ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown

Dave Erickson 0:00
So you are an engineer who thinks they have the next great idea, but how are you going to turn it into a product and a successful business? On this ScreamingBox podcast, we're going to look at how engineers can use coaching to make a successful business out of their product ideas. Please like our podcast and subscribe to our channel to get notified when the next podcast is released.

Dave Erickson 0:42
Are you an engineer hiding from sunlight while perfecting your latest product idea? What are you going to do when you need to turn it into a business? Welcome to the ScreamingBox technology and business rundown podcast. In this podcast, Botond Seres and I, Dave Erickson, are going to look at how engineering types can make a business out of their product ideas with Vladimir Baranov, founder of Human Interfaces. Vladimir is an executive coach for founders and technical leaders. He has coached and mentored globally at various incubators and accelerators, with a primary focus on launching, developing and sustaining startups. He is a serial entrepreneur, having founded three companies with successful exits in FinTech and SpaceTech, demonstrating his proficiency in scaling businesses through various funding stages, his entrepreneurial journey has encompassed such roles as founder and many C level positions, and lends him a comprehensive perspective on creating optimal data and technology products and services. Vladimir, welcome to the podcast and is there anything you'd like to add to this intro?

Vladimir Baranov 1:47
Thank you for having me Dave, that was, that was quite an introduction, did I give that to you a little bit? All right. Well, it sounded great coming from you. Especially,

Dave Erickson 1:59
Thank you.

Botond Seres 2:01
So Vladimir, could you share the moment of inspiration with us that led you to fund your first company and how that experience shaped your entrepreneurial mindset?

Vladimir Baranov 2:15
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I think a lot of us had that sort of like, turning, turning point. For me, when I was growing up back in Russia, I think I was always fascinated by how you can just go ahead out of there and start something like most of the books, or most of the stories that I've read, or like the way the society operated is that you have a job and you have a manager and you have a boss, and you got to go there. And there were no people around me who owned companies, so started them. So it was always, always fascinating for me to learn about that. When I moved to the States, I kind of still had the same aspiration and trying to figure out, and was doing things here and there, but never like a real company. I think the real conversion point came much later, when I was turning 30s, and I already was clocking about 10 years of corporate experience. I said, now or never, because I'm going to get older, I'm going to get family, I will not have as much time, and I decided to leave my corporate world to just go ahead and experience this wonderful world of startups that I built up in my head. So from time and perspective, I would say it was there. From idea perspective, I think it was always there for me for a long time.

Dave Erickson 3:40
What are some of the biggest kind of challenges that technical founders face when they're trying to transition from, you know, they've done their product engineering and they're building, kind of their MVP or their first product, and they now need to kind of switch over to thinking about, Okay, well, how am I going to turn this into a business? What are some of the biggest challenges that they really face in them?

Vladimir Baranov 4:02
Yeah, yeah. And actually, we'll just go back a little bit before that question comes up, is that when you do full time engineering, when you do full time, like if you're being a scientist in the lab, a lot of interactions that you're doing are between the problem, the screen and your brain. It's a very small group of entities involved. There's no other people's usually it's you, screen, code, maybe a little Google research, and a lot of things happen. A lot of engineers are smart, that's what got them there. A lot of scientists are smart, and that's what got them there. But the thing is, what's not there is answer to the true customer need. No matter how hard you think, no matter how hard you Google search, you will not get 100% or full understanding of how customers think and what their true needs are. And this is where a big learning point and a big breaking element comes in when you have to transition from being a full time engineer, a being full time scientist and start being a full time business person. A business person is not necessarily the one who writes the code. It's not necessarily the one who solves the algorithm. Business person is the one who goes out there, and six out the problem inside other people has, which, no matter how smart you are, you will not be able to get unless you talk to people so And to answer your question like, What would you say the most challenging point and what's like, the number one thing that a lot of engineers have to work on is figuring out how to talk to other people, to figure out whether or not they have the problem that you're solving for and whether they'll be interested in buying your solution.
Botond Seres 5:46
Oh, that's very interesting. And to expand on that a bit Vladimir, how do you think people should go about finding their right or their ideal mentor or coach.

Vladimir Baranov 6:02
The best one is the one who was, was there before, like ideally, somebody who started exactly your company, exactly your idea, went through it, had success, sold it, cut out, became a coach. Now, chances are that person probably does not exist, but then you have to roughly approximate, was this person, at least in the similar industry? Was this person ever in the similar role? Did they have an entrepreneurship experience, or were they full time at a larger company when they were doing that? Are they the same gender? And sometimes gender is important, because different genders just go through the work differently to face different challenges. What helps is when a lot of those, most of those parameters align, because that way, the coach is more familiar with the context of where you're coming from and where you're going. Now I'm not saying that a coach who doesn't have context will not be helpful, but there will be a lot of time spent for the coach to learn about the concepts, to learn about the dynamics of the industry, to learn the roles that you are executing day to day. And you don't want to take away from that time.

Botond Seres 7:17
Just one sub question, how specific do you feel people should go when selecting by this criteria?
Vladimir Baranov 7:28
I think you started the most you can. It's like, when you're searching for your spouse is like, I want everything. And when the market tells you, like, well, that's not available, then you kind of step back and but then also, like, I think there's also a scoping question, because if the client is facing this problem for the first time, there's a chances that their scope of the problem, who they think might address that problem might not be accurate. So in a sense, like you might not need to be a very tuned in specialist to coach you through this situation, and maybe some person who does not have all of those parameters that is necessary.
Dave Erickson 8:03
Yeah, it may be in some situations or what you're trying to do in business, you may have a main business coach or a coach who's helping you try to transition. You may have an additional one to help you with marketing, or, you know, investors, or something like that. Let's go back kind of to this mad scientist concept, which always fascinates me, because I seem to meet them a lot. Of engineers, usually, the situation that I kind of find is an engineer has a job, he's been working on a product idea because he has some kind of pain, right? And so he says, Oh, I'm going to solve this problem by developing something to solve my problem, and, and that's a very good start, because it means that there is some kind of pain, some someone in need of a solution. They get to the point where they've developed some kind of MVP, they've proven it out to them that they can actually make something that solves this problem, they've solved the problem for themselves. But that's a long way from developing a product that would have a big audience in the market. So part of that's going to be them switching from this mentality, if I solve my problem to, can this actually solve other people's problems? What are some of the things that are kind of barriers to engineers finding this, determining if their product market fit actually fits a market, and what are some of the things that they can do to kind of overcome those barriers that they may have for reaching out and finding out if their product actually has a market.

Vladimir Baranov 9:52
Yeah, yeah. It kind of goes back to what I said originally, is figuring out how to talk to other people. One unfortunate one unfortunate thing. It's like, and it's true for everybody. We like to do the things we're good at, and when we start building the product as engineers, we spend a lot of time engineering, because that's what we learned before, and that's what we're good at. And when it comes to talking to other people and actually selling this product, we delay that process because one we're not good at we don't know how it's done, and it's usually somebody else did it who we didn't necessarily respect, because they don't know engineering. And in those cases, kind of you create a self, like a natural barrier for yourself, like, I'm not going to do that. Somebody else will do it. It just will happen naturally. And you kind of lead yourself into delusion that once you're done coding, magic will happen. You complete some sort of milestone with coding, and you launch it. Then you wait, and magic doesn't happen. And then you kind of jump to the next thought, well, I probably did not do enough coding, let me do some more coding and then magic will happen. And then you go in a second iteration, and third and fourth and fifth, eventually coming to a realization, like, Okay, so maybe more coding is not the answer. And to kind of answer your questions like, how do we find others with the same problem? So, very simple way of thinking about, well, let's ask the universe, right? Who is that universe? Who are those people? Are there other developers like yourself, other developers who work with you at the same company, who you can explain this problem fairly well, and you can ask them, would they use your solution? Can you go on Reddit? Can you go on the internet or other chats and ask, Hey, I'm working on this problem. Has anybody had that before? Best way to find those people who might have had that problem is go to conference where those technologies that you are solving for might be proliferated, because there's a high chance not everybody, but there's a high chance that there are developers there who might have experienced this problem. Now, ideally, all of those conversations should have happened before you wrote a single line of code. Another delusion where we're all experiences and industries that our own time is free, like when we code on something that is free, and that is a delusion, because you're using your own time, and also you are super expensive, like as an engineer, you've been getting pretty serious salaries at different companies, and you might not convert it into your head, but imagine that you actually don't know any engineering, and you have to find engineer like yourself to do the work that you're doing. That could be 80, 100, 200, 300, 500 dollars an hour, like depending on what specialist you are, and that is the amount of time and money that you're actually spending building this product. The mindset that you kind of have to introduce yourself, it's like, how can I spend the least amount of time doing the code and more time figuring out how to do the sales? Now, I know it's backwards, and I know you're not good at that, but that's where you have to start.

Botond Seres 12:57
That's a fair point, but how could we figure out the golden path between focusing on coding and iterating through the necessary steps to get the usable products?

Vladimir Baranov 13:11
Yeah, great question, and it's an optimization question, and it's you optimize for revenue, and you optimize for every just enough coding to get that first dollar. So in a sense, can you get a first dollar by just talking to somebody? It depends on their state of need, right? If they're in a dire need, they will pay you $5 $500 $1,000 $10,000 even for an attempt for you to solve it, right? There could be some critical situations. Maybe a system got hacked. Maybe the product is getting released in two weeks and you're missing part of the code. Maybe you ran into the issue where there's like, a branch is compromised, and you like, kubernetes cluster is down, and you have to bring it up right now. So people are in dire need willing to pay a lot of money for your solution has to happen right now. Now, you cannot always find those people, but in those situations, you have a customer who is willing to pay you right now, you can just build a one off solution there. So that's, that's one path,would you like to optimize for that absolutely, but not always, not always that situation arises. So kind of go back to the first statement, optimize the most revenue for the least number of lines. How do you do it? You go out to the market and ask them, Do you want to list a bit built or what? Okay, sorry. The first question should be, tell me about yourself. Tell me about what pains you're experiencing. Tell me about what kind of things you're looking for in this world, and as this person is telling you their narrative, you listen to them very carefully, and you try to understand their pains. Once you understand their pains, you ask them the question, can I solve that for you? Would you be interested? It, and sometimes the answer is no, because I might have a problem that I have a pain, like I don't have a Lamborghini, so I cannot take really good pictures of myself with the Lamborghini, but am I willing to pay for it, absolutely not. Do you want to solve that problem? Probably not. So it's like we'll also have to identify problems which are actually painful, not just for yourself, but for others too. So once we start getting clarity with that problem, payable, what would you call it? It's not a problem Market Fit. It's a it's more yeah, it's more problem Market need and payment fit, I don't have a good word for that right now, I'll come up with it later, where we have a potential for revenue for this problem. What is the minimum version of solution for that? Sometimes it could be just the phone and the spreadsheet. If the person is missing a formula that needs to be executed on a regular basis, you don't need to write a lot of code, you can just plug it something in spreadsheet, and the business owner or client can call you up and you type in numbers into the spreadsheet that gives you a number, less amount of effort, much amount of outcome. Once you start, going to start getting more clients, it's a good idea to automate all of that, but there's no need to focus on the technology. So kind of to answer your question again, baton, it's you're trying to do the least amount of work with the most simplest technology to get to the fastest client satisfaction.

Botond Seres 16:20
Well, that's quite contrary to the common belief that we need to start with the best technology, the best codes to make the best product immediately. Yeah. Thank you, Vladimir, for expanding on that. Of course, interesting answer,

Dave Erickson 16:35
As you mentioned, engineers kind of do things a little bit reversed. They focus on the product first, and usually that's because they're trying to solve their own problem, and they may be trying to just solve their own problem, and not even thinking of it as a product and only later do they say, Oh, this could be a product, but this concept that you have an idea for a product and go look and see what it would take to market this thing, sell it. What is the market before you actually start building it? Because you may find in doing that research that it takes a different direction. But the reality is, most engineers with an engineering mindset are really trying to just solve a problem. They don't really look at what are the problems and challenges for themselves. So if you're an engineer, and you've kind of gone through the first steps of solving a problem for yourself, and you say you want to turn it into a business, you know engineers are not necessarily the best people people they have a hard time sometimes relating to people. Some, some don't. I've met some engineers that are very extroverted and outgoing, but the majority tend to be more introverted and more focused on, you know, development and versus relationships. What advice would you give to these, these engineers, as they're starting to think, Okay, I may need somebody else, you know, for them to go on an engineering forum and ask questions about business doesn't make a lot of sense, but that may be where they're comfortable, or that may be where they're currently on. And they may go to, you know, Sub Stack or Stack Overflow or something, and say, Okay, how would I market this product? They may not get the best advice. If somebody wanted to start looking at partnerships or working with somebody to do marketing, sales, product market, how would they go about that? What kind of advice do you have for them? Some of it may be finding a coach, but some of it may be just meeting people. What advice do you have on that?

Vladimir Baranov 18:49
Yeah, that's a great question before we actually jump into answering a question directly, I would still though challenge each individual engineer personally to go and continue trying to figure out ways of how they can communicate to other people and try to market it themselves through the means which they find the most comfortable. So if they are comfortable posting things on forums, if they're comfortable with doing online marketing where they don't have to show their faces, they don't have to talk to people directly, but they maybe they can chat. So regardless of whatever medium you're choosing, you're either hiring somebody, or you are practicing yourself, or you're learning yourself, you still have to talk to other humans. And even if you're going to be looking and trying to find people who will do this work for you, you still have to talk to them. You still have to understand how they think and how they will be communicating back to you about the status of the market and how they think about things in the sense like the human element is super important when you're trying to market the things that you built. How to find that right person? The answer is not usually straightforward in a sense that it's almost like hiring for the best fit personality for yourself or for your business, and it takes time, and especially takes time in an area which you don't understand. And the only way you can understand it is by one, learning a little bit by the area, so learning a little bit about marketing, a little bit about advertising, a little bit about sales, a little bit about doing business, because this way you're educating yourself on the language approaches, understanding who are the people at the very top of the pyramid who are maybe a little bit below, what skills they need to have in order to fulfill the job for you. And then you run experiments, because when you hire a right marketing person, you don't know if they're right, because you don't know anything. You know how to hire a right JavaScript person, you know how to write a SQL person, how to write an AI person, but you don't know right away if you're hiring the right marketing person. Same thing if you don't know if you'd go into the right doctor. Like the metrics that we use as ourselves, as clients or as patients are so different from what the doctor does, right? So for me, as a patient of a doctor, would be like the doctor was nice, the doctor seemed knowledgeable. The doctor offered me options, and I didn't pay much. None of those things have to do with medicine, right? All of those have to do with client like client experience, and in a sense, like, do I? Do? I want to know if my kind of ailment was self the absolute but most of the doctors, respectfully, most of doctors probably will be able to solve my ailment. But that's not what I take away. I already come with an assumption that doctor can probably solve same thing here we come with an assumption that this marketing or advertising or business person can solve it. But here's a twist, none of them are really licensed. All of them. I just have experience, so our assumptions have to be modified. Actually, a lot of those people cannot solve specifically your problem, so we have to find the right person who can work with us, maybe coach us, just maybe teach us, maybe explain what they will do to get us there. I've met a lot of marketing and advertising people, and what happens is, once you learn about them, you realize that not they're all not all the same, and they're also have their own variations, like in technology have different technologies. You have DevOps, you have SecOps, you have so on. You have similar categories in advertising and marketing. You have somebody who is really good at funnels. You have somebody who is good at video capture. You have somebody who is really good at Google advertising, somebody who is good at LinkedIn, and they all help on specialties, because that's what gets paid. So probably in the beginning, you're looking for somebody who is more of a journalist, unless you are trying to be that journalist for marketing and distribution, and you talk to them about what high level things are the best thing to do for you. And you run experiments, you hire somebody for one contract, maybe for a month, you hire even multiple people for a month, and I'm not saying like for the full time, but so you can start working with multiple people and see which ones get you the results. You have to define those outcomes for yourself. Just doing marketing for marketing sake will not get you there. Do you want to get more sales? Do you want to get more eyes on your website? Do you want to get more free trial users? You have to define those goals before you start writing any experiment and over time and again, over time, like there is no right answer, like, maybe you'll have to go through 10 professionals before you understand how the practice works. Those numbers will start going up, because that's the nature of the business, and the more money you spend over time again, you will get some results. Will it be the most optimal results? Probably not, but at least you will understand how the input parameters affect your outcomes.

Dave Erickson 23:38
You mentioned something again that is important about getting aligned and getting some coaching to help you find out and figure out what areas you need to start focusing on. Engineers. Obviously, many of them probably have never even thought about coaching or how coaching can help them. So if I was an engineer, I have my MVP, I kind of put it up somewhere. I got it so that the mechanics of doing business are there, but nothing's happening. And I think to myself, well, I need to get some advice or some help if I was going to try to find a coach and choose a coach, as you said, part of that experience is more your feelings about if you think they can be helpful. What advice do you have for somebody who's decided, okay, I may need a coach or I may need a help? How do they find one? What do they need to look for in coaching? And how can coaches actually really help them?

Vladimir Baranov 24:40
That's a great question. There are a few ways. One, you can go to my website, Human Interfaces. Dot co, so be happy to facilitate a discovery session. Number two, almost the majority of coaches out there will be happy to offer one or two sessions for free. Are completely complimentary, and those sessions are intended to figure out whether or not you and the coach are a good fit. And really good coaching only happens when you have a good fit. Doesn't really matter how much you pay. It's, it's about the fit that is important, that you understand the coach, that you can relate to them. You're both empathetic, you create a good rapport. And if those things are not there, productive coaching cannot happen. So once you find the coach, absolutely ask for a complimentary sessions. Google is your friend. There are a lot of coaching directories online that you can reference, but actually also ask the internet Stack Overflow and other engineering forums, Has anybody used the coach before? Can anybody recommend about 50% off business for a lot of coaches comes from referrals, because it's like, similar to therapy, although it's not to therapy, and similar to legal services. But again, I'm not a lawyer. A lot of those referrals are very personal, because it's almost like you're delegating trust to your friend because they have good experience, and they through you, through them, you feel like you understand how they relate to the world, and if they found something useful, you will find that too.

Dave Erickson 26:17
So if I were interviewing or taking up a coach on a complimentary session. What are some of the questions that I should be asking that coach to find out if they're going to fit or if they line up with me?

Vladimir Baranov 26:34
So I think it's very important that the coach has some sort of experience which is similar to what you're going through right now. Because, as I mentioned before, context matters a lot when trying to coach, and if that context is not established, it's harder to get to the core of the issue. So you can ask questions about coach's background. How did they learn things? What is their approach to coaching? Number two, it's important to outline and know your own and a good coach will tell you that have those outcomes and goals in mind, because coach is not there to set those goals for you. I cannot tell it like, Hey, your communication sucks. Let's work on that. That's not coaching like you have to come up with at least an idea of a problem that you're trying to solve for yourself. I have this business. I would like to make it better. A good coach would ask, what is better mean? Well, I would like to have more revenue. Well, when would you like to have more revenue? Now or in the future? How much of it would you like to have? Because in the end, a lot of coaching conversations are driven by the client, because the client has the context and client has all the actionable actions, actionable actions, important actions to take that are necessary to get us to those outcomes. So and then, first the conversation, it's good to establish goals. It's good to establish needs, and also ask a lot of questions about coach's background, and see if, if you can get one or two complimentary sessions where you can actually experience coaching and see what it is about. Because sometimes it's hard to explain to somebody what coaching is until they actually have experience. But the outcome of that is that you're experiencing a mind shift, and you're getting more clarity about the things that you're thinking about.

Dave Erickson 28:16
So as a coach, what kind of relationships do you tend to end up having with the clients? Meaning, are these more short term, or are they longer term, or are they, you know, busy in the beginning and not so much later, or not so much in the beginning, and then later they come in more can you describe kind of the relationship options to coaches?

Vladimir Baranov 28:42
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think it really depends on the nature of the problem. Sometimes you, when you go to the coach, you might not even know that. You might already have an answer. You just want somebody to validate what you're thinking about. And those could be very quick sessions, maybe, if things will just get rearranged in the first complimentary session. And then there are other relationships where I'm actually was working with one busy executive, where I was meeting with her every week, because things were just upside down in the company, people were let go, people were hired. There was a conflict within the group, and coaching was necessary, very tactically, on a very regular basis. And then there are more like long term coaching, where you're trying to figure out your long term vision, where you might reconnect with client once a quarter, like for maybe an hour or two, where you just reassess everything that has happened, and you try to set a long term vision of whether you're not aligned with your life's path. So I'd say there's different approach for a different situation, but you never know until you start talking with the clients and you see what their context is, and you start asking them questions.

Botond Seres 29:53
And do you think it's a small step back from the specifics of coaching? I wonder in your opinion, Vladimir, what should, what are some of the key factors that founders should focus on when they are trying to scale up their startup? Because, getting through the initial phases is all good and well, getting the first clients, but it seems to me that lots, lots of problems can come in when trying to make the jump from a couple clients to a couple 100.

Vladimir Baranov 30:28
Yeah, that's a great question. I think scaling is different for different companies, and there's never a right answer. And the best way to figure out how to do is by talk to few other people who have done this before, but not necessarily copy them, because they've done it in their own context, with their own resources, with their own leadership, and see which of those elements apply to your context. Maybe in one case, they had a strong person who had done this before, and they were just running their gamut, and they just worked out. Maybe they had product which was selling like hotcakes, and they were able to optimize it initially, and they didn't have to have a lot of overhead. And it just happened, maybe they spent a lot of time designing the machinery for automation. What helps, it's like, similar to how we're trying to find other professionals, is that, how can we apply some things, see how they work, and then try to apply others. But also remember, like anything that anybody will share has worked in their context, in their story, in their team, so even if it might work for them, it might not work for you. I know it's very different than coding like I know that code when it works on one platform, chances are it's going to work on another but it's not the same thing when it comes to business context, like if you're not translating that business context, if you're not adapting it to your own needs, chances are that it might fail. But also, like to kind of highlight some other details for the scaling question. So is that your own estimation of scaling, are you creating enough overhead or not enough overhead., do have all the resources necessary to proliferate the scaling, and sometimes you will have also a bit of a pause or a bit of a buffer when you hit those numbers, because once you hit those numbers, there's a little bit pain you can solve for that pain when that pain happens. So like just in time reaction, and not necessarily preparing yourself for that failure, because in some cases, like, your scaling might be too expensive if you, let's say, building an AI business, and you're buying, like 1000 of H 100s just to assume the demand which may never come, and that kind of like purchase may kill your business, but you have to be very careful. Man,

Botond Seres 32:40
oh yeah, oh yeah. We do see that quite often, large purchases, killing businesses. But what would you use as a rule of thumb for making a, let's say, a moderate investment? I don't want to say like, I don't know, like, 50% of the total value of the company. But what did we even base it on? Like assets, liquid assets, or monthly income or profits?

Vladimir Baranov 33:13
If I understand your question correctly. So let's say if you are a founder in a business and you're trying to figure out how much you want to invest into each particular initiative.

Botond Seres 33:21
Yep, let's say I have some wild new idea and I want to invest something, but also want to keep it safe.
Vladimir Baranov 33:28
Got it, got it. Well, it depends on how much money you have. If you have a ton of money, then you probably should not be doing the work. You probably should hire somebody else who can be your founder and work on a specific idea, and you can have a portfolio of those ideas. What gives you down scale, and you only have money, how much you have money to leave and so on. In the end, you kind of have to put all eggs into one basket, because you're the only person who can execute. And it's best that this idea, this basket is the maximum that you can output and perform a maximum of your skills. So this way, you're lining up everything. I think the biggest investment you're going to make is actually less monetary, but it's going to be over your own time. And you can think about it this way first, because, as I mentioned before, sales does not require money. Requires time by talking to other people, and let's say, if you invest some period of time and you have gotten some interest from the clients, and then maybe even prepaid for some of the solutions, then you can start thinking about how much money you want to spend yourself to build the solution that those clients want. Now it's hard to say whether it's a percent of your salary or not, I would focus more on the time aspect versus the money, because most of the time you have to do the sales first and engineering second.

Dave Erickson 34:49
Yeah, it's, you know, sales is a very difficult thing. A lot of startups and tech company founders what they don't understand is that most sales are done by the founder, because they're the ones who know the depth and detail and history of the product or the item that they're they're they've developed, and they're the ones who have to kind of give it that gravitas to sell it into their first couple of clients, (right) If you have a product and you want to try to, you know, hire a salesperson, the probability of successful results is pretty low, (right) Even if they have a great Rolodex full of great contacts, in the end, they may get a meeting, but the founder is one who's actually going to sell it, right? I don't think a lot of engineers understand that. That's what it's going to take to get your first sales. And only later can you quote think of hiring somebody to do it, whereas you can hire a developer relatively easily and give them development instruction, (right) And you know that may be where the founder might need to look at a strategy that's different than what they think they would need, (right) Where, you know they may need to focus on sales, whether they like it or not. That's just how businesses work. You mentioned something about funding. And one of the things that that I have experienced is that I've talked to some engineers, and they're like, I'm developing this thing, and it's great, and it's wonderful, and I know as soon as it's ready, I'm going to go find an investor, and they'll they'll just want to invest it, because it's the greatest thing in the world. If you've been in business for any length of time, you know that funding is never that easy. What kind of advice would you have for engineers concerning funding, and if they need to get funding, how do they determine that? And what are kind, of some of the paths they need to look at for funding.

Vladimir Baranov 37:02
Yep, for First of all, actually, would like to address the just getting funding aspect. And I'm going to say it happens, I wouldn't say it happens all the time. And when it happens, it happens frequently, but sometimes just happens. Maybe you meet somebody who's not necessarily experienced in investing, and they look at the idea, and it's like, oh my god, I love this. I will invest it. And you get few $100,000 from some, some rich person who feels that you're you're good. I don't think that is likely to happen with everybody, but there's another chance. What if you build some machinery, which is basically prints Bitcoins. You know, it's like a goose which brings golden eggs, or like you invent a time machine, or something like that, where it's absolutely, absolutely easy to understand how much value your software is producing, then there's also very high chance for immediate funding for most of the cases, it's a hypothesis. It's an idea that has to be put in front of the market and has to be demonstrated that the users will actually be using this and will be paying for the service. And the question that a lot of VCs investors will ask is that, what traction do you have? How many users do you have? What demonstrated interest Do you have from the market that your system is working and they're interested in it. And that is actually a pretty straightforward system that has been established. Once you have your startup, once you launch, once you have a couple users, create a pitch, create a sales pitch. And there are a lot of pitching competitions you can just easily Google that, just say, startup pitch competition or something like that. And there's hundreds of them, if not 1000s, happening on a regular basis in the United States, and even more, in the world, where you can attend and you can present, and there are investors in the audience, and some of them will be interested in what you have to say. There are interestingly and other opportunities which are non dilutive opportunities. One is, don't recommend it, but there's a loan, right? If you have something that is actually working, you go out, take a loan on your credit card, or you take it from the bank, and you just build something because you're so sure of it, and that's fine. And another one is government grants. If you're developing something that is in high deep tech, I don't know, like you're developing an AI which generates formulas for new vaccines or new medicine that will absolutely work, that is in line with R and D goals of United States, or different states within the states, with United States, which can give you a grand 100, few $100,000 just for you to continue working on it, because it creates a lot of public good, and that is another way that you can get some of that funding.

Dave Erickson 39:49
You've probably worked with a lot of different startups over time. Maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about what are some of the things that differentiate the startup or the. Founders mentalities between those startups that start and then don't go anywhere, and those startups who actually succeed and grow into substantial businesses.

Vladimir Baranov 40:11
Again, I think it's more like the bell curve thing. I've seen people where completely stubborn get to success without any communicational skills and just things work out and I don't logically understand how that happened, but it's a probability distribution. Some of them will get to the top, and unfortunately, media will latch on to those stories more frequently because they're more dramatic and more like more interesting for from a narrative and story perspective, and some others might not fade away, but I'd say, like the number one thing is acknowledging to yourself that you don't have all the answers, and figuring out how you're going to get those answers from others is probably the number one most important skill that people have. And as part of it, what's driving it, I think it was Gary from, from Mike said that it's an agency. So if you have agencies, and you kind of decide like, Oh, this is the question I have to ask of the universe. I ask of the universe, I'll follow up. I'll follow up. I'll follow up. But you have this autonomy agenc, feeling that you're able to navigate all the different problems that are in front of you with ease, and you're also able to ask others for help. And I think that creates a multiple effect for your luck, establishes your bigger luck surface. So no matter what issues, come in,, opportunities commit, you'll be able to capture them easily, as opposed to, let's say you're isolated. You're working on just one or two problems. You're working by yourself. You're not talking to anybody. You Your luck surface is basically much more

Botond Seres 41:41
So Vladimir, all the things we discussed so far are mostly related to the birth and the initial phases of startups and ideas in general. But since you have successfully exited companies, both in FinTech and Space Tech, very impressive, by the way. What lessons did you learn navigating exits that you think every entrepreneur should know? Because most of us are not thinking exit strategies at the start, but it is critical.

Vladimir Baranov 42:15
Yeah, yeah, I think exit strategy should be one of the first ones to be decided, like, why are you starting, what you're starting and how you're going to get ou. You might be starting a lifestyle business. Maybe it's not for exit whatsoever. It's just something you're going to do until you move on, and that's okay. At some point, maybe you realize, like, hey, I want to try it. I don't care if it succeeds. And you're kind of highlighting that's an experiment that I want to do with it. I want to watch a rocket business. I don't care if it succeeds, I just want to do it. So then the exit strategy. There is more, like, how do I bankrupt that up slowly, can enjoy the experience as long as possible, Then there is strategy of being acquired and going to IPO. I'm not including, like, getting a fundraiser strategy, because that's not exit. It's just moving on to the next round. But if, let's say, you're trying to get acquired, one of the first things you kind of start doing as you are going to the conference, assisting me, up working with people, you start looking for acquisition partners right away, even before you start a company, because you can maybe identify some of the weaknesses in existing companies and start a company which might solve that with the goal that those companies may acquire you somewhere down the line.

Botond Seres 43:29
All right, I'm really glad you mentioned that some people might not want to exit at all, which I think it's more common than I would like to think. Certainly any business I plan to start is not really with the next strategy in mind, more about the, the enjoyment of said business. So in your opinion, what is the future of coaching?

Vladimir Baranov 43:52
That's a it's a good question. I think coaching right now is going through a sort of Renaissance. It's split off from kind of business gurus advisors and became its own thing, which has fed some of the elements of therapy in it. I think we understood that just problem solving is not enough, and figuring out our human interfaces is very important from, from doing the business and the skill itself will be required as we are advancing as a civilization. But what's interesting happening from a technology perspective, there are a lot of tools, and there are a lot of new support technologies that arrive, which make the coaching maybe easier to capture and to practice. And also we have a lot of AI coaches which are coming up, which might disrupt the business model of a lot of coaches, and will be able to help users get coaching maybe more affordable ways. But there's always going to be, I think, a need for interpretation to some degree, because AIs are always working on the information of the past and not on information in the future, maybe technology will get there, and maybe not, but that will be interesting to watch.

Dave Erickson 45:08
All right. Well, Vladimir, maybe you can talk a little bit about your coaching and your coaching business, and how do you approach coaching?

Vladimir Baranov 45:17
Yeah, thank you for that question. Dave, so my business I'm a business coach. I work with tech founders, so a lot of engineers, a lot of scientists who have already have an idea, or already in the middle of implementing idea, or have been running a business for a little bit while, and now kind of running up against those business problems, market issues, product issues, sales issues, understanding customer issues, customer discovery, process issues. And this is where I come in with my experience in both business engineering and I help with analogies and good questions to bridge the gaps in understanding of where you're currently at to where you are trying to go. So I would say, like my business helps you bridge your gaps between business understanding of the world and engineering understanding of the world.

Dave Erickson 46:09
Great. And we'll have in the description your contact information if people want to get a hold of you. Vladimir, thank you so much for being on our podcast and helping us understand what it takes for engineers to build a business from their engineering work.

Vladimir Baranov 46:17
Thank you Dave.

Botond Seres 46:28
Well we're at the end of our episode today, but before you go, we want you to think about this important question, what brilliant idea are you going to engineer into a product and business

Dave Erickson 46:41
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