The Architect of Onboarding: Srikrishnan Ganesan and the Rise of Rocketlane
The definitive profile of Srikrishnan Ganesan, the founder of Rocketlane. His journey from a Freshworks acquisition to building a $45M SaaS venture.
There’s a moment in every B2B relationship, right after the contract is signed, where the real make-or-break work begins. It’s a chaotic landscape of spreadsheets, siloed email threads, and missed deadlines, yet it’s the very ground on which customer trust is built or irrevocably broken. Srikrishnan Ganesan, the co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane, has a name for this critical phase: “The Second Sale.” This simple, powerful philosophy is not just a clever tagline; it’s the foundation of his $45 million venture and the core thesis he developed over a career spent building and scaling world-class software products.
Srikrishnan recently sat down for an in-depth conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast to deconstruct his journey from an acquired founder to a category creator. His story is a masterclass in turning hard-won experience into a strategic advantage.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Architect: Who is Srikrishnan Ganesan?
Srikrishnan Ganesan’s career is built on a rare dual foundation of deep technical knowledge and sharp business strategy. He began with a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science & Engineering from Anna University, giving him a ground-up understanding of product architecture. He then augmented this by earning a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, one of India's top business schools.
This blend of engineering and management acumen defined his early career in product management at large-scale B2C companies like Verizon, where he managed the FIOS TV service, and the Indian internet portal Rediff.com. However, it was his first entrepreneurial leap with Konotor in 2012 that forged the resilience of a founder. Konotor was a B2B SaaS venture aimed at providing an innovative two-way messaging inbox for mobile apps. While the product was ahead of its time and won the Qualcomm QPrize in 2014, Srikrishnan openly reflects on the challenge of an "evangelistic" sale, educating a market on a problem it didn't fully recognize yet.
The Crucible: A "PhD in Scaling" at Freshworks
In 2015, the most pivotal chapter of Srikrishnan’s early career began when Konotor was acqui-hired by Freshworks (then Freshdesk Inc.). This wasn’t just an exit; it was the start of what he calls a “4.5-year apprenticeship in scaling.” Inside the Freshworks rocket ship, Srikrishnan and his team were given the resources and market tailwinds to rebuild Konotor.
Relaunched as Freshchat, the product expanded to serve web and mobile, perfectly aligning with the explosion of conversational marketing. It became Freshworks' fastest-growing product, achieving a remarkable "$0 to $12 million journey in two years and three months" and earning recognition in the Forbes Cloud 100.
This experience was transformative. Srikrishnan witnessed firsthand the power of a world-class go-to-market engine and the momentum that comes from solving a known, painful problem. He didn’t just learn how to build a product; he learned how to build a high-velocity SaaS business.
The Vision: Why Onboarding is The Second Sale
It was during this period of hyper-growth at Freshworks that the seeds for Rocketlane were planted. Srikrishnan lived the very problem he would later set out to solve. He saw how the critical customer onboarding phase—the journey from a closed deal to a successful, live customer—was chronically underserved.
“Whenever we were selling to, like, mid-market or enterprise customers, you'll finish the sale, but to go live with the customer was, like, a real headache and so much chaos.”
He realized that this journey was managed by a messy patchwork of generic project management tools, spreadsheets, and endless email chains. This led to siloed work, a lack of visibility for both the team and the customer, and a "hero-driven" culture where success depended on the unsustainable efforts of a few key individuals rather than a reliable system. This core insight led to his foundational philosophy: successful project delivery requires process, transparency, and accountability, not just individual heroics.
The Vehicle: Rocketlane, A Purpose-Built Platform
Forged in the fires of this direct experience, Rocketlane was officially founded in April 2020. The company's mission is to accelerate how quickly businesses can deliver value to their customers by transforming the entire process of customer project delivery.
Rocketlane is a purpose-built, collaborative platform designed for customer onboarding, implementation, and professional services teams. It unifies project management, resource management, communication, and client collaboration into a single, sleek workspace. By providing a dedicated, magic-link-accessible portal for clients, Rocketlane eliminates the black box of traditional implementations, offering radical transparency that builds trust from day one. This focused approach has earned it the #1 rating in the Client Onboarding software category on G2.
Growth and Strategy: The Rocketlane Playbook
Since its founding, Rocketlane has demonstrated impressive velocity, raising a total of $45 million in venture capital from top-tier investors like 8VC, Matrix Partners India, and Nexus Venture Partners.
Seed Round (June 2021): $3 Million
Series A (Jan 2022): $18 Million
Series B (June 2024): $24 Million
This financial backing is fueled by a deliberate and modern strategy that rejects conventional startup wisdom.
Community-Led Growth: In a masterstroke of go-to-market strategy, the team launched the Preflight community a full nine months before Rocketlane was commercially available. Preflight has since become the #1 online community for customer onboarding and implementation professionals, boasting over 1,200 members. This community-led approach provided a channel for continuous market research, established the brand as a thought leader, and cultivated a pipeline of enthusiastic early adopters.
The Anti-MVP Strategy: Srikrishnan is blunt about his product philosophy:
"MVPs are dead for mature markets."
Believing that a half-baked product is a recipe for failure in crowded software categories, the Rocketlane team employed a "Clarity Before Code" strategy. Before writing a single line of code, they conducted over 80 interviews and logged more than 200 hours of recorded calls, asking users to show them their broken, manual workflows in painstaking detail. This ensured that when Rocketlane launched, it was a fully-formed, polished, and clearly differentiated solution.
The Future: An AI-Powered Revolution
With its latest $24 million funding round, Rocketlane is focused on an ambitious AI roadmap. The vision extends far beyond simple automation. The goal is to revolutionize project delivery with "copilot experiences, automations, forecasting, insights, and recommendations." Srikrishnan envisions a future with agentic intelligence that can proactively manage project health, generate client updates, and fundamentally change the economics of professional services.
His journey, from a first-time founder learning hard lessons about market timing to a second-time founder building a category-defining company, is a powerful testament to the value of experience, deep empathy for the customer, and a relentless focus on solving a problem you understand intimately. For Srikrishnan Ganesan and Rocketlane, the mission is clear: to become the default software for any and all customer-facing projects.
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