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From Consultancy To Scalable Tech Platform By Obsessing Over Customer Value
MG Gurbaxani
Cuvama
The BAE HQ welcomes MG Gurbaxani, the Co-Founder of Cuvama.
MG in his early days was deliberately against wanting to become an entrepreneur.But over the last 17 years, MG has helped over 80 global B2B customers across manufacturing, distribution, high-tech and software realise their monetisation potential. As the software industry moved to SaaS, MG recognised that the shift of power to the customer was inevitable, and built a boutique consultancy, mgpricing, dedicated to this new and growing market need.
After many years of solving the same problem set, the consulting knowhow was codified into a tech platform, and Cuvama was born.
Show Notes
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Full video of episode
MG Gurbaxani: [00:00:00] I doubled down on not wanting to be an entrepreneur and you could see far ahead, like, okay, this is not just for this company. The world is changing. And that's why I would say seeds were planted for, Hey, this is a new problem. It's a growing problem. You're living this problem. Can we do something about it?
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when we kept talking about, is there a product angle here? Can we build tech to solve this? An opportunity like this is never going to come again.
Amardeep Parmar: And we're live. Today we have with us MG Gurbaxani
, who's the CEO and co founder of Cuvama. They're a platform that enables B2B software companies to sell on value, not on features. If you're joining us for the first time, we're the BAE HQ and we're all about inspiring the next generation of British Asians to achieve their dreams.
Amardeep Parmar: So M. G., tell me when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you ever imagine being in this world?
MG Gurbaxani: No, I didn't imagine being in this world. Like [00:01:00] most Indian boys growing up in the 80s, my dream was to be a cricketer. So this is, uh, quite a far stretch from that.
Amardeep Parmar: And did you actually go down that path?
Amardeep Parmar: Did you actually try to? Worked down there, like when you were a teenager, what was the aim then?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, I think by, by age 11, realized that I was, uh, not rubbish, but nowhere close to being on a professional athlete trajectory. So studying maths and science like, like a good Indian boy was, uh, was the path.
Amardeep Parmar: And what did you study at university then?
MG Gurbaxani: So maths, maths, I left India as a teenager to do my undergrad. I got, I got the scholarship to study maths in a tiny liberal arts school in Ohio and It was four years of maths and economics before working at different cities across the U. S., most of it in San Francisco.
Amardeep Parmar: How was that adjustment going from where you grew up to Ohio, like you said, a small place in Ohio?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was an [00:02:00] amazing four years. It was a big change. I had never visited America. So my image was Hollywood and New York and skyscrapers. And then we land in rural Ohio with cornfields and Amish people.
MG Gurbaxani: So it was, uh, it was definitely a surprise. And not much Zoom or FaceTime or any real immersive experience to prepare us for an experience like that. But it was an ideal combination of building relationships, camaraderie with not just the international students there, but integrating into American culture, the Midwest, very warm, hospitable culture and sports and studies and partying and fraternities.
MG Gurbaxani: And, uh, yeah, I mean, very fond memories of the four years in Worcester, Ohio.
Amardeep Parmar: And when you're at university, do you ever think like, [00:03:00] maybe you want to start your own business someday? Would that come a lot later still? Cause originally you went into the professional corporate world, right?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, absolutely.
MG Gurbaxani: And you know, I love the corporate world so much so that I was deliberate in not ever wanting to become an entrepreneur. So my family has had many entrepreneurs, my dad, my grandfather, my brother, and living through some of the ups and downs. My perspective was, you know, I want a predictable, comfortable life and that's what I have and I was working for some established companies like SAP and Microsoft where, hey, life was pretty good.
MG Gurbaxani: It was pretty comfortable. So, so no, there wasn't, uh, definitely wasn't, uh, direction back then saying, I want to start my own business. That came much, much later in life. If you fast
Amardeep Parmar: track through some of your corporate career there, right? Yeah. So you moved companies a few different times. Yeah. What was your main aims in those different moves?
Amardeep Parmar: Like what was driving you to change your
MG Gurbaxani: environment? Yeah. So let's [00:04:00] go chronologically. So the first job after university was as a data scientist. And I loved maths. Data scientists sounded pretty cool. And I was hanging out with a bunch of scientists way smarter than I was, but really got stuck into applying probability and statistics to data, which was pretty new and exciting back in early 2000s.
MG Gurbaxani: But I felt like where I was different from my peer group was being able to overlay the business side of things. Like, okay, how do you communicate to a business stakeholder? And that pulled me into consulting. So decent stint in management, consulting, learning how to make good PowerPoints, running workshops, and I stayed close to my roots, which were in maths and pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: So pricing kind of became this area of expertise, which funnily enough started back [00:05:00] in my undergrad. So my undergrad, the senior year, you do one year thesis and I chose pricing as, as my topic. So pricing was this consistent thread, which fed through data science, consulting, a couple of startups. So a couple of startups that specialized in pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: Formative experience in San Francisco with an early stage startup where they did everything in a way which was very different from corporate. We worked hard, we were building cool things, we were delivering for our customers that got acquired by Microsoft. So it was this experience of early stage startup to Corporate and that I would say looking back at it now, uh, was, was a formative experience from there.
MG Gurbaxani: My wife and I, we left San Francisco and this was actually a, a, a, a slight segue, but 2010, I was living in San Francisco. The Indian dream [00:06:00] of living in San Francisco, working for Microsoft with a green card. It's like..
Amardeep Parmar: You made it.
MG Gurbaxani: I've made it. I've totally made it. And my dad comes to visit and I tell my dad about the plans, which involved taking a year off and traveling, going to business school and figuring out what comes next.
MG Gurbaxani: And he looked at me like I'm a complete idiot. And he said, I can't believe this. It's like you have worked so hard and invested to get here. And now you want to throw it all away. Do you know how hard it is to get a green card? Do you know how hard it is to work for Microsoft? We, we went through it anyway, and we.
MG Gurbaxani: did the year of travel and we applied for business school and moved to London in, uh, in, in 2012, at which point stayed true to the roots in pricing and worked for another American company, which was expanding in Europe. And that's where [00:07:00] there was a big, big change in software. And 2012, 2013, there was a transition for a lot of old school software companies selling licenses, selling on premise to SaaS.
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when just working at this company, there were big, big changes and you could see far ahead, like, okay, this is not just for this company. The world is changing. And that's why I would say seeds were planted for, Hey, this is a new problem. It's a growing problem. You're living this problem. Can we do something about it?
Amardeep Parmar: You mentioned there about leaving the dream job, right? Microsoft and going to travel. What was behind that? Right. Because like I said, if your dad thought you were crazy, why did you do it anyway? What was the, your drive there? And why did you decide? Right. Obviously you were doing well. You said that you enjoyed the corporate career.
Amardeep Parmar: You loved the corporate career. Why leave it? Like, why take that year out?
MG Gurbaxani: You know, some of it was further down the road, wherever you live, there's going to [00:08:00] be mortgage and family and the responsibilities that come. And this was, Hey, here's, here's a bit of a, a break. And maybe this was influenced by American kids who have their year of backpacking in Europe and the year off and the study abroad.
MG Gurbaxani: I didn't have any of that. I want some of that too. So there was, so there's actually another reason to. 2011, the first few months in 2011 was the cricket world cup in India. And I wanted to be in India for that cricket world cup. India won that World Cup, which was even more special.
Amardeep Parmar:My dad was there for the, uh, final and the semi final in the stadium.
MG Gurbaxani: No way. That's amazing. That's amazing. So full circle from wanting to be a cricketer, that didn't happen, but making it to the, the World Cup. So there was again, a bit of a planned hiatus from work, wanted to travel, wanted to spend more time in India. And I was amazing. Absolutely. Absolutely. No regrets.
Amardeep Parmar: Because I think a lot of people get to maybe that same stage you did [00:09:00] and they'd want to do what you did, but they're worried about their career.
Amardeep Parmar: What's going to happen afterwards. So you having no regrets, hopefully that inspires some people to maybe think about it more seriously as well.
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. What I will say though, is the network that was built. Back in San Francisco, you think about the connected world, and that played a huge part in me not having to start from scratch again.
MG Gurbaxani: So it was like, okay, you've put in your years, you've put in your time, you've worked the long hours, you've done consulting, that stays. So moving to London, it wasn't like, all right, I'm, I'm, uh, starting from zero again. So that gave me a degree of confidence, just finishing up business school. Everybody's looking for their next role after that.
MG Gurbaxani: And my dad finally started thinking I'm not as crazy. Uh, maybe, maybe now at least he's convinced that that was actually a good call in hindsight.
Amardeep Parmar: Cause I hear so many people who talk about you have to move to Silicon Valley to be successful, right? And then you've done the opposite, right? You've left Silicon Valley, you've left San [00:10:00] Francisco to come to London instead.
Amardeep Parmar: And you said like, we talked about it before, it's different reasons behind that. And like, why has London been your home for the last? How many years? It's been 12 years, right?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: ‘Cause obviously you must like it to still be here.
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. Yeah. In spite of the weather, I love it here. And this is very much home.
MG Gurbaxani: My wife is American. I'm from India. This is a perfect halfway in between and culturally as well. I feel like it is, it is home. In my mind, the Foundational, the formative experiences in San Francisco that, that has stayed with me and especially in terms of growing a tech company. I think what I learned there accelerated a lot of what I'm able to do here, but London today, it's, it's a massive tech hub.
MG Gurbaxani: It's growing fast. You hear of Silicon Valley being saturated to some extent, and there's a lot to be said about being in the right place at the right time. So I feel like London is a, is a good place to be. Uh, this point in our lives.
Amardeep Parmar: Because I mentioned it before as well. It's [00:11:00] interesting to me how many people have been on this podcast, have spent some time in America, whether it's a university or they were born and raised in and they've come here.
Amardeep Parmar: And often because you've got that experience out there, it probably helps you to do better here because you've got a different mindset and maybe you're more willing to take risk or you're more willing to be entrepreneurial than some people raised in this culture in the UK. But like I said before. You actually didn't want to become an entrepreneur on purpose before, but you ended up doing that now.
Amardeep Parmar: So where did the seeds for, you said the seeds for the companies came from? They shift from licensing models to SAS models. But you could have still done that at another company. What made you decide, I'm going to go and build it myself? The
MG Gurbaxani: move to entrepreneurship was one where, I think this, this has to be quite a unique path because I doubled down on not wanting to be an entrepreneur at business school.
MG Gurbaxani: So I went to arguably the number one business school in the world for entrepreneurship. And I didn't take a single elective that had to do with startups, [00:12:00] entrepreneurship. I was like, no, I don't want that. But sometimes life has a way of playing out. And I would say that I haven't resisted a pull in the direction that's in front of me.
MG Gurbaxani: And it's like, okay, this is where the world is going. And five and a half years through my corporate job, there was an opportunity to explore. And I decided again to take a bit of a break and think about what I wanted to do next. Part of it was networking. Part of it was playing golf. Three months into the playing golf, my, my wife said like, all right, so when's the paycheck coming?
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when I, funny how many stories start with, I met this guy at a drink in the pub and the premise for the meeting was he was going to help me to look for interim consulting [00:13:00] opportunities, software, pricing. And we started talking and he said, actually, can you help with pricing in SAS? I said, yeah, that, that, that is what I do.
MG Gurbaxani: He said, you know, we've got some help we might need at, at my company. And I went in for the strategy workshop the next day and said a couple of smart things. And next thing you know, he's like, can you start next week? I was like, Oh, but hang on. I don't have a company. I need to sign this form, this NDA. He said, well, you're MG, you do pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: How about just write MG pricing? And that was the birth of MG pricing, which grew into a consulting business. I was like, Hey, all right, maybe this is a one off and it's going to pay the bills for a few months. But then the provable one thing leading to the other got a second customer, got a third customer.
MG Gurbaxani: And I operated with the philosophy that, Hey, when you're selling, go by the rule of three. If one of the three [00:14:00] comes through, that's just right. If two of the three comes through, all right, that's, that's a really big stretch. If three out of three come through, then there's no sleep and it's nights and weekends and holidays.
MG Gurbaxani: And within the third month of this entrepreneurial gig, it was three out of three. And I remember cancelling family holidays and flying to New York in a snowstorm to deliver on a workshop for deals I didn't think were going to come through. But that was a clear sign to me that, wow, there's something big here.
MG Gurbaxani: And I brought on a college intern. to help me out, which was great because all of a sudden the perception shifted from a one man band MG pricing to hang on, you're a boutique consultancy now. And that from a perception point of view was a big step forward. And there were more projects and kept learning and kept delivering and you do [00:15:00] good work for good people and the word of mouth spread.
MG Gurbaxani: And finally, I was able to convince one of my colleagues, someone who I worked with for a long, long time, one of the smartest guys who I've worked with, uh, to come and join me, uh, as, as a co founder. So we progressed down this path again, selling bigger projects, competing with bigger consultancies, clients in San Francisco, clients doing really well.
MG Gurbaxani: And we started seeing that we're solving the same problem over and over and over again. And that's when we kept talking about, Is there a product angle here? Can we build tech to solve this? And that was really the point. And it wasn't a point because we were, we were talking about this for a year before,
MG Gurbaxani: I want to say the catalyst was we won this grant from innovate UK. So we had a bunch of essays to write. And Innovate UK gave us a hundred K [00:16:00] to build tech. And that's when it went from being an itch we wanted to scratch to crap If I don't build this, I'm going to jail.
Amardeep Parmar: Is that how the grants work at Innovate UK?
Amardeep Parmar: You don't do it, you're going to jail.
MG Gurbaxani:Well, probably not, but you get 50 K deposit in your, in your account. And then after you complete the project and do what you said you were going to do, that's when you get the next 50 K.. So probably won't have ended up in jail, but it was like, okay, you've agreed to something with the UK government.
MG Gurbaxani: You better do this now. And we, we got our first customer and they were using product and it was really starting to work with them. And we got a second customer. And we're like, all right, this is not a, this is not a fluke. And we're starting to sense that, Hey, there is real demand in the market. And that's when we said, okay, we can bootstrap.
MG Gurbaxani: And we were using our consulting revenue to bootstrap and build product and iterate on it. And it took us pretty far to the point where like, all right, this is the point where we need to decide whether we want to go all in or not. And [00:17:00] we got a bunch of angels, a New York based venture capital who believed in our thesis and had conviction in.
MG Gurbaxani: This is how the world needs to work and that's really how the transition from MG pricing consulting to Cuvama, which stands for customer value management, the platform that took place in, uh, yeah, a little over a couple of years ago.
Amardeep Parmar: And I think a lot of people who start with consultancies or advisory first, and you obviously then made that transition.
Amardeep Parmar: How hard is that transition of, because obviously you said you were overbooked. Quite early on, right? And when you're so busy with the consultancy side, but also trying to build a product, how was that internally for you when you're like, okay, there's something here, but you have to give up income in the short term, maybe in order to build that product.
Amardeep Parmar: And how did you address that internal dilemma?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, that was hard. And that was a lot of conversation. So with my co founder, we brought in another co founder who knew how [00:18:00] to help us move from consulting to product. The trade off on the money was a hard one. It was, Hey, this is, this is a great business.
MG Gurbaxani: It's working for us. Everybody's happy. Why change something that's working so well? But then we were also driven by an opportunity like this is never going to come again. And you're going to have a regret if you, if you don't go for it. Combine that with, all right, we, we had run the business for three years.
MG Gurbaxani: We had reserves in revenue. Like, you know what, this, let's go for it. Let's, let's fill it out. And I won't say we took the plunge right away. It's like, okay, let's, let's actually see if this works. Let's see if customers are using it. Let's understand how much customers are willing to pay for it. Let's de risk this being a business before we give up a lot of what we've built.
MG Gurbaxani: And then when we took on institutional funding, That was very much a, okay, you guys are all in. This is not a, let's have one hand in [00:19:00] consulting, one hand in building product anymore.
Amardeep Parmar: So like for people listening as well, who would understand more about like Cuvama does, could you explain a bit more in detail?
Amardeep Parmar: Like you mentioned pricing and how it enables SAAS companies to do that better. Can you go into a bit more detail about what would happen for the users?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. So a lot of companies build really cool product and there's innovation there. These cool features. But at the end of the day, how many of those companies are realizing their pricing potential?
MG Gurbaxani: Can they charge the price that they deserve in the market? And what's underneath the pricing is the value for the customer. Oh, it's really hard for B2B software company to communicate the personalized value to many different personas. In many different industries and to do this at scale, especially when they move beyond founder led selling to bring on salespeople.
MG Gurbaxani: It's just unrealistic to expect [00:20:00] that your average sales person, your new sales person who doesn't have the industry experience. Can doo a good job discovering where are the customer's pain points? How does my solution really address those pain points? What you find more often than not is a salesperson will jump in the first sound of pain and they'll jump into a demo and they'll say, here's my awesome product.
MG Gurbaxani: Here are all the bells and whistles. and hope that the customer can connect the dots. And that doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't work anymore. There's too much tech. And if I may tell a story of how this would translate into B2C setting. So I just moved to London and people told me that MG in London, you don't really need a car.
MG Gurbaxani: Public transport is great. I was a bit of a brat and I said, no, no, I still, I still want my car. I want to go golfing on the weekends. And I would, the car. Sporty sedan to a car [00:21:00] wash and then life happened, kids happened and all of a sudden I needed to trade in my sporty sedan for a somewhat boring SUV.
MG Gurbaxani: Now I used to pay 10 pounds for every time I got my sedan washed. Going with the SUV and the guy at the car wash, his name is Machik and he says 20 pounds. I was like, whoa, that's a big price jump. This car's not really that much bigger. Machik, why is it, why is it 20 pounds? And he said. MG, it's not about the size of the car, but in this neighborhood, when somebody buys an SUV, more often than not, they have kids, they have car seats in the back, kids make a mess and I look back in my car seat and there's crumbs and there's wrappers and there's something that looks like a piece of fatty bacon in there and all of a sudden that 20 pounds feels like a really good deal.
MG Gurbaxani: But what did Machik do? He was able to uncover my [00:22:00] pain, understand me as a customer. He said, people like you in this neighborhood. That's customer segmentation. The guy's an entrepreneur, but he was very, he had so much data, so much experience, he knew that digging deep into those car seats and getting all those scrums out, Hey, that's, that's real value there.
MG Gurbaxani: So he was able to shine a spotlight on the personalized value for me and tell the story in a way where the price all of a sudden was much less of the issue. Now, you can do that when you have three, four, five types of customers. But when you have hundreds and they're all in different industries, and then you've got many, many different products and tech companies are releasing modules at a faster and faster rate.
MG Gurbaxani: How do you do what Machik did? And that's what Cuvama was built to solve.
Amardeep Parmar: And like, as you've been building the company yourself as well, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes you've made along the way that you've learned from and now have made you a better entrepreneur?
MG Gurbaxani: So early on, we, [00:23:00] again, being pricing experts, we believed that we could, command a high price in the market.
MG Gurbaxani: And we were anchoring on price points that were not stage appropriate for, for where we were finding customers who really believe in what your solution is about. And We'll evangelize for you. We'll advocate for you. It took us a bit of time to work with to, to prioritize finding those customers ahead of saying, Hey, we charge a 100 K for this awesome product and we can demand that price.
MG Gurbaxani: We can talk about the value. I think there was an important learning about, look, when you're starting to get your first 10 customers, never do it for free, get commitment, get skin in the game. But pricing will come, prove it out. Pricing will come, money will come. So that, [00:24:00] go slow to go fast. I think we, we try to go fast a bit too, too fast.
Amardeep Parmar: Obviously you've grown a lot now in the last few years. and Platform's been out for two years now as more of a product. Where are you today? Like what's some of the big milestones you've achieved and the things, some of the things you're most proud of?
MG Gurbaxani: So we've raised a couple of rounds of funding. We've got a good, set of investors.
MG Gurbaxani: I think this was another big learning as well is the types of investors that we brought on were angels who really understood and bought into the problem that we were trying to solve. So they came in, they've helped us a lot. They have been able to open doors and make intros. And that goes a really long way.
MG Gurbaxani: So I'm most proud of the team that we've put in place, the types of investors that we brought on board. When you see customers renewing, expanding, wanting more, moving from, Hey, we were [00:25:00] only doing this in the UK. Now we're going to get our French and our German. old school sales reps and it starts working with them.
MG Gurbaxani: That to me is, is like, all right, this is, this feels right. We're, we're winning. And there's, there's more of that to come. So where it's, it's very early days. There's A lot to learn. I think the environment that we're in right now, look at, okay, we, we raise funding, but since we raised funding, it hasn't been a happy story for tech in the macro environment.
MG Gurbaxani: Fundraising is only a small side of it. But if you think about our customers who are software companies, we haveChief revenue officers who are in a state of mind where it's about, how do I rationalize my tech stack? We have too much tech today. We have cuts to make. You are coming to sell me a new piece of tech.
MG Gurbaxani: I'm not ready to talk to you right now. So a [00:26:00] big focus at the moment is how do we cut through the noise? How do we ourselves not just communicate how amazing our product is, but where are we solving those burning pains, those critical business issues today? And I think when you just start a business and you hear about timing and you hear about macro trends, like that’s what we do in Cuvama, I mean, we, you know, we're just going to keep our head down and do our things, but no, I think there is a big need to move with the market, have your messaging, be relevant and topical.
MG Gurbaxani: And that's been a big priority for us. So what? So what we are aiming to do in the next few months is how can we start really small so that we don't need to talk about, oh, this is going to be a big change for your organization and we're going to need to do all of this training and change management.[00:27:00]
MG Gurbaxani: Let's find a way to start really small and use that as a way of driving the behavior. So very exciting things in store. Uh, lots, lots to come. But we're very happy where we are in the, you know, looking at looking back at. The consulting business and how that's transitioned to tech.
Amardeep Parmar: So really enjoyed talking to you today, MG.
Amardeep Parmar: We're going to move to the quick fire questions now. So first one is, who are three British Asian entrepreneurs that you'd love to shout out that you think people listening should be paying attention to?
MG Gurbaxani: So, uh, first one is Dhiraj Mukherjee. He was a co-founder at Shazam. Great guy. Someone who has given me.
MG Gurbaxani: And people talk about who gives you advice and you get a lot of advice, a lot of it unsolicited. Uh, but Dhiraj has in short periods of time been able to dial into my headspace and give me, Hey, here are the three things. And those three things have all stuck with me. So he's now, uh, tech for good investor, [00:28:00] coincidentally, my neighbor.
MG Gurbaxani: Uh, so he's one who I would, uh, he he's, he's one of the shout outs. Uh, second one, Shomik Panda, colleague of mine from business school, real entrepreneur. He's one who sees opportunity and then has this lens into what's going to lie ahead. He's founder of Inline policy. which helps a lot of British based companies expand into Europe, mostly tech and European tech companies expand into the UK, Brexit, everything surrounding that.
MG Gurbaxani: And he's built a great practice on the back of that. And finally, Kaushik Subramanian, who is partner at EQT Ventures. We connected a couple of years ago and have had a very similar story going back to Pune, which is where I grew up. So Pune, San Francisco, London, tech, and our worlds intersected. [00:29:00] Uh, so yeah, he's, uh, he's another one I'd like to shout out to.
Amardeep Parmar: Awesome. They sound like they're great. Next one is, if people listening to this right now, they want to find out more about you, more about what you do, more about your company, where should they go to?
MG Gurbaxani: So LinkedIn, I'm big on LinkedIn, very active there, that's probably number one, uh, Cuvama.com, check it out.
MG Gurbaxani: Uh, lots of new and exciting things coming up there.
Amardeep Parmar: And if people listening right now maybe could help you out, what should they do or how could they help you?
MG Gurbaxani: So if there's anyone in your network who's built something cool, And they are struggling to either sell it at the right price point or be able to accelerate some of their sales cycles.
MG Gurbaxani: Come and talk to Cuvama. We, we help a lot of companies that are series A stage, looking to scale. Founders have built something cool. And they want [00:30:00] sellers to go out and sell it on their behalf. And that's where we see a lot of companies fall down. So anyone in your network, send them our way. Love to have a chat and, uh, help them with pricing too.
Amardeep Parmar: Perfect. So thank you again so much for coming on. Have you got any final words to the audience?
MG Gurbaxani: Final words. So I've gotten a bit into yoga in middle age, classic middle age, and this is maybe pulling a little bit into the spiritual direction. But someone told me once, if you're swimming from point A to point B, And point B is your destination.
MG Gurbaxani: And while you're swimming to point B, you have a current that's pulling you strongly in, in another direction. Now you can fight the current. You can still go to point B. You'll be tired and out of energy. Or you can swim with the current and see where it takes you. And that's a philosophy that I, that I've, I, I live by and I think there's a lot of power in there.[00:31:00]
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MG Gurbaxani: [00:00:00] I doubled down on not wanting to be an entrepreneur and you could see far ahead, like, okay, this is not just for this company. The world is changing. And that's why I would say seeds were planted for, Hey, this is a new problem. It's a growing problem. You're living this problem. Can we do something about it?
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when we kept talking about, is there a product angle here? Can we build tech to solve this? An opportunity like this is never going to come again.
Amardeep Parmar: And we're live. Today we have with us MG Gurbaxani
, who's the CEO and co founder of Cuvama. They're a platform that enables B2B software companies to sell on value, not on features. If you're joining us for the first time, we're the BAE HQ and we're all about inspiring the next generation of British Asians to achieve their dreams.
Amardeep Parmar: So M. G., tell me when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you ever imagine being in this world?
MG Gurbaxani: No, I didn't imagine being in this world. Like [00:01:00] most Indian boys growing up in the 80s, my dream was to be a cricketer. So this is, uh, quite a far stretch from that.
Amardeep Parmar: And did you actually go down that path?
Amardeep Parmar: Did you actually try to? Worked down there, like when you were a teenager, what was the aim then?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, I think by, by age 11, realized that I was, uh, not rubbish, but nowhere close to being on a professional athlete trajectory. So studying maths and science like, like a good Indian boy was, uh, was the path.
Amardeep Parmar: And what did you study at university then?
MG Gurbaxani: So maths, maths, I left India as a teenager to do my undergrad. I got, I got the scholarship to study maths in a tiny liberal arts school in Ohio and It was four years of maths and economics before working at different cities across the U. S., most of it in San Francisco.
Amardeep Parmar: How was that adjustment going from where you grew up to Ohio, like you said, a small place in Ohio?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was an [00:02:00] amazing four years. It was a big change. I had never visited America. So my image was Hollywood and New York and skyscrapers. And then we land in rural Ohio with cornfields and Amish people.
MG Gurbaxani: So it was, uh, it was definitely a surprise. And not much Zoom or FaceTime or any real immersive experience to prepare us for an experience like that. But it was an ideal combination of building relationships, camaraderie with not just the international students there, but integrating into American culture, the Midwest, very warm, hospitable culture and sports and studies and partying and fraternities.
MG Gurbaxani: And, uh, yeah, I mean, very fond memories of the four years in Worcester, Ohio.
Amardeep Parmar: And when you're at university, do you ever think like, [00:03:00] maybe you want to start your own business someday? Would that come a lot later still? Cause originally you went into the professional corporate world, right?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, absolutely.
MG Gurbaxani: And you know, I love the corporate world so much so that I was deliberate in not ever wanting to become an entrepreneur. So my family has had many entrepreneurs, my dad, my grandfather, my brother, and living through some of the ups and downs. My perspective was, you know, I want a predictable, comfortable life and that's what I have and I was working for some established companies like SAP and Microsoft where, hey, life was pretty good.
MG Gurbaxani: It was pretty comfortable. So, so no, there wasn't, uh, definitely wasn't, uh, direction back then saying, I want to start my own business. That came much, much later in life. If you fast
Amardeep Parmar: track through some of your corporate career there, right? Yeah. So you moved companies a few different times. Yeah. What was your main aims in those different moves?
Amardeep Parmar: Like what was driving you to change your
MG Gurbaxani: environment? Yeah. So let's [00:04:00] go chronologically. So the first job after university was as a data scientist. And I loved maths. Data scientists sounded pretty cool. And I was hanging out with a bunch of scientists way smarter than I was, but really got stuck into applying probability and statistics to data, which was pretty new and exciting back in early 2000s.
MG Gurbaxani: But I felt like where I was different from my peer group was being able to overlay the business side of things. Like, okay, how do you communicate to a business stakeholder? And that pulled me into consulting. So decent stint in management, consulting, learning how to make good PowerPoints, running workshops, and I stayed close to my roots, which were in maths and pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: So pricing kind of became this area of expertise, which funnily enough started back [00:05:00] in my undergrad. So my undergrad, the senior year, you do one year thesis and I chose pricing as, as my topic. So pricing was this consistent thread, which fed through data science, consulting, a couple of startups. So a couple of startups that specialized in pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: Formative experience in San Francisco with an early stage startup where they did everything in a way which was very different from corporate. We worked hard, we were building cool things, we were delivering for our customers that got acquired by Microsoft. So it was this experience of early stage startup to Corporate and that I would say looking back at it now, uh, was, was a formative experience from there.
MG Gurbaxani: My wife and I, we left San Francisco and this was actually a, a, a, a slight segue, but 2010, I was living in San Francisco. The Indian dream [00:06:00] of living in San Francisco, working for Microsoft with a green card. It's like..
Amardeep Parmar: You made it.
MG Gurbaxani: I've made it. I've totally made it. And my dad comes to visit and I tell my dad about the plans, which involved taking a year off and traveling, going to business school and figuring out what comes next.
MG Gurbaxani: And he looked at me like I'm a complete idiot. And he said, I can't believe this. It's like you have worked so hard and invested to get here. And now you want to throw it all away. Do you know how hard it is to get a green card? Do you know how hard it is to work for Microsoft? We, we went through it anyway, and we.
MG Gurbaxani: did the year of travel and we applied for business school and moved to London in, uh, in, in 2012, at which point stayed true to the roots in pricing and worked for another American company, which was expanding in Europe. And that's where [00:07:00] there was a big, big change in software. And 2012, 2013, there was a transition for a lot of old school software companies selling licenses, selling on premise to SaaS.
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when just working at this company, there were big, big changes and you could see far ahead, like, okay, this is not just for this company. The world is changing. And that's why I would say seeds were planted for, Hey, this is a new problem. It's a growing problem. You're living this problem. Can we do something about it?
Amardeep Parmar: You mentioned there about leaving the dream job, right? Microsoft and going to travel. What was behind that? Right. Because like I said, if your dad thought you were crazy, why did you do it anyway? What was the, your drive there? And why did you decide? Right. Obviously you were doing well. You said that you enjoyed the corporate career.
Amardeep Parmar: You loved the corporate career. Why leave it? Like, why take that year out?
MG Gurbaxani: You know, some of it was further down the road, wherever you live, there's going to [00:08:00] be mortgage and family and the responsibilities that come. And this was, Hey, here's, here's a bit of a, a break. And maybe this was influenced by American kids who have their year of backpacking in Europe and the year off and the study abroad.
MG Gurbaxani: I didn't have any of that. I want some of that too. So there was, so there's actually another reason to. 2011, the first few months in 2011 was the cricket world cup in India. And I wanted to be in India for that cricket world cup. India won that World Cup, which was even more special.
Amardeep Parmar:My dad was there for the, uh, final and the semi final in the stadium.
MG Gurbaxani: No way. That's amazing. That's amazing. So full circle from wanting to be a cricketer, that didn't happen, but making it to the, the World Cup. So there was again, a bit of a planned hiatus from work, wanted to travel, wanted to spend more time in India. And I was amazing. Absolutely. Absolutely. No regrets.
Amardeep Parmar: Because I think a lot of people get to maybe that same stage you did [00:09:00] and they'd want to do what you did, but they're worried about their career.
Amardeep Parmar: What's going to happen afterwards. So you having no regrets, hopefully that inspires some people to maybe think about it more seriously as well.
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. What I will say though, is the network that was built. Back in San Francisco, you think about the connected world, and that played a huge part in me not having to start from scratch again.
MG Gurbaxani: So it was like, okay, you've put in your years, you've put in your time, you've worked the long hours, you've done consulting, that stays. So moving to London, it wasn't like, all right, I'm, I'm, uh, starting from zero again. So that gave me a degree of confidence, just finishing up business school. Everybody's looking for their next role after that.
MG Gurbaxani: And my dad finally started thinking I'm not as crazy. Uh, maybe, maybe now at least he's convinced that that was actually a good call in hindsight.
Amardeep Parmar: Cause I hear so many people who talk about you have to move to Silicon Valley to be successful, right? And then you've done the opposite, right? You've left Silicon Valley, you've left San [00:10:00] Francisco to come to London instead.
Amardeep Parmar: And you said like, we talked about it before, it's different reasons behind that. And like, why has London been your home for the last? How many years? It's been 12 years, right?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: ‘Cause obviously you must like it to still be here.
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. Yeah. In spite of the weather, I love it here. And this is very much home.
MG Gurbaxani: My wife is American. I'm from India. This is a perfect halfway in between and culturally as well. I feel like it is, it is home. In my mind, the Foundational, the formative experiences in San Francisco that, that has stayed with me and especially in terms of growing a tech company. I think what I learned there accelerated a lot of what I'm able to do here, but London today, it's, it's a massive tech hub.
MG Gurbaxani: It's growing fast. You hear of Silicon Valley being saturated to some extent, and there's a lot to be said about being in the right place at the right time. So I feel like London is a, is a good place to be. Uh, this point in our lives.
Amardeep Parmar: Because I mentioned it before as well. It's [00:11:00] interesting to me how many people have been on this podcast, have spent some time in America, whether it's a university or they were born and raised in and they've come here.
Amardeep Parmar: And often because you've got that experience out there, it probably helps you to do better here because you've got a different mindset and maybe you're more willing to take risk or you're more willing to be entrepreneurial than some people raised in this culture in the UK. But like I said before. You actually didn't want to become an entrepreneur on purpose before, but you ended up doing that now.
Amardeep Parmar: So where did the seeds for, you said the seeds for the companies came from? They shift from licensing models to SAS models. But you could have still done that at another company. What made you decide, I'm going to go and build it myself? The
MG Gurbaxani: move to entrepreneurship was one where, I think this, this has to be quite a unique path because I doubled down on not wanting to be an entrepreneur at business school.
MG Gurbaxani: So I went to arguably the number one business school in the world for entrepreneurship. And I didn't take a single elective that had to do with startups, [00:12:00] entrepreneurship. I was like, no, I don't want that. But sometimes life has a way of playing out. And I would say that I haven't resisted a pull in the direction that's in front of me.
MG Gurbaxani: And it's like, okay, this is where the world is going. And five and a half years through my corporate job, there was an opportunity to explore. And I decided again to take a bit of a break and think about what I wanted to do next. Part of it was networking. Part of it was playing golf. Three months into the playing golf, my, my wife said like, all right, so when's the paycheck coming?
MG Gurbaxani: And that's when I, funny how many stories start with, I met this guy at a drink in the pub and the premise for the meeting was he was going to help me to look for interim consulting [00:13:00] opportunities, software, pricing. And we started talking and he said, actually, can you help with pricing in SAS? I said, yeah, that, that, that is what I do.
MG Gurbaxani: He said, you know, we've got some help we might need at, at my company. And I went in for the strategy workshop the next day and said a couple of smart things. And next thing you know, he's like, can you start next week? I was like, Oh, but hang on. I don't have a company. I need to sign this form, this NDA. He said, well, you're MG, you do pricing.
MG Gurbaxani: How about just write MG pricing? And that was the birth of MG pricing, which grew into a consulting business. I was like, Hey, all right, maybe this is a one off and it's going to pay the bills for a few months. But then the provable one thing leading to the other got a second customer, got a third customer.
MG Gurbaxani: And I operated with the philosophy that, Hey, when you're selling, go by the rule of three. If one of the three [00:14:00] comes through, that's just right. If two of the three comes through, all right, that's, that's a really big stretch. If three out of three come through, then there's no sleep and it's nights and weekends and holidays.
MG Gurbaxani: And within the third month of this entrepreneurial gig, it was three out of three. And I remember cancelling family holidays and flying to New York in a snowstorm to deliver on a workshop for deals I didn't think were going to come through. But that was a clear sign to me that, wow, there's something big here.
MG Gurbaxani: And I brought on a college intern. to help me out, which was great because all of a sudden the perception shifted from a one man band MG pricing to hang on, you're a boutique consultancy now. And that from a perception point of view was a big step forward. And there were more projects and kept learning and kept delivering and you do [00:15:00] good work for good people and the word of mouth spread.
MG Gurbaxani: And finally, I was able to convince one of my colleagues, someone who I worked with for a long, long time, one of the smartest guys who I've worked with, uh, to come and join me, uh, as, as a co founder. So we progressed down this path again, selling bigger projects, competing with bigger consultancies, clients in San Francisco, clients doing really well.
MG Gurbaxani: And we started seeing that we're solving the same problem over and over and over again. And that's when we kept talking about, Is there a product angle here? Can we build tech to solve this? And that was really the point. And it wasn't a point because we were, we were talking about this for a year before,
MG Gurbaxani: I want to say the catalyst was we won this grant from innovate UK. So we had a bunch of essays to write. And Innovate UK gave us a hundred K [00:16:00] to build tech. And that's when it went from being an itch we wanted to scratch to crap If I don't build this, I'm going to jail.
Amardeep Parmar: Is that how the grants work at Innovate UK?
Amardeep Parmar: You don't do it, you're going to jail.
MG Gurbaxani:Well, probably not, but you get 50 K deposit in your, in your account. And then after you complete the project and do what you said you were going to do, that's when you get the next 50 K.. So probably won't have ended up in jail, but it was like, okay, you've agreed to something with the UK government.
MG Gurbaxani: You better do this now. And we, we got our first customer and they were using product and it was really starting to work with them. And we got a second customer. And we're like, all right, this is not a, this is not a fluke. And we're starting to sense that, Hey, there is real demand in the market. And that's when we said, okay, we can bootstrap.
MG Gurbaxani: And we were using our consulting revenue to bootstrap and build product and iterate on it. And it took us pretty far to the point where like, all right, this is the point where we need to decide whether we want to go all in or not. And [00:17:00] we got a bunch of angels, a New York based venture capital who believed in our thesis and had conviction in.
MG Gurbaxani: This is how the world needs to work and that's really how the transition from MG pricing consulting to Cuvama, which stands for customer value management, the platform that took place in, uh, yeah, a little over a couple of years ago.
Amardeep Parmar: And I think a lot of people who start with consultancies or advisory first, and you obviously then made that transition.
Amardeep Parmar: How hard is that transition of, because obviously you said you were overbooked. Quite early on, right? And when you're so busy with the consultancy side, but also trying to build a product, how was that internally for you when you're like, okay, there's something here, but you have to give up income in the short term, maybe in order to build that product.
Amardeep Parmar: And how did you address that internal dilemma?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah, that was hard. And that was a lot of conversation. So with my co founder, we brought in another co founder who knew how [00:18:00] to help us move from consulting to product. The trade off on the money was a hard one. It was, Hey, this is, this is a great business.
MG Gurbaxani: It's working for us. Everybody's happy. Why change something that's working so well? But then we were also driven by an opportunity like this is never going to come again. And you're going to have a regret if you, if you don't go for it. Combine that with, all right, we, we had run the business for three years.
MG Gurbaxani: We had reserves in revenue. Like, you know what, this, let's go for it. Let's, let's fill it out. And I won't say we took the plunge right away. It's like, okay, let's, let's actually see if this works. Let's see if customers are using it. Let's understand how much customers are willing to pay for it. Let's de risk this being a business before we give up a lot of what we've built.
MG Gurbaxani: And then when we took on institutional funding, That was very much a, okay, you guys are all in. This is not a, let's have one hand in [00:19:00] consulting, one hand in building product anymore.
Amardeep Parmar: So like for people listening as well, who would understand more about like Cuvama does, could you explain a bit more in detail?
Amardeep Parmar: Like you mentioned pricing and how it enables SAAS companies to do that better. Can you go into a bit more detail about what would happen for the users?
MG Gurbaxani: Yeah. So a lot of companies build really cool product and there's innovation there. These cool features. But at the end of the day, how many of those companies are realizing their pricing potential?
MG Gurbaxani: Can they charge the price that they deserve in the market? And what's underneath the pricing is the value for the customer. Oh, it's really hard for B2B software company to communicate the personalized value to many different personas. In many different industries and to do this at scale, especially when they move beyond founder led selling to bring on salespeople.
MG Gurbaxani: It's just unrealistic to expect [00:20:00] that your average sales person, your new sales person who doesn't have the industry experience. Can doo a good job discovering where are the customer's pain points? How does my solution really address those pain points? What you find more often than not is a salesperson will jump in the first sound of pain and they'll jump into a demo and they'll say, here's my awesome product.
MG Gurbaxani: Here are all the bells and whistles. and hope that the customer can connect the dots. And that doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't work anymore. There's too much tech. And if I may tell a story of how this would translate into B2C setting. So I just moved to London and people told me that MG in London, you don't really need a car.
MG Gurbaxani: Public transport is great. I was a bit of a brat and I said, no, no, I still, I still want my car. I want to go golfing on the weekends. And I would, the car. Sporty sedan to a car [00:21:00] wash and then life happened, kids happened and all of a sudden I needed to trade in my sporty sedan for a somewhat boring SUV.
MG Gurbaxani: Now I used to pay 10 pounds for every time I got my sedan washed. Going with the SUV and the guy at the car wash, his name is Machik and he says 20 pounds. I was like, whoa, that's a big price jump. This car's not really that much bigger. Machik, why is it, why is it 20 pounds? And he said. MG, it's not about the size of the car, but in this neighborhood, when somebody buys an SUV, more often than not, they have kids, they have car seats in the back, kids make a mess and I look back in my car seat and there's crumbs and there's wrappers and there's something that looks like a piece of fatty bacon in there and all of a sudden that 20 pounds feels like a really good deal.
MG Gurbaxani: But what did Machik do? He was able to uncover my [00:22:00] pain, understand me as a customer. He said, people like you in this neighborhood. That's customer segmentation. The guy's an entrepreneur, but he was very, he had so much data, so much experience, he knew that digging deep into those car seats and getting all those scrums out, Hey, that's, that's real value there.
MG Gurbaxani: So he was able to shine a spotlight on the personalized value for me and tell the story in a way where the price all of a sudden was much less of the issue. Now, you can do that when you have three, four, five types of customers. But when you have hundreds and they're all in different industries, and then you've got many, many different products and tech companies are releasing modules at a faster and faster rate.
MG Gurbaxani: How do you do what Machik did? And that's what Cuvama was built to solve.
Amardeep Parmar: And like, as you've been building the company yourself as well, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes you've made along the way that you've learned from and now have made you a better entrepreneur?
MG Gurbaxani: So early on, we, [00:23:00] again, being pricing experts, we believed that we could, command a high price in the market.
MG Gurbaxani: And we were anchoring on price points that were not stage appropriate for, for where we were finding customers who really believe in what your solution is about. And We'll evangelize for you. We'll advocate for you. It took us a bit of time to work with to, to prioritize finding those customers ahead of saying, Hey, we charge a 100 K for this awesome product and we can demand that price.
MG Gurbaxani: We can talk about the value. I think there was an important learning about, look, when you're starting to get your first 10 customers, never do it for free, get commitment, get skin in the game. But pricing will come, prove it out. Pricing will come, money will come. So that, [00:24:00] go slow to go fast. I think we, we try to go fast a bit too, too fast.
Amardeep Parmar: Obviously you've grown a lot now in the last few years. and Platform's been out for two years now as more of a product. Where are you today? Like what's some of the big milestones you've achieved and the things, some of the things you're most proud of?
MG Gurbaxani: So we've raised a couple of rounds of funding. We've got a good, set of investors.
MG Gurbaxani: I think this was another big learning as well is the types of investors that we brought on were angels who really understood and bought into the problem that we were trying to solve. So they came in, they've helped us a lot. They have been able to open doors and make intros. And that goes a really long way.
MG Gurbaxani: So I'm most proud of the team that we've put in place, the types of investors that we brought on board. When you see customers renewing, expanding, wanting more, moving from, Hey, we were [00:25:00] only doing this in the UK. Now we're going to get our French and our German. old school sales reps and it starts working with them.
MG Gurbaxani: That to me is, is like, all right, this is, this feels right. We're, we're winning. And there's, there's more of that to come. So where it's, it's very early days. There's A lot to learn. I think the environment that we're in right now, look at, okay, we, we raise funding, but since we raised funding, it hasn't been a happy story for tech in the macro environment.
MG Gurbaxani: Fundraising is only a small side of it. But if you think about our customers who are software companies, we haveChief revenue officers who are in a state of mind where it's about, how do I rationalize my tech stack? We have too much tech today. We have cuts to make. You are coming to sell me a new piece of tech.
MG Gurbaxani: I'm not ready to talk to you right now. So a [00:26:00] big focus at the moment is how do we cut through the noise? How do we ourselves not just communicate how amazing our product is, but where are we solving those burning pains, those critical business issues today? And I think when you just start a business and you hear about timing and you hear about macro trends, like that’s what we do in Cuvama, I mean, we, you know, we're just going to keep our head down and do our things, but no, I think there is a big need to move with the market, have your messaging, be relevant and topical.
MG Gurbaxani: And that's been a big priority for us. So what? So what we are aiming to do in the next few months is how can we start really small so that we don't need to talk about, oh, this is going to be a big change for your organization and we're going to need to do all of this training and change management.[00:27:00]
MG Gurbaxani: Let's find a way to start really small and use that as a way of driving the behavior. So very exciting things in store. Uh, lots, lots to come. But we're very happy where we are in the, you know, looking at looking back at. The consulting business and how that's transitioned to tech.
Amardeep Parmar: So really enjoyed talking to you today, MG.
Amardeep Parmar: We're going to move to the quick fire questions now. So first one is, who are three British Asian entrepreneurs that you'd love to shout out that you think people listening should be paying attention to?
MG Gurbaxani: So, uh, first one is Dhiraj Mukherjee. He was a co-founder at Shazam. Great guy. Someone who has given me.
MG Gurbaxani: And people talk about who gives you advice and you get a lot of advice, a lot of it unsolicited. Uh, but Dhiraj has in short periods of time been able to dial into my headspace and give me, Hey, here are the three things. And those three things have all stuck with me. So he's now, uh, tech for good investor, [00:28:00] coincidentally, my neighbor.
MG Gurbaxani: Uh, so he's one who I would, uh, he he's, he's one of the shout outs. Uh, second one, Shomik Panda, colleague of mine from business school, real entrepreneur. He's one who sees opportunity and then has this lens into what's going to lie ahead. He's founder of Inline policy. which helps a lot of British based companies expand into Europe, mostly tech and European tech companies expand into the UK, Brexit, everything surrounding that.
MG Gurbaxani: And he's built a great practice on the back of that. And finally, Kaushik Subramanian, who is partner at EQT Ventures. We connected a couple of years ago and have had a very similar story going back to Pune, which is where I grew up. So Pune, San Francisco, London, tech, and our worlds intersected. [00:29:00] Uh, so yeah, he's, uh, he's another one I'd like to shout out to.
Amardeep Parmar: Awesome. They sound like they're great. Next one is, if people listening to this right now, they want to find out more about you, more about what you do, more about your company, where should they go to?
MG Gurbaxani: So LinkedIn, I'm big on LinkedIn, very active there, that's probably number one, uh, Cuvama.com, check it out.
MG Gurbaxani: Uh, lots of new and exciting things coming up there.
Amardeep Parmar: And if people listening right now maybe could help you out, what should they do or how could they help you?
MG Gurbaxani: So if there's anyone in your network who's built something cool, And they are struggling to either sell it at the right price point or be able to accelerate some of their sales cycles.
MG Gurbaxani: Come and talk to Cuvama. We, we help a lot of companies that are series A stage, looking to scale. Founders have built something cool. And they want [00:30:00] sellers to go out and sell it on their behalf. And that's where we see a lot of companies fall down. So anyone in your network, send them our way. Love to have a chat and, uh, help them with pricing too.
Amardeep Parmar: Perfect. So thank you again so much for coming on. Have you got any final words to the audience?
MG Gurbaxani: Final words. So I've gotten a bit into yoga in middle age, classic middle age, and this is maybe pulling a little bit into the spiritual direction. But someone told me once, if you're swimming from point A to point B, And point B is your destination.
MG Gurbaxani: And while you're swimming to point B, you have a current that's pulling you strongly in, in another direction. Now you can fight the current. You can still go to point B. You'll be tired and out of energy. Or you can swim with the current and see where it takes you. And that's a philosophy that I, that I've, I, I live by and I think there's a lot of power in there.[00:31:00]
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