Jyothi Swaroop was brought in to bring “unreasonable velocity” to what’s already the world’s largest end-to-end EV charging company, ChargePoint. He attacked the challenge as he has done time and time again, by thinking big. “Small thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he told Entrepreneur.
Swaroop spoke with us about his career and success in finding ways to unlock explosive growth, offering his unique insights to entrepreneurs on pivoting, focusing your efforts, and ensuring that your team is never sitting around guessing, “What is my boss thinking?”
What do you mean by small thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
As chief growth officer, I don’t want people thinking in terms of 5% or 10% improvement. I want them to think in a 5x or 10x improvement frame of mind. It completely shakes up someone’s mindset when they are trying to get 10x out of a project, rather than trying to eke out 5%. If you really want to make something meaningful, you need resistance, not the path of least resistance.
How do you define “big thinking”?
Thinking big can mean different things depending on where you are in your journey. If you are a billionaire, it might mean building a new five-billion-dollar business. If you’ve just started a pool-cleaning service, it might mean aiming to add 10 new houses to your customer list by the end of the month, instead of adding only one new house. But either way, thinking big creates big results.
What have you learned from mentors that changed the way you think?
Everything I’ve learned I’ve learned from others. One of my biggest personal and professional mentors, though, is my dad. He started as a lift-machine engineer at a watch manufacturing factory and, after 34 years, retired as the CEO at that same company. It’s an incredibly inspiring story for me. One of the lessons I learned from him that changed the way I think centers on a phrase he used to say, which was, “Send the elevator down.” What that means is that it doesn’t matter what floor you’re on during your career. You need to send the elevator down so that other people can get on the same journey and rise up to your level, or even go higher if they so choose. It’s an analogy I take seriously. I’m passionate about seeing the career paths of my team members grow, and sending the elevator down to them, to make sure they can go as high as they want.
Tell us about a time you made a decision everyone around you disagreed with and what happened next.
In one of my former companies, a decision had been made internally to pivot almost entirely to an indirect sales model. I strongly disagreed with this, instead encouraging a direct, account-based approach. The company wanted to pivot to an indirect model because they were a technology-first company, and I think they didn’t quite grasp what was needed to sell to the CXO personas. But I knew they weren’t going to get the revenue they needed with an indirect sales model.
Eventually, the Board and CEO agreed with me. It was baby steps at first, but after a time, we were able to move the business to an 80/20 model, with an 80 percent direct business. And you know what? It resulted in 3x growth in revenue over 2 years, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps equally important to this was that the direct sales model helped form strong relationships with CXOs and VPs, which holds the company in good standing, even still today.
What is a leadership tactic you swear by?
There’s a principle I strongly believe in that focuses on what I call “What Three Things?” This means finding what three things are important for the next month, the next quarter, or the next year. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or working in a larger corporate structure, you need to distill your priorities down to three things. It creates focus, it creates clarity, and it will help your business grow. Add it to your playbook.
Once you have those priorities, the rest is fairly simple. If you’ve hired the right team, the next step is getting out of the way. Let your team do its job. If you’ve hired the right people, and you’ve told them the top three priorities, there should be a level of trust that they can get things done on their own. Your team should not be thinking “what is my boss thinking?” They will never be creative or execute properly if they are thinking that.
Separately, I also believe in the philosophy of moving with “unreasonable velocity.” AI allows you to do this now. Move fast and keep moving. You might break things, but you’ll recover and keep moving. Innovate and do it fast. It’s about adjusting to our times, honestly. The world is no longer incremental — it’s exponential.
Jyothi Swaroop was brought in to bring “unreasonable velocity” to what’s already the world’s largest end-to-end EV charging company, ChargePoint. He attacked the challenge as he has done time and time again, by thinking big. “Small thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he told Entrepreneur.
Swaroop spoke with us about his career and success in finding ways to unlock explosive growth, offering his unique insights to entrepreneurs on pivoting, focusing your efforts, and ensuring that your team is never sitting around guessing, “What is my boss thinking?”
What do you mean by small thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
As chief growth officer, I don’t want people thinking in terms of 5% or 10% improvement. I want them to think in a 5x or 10x improvement frame of mind. It completely shakes up someone’s mindset when they are trying to get 10x out of a project, rather than trying to eke out 5%. If you really want to make something meaningful, you need resistance, not the path of least resistance.