Sudheer Koneru, an experienced engineer and CEO, who built a successful business by identifying and addressing a need in the beauty and wellness industry.
This video features Sudheer Koneru, an experienced engineer and CEO, who built a successful business by identifying and addressing a need in the beauty and wellness industry. It highlights his journey and entrepreneurial mindset.
so at zenot we believe fundamentally what i said earlier which is when people feel good they go on to find their greatness you know they do well in their everyday life so so we are very passionate about this space and when we say we are passionate about this space we want people in this industry to do they do a great service to all the consumers so we want them to really excel at what they do alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so super exciting guest today that we have i mean we're gonna be learning the transition from corporate to building your startup to going from technical to business and now obviously to really a tremendous journey that he has embarked on that we're going to be learning about today so i guess without further ado let's welcome our guest today sudeir quinero welcome to the show thank you glad to be here so originally born there in india
actually in quite a small town so how was life growing up there yes it was nice it was more about family and close connections and bonds and being in a small town a village kind of atmosphere it was you know appreciating relationships and being very well bonded to my family was something which i grew up with and how small was the town ah it was like maybe 400 people kind of stuff that's all wow yeah so everyone knew everyone yes i knew everyone so if you go out into the town then you have to stop at everybody's house and you will say hello and to go to the next house so it was not easy to get away from being polite i mean if you ever probably go back there they must be asking you for photographs and autographs and all types of videos like the rock star but you know this is for you uh it was a pivotal moment your father uh decided to go to the city and that definitely really you know got
you guys to to get emotion you know so to speak so so tell us about how that was you know uh perhaps like a shocker or quite a difference for you and what you were used to yeah it was very different because my dad was the first person in our whole family to leave the village and go to the town go to a city uh and you know work there so growing up for me uh i came from very simple roads whereas in city there were families and people who were very flamboyant very you know different in how they used to be so i had to just fit in and kind of learn to say okay i'm also here so it was yeah it was an interesting gradual experience but some of those shape you uh they stay with you that you always tend to think simple whereas you know everybody around you is maybe smarter but they talk a lot and stuff and you you know you just learn to live with that i think you it shapes you and for you your
father uh obviously um played a really important role for you i mean he he ended up coming to the u.s uh you finished your your school there in india but i'm sure that that you know kind of like put the u.s in your map in your raider i mean obviously you know as a result of this you even ended up coming to the us to do your masters uh but i guess my question here is why engineering why is every single person that i meet from india they have an engineering background i mean are you guys born with an engineering degree under your arm or what i think no i think it's it's about the times in those times i think the opportunities in india were more around engineering and medicine where you could get a good career whereas if you went down journalism or other artwork you may not make material money but today that has changed even in india but in those days that was the case so if you were really
good at your education it was natural that you get into you know the best engineering school and even in terms of i chose computer science it's not like i chose computer science because i knew i want to be in computer science it's like it is the most aspired discipline in those days because it was the most emerging category and it was hardest to get into so if you get a good rank good grade then you could get a shot at it so i picked it because i got a shot at it and and talking about taking a shot at it i mean you graduate from your masters and here you are you know you start in a village you know with 400 people and now all of a sudden you find yourself in one of the biggest tech companies on the planet i mean how much of a shocker was that and how did you land on microsoft yeah i think so microsoft was a very accidental thing i when i was in college all my friends were going off and
saying oh we're going to do internships and all that stuff when they were in grad school in ut in texas austin and i thought oh okay i'm going to sit around doing nothing for summer maybe i'll also apply so it was late applicant but i got into microsoft and i loved atmosphere it was really very friendly and very family-like and i joined microsoft as an intern and i loved the place so much that i went back as a full-time employee though my job offer from microsoft was like you know they were paying me in those days like you know something like 35 000 a year whereas ibm i had a job for 55 000 a year i still chose to go to microsoft and it didn't make any logical sense it was just my you know this is what i mean about choices that we make i somehow made that choice it was my gut reaction it wasn't you know thought through i wasn't as passionate about money but i loved the place so and of
course it worked out beautifully because i remember i was negotiating with my recruiter can you reduce my options and give me some more money and my stock options and she was like nope we're not going to do that and i'm so happy that she didn't do it because it would have made difference of millions of dollars 100 i mean it was we're talking about the early 90s where the company was like literally blowing up in a really really nice way i guess for you like how was the experience of being able to work and being able to see and and perhaps meet you know people like bill gates who at the time was very involved with microsoft yeah i think microsoft was a very defining time of my career in those days uh it was very uh people were very driven energized to do well and you know the standard the bar of excellence was so high uh that i kept learning like crazy every year it was like i never was in
the shoes of feeling like i know it all that the environment kept me in the shoes that he has so much to learn and so much to grow kind of stuff and so i ended up with very good career growth at microsoft and uh you know did very well in terms of leading a very large part of windows team when i was leaving microsoft and definitely your segway into launching your your your first baby in teleprep so here you get together you know you put the band you know it was a a group of former colleagues as well from from microsoft and here you go you know started your first thing so so how was that experience with intelliprep and what were you guys doing there yeah so we built what is uh online learning solutions so learning management systems and you know we evolved what we did we started off with some high principles because we came from microsoft we were guys who knew how to build great products
and we thought like microsoft because microsoft can choose to think and solve any big problem because they're microsoft whereas when you're out in the world on your own uh we had to quickly learn and realize hey we can't do aspire to solve to be very specific about solving specific problems and get customers very quickly and learn how to get customers so it was a big wake-up call and a learning exercise that though we were great technologists uh and product designers we didn't know what it meant to do business and we learned very fast but it was i think it was the best decision though uh you know it was a tough decision to leave microsoft at the time yeah no i can't imagine but definitely quite a quite a ride what ended up being the business model of intelliprep i mean what were you guys doing there so we were building uh talent management solutions learning management solutions for
large businesses so we had the top 60 percent of the s p 500 as customers of us in the category the product we built became the leader in carpenter magic quadrant et cetera so it was a leading solution and eventually the company was called some total systems through some name change in m a yeah because the company was merged into click to learn which was a a polar link company funny enough how you keep getting the microsoft vibes you know in in in your career uh and then like you were saying that translated into becoming some total so i mean the company ultimately ended up being a 100 million dollar business by the time that that you decided it was time for you to leave uh but i think that for you and for the team probably it was quite an interesting journey because you were able to learn as well you know it's like what they say you don't know what you don't know right and i guess at
this point what…