In an insightful conversation with Raamesh, our esteemed editor, Abhinav Das, the visionary Co-founder and CEO of StackIt, takes us through the captivating story behind the inception of StackIt and the transformative vision that fueled its creation. Das delves into the unexpected origins of StackIt, born out of his experience assisting his sister’s e-commerce business and recognizing the inefficiencies plaguing data analytics and insights within small enterprises.
Discover how StackIt aims to revolutionize the landscape by upgrading the conventional spreadsheet model to meet the demands of evolving data analysis use cases. Abhinav Das shares the company’s mission to empower founders, like his sister, with a self-serving, data-centric operating system.
The interview unfolds as Das navigates through the dynamic market dynamics, showcasing how StackIt has carved its niche in the tech industry. Learn about the unique value StackIt brings to B2B SaaS businesses, addressing the challenges of customized Recurring Revenue and Churn reporting.
Abhinav Das reflects on StackIt’s journey, highlighting key milestones and its global impact, serving businesses on six continents. Unveil the challenges faced during the early days of the startup and the valuable lessons learned in shaping the product and establishing a core value proposition.
Explore StackIt’s commitment to innovation and technology, focusing on being early adopters and continually challenging processes. Abhinav Das provides insights into how StackIt prioritizes user experience and ensures customer satisfaction through dedicated “Customer Delight Hours” and iterative improvements.
The interview deepens with a discussion on StackIt’s collaborative culture, emphasizing the importance of a strong team and the core values that shape their DNA. Abhinav Das elaborates on the company’s unique approach to building a collaborative and innovative environment, rejecting the concept of remote work.
As the conversation unfolds, Das provides a glimpse into StackIt’s future roadmap, offering valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs based on his experiences. The interview concludes with insights into StackIt’s engagement with the broader tech and startup community, highlighting their role as early adopters who actively contribute feedback to relevant tools in the industry.
The inception of Stackit: Can you share the story behind the birth of Stackit and your vision when co-founding the company?
I stumbled upon the original idea of StackIt in a very unexpected space. During my break between two jobs, I was helping out my sister, who runs an Ecom business (amounee.com), streamline her ops into a much more predictable model using her history data.
While doing this, I realized the entire process of doing any analytics or insight gathering involves extensive manual & repetitive work to take any business action on data. The dependency on an analyst in the team is massive.
My sister and 100s of other small business entrepreneurs use spreadsheets as their primary operating system. As much as the platform is dynamic and DIY for data handling, spreadsheets must be updated.
The vision with StackIt is to upgrade spreadsheets to the needs of the ever-maturing data analysis use cases and make founders like my sister self-serve or their primary OS, i.e. Spreadsheets.
Market Dynamics: How has Stackit navigated the dynamic landscape of the tech industry, and what unique value does it bring to the market?
StackIt is popular amongst B2B SaaS, deep diving into their SaaS revenue metrics, churn and their Customer acquisition costs. Most players in the space need help to do Recurring Revenue and churn reporting customized how they need it. StackIt’s unique value is to stitch a truly bespoke revenue story of their business.
Key Milestones: Could you highlight some key milestones and achievements Stackit has reached since its establishment?
At StackIt, the only milestone we truly celebrate is # of Customers. StackIt today is being used in 6 different continents. We are fortunate to be valuable to other businesses, automating their daily manual analytics work.
Challenges Faced: Every startup faces challenges. What significant hurdles did you encounter, and how did Stackit overcome them?
We invested a lot of time in shaping and building the product during the early days. That has to be our biggest mistake to date. The product (and the engineering) is a means to an end (unless it is a tech product). Building a customer base and pinpointing a core value prop early in your journey will accelerate your business pace and keep the team’s momentum consistently high.
Innovation and Technology: What role do innovation and technology play in Stackit’s products or services, and how do you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving tech environment?
At StackIt, we are all super early adopters of technology & super iterative by nature.
At every step, we challenge our processes, what is working/ what is not working. We question the need for each tool now and then. We challenge the need for our core features/designs/integrations/ everything. We strive to be better every day by iterations.
User Experience: How do you prioritize user experience at Stackit, and what steps have you taken to ensure customer satisfaction?
Oh, this one is interesting.
Four hours on Saturdays at StackIt is purely devoted to something we call “Customer Delight Hours”. We all sit together and pick things our customers don’t need but would love it if it existed.
Collaborative Culture: Building and maintaining a strong team culture is crucial. How has Stackit fostered a collaborative and innovative environment among its team members?
StackIt doesn’t believe in the concept of remote work. The natural collaboration happens when we build together in the same room.
We have a solid set of core values that we live by daily. It is core to our DNA.
1 – Own what you do: Think (and work) like entrepreneurs, own the challenge and deliver. “Your job is done once the job is done”.
2 – Do the Right Thing: Always act in StackIt’s best interest and bring bad news as early as possible.
3 – Put your 120% Punch above your weight—no excuses: ship & do everything needed to deliver.
4 – Deliver WOW: Consider the customer for everything you build. Care about the details and be thorough.
5 – Be a Team Player: We have each other’s back. Every win is everyone’s, and every failure is also everyone’s.
Tactically speaking — we are constantly looking out for people who show these values in their work & appreciate them publically on these lines immediately.
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs: What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs based on your experiences with Stackit?
Two pieces of advice from my experience:
- Don’t worry about the product, tech, team size, accounting, ops, nothing. Could you identify
- the problem that you are trying to solve?
- Who are you solving for?
- Does the person value the solution?
Everything else will fall into place.
- You will never get it right the first, second, third or fourth time. Try to maximize your time to run multiple experiments and run them very, very quickly. Optimize for time at every single point.
Community Engagement: How does Stackit engage with and contribute to the broader tech and startup community?
As I said, we are all early adopters of technology. We love to try every tool out there whenever it is relevant to our business and give sincere & necessary feedback (not-so-great ones).
