Ep488: Smriti Tomar – Stay Focused on Your Customers

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community we know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. My mission is to reduce risk in your life. Your mission should you choose to accept it is to pause this episode right now and go to my worst investment ever.com. To take the risk exposure quiz I created from a lessons I've learned from all my guests. It's time to learn how exposed you are to risk in your life and how to reduce it. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I am here with featured guests, some gritty Dumas, who is about to join our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. Do you accept this mission? And are you ready to rock?

Smriti Tomar 01:01
Yes, I am. Thank you.

Andrew Stotz 01:05
Yeah, well, I want to introduce you to the audience, you're doing some really exciting things. And I'm gonna just go through summon them as founder and CEO and stack, some ready strives to make investing accessible and affordable for India's 440 million millennials to help them save for their goals in life. Stack is the Vanguard for India, through its automated Savings Investments and financial planning stack helps Millennials stop wasting money and start making better financial decisions. She's devoted to and excels in three areas, each area, strengthening the other marketing and product management, creating a venture that creates awareness, accessibility, and personalization around financial services, and women's business success. My goodness. So I'm ready. Take a minute, and Philly for the tidbits about your life. Sure.

Smriti Tomar 02:03
Thank you so much, Andrew, for the introduction. So my story has been fairly simple I come from India, and based in Bangalore, before this, I graduated as an engineer from one of the premier institutes in India. And probably just like every other millennial in India, we have a youngster, I was so devoted to excel in my academics and do well in my career. And that's when I started doing that was the first time I came across startups, when, alongside my colleagues, I started doing some side hustle, I used to work at startups as an intern. And that's when I was first exposed to entrepreneurship and startups. And I really like that, you know, phase in my life. After that, I eventually, I started saving a lot of money. So I started investing it because I had nothing else to do than to invest. And, and that's when I started, you know, I would hear this noise around market stock sector, a lot of my family members talking about trading, etc. And I started doing the same. That's when I made a lot of mistakes, actually. And in fact, I also learned from them. I think one thing that was good in that phase was I was never deterred from investing or from, you know, from, from trying out new things from experimenting into this space. And eventually, I learned the tricks of trade. Actually, I learned that what's the difference between reading investing what is right and wrong for me? How good I mean, I started actually getting some more knowledge about investing in that. That's when slowly that hobby turned into a passion. And I started realizing that a lot of my friends who were in college, in fact, even my family members, they were not really familiar with investing for a lot of people still in India, investing is like a gamble. They believe that you're just going to waste all your money and it's not safe, etc. So they usually keep stashing all their money in their bank accounts and much safer instruments. So that's when I realized that, you know, people are losing out on a lot of wealth building opportunities. Anyway, moving on, I eventually started with a job at a bank, I was working with Citibank, that's when, you know, I found that my job was becoming a bit monotonous. I was doing something but it wasn't impactful enough. I couldn't see myself, you know, utilizing the best of my potential. And at some point, I just decided to quit. I wanted to I mean that, you know, that nudge to do something about investing and making people more aware about investing was something that always stuck with me and I decided to quit my job. I had I think that was really about 2422 years phase when I had quit, and I started my own startup And it was, of course, it's been a very interesting journey. So far a lot of ups and downs, but I really enjoy. Entrepreneurship is something you can never get enough of you get frustrated, you get happy, you get sad. But one thing a true entrepreneur would agree with is that you never want to quit, you just are addicted to that journey. And so I started with my own product, it's known as stack stack basically helps people to invest for the life goals, like retirement, parents, education, basically anything and everything which they might not be able to do right now, because of maybe lack of knowledge, lack of time. Or maybe they need more advice and confidence to be able to do that themselves. So we automate all of that, so that people don't have to take care of, you know, people don't have to research and, you know, read through a lot of these, you know, documents and these platforms, which have, you know, 1000s and 1000s of options. And also don't, don't have to invest the time on a monthly basis to track the portfolio. So this is all about stack. I think, the the entire product, the entire thesis behind this company itself, comes from our own personal lives, everybody in the team, we believe that investing has been very complicated for all of us at certain point of time, that might be due to maybe lack of proper skills, but also a lot of time, it's time. We cannot really devote, you know, required amount of time out of our jobs or careers because we're just too busy, you know, hustling in our daily lives that we forget how to manage how to track our assets or investments properly, and ultimately, we end up making mistakes, and we regret them later on. So yeah, we're on a mission to help, you know, young Indians invest better make the best out of this opportunity of being in a developing country where the markets are at all times high, you can you know, build your wealth you can, you can create a lot of assets for yourself by making your money work.

Andrew Stotz 07:11
And what at what stage is the business now? Like, how many years? Is it been operating? And how are things I mean, it's, the startup world is always, you know, so crazy and intense. And you know, to expand, you got to raise a lot of capital and all of those things, maybe you can just tell us a little peek at where you are right now in that journey.

Smriti Tomar 07:32
Yeah, sure. So I think it's been about eight years, since we officially had begun, we launched with some, you know, a different product than just investing where people could basically basically get a bird's eye view of all the finances, including investments, savings, assets, liabilities, etc, in one place. And then we started working on this investment product. And right now, we have about, I think, more than 5000 users. So far, we just launched it very, fairly, very early. We have not yet even sort of given any public access to people we are keeping it on. You know, invite base thing only right now, only people who are on boarded on that can invite other people. But we are soon going to open it to all very excited for that. And I think so far, everybody has really loved it. And we have realized that, you know, actually everybody in the team, we have been waiting for this product to launch so that we could put in all our investments here. And we could start investing, because this really is what we all needed. And essentially, I think this is a product that we've built for ourselves, and others.

Andrew Stotz 08:46
Exciting. Well, I have a lot of listeners and friends in India. So I know they're going to be following you and what you're doing. And now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it and then tell us your story.

Smriti Tomar 09:07
Okay, so the story actually is probably one of the biggest lessons that I've learned and the biggest mistakes I've made so far. So it's when I had just started out, I quit my job, I started up with this company and soon I realized that I would need capital to be able to, you know, build a lot of things, hire more people expand and ultimately, you know, build something that people can use. And that's when we started to raise funds from investors. We started approaching all kinds of investors, angels initially and then of course, there were venture capitalists as well. And why we used to interact with them of course, like any early stage entrepreneur, any you know, young entrepreneur you face with a lot of rejections as well as a PC patients, but I think what comes along with that feedback. And I think that feedback which people give is something that sort of hooks you, I mean, you get hooked on to the feedback, every time you're getting some advice from people it's as if you are, you know, obligated to follow that you feel that some wise person has given you some, you know, their words of wisdom, and you're supposed to incorporate that you're supposed to follow that. And you might be losing out on things, if you're not, you know, if you're not, sort of following their advice, you might end up regretting that, etc. And that happened with me, and, you know, it was not one time it was it, it happened a lot of times, in fact, hundreds of times, it would have happened, every new investor that I was meeting, they, they would love the idea that we love the product, and then they would give some feedback, you know, we like this, but you can also do this, we like this, but you can maybe try out something better build up this, but maybe you can, you know, tweak this thing, you can make this better, and, you know, different all kinds of feedback. And, and that's when, you know, we started making changes, you know, all all entrepreneurs have a vision to what this, you know, baby that they're building that they've made is going to look like eventually, and that started changing over the time, you know, we, we would interact with a lot of people, and then they would say, you know, make these changes, etc, etc. And we do so and eventually, you know, it, it started deviating from what it actually was supposed to be. And we thought that it was good, it was a good, you know, change, you know, change is the only constant you're supposed to, you know, the product is supposed to evolve, just as you do. And that happened eventually, after, I think it took us about two, three months, until we were done with the first round of funding and getting the capital. And we started to work on the product, we it was almost, you know, towards completion, when we started doing some close testing with our friends, family network, etc. And they tried out the product. And we realized that, you know, people did like the idea of bios, there were, you know, there were a lot of people who were not able to use it to its I mean, they were not able to use a lot of its feature, because it seemed really complicated to them, you're not able to understand the value propositions. Sometimes they would say that, you know, there's just too many things that are not able to focus on one thing, and eventually realize that, why is it even happening, I mean, we have given our best we have put in so much hard work of our months, so much money. And you know, all of this has come after so much brainstorming within within not just within the team, but also from, you know, investors, and, you know, these investors, they they're never satisfied somehow, because they're putting the money, they feel that, you know, they should have the biggest USP of the world, this product should have, you know, a selling point that nothing else does. And eventually things keep piling on. So, you know, you're supposed to give one value proposition, and it turns into, you know, hundreds of things, you know, sort of jumbled together in the hope of you know, this being the best product out there. And so yeah, I mean, we started testing and you know, it was surprising to a lot of our users were, they were not able to focus on one feature, they were not able to use the app as much as they would have, if it was much more simpler. And we started, we went back to the drawing board, and we started, you know, thinking that what went wrong, what's happening? Why is it not working in sector? And that's when, you know, we started to talk to a lot of customers, we started spending a lot of time just talking to them and, you know, hearing them out what is that? What goes in the mind while they're using this product? What are the you know, what are the pain points that are yet not solved with any of the investment products, by investing, so difficult, too complicated for them. And we are getting such simple answers such simple things that, you know, we could easily solve through, you know, simplest of the features, in fact, and I think it took us some time, we had to you know, we have to spend a lot of time with our customers, we actually talked to about more than 100 Customers ourselves. We invested a lot of time, even after so many months of hard work. We had to sort of start from scratch again. Because, you know, at some point we had deviated from what we were initially doing, which was actually the right path. And, you know, we had to give a pivot and it took us a lot of time we had to sort of start from scratch, we had to put in a lot of money again. And I realized that you know, a lot of in fact, not just me a lot of other people as well. In the hope of you know, pleasing investors, there are a lot of things that go into your mind you think that you know you're pleasing somebody you're supposed to follow the advice People who are more experienced than you, they must know something, right? They are talking to so many entrepreneurs just like you, they know much better things than you do. There's a FOMO, as well, you feel that if you're not going to follow that advice, you're going to regret it later on. And that's what I think happened with us as well, it costs us I think time is much more valuable than capital, when you're running a startup, because you're supposed to grow much faster, you're supposed to scale faster, you're supposed to make mistakes, and also, then, you know, move on faster. So I think time is what it cost us. And of course, it did other things as well, we had sort of dedicate a lot of resources, money, again, but I still believe that that time could have been utilized better, we could have, you know, moved much faster, we could have scaled faster. If that had not happened. I think, you know, this has been my worst investment to actually, I would say, invest a lot into investors and other customers, which we should have face.

Andrew Stotz 16:11
So how would you summarize the lessons that you learned from this?

Smriti Tomar 16:15
Alright, so yeah, I think the biggest lesson that I got was, you know, especially when you're running a startup, or you're building you're working on some idea, you have to, you have to be very prudent about where you invest your time in because I believe time is the only capital that no investor no VC can give you, you have limited amount of time with you. So who you invest, that time in is very important, I invested my time into, you know, investors in the hope of getting, you know, later, more money and you know, sort of pleasing these people, while I should have invested that with my customers into my customers. So that's my biggest lesson, you know, invest not into the investors in the hope of getting more money or whatever, but in your customers, because these are the people who are supposed to add, these are the people whose lives you're supposed to add value in. And you these are people who will be directly impacted with whatever you're building, so they are supposed to take all the calls, they're supposed to make all the decisions and judgments. And probably, I think, a couple of learnings connected to this is also that you should not give into the you know, I would say, given to the urge of pleasing others, whether it's in the hope of getting, you know, fame or money, or anything for that matter, you know, you're not supposed to please anyone, unless these are people who, who ultimately would be impacted by your idea by your product, or whatever it is, we should please our customers invest not investors. I mean, of course, at some level, yes, but not entirely, and not just investors. So I think, especially with, you know, young founders, it happens that they're not so experienced, they're a little bit gullible. And they feel that it's their prerogative to sort of keep their investors happy, operate investors happy, but it's only customers who matter at the end of the day, and customers give these investors the returns. And yeah, I think another thing is, as I mentioned, FOMO, you know, do not get into that fear of missing out, you know, you're supposed to make mistakes, learn from them, and then move on. But that fear of missing out sort of, you know, makes you take bad decisions, it deviates you from the, you know, from what you're focusing on. So I know it's a natural tendency to, you know, sort of feel that you have that feeling when you will be that, you know, you're going to regret later on. This is what is supposed to be somebody suggested, but I think, you know, trusting your instincts is much more important than following what others are saying, who do not even know your business or your self. So well.

Andrew Stotz 19:12
Well, maybe I'll summarize some of the things that I took away, I wrote down a lot of notes while you were talking, the first thing I wrote down was complexity. And it's so easy to create complexity. It's hard to create simplicity. Yeah. And, and that's the first thing. The second thing I wrote down was the idea of, you know, in order to truly be successful, particularly with a startup, I think you really need a narrow focus, the wider that focus gets, you just don't have the resources to build that out, you know, and to hit a bigger target. So narrow focus. That's the second thing I wrote down and then I wrote down a third thing is, you know, one USP one unique selling proposition or one thing and I like to think about it in the terms of it If my satisfied customer was introducing my product or service to their friend, what would they say? How would they say it? So I'm thinking about Slack, not stack in this case, but we use Slack. And I sell it to my friends by saying, it's reduced our internal emails by 60%. You know, that's a pretty clear message. And I kind of got it, maybe some somehow from them, but also, I just saw the result. So one way for the listeners out there, as you're going through this thing, try to really nail it down to that one thing that people would repeat to others, because ultimately, it's first about satisfying that one customer, but then it's about that customer telling their friends. And if they're not, you're not hitting the mark enough to go viral. And really get out there. Just really liked also, I wrote down about the investor versus customer just think that's really a great point that you make. And, you know, I have been in financial analyst all my career. And throughout most of my career, I go and meet CFO CEOs, and basically talk to them about their business. And CEOs nowadays, as I've gotten older asked me like, what's your advice for me, after having all these analysts and all this and being in the market? I said, don't listen to analysts. You know, financial analysts have a job. And they're not their job isn't run a company. They try to assess what's going on. But ultimately, you know, what's going on? And, and then, but one thing's for sure they all have an opinion. Yeah. And so don't get caught up in that. It's nothing. It is a challenge, you know, how do you bring on feedback? You know, you don't want to reject feedback. But it's a balance of how do I bring on feedback without turning my whole company in the direction of that feedback as an example. And then it just that brought me down to the last thing I wrote, which was like the idea of refocus while you were talking about how you had to refocus the business. And you know, for the listeners out there, I just, you know, want to say that it happens to all of us, even the most focus, people lose focus, they get distracted things, pull them away. Nothing wrong with that, what's wrong with that is if it happens over and over number one, but what's wrong with that is if you don't get back on track, so part of what I liked about your story was kind of the triumph of getting back on track. And the story about you know, the idea of listening to your customer, you know, you just can't go wrong with that. But you can go wrong, listening to friends and family and investors and competitors and other people or whatever, but you just gonna have a hard time going wrong if you're spending every day trying to satisfy your customer. So let me ask you, based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate? I mean, I'm thinking about someone like yourself ambitious young person who's out there, trying to raise capital, trying to make their company as appealing as possible, trying to be open to feedback and all that. So let's just imagine that man or woman's in that position, what advice would you give them?

Smriti Tomar 23:13
All right, I think biggest advice I would give would be to listen to your customers, I think interact as much as you can with your customers, because they would have all the answers that you probably are looking over on internet or, or by talking to your investors or other so called five people. And, yeah, I think a lot of things that we do right now, including marketing, including product are actually based on user suggestions, their their requirements, and it really helps because it keeps building on so as you mentioned, you know, there would be let's say 1000 Happy customers who ultimately would bring 10 more people and it keeps exponentially increasing. So once you start acting upon their advice, it automatically starts to crease masses, you know, their friends and family, their networks. So it's important that you stay focused, and you create something, you build something that these people like the sort of people like, because it ultimately we'll multiply and then move on to other people as well. You won't have to even you know, work so aggressively on that. And, gee, I think that would be my biggest advice. And probably the next would be to, I guess, be very, be very prudent in terms of what feedback and advice to sort of act upon not every advice is supposed to be taken up and acted upon. You have to be very, you know, selective, you need to make that call. You need to learn over the time that you know, what's the set of feedback, what's the sort of advice that you should be taking up? And what is that you should probably hold on to and maybe try it out later on or maybe just discard. So that's something that comes with experience, but the sooner you realize that you're supposed to And you're supposed to learn the better experience, the richer the experience gets over the time.

Andrew Stotz 25:07
Okay. And last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months.

Smriti Tomar 25:13
Um, I think the only goal we I personally obsess on is getting more and more people to actually start investing, and taking right decisions when investing. So in India, it's about only between three to 4% of people only invest in India. And that's very low. So I think the only goal we all have in mind is to get more people to invest. And that's what we're working so hard for, so that we can craft that, you know, solution that really helps people to do it all confidently and start early. So my goal would be in the next 12 months to get as many people I think the target is to get about 200, you know, 200,000 people to start investing. But I would say, even if we could get like fresh, new 50,000 investors who had never invested before, who have always been reluctant, I think those would be my priority to get people who have just been so reluctant to have thought that investing is not for them, I just want it to be more accessible and also affordable to them. Great.

Andrew Stotz 26:19
Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning, remember to go to my worst investment ever.com And take the risk exposure quiz, because it's time to see how exposed you are to risk in your life and how to reduce it. As we conclude some routine. I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Smriti Tomar 26:52
Yeah, I think I would just say that the lot of mistakes that we make, particularly, you know, could be investments are not related to investment. But I think what we also aim for is making better mistakes in the future and learning as quickly as we can. So I hope my story helps a few of you. And also I think I am looking forward to having more such failures and learnings ahead in the future.

Andrew Stotz 27:19
Fantastic. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.