How Deep Customer Knowledge Builds HR SaaS

My background is in HRBP. I've worked with that now for about 15 years. I started to research, like, is it really true that we don't have anything where employees can build the most valuable benefits package for them for a budget that already exists? And 6 months after, we couldn't find anything that was suitable for the Swedish market, and I couldn't find that product for that hole in the market either.

I need to A lot of founders think they know the problem, but if they're not intimately involved with the, the problem that they're solving, there's nearly always something that they haven't thought about, and that can be the difference between success and failure.

And it came to a point where I felt like we were going too slow, and I was like, we need that little bit of a fire with someone that knows what it's like going to market, because I've never brought a product to market. Today I got our very first customer on board. I got the very first email that our very first client is gonna prolong their contract for another year. We're doing something right. A client that we signed 4 months ago, they trust us to expand to a market I know nothing about.

Hi, I'm James Green, co-founder of DQ Ventures. If you're an experienced professional thinking about starting your own business, then please listen to this before you quit. Hi, welcome back to Founder Stories with DQ Ventures, where we interview founders who have started a real business, not a unicorn. And the reason we're doing this is because a lot of the startup content that you consume online is produced by venture capital investors or the founders of companies that have gone on to become a unicorn. But unfortunately, that doesn't represent 99% of businesses and business owners. And the likelihood is it doesn't represent you either. Today's founder is Caroline Sandqvist, who by sheer coincidence is based in Stockholm, the same as me. And she was exploring all sorts of accelerators, uh, funding providers, and ended up working with us at Deeky Ventures. Her, I think her main reason for that was that she, even if she had been given money, she wasn't really sure what to do with it. And she wanted to work with people who'd started businesses before, um, and had an idea of the path that she should take. So without further ado, let's hear from Caroline and see what she has to say.

Something that I see all the time is that most companies think that a high-budget wellness allowance and complex bonus structures is going win great people over. But after 15 years in HR, what I can tell is that what employees actually care about is not the wellness allowance per se, but benefits that they can tailor after their different life stages. So not a one-size-fits-all package. And the problem that I saw in the market was that there wasn't really a benefits platform that was truly built for people, but also admin-smooth for payroll. And this is exactly why I built CleverBenefits. I'm Caroline, the founder and CEO of CleverBenefits. And if you're ready to truly attract and keep brilliant people through meaningful benefits, you can visit us at cleverbenefits.com.

I am very happy to be joined by Caroline Sandqvist, who is the founder of CleverBenefits. And she's part of our Deeky Ventures portfolio. And building a SaaS company here where I'm based as well in Sweden, in Stockholm. So Caroline and I are rare exceptions that we actually meet in person from time to time, which is nice. Another thing that makes Caroline a bit unique is that when she came to us and when she first discovered us, which I think was via LinkedIn, wasn't it, Caroline?

Yeah. Yeah.

That she already had a software platform built because she has a co-founder and he works diligently behind the scenes to bring the platform to reality, while Caroline is focused more on the content of what the company does and the business development. So, welcome, Caroline. Thank you for being part of our humble little podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Caroline, the reason that we record these podcasts is that 99% of podcast material out there that talks about startups is recorded by less than 1% of founders. And so, we wanted to record podcasts with people who are building real businesses the hard way. Not that raising venture capital is not hard, it's incredibly hard, but it's just not for most of us.

Yeah.

And so, we're trying to bring real stories. So, if anyone's out there who's thinking about quitting their job and starting a company, that they get the real inside story, inside track on what it's really like, and what some of the unknown unknowns might be.

Yeah, I think that's really useful, because obviously, not everyone can be the people that get written about in papers, on Forbes lists, or whatever. It's a very few percentage up there.

Exactly. And a lot of the people that apply to Deque assume that they are going to be the one that ends up in TechCrunch, and that raises millions of dollars and exits for many millions more. But sadly, that's just not the reality for 99% of founders.

One day.

Yeah, but you don't need to be in Forbes to have a great business. My brother sells yachts for a living, and he said that apart from the occasional Formula 1 driver, most of their customers are people you've never heard of who have built big businesses that have never really been written about. I want to talk about the problem that you're solving and give us a little intro to what that is. But what I'm most interested in is that, what happened? What was that moment where you were working in your job and you just thought, do you know what? I'm going to go and build my own company, and this is why. What was that moment for you?

That moment was actually, when we were trying to find a product that we couldn't find at our current job. So, my background is in HRBP. I've worked with that now for about 15 years and actually still am. It's still the things that pays my bills until Clever will hit off and be able to pay my bills. But when I was done working in-house, we were an international tech company. It was in the middle of COVID And salaries were just spiking. And we're like, we, it's not sustainable for us to, to follow in this salary race. So, what can we do in terms of compensation to keep being attractive and for candidates to choose us, but also to, to keep employees? Because we were seeing an employee turnover rate of like 25%, even 30%. And everything was going to go remote, and you saw this big shift for employees, like, what's in it for me? So, you needed to make that mindset change. But also, the difficulties is that you were operating in different countries with different legislations and different tax legislations around employee benefits. And so, we were trying to unlock the set benefit packages that we had and see if employees could swap one benefit for another if they saw a bigger value in another benefit. depending on where they are in their lives today. We could find something that was suitable for the UK. We found something that was suitable for Spain, which was the 2 biggest countries that we had employees in, but then we had Sweden. And as soon as we started to talk about Sweden and Nordics in general, it was a hard no. The platform's like, no, we can't do it. We're not going to do it. It's too complex. We don't understand the market with benefit taxation, et cetera, et cetera. It ended up with that company purchasing a platform, I still have to call it, but I would say a glorified Excel for lots and lots and lots of money. And it was never launched to the employees. So they signed like a 2-year contract, it was never launched to the employees, because they couldn't get the calculations right, even in the markets that they were actually operating in. And that was like an aha moment for me. And we have other benefit platforms in Sweden. But I started to research, like, is it really true that we don't have anything where employees can build the most valuable benefits package for them for a budget that already exists? And I couldn't find it. And then I was thinking about like the rest of the HR landscape. We've seen so many new HRIS platforms coming in for the smaller companies. You have all of the engagement and survey platforms, and you have all of the learning and development platforms coming on. So, we've seen Lots of digitalization all around in the HR space, but nothing has happened on the benefits side. And I was just going with this thought. And for years and years and years, when I was working as an HRBP, I had this feeling that's like, I should run my own company, but I didn't know in what.

Yeah.

And 6 months after, we were like, we couldn't find anything that was suitable for the Swedish market. And I couldn't find that product for that hole in the market either. I was like, I need to try. It may go to shit, but I have to try. And at least I've tried. So, that was like the moment where I then decided, like, I need to do this. And then we will see what happens.

Wow. So, how did you then tackle that? You know, what was the next step? You'd never built a company before. You'd not built software before. You knew what you wanted. What did you do? What did you do first?

I mean, obviously, the very first thing for me was to, like, since I could be the customer of this product, it was quite natural for me. It's like, if I would be to buy this for my company that we wanted to buy, but we couldn't buy, What would it look like and what would be crucial for me? So then it's like, needs to be the user experience, it has to be all of the settings in the background, making sure that it's tax compliant, making sure that it's GDPR compliant, etc., etc. There's lots of different variables. I started thinking about like, what would this product look like for me if I was to buy this? And then obviously you have an HR network. So I started to talk about this. And I was like, I'm thinking about building this. If you were to buy, what would you have wanted it to look like? What would be really important, etc.? So, that was the first thing to basically design the product because that is what's closest to me to even like, who would buy this if I'm offering it?

I think that's quite common, you know, that most people lean towards product. It's the exciting part. It's the creative part. So, you're definitely not alone. But in your case, you were the buyer. And I think that's a big advantage. Yeah.

And I also think, like, I kind of did those, like, unofficial user interviews when I was, like, talking to other HR people. Probably going to talk about it later on when we joined Deque, that's what you do first is user interviews, but I didn't have any documented, super structured, etc. But I had still talked about it, but it's one thing talking about it and people say, oh, yes, it's a great idea, to someone that's actually buying the product.

Yeah.

But step number 2 was, I don't have hundreds of thousands of sec to spend on a developer, so I need someone to build this for me. I was then looking around with people I have worked with before. I also wanted someone that had a little bit of that like business mindset, understands what it means building a business and someone that's ready to give up like evenings and weekends, because most likely in this age that we are now, we have bills to pay and we have mortgages. And so you can't just like jump into something 100% and quit your job and not being able to know. how you're going to survive next month. So, I reached out to a developer that I had worked with 8 years previously. So, we had worked at the same job, and I talked about the idea, and then I said, do you want to build this with me? And he said, yes, I want to build this with you. And then, that's how we started the company. And pretty early on, we created the company for Like for the official documentation and shares and stuff like that. So, so all of the papers would, would be in order, which is pretty early, but we were also just like, not friends, friends, even though we had worked together for, for a few years.

We don't do that. We don't start a company until, until later, but, but I think it's quite, quite a natural thing for, for you to do in your situation. Definitely working with co-founders can be fraught with trouble and issues. And misalignment, even when you've worked together, that can happen. But the, but in your case, because you had worked together before, it's not that, not such a big risk. Just for anyone listening, by the way, SEK is the acronym for Swedish krona, uh, with like, like USD is for US dollars. You started the company, you issued your shares, you got started, you designed the product, uh, Kevin started building.

Yeah.

What, what happened then? And where, when did you realize that this was not going to be as easy as you thought, or that maybe you needed some I think a big realization for both myself and Kevin is that we probably need to be accountable for someone else. Okay.

So, we built for a long time, and I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, which is also not great because you need to ship a product and just test it out. But at the same time, I was like, if we don't have GDPR stuff in place, no one's gonna buy Anyway, because we're gonna deal with personal data and people's salaries and stuff like that, it needs to— we can't have too low of a minimal standard because then, then we won't sell. So, I think we took about like 1.5 years before I even started talking about the product and trying to then sell it because I thought it was like, now it's good enough and I can stand for that. I know that we are GDPR compliant, etc.

Just to jump in there, there's a ton of wannabe founders or aspiring founders who are thinking, all I need is to find a tech co-founder and everything will be fine. I think this is quite an interesting insight that there's a couple of issues. One is, just because you've got a tech co-founder doesn't really speed things up. Because the thing that holds you up the most generally is not the product, it's getting the customers. But having a tech co-founder means that you can feel busy. You can feel you can spend ages on where's that button going to go, what's the flow? And it's fun. I've done it myself. It's wireframing and working out how the user experience is going to flow. is great, but the trap is that it takes a long, long time, and you build from your brain and from your imagination rather than from real market feedback.

Yeah.

And so, by the time you launch, you've spent 18 months. It happens more quickly now with AI, but it still can be a long time getting things right, and you're building away in isolation, and then you bring something to market, and then you realize all the things that you should have known by starting to speak to customers.

Yeah, exactly. From what I told Kevin to build when it comes to what flows and how reporting needs to work and all the GDPR setups and stuff like that, to then what our customers have actually bought today, hasn't changed. I think really strength with being a buyer building the product, um, I was quite realistic in what was needed, but since I also was very realistic what was needed, it took us longer because I wasn't, this is not good enough, this needs to be stronger, I can't sell this. I'm also quite an honest person and sometimes that's a really good thing because you build credibility and you build trust and you build relationships, but sometimes you need to be a little bit of a hustler and you need to promise the world and fix it afterwards and sometimes I can struggle with that balance.

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's an interesting one. I'm like you, I believe honesty is the most important faculty to have, but there is always an element of sell it, then build it.

Hmm.

But, but I also agree completely that you were the buyer and that is a big reason why we wanted to work with you was because a lot of, a lot of founders think they know the problem. But if they're not intimately involved with the problem that they're solving, there's nearly always something that they haven't thought about, and that can be the difference between success and failure. So, for us, you were spot on. And this is definitely not intended to be an advert for Deque, but more from a kind of a what's missing point of view. What attracted you to us when you saw us on LinkedIn and What was it that you thought, God, you know what, this part's not working, I could really do with help here, that maybe you didn't think at the beginning, that other people might be thinking that they know, but they're going to find out that it's much more difficult than they realized?

Yeah. So, in my early, early career, I was an account manager, lifting up the phones, doing cold calls, getting rejections and stuff like that. And I 100% have a little bit of PTSD when it comes to that time because I don't have a very positive view of sales, to be honest. And I remember in our first conversations as well, you were like, what are you gonna struggle with? And I was like, I'm gonna struggle with sales, which is not great.

Not great.

Because we're not gonna have a business if I can't sell my own business. It's as simple as that. But I think it came— I think I followed you for over a year before I contacted you and DQ, and it came to a point where I felt like we were going too slow. And I was like, we need that like little bit of a fire with someone that knows what it's like going to market, because I've never brought a product to market. I have my perceptions of sales that are completely wrong to what I was selling 15 years ago to what I will sell now. And I realized, like, how will we get there? It's probably the best for us that we get other people in with various expertise in their different areas to support us in that journey. I really resonated with the DQ way of that not everything has to be super quick. You don't have to quit your job. We understand you have to commitment. You rather speak from the point of view, don't quit your job because most businesses fail and we don't want you to leave a great full-time job, but we still want you to commit and we still want to know that you're serious with this. And then of course, I checked out the team, what you've done before, what type of different expertise you had. You've all built businesses and sold businesses, But what were your strengths when you were building your business? And I felt that your team was complementing both me and Kevin. And that's when I reached out to basically the go-to-market strategy, because we had the product. I was like, how do I ship this?

I've got a friend in Singapore who runs a VC fund. And he says many times, and I have many conversations with him where he'll ask people, what do you think is the most important thing about a business? And there aren't, you know, people say product or customer service or funding or whatever, but he always says no. He always says no to everything. And he says, it's always sales. He and I have invested in a lot of businesses and nearly always the reason that you don't get the outcome you want is that the company just couldn't sell as well as they hoped. Or, I mean, it's not necessarily about sales ability. It's about how much do people want the thing that you're offering. And like you were saying right at the beginning, there's a big difference between telling someone in a friendly chat that, I'm building something, what do you think? Or, I'm building this, what would you want it to look like? People are nice, they're going to say nice things. They're going to say, oh yeah, you should, you should do it. And your friends, I mean, I think this is one of the most ironic things in startup world. If you tell your friends that you're thinking about quitting your job and going and starting a company, They'll probably say, yeah, go for it. What could go wrong? It's like, it's the worst thing that you could say to somebody. It's like, yeah, a lot can go wrong, actually. So they should be saying, don't quit. Find someone who knows what they're talking about and get some advice and take it slowly. Don't give up your income. Because, I mean, as you've found, it takes a lot longer than you expect to be able to pay yourself a salary like you're used to earning from your own business.

Yeah.

I'm interested to know, when you reached this point, did you— you obviously, we were connected on LinkedIn, and so I was posting a lot in those days. Were there other things that you were considering? Like, did you look at accelerators, or did you try and raise money, or—

We never tried to raise money because, I mean, obviously you follow Dragon's Den and all of that. It's like, we had a product, we didn't have any customers at that point. I was like, we're gonna have to give up half of the company for peanuts. And I was like, not interested. There is other companies in Spain and in France that have raised millions of euros and like they've grown so fast in 5 years. And obviously that is like a little bit of like a trigger. It's like, okay, there is something here in the Spanish market.

Yeah.

Can I translate that to the Swedish or the Nordic market? Looks completely different as well. You, you can't have a Swedish product and launch that in Spain because they're not going to buy it because they have their tax regulations, etc. It gave me the strength to see like, we do have a culture shift when it comes to compensation and benefits packages and stuff like that. And it's been invested in as like a future product in other markets. Could that be the same for Sweden? Obviously, you never know, but I wasn't interested in looking at capital then. I did look at some accelerators and stuff like that. Obviously, they are also going to have shares. You're always going to have to give up shares. But the difference here was, it's like they want you in 100%. They want you to do the business 100%. And neither me or Kevin was just not there with the life circumstances that we have. We're not 20, 25 years old anymore and can move back home. So, that's where we found Deque being a better cultural option for us.

Yeah. I mean, that's why we started it. I think YC, I think the first thing you read on the YC website, or it certainly was at one point, is that If you're not all in, then why are you bothering? And they're only interested in people who are all in. And that's the predominant attitude across the startup world.

Yeah.

And we started Deque because we felt that that just discounts the majority of founders who just don't have that freedom and flexibility to do that, or certainly more experienced founders who the statistics show are more likely to succeed because they actually know something. And have learned something.

Yeah.

The whole de-risking thing is a big, big focus for us. But that's not to say that we can't raise capital. I think I agree with you that raising capital on day one is generally a bad idea unless you've already built yourself a startup and you've got a track record and people are willing to invest millions of dollars for a small stake because they already know that you're very likely to do it again.

Yeah.

But for most people, you, well, A, you probably won't be able to raise money, and B, you probably shouldn't because you don't know if it's going to succeed either. And, and I can speak from experience that there's no worse feeling than realizing your business isn't going to work when you've taken millions of dollars of people's money, and you've got to make those phone calls and tell them that it's not going to work and that you can't pay them back. I think you're doing exactly the right thing by building traction, building conviction in your own product before you think about scaling. And then, then you've got the option to, to pour fuel on the fire and potentially raise some capital to, to do things faster, quit your job if you want to, and, and so on. But I like, I really like your, your way of, of approaching Clever. That, I remember one of our recent chats, you were saying that, you know, I've got plenty of time, I'm not rushing this, we've got some customers They're happy, it's going well, but I'm not rushing to quit my job for this, and I'd much rather build my own conviction that this is going to work before taking that leap. And I think that's sensible.

Yeah.

You're still thinking the same thing?

Yeah, and actually today I got our very first email that our very first client is going to prolong their contract for another year, which means that our very, very first client are happy with us, they want to continue, we're doing something right. We have talked about like, we need to nail Sweden, then we'll maybe have a look at Nordics because it's natural for our businesses to have operations in nearby countries. A client that we signed 4 months ago, we've gone live in Sweden, they are now like, we want to launch in Norway, let's set up a call with our accountants to make sure that we get all of the tax regulation right. So, Now, all of a sudden, we can look at, it's like, we're doing that good of a job in Sweden that they trust us to expand to a market I know nothing about. And I've been 100% honest with them. It's like, I've never worked with Norway. I have no idea about Norway. We need help from your accountants. And they still invest that.

That's awesome.

So, those receipts for me is just like, continue building clients. They are going to want to stay with us. We are doing a good job. We are doing something right.

Okay, let's take a quick break and hear from one of our portfolio companies.

Hi, I'm Rachel, and I'm the founder of Journey. Journey began when I had to fly back from the UK with my 3 children under the age of 4 by myself with a 2-month-old baby, and I realized that it was something I didn't think I could do alone without an extra pair of hands. I posted an ad on Facebook looking for a companion or somebody who could help me with my children, and it went viral. I had thousands of people comment, respond, message me, and media outlets reaching out to run a story on me. And that's when I realized that this was a problem that was more widely spread than just me. We launched Journey in June 2025, and since then we've had more than 50 journeys that have The thing I'm most excited about is getting more people matched together so that more people can travel the world, do the things they want to do, see the people they want to see, and not be held back by the challenge of the bike.

Can you think of a specific moment along the way where you really didn't know what to do? You leant on the people around you to, to solve a problem that you weren't sure how to solve, or maybe there was— you were really stuck with something? And you managed to get unstuck? I've probably got one or two things that I can think of, but for you, I'm interested to know what was there where you were like, oh, I'm so glad that we managed to solve that.

For me, it's most about like my impatience, maybe.

Yeah.

Even though I have like a full-time job and you have commitments in that and I have clients there. There is still a part of me that is very much like 100% Klever is going to be my future. Klever is the company that is going to pay my bills. I'm going to work with 100%. I am convinced that one day we're going to hire our first employee that's not the founding team. I do see a future for Klever. And then I want to run faster. Obviously, when you have a founding team, it doesn't matter how well you get along, you're gonna have different ways of working.

Yeah.

And sometimes my ways of working haven't aligned with my co-founder's way of working, and I've been frustrated. And I was like, this is going too slow, this is doing this, this is doing that, etc. But at the end, It's come to the acceptance that as long as we get things done on deadline for our clients, it doesn't matter how we get there. Yeah.

Well, I've got co-founders, as you know, and we all work very differently. And certainly, there's always going to be certain frictions, and there's going to be times where you see things differently. But I think making sure that you work with people that you respect, And that you trust, then you can pretty much get through anything. And also people that can keep their sense of humor, because there's going to be times where someone loses their shit and goes off and sulks. And there's nothing like a bit of teasing to snap someone out of a bad mood rather than everyone getting too serious about it.

Yeah.

I've had a few co-founders over the years of very different personalities, but they've all been people that I really trusted and respected. So they all ended well, those businesses, whether we sold them or we shut them down. I'm still talking to all of those people, as far as I can remember.

Yeah.

Well, so that's something that you probably knew about yourself already, that you're a bit impatient. What's something that you've learned about yourself through this process?

I think that through my, like, Employment years, I've always seen myself as very independent, and I get shit done, and I'm super fast, and I just like, just give it to me and I will sort it out. Here you go. Running your own business, I have realized that I thrive the most around people.

Yeah. It can be quite lonely, can't it, being a founder?

Quite lonely. My best ideas come from when I speak to people. It doesn't have to be a customer. It can, it can be Kevin, that's my technical co-founder, Or you and me sit down and speak, but I've realized that if I'm isolated and I'm alone, I'll get nothing done.

Really?

Yeah, and, but I was one who's like, just give me a task and I will get it done. But I was also part of a context, even though I was working independently, I was part of a team.

Hmm, that's really interesting.

You had like 3 team meetings that week and then you could talk about things and all of a sudden you got a solution for that problem you were working on, and you took in other people's perspective. But when I'm then going to develop my product, or we're going to talk about something, or I've given something, I've given something bigger to Kevin, he's like, oh, it's going to take me 3 weeks to do this. Okay, okay, fine. Then I get nothing done for those 3 weeks, because I'm not speaking to Kevin, unless he's got a blocker, because I leave him alone to build what we have agreed to build, or whatever our customer has asked for. has requested from us. So, for me, it's the team and the interaction that I'm a lot more dependent on than what I thought at the start.

Hal, I've never heard that insight before, and I can so resonate with that. It really resonates with me. And I think, just trying to distill that down, a lot of people who become founders are Doers. I think, I feel like I'm a doer and get stuff done. But there's a very big difference between doing and being motivated to do. If you're, so if you don't have someone holding you accountable, and especially, you know, you're working from home, like I'm at home now, I'll just go and make a cup of tea and then I'll flick through the paper or, God, the distractions of the mobile phone these days. You can barely tell what's scrolling through.

Laundry. Yeah, exactly.

So, there's always something to find that you can do. And like you say, there's a big difference between feeling like you're going to get stuff done and actually getting stuff done.

Yeah.

So, I'm glad that we've been able to help with that. And I'm going to try and think about that more because that's something that most people probably wouldn't think of, especially if they think of themselves as someone who really gets stuff done.

Yeah.

That might come as a surprise.

Yeah. And I've always been there, but I can genuinely say the last 6 months of our platform, since we're collaborating more closely with our clients now that we have on board, we've got more done because number one, we know what they want, and two, I'm accountable to deliver it to them, which then also makes Kevin more motivated because he knows we're also shipping stuff that our clients really want instead of me sitting guessing what we want. And I think that has really, since we got our customers in, that's really pushed our speed as well because we are accountable to someone and to make sure everything is right as well.

As you know, like our process, we like to get a customer before we build a platform. And And I think I've not thought of that as being an advantage, but certainly having somebody expecting something makes you move quickly, as well as making sure you're building the right stuff. So, that's good.

Yeah.

Knowing what you know now, if you went back and transformed yourself or transported yourself back into your former self, where you're sitting there thinking, oh, you know what, I should build this myself, what would you say to yourself to give yourself some advice? Like, it could be, don't do it, or it could be, uh, yeah, remember this. What would you say?

I would say, allow, allow time and don't stress. Because obviously, you get the newspapers and, and all of the articles of lovable founders and whoever else that raises billions, and you see all of the success stories. And of course, you want to be part of that. It's a dream, but will you ever get there? Most likely not, because that's the reality. If you make it, you're one of thousands, hundred thousands that's ever starting to build a business. And when I started everything, I wanted it to be super quick, and I was like, within 6 months to 1 year, I'm gonna have to resign, and we're gonna be super successful, and this is gonna go into all of that. It takes longer time than that, and you don't need to beat up yourself because it is taking longer. It's better to have a sustainable business that clients actually want, even if it takes longer time. Isn't there a saying that it takes 7 years for like a normal business to be profitable? And we're 3 years down the line from where we started building.

That's right.

So we have 4 years to go. Before you make that average mark.

I mean, the first thing, you're basically saying to yourself, don't quit, because this is gonna take a long time, and you don't have the funds in the bank to support that journey, which we say to people all the time, but people ignore us constantly and go and quit, and then they end up burning through their savings, or realizing their savings are gonna burn out, and then trying to get a job when they've half-built their software Yeah. You've never spoken to a customer. It's a great way to burn through your life savings and not achieve anything. I mean, if there's anyone out there in that position, please don't quiz.

But also, hold down costs. How can you build as cheap as possible? Obviously, a big advantage for us is that I had a technical co-founder that is investing his time in building all of this. But everything we've built on, we tried to get software for free. Like, we have joined startup programs and stuff like that, so we don't need to pay for lots of licenses. and trying to be smart with the money you spend. I think, on average, since we started, we've spent $50 a month.

Yeah.

And you can afford to spend $50 a month building your business if you have the right competence. Obviously, that's a different story if you don't have a technical co-founder. Try and find a way and a team, and you have partners to do that, and that's also why you exist. But how can you hold down costs so you don't burn your life savings on it? Be smart with money.

Well, I know at least one person, well, I know 2 people actually. One I know pretty well. He spent $100,000 of his own money building a software platform that never got a single user because he had the money and he found a company and they built it and didn't do any go-to-market or any user interviews. I know another guy, I only met him once actually in Singapore, but he'd spent half a million of his own money He was clearly a wealthy guy. And what he actually said to me is, he was trying to raise money, and I was investing in those days. And he said, I'm raising money because I just want to build a couple more features, and then I know we'll get users. And I was just thinking, this is what he's done. He's just added features thinking that's what drives customers. But actually, it's not. It's talking to customers and finding out what they want. And the other point I would make about that, is that, I mean, software development agencies are going to hate me for this, but if you find a software development company to build your product and you say, I want all of this, and I've got the money to pay for it, then they're going to build all of that. I mean, the good ones will make it better, but they're still going to spend your money.

Yeah.

Whereas what you really want is someone who's got as much incentive not to spend money as you have, And so, there are ways, especially now, there are ways to fake it or to build a true MVP for peanuts.

Yes.

You've just got to find the right people to build it with you, maybe get them so that they're aligned at some kind of success-based reward, but don't just go and blow your money on someone who you think is good because if their business is based on hours and work done, then they're going to spend hours and they're going to bill you for them. So, yeah, you're quite unusual that you've got Kevin, and that is a major bonus for you. It's good for us as well, obviously, because we didn't have to worry about building the product and funding that as well. My other question was, when you meet people now, I know I bet this happens, that you go to a conference and you meet someone and you say, actually, I've started my own company, and they say, oh, do you know what? I'm thinking about starting my own company. Well, what's the one thing you say to them? I mean, maybe it's the same, that it's going to take a long time, but what do you find yourself telling people?

It's probably the second thing that I would tell myself. Be out and about. You need to let people know that you are building. You need to let people know what you are doing. Obviously, I'm still HR consulting, and I'm reliant on getting new clients. I talk a lot about pay transparency because that's what I'm working with in my day job.

Yeah.

And I need to talk about my other business the same way, because if I don't talk about it, how are they even going to know that it exists? For me, selling, and we've talked a lot about this, James, like, I do my very best When I'm at smaller networking events, 30, 50 people, it shouldn't be like the big tech arena or whatever with thousands of people, because I don't want to approach people that way. I want to be in a smaller room where I know a couple of people, you get introduced to another person, and then the words start, start building.

Spread. Yeah.

And spread. And then I have seen, since I started writing more about Clever on LinkedIn and letting that network that I've actually built on there knowing that I'm doing this as well, I have got incoming leads that I didn't get before. And it's incoming leads I would probably not approach, like one company's 3,000 employees. It's not our ideal customer because like, can we even take care of 3,000 employees? But I'm preparing Kevin's like, if we get 3,000 employees, you need to make sure that we can do it.

Yeah.

So that's almost like, it's not sure that they will ever sign, et cetera. But, and even if they don't, it's incoming leads that's showing interest. If they show interest, someone else will show interest. just because you're talking about it. I would tell everyone else that's trying to start their own business, you need to talk about it. And connections and contacts and networking is probably more important than I thought.

Yeah.

But also having the authentic connections. So you need to be a little bit personal, not just chatting when you want something, but chatting to constantly just stay in touch and being friendly, really.

Well, I think that's really good advice, but I also think that what you've learned is what works for you, and that might not be— that might be different for someone else. But you—

Yeah.

You know, I think— I do think that that in general is a good strategy, but I also think that what the important thing there is that you— I remember having that conversation with you before. We were talking about doing more outbound marketing or maybe some more webinars or something, some of the things that we tested. And you said, you know what, the thing I really like doing is going to events. Can I not just go to events? And I remember we said, yeah, let's go to the events if that's what you feel comfortable doing.

Yeah.

So, it's nice to hear that that's paying off. And I think that point about talking about it, there is this common fallacy that these optimistic founders, and most of us are optimistic, that we kind of think that This is such a good idea. If I just build it, then they will come, then customers will find out about it. But unless you're talking about it, they won't. No one will. And so, go-to-market is such a crucial element, and you want to be doing that as early as possible. Sell it, then build it is always a much better way around than build it, then sell it, as you're finding with your new features. So, I'm going to wrap it up there. That's pretty much exactly the hour. Thank you so much for—

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing, Caroline. I know that it's been a fun journey, but it hasn't all been plain sailing. It's nice to hear your honest perspective.

Thank you so much. I hope it can help someone to get the realistic view of what it's like building a business nowadays.

Yeah, I think for me, the big thing that you said there that really resonates with me is how long it takes. Because I don't, I don't, I think I've invested, you know this, I've invested in 65 companies and I've invested in a bunch more through 3 funds that I backed.

Yeah.

In all of those companies, I can't think of one company that has grown faster than they expected. And I think from my perspective, certainly as an investor, they've all grown much slower than I hoped. And so, I'm sure that's true for the founders as well. They're all thinking, God, this is a slog. This is not what I was expecting. And I don't think you hear that talked about very often. But yeah, if you're my age or younger like you, but you're still mid-career and you've got mortgages, you've bought a nice flat, or you've You're spending your money, you need to find money every month to keep your head above water. And that's a key consideration, how long it's going to take. I think people think they're going to build their business and sell it in 3 years. It's not going to happen. You might build it and sell it within 10 if you're lucky. But yeah, take your time. Don't rush. Don't quit.

Definitely.

Cool. Okay. Last thing I'm going to ask you. How do people find you and find out more about Clever?

So, if people are curious about flexible benefits and how employees can build their own packages, obviously we consider HR and payroll admin can't be too heavy and payroll needs to be compliant, it's just to visit cleverbenefits.com.

Brilliant. All right, thanks, Caroline. And if you'd like to that interview and you'd like more of the same, look for Founder Stories on YouTube under EQ Ventures Official, or find it wherever you get your podcasts.