Matt Tait [00:00:02]:
I'm Matt Tait, Founder of Decimal and fellow entrepreneur. Yes, I'm one of the crazy ones. I've chosen time and time again to hustle my way through that first million. Now I'm scaling to the next 50, so I know firsthand what the messy middle is really like. And I know that entrepreneurs and leaders like us need a destination for empowerment, community, and encouragement. This is our place. This is After the First Million. All right, welcome to today's episode of After the First Million.
Matt Tait [00:00:34]:
I am excited to introduce everybody and to have a conversation with Abhik from Ashby. And I have to admit, straight away, Decimal is a long time Ashby user. For our own recruiting and really tracking our whole hiring process and how they've built the software compared to other softwares that I've used has just been a huge game changer for us. But a big story is really cool. And in fact, I was just laughing with him right before this, that our prep, right before the call, I should have totally recorded because we really dove into some really cool stuff about running a business and thinking through things in entrepreneurship. And so before we get started, Abhik, welcome to After the First Million. I really appreciate you joining.
Abhik Pramanik [00:01:22]:
Thank you for having me, Matt.
Matt Tait [00:01:24]:
So one of the things that I always think about is, and this is not my first company, those of us that start businesses have to be a little crazy. When did you realize you were one of the crazy ones?
Abhik Pramanik [00:01:35]:
I would say pretty early out of college. I think college was kind of my place to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. I always loved art and CS before college, college was kind of my way to figure out how do I meld the two. And then I went into visual effects straight out of college. That was my lifelong dream of I wanted to work in movies and film, and I got my shots and I was working at Industrial Light and Magic at the time. What was really interesting was about a year and eight months in, if I remember correctly. I really wanted to build an app because I was playing, like, flag football, and I wanted to build an app to, like, find other people to play flag football with. And this was like a crazy idea.
Abhik Pramanik [00:02:19]:
Like, I had my dream job, and then all of a sudden I felt like I had to leave to build this idea. And I remember I was, like, talking to my parents, and they're like, this is what you've been, like, dreaming of your entire life is to work in film. And you get it and you just want to quit to go do your own thing. And I think at that point I realized Like, I. I really wanted to build something big and massive and touch millions of people and do that my way versus joining something like Pixar or ilm.
Matt Tait [00:02:48]:
It's funny, I always joke that I'm a terrible employee, and I wonder if part of that, too is just I like having the freedom to dive in and to pull on the thread of curiosity. And it sounds like that's part of your journey too. Maybe not the terrible employee part.
Abhik Pramanik [00:03:08]:
I'm a terrible employee. If Tracy and Ralph from PlanGrid are listening to this. I knew them very well at PlanGrid, and I think I definitely got on their nerves quite a bit, even when I joined other companies. I don't know about you, but I was very passionate about their mission and I almost put it on myself. I was like, with PlanGrid, I was like, we're going to change the way construction uses software. And I just lived and breathed it every day. I remember I worked as hard at PlanGrid as I work at Ashby today, but I think the problem there is you're a terrible employee because you take on their worries and their concerns when the reality is you don't have the agency to act against those, but then you go and act against those, and then they're like, what are you doing? This is not your domain. Like, stop.
Matt Tait [00:03:58]:
I think that totally makes sense. I mean, and that's the way I was like, you. You. You take on the. The passion and, like, you dive into, like, this is the mission of this company. We can do this, and this is how we should do it. And the minute you start thinking this is how we should do it, and it diverges from leadership's thoughts on this is how we should do it, but you do it anyway, kind of.
Matt Tait [00:04:19]:
That's when that friction happens, and it's the beginning of the end for people like you and I.
Abhik Pramanik [00:04:26]:
Oh yes. Funny story. I remember I was so passionate about, like, One Direction we want to take the company. I wrote a thesis of, like, here's where we need to take PlanGrid. I regret writing that. I remember Kevin, who was now at Ashby. He was like, Abhik, you're going to be in the doghouse if you send this out. And I was like, I don't care. I really want us to, like, be huge.
Abhik Pramanik [00:04:46]:
And it was dumb. That's just like your. The mentality of not realizing, hey, like, this is not your baby, it's someone else's. Like, they are calling the shots.
Matt Tait [00:04:54]:
Well, it's funny. Then you have kids and somebody tells you how you should raise that Kid and you start to say, ah, this is where I went wrong in sending those that thesis or for in my case, in doing other things. Where you're like, okay, you start to have empathy for the people that you maybe weren't great at working for.
Abhik Pramanik [00:05:13]:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, now that you know, Benji and I are at Ashby and like, we're like living and breathing this for like six years, you kind of look back and you're like, I had a limited purview. Like, it may have been enough to like have some intelligent ideas, but like in PlanGrid's case, Tracy and Ralph like lived and breathed that for like several years before I was there. Like, they knew the ins and outs of our customers more than you know, I did. And they had a head start. Like, there was almost no way I could catch up to them because they were on the front lines. And so now that we start, Ashby, like, you kind of feel that because like, you kind of have to gently tell people sometimes, like, hey, I know you feel this way strongly, but there's like a series of things we have learned over time to get to this point. And we're not always right, but it is deliberate and methodical.
Matt Tait [00:06:01]:
We've thought deeply about this problem and come to this conclusion. Just because you're thinking deeply isn't a bad thing, but don't discount the fact that we have to. How did recruiting and Ashby become a passion project that is now an amazing company?
Abhik Pramanik [00:06:21]:
So Benji and I worked at PlanGrid together. This is my second company. It's Benji's first company. I was not looking to start another company. So after my first company, I shut it down. I realized I had just very naive in a lot of ways. I really wanted to work at growth companies to, to really understand once you find product, market fit, what does that next phase look like and learn a lot about the problems and like how to solve those problems and be able to experiment at that scale. You just can't do that when you're like at an early stage startup.
Abhik Pramanik [00:06:54]:
But at some point, like you said, we're crazy. And so Benji came knocking. He was ready to start a company and he had really went through the high growth phase at PlanGrid and used all the recruiting tools. He cared deeply about hiring and he was just like, the tools are not great. I wanted to do basic things, basic reports, and I couldn't do it. I had to do it in spreadsheets. There's something fundamentally broken about this. And so then when we looked at the market, we were like, There's a lot of customer pain, there's a big market and people are not satisfied with their solutions.
Abhik Pramanik [00:07:32]:
And then on top of that they're compensating for all these ancillary tools like scheduling, sourcing. This is a great place and for Benji and I, we really believe that we are great executors. And so this is like an execution play. We have to build 10x better software, but we don't have to prove a market exists when we're at playing grid. You had to basically prove that we could replace paper with but software here, software already existed. We just had to build it to mix better. So all of that put together, plus Benji and I having a really good working relationship. Like we, we challenged each other.
Abhik Pramanik [00:08:06]:
It wasn't just we were friends, which we were outside of work, but we challenged each other at work. Putting it all together, it was seemed like a no brainer. It just felt obvious at that point. And the rest, you know, the rest is history.
Matt Tait [00:08:17]:
I think that's interesting. Like you before decimal, I had a failed startup. It was like restaurant marketing tech. It was a great idea, really bad business. It was one of those things that everybody conceptually is like, oh, this is cool. Like I really like this. And then you get into it and you're like, can't really sell a lot of this. Raised a bunch of money, ended up shutting it down.
Matt Tait [00:08:40]:
And my wife looked at me and she goes, hey, for two years, that's all I care about, two years. Will you go get benefits? That's all I care about. Two years. And she's a saint. She's a partner at a big law firm and she used to work for the state and got way cooler jobs than I ever have, but she was like, I would just like you to be steady for two years. I lasted 13 months.
Abhik Pramanik [00:09:02]:
13 months?
Matt Tait [00:09:03]:
I did. And I'll never forget it because we started decimal in January of 2020. I went to a large accounting firm and they brought me in to be an entrepreneur in residence. They just said, start a bunch of things, help us make a bunch of money. It was fun, like I had a blast. And that's ultimately how I went from having no background in accounting to running a very large bookkeeping firm. But we went to this Christmas party for the whole firm and she looked at my co founder who I brought to help me and we walked out of that Christmas party and she goes, you guys need to get the hell out of here. Like whatever you're doing, like build towards mid summer getting out. Like you guys have to go.
Matt Tait [00:09:39]:
Like, this is not a good place for you. It'll never let you grow this where you want to grow it. And you're launching in effectively two weeks. Build your exit strategy. Pandemic hit. So that changed the whole thought process around everything. But it was kind of same as you. Like, I wasn't ready to start anything and then all of a sudden I'm crazy.
Matt Tait [00:10:00]:
And this good opportunity came and I thought it was a nice, safe place to do it. And then I was like, no, it's better out, and it's been way better outside of it. But I think it's fascinating how many of us take a failure and that failure makes us just that much better to then succeed in the next round.
Abhik Pramanik [00:10:22]:
There's so much I learned in the process of starting my first company. But, like, I think the other part of it was just like, it was so depressing shutting it down with Ashvi. We talked to a hundred recruiters. Like, I say this and it sounds ridiculous, but like, I had a signing bonus, I had to pay back. Like, Benji was like, you're quitting? And I was like, do I have a signing bonus? Like, I have to pay that back if I leave? And he was like, no. And I was like, all right, well, then I have to be damn sure that this is the right idea. So we talked to a hundred recruiters and like, that was what it took for me to get very convinced because, like, if you talk to two or three, it's like, does that make sense? Like, I want to talk to, you know, mid market companies, enterprise companies, and that's what it took for you at decimal. Like, what did it take to, to like, really make that crazy move?
Matt Tait [00:11:14]:
I'd run three companies before that, and I had major pain with my bookkeeping and bill pay and like just getting it done, going through vendors, hiring people, like, it was a really painful process. And so I then started talking like you. Like, we talked about a hundred small businesses and just people we knew or people people knew. And we just networked our way around just asking questions. And we easily talked to 3X. Like, we validated the problem about 30 in. Like you, I'm like, I need to go further. Like, if I'm going to make this move, if I'm going to do this, I need to be 1000% sure.
Matt Tait [00:11:54]:
And then we're in an accounting firm at the time, watching how they're doing it, and they're supposed to be the best, and we're just watching them do it and we're like, this is terrible. Like, you're the best. Like, oh, my gosh, we can easily do 10x. And so it's like that 10x that you talked about. And so we validated the problem on both sides of the marketplace, the buyer and the purveyor of services. And we said, you know what, we can do this better, we can make more money and we can create better experiences. And ultimately, that's how we've built what we've done. And it's been fun.
Abhik Pramanik [00:12:28]:
People always talk about luck. Like, there was a little bit of luck in our story as well, because Benji and I have been throwing around different ideas. Benji was very confident about recruiting and a lot of credit to him for just, like, standing his ground over time. I was like, hey, I really want to work together now. You've got me excited about starting a company, but, like, recruiting Greenhouse Lever have been around for a while. Like, why? And, you know, I haven't lived and breathed the problem until we started Ashby. So I was like, maybe we do financial planning software. I think that was the other thing we had turned around because we had a couple of friends in the finance team at PlanGrid, and their issue was, like, modeling.
Abhik Pramanik [00:13:06]:
And, like, I think you hear a lot of startups going after this, but, like, fundamentally we did talk to a bunch of people, but I met my wife at the time, right around the time that we started Ashby, and she's in finance at, like, a Fortune 15 company and they're still using Excel. And she showed me and walked me through her models. And, like, Benji and I were like, excel's actually really good at this. Yes. We could, like, try to compete with it, but at the enterprise scale. Like, Excel is just like a canvas to paint on, and you have enough people that can, like, do it in a way that, like, is very specific to the company. Like, the younger startups, they just kind of want a. A dumb tool to, like, model it, or they would just want, like, an Excel template that they get from, you know, investors or from their incubator.
Abhik Pramanik [00:13:50]:
I met my wife right at that time and she was like, don't do this. Like, do not do this. You should do the recruiting idea.
Matt Tait [00:13:58]:
That's good advice. I mean, marrying her was probably a better move, but, like, it sounds like it worked out well in a lot of areas. Yes.
Abhik Pramanik [00:14:06]:
I mean, I mean, Benji always a hundred percent in recruiting, but, but like Benji said to convince me, I was a bit skeptical, but again, that was. That was naivete on my part. I just didn't know any Better because I hadn't done recruiting at the time.
Matt Tait [00:14:19]:
Luck plays such a key role. And I don't know about you, both of us kind of started around the pandemic. And for me, that meant that my business went to zero overnight, like literally six weeks after we started. But then all of a sudden it just took off. And then the world, businesses that were working towards being better at being fully remote and digitally capable and on the cloud and all the terms that you kind of hear were forced to do it and found how much easier it was. And I wonder if part of that, like being in this kind of post pandemic world has also benefited you guys, as people are using software in different ways and thinking about their recruiting and thinking about their back office and they've changed perspectives and it broke them out of the way that we always do it mentality.
Abhik Pramanik [00:15:11]:
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's the pandemic. I would say there's luck in the swings of the macroeconomic factors that we've seen over time that have really fueled us. A really good example of that was when the market crashed around 2022, 2023. So our goal is to build all in one recruiting software. That is a huge mandate. Like, we need to replace not only the legacy ets, but we need to replace all the scheduling tools, the sourcing tools, and these are themselves venture backed companies and we need to build all of this software and we need to convince people that the sum of all these parts is better than buying these individual pieces of Software. Back in 2022, we had replaced the legacy ATS, but we were like missing a couple of features. And then for the scheduling ancillary software, we were also like maybe 70% at most of best in class.
Abhik Pramanik [00:16:10]:
But because recruiting budgets were shrinking, people were like, I just can't. Like I have to compromise somewhere. And so this kind of downswing in the economy and the lowering of budgets helped us because we could sell Ashby as an all in one. And people knew they were compromising at the time, but they just kind of had to. They're like, I either just get my legacy ATS and like, not these great tools, or I get Ashby. I get a certain percentage of these great tools and it kind of all works together. And so people could take bets on us and then the rest was on us. We had to take that luck and run with it.
Abhik Pramanik [00:16:49]:
We had to actually build 100% of best in class in these other areas. And we did. We're barreling towards that today. And again, we could have been Successful a different way, but it allowed us to accelerate our master plan a lot faster.
Matt Tait [00:17:08]:
You know, one of the things that you're kind of tap dancing around that I think is really cool that I find with tech companies in general that service businesses, and you've been around a million too, don't do as well. You guys seem, and you seem in particular like you've deeply thought through this problem and how to create a great experience for your customers, continually improve it and keep them as long term customers. Why do you think other people don't do that so well?
Abhik Pramanik [00:17:42]:
I think the way I've put it is some people are just not in a position to be able to do it. If you look at the recruiting space, at some point people have been purchased by private equity and that is now you're trying to pull out profits from these companies and that means you're cutting support, you're basically cutting R&D. So in some of the legacy ETSs are just kind of hamstrung by focusing very purely on margin and profit. That doesn't always play out that way with a private equity purchase, but in this case it did. I also think sometimes some people just stop listening to their customers and I don't know why. At some point a company just becomes too confident. I don't know if confidence is the right word. They just kind of lose sight of like hey, just listen to your customers.
Matt Tait [00:18:31]:
I'm sure a lot of it's overconfident, but do you think a lot of it's just distracted too?
Abhik Pramanik [00:18:36]:
Distracted by what though?
Matt Tait [00:18:38]:
Well, is it distracted by. We heard our customers, they told us to do something, we're doing it, but then not listening while doing it. Whereas like that startup mentality, you and I both started companies. The theory that you start with even in that first listening so that you talk to a bunch of recruiters, right, you guys came up with a theory, then you started to build. There's no way this end product is, is exactly what you initially thought you were going to build. Like you, you end up moving along as you keep listening, as you keep like learning, as you keep improving and like that's that kind of startup mentality. And I do think at some point people either get distracted by their vision or all the trappings of running a business and they stop doing that kind of process that we all run as startups.
Abhik Pramanik [00:19:29]:
In our space at. I think what we've seen from some of the top players is we've heard that they have their own belief about where recruiting is going. It's almost like, hey, we're the top player. Here's our opinion on how you should do recruiting. And they kind of push their features in service of, like you said, they have their own vision of where recruiting is going, and that sometimes misses the mark. You have to have a vision to start something and make it successful, because otherwise, you're just kind of like, building exactly what your customer says. But at some point, like, this is the vision. This is like, everyone's going to follow us because, you know, we know what's best for people.
Abhik Pramanik [00:20:06]:
And I think, like, one of the things that Benji and I have done is we've listened to the market. For instance, in 2021, if you asked all our customers, like, where do you want Ashby to focus? It's like, sourcing, sourcing, sourcing, sourcing. Like, we have so many jobs open, not enough candidates out there. You know, find all those candidates. Now, if you switch to 2022, all of a sudden people are like, we need to slash headcount. We need to close all our jobs. We have a couple of jobs open. We're doing backfills.
Abhik Pramanik [00:20:37]:
If you ask a lot of our customers, like, where do you want Ashby to focus? It is on inbound handling the inbound volume, which is still somewhat true today, which is like, we have 2,000 applicants for a role. How do we sift through these people? If you built a vision in 2021, and you're like, we're going to build sourcing for the next year, like, you have to be nimble. Like, we were nimble. We just basically were, like, shifted a lot of our focus onto handling inbound volume. And so I think the vision can sometimes work against you.
Matt Tait [00:21:08]:
Every business needs that Northstar, like, for you guys, you want to build that all in one. That's the north star. How you get there, listening, that changes, but it doesn't change that North Star. I think that's probably the nuanced difference is when you pack too much into that, that's when you start to lose the listening. I really like the listening to the customer base because I feel like not enough companies figure out how to systematize that too. And it kind of becomes an oh, shit moment every once in a while. Like, oh, shit, I should go listen to my customers, or, oh, shit, I got to figure this out. And.
Matt Tait [00:21:50]:
And it's more than NPS scores, too. It's like, actually deeply understanding and listening. How have you guys kind of really systematized that? Because it sounds like you've. You've listened, you've pivoted and you've kept up with the market. And as a user I can see all the changes or my team can. They don't let me do anything. But how have you been able to maintain that consistency?
Abhik Pramanik [00:22:14]:
I want to say there's like a, like a system I can teach like and tell you and like articulate to you, but I think it's really one. Benji just stays close to customers. I recruit every day. Like I am my own recruiter. So part of me building empathy with recruiting and this is also a little bit of not luck, but like we are growing and so I get to see different scales of our customers simply by me doing recruiting every single day. And so it used to be that I was the only person recruiting for engineering and now I have hiring managers reporting to me who are also doing recruiting. And so now I see like, how does Ashby scale to a team? So Benji's talking to customers, I talk to customers. Not as much, but I literally just use the product day in and day out.
Abhik Pramanik [00:23:02]:
And I think that is a bit of a secret sauce that we have is we can use our own software and we're scaling. And so now I can see how our software scales to different levels of folks. And I think that I do approach recruiting with a bit of not sophistication. I try to make it as automated as possible. And so I think about like, what are some things I need for myself to be able to like not have to spend a lot of time doing monotonous tasks. And then those will be ideas that Benji and I come up with. And then we like kind of ship to our customers, but sometimes we're able to anticipate some of our enterprise customers needs because we ourselves are trying to build a very sophisticated recruiting process.
Abhik Pramanik [00:23:45]:
And then we end up just thinking of features and our customers are like, we have this problem. Like, oh yeah, we were thinking about this. Here's conditional activities, for instance. Like that's like an example of something we were thinking about. And then one of our customers, who's 8,000 people e commerce company, was just like, we have this problem. We're like, yep, we have this problem too. We have an idea for it.
Matt Tait [00:24:07]:
You know, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about lately is really creating true partnerships between tech companies and customers. And in my case it's accounting firms or bookkeeping firms and the, the companies that actually provide the technology. Because you come from a space in recruiting with a lot of Legacy software Accounting QuickBooks is the legacy software. It owns the largest market share of most of any other tech company. I mean, it's insane. But what it's done in my industry is created this more of a vendor user perspective where it's not actually a true partnership. But then you're seeing this next generation of tech companies come in and say, hey, we actually want to build for you. We want to create a relationship where we're working together versus, you know, you just using and us maybe sort of listening but really doing what we want.
Matt Tait [00:25:07]:
And it's creating these new opportunities and growth and creating a different sense of community within the industry that I think is really, really cool. And it sounds like you all have really kind of built towards that as well.
Abhik Pramanik [00:25:22]:
Benj and I really wanted to build a great customer success team and something we've invested in quite a bit. Customer success support. People we brought on those teams are fantastic. They feel the pain of the customer and they're able to articulate that back to us. It's almost like their profile is almost very sensitive to the needs of other people. And we've hired a great team on that front. And that's something that like you hear from our customers is like, Beth is fantastic. I love working with Beth.
Abhik Pramanik [00:25:51]:
Like they, they know them on a first name basis, they just talk about them all the time and it's almost like they are, they're almost as like front and center as the product itself. But like that creates a true partnership. Again, like we're not just building what people tell it, tell us, but like the customer success team is able to really bring back a lot of the problems. They work with the product team to kind of like talk about like, hey, how do we message this back to the customer? Are we going to solve this problem? If not why? And have like come back to the customer with like, we're going to build this, it's coming soon. There's just a lot of collaboration within our company to make sure that when we do communicate back to our customers, it feels like a relationship as opposed to us saying no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no. Which I think is what most companies do, is just like say no, say yes rather than actually articulate the why behind it and our motivations.
Matt Tait [00:26:48]:
We're transitioning 250 clients onto Puzzle, a brand new AI native ledger and competitor to QuickBooks. Still have 600 clients on QuickBooks, so it's not like it's going anywhere anytime soon. But over the last week we've been working with them and doing a back and forth on blog posts and press releases. And kind of all this stuff that goes with it and we've been asynchronously working and I'll have an opinion, they'll push back, they'll have an opinion. And it's been that kind of back and forth of a true partnership. And I get it with my co founder. And it sounds like you and Benji have it too, where when you guys actually push back and you have a deep conversation, neither one of you is 100% right, the other person gets you there together. And that to me is what you're talking about in your customer success team.
Matt Tait [00:27:36]:
And listening is the customer has an idea of what they need, but sometimes they're not great at really articulating the underlying thing that they truly need. They're good at telling you the symptoms and you have to then pull out and figure out the core use case and the core really reason that also helps make the symptom better. And that type of listening is a true partnership.
Abhik Pramanik [00:28:01]:
Yes. And I think your customer success team and your support team have to be really in tune with the product and the customer needs. So, like, I went to an implementation for a customer, I went on site and it was amazing to watch, like our success team work because they're in a mad rush to implement your software and they're like, this doesn't exist. Like, we can't do this. You just can't do this in the software. I think if you didn't have a good customer success team, they would just come back to product and be like, they don't have this. Like, we, we need to build this. Whereas, like, Kira was there on site with me and her response was, tell me what problem you're trying to solve.
Abhik Pramanik [00:28:44]:
And then they were able to craft a solution with our existing product for it because our product is flexible. Like, you should be able to solve a lot of, a lot of needs that you and a lot of problems that you have. And when we couldn't, that was when we had a discussion. But like, the thing there is like, I think there's a reaction sometimes from startups just be like, oh, we'll build it, or we just say no, rather than like, hey, let's think about our product. And like, how could they solve this in our product? It might be a compromise, but it might like, solve the problem just well enough that like, we buy ourselves some time. And that's the other thing I think that is important is thinking about what do you build now versus what do you build later. I think a lot of things we've seen Our customers. Like, I need this.
Abhik Pramanik [00:29:28]:
Yes, I know you need this. And we will build it. Do we build this now or do we build this later? And I think that's something that we've been generally good at. And Benji leads product, and so I think he's been very good at kind of anticipating. We have 100 things we know we will need to build over the next five years. How do we sequence them in the right ways such that it gets us to the next milestone? That's like really listening to customers and figuring out when to push back and when to say yes.
Matt Tait [00:29:55]:
There's another really important thing. And I talk about it. We don't build product. We do adapt and change services and solutions and what we do. But sequencing out change and not trying to do too much at one time and understanding how much your team can handle and how much as you grow, they can handle more, but how much more. That I think is also a really important thing to building a successful culture in addition to a successful company.
Abhik Pramanik [00:30:23]:
I would agree. I mean, I think you have to be very deliberate and methodical about how you approach this. I think it's easy to say yes to everything. It's easy to say no to everything. I think really where things get hard is just like thinking about, like, I have limited resources. How do I use this in the most effective way? I think back in 2021, everyone's like, let's just hire and then we'll get infinite resources. And you saw the consequence of that. But I think really the most successful companies are made because they know their constraints and they work within those constraints to kind of, I think, build magic.
Matt Tait [00:31:01]:
Yeah. And I think the addition there is. They also are willing to push the boundaries, but not too far. People like you and me, we have no problem jumping out of the airplane. I do like having the parachute making kit on the way down. Those are kind of the important things. I see a lot of people start companies and it's like you really don't know what you're getting yourself into. You have the kernel of an idea.
Matt Tait [00:31:24]:
Like, this is great. It's awesome. You need a little bit more here. You need to really figure this out. And then as a team scales, you become astronomically more complex and. And then you're dealing with more people. One of the things I'm interested in as we've grown and I'm interested if it's similar with you all, I've learned very quickly where my deficiencies are too, and having to hire people that are better at me in a Lot of different areas, and I found that to be a really big key, but also, like, it was something I did very poorly at my first company and have gotten way, way better at in this one is just being like, I really suck at this. I need to hire this person or I need to hire for this function, and they need to be way better than me.
Matt Tait [00:32:14]:
How have you guys kind of filled out and grown as yourselves as co founders, but then how has that allowed the business to grow and affected your hiring?
Abhik Pramanik [00:32:24]:
I think what Benji and I really thought about is what are the things at previous companies that we've been at? Where did leadership fail and what do we need to keep running with the torch and what do we need to hand off to other people? And for us, it's like setting a high bar was just something that me and Benji have to do. And on top of that, Benji has to set the vision for product. So I think this goes back to, what are you trying to accomplish with your company? What is the strategy to be successful? For us, it's execution. And so when I thought about, as Ashby grew, where do I need to put myself to one, like, really be opinionated in a way that benefits the company and something that, like, I feel like I am somewhat qualified to do. I just think when you start a company, you're not really qualified to do a lot of things at, like, the scale we're at today. And to me, it was like, I have worked with great engineering teams early in my career and I want to build a fantastic engineering team because as a company that's really about building 10x software, our engineering team is one of the foundational pieces to doing that. We need to move fast. We need a ton of ownership.
Abhik Pramanik [00:33:38]:
We need people who are just excellent at thinking abstractions. Then when I looked back at my previous companies, it was like, not all these engineering teams are well run. Like, and also I felt bored as an engineer. Like, there was this process and I was like, these are things that if I can innovate. Innovate in quotes. Like, if I can just be different in this area, that gives us a competitive edge as we grow. And so that's where I decided to place myself. And then the other ancillary area is, like, we just need to hire people who, like you said, know this better than us and who are going to be able to, like, help us, like, think about this problem in ways that, like, leverage their experience and also their, their kind of like, different perspectives. That's the way I think about it.
Matt Tait [00:34:23]:
I think that's awesome.
Abhik Pramanik [00:34:24]:
How have you thought about yourself as you scale?
Matt Tait [00:34:27]:
You know, I. I got lucky when we started to really scale. I realized that I was quickly coming up on stuff I'd never done and sizes of companies and complexities that I'd never led before. I hired a great coach, and he's really helped me to hold a mirror up to where my deficiencies are and to do it ahead of time. Because, I mean, I'm sure you kind of see this when you're scaling. Sometimes the nature of your job changes every two to three months. Like, astronomically changes. Like most businesses that grow, like, maybe they have one massive change a year or every two years.
Matt Tait [00:35:07]:
But, like, when you're scaling as quickly as we have and you have, sometimes it's like every three months and you're like, man, I got a totally different job right now. And so having a coach really helped me. But what I've ultimately learned is, like, I do good on kind of the vision side, and I'm a really good relationship person. I'm a terrible execution guy. I'm just not good at it. My joke is I'm really good at convincing people to jump off a bridge. I can't get them to line up to do it. And so hiring a COO was a big thing for me, where it's like, hey, I need somebody to run this business, like, day to day.
Matt Tait [00:35:43]:
Like, run the company, run sales, run operations. Like, I need somebody that can do that better than me because I'm just not good. I'm good on the very high level, and I'm really good on the down, like, tactical low level. And I'm a good, like, conversationalist and help here. But I'm not good at running those types of teams for a long period of time. And that's been a big learning for me.
Abhik Pramanik [00:36:07]:
I was gonna say I'm the opposite. I'm very much execution. I don't know if I'm visionary. I just love building great software and, like, figuring all the nuts and bolts to, like, make that great. So, yeah, it's interesting, but I was gonna say, like, executive hiring seems like a very important thing facet of this, which is like, hiring great execs. And that's something I think we've done very well. Benji hired all of them, but I think we've done really well on that.
Matt Tait [00:36:33]:
Becomes kind of the first tough point when you start out and it's you and your co-founder and you guys are making all the decisions, and then at some point that room grows and you're like, now it's all of us making a decision. Then maybe think once a year, maybe once every two years, we run into a decision that it's locked, and I got to make it CEO. I have to be the one that puts my thumb on the scale. But that also was a tough thing to say. Like, hey, we. We now have a leadership room. We all have an equal vote. Mine may be two when I need it to be two, but, like, that was also kind of a just dynamic change, and it changed the dynamics with my co-founder a little bit too. And it was just, like, time to grow up as a business.
Abhik Pramanik [00:37:18]:
It's an interesting transition. I've seen this happen at previous companies where we brought in executives, and it felt different. I think for us, it. It didn't feel that there's this moment that's been seared in my mind. I was talking with another founder, and they were like, do you hate your VP of sales yet? And I was like, what? Like, why would you ask this question? I was like, but if I didn't like our VP of sales, they wouldn't be here. Like, Benji, around the board, we make decision to, like, let them go. They talked about how they were kind of in a position where it was like the VP of sales had built a good relationship and had previous relationships with their board. And there's all this drama that happens at, like, the executive level.
Abhik Pramanik [00:38:01]:
And I saw that at previous companies, too. And I think we've had the fortune of every half year, we rent an Airbnb, and we all just stay in the house together for three days and just, like, plan for, like, the next six months, one year, and talk. And it's incredibly fun. Like, I love talking to every one of our. Our leaders. And Mike at VP of sales, Kelsey in success and, like, marketing and gym. And we just brought on Shane to lead finance. Like, it's just so fun.
Abhik Pramanik [00:38:34]:
Me and Benji were, like, kids, but, like, we're all kids. Like, we all want what's best for this company. We're all kind of willing to make compromises to, like, work together, but we're all just, like, sitting in the room spitballing. And it's kind of amazing. Like, it's just an amazing feeling. And again, this is my first time with the company with an executive leadership team. But, like, at previous companies, I didn't get the feeling that, like, the founders and the exec team weren't really on the same wavelength. And I think that's, that's huge. I think that's really Important for the executive team to be really gelling together.
Matt Tait [00:39:10]:
Well, that's really cool. Well, as you look at 2025, what's on the docket, man?
Abhik Pramanik [00:39:17]:
We're moving heavy into enterprise. We have Snowflake OpenAI as customers, getting more of those folks as customers. There's some really exciting challenges from a product perspective of serving 200, 300 person recruiting teams with interviewers that are number in the hundreds that they have to figure out and schedule. Part of that is building new products. Something all of us know as founders. We're venture-backed, right. So at some point we need to figure out what's that next kind of product.
Abhik Pramanik [00:39:49]:
We have to go multi-product. And so going multi-product is a big focus for us, which is super fun. Also very interesting. It's an interesting challenge like how do you build a brand new product inside your company? And that's going to be fun and just like figuring out how to do that is going to be interesting and then just making our product better. There's so much exciting technology coming out. AI, that's the hot buzzword today. I was using cursor the other day to code and I was just like, this is amazing. It's not going to replace me as an engineer, it's not going to replace our engineering team.
Abhik Pramanik [00:40:21]:
But it's very clear that AI is going to make people better if you learn how to use it just like any other tool. And I think that's the same for recruiting. AI is not going to place recruiters what it is. It's going to make them better, it's going to remove a lot of the monotony out of their day and I'm really excited to explore that in this space.
Matt Tait [00:40:41]:
Well, I think that's really cool. You guys are building a great product and I like how you're building a great company too. I used to think like the products and services that we were putting out there was the baby. We all think of our company as a baby. It's our kit. Yeah, it's really the whole like culture, it's the team, it's that I feel more adherence to. I mean it's, I like both those feelings you get working with them to push forward to something really cool. That's what I think is truly awesome.
Abhik Pramanik [00:41:10]:
If you think about it right, like when you're five people, the things I produce make a material impact in the way the company kind of moves forward. At Our scale now, 150 plus people coding is not going to move the needle for Ashby and it's really about figuring out how to design a culture where, yes, an engineer can build something and it moves the needle because they're in a culture that allows them to move that needle versus be a cog in a wheel. And that just to me is so exciting. Like, I want to build a company where I myself could just like be an IC and like, have a ton of fun. If it kind of wind it back to our earlier conversation, that's like, I was like a rebel at every startup I was at. There was moments in time where I was just given enough freedom that that rebelliousness turned into, like a benefit for the company. And like, I want to build a culture that does that. And I think there's this natural tendency as a company grows for consistency in output rather than exceptional output.
Abhik Pramanik [00:42:17]:
And so they, they build in all these processes so that like, the rebels kind of just feel lost in process. And I think on engineering it's very clear that you can hire an engineer who thinks about product, thinks about design, and can build a brand new product without really much support. Like, how do you do that at 50 person engineering team, 100 person. And that's like a really fun challenge for me. I just think about this all the time and like, the product is almost like secondary to that because you're like, the product will. Will build. If I build this great team.
Matt Tait [00:42:53]:
Yeah, a great product can be there and a bad team will make it worse, but a great team will always start to produce a better product.
Abhik Pramanik [00:43:02]:
Yeah. And mean, we have product market fit to some degree and like, it's really about accelerating that. And you can hire a team to maintain product market fit, but that doesn't make you amazing. Like, what makes you amazing is hiring even more amazing people.
Matt Tait [00:43:18]:
No, I agree. And I think, honest Scott, that's the perfect way to end this. I really appreciate you taking the time and having this conversation. I've been taking notes, I've learned a ton and I think it's awesome. Thank you.
Abhik Pramanik [00:43:31]:
Thanks for having me. And I love the conversation. It's been really great to learn about decimal and you're approaching things differently than I've seen before. And it's just like the prelude to this was just. It was just so fun to talk about business and strategy.
Matt Tait [00:43:46]:
It's always great to find a good thread that you can just keep pulling on.
Matt Tait [00:43:50]:
Thanks so much for listening. After the First Million is presented by Decimal. To listen to more episodes and find tips to help make running a business easier, visit decimal.com/afm. Want to join the conversation? Reach out to me on LinkedIn and let's explore the messy middle.