Jakub: All right, Vadim. By the way, did I pronounce your name correctly?
Vadim: Yeah. It’s Vadim, but it’s pretty good.
Jakub: Vadim.
Vadim: Yeah.
Jakub: All right, so we are here with Vadim, and currently, he’s in Bali and the weather is beautiful out there. We will talk more about his upcoming product, his journey, and his story. Also, definitely about how did he end up in Bali. His product is Blogalyzer, and it’s a tool for content creators that help measure and track everything they do in their content marketing game. So thank you very much for joining me, Vadim. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself a little? Like what do you do? How did you end up in Bali? Let’s discuss it further.
Vadim: Okay, cool. So yeah, my name is Vadim Popowsky, and I am a Belgian guy with a Russian name. Basically, I’m a guy with a master’s degree in Economics and I did a couple of corporate jobs. I started learning to code when I was pretty young, just websites and stuff like that. But I always liked the flow of coding and also the fact that it brings you into a flow. But, I wasn’t really happy doing corporate jobs so one day, I decided to go deeper into the Java course and that got the ball a bit rolling. So now I describe myself a 50% marketer, 50% coder, and a 100% genius. Some people find it funny, some don’t. But that is who I am.
Vadim: I had once launched a startup earlier, more into the B2C section to find few fellow mates but it didn’t properly work out. Later, I started working for other startups as a marketing manager where I also did some sales. I did a lot of different jobs before I got to this point. So basically last year, I was a marketing manager and I also developed some automation for the team to get leads in the CRM systems and automation on exactly what I’m doing now. So along with content marketing, I also got various campaigns. I was more like a technical marketer and that’s how I would like to describe myself. I had an idea of creating an agency that would help like marketing teams with limited technical skills to basically have some tools and that was called the marketing pharmacy.
Vadim: So basically, I would develop a lot of small tools, and people could enter that pharmacy, a marketing pharmacy and then take products off the shelf or come behind the counter for consulting. Also, ask if they know the pharmacist about illegal drugs. I built Twitter bots and stuff like that as well. So that’s all about it. Well, I started developing my second tool, the Blogalyzer thing, and of course, it turned out to be way bigger than-
Jakub: Way more complex…
Vadim: Way more complex, way more work, way more interested as well. So that’s the thing. So now it’s been over a year that I have been working on this.
Jakub: Perfect. Thank you for the introduction. It’s an amazing journey. But let’s go back a little and … so why don’t you tell us a little bit more about like your corporate job and the reason you didn’t like it? Why did you decide to leave, and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur or a freelancer? So what exactly was the reason behind it?
Vadim: Good question. So my last real big corporate job was in 2015 or 2016. I was working for a big retail company in Belgium and basically, I was responsible for the market share and reporting thing. I had a pretty good job, pretty good pay. The holidays were amazing because when you’re on holiday and you work for the corporate… all the responsibility falls away so you can really enjoy the holiday. That’s not the case when you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t really have that pleasure anymore. But, what disturbs me a lot are two things, the first is growing the company that means growing in 0.15% margins, which is ridiculous. So you know you can’t establish real growth, you can’t build something new, and in a fast way. So that was pretty disturbing.
Vadim: I think a lot of corporates started to implement the startup mentality as well. Nowadays you can easily be an entrepreneur, but that really wasn’t the case back when I was working. But that was one thing, and the second thing is like I couldn’t grow as fast as I wanted because you need to be two years into your actual job to switch to another one. So it’s kind of frustrating for someone who likes fast pace, who likes change and growth. It was not easy… it was frustrating.
Jakub: Yeah. So the main reason was the pace, and the speed of the growth and innovations in corporate that was just way too slow for you as an entrepreneur. So what was the first step after you decided that you’re going to leave your corporate job? Because it’s a big difference because when you’re coming to the job you know exactly what to do. You have the boss but the transition between corporate job, and between entrepreneurship, and being on your own, it can be quite difficult. So what was the first step? What was maybe the first challenge? What all you faced while you were transitioning from your old corporate job to your first startup product?
Vadim: Well, I thought about it a lot. Basically, I had an idea that was completely different in events, and fashion. So it’s nothing to do with tech, but I knew that I wanted a part-time job next to it so that I could get some income. But, I also liked to stay a little bit focused because the startup idea wasn’t really working out yet. So I wanted a part-time job and I was looking at restaurants to work there and some other places…But I had a lot of luck, there was like a sort of course in Java in Belgium for six months, and you would actually get unemployment money while doing it.
Vadim: So it was a really relaxing thing, it was really a low-level course as well. But it allowed me to learn how to code again, more in-depth, and at the same time, I worked on my startup. On the startup idea let’s say. So basically, that start up idea, that event of startup idea failed because I didn’t have the experience, or the right people around me. It’s kind of difficult to start something in that space without context. So with the coding, of course, you get some ideas when you start coding, and then my first idea of actually building a sort of tinder for roommates came up. So after six months, I decided to focus completely on that, and well, I also got a sort of incubator who gave us $25k seed funding which allowed us to start. So it’s always a case of having enough money of course.
Vadim: Basically, that transition came from … I incorporated a lot of safety nets in it. To the part-time job, the incubation will give you money, so there were like safety nets to do it.
Jakub: You said that this first startup didn’t work out. What do you think that was the main reason? Was it because that you had way too many safety nets, and you didn’t go all the way in it? Or was there anything else?
Vadim: There’s a couple of reasons. There’s one other reason on the idea itself, it was a B2C, so we had … we needed like a huge market to actually start. Although we created a lot of growth hacks, so we were scraping Facebook groups completely, and putting all the rooms that were available in Facebook groups, we put them on our platform, which meant that we had one side of the double-sided market in place. We had like the offer. The demand, well, that was like the second problem. But it actually looked pretty good, but the thing was, we needed a lot of investment to get something like that starting, and B2C in Belgium is not supported, let’s say, there are non-existing B2C startups, and we were a bit young to move to Berlin.
Vadim: Then there were difficulties with tech developers. So basically, I’m a bit of a coder, but I can’t develop a full platform. My co-founder was a developer, but he had a lot of opportunity costs plus you can get a lot of money starting pretty young as a developer in Belgium. So well, he had an opportunity cost and he was also at the start of his career. He got a lot of good offers to join big companies and that’s what he did. So at that point, I could have continued, but I think I lacked the … How do you say it, the … not the responsibility, but I like the-
Jakub: Freedom or …
Vadim: Freedom. The guts, basically the guts to deal with it. There’s another important point, at that point I was really afraid to ask for feedback… So we met some investors and they broke us down, and then you get that negative feedback in you, and that kind of discourages you, which is something you have to learn on how to react to.
Jakub: Yeah. I have a similar experience when I was pitching my idea to an investor, and we were working on it for two years and he said, “No, it’s not going to work.” It’s really difficult to hear something like this from someone who can really help you if you want to, but if you hear it, it discourages you. I totally get to what you’re saying. For us, similar to you, there was a problem with developers. I’m actually wondering because I’m not a coder, as well I’m not a developer. So do you think that you, as a startup founder, should be actually more focused on one aspect like for example, marketing your product, or development, or you as a CEO should be able to do like all of it, at least at some level, at some depth? What do you think it’s a better approach to find a co-founder who is technical and you’re the marketing guy, or you can do all things together?
Vadim: It’s a really difficult question because I don’t have the answer, and then there’s like two sides to it. One side is what I’m doing now is that I built a prototype, and people say that it’s really easy to work that way. So that’s what I did the first year I built a prototype myself with a lot of learning, with a lot of failing, with a lot of trial and error, but I was really proud that I would be able to like bring a product to the market. So that was cool, and some people said that’s the best way to go. On the other side, I’m still stuck, and I can’t really finish a product because I don’t have the architectural skills so I can go … so on the other side, I’m still stuck because I can’t really finish a product as I don’t have the architectural skills. So I can code but like the experience to know which architecture you’re gonna use is not there.
Vadim: So I’m still relying on other people, and basically we need to … that’s what I’m doing now this year is to rebuild the entire thing into a web app, which is more solid and everything, so I still need these people. These people right now who work with me, they’re on another level, which means that even though I spent a lot of time coding, learning to code, doing workshops, and everything like that, I still can’t really understand what they’re doing, which and also, if I would like to understand everything that they do, I would need to spend my full time actually reading their code. So that’s a bit of a problem there.
Vadim: So I’m wondering myself, was it really necessary for me to learn how to code, to do a startup? I don’t think so. Because maybe I would have been more focused on developing the idea in balsamic or just wireframes, and do those things instead of starting to develop it.
Jakub: Interesting. Thank you for the answer, we have a first question in the chat, and it is asking, how did you handle the feedback from the investor, or from the guys who gave you the feedback that discourages you, how did you handle it? Did you continue doing your product?
Vadim: Yeah. Basically I quit that first product, which is not something I’m really proud of, because it was called Flat Ninja, and my two competitors that started at the same time as I did back then, have now raised 17 times respectively, so it’s kind of stupid that I stopped the idea because we were actually doing a pretty good job as good as they had. So the feedback was … well, we went, we tried to get investment in Tel Aviv, we tried to get investment in Singapore, and they both told us like, “If you don’t get investment in your own country, we can’t help you. If you can’t even convince people in your own country to give you 250 thousand dollars then why would we give you more money than that?
Jakub: I understand. That’s interesting. I live in the Czech Republic, which is Central Europe quite close to Belgium as well. The mentality here, well a certain mentality here isn’t that far in the tech countries such as Israel or San Francisco, Silicon Valley. People and investors understand more that growth, for example, is more important than you are making a few bucks on the start, and that’s something really difficult to explain to all the people here in Central Europe where some still have old thinking about the business and yeah, that’s something … that’s quite difficult. Alright, so you have built a few startups, first was sort of fashion startup that was called flat ninja, was it called flat ninja? Your current startup Blogalyzer, what was the journey after all these products you build? Why did you decide to start building this tool?
Vadim: Okay. So basically I was a marketing manager for a company, and my boss at that point, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with, and really young back then he was 23, he actually did the marketing. When we were doing the marketing when I was the manager I had other content marketers in my team, and he told me we had more distribution, we had more page views before, we did it better, and I’m like, “Damn, we’re doing everything we can. So please tell us what you did, or how you did it.” Basically, he couldn’t explain what it is. So I held the meeting with them, and we went through Google Analytics and trying to find the metrics from before when he did it, and we just couldn’t find it.
Vadim: It was a really frustrating process of clicking in analytics. So I decided to build a dashboard, or just build an overview or analyzing our blog. So that’s how I came to a sort of Google Sheet with all our blog posts, one below each other, and then the page views per month and so then I put some conditional formatting on it and we took it to our blog. That was a pretty interesting thing so we found the solutions, we saw that he was right.
Vadim: He had 3000 page views each time he published a post and we had about 1000. Then we discovered … based on that, we went like deeper in analytics, and we saw that 3000-page points came from Reddit and from Twitter, way more than what we were using, which was Facebook and Instagram. So it actually gave us insights, and in two or three months later, I wanted to do a follow-up. Basically I had to rebuild that entire Google Sheet from scratch, it took me two days, and then I kind of understood, if I would automate this thing, it would help us but it would help a lot of companies probably the biggest, of course, I tried to find another solution before I started developing it myself, and it didn’t exist.
Vadim: So I had that in the back of my mind that it could be a useful tool, and so then when I started the marketing pharmacy idea like the agency thing, I thought this would be one of the small tools and I decided to start building a Google Sheets add-on because I was doing a lot of things in Google Sheets, back end and automation and stuff like that. So that’s how I decided to start it.
Jakub: All right. Another question, this is really interesting. So you basically were solving the real problems you experienced in your company and other people as well. Because I know that from my personal experience, and from people around me that people just fall in love with some technology, or some solution, and they start building a product about around it. Then they start thinking about what problem it solves, but you actually did it the right way, that you found the problem and then you found the solution for it, which is a good way. I want to ask you another question. How did you actually validate the idea that this is the idea you want to go for? Was it only because you solved the problem in the company? Or did you do some sort of MVP? How would it work?
Vadim: So there’s a couple of answers to that. So, I validated the idea because I saw a problem, and I thought like, “All right, this could be really helpful.” That was the first thing. But then afterward, I didn’t do it the right way. The first thing is I wanted to quit my job and to travel, so I needed some kind of job in the meanwhile because I just didn’t just want to travel. I just wanted to experience something else. So this idea was pretty solid, I could code, I could learn how to code better than I was doing before. It seemed like an interesting project for me. That was one of the things that’s not really the good mentality. On the other side, I thought it would be a really small project. So I thought it would be like two or three months of coding and it would be done, and then I would figure out I was going to do it myself.
Vadim: Then the good part starts like after two or three months, I got validation because people asked me what I was doing, and I met a lot of people who said like, “This would be interesting for me.” I would be like, “I tested it with my things.” So then validation started to drop in, and I got more and more sure of it … So basically a funny story is that I was testing it with the blog of my previous company, which had about 50 thousand page views in total. Then my testers … one of my first testers were like, “All right, it’s cool. I want to test it with my blog, but how many page views do you have?” I said, “I don’t really know, I didn’t look at the total number of page views.” He was like, “Okay.” So I looked it up. It was like 50 Thousand, and he was like, “Okay, interesting, because I have 50 million page views.”
Vadim: So of course, my first use case was a really heavy blog, and everything broke down, which meant I had new challenges, I had a lot of new challenges which I tried to solve. I’m a bit like that if I kind of hook onto it and I just want to solve it if it makes sense or not. Well, basically when I stopped that problem, I could handle on every blog that existed. So, that was good. Well, to continue on the story like six months into it, six months later, I could actually open up my bed on … none of my bed, my prototype as Google Sheets add-on. Then I started to put some posts on social media and I saw that there was a lot of interest. So that’s how I validated the real interest, I tried to do surveys which were really complicated. So a lot of people said that you have to do surveys, you have to get your validation, but …
Jakub: No. I mean, it’s a … you actually got like the first real customer and actually really a big customer, 50 million page views before you started the boasting and getting your beta testers?
Vadim: Yeah. Well, it’s not a customer, it was a tester. I thought I found that guy through my coworking space. So, yeah there’s a really good coworking space in Bali called Dojo, and there’s a lot of interesting people who are location independent, who are working on their own companies, too. So it’s kind of easy to find interesting people who can help you and … so I found my first tester through my coworking space.
Jakub: That’s perfect. So, we have another question, because a lot of people here are mostly marketers and business people. So what for you as a marketer as well as an abroad product developer, what is the best way for people like us – marketers, to find or to learn how to code because you learned how to do Java. So what would you recommend? Any courses or did you just watch YouTube videos or how does that work for you?
Vadim: It’s an interesting question because I first learned to code websites when I was around 18, then I quit completely while I was doing business in university. But I knew how it felt like to code, and I knew that’s the first and most important thing also if you’re … you need that logic and you need to love it, you need to love to solve problems. It’s a really nice job somehow because you basically solve problems all the time. So it gives you a lot of endorphins or whatever it is like that makes you happy.
Vadim: The downside to coding is that it’s really lonely basically, I mean, you work by yourself going to the computer all day. So I always had the mix between like the marketing, I like going out, I like to sell, the sales, and then at the same time I said, well, the biggest flow I got in my work is when I’m coding because your brain is completely occupied, and you don’t think about anything else. So it was … it’s a trade-off. While at a certain point, I just wanted to go back into it, and … there are different ways of learning it that I had the chance of doing a course which actually forced me to do exercises and that forced me to come up every day to the classroom, and basically, show my progress and it wasn’t bad course. You make out of it, what you want to make out of it. So I did it the right way, and I think 90% of the class just didn’t do anything they were going to do. So yeah, it allowed me to get back into it, get paid while doing it, it was a really big chance I had got.
Vadim: Then after that I did Le Wagon. I don’t know if you know Le Wagon which is a coding school from France and basically they’re all over the world now. They’re in Japan, I visited their offices in Japan, I think they have an office in Bali because they’re here as well, they’re there in the States, in Central Europe as well, and that’s a really good course, It’s expensive though. As soon as you get out of there you can find a job at 300 euros a day, which pretty much covers up the cost. That’s the way I learned it. But then what I just … the last little thing I want to add is like after you finish that course you’re not done yet. Coding is a life long thing, and you have to keep on learning, keep on working. Basically, when you finish that course you think you know something but you don’t know anything. So you have to think about that, you have to think about what is it and what I want to do.
Jakub: So the success you experience with code and coding basically that you decided to learn how to code was one of the reasons that the course you attended, held you accountable that you had to come here every day, and you had to show that you do something actually. Which for me, when I’m learning something, maybe the discipline to find the time and like the everyday invest one-hour into learning anything is quite maybe the most complicated thing. It’s like a challenge for me. Guys, if you want to learn how to code consider like joining the courses, which will hold you accountable-
Vadim: Yeah, people do it full time because if you do it one hour a day, you’re not going to get anywhere. Also, have an idea in mind of what you want to develop. If you have a project in mind, you can work on that project and want to finish it eventually. You just learn how to learn, and it’s not going to be difficult.
Jakub: All right. Let’s move on a little forward right now. So you said that you were getting like beta testers from social posting. So let’s now talk about your marketing side. What road hacks did you use to like to get your traction into your MVP and to get first users, to get first beta testers. What is it you actually do, if you can share with us?
Vadim: Well, I did a lot of growth hacks before in this case of Blogalyzer, I don’t … I wouldn’t call it growth hacks. I think the advantage I have is that people see the value in it. I didn’t know that from the start. So the biggest thing I have is like for example when I posted Blogalyzer in a couple of Facebook groups last week. It takes me like one hour of work if you can call it – work, and I got 150 leads out of that. I have the love that the product actually talks to people, but at the same time, of course, I don’t ask them to pay anything. I’m looking for beta testers, which is like there’s no involvement, there’s no engagement from the beta testers.
Vadim: So basically, that’s what I do … the only thing I did until now to get the beta testers is literally find some Facebook groups posted in there. Since it’s free right now, or since it’s beta, it’s not that complicated. I can still post in those groups without being kicked out. I talk in a really personal way I just said like, “Right guys. I was a marketing manager, I had this problem, do you recognize it? Do you want to test it with me?” Not hard sales. It’s not like, “You need this right now, because bam, bam, bam.” It’s more like a sort of question that I do, and each of it a little bit over the value of the position that you do, but I didn’t even … I don’t measure that right now, I don’t think too much about it. When I post I am just literally like, “Boom.” I start writing what I think.
Vadim: So of course, some groups don’t work at all. Some groups work like magic, but there’s a lot of groups out there, and as long as you bring some value to those groups, I think that works.
Jakub: Perfect. So you haven’t spent like any dollar on advertising it, it’s all free promotion.
Vadim: Yeah. So now with this free I mean, I have enough beta testers right now so I got 500 more or less. That worked pretty well, and now the big issue will be how to onboard all of these companies because I want to collect their feedback, I wanted to have that, but I was planning on running ads. Why because of course, posting in Facebook groups is not sustainable. I can do it now because I offer something free, but I won’t … if I just post something that’s for sale in a group like that, I think I will be kicked out.
Vadim: So right now I have actually prepared everything to do the Facebook ads, and there are two reasons for that. One is because I want to show investors and potential co-founders which I’m looking for, by the way, that we have more than 500 but doesn’t say anything. Also, I cannot prove everything I say. I spent only like maybe two full-time days on finding those 500 people but nobody will actually believe that because I don’t really show any conversion metrics. So the Facebook ads that I want to run now will always build that list. But second, and most importantly, is to actually show a sort of CAC, Customer Acquisition Costs for myself and for third parties around. So that’s why I’m going to run ads now to … yeah, like that.
Jakub: Okay. Why did you choose Facebook for your advertising? Why didn’t you choose for example like LinkedIn, or organic posting because as far as I know, LinkedIn is really into like boosting organic posting! It’s like Facebook back in 2013. When a user posted something and massive, multiple people saw it because they weren’t penalizing the reach like they’re doing right now. So why do you think like Facebook ads are a way to go for you? Why do you think your audience is active on Facebook? Why do you think you will reach them there?
Vadim: So in LinkedIn, the groups don’t work. The organic posting on my timeline, since I’d done many different jobs, I have people from all industries in my network, and it doesn’t interest them that much. So I did that before, but it’s more like to tell my network what I’m doing. I got some interesting feedback, but there’s not much anyway. The ads on LinkedIn are more expensive than Facebook. So back to Facebook, well, I’m lucky that I’m selling my product order that I have been building a product for marketers. So a lot of marketers are on Facebook, and yeah, that’s the answer.
Jakub: All right. I will summarize a little bit about what you’ve said so far. So you can have a drink.
Jakub: Vadim comes from a corporate background, but when he decided that he doesn’t want to do it, and he founded the few startups bundle his latest startup is Blogalyzer, which helps content creators and bloggers and marketers to like to skyrocket their content marketing game, and that’s actually what we want to talk about right now. So Vadim, tell us a little bit more about what exactly your product does and why it’s important for bloggers to use it.
Vadim: Yeah. So my product is basically … Well, it gives you an overview of your blog. It gives you a historical overview of your blog. The only tool that exists to do that is Google Analytics right now. So Google Analytics, the issue with that is they show data in one column and what we want to see is the growth of your blog, so you can see a sort of graph in analytics for one article, but if you want to see these graphs for one article all underneath each other, is not possible.
Vadim: So, it’s really frustrating because it’s a lot of clicks and you don’t get an overview. So that’s the first proposition that my tool does. When I started thinking about that, well, my first feature is basically this historical overview that you can see on any page, which with conditional formatting just gives you like, “All right, these are all our blog posts, these are week by week or month by month of our performance.” Conditional formatting actually shows you what works, and what doesn’t work, or what needs to be redistributed or what doesn’t.
Vadim: Then the second feature that I added is when you click on one of these cells, so let’s say blog posts number one for February 2019. When you click on it, you see all the metrics that are actually valid for blogging underneath each other. It’s one click away. So you can see acquisition, you can see the conversion, you can see the audience. You can see some SEO metrics and geographical and so basically, you only need one click, and you see everything which in analytics, you guys know what, which you will probably do is like hundreds of clicks. So,
Jakub: So, it’s really difficult…
Vadim: Yeah, that’s the first thing, and if you expand the view a little bit, so the vision is really to have a tool that analyzes but that also like to suggest, to all content marketers, to all marketing managers what the next steps are. So finding company explaining, finding the keywords that you need to use. So we will try to take all of these analytics out of your hands and propose some ideas to you.
Jakub: So you basically go against Google Analytics. That’s a tough fight.
Vadim: Yeah. Google ethics is just not made for blogs. So I mean, just having a list of your pages, and then having this advanced feature, you only filter out the blocks. That already takes like 10 clicks before you’re there. So it’s not adapted for blogs, and I’m not going against analytics, I’m trying to be an extension of it, right now. Then after that, I tried to make it easy for people. So basically it’s that, it’s easy and fast visual metrics, which you can probably try to find in Google Analytics and have some kind of results, but it’s going to be costly in terms of time and some things won’t be even possible.
Jakub: All right. Another question which our members would like to ask is … How did you decide on what features you want to implement the first? The second part is, how you will decide on what features you will implement the next.
Vadim: The first features I discovered as a need for myself, I mean, that was the overview and the metrics. The second or the third feature, if you want to call it the third feature, which is email reporting is basically something that I got from my first beta users. I built this Google Sheets added on prototype that I tested in winter last year. So I got 70 testers on that, and basically, their feedback was like, “We want the web application because this is complicated, where we don’t want to work and doing Google Sheets.” Second, of it, we want … they didn’t really say that, but the fact that they didn’t come back to the tool pushed me to understand that I need to send them emails with value. So that’s how I came up with the email reporting, and then all the features after that, I will need to test them still.
Vadim: I have a lot of ideas. So for example, we will add YouTube content, that means it’s large, you talk about content marketing that you will also add videos. Then the AI and the suggestions are because I understood that my tool was not very actionable. So it’s fixed but you want to bring something actionable, you want to bring something that I do for them, and not more than what I do now. Basically, in these times, like making AI suggestions is just the way to go. So it’s pretty clear what kind of features are possible. You think about your product every day, so you come up with a lot of ideas with a lot of different features. But it’s a lot of testing. So right now we know the features we want to build for the release next week of the beta, and then we’re just going to try to collect as much feedback as possible and see what the first important thing is for the people.
Jakub: What is the go-to-market strategy that you want to release it to the world? Do you want to go on Product hunt, or how did you do it? How do you do it?
Vadim: For SAAS companies basically, it’s pretty straightforward. You have those better lists and product consent and those things, but I subscribed to all of them a couple of weeks ago, but I’m never going to pay for them, It’s ridiculous. If you have to pay for them, for all of them, you spent One thousand dollars or euros or whatever, so I’m not going to do that. I subscribed for the free one, and we’ll see what it brings. But as a SAAS tool, it’s pretty straightforward. That’s a big advantage of B2B versus B2C. So B2C is like one user is worth nothing. So you can have you have like a-
Jakub: Small lifetime value.
Vadim: Yeah. The advantage of like mine is that there is some kind of value – it’s not a huge value, my pricing will be around 30 euros a month, but it’s still some value so you know how much you can spend, and basically, the only way forward is ads. There’s more … sorry that’s not true. The best way forward, in the beginning, is ads. The second way forward is inbound marketing, which is, of course, the content marketing space. So I need to write content. I’m a big believer in content marketing, I think it’s the best inbound channel out there, It’s giving value and at the same time raising your SEO. Everything happens with research … there’s always … there’s a good graph showing that in previous times, there was like 80% sales where actually salespeople called people to give them information about certain products, and 20% was marketing.
Vadim: Now it’s like 80% marketing because people experience their own problems and go look for a solution. So you need to capture those 80% that are actually searching for answers. We all notice in this group, probably yeah, SEO is the key, and contents are just the key to get your SEO up. There will be referrals, a referral is probably important. Some people call it as growth hacks when it was Hotmail or Gmail, what was it Hotmail? I guess, like I sent an email via Hotmail and then yeah, the problem is that a growth hacker is that just like pure logical referrals? I think it’s pure logic and those are all kind of small things that we’re going to do. But in the first space, it’s going to be those initial 500 people trying to do, to make them the promoters of the business, and second, ads.
Jakub: SO your primary focus will be companies at this point like, agencies and so on. Then individual bloggers?
Vadim: No. I see three types of users, so basically, I don’t focus on amateur bloggers, I don’t focus on people doing that for their pleasure. I focus on company service. So those agencies, which is a different kind of client. I’m not focused too much on agencies right now, because their needs are way more complex than just a standard company, let’s say a startup of 10 people, but actually do content marketing for the reasons that we just explained. So they spend a lot of their budget on content marketing, but they don’t analyze it. Their needs are all the same. They do it for lead acquisition. They write articles, they don’t distribute it enough, like all … everyone who I know spends 80% of their time writing and 20% in distributing things, it should be the other way around. So basically, their needs are the same. They want to know where their traffic is coming from, is that traffic is actually converting, and then if they’re reaching their same audience … the right audience. So I’m focused on small medium businesses that are using blog as lead acquisition.
Jakub: All right. So your favorite customer would be for example what?
Vadim: Other SAAS businesses. That’s my favorite customer because basically, they understand products, they know how products work, they want to try new products, and often it’s a small to medium business between five and 20 people.
Jakub: All right. Before we jump to your 90 second pitch. Let’s talk a little bit further about your team. How do you approach building your team and developing, and you actually said that you’re looking for a co-founder. So tell me what is your approach to team, basically.
Vadim: So that’s a bit difficult question. One big piece of advice is to never start alone. I did that because I wanted to travel and I wanted to code myself. So I started this thing alone, which is difficult because it’s more difficult to find someone along the process. Also now if I’m looking for a co-founder, it’s going to be complicated because I spent like some money on it, I spent a lot of time on it, so that’s going to be the value. So still that’s the first thing, and then I started looking for co-founders, but I started looking for co-founders in Belgium, and it’s kind of difficult as well because they have a lot of opportunity costs, same problem as I had with my previous co-founder as well. Well, then I just posted again in Dojo group community, which is my coworking space in Bali, and, well, I got a lot of interest there because it’s people who also want to travel. So that’s how I found my team right now, or my first team member, but it’s not a co-founder. So we’re not working on co-founder terms we’re … I’m having a team of three developers right now. Not full time, but around four or five.
Vadim: It’s not that easy because you’re still alone with all the strategy, with the end responsibility, with the finances and everything. So I would suggest to find a co-founder as soon as possible and start something not alone, and so-
Jakub: I heard that some incubators really prefer, not a solo founder, but multiple founders because one of the most important reasons is that you can share the burden with someone because sometimes it’s a very lonely journey, and you just need to talk to someone and discuss it. It really helps, and it’s like as a solo founder, you’re a really good sprinter, but with multiple founders, you run a marathon.
Vadim: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. One big lesson.
Jakub: All right, Vadim. Do I pronounce it correctly, Vadim?
Vadim: Yeah, it’s all right.
Jakub: All right. So right now we have a time for your 90 second pitch where you can introduce your projects to community. Then we have some questions from a chat, we will answer after you pitch your product, and then … that’s pretty much it. All right, so I’m going to start my stopwatch-
Vadim: I just have like 8% battery, will that be enough? Yeah, that will be enough-
Jakub: Yeah, that will be enough.
Vadim: For lighting.
Jakub: So you have a 90 seconds. Are you ready?
Vadim: Well, I guess so. Yeah.
Jakub: So we are starting now.
Vadim: All right, cool. So how are you? Blogalyzer is an intuitive and visual tool that helps you track to understand and optimize your content marketing with a minimum amount of clicks. So that’s my elevator pitch. What we do is we basically optimize your strategy to easy analytics. So It’s easy, fast, also you will understand your blog, and based on understanding your blog, it will be able to make a better strategy and iterate over your content. So we also give you answers on most of the questions you have. So we’ll answer like, “Where does my acquisition come from? Do my readers convert? What should I write next?” Based on the metrics that we show you fast and visual, you can answer those questions. The third thing that we’re going to add for you is automatic email reporting, which will actually give you an email in your mailbox every week telling you about your performance of your blog, what you wrote and actually motivate you.
Vadim: So for content marketeers, you can optimize your strategy and your writing. For marketing managers, you can keep track of what your content marketeers are doing, if they’re performing well, and basically have a way better playing field to discuss your content marketing. So this is Blogalyzer right now in the future we will add artificial intelligence and machine learning to actually give you complete insights and complete suggestions about what you should do the next day or the next 30 days-
Jakub: Perfect. We are at 100 seconds. You stretched a little, by 5 to 10 seconds, but I believe you pretty much mentioned everything. So thank you very much. It was very good. Yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs just cannot explain what they do, and I understood it properly, and like totally after you said it. All right, so Vadim, thank you very much for this pitch and interview, and we have so far two questions. One of the questions is, is Blogalyzer out yet, and is it for sale?
Vadim: Right. So no, we’re launching the MVP or the beta … sorry, the beta version one, next week, Mondays. So I have a complete list and thus I’m not allowing any new beta users for next week, but you can always subscribe to the landing page and we will open up the beta version two on the 15th of May approximately. It might be earlier, it might be later, but we need to see if there are bugs, we need to test it out first. The paying will only start somewhere in July. So right now if you want to subscribe, you can still use the tool for free.
Jakub: Okay. Can’t you open it for the PitchGround community? Your Beta list?
Vadim: Yeah. I can add you, but I mean again … yeah, definitely. I think even if you subscribe now on the website, you will still fall into this first beta user list, but I can guarantee that it will be next week because I’m a bit afraid of bugs and everything like that.
Jakub: All right. Second question is, where can we find that graph, 80% inbound and 20% outbound? Do you have a source for it, or where can we learn more about it?
Vadim: No. It’s a visual that I once saw from another Belgian company called Showpad, and they explained it really well the … it’s not 80% inbound 20% outbound, it’s basically 80% sales and 20% marketing. Nowadays 80% marketing and 20% sales, and then I think it depends on your type of business, what kind of marketing I mean, the percentage of marketing is. I’m a big believer in inbound way more than outbound because with inbound you reach the people at the right timing, with outbound you just don’t know. So well, I would say 80% inbound and 20% outbound, but that depends on your type of business of course.
Jakub: All right-
Vadim: I can share that visual because I made it in one of my pitch decks, I can share that visual that I made.
Jakub: All right. I think you can send it to me or may be post it to group and we will share that with the members here. All right. Vadim, thank you very much for the interview. It was a pleasure, and it was a real lot of value for our community and for me as well. I have learned a lot. Feel free to network with people in our community, and now that you introduce yourself, I think it was awesome. Thank you very much, and I think we’ll talk soon.
Vadim: All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks to that, It was awesome.
Jakub: All right-
Vadim: I will network with everyone if you have questions, I’m available.
Jakub: Awesome. So feel free to reach out to Vadim on Facebook. But his real name is Vadim Popowsky.
Vadim: Exactly. All right-
Jakub: All right.
Vadim: Thank you-
Jakub: Thank you and have a good one. Bye.
Vadim: Yeah. Bye, you too.
