Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, the first Indian SaaS company to be listed in NASDAQ — and when he’s in his home country, he gets the celebrity treatment. Freshworks’ 2021 IPO was a milestone for the country’s tech sector, and Mathrubootham has also attracted a “take a selfie with me!” level of fame for trying to change the conversation about entrepreneurship there. “You can be successful in business without doing bad things,” he says. “Being a good person and winning is not mutually exclusive.”

In this episode, Girish and Joubin discuss the silver lining of COVID lockdown; learning how to make mistakes and fight for what you want; why Girish started Freshworks after finding success at Zoho; the challenges of starting a small business in Chennai in the early 2010s; the “modern jail” of being a CEO; immediate job offers; “Indian cowboys”; why multi-product startups should hire in India; why moving to the US was like competing in the Olympics; and why the IPO is not the endgame.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in a “tier-two town” and social norms in India (06:03)
• Why entrepreneurial people don’t always fit in at big companies (13:00)
• Being a celebrity businessman in India, breaking up biases, and the pressure of being an idol (20:49)
• 500 crorepatis and generating wealth for employees (24:27)
• Why Girish started Freshworks, originally known as Freshdesk (28:09)
• Keeping up morale & being scrappy when Freshworks didn’t have much funding (36:35)
• Nostalgia for the early days and the luxury of time (39:44)
• “Ripoff or not” and doing battle with a respected analyst (45:29)
• Growing from one product to many, and the support needed to do that (49:58)
• Deciding to build a billion-dollar company, and moving from India to the US (58:43)
• Why Girish has re-committed himself to Freshworks for at least seven more years (01:04:24)
• Finding happiness in small things and not letting others control your feelings (01:07:57)

Links:

• Connect with Girish
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm