Acing Customer Dev & Partnerships in the US - Kalyan Verma, Almabase | BTS E11 | SaaSBoomi Podcast

Kalyan Varma is the Co-Founder & CEO of Almabase. Before
solving the alumni fundraising problem, Kalyan worked as an
analyst at Goldman Sachs, just as he moved to start an online
marketplace which couldn’t scale, yet he kept trying new things
to eventually stumble upon the gap in the education system to
eventually start Almabase. 


Kalyan is an alumnus of NIT Warangal and cites BITS Pilani as the
foremost institution in the country with the strongest alumni
relations. 


In this episode, as we dug deeper into the idea in this
unconventional space, Kalyan breaks down the idea by sharing
memorable experiences from some of the big institutions around
the world; the challenges he faced in US trying to learn more
about the disorganized space, in a bid to fix the broken
relationship between the alumni and the colleges to create a
win-win situation for both around the world. 


Tune in to watch an insightful conversation brew among the trio.


Key take aways


2:14 - A creative way of solving high college tuition fees


5:15 - Building blocks of a strong marketing structure


10:55 - How can sales empower marketing?


14:11 - Thought leadership marketing and category creation


17:27 - Getting the first US customers


18:34 - Cold emailing and customer development hack


21:30 - Going all out to understand your Customers


25:10 - Why now is a good time to sell to US?


27:20 - Customer agony to features


28:47 - The Power of a rock-solid CRM


30:38 - How CRM is set up differently for better?


33:30 - The CRM mantra that helped us


37:01 - 5x scale from ABM compared to Outbound


38:25 - The Win-Win-Win Strategy


39:44 - Partnering with a billion dollar company as a startup


44:31 - Disengagement of Alumni


48:12 - Starting up in 2023: What will you do differently?


49:33 - Kalyan’s biggest pet peeve


Happy listening!