Ep.97: If You Can’t Be a Unicorn, Be a Workhorse—with Aleem Mawani of Streak

The Boost VC Podcast

Boost VC S5EP4 Streak CRM

If You Can’t Be a Unicorn, Be a Workhorse—with Aleem Mawani

Not every startup can be the proverbial venture unicorn. But just because a company isn’t valued at $1B or more doesn’t mean it’s dead. So, how do you build a profitable, growing tech workhorse? And how might venture evolve a new model that supports these businesses?

Aleem Mawani is the Cofounder of Streak, a CRM for Gmail that helps small teams manage any workflow from their inbox, including sales, project management, fundraising, customer support, hiring and business development. Prior to Streak, Aleem served as a Program Manager at Microsoft and Product Manager at Google, and he earned his MBA at Harvard Business School.

Today, Aleem joins us to explain what inspired his team to build Streak, sharing their customer-centric process for adding new features and making pricing decisions. He discusses the concerns founders have around building on a centralized service like Gmail and how his team mitigated their risk simply by talking to the team at Google. Listen in for Aleem’s insight on building a profitable tech workhorse (as opposed to a unicorn) and learn how venture might innovate to accommodate growing companies like Streak.

Topics Covered

How Aleem came to build the Streak CRM for Gmail

• Needed CRM for sales in work with previous startup
• Realized Salesforce was overkill for small teams

The Streak team’s current process for adding features

• Imbed selves with customers, listen to stories
• Offer for free rather than upsell for retention

How Aleem’s team makes decisions around pricing

• Find ‘point at which people start caring’
• Negotiate with clients with 20+ users

How Aleem thinks about when to start charging customers

• Enterprise software can charge from Day One
• Consider risk won’t be able to charge later

How Aleem benefitted from work experience at Google

• Background in free products, understand scale
• Familiar with Gmail team and Google’s priorities

The top concerns for building on a centralized service

• Platform risk (e.g.: What if Gmail builds this?)
• Change product in way not aligned with yours

The benefits of being a profitable workhorse like Streak

• Offer engineers stability but with startup feel
• Not necessary to stop and raise money

Aleem’s insight on the need for innovation in venture

• Model only appropriate for unicorns that scale fast
• No mechanism for long-term investor relationship

The challenge around brainstorming during a pandemic

• Remote works well for executing projects ‘in flight’
• Much harder to launch new initiatives on Zoom

Aleem’s personal definition of success and fulfillment

• Find something you enjoy, become masterful at it
• Pursue purpose with time for human connection

Connect with Aleem

Streak https://www.streak.com/

Streak on Twitter https://twitter.com/streak

Streak on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/streakgmail/

Streak on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/streak-com/

Aleem on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleemmawani/

Aleem on Twitter https://twitter.com/aloo

Resources

Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/

Zynga https://www.zynga.com/

DocSend https://www.docsend.com/

Tempo https://www.yourtempo.co/

Books by Warren Buffett https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett/e/B001IGFJO2

Connect with Boost VC

Boost VC Website https://www.boost.vc/

Boost VC on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/boostvc/

Boost VC on Twitter https://twitter.com/BoostVC

Boost VC on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/boost_vc/