Suresh Mathew, CEO of Sedai

Check out our latest Vendor Spotlight with Suresh Mathew, CEO of Sedai, and learn how the company leverages customer feedback to refine its autonomous cloud management platform while educating consumers on a new product category.

Key Takeaways

• Creating a New Category in Cloud Management: Sedai is an autonomous cloud management company focused on cloud cost optimization and performance management, which Suresh describes as “the last mile of FinOps.”
• The Challenge of Go-To-Market and Category Creation: Suresh explains that GTM was especially difficult because “autonomous” was a new category, requiring Sedai to educate buyers while still pushing toward product-market fit.
• Using Sagetap to Get Candid Buyer Feedback: Suresh says Sagetap is “the best way to get that feedback,” because buyers come in with the intent to refine the product rather than just be impressed by a pitch.
• Customer Feedback Directly Shaping the Roadmap: Through conversations on Sagetap, Sedai expanded what it manages — adding ECS on top of Lambda — which Suresh says helped move the company closer to closing deals.
• Measurable ROI from Sagetap Conversations: Sedai has seen a 2.5X ROI from Sagetap, and deals from the platform often lead to additional deals outside the platform through buyer word of mouth.

Full Transcript

Suresh Mathew: It is one thing to build a product. It is a very different thing to build a product that can be consumed by people.

We are an autonomous cloud management company focused on cloud cost optimization and performance management. Here at Sedai we give you, safe recommendations that can be executed without failures. It's really the last mile of FinOps.

Sahil Khanna: How have you gone about bringing the Sedai solution to market?

Suresh: GTM is the second hardest in a startup journey, after product market fit, and for us, it was a little bit of a category creation because autonomous was new,

So we had to educate a little bit. And the major challenge there is when you go for a pitch, generally people say the product looks good because you're so passionate about the product. Now you have to really put yourself in a position where they can be open about the feedback.

And of course, a platform like Sagetap is the best way to get that feedback in. The buyers that come in are coming in with an intent to refine your product.

I'm not saying you want to build everything that people would want, but at least they can refine the roadmap for you.

We started adding more technology that we manage like ECS on top of Lambda was an addition after a few conversations.

That's when you start closing deals. These guys talk to each other too. So this is a very small network. People with, for example, cloud management cost paying clients do talk to each other. And they would probably socialize the ideas too. So, from Sagetap you may get five deals.

From outside of Sagetap, because of those conversations, you may get another five.Now, for us, the ROI has been, from a number standpoint, it's 2.5X today, which is a, which is a solid ROI for the effort that we're putting in.

So this is one platform that I would, I would ask anyone to sign up, trust the platform, run with it. You will find ROI pretty quickly.