Happy First Birthday, SanjMo

Thank you, my esteemed readers, for your support in my first year of being an independent analyst. It has been a pivotal year filled with lots of success and discovery. This is only my second newsletter since I started the company in July 2021.

I started the year without knowing what lay ahead. It was a leap of faith into an unknown world of entrepreneurship. My calendar suddenly swung wide open. I am happy to report that I ended up working with over twenty clients and executing wide-ranging and exciting projects. A common purpose emerged: help technology companies with go-to-market strategy.

As I write this, I do feel much pressure from my customers and well-wishers asking me what my long-term strategy is. Some have asked when my company will hire other analysts to blossom into a boutique advisory. All I can say is that I am living in the moment. And enjoying my engagements immensely.

A Year in Retrospect

A hallmark of my past year is that I am still discovering my potential. I am constantly surprised by the range of activities I would perform. Some of my accomplishments include:

• It Depends podcast. I launched this YouTube channel in Jan 2022 and have averaged one podcast every two weeks. YouTube informs me I have 5,000 views and over 500 hours of viewership from users across the world.
• Publishing. My writing cadence has improved and I have taken to the joy of writing. I also got accepted into the Forbes Council and my first document is close to being published. My favorite line on this topic is from Jane Didion, “I write to find out what I’m thinking.”
• Conferences. In-person conferences came back with a vengeance. It seems like contracting COVID-19 became the price for freedom and a rite of passage for many attendees. Nevertheless, yours truly attended about 14 conferences and events between January to July 2022. I got an opportunity to keynote many of the events, such as Okera Airside, Starburst Datanova and data.world Summit. In addition, I addressed a few customer advisory board meetings and sales enablement sessions.
• Event organization. While we are on the topic of events, I did a turnkey analyst day for a client. This action-packed event was packed with vigorous discussions from leadership, customers, partners and industry analysts. No one wanted the brainstorming to end.

In the process of doing these public speaking events, I have developed some excellent partnerships and friendships, such as with SiliconAngle theCUBE and DM Radio. Showing up to these events has been a transformative experience for me as I now have to critically analyze recent developments in the context of the bigger picture in order to provide thought-provoking insights. I have gone from being a passenger to being a driver.

All these accomplishments were public facing. Some people may assume that all I do is to go around the world and pontificate. However, the reality is that my revenue-bearing projects happen behind the scenes. These have included performing competitive intelligence research, creating evaluation criteria, helping companies refine their GTM strategy and pitching to large analyst firms like Gartner.

What hasn’t worked well?

My focus on urgent things has taken me away from the important ones. This long-overdue newsletter is prime evidence #1. My website being out of date is another.

I had written over 500 pages of content for my book and I went through the early part of the year with an editor, but I still haven’t published. I am now planning to repurpose the content by developing a masterclass on core data infrastructure in 2022 (see below).

There are many other unfinished ideas, such as developing a community of like-minded people, and running a technology unconference. I had also expected to grow my LinkedIn network rapidly, but have added only about 1,500 new contacts in the last six months. Somehow, I feel OK with this progression. I feel my followers are deeply aligned with my space of data and analytics. I have moved slowly but emphasized quality over quantity.

Ok, let’s get back to the positive aspects.

Lessons learned

When my kids were growing up I learned a new term, “adulting”. This is my version of adulting! I am eager to share some of the lessons I have learned in my first year.

Impostor syndrome. Oh man, do I love this concept. I start each day with a blank slate and a mild sense of panic, aka, impostor syndrome. I have made friends with this concept because I interpret it as pushing the envelope and stepping out of my comfort zone. If you don’t have one, go get it. You can thank me later.

Be a builder. The only reason one gets impostor syndrome is because they are constantly creating new deliverables. I find this joy of creation to be one of the most satisfying parts of my day. It is only possible because my calendar is no longer filled with mind-numbing, useless meetings. I have time to think. I also joke that when I refer to a staff meeting, it means that I am talking to myself.

Stop planning. Ok, you must wonder what kind of idiotic advice this is. I myself was shocked to hear a motivational speaker claim that “planning is a form of procrastination.” I took this to heart and now try to constantly be in an execution or delivery mode. Instead of planning a project, I start “preparing.”

So, what does year 2 look like?

I began year 2 with some soul searching. How to transform the joys of living in the moment into a more sustainable strategy. We may also be heading into a recession and I want to keep my options open. I have no dearth of unsolicited advice. And I listen to it all, howsoever conflicting.

I am looking forward to adding more structure to make my business scalable. I have eschewed the notion of having a strategy because I feel that the modern data space is so dynamic that strategies come and go, and one needs to be agile and adapt to the dynamic nature of our industry.

My year 2 plans include:

Launch a masterclass. I am in the process of compiling some of my learnings over the years and am putting together a technical class on architecting the modern data infrastructure. In the first of the series, I want to talk about the components, best practices, lessons learned, taxonomy of technologies, evaluation criteria, and pitfalls to avoid.

Advisory. Continue adding more clients and breadth of projects. This is what I was born to do. I have become a keen student of technology and market trends. However, I’ve had to come up to speed with the financial aspects of companies, like ARR, NDR etc.

Update my website. I have generated content faster than I can catalog. So, everyday the work to refresh my website seems even more daunting.

Closing

Jeff Bezos says, “day 2” is a statis. A flatline. I hope to live every day of SanjMo’s second year as “day 1.”

I will leave you all with a question that I often ask myself: What can you start creating today?

When you answer it, don’t stop there — put pen to paper; there is nothing that will propel you more than making this commitment to yourself and your future ideas.

Until next time.

Sanjeev Mohan