Episode 53: Anand Jain- From door to door sales to building CleverTap
About Anand Jain:
Thomas Edison once said that Genius is prolonged patience. I am patient enough to be sure.
Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Anand Jain. He is the Co-founder of CleverTap. CleverTap is the world's leading customer engagement and retention platform, valued at USD 775M and backed by Sequoia India, Tiger Global and others.
In this fascinating conversation, Anand talks about how curiosity and constant tinkering of an average student from a humble background have led him to build multiple successful businesses, the value of thinking in first principles, how understanding the customer is selling, and much more.
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Some Key Highlights:
Learning Framework: There is a certain joy in figuring out things on your own from first principles. A learning framework is- Do it as long as it doesn't kill you then come back and look at what you've learned. Can you have a compounding effect on what you've learnt?
Founders: Technical founders typically start from the problem statement as opposed to non-technical founders who start from the market opportunity or the competitors in the space.
Teams: Your competitors will change, markets will change, and products will evolve. It's the people who will decide whether you win or lose.
In this conversation, he talks about:
00:00 Intro
01:52 Early life: One bedroom rented house, an average student to co-founder of Clevertap. How do you reflect on it?
12:52 How is understanding the customer- selling?
16:18 What is your learning framework- How do you indulge in learning something new?
19:03 Technical founders - how has the experience been?
22:54 How do you differentiate yourself?
28:25 Being a product-first company- what does that mean?
32:58 Building for a niche/ focus group Vs for everyone?
36:02 What do you think about building a team?
39:16 Key learnings from Moments of Truth?
41:29 Views on Elon Musk?
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