Some entrepreneurs like to talk about people who set an example for them, who inspire them and who are their mentors in running business. Do you also have such a guru?
When we talk about Polish entrepreneurs, I have to mention Rafał Agnieszczak. I have been observing him for many years and I have also known him for some time now. Rafał gave us advice when we started to build Brand24. I often ask him philosophical questions as there are not many people with such experience. As far as foreign businessmen are concerned, I can mention three names. The first one is Elon Musk, the author of Space X, Tesla and a man who contributed to the success of PayPal. I’m very impressed with what he does. The second person of similar calibre is Nick Woodman, the head of GoPro, who has managed to create something out of nothing in only a few years. The third person is David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-author of Basecamp. This service is an example for the whole SaaS sector. I have to admit that the success of this brand has inspired us to create our own tool.
Looking at the four people you have just mentioned I can see that two of them deal strictly with software and online services while the other two – with more tangible products such as cars, cameras or spacer rockets. Would you like to create something more substantial than the SaaS service in the future?
Nowadays almost everything can be made in Chinese factories. Therefore, I believe that more and more products will be teetering between hardware and software. Tesla cars and GoPro cameras are connected to the Internet after all. If I’m going to realise a new project in the future, I will try to bring the world of software and the world of hardware together.
Quoting Marc Andreessen, “software is eating the world”…
That’s true because the margin on software is much higher. Talking about equipment, I mean such hardware that is the extension of software. In the last few years Apple has owed its success not only to hardware but also to the ecosystem of software. One could even say that iPhone or iPad are only software finishes, mainly iTunes and App Store applications. I believe in such hardware that is the emanation of software.
Your company is growing quite quickly. Do you focus only on managing it or do you sometimes let your imagination run wild and think about new projects? Or maybe the future outside Brand24 is a complete abstraction for you?
It’s definitely a complete abstraction. The company develops really well but we still face many challenges and have lots of things to do. I don’t want to spread myself too thin. Our aim is to become a global leader in our sector. I wake up and fall asleep thinking only about that.
“We want to become a global leader” – that’s a serious goal…
It is as serious as “we want to become a leader in Poland” – the goal that we had when we started. For the first time we presented Brand24 in 2011, during the Startup Weekend in Warsaw. We said then that we wanted to become a leader of Internet monitoring in Poland and I remember that we didn’t receive very enthusiastic comments. Not many people, especially investors, believed in us and we were rejected by a few funds, which decided there was no point in investing in us because the market was already full. Well…These last three years have taught me that you have to run your business believing that it’s going to be a success.
Especially that the global market is much more interesting that the Polish one was when we started in 2011. The sector is full of companies that have been operating for many years. They started when technology was expensive and prices were high. Years went by and their products as well as prices haven’t changed much. With our modern product, modern functions and modern layout, which are available at a much better price, we have a chance to make a global impact.
We hired a salesperson who deals with global markets only two months ago but we have already managed to find several clients from abroad. These are usually companies that were aware of such tools that we offer but they couldn’t afford them.
How much time will it take for Brand24 to become a global leader in Internet monitoring?
No one knows but I foresee it will take us two years, although it can easily be four or five years. Everything depends on when we will manage to pass the critical point of market education and join the so-called long tail. We prefer such clients as owners of small restaurants, small and medium PR or advertising agencies as well as family companies and brands. We want to show all entrepreneurs that monitoring is not that bad and expensive and that they don’t need an army of people to do it. These tools are available not only to corporations but also to small and medium businesses.
From the point of view of Brand24’s clients monitoring itself may not require an army of people but developing a product and customer service, which your company is famous from, does, especially if you want to be a global leader…
Talking about people, the biggest needs are connected with IT service for the whole product. At the moment, our service process is so automatized that one person can help hundreds of customers and still maintain the service on a high level. We are constantly working on making all processes automatic and with time this proportion will grow – I think that in order to provide global service to thousands of customers we will need a few dozens of people. In Poland we started with one person and now we hire 30 people.
As far as I know, Brand24 is growing organically. After all, you don’t have any investors…
It’s quite a funny story. For 10 months we didn’t have any income from Brand24 and in our previous company we were used to high salaries and so we decided to look for support. Many renowned and recognised investors rejected us claiming that it’s never going to happen and that such business has no future in Poland, not mentioning the global market. They claimed that there are many companies like ours and we don’t stand out against them. We reached the point when we were ready to give up the company only for a full-time job as product managers in a bigger structure. Luckily no one was ready to do it. Our business partners and people who helped us get the company going in 2011 were those whom we wanted to sell the first subscriptions to. Instead they became our business partners. We still manage to grow our company without any external financing.
Do you think it’s possible to become a global leader without any investors?
Maybe we could become a global leader growing organically but it would take us much more time than if we had an investor with some experience on the international market. I can reveal that 2015 is going to be the year of significant financing. We are already talking with some funds from the USA, Great Britain and Poland. The funny thing is that in 2011 some of them rejected our idea…
Judging from your activity in social media one can assume that you are very involved in your company and everything that goes on around it. You join discussions about it and you actively build the image of the company as well as your own. Are you thinking about how long such a level of involvement can be maintained considering the company’s growth and your global ambitions?
The character and intensity of my involvement are already changing. Some time ago we hired Mikołaj Winkiel to become our main evangelist. He also takes an active part in discussions about the company. I think that along with the global expansion we will have one brand manager in every country we offer our product. This person will be responsible for keeping fingers on the pulse.
I’m also going to be ready for action all the time. I like joining discussions about Brand24. The willingness and ability to interact with clients or potential clients proves, in my opinion, if someone is a good entrepreneur and a good leader. It’s worth stressing, though, that in the case of Brand24 it is easier to react to every mention of the company because we operate in the sector where, in order to become a global leader, you need to have several dozens of clients. I cannot imagine Elon Musk being able to react every time someone mentions his company but in my case it can be done.
To what extent do your business style and the way you build your brand come from the fact that you are the person you are rather than calculations that someone running a business like yours has to take into consideration to attract customers?
Many people believe that Brand24 has become a success because I’m the person I am. I think that the way I build the image of our brand as well as my own results from the fact that Brand24 has become a success. I don’t have a hidden “2011 strategy”, which said that I woukd be regularly updating my Facebook profile and write about the things that are going on in my company and that this openness culture will generate a certain conversion.
If someone believes such a document exists, this person highly overrates my planning abilities. Most of my Facebook posts are spontaneous. It comes from the fact that I feel a strong need to be appreciated. Therefore I share or boast about the successes of Brand24 and I openly write about the challenges we are going to face. I don’t want to show that I’m better but I want to feel that someone appreciates what I do. All this was natural for me. The afterthought that my style of communicating with the world has worked came later. During a training session I analysed my activities and only then I wrote down my mini strategy. Now I encourage entrepreneurs to cultivate the openness culture, sharing everything that’s going on in their companies and demonstrating things that others can use in growing their business. I can see that what you give is what you get.
Was this need to be appreciated a key element in choosing your career path? Was it the reason why you have become an entrepreneur?
If I said it was the case and that I always wanted to have my own company because I wanted to be appreciated, I would be making up the ideology to my actions. The truth is that there are many coincidences in this. When I was a fourth-year-student, I wanted to work in a corporation. I thought I would become a programmer at Siemens or Comarch. I entered the Internet world by accident. On the other hand, I was always good at creating websites and I think I would do the same thing anyway. No matter if I worked in a corporation or any other institution, I would always want something more. This “more” means a position of a global leader in Internet monitoring.
The interview was conducted by Paweł Luty / Brief Magazine
Photo © from private archives of Michał Sadowski
