Alohaa

Here is what I am interested in & and execute @ Alohaa.ai

Goals: See that, we have profitable acquisition & scale. 

1) To find the right audience, in really really large numbers (right channels).
2) See that we understand the pain points well, and use them as messaging (our customers should feel - this is exactly what's causing me pain while using traditional phone systems for their business, let me sign with Alohaa.ai and get free from it)
3) Once they are in our funnel, I would love minimal drop-offs(that's what we strive for)
4) From here on, our Sales, Support, and product teams play the post-acquisition picture and they do it great, so my job mostly here is to just have peace of mind knowing all the customers are being handled by the right people & teams.
5)Well, you may notice that I have PM experience(and also kept it here). 

Initially year, I worked both on Product and marketing, now that we are more confident about the product, and our team has great people who understand (and build for customer pain points/feedback), 
I completely moved into marketing to distribute our product to a much larger audience.

One last thing, If you want to talk about any of your - Business Telephony needs(VMNs, IVR, Cloud Call Centers, Voice broadcasting, WhatsApp messaging, etc.) and see how alohaa.ai can help you or want to talk about SaaS marketing/product/unit economics. You can simply DM me. I am available 24*7 to respond(kidding I am not, I will respond as soon as my work & life allow, but we will talk)

Head of Growth

Reforge

Member

Reverie Language Technologies

India has 600Mn Internet users while 500Mn of them cannot read English. We help D2C, E-Comm, Fintech and other verticle markets to go local in 12 Indian Languages. Currently we are the only company to provide end-to-end solutions for any brand (Text, Speech, Bot automation etc,.). 

This will help you 5X your market size, get profitable faster and become a Unicorn in lesser time(if that's your goal). I am currently working on D2C, Fin-Tech & Transliteration services.

Product Manager

Travelling

After quitting my job at the previous company(Way2online). I wanted to take a 10-12 week travel and exploration break. I am currently exploration places back to back which is expanding my world view and how much each geography, person, and even food changes in an overnight journey.

10-12 weeks is a very short time for a full-time exploration of the world(for now few parts of India). But I am understanding the rules of a long journey. While I attach more memories to my heart & soul. I am finding myself and evolving as a person and I can really feel it.

Travel Break

Way2Online

I head the growth team.
Increased the funnel convention by 25% (landing page to code integration)
Grew the total website traffic from 2 Lakh to 5 Lakh (source: Similar web)
Grew the registrations by 10,000 with in 10 months
Doubled the organic traffic.
Helped launch WordPress and Shopify plugins. 
Came up with pricing strategy and become operationally profitable.
All above at zero marketing costs, same team size.

Co-Creator & Growth Head @ Truepush.com

Drew the Initial wireframes for the product on pen and paper, rolled out the product within 5 weeks of ideation. Managed new features and roadmaps for the product based on the feedback from the customers. managed the tech/design team until the push notifications reached 45 Bn Push notifications/month.

We have won multiple G2 and other Saas Awards for the product and ease of use. Have a great sense for good UX and really love not including things that are needed in the first place. I wrote the product copy. Have the product releases happen on time through sprints. Responsible to the growth/sales team and manage expectations while signing up with high-volume customers.

Our G2 Reviews - https://www.g2.com/products/truepush/reviews

Co-Creator & Product Head @ Truepush.com

10X - Business Short News 
Entrepreneurs, CXO's and Investors often have busy schedules and it will be impossible for anyone to be updated on all business news.  We at 10X are covering 7 major industry news, general business and politics/sports. We believe this is the only app you will need to cover all the news. Our content team works really hard to curate business news with quality and deliveries in time. You can download Android version here - http://bit.ly/a10xapp , IOS Version - http://bit.ly/i10xapp

Product Head - 10X - Business Short News

Startup Talks

Startup Talks is a Community for Early Stage Entrepreneurs where they can Learn, Network & Collaborate on different verticals of a Startup. We are currently have 25000 + members in our community.
If you are an early stage entrepreneur you can attend one of our monthly meetup at one of these cities - Hyderabad(www.meetup.com/startuptalks) , Bangalore (www.meetup.com/startuptalksbanglore) , Mumbai (meetup.com/startuptalksmumbai )

Founder & Organizer

[self-employed]

I am exploring a couple of niche spaces.
- Movie Franchising to brands 
- Helping Authors to Increase their PR, establish credibility to and increase book sales

Freelance Marketeer 

Zenty

Zenty helps Brands to connect with powerful Influncers handpicked by us to execute offline campaigns which helps them generate word of mouth, get consumer insights, generate content for their marketing channels and many more. Our platform will help Brands learn more insights and use the data and content generated to use in their other marketing activities which can increase their over all ROI on marketing and branding spent.  You can reach me at Manoj@zenty.co for more details.

Founder

Startup Leadership Program

The Startup Leadership Program (SLP) is a highly selective 6-month world-class training program and lifetime network for outstanding founders and innovators. SLP Fellows have founded over 1000 companies that have raised $450 million, and include breakthrough and award-winning startups like Runkeeper, Sensobi, Shareaholic, Solar Junction, Voicetap and Ubersense. The program began in Boston in 2006 with seven Fellows (participants). It has grown to 26 cities in 12 countries.

Fellows spend six months in a rigorous cross-disciplinary entrepreneurial-CEO training program that combines

* Mentoring from successful entrepreneurs
* Extensive participation in active VC, corporate, and entrepreneur network
* Coaching and professional development
* Fireside chats with entrepreneurs and VCs and
* Focused skill-building workshops

Fellow

IIIT-H Foundation

As part of its mandate to encourage entrepreneurship both inside and outside the IIIT-H community, the IIIT-H Foundation (aka Banyan Intellectual Initiatives) runs the incubator known as the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) on the IIIT-H campus. CIE provides an environment and an ecosystem that supports start-ups in building technology-differentiated products and in taking them to market.

Manager

I advice on Product Management | Growing your customer base | Career Growth

Ex-Founder | Growth | Ultra Runner | Writer

From failed startups to scaling Truepush to 100B+ notifications monthly and 4,500+ customers worldwide, I've learned what it takes to build products people need and grow them relentlessly.

I built Truepush from paper wireframes to becoming a top 10 global player in our category. At Alohaa.ai, I doubled sales within just 3 months and drove consistent month-over-month revenue growth.
Beyond business, I push limits personally. 

I recently completed an 82.4km ultra run during a 12-hour stadium event. Mountains, travel, and nature are where I find liberation through both excitement and boredom.

Learning obsessively fuels everything I do. I've devoured 313+ books, and continuously invest in courses (Mindvalley, MasterClass, Matt Gray, Justin Welsh, Reforge and more).

When knowledge compounds with consistent execution, results follow:

- Built a 25,000-person startup community across 3 cities
- Published 250+ LinkedIn posts in 2024 alone
- Recognized among the top 1% of mentors on Topmate.io
- Created Solopreneur OS to help others identify market gaps and build growth systems

All while maintaining 7 hours of sleep nightly, seeing friends regularly, and maintaining my unusual preference for vegetables over chocolate (though I love both).

Want to build something great? Let's connect.

Used to lookup to Kunal Shah a lot

He came up with the Delta 4 concept 

If you can reduce 4 steps for a user journey,

Most likely user will be hooked and your product can go viral 

However, I’m questioning what’s happening now -

He is promoting virtual coins to redeem which are worth $0.000 

It’s been a while I used CRED app.

It takes a click to pay from my bank than go through multiple steps to pay on CRED + get 1 rupee for paying from it.

CRED really attracted high credit worthy people then started selling random scratch cards that doesn’t even scratch the curiosity 

PS: rarely when I want to buy food items, I go and check if there are discounted products there as they maintain good quality, but that’s about it(stopped even doing that).

What’s your experience with CRED?

Manoj Surya

2X Founder | Head of Growth | Ultra Runner | I write on Growth for B2B and Personal Learnings

graphical user interface, text, application

One of the days this year. I will turn 36.

I some how don’t understand how I’m in my mid 30s already.

13 years of work in 5 completely different designations , 2 failed starts ups, 4 successful good works, 315 books multiple courses, many travels, writing a lot of posts and articles, running ultra Marathons(50km+), making really good friends and meeting them often, meeting hundreds of people over time and falling flat on the face countless times and getting back from it.

Sometimes, I still feel lost.

And I guess it’s totally okay. 

I figured , as long as 

- I do things in my control
- Don’t harm people consciously
- Take care of mental and physical health 
- Bury myself in good indulgences (for me it’s - running ultras, books)
- Putting in honest work
- Valuing our work and ourselves well 
- Make efforts to have good relations with important people in life 

I will be fine.

Guess it applies to everyone.

Do these and hopefully you will be less lost and you will be fine too.

Not all wanderers are lost.
And everyone lost isn’t a wanderer.

You find you.

40 rules of exponential growth

1. Find a starving crowd
2. Build to solve their problem
3. Get your positioning right
4. Test multiple messaging angles
5. Find winning channels
6. Build a great culture
7. Pay people well
8. Disrupt your own product before someone else does
9. Repeat 1-8
10-40 points = Read 1-9 , 31 times

You will remember it then, maybe?

PS: It’s easy to keep this in theory, I couldn’t do this for more than 2.5 years when I did my own startup. 

Google and Virgin groups have so many failures because it’s hard to predict what works. Heck, many of Einstein’s papers are never referenced. What are our chances?

Success needs a lot of iterations, meaning more failures than others. Hard to endure, and most times it feels it’s not worth it

For me, luckily able to execute and find a few successes(in marketing) when I worked at other places. (Keyword being ‘luck’ too).

No alternative text description for this image

We glorify the sh*t out of success stories 

And we keep forgetting that people who failed too has similar stories 

For example,
Hussain bolt we remember, but someone who came 2nd who is just micro seconds late? 

Like really? Why don’t we care about them?

Or someone who came 5th, probably worked hard their entire life to be in that final 8 line up on a world stage.

Or about startup founders who 100% of them know the success rate is only 1% 

Why do we keep forgetting the rest 99% who dared to think and create something that did not exist yet?

What we should glorify is the process too, like a lot.

We should glorify 

- channel and products tested well before scale
- people who show up
- who keep iterating and learning 
- caring about unit economics 
- caring about profitable customer acquisitions 
- code that’s written clean 
- follow ups that done well
- sales that done well 

Let’s glorify the process, the scores will take care of themselves

Your product should build your brand 

When I think of Hyderabad- I remember Irani chai and biryani 

When I think or Mumbai - I think of Vada pav 

When I think of Kolkata - I think of Rasagulla 

And I’m sure it’s same with most people

These cities did not brand then sell these

They sold these and made better than anywhere else in the country 

Likewise 

ChatGPT produced a great product -> lead to a brand 

I’m not saying brand building is bad

You need to know what you stand for, who you stand for, how you can help them -> show the results thought your product (or service)

Then you spend more on brand building 

Startups = survival 
Lead gen = Great product = Renetention = constant money (Hopefully growing) = 
Brand for your users and the future users they talk to … repeat until profits

Hard way, and needed.

Me: Writes marketing breakdowns - 13 likes and - 398 views

Me: takes a screenshot and little rant - 66 likes and 34,311 views(86.2X more views)

LinkedIn, you are wild - what is your algorithm even optimising for?

If I a few million dollars

I would still

Write daily
Get in shape
Meet friends
Read books
Travel
Do adventure sports 

There are things money can’t buy - like mental peace

You got to earn that with or without money

Advertising

Is not

- Manipulating people
- Just Hooking them isn’t the goal
- It isn’t bunch of fancy words

It is

- A good argument 
- Clear communication
- Helping your customers choose you

Anyone can write a lot

Try writing less,
While communicating your point

It will humble you.

Yesterday one boy started telling me a story starting with -“when I was little”. He is 3 years old.

Guess thinking - we already are at our highest is a default instinct. And may be being an adult and having logic ruined that feeling for adults.

There are books, and there are books

When I said this - why did you instantly know that - I’m talking about two types of different books?

When you read often, you do know how words make you feel

And when you combine that knowledge with AI, you get faster content -> that’s more meaningful 

Because

1. You know exactly how you want your words to impact
2. You will give a super detailed input
3. You will iterate until you see the output you want not what it gives you

You need first principles + expertise to make meaningful large scale impact - using AI

So if you want to use AI effectively. I would recommend you spend 60-70% time on your first principles and your inputs to AI. 30% for actually finding tools, giving input and iterating.

PS: I’m slightly worried about next generation- AI may make their learning shallow than helping them go deep because most may be struck to 

Give prompt -> iterate (but prompt itself will be shallow because they are getting quick output leading to quick domaine) 

This is my theory.

There are many nice things in the world and one of those is - Founder- Product - Market -Fit. Why?

because without a PMF, you will have a hard time selling and scaling. Your good time will become stressful times,

you will think about survival instead of scale,

you will leave good opportunities waiting for a miracle where there may be none

but PMF is easier said that done, without data you can’t pivot 

and when you pivot, there is no gurantee you will hit a gold mine

precisely why it’s so hard to build and scale a company

all you can do is be honest and be mission driven

and having Founder-PMF, making this long journey sustainable

If founder don’t enjoy, nothing good will come even if PMF is really there

If any person on growth or marketing is about tasks in their reports even after few weeks of starting the campaigns like -

- We spent X on marketing 
- We sent Y emails
- We wrote 50 blogs (okay seo may take 4-6 months to show up results)

Instead of talking about 

- We have X no of leads
- We have Y no of paying customers 
- Our CAC is high, looking to optimise with ads / new ICPs

Scientifically speaking, the name of the medical condition they have is called ‘BS-ing’

If you aren’t clean on ROI then what are you even doing? 

PS: not all campaigns work and that’s okay that’s the language should be - let’s marketing , it should be let’s experiment with XYZ assumptions and scale what’s working.

One thing I realised is that, when you help for free, people will take it for granted. Very few will know it’s value.

But when you charge for your knowledge, they will value it because they are literally paying for it.

I guess the best way to help people is to charge them.

Either you will have money or peace of mind for - not giving in for less returns.

5 things I learnt running a 82.4Km (in 12 hours):

Apply these mental model cheat codes anywhere you like

1. The right plan 

Target may impossible. But my job isn’t to think about it.

My job was to follow the plan. Beauty of endurance sports - It compounds.

Give it 3 years and you can do a 50km. Give it more time, you can do more.

2. Belief

Even after 6 hours into it, I did not believe I can last 12 hours

Again my job wasn’t to think about it

I had to believe I can do one more step and I can finish the current kilometre somehow

That’s it, 12 hours passes

3. Strength 

My Physio often says(when I’m in doubt), Manoj, you are stronger than you think

I was so anxious of this run, my gut gave up and started having issues

It was gone as soon as the run started and never came back 

We are stronger than we think in reality than in our head

4. The right community 

82.4km seems a lot right? But,

I was feeling like an imposter there. I was 11th out of 14 people who finished and there was 16 more people running 24 hours

I was a beginner in the ultra running world

I once asked someone who do to Buddha trail (hardest in India), he calmly said. Just practise few 50kms so you don’t feel tired then plan for it

It was normal talk. Just like entrepreneurs would talk about a 5 million fund raise 

In ultra running community I’m a beginner. Everyone else outside run community will think I’m insane. 

5. Science and craft 

Once I knew the since of running, it’s more believable even to practise and attempt a 160km if I give enough time (2-3 years) for it.

Because this sport don’t have short cuts you have to put in time. Ofcourse few people are genetically gifted to pick endurance quickly (and I’m not one of them)

Any skill or craft, if you know how it works, it’s easier to control the growth or dips.

——-

Replace these points with any goal and they will still be valid.

What do you think?

How to sell something 

1. Know what people face issues with
2. Solve it, make it easy to solve, make them feel better while they solve it
3. Fine, where you can find them
4. Talk in their language in your approach - emails, ads, etc 
5. Keep marketing, refine with feedback

Steps 1-4 can take from 3 months to a year or even more sometimes

PS: pivots may happen ,you realise when there aren’t enough people paying it, or it’s too pricy to reach them for what they pay

PPS: Unfortunately most fails happens in 1-4 and that’s what makes everything much harder. Usually people lose patience while going through this steps but having patience is the shortcut.

The only live stream we need every weekend (okay, every few weeks for us may be)

Hacks (aka fundamentals)

Product -> not getting users?

Check if 

- wrong audiance
- wrong messaging 
- wrong channels

Product -> no retention?

Check if

-  core motivation of users is different 
- wrong icps are being aquired
- key features not built 

Product -> not scaling?

Check if 

- you nailed retention
- you have few core raving customers
- found channels where you can find more core customers
- if your messaging is right 
- If your product positioning is unique or fighting with existing industry giants 

Cost of acquisition -> high?

Check if 

- you can optimise first for small icp before scaling 
- can you upsell later
- can you increase life time value of the user

——
Insights:

I haven’t even included the team mechanics / right team doing these

And people wonder why it’s so hard to build right products and scale

(Hint: too many moving variables)

Leo Tolstoy opened his famous with his famous book Anna karenina(and yeah I read that book) - All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo

Likewise, all scaling companies are alike; each non-scaling company is non-scaling due to its unique issues.

I read 24 books this year - covering fiction, self-help, writing, marketing, and business.

It covers right from multiple 15-minute reads to complex/deep long reads.

Have given 2-4 lines of summaries to these books (where relevant).

Hope you find this article useful to make you intrigue you to buy and read one or more books. If you just started reading, this list may really help you nicely.

I read 24 books this year (paperback, Kindle, and Audible together) I am categorising based on ease of reading / Genre A) Short books (15 to 60 minute

Open article: I read 24 books this year, sharing books from 15-minute reads to longer must-read fiction and non-fiction by Manoj Surya • 5 min read

I read 24 books this year, sharing books from 15-minute reads to longer must-read fiction and non-fiction

No - health is wealth
Yes - health and wealth 

Why choose one when you can strive for both?

2X Founder | Head of Growth | Ultra Runner | I write on Growth for B2B and Solopreneurs

Your process is the reward. The outcome is a bonus.

Taplio

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