The Executive Brand Podcast Sendoso CEO: Turning around a $100M+ Company
Abhay Rajaram is the co-CEO at Sendoso, a Direct Mail and Gifting Platform doing over $100M in annual revenue with 250 employees. They raised a total of $175M, including a $100M Series C led by SoftBank in 2021 during peak ZIRP. Abhay joined in 2023 when the business was struggling, first as Chief Business Officer, then stepping into the co-CEO role to lead a full turnaround.
In this episode, we talk about what it looks like to lead a SaaS turnaround after raising at peak valuations, what Abhay made the one single metric he rallied the entire company around, how to build trust with your team, board & founder when the company is walking a tightrope, and much more.
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We discuss:
* Why Abhay deliberately delayed focusing on new business growth when he first joined
* The “trust triangle framework” that allowed Sendoso to improve employee NPS by over 50 points in 2.5 years - and why it matters so much
* Managing board & investor expectations after a massive 2021 $100m Series C
* The two ways to position your company in an “AI-only” world
* Abhay’s 3 keys to working with founders (very important when stepping into a C-level role, especially CEO)
* The tension between impatience and patience
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Connect with Abhay:
Abhay’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhayrajaram/
Sendoso: https://sendoso.com/
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Connect with Finn:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/
Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/
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My personal takeaways:
* Sendoso had product-market fit and $175M raised, but the business was struggling when Abhay joined. Net retention had been masking gross retention issues during the ZIRP years. He made retention the one metric he rallied the entire company around. That meant deliberately delaying focusing on new business growth, at a company that had raised a massive $100M round by Softbank with very high growth expectations. He talks about how he navigated those conversations with the board and investors. Takes courage + discipline + radical candor to pull it off
* The trust triangle (by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss): authenticity (are you the real you?), empathy (do you care about people’s success?), logic (is your judgment actually sound?). Abhay’s point: the first two are relatively easy. The third is the one that earns or breaks trust. You have to prove that your strategy works before people truly buy-in. One of Sendoso’s longest-tenured employees came to him after a few months and said “I didn’t know if we could pull it off, but I’m starting to believe now.” That’s the logic part kicking in. It kinda applies to exec brands too, authenticity and empathy get you attention, but it’s the logic (results, proof, specifics) that converts attention into trust
* Abhay’s framework for working with founders:
* match their speed, what he calls “scrappy mode” vs “scale mode” (btw scrappy does NOT mean crappy)
* understand the why behind the 50 ideas they throw at you
* earn credibility by actually being deep in the details - founders sniff out surface-level knowledge instantly
* They improved employee NPS by 50+ points in 2.5 years. Not by plastering new “values” on their walls, but through boring, good-old consistency over a long period of time: sharing bad news honestly in All-Hands, Abhay personally following up with employees, reaching out for birthdays, giving people shout-outs, celebrating wins HARD while being honest about the current challenges.
* Off topic, but his was Abhay’s first podcast EVER. Luckily only uphill from here for him. But the fact that the CEO of a $100m+ company hasn’t done a single podcast until now tells you how heads-down he’s been
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