Founders on Fire: Ramesh Prabagaran, CEO and Co-Founder, Prosimo

Today we’re catching up with Prosimo, our winner of the 2021 Networking Trailblazers Award. We have the pleasure of chatting with Ramesh Prabagaran, CEO and Co-Founder of the firm. Chief Trailblazer Rose Ross quizzes him to find out more about how Prosimo came about and what the company’s name means.

Ramesh shares his experiences of fund raising and offers advice about the correct timing of when to “pour on the gas”. He also explains his firm’s technique for hiring the right staff, extols the ability to “zoom out” to take a system-wide view, and how credibility by association is the best way to gain credibility for your startup.

He also warns of getting emotionally attached to failing projects and shares how he gets inspiration that he can use to improve his own startup. Listen to the full podcast here:

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Interview transcript

Rose Ross: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Founders on Fire podcast with the Tech Trailblazers. I’m Rose Ross, Chief Trailblazer and Founder of the awards themselves. I’m delighted to be here with Ramesh Prabagaran who is the CEO and Founder of Prosimo, our Networking Trailblazing winner. Hello Ramesh, how are you?

Ramesh Prabagaran: Not too bad. Thank you for having me on the show, Rose.

Rose Ross: Well, thank you for joining us, and congratulations again on your win in the networking category last year, very exciting times for you.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Absolutely.

Rose Ross: I’m wondering if you could give me a little bit of your background Ramesh, and a little bit about how you came to found the company, and what it’s all about, please.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Oh absolutely, an interesting journey. I have lived in the networking world for forever. Right after school, I joined a big networking company, many of you know, Juniper Networks, spent about a decade there. And since I was in the Silicon Valley, the startup itch started to occur, and back in 2012 I got the first startup off the ground, that was Viptela. We were a pioneer in the SD-WAN space, and almost five years in we sold that to Cisco. It was a great ride up, discovered a lot about myself, capabilities, how to form teams, what moves the needle etc. Spent about one and a half years inside of Cisco and the second startup started to occur again. And back in 2019 my co-founders and I we got Prosimo off the ground.

Interestingly, Prosimo means ‘the next one’ in Italian, and for many of us this is the next startup, we also want to be the next one. It also means ‘coming closer’, and fundamental to the technology that we provide is we bring users, applications, and services all really close to each other, and so it was fitting from that standpoint.

Rose Ross: Fantastic. So we should really be saying ‘Prosimo!’

Ramesh Prabagaran: Yeah, exactly! That is the right way to say it, ‘Prosimo!’ that’s right.

Rose Ross: It’s nice to have an unusual ring to a startup that everybody goes, ‘What does that mean?’ So, tell us a little bit about what Prosimo actually does.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Absolutely. We are in the cloud networking/cloud infrastructure space, very simply think of it as solving two problems. What do enterprises care about – access to applications, and what do their apps really do? We keep the apps in the centre of the universe in the public cloud, and we build infrastructure around it. We serve two things that are trying to access the application, one is either a user like us, trying to access applications, or it’s another app talking to another app, essentially user to app or, or app to app. The core of what we do is networking and security combined in the public cloud, and that’s really how the company was born.

Fast forward to today, three years in, about 70 people in the company, and we’ve just recently raised our funding round as well, bringing our total capital raised to about 55 million. But to us the real interesting data point is the number of customers, we’ve been humbled by the sheer number of customers that have taken our technology, adopted it and deployed it, and are continuing to expand. And the sheer number of new customers that are on this platform as well. So, it’s been a humbling journey, to say the very least, in the last three years. Something tells us that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with lots of interesting things to come.

Rose Ross: Congratulations on the fundraising, that’s good, that’s going to…

Ramesh Prabagaran: It’s like air.

Rose Ross: Yeah exactly, you’ve got some fuel for the tank now. So tell us, I mean everybody’s been talking a little bit about the difficulties of fundraising post the beginning of the pandemic. Obviously you did your Series A, I assume, prior to it?

Ramesh Prabagaran: Correct.

Rose Ross: How would you say the experiences were different?

Ramesh Prabagaran: I’ve actually been through across two startups, about six different funding rounds now, and I would say it’s actually quite an interesting experience to go through every single time. And the reason for that is, the best time to raise is when you don’t need the money, so when you’re growing like crazy in a startup you get inbound folks reaching out to you and saying, ‘Hey, I really want to put money in. I know you don’t need it. That’s when you need to raise, that’s the most ideal’. But myself, I’ve six experiences on fundraising, a few have been along those lines, a few have been concerted fundraising, there’s really no right or wrong way to do this, but what has worked really well, and especially bringing the last round into focus is just show real tangible growth.

Early stages in the company, when you’re really trying to prove out the market, you want to show that you have enough customers that you have talked to, you understand the problem, and you are losing your sleep over how this is an unsolved problem. That’s really what investors are looking for in the early stages in the company. They’re looking for the team, they’re looking for conviction, they’re looking for a profound understanding of the problem. I think some folks get carried away with financials and metrics etc in the early stages of the company, I would advise them to just focus on the core.

Fundraising, you don’t optimise your time for fundraising, you actually optimise your time for building the company, and fundraising is an event that happens at a certain period of time. And so I would say don’t get distracted by what you need to tell the investors, just stay focused on how you should build a company. And certainly as you grow the company, get to the second stage of many stages, then you start to look into really good fundamentals. People get enamoured and carried away by all the things that are happening around them, I would just stay grounded at the fundamentals. What is it that’s really moving the needle on your product differentiation? What’s really moving the needle with the initial customers? Do you have the repeatability, and can you acquire customers at a certain pace?

Almost before you even reach the investors, you need to get to a conclusion where you say, ‘Capital is the only thing I need to pour gas, the rest of the problems have been somewhat solved. What I need right now is capital, and when I put capital in, this thing it is going to take off.’ Get to that conviction, and when you get to that conviction you will have all the metrics, all the leading indicators, and everything to show, not just to the investors but to yourself and your own teams, ‘Guys, we are ready for the next stage.’ And that would be the most ideal time to raise, it’s not when somebody reaches out to you inbound etc. but are you ready for that stage. Get to that point, raise, and go. That’s what I would recommend. Myself included, I talked to a few people who have asked about fundraising, when they should raise and so-forth, I find myself guilty of doing this and not following my own advice sometimes, you tend to compare yourself with peer groups and others, it’s just a crazy exercise to go through. No two companies are the same, you just know that deep down, no two companies are the same, no two situations are the same, so optimise for what you can and where your company is at, don’t get caught up with what your peer group is doing etc.

That’s what has helped me, it all drives some level of sanity inside me as well.

Rose Ross: Well I like that, I’ve always been very much the advocate that your most important investors are your customers, because they really are immersed in the ground, it has to work for them.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Exactly, and there’s no better barometer or metric you can use than are you able to energise a customer in the first conversation you have, and startups unlike big companies, don’t get a seat at the table unless you really have a compelling thing to talk about. And when you do get a seat at the table to talk to a potential prospect, they’re not a customer yet, you need to wow them in the first 10 minutes. And whilst it’s not just, ‘Hey, I’ve found a really cool way to do this,’ or ground-breaking technology etc, they just need to see that you are equally at… not at ease as them in solving that problem, like you’re losing sleep over it, and they should feel that passion in you, that carries you half of the way. The other half is, are you able to relate to their problem and move the needle. So, in many ways it’s just simple stuff, but it’s very hard to practice when you actually go through the whole exercise.

Rose Ross: I can fully appreciate that, it’s a lot of hard work. You mentioned team earlier, and you have co-founders as well. In previous conversations I’ve had with other founders it’s about how important it is to have that really strong team around you, sharing responsibilities, taking everybody’s strengths and deploying those in the process of building teams, and building businesses. Your background is more on the technical side, more on the business side, where are you coming from in this, are you personally the one losing the sleep? You don’t look very sleepy to me, but it is early over there in the valley! So you might have been up all night and you’re just about to fall off the cliff in your sleep.

Ramesh Prabagaran: I may not subscribe to the same thought processes as many others, but I have both a Master’s in science and a Master’s in business, and I see them as two sides of the same coin. You need to be extremely grounded in technology, I’d say I’ve probably spent 60% or maybe 70% of my time in technology, product fit, customer pain points and so-forth, and the rest of the time in ‘does this make sense for the business?’, and how to grow, what is the competitive landscape, and all the good stuff around it. And so as a CEO you just have to consciously find time in the day, multiple times in the day, to zoom out. There’s never a shortage of getting into the weeds and trying to solve problems, but somebody has to zoom out and do what is called a system’s thinking. Maybe you have your product, your customer, your sales, your marketing, you’ll have a whole bunch of these machines that are running in parallel customer subsets, and so-forth. You look around the room and there’s only one person who is actually taking that system’s view, and that’s the CEO. Everybody else looks at their own individual function.

So, a core part of the job is actually bringing all these things together and ensuring you’re making the same decisions. Those same decisions could be in the area of technology, it could be in the product, it could be in the business, in acquiring the right set of partners, and so-forth. So, to me if you understand the nuts and bolts of what product or service you’re providing, the business aspect of it just naturally comes in and supports the costs. Very rarely have I seen somebody create a business plan, and then the technology comes along, it’s usually the other way in a startup, and that’s what has worked well.

Now to the original point you made around the team. I’m a firm believer in knowing what you know, and also knowing what you don’t know. The first thing is actually getting your co-founders to complement, you put a pie together and you say, ‘Okay, I’ll take a small slice of this pie, but the rest of the team put together are they going to complete the pie?’ And if so, then you have a solid team. And in our case it was a co-founder very deeply rooted in engineering, another co-founder very deeply rooted in architecture and CTO, and myself on the product and the business side of it. We complemented each other, and that worked out really well. Today I’m three-plus years in, we operate in exactly the same way, we have a management team that’s come on board as well, carrying multiple functions, and that really helps.

The other piece that really helps me is, again, I’m a firm believer in A people bring A-plus people, and B people bring C people, it’s really that simple. So I consider myself and my team as A people, and if we bring A-plus then those guys are going to bring another set of A-plus people, and that’s how the teams are formed. Once you start to see cracks in the system and you bring folks who are B, and B not in a derogatory or an inferior way, but somebody who doesn’t fit the profile of who we need, then that leads to more of the same. Then B becomes C, and before you know it you have a team that’s not really hitting it out of the ballpark. So, simple stuff again, but very hard to practice given all the constraints that startups impose.

Rose Ross: That’s interesting because everybody’s been talking about skill shortages. Everybody’s been talking about the impact of remote working, hybrid working, on what’s happening in tech recruitment, and also with retaining your talent. So, having done this twice effectively, obviously with your first startup and now with Prosimo, sorry, I’m going to keep doing it.

Ramesh Prabagaran: It’s nice, I like it.

Rose Ross: Sorry, it doesn’t sound Italian to anybody else. Apologies to all the Italians who are listening. But what are the differences that you can now see between the traditional way that you did things, where you maybe had a different development team somewhere, and you had a Head Office where everybody could get together, have the water cooler moments, people got to know each other. I was just speaking to a friend of mine, it was about the fact that there were pre-pandemic employees who knew each other, had gone out for beers, and you had the vibe of each other. Then post-pandemic, a new team you might say, who have only seen one another like we are mainly, so you see person on a screen. And they were finding that people who knew people previously found that they were a really important resource. So you, as a startup, you’re particularly challenged with regards to that, because your team was so much smaller, and you’ve probably grown an awful lot over the pandemic period.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Absolutely.

Rose Ross: Because you most of your life at Prosimo has been during the Covid pandemic. So, what have you learned from that about how you manage teams now, compared with how you did it before, and how you build them?

Ramesh Prabagaran: One thing I miss, despite us living in this new brave reality, is getting together with the team. The first year of Prosimo prior to the pandemic hitting us, I remember every single day we used to have lunch together with a team of about 20 to 25 people at that time. We just got to know each other really-really well, like our shared passions, our shared interest, things that we don’t agree on, etc, and it just came together so nicely. In a startup you need that because you’re spending probably 12 to 16 hours with each other, you want to like and be around people that you like as well. So, when the pandemic hit it was a bit of a shock to many of us, we didn’t know how to handle it, to put it bluntly, but it took probably two to three weeks.

As you would expect the first focus was on getting back to productivity, so people were able to do their jobs the way they’re supposed to. And then slowly we started to focus on how do we bring folks together, whether it was socially-distanced gatherings etc, we never lost sight of that. We used to have Zoom-based games, each person would volunteer, get the whole team together and we would play games on Zoom for a couple of hours on a Friday, and that brought people together. It’s those small moments of happiness and laughter that you carry through, and so that really helped. The part that we tried to do right after some level of restrictions were lifted, was to get people back into the office but at their own pace. So we said, if you want to do a whiteboarding because you just need to interact well with each other, then just reserve a room. We have a space that’s pretty big, and we put two or three whiteboards so that people had their safety, but then just come together, masked and all, and still have the discussions. That really helped quite a bit.

But the point that you mentioned Rose is spot on, and that works well when the people know each other. And for those who don’t know each other, we’ve spent two out of our three years in the company in a pandemic setting, which actually if I look back, about 50 people in the company out of the 70 that we have, all joined us in a remote fashion, and so they don’t have the first-year experience that we had. So, we try to bring folks together, we try to encourage discussions over Slack, a lot of these fun channels that we have, and just get to know people. If people post their interest, we have something called Healthy Living, and people post their interest on doing yoga, biking, mountain climbing etc, so you get to know some of the things about the team. That really helps bring it together.

The last couple of years with respect to recruiting talent has been interesting as well, because just looking at the macroeconomic conditions, we’ve been through a high and then now things are looking down so to speak, because of the looming recession talks etc. In each of those phases you can use different techniques to attract the right talent, and during peaks etc., you just can’t go for people who are comfortable in their career and will not be able to move because of what they’re making, but you do have people who are stagnant in their careers or itching to move. I found myself in that situation about 15 years ago..

Rose Ross: Not now. No. It’s ok, he’s not leaving, everybody.

Ramesh Prabagaran: No, I’m going to be in a startup forever I think. But people who just want to do something, want to discover themselves and so-forth, you go after those guys, those are the ones that you can pluck out of out of the trees.

Fast forward to today, there’s a different recruiting strategy there, because folks who joined in the last couple of years have seen their equity in their comfortable jobs wiped out by almost half, and you can shake a few trees and get some good talent. So different strategies for different conditions, but it’s always good to get people to complement, add more. We have a simple rule in the company, heavily metrics driven, and we say, you hire somebody when you feel you have enough that’s been piled on, that’s important, but at the same time you don’t have the time to do it. And at that time if it’s important and it needs to be done, and you don’t have the time to do it, that’s when you bring in somebody. Don’t bring in somebody just because you put a plan together at the beginning of the year, ‘I need to bring 20 people’ and each manager goes and finds the 20 people, no that’s not how we do it. We look at it almost every month and we say, okay for the stage of the company what do we need, who do we need? And is this person or that person going to materially move the needle? And if so, bring that person in, otherwise just be cautious. You never know, things are high one day, things are low one day, but if you have the discipline in running the business then it doesn’t matter.

Rose Ross: So, on a ‘need to recruit’ basis.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Exactly, yeah. And then there are times when you want to be aggressive, and there are times when you want to be conservative, things that are working well in a startup you want to pour gas on it, because you know it can go from one to 20 fairly quickly, and you need people for that. But certain things that are not working, don’t pour gas on it because the worst thing you can do is make an inefficient system chaotic, and the last thing you have in a startup is time.

Rose Ross: Absolutely. Let’s take us back, since you won your Networking Trailblazers award, you’ve also have some recognition from a few names that people might recognise, Gartner, CRN (Computer Reseller News), and GigaOm. We’re very pleased that the success you’ve had with us is obviously resonating with other awards.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Absolutely.

Rose Ross: Great to see that you’re investing the time and the effort, because it does take time and effort to do these things, maybe not always you personally, but certainly your team that can focus on it. So, why are awards like those you’ve had with the Tech Trailblazers and other great names that I’ve just listed, why is that important to you, why is that important to the company?

Ramesh Prabagaran: In a startup you have this notion of recognition or award by association, which is, internal to the company we think of ourselves as big, but if you zoom out and look at the 30,000 ft. view you’re like a tiny speck in a big ocean, it’s just very humbling when you think about it that way. And so you want to get credibility by association, and credibility by association comes in a few forms and shapes. One, certainly you have a thesis that you have started a company, when nobody believes in that you have a high degree of conviction, you’ve formed the team together to support that cause, and now you’re bringing customers onboard to get that to the next level. The first endorsement comes from actual paying customers who endorse the technology and are able to use it, that is the rubber stamp of approval of a startup that says you are legitimate now.

The second comes in the form of multiple customers essentially reaching out to these analysts and saying, there’s a new wave of innovations that are happening, and this one company is actually leading the charge on that integration. And so it’s very humbling to see some big SNP 500 names, Fortune 500 names, call into Gartner and say, ‘Hey, I’m building this. I’m using Prosimo for these things, are you seeing this as a regular pattern?’ Gartner reached out to us and said, ‘Looks like you guys are talking to quite a few customers, what are you guys doing about this?’ And so that led to a few dialogues etc. Lo and behold, towards the end of why these awards are important, it’s because it’s that rubber stamp of endorsement and credibility, because not everybody gets to win, not everybody gets to claim that they are winners in these awards, but when you put some concerted effort, when you have that initial conviction when nobody has, and you see that come through, then what really makes it real is essentially getting this recognition. I see this as a huge part of the strategy.

It’s just like us in real life, when we search for a car or search for something to buy for our home, we look for third-party endorsements, credible endorsements, and so it’s the credibility by association that really helps quite a bit, and it needs to be a conscious strategy when you set up a startup. Now, at the same time I would say be careful and cautious in engaging with the right outfits, and the right outlets, because there are some that are low bar than some that are really credible. So invest the time in the credible ones. I’m happy you mentioned Trailblazers, CRN, Gartner and so-forth, these are really credible names, and so just associate yourself with that. It takes a bit of time and energy, but it’s well worth it in the end.

Rose Ross: Well, we’re very happy to be bedfellows as the Tech Trailblazers with GigaOm, CRN, and Gartner, so no complaints there, we’re very happy to be part of that tribe.

Obviously, you’ve had a load of cash, well it may not be directly in your bank right this second, but you have access to a big pot of cash, relatively speaking, 30 million. What are your plans with that? Obviously, clearly there are things that you outlined that you said ‘this is what we want, and this is what you want it for’. Obviously some of it you may not want to discuss, so what are your priorities that you can talk about?

Ramesh Prabagaran: The priorities are two. One is, you want to continue the game on innovation, because what got you here is having that innovation and differentiation, and there’s no time to pause on that. You just need to keep that moving, because guess what, if you’re doing something, somebody is going to come and copy that, or follow, and some might be fast followers. The last thing you want is those fast followers to out- innovative you, so you need to ruthlessly out-innovate the others because that’s what has got you to this point, and that’s what’s going to get you to the next milestone as well. So, one core focus is around innovation.

The second goes back to essentially pouring gas on something that you know has worked. In the first couple of years of a startup you do a lot of experiments, you make a bet, you let that bet go through, and then you see towards the end has it fallen flat, or were you directionally right, or has that really helped? If it’s in the third category where it’s really, really helped, then you want to pour gas on that, because you did an experiment, which means you’ve not gone and exhausted the people you can attach for that experiment. So go push on that.

And the second one, for things that are directionally right, is that going to get to the third category? Can you really use that as attainable in the company, and if so pour gas on that. This comes in the form of getting more people in the go-to-market functions, this comes in the form of having repeatability and product-like growth inside of the company. So, you want to invest in ideas that are going to give you that force multiplier, and once again it goes back to fundamentals and basics; see what works and invest more than that, because it’s going to yield a return. Watch it like a hawk, I think the funding round that we have raised as though it’s my personal money, and money I have inherited, and it’s the money of all the people around me – you want to safeguard that, you want to make sure you get the returns on that investment.

So, be cautious about that, but at the same time when you see something working then just pour on the gas. And for things are not working, now is the time to kill it, don’t invest too much time in things that you know are not going to work, because after you do one or two experiments you have enough data points to prove one way or the other, it is working or it’s not working, and if it’s not working either try to correct the course, but if you see it not showing the promising signs just kill it. People get very emotionally attached to, ‘This is my project’ etc, no such thing in the startup, we just correct course. There’s plenty of things to do, pick something else and go run, that’s all.

Rose Ross: And your VC partners, who are you working with and why are they really a good fit for what you guys are doing at the moment?

Ramesh Prabagaran: This is what I would say we consciously did. This is the second time for us and so I’m humbled and honoured to be working with the investors. One part of their role certainly is to provide the capital, but to me the most important one is the guidance. Every month I have one-on-ones with our investors. I ask for some part of that one-on-one to be just an informal session of sorts. I want the ability to throw ideas and just get a sounding board going, like this is directionally right, or this is what I think about it, and so-forth, without having to worry too much about what the hell is this guy thinking? I don’t want that judgement to come in the way of me testing out ideas on the people. So that’s one part of it. The other part of it is to stay true to the core values of the company, and the fundamentals of the business, show that things are growing. And so it’s being able to straddle between those two, then absolutely great.

I personally, this second time around, wanted investors who are practitioners and who have been knee-deep in running companies. All the investors we have so far have all been in big or small companies, running teams, have grown businesses from the ground up and have shown success, because they have a profound sense of appreciation for what it takes to build something. You can’t be looking at leading lagging metrics, financial metrics, or customer acquisition metrics and run a business, you just need to be grounded in what does it take to build a team, what does it take to acquire a customer, because I need to be able to tell somebody, this is why the deal that I promised for July has moved to August, it’s just part of the thing and there should be no questions around it, provided it’s all for the right reasons. So, those are the things that we look for in an investor.

A second part to that is the quality connections. If you get people who have been practitioners, operators, are well-known in the industry that they have lived in, they have contacts that humble you. I’ve actually been floored by my request to a few of the investors, ‘Do you know this person?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s my friend,’ and two minutes later there’s a text message that connects the two of us, I was like, ‘Wow, this is nice.’ So that’s the quality of the investors that you want to be looking for.

Rose Ross: We’ve covered so much ground, your startup journey, your investment journey, technology journey, building teams, working through the pandemic, recruiting, maintaining, all of this stuff, and of course how amazing awards like the Tech Trailblazers are for you.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Absolutely!

Rose Ross: We have our awards night on the 15th of November, we’re hoping to see Prosimo also raise a cup again perhaps then.

Ramesh Prabagaran: We’d love to.

Rose Ross: We’ve obviously covered a lot of ground, is there anything else that you’d like to share that you think would be of interest to our listeners?

Ramesh Prabagaran: Yes, since this is the startup podcast, one thing I grappled with in the past, and I wouldn’t say continue to but something that you consciously work on is, essentially looking inward and staying true to your own growth. I think the first order metric is not how you are doing with respect to all the other companies around you, I think that’s the wrong way to look at it, and I’ll use LinkedIn as an example.

Nobody goes to LinkedIn when they’re sad and posts that they’re having a really bad day. When you go to LinkedIn you want to post something that’s great, and so you have to understand that whatever is on LinkedIn is probably people writing with that frame of mind, that very same person is going through enough of a turmoil. And so when you are on a low for example, don’t go to these places, just look inward, look at what you can control and essentially build towards that.

What has personally helped me, and I mention this to all the people in the company, all the employees and folks we have, is just compare yourself from three months ago. That’s a very simple comparison to do and nobody needs to be a judge of that, only you are a judge of that. Have you personally become better as a person, as an employee, as a contributor, as whatever it is, from three months ago? And if you have not then there’s no other comparison you need to do, you just need to work on how to do that, and then just move the ball forward. So, that’s one I would definitely encourage.

The second one for startups. I would say probably 10% to 15% of the time is when you are on a high, the other times you are on a low, and the lows are lows, really bad lows. But when you put all this together the trendline is up and to the right, so don’t get enamoured by living in chaos, living in distress for prolonged periods of time because you just know, be an eternal optimist, be an eternal optimist, because the high is going to be a real high. So, look forward to that high, and nothing can deter you from reaching that.

So, those are two things that have personally helped me. I’m sure I can learn a lot from others. I listen to the startup podcast during my runs, and a small nugget of information comes out of the left field from somewhere and it just jolts you, like, ‘Wow, I never thought about it that way.’ So, just know what you know, and also know what you don’t know, and be on the lookout for that, that’s all I can say.

Rose Ross: Fantastic. It’s been an absolute pleasure Ramesh, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations again on all your recognition.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Thank you Rose. The questions were awesome, I hope the listeners get somewhat of an understanding of what it takes to do a startup. Those that are already in a startup, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Those that want to jump in, it’s not bad at all, just jump in, it just requires guts of steel and everything else just takes care of it.

Rose Ross: And a really big smile. I have to say you’ve an amazing smile, which also goes a long way. I’m sure that your team very much welcome that when they’re having a bad day, that Ramesh is smiling at them.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Life is too short. And going back, you just know you’re going to be hitting a high very soon, so don’t let anything deter you from that. When you get the highs celebrate with the team. When you get the lows pick yourself up and the team and run forward. That’s it, simple.

Rose Ross: Yes, this too shall pass, as they say. So, thanks again to Ramesh who is the co-founder and CEO of Prosimo, and our Networking Trailblazer last year.

You’ve been listening to Rose Ross. I’m the Chief Trailblazer and Founder of the Tech Trailblazers Awards. This is the Founders on Fire podcast and videocast, where we meet the Founders of the winning companies.

You can find us at www.techtrailblazers.com, you can also follow us on Twitter @techtrailblaze, and also find us on LinkedIn. We look forward to connecting with you. Thank you very much again Ramesh.

Ramesh Prabagaran: Thank you as well.