Partnership can be a great opportunity to drive startup growth but it can be tough to get the attention of a mega operator. How to convince them to join forces with you? To get insights on how to engage with big corporations, join us for our next run of Kopi Chat with Irzan Raditya of Kata.ai. He will share about how Kata.ai successfully partners with big corporations such as Unilever, Telkomsel, LINE, Accenture and Microsoft.

1. Kopi Chat Takeaways
Strategies for Small Startups to
Engage with Big Corporations
With Irzan Raditya
28th September 2017

2. Irzan Raditya,
CEO of Kata.ai

3. Initial Strategy
“YesBoss was a virtual personal assistant
service, but we chose to pivot to Kata.ai last year.
We learned from Elon Musk. He built the high-
end Tesla Model S and used it to fund their mid-
ranged cars en masse.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

4. Initial Strategy
“We learned that B2C was hard to crack, so we
needed to think about the 10x growth mindset;
how to thrive with limited resources. We took a
risk and went B2B.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

5. “Everyone said we were wasting our time, that
we should focus on SMEs and startups with our
SaaS. But we had faith that this was the right way
to go.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai
Initial Strategy

6. Pain Points for Sales Enterprises
“Long sales cycles. Building an enterprise sales
cycle will take 3-6 months. Toughest ones take a
year. You need to create a strategy on how to
conserve your cash and be resilient. It will take
you some time, energy and focus.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

7. Pain Points for Sales Enterprises
“You have to comply with internal policy which
sometimes don’t make sense, or sometimes
legacy systems for solutions. We need to comply
with their regulations / policies when interacting
with them.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

8. Pain Points for Sales Enterprises
“No single decision maker. Sometimes, you think that “oh, I
know the CEO or managing director, everything should be
ready to go”. Unfortunately it’s not that easy. We thought it
was a great strategy by shooting for the top, but of course
that guy will send you down to the VP level. At that level,
the decisions are made by different divisions.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

9. Pain Points for Sales Enterprises
“Proof of concept. Sometimes, POC
requirements are a pain. A lot of customization
requests, and they request POC for free
sometimes. You have to solve this situation by
being up front.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

10. Pain Points for Sales Enterprises
“Negotiations. Their procurement team will try to bring the
price down as low as possible, sometimes even up to a
90% discount. Make sure you have justification that the
price you’re providing fits with the quality you are delivering.
Have calculations in the back of your hand; what’s the cost
for them to not use your product.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

11. Personal Journey
“I made a mistake the first time I dealt with
procurement. I asked for X, and ended up selling
the POC for a 70% discount. I learned that you
had to know your quality, be more convincing and
never be underselling yourself.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

12. Personal Journey
“You need sales, but you don’t need salesmen. That’s the
mantra we’ve been living for the past 9 months. As a
founder, you’re the salesman. Who can evangelize your
product but you yourself? The only salespeople we have
are me and my CMO who is also my co-founder.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

13. Personal Journey
“As a founder, when you try to negotiate with
upper management, they’ll appreciate you even
though you’re young. However, it doesn’t scale.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

14. Personal Journey
“My theory is that you don’t need a salesman to
sell your product if your product can sell itself.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

15. Personal Journey
“Get your product right and get the word out. The
one thing you have to fix is your product. Make
sure it’s working and serves your customers’
needs.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

16. Personal Journey
“Get the word out; go to events, press releases.
Your product won’t sell if people don’t know it.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

17. Personal Journey
“Sell through partnerships. Partnerships always
start with relationships. How you can meet the
key players. It’s a good idea to build your sales
through partners who have clients. Clients that
need your solution.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

18. Analytics
“The buying process doesn’t start with your sales
pitch, it starts in your customers’ minds, their
cognitive bias. How you can shape and tell a
story so that when you pitch your idea to them,
you show care for them.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

19. Analytics
“Your biggest competitor is your customer’s
cognitive bias. It’s good to come with market data
to support your product, but selling is not a
science, it’s an art.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

20. Analytics
“Acknowledge the pain of your customers and
provide your solution. Spend more of your time
on the problem, not your solution. After you get
them emotionally involved, then you can show
them your statistical data and reports.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

21. Analytics
“After getting the problem accepted, then you can
transfer your story to the solution.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

22. Analytics
“Spend time in explaining the results of your
solutions. Integration time, cost saved, you
should cover everything.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

23. Analytics
“Once you have finally found the status quo of
their current solution and the cost of them using
another product, you have a number that you can
charge them. That’s the cost of pain.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

24. Analytics
“Show that you care about their problem and that
you can commit to solve their problems. Then
confirm; what you need from one meeting is a
confirmation to another meeting, all the way to
your POC.”
Irzan Raditya
Chief Executive Officer
Kata.ai

25. Kopi Chat Takeaways
@Block71 Jakarta
A special thanks to everyone who attended
Kopi Chat @BLOCK Jakarta and made the
event possible!
28th September 2017