Part 2: Girish Mathrubootham on Freshworks' trade secrets – and why he opened them up to competitors

First Principles

Girish Mathrubootham – founder and CEO of Freshworks – feels strongly about having the authority to take one’s own decisions, from a young age.

He made a very apt example in our conversation with him earlier this month at his office in Chennai: a kid never gets to make his own decisions, even if it is to just order food of their liking. This in turn translates into their adulthood as an inability to make decisions.

Girish has been out there making most of his decisions for himself from a young age, including which school he would go to, which college he’ll enrol in and having a say in most of his major life decisions.

The biggest learning he got out of this: understanding the consequences of your actions and reflecting on them to see the untapped opportunities that lay ahead. And once he got good at that, he became adept at learning so that he could do something about the untapped opportunities.

Girish isn’t just the CEO of a NASDAQ-listed SaaS company, he’s also deeply involved in SaaSBoomi, a community that calls itself The World’s Largest Pay-it-forward Community of SaaS Founders.

As one of SaaSboomi’s founding members, Girish played a big role in shaping its culture of openness and paying it forward. He did it by sharing in detail the methods and tactics that got a young Freshworks to $1M in annual revenue.

Then, a few years later – as he explained – he took Freshworks from $1M to $5M.

How often do you see a company explain their growth playbook to a possible future competitor and enable them?

It’s rare.

Girish also doesn’t limit his wish to pay-it-back just within the SaaS universe. He’s also out there with a mission to build world class champions from the football academy he set up, FC Madras.

He’s infused 100 crores into his academy for the game he loves because he knows the talent is there and it needs to be nurtured properly and in the future we might have a shot at the world stage.

Welcome to part 2 of our conversation with Girish. This episode too, like the first part, is filled with colorful quotes and examples ranging from Steve Jobs to Rajnikanth movies!

This is episode 43 of First Principles–The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast. Let’s get started.