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Searching for success: A start-up journey
Rahul Joshi’s career journey is a winding path. He’s dived into the different depths of engineering and trekked through the ups and downs of the start-up world. In 2015, he decided to co-found his own start-up, BigReco, where he developed an app that allowed customers to recommend products, places, and businesses to each other. While his start-up didn’t take off as much as he’d hoped, Rahul gained valuable experience from the venture. This very experience in creating and growing BigReco is one of the factors for his current success as a Software Development Manager, managing Amazon’s Fire TV’s LLM powered search engine.
Here’s what he has to say about this time in his storied career.
Q: So, what were you doing before you co-founded BigReco?
Joshi: I was actually working at a separate start-up for two years. We were doing source code analytics, analyzing other people’s software code and providing recommendations on how to improve it.
Q: Is that where you got the inspiration to create an app for peer-to-peer recommendations?
Joshi: Sort of. During my previous job, I had the opportunity to interact with various customers and businesses. And I’ve always had this drive to build things that can help people. I suppose being in a start-up environment developed by entrepreneurial instincts.
Q: And so you wanted to make your own impact with your own business idea.
Joshi: Exactly. My drive for building and developing software meshed with my newly discovered passion for working with my own product in my own company. Coming up with an idea is an exhilarating feeling. But you do have to ground it in reason. Your ideas need purpose.
Q: What was the purpose of BigReco then?
Joshi: BigReco was centered around product recommendations. We had two branches. The first was a business-to-business (B2B) model for ecommerce websites belonging to tier 2 and 3 companies. They didn’t have the resources to build their own machine learning softwares or host their own recommendation engines. It was a need we could fill. An opportunity space.
The second was the business-to-customer (B2C) model. An app based around social recommendation of businesses, places, or products. Whatever customers searched for, found interesting, and wanted to recommend to other customers.
Q: It seems like an area that someone would already have tried to put their flag in.
Joshi: It was. And still is. The type of product we were working on has many challenges. There were attempts by others before us to solve the problem. Even now, it remains unsolved. What’s interesting is that several ecommerce sites have tried to get into this space, but failed due to poor recommendation systems.
Q: What exactly are these challenges?
Joshi: Peer-to-peer recommendation apps require enormous scale to succeed. Lots of people, and lots of time. We were developing this app in India. And at that time and place, the start-up ecosystem was not as developed so as to support new consumer apps. Starting small and sustaining the required duration to scale up would require enormous investment and resources.
Q: How long would you say it would take?
Joshi: At least 5 years. And you would have to maintain and retain your customer base at the same time.
Q: Now, your previous experience was recommending improvements. Recommendation systems are a whole different ball game, are they not?
Joshi: Yes. Search and recommendation algorithms are specific to each domain. Current machine learning systems were not developed back then. Older algorithms were more challenging to work with. On top of that, we had to surpass any competition that would crop up.
Q: What was the hardest part of working with these systems?
Joshi: It was a three-part challenge. First, learning about search systems itself. The concepts were new and heavy for us. Learning about the technology we were working with alongside interacting with customers was one part of the challenge. And then there is the cloud, which was becoming big at that time. So, we wanted to build a solution that was based on the cloud. But since it was an evolving space, the uncertainty caused some stress. The final challenge was the amount of hard math and science involved. I remember reading academic papers and learning new algorithms.
Q: As someone who hasn’t been involved in the science of academia, ever, it sounds a little scary.
Joshi: It was definitely hard and stressful. But the journey was very rewarding. Even now, that hard work is paying off.
Q: You mentioned needing to surpass competition. And that other people were trying to do what you were trying to do. How did you gain customers in the midst of all that?
Joshi: On the B2B side, our initial customers came from references. Connections and networking was key. Our ideas had to reach the right people at the right time while also demonstrating the value of our product.
Q: Sounds like typical business development.
Joshi: You are correct in that assessment. For the B2C side, it was solely marketing. We used social media and advertising.
Q: Did marketing sustain your customer base?
Joshi: No. Customers who came in needed to create a cycle that draws in more customers until a certain threshold is reached. For example, on a social media app, consumer action generates content like videos and images. People become interested in the content, and decide to generate content themselves.
So first, customers come to consumer content, and then end up generating content. This is the cycle. And it needs to become self-sustaining for a company to find success. Like I mentioned before, it’s hard for start-ups with this kind of product to reach the scale that indicates success.
Q: We’ve talked quite a bit about challenges. Pivoting in another direction, what are the biggest lessons you learned during this journey?
Joshi: I would say it’s learning about the local business ecosystem. Understanding who and what is in it. Who are the local investors? What does your customer base look like? If I had to give some advice, it would be to not base this understanding on another locale or niche’s ecosystem. Because each one has different paths to success.
Another is finding the right product market. This goes hand-in-hand with understanding your customer base. The question is whether the customer and product mesh together.
And then, as I mentioned earlier, scaling up to the point of self-sustainability. You need to be upfront with yourself about needing to break even. It’s a tough path to walk, and you need to be ready for it.
Q: How did that path end for you and BigReco?
Joshi: One thing you need to understand is that I had many responsibilities. To my family and to myself. When I started this journey with my co-founder, I set aside a specific amount of my savings to devote to BigReco. Our primary goal was always to get to a point where the company was self-sustaining or fueled by investments. I always had a hard limit for myself from the beginning, because the reality is always demanding.
So, although we had a product, and customers who used it, there was a point where tough financial decisions needed to be made.
Q: Yes. You mentioned earlier how hard developing a solution to peer-to-peer recommendations was.
Joshi: Exactly. For us, we hit the resource limit. And tapping into personal finances was not an option. This is the question anyone on this path needs to ask themselves: How far are you willing to go? What is the boundary that makes you step back?
Q: How does one determine that?
Joshi: One element is the resources you have access to. The other is the probability of future success. Weigh these together, and you will find your answer. It’s different for everyone. It’s also different for every product and market space.
Stepping back doesn’t always mean you’ve failed. Because there are so many factors to success. You just need to choose another path and continue your journey forward. That path was different for me and my co-founder. Because we wanted to do different things.
Q: That is quite profound. Now, you have already given some advice to anyone on a start-up journey. Is there any other advice you want to give them?
Joshi: Yes. And this is something I have experienced at different times in my career. It is a company’s structure.
Q: Like a company’s hierarchy?
Joshi: Not just that. Typically, a larger company has a structure for planning, assigning, evaluating, and so on. But this structure doesn’t exist in a start-up, for obvious reasons. It’s like entering the open ocean without a boat. Because a founder needs to build and create a sustainable structure on their own. A founder is their own manager. It’s something I’ve come to realize as I am a manager myself now.
Q: There is something to be said about hindsight.
Joshi: Indeed, I hope reading about my experiences helps someone down the road.
And with that, the conversation came to a close. Since stepping away from BigReco, Rahul Joshi went on to join another start-up, and lend his expertise to another person’s journey. Soon after, he joined Amazon, steadily moving up the ranks. It’s obvious to see how he’s taken failure and used it to blast him towards success at the largest online retailer in the world. For Rahul Joshi, experience certainly talks.
