BIO: As founder and CEO at Stack, Smriti Tomar strives to make investing accessible and affordable for India's 440 million millennials to help them save for their life goals.
STORY: Smriti took feedback from investors and used it to change her product. Customers hated the new version. After listening to her customers, she had to put in more time and money to build the product the customers—not investors—wanted.
LEARNING: Invest in your customers, not investors. Be very prudent about where you invest your time in. You need a narrow focus to be successful, particularly with a startup.
"Time is the only capital that no investor or VC can give you, so invest it wisely."
Smriti Tomar
Guest profile
As founder and CEO at Stack, Smriti Tomar strives to make investing accessible and affordable for India's 440 million millennials to help them save for their life goals.
Stack is the Vanguard for India. Through its automated savings, investments, and financial planning, Stack helps millennials stop wasting money and start making better financial decisions.
She is devoted to and excels in three areas—each area strengthening the others: marketing and product management; creating a venture that creates awareness, accessibility, and personalization around financial services; and women’s business success.
Worst investment ever
When Smriti started her company, she soon realized that she would need capital to build many things, hire more people, expand, and ultimately create something that people could use. So she started approaching all kinds of investors, angels, and venture capitalists. Every new investor that Smriti would meet would say they love the product and give her some feedback.
Smriti started making changes based on feedback from potential investors. Eventually, the product started deviating from what it was supposed to be. It took Smriti about two to three months to complete the first round of funding and get the capital. She then started working on the product. Once it was complete, she tested with her friends, family, and network. They tried out the product, and they liked the idea, but many people could not use many of its features because they seemed complicated.
Smriti spent a lot of time talking to her customers to discover their pain points. She got such simple complaints that she could quickly solve them through the most specific features. Smriti had to start from scratch, causing her to spend a lot of time and put in a lot of money again to build the product customers wanted.
Lessons learned
- Be very prudent about where you invest your time in.
- Invest not into the investors but in your customers because these are the people whose lives you're supposed to add value to.
- Don’t give in to the urge to please others.
- Don’t give in to the fear of missing out. You're supposed to make mistakes, learn from them, and then move on.
- Trusting your instincts is much more important than following what others are saying.
Andrew's takeaways
- It's so easy to create complexity and so hard to create simplicity.
- You need a narrow focus to be successful, particularly with a startup.
- Nail your unique selling point down to that one thing that people would repeat to others.
Actionable advice
Listen to your customers and interact as much as you can with them. They have all the answers you probably are looking for. Also, be prudent in terms of what feedback and advice you act upon because not every piece of advice is supposed to be taken up and acted upon.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Smriti’s goal for the next 12 months is to get more people to invest.
Parting words
“Let’s aim to make better mistakes in the future and learn as quickly as we can.”
Smriti Tomar
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