How Responsive validated a new software category using LinkedIn job postings instead of analyst reports | Ganesh Shankar

Speaker A: Don't try to create a category on day one. First thing, you have to associate with a category that already exists. Then carve out your own path.

Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, uh, let's jump into today's episode. Today we're speaking with Ganesh Shikar, CEO and co founder of Responsive. Ganesh, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hi Brad, thanks for having me on.

Speaker B: Of course. So Strategic Response Management, that's the category you're in. Is that the category you started with 10 years ago, 11 years ago when you founded the company?

Speaker A: It is the category we are in. It is the category that we coined and it's uh, not the category we started off. We started off in a little bit of a smaller category. Ah, which is we'll talk about more. RFP software is where we started helping companies to respond to RFPs. So today the category is much broader. Um, like you mentioned, Strategic Response Management and RFP response is part of that overall category. Srm, we'll talk. So yeah, I didn't start that it in mind but truly more than a pull or a push, it was a pull from our customers in the way they saw how they can leverage our platform.

Speaker B: And what was that evolution like in terms of category? What were kind of the key chapters along the way that got you to the position that you're in with Strategic Response Management?

Speaker A: If you think of responsive. Right. Our name actually today is Responsive, but when we started the company, our original name of the company was rfpio. So basically request for proposal, input and output. Uh, we want to keep it as simple as that so that we straightforward so that customers or prospects who come to us know exactly what we know what we do. And we didn't want to spend a lot of marketing budget and explaining what we do. So actually that name was perfect. A lot of customers have told us very directly. So like I mentioned when we started the uh, journey, uh, back in 2016, our core use case was solving how customers respond to RFPs when they receive an RFP that's our application gets started and the whole process of responding to that has been done in our platform. So if you look at it right and fundamentally what that process helped our customers is one is responding to RFPs. The response that they put inside the RFP became uh, a curated knowledge. So our application also helps them to collaborate with multiple stakeholders, which we call SME M, which stands for subject matter expert within the company. Right. You know, we curate that critical information, authentic information, compliant information in one central repository, which is our library that goes into the RFPs to win a deal. So what our customers told us, that information that we preserve and curate is the most current, compelling, customer facing information. We don't get that information anywhere else. No other system in our enterprise has that curated knowledge, responsive, have that, and we want to leverage that. Uh, that's when we started noticing a lot of our customers started democratizing that information beyond RFPs. And then we started noticing customers use the curated knowledge for security questionnaires, analyst questionnaires, or even as simple as responding to an email where you are required to put the compliant response in an email. They've started leveraging. So that is when we realize, oh, this is a much broader use of the curated knowledge they've created. Hence why we started recognizing the strategic response management beyond just rfp. You know, response management as a whole. We started looking at it whenever any employees of a company needs to respond to their external stakeholders. That could be your customers, prospect investors, analysts, regulatory bodies who are asking for information and the employee of the company need to be accurate, not to misinform. That's where they look at our system to see if they have that information as a response, that they can feed that back to the information seeker, which is the external party. So, so that's where we come um, into play. And that's when we realize, okay, this is much broader. So here we are as responsive.

Speaker B: And in terms of the category then do you view this as category evolution or is this a new category that you're creating and you have to go and evangelize out into the world and convince people that they need this to be a line item?

Speaker A: It was not the category. The broader way of uh, looking at Initially there was a category called proposal management. The proposal management again was not the right category. Then we thought, okay, it's an RFP software as a category. Right. Okay. But as I mentioned just now, it got beyond. So proposal is if you're a, uh, freelancer trying to build a proposal because you don't have. So that is a, uh, small power. And again the proposal gets very broader use, but then becomes rfp. But what we have now is, and the content that is in responsive is not just for useful proposals or RFPs, they're useful for many different use cases. So we were compelled to see things differently. And that's where strategic response management came in. But surprisingly, if you go to LinkedIn, you will also notice today there are titles that talks about manager, Strategic responses manager or strategic Response management or uh, SRM Manager. There are titles people have, SRM team, Strategic Management Team. So this is very compelling for me to realize, okay, unless you it's an artificial name, then this is real. When customers start leveraging that in their titles and their team names, that becomes real. Because that's what we say. You know, our goal is to move our core users from the back office to get to the corner office. You know, when you put that level of angle, you know, our customers are, our core users are giving the most current information to their team members so that they are staying compliant, they are staying accurate. So that's where I feel like that's the pivot. And it is true. Today almost all of my competition is using the word response management.

Speaker B: I see parallels there with another company that I really admire, Gainsight, and I think they observed something very similar. They saw that customer success as a job title was emerging and they said there's a bunch of software, there's a bunch of tooling that's not purpose built, general purpose tooling that's being used by them. But there is no tool for this discipline and for this function. And we believe this function is going to become big and massive and needs purpose built software. We're going to provide it. But then more importantly, I think what they did very well was they evangelized the customer success profession. They wrote books, they did podcasts, they went on all the speaking tours. Like they really made it. So like think if you were running a company and you didn't have that function, you thought you were doing something wrong. Are you taking a similar approach here where you're viewing it as part of your job is to of course evangelize the company, but the rest of it is to evangelize strategic response as a function and as a discipline in these orgs.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. The good news is for us, that particular role, proposer manager or an RFP manager, uh, was long existing. It is us helping them to elevate that into more strategic roles. And some of our customers realize this, you know, the amount of work that particular team does today to curate the enterprise knowledge in one single place is amazing. You know, again, when we open up, unlock the opportunity to democratize that information, it is not just for proposals, not for RFPs. So it goes well beyond that. So I'll give you another interesting fact, right? If you, if you open up LinkedIn at any given day, I think our recent count says about 300 to 400 jobs in LinkedIn looking for responsives experience. Tell me how many companies in the world startups can claim that, you know, as part of the job description I'm looking for, you know, this experience, you know, like that is a massive movement that we are noticing, right. You know, either it's must have sometimes it's uh, a nice to have, you know, like how you know our Salesforce admin I've seen like uh, I said I think it's at any given date is almost 300 plus jobs are in the market today, not us. And of course I'm eliminating any jobs. Posted by Responsive I'm just going with the keyword rfpio or responsive in job description. So that is very compelling. You know, it's just the job economy that we are uh, you know, helping our customers to create. It's amazing to see that that's a good validation for us.

Speaker B: This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast, I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. I mean that seems like the ultimate, or not the ultimate, but one of the ultimate validations that you can get. I think as a software founder, as a software builder. Right. When people start talking about it as an experience that they need for candidates to even get the job, that is a very special thing.

Speaker A: I'm sure, uh, that's one of the reason why we started to answer a prior question. That's when we started doing our academy certifications again. You know, maybe not exactly the same way Gainsight has done it, but we have our own path, you know, and we are noticing helping our customers to stand out of the crowd. So many customers have said that this has really helped them land a job. They reach us and say, hey, I'm um, Applying for this, one of the requirement is this, can you help us to get certifications? They're not a customer, they're in the job market. So it's amazing to see how much of the work our team is putting and helping, you know, beyond a software mentality, helping these users to land on the next dream job or ah, next job that they are looking for. It's amazing. That flywheel effect that we are seeing

Speaker B: in the market and where does that sit for you? Is that sitting within marketing? Is that called thought leadership? Do you call it like evangelism? Like what do you call that that you just described that you're doing with like the academies and all of that stuff?

Speaker A: I don't believe it's across the board. Right. Uh, if you look at it right, you know, the thought leadership comes from the marketing. The academy sits in our professional services team, in our customer success. Org. And then I do this. So it's a mindset. I don't think so. If you're trying to become that, helping your users to be the evangelist of you, there's not like, okay, that team needs to take care of that. It is starting from me. For example, I post jobs. Look at Yesterday, my post LinkedIn I posted. Yeah, I didn't even know this is. I started promoting our customers who was looking for talent to add their team. So it is beyond, you know, just one team. It is across the board, all of us do that. Our marketing team and events team does a pretty good job. But I don't think it's one team's KPI. It is across the board. We should be helping our customers.

Speaker B: And then how do you think about the line item? And you know, are you seeing that, you know, given that this is the uh, a job title, people are searching for that experience. Like what line item do you take up and does this eliminate those other line Items? So the RFPs or the proposal software, like if a customer is using your tool, do they no longer need it? Like is their line item consolidation? What does that look like?

Speaker A: No, I don't think so. It is more. See this is now you're entrepreneur, you're a podcaster. What do you do? What do you use? You know, it looks like you're using an application, right? You know, anything. Imagine if this technology is not there. You're using a conference bridge or the technology that you and I are talking very similar for that type. They need a specialized application to do. Uh, can you do this in an iPhone? Absolutely, you can do this in an iPhone. The same conversation you and I have. Why are you using a specialized application for this? Because it required some level of professionalism, it requires some level of dedication, requires some level of roadmap because it solves the problem that you and certainly you can put in a different hotspot solution. But there is a reason why similarly we are this purpose built application for this SRM and our primary user's job is to prepare proposals on RFP security questionnaires, due diligence questionnaire. They do this pretty much. That is their 9 to 5 job. And they are looking for application that is purpose built for that purpose and not trying to, you know, pick siloed applications. It's not like I'm taking all this. I'm helping them to be much, much more efficient, especially even with the AI. Now again, think of us. We have created these uh, different AI agents can automate some of these things. For example, if you receive an rfp, we have an agent that can help you get to the first draft within minutes. Used to take days. Now we are getting them the first. It doesn't mean that we are asking them to submit the first draft. It is first draft is ready. Now they become more of a reviewer and small of an author versus earlier. There are a lot of authoring was there and then they have to rely on reviewing. Can we minimize the authoring and make them more strategic reviewers? That's what we do and especially our tool does it really well on that front.

Speaker B: I had uh, a founder on yesterday who's been very successful and we were just talking about messaging and how to communicate especially when you're using AI. And his advice generally speaking was communicate to the CFO because that's more and more who you're going to be speaking to. And you need to have a very, very compelling ROI story to get any technology adopted and purchased Right now what's your ROI story look like? How do you communicate roi?

Speaker A: So in fact in our case it's pretty straightforward. We actually any software I feel like uh, broadly you can classify into three different pockets. One of the bucket is softwares that can help you mitigate risk. Any all the security software which helps you do from Phishing attack so that you can put all those things into this bucket. And the second bucket is any software that can help you minimize cost, doing more with less. Right. And the third one is any software that can help you make money because that software helps you to be much more. Not just efficiency but it is also helping you, you know, hence why Salesforce is, you know, your lead generation all those marketing automation technologies directly talks to the revenue. The advantage of responsive, it actually touches in a way it touches all three. If you're not responding to an rfp, if you're not winning an rfp, you're not bringing in revenue to the company. So we are part of that. Number two is like I said, we are trying to create a lot of efficiency to get to the first traction. A lot of human time is being saved and they can be leveraged. So that is doing more with less or being more strategic. That's two. We help the entire company speak the same compliant language and you're not risking the company by providing this information or generating random information that is not accurate about reflection about your company. So it cuts across all three. When you talk about uh the ROI for us, it depends on what angle a ah customer is coming from. Understanding that angle is super key for us. If you are talking about the first angle, you are talking about the CRO connection because the CROs, the chief revenues officer are much more interested in winning deals. How can we help you more money, second be more efficient. You know, then you're talking to the CFOs or CIOs of the world to be more uh, CFOs. In this case, uh, if you're talking about third use case like helping you to mitigate. So CIOs are very interested because chief information officers are the ones who are under the heat when there is information leakage or something. So they're very particular about that one. So I do believe it depends on the software category, the bigger bucket and you have to talk to the right uh, respective. But end of the day, yes, if you're having a CFO conversation, you have to have a business case that shows a clear ROI in one of those things. It doesn't mean that revenue doesn't mean the cost or it doesn't mean the risk mitigation. You have to have a very compelling, in fact we even have a uh, dedicated value engineering team. All they do is identify where the value we can create to the customer in one of those buckets. But predominantly our value drivers are towards the first bucket which is the revenue driver. We help our customers to increase the win rate of the RFPs that they're competing in. So in certain cases, even if a couple of points incremental win could very well take care of the ROI of an investment in technology like responsive. So it's pretty straightforward in our case. It is never the question of uh, whether responsive or any similar technologies can help us make money. It's never the question. Most of the time the question that we get is why responsive versus competition and why now? Why can't we do this? It's never the question of can you help me make money? Because it's pretty straightforward. It's very evident you need a technology. Almost most of the objections are why responsive and why now versus why can't I do it next month or next quarter? Does it make sense? This show is brought to you by the global talent company, a, uh, marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet

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Speaker B: yeah, definitely makes sense. A while back I had on Godard Abel, the founder of G2 and part of what they do is create categories. And I asked him, what's your advice for the founders out there who want to create categories? Because I think everyone dreams of creating category. Sounds like you've actually done it successfully. His advice was partner with the competition and go and say we need to go and make the case together to these firms. We need to make the case to uh, all of our customers individually to say like there needs to be a category here because you can't have a category of one. So if you look at strategic response management, are you a category of 1? Are there others that are now kind of using that same language and playing that same game? What does that look like for you today?

Speaker A: I think if you start to talk about uh, G2, I mentioned when we started this whole thing was under proposal management category. Today go to G2 Crowd. You will notice there is an RFP software category. I truly believe it was because of us. At that time when we start launch the company there was no category call RP software. We created that thought process but now we are looking at a much broader category SRM. It's not category of 1 nor category exist in G2 crowd. But I've seen pretty much all my competition is speaking this response management as the terminology they're talking about. So I do think that will be a time when there is a category in G2 crude. But even today RFP software is the category that exists in G2 crowd and I don't think so. That category existed before responsive's existence.

Speaker B: And what about like the Gartners of the world, other founders I know that are creating categories. They have that as kind of like the north star of success for that category. They're creating is when Gartner picks it up and does a magic quadrant. But I have others that have come on, they've said I could care less. Uh, I don't care what Gartner does. It's going to have no impact. We're going to create this category. We haven't created this category with or without them. How do you think about the Gartner of the world?

Speaker A: Yeah, Gartner. Gartner don't have a magic quadrant for us. But I think the magic picked the best of both worlds. They, you know, about a, um, year, maybe and a half earlier they started. I don't know what they call that particular piece, market advice or market thing insights. They're calling it as RFP response management. RFPs. And they call it as response management. So that's what they done. They're not calling it a strategic response management, rather they're calling it as RFP response management software as a category. Because RFP tend to have both sides, right? There is a reason why it has to be very clearly called out. Because when you talk about rfp, there's a buy side which is actually seeking information. You're creating the rfp, whereas on the flip side, the sellers are responding or proposing. So there is a clear difference between both sides of the spectrum. So RFP response management makes more sense because you are talking about vendors who help customer to respond to RFPs versus helping procurement teams to buy software. Right. There are two sides. So that is why we call it as RFP issue, an RFP response process. So RFP response falls under this response management. When you talk about strategic response management, that's why we go much far beyond RFPs. So that's why we see it that way. But Gartner is just picking it up on the RFP side. I think they will come along the same conclusion that we came to, but I see the same pattern. They had proposal management, now they're saying RFP response management, which is what exactly went through maybe a few years ahead of them. So I think it's always true. Right. You know, when you see this kind of a pattern, you know, you know, obviously analysts don't want to jump because of a vendor using. They want to see the market trend. I think they just got the market end of RFP software. I truly believe it may take some more time for them to recognize the strategic response nature side of things.

Speaker B: Final question for you. What advice would you have to other founders that want to bring technology to market like this, where the market doesn't exist? And they have to go and effectively create and evolve the market to become what they needed to become.

Speaker A: See, I'm a big believer of we don't need to over engineer this by creating, trying to create categories. Right. You know, I'm a big fan of book, uh, called Play Bigger. I don't know if you have ever read that Play Bigger. You know, uh, Al's book. I've been on calls with Al, uh, a few times. But that clearly says, you know, if you don't have a category, don't try to create on day one. First thing you know, you have to associate with a category that already exists. Then carve out your own path. Separate yourselves. You know, if you, in day one, if you're trying to say, okay, I'm going, it's one, it requires a lot of energy investment on day one. So it's very difficult because nobody even, you know, a couple of years before nobody was searching for the term, um, strategic response management. Somebody's going to search for in a way or ask today in ChatGPT or other modern, you know, LLM models, they're going to ask what they are familiar with. So it's best to align on the familiar side of things and then carve out your own path. If that leads to you creating your own category, then that's the right path. So don't have that. Okay, I'm going to create own, you know, then you're going to churn a lot of energy and a lot of investment is needed. And you know, it may not resonate with your prospective customers because they are not waking up from their bed asking for a particular category they're looking for. They're waking up from their bed to see how something can solve my problem. Be that and then eventually that problem and your vision for category matches, then there is an opportunity to expand upon.

Speaker B: Amazing. Great advice. And that's where we're going to end things. Thank you so much for taking the time. Where should we send those who are listening in that want to follow along with more of you?

Speaker A: Obviously we have our own website. Our www.revolutionive.IO or www.revolutionive.com would also get the same results.

Speaker B: Amazing. Well, thanks so much for taking the time.

Speaker A: Thank you, Brett. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your podcast.

Speaker B: Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IE where you'll find a library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders. Where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO Podcast as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.