‍Julian: Hi everyone. Thank youso much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have PalashSonish Soni, co-founder and CEO of Goldcast. Goldcast is a digital and hybridadvanced platform for B2B marketing teams. Plush. I'm so excited chatting with you,not only to learn about your. Experience, you know, being from, you know,coming up how you did, thinking about technology and the way you thought of,and, and we have a little bit of insight into what that is.

So we'll share that with the audience,but also Goldcast and how this whole kind of events and, and spaces is reallychanging. And it's like we see one ad adaptation. We see another kind of, uh,transition into, you know, localizing kind of where we meet, how we meet, and,and. Uh, companies are finding creative ways to only kind of create, you know,hybrid events with their teams, but also with their customers and theirclients.

And it's really exciting to see how, youknow, Goldcast is really changing the space in a lot of ways. And, um, creatinga really intimate experience, which is, you know, kind of lost in a lot of the,whether it's a webinar. Or whether it's any type of digital event, um, a lotgets lost in, in in that conversation.

Um, but it seems like Goldcast is reallytackling those problems. But before we get into, you know, Goldcast and whatyou're working on, what were you doing before you started the company?  

Palash: Yeah, for sure.Julian, I'm excited to be here. Um, what was I doing before I started thecompany? Yes, Julian, I was an MBA student at, at Harvard Business School whenI started the company.

Julian: And how was thattransition? You were, I, I, I, I read somewhere that. You were, yes. You took aleave of absence to, to pursue this company. First of all, what was the anxietybehind that decision? I'm sure that there was a lot. And, and what, what was socompelling to you that you, you felt that it was a necessary step to then startyour entrepreneurship journey?

Palash: Yeah, yeah, course.So, um, leaving h p s itself was not, it was a tough decision, but it was. Thetoughest decision in that time. The, the tougher decision was the immigrationchallenge because I was, as you can see from accent, I'm from India. Right. Itwas, it was actually my first time in the US and my first year was just comingto an end in the us.

Yeah. So, Uh, the time, the moment Idecided that, okay, I probably will take a break from hbs, which in itself wasa big decision because I had moved my family over my, I convinced my wife to takea break from work, which she was not very happy about. I, you know, my parentshad, you know, were a little upset about my decision.

I'd done all of that and then I said,okay, I will. Move out of hps. Um, after all that, I realized that it's not trivialfor me to not be a student and work full-time in the US There was a bigimmigration challenge, and so that was the, the bigger thing. Um, and so therewas a lot of thought in, in, uh, You know, that went in there and more thanthought it was more like conviction behind the opportunity.

Yeah. But, um, the conviction came from,honestly, you know, what you were told when you were starting up just talkingto customers and, and at that time there was a time when Covid had just startedand, uh, and somehow we, you know, we were able to get to a lot of. You know,people who ended up becoming our customers, advisors, et cetera.

And after talking to a lot of them, wewere so convinced and so in love with the, the community that we were like,okay, you know, this is worth, worth, the, worth the effort, let's go withit.  

Julian: Yeah. And describe,you know, a lot of founders, we haven't really dove into too much of what it,what it means to get, you know, your, your, your.

Support system aligned and get everyonekind of around you aligned to the one vision and one mission and, and honestlykind of separate, you know, the, the responsibilities with, you know, wantingto kind of move fast and break things and, and work in almost a risky behavior.It's, it's really kind of, it's, it's a juxtaposition between the two of them.

How is that process and getting, youknow, your family aligned, but. With your co-founders in the vision, in theidea of the company and, and what was the first step Once you had the customer,um, you know, the customer information, all the user information, you kind ofhad the problem set to find. What was the next step after that?

Palash: Yeah, I think, uh, Ithink Julian, the, the, the sort of conundrum and all of this is that all ofthis has to happen, all, you know, all at once. Yeah. So, uh, uh, at that time,me and my, you know, co-founders, we were, we were all, you know, talking toeach other because we all had to make this decision of, you know, not pursuingthe mba, which we had thought about for so long, and, and finally, You know,made it and, and come to, and, um, we all had to convince each other of theopportunity and, and the opportunity cost that we were taking and also convinceour families of that, right.

So, um, it was kind of, you know, it allhad to happen together. But I think the, the main key ingredient of all of thatis that is. Is that sort of, um, irrational, uh, desire to, to be anentrepreneur, right? Yeah. I think all three of us did. That was the, the desirefor one or the other reason, right? For, for one or the other reason we, thethree of us were like, okay, we have to do it.

I just want to do it. Um, so, um, yeah,that, that, that's what. Made us go for it.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. You findthat in a lot of founder stories where it's like, there was, there's alwaysthat burning itch to, you know, start something on, on your own and identify aproblem and lead, whether it's a product vision or service vision or whatevertype.

Um, you see that common, uh, commonly alot of, uh, uh, with a lot of founders. And also that whole opportunity cost.It's like the opportunity to gain a network, learn about, you know, startupand, and being in that environment versus, You know, not, or some kind ofmonetary, it's not about that. It's about the, you know, the experience and,and you know, the, with the value of the relationships you build.

And describe a little bit more about,you know, Goldcast, what the company does, what the product is, what's the userexperience, um, and what would I expect if I'm, if I'm a B2B marketing teamusing the product. Just to give the audience a little bit more context to whatwe're talking.  

Palash: Yeah, for sure. Uh, soJulian, we are a digital events platform for B2B marketing team.

So the premise of the product is verysimple, right? As a B2B marketer, right? Yeah. Uh, you in the beginning of theyear are given a pipeline goal, right? That you have to drive X million dollarin pipeline and events is one of the top, you know, two or three channels thatdrives finite, right? And. After Covid, you know, when the world is now in asteady state, digital events have become a thing, right?

People know that, you know, in personhas come back, but people know now that, you know, digital is a channel that,uh, the audience expense that will be offered in, you know, as the main channelor as one of the channels that, you know, you can access the content people,the, the network. Yeah. And, um, And so we are the product that B2B marketingteams to run digital event marketing channel end to end.

What that means is we are, we providethe platform to. Deliver that experience, which is, you know, a browser basedproduct which helps you put together anything like from a 30% webinar. Yeah.All the way up to multi-day multi-track complex conference of sorts. Right. Sothat would, uh, you know, that has all the, you know, nice video conferencingelements.

It, you know, you can. Uh, you know,5,000, 10,000 people, um, you know, speaker, you know, event with multiplespeakers. You can do very nice, you know, video production on it. You can havechat, you can have documents, you can have play videos. You can do all of itwith a lot of ease without needing a lot of. You know, a big team to run it.

You can have conference networkingrooms, you can do a lot of that stuff. Um, and then we provide them the toolingto run the registration before to do all of the things after the second layerof the product is what we call go to market orchestration. So, uh, the core jobof the event marketing team is to ultimately be the marketer, right?

They are, they serve the sales team.They serve the other marketing teams. Yeah. They serve the revenue org. Right.To, so their job is, Get the right people in the event to get the, the datafrom the events on how people engaged, uh, what they engaged with, who are the,you know, the top accounts that came in the event to integrate with other, youknow, sales and marketing tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, et cetera, andultimately measure the impact of events.

So we are very deep in all of thoseaspects, uh, which is, you know, one of our core differentiators. Soultimately, you know, we think of ourselves as a MarTech tool first. Than,yeah. Um, than anything else. So that's what Goldcast is. And so all, uh, ourcustomers are typically, uh, companies, you know, 500 plus people, companieswho have a repeatable, uh, large, you know, event marketing program.

Yeah. And some of our customers arecompanies like, you know, lg, Adobe 6 cents Drift, um, who have Yeah. You know,a good brand presents and, and a big event marketing.  

Julian: Yeah, and what, youknow, what's particularly unique, you know, seeing that, you know, videoconferencing tools and tools to connect people over video.

It's kind of a Red Sea space, but theproduct is super unique in the way it kind of continues this energeticactivity, not only, you know, with the video, but the presentation, the chatI've, I've toy toyed around and played with it is a little bit more involvedthan say the typical Zoom call where everybody.

Screen. Yeah. And you're not reallygetting all the information you need, or you might be checking in and now whatin particular kind of led you to create that environment? Um, and how did you,you know, think about creating that environment so that, you know, it couldreally foster that, that activity that you're looking for and, and that, um,uh, participation, which is huge.

Hugely, I think, you know, minimized ina lot of webinars and, and events like, What was your process for building it?How do you continue to foster and think about creating that, that, um, thatthose actions and those behaviors in, in, in getting people involved?  

Palash: Yeah, yeah,definitely. So, so the way we, we phrased the problem, Julian, was to, youknow, talk to the customers and Yeah.

You know, what they wanted out of. Outof a platform like this. Right. And there were a few things that the customerswanted from a platform like this, right? So there a few things were, and someof those will sound very obvious, but I'll tell you why they were not obviouslyavailable in the market, right?

Sure. One of them was that the productshould look exactly like my brand, right? I don't want the product to look likeZoom, uh, right? Yeah. Or I don't want it to look like Google meets. Um, sothat brandability is very important and that's not very easy to achieve on, um,you know, on the browser, especially if you want the ease of use, right?

If you want the customer to go in and beable to do all of that without needing a CSS or HTML knowledge, right? Sothat's one. Uh, the second is they wanted, The ability to do what is calledclassic video production, right? Like be able to manipulate the layout of thesethings and, and create those like engaging nice layouts and mm-hmm.

And do all of that. Um, without needingan agency, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, so the, the draw of digital events is that,um, is that they are cost effective, but the cost effectiveness drasticallygoes down if you need a high video production project. Right. So that wasanother thing. Um, the third thing is that people need.

Hi attendance. So we need, we wereforced to think about how do we get people into the event, right? And we have alot of features that we have built in, you know, the pre event part, which werenot only, you know, which classic tools that are focused only in the event,like, you know, in the, in the video content part, like Zoom, they mess.

For example, we have a very complexcalendar management feature. So if you register for any Goldcast event, right?Yeah. You'll always get a calendar. Even if you use Lotus Notes, you'll get acalendar in, right? You can click into it one thick, you'll get into it. So,um, that one feature is, you know, like a 10 x feature.

As you know, Jason Lampkin says it's ouryeah, that no one has been able to copy even today. Um, so that's third and thefourth is the most important. And again, you know, looks simple, but easy, noteasy to replicate is all the, you know, the MarTech integrations that we have.So in an event, if you imagine an event, right, an event.

Like a very highly concentrated, highlyinvolved digital engagement activity. It's like a thousand people have come toyour website and have been there for one hour and constantly, you know,engaging with it. So it generates a huge amount of data, and now for you to beable to make sense of the data, get into the right place.

Right people's hand and, and it has tobe acted upon within 24 hours, otherwise it loses its value. Right. So to getit into the right place, to the right people, yeah. All of that requires a verysolid integration, data analytics, and understanding of a B2B marketer'sworkflow, which we have built over the last two years.

So, uh, that part is something that wehave a. Sort of leap in, you know, ahead and a lot of horizontal platformslike, you know, zoom, et cetera. Don't think about it like they don't even. Afeature there. So, um, that's, those are some things which, you know, help usstand apart and, and sort of make us the purposeful platform, which we say, youknow, for, for b2b.

Julian: Yeah. And I canimagine, you know, if, if there's features that aren't set up to, you know, uh,kind of. Track those attendees and come up with action items that you, youlose. You have a huge drop off. What, have you seen any numbers to where thatdrop off has decreased to a certain degree or you have a certain level ofengagement that was different from the incumbent before?

What numbers have you seen to reallykind Yeah. You know, that are, that are impressive in terms of the way thatyou've kind of, you, you've brought all these people into your funnel. If youthink about a classic marketing funnel, you've got that and, and then you havethis shared experience, which is so powerful cuz it creates warm leads.

And then what? And then you have thefollow up system that allows you to kind of maintain potential, you know,business conversations and, and move them through the pipeline. What have youseen in terms. Pro positive effects that that Goldcast has had on that wholekind of, um, ecosystem and, and, and I guess process.

Um, and what was, yeah, what was theincumbent before? How were people tracking it before?  

Palash: Yeah. So if you lookat, uh, start with a very tactical answer, right? If you look at the, thefunnel of digital events, right? Assuming that a digital event program existedin the company before, um, how does it start? It starts with a person beinginvited.

So let's say I registered for as a. As aright then I need to show up for the demand. And by using Goldcast, we haveseen that we make anywhere between like a 20 to 40% impact on that part, right?By how we, you know, are able to engage people with reminders, calendarinvites, and everything like that, right?

And then once. People come into theevent, we are able to create a lot of engagement with, uh, we have a lot ofthings in, you know, how the event looks, feels, engages, what tools are thereon your disposal with q and a polls and how we, you know, create the wholeexperience. We can create anywhere between, um, another, you know, 20 to 50% inhow, you know, how much engagement we can create.

Even some customers, we have created a,a two three X improvement in how much engagement we can create. Yeah. Uh, andthen, The last part, okay, we have created all this engagement. How do you minethat? Right? How much pipeline impact can you create there? And we have seenanywhere between like 50 to 200% improvement in how much pipeline you can mineoff, um, off the.

Of the engagement you have createddocuments. Yeah. Now this is assuming an event program existed. Now, if youlook at a lot of companies, you know, that, that do not have a digital eventsprogram, right. Who are still reliant on trade shows and, and the, the wholeway of event marketing, um, our message to them is that the world has changed.

Right? If you look at 2017, um, Most ofyou know, deals that were above $2,000 were made in person. Right. The accountexecutives will fly or drive to those locations. They'll do field sales, right?Yeah. And now if you look at it, every even thousand, a hundred thousanddollars as deals are being done on Zoom, right?

Yeah. So, That same argument can beapplied to many places, right? You can do a lot of, lot of your event programshave to be, can be done digitally. And, and we also do in-person events. Weknow they have, you know, they have a place and, uh, of their own, but digitalevents are, you know, have their own place. So we.

By giving people the whole end-to-endtooling and a place to create a great, amazing experience, we can create thiswhole new channel to create pipeline. And that impact is, you know, thedenominator there is zero, right? Yeah. Cause we had nothing before and now weare teaching people how to do that. So, um, that's a whole different sort ofballgame that we are.

We are trying to play.  

Julian: Yeah. When you thinkabout kind of the whole events ecosystem space and you know, what, what isvaluable in that space? You know, in particular, what do you see that people,because you know, we see all this, um, uh, we see all this excitement about,say the metaverse and having digital events up in the metaverse, but it's, it,it's, it's not there yet into where, where, where we feel like it's areplacement or a substitute for being in person, but there's so many down inthese visual events because, The ease Yes.

Of, of joining them, the informationthat you're able to get. Yeah. And the, um, you know, the, the overallconnections you can make with people who are distant and and apart. What do yousee as, as the value of these events, as they continue to grow and ascompanies? You know, continue to decide whether or not their workforce is gonnabe hybrid in office or distributed.

What is kind of like the, the, theobjective for a lot of these companies creating these events, and what is thevalue that people are really getting that you don't see in, in-person events orevents that are digital over the metaverse? Yeah. So just curious what yourtake is.  

Palash: Absolutely.Absolutely. So there are two.

I would break that into two questions,right? Yeah. So what is the value of digital over in person? I would say thatthat question needs to be fixed, right? I, I don't think there is additionalvalue or it should be considered additional value, right? Digital is, iscomplimenting in person, right? So, right, right.

We never. That digital should replace inperson. Like we as a digital events company also do in-person events ourselvesfor our marketing, we have products to do in-person events. We are deliverersevents as events, as a channel for, you know, distributing companies narrativeand creating community and, and driving pipelines.

So we definitely tell companies to do inperson once it's, it's complementing digital because there is. There is a timeand place for digital that helps you accentuate the, the reach. It helps engagepeople in different times, in different situations and, and, uh, you know, in differentgeographies. And not everyone can travel at every time in a place, right?

So it definitely is a compliment, right?So, for instance, instance, and not every event can be done in person, right?So I'll give you an example. This week you'll see a lot. GitHub's productlaunch is happening on broadcast, right? So it's one of our customers, right?It's impossible for them to do it in person because, uh, they're, they're like20 product launches.

Uh, and, and they're happening across,you know, the globe. Yeah. It's, it's impossible for them to do it in person.Uh, similarly, a lot of like, you know, partnership events and those kind ofthings happen in, you know, on Goldcast where they, uh, they can help, youknow, bring together a lot of people in different geograph.

Together versus some events do happen inperson, but I think with, you know, the realization that yes, you can create,you know, some connection digitally, the value of in-person events, um, hasincreased. Mm-hmm. The, you know, the funnel has tightened that you bring onlyhigh value attendance in person. And so the value of in-person has increasedand then, you know, you can broaden the reach Yeah.

Using digital events. So there aredifferent ways to leverage digital, but it's a compliment. Yeah. In terms ofmetaverse, I'm not an expert in that topic, I would say, but, uh, I believethat tech has to catch up their, uh, uh, especially the VR tech has to catchup. It's, the experience is, is not there yet.

Right. For example, like we. Browsertechnology all the time. Right. And we, we know that browser is not strongenough to even do great stuff with regular video. Right. You know, thatRiverside just to do this regular podcast recording has an 80% engineeringteam. Right. It's a, it's a com It's, it's complex to do a regular audio video.

We went on, on browser. Right. SoMetaverse has, has a long way to. You know, tech  

Julian: wise. Yeah. And whendoes, when should a company start thinking about doing, you know, events ordigital events and start educating people? Cause I think one of the biggest, Ithink value add, or is any company adding value to an audience or the customerbase, if such, you know, leads to long-term.

You know, returns gives you a strongbrand image, makes you as a thought leader in your space. There's so manypositive outcomes, but I think it's hard for companies to decide when they needto start doing that. When they're building their product as they're buildingit, or you know, now they've raised a series A, a series B, they, they'vecreated a marketing team and, and this is a big initiative.

Um, but in your opinion, when, whenshould a company start, you know, creating events, adding value, um, you know,starting to think about their brand image and things like that. When do youthink is the right. Um, and where should they start in terms of, you know, theinformation? They should start, you know, broadcasting or, um, um, you know, Iguess bringing people together around.

Palash: Yeah, great questionJo, and I wish I had a great answer, but I'll, I'll, I think I have aframework. Think about it, right? So, um, different companies, you know, marketdifferent ways, right? So some companies are, um, start marketing very early,right? They are. Right. Building a community and, and they're marketing firstand building the pro or launching a product later.

Right? Right. So in those cases, theyshould start events very early on. Right. And uh, and for smaller companies,probably digital events, um, especially if you are talking about a bigger.Confidence. S a digital, what makes more sense? Right? It's more costeffective. They don't make sense to us as customers because they're notrecurring and it doesn't make, you know, sense for us to invest in, but they, forthem it makes sense, right?

So, uh, but for a lot of companies and alot of segments, it probably does not make, make sense to invest in eventsearly on because events are tough, right? They, they, yeah. It's, it's, it's ahigh stress activity. It requires some expertise to do well and. You should notinvest unless you know how to it. Well, so, uh, there's that trade off, right?

You have to decide what type of companyyou are. Right? Uh, and it's easy to say on LinkedIn that, you know, you shouldstart marketing first and build the product second. But it's, it's hard to do.We know that, right? Sure. Um, But I guess typically series B is when series Aand B is when you should start having a repeatable events program.

For sure. Yeah. Um, series A at leastyou should have some kind of like digital event strategy and c b is when youshould, should definitely have an event strategy.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It makessense kind of when you've gained the audience, you've kind of have your productmarket fit. Fully focused on one direction, gaining traction, scaling, and kindof, you know, using a lot, a lot of founders.

I think, uh, I don't know if a lot offounders, but people don't really understand the, the. A purpose of, say, amarketing funnel and, and what it actually means to generate one. Um, it's notjust about the transactions or, or getting people to sign up right away, butit's about building a lot of that brand image and, and, and the building thatthought leadership.

And I'm, I'm just curious out, out ofyour opinion, what brands have you worked with that are particularly doing itwell, doing it the right way, in terms of the frequency, amount of, of eventsthat they host, the information that they're. Um, and then their follow upstrategy with the community that are, that are involved in these events.

Anyone come to mind or any couplecompanies come to mind?  

Palash: Yeah, for sure. Uh, soone company I think, which does really well with, uh, digital events, Julian,is Lattice. LA does amazingly well. Uh, and they have probably dominated themind space in HR a lot. So that's one, uh, Zu, uh, does it amazingly well too.Um, yeah, um, that's another one.

Um, then I guess Drift was amazinglygood, uh, at least up until last year, and they're redoing their strategy thisyear as well. So those three companies, I. We, we definitely look up to, um,most of our customers, at least, you know, the early ones after last year weresome kind of pioneers Right. In, in digital events.

Yeah. Because they were early with us,so,  

Julian: yeah. Yeah. Um, tellus a little bit about the traction. How many companies are you working with?What's particularly excited about, um, you know, the growth you've seen now andwhat are you particularly excited about, you know, the next stage of growth andwhat you're focused?

Palash: Yeah, for sure Julian.So we have around 300 customers right now who, um, mostly, you know, US focused.Uh, and the typical profile of companies in our state of our customers arecompanies with more than 500 employees. Yeah. Um, most of them are techcompanies, you know, B2B tech companies, but we now have non-trivial tractionin non-tech b.

Firms, you know, manufacturing, lawfirms, accounting firms, um, consulting, financial services, et cetera. So, um,that's, uh, that's where we are. And, um, the, the, the great thing is that,um, We found ourselves in a, in a great place with the start of, uh, microeconomic,tailwind headwind. So they were tailwinds for us because we offer the, the, thescale efficiency and, and measurability that marketers need at this time,right?

So we are still growing at a pretty,pretty healthy rate. So yeah, we think we can, we can get to. Seven, 800customers by end of 2024.  

Julian: Ah, that's amazing.And, and, um, if you think about whether it's external or internal, what aresome of the biggest risks that gold faces today?  

Palash: Biggest risk? Oh,that's a, that's a great question, Julian.

So I think one of the risk for us is, isobviously true with every. Uh, an internal risk, um, is true for every growthsearch company, right? We are a remote company, you know, growing fast andthere's always a risk of train running too fast and, you know, uh, way ofcourse. So that's something I'm aware of and I'm, you know, always working withour leadership team to, um, To work around that.

But the second thing is, is we are inMarTech, right? And Marek right is a very, very fast evolving space, right? Thenarrative changes very fast. The marketers preferences changing fast and howthe world wants to be marketed to also changes very fast, right? Yeah. So, sofar we have been able to cater to the preferences of the world and thecustomers, but it is very easy to get blindsided, right?

And to, to not see what's coming. And Iguess that's a, that's a risk that we for sure face with which. Every marketingmulti-company faces, we are, we are definitely aware of that.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Um, ifeverything goes or what's the long-term vision for Goldcast?  

Palash: Yeah, Julian. So ourlong-term vision is, is what we call that we want.

Every B2B company operating like a mediacompany. So our vision is not just just advanced, but we want to helpcompanies, you know, distribute content and build audience like a mediacompany, right? So we want to get into to video podcasts and, and contentrepurposing and, and a lot of these domains that help them, you know, build upcontent like a media company.

So, For the next two, three years, weare going to be focused, obviously on digital events and hybrid events, but,uh, that's where we want to get to long term. We want to be one, you know, acore part of the, the CMOs go to market stack.

Julian: Yeah. And, uh, I wouldlike the next question, um, I call my founder faq. So I'm gonna hit you withsome rapid fire questions and then we'll see where we get.

Yes. Um, first question is, uh, I wouldlike to open it up with what's particularly hard about your.  

Palash: Particularly hardabout my job, Julian, is that it changes very frequently. Sometimes it's in hr,sometimes it's a strategy person. Yeah. It's a very, very highly agilejob.  

Julian: Yeah. And what inparticular is, is there something you know now as a founder that you wish youknew earlier on?

Palash: Oh, yes. Uh, as afounder, I've, something that I wish I knew earlier on was to, to pay moreattention to companies cultural values and, you know, and to be more serious aboutthem, right. I think, um, it's very easy to forget them in the, the dailypuzzle, but I think it's, uh, those are very important.  

Julian: Yeah. What's somethingthat you find yourself spending a lot of time on that you want to spend lessand something that you spend a little time on that you wanna allocate moreto?  

Palash: Yes. Uh, I think I, Ispend lesser time on the company's, you know, negative, uh, which I want tospend definitely more time on. Um, and I'm, I'm correcting that.

Um, I, I do spend a lot of time on, um,Firefighting, uh, which I think is, uh, is part of life of every founder. Yeah.And, uh, um, I am, I definitely wish I can put more structures around, youknow, my team that I can spend less time on.

Julian: Yeah. What, um, whichparticular, uh, if you were working on Goldcast, uh, what would you be?

Palash: That's a greatquestion for you. And so if I were not working in Goldcast, I would be, I wouldbe running a small business.  

Julian: Yeah. I feel like mostfounders either have, I don't know, uh, what I would be doing, I've neverthought about it or the exact answer is like, starting another one, obviously,uh, submit, um, what's it called?

Um, I always like to ask this questionbecause I, uh, I love how founders extract knowledge from anything that theyingest. Um, whether it's early in your career or not, what books or people haveinfluenced you the most?  

Palash: Oh, yes. The book thathas influenced me a lot is this book called The Model Animal. Uh, it's by, uh,this journalist coming, evolutionary psychologist called Robert Trite, and it'sabout evolutionary psychology.

Very basic book, uh, not basic, but uh,pretty interesting book about human nature and, uh,  

Julian: very good. What, what,what was it that, that you, you took from it? What, what particular standardstood, stood out?  

Palash: Um, I think what stoodout from it is what we take for granted, uh, in human nature and we getfrustrated about is, is.

Is, uh, actually something that has beenforced by a lot of forces that, uh, again, we, we don't see today and we shouldnot be frustrated by it, and we should take everything with more empathy. So itjust built a lot of empathy in, in me.  

Julian: Yeah, that's, that'sinteresting. That's an interesting point. I, I, you know, it's like the, thebuilt-in frustration is that used to be like the stimulus that would causecertain reactions.

You know, it, it, they're still there.And those mechanisms need to be addressed. And that's interesting. I've, I'venever had a founder. Um, you know, I guess, I guess say somethingsimplistically about, you know, being, being more empathic about not only yourinternal feelings, but also the external environment and how you reacting onthat.

It's really cool. Um, I always like tomake sure we don't leave anything on the table. I know we're coming to theclose of the show, but is there any, uh, is there a question that I didn't askyou that I should have or anything that you would've wanted to answer that,that we didn't bring up? Anything we left on the table here?

Palash: No, I think so. And wehad a very, very good discussion. Thanks for asking all those questions.

Julian: Of course, Pash andlast little bit, as I always like to make sure we give our founders a chance togive us their plugs. Let us know where we can support you, where we can supportGoldcast. Where's your websites, your LinkedIn's, uh, where can we support youin the company?

Palash: Yeah, absolutely. I'mon, on LinkedIn, um, Palash Soni. So I think I'm the only Palash Soni, soprobably on LinkedIn. So you can, you can find me and, and, uh, our, our LinkedInpage, please follow it. We are very active on LinkedIn as a company. Uh, wepost a lot, uh, of pretty good content, so please, uh, like it, follow us andengagement or something.

Julian: Amazing. And plus,last, last question, I guess just popped into, If you were, if you were afounder right now who didn't have a strong marketing and and motion there,what's your one piece of advice? What would you start, if you were starting outand thinking about marketing initially? Just last question there.

Palash: Oh yes. If I werestarting my marketing engine now, the first thing I would focus on would beproduct marketing.

Defining the the what in before the, thehub. Uh, and that's something we did not do early on. We just, we, we went intodemand jam first, I think. Product marketing is comes best.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I lovethat. Plus, it's been such a pleasure learning about your experience, whatdrove you into entrepreneurship, but also what you're doing at Goldcast and hownot only do you capitalize at the perfect time during covid, but how you,you've been able to create such a strong platform for companies to build strongbrand presence, add value to their customers, and overall just, just gives thegeneral public more information to know and acknowledge their product or theirservice.

Plus, it's been amazing chatting withyou and learning more ways that we can implement that as. I hope you enjoyedyourself and thank you so much for being on the show today.  

Palash: Thank you, Julian.Thanks a lot.  

Julian: Of course.  

Palash: Great talking you.

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