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Episode 4: Bo Jiang, Lithic
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In this Second Acts episode, Krish speaks with Lithic’s co-founder and CEO, Bo Jiang; who breaks down how Lithic (a fast-scaling, B2B infrastructure play in the card issuing space) came about as a compelling second act while running a cash-efficient, B2C startup.
Bo: “Infrastructure businesses tend to trend as being horizontal vs verticalized businesses. And if you think about the transitional phases of a company, everyone starts somewhat horizontal. Or a lot of companies start somewhat horizontal. But, in order to scale, in order to differentiate and to build bespoke businesses over time and cross the chasm, you have to verticalize the business.”
Krish: “…it’s a new learning for us to not reject the idea [of professional services] but to embrace it and ask, ‘what makes a customer successful?’ Incentivizing even the sales process to, say, leave enough room for professional services to be monetized later, because the customer has a particular budget for the first year…[then] making sure that the implementation is actually successful while you discount the first year’s platform fee.”
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Chapters:
(3:37) Going from a lean team of 20 to raising $100m+
(7:47) How their own B2C startup has been Lithic’s first (and foundational) customer
(10:28) Questioning general startup wisdom with the right whys
(11:10) Why most infrastructure businesses make the horizontal-to-vertical shift
(12:03) How Privacy.com has continued to inform Lithic despite their ICP evolution
(13:22) How the technology adoption curve explains verticalization
(15:44) The traps of an “unlimited TAM”
(18:07) Revisiting the strong pull of promising verticals
(20:48) One of the hardest things to balance as a founder
(21:44) Why expanding to new segments/verticals requires a beginner’s mindset
(24:18) How to build products that both devs and other business stakeholders love
(26:55) How to think about (and structure) the value of professional services in SaaS
(31:04) Assessing potential exec hires for adaptability and the ability to altitude-shift
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Mentioned/Resources:
Lithic's 10-Year Anniversary Episode
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Connect with Bo:
Connect with Krish:
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About Chargebee:
Chargebee is a revenue growth management platform that helps thousands of subscription businesses unlock second acts of scale with transformative billing, monetization, and retention infra. Learn more.
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