A guest post by: Romi Mahajan, CMO Quantarium

Residential real estate – peoples’ homes – is the world’s largest asset class, tipping the scales at almost $200 trillion worldwide.  This number is staggering to many, including those in the housing industry.  Larger even than the sums involved are the emotions – a family’s residence is likely its largest investment and one from which, so many other life-factors radiate:  Who are your neighbors, what schools do your kids attend, are you safe, how close are you to good medical care, and so on.  Insofar as this is true, the housing sector can never be given too much attention by Economists, Sociologists and even Technologists.  Still, in many ways the sector has been given short shrift.

Consider a matter at the heart of the industry – the value of a particular house.  What appears to be a simple question with a simple answer is not.  Sure, one can look at the basics – how big it is, the year built, comparable houses in the neighborhood and so on.  One can even attempt to factor in other variables – school district, crime statistics, proximity to the beach, and a host of other things.  All said and done, all of these factors are “external” and in many ways “non-specific.”

Let’s pause for a moment.  While these factors are indeed external, we have to ask ourselves a basic question – how do I get specific?  How do I assess the value of a particular house, looking beyond these basic factors and in the process taking into account the condition of the house and the nature of its interior landscape?

For most of us this is an obvious question.  After all, if you put in a lot of money to modernize or refurbish a house, you would expect that its value rises, even if your work and effort is not recognized in the external statistics being looked at for valuation.  If you, on the other hand, paid no attention to the house and allowed it to atrophy, you’d likely expect the value to diminish.

This issue is often “solved” by Appraisers, who theoretically take into consideration all of these interior and condition-based factors when assessing the value of a house.

Now, we enter a world fraught with problems.

For the purposes of this short piece, we won’t get into the debates about the objectivity of Appraisers or even about the shortage of talent that is delaying closings in many large markets (in the US for sure.)  These issues are fertile grounds for discussion, elsewhere.

No, the main issues we intend to dissect here are the issues of scale, speed, and customer experience.

In the US, there are over 100 million residential units.  Now imagine you work at a bank or other institution that originates and/or “owns” millions of mortgages and wants to determine the value of your portfolio in toto?  Imagine, further, that you need to do so every month.  After all, you need to keep track of your assets, make decisions about where to keep houses and where to sell houses, and assess your risk in holding these mortgages.  The issues of scale and cost are enormous.  You certainly can’t send an appraiser to each house.

Imagine a different scenario.  A consumer lives in a city with a very fast market and needs to make decisions on the spot whether to buy a house.  Waiting even a few hours, not to mention days, can mean losing a house.  In this cauldron, determining the true “value” of a home has to be done instantaneously.  Here, the issues of speed are paramount.

Finally, imagine you are a real estate agent with a demanding (and rightfully so) customer who wants to buy a house.  You have visited 10 houses to determine fit and have been disappointed by their dilapidated interiors.  You are not paid for your time, only for results.  If only, there were ways to determine condition and value based on condition in a way that was easy for the customer (in this case, you.)

Enter technology, specifically AI and its offshoot, Computer Vision.  Artificial Intelligence yields a potent set of tools for real estate, starting with valuations.  First of all, AI is “better at the basics” than non AI methodologies.  To get even a basic valuation of 100+ million properties every month is not trivial; with AI, the entire US footprint can be run in hours not weeks.  The idea is simple:  Computers can learn from data sets of a critical mass, then keep improving their outputs as more data comes in.  Machine-learning is just that- machines that actually “learn” and thus can offer results and outputs that are neither obvious nor simply the result of brute-force methods.  AI can thus help with the scale and speed components.

Computer Vision comes in here in a delightful way.  If you look at house-listings, they often come with a multitude of pictures.  Computer Vision can analyze and categorize these pictures- with speed and fidelity- thereby assigning “condition” scores to kitchens, bathrooms, and other hotspots in the house.  In this way, they can help offer a “condition-adjusted” value.

Put all of this together and you get a powerful mix.  Automated Valuation Models (AVMs), powered by AI can provide accurate valuations at scale and with enormous breadth.  Add condition-adjustment, powered by Computer Vision, and you start to see technology giving its due to the vexing problems and incredible opportunities in the real estate industry.

Marketing Darwinism had the Opportunity to Meet Up with Jeremy McCarty, Co-Founder and CEO of Valligent Technologies.

Marketing Darwinism: Jeremy, the Real Estate Technology/PropTech space is, simply put, “on fire” as of the last few years.  Can you comment on this and on Valligent’s place in the mix?

Jeremy: Indeed, Real Estate as a sector and RE Tech specifically are buoyant and exciting.  It is important to remember that residential real estate is the largest “industry” in the country. US homes in aggregate are worth upwards of $35 Trillion collectively and this year almost 7 Million houses will be bought and sold.  The application of technology to this space is key to its future and we’re fortunate at Valligent Technologies to be at the heart of this.  While our valuation an appraisal business has been healthy for years, we saw huge potential in virtual appraisals and low-touch valuations and skated to where that puck was going.  We now have the most innovative virtual appraisal offering in the industry and the regulatory environment has made massive scale possible in this space.  All in all, we don’t feel like we have a ring-side seat; instead we feel like we are on the field playing the game!

Marketing Darwinism: Tell us more about the changes you see in the space?

Jeremy: There are so many changes, manifesting daily.  Some of these changes are “disruptive” and others are just natural extensions or evolutions of what existed.  On the former side, take the notion of house appraisals.  House appraisals are very much about the verification of valuation.  In the home buying process- still a lengthy procedure—the valuation of the house is the centerpiece.  From what loan you get all the way to the cost of insurance, the valuation pops up a dozen times at least in the process.  Now imagine being able to get an accurate valuation with technology, in less than an hour.  No long waits for appraisers and white-knuckling the results.  No costly and repetitive services to be subjected to.  Now, imagine further.  Of the circa 7M houses that will sell this year, 40% of so are eligible for waivers on the standard appraisal.  Enter virtual appraisals.  Such speed and scale are a sea-change in what is otherwise a slow moving industry.

Marketing Darwinism: We see a lot of VC, PE, SPAC, and other investment dollars going into this space.  Is there a bubble here?

Jeremy: As in all spaces, this one will have winners and losers.  There is a certain amount of rhetoric and exaggeration in the space, especially with regard to “dressing up” old business models with new “language.”  We see technology buzzwords abounding but when it comes down to it, many companies still rely on analog and traditional methods to transact.  We understood this and have partnered with leading technology players like Quantarium and have developed cutting-edge tech capacity of our own.  So, yes, there are bubble aspects but in reality we are just beginning to see this industry transformed by the combination of technology, regulatory change, innovation in business process, and highly capable and educated consumers.

Marketing Darwinism: Tell us about your Marketing work?  After all, we do care a LOT about Marketing!

Jeremy: Marketing is key to Valligent’s success.  We are big believers in participating in the industry community and in doing our part to promote the industry as a whole. We have been pleased to receive multiple awards in the space and that notoriety has helped create a flywheel of engagement, advocacy, referral, and growth.  Marketing is and will always be core to our company and we feel very strongly that we back up our messaging with a product and solution platform nonpareil.

Marketing Darwinism: Any parting thoughts?

Jeremy: We continue to be excited about Valligent’s growth in the new world of Real Estate and about the space in general.  We believe that top talent will be drawn to RE Tech and that the addition of smart, driven, and innovative people will help the industry mature into a fully tech-enabled and dynamic part of the economy.  It’s already the biggest part of the economy but we want it to be seen as cutting edge.

Marketing Darwinism chatted with Pepper’s CEO Pulak Sinha on progress since last time we spoke.

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, how has progress been since connecting six months ago?

Pulak:  I appreciate the question around progress since in fact that is the key determinant of a company’s success.  We’ve made enormous progress on a variety of fronts, most significantly around customers, product, and team.  We’ve expanded and deepened our customer connection; over $5B runs on the Pepper platform today- doubling in 6 months.  Produce-wise we’ve introduced a variety of new modules and connectors and have launched a low-code orchestrator for our customers.  And we’ve expanded our team, with two solid executives joining over the last quarter.  Miles to go still of course but real velocity in the right direction.

Marketing Darwinism: Remind us again about your “raison d’etre” and your core target market

Pulak:  We built Pepper from the ground up to offer simplicity, ease, success, and ROI to Asset Management and Portfolio Management teams.  That Asset Manager with a new fund or one that is seeking optimization of data to improve outcomes in a current fund, the portfolio manager who wants to harness data- across investment and asset classes- to drive customer value, the data-drenched Asset Manager who is looking to at once increase returns while simultaneously complying with the varied regulatory frameworks in the industries and geographies that government his/her investments—these are the people for whom we’ve built Pepper.  We believe we are the leading data platform for ROI optimization in the space.

Marketing Darwinism: As an entrepreneur, how did you land on this space and why does it continue to animate you?

Pulak:  Great question.  The numbers are striking.  Asset Managers have been given $120 trillion to manage on behalf of clients.  Such staggering numbers can overwhelm.  Of this, over $15 trillion is invested in alternatives.  Making sense of all these investments, optimizing current portfolios, and analyzing the benefits of new investments in a data-driven fashion – these are all areas we support.  I got into the space because when I was deep in the industry, I needed a “Pepper.”  Such stories to me are the essence of the journey we are on.  We’ve been successful so far but are humbled by the possibilities ahead.

Marketing Darwinism: Recent articles have emphasized the connections between great Chief Information Officers, Asset Managers, and Chief Investment Officers.  Can you comment on that?

Pulak:  Every time one of the articles comes out, it is great for us.  We’ve built an enterprise-class platform that would align all of these roles- a SaaS platform with low time to value, cloud-native and extensible apps, integrations, and ease of use—we believe that we are a crucial piece in the alignment of Asset Management ROI and technology.

Marketing Darwinism: What is your customer success strategy?

Pulak:  This relates back to our mission. Helping customers harness the power of data is never a one-off, point-in-time “task” but is instead a process.  While our platform is very easy to deploy, we make sure to connect with our customers regularly to ensure that they are prospering and getting what they need.  There’s nothing better than seeing them succeed but also getting their feedback and rolling it into the product.

Marketing Darwinism:  Dharmesh you’ve been on our pages before, welcome back.  Tells us about the progress at Advaiya.

Dharmesh: Thanks Paul.  2020 has been a year of massive amplitudes.  In society, there are many people who are suffering and have lost loves ones and jobs. In the business world, companies of all sizes have been jolted into a new state of being; many have realized that all of the earlier talk about sustainability, disaster recovery, and- frankly- agility was real.  Black swan events happen and will happen and companies need the digital infrastructure and a corresponding culture to manage through them.  We’ve been very fortunate to be able to help a variety of organizations through this process this year.

Marketing Darwinism:  Can you give us more specifics? Can we move away from “Digital Transformation” as a one-size fits all approach?

Dharmesh:  We agree.  The details and nuances are the nub of the matter.  We believe very strongly in a vertical contextuality not just a patina of “understanding” that is really in practice superficial.  I can’t help a Financial Services company create a digital backbone if I don’t understand its customers, its regulatory environment, and the changing landscape in the space.  Similarly, we’ve seen the healthcare system buckle under lack of capacity because earlier consultants thought of them as “any old” industry and convinced them to be “just in time.” In reality, they are a social service that requires a peak load view not a base load view.  These snapshots of vertical insight differentiate us often.

Marketing Darwinism:  In a WFH or now Work-From-Anywhere context, how do organizations need to think about digitization?

Dharmesh:  We have believed in WFA and SFA (Source from Anywhere) for a long time.  We have understood that the best talent for the job can be found anywhere and that our customers themselves are not fixed in time and space.  We believe that in a WFH and WFA context, the “silicon” isn’t the full solution- people and culture are a big part of the equation.  Technology infrastructure and applications need to enable them to uncover new scenarios and act on them.  That is the heart of real innovation and progress.

Marketing Darwinism:  How is Advaiya’s growth orientation?

Dharmesh:  Over the last 5 years, we’ve had a continuous, secular growth trajectory.  Q2 of this year was a hiccup as we all adjusted to the new reality of Covid.  But as companies sought change and wisdom and frankly help in Q3, we’ve seen our growth return.  Right now, we are focused purely on customers and partnerships; growth will persist if we maintain that focus.

Marketing Darwinism:  You work a lot in aiding marketing organizations.  How is that going?

Dharmesh:  In our incarnation as an agency- for content, digital assets, analytics, visualization of data, and so on, we attempt to be an organic part of the teams we support.  Marketing teams have been wonderful to work with- at times we are simply a human-being extension and at times we are developing markets together.  None of our offerings are atomic- they all connect to a larger marketing reality.

Marketing Darwinism:  What’s next?

Dharmesh:  We have a lot planned for 2021. We are continuing our big push with applications and infrastructure but also with our “last mile” customer work.  As we grow in both North America and Asia, we’ve been able to bring on some exceptional talent.  As with everything, they’ll help us define what is next!

Marketing Darwinism: John, tell us about Zact.  We love it when founders tell their stories.

John:  Thanks Paul.  Zact was born of a simple idea- that Expense and Payment Management – core to the success of any organization- should not be an area of constant frustration and deficit.  We built Zact with three things in mind- 1. The Integrity of the process whereby accounting reconciliation is inherent; 2. Driving harmony between the employees and the Accounting and Finance Department; 3. Helping customers spend their time and capital on growth and not on the error-prone minutiae that often hampers them.  When I look at what our small team has accomplished in record time, I’m really very proud.

Marketing Darwinism: So Zact is an Expense Management system?

John: That and much more.  Zact is a true platform for Expense and Payment Management.  Our innovative business-design win is manifested in a product called “The One Employee Card” which allows for Managed Autonomy- spending within guardrails and easy reconciliation.  It is also very much about democratization- all employees are part of the growth story for the organization.  But we didn’t stop there; instead with our App, our backend, and our native Cloud-based reconciliation, we emerge not as a point-solution but as a platform.

Marketing Darwinism: Would you classify yourself as a Fintech company?

John: Absolutely.  Fintech, and the sub-category PaymentTech, is a burgeoning area that we are thrilled to be in and associated with.

Marketing Darwinism: So, as a Marketing professional, I have to ask you about the Expensify CEO’s email to his customers and community asking them to vote for Biden.  What are your thoughts?

John: Each entrepreneur does what he or she sees fit for his or her business. Interestingly, this particular email brought attention to a space – payments and expense reporting – that is often relegated to the arena of “necessary but not sexy”.  I hope this email draws customers’ attention to innovations that are happening in this space to drive financial and operational efficiencies while enhancing reporting integrity – three attributes fundamental to the Zact narrative.

Marketing Darwinism: As a startup CEO, how do you think about Marketing?  Do you plan to invest further in the space?

John: I believe in Marketing.  Ultimately, Zact is all about current and potential customers; we feel, very humbly, that the more we scale, the more we’ll drive real satisfaction to our customers and real value to all elements of the ecosystem.  We also believe that a core driver of that process of scale and speed is marketing.  It is an area that we plan to invest in heavily going forward.

Marketing Darwinism: Any parting thoughts for MD’s readers?

John: Indeed, we hope that our solution(s) are highly relevant and fundamentally useful to all of our customers and ultimately their employees, partners, and customers too.  The journey so far has been exhilarating.  We know that each road has potholes but are determined to keep the faith, to drive hard, and to always focus on our core mission.  Anything less would be an abdication.

Marketing Darwinism: Manish, Advaiya has been going strong for over a decade now.  Tell us about your evolution.

Manish:  Paul, you used the right word here- evolution.  Our company has grown and evolved a great deal since it was just an idea in our minds years ago, to now being able to list in our roster or customers and partners over 100 companies and over 500 individuals as ongoing customers.  We are at once proud and humbled.  Advaiya started as a Microsoft partner, focused on Enterprise Project Management, and has evolved into a full-service Application Developer, Integrator, and Implementer and a full-scale Digital and Content Agency.  Under one roof, we connect to and service some of the world’s largest companies hailing from North America, Asia, and Europe but also innovative startups and what are deemed “traditional” companies in the manufacturing and services spaces.  We are having a blast.

Marketing Darwinism:  Big Tech has grown into the most powerful economic force in the world.  How do you see that as it relates to Advaiya’s growth?

Manish: We are lucky in this regard in two ways.  First, we have very good relationships with companies that constitute “Big Tech” and continue to partner with them actively.  In fact, many of our outbound efforts are conducted jointly with large companies.  We feel very lucky in that regard.  Second, and maybe even more importantly, the notions of Digital Transformation are real and we are able to offer a layer of know-how, IP, and process on top of the amazing platforms these companies build- we offer them to a slew of customers of a variety of sizes and across verticals.  Companies that many deem as “old world” are in fact embracing Digital Transformation with a speed and vigor that would surprise all the naysayers.  So, again, we have a twofold win here- as customers and as value-add partners.

Marketing Darwinism:  Okay so you said it.  Digital Transformation. Unpack that for me.

Manish: We all know of the clichés and we all know about hyperbole.  But what’s lost in all that are real stories of learning, transformation, growth, culture change, and yes mistakes too.  Digital Transformation is not about rhetorical shifts but about profound changes in the actual processes and products/services an organization uses to engage, operate, and execute.  Isn’t that the goal ultimately?  Digital Transformation implies something deeper too- an ongoing, persistent commitment to honing, improving, and creating efficiencies.  We work with amazing companies that are discovering the mind-bending results of say well-implemented CRM solutions, Data visualization and effective dash-boarding, implementing an effective data strategy, building engaging digital artifacts, and so on.  Being even a small part of that is heady.

Marketing Darwinism:  What do you tell prospective customers to get them to want to work with Advaiya?

Manish: We approach these conversations with a clear view that we must put our best foot forward with all customers.  We have to be able to understand context, culture, as well as the business needs in order to truly be effective.  Even when we were a small team, we were working with some of the world’s largest corporations on critical projects.  There was no room for anything but our A+-game.  Though we have expanded our personnel and our footprint, there is no different in our attitude or our execution.  This is in our view attributable to 4 elements:

First, we are very picky about hiring.  About a third of the company has been with us since inception.  Another third has been with us for over 5 years.  We love growth but it has to be done in a way that does not diminish results.

Second, we have incredible customers who understand that long-term partnerships produce the best results. We are not here just to transact.  We are here to build together.

Third, we are a constant-learning organization.  This applies to the latest technologies, the latest processes and certifications, but also a fundamental dedication to listening.  Learning is key.  Our Chief HR Officer is really our Chief Learning Officer.

Fourth, when we falter, we correct quickly.  We cannot be caught up in the ego and pretensions of being right always.  We are not.

If these factors make sense to you, then please work with us.  Else, let’s just be friends!

Marketing Darwinism:  Any parting thoughts?

Manish: The new technologies and applications, powered by AI and ML and built for customer engagement and improvement are worth looking at. We have a breadth of expertise and the curiosity to learn how to quickly apply these technologies to real scenarios.  We love to listen.  And then to go about making real contributions.

We caught up with Samir Saluja, who we’ve covered before when he started DeriveOne about his new venture, Ahrian LLC.

Marketing Darwinism:  Tell us about Ahrian, your new firm.

Samir:  Thanks Paul.  Ahrian is a boutique consulting firm that will take on a limited number of deep customer partnerships this year.  We work on audience development, innovation and innovation processes, channel empowerment, and market development.  Underpinning these concepts is data, research, and technology.  I’m as excited about Ahrian as I have been about anything else professionally.

Marketing Darwinism: Ahrian – great name.  Tell us more.

Samir:  Well, I must admit, Ahrian is the name of my son.  Just as he’s the light of my full life, this company is the light of my work life.

Marketing Darwinism: You were at Microsoft for a long time.  How does your experience there inflect your work at Ahrian?

Samir:  At Microsoft, I was surrounded by really driven, smart people who thought about speed and scale.  When I co-founded DeriveOne, we wanted to combine speed and scale with actionable insights for companies that were seeking outside help to validate hypotheses and understand their customers, and then with our Project Simile joint venture we have been applying recent advances in machine learning to help customers measure metaphor resonance for brand and communication strategies. With Ahrian, I am synthesizing all my past experience- even my experience in International Trade, to bring to bear the entire panoply of services to my customers.

Marketing Darwinism: You openly say that you aren’t seeking any and all customers, just the right ones.  In fact you call these customer partnerships.  Please walk us through that logic.

Samir:  Deep relationships are partnerships and the only way to truly serve customers is my discovering, exploring, and building together.  I do not want to add only a thin-layer of value but to be considered a real team member, just with a different email address.  Without that depth, you miss context and nuance and without complexity and attending to nuance, you cannot create lasting products and solutions.  Ahrian is my ode to that concept.

Marketing Darwinism: Are you focusing on particular verticals?

Samir:  Yes and no.  We do a lot of work with technology companies and with their ecosystem.  We also work with Fintech and other adjacent areas.  We do so from the vantage point of data-driven growth combined with wisdom and experience.  Ahrian is a prescriptive company but never is it implied that we know better, only that we have an alternative point of view that should be considered.  That has resonated very well in these sectors and will hopefully elsewhere as well.

Marketing Darwinism: What are you most excited about?

Samir:  Building a true boutique firm.  A McKinsey of sorts without the baggage and overhead.

Second, I want to be friends with all my customer partners.  It’s not worth doing if you can’t enjoy your time with people.  If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that life is short, and all solutions start with investing time in people that inspire and fulfill you personally and professionally.

Marketing Darwinism: Steven, it’s been a while since we caught up but I know you are doing something very interesting and relevant now. Can you tell us about your new project?

Steven: Thanks. The last 15 years have been very interesting for me and have culminated in the new stealth startup I’m building. As you know, I cofounded Ascentium and we grew it from zero to 90M in a little less than 7 years. Our entire focus was technology in context and a relentless focus on customer needs. We build the entire company around the customer in our “surround” strategy. When we sold it, I moved into an area that always fascinated me- hospitality, where I partnered with some of the most incredible technical talent to build and nurture systems for hotels, casinos, and other hospitality ventures. My new startup is connected to that space.

Marketing Darwinism: Isn’t the timing for that, well, awkward given the 80% decline in hotel stays and the pandemic situation in general.

Steven: On the surface, yes. But when you dig deeper, you see that when the industry recovers- even if not 100% or even close- it will need flexible systems that can elastically throttle up and down. In addition, as assets get repurposed and value is derived from new modes of business, the currently rigid systems will have to flex. That’s the key to a post- Covid 19 scenario.

Marketing Darwinism: Fascinating. When you talk about repurposing, in some ways that is the key. Transformation, Pivoting, Repurposing….these are buzzwords. Is there something more to them?

Steven: It’s a great point. For many, the “pivots” they’ve announced are hardly interesting. I mean going from serving a sandwich in a closed environment to offering it for pick-up is necessary but not super-innovative. But imagine converting a hotel into a hospital or into temporary work space? Imagine a physical business that transforms itself into a digital, ether-based business. These are the sorts of things that deeply vertical solutions will have to accommodate going forward.

Marketing Darwinism: So, given that, what is your focus now?

Steven: We start with the customer. Customers have been telling me for a long time that they need modular solutions that allow them to scale up and down and don’t require a complex and impacted process or culture curve to adopt. My goal as a technology builder is to start with these needs, to deeply contextualize myself in the culture, and only then to architect the technology. So, as we launch, we will be sure to continue to give you, Paul, the exclusive insight into our plans!

Marketing Darwinism: Steven, how does Marketing fit into your new startup’s plans?

Steven: I’ve always been a big believer in Marketing. All effective companies must communicate clearly and often, and I believe Marketing is the key here. Products are great to build but they can “sit on the shelf” without an effective strategy to win influential people to avail of their benefits. While I am a technologist in the first instance, I am a Marketer in the second; I’ve never built a company without a superb Marketer in the first 3 hires.

Marketing Darwinism: Any thoughts about the future of hospitality and hotels?

Steven: I believe that the industry will find its footing. While we cannot say that this pandemic came out of nowhere, it certainly caught many industries flat-footed. But in the past 2 months I’ve seen story after story of positive transformation – as I alluded to before- and have seen that the entire ecosystem that supports the industry is ready to retool. As such, I think that our job as technologists is to enable and accelerate the processes by which this reinvention takes place. I don’t necessarily believe we’ll be back to the “glory days,” but I’m clear that the new scenario will not be as bleak as was thought in the first waves of this pandemic. Success will be had again!

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, tell us about Pepper.

Pulak:  Thanks Paul.  Pepper was conceived as an end-to-end platform for Asset Managers who seek simplicity in a deeply complex world.  Asset Management is indeed complex; think of the questions Asset Managers have to answer:  What investments should I make?  How should I optimally manage the investments I have made/my portfolio?  What are the regulatory and data frameworks that govern the different asset classes in the portfolio?  How should I get real-time intelligence on my investments?  How should I report to my investors?  How do I differentiate from other Asset Managers?  These questions lend themselves to a platform- approach to this space.  So we built Pepper.

Marketing Darwinism:  Tell us more about Pepper’s origins.

Pulak:  I’ve spent my whole career in and around this space.  What appears to be a perfectly working machine from the outside has the usual issues when viewed from the inside.  We are talking about the management of trillions of dollars across a plethora of asset classes and a complex and dynamic international system of rules, regulations, compliance, and risk tolerance.  When I realized there are ways to simplify this, to help Asset Managers focus on client-return and not the perspiration and minutiae they have to spend much of their time on, Pepper was born.

Marketing Darwinism:  So is Pepper just an idea like so many startups or are you in market?

Pulak:  Great question.  There are so many claims made in the “Fintech” space that are theoretical and not tried and tested.  So I appreciate the question.  We are very much in market.  We are a revenue generating company with a blue-chip client base.  But I will say that my background is deep product design so I over-indexed on building a resilient comprehensive platform.  So we are now launching a massive marketing push to expand our customer footprint.

Marketing Darwinism:  Marketing is “music to my ears.”  Tell us more about your plans.

Pulak:  We are in a sector that requires very strategic marketing and not scatter-shooting.  First of all, given the impact of this sector- with the trillions of dollars at play- we should not exaggerate or embellish.  We plan to use a very clear, authentic messaging strategy in the voice of a peer.  After all, the idea is to be clear that we built this on the backs of our own experience and from within the cauldron not from the outside.  We will certainly leverage the tools of modern marketing- LinkedIn and others to get our message out but ultimately we know the true potential of Pepper will be realized when organizations trial it and see its power.

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, you have mentioned “Fintech” a few times.  What do you think the future of the space is?

Pulak:  I think the future of Fintech is very healthy but as entrepreneurs we have to help make it healthy by building truly useful products and truly helping customers adopt them in their own contexts.  No technologies are silver-bullets without context and culture surrounding them.  We have to think about those aspects of our industry and then devise and hone products that are in keeping with those principles.  I’m very bullish but also very clear that we have to work hard for that bullishness to be warranted.

The following is a guest post from Samir Saluja, Founder DeriveOne and Romi Mahajan, CMRO Quantarium. Enjoy …

The metaphors we use to understand and process events, data, and thoughts are the ones that ultimately govern the ways in which we react to the stream of information that comes our way.  As we attempt to navigate the shoals of human behavior- in order to create a model for how indeed these metaphors connect with actions- it is clear that sentiments as a whole direct economic behavior, whether classified as consumer or business-to-business.   These sentiments are governed by a host of variables.

With the Covid-19 Pandemic raging across the world, we see sentiments gyrate wildly.  The stress of virus-induced death and sickness, the constant admonitions, our fear for loved ones and friends, and the disruption of life-as-we-know-it is real and palpable.  The lack of fixity, the presence of a persistent “unknown” exacerbates this stress and affects sentiments about all manner of subjects. 

In the first quarter of 2020, as the payload of the virus was delivered and public health experts suggested ways in which to slow its spread, many parts of the world witnessed a sudden economic downturn.  People stayed at home suddenly, weren’t able to either work or spend; demand for certain goods and services plummeted.  Employers laid millions of workers off.  A variety of businesses closed-shop many of which will likely stay shut.   Well, these processes cannot be referred to only in the past tense.  These trends continue unabated- dismal economic figures are released daily by many of the world’s major economies. 

Precarity is the order of the day.  Mental health providers are witnessing a spectacular rise and cannot handle the scale of calls upon their services.  Depression has become commonplace. 

In this environment, the metaphors that govern the sentiments and thus the outlook of most Americans are direct results of the pandemic and its consequences -and understandably so.

How will this affect economic decision-making?  To speculate thus, it is important to understand the metaphors people use to process information and thus inform decisions.  Some early thoughts here based on recent reviews of news, polls, and in-person conversations:

Clearly, more nuance is required.  For instance, a recent study by Simile shows that “Boomers” and “Millennials” have markedly different views of and sentiments triggered by the Covid-19 Pandemic.  As such, their responses, even economic responses, will be inflected by these sentiments; likely, millennials will want to “transact” in “normal” ways with more haste than older Americans. 

The biggest asset class and backbone of the US Economy- Housing- will undergo a sea-change not only in scope but also in process.  March 2020 witnessed a 22% decline in housing starts and the largest dip in homebuilder sentiment in the history of its measurement.  Multiple anecdotes from Real Estate agents refer to a blight in listings and a “dead” market.  Being able to understand sentiment and translate the understanding into predictions is an incredibly important part of the planning process, as we seek economic retooling and recovery.  Here, the sentiments of fear and uncertainty play a large role as do some of the elements of the purchase/sale process.   For example, no one wants an appraiser traipsing through his house and no one wants to stage her house and open it for viewing, not to mention that very few people would risk touring houses in an era of fear and social-distancing.  These trends bode ill for business-as-usual in the housing economy.

The sentiments provoked by the pandemic will change existing economic patterns and create new ones.  Understanding the metaphors and sentiments evoked by this crisis and then innovating around the processes by which they can be translated into economic activity is key.  Without a doubt, the human tragedy unfolding is the biggest story related to the Pandemic; when and if we contain the virus and reduce it to a minor irritation, fixing the economy is next-up.