“I think of decisions as forks in the road - and there’s no point in spending too much time at that intersection. You can always go back if you don’t like the direction you’re going in. But if you waste a lot of time on just deciding, it's not going to get you anywhere.”
In this edition of One Thousand Paths, we get into conversation with Sanjeev NC, co-founder of microSaaS startup Supermeme AI, and a humorist who has brought a breath of fresh air to SaaS marketing communication. He joins us for a freewheeling chat that touches on the value of being a generalist, intuition versus data in decision making, being a creator, and much more.
Not a reader? You can listen to this conversation here.
ON CAREER PROGRESSION AND BEING A GENERALIST
Tell us a little about yourself, Sanjeev. But just for fun, do it in the third person.
Sanjeev doesn't like playing by the rules. Sanjeev questions everything that is put out there. Sanjeev is a proud generalist. He likes to explore multiple things, and he wants to just keep going down that route.
Let's start with the last one—proud generalist. Who in your definition is a generalist? And in a world where everybody is picking a niche, why do you want to be one?
The usual perception of a generalist is somebody who’s a jack of all trades. I think more than that, a generalist is somebody who’s repeatedly been a specialist at different things for brief periods of time.
Over the ten years of my career, I have spent two years in customer support, two years in sales, two years in marketing, two years as a product manager, and most recently, two years as a freelancer and co-founder. I would say that I've been a specialist in all these areas. And because I've been a specialist in different areas, that makes me a generalist. Just being able to do multiple things does not make me a generalist.
I like how you have flipped the definition of generalist on its head. These career decisions- a move once every two years—how have they helped you?
The intersections between these roles have ensured I carried my learning forward. For example, when I moved from customer support to sales, I benefited from the discipline of responding to emails on time. When I moved from sales to product marketing, the practice of communicating the value of a product to individuals helped me communicate value to customers at scale. And when I moved from product marketing to product management, the research angle of how you can market a feature helped me build the right set of features.
And of course, all of these learnings are now helping me in the role of a founder. Many people have seen my career as a series of shifts—but I see it as an evolution.
What was interesting was, every time I made the switch, I explored two new things at a time. So when I moved from Capgemini to Freshdesk, I moved from a support role to a sales role—and I also moved from a service company to a product company.
When I moved from presales into product marketing, I also moved from an IC role to a people manager role. When I moved from product marketing to product management, I also moved from a big company to a startup.
And in my current role of founder and freelancer, I’m learning how to build a product but also how to run a business—which are definitely two separate things.
Changing two things each time— was that deliberate? Is that something you would advise?
Every time I recount the story of my career progression, it looks so structured and planned. But it wasn’t so thought out.
All of these moves I attribute to two things. One was just being at the right place at the right time. The other was not being afraid to try new things or step into unknown territory—and having no fear of how I would be perceived for these moves or how it would affect my resume or reputation. I think that this fearlessness is one of my biggest strengths.
I relied heavily on gut, and if something felt right, I would go in that direction and just see where it took me. And so far, it has taken me in directions that I don’t regret.
I think it's important to acknowledge that, for the first five years of your career, you're going to second-guess everything and probably don't know what you want. During this time, your gut feel can be a good indicator to make decisions.
If you really don't enjoy what you're doing in your job, maybe it's not the right role for you and there's nothing wrong with it. You don't have to stick it out because your college put you there or because it’s your first job.
But once you spend 5-10 years in a career, you usually know what you like and don’t like. So you can make a more informed decision.
Can you pick one inflection point of your career and tell us about it?
I can think of two things. The first was, before I joined work, I volunteered with an organization called Make A Difference. I always see that as a fork in the road, because up until that point, I was not the sort of person to wake up on a Saturday morning and catch a bus to go give an interview. But something made me go through that, and my life changed. Make A Difference functioned like an organization—it had meetings and stand ups and what not. So it prepared me for my work even before I entered work.
The second one was when I applied to speak at conferences. This again, was not a logical decision. I was 25, and the average age of a person speaking at those conferences would be north of 40. But I was like, I want to sit in these conferences and take notes. And I thought, okay, the way that I'm going to go to these conferences is I have to earn it– and so, I'm going to apply to speak.
That started a series of events where every month I would be at a conference presenting. That put me in positions where I had to travel by myself to different countries, interact with people etc. It really opened me up a lot more and improved my confidence.
ON HUMOR AND CREATIVITY
Humor is a very big part of your life and work. How did it become part of your career? I think I've always been funny behind the scenes. Even during my product marketing days, I used to create memes and put them on Twitter, and get attention from people active in that industry.
When I started presenting at conferences, I naturally gravitated towards using memes. People would be expecting bar charts and graphs and pointers, and I’d be standing there in front of a huge audience and a huge screen with just a meme on it. It made people laugh, and that made me feel really good.
When the pandemic hit and I had time on my hands, I started posting Tamil memes on Instagram and Twitter—and my personal brand started growing around memes.
What happened next was that I was trying to make an informative video, and I set up a tripod and shot it. The video was so bad that I knew that there was no point putting it out. But then I had the setup ready, so I thought I might as well try something new. I was a product manager at that time, trying to figure out what it meant—so I riffed about it in a humorous video, and it resonated with people.
What I really enjoyed is the attention to detail you bring to these videos…
What worked for me is that since I had spent two years in all these teams, I have probably been to every meeting that you can imagine— engineering meetings, marketing meetings, sales meetings, ticket review meetings, demos, the whole gamut. I know that my videos would be authentic because I've been in those meetings. You won't see me making fun of the legal or finance teams because I don’t know what they are like.
So what is your creative process like?
I always make a note of things I observe and ideas I get. I could be talking to a friend, listening in on my wife’s work call, scrolling on social media, and suddenly I have an idea. I put it on the note taking app that I use, and when I have to do a video, I just go through that and see what resonates with me.
One thing that has worked for me is I keep the resistance very low. I use my phone to record the video, edit it, and publish it. Because I will not be able to tolerate transferring the files onto a laptop and editing it and such—I will get lazy. So I just keep the resistance low, and then I'm able to kind of see it through.
What advice would you give to a wannabe creator?
I think the biggest thing that stops creators in their tracks is fear. What if I put this out there? What will people say? The truth is, no one cares. There's so much content on the Internet right now that even if you put something out, no one will care.
My advice? Don't think of it as trying to build an audience. Think of it as a collection of things that you are putting together for yourself. For example, when I do videos, I know that some of my videos are going to live on the internet forever. So I’m leaving a part of me behind. If people come across it, they like it, they share it, then it's good. But even otherwise, just the process of creating and putting it out there is a win.
When you think of content creation as a library of sorts, you stop expecting likes and shares. Even though I do care about the people who engage with my content. I’d rather put the focus on the content creation itself. The outcome of that—likes, shares, comments— I can’t control. But how much content I put out, how innovative I am, these are things I can and do control.
ON STARTING UP SUPERMEME.AI
Tell me about Supermeme.AI, the meme marketing company you co-founded?
Supermeme.AI started as a side project, when I was working as a product manager. I was part of a no-code cohort course and I was expected to create a no code product. Memes were the first thing that came to my mind, so I just put something together and put out a demo. And Ramsri came upon that and we got on a call, and then Nico joined too.
We just formed a WhatsApp group and launched Supermeme.AI in two weeks. Ten days later, we had our first customer. This was November 2021, a good year before ChatGPT, and AI tools weren’t this popular yet.
Even today, we still operate from the WhatsApp group. We haven't met each other at all. We get on a Zoom call once or twice a month, and everything else happens just on WhatsApp.
Wow. That is the most lean setup ever. How do you three make decisions in a remote setup?
At a high level, Ramsri is responsible for anything AI. Nico is responsible for anything full stack development. My responsibility is mostly around the marketing side—I put the story out, bring people in, communicate the value proposal. Basically whatever I’ve done at different stints so far, I bring that expertise.
But while we have our core areas of function, we also have overlaps. Any product decision is a collective decision, and when any of us needs help, the others step in. We are aligned in terms of what we want from Supermeme.AI, and there’s trust between us.
Absolutely. I think you need to have that in order to have survived this working model for the last two and a half years. Can you tell me about your customers?
When we started Supermeme.AI, we were clear that we wanted this to be a revenue generating process. One of our areas of focus has been people like me, basically, marketers, social media managers, and others who want to build their personal brand on social media.
Another persona that surprised us were educators. We found out that this is actually a popular use case, that teachers are trying to spice up their lectures and presentations with memes.
We have about 300 paying customers, and all of them are from different parts of the world. We’ve never had to get on a call with any of them and demo the product—it’s just that intuitive. They go in there, find what they like, pay to use it, and cancel the subscription after they’re done using it. So it’s a very use-case driven product.
What has worked best for you as a marketing channel? Is it your personal brand that is helping?
The starting point has been the personal brand, for sure. When we started, we collectively had about 50,000 followers across all social media platforms—that helped get us off the ground.
Another thing that helped was that Supermeme as a product is something you are quite likely to share on social media. When ChatGPT launched, creative AI tools got popular and we started getting listed in articles about top AI tools to watch out for, interesting AI tools for marketers, and such. This helped our backlinks and had a knock-on effect on SEO. So today, SEO is driving a lot of our traffic.
At our best, we were getting 3000 sign-ups a day. Right now, even with the whole buzz around AI tools dropping, we're still averaging 500-1000 signups a day without a lot of work going into SEO.
What is a challenge that you are trying to solve as a co-founder right now?
At an organization, there are external triggers shaping what you do. But when you are bootstrapping a product, no one's going to tell you what to do or keep you accountable. Deciding that I have to do these five things that will move the needle, and actually having the discipline to see them through is definitely a challenge.
Another challenge is that when you work with only cofounders, and everyone is equally passionate and involved—you have to navigate that well. Because if the relationship breaks, everything goes downhill. So you have to know when you need to step back and what decisions you have to let go, even if you feel strongly about it.
Where does data come into these decisions? How often do you bring data into a room when you're making a larger decision?
I manage the dashboards at Supermeme. We stay on top of revenue at all times, and I look at everything else periodically (and feel like a detective while I’m at it :))
Here is what I feel about the role of data: These days, we track everything and it is easy to get distracted by data. You could spend the entire day looking at data and not doing anything about it. You could also have endless arguments about it, which is counterproductive. Or you could try to squeeze it to get the insight that you want.
Data has a place in decision making and it should be a guiding factor. But it’s ok to make decisions that run counter to what your data indicates, so long as you know why you are doing it.
Tell me about your personal decision making mindset. How has it evolved over the years?
I don't like mulling over decisions too much. I usually just decide either for or against and just move onto the next thing. I think of these decisions as forks in the road - and there’s no point in spending too much time at that intersection. You can always go back if you don’t like the direction you’re going in. But if you waste a lot of time on just deciding, it's not going to get you anywhere.
What I've gotten good at over time is minimizing unimportant decisions. For example, sitting on an email for many minutes trying to decide if the language is fine—but nobody is really bothered about it. I don’t spend time on unimportant decisions, And I don't care if I make a mistake as well.
One framework I apply is: I try to make small, reversible decisions, which are easier and low impact. Because most times, when there’s a big decision to be made, you can break it down into smaller decisions. For example, looking for a new job is a big decision. But then you don't have to frame it like that. You can start by just looking for opportunities, which is a very minor decision.
Sanjeev, you write a newsletter on MicroSaaS and are very vocal about its potential and future. Tell me about this.
I have my own definition for microSaaS—it solves a small problem, solves it really well for a micro market, with a micro team and a micro budget, while being happy with micro growth.
I've spent about seven years in a SaaS company. So when I entered microSaaS and started building Supermeme, a lot of what I used to believe about SaaS and software were proven wrong.
For one, I always thought you need a lot of money if you want to build software. With Supermeme, we only paid for the domain and nothing else.
I used to think you need a large team to build software. We built Supermeme with three people—and I don't code, so technically two people. I also used to think we needed to spend a lot of money on marketing. We haven't spent anything on marketing.
This made me realize building software is becoming easier. There’s a new market opening up where an individual can build software just as well as a big team, keep the price competitive because of lower costs, and still provide good service.
For me, MicroSaaS is a way of life, a philosophy, where I stop exchanging my time for money. I build software and put it out into the world. People can pay small amounts of money to access the software, and I get to do what I want with my time.
ON PRODUCTIVITY AND TIME MANAGEMENT
Besides Supermeme, you also freelance as a content advisor for other startups, take on humor writing gigs, and make your own comic videos. How do you juggle all this?
I am what you call a classic productivity nerd. Which means that I spend a lot on software and geek out on productivity systems.
Earlier, I would always be overwhelmed with the number of things I wanted to do. But now, I feel calmer - because every quarter, I sit down and list out all the things that I want to do in that quarter, and then that translates into a monthly plan, which translates into a weekly plan, that kind of drives what I do every day. Now I feel comfortable knowing there’s only so much I’m going to do on any day.
Anything that’s worked really well for you?
I think of it like a journey. I've consumed a lot of productivity videos. I've spent a lot of money and time on productivity tools and books. Having gone through all these things, I have uncovered a system that works for me. So I can’t recommend one tool or system that will work. But that exploratory path itself teaches you a lot.
For example, you have people who manage everything in the Apple ecosystem. On the other hand, you have people using multiple note taking tools and task management tools, and they've connected everything together so it works well for them. In the end, you have to put a system together for yourself.
I have been using Things 3 for a long time now, and I use Obsidian as a note-taking tool. I just enjoy watching what's happening in this space.
Are you reading or watching anything interesting?
I'm an erratic consumer [of content] and I go down different rabbit holes. A recent one is philosophy and coding, a random intersection I find very interesting. For anyone looking for quality writing, Every.to is an amazing resource I’d recommend.
I keep going back to content that I always enjoyed. For example, I love any book around Steve Jobs, including his biography itself. I liked Creativity, Inc. which is a book about Pixar, and one more about how Pixar went to IPO.
Is Steve Jobs an inspiration/role model? Is that why you said you read anything that has to do with him?
I don't believe in the concept of a person being an inspiration or a role model. Because when you adopt a role model, you are buying into their flaws as well—you’re willing to ignore or accept whatever they do.
But while I don’t have role models, I do learn a lot more from certain people than others. What I learnt from Steve Jobs is imagining the unimaginable. I still remember that when I first talking about Supermeme, people were like, is there even a business here? But we've been around for two and a half years. We're making money. I think if you're trying to make an impact, you should be ok with things that may not be conventionally acceptable.
Another person that I get validation from is Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He is not the best artist, he is not the best comic, he’s probably not the most knowledgeable about tech. But then he puts all these things together, and he comes up with Dilbert, which is brilliant.
I relate to that. I am not the best actor, I am not the best scriptwriter, and I don't know everything about tech, but then I just put these things together. And the combination just works.
Lovely. This has been such a brilliant chat. Thank you for talking to me today.
