🚀How did Zoho get 100mn Users?
In Today's Siam Sixers
🚀 Zoho’s Journey to 100mn Users
📺 A video on SpaceX’s Approach to Exponential Growth
🎧 A Podcast on Using AI and Data for Digital Transformation
💡 Essential reading material for product teams and leaders
🤖 AI Corner
😂 Look on the bright side!
1️⃣Zoho’s Journey to 100mn Users
Zoho Corporation has become the first bootstrapped SaaS company to get 100 million users. The company crossed the monumental milestone today and the news comes on the heels of the company reaching 1 billion in annual revenue last year.
Here are five things about Zoho nobody will tell you, that makes them the OG of Indian SaaS players.
💼Zoho runs on Zoho
This means they exclusively use Zoho software to run their entire business. Let’s put this in perspective. Zoho has about 12,000+ employees spread across countries, serving 80+ million users across more than 150 countries. Everything they do lives on the cloud and runs on Zoho applications and every employee uses the Zoho suite of office apps for all internal processes.
❌Zoho doesn’t believe in KPIs
For Zoho, success is measured in more than just revenue, trend lines, and KPIs. They value immeasurable elements of a business such as the worth of a team that's worked together for decades, the value of trust between colleagues, and the loyalty or dedication to a shared vision. For example, the same team that built Zoho Writer, their very first cloud product is still at it!
💰Zoho puts more money into R&D than Marketing
Zoho’s principles on internal spends are starkly different from companies that operate in the same space or with similar size. For instance, Salesforce spends nearly 50% of all revenue for marketing its services and finding new clients. Whereas Zoho’s R&D spendings are three times more than its marketing spends.
🚫Zoho doesn’t believe in shortcuts
In the age of mass production, Zoho sees software as the ultimate form of craftsmanship. From training their employees to designing products, Zoho never optimizes processes for “next quarter’s profits”. Their patience has become one of their biggest reasons for SaaS greatness.
🤝Zoho is committed to staying Private
Since Zoho is a private company, they prioritize on sticking to growth strategies that value long-term success. Their CEO, Sridhar Vembu has often stated that they have been profitable from Day 1 and has reaffirmed his commitment to not take investor money or make the company public, just for the sake of chasing valuation.
2️⃣SpaceX’s Approach to Exponential Growth
Have you ever wondered how Elon Musk innovates with technology to do stuff that’s never been done before? You’ll find the answer in this video.
In this video, Kiko Dontchev, the VP of Launch at SpaceX, talks about Musk’s first principles approach to technology. He shows how Musk solves any challenge to gaining exponential growth with a three-step problem-solving algorithm - which you and I can apply to build products that solve our user’s problems.
As a cool bonus, you also get an insider’s POV of SpaceX's history, evolution, challenges with launch capabilities and the emphasis on the game-changing nature of reusability in space exploration.
3️⃣Podcast: Using AI and Data for Digital Transformation
How do you understand customer needs before they are expressed? How do you build digital solutions for business transformation?
These are some of the questions answered by Gaston Besanson, the Global Head of Data Science at PepsiCo in this podcast. Gaston explores the topic of digital transformation and its key barriers, connection between analytics and business objectives, significance of digital talent and its connection to successful transformation, and more.
4️⃣Essential Reading for Product Teams and Leaders
Here are the latest blogs from Siam Computing that I feel will be useful for product teams and product leaders.
📲Your Startup Needs a User Experience Platform, Not an App
🏗️5 Ways in Which Distributed Task Queue Systems Improve Task Efficiency
🚧A Tried and Tested Process for Navigating Project Delivery Obstacles
🌐Improving UX in Real-Time Communication Protocols with WebSockets & SSE
🔒JAMstack : The Go-to Architecture For Faster, Secure, and Scalable Websites
5️⃣AI Corner: News from Nvidia, X, Baidu, Zomato…
Here are the top stories from the world of AI
🙅♂️PM Modi, Nvidia CEO discuss India's potential in AI sector
🔐X’s privacy policy confirms it will use public data to train AI models
👩💼Baidu CEO says more than 70 large AI language models released in China
🍽️Zomato to use AI to help users choose their next meal
🆚Visualized: AI vs Humans - Who performs what better?
6️⃣Look on the bright side!
I hope you enjoyed this week's curated stories and resources. Check your inbox again next week, or read previous editions of Siam Sixers for more insights. To get instant updates, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers!
Khuze Siam
Founder: Siam Computing & ProdWrks