Choosing the right Co-Founder with Aura Co-Founders Purvi Goel & Gautam Madaan [007]

Written By Gus Joseph

Episode Summary

In this episode of Founder Facing, Gus interviews co-founders Purvi Goel and Gautam Madan from Aura, an AI-powered platform that bridges the gap between HR and finance. Discover how they met, built their co-founder relationship, and navigated the challenges of acquiring their first customers with no prior sales experience.

Key Topics

  • How Purvi and Gautam's long-standing friendship evolved into a co-founder relationship
  • The critical elements of co-founder trust and emotional intelligence in startups
  • Strategies for dividing responsibilities while collaborating on core business functions
  • Building a sales pipeline from scratch with no prior sales experience
  • The journey to acquiring and launching with their first pilot customer

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Full Transcript

Introduction to Aura

Gus: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Founder Facing. It's a little bit different this time because we have an extra face on screen. We're doing a dual co-founder interview episode, and I'm so lucky to be joined by Gautam Madan and Purvi Goel from Aura. How are you doing, guys?

Gautam: Doing excellent. Thanks for having us.

Purvi: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Super excited to start.

Gus: Gautam, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you guys are building over there?

Gautam: Yeah, you know, Tesla's doing autopilot for cars. We are trying to do the same for HR one. That's in a nutshell. Historically, the HR and finance, they've been like separate functions always, but there's a lot of overlap quite recently with the layoffs happening or too much investment happening to people. We felt like, I think after we talked about 250, 300 CFOs, CHROs across different industries and realized like there is a disconnect in terms of what finance expects from HR, and both in terms of the data that they need to make decisions and also forecasting how the outlook might look like from a cost perspective, from a people cost perspective.

"Tesla's doing autopilot for cars. We are trying to do the same for HR."

– Gautam Madan, Co-founder of Aura

Roles & Responsibilities

Gus: Let's start talking about the co-founder relationship and what your different roles are within the business. Obviously, founders, you do everything. There's no set role. You're wearing a lot of hats. But Purvi, tell me how you guys have divvied up the different work and the different things that you have to do within a startup on the day to day.

Purvi: Yeah, and I think you absolutely prefaced it in the right manner that, you know, as a founder, you're pretty much doing a lot of functions, things that you've never done before in your life. So you're pretty much learning on the go. For Gautam and me, I think we were fortunate enough. At least I feel that, you know, we're fortunate enough to have a team which kind of encompasses everything that you might need in running a successful startup.

Purvi: I come from start. I started off as an engineer and then moved into a product role. So for me, the focus area, at least within Aura, has been product, business facing conversations, somewhat of operations, which is part of life. So that's kind of how we've done it at Aura. And then, you know, Gautam, apart from helping out on the product building and on the technology side, he's, you know, day to day also helping Aura as an organization and helping me in really figuring out our go to market strategy.

Purvi: I think jointly we have the basic things that we both are always doing, which is really talking to the customer, really understanding their pain points. What are they asking for? What does the industry need? Where is the industry going? And I feel fortunate that, you know, both of us can combine our minds together on that to really build out that product. And so when it comes to the actual, maybe the engineering side or the building side, that's where Gautam and his team are leading that function. While I can maybe focus on the marketing aspects or maybe the other operational aspects.

Gus: And Gautam, do you think that that kind of split happened naturally over time or did you kind of go into creating this business with that in mind? Obviously, keeping in mind all the things that you guys work on jointly.

Gautam: Yeah, I think like there's so many things that you have in mind when you start and they absolutely don't work out the way you think. And I think in this case, like even splitting of duties happen exactly the same way. I think when we went into it, it was more about, OK, I come from an engineering background, you come from a product and finance background. Let's start with that. And then pretty soon, within like a week or two, you realize you've got to figure out operations, you've got to figure out go to market, you've got to figure out sales, talking to customers, hiring the team. So all in all, you know, those niches that you want to be in, that's just like 10% of your work. The rest, 90% seems to be common.

Co-Founder Relationship

Gus: I think that really highlights the importance of choosing or, you know, determining who you're going to be building your company with. So what's the story of how you guys met, Purvi? Tell me about how you guys connected with each other, how you guys determined that you were going to start this business and go on this journey together.

Purvi: Yeah, sure. For us, it's been a very organic way that we came together. And I've known Gautam for many years now. My husband and Gautam went to high school together. So I've known Gautam for maybe a decade now and, you know, followed along his journey. At some point, both of us were in payments companies and two different payments. He was at PayPal and I was at Clover. So we exchanged a lot of ideas, notes around that time.

Purvi: Specifically in regards to Aura, you know, while I was at Carta, there was this notion of, you know, a mismanagement between HR and finance. That was pretty much my role. That's what I gained insight into at Carta. And as I was, you know, brainstorming on what's happening, what could be a better way out for these organizations to operate, I had the privilege to actually discuss that with Gautam.

Purvi: And since he's always been such a close friend, we started discussing and, you know, one thing led to the other. And as we knew it, we were like, OK, I think we both are passionate about making a change. We both wanted to build a startup. And so the synergy is all lined up. Both of us quit our jobs, got together, and that was the start of Aura.

"With co-founders, the most important factor is trust. The rest just follows."

– Gautam Madan, Co-founder of Aura

Gus: What do you think the most important aspect is when you are looking to start a business and you need a co-founder?

Gautam: For me personally, is the trust. Where do you feel is you getting the most intuitive trust with? And while that's like difficult to gauge, I think the best way that I've found is like just start working with both of them and see where it goes. Because as you start working at least a month, two months, three months, you'll know each other's commitment level. You'll know each other's trust level, kind of things that they do, how they do it, and then you'll encounter problems which you'll have to solve. And so hopefully like that gives you a good idea of how much you can trust the other person. And that's the biggest factor. The rest just follows.

Purvi: I think trust is most important. Adding to trust, maybe the other thing would be just EQ, your emotional quotient. It's a long journey, lots of ups, lots of downs. And obviously life goes on, right? You have your own personal life that goes on. And so it's really important to really gauge out how you would basically work in different scenarios and settings. Is the temperament right? Is the emotions right? Is the commitment right? Is the trust in the right manner? After that is just leap of faith.

Landing the First Customer

Gus: How did you guys get your very first pilot customer? Tell me, walk me through that process.

Gautam: Oh, it was a tough journey for us. And the reason it was tough is because we, both of us, Purvi and I, we don't come from a traditional HR background. We're like product people. I mean, we're from engineering, achieving from product and finance. And so, for us, it was really about building the network, first of all, of our potential customers, talking to them day in, day out.

Gautam: And that was all done through, first, do we have friends who are in different companies that can forward our message to an HR? Just get in front of them. And that was just contacting our friends one after the other, pinging them, asking favors. That was what we did. Really rudimentary, get it out there.

Gautam: Once we refined on that message and we were confident, okay, this is what is hitting, then we started the cold reach out. And this is really, you can do LinkedIn sales now, other things. And, you know, that was a process, essentially, start with a cold reach out now, talk to the customers.

Gautam: After about, like, I would say four to five conversations initially, that was our sales cycle. We would get to a point where we would have a pilot conversations. It took that amount of time because we had to convince them. They had to trust us. We had to be credible. We are an early startup, and we don't have a big HR network. And in HR, a lot of things work off of credibility. Has anyone else used your product? So I can also use it. I can be confident. So you have to navigate a lot of that waters. I think it took a good five to six months, even to just get there after so many conversations. It was tough, but we got there.

Purvi: One of the first things for the first pilot customer was also a nudge from someone that we'd spoken to. And I think it came to us later on in one of the conversations we were having from them that we asked them, like, hey, how, you know, what prompted you? And they were like, oh, we got a nudge from someone that we had spoken to maybe a couple of months back.

Purvi: And, you know, they were not specifically like an HR operator, but they were in another role. And so to Gautam's point, right, a lot of, you know, the conversations happen maybe at places where you don't know that they are happening. And, you know, it seemed like this person had talked about Aura, and they had only talked to both of us. So they talked about us as founders and how they believed in what we were building. And while this customer was in the process of, you know, really thinking whether to, you know, onboard Aura or something else, I think that just messaged from them, prompted them, tipped them in the other direction.

Sales & Marketing Approach

Gus: In terms of marketing, what has been your approach to marketing so far? Has it really been all that cold outreach?

Gautam: I think we started off with just purely sales and not much of marketing. And that was purposely also we hired a person who was really good at doing the sales, taking the lead, sending out outbounds, understanding the customer, the ICP. And that was our whole focus for at least like a good chunk of last year.

Gautam: But, you know, after we have sorted that out, now we have a good process around it. Now we feel we are in a position. We have the pilots running. We want to go public with our product. Marketing is essential. So we are entering that phase where we are trying to ramp up our marketing efforts. And that involves like LinkedIn outreach, posting on LinkedIn about us, about the product, about the value that we are creating, getting in touch with our existing people that we have talked to via email. So, you know, different channels and trying to help them. At least sharing with them what we've learned so far and the value that we have.

"It's one thing to build a product, which I still think is not the hardest thing. Listening to customers is maybe the first and most important thing. But then after that, you've got to do sales. And without sales, nothing exists."

– Purvi Goel, Co-founder of Aura

Purvi: A few other things last year that we sort of set in place was one, getting a network of advisors. So we have a couple of advisors that help us not just on the product, but obviously they become like our champions in the world outside. And so when they are part of, you know, speaking engagements or if they are part of any communities, I think they can speak to essentially how Aura is, you know, bringing a change in the industry and where they see us going and things like that.

Purvi: The other thing, as Gautam mentioned, is channels, right? LinkedIn and a few of the social media platforms is one channel that we started to sort of scratch upon. But the other has been also organic partnerships. So we focused a lot of time to really figure out partnerships that work for us. And one such partnership is like a company that is a CFO marketplace. And so just working with them. There's a few others as well that we are working towards. And those are partnerships, not just from a business perspective, but they will bring us marketing in organically.

Conclusion

Gus: This was an amazing chat, guys. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys coming on and talking to me about your journey. Purvi, where can people find you and Aura? Where can they learn more? How can they reach out to you if they want to connect?

Purvi: First of all, thank you so much for having us and really appreciate the time today. It was a wonderful conversation. For me, I'm always, you know, easy to reach out over LinkedIn. So you can always connect with me over LinkedIn. If not, my email is the best place to reach me.

Gautam: Thank you so much for having us here. Really enjoyed our conversations. If anyone wants to reach out to me, LinkedIn, I'm active there. If you reach out to me, I'll definitely respond there eventually, soon rather than late. But our website where you can check out what we do is get-aura.com. There's one or two other Auras out there. This is us specifically, get-aura.com. But yeah, reach out there. If you are interested, you can just fill out a form and we'll get in touch with you.

Gus: Amazing. Well, thank you guys so much. Everybody, thank you all for listening. Get subscribed, all that stuff. If you have any suggestions for founders that you would like me to talk to next time or questions that you are like yelling at your phone, like why isn't he asking this question, leave those in the Spotify comments and maybe we'll try to integrate those into the conversation next time.

Resources Mentioned

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