Like a fine wine or an aged cheese, some things require time before they achieve greatness. Vik Arya, CEO and Co-Founder of Pudding.App has had many years of experience honing his craft as an SE and SE Leader.  Now, Vik has found a valuable niche as an enabler of SE Teams to be more effective in how they deliver proof of concepts (PoCs). This show gives us a CEO’s perspective on the importance of the discovery, understanding customers, your own value and overall the importance of a methodical approach to not only lead a company but to deliver great PoCs.

How does one give up a steady salary + base to create their own company? How does one find the motivation to make such a trade-off?

It all starts with finding the need.  You must be confident that there is a gap or pain in the market that you’re going to address, and you must be even more confident that you’re going to present the market with a solution that people will actually buy.

Having a good idea isn’t good enough, you must be able to execute.  That confidence to know you’ll be able to execute comes with time and is typically achieved on the back of many, many mistakes.  

Never stop learning and you’ll never stop growing.

When allocating roles and responsibilities to anyone on your team, regardless of size, consider where people’s skillsets can be most effectively leveraged, and adjust as you need to.

How’s Life Different as a CEO vs. an SE?

• When you’re a Founder/CEO, it can be hard to define when work ends; it’s not after a demo is done or a deal is closed, it’s always in your mind to make things better and to constantly grow.
• The scope of concerns is generally wider across all functional areas rather than just pre-sales or engineering.

All the while, being an SE can still mean that you’re the CEO of what you’re responsible for.  Remember, extreme ownership.

Vik sells to salespeople; how does he find it?

“Super easy.” 

And why?

1. Salespeople are already outward facing at any organization, it’s not hard to find your buyer.
2. Salespeople, particularly SEs and SE Leaders, are particularly open-minded to new technologies and tools to be more effective.

So long as both you and the customer recognize your value proposition, then any negotiation will always have the clear end-goal of obtaining that value.  Everything in between is just semantics.

What are the biggest mistakes Vik has seen SEs make when developing/creating PoCs?

• Lack of proper discovery.
• Not properly engaging the customer – they’ll typically know what they want or need more than anyone else.

Don’t be shy to ask the questions you need to ask to deliver the best PoC you can.  Nothing is out of bounds. It’s better to know now if you can or can’t do something that wastes a bunch of time delivering something the customer doesn’t care for.

When conducting discovery, you should be considering their pains/needs/wants and how you address them using a simple framework that segments your solution’s features into three categories.

1. Unique Features: These are features that are unique to your solution and is a strong element of your competitive advantage.
2. Comparative/Competitive Features: These are features that you have, but so do your competitors.
3. Holistic Features: These are features that don’t necessarily directly address a customer’s requirements, but they are still important pieces of what makes your solution so great.

You should be mapping the discovery to your Unique Features while sprinkling in the others as you need to, but if there isn’t a clear mapping of their requirements to your unique features, then they (or you) may not be the best fit.

Not So Fire Round:

1. What do you love about being a CEO?
   1. The freedom to create and build things.  It can be both painful but beautiful – Loves being able to solve problems with what he creates.
2. What would you change about being a CEO?
   1. The extreme challenge of achieving proper work-life balance.
   2. The difficulty in not letting your emotions get in the way of data that ultimately drives your decisions.
3. Books/Resources/Tools Vik Recommends: 
   1. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr
   2. Atomic Habits by James Clear
4. What Separates the Great SEs from the Rest?
   1. Those that can take a step back to truly evaluate what they are doing and why.
   2. Those always looking to iterate and grow in a methodical way.
      1. Must recognize that it’s a process that takes time.

Additional Links:

Pudding.app

Proof is in the Pudding – Podcast

Connect with Vik on LinkedIn