LE007: Start a Business with Nick Timms and Eduarda Bardavid

Hello, I'm Takis Athanassiou. I'd like to welcome you to the new episode of Leadership Execution Podcast, a podcast for leaders who'd like to make a difference. My goal is to inspire you to take the initiative to change what no longer works and to provide you with the necessary strategies and processes and tools to achieve that. Without delay, let's start with today's topic. Hello everybody, Takis Athanassiou here. Welcome to Leadership Execution Podcast. If this is your first time listening, then I'd like to thank you for being here, and I hope to have you on the show again. Now, let's put this on the road, and without delay, I'd like to introduce you my guest for today. Today, I'd like to introduce to you two young people: Mr. Nick Tibbs and Mrs. Eduarda Bartavit. Nick and Eduarda are two wonderful young people with great ideas and even more talents. The point is not that young people have ideas; that's a fact.

The point is that Nick and Eduarda had an excellent idea and learned how to make.

It happen. You see, Nikan and Duarte are the founders of Drag. Drag is a Chrome extension that helps you organize your inbox, and it's also a new startup business with more than 32,000 users testing its products. Isn't that something? Well, without further ado, let's hear what Nikan and Duarte have to say about more than business organization Drag. First of all, I'd like to welcome you Nik and Eduarda on Leadership Execution Podcast.

Hi, Takis.

Hello.

Hello both. Thank you for being here. Let's start our discussion from the only lady in our company today, Eduarda. Hola, Eduarda. How are you today?

Hi, how are you, Takis? I'm very, very good. Thank you. Hi, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm fine too. You, Nik?

Yes, the same actually. Apart from the weather in London, it's It's not too bad, it's a good day today, thank you.

It's excellent. In Greece we have sunny weather, so it's perfect.

You always have sunny weather, right? Yeah.

Thank you for being here, Ken and Eduarda. Let me ask you some questions. Let's start from you, Eduarda. Who Eduarda is and how do you start with drag? If you can tell us something about your background.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So it's, um, it's very interesting every time someone asks my background, um, when I said that as a tech founder, because actually there's nothing to do with my background. So I am an engineer, okay, but not computer engineer. So I meant I'm a mechanical engineer, but I worked most of my life with management consulting, um, mainly focused on energy. So I used to work on something really, really different from drag. So it was a big leap For me to leave from a job and, you know, where you used to work with just the fancy clothes and briefcases in an office, to now come to a completely new startup working from coffee shops, and it's such a different environment. But yeah, basically this is my background.

Okay, so you're a Typically consultant, are you not?

Sorry?

You're a typical consultant, I guess. Not an IT consultant like myself, but—

No, management consultant. So I used to work with the strategy of oil and gas companies. So it's completely strategy and business. It's not related to IT at all. It's completely focused on business.

Excellent. Then I imagine that as my age, organization is a must for conducting your business.

Yeah, for sure. It was very, very good. It's a good— gave me a good view on business, on organizations. Although I used to work majority with oil and gas companies, you know, when you talk about strategy and how it's Organize people and to organize your competitors and the market that you are dealing with. So all of this, all this learning has been very, very useful to apply in drag as well. So yeah, there was a lot of things that I'm leveraging from my experience from management consulting.

So this experience can help you, I imagine, To discuss with Nick and design something like drag.

Yeah, so it was very— so this idea was very funny. Like, we are big fans of Trello, of Kanban as a whole. So I use Kanban at home, like, to organize my tasks. I'm a really big fan. And email is something that hasn't changed much, if you think. Since it was created in the '70s.

Yes.

You have that standard single row organized chronologically, organized by dates, and it didn't change much. And I always got myself lost in my emails. I never knew what I needed to reply or, I don't know, what are my emails. important emails sinking on the inbox. And merging this with the idea that we love Kanban and inspired by Trello, we thought, hey, why not apply it to inbox? It would be amazing for me at least. And then the whole idea came. We'll explain it more in detail. But yeah, and then I took this big leap, said, you know what, I've been working for the last few years in management consulting. Okay, I have a good idea on the strategy and business, but now I think it's time to build my own. And this partnership with Nick came in the perfect timing. And yeah, and then Dwerg was born.

Excellent. Let me ask Nick, what is his unique perspective and what kind of background does he have?

Mine's not as exciting as Duda's. I've been in London and in England the whole time. She's been all over the world. And my background is almost really doing my own things. I started digital agencies about 10 years ago. You talk about us being young, but I'm not quite so young. Yeah, I started digital agencies about 10 years ago and moved into software, so software as a service, as of about 4 years ago. And I was really excited because historically where I've dealt with digital agencies and our own online retailer and things like that, we've— I've been exposed to purchasing product and then trading product. And so the margin that you have is limited by obviously inventory and stock. So when I first stumbled across SaaS and realized that you You know, you develop a product and you retail it effectively under a subscription service where you don't have that direct attributable cost. It's amazing. So the model of SaaS is amazing. Obviously, we see it everywhere now and it's such an exciting industry to be in. So as of 3 to 4 years ago, I've launched a number of SaaS products. I've launched 3 different ones that are based in different areas of the UK. And they're successful now, they're profitable, and they've got good teams behind them that run those businesses. So as Eduardo was saying, as of, I think it was March time, we started to launch the first MVP, so the first minimum viable product on Drag, and we haven't really looked back. It's been really exciting. It's starting to get some traction. It's starting to get some really nice numbers. So it's a good time to be here with us.

I see, Nick, that you use a lot of lean methodology approach. I mean, that your LeanCo defines a certain methodology that probably you follow. Kanban is part of this methodology, I imagine.

Exactly that, yeah. Do you know what? And I've done that because— we've done that, sorry, I should say— because some of my historical learnings have been through failure. So over-investing in development and assuming certain features and assuming certain products and getting so far down the line on thinking that a product will look correct before you launch it to the market, only to then realize that your assumptions are incorrect, and then you have to reverse engineer and pivot and change. So the learnings that Eduardo has and the learnings that I have, and we put those together And now we're in a place that the way that we work, that our customers now use, is to be agile and is to be very lightweight and is to introduce features based on what our customers are saying and iterate instead of having assumptions and building these big, cumbersome, robust products that aren't necessarily what the user wants. So that's reflected in things such as our public roadmap that we have on our website.

Mm-hmm.

it and seeing the engagement with over 1,000 users who are telling us problems, bugs, feature requests, and they're voting on all of these as well. So they're the people who are shaping the product for us, really, not ourselves.

So what makes 2 young people like Eduardo and yourself to take the decision to shift from a regular quote-unquote business to a venture project?

Well, I think it is a very— it was a very difficult decision because of course there are pros and cons, but when you think that I used to have my stable and well-paid glamorous job in consulting and suddenly I had no salary, no certainties about the future of my company and you come to an uncertain environment, it's completely different. It's really tough. I think you need to be prepared. The thing is you need to calculate your risks. So you need to have a plan. You know that you won't have a salary the first months at least and you can't guarantee that you your idea will succeed. So you need to have this courage to make this decision. But at the same time, it's been good. It's been amazing because the thing is that when you work in a big company, in a big corporation, and you have dozens of layers of hierarchical hierarchy above you, so you don't have much authority to do the things that you think are right or the things that you believe in. So when I worked in consulting, I mean, I did the things that I was supposed to do based on the projects that the partners used to sell. And I mean, my decision-making was not so— I didn't have much power for decision-making. And now with my own company, I make the decisions basically. So me and Yves together, we have completely the power to do what we believe is the best. So I think in the end, When you go to— when you follow this path of building your own company, you end up working much more passionately because you were working towards something that you created, your ideas, your plan that you built, instead of just executing something that someone delegated to you. So it requires a commitment. Completely different mindset. So yeah, as I said in the beginning, it's really tough. You need to balance, you need to have the courage, and you need to calculate your risks that are high. But I don't know, but most of times it pays off for me, at least, right? I really believe it's paying off.

Excellent. What about you, Nick? How do you view the whole thing? The transition to go full-time into entrepreneurship?

I have nothing to add, Takis. I think Eduardo has said it all. My background is a little different, so I've always kind of started from nothing and worked for myself and tried to launch businesses. And, you know, some have been successful and some not so successful. So I haven't really done the transition Eduardo's taken, a really, as she was saying, a really, really bold leap. From what was a very glamorous role in the Middle East to, you know, starting and working from the ground up in something that's her own. So mine has always been starting from the ground up.

In any case, Nick, this is a transition time, and I totally agree with Eduardo that you should have a B plan in any case, or a C if that helps. But the thing is that The certainty has finished up with the end of the last century, I believe, and now you have to do something on your own in order to compensate for the certainty you have lost. So the primacy for many people is one way, I think, as an approach. But I read in your blog something that struck me very oddly, and And I know from experience that it's true that you spent something around 1,200 hours for developing and more than 1,000 hours for planning, marketing, and executing. And that is something that I'd like for you to tell me some more.

Yeah, of course. So the thing with any business is that you have to take a leap of faith. faith. And the leap of faith that we effectively took was, was those numbers that you've read out. So, you know, 1,200 hours of development, so we've incurred that time and that cost. 1,000 hours of planning, which is Eduardo's and my time consolidated together. And marketing, executing, so reaching out to 26,000 people by email. And I think what that means in the context of that blog that I was writing was that it's demonstrating the work that we've put in to date to get Drag to where it is. And I think from a user perspective, they hopefully just see a cool tool that works and functions and improves their productivity. But the background activity that's taken for us to get it to there has been really extreme. So when you've read that— I think it's really important to note that We're running a blog called Inside Drag, and Inside Drag is hopefully opening up the inside and the background operations of Drag to give all of our users visibility around how we do things, why we do things, and what's important to us, what things are working really well, what things aren't working so well. So the context of those points we're moving—

yeah. What all this effort doesn't mean to you as a person? I mean, Okay, you have the role of entrepreneur, but you and Eduardo, you have different roles in your life as well. What does it mean to you to be founders of a company in the startup and the early stages for you as a person?

Eduardo, do you want to lead on this one?

No?

Okay. So for me, it's It's a hard one to explain, actually. It's exciting, but it's sacrificial as well. So you— there are other things in your life, of course, aside from work. And the problem— if we start with problems— the problem with having your own business and running your own business is that you are the one that's accountable for all of it. So what that means is that you can't have a finite 9-to-5 work habit. You can't necessarily have a 9 to 6 or 7 work habit. For example, with DRAG, we have an international team. So we have employees in Japan, we have employees in Brazil, we have our team in London, and we have a team in Brazil. And bear in mind, because that's so diverse, the hours are very diverse as well, and we need— we are the accountable people. that are there to support each one of our team, which means that our working day can be stretched very extremely. By extremely, I mean, um, 6, 7 AM in the morning, potentially through till 11 PM at night. So that's the professional life, which means the impact that has on the personal life can, can have an impact. But, Edouard?

Yeah, just to, just to add on top of what Nick said, What you said, that's completely true. So the times are a bit crazy and you are completely accountable for your work, so you cannot have a fixed schedule. But a big advantage on that, I think, is you also have more flexibility. And this I can say as well coming from a big corporation where you need to go every morning to the office. And you need to show in a— how do you call the work database? You need to put your hours that you're working, this kind of things. So when you have your own business, you have more flexibility. I don't know, sometimes you work from 6 to 10 AM, and then 10 AM you have, I don't know, something to solve from your personal life, and then you go have lunch, and then start working again at 5 until midnight. So it's kind of a crazy time, but it's good. This flexibility is very good. I really value it from my having a previous career that was more hard in terms of working hours and going to the office and this kind of Do you have some daily habits or strategies in order to make you more productive?

I mean, you have a very diverse team all over the world. I imagine Brazil, Japan, and London, what Nick said. And do you have some productive, besides the drug of course, to help you move on what have to be done?

Yeah, good question. I think a lot of things is balance. So we do work long hours, but as Eduardo was saying, the flexibility to jump in and out. So I think it's ensuring that you allocate free time to not working sometimes as well. So health and diet, I think those 2 things are really, really important. So I think to be able to regularly go into the gym clears your mind, and having a routine to be able to do that. I think that having a clear A clear kind of diet and a healthy lifestyle really helps you remain active and fresh thinking as well. And I think if I was to be honest, I would say that starting from your body and your kind of your mental health is the first thing to keep you productive and to keep you going. Excellent.

So you must be— for you to be organized, it is a must. Must, despite the drug development, but it is an essential part of your business to keep on focus all the time and keep on pushing the limits further and further because you're in the early stages of development of a company and you already make a huge impact in USA and Europe. As I can say. So the question is, what, how you push further your professional goals? I mean, how you developing further your company, not just the application, but what is your model of excellence, if you like, about drug Another one?

So the model of excellence, that's a good question. We've got a couple of cornerstones that we want to do. We want to ensure that our customers are happy and excited. We want to ensure that when they use Drag, it firstly delivers the wow moment, but then more fundamentally, it ensures that it makes them more and more and more productive. So our goals when it comes to developing the product is to introduce features that are genuinely going to free up users' time so that they can do things outside of work. You know, people spend 6.3 hours a day every single day in their email, and Drag's ultimate goal isn't to make them work more, it's to make them more productive. productive, to open up their time to other things so that they're not fundamentally staring at their computer for that 6.3. We'd love to get it down to 1 or 2 hours a day. So that's— it sounds like a strange goal, but it's kind of fundamental to the direction we're trying to take as a business. And we're doing that, we're doing that all organically at the moment. We are— I don't know if we mentioned— we are raising investment at the moment to accelerate all this and hopefully make Drag the universal tool for people's inboxes generally?

It is excellent because the inbox has a very huge impact on your daily business life at least, and not to say for the personal one. And this is becoming worse and worse if you're out of focus or you have too many demands to satisfy. For me, Gmail and Drag is now part of my everyday life. Books, and I like it very much because it follows, beside a methodology I like as well, the Lean methodology and Kanban, I like the gamification approach you have provided to that. That makes it more fun to use it. But what I have to ask is, in order to develop a better When you are developing your product, you need a lot of feedback. Is that something that you have a special department, or you both as founders receive feedback from your users and try to teach, if you like, your users the better ways of being productive with Dag?

Yeah, so this is a very interesting question, and this is something as new as Dag is, Nick mentioned earlier, it's extremely important for us. So, since day one, we built the product 100% based on what our customers want. And we have a couple of channels, of communication channels with our customers today. So, the main one is, I would say, is the Trello, is the public board. So yeah, Nick mentioned we had over 1,000 engagements of customers saying they're reporting ideas that they would like to see on Drag and reporting bugs and other stuff, and they can follow on our plan and how— what we are developing now and to have an idea of when the next features will be developed and etc. And we have of course Of course, another communication channel is email, the standard ones. We also have a live chat on our website, so we always put a lot of effort to reply very quickly. So at any time, if you go to our website, if you have any questions, we will be there. And another important tool for us that we created is the Which One Do You Prefer campaign. So every Tuesday we send an email to all our customers with some— with a survey about the product. So for example, guys, we're gonna launch this new feature next week, but we need to understand from you which would be the best design for that. And we send 2 or 3 images and say, How would you like to see this feature? Option 1, 2, or 3. And they can vote, and we literally do the design that they vote. So this is very important for us. We have a lot of engagement in this, which one do you prefer campaign. What else? Am I missing something, Nick?

No, I think you've covered them. I think you've covered those channels.

Yeah, so this is very important for We really value the feedback that we get from the users.

I think that it is the only viable approach nowadays because as an instructional designer and e-learning expert, I know the importance of users' feedback back to your products, and I know that sometimes in the older days at least Every one of us have fallen into the trap of designing in blank or in the blackboard and without the users.

Yeah.

And this costs a lot to many companies nowadays. I believe that your approach is excellent because the user feedback is the only thing that, besides the solid methodology, gonna provide you the critical points that you need to pay attention to whenever they arrive, and perhaps a direction for your next pivotal move you need to make.

Yeah.

I want to thank you, but I want to finalize this interview asking you just one question. If any of you or both of you would like to give one final advice to people that they like to follow your lead or mimic your example, if you want that, what would that be?

So, so just me? So first of all, if someone is in this, is facing this difficult decision that I did once, jumping from a big corporation to start your own business or, yeah, to start a startup, so my first advice is to take the leap. Of course, calculate the risks, acknowledge the Know the risks that you're taking, have a plan B, but then go. Don't feel like— you need to have the courage. Don't feel intimidated, like attracted, just basing your decisions only on stability, because most of times it will pay off. So this is my first advice. And the second one is very important. for entrepreneurs who are starting their business now, and something that I've been learning a lot, is to always seek help and mentoring and every piece of advice from people that were once in your situation. So more experienced people, people that founded startups before. In my case, I seek I seek a lot of advice from my ex-colleagues, consultants, so partners in the consulting firm that I used to work, or my colleagues, engineers that now are working in banking. I ask for their advice for our financial plan. So everything that you feel that you can learn from people that know more than you, I would suggest to leverage the knowledge of these people.

Excellent.

Nick, would you have something to say?

Yeah, probably not as much words as wisdom, I would say. From my perspective, it's just to execute. So I've been doing it for quite a while, and I think the reason that we're quite fast to do things and fast to launch and fast to be aggressive with growth is just by executing. And apply that to every single area of your business. So yes, there's a time for planning. Yes, there's a time for preparation. No, there's no time for procrastination. So get your planning as lean as you can and then execute on everything. So we refer to launching a product, we refer to executing a marketing plan, we refer to sales. Do everything and execute, execute, execute. And I think that drives the business forward. I think it instills a good culture for the team that you work around, and it sets a precedent for the speed and the style of business that you're trying to grow with.

Excellent. So I keep the final key points by Edward: take the leap and seek help and mentoring. And the one point of view, start planning and execute upon your plan. And I think it is the best advice I have had lately. I'd like to thank you for being here, and I hope we'll see you again in another interview. I hope it was— the experience would be nice for you too, as well.

Yeah, massively so. Thank you so much, Takis.

Thank you very much, Eduardo and Nick, and nice to have you here. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye. Thank you all for listening today. I'd love to see you at the next episode of Leadership Initiative Podcast. If you have a question or a comment, please send me a message at my site, takisathanassiou.com. Until next time, take the initiative to become the person you want to be. Start now and make a difference. Thank you all for listening. Thank you.