Suresh, founder of Formcept, data analytics platform shares how sharper positioning helped him spotlight the core product value.
About:
- Domain: Data analytics platform
- Stage: sub-$5Mn
- GTM: Sales-led
Trigger:
Suresh: When we started in the 2011–12 timeframe, this structuring the unstructured—whatever people are talking about right now, NLP, contextual analysis—we created it. We were well ahead of the curve, but somehow we were not able to break that chasm of growth. Founders will always keep thinking what is the mistake. I thought you would be the right person for us to change our narrative.
”We were well ahead of the curve, but somehow we were not able to break that chasm of growth. See, product at the end of the day is just 25–30% max, right? Everything after that is how you are actually messaging it, positioning it, and I think we messed it up royally on that.”
SURESH SRINIVASAN, FOUNDER OF FORMCEPT, DATA ANALYTICS PLATFORM
In the last 14 years we tried lots of things, but somehow the message is not going across to the other side in the right manner. They always think the product is very technical, very complex to use and things like that, which means we are making some mistake. See, product at the end of the day is just 25–30% max, right? Everything after that is how you are actually messaging it, positioning it, and I think we messed it up royally on that.
Insights:
Suresh: When you created something like a new category, like a data interpretation platform, we were actually surprised that very day when I saw it. I immediately kind of interacted with Anuj also, like how come we missed it out, right? So that was the right part—your way of trying to understand the real problem. I think that is pretty good.
"We were actually surprised. I immediately kind of interacted with Anuj, like how come we missed it out? We were actually focusing on the MecIntake part of it. You were saying these are all given. It was a hard hit on my head. What you said is correct and we were blindfolded."
SURESH SRINIVASAN, FOUNDER OF FORMCEPT, DATA ANALYTICS PLATFORM
In fact, we never thought of it that way. You are basically coming up with the three core products—MecBrain, Mecense, and MecGPT. We were actually focusing on the MecIntake part of it, for example. So you were actually saying these are all given—why are you talking about it? That is also something like it’s a hard hit for us, right? Meaning at least for me, it was a hard hit on my head right? Because what you said is correct and we were blindfolded.
Results:
👉 Spotlighting the hero product and the core value
Suresh: We don’t talk about the auxiliary product now, because the moment I come to the core, by the time people will be tired, right? That is a major change, in fact.
"We don’t talk about the auxiliary product now."
SURESH SRINIVASAN, FOUNDER OF FORMCEPT, DATA ANALYTICS PLATFORM
