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Clarity

Suresh Venkateswaran

Entrepreneur, Co-founder Hospitality SaaS startup, Product & Strategy expert in Fintech, Mobile, Marketplaces, Omni-channel Commerce & SaaS platforms. Product & Strategy consultant for multiple early stage/venture funded startups. Connect with me for quick consultation

$4.17/min

6

6 Calls

12

12 Reviews

32 minutes
Avg. call

Entrepreneurship Startup Consulting Product Management Lean Startups User Experience Design Business Strategy SaaS - Enterprise & SMB B2B Ecommerce Strategy Mobile Commerce Payment Systems

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eCommerce & Mobile Commerce

Experience with multiple commerce platforms - web & mobile. Knowledge of various payment platforms, integrations, merchant accounts & gateways

Payment Platforms, Prepaid / GiftCard & Loyalty

Experience in implementing Payment gateways, POS platforms for integrations with eCommerce platforms, marketplaces, SaaS & mobile solutions

Product Strategy - Payments, Mobile, eCommerce, UX, Design

Experience working with startups & entrepreneurs, remote teams, guiding through concept validation to product development. Passion for innovation & UX, leveraging to help build delightful customer experiences

Outsourcing & Remote Development

Experience in outsourcing & working with remote teams, have helped several startups/companies to leverage remote development & design teams for building SaaS platforms, mobile apps, ecommerce solutions

SaaS, P2P, B2B & B2C - Marketplaces

I have extensive experience in building SaaS applications, pricing, customer on-boarding, retention as well as B2B customer acquisition.

Talk to me if you are starting a SaaS business or need advice on how to scale one, build the team, do customer service or any other challenge/opportunity you may have. I love this category!

http://www.leads360.com

Building a Foundation for a Successful Mobile App

One in four downloaded mobile apps is never used and is discarded. After all, there are only a handful of apps that every person uses on a daily basis. So how do you make sure that your app is among those three that are downloaded and used consistently?

I have lead mobile initiatives at fortune 100 companies & startups alike and understand the space from the standpoint of user experience, acquisition & engagement.

Schedule a call with me today to discuss how you can build a strong foundation for a successful mobile app.

Answers 28
Reviews 12

Answers

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

What are the best tools to use for growing social media reach?

HootSuite, Bufferapp, SproutSocial are all platforms that help you engage, track progress & post frequently to most social platforms including Twitter.

SocialRank: https://www.socialrank.com/ is a platform to track your followers, engage & find new followers. It has been receiving rave reviews for the deep insights provided for Twitter & Instagram followers

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Social Media Marketing

Social Media

Social Media Strategy

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

As a startup, is it better to find a way to pay for services (i.e. design) or trade equity for it?

There are several avenues for startups to connect with designers. Platforms are dedicated exclusively for design professionals - enviro, theme forest, oDesk to name a few. Depending on your project & size you get work done for a reasonable price.

As long as your are cash strapped, I would reserve equity for employees. Equity serves as a great incentive to grow your company in the years to come.
With that said, I know of tech/dev companies that partner with startups to work for equity until they can be paid at a future time

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Early-stage Startups

Start-ups

Equity Funding

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

What is the best way to find a CTO for my start up?

CTO can be an important leadership hire for a company. As it continues to grow CTO adds value to help scale the technology & platform, dev organization and leadership presence with investors/market.

Your networks are always a great source to find such talent - LinkedIn, Founder dating, Angel List and clarity are few forums I would recommend connecting with prospective tech leaders. In addition, depending on your geographical region there are always great startup and tech events to connect with your future CTO.

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Recruiting

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

I was once told that the best way to differentiate yourself in the world of mobile ecommerce P2P apps is strong marketing. Would you agree with that?

In today's mobile app landscape and that too in P2P, there are several players trying to address various use cases. Marketing aside, customers themselves can be great advocates of your product. User experience that delight customers and delivers value will automatically resonate with users. They become your strong advocates. You can the leverage various growth hacking strategies/tools to grow

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Ecommerce Strategy

eCommerce

Mobile applications

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

Holding funds in a 2-sided marketplace?

Seems like an interesting venture.

When it comes to platforms and holding money there are strict regulatory & compliance requirements. As a platform operator you had rather focus on the core user experience and providing value to your users.

There are several payment platforms that will manage your transaction-holds experience ( for a fee) - PayPal, Stripe, wePay are a few I can recommend. These platforms take responsibility to manage the KYC, Risk, Regulatory/Compliance requirements for the transaction and associated holds experience.

Especially with online fraud continuing to be on an uptick it makes to rely on the experts. Happy to provide further advice if needed

Cheers

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Marketplaces

Online Marketplace

Payments

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

Should I pivot my business from an agency based model to a marketplace model ?

First off, congrats on building a business that creates value and growing customers. Based on your description, the current agency based model seems more one of full-service, you may have a good feel on how much your current customers value the model.

With an agency model, the customer trusts your service and subject market expertise to give them the value they are seeking. It also allows you to charge based on the customer, complexity of project, resources needed, skillset etc.

In regard to the market place model, customers are usually looking for flexibility in pricing and also in situations where they are fine with identifying the writer, project managing it. The platform serves as the connector between both parties and helps manage the experience through services to post requirements, manage feedback & communication, payment, reviews etc

Few recommendations:
- Try the marketplace model as an alternate tier for customers that would be open to managing it themselves
- You facilitate the engagement via the platform and take a cut of the transaction from both parties
- It allows you to see how customers choose between either model & make a decision before pivoting.

Each model has its own advantages & challenges. Look at a few marketplaces such as envato, fiverr etc that have accomplished the marketplace model.

Happy to connect further over a call.

cheers

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Marketplaces

Online Marketplace

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

How do you build a MVP for an innovative tech b2b product? We would need good amount of funding to build a decent MVP and show businesses.

There are lots of resources today where you can cost effectively build a MVP for a b2b platform without needing to raise lot of funding. In most cases ( as long as you have a great network of investors) you will probably need to have already developed an MVP, validated the product/service offering before you approach. Depending on the kind of B2B platform, you might be able to leverage existing frameworks to help build an MVP.

I have had lots of experience in B2B & B2C platforms and would be happy to share thoughts/feedback.

Cheers

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SaaS - Enterprise & SMB B2B

MVP

Product Development

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

Where can I find a coach/consultant for the online digital marketplace?

There are several platforms that support a marketplace for digital content distribution & sales. Bringing together consumers (for the content) and content creators. Example: Fiverr, Themeforest, Envato etc

It is a very interesting and highly evolving space with lots of opportunities to solve problems for both parties

I have had experience building digital platforms and am very familiar with the space. Happy to connect further if you need more guidance

Best

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Online Marketplace

eCommerce

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

If your business needs two type of users(like Uber or Clarity, you need Driver/Expert as well as passenger/Entrep.) how do you enter the business?

For any Marketplace platform to function & grow well both sides of the user base needs to be developed in tandem. Initially depending on the service the Marketplace is trying to provide, it is important to focus on users that will provide the service.

Uber: Drivers, Clarity: Experts, eBay: Sellers, UpCounsel: Lawyers etc. At the same time these service providers need optimum infrastructure, tools etc to showcase their services in order to attract consumers. Once you have a good number of service providers, you should begin promoting & targeting consumers. Without consumers the two-sided marketplace will not function.

Though you can begin focusing on the consumers later, it might make sense to begin targeting a small sample of users so they serve as initial users/beta testers of your two-sided marketplace.

Hope this helps. Happy to connect further over a call to get into specific strategies.

Best

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Business Strategy

Growth Strategies

Marketplaces

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

Need help to understand how far APIs can take it us & what the user experience will actually look like?

While you are considering bringing all the Content Marketing & Measurement features and capabilities together with Project Managment ( I am
assuming some type of cohesive management Dashboard with combined analytics ?), you might want to consider the following:

- the integrated product should not make it a challenging user experience overall
- is this something the customer/client needs, do you have relevant feedback to validate such a move ?
- what might be the benefits to the platform & users by such a change

It is hard to comment regarding APIs without more context on your goals. I have leveraged publicly available connectors & API modules to connect CRM, marketing automation and payment functions successfully.

Happy to discuss further over a call and address your questions

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Rapid Prototyping

Product Development

System Architecture

Suresh Venkateswaran answered

Is it possible to add money to the balance on the two-sided marketplace platform?

There are legal, regulatory and risk implications to retaining and handling funds as a marketplace.

The good thing is with marketplace platforms becoming more mainstream, the payment solutions ( such as Stripe, BrainTree, WePay etc) have also evolved to support their unique needs/services provided.

Depending upon your marketplace model you could choose to just transfer funds to the Seller minus your fees/commission OR hold onto funds (for a certain period) giving your users the ability to withdraw funds upon their choosing.

The payment solutions you choose vary by the use case, and the solution providers take responsibility for legal, regulatory and risk implications.

I have experience in payments for maketplaces and would be happy to share more feedback and suitable solutions over a call.

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Online Marketplace

Marketplaces

Legal Assistance

Reviews

Great advice and feedback on next steps moving forward! Thanks!

James Butters Source: Clarity

Suresh was super knowledgeable on the topic (payment solution) and helpful! He gave several real life examples to explain his points of view which made it easy to understand. Would gladly reach out to him again for more questions!

Henry Oh Source: Clarity

My call with Suresh was very helpful. He understands the SaaS landscape well, and was able to provide good insight and perspective into potential synergies and partnerships that can help grow our business. I definitely recommend Suresh for anyone requiring advice in the SaaS arena.

Ara Kevonian Source: Clarity

What a great guy with a knowledge that he shares to help others. The real deal!

Jack Dickerson Source: Clarity

Suresh understand product and early stage startups. He is warm, approachable, insightful, resourceful and genuinely cares about your project. And you need Suresh on your team! My co-founders and I are working on a new mobile app startup venturing into the art industry. Suresh is not familiar with the art industry but within a few minutes during our discussion, Suresh grasp our mobile app concept instantly and the rest of our conversation was very insightful. Suresh is straight to the point, he doesn't waste time with fluff. He helps us stay focus on what is important now while advising us to think about future goals for our product. We are so fortunate to have Suresh as our advisor on our mobile app startup project. Suresh have definitely helped us focus and saved money, time and precious resources. Many thanks for your valuable guidance Suresh. I hope you will be lucky enough and have the chance to work with Suresh so you can see first hand how awesome Suresh is.

Steven Lam Source: LinkedIn

Suresh is a great collaborator, and together I felt we accomplished wonderful things at PayPal. As a product manager leader, his enthusiasm and ambitious goals inspire his teams to redefine rather than refine. Suresh balances competing demands on his time with aplomb and is always ready to make the call. I look forward to our next collaboration.

Russ Brown Source: LinkedIn

Suresh is great to work with!

Suresh is able to navigate risk policy, legal, alongside customer needs and functional requirements and can translate them all into appropriate product requirements for a team to develop against. He is a team player willing to roll up his sleeves to collaborate and design/ execute a well developed product.

Bernice Yee Source: LinkedIn

Suresh is "la crema della crema" of the many product managers I have ever worked with in my career. He has deep knowledge of his vertical and is always prepared with background, requirements, and a vision for the future of his product. Suresh has a great understanding of how best to use the resources he is given, and is also open to new ways of working as a team. He has high expectations of others, of himself as well, and is a tremendous help as a mentor. I recommend Suresh and would certainly work with him again.

Giovanni Bacigalupi Source: LinkedIn

Suresh takes a common sense approach to Product Management. His technical knowledge and intellectual curiosity leads to well thought out options and solutions. He combines a passion for excellence with a calm demeanor that exudes confidence with his coworkers at all levels. Suresh is highly collaborative and open minded Product Manager.

Kurt Van Etten Source: LinkedIn

I’ve known Suresh for more than 6 years and there is no one I would rather have on my team. Suresh is extremely unique because he is both technical and strategic. He pays attention to every detail without losing sight of the big picture. That attention to detail and his ability to understand the competition and position a company for success is why Suresh is so valuable to any organization. I have never seen Suresh fail.

Paul Benevich Source: LinkedIn

I'm honored to work with Suresh - as a mentor guiding me to deliver a complex and most awaited high profile product for the company and as a cross vertical product champion who helped us to deliver the ideal product for our customers. And, we succeeded!!! Now, this is the standard that my company is following and leavarging my product as free of cost for the future initiatives. Suresh is strategic and always makes sure the business initiatives are aligned with the company's long term goals and also taking care of the success of his sub-ordinates. He helped me focus on my strengths, provided me the right direction when needed and kept me motivated under difficult circumstances. He is culturally aware, very easy and fun to work with and work for. Everyone loves to have suresh on the team, as a mentor, manager, leader, and a friend!” Getting an opportunity, I'd love to work with Suresh again without any hesitation.

Gopal Srinivasan Source: LinkedIn

Member since September 2013