How to Win podcast with Peep Laja

Diversifying your product offering with Kovai.co's Saravana Kumar

Oct 24, 2022

26:17

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Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

How to Build a Product in Today's Market?

01:48

Bistock Server, Serverless 360 Starter - What's Your Strategy?

03:12

Is There a Single Team Serving All?

01:47

Introduction

3min

The Road to First Million in Revenue

3min

What Makes an Effective Thought Leader?

3min

Bistock Server, Serverless 360 Starter - What's Your Strategy?

3min

Is There a Single Team Serving All?

2min

The Benefits of T-Shaped People in Your Marketing Team

2min

Copycats Will Come, Build Nearly Identical Product

3min

Marketing to Mind States - Five Ways to Make Your Customers Think of You

2min

How to Build a Product in Today's Market?

2min

10.

5 Content Marketing Strategies for Niche Industries

3min

Summary:

This week on How To Win: Saravana Kumar, CEO of Kovai.co, a software company offering multiple enterprise and B2B SaaS products including, a customer success product, a self-service knowledge base product, and enterprise software for Microsoft BizTalk and Azure Serverless platforms. Founded in, 2011, Kovai.co has over 240 employees across the UK and India. This year Kovai.co's annual revenue has topped $10 million. In this episode, we discuss the benefits of true thought leadership, diversifying your product offering, and winning in your niche. I give my thoughts on the benefits of hiring T-shaped people, the concept of mental availability, and finding riches in the niches.

Key Points:

Saravana talks about the beginnings of Kovai.co (01:01)
How did Saravana use his blog to acquire his first customers? (03:11)
Saravana reflects on becoming a Microsoft MVP (04:50)
I weigh in on true thought leadership with a quote from Orbit Media Studios' Andy Crestodina (06:07)
How did Saravana scale customer acquisition beyond the first million? (07:27)
Why did Kovai.co become a multi-product company? (09:15)
Saravana discusses the need to launch products for different ICPs (13:08)
I give my thoughts on the concept of T-shaped people with a quote from author Mike Clayton (14:02)
Saravana breaks down his strategy to stay ahead of the copycats (16:00)
I stress the importance of understanding customers' mental availability with a quote from Will Leach, author of Marketing to Mindstates (18:51)
What were some of the strategic decisions that paid off for Kovai.co? (21:15)
I lay out Animalz VP Ryan Law's five content marketing strategies for niche industries (22:54)
Saravana gives three pieces of advice to fellow SaaS founders (22:36)
Wrap-up (25:18)