Robert Hangu - NextOps

Welcome guys to another Founder Wisdom. But we have Robert Hangyu with us today. He's the founder at Next Operations. Uh, he's, uh, into automated call centers, uh, for HOAs. These are like the association, house owner, whatever associations, real estate boards that people have. And live from Bali, Indonesia. I'm not sure if you were there last time we spoke, uh, Robert, but it's 6:30 your time, right?

Yeah, correct. So last time we spoke, I was still based in Romania in Europe, so the time difference was maybe about 8-9 hours, but now it's 10 hours, so you're 10 hours ahead. So here it's 6:30 in the morning, and for you it's, I think, 4:30 PM. So probably the perfect time to have a conversation for early risers, right? Because I understand you're also an early riser.

No, man, I'm not an early riser. I'm an owl. Yeah, I sleep a lot. That's one, like, that's different. Most people don't, right? Like entrepreneurs, they're on the grind. Me, I optimize for longevity. And, you know, like the best brain drug is sleep, right? We're talking about yerba mate, which is fucking great for the brain. Well, the best drug is sleep. So yeah, not an early riser. I've A/B tested that as well, right? Like I've tried it, just not made for my system. Um, is this your first time in Bali, or—

yeah, actually, yes, it is, and my first time in Asia as well. So it was on my list for, yeah, for a couple of years now, and yeah, various things got in the way, and that was the right time, and I said, okay, it's now or never. And yeah, it wasn't the best, best time, but you know how it is, you just make it work, just make it happen. So I just did. Yeah.

Uh, Asia is epic, right? It's like a different type of energy, different type of vibe. Um, not that I can describe it, but I've lived for a while in Hong Kong. Back then I did, uh, Philippines. What else? Um, yeah, I did China as well when I was there, and I did the casino city in China. I forgot what it was called, but where, where Jolo, the, the one, uh, DB fugitive is hiding. Yeah, Macau. Uh, I love Macau, by the way. It's a great little city. But yeah, I did a bunch of these places back then, and I was working like until 3 AM to, uh, follow like the EST time zones, and it was pretty peaceful back then. But yeah, no, glad that you made that move. It's, uh, Bali's cheaper, it's great as well, uh, it's different type of vibes. Lots of founders in Bali, yeah, uh, with the specific energy. So yeah, do you feel that's a turnaround for you? Do you think, uh, do you think it's a much-needed shock to your life?

Yeah, I would say so. You described the founder scene here very well. So there's many people who are really driven. I checked some coworking spaces and I found a really good one. And there's one room in the back where all the people that are focused work. And yeah, they like— before I came here, I used to live in Barcelona, in London, and last time in Romania. I've been to some coworking spaces there as well, and it's not quite that energy. So most people are laid back, they're working remote jobs 9 to 5, but here in Bali, it's a totally different story. People come here to just lock in, to crunch, to do crunch time, to just bring their businesses forward. I'm surprised by how many marketing and let's say business development people I've met here. Of course, there are also some tech founders, but from what I'm seeing, tech is not really the kind of the main focus of Bali, although you find some independent builders here, some indie hackers, but it's mostly focused on marketing distribution. And this was also one of the reasons why I moved here because I wanted to hone down on, like, hone on my skills in this regard. I'm from a tech background originally, So it's, it's a much needed change, as you put it. And I'm really looking forward to making a great time here.

You've told me about your businesses last time we spoke. You've been in the game for what now, 7 years, I would say, right? As a founder or more?

Yeah, about like 6 years full-time, 7 years. Like the first year was more testing the waters. I was working in big tech. And I was taking, let's say I wasn't working full-time the last year in big tech. I took like a part-time and I was exploring different ideas. So you could say 7 years. Yeah.

So how's been the marathon so far?

Yeah, it's been with ups and downs. So I think, I think, I think you could say that there were periods with higher energy, lower energy. So to give you some context and to give the audience some context. I was working in big tech back in Germany, and I decided that the corporate life wasn't quite right for me, although it was a great life, like all these perks, everything. It's quite, quite comfortable in big tech. So then I quit and I had applied to a startup accelerator program in London where I got in. I moved there and I met my business partner, we managed to raise investment and we had money in the bank for roughly 2-3 years. Now after 2 years, the money had started to run low. We also didn't like— the chemistry wasn't quite right between us. We weren't quite matching characters and we hadn't worked before, like together, because like we met on this program and then we decided to part ways. I tried to continue this business for half a year more, but didn't work out. Moved to Barcelona. Again, different vibe, a bit more relaxed. And that's when I got into the AI space, especially generative AI. That's when it became big in 2023. And I first built marketing automation for companies to generate ads, to post on social media, this kind of automation. And then mid-2024, end of 2024, the voice AI space started to become very important and the solutions became better and better. So I saw a big niche there, especially in the, let's say, local businesses industry that rely a lot on picking up the phone and answering calls, customer support and sales and I also saw a niche in the property management space. So the problem I'm solving now is for homeowner and community management companies that pick up the phone or they have to answer support calls, 100 to 150 calls per day, many of which are repetitive. So I put a front, like a front call center in their business that takes a lot off their plate. So that was my journey so far. Ups and downs, periods with, let's say, more financing, less financing, building alone, building in a team. So it's been a great mix so far.

Yeah, I had a call center with 200 employees, so couldn't get worse than that. But yeah, that business was, uh, was challenging, to say the least, right? Like, um, I was serving real estate agents, right? Like, I think I told you that. And that business, um, broad scale, there was a need for, uh, calling like for sell-by-owners, what we were doing back then. And yeah, it went to shit though pretty quickly because semi-legal to do that. And yeah, I had to let go a bunch of people. One of my operation guys started recruiting people that I was paying, right? So yeah, shit hit the fan pretty quickly on that one. We talked about your niche last time, right? And your ICP. What makes you bullish on what you're building right now?

Yeah, good question. In the beginning, I was exploring pretty broadly. I was exploring also some other service-heavy businesses. Think of wellness clinics, med spas, dentists, home services, and also property management at the same time. And I had got a positive and very proactive reply from one of the property managers, and he happened to be exactly in this space, in the homeowner association. Management space. And he was very enthusiastic about AI. He could really see the benefit, right? And he had initially thought of using it for marketing, but then as we discussed, he saw that it's actually ripe to answer his phones. So the, the tech was already there. And then we decided to start a prototype, and he and the team, they were convinced. And then we transitioned into a proper implementation. And then we've built this implementation and it's now serving his homeowners. It's live. It's the first project so far. But the positioning is super important here. It's also something that we talked about, which I'm also working on because not everybody is an early adopter in the industry. And You can totally understand why that's the case because most solutions, they don't really deliver. So for these businesses that heavily rely on service quality and where the quality of the answers is very important, you have to make sure that the solution is really, really working well. Now for this first client that we're working with in the homeowner association management space, we built in a, let's say, a way to contact the team if you're talking to the AI. So if the AI cannot help you, it will redirect you to a team. Now the problem is that, or not a problem, but the way the industry thinks is that they are already set up well with a call center. So the they're not really aware of how well this tech works, so they're a bit reluctant to use it. And I think it's mostly about a market education problem in some sense, and maybe also the market needs some time to really, you know, catch up on this tech. So it's, it's quite exciting to, to have conversations in this industry. I remember you've, you've also mentioned You've also mentioned a fresh approach for me, which was to open the discussion with them instead of trying to approach them, let's say, cold and say, "Hey, look, this is how we can help," instead to open up a conversation with them, which is what I've been trying now. And quite surprisingly, it's not bad, I would say.

Yeah, it's more leads, but yeah, asking them the questions even before you get to call, on a call with them, like on Calendly, for example, pre-qualifying questions is great. Would you describe yourself more as a builder, a founder, a salesperson? Like, what's your, what's your best skills?

Yeah, good question, good question. I think I'm more of a builder than a salesperson, and basically a founder because I started this, this, uh, myself. I do pretty much everything. So I would say I'm probably 70% or more builder, and the rest, 20-30%, I'd say I do the rest. I do operations, sales, marketing. However, historically, I'm more inclined towards, let's say, over-optimizing the tech which is a blind spot that I have. But I try to keep close feedback with the market, with customers, just to not waste time on building stuff that isn't really needed. And I've been catching up on the marketing sales side over the last couple of years, ever since I've left my last startup. Because I figured out that if you're a tech founder, you're kind of biased in a way. So that's why I've been working a lot to improve my marketing, my sales skills. And of course, at some point, I'm also looking forward to hiring a team at some point. But currently it's all about market validation. It's about finding the right niche with the right product. And I think the property management space is is an interesting space. So for the time being, let's say I do everything. So founder, builder, marketer, you name it.

Interesting. Are you still hiring humans or coding your own agents nowadays?

Yeah, good question. So I think right now I'm finding lots of leverage with, with AI. So I would say a lot of the work that I use AI to do would previously have been done by humans. So in this sense, a lot of, let's say, a lot of prospect outreach, a lot of the content creation, the research is all, let's say, semi-automated. So I still basically, I still instruct the tools to do the work. But most of it is streamlined. So I think if it wasn't for this technology, it would have been super hard for me as a solo founder to reach out to so many people in such a short time and to run these experiments in such close time intervals, right? So I guess it's a lot of automation at the moment. Yeah.

What are your top goals for this year? What do you want to achieve?

Yeah, good question. So this year it's all about basically validating the market, and if it works well, to create a, let's say, a recurring type of business, right? Because at the moment I'm working on a project basis in like as a service business, right? So I offer these services of building bespoke systems, right? This is what I do. But my goal for this year is to be able to find a repetitive problem with a repetitive solution, and that basically the solution works in a sort of a SaaS type of, of way. Like, I would, I would basically install this type of voice automation to various property managers and then hopefully scale it from there. So that's the goal this year, finding this repetitive problem, so to speak.

Interesting. Rob, where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn.com/in/robert-hangu and you can also find me on YouTube, YouTube at um, slash at, um, at Rob HNG. That's R-O-B-H-N-G. And on Twitter or X, uh, you find me at Robert Hangu in one word.

That was Robert and