← The SaaSiest Podcast
The SaaSiest Podcast
206. Rahul Yadav, CEO of Paligo - The CEO Blueprint for High-Impact Executive Offsites
00:50:59
Loading summary
Transcript138 lines
- [00:03]
Rahul Yadav
You are listening to the Sassiest podcast in the world.
- [00:06]
Daniel
Born in the Nordics.
- [00:08]
Rahul Yadav
Democratizing B2B SaaS knowledge everywhere.
- [00:11]
Daniel
Hi, I'm Daniel.
- [00:12]
Thomas
And I'm Thomas. And we are experienced SaaS professionals that are curious about how other successful SaaS companies go to market scale, build winning teams and great products.
- [00:22]
Daniel
Join us on our journey as we speak to SaaS leaders trying to get hold of their secret sauce.
- [00:26]
Thomas
And today's guest is Rahul Yadav, the CEO at Paligo.
- [00:31]
Rahul Yadav
It's not only about all the great things, it's also about what we are not doing good and calling it out. So being open, being vulnerable, sharing transparently. I think that's the only way you build great cultures.
- [00:45]
Thomas
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Sassiest podcast. We've been away from each other now, Daniel, for almost two months. I've been down in Thailand having 30 degrees. You have been up in the cold weather in the north, the Nordics. Do you miss me?
- [01:03]
Daniel
Oh, a lot, a lot. I see you virtually like this like all the time, but I just, you know, it's a simple stuff. I just miss us going to the local pizza place here in kebab place, having a dirty kebab together and just, you know, having a chit chat about absolutely nothing and some stuff you've built with AI agents. And you can inspire me and I can judge you if it's a good or bad thing. But no, definitely miss you. Really looking forward to you coming home this weekend. Yeah, I will not be at the airport.
- [01:32]
Thomas
You will not.
- [01:33]
Daniel
I know, but I'm looking forward to a lunch on Monday in person and it's been a lot of fun.
- [01:39]
Thomas
Otherwise I'm arriving 6:20 in the morning so I mean you can do it.
- [01:43]
Daniel
Okay, I'll think about it. But it goes to show that you can get a lot done if you're passionate and you are aligned. You don't have to sit next to each other. So more of this if you want to, but please come back now.
- [01:58]
Thomas
And today we really have a passionate person with us that has a lot to share both when it comes to getting your team and your management team aligned, doing effective and off sites that really can make a change. And we will also go into other things now in the transformational times we have with AI and so on. So we are super excited to talk to Rahul today. We are super excited to have no other than Rahul Ijadav, the CEO at Paligo, here as a guest in the Sassiest podcast. Great having you here.
- [02:38]
Rahul Yadav
Rahul, great to be here.
- [02:39]
Daniel
Fantastic. And we appreciate you taking some time to jump on this. We know that you are relatively new to Paligo. What are you like a couple of months in? How's it been so far?
- [02:49]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, so it's been great, Daniel. I think it's been, I would say busy. I would say especially if you are in a CEO in a PE backed company, you can imagine you are on your toes all the time. It's been amazing. I've been really embraced in the organization so well, you know, talking to many customers, talking to partners, talking to colleagues inside the. Inside the company. I think it's been great. I couldn't ask for a better start.
- [03:16]
Daniel
Amazing. Is there anything that's. We're not going to go into particular details here, but I'm always curious, is there anything that surprise you? It could be a positive surprise or a negative surprise. We always go into with some data points. There's a working thesis, but there's also some assumption. But was there something here the last two months that you feel like, wow, this was much better than I thought or whoa, this wasn't exactly what I expected.
- [03:40]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah. I think maybe one thing positively surprised was actually Polito people and the culture underlying. It's amazing. There is this immense deep care and empathy amongst the colleagues. Right.
- [03:54]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [03:55]
Rahul Yadav
Even though we are highly hybrid as an organization. Right. So of course we have, you know, main base is actually in Solna in Stockholm. But then a lot of our colleagues are spread across. But I think there is this immense sense of empathy, care towards each other. I think it's. I haven't seen this kind of care and closeness in colleagues, especially in a hybrid setup.
- [04:19]
Daniel
Right.
- [04:19]
Rahul Yadav
Was a very positive surprise for me. That also means that I have a very solid foundation to build upon.
- [04:23]
Daniel
Yeah, that, that, that's a nice surprise. That's like you feel like, okay, there's a strong bond here because you need that. I know you guys are making some, some additions, some changes. Then you need to have that strong foundation to be able to succeed with those exercises.
- [04:38]
Thomas
So you are now the CEO of Polygo. But what else can you tell us about yourself? Work wise, personal wise?
- [04:45]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah.
- [04:46]
Thomas
Who's Rahul?
- [04:46]
Rahul Yadav
No, absolutely. Who's Rahul? I mean, you know, maybe before I start talking about work, I am a very passionate person, more or less. I take my time to choose what I want to do. When I choose something, I am 1,000% in. And this is probably how I am wired. So I'm extremely passionate about what I do. And then actually, then I give all my energy into this. So of course that reflects on my work. That reflects in the other things that I do outside work. For example, I'm actually an ultra trail runner, so I actually do long distance running. So I have not been running at all, you know, before 2011. I got into running, I got super passionate. I, you know, and then I just build my running as a one of my go to place. Right. Where I can really relax. So all the way from running anything from 5k to 100km up in the mountains. Right. So I've done all of this. So. So the passion is something. Passion is something that really just goes through in me in work and life, in sports and whatever. Right. Other than that, Yes. I mean I have been a product and tech geek all my life. So I have, you know, so I always say that, you know, I, you know, I always have loved to really use technology in a way and bring technology which really helps greater society. Right. That's also have always been the case. I think technology has been part of my life all my career and I happen to do, you know, leadership more or less. But you can see that I think for me it's about how do I. How do I create organization environments, culture systems where getting good people to work on great technology which actually delivers some great outcomes. That's what I have been doing. And you can see that with that thesis I have been working across different industries. So Polygo is my seventh industry in my career. I started with silicon Telco media and streaming public IT security and surveillance and now finally content management. Right. So you can see that I have always been kept myself agnostic because I happen to do technology and I happen to do, to really create teams and processes and people and culture and innovation which basically leverage technology for greater co. Gotcha.
- [07:05]
Daniel
Hey, I have a quick question here. You being an ultra marathon runner, I'm looking for new running shoes. Like what brand should I go for? And you should know there's a little bit caveat here. I am going to start running. So I am as far from an avid runner as you can imagine. Where do I start? Do I go for the hype or do I go for something else?
- [07:25]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, so actually you're probably asking someone who has a very strong opinion about this. So I'm always in a big favor of flat feet running.
- [07:32]
Daniel
Oh wow.
- [07:33]
Rahul Yadav
Right. So that means that try to get shoes which is neutral and especially considering you, Daniel, you're lean, you don't have a lot of extra weight.
- [07:42]
Daniel
Oh, I appreciate you. This episode is going to be great.
- [07:46]
Thomas
Have you met Daniel in person or.
- [07:48]
Rahul Yadav
No. At least it looks like. At least it looks like. Right.
- [07:50]
Daniel
Thank you for recognizing my fitness levels. So flat shoes.
- [07:54]
Rahul Yadav
Flat shoes. And that means, you know, you don't need to have a lot of drop. Right. That means from, from toe to. To heel it should be flat.
- [08:03]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [08:03]
Rahul Yadav
And that means it will, it will promote natural form of running. Right? I'm a big fan of natural form of running. I have used to be run bare feet quite a lot. Right?
- [08:12]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [08:12]
Rahul Yadav
That means, you know, I've done marathons on, on beaches, on bare feet and, and all of that. See that? Actually, if you really train yourself from the beginning like this, I think you can really avoid a lot of injury that comes with all the fancy shoes. Because, because it, you know, whether you're pronator, you know, super neater and there are a lot of techniques behind this. So my suggestion is that go with, go with flat feet and then start small in small increments.
- [08:37]
Daniel
Right, Gotcha. Gotcha. Good advice, good advice. I'm going to this running lab so they can see my running technique. There is no running technique but to see what they can fool me on. All right, good enough about running. So tell us a little bit about Paligo. For the ones that don't know Palego, what are you guys for? Whom do you do it and what's the great value you deliver to those people?
- [08:57]
Rahul Yadav
Absolutely. So Paligo, at its core it's a structured content or structured authoring platform, right. It's a tool where basically if you are a tech writer and if you are in a large company where you have thousands of documents that you have to write, you use Polygo to create your product manuals, your technical documentation, your compliance policies, your support articles, tech spec. You use tool like Polygo especially when you have complex documentation need. So this is the tool that Polygo came from, right. Which we call structure authoring. And we use a format called docbook and xml, which is basically why it makes Polygo a much more user friendly, what they call component content management system.
- [09:41]
Daniel
Gotcha.
- [09:42]
Rahul Yadav
So if you are in a manufacturing industry or if you're in life sciences, or if you are any regulated compliance industry and also beyond, I would say you will need a tool like Polygo to make you more productive simply because you will write your content in a structured format which could be reusable in different ways. And on the other side you can publish to different platforms, like any knowledge basis, for example, knowledge portals. But also you can push it to Salesforce, Intercom, Zendesk and the support tools, like that.
- [10:14]
Daniel
Got it.
- [10:15]
Rahul Yadav
That's what Polygo has been for last 10 years, right?
- [10:17]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [10:18]
Rahul Yadav
Offering a tool for CCMS.
- [10:19]
Daniel
All right, so listening to you, Rahul, how you describe this, my mind immediately goes. And correct me if I'm wrong here. Please do correct me. Like, is a typical customer. Like, I'm starting to think like companies that manufacture something. Like there's manuals, there's a bunch of technical specs. Is that a typical customer of yours or are you like agnostic when it comes to customers as well?
- [10:43]
Rahul Yadav
So yes, so we are agnostic, but we also have kind of a more affinity to those kind of customers. Absolutely. Manufacturing is one. Life sciences is another one. Cybersecurity software company. Right. Some of the logos you can see on our website, I mean, they are cybersecurity companies. High tech cybersecurity company, using it.
- [10:58]
Daniel
Right.
- [10:59]
Rahul Yadav
So yes, those are. Those are some of the biggest verticals that were where we succeeded. But at the same time we also have software development companies who do software development. So we have a mixed bag of all of this. So wherever you need lot of documentation and you are really, you know that your Word Doc, Google Doc, SharePoint, Confluence, Wiki is not scaling.
- [11:20]
Daniel
Right.
- [11:20]
Rahul Yadav
And then you basically come to two, like Polygon.
- [11:24]
Daniel
Gotcha.
- [11:24]
Thomas
All right, so to better understand the scale of your operation. So what can you tell us about the ARR of your company and how are you growing and so on?
- [11:35]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, so I think the scale is like, you know, we are just. This year or last year, we achieved $11 million in ARR. We have roughly 500 customers and some of them are Fortune 500 customers. So quite big customers as well. And we have customers in across 38 countries.
- [11:55]
Thomas
Are you focusing on some specific markets or what does that look like?
- [11:59]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, exactly. For SaaS, for a tool like this, of course, US is a big market. Right. US represent more than 50% of the market, followed by email. Right. And of course, we have also selected customers in APAC as well.
- [12:12]
Thomas
Okay, and how many employees do you have on your team?
- [12:16]
Rahul Yadav
I think we have 86 people today.
- [12:18]
Thomas
All right. It's efficient organization and we're going into this with the people a little bit. And we know that you have some opinions and some experiences when it comes to taking your team off site or you take your management team off site. So we wanted to dig into that a little bit and get inspired by your views on that. And I mean, why do you do an off site in the first place?
- [12:46]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah. So I think what I have so there are two things here, right? One thing is that I always have been doing in my career, at least once a quarter I usually bring my leadership team with me somewhere. Right. So that's one. And then of course, as a team, as a whole organization, I'm always in favor of bringing people together, the whole company together at least once a year. Because especially in this hybrid, remote environment, I think if you really want people to gel together, I think it's much better that you actually bring them together under the one roof for a couple of days. So just in January we did an off site where we actually brought everyone in the company together in a nice castle south of Stockholm. And then leadership offside, we do it quarterly. And I think the reason is simply because I actually when you get out of your normal day to day working place, out in the nature, sometimes out together, actually you really start to bond with people in a different way that you normally don't bond either over remote, but also in a fixated meeting room with a less inspiring environment, let's say. Right. And then of course, then you start to. And then of course a lot about what kind of topics you bring in those. Right. What kind of conversations you want to bring, all of that.
- [14:01]
Daniel
And that was my question really. So you have these off site executive meetings or management meetings and so on. Does it always follow the same type of agenda? So every quarter when we meet, we check these 12 boxes here and then we add one or two new elements or what's the content of this exercise to start with?
- [14:20]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I think I'm always in a favor of actually not cluttering the agenda with too much because normally what happens is that what I've also seen in other teams where people do this off site, but what they do is they actually put so much in the backlog in terms of agenda that anything that is left over that you don't have the time to discuss in your regular day to day meetings, you actually bring it to the off site. And that's not the purpose. So what we do actually is that first of all we try to do that. Can we even do without a laptop, for example? Can we just do it without. So very old school, you know, pepper and pen. Right. If it's possible in some cases we deliberately decide, but then it's us who deciding it. Then the agenda you bring is actually very, very simple. So for example, I'll give a concrete example what we did just recently, we just concluded an off site with my leadership team where since at the beginning of the year, a New strategy we just launched, right? And of course, we were all hired with the strategy, and we know exactly what needs to be done on a high level, at least on a strategic perspective. And then we already have our budget round already done, so which got approved from the board. And also we exactly know everything. But then when we talk to individually in the team, I actually said that these two days, we're gonna only discuss three things, right? Nothing else. Number one, if. When we're gonna look on 31st of December, 2026, why would we pop a champagne? What we should have achieved that will allow us to actually celebrate something with popping up a champagne. So that's one then. Actually, I asked everyone in my leadership team to come from different functions. So whether it's, you know, whether it's engineering, whether it's product, you know, go to market, CFO people and culture, each of them actually from their own perspective, they said, if we achieve these things and not more than three each, right, Then this is what we do it. So we said, okay, fine. And then they all talk to their share in plenum once they do it themselves and they share in plano. So one thing, second thing I said, okay, now think about what are the risks you see that will block us from popping the champagne on 31st of December? What are the top three things that you think that we will not be able to? What are the risks that you see? Or what we will not be able. What will hinder us to achieve those. Those goals that we talk about, right? And then the last question is about what is it that we need to do from now on to achieve so that we actually pop a champagne at the end of the year, right? It's very simple. And I know probably it's just you can do it in several ways, but the idea here is to really keep the conversation on a very human level and then setting the rules, actually. So before you do this, right, we actually have a team charter in my team where we basically practice radical candor all the way. Anyone can change, challenge anyone. We will not interrupt each other. When someone say, we will always go with curiosity. Try to understand the person's perspective and not directly judging, right? If someone says this is a risk and someone feels it's not a risk, then rather than judging, try to understand and put yourself into other person's shoes, right? So it's all these basic things that we all talk about as a leader, but when we reflect on ourselves, how many times we actually do it because we get so obsessed with our own idea of what good look like or what bad look like that we enforce. And specifically for me as a CEO, I know that if I say something, I know there is already that thing has a lot of weight. So what should I say and how should I say? And the environment I create so that people can challenge me. So creating that psychological safe environment where people can, people can talk and then get their concerns out when they talk about risk. Because we know that like head of engineering, for example, he will always have pressure to deliver the new shiny feature. But giving him or her a chance saying that what will hinder you? And with a perspective of how can. What can I do to help you so that we don't end up into that risk, I think really changes. I know it's so basic, but it changes the conversation in a very different way. Then you are there to help, support, guide, coach and understand with curious mind rather than okay, tell me why you can't deliver. You're hired to do this.
- [18:37]
Thomas
What was the hardest part? Was this to define the goals or what you want to celebrate or was it the risk thing or how to get there? Is there a certain part of this that is harder than the other things?
- [18:48]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I think the hardest part was I would even say that before the off site. Really look, this team is fairly new for me. Right. Because I just came 1st of December. So the hardest part was from 1st of December until that day when we have the off site to really build that team where they really feel we are in it together. We know that we have each other's back, we know that we, we know where we are going as an organization, as a team, as a company. And we know that what are our strengths and weaknesses. Right? Yeah. And so really bringing everyone to the same baseline. I think that was the hardest part because it requires a lot of time together. But once you have done that, when you come to this kind of event and then setting the rule of the rule for the next two days, then actually then of course the hardest part was to make sure that how do we consolidate it into handful of things that we can follow up and follow through throughout the year.
- [19:39]
Daniel
I'm just curious practically and I use myself and Thomas here as a horrible example. Anybody listening to this, you could just close your eyes and ears for a second now. But we have also our off sites, founders, retreats, the two of us here and trying to figure out what to do and so on. We don't run them in the most efficient way. And where we come in short is multiple areas. There's not Enough prep because we're too much in the weeds things and so on. And then when we end up there, it's not always that we walk away with a clear action plan. So I'm curious a little bit because it's one thing to get closer to each other and so on, but the end of the day, walking away from the meeting, you still want to have some mutual agreements like how do you prepare for this before? So when you actually meet, everybody knows that we're not just here to kumbaya. There's also going to be some activities after this.
- [20:36]
Rahul Yadav
No, absolutely. And I think the important thing is your off site and the action from the off site should not be disconnected from what you do every day. Otherwise you are doing it wrong. So that's one thing. So it needs to be reciprocated and reflected inside your team backlog that you manage as a team. Right. So we have a daily stand in my leadership team. I don't know how many C suite team actually does a daily standup. I actually do that. I've learned this from software teams in the early part of my career.
- [21:03]
Daniel
So wait a minute, you meet your C suite every day?
- [21:07]
Rahul Yadav
Every day, 15 minutes. We have a daily stand just like any scrum team, any product team and basically what is up on the agenda for each of the C suite member? We spend 15 minutes, no more than 15 minutes. So we exactly know what each of us are doing that day and then how we can help each other. So we exactly know the backlog of each of the team member every day. Right. So what I'm coming back to is that we manage that and then we manage our weekly backlog and then we have a quarterly backlog. So the outcome of those offside should not be something that we haven't discussed earlier, but it's very much about alignment. That's one second thing to your point about. You end up into a lot of nitty gritty practical things which normally happens because we all human beings, we go into weeks of things. So normally what I do is that in these off site I actually normally from the beginning I create a, a parking lot. So it's a little bit a kind of a flip chart or a kind of a paper that you put it on the, in your meeting room, wherever you're meeting, say guys, there will be a lot of idea that will generate in next two days. If it's not on the, on the topic that we're talking about, not that they are not important, it's super important. We just put it out There on that parking lot. Because what it does to the person who brings that idea is that, okay, my idea is acknowledged. It's not for discussion now, but I can remove it from my mind. And actually there is there on the parking lot. We will revisit it later. So it's a very simple kind of, you know, a gesture that you just do where you just say, there is actually a parking lot. Right. And then sometimes we say, I have a rule actually for off site. Is that off site, we keep it strategic. Monthly meeting, we keep it operational. And weekly, we do it tactical.
- [22:49]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [22:50]
Rahul Yadav
So every time, whenever we do a quarterly offsite, if there is a operational or tactical task come in, we said, are we rat holing? And then even actually we created in the leadership team. And this is something I've learned from my previous company. We actually have a role called Yoda in the team. And this is something I learned from my previous company. So I don't want to take a credit of that. Right. But the role of Yoda is that if I'm speaking a lot myself and I'm not allowing someone to speak, then the Yoda will say, rahul, remember, you are speaking too much. Right. So Yoda has a role of actually calling anyone out in the team. Right. Or if we are rat holing or if we are, you know, if we are out of the time. Right. So we actually define that role. Right. And we are trying to practice that as well in Paligo now.
- [23:36]
Thomas
Right.
- [23:36]
Daniel
That's exciting. So us sports fans, we call this a ball hog. Somebody that takes the ball, doesn't want to hand it over. So I'm also curious. You said you're spending quite some time here. Like, you started in December, this is three months in now. And you said when you met there, you wanted to have honest discussions. And I mean, people are just people. They're human beings. You know, they're responding to a new boss here. The new boss maybe has some new ideas, like, you know, how do you truly make sure that people are genuinely as honest as they can in that session? And not half honest, so to say, or not holding back a little bit because there's a new boss here. I don't know, does he want to hear this?
- [24:21]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah.
- [24:22]
Daniel
So I might gonna say that because that's, I think, what he wants to hear.
- [24:25]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I think that's a. That's a great question, Daniel. So I think, and honestly, there is probably no. I. I really wish that I had some very, very smart answer on this. The way it is is very simple. That you just need to be vulnerable, you just need to show up, you need to create, you just need to create psychological safety and you need to build that. And if you do all of this, you're going to build the trust the moment you start to realize that the team knows that you have their back. Right. And there is no wrong answers or there is no penalty for bringing the bad news, I think. And this, you need to practice every single day. Every single day, right? So what I'm trying to do is that what I'm telling you, this is what I'm preaching now, is what I actually normally do in my every single daily meeting I have with individual one to one, but also in the leadership team meeting. So for example, I have no problem in telling in front of the whole company guys, I made a mistake or I was wrong. Right. And because I think, I really believe actually if you do this and if you do it enough time, you will start to see that, you know, the trust and the psychological safety emerges. Because the trust and psychological safety come from you as a leader being vulnerable and sharing your vulnerable side as well. Right. And once they know that this, this is actually okay. It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to fail as long as we learn. And it's okay to fail if we don't, you know, if we don't make the same mistakes again and again and if we learn from those. Right. So I think it's just this daily nudges, daily, daily practice and walking the talk. That's the only way. I think there is no other way.
- [25:57]
Thomas
So when you do an off site like this, I mean you mentioned the things that sort of, that you focus on, but how do you sort of set up the day so you get a nice setting for it? Do you plan the day certain way? When in the day do you do these exercises? Do you have other parts that opens up sort of you for spending this time and doing this work, strategic work together?
- [26:22]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah. So I think we try to at least these off sites, I always say that actually that, you know, of course at the end of the day it's all about how do we grow the company, how do we create a good culture, how do we get a product Right. And any CEO, any company will say that, right? I think what I normally think about whenever I plan these two days together, right. In the leadership, I always think about what is it that I want to achieve. Really? Really. Right. Of course, your business impact. I actually say that those are your lagging indicators. You will get it anyway if it was a good team and a good product and a good execution plan. So what is actually that I want to achieve? So for example, normally in this off site, I want to make sure that we have good camaraderie. We really build a good camaraderie in the team, right? Meaning that people really feel that we are in together. Right. And there is no friction between different functions in the organization. So really having your agenda on a high level, not on all the nitty gritty on every half hour planned out agenda, but at least on a high level there should be enough room to breathe, there is enough room to actually have fun together, right? Enough room to go, probably go for a walk, have a nice dinner together, right? Enough room for reflection. Reflection is extremely important. So at the end of the day one and maybe early in the morning, first thing when you come on the day two, asking people how you felt last time, you know, last, last day, what are your key takeaways, what we could have done better. Right. And to make sure that you don't, you carry some of those learning in the day two. So, so again, it's very much about planning around some of these high level things, right. Rather than really going into hour one, we're going to do this piece our two, we're going to do this piece because then you again make it so rigid that people are just following that recipe rather than saying that, okay, the whole reason of offsite is that you let a little bit loose so that you can be creative and you can be vulnerable at the same time.
- [28:20]
Daniel
I have a question. It comes from when I was much, much younger and I was almost bothered by it early in my career. So you have the management team, they go off site and magic happens there. But it's a little bit of a black box to the rest of the organization sometimes in some organizations I'm curious like, you know, if, if so to what extent do you then in the coming, you know, Friday town hall, do you say, hey, last week the six of us met. Here's what we agreed on, here's what we didn't agree on. Like how transparent are you with the details of the discussions during those off sites with the rest of the organization?
- [29:01]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I actually love that you asked that question, Daniel, because. And now you know, when this podcast is going to go live, my, my colleagues inside Paligo is going to watch it as well. They will tell you actually that the day we ended the off site, which was day two, 4pm or 3pm we had an all hands. I literally shared what we Discussed in the off site on a high level and then followed by that. On Friday, actually every Friday I write a CEO reflection to the whole company on Slack where I even shared what are the key things we discussed and what are the key things that I'm happy with and the key thing that we need to improve on. So actually that transparency, again, I'm talking about walking the talk and being vulnerable. Every Friday I actually write a CEO reflection where it's not only about all the great things, it's also about what we are not doing good and calling it out. If I have a customer call where customer is not happy, I actually share it openly in the company. Guys, we need to. This is not good enough. Or on the contrary, if customer is happy, also share this in the organization. Similarly, just, just last week I attended this Best practice in the Age of AI event in Stockholm. I actually wrote a post about the sense of urgency when I see what's happening out there of what a company like Polygo can learn. So being open, being vulnerable, sharing transparently, I think that's the only way you build great cultures.
- [30:18]
Daniel
Yeah, I love that. And that helps you also keep the momentum and some transparency. With transparency comes also accountability. How do you make sure, I mean you have your daily standups, you have the letter you send here, like. But how do you make sure that you take the energy from that closed room and that lasts you throughout the next time you have that closed room session? Because sometimes people can be pumped and it can fade out a little bit because then go buy back and there's a customer complaining or there's a bug issue or whatnot. Like how do you keep that momentum?
- [30:54]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I think it's just like make sure that those moments and those, I think progress is the key here, I would say. Right. So those moments that you create in those off site, if you can really make a tangible progress that you discuss in your leadership team regularly. Right. Then that carries forward. So that also means that whether it's our daily stand, whether it's our weekly meetings in the leadership team and also our all hands as well. Right. Make sure that you actually have that constant dose of energy and excitement coming in, but at the same time grounded in brutal truth as well, the things that we are not doing good as well. So I always make sure that I paint a realistic picture, but at the same time making sure that there is actually a way forward out of that as well. And there are concrete actions and concrete ownership that a leadership team is taking to improve the things that are not doing Good. But also at the same time motivating the organization for all the great stuff that we are planning to do as well. So I think talking about it in different for us, reflecting in your mails, in your slack messages, in your communication, and then constantly nudging it in the organization, that's the only way.
- [32:05]
Thomas
Yeah. It's very inspiring to hear all of this and it's evident that you're very passionate about all of this and with leadership and so on. But what excites you the most right now?
- [32:16]
Rahul Yadav
I would say VR in probably one of the most technologically disruptive times of our life that poses either some crazy kind of threat or excellent opportunity. I'm actually on the camp on the latter side. Right. I actually believe this is an exciting opportunity for a company like Paligo. Right. And me coming from a product and tech background with a huge, you know, with a good toolbox from a business and commercial side as well, I actually think that what we are about to do in Polygo, which I haven't talked about yet, is so exciting and it's so relevant in this world of AI. That's what keeps me awake and my team awake. Right. Meaning that all that structured data that I just talked about that is created. Imagine if we can supercharge AI, the whole world of agentic with that structured single source, version governed data so that your AI become trustworthy and not hallucinating. That's the opportunity that Polygo has now.
- [33:18]
Thomas
Was that the part of why they hired you as the CEO, because you had this tech background?
- [33:23]
Rahul Yadav
I think in my conversation with the investors and with the board, I mean, they were very clear from the beginning they want a product and tech background leader.
- [33:31]
Thomas
Okay.
- [33:32]
Rahul Yadav
And then when I came in, when I started to look into this, I could really see that I can really build this company to a very different scale and a very different, I would say, enhancing offering compared to where we come from, from being a tool provider to a critical infrastructure for content. Because content is going to be the king in the world of AI. And grounded content will become the King Kong.
- [33:57]
Daniel
And to get there, what do you see ahead of you? Let's say the next 12 to 18 months or maybe even 24 months. That's a long time in the age of AI.
- [34:07]
Thomas
I thought you would say six to 12 months instead, but you went up to 24.
- [34:11]
Daniel
That's. We got to give Rahul some chance here to get the wheels in motion here. He just started.
- [34:16]
Rahul Yadav
No. So I think, I would say I agree actually with Thomas. I think 24 months is way too long. Also in my book, right. The world could be very different in 24 months, I think. Next 12 to 18 months I would say, right. What I see is that Polygo will become that essential platform. Right. And essential is important, a mission critical platform. If you really want to make sure that your agents, your agentic flow on the other side is grounded, is trustworthy, is hallucination free. You will need a tool like Polygo to really create that structured content which is basically understanding your domain, your vertical. Right. But at the same time single source, version governed and all of that. So I will say that we will achieve a lot of this, what I mentioned, in the next 12 to 18 months.
- [35:10]
Daniel
So you have a strong team, you have a strong product base. I mean clearly you have like 500 customers. You've been doing something right for a very long time here. What else do you feel you need to get you from where you are today to your this milestone goal of becoming this central player that runs the infrastructure?
- [35:29]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah. And I think honestly I will be very open, Daniel, and I think this is something I haven't spoken openly about. But let me just say I think what's happening is that I think there are two things that we need to get better at now, right. We need to reposition and we need to reprice.
- [35:42]
Daniel
Okay.
- [35:42]
Rahul Yadav
So both needs to happen in parallel, right? So repositioning of the company. Because remember, we are coming from a traditional CCMS tool, by the way, we are one of the best tools out there. No doubt about it, right. Hands down, best user friendly CCMS tool out there. Right. That's why our customers love us. So there's a lot of goodwill that has been created in the last 10 years, right. Which we need to really make sure that we continue to amplify and leverage that. So that means we do have a very strong product market fit today. Now where we are going with repositioning is that we will become attractive because remember, who has the budget for infrastructure in the organization? It's not your tech documentation managers. Right. It's actually the CIOs and the CTOs of the world.
- [36:21]
Daniel
Gotcha.
- [36:21]
Rahul Yadav
So that's why repositioning is important and therefore repricing is important as well. So that will some of the things that we're going to work now from now on.
- [36:28]
Daniel
Right. So if I'm understanding you correct, it's not so much, of course the product is always going to be enhanced and updated and so on, but the product is there. It's more maybe the story that needs to be adjusted to fit this new group of people. The product already fits them. It's maybe the story that needs to be adjusted.
- [36:45]
Rahul Yadav
Yes. And there's also things that we need to do on the product more than what people know the product from today.
- [36:50]
Daniel
Gotcha.
- [36:51]
Rahul Yadav
So of course we will announce that product as well and that offering as well. But the product is already in a good place as I said. Right. So the product is there, story need to be told and then on top of it, there are some other elements on top of the product that we need to build, which we have already started building. And by the way, on the positioning story, maybe I can use this as an advertisement. Actually, I'm hiring for a product marketeer and content marketeer to really help me tell the story. So if anyone listening out there, if you want to apply, please look at my LinkedIn profile.
- [37:24]
Daniel
Awesome.
- [37:26]
Thomas
And another question here, I mean, all of us, we have to learn how to work with AI and see what we can do for ourselves and for the company. Could you share something about how you AI, what do you do in your personal or professional life that you think really have made a difference for you so far? Or what are you experimenting with after hours?
- [37:52]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. As we were discussing before the start of the, of the podcast, I think, you know, I really feel a big time fomo, right, of what's happening out there simply because we all have limited hours, right? And I feel like the progress that's been happening day over day is just impossible for one human to actually follow in entirety, right? I never ever in my career in technology career I've ever felt like this, right? So there is something, something crazy which is happening. So what I do is that of course I'm playing with all the tools, the usual suspect you can think about. So I have subscriptions of Lovable, I have subscriptions of Claude, I have subscription of ChatGPT, Gemini. And actually I play with all of this. So of course some, I am also configured some of the agents myself which actually helped me to do the job. So for example, as simple as like every morning at 7, I actually get an email out of Gemini how my day look like and what I need to know before my meetings, right? So that's very simple, right? Very simple. You can just configure it, right? So that's one thing which I do. Other thing is that some of the things that I like, some of my writing I do, right? Of course there is a lot I actually have to put and nudge right myself. But there is A lot that I can see that it was just not possible six months ago, which is possible now. Right. And then actually our go to market organization, I can just tell you that we are basically moving a lot on cloud right now. We have connected with all of our backend systems. So there's a ton of stuff that I can already do today. Right. Which was just not possible three months ago. In terms of really how is my pipeline health look like? Where are the pain points I see in terms of churn or what are the main customer top five customer pains that I'm seeing? Based out of the transcripts that we have of the call, all of that actually is possible. And all this data earlier we did had a lot of tools, but they were residing in multiple tools. Now actually there is this layer on top of the that we can actually can hook all of this and then ask the system which was just not possible. So now actually I don't even need meetings. I don't need to talk to VP Marketing or VP Sales to give me a report. I can generate it myself. Which is just crazy. Right?
- [40:02]
Daniel
Yeah. I mean it's fascinating. I hear you, what you're saying. Like suddenly you have this interactive data interpreter that you can just talk to and wherever the data resides, it will give you really detailed and analyzed feedback. I think think it's fascinating.
- [40:20]
Rahul Yadav
And the POC is another piece actually. And then. Right. So now for example me as a CEO, I actually, I mean we were working on something new and I wanted to convey this to the team. I actually just put on lovable. Right. And then I just did it like over half an hour. And then I said guys, this is how it should look like.
- [40:40]
Daniel
Right, right.
- [40:41]
Rahul Yadav
As simple as that.
- [40:41]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [40:42]
Rahul Yadav
Imagine for this earlier it would have taken me a couple of days if I do a FIGMA wireframe or a storyboarding or whatever or explain it in a meeting. So I think this is why it's super important that everyone in the organization leverage these tools out there. Right. They are not perfect, but they are getting there.
- [41:01]
Daniel
Yeah, exactly. And not to bash anything, FIGMA here or something like it's a fantastic tool. But the lovables of this world, they've given people like my c. Pure mortals, non technical people stuff that I couldn't do and I wouldn't even attempt. In figma I can create a fairly simple wireframing that I can show to Thomas and the colleagues here. Like hey guys, I think here's an idea of how it could look and so on. So it's somehow it helps with democracy, everybody can now contribute to things and actions maybe they couldn't take part of back in the days.
- [41:33]
Rahul Yadav
No, exactly. I think I just. Today I made a small poster today of what kind of people that I will really look like to hire in this world. Right. I mean, you can look it up. I mean, for me, I think it's not a technical skills anymore.
- [41:44]
Daniel
Right.
- [41:45]
Rahul Yadav
It's about agency, it's about judgment, it's about clarity, it's about taste. Right. Curiosity. Right. And this is what is needed because I really believe the cost of execution is nearly coming to zero in the next coming years.
- [42:00]
Daniel
Yeah.
- [42:00]
Thomas
So it's interesting times and we try to find interesting guests for the show and interesting topics. So is there someone or a topic, Raoul, that you think that we should try to get on the show? Is there anyone that would excite you as a guest here?
- [42:17]
Rahul Yadav
Yeah, I think, you know, I'm a big follower of a lot of great people out there who are doing this. Right. I think so. I think, you know, I would say that especially for a lot of companies like Paligo. Right. A lot of great companies that have been built in the last five, seven years, maybe look at the guests who could, who are actually doing a pivot from being a SaaS company, a traditional SaaS company, to becoming an AI native company and reinventing that. I think the world needs a lot of inspiration simply because all the time, all the limelight is taken by the AI native companies like Lovables of the World, Lagoras of the World, which is great. But just imagine if you're a company building on a tech debt, on a big churn problem or whatever. If you're coming from a good, successful SaaS business, what does it mean for you to become an AI native? I think, you know, I don't have one name in my mind, but I'm just trying to give you a theme. This will be very interesting for a lot of. Lot of people like myself, you know, to learn from others who actually are taking a similar journey so we don't make all same mistakes.
- [43:30]
Thomas
And many of these companies, they have the domain knowledge, they have the customers, they have the data. Right. So they're in a great position to do something completely new with new technology. But as you say, it's technical debt. They have maybe to, you know, revamp the whole organization. They have to do some, you know, painful decisions, but there's great opportunities out there as well.
- [43:54]
Daniel
Yeah. And it's not, it's not just. It's not just technical that I think for Many people, it's like technology, like you'll figure it out. I think it's a commercial debt. Like you have all these customers that are you together with them have an agreement of how they consume and how they pay for your services.
- [44:12]
Rahul Yadav
Absolutely.
- [44:13]
Daniel
And now maybe there's pressure that I don't want to pay you per seat, I don't want to pay you like this. I want to pay you for some kind of outcome or token based. And that creates a different type of pressure. Like okay, I'm going to remove like 50k ARR from this customer. Yeah, maybe they're going to spend 10 now or maybe they're going to spend hundred. I don't know how many tokens they're going to use. Where does that leave me in my model? I think that's, that's a, that's a challenge that I think many people have because technically I think more people can. Everybody will figure it out. It's a transition to the commercial model in my opinion that will be the challenging element.
- [44:47]
Rahul Yadav
No, I 100% agree, Daniel. And I think also that's why when I say when you move from a traditional SaaS company to what they call AI first company to an AI native company. Now the thing is in this middle layer, a lot of companies who are moving From a traditional SaaS to AI first, what they're doing is actually, I actually call it as a lipstick on a pig model. That's what I call it. Because what it means is that you say, okay, let me throw in some AI features on I will have AI assistant, I will have this and that. But actually it's not going to solve the fundamental issue as you said about the commercial model. So in the AI native world, what you need to look at is okay, do you need to reinvent your product still keeping your competitive mode that you had, right. Your mode could be a customer, your channel, your data. Right. That could be one. And what does it really mean in the new world? That's one to achieve that, what kind of commercial model you need, what kind of go to market you need, what kind of pricing you need? Right. What kind of does it change your buyer Persona, economic buyer of your product? Does it change that? That means repositioning as well on the other side. Right. So all needs to be baked through. And I think the load in that company who's dealing with a lot of tech debt, I think it's a quite a big, you know, big shift and transformation that is needed. That's why more we can talk about it in a platform like this, the more we can help people.
- [46:02]
Daniel
I love that topic. So if you're listening to this episode and you feel that, that we are calling you, you have made this transition from, I hate to use the word, but you know, a legacy SaaS to become an AI first company with AI first offerings. We'd love to hear from you. So give us a ping, Thomas. Where do they reach us?
- [46:23]
Thomas
Well, they can reach us. I mean, you can find us on LinkedIn. You can email us at thomas or danielassasias.com. yeah, I can give your phone number later in the episode. But also, I think, I mean, it's been really great having you here, Rahul, and you are Quite active on LinkedIn. You are writing a lot of good content. So I also encourage you to go and look him up. I'm sure that if you want to get in touch with him, that's the best way as well. Or am I right?
- [46:53]
Daniel
Yes. And now you're going to get bombarded by content writers and product marketeers. I think product marketing is the hardest role to hire for. So if you think that you can help Rahul and the team over there, do give him a ping. So once again, Rahul, thank you so much for joining the show. This was very insightful. Love the energy.
- [47:11]
Rahul Yadav
Thank you so much and great being here.
- [47:13]
Daniel
Thank you. Take care. Now, Thomas, I see you're smiling here. Like, what is the one thing you want to share with the listeners here? What are you taking away from this conversation?
- [47:26]
Thomas
A lot. But, but just to take one small tidbit of everything, I think it was quite cool that it took the whole leadership team for a daily stand up in the morning. So I mean, that's, you know, coming from the product side you can recognize that and I think it can be good way to be aligned actually. So, yeah, that was a good, good little piece of advice that I liked.
- [47:56]
Daniel
Yeah, you stole mine. You stole mine. That's the one I was, I was going for. Right. I thought there's many good things here. But I really appreciated what he said. You know, at the end of the day, it's about, at least that's how I interpret it. It's about being human. It's about being human not just in the management meeting and the offset meeting, but before to build this trust. And I think you got to work, walk the walk, talk the talk and whatnot. Like, you gotta show people that even me as a CEO, I can make mistakes. And he had some phrases where like, you're not gonna get shot. He didn't say that, but you're not gonna get shot for being the carrier of bad news. Contrary, maybe you'll be the one that's rewarded because you brought it up. You make sure that we have all eyes on it and so on. But it's about building that trust. And if you come into these management meeting where everybody feels that they can have, you know, their guard down and openly speak about, here's the issues we have, here's the challenges we have, here's where we want to get, but here's potential risks that will maybe stop us from getting there. Only then can you actually make really, really good progress. So I like the human aspect here. You got to build the trust and the open environment where everybody's seen, everybody's recognized and everybody understands the communication rules here and how we move forward. I think that's the only way to actually have full transparency in your organization. So hats off to you Rahul for being so transparent with us and with your new team here, just three months in.
- [49:29]
Thomas
Yeah, and other places where we have transparency and where we help each other is in our networks. So if you're a CEO and you would like to have a cohort of peers to bounce ideas with to be vulnerable, you can join our CEO network and there is similar networks for all kinds of vertical management also within the executive network. So you can head over to SEO.celsius.com or executive.celsius.com and check it out. There will also be be a lot of opportunities during the year to get together. We have our big conferences starting with our flagship as YST 2026 in Malmo. Our 5th year anniversary on May 5th and 6th and then the year goes on with conferences in London, Munich, France and Amsterdam. And on top of that a lot of other opportunities to meet on meetups, dinners and other organizations locations. So very active year for the community here and we hope to see you around.
- [50:36]
Daniel
Just how we like it.
- [50:37]
Thomas
Yeah, that's how we roll.
- [50:38]
Daniel
That's how we roll. Lots of action and once again we appreciate all of you guys downloading this, listening to this, keep the ideas flowing and let's see where this year takes us. It's an exciting year to be in tech.