"There are multiple risks and opportunity costs involved" with Adit Jain

Our co-founder and CEO, Adit Jain, has been our face and voice in the media. An IIT-D grad and Y-Combinator alumni, he prides himself on the astute understanding of what HR teams need to deliver a stellar employee experience. Post a summer training at EY, and a marketing internship at IIM Lucknow, Adit, began his entrepreneurial journey with Chatteron in 2015. A study of why Chatteron wasn’t making enough money brought him and the other co-founders to the concept of Leena AI, and there has been no looking back since then. Today, with an annual turnover now coming up to $10M, Leena AI has become one of the leading SaaS products in HR Tech.  

 Can you tell our readers about your background?

Well, I was born and brought up in New Delhi, and like any typical kid, I loved all kinds of outdoor activities - cricket, football, badminton - you name it. I was always a very outgoing child, always surrounded by a lot of friends whether engaged in playing games or enjoying my life in general. Studying took a backseat at the time. It was only during my penultimate year in school when I consciously turned into the exact opposite of what I used to be. I prioritized studying, and for two consecutive years, I spent 14-16 hrs a day just studying. After I completed my school, I took the JEE, one of the most difficult tech entrance examinations across India, and got into the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi which is in itself a prestigious University in India. From there on the rest is history!  

What inspired you to start your business?

When I first met Mayank, our Head of AI, and Anand, our CTO, my two co-founders, back in IIT Delhi, we became great friends and often found ourselves working together on a project. We worked on various projects - I remember us working on Automatic Content Summarization, Face Recognition - that gave us the initial confidence of building things together as a team. So, when we were about to complete our under-grad, back in 2015, the arena of startups was taking a rise and we thought of jumping on the train as well. We were reading a lot about global startup stories, and that inspired us to take the leap. We were already a great team and just thought of creating our own startup at that point. Even though we had jobs in our hands, we decided to not take them up and instead started something of our own.

Where is your business based?

We started the business in India but set our headquarters in the US, Wilmington, Delaware, and New York. 

 How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

There is a mistake that almost all technology entrepreneurs, i.e. young guys just out of college make, is that they look up technologies they love and then try to build a solution using that technology. And that's exactly what we did fresh out of college as well. We were in love with NLP (Natural Language Processing) and we decided to build a platform called Chatteron. We worked on using NLP - specifically conversational AI - to improve people's lives. We built the platform, went through used cases in sales, automation, etc. and Chatteron came into being. But, in hindsight, it should be the other way around. You should first identify the customer pain point and then build the technology needed to solve it, build the solution. 

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

The past year was about scaling for us at Leena AI. We have access to people, capital, and resources to do a lot of things. But I will choose to answer this question from more of an early-stage perspective. I feel that the founders themselves are the biggest champions of their product or business or brand. Initially it's about the people's promise. Customers are not buying your solution or your services, they are buying your promise to deliver that. And I feel that you yourself are the biggest asset in terms of raising awareness of the solution or product or service, whatever that you are out there to sell. 

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Oh! There were many. (laughs)

As you progress through your entrepreneurial journey, the kind of challenges that you face keep changing. For example, right now the biggest challenge I am facing is how to scale the business to $100M in revenue. But for us, we were hardcore techies. So learning to do sales as just a three-person team, without the money to hire a team was the first challenge we faced. In the early days, challenges were largely focused around product-market fit, and after that, it was about hiring the best people to build the best solution. That said, hiring the best is a constant challenge throughout a business’s journey. 

Now coming to overcome these challenges. As I mentioned earlier, we were hardcore techies, and sales was something we had to learn from scratch. But we gradually learned. We understood how to sell to investors and customers. Just to add to that, I was dealing with the fear of “What if someone says no?” But over time, I’ve learnt that you have to be comfortable in your skin 99 out of the 100 times you hear a no. The day you get that lodged, you improve. 

That's one, now coming to the challenge of product-market fit. Product-market fit tells you whether you should start scaling or not, and it’s critical because it tells you whether or not your business idea will be a breakout success. So, we decided to go back to our customers to understand their needs and figure out how we could effectively solve their problems. I’ve learnt that even if there are 3-4 customers whose problems your solution can solve, that there is a big win! It is important for entrepreneurs to go back to their customers, the people they are serving, who will be using the solution, and understand their requirements. As soon as you see repeatability in your customers, you know it is a fit. 

Now coming to the third point, hiring. As an entrepreneur, you need to understand the ethos, the non-negotiables, and possible red flags. Cultural fit is imperative as well, even though culture is basically fluid. As entrepreneurs or early team members, you need to have a clear understanding of the culture you want to build and hire people accordingly. 

 How do you stay focused?

As an entrepreneur, you see opportunities every day, and staying focused on your idea is quite difficult. One thing I personally use is the value bar. Am I adding value to what I’m saying or doing? Before I start something new, I try to calculate the value it will generate for that particular segment of customers. But after I am locked on the idea, I do all sorts of calculations to analyze it, basically being the devil to my own idea. Once I have spoken to multiple customers and see that the idea can be a solution to their problem, I will go ahead and give my 100% to it. 

During the early stages of my career, I have picked projects, worked on them for 3 months or so, and moved forward without giving in my 100%, and I understand that it might happen to anyone. But at the same time, it’s essential to explore different ideas and do the due diligence, and then commit to the one you find the most validating. That said, it’s possible that even after that validation, you could fail. But it’s important to remember that commitment is key to winning, and that’s what I keep in mind when focusing on anything. 

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

We are in the business of enterprise SaaS. Essentially, we help HR teams save time, we’re kind of like Siri, but for enterprises. However, at the core of it, it all comes down to the people actually using the product. If you look at the biggest companies, they were built by their administrators, i.e., HR teams, IT teams, marketing teams. So for us, the biggest differentiator is that we think like our users, and that's how we trackback to our users. That is one secret sauce that has worked really well for us! 

Second is our bias for speed, our hunger to solve more and more problems for our customers and help them get the most ROI out of the solution. The combination of these has worked really well for us from a competitive advantage perspective.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Different strategies during different points of time during our growth have really worked well for us. But by far the most important one has been customer advocacy. It’s like giving your heart and soul to your initial customers and letting them talk about your products and services. This could be in the form of video testimonials, online reviews, and sharing these everywhere for others to see. This helps bring in new prospects and is one of the things that works really well.

 What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Great question! I like to go back to Nike’s “Just do it”. A lot of times new entrepreneurs have hesitation. Needless to say, there are multiple risks and opportunity costs involved, but at the end of the day, it’s a leap you take towards opportunities. These opportunities create a learning curve, so even if you don’t make money, it will change you as a person. Which is why just do it!

 What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

I am a big fan of Gmail as well as Slack’s mobile version. These two help me stay on top of everything. 

With blogs, I follow Jason M Lemkin, who is one of the biggest influencers in the SaaS world. He’s been incredibly helpful with his insights through his blogs, YouTube, and various other channels. 

I am generally not a big consumer of books myself; I’ve moved to read summaries now. I used to be an avid reader. But I’d say my favorite book would be George Orwell’s 1984. It’s a dystopian novel that talks about how if unchecked, technology can be really hazardous but also big-brotherly. It taught me that whatever good you do, too much of it might just turn into something really bad. The book has centrally been with me to ensure that whatever we do, we have to look at moderation and avoid extremities of anything. It has been integral for me when I think about application, integration, technology and solutions, even relationships. 

 What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

Definitely Slack and HubSpot. HubSpot helps us with our CRM and Slack is just perfect for seamless communication between the team.

 Who is your business role model? Why?

I have and will continue to admire Warren Buffett. He has been my role model for a long time now. His life journey is inspiring. He started investing when he was maybe 13 or 14 years and he’s now the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway with 60+ years of investing. It shows that if you like doing something, you do it again and again, day in and day out. It might appear boring for other people, but if you love it you should continue to do so. And over time, it could change the world meaningfully over decades of work. That really inspires me time and time again.

 How do you balance work and life?

Well, that might be the wrong question to ask me! (laughs)

But I love what I do, to the point where it doesn’t even feel like work. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t built Leena AI. It is my baby at the end of the day, and I love spending my time with it. It just never feels like I am working when I am spending time building Leena AI. 

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

Definitely music. After a long day, I like to put on my headphones and listen to old-school English songs. For me, it’s the best way to decompress.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

The next six months are extremely important for Leena AI’s journey. Over the past twelve months, we’ve completed our Series B funding, and have now moved at the forefront of this category. It is crucial for us to maintain that position. We’re looking to expand into further geographies, customers, and expand the category to a much larger scale. Exciting times are ahead as we plan on increasing 4X this year and the next six months are going to be a crucial launching pad for that.

How can our readers connect with you?

Anyone can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. My handles are - 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adit-jain-75713b5a/

Twitter - @AditJain93

Links to be added –

Website: https://leena.ai/

 Picture Courtesy – Tanmay Shah