Suggestions
Sidharth Kakkar
Subscript.com 👈🏽 Making the modern, flexible way to do Subscription Billing and SaaS Metrics
Sidharth Kakkar is a technology entrepreneur and business leader currently serving as the Co-Founder and CEO of Subscript.1 He has a diverse professional background that includes roles at several notable companies:
Professional Experience:
- Co-Founder/CEO at Subscript (January 2021 - Present)1
- Co-Founder/CEO at Freckle Education (formerly Front Row) for 7 years and 9 months (April 2013 - December 2020)1
- Investor at ASDF Ventures (August 2019 - Present)1
- Previous roles at prominent companies including:
- Goldman Sachs (Analyst, 2007-2009)
- Microsoft (Software Engineer, 2006)
- Bain & Company (Consultant, 2011)
Educational Background:
- MBA from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management (2010-2012)1
- BSc in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science (2004-2007)1
Additional Details:
- Based in San Francisco, California
- Multilingual, speaking English, Hindi, and Spanish1
His recent LinkedIn posts suggest he is actively engaged in the finance and technology sectors, frequently sharing insights about business operations, finance leadership, and startup dynamics.23456
Highlights
Finance is a lonely job! A Series C company might have 50 salespeople and 30 engineers, but 3 finance people (highly variable, depends on the co!). Engineers do code reviews and learn from each other, salespeople sit in the same room and share call scripts / email templates - but for finance people they need to find peers to learn from outside.
As we build Subscript for finance teams to help with their workflows, we've been spending more and more time building community too, since finance leaders are hungry for that. Here's what they tell us about it:
“I loved the chance to connect with other finance leaders outside of my own bubble”
”I really enjoy hearing from others - it's so helpful to hear either that they're (1) doing similar things or (2) have suggestions for other things to do or to avoid. It's a well curated group.”
”I got actionable advice; The discussion brought up different tech stacks and ideas that has been valuable and gave my team more vendors to investigate.”
”I could've gone a lot longer than the one-hour slot as I found the discussion to be quite interesting and engaging!”
If you want to get in on this, just comment or DM :)
Introducing new metrics into a business is shockingly hard. Here's how the smartest CFOs I know do it:
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Know the problem you're trying to solve. Don't just introduce metrics willy nilly, but be thoughtful
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Let's say you think the company needs to monitor sales efficiency better. Next, pick the metric that's most appropriate for the business and the stage. Is it payback period, CAC, something else?
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Don't just calculate it once! Build it into systems (better yet, use Subscript!) so that you are able to see it up-to-date at all times
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Introduce it to the team, in a non-judgmental way! Do share what benchmarks are, but triggering defensiveness right up front isn't going to get you anywhere <- THE HARDEST PART
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Lay out a plan. How do you get closer to what benchmarks are, and where you want to be? Help the team OWN the metric, and the PLAN
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Repeat! Make sure the team knows the metric real time, regularly. Even metrics that don't change that much week over week are worth talking about - so that they're top of mind for everyone, regularly
It's hard work, but being thoughtful about what metrics your team needs to track, and carefully introducing them is your absolute best tool to inspire ownership.
