ApplyBoard’s Growth Journey From Zero to Billions with Martin Basiri, ApplyBoard

I wanted to kill myself. I was that upset in life. One day I see you guys on Instagram. I applied, I'm here. I'm so active. I don't take my medication anymore. What else I could do my life. That someone sits in front of me and say, you saved my life. That's a very high benefit apply board has.

I need some traction.

You need some traction.

Let's get some traction.

Hey, what's up innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries and disruptors. This is your Traction podcast host Lloyd Lobo. We're a community of over 100,000 people just like yourself, on a mission to help you get the methods, the money and the madness out to explode your business growth. Featuring stories and tactical advice straight from those who've done it before, like Shopify, Twilio, Asana, and many more, this episode is brought to you by Boast AI. Each year the US and Canadian governments give out billions of dollars in R and D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses like yours. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to frustrating audits, and receiving the money can take up to 16 months. Boast AI gets you access to research and development tax credits and innovation funding opportunities without the headache and red tape. Join thousands of North American companies leveraging Boast AI software to maximize cashback. Check out B Oast AI. This episode is also brought to you by Launch Academy and an international tech hub that provides mentorship, resources, network and the environment for entrepreneurs to launch, fund and grow their startups. Since 2012, Launch Academy has incubated over 6,000 entrepreneurs, of which 300 have grown their startups past Seed and Series A and have collectively raised over $1.2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch Academy's programs, check out Launch Academy.

I'm super excited here today. Fantastic entrepreneur Martin Basiri is the CEO and co founder of Applyboard, the world's largest online platform for international student recruitment. They've grown super fast to over 500 employees in 20 plus countries, assisting more than 80,000 students with their educational journey. And they've had this really hyper growth trajectory here, raising multiple rounds of funding in the last year during a pandemic. Valuing the company at 1.4 billion 2019 you were named one of the fastest growing technology companies, ranking number one on the Fast 50 list. I reached out to Martin for advice because he knew one of our lead investor who had just joined the fund and Martin was very gracious with his time and he gave me the ins and outs of how you pick a VC partner and if you're asking about this guy, take the money, we'll spend five minutes talking about that and the rest we can shoot the shit. So he's been very gracious and that shows, right? If you help enough people get what they want, you'll get everything you want. And he's not only a great entrepreneur, but a great human being. Thank you for joining us. Martin, how are you today? How is 2021 treating you?

I'm doing very well. Thank you very much for having me here. 2021, so far so good. A bit cold, but you know what, like, we like it here, definitely.

And before we jump into things, introduce us to apply board. You've effectively pioneered a whole new industry. I didn't even think about this space really. And it's been super successful. Give us the, the backstory. What made you start the company? What else did you consider before, before you landed on this? Give us the intro.

Yeah, for sure. So first of all, I tell you why we're doing it. We are doing it to democratize access to education. Because let me tell you the magnitude of the problem. So in today's world, 1 out of 15 people should be in a higher education at any time. And that is giving us something around 50% of adults going to universities. Even for us to achieve 50%, which for example for Canada is 54%, we need to have in the world of 7.5 billion people, we should have about 500 million people studying in higher education. The real number right now is 160. And 160, you could see 50% in countries like US, Canada, Australia, all western countries. And then you go to the other countries, you start seeing percentage like 10%, 20%. It's incredible. 340 million people, they cannot be in a school. We are talking about every single one day, every single day, 1 million people need to go to school that they're not going. You're talking about 10 times the population of Canada. These are the people that they need to be in a school and they're not. And we are basically trying to solve this problem so every kid around the world, they could have access to a good higher education. But how did we land on this? I'm from Iran, so do a lot of Iranians. We have pretty good bachelor degree. If you are very hard studier. So if you are like top one 2001 or 2000 of half a million people, you can go to what you want to study. Otherwise really ruined your life. So I got lucky on my bachelor. I did study well and I Also had some points. But when it comes for my masters, only 4% of people can go to a good grad school. And in a country like Iran, education is a must. It's not like you get your bachelor degree and you could still have some level of good life for that. I had a lot of inventions and stuff. So I applied for University of Waterloo. I get accepted. I came to Canada from Pearson. I was going to north of Toronto where my uncle live and on the airport I was like, this is life, I love it. I just, I was feeling positivity from day one. I landed to Canada. So I started planning of bringing my brothers. And so this process of going abroad is so hard. I've redone it for both of my brothers and they came at the age of 18, which was like a shocking for Iranians. And so a lot of people start messaging us, can you also help me? Can you also help me? So we helped them and then we are not doing it anymore. Couple of years later now I finished University of Waterloo, I got my master's of engineering, I'm in the U.S. i working, I was like, I want to get back to entrepreneurship stuff because I used to do those things back home in Iran and. And I quit at my job. I didn't have any idea. So I said, let me go back to helping other students to make some money. And the first students I helped called my brothers said I think we should automate this. And that's how Applied Board started. And the first one or two years we were just doing business like everyone else, just trying to solve a problem. And after that, when the students started coming to to Canada and us with the help that we were doing and I started talking to those people, I started feeling in love. I stopped falling in love. How much we changed their life. And then our trajectory changed from running a business to running an art to having fun every day, having an impact on hundreds of people on a daily basis, changing their life and, and every day it goes. I fell in love with applied more and more and I get more positive energy about what it does to the level that I say, even if one day everything stop, the whole thing vanish, then what happens? I don't mind at all because during this journey I help thousands and ten thousands of like people, me and my team. And I think that's enough pride for the rest of my life.

That is a fantastic story, fantastic journey. So what did your early customer development look like? You said, I'm going to automate this process. You've helped thousands of people, but who are like your first 10, 20 people to go through this process. Because it's like marketplace in a way. There's multiple people involved.

So for we didn't know what to do. So you started from the student side. I remember I was going to one of the universities library in the morning, all the way to like night till they were kicking me out. And I was on the phone in one of those study rooms, locked myself on the phone, talked to hundreds of people from Afghanistan all the way to Chile and Argentine, trying to convince them for our service. This is before we even have a product or something. I got a sense of what is the problem. We were chasing a different problem. But at the start we were thinking it's a product that students pay for the service. And then we figure it out and is a product for the students. But a school's willing to buy it because they want also to get the students and we recognize the other side. If I want to say one answer, I would say hustle. We just hustled our way up. We work double everyone else and we called four times everyone else. We got a lot of rejection and we say okay, it's okay. So we kept continuing and doing it. Early days was so tough because first of all, everyone was laughing at us for what we are doing. And it wasn't something that resonate especially for the investors in North America. Because a lot of investors, they go to Stanford and Harvard and Yale and those. And they were like, why someone from Bangladesh, for example, sell their apartment and their parents retirement to come to go for example, to a college in Canada? It was not connecting, hey, because there's no university for that person back home. And they were like, why don't they come to Stanford? We're talking about 340 million people. Stanford is taking like maybe like 30 undergrad international per year. You're talking about 300 million. So it was not resonating. So it was very tough. From 2015, April or May when we started till March 2018, it was only hardship. Like three years we went through the hardest time of our lives. We were almost like bankrupt. Everything was bad because results were also not coming. We were trying different things.

Sort of drunken founder journey. The three years are almost there and they're not quite there. And it's hard. But during that time, did you think maybe that or looking back, maybe I would have started on the other side of the marketplace and not with the students first? Or you think going after the students first and creating the demand was a good move?

We basically had to Go through multiple customers, their students, their counselors and the universities at the same time. So it wasn't ever. So at some point, students. We had more students than or more recruiter than the university. And then it flipped. No, I don't have a regret. I think we done it very naturally. We didn't have a KPI of saying this has to be there. And we were like, okay, we just like answer the customers and we go with the flow sometime that we had too much of supply, low demand or vice versa. It balanced each other. So I know I have no regret if I go back. Probably I would do it fluid as we've done it the first time.

That's fantastic. And you talk a lot about fluidity and we'll dive into it. But what happened in March 2018? Like, how did you say, like I got product, market fit or this is it, let's explode from here.

The January semester of 2018, every year is three semester. We had equal to the entire history of Applied board to that point. Number of students who showed up by a factor of two. So in one month we've done more than last three years multiplied by two. Then I went and I started fundraising and we got from raising fund 50k to 50k. In the last three years we raised and we raised 11 million USD or something, series A. And from that time we started thinking long term. Now we were not worried about if the next quarter we could afford people or not. We started hiring people, we started doing. But if I go back, I'm not going to change that. Three years. I think the first three years of hustle and sweat and sleeping on the couch and not having home or money or anything, it just built the taste of success further on for people. It just made it more tasteful, you know what I'm saying? I don't want to go back. I'm happy that we didn't get funded for the first couple of years. And it was so hard because now I enjoyed more. If it was easy, maybe I wouldn't not enjoy it as much as more as right now. It was so hard and I'm happy about it that it was hard, definitely.

And pain is the precondition for growth, right? If you look at the last recession there, Airbnb, Uber and stuff came out of it. But there's another lesson here is it forces you to be frugal and think creatively when you have no money, when you start a company from day one with other people's money, you're just running an experiment and you're like, if it fails, it fails whatever. Like some, some people can get that mentality and sometimes more people die from indigestion than starvation. And this really helps you become resilient. You talked a lot about fluidity. And I had this question on milestones. What is your next big milestone? Or was there ever a time in your journey where you had a no go, no go or go no go timeframe? And then you talked about, I like to be like water and make it fluid and every day must be better than the next day. Walk us through that mindset, guys.

Like, remember I was Iranian. Even for example, till end of 2016, my brothers were still on visa and their visa was expiring, so we didn't even have a permanent residency. So people like I was going to people and pitch and they were like, pitch for money. And this is like a year and a half into it and people are like, buddy, in nine months you have to leave the country. You are asking me to give money to you. And my accent was thicker. So there are a lot of reason for people not to fund us and a lot of uncertainty. We were just thinking, you know what, it doesn't matter if we only have nine months to stay here. Listen to the last day hustle. And then if it doesn't come back, finally our immigration from the Canada side got solved. I'm saying it in a positive way, but there's a dark side about it too. So it was some bias about the whole immigration. And this is, think about it, this is 2016 where especially in the US the thing changed. So there were a lot of bias. Why do we need more immigrants? Especially earlier on of the last administration in the U.S. it was a lot of things about against Iranian because when Trump came, it was a lot of like Iran was in the news every day. So people were like, where are you from? It's like, I'm from Iran. And like a third of the whole VC time was going to gone talking about politics. I do think this guy's saying, right or that guy. So I had a lot of like big disadvantages in my life. It was like also same. We grow up in a lower middle class family with no money and we had to like doing it. And that's where the fluidity come from. Fluidity is you control what you have in your hand to control and you believe in luck. And I don't call it destiny and positive energy. Coming back from the world, I had one mentor was saying, good things happen to good companies. That's why I don't Put like very rigid milestones of oh, by first year, for example, by end of three years, we should be there. I'm more about if we solve the problem and if the basics are good and if the culture is good, if the company have the cash, if we build the right company and we are solving a real problem and we are getting customer satisfaction, result comes after that. And instead of being the focus on the company that, hey, we are result oriented. Don't take me wrong. We also have goals. We do the planning. But it's like more, let's see what happens. Whatever happens, I don't have control on the whole world and market. That's why whenever something happened, I try to hustle it up. And if it works, if not, you.

Can have the big goals. But you got to try to do control what you can control and be a little better every day because it grows from there. How do you acquire customers today? I'm curious what like, channels are working? Is it word of mouth? Is it ads? Is it referrals?

We don't do ads. Not a single dollar ads.

That's amazing because ads can be a drug.

All from channel marketing, word of mouth, outbound, inbound. How big marketing?

How big is your sales and marketing.

Team today or yesterday? So let's. Because when you were like introducing the company, you said like 500. You're like 750 now. It's like, when did he talk to my team? And when you said like, we helped 80,000. I think the current number is like 140,000.

Wow.

So I believe something 200, 250 people.

And then when you raise your first round, first 11 million or so, let's call it like a super seed round because you had small amounts before that. Who are the first people you hired? How do you think about like, how do I now unpack and scale this? Or maybe it feels like so far off that you can't even.

I think we hired like first we started hiring people, engineers because it was the first time we could afford paying someone like a salary that they don't come back and slap us in the face on the offer. A lot of like that frugality stick to us as like right now we are giving like very competitive. But somehow like people still think it is that time because we really didn't have any money. You're living out of nothing. Just to tell you guys, when we got one $300 million acquisition offer in 2018. Ish. Yes, in 2018. And by then I think three of us together was not even making $8,000 before tax, not even after tax. So we are living on each other homes and it was crazy. We were trying to really save every single dime for the company to be able to hire. But after the first fundraising, which was our series A hired engineers, I think we hire sales and marketing. Any particular path and strategies? Everything again was going naturally. We never pivoted or anything. It was always going naturally.

So why didn't you sell the company? You got three broke brothers here almost on the verge. You raised your Series A at 11. 300 million is a pretty big valuation. What stopped you from selling the company? Because this is important.

I have a snapshot of my bank account that day. I had 1,408 Canadian dollar in my bank account out of that deal. I think I was me. Medi and Matthew were like walking out with 100 million USD cash plus another 100 stock to stick around with the new company. So before that I went to the other company before they come with a price. I looked at it and that company was a little thing. When I was walking around, it didn't feel right. I was like. Because they wanted me to also be the CEO of the joint company. So now applybar, I think we were 80 people and the other company was like 500 people. So that was one thing I came down to. We had a small room called India. This is our last office. I went and I remember Mehdi just came. Mehdi is my brother. So Mehdi and Massey are twin brothers. The three of us started a company together. I went to Mehdi, you said, hey, this is their last offer stuff. And Mehdi traveled a lot because he'd run the sales and marketing. So he goes to different countries like before Pandemic. And he was like, I bought this $5. My pants are $20, my shoes are like $40. Why do I need this money? That was it. In two hours we get back to them and said no. And Matthew was like, Matthew was angry at us that why are you guys even talking about this? How much of more features and things we have to build. We didn't do it. What if we go? They don't allow us to build what we want to build. So that was a conversation.

So this is a very important lesson here, right? I guess in life and in business, there's two things that are key that I'm hearing here. One is passion versus transaction. If you treat everything like a transaction, I need so much money to get to the next milestone, whatever. You may be enthusiastic about it and lose that enthusiasm. But if you're really super passionate about a problem that transcends companies and that you're on this mission and you're committed in the heart and the mind. And the other thing is relationships. The good thing is you have three brothers here. So you guys are all aligned, hopefully. And relationship also transcends companies and ideas. The passion and relationship is the key lesson I want to jump into.

And fun.

And fun. Yeah.

Of course. If you're beating every day, you wake up, think about it. Let's say you would have sell the company. What do you do for 100 with $100 million? Think about it. So you have to have a plan to spend it and then you have to have a plan to invest it. We are not a spender type of guys that go. I said, hey, we would have go buy a big mansion in Florida and have yacht. That's not my type. So then it would have been investing what type of company invest? I like apply boards. It's going well, so let's invest in that one. And by the way, I'm in control myself. So I think the real question is the fun part. If you are having fun, what you do, even though it's the hardest thing, then you say, okay, so if I'm selling it, not gonna have this much fun, so why shall I sell it? It's fun. Like I'm doing something that I like in my life. I always think about the word of when I'm 90 years old and I have all my grandkids and grandkids around me and I'm telling them my life story, am I smiling that day? Am I proud for what I've done in my life? Or I'm just talking about, oh, yeah, I got rich, so what? Probably like my grandkids don't even care about it. So I want to, I want to tell them a story that I feel proud of that so when I'm dying, I just die with a smile. You know what I have every day of my life, I have a smile on it. Even if it's the hardest day.

And that's what every time I've seen you, you're always smiling. I want to take one audience question here. What makes your company unique in the tech education sector? You have a huge. You could literally dominate this industry that you've pioneering here, right? There's lots of opportunities. But what makes you unique in this sector that you're growing like weeds?

What makes apply board unique is every single one in the company is progressive. So our sales team innovate, our engineering team Innovate. Our administration team. Innovate. Everyone thinking outside of the box. And I didn't realize how much it is till now that I start seeing from every point of the company innovation is coming. I think that's the number one. And I think the other thing is people are very connected with the mission. Like they also start. You remember I told you I started this as a business and as a startup. And then I start seeing the students come and I was like, oh my God, I really changed this guy life. I had one of the students come to company. He took bus six hours to get to where we are. He came and said, you guys saved my life. What do you mean we helped you to come. It was like, you don't know. I wanted to kill myself. I was that upset in life. No hope, nothing. One day I see you guys on Instagram. I applied, I'm here. I'm so active. I don't take my medication anymore. I'm going to gym. I already secured an internship like you guys saved my life. And think about it like what else I could do my life that someone sits in front of me and say, you saved my life. So I think that's a very high benefit apply board has. And I always challenge people like anyone in your list. If you ask them why are you here? I can guarantee that everyone like giving you the same answer. We are here to make this possible, to help these 340 million people that they're not in a school so they can also go to school. How good of the world is if everyone get educated? How much of racism go down? How much of world can collaborate more? How many more engineers we need in this world? How much of technology would advance if for every student we have in a school now, you make it three times means three times more engineer, three times more a scientist, three times more people that know about the world and everything else. We're going to be so beautiful, future going to be so bright. I think that's the thing about unique about Applied World.

What doesn't connect with a lot of people probably living in North America is I'm an immigrant myself. I was a refugee of the Gulf War. Then we moved to Canada. My parents are from India. They were working in Kuwait at the time. In countries outside of North America, education is the highest bar, right? Like you get your grades, can you get into engineering or become a doctor? Can you do your master's kind of thing? And it's very hard to get opportunities especially in like Asia and the Middle east, particularly India and Middle east is if you don't have a certain bar of education, so it makes it quite hard. And so I completely connect with this because I almost dropped out of high school. So I know like you're not gonna get a job and everyone's gossiping about you. And it's not just you, but it's the community around that makes it miserable for you. And you're like, ah, I'm a failure. And so I can completely connect. But beyond this, I think it shares. You provide a great lesson here on people and culture is that the most important thing is not the money, it's to have a mission and to have passion for that mission. Because if the founders and all the leaders are passionate for that mission, it will go in through all the employees and the people that you hire. And everyone is bought into that mission. And you got to reiterate that over and over. And so that's a fantastic lesson. I want to go into some fundraiser. How long of a Runway until revenue will start to match valuation? Like how do you think about that?

What is called a value of a company is a value of a company, not the revenue of the company. So revenue valuation. I know investors try to match these two other formula. Like it used to be 10x of ARR or 40x of ARR. But over time it showed what makes a good company is what makes a huge valuation. But a good company solving a big problem, a good company doing innovation while solving a very big problem. A big company that gonna have access a lot of data. A good company do things in other way. A good company learn where they are to unlock the access to the human being. Focus on that part, not the revenue part. Because if it is a good company, one of the characteristic of it is it's also create a very good revenue. It also creates a very good growth rate. Still, the fundamental of a good business didn't change since 18th centuries. A good business is where it solves a real problem. And customers love that solution. And the why is there. And they can attract the right people. If all these elements is there, anytime the revenue shaft is open, it comes. So that's how I would approach what is the valuation thing. And valuation is not really something. It's not a goal or something. For example, me for our funding, I had to bring our valuation because of the pandemic down like $900 million. And I don't even regret it for a second. Because valuation is just like what market pay at that time depends. What matters is the money that you get on that valuation. How Are you going to utilize it to make your good company a better company, to make your great company a fantastic company, to get your fantastic company to an excellent company, to make your excellent company to a fabulous company? That's what matters.

Since we started with valuations here, let's go right into fundraising. During a pandemic, you mentioned that you had some great investors who you needed to close your Series C. And you emailed them or contacted them on a Sunday night or Saturday night and they wired you the money on the Monday. So let's start here. How did you decide when the right time is to raise and how did you build relations and pick the right investors for you? Because picking the right investors is key. And this is something you gave me advice on before we took the money from Radian Capital and Chris, and we spoke very highly of him, which is one of the key factors on why we went that direction. So how do you. I think no one knows better than you suffering for three years and now saying that I have investors who I contact on a Saturday night or Sunday night and they borrow money even to put money in our company by Monday. How did you decide when to raise and how do you find the right investors?

2016, you remember I said if you're almost at the edge of bankruptcy, we had to let a couple of people go. And our team was like 16 people. And we came down to 11 or something like that. I think six people we let go till day. That was the one of the hardest days in my career that because the lack of cash, I had to let good people go. And it just took with me. And actually, back to the last question. I always want to have years of Runway in my bank account because cash bring stability. And that's what happened during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, we had a term sheet at $2.2 billion, signed term sheet, and then we got another term sheet at $1.8 billion. And then pandemic happened. Investors start their interest, they go. And I was like, who cares? I already signed terms sheet. And the guy that did up to 2.2 billion valuation, he called and said our LPs or whatever, hey, I can't. Sorry, man. Bank on drop. And I looked at it, I was like, what if this is like a 2008, like if pandemic goes and borders get closed, and this is before March 16, that actually government went ahead and closed the borders businesses to bring students internationally, what's going to happen? I'm not going to lay off people because we don't have money or something. And remember even within that time I had all the money that we raised for series B still in the bank. So we still had two years of run rate but it meant we couldn't grow. So I went back to investors and I reduced the valuation, said hey, instead of this is the amount that is on term sheet. If I bring it lower, what is the lowest I can go? He said this, I said what is that valuation? We agreed on the valuation, we shook hands, it was Thursday afternoon and he said, look, I have a Monday morning call with the partners, I have to deliver them the news that you cannot raise the total. And I'm going to tell them that the adjusted valuation, I remember he told me hustle up till Monday, tell me if you got this amount of dollar or not. He was putting 70 something percent. So I had another 20 something percent to raise from Thursday afternoon till basically his Monday morning before pandemic. I was asking people to invest $100 million in our company. So I was going for a hundred million dollar check. And at that point I started calling people for a hundred thousand dollar check. And one of our investor Chris that I introduced you, he personally also invested like more money because he used to invest from another fund. And this is what happened. Like I called even people for 50k I think Saturday night or something, Saturday evening or something, I got the money. And then you realize what means okay investors. I had investors that we made them over 100 times and I messaged them, said sorry, I cannot help you. I had investors that more than what they invested, they said don't worry about it, we get the money for you. I had one of my investors that from China, he didn't have money in Canada, he borrowed money to invest in our company so we can close our round. I had investors that you know, because they knew something's happening, they decided not to like react on it. And then two months later they come said hey, I'm sorry, can I do my pro rata right now? And you're like, seriously? But the good thing is I got mostly support from my current investors and the whole money that 25% left, my current investors, majority of it they put in. And I would say they helped the round to close. And I'm so proud of that because I went from here to the bottom and I get to the point that I was literally to the urge of cry because I was keep remembering 2016, I was like, how do I go in front of my employees and say and now I need to like lay you guys Off. I'm not going to do that. And I think we hot sell it up. We got a great support from our investors. They put the money and now probably is three or four times their money they made since last March that they put money in. And yeah, that's a story. It was hard, man, it was hard. When I was thinking about, when I was thinking about at that time, I was like, why don't I have personal money? I should have be able to put the money in the company to bail it out. I didn't have and that was one of my mistakes that maybe previously I never took any money off the table. Major thing that I can't save the company in a day like this. I was like, I have nothing. I had some money, it was in my mortgage. I was calling my bank on Friday, hey, how much can you refinance? Even if you do, it has to be new appraisal. We're not going to be able to give you. I have nothing. I have a company, billion dollar company. It might go to negativity of layoff and then decline versus this is the urge now everyone got hurt. I need to double up the team. I need to do a strong. And when we got the money we turned the shaft to the positivity we went to. Everyone said not only you're not gonna lay off, we're gonna go strong. And I think we hired half of the team since the day pandemic happened. We get from 300 something to 750 now that's amazing.

So I wanna get into the team side of things here because this ties right in. What is the key lesson here? Because young founder, I would say first time founder, first time raising. And then you hit this tough situation and there's a few that stick with you. Looking back, what are some key traits or signals that projects what a good investor would be?

Every time I start with why and I start with what it is and in their eyes I can see this guy connect or not and vendor don't connect like ah, you are bottom of the list. I still go to you if I really need the money and I need to survive. But I rather go with the people that when you tell them said do you understand if for every single graduate we have another two graduates how beautiful the world would be. They're thinking about this. Yeah, I want to bet on that future. I want to make that thing to happen. I want to make world a better place. I want to be part of this journey and those people just give me energy. A good investor is an Investor that when you down, they behind you say Martin, you could do it. Or like Lloyd, you could do it. Don't give up. But think about it. For example, we as founders have one of the hardest job in our company. Everyone, not even my company, I'm saying in any company, everyone looking for recognition. And recognition should always come from top to down. That's normal. But rarely someone comes said hey Lloyd, I want to appreciate you for being a good founder or something. And you're looking that. But when you go to your investors, they're looking at a strong suited tie. Always type of professional CEOs that things are stable. But we are humans too, man. We are in our 30s or 20s and doing something rarely happened that someone pick up a phone said, hey, I just want to tell you how happy I am. They tell you like how happy I am, like invested or something. But sometimes on your execution it makes the job of the founders lonely. So when I see someone who connects with the founders in the personal level and they're like, man, this is your journey. I want to be part of the journey. I want to be part of. I want to be, I want to do something. These are the people that when you down and you feel bad about yourself or you doubtful or something doesn't go wrong. You can call and just say I think I have a very big problem and I don't know the solution. And you are not worried at that time they're going to judge you or they going to bring like board. They're trying to just help you as a partner. Those are the good investors people who you connect with them personally. That's my big things. I never went after the brand I never cared about. Oh, this is xyz, this is blah blah. Look at my VC list. Arteman Ventures, Antos. Now Antos are like pretty famous. Like maybe the last round Drive and Index. They're very like well branded. But it happened because I connected with them, not because I wanted to go after XYZ brand. Don't take me wrong, I went to those brand too. Like a lot of them rejected us. But it wasn't ever a motivation of us that I need for example XVC to be our thing. I want to work, this is my life. I want to have fun. I want to like someone that I can call and text and do good and they understand when I'm busy.

And that was a very good piece of advice when we spoke late last year as we were deciding because that brand thing when you're. I live in San Francisco, for example when you're still in the Silicon Valley, you're stuck in this bubble of big names and, and whatnot. And what really matters is do you connect and are they passionate about it? Because throughout this conversation, the theme here, even here is passion trumps transaction, passion transcends, relationship transcends. And I know as founders it's lonely and mental health is really important. So you want to be able to connect with people. And Chris a while ago typed that would back you and Lloyd every day of the week, humbled to be included. So those kinds of things are fantastic to hear here. Going into people, right? You went from three people to 80 people to 300 and then now 750 and growing by the minute. Did you have some sort of scaling formula? Like after X people maybe we'll move to a wework, then we'll buy an office. So like how did you come up with this level of scale? Is there some sort of formula?

I don't think there is a certain formula. You have to believe in your people. And guys, I'm not hiring 700 people. My people hire the next level of people. You have to trust them. Of course you're going to be very good. The main thing like the main KPIs of the business, the main customer feedbacks and those things I owe on daily basis, I check, I talk to people, I talk about challenges, but the rest of it, you let the people go. The problem that AppLiber had from 2017 to now, we always had more customers than we could serve a lot of companies. So this formula works for us is like always like chase the problem solving thing. Some people have a different problem. They have the product, they have the service, but they don't have enough customers. So my advice for them might not be as good because for us it was like we always had customers, we knew what we have to do. It wasn't very hard to figure it out. The biggest problem is how to make all of them happy, to address their issues on time, to do the tickets on time and everything else. I know the formula for growth is be a good person, hire good people, bring the next good people and good people bring the next good people. And what happens when accompanies that positivity? Even when negative people come in, they themselves push themselves out. Like you become such a positive things that everyone come and they want to be negative and they want to be things they can't because everyone around them are so positive. So the company push it out and you don't have to do everything with a formula. Or something. And then more immigrants and females and those things come look at our diversity. 56% female and gender variant. 60% immigrants. Right. 65% speaking another language. Think about it, how on earth we have people from 40 countries. How you could put people in 40 countries and there's no culture clash stuff. The only thing that is between cultures are saying is goodness, right? Being authentic about what you do. Go to people, explain if you made a mistake. Go say hey guys, I screwed it up. I'm 32 years old, I don't have all the answers in the world. And make the company a positive and it's going to take care of itself. Sometimes negativity happen and it's normal. Sometimes you make mistake, you go and say I apologize. Sometimes you do something good and they don't understand it. So you try to explain it. And sometimes there is something happen. You say, I'm not going to focus on this because this negativity, I have a better thing to address.

So it's a lot about communication and it's positivity. Basically what I'm hearing is hire smart people that are positive, that are passionate, bought into your mission and get out of their way and they will bring the right people. So give them the vision and the mission and the metrics and they will figure it out. Give them the autonomy to execute is what I'm hearing here. Because now at 750 people, it's hard. At 750 people, what goals should CEOs set for themselves? How do you define success? What KPIs are you on top of?

It's a complex because from one side you have some. How many students, for example, you want to help? What are the geographies you want to be in place, how much of a human touch point you want to have in your product and how much automation you want to have. So we have those KPIs, but look at Covid, our industry came down 77% and we've grown on that same industry. So those numbers at the end of the story really doesn't matter. Let me answer you by this one. There is a book by Bill Walsh called the Scores Take Care of Itself. If you read that book, it changed the whole methodology of like how you build a business. And the whole thing is you put the right process, you put the right people, you do something good, then the result come. Don't worry about it. And that's how we like running it. Like again, be fluid, do the good thing and whatever happen, you don't have control in every single Situation at the end of the story. My biggest advice to whoever want to start a company or work in a startup, realize that people are people. They make mistakes. Things doesn't go well sometimes, and that's the opportunity of working in a startup or do a company because you can learn way more. When things are unstable, when things are exploding, when things doesn't have process, that's the opportunity of learning. And when it comes back to people, bring people who are positive, who align with your core values, who align with your mission, and who want to do something differently, who want to have impact in their life. Who not just chasing you because now you give the best stock option and your stock is the next big thing, right? Who chased you because they really believe this world should have something like this.

One thing is key here because you've built a massive team. You're at the top now, 750 people. And you talked a lot about passion, mission, motivation, hiring great people. And it's a hard thing to do for a lot of people. How do you make sure everyone on your team is well aligned with the broader company mission, strategy and goals? Like how do you train an organization to make better decisions when you're not in the room?

So from the first line of the job description, when they're reading to apply, you talk about your mission. The day that they come to your company, the first thing they see on the wall is talking about, for example, for us is education is a right, not a privilege. Our mission is to make education accessible for all students around the world. You say it so many times and now I realize this after years of saying it is people who don't like this, after you tell them 300 times and they see it everywhere, they actually go away from it themselves, naturally. So mission not only is a magnet to bring the people who really believe in this, also it has a defense mode for people who they don't care, they're racist or something. If you are racist and you come to apply, but doesn't matter how good your performance is, soon you're going to get pushed out. You can't like, you cannot be in a meeting that there is an Indian with accent, Iranian with accent, Arab person, like a Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, you're not going to be able to last that thing. Like one day you break down, said, this is not what I want. But if you are not racist, you will stay because you enjoy it. Now. This is a place that you could have your nationality and your accent and your religion and everything and be proud of who you are so that's all I wanted to say from that regard.

Yeah, definitely. And what I see is that some of the greatest companies do that, right? They start with a mission. People are bought in their mission driven companies and. And now, yeah, they're making a lot of money. It doesn't seem that way. And a lot of us get caught up with the transaction of it is, let's run this experiment and let's optimize that. And next week we actually have Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. And the last time he spoke at our in person conference, he said one thing really important here. He's like, when you look at things as a transaction and optimize an A B test to the nth degree, every site becomes a porn site. He's like, focus on the customer you're serving and your mission and let that be your primary guide. And I'm hearing that as a common theme between some of the greatest CEOs here. Martin, as you look back on your journey, some parting thoughts here. What do you wish you did more of and what do you wish you did less of?

I'm very hard on myself, so maybe I would have been less hard on myself and maybe that part I would do more like just keep telling myself, hey, don't worry, it would be fine and stuff. I cannot change the history that I came from. I came from like bottom of the World, these movies like there is a car running and people without shoes, they running after the car. I came from something like that. So if I sometimes tell people if this is the poverty line, we were here and sometimes we didn't want to go underneath, so we were pushing the line down. So because of that, like, it's in my nature of always be hard on myself and try to be the best of the best. Maybe that's the only thing I would say. No, man, like, I made so many mistakes. If I want to tell you one by one of them at the company that I made mistake, I've said things that I should have not said. I've done things that I should have not done. I started the bad cultures that I should have not done. But at the same time, I've said good things. I've said things at the end of the story, if you want to count it, I don't know, call it 60, 40, right? 60% good, 40% bad. If I go back, I said, don't worry about it. 60, 40 is still acceptable, you'll still pass. Don't worry about the result of it. Just do what your heart is telling you to do. Again, I'm getting to that realization of saying right now for me this is not a company anymore, it's a movement. What's the most beautiful thing? I start seeing this like mockups that happening. Someone like a one page website, they put it online. You know what I love about it? Every single one of them copy paste our mission. And when you see the copycats start copy pasting your mission, it gives you a heart, a good heart to say oh my God, if these guys are also believing in what I believe the world should be world going to be such a good place because now we started the movement, it's not a business anymore. And I believe apply for already is a movement like we change entirely our industry. How schools. We made a school so much more responsive because now there is a competition between them. We made counselors way more respectful to the students. We brought the respect and the standard up in our industry, even financially or whatever happened to Applyboard. I'm proud of what we've done. We made world a better place.

You know what? That is probably the best parting thought we could get. If you're passionate about your mission and your whole company believes in it, your mission and you can turn that mission into a movement, you'll not only be extremely happy and have a happy life, but you'll also build a massive company. Martin, thank you for being a friend. Thank you for all the advice. Thank you for joining us today. This was fantastic.

Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for having me.

I need some traction.

Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the Traction podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star review and you can find more information and all the resources mentioned in today's episode at Boast AI that's b o a s t AI blog.