OnBase: Smashing Sales and Marketing Misalignments Ep 43 | The Story Behind TrustRadius: In Conversation with Vinay Bhagat
In this episode, Founder and CEO of top rated review site TrustRadius- Vinay Bhagat discusses his entrepreneurial journey while also breaking down the future of the SaaS marketplace.
About Vinay and TrustRadius
Vinay is a serial entrepreneur who conceived TrustRadius after experiencing challenges when buying enterprise solutions at his last company. Prior to founding TrustRadius and his earlier company – Convio, Vinay served as a Director at Trilogy Software and a Consultant at Bain & Company in London, Hong Kong and Kiev. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar, an MS Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University, and a MA Engineering Information Sciences from Cambridge University with First Class Honors. When he’s not working, Vinay loves spending time with his kids, swimming and the occasional squash game.
Top ten takeaways from the episode:
- “The epiphany for TrustRadius came when we were procuring technology to run our own business. In one case, we rolled out a tool that wasn’t the right fit for our team. Without doing sufficient diligence to see how the product would work in our case led to a great degree of buyer’s remorse!”
- “3 Trillion Dollars are spent on enterprise technology purchase every year. Businesses need trusted buyer reviews to make the right technology choice.”
- “One of the rules we always follow – Put the Buyer First.”
- “The SaaS marketplace is proliferating. Software will become more pervasive. And with time, the idea of owning a software will eventually be replaced by subscription-only models.”
- “The democratization of IT purchasing boosts the demand for trusted buyer review sites like ours.”
- “When it comes to customer reviews, people come to read them because they are looking for the other side of the coin – they want to understand what the cons are for a particular tech product.”
- “No longer are people choosing technologies purely on the basis of a brand name anymore.”
- “We’ve seen a tremendous growth across the board in martech. There are certain categories like Customer Data Platforms that are gaining popularity.”
- “Having a more systematic way to gather customer feedback will be more and more critical.”
- “The combination of a very focused advertising campaign teamed with a strong conversion page can be a compelling strategy for any Account-based Marketing strategy.”
About the podcast
Sunny Side Up is a series of 15-minute podcasts. Leaders and innovators share what they’ve learned in the B2B tech sector on topics related to marketing, product management, sales, and leadership.