Gokul Rajaram
speaker
1,839 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 16 Mar
Gokul Rajaram’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
takeover labor and so vertical software right it's no longer sauce it's basically i did software as a service but it is services so you're going after the services spent so one of the interesting things as you know is that verticals mostly especially if you're selling to small businesses they spend some amount of tooling but they spend a tremendous amount on both bpo as well as on human capital human labor you need to basically target those two spends and i think if you do that and you're committed to building the whole product you can absolutely
No, we are seeing that.
We are seeing that.
I think the first one, most businesses don't want to lay off people.
So the way we are seeing it, the first thing that's happening is businesses are outsourcing to third-party BPOs, many of them in India, Philippines, etc.
That spend is the easiest to cut because now you can offer the same service higher quality, faster, and 20%, 30% cheaper.
The second thing they do is when somebody leaves, they don't replace that person.
And the third thing they do is layoffs.
So I think layoff is still maybe a little bit a while away, but you're seeing absolutely BPO spend.
All the call center companies that you mentioned, all the next generation AI customer service companies, they're going after BPO budgets.
I was shocked when I was doing work in this space, how many different verticals, doctor's offices, et cetera, use call centers outside the US.
They already have budget clearly allocated, and there's a better service.
So I think it's BPO spent first, don't replace the person second, and then potentially think about laying off.
I didn't know 30,000.
There are two outcomes for these companies.
All of us have those companies in our portfolio.
A bunch of them are going to become zombie companies.
They're going to try to add AI features as a last resort, not succeed and be sold to PE.
The problem is even that might not be a good outcome because PE itself is struggling to digest the companies they bought a couple of years ago and the prices have reset.
They do have good assets.
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