How To Leverage The Startup Community For Business Growth

Narinder Patti: 0:00

You've got an idea, go and speak to somebody. Go and find a trusted person within that ecosystem it could be anyone and you'd be amazed at how many people will be available to give that really solid, constructive feedback to ensure that your business or your idea is going to be a success.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:23

To help us. We have an expert with us today, Narinder Patti, who's a Senior Account Director at Google Cloud, specialising in fintech. She's also the founder of Google Women in Fintech. She's had a long career throughout the ecosystem, doing many incredible things, including founding a startup herself. We hope you enjoy this episode. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ, and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So so great to have you on today. Obviously, you're part of the ecosystem yourself at Google and you're doing incredible work there, but when founders should be thinking about the ecosystem and what that means, what are the main players like? Who should they be thinking about?

Narinder Patti: 1:01

So that's a great question, Amar, and it's a pleasure to be talking to you as well. So there's many different parts of the ecosystem when we think about it. So, from very early stage, it could be your venture capitalists. Who is giving you that investment? To where are you doing your research in terms of universities, or which methods are you using for your research? And then going on more towards the tech partners, then your branding, etc. And then having some sponsors from some traditional firms that will really help elevate you up. So it's really about a collection of people that are going to help you number one, one, launch and then scale your business. That's the way I would look at the ecosystem.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:48

And when should people think about this right? When's the right time to start looking at the ecosystem? Do you need to spend some time yourself first? I know many founders, for example. They have this attitude of that lone wolf. We need to just do this all ourselves, and often they'll miss out on great opportunities. So when should people start thinking about this?

Narinder Patti: 2:05

So, um, in my experience. So we we deal with a lot of um, uh, sort of early stage startups. So there's people lone wolves will get their head down. They'll create a prototype and be really excited about it. Oh, I've got this, this new idea. It's on my phone. Hey, look at this app. And whereas you get others who will have an idea, it's stemming in their brain and they'll go and have a coffee with someone, hey, I've got this idea. What do you think? Do you think it's going to work or do you think it's not going to work? I think that is really powerful to. You've got an idea. Go and speak to somebody, go and find a trusted person within that ecosystem. It could be anyone, and you'd be amazed at how many people will be available to give that really solid, constructive feedback to ensure that you know your business is, or your idea is going to be, a success.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:04

And obviously you must get a lot of this yourself right people reaching out to you. What's the best approach people should take, like, how do they make sure that they do it in both a respectful way and a way that enables them to grow their business and learn more?

Narinder Patti: 3:12

So the number one thing that I normally get is on LinkedIn. Um, can you get me a job? That doesn't normally get you a response from me. So I'd say, reach out on LinkedIn and be really authentic. Give the reason why you're reaching out and what you're looking to get out of the reach out. Do you want to have a coffee? Do you want to get some ideas or some really valuable feedback? I personally will always respond to that. I personally will always respond to that and I'd recommend anybody who wants to reach out to, not just a person such as myself and Google, but anybody else that you see as a mentor. So it might be somebody in the retail industry, it might be somebody in the government official. Have a look at number one, what your message is, how you're going to approach them and what are you offering them in return for their time.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:00

And would you be able to give any examples of companies that you think did this really well, where obviously you've worked with so many startups and they were able to build those connections that really then enabled them to grow faster and to make a bigger impact?

Narinder Patti: 4:24

Yeah. So I'd say I've got a great example of one of those. So there's a cto that I know who worked for a bnpl company and the bnpl company unfortunately went through a little bit of a hard time. You know, most startups or any company at whatever stage not only startups, even the most largest enterprises go through some amount of turbulence. And he was without a job.

Narinder Patti: 4:48

He continued to really leverage the network of connections that he had actually built and through that he met an investor and rolled forward six months. Nobody heard from him and all of a sudden he came knocking on the door and said hey look, I've got this new app. So he had this new idea and it was a marketing app to give positive reviews and he was targeting sort of university students to give positive reviews and they would then get money in return for those after testing. So we helped him get early stage funding to really give, let him leverage the right technology to get that app launched and fast forward 12 months. That app's actually been launched and he's adding new functions and features to it.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:37

That sounds really good and I think one of the things that sometimes stops people reaching out about from the ecosystem getting their support is especially early stage founders are worried about somebody stealing their idea or that. How do they trust people and do you have any experience of this in terms of advising people of how they should go about those conversations and should they be worried about that? Should they be worried that they talk to you and Google is going to steal their idea or something like that? Right, obviously that's not going to happen, but how do you manage that, I guess, if there's an initial distrust where people have really kind of closed off?

Narinder Patti: 6:09

I think that that's a great question, by the way. So trust works in two ways. You've got to be vulnerable enough to be able to accept that. You know you want to share your story and be trusting of somebody else and be open to feedback. And number two is the person that you're talking to. Do some research on them. You know, are they really a honourable, trustworthy person in terms of stealing ideas and things? These are the sort of things that happen at a very high level in enterprise companies at startup phase.

Narinder Patti: 6:56

I'd say there are so many startups that are launching and emerging. It's literally an emerging industry at the moment. Since COVID especially, there's been a huge acceleration of digital native-born businesses using technology, and there's a gap right. There's a huge gap in our traditional systems. Whether that's retail, whether that's banking, the pace of change for a traditional company is a lot longer. It can take up to 18 months for a regulated industry to take on a new product to go through that change process. So it's a lot easier and faster for the traditional companies to take on a smaller new startup venture, plug that in into their product or their kind of like, their features or whatever that they're offering, to ensure that they can accelerate their business. So it's a partnership right. So you're helping the startup accelerate the growth of their business and yet you're also filling that fundamental gap in your own solution or your go-to-market strategy and getting a competitive edge.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:16

Yeah, absolutely, and looking at that too. So the startups let's say they've been able to connect with somebody like you, they've been able to connect to the university, how do they go about trying to maintain that relationship? What kind of cadence should they be thinking about? Is it something which you need to try and meet them every week, or how do you try to balance that out? How should they think about? Like, we want to keep a strong relationship here. What should they be doing?

Narinder Patti: 8:41

I'd say just keeping contact, whichever forum that you've got right there's lots of different social media kind of like forums and spritzing somebody. Too often, everyone you know has time restrictions. And time is really valuable and so maybe having sort of bi-monthly cash shopping person and you know nothing more than that, I'd say um initially, and then, as your kind of like, your, your interaction grows with each other, becomes more meaningful and um you have a requirement in terms of you know what next steps are, etc. Then you can naturally that progresses on and evolves to maybe, like as a weekly, daily, um, as that engagement requires.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:32

Is there any particular areas of like partnerships that you think are often overlooked where startups can really gain a lot of value from? But maybe there's a lot you don't see too many startups actually trying to create this kind of partnerships.

Narinder Patti: 9:45

So that's another great question. I'd say that, um, really leverage the networks and the connections that you have and don't be afraid to ask questions. So if we take, for example, in the BAE HQ event that was done at Google recently, there were so many people that I spoke to that had no idea that funding was available for them and they had no idea that there was all this support ecosystem that was available, which is essentially the partner ecosystem that we have right as entrepreneurs. So ask those hard questions and that will get you to the next step. So just go and leverage that network and don't feel embarrassed, don't feel like, oh, am I doing the right thing? Because if you don't take that first step and you don't ask, be risky, you won't know.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:40

What are some of the great questions that people have asked you at these kinds of events?

Narinder Patti: 10:46

So some of the questions I get I. So some of the questions that I personally get asked are how do we get technical support or how do we get funding? I'm doing this with my company. I've got this idea. I don't know operationally how to elevate to the next level. Have you got some advice for us? So those are the types of questions that I tend to get asked.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:16

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:47

So if you want to learn more, check out hsbc innovation banking. com. I guess it's always about showing community right, because I'm guessing you experience the same thing, where you go to a lot of events and everybody's trying to pitch you. They're trying to say how amazing they are, but if you show yourself as so amazing, then you don't really show that gap. For okay, this is something which I could potentially help with, and do you think that really helps the attitude that people come to you with the idea that they can learn and grow rather than coming at you with the idea that we're amazing.

Narinder Patti: 12:17

Yeah, I'd say that. So being humble um and uh again, vulnerable is is is really key. You're more likely to get help if you're showing that you've got that humble approach. You can be a multi-billionaire, but if you're humble with it. If we look at Bill Gates, for instance somebody that I worked with previously at Microsoft. He is such a humble person. Having had breakfast with him previously in the early start of my career, normal person to have a conversation with, versus if I look at Larry Ellison from Oracle, completely different ball game.

Narinder Patti: 12:54

So you're more likely to get an honest answer and, I'd say, more recommendations for your business if you are humble. So I can give you some examples there. So when we do some of our events, or somebody tells me about I've got this app that I'm building, I want to launch this business type, I'm more likely to connect them with somebody who's got a need for their app or their business. If they are really humble and they show that they need, they've got the need. But if you're going to show that you know I'm so brilliant, I'm, you know, making lots of money, and then why are you talking to us?

Amardeep Parmar: 13:39

And you mentioned as well about university partnerships and I think again, that's something that people don't necessarily think about that much, that there's actually a lot of support they potentially get there. Could you give any more details about that, about what kinds of things you've seen there?

Narinder Patti: 13:51

Yeah, absolutely so. Um, if we look at university, so you go through your degree, there's phd students. They're doing deep research. Then you've got the business schools who have that deep research, that deep industry level of connection and information. So, reaching out to some of the business schools, such as a side business school in Oxford University or Nottingham University I was with them last week. There is a whole ecosystem of academia that are just waiting for entrepreneurs to come and approach them so that they can help them. They're running some really great projects. They've got funding where they're creating sandboxes. And there were  few entrepreneurs to go to them, so you know getting that um from the land  is often academic where the research is already done, and applying that or injecting that research into your business model before you've launched is going to help you have a more solid business as you launch and scale versus you going in. I know, you know, I've done a little bit of research here, looked at some stats and I'm going to launch my product and it's going to work, because chances are, come a year's time, you're going to come across a whole load of challenges and roadblocks where your technology doesn't work, it's not scalable, you've got performance issues, etc. So it's worth investing a little bit of time in that research to ensure that those foundational levels are really um secure.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:19

If you think we haven't covered at the moment that you think is really important for founders to know when they're looking at partnerships that you'd like use the opportunity to share and help them with?

Narinder Patti: 15:36

Yeah, I I'd say, um, don't be put off with the thinking that it's only me launching this company. Where do I get the skills from, et cetera, et cetera. So, by talking to your partner ecosystem, there are resources available. You know throughout that journey, from the very early stage all the way through to you know when you're scaling for global expansion, etc. And there's funding opportunities available from all of the major cloud providers. I would assume google certainly have very rich funding programs available. We want to make the start-ups and entrepreneurs successful, because that is the future. So I'd say, don't be afraid. Even if it's human resource that you need, there are companies out there who can inject those resources in to help bridge that initial gap that you might have.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:48

One of the challenges I think people have too is that it's quite difficult to know what resources are available. So if people are looking into this and they're like, okay, google is a giant organization, how do they work out, or what's the best place to make me able to go to find out what support they could get, or what kind of starting point do you think they should use?

Narinder Patti: 17:03

I'd say, if you don't know anybody in Google, first of all use the same metric that any kind of like if you're doing a bit of research for you know in a university project that you would do would do. I would leverage LinkedIn. Go onto LinkedIn, have a look at who works there, the location, what their role is, and find somebody that you might find that you know is a little bit approachable. Reach out to them with your message and try and build that connection, or get to some events, ask the question, say hi, I'm looking for this, and chances are that somebody within that ecosystem is going to lead you to the right person.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:44

I think one of the really under underestimated things too is about that consistency of if you go to one event and you ask somebody a question, then they're miserable, all these different things. Right, if you keep going to those events, they're going to recognize you, they're going to come up and chat to you because they've seen you at the last event and I think that's a huge part of how we built our relationship at the beginning. Of what we're doing too is that because we go to so many events, we keep seeing the same people and it makes it easier because then you've got a bit more of a rapport where sometimes I think people go to maybe one event they because it's they knew they don't know anybody.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:16

Then there's so much things going on and then it's hard for them to necessarily make the individual connections if you come again, then some of the same people are going to be there again and you keep coming, and I think with something like google, for example, I think that's a great thing because you guys have so many events on, there's actually quite a lot of opportunities and entry points them to come and meet people like you yeah, absolutely, I agree with that.

Narinder Patti: 18:36

And consistency is key, right? So? So being persistent, being consistent at the start up of your journey, is so important. So, if we even look at it, when we're looking for a job, initially we don't apply for one job and then say, ok, that's it, I give up. You go at it again and again, and again, and that's the same with these events. When you're looking to build your network, the network continuous, it's evolving, it's repeatable. So having that, that repeat, kind of like um interaction with the ecosystem, is so important. It's going to build the credibility and you mentioned earlier about how do you build the trust.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:18

Before we go into a quick fire questions what's exciting you most about this, right? So you obviously work with so many different startups. You're one of the people that helps in the ecosystem to help some of these founders build their dreams, right? What's most exciting about that for you? What do you really get joy out of during that process?

Narinder Patti: 19:34

So I think, personally, what really excites me is when we will, when I see the launch of whatever product it is, or when they are scaling out for the regional, global expansion. That's when I know okay, we've helped you in terms of the technology solution, we've helped you in terms of your funding, and now your product has launched and you're sitting here with, you know, a thousand customers, and that that's really fulfilling.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:09

So thanks so much for all the information you showed today. We're going to go into quickfire questions now. So first one and is who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you'd like to shout them out today?

Narinder Patti: 20:20

So, um, the first one is undoubtedly BAEHQ. Um, I have seen so many communities, uh, during my time, but what you guys are doing is absolutely inspirational. You are extremely transparent, you're very authentic in terms of helping that ecosystem, so I'm all in with you guys. The second person I'd like to give a shout out to is somebody that I actually really have a lot of respect for in terms of how she's built her career and how she's projecting herself and elevated up to such a senior level is someone called Sujata Bhatia. She's currently the COO at Monzo Bank. She started off at American Express and if you watch some of her interviews on Bloomberg, I'd say she's doing Asians Proud through and through.

Narinder Patti: 21:16

So the third person I'd like to give a shout out to is actually my partner. His name's Tony Patti and he has been instrumental and a change leader in Asian broadcasting. In fact, he was the first to start up Asian broadcasting in the UK. Um, yeah, just watching his journey has really helped, um inspire me, given me the confidence to make some of the decisions I have in my career.

Amardeep Parmar: 21:49

Awesome. So obviously the first people shout outs there, they're amazing. But the other two are pretty good too. And if people want to find out more about you and what you're up to, where should they go to?

Narinder Patti: 22:01

Yeah, just check me out on LinkedIn. So, um, you can uh go to Narinder Patty, that's p-a-double-t-i at LinkedIn

Amardeep Parmar: 22:03

And is there anything you need help with right now or your team needs help with that the listeners listening today maybe could reach out to you and help you with?

Narinder Patti: 22:18

I think we're good. Um, just, if you're starting your business, come and link us up. We have funding available. We want to help you grow your business, accelerate it, launch it. Whichever part of that journey you're on, link us up and be really excited to talk to you.

Amardeep Parmar: 22:36

Awesome, so thank you so much for coming on today. Have you got any final words for the audience?

Narinder Patti: 22:40

No, just good luck and go for it.

Amardeep Parmar: 22:43

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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