Vikash Koushik, Marketer and Startup Enthusiast
Hey here!
For our Live Chat today, we are lucky to have Vikash Koushik, Marketer and Startup Enthusiast! 😊
Here’s more from Vikash:
Heya, friends!
I’m Vikash, currently living in Bangalore, India. Some of you might know me from this awesome Buffer community. I’m a product oriented person. I’m currently working at a startup called germ.io and I’m fortunate enough to take care of growth, content and support.
A bit more about me:
I finished my under graduation in Computer Science Engineering in 2014 and have always been fascinated by the startup ecosystem. Just before my college ended, I started my own startup. We were fortunate to have been part of an accelerator program and get mentored by some of the top executives in the food industry such as Pepsi, Domino’s, and other top firms like OgilvyOne and Deloitte. Unfortunately, things didn’t work as we would’ve liked. That’s when I joined germ.io.
During my time in school and college, I used to play Cricket and represented my state. Playing cricket for my country was one of my dreams as a kid. Other than that, I support FC Barcelona in football, enjoy watching movies and travelling.
Hey Vikash! It’s 9:30pm where you are now? Thanks so much for joining us so late in the day! 😊
Heya, Alfred! Yeah. It’s 9:30 here. I came back home about an hour back and quickly had my dinner.
Thank you so much for having me. 😊
Startup Reflections
Thank you for wanting to chat with us! Also, thanks for briefly sharing your story with us! Your story is very inspiring! What made you want to start a startup right out of college and to continue working in a startup now? 😊— Alfred Lua
Sure, Alfred. During my school days, I was helping my friends and their friends fix their computers. Back then, not many knew how to set up their own PCs or fix them if something went wrong. Soon, we realised that this wouldn’t be a great solution that can be scaled. Then, my friends and I started looking for problems that we faced in our daily lives and tried to solve it. This gave birth to my “actual” startup. We tried to help restaurants with customer retention. After a year and a half, it kind of didn’t go as well as we would’ve wanted it to.
All these days, I felt I was learning a lot more in a startup. A lot people were willing to provide a helping hand and it was really inspiring to see how much you can impact a lot of lives with a startup. I think that’s what made me want to continue with the startup life. 😊
So, even failures teach us something, Vikash… what do you think you learned out of your first start-up experience? — Dray Wharton
I couldn’t agree more with you, Dray. I think one of my biggest learnings from my first startup would be:
Team > Product > Everything Else
I believe we’re in a stage where investors invest in teams. Even if the first product isn’t up to the mark, great teams can figure a way and make it happen. I’m a big believer of it now. 😊
When you’re thinking about startups or just a new service, do you find yourself looking at problems that haven’t been addressed or ways to address problems better than the current solutions? Or both? — Joshua Price
Awesome question, Joshua. I’m someone who has always been more inclined to look at solving problems that haven’t been solved yet. I think the downside to this approach is it’s a lot more harder because we still do not know if a market exists.
I think this is where Eric’s The Lean Startup principle comes into play. God! I love that book. 💙 😊
Life at Germ.io
Vikash — good to see you. I’m curious how a company called “Germ” manages to pick a name like “germ”. — Dray Wharton
So glad to see you too, Dray! Great question! I’m not really sure if I know the exact answer for this. 🙈 But I’m guessing that since we’re a product that helps your ideas take off, we were going after something in the lines of your ideas taking off and spreading quickly…
I’m gonna ask our founders what exactly is the reason first thing tomorrow. 😊
Aha! “germ-ination” I get it. — Dray Wharton
This is silly but germ.io is blocked on my work computer (the strangest things don’t make it past our filter) could you tell me in one sentence what germ.io does? — Sami Grady
Uh oh! Sure thing, Sami! Germ.io is a tool that lets you take your ideas all the way to execution. We believe that most of your ideas are thought about inside your mind and before an idea can get to a stage were it can actually become an actionable plan, you’ll probably have to go through a lot of brainstorming.
So, with germ.io, we wanted to build a tool that will help you capture your ideas, break it down into tiny steps and form an actionable plan out of it. 😊
So, Vikash… what is your role at germ.io? — Dray Wharton
I’m currently wearing multiple hats. I take care of growth, write content and respond to customer’s questions on twitter or email. 😊
Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the various tools you’re using as you wear those hats? — Dray Wharton
Love tool questions! I test a lot of tools. I mostly respond on Twitter using Twitter itself. For responding to customer tickets, we use Freshdesk. And to plan our campaigns we use our own tool. I think using our own tool helps us find friction points and solve it for our users. 😊
For analytics, we use Mixpanel. They’re awesome! 👍
Oh, yea! I use Buffer extensively in our team. So, let us add that to the list of tools I use.
So, if your new ‘priority stack’ is team > product > everything else, what are you doing to promote, support, and improve your team, Vikash? — Dray Wharton
Oooh! We’ve been extremely fortunate to have users inviting their friends and colleagues to collaborate with them on their idea. This is helping us keep a steady growth while we write content and promote it on various channels. 😊
When you talk about working on growth, what metrics are you focused on? and how are you working to achieve them? — Joshua Price
Awesome question, Joshua! We’re focusing a lot on improving our conversion rates on different phases of the funnel. We love and follow Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics. And we try to optimise on every phase of it. 😊
If you might be interested, here’s the link to Dave McClure’s video on AARRR metrics :
When it comes to growth what channels are you focusing on to spread the word about your company? — Joshua Price
We focus a lot on talking with people who write about our industry and build a relationship with them. One lovely place that I enjoy hanging out is Reddit.
We’ve learnt that Reddit can be a great place to drive a lot of traffic if we understand how Reddit works.
Reddit was extremely tricky for me in the beginning. 🙈
Talking about Reddit, I know you are a keen learner and very active in a few communities. What are some of the “places” you go to for learning more about marketing, growth, products and support? 😊— Alfred Lua
I’m so glad you asked that, Alfred. I love communities. I usually hang a lot in Inbound.org, Growthhackers.com, Reddit and try to read a lot of blogs.
PS. I hang a lot in Buffer community too! 💙
Have to ask, what part of Reddit do you visit most? I have attempted to use it for serious things, but I get lost on funny threads and opps have killed an hour of time. — Laura
Haha, Laura! I’ve found Reddit can be really a good place to learn and let off some steam. I’ve been through that road too! 😊
Some of the sub-reddits that I hang out are: r/marketing, r/startups, r/entrepreneurs, r/socialmedia
r/digital_marketing is also super cool 😊
Vikash, I don’t want to dominate your question set, but I’m curious: how is germ.io funded? — Dray Wharton
Not at all. We’re funded by friends and family. 😊
What is something you’re hoping to do more of as your company grows? — Nick Beall
Love this question, Nick. I’m not really sure I’ve clearly thought about it right now. I would love to take on more responsibilities and grow a rock solid team around us.
You are working on so many things (growth, content and support) at once; how do you allocation time between all of them? 😊 It’s something I’m working on and love to hear how others are managing it! — Alfred Lua
Wow! Love this question, Alfred. It’s something that I’m constantly working on. I’m not sure I’ve found the right balance in managing my time. Since we’re a small team, there are a lot of things that tend to pop-up unexpectedly.
Vikash: regarding Alfred’s question on time management, do you have any set routines that you follow on a daily/weekly basis to help you manage? — Dray Wharton
Mostly, the first thing I do is check if there are any support emails that haven’t been addressed yet. Once I’m done with that, I talk with my colleagues to get an understanding of what we’re up to for the day. This usually involves brainstorming on what we need to do for the day/week.
I’ve usually found myself to be super productive after lunch. That’s when I do a lot of the marketing works and content writing. 😊
So you have a scrum-like ‘Stand Up’ every day? — Dray Wharton
We currently don’t have a formal scrum like stand up at the moment. Maybe that would come as we grow into a bigger team? 😊
Hey Vikash, I’ve just connected! I am searching right now for help on how to deal with beta users. How to retain them, how often should I speak to them, what’s basically the process? And if there is someone who can speak to me about beta launch and beta TIMELINE for the product, I would be very very grateful. [We are a social media SaaS] — Vlad Caluș
Love this question, Vlad. We’ve found beta launches super useful as long as we stay connected with our beta users. My gut feeling is, the key lies in how much you try to see how they’re using your product. Hopefully tools like Mixpanel will help you with this. Once you find a pattern, maybe you could try and approach them every week to get to know “WHY” they’re using your product in a certain way?
Just, we are afraid that our beta users won’t communicate with us. In terms of — sending us bugs, and so on. — Vlad Caluș
Aaah! Maybe you could try to get in touch with your friends and their network who will give you solid answers?
It would be great if you could also try not to get your close friends as your beta users. In my experience, your close friends will give you answers that you want to hear and not the answers that you should hear.
Just for fun…
Totally off topic, but what did you think of the world T20 final on Sunday? — Nick Beall
Oooh. Fun question, Nick. Although I played cricket for my state, I’m not a big fan of T20 cricket. I’m more of a Test cricket lover. 😋
So, I’m not really sure that I’ll be a good person to comment on the latest T20 finals. I heard that West Indies played some amazing cricket. It’s really wonderful to see such a team that were once so dominant (in the late 1970s), return back to good form. 😊
Hey Vikash! Thanks so much for chatting with us so late at night! You are amazing! 🙌 It was fun learning more about Germ.io, your experiences as a multiple hat wearer there and the things you do!
Thanks to all who joined the chat today too! 👏 — Alfred Lua
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