Microsoft Product Leader to SaaS Founder - with Anand Subbaraj, Founder and CEO Zuper

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, founder and CEO of RevOp Squared, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of B2B, SaaS, and Cloud thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed decisions. Now on to today's show. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. We are joined by Anand Subbaraj, the founder and CEO of Zuper. Today, we'll be covering three main topics for Anand. First, his lessons learned as a product leader at Microsoft that has helped guide his entrepreneurial journey. Second, the unexpected surprises when transitioning from a large company to founding and leading his own SaaS company. And third, the metrics that Anand uses to measure customer value and overall company performance. Anand, please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics Measure Up podcast.

**Anand Subbaraj** (1:13)
Hey, Ray. Hello, everyone. I'm Anand Subbaraj, co-founder and CEO of Zuper. I have been with Zuper for the last five years. I was one of the founders. And prior to Zuper, I've spent about 13 years at Microsoft as a product manager first and then as a product leader.
I live in Seattle, have spent about 20 years in Seattle, and I have been in the technology industry for over 20 years. And super excited to be here in this episode.

**Ray Rike** (1:43)
Okay. Well, it's super to have Zuper, right? So let's start, not at the very beginning, but definitely after 13 years at Microsoft and the combinations, you said product management to product leadership. And it was product leadership and a pretty important product, the Azure Data Factory, right?

**Anand Subbaraj** (2:01)
Absolutely.

**Ray Rike** (2:02)
Well, what were the key lessons that you learned in these product and product leadership roles at Microsoft that you find yourself leveraging using today in your own early stage SaaS company?

**Anand Subbaraj** (2:15)
Yeah, great question. It was an interesting journey for me in Microsoft. I joined in a very interesting role. It was called Forensics Product Manager. My role there was to understand the issues of an early stage V1 product, which is the version 1 of a SaaS product in Microsoft called Windows Live 1 care at that time. My responsibility was to understand the customer issues, understand how customers are using the product, and figure out a strategy to reduce the customer support cost of maintaining that product and managing that product.
From that point on, I went on to working on about five version 1 product at Microsoft. The last product that I worked in Microsoft is Azure Data Factory. That was an amazing journey in Azure Data Factory for three reasons. One, I was part of the founding team of Azure Data Factory. I was part of the initial team that came together with the idea of releasing something in the data integration space. Microsoft never had a product in that space. Secondly, we were taking on the industry bigwigs. There were top names, leaders in that space. Microsoft was just entering into that market. Third was understanding the customer requirements, talking to a lot of customers and figuring out what they are not seeing in the existing products and trying to bring a product that addresses the gaps and meets the requirements of the customers. I worked on that product for about five years. When I quit Microsoft, I was the head of product of Azure Data Factory. The month that I quit Microsoft, we made it to the Gartner Magic Quadrant leader.

**Ray Rike** (4:09)
Wow, that's amazing. I can't believe you had five, if I'm not mistaken, different product launches that you were involved or oversaw at Microsoft.

**Anand Subbaraj** (4:20)
Yeah, it was an incredible journey. People say Microsoft is not where you get startup experience, but I had this opportunity, an incredible opportunity to work on five version one products.

**Ray Rike** (4:31)
Well, with that experience with Microsoft continuing to invest in innovation and launching new products, I think what they're doing with ChatGPT and regenerative AI is pretty interesting. Tell the listening audience a little bit about your thought process of leaving such a stable, successful company where you get to actually be involved in great innovation to start your own company. What was the motivation for that?

**Anand Subbaraj** (4:57)
So I'm a product person. I love building products. I love building products that solve real customer problems. So when I encountered a problem personally, which was the genesis of Zuper, I had a terrible personal experience while getting my refrigerator serviced. And I was trying to get my refrigerator service from one of the largest global brands. I had to reach out to the customer support of that brand after a few weeks of purchasing the refrigerator when it started developing some noise. And from that moment, the journey was just terrible. Reached out to the customer support about 10 times. Three different technicians showed up at my place six different times before which the issue was addressed. And in this age of Uberization of all services from ride-hailing to food delivery, my experience working with that company was just terrible and archaic. And that was the genesis of Zuper and the genesis of the thought that there's a real problem that I encountered. What is out there to solve that real problem and how do we solve that problem? So yeah, that was the genesis of Zuper.