Dmytro Grechko: The Impact of Branding & Building Innovative Digital Products for Your StartUp

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akeel Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about the impact of branding and building innovative digital products when launching your startup. Today we have our guest, Dmytro Gretschko, joining us. Dimitro is a self-taught entrepreneur and software engineer who found his passion and borrowed his inspiration from the constant process of learning and meeting new people. His skills and interests range from emerging technologies and the latest marketing trends to sports and music. He is the founder and CEO of Destri Studio, where he specializes in helping brick-and-mortar companies digitize their operation and reinvent their business with the latest technologies. His personal goal is to help early-stage startups and entrepreneurs uncover their true potential in new unique markets and connect them with like-minded investors and the right people for the job. So welcome, Dimitro, uh, glad to have you on our show today, and hopefully that was a good introduction.

Thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

Cool. Um, so from my understanding, at Destry you help, uh, non-tech founders create their products and launch them, right? How are they building or writing the code, or how are they continuing to build a product after they launch if they don't have a CTO or that tech background?

Well, I think the most challenging thing for non-tech founders is to understand the technology and its dynamics, because a lot of people are under the impression that technology is something easy and If they want to build some features or anything, it can be done within a very short period of time, which is true. However, with startups' limited resources, it's not always the truth. Besides that, understanding the technology can help them broaden their mind in terms of where they can lead their product in the next year, 5 years, or 10 years. So our job is not just to build the product for them. but also to educate them about technology and what it is. And it's quite often that I actually personally teach some founders how to code so that they actually understand what it is about their ability. And it's that process helped them to hire a CTO later on. So initially for startups that we work with, we do the coding and we teach them about it. And we also explain to them what are the characteristics of the CTO that will be suitable for their company. And until they find one, we serve as a CTO. Sometimes, you know, just as a hired agency. Sometimes we sit on the board of advisors, but we pretty much guide the startup from the initial stage of an idea to launching the product, even hiring the developers and the CTO and other team members.

Got it. So can you get a little deeper on like what the standard strategy or playbook is? So if I'm a startup, I come to you, I need some help as a founder. How am I managing my resources to get to launch and then finally to hire and build a team and then be able to go on my own?

Yeah, absolutely. I think with startups, so startup by definition is an organization that's trying to do the impossible with zero resources. So, and we at the studio completely understand that. So our Usually our approach with startups is the minimum is the best, and we actually work with them to minimize their product so that it's, you know, easy to launch and it's suitable for the market. So building the right MVP, and we help to employ the technology that will help to make this process faster because we do a lot of R&D internally. And we do have a lot of tools that we've created that allow us to make simple apps not in a few months but in a few weeks. So this approach helps startups with limited budgets to actually create their product and launch it.

Now, other— sorry, continue.

Yeah, and usually startups come to us with various resources. Some people have something they've accumulated from their family, some people Sold their houses to build a startup. So this is— yes, we've been in various situations, and depending on the product and the budget available, we go completely different roads.

So are they coming to you with the idea and say, hey, I just sold my house, here's some cash, build this product for me? Or are they coming to you and say, hey, I want to start a startup? And then how do you assess— like, are you involved in assessing the market viability? with the solution, the SaaS solution that you're helping them build, or are you just there until they find product-market fit? How involved are you in that side of it?

Actually, we are involved as much as the founders allow us to be involved, and most of the time I would say that we refuse to work with probably 80% of the startups that come to us because, well, first of all, like, I'm personally a believer that there is no concept of a great idea. Every reasonable idea is great, but at the same time, it's all about how involved the founder is in the process. And because success depends on this implementation, if we look like Airbnb seemed like a crazy idea a few years ago, nobody wanted to invest. And we look at it now, 3D printers seemed like an amazing idea, and everybody was saying that, well, in a few years everybody will have one. But turns out it's not really the case. So for us, it's mostly like we involved with the founders to identify whether what they are building is a great thing for the market. And it's so easy because you can do a lot of research, you can assess the market size, the yearly growth rate, and things like that. But at the end of the year, like, you can see that it all comes down to what people say. Because if you put this through customer lenses and ask people questions like, would you like— from the industry, would you like to have this product? Would you want to use it? If so, how would you like to use this? This actually answers the question whether the product is fit for the existing market. And later on, yes, we assess the market size and things like that, but we're involved very deep in the process from the beginning.

So you guys are actually going out and doing the research or helping them do that? Speaking to potential clients and seeing if there's actual interest.

We do, we do the research. We help them even create the scripts. We help them create their pitch decks, their public speaking. So it's mostly, it comes down to everything that we see they might need at this stage, because throughout the years, through our own mistakes, we've accumulated a lot of knowledge, and this is some something that we want our startups to have. And quite often we just, even if we see that we're not the right fit for the startup, let's say they don't have enough budget to work with us, what we're gonna do anyway, we're gonna make a few sessions with them, we're gonna explain to them as much as we can about what they should do from our perspective. And yeah, so it's all about helping.

Cool. So I know you also work with brick-and-mortar companies, right? You help them digitize their operation, reinvent their business with the help of using more modern technology. What are some trends or certain businesses you've seen that this works really well recently in making that shift?

Yeah, well, I would say that revenue-wise for us, it's probably 70% of the revenue is brick-and-mortar companies. However, workload-wise, it's pretty much 60% startups, 40% brick-and-mortars. So we definitely seen a lot of trends, and some of them very unfortunate from our perspective. So, but it all depends on the business. So for some businesses that we work with, they're partially digitalized. So for them, the innovation might lie in using artificial intelligence to boost their productivity or, you know, analyze some patterns. But 80% of the time, it's still 2 things. It's automation and Because unfortunately a lot of businesses are still doing a lot of manual labor, which is expensive, it's inefficient, it, you know, ought to subject to a lot of errors, and this is not the right way. So we help them automate everything from quotation, inventory management, marketing, you name it. And beside that, it's also client communication, because a lot of businesses still communicate with their clients in an old way. And we help them find out creative ways of doing this. So let it be a mobile app, let it be a chatbot, you know, an app for Google Home or anything like that. We've even seen one of our brick-and-mortar clients turning into SaaS startups and selling their products, physical products as a service through digital tools. So there is definitely a trend towards new way of communicating with the existing client base.

Can you give some examples of some companies? You don't have to say the name, but what kind of stores are these? For example, that one that was brick-and-mortar, moved to a SaaS company.

Give me an example.

What was it?

This is a Canadian-based company. It's an accounting firm, and they traditionally work with very brick-and-mortar organizations. Mostly it was medical, dentists. They work with construction companies as well. They, due to the COVID they've seen that this is the way they operate. This is not really the right way. So what they've done, they divided their services into multiple packages and we helped them create a platform where they can manage the financials of their clients. The client can see the financial, they can see and access all their documents at any time, and they would communicate with them through this platform. And now we're about to launch this product, but we already received some really good feedback on that. And with them, they didn't have any experience with using technology at that level before, so for them it's a big shift, but it's a shift in a very good direction.

Pretty cool. I wanna talk about branding a little bit because I know that's a big function of what you guys do at the beginning stage of the startup. How important is having the right brand and design from the beginning for startups at the early stage of development?

I would say there is a huge misconception that a lot of startups and even large companies have about branding. So when it comes to branding, a lot of people who inquire to us, they're like, well, branding-wise, can you make a logo for me? Well, branding is not just a logo. It's pretty much, it's a unique way company communicates with its customers, but it's not even customers, it's employees, it's investors and other stakeholders. And most importantly, it has to be understandable and memorable because when people see your brand, they have to understand immediately what it is about and they have to remember that very much. And it has to be reflected everywhere. It's not just the logo, it's not just the website, It's emails that you send to your customers. It's for startups, it's also their pitch deck, the words they choose when they talk to investors. So brand is all about communication. And for us, the most important thing to establish with either a startup or any company that we work with is, okay, so what is that they want to communicate with their clients, why it's unique, and what's the best way of doing it? And then based on that, we help them with the logo and all the identities. So, you know, it's one big process.

Makes sense. And the same applies, I'm assuming, for whether it's a brick-and-mortar or a tech company, right? That the same concept should apply?

Yeah, absolutely. It is the same process for a multi-billion-dollar company or for a one-man shop. But for one-man shop or for startups, they must do a better job than a big company because the big company has already established themselves in the market. They already have the outreach, they already have the resources and everything to make sure that people remember them. And the job of the startup is to create the unique and memorable and understandable identity so that their customer is gonna remember them. and they're gonna come to them and they're gonna associate their service with them, which is extremely important. For example, everybody associates— like when you think of CRM system, right? Everybody thinks Salesforce like immediately. So for any company that is doing new CRM system, their job is to break that association with CRM from Salesforce. They want to have associated with their company. So it is a tedious, very tedious process.

Can you share a little bit in more detail what that process looks like for establishing that connection? For example, I saw that one site I thought you did a really good job with, which was called Sir Winebot. I'll make a link to that as well, or any other startups in particular, but I really like that one. If you can speak about how that process looked like.

Yeah, so Sir Winebot With our studio, we launch internal products and we usually launch them every 3 to 6 months. The reason why we do that is because we want to discover different industries and we want to feel ourselves as a startup because this is a part that all of us are kind of missing. So every 3 or 4 months, like, hey, let's build a new product. So Certain Wine Bot, the idea was to make wine, you know, more sexy and entertainment for millennials. And the process of creating the brand for that took 4 months of work. And the way, you see, the way the branding came out is, for example, you're gonna buy wine, most probably not the one that you see in the store, but the one that has been recommended to you by a friend.

Exactly.

So our job was to create a friend. And the friend had to be funny, the friend had to be entertaining, and had to be close to you. So the way we've done this, it's— so the logo of the Wine Bot, yes, it is bright, entertaining, with a monocle and everything. So this guy is really, really funny. And it's also, he seemed— he seems old, so he's experienced about wine, but at the same time, he's very, you know, he's not distant from you. You can talk to him. And we've done it in the way that it knows all the movies. So for example, you can pair the wine with a movie. So you name it a movie and it's gonna recommend you wine in the light of that movie. For example, for Game of Thrones, it's gonna recommend that with some jokes about Game of Thrones and so on. So the idea was to make this accessible and funny so that people can learn about the wine and, you know, they want to drink wine. And this got a lot of attention because when we were at Collision event in Toronto, we've got a lot of interesting companies sign up. We've got IBM using this, 43North, TELUS, a lot of other companies. And in addition to that, we've got inquiries from Constellation Brands, which is a huge wine and spirits company. And all of that was with zero marketing dollars. We've just been on one conference with One bright brand and that got a lot of attention. So I think it's a good example of what the right brand can do without investing a lot of dollars in the advertising.

Cool. Kind of sells itself, right? Catches the attention.

Yeah.

So I know you're based in Canada just like me, but you also work with startups all over the world, right?

Yeah.

What differences do you see in the market adoption rate And the investment and startup ecosystem between, say, Canada, between Europe, which I think we spoke about a little bit before the show, and then also the U.S., let's say.

Yeah. So for Canada, I'm I'm very proud of you know being in this country because I'm I'm originally from Ukraine. I came here what seven years ago, and when I first came here, I went to different startup events and. I remember that those events would appear once a month and there were like 10-15 people on them. And now we have events where there is hundreds of people joining every few— every week or so. And this is growing crazy. So I can say with confidence that based on what I see investment-wise and even the amount of startups here, I can see that this one— that Canada itself, and specifically Toronto, is becoming the fastest-growing tech hub in North America. I think a huge reason for that is also governmental policy because, for example, if we're doing R&D as a startup or as any enterprise that works with us, the government can actually refund up to 60% of expenses and tax credits if it's done on innovations. Besides that, If there is any startup from Europe or Asia or anywhere in the world that has a talented idea and is going to be a fit for Canadian market, that startup can be established in Canadian market within a few months. This is also thanks to immigration policy. So government plays definitely a huge role here, and that's why it's growing fast. Europe, Europe is great. I think I've been there a lot, and like I lived in various countries in Europe. Europe a lot. And but there is— I would say that the VC structure is yet to be fully developed because a lot of classic European investors still perceive investing in startups as a big US bubble, as one guy in Italy told me a few months back in September on the conference, because they don't believe in that trend. However, there's still a lot of great startups, especially Medtech, fintech startups, privacy startups—they are growing. And I would say that U.S. and Canada actually steals a lot of startups from this ecosystem because of the way it's structured. So this is a great field, absolutely. But I think it's going to be changing a lot. U.S. still dominates, like by all means. There is a huge population. There is a huge capital, everything. But the barriers, financial barriers to headquarter there and to manage the team, especially if we're talking about Silicon Valley, it's not a good option for a lot of startups. So I would say that there's definitely a shift towards Canada, and but, you know, US is still a larger market. So any startup that operates North America, they have to operate in US.

Makes sense. Yeah. Now when you're working with a founder, right, you have a— you're trying to build the solution. So you have a solution, it should provide enough value to the end user. But I always feel like sometimes the founder or the client has a proposal with features maybe they rarely use, or the founder isn't very clear on what their vision is or knows exactly what they need, right? They're like, I want to solve this problem, but maybe they don't know what the better— best approach is. How do you guys agree and align to have the same vision for actual functional features versus non-functional features, the pricing strategy, the real problem to that solution that it aims to solve, and make sure you still deliver the maximum value there? How do you keep that balance with the founder? Because you're not the entrepreneur, right, at the end of the day?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is, you see, this is the toughest problem that we have and that any startup has because founders by nature, and I remember myself, I was the victim of the same problem, is they're very self-confident and some even self-confidence and confidence in their vision. So for them, there is a huge misconception that the more features you have, the better you can attract your customers.

That's right.

For example, when we were building our first SaaS platform, I was like, well, Asana has those features, well, we must have more, that's the way we're gonna attract customers, which is definitely not the case. And I think the best medicine for this is user feedback. And what we're doing with a lot of founders, we'll say, okay, so you have this amazing number of features that you cannot really explain in 8 seconds, so you need at least 10 minutes to explain what your product is about. So how about we do this? We're gonna take you to a conference, and we did it like we were going with founders to Lisbon Web Summit, to Collision, to different places. And we're like, okay, how about you try to explain what your problem is about and what solution you're building to the people and see what they say? So when we put it like that, and we've seen a lot of founders change right away because they see that people don't understand their product, they don't know what it is about, and And this is too much for them to absorb, and that's the the moment they step back a little bit and they're like, okay, now let's see. The other medicine is this: is for example, like we tell they have this number feature and what what we're doing like okay, so we're gonna estimate you amount of hours that is needed to complete this and this and this feature, and we're gonna show you what's gonna cost for a team to. you know, make this within, let's say, 3 months or a year. And usually because there's a lot of features, that costs like hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

And that's the way, like, okay, well, that's maybe not what we want to do right now. And then what we do, we create a visual prototype of the whole product and we put it as a vision in 5 years, and then we cut it half, half, half, half, half until it's an MVP. And this is the MVP that we then test on the customers, like through the interviews, you know, show demos and so on. And when the customers say, well, I want that, I need that, that's the moment we say, yes, we're building that. But the problem here is quite often the founders come up with a great idea, as they think, and then they try to find the problem for this. I think it's probably 90% of the cases. Which is really, really bad approach, really bad. So that's why, like, we usually— the first thing we ask any founder that comes to us is like, what is the problem that you're solving? Why is it the problem? And who else experiences this problem? And based on that, we're gonna go out next.

If you're getting any negative feedback or not as much positive feedback as you You would have liked, but the founder is still adamant in moving forward, do you still, you know, okay, we'll do it just because you ask, or you say, look, this is not gonna work, and, you know, kind of turn them away?

You see, this really depends on the situation. If we see that they can afford a mistake, we'll let them do this, and we've seen that quite often. We've seen founders building the product for a few months without— we literally almost had fights with founders founder sometimes, literally, because we had 6 hours in the meetings and, you know, nothing, nothing else. And I understand that we also don't know everything and everything has to be tested. And what usually happens when the founder doesn't listen at all, we themselves, like, we say, okay, so this is— we write it down. This is what we think is gonna happen and we want to show it to you. So You're the owner of the idea, you're the brand owner, so you make the decision. If you wanna decide to move forward, we as a team are gonna support you, so we're gonna help you here, but this is what we believe is gonna happen. And then a few months down the road, what usually happens is not even what we decided, what we described, it's mostly something in between, and then they see like, okay, it doesn't work. And if the founder is, I wouldn't say smart enough, I would say that—

Humble enough.

He has enough confidence in himself and in the product, he's gonna switch it a little bit and move to the next direction. Because at the end of the day, this is what any startup is gonna experience. We haven't seen a single startup that was launched and everything went smoothly like this. Usually you have to do a few pivots and then you're gonna grow.

Right, so if they're a little bit open-minded, they'll hopefully look to pivot. If not, I mean, you can advise them. Give them your recommendation, but at the end of the day, they choose to go for it. Like you said, they want to make that mistake, that's on them. What for you is an ideal profile of entrepreneurs that you've seen succeed, who you want to work with, and who are also, say, non-tech focused? What are the minimum requirements that they need to have in your mind?

For me, I believe that I would say that we mostly operate on red flags. What I mean by that is, for example, if we hear people saying that, hey, I've got this great idea and I was thinking of building that, at this moment we say no because this is, this is not a startup. This is a side hustle that people are gonna be trying to do one year in the evening before supper, and this is not something we wanna work with. So for us, founders is, they are super serious about their product. They have to be ready to learn because first-time founders, they need to absorb a lot of information and really, really fast. And this information— financial, sales, marketing, operations, tech— so there's definitely a lot of things to learn. And they also are willing to risk everything. And we have the— I would say the brightest founders that we have are the founders who literally risk Everything, and they, as I mentioned to you, some people would sell their homes. Some people would sell like their land, and literally, this is their last chance to succeed. They were successful people before that. Those like, and but still, they would take that move and you know pursue their dream. And in this case, this is also what inspires us to work with them, and also what gives confidence to the investors because investors are going to look at that. they can say, well, this person really believes in this idea if he was to make that move. So for us, it's a lot of, you know, that kind of requirements for founders. But beside that, it's also about— at the end of the day, it's also about capital because even with a lot of R&D that we have that helps us speed up the development, there is still some budget required to make any startup. Sometimes if it's, you know, very small product, it can be done, you know, in, you know, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. It really depends. But there are very technological products that requires a lot of R&D and literally like a year or 2 years of development and the work of 10 to 20 people. So these startups, this is definitely impossible to do within, you know, with a budget of like $10,000. So this really depends on the product as well.

Makes sense. And do you help them get funding, whether it's initial angel connections or seed capital, or is that later stage after you found product-market fit usually?

Usually we do not recommend the founders to try to raise capital before they have an MVP and before the product is proven because first of all, like, I think a lot of people want to build products to raise capital, which is not the way it should be. And second of all, when they're attracting investors to their company or any other, like, shareholders, they are responsible for the product success in any way. And we don't believe that they need to attract capital before they're confident that They got that market fit. So we do connect them with investors, some of them, but it's not initially. It's only when they got some certain level of traction and only then we introduce them to somebody.

Got it, makes sense. What's some kind of design stack, or I know no-code now is getting pretty big here, I don't know if you guys incorporate that as well, or any underrated products that your team uses and maybe SaaS founders can take away and start using to help them maybe stand apart?

Yeah, see, I'm a huge tool guy. Like, we, with our team, we review about 40 to 50 tools per week. And yeah, we examine them because our job is to make the development high quality and has to be done fast because the founders, they don't have enough budget to pay for, you know, us trying things. So we need to be confident. So I would say 3 tools. One is the most underrated from my perspective, and I think this is one of the most interesting startups out there. It's the tool called Webflow.

Webflow?

So Webflow, yeah, it's YC alumni, and it's a website builder tool. But the way it works is you literally can create amazing designs in a matter of hours. And we're building a lot of websites and we're building a lot of e-commerces. And we pretty much, we come to the extent where we say that, well, if we're building the website for you, we're building that only on Webflow, nothing else. That's it. Because if you want us to do WordPress, we're not going to do this. Because we believe this is the future. And Webflow, you can actually do a SaaS platform with Webflow. You don't need to learn to do a lot of coding. You can use Zapier and Webflow to create a SaaS platform, essentially. So this is a really, really nice tool. Another tool is Firebase by Google, and this one requires a little bit of coding, but I think it's a genius product because it can help you to set up your database servers, storage and everything in a few minutes, literally. So this one is amazing. And the third one is Intercom. It's another great startup, and I think a lot of startups underestimate the communication with clients initially. And here, Intercom handles everything. It stores your client data, allows you to communicate with them, marketing, anything. So I think it is a great tool.

Cool. So Webflow, Firebase, and Intercom. I think, I believe your website, when I saw it, that's the first thing that came to mind is I believe that's Webflow as well.

Yeah, all the static websites that we build are Intercom. Sometimes ecommerce we'll build in Shopify, but we prefer Webflow.

I love how fast they are right there. I think they're super optimized for SEO. I think it ranks like 98 on Google Speed Insights. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, super clean. So I understand you're looking to make a shift and potentially raise your own VC fund moving What does the, you know, the second half of 2020 look like for you, and what are you most excited about making that shift?

Well, for me, the VC fund was my goal for the last 5 years, but I feel that I'm only now ready to move into that direction. But still, like, for the most exciting part for me for 2020, I would say that It's not connected to VC Fund, it's connected to the fact that I'm gonna become a father in a few weeks.

Cool.

So for me, that's the most exciting part. But speaking of the fund, I would say that I'm in the very beginning of starting this process because it's not even about creating the right financial structure and attracting the investors, but it's also about creating the right mechanism of working with startups and The way I wanna structure the fund is we wanna help founders not just by doing capital injections, but also educating them on the process of branding, sales, development, and helping them in this direction. As we discussed before the call, it's indeed like a VC studio. It's indeed that type of process. But geographically, we wanna be focused on Europe because there is a lot of undervaluated startups. And undervaluated, I mean both financially and product adoption. And I've seen this many times. I've seen the great ideas not being adopted in Italy, in Germany, in France, but I know that there would be a great fit here. So we are gonna be searching for startups there and helping them adopt their products in the Canadian market and then in the US market. So that's the goal. But my biggest excitement in this growth is to help.

Awesome.

Because that's what we're doing with the studio as well, is we want to help startups. Because if we can grow this amazing ecosystem here, this is the ecosystem that can, you know, cure the disease. It can help to save lives. It can help to, you know, create other amazing movements as well.

Mm-hmm.

So I think being a part of this is what motivates me a lot, and being able to help startups at the another level is something that I'm dreaming of.

Love it. So if we have any SaaS founders or entrepreneurs who are based in Europe and they're looking to maybe expand or grow their startup in the US or Canada, obviously get in touch with Dmytro, get on his waitlist as they launch in the next couple months or a year. How can our audience get in touch with you and learn more about yourself or apply to work with your studio or your future VCs?

Well, I'm reachable with, you know, through emails, through LinkedIn. I'm very, you know, I try to be as responsive as I can. For me, it's hard with a 14 to 16 hours workday. It's sometimes it's hard, but I will respond. So, you know, with LinkedIn or my email, I can, you know, leave my personal email here as well and you can reach out to me. What we usually do with startups is most of the time when we get a call, we listen, we provide the recommendation, and we're actually going to tell you whether we think it's going to be beneficial for you to work with us or there is some other way that you can take. So it's all about recommendations. So I'm going to be happy to answer any questions, so you can reach out to me with personal email or LinkedIn.

Okay, awesome, Dmytro. I really appreciate you taking the time today.

Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Thank you all for listening in to today's episode. Don't forget to join us for another episode where we interview top leaders and experts in the business and SaaS industry. If you enjoyed this episode, I ask that you please give us a 5-star review on iTunes. That would be really, really appreciated. Otherwise, if you have any feedback, suggestions, or improvements, please leave them in the comments below. improvements for this podcast, please feel free to send it directly to me on our website at horizoncapital.com, or you can just tweet me @akeeljabbar. Thanks again, and hope to see you guys on the next episode.