is everywhere everywhere. What is that you want to solve? And how are you going to solve? Right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think your point about the making connections is so critical because I think we've just had such a rapid pace of AI to oh my gosh, what is this? I'm suspicious of this. Oh my gosh, it doesn't all these incredible things. It's like, okay, who's not using AI? Like, come on, people, right? But and and look, I have a whole professional take on how far you can make claims in that domain, but that's for another conversation. But I think what you're saying is is like, okay, the substrate is there, it's gone from differentiating to becoming table stakes. Give me the new differentiation. And what I actually had as a walk away from here is the differentiation is being contemporary with pretty much like timeless practices to be able to build businesses, which is relationships, which is going and making connections earlier than your competition and really well earlier than your customer, but have them think that they are the ones who put that last little piece in because they bought your product or service.
SPEAKER_00That's fair. Yeah, one thing we missed to emphasize a little bit. I was just thinking after the after the conversation. Yeah, remember what Netflix did? Okay, Verizons of the World built the network, and then uh YouTube and Netflix came and then started writing over the network, and that's about it. Yeah, and Fiducia is pretty much doing that. People are building platforms, and then we are saying today we can actually sit on IBM Cloud, use everything on IBM Cloud, and also talk to my the other hyperscalers too. Yeah, it's just fascinating.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_01Jonathan, what you what did you get from that conversation? I think we didn't touch about just having a distributed workforce, right? So you're a startup, you're gonna have people and your team members at different locations, and you're building this whole part of using new technology internally, and you're building new solutions for the customer base, and you're doing distributed and everything. So I think we've touched about that whole point is like how we can adapt the new technologies internally to build solutions, have your team bonding and things like that, and then you're you're adjusting. So, one thing I've seen at these um live events that Ganesh and I attend to is that a lot of companies are distributed. This is the team bonding part. They're coming to these live events, they're bringing all the teams together, they're not meeting in the office anymore, they're meeting at the live events, which is fantastic for a startup like us, is that we're not chasing down one or two people at one location, they've got the whole team. So you can actually meet three, four people and everything, and this experience and this um opportunity, and then they're flying in their customers as well. All the customers are in town, all their team members are in town, and you're in a unique position, like, oh, we're meeting these people, we're meeting their customers, uh such all one location, and so the dynamics have changed because everybody has distributed workforces, not everybody's in the office, um, and maybe they have multiple offices and they're not all in the same office, uh, and that's the customer too, right? So you have a partner, you have your customers, everybody's different places and stuff now. These live events to bring everybody together and everything. We'll we see people that I'll use New York as an example, we'll have people come from New York, go to a live event to meet other people from New York because they can't meet them and don't have time to meet them in New York.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's so funny. I would even go and say that New Yorkers will go and tell you, I need to go and have an event in New York to meet other people in New York. But it's true, it's it's an excuse to kind of go get out because we have this higher-paced environment that's going on. I think Ganesh, you wanted to add something else earlier as well.
SPEAKER_00Uh no, we at Fiducia we do the same thing too. So Teddy makes me fly Las Vegas, not just to meet him, but also we meet a lot of customers too. That's it. And uh I I think the he was very wise in actually picking the right city because everything is happening in Las Vegas. And from everyone.
SPEAKER_02Well, you just go and take them to the sphere, Jonathan. Like that's all you need to do. Which it was. It really and you and you and okay. So here's my question. I'm totally going off script now. Okay, but there was no script for this part, but I didn't realize I can go even more off script for from this portion. I I haven't seen it yet in person, but I've seen some of the stuff. You can be like a dozen miles or more out and still have it in the distance because it's so big, right? So it's like there's almost like an experience of approaching the thing as well. Yes, uh, that's there. So I I just find that is really fascinating because it's all circular and everything, yeah, and everybody talk about it and everything.
SPEAKER_01Have you been to it? Because you can do tours and everything. Um, there's shows to be had there and stuff like that, but everybody sees it. If you're taking the monorail, you see it if you're driving to any place, taxi, buses, or it's there. You're going have multiple events you're gonna see in the sphere and everything like there.
SPEAKER_02I I just I love it because like I'm an architecture buff to so for me, this is like the modern digital architecture in terms of like full-fledged expression. Um, and I also realize that we are so way off script that uh it's a good pause to go and have, gentlemen. Thanks for just that quick debrief and that takeaway and for being our guest today. And look forward to the next opportunity to chat again.
SPEAKER_00No, look, look forward, and thank you very much, Andrew, for including us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Cheers.