The Solo Founder's Journey: Product-Market Fit & When to Sell - Misfit Founders Ep 3

Biro: 0:00

Here's after a year, half a year to a year. Nothing is sticking. I was doing well.

‍Alex Constantinescu: 0:07

after these five years, I actually reached a turnover of 2 million One day.

Biro: 0:11

I just want to be part of a greater team, then you're an AccuHire. You're not a business for sale. You're watching the Misfit Founders podcast A raw conversation about the challenges of building businesses, overcoming hardships and also feeling out of place An Bureau, an Exited Founder, investor and Advisor who failed quite a few businesses in the past. My mission with Misfit Founders is to help at least one founder every single month by unveiling the authentic stories of other founders and providing guidance and support. So I hope you enjoyed the podcast today and get useful insights out of it and, if you do, do join the conversation on our WhatsApp community, where we discuss topics like this one in this podcast in group, as well as private sessions Link in the video description. Also, please subscribe to this YouTube channel so that you get notified when we publish new videos.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:15

First of all, thank you for inviting. I'm Alex. I'm CEO of Life in Code and basically what we do is we help teams buy back time by providing them with the tools and know how to work more efficiently. About myself I started actually. I'm a technical guy. I started my career as a Java developer.

Biro: 1:40

Oh really.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:42

And when was this? This was in Bucharest. For a corporation? Well, I guess we can say I worked at IBM and basically I started my career with an internship on Java development and coincidence is that they put me on a project where we were developing in-house add-ons for JIRA using Java. So that's how I learned JIRA.

Biro: 2:10

And how was that transition from saying being a full, hardcore engineer into basically deploying and setting up and administering JIRAs? So well.

Alex Constantinescu: 2:26

As you probably know, if you develop add-ons for a tool, obviously you learn the tool right. So then I learned the tool and they said, okay, now you're going to do JIRA admin as well. And then they said, well, you know JIRA, now you're going to do conference admin as well. So I was kind of forced, in a way, to transition towards this. I did not initially realize that I prefer this. I have to confess that I actually left IBM for a few months and went to do Java development some other place.

Biro: 2:55

Well, now it is this bullshit, JIRA stuff yeah exactly, but I still had this on my LinkedIn.

Alex Constantinescu: 3:02

So then another company contacted me and said we are looking for an add-on admin if you want to join. So they convinced me to get back into this and I learned what it really means.

Biro: 3:17

Yeah, I grown to like it. You have to spend a tiny bit of time in the ecosystem to really understand and figure out, if it's. Because I've seen people that are like well, I've worked with JIRA for two weeks and I hate everything about Atlassian. I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, slow down, it's not that bad. And then with the transition from being a working as an administrator and setting up for this company, having a role or a job there, and so on. How did you transition to having your own company? What was the catalyst?

Alex Constantinescu: 3:55

for that. So, long story short, I'm a workaholic and, okay, I had basically my full-time job as a consultant, to be specific, as a freelancer. So I already started the company actually, but I was just by myself, just to work as a freelancer. And since time permitted and I'm a workaholic I would start taking projects on freelancercom at the time and do more. And this went on for a few years and realized there are more and more projects. Basically what I did initially I subcontracted some of my friends and colleagues to take on those projects.

Biro: 4:39

As you usually do.

Alex Constantinescu: 4:40

And now, when I look back, you're a freelancer, yeah, but now, when I look back, that's actually how the company started. Okay, like really, because before that I was a solopreneur, I was just by myself. But the moment I subcontracted the first project, that's when really we started scaling up.

Biro: 4:57

Okay, and that was basically that's when you decided okay, I want to build, or I'm what I'm doing here. I'm building a business. It's not a freelancing job anymore.

Alex Constantinescu: 5:11

Yeah.

Biro: 5:12

And so on. And I'm curious what was specifically that click? Was it the influx of job requests that you had?

Alex Constantinescu: 5:22

Yeah, I saw there are a lot of projects, okay, and how was the competition?

Biro: 5:26

There's a lot of potential Because now, like, for example, if you go on Upwork or Freelancer, this Freelancercom still exists.

Alex Constantinescu: 5:33

To be honest, I'm not sure I don't have a profile anymore.

Biro: 5:36

I do know that Upwork still exists because we use it to, I think there was a merger, I don't know. Freelancer I don't want to talk rubbish, but anyways, if you go on Upwork now and you type G-Rob, admin or anything like that, there is a wealth of freelancers. Was it the same thing back then, and when was this what?

Alex Constantinescu: 5:56

year was this? There were quite a few, so this was so when I was on Freelancercom I believe this was in around 8 years ago, give or take. Okay, yeah, there were quite a few. I think I had the advantage of pretty good profile due to my daily work Right, because I was working with interesting companies and, yeah, that was, let's say, my competitive advantage Also that I was a technical guy in the Atlassian ecosystem, so I was doing a lot of scripting. Also, I could take on all these script-runner requests which are quite common. Yeah, because that's something the company doesn't really have the expertise to do in-house. Yeah, so I was able to take on all this.

Biro: 6:49

So I suppose that's one of the you know upper-edged, upper-benefit of being an administrator G-Rob administrator, confluence administrator, atlassian. In general, admin is having the ability to code and being technical.

Alex Constantinescu: 7:06

Yeah, I think that's still an advantage.

Biro: 7:07

Although Still even for.

Alex Constantinescu: 7:08

Cloud if you think of yeah, they do move. Like, if we look at some of the more complex apps that required you previously to be very technical, I think they move now in a more drag-and-drop, nice UI direction. So maybe that's less relevant today, but for sure it still helps.

Biro: 7:32

So over the years. So you said you started Life in Code officially, yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 7:41

In 2013, basically. I was who started but I was just by myself. We were not an Atlassian partner at the time.

Biro: 7:50

So when did you became? When did you, when was there more than you and you got into Atlassian partnerships and so on. What year was this?

Alex Constantinescu: 8:00

Around five years later. Five years later, okay, so how was it around 2018?

Biro: 8:08

How was business progressed since then?

Alex Constantinescu: 8:12

It's an interesting thing because I actually want to talk about scale-up and when not to scale-up or actually when to decide to scale-up, because I was doing well. After these five years as a solopreneur, I actually reached a turnover of 2 million just by myself. That's impressive, yeah. And today we are eight people, but we're not much higher than that. So that brings an interesting topic on when should you decide to actually scale-up and what is the point of it? I think it's, and I guess we're going to talk about that later.

Biro: 8:49

Yeah, yeah, we can get into it. There's no very specific agenda, but that's a really interesting topic. It's a really interesting question Do I want to make 2 million annual revenue on my own or do I want to make 2 million annual recurring revenue with eight people on board? Yeah, for me, I think to answer that question, one needs to look at what they want to achieve and where they're heading and so on, because I know plenty of people that are super happy to be solopreneurs and just make revenue, take dividends and just keep on going with the business and be a lucrative business lifestyle business, as they call it and that's that Perfectly fine, perfectly acceptable, it's normal nowadays. And also, if you look at the Twitter communities and Microquire and so on, there's so many people that just start, build something, get it to 10, 20 monthly recurring revenue, 20k, and decide to sell it to the next person that actually wants to build a lucrative business out of it, and so there is a variety of models, but solopreneur is, to me, is a lifestyle type of business. What you choose to do, this thing is lucrative, pays for your lifestyle, and that's it. Where the solopreneur kind of slightly falls apart to me is if your aspiration and your goals are to eventually get acquired, get into a bigger team and so on. It's it kind of raises eyebrows If, let's say, for for a year or two you've been growing a business on your own, got it to a hefty amount of money, but say, and you know that you're going to get acquired, that's your plan, but you refuse to hire and scale while you were on your own Because of whatever reasons. People have reasons, you know. I know people that don't want to scale because they don't want the headaches of, you know, working with other people and culture and culture misfit and hiring processes and so on. It's very heavy. But the point is, if you go in front of an investor or a buyer company and you mentioned that you made two million brilliant, you're a very smart person. But there are red flags. If you're, if you're not willing or able to grow beyond yourself, if you're a one man band, do you have per se a business or are you depending on what like? If you have a product, you have a great product, you built a product and you're selling it, but you're doing everything. You don't have skilled infrastructures, you haven't proven that you can expand your business with your product right. So I think that's where that falls apart. But again, like, each with its own. Like, if you, for example, if you have a consultancy business and you make a pretty significant amount of money and you decide I'm just going to stick with this and then one day I just want to be part of a greater team, then you're an AccuHire. You're not a business for sale, you're an AccuHire. And if you build a product on your own and you want to one day sell it, well then you're selling a product, you're not selling a business. I think that's for me.

Alex Constantinescu: 12:57

That's that's where things yeah, some very interesting points. I would like to add to that also the scalability part no, sorry, sustainability part, because I think it's not sustainable to be just by yourself forever, Like, okay, I was young and had a lot of energy, but for how long could I work? You know, 12, 16 hours, which was unknown for me a day.

Biro: 13:23

And you see, that's what, once you get to a certain level, I was saying, like my early twenties, why are all of these companies with so many employees, all of those employees doing? Look at me, I can do x, y, z in parallel and and be versatile and so on. And that was true. And I recommend every single entrepreneur that starts now and it's in early days and quite young and ambitious and energetic to do that. Start and you know, figure out what you're good at, try to be good at as many things as possible and the stuff that you're not good at, maybe get a co-founder or something. So that's acceptable. But once you go to, you know build a business, exit it, build it just with Nikki and I and I'm the early days and you're like rolling our sleeves up just do, do, do everything and learn about everything is very healthy, right, and you have to do because you have the energy and the the horsepower right to do. But it's also very healthy if you want to grow into a very mature entrepreneur and professional in your life. Is healthy to dab in a lot of topics, but at one point you continue to do that with every single business, a serial entrepreneur, and you want to build. You build a business, you sold it. You build another one, you sold it. Do you continue to build stuff from scratch, starting alone, or the next time, second time, third time, you learn what you need as essentials and you hire people in the early days. And I think that's one of one interesting questions, because I know people like I know people that you know I can't. Can I call myself a serial entrepreneur? No, I think serial entrepreneur means, at least in my head, I might have the wrong definition. For some people, serial entrepreneur means I've built and exited multiple companies. Right, I built and failed A lot of companies and exited successfully one right, so I can't really call myself a serial entrepreneur. But when you're a serial entrepreneur, there are people that just like to start things on their own and just craft and think about it and put stuff together and just hack at it and put themselves in uncomfortable situations by learning about new stuff, and that's perfectly fine. But I think a lot of us and I'm one of those people maybe you're one of those people as well I had enough of hacking stuff on my own. I feel, like when I'm thinking of business. Now I'm thinking right.

Alex Constantinescu: 16:13

So what kind of skill set would I need in order to achieve this Exactly, and I want to answer that myself. For me, it is very clear that the next business I start, it will not be just myself. Now, I know what I am good at, but I know that I also need help on it, would it be?

Biro: 16:30

I know that you have a healthy business currently and so on, and we'll talk about your plans with that. But would it be still in services or are you thinking of dabbling with product?

Alex Constantinescu: 16:45

No, I want to go more towards product.

Biro: 16:47

Ooh, and what would you build?

Alex Constantinescu: 16:51

Well, I'm saving that for later. It's actually one of my questions to you for today. How did you decide what you built? So how did you do product market fields?

Biro: 17:04

Well, I'm going to answer this in multiple folds. I've failed so many businesses before because I've never actually done product market. I started Jekso with Nikky without us doing product market. We built and this is the story of so many founders in the Atlassian ecosystem Developers, technical people, consultants that work for that, integrate Atlassian and know everything about it. We built our first product just because I had an itch and a need. I had the itch to continue to do stuff, to build my own product outside the 9-5 that I had and I had a need for a product for our team in the 9-5. So I had an itch and a need. So I had to scratch my itch and satisfy my need and Nikky was. I was working with Nikky. We got it started. Initially it was like, oh, we need to release orchestration tool. We can't find anything and let's build one. Let's think of how we would envision it and sketch it and build it. That was our product. Market fit is not having the tool that we needed and it's safe to say it didn't work Like Swanly in the first year or so was not getting any traction. So it did. In the early days it did feel to me like another failed business, the way I felt it was like, oh, they should have. Oh fuck sake, not like and this is why I'm calling this podcast Misfit Founders, because the amount of times that I felt out of place and I felt like I was an imposter, I shouldn't be a founder. Because look, here's Jekso failing after a year, half a year to a year. Nothing is sticking. Deja vu on all of my failed businesses. And I think it took it took Nikki right. I've been saying that Nikki has been quite a bit my savior in a sense, and if I didn't have her, there would have probably been a different story. I was the technical part in our startup in Jekso, and she was the product person. She would get into how we build the functionality and so on. So she started researching and getting into learning about product discovery and research and all of these things. So she started looking into how to make our product stick and we basically figured out a couple of features that the G-Raw users were asking for related to release management, and we built them that weren't existing and we built them, we validated them and then launched it. So Jekso Swanly, our first product, in its initial state was a dump right. I don't even know how we got our first payment after four months of after launching. It was a $60 per month license and I was sat there scratching my head thinking how is this person paying for?

Alex Constantinescu: 20:50

my tour.

Biro: 20:51

Like I feel like we failed with this product. So then Nikki done research and we looked at features and we implemented a couple of features. We also had a couple of people that left comments on, oh, we would like this change, and so on. And then it kind of became a snowball effect because one those features kept on bringing us users. They kept on asking for new functionality, extendability. We started clustering ideas. We started looking at where do we want to head with this product, like what's the long term vision? This was after Nikki doing quite a lot of research on release management, road maps, product Planning, project planning and so on. So we're getting quite deep into this topic. We were looking at solutions, we were looking at what people were asking for in communities and we started forming a vision for the product. And then, as customers were asking for features, we would cluster those into themes and see if these ideas contribute to the bigger picture. In a sense that was how we handled Swanly initially right. Our second up, like the Foxley one, the one that's currently quite successful. It was actually a completely different story. We've done a lot of market research upfront to figure out whether that seed of an idea that we had, whether we should build it or not and, as a testimony, foxley skyrocketed very early on when we launched it in the marketplace. But we've done a lot of prep, a lot of education materials upfront before even launching the product. And again, product market fit. We went out, done research volumes needs, what people were using outside the ecosystem, how they were using it, what was in the ecosystem, how it was built, what level of leverage of pool did those solutions have and so on. And also where the market was heading trend-wise with this topic and we were talking about prioritization and actually prioritization was quite a growing trend. At that point there were quite a few standalone apps around prioritization that were getting launched and getting quite a bit of traction and press releases and so on. So we've scoured and done a lot of research on how much this topic has been growing and also the needs of people around this topic. And we even had calls with some of our existing customers from Swanly that were more closer advocates of Swanly to understand how their departments do prioritization and what they use and we got to see templates in spreadsheets and so on. So there was again night and day. One was like this is a good idea, let's just get something to build it and then kind of rapidly figured out a way to make it successful. The other one was really cerebral on how we approach and how we build it.

Alex Constantinescu: 24:20

You see, I think in my case, what we're going to build next, to answer your previous question, First we're going to start with what we have, because we do have a small product. Since this was never the focus, I think we have to look into if it makes sense to put that on cloud. It's only on Intellectual Non-Prem on Datacenter at the moment. And next, this actually is more product that we have. The idea came from a customer Now being in the services business for so long and working with companies anywhere between 10,000 to 5,000 to 30,000 employees. There are a lot of ideas coming in.

Biro: 24:58

Oh yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 24:59

They bring a lot of requests that we have to tell them, okay, that's not possible or that would require I don't know how many days of scripting or custom development and so on, and they decide it's not possible or not worth it. So that's how we should. Preview was built. Our only product at the moment issue, preview was actually an idea from one of the customers. They decided it's not worth paying for so many consulting days to put it in place, right. Then I was like okay, then we're going to build that ourselves and I'll give it to you for free for a year. That's it. Thanks for the idea. Basically, that's like and I have a lot of these ideas from customers.

Biro: 25:40

I think you're in a really great position, to be honest, one that Nicky and I never been in, and this is one of our struggles, right, because at one point we were thinking should we start the? bloody consultancy, because that then will have the insider information of what the customer is challenged with and what kind of solutions they need, and I think you're in a really good position for that. Do you have any specific method currently how you're capturing these ideas and figuring out how you're going to build what can be the most successful of these product ideas, basically, product market fit and prioritizing them?

Alex Constantinescu: 26:27

Yeah, I don't have a way at the moment to. And this would be something I would really want to figure out Because, okay, one customer is giving you one idea, but then we have to decide is that worthy implementing or is nobody else will want it? So how to decide that I would say it's also a matter of effort. If it's not too difficult to do it, even if it's for on-caster, I will still do it and then see if actually there is an interest to grow that and if it gets some traction, like you said with your first install, if it gets some traction, then we will add more features to it.

Biro: 27:11

I mean how we started. Swanly, in my mind, shouldn't be an example. That was the wrong approach right. So if a customer pays you to build something and you agree with them, I'll give you a discount and I'll own the rights of this piece of code, then, yes, you could start with that, build it and then figure out later. But I do recommend that you do some market research to figure out whether that idea is a good idea. And I think if you haven't already set up a backlog of all of these ideas, categorize them, create- a classification bucket type of system and then just put stuff in there and periodically from all of the customers and periodically sit down with your team and look at those ideas and try to kind of like abstractively I don't know if that's a word or not- probably not try to figure out. Can this A idea link with this B idea? Because this A idea was provided by five customers, a very similar concept and so on, and this B idea seems something that could throttle some of the positioning on the market and so on. So I don't know, do you do that?

Alex Constantinescu: 28:43

Yeah, not yet, and actually I will start doing that. I started recently playing with Gira product discovery, so I was actually thinking okay, what can I use this for today? And I think this would be a good day of starting.

Biro: 29:00

Yeah, it is because, again, I think the differentiator between consultancy businesses and I call it consultancy just for the sake of the audience, because some people might not know what an Atlassian solution partner is, and so on the differentiator between consultancy businesses that build successful products and then eventually they realize, oh, we can't have a consultancy in the product business and the same thing they split.

Alex Constantinescu: 29:32

but that's a trend that's been happening, but it's something I consider doing as well.

Biro: 29:38

Yeah, because there are two very different businesses, and I've heard stories in our ecosystem as well how people are. Marketers, for example, came and told me how bummed they are because the consultancy company that they work are not investing in the product that they need to make popular, and so on. But I think being able to successfully launch a product means significant market research up front, and I would go so far in saying that if someone comes and says I'll pay you to build this product and you keep the rights to it, but I'll pay you less, right, it's a good deal for me as well. I get this implementation, but I also don't care if someone else uses it. I'll pay you less Even in that scenario. Basically analyzing, how much energy do I need to put into building this solution? Not just building it for this customer, but you have to deploy an entire spectrum of resources and energy in order to build a product that's not an internal product for one person, actually make it be flexible enough to be used by other organizations as well. So that is a completely different beast than someone coming in saying I have ABC requirements and build it for me. That seems a lot more straight forward not always, but it seems a bit more straight forward. But then saying I'll pay you less and you keep the rights for this product, you can resell it and so on. You have to think about how much money am I not getting I'm losing now from this situation? Right, this person, this company wants to pay me less. And then, how much more energy do I need to invest in this product in order to make it be able to publish in the Atlassian marketplace? or stand alone product. And then, with these two pieces of investment topics research, research, research, research, research figure out need from other customers, sit down with other customers of yours and be like, well, okay, so if I give you a solution like this, no charge for me to build it, I'll just charge you a monthly subscription. Would you pay for something and have a conversation with, um, with, yeah, with all of your closest customers, cause you must have closer customers that are kind of like friends and so on. They're, they're close and would help you out, and even, um, and going and positioning it as a do you have this problem? Validation yes or not? How do you solve this problem today, um, and then see whether that would be a fit, and then eventually, oh well, yeah, I could actually sell this to already five, 10, 20, 50% of my customers, so it's worth my time. Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm blabbering here, I'm talking too much but.

Alex Constantinescu: 33:04

but that's great advice and we we do have a lot of customers that we could validate our BS with.

Biro: 33:10

And I think that differentiated because, again, there's also consultancies that created products that was the brainchild of a customer. Right, and the customer were like, let's buddy up on this. Even worse. Right, there's there's one thing to say yo um advisor, or you know, um consultant, um, I have this idea and I need this product and I think you can benefit from building a product from it and give me a discount because I'm not going to own the rights. It's a war set up for that customer to be and I've seen this that customer to be, let's buddy up, I'll give you the idea, you build the product, I'll give you some money to be able for you to survive while you're building that product, and then we'll have these right. Well, how's this the, the, the revenue, or we'll do this revenue share type of agreement. And then you're like, oh yeah, that's a great idea and you build it and you realize, oh, I need to invest so much more because no market fit. And then the relationships get sour with your, with your customer, because getting into that, again, these are, you know, nightmare scenarios that I've heard of, and usually the products that don't work come from situations like this where you don't do a lot of a lot of or enough product market fit. So you started the question around product market fit. I think that is. No one should take my example, because that's what I failed all of my businesses before. No product market fit. I would see something that's working and I'll say I can definitely build that and I'll build it. I had no idea what my customers were, so it always always fell yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 35:10

Yeah. Okay, now we'll learn from that. What's next?

Biro: 35:12

What are you doing next? What's next?

Alex Constantinescu: 35:16

Well, you already touched the points that I want to split services and product, and that's for multiple reasons. It's also because I think that the team will eventually be different. It's also because now we actually have a lot of people who are. Now we are talking about the startup world and exits and so on, and I think it's much easier to exit with a product business than with a consulting business, especially when those consulting services depend a lot on yourself. So in that sense, I could keep the services as a lifestyle business and see a post potential exit for the product. Only that that it's just an idea.

Biro: 36:02

That's a that's a no, that's a very valid and rational idea. I'm going to put this other thought and question and see how you feel about this. Now, not saying is the right idea, like what you just mentioned. How you're thinking of your, of your future, is great. Have you thought of, for example, selling the consultancy business for a you know multiplier or something? Like that, getting an extra buck for it and building your product business with those resources, and again, these are two very separate approaches, right? So yeah, of course, Of course.

Alex Constantinescu: 36:47

I did think about it who actually had some conversations with some potential buyers. I think my services business is not really sellable at the moment because it was never built that way and just lacks. Let's say. Let's say I need to do some clean up in order for it to be sellable, but is that doable, I think, would you be able to? I think that the bigger question is if I want to do it, is it worth doing it? Yeah, if it's just for the funds to invest in products, it's probably not necessary. I could look for potential investors in a new product business from the beginning and basically a co-founder. You know, and do it the right way.

Biro: 37:39

Yeah, I mean honestly, if it requires some clean up in a sense, your business and I hear this so often right, and I think Nicky and I were lucky because we took the decision that we're going to be part of a bigger team at a very early stage where the company and the business was in its infancy, so we didn't get to develop very significant structures internally to be like, but how are we going to sell this? Right? Like it doesn't make sense, right? No one's going to want to buy this right. So we were lucky in that sense because we didn't really once we decided we want, we want to sell, we want to join sell and sell is a weird word because we got acquired right, it's not really sell, yeah. We wanted to get acquired, to be part of a bigger team and so on, and we started laying down the needs in order to make that happen and running our business for that purpose. Right, right. I hear so many people that are looking at a variety of business setups, business mixes, but they want to eventually exit or get acquired and I'm sad they're thinking don't do that Like, for example, a revenue share, splitting your revenue with another company, collaborating, co-owning, ips, doing a lot of heavy lifting on the consultancies.

Alex Constantinescu: 39:28

So now we're getting into that, cleaning what I mentioned actually means. Yeah.

Biro: 39:33

Yeah, because I feel that it's very administrative stuff and it's very legal related stuff that usually is not like oh well, I didn't sell this or no. It's usually legal and administrative structures that are complex. Now I suppose that's the same for you. You don't have to get into it if you don't want to talk about it.

Alex Constantinescu: 39:55

Yeah, I can give a few examples, like what I mean by cleaning, like, like I mentioned all this shared IP, for example. It just makes it more complicated. Or if you don't have proper contracts with some customers, so what are you really selling then? Or if, let's say, a big chunk of your team are part-time and they have another job on the side, oh, yeah, yeah. So again, then, if whoever acquires you actually wants the team, that's problematic. Yeah, all these kinds of things. Or maybe investments that you did on the company, like I don't know some real estate investment or whatever. So how?

Biro: 40:38

do you get?

Alex Constantinescu: 40:39

that out before getting acquired.

Biro: 40:44

And then it also it's kind of like why you're doing cleanup before getting acquired. You know, and in many cases that might be super okay, but it might also be some not-so-straight-forward, dodgy-looking moves that might make an acquirer say, but you know, and this is like I thought that our company was the most straightforward, minimalist business ever. We still spend plenty of time in due diligence and there were things that hit me that I and that you only bump into when you know, when you get into acquisition and you've never heard of things like that before and stuff, yeah, and when you do cleanup, you also it depends if you have a proper lawyer and accountant that helps you with the business and building the business, maybe you're more okay, but we're a small startup. We never actually had to sit down with a or, you know, had the budgets to sit down with a lawyer, even the accounting I was doing the accounting and we had a tax submission service and so on. So you know, you find out that I should have kept this record or that, or I should have done this and so on. So you have to clean up. But look, I think your approach is actually a very sane one and, from the sound of it, that's the way you should go. It will be less hassle, less headaches and so on, keeping the consultancy business as a lifestyle stuff and in parallel, start building a product.

Alex Constantinescu: 42:21

Learn from my previous mistakes. Now, if I start another company with potential exit in mind, I know how to do it from the beginning. It's very different and what else is probably next for life in codes. What I'm trying to do by scaling up is to reduce my personal implication there.

Biro: 42:42

It's hard, isn't it? Yeah?

Alex Constantinescu: 42:44

I wanted to become an independent entity, so then I can actually focus on new challenges in my life, like maybe building product.

Biro: 42:53

So, as in, and what's the? What would be the setup there?

Alex Constantinescu: 43:00

As in, you'd have a different CEO and you have someone run at someone else Eventually, yes, we are present in multiple countries, so I think I would go more for a setup where there are responsible people for each location.

Biro: 43:20

But you're still, you're the you know main CEO still, I suppose. But you have like for the time being yes. Co-ceos and other locations and so on. Okay, that's the idea at the moment. I think the one thing that it gets challenging is if you're a stakeholder that relies on dividends from a business like this. Yeah, and you don't have executive control. It becomes very uncomfortable very quickly, right? Because you see decision being taken and this and that, and it's very uncomfortable to not have a, to not be there to take the harness and this is exactly why I believe it would be very difficult to give full control to someone else in this business.

Alex Constantinescu: 44:17

It's a bit too late for that.

Biro: 44:18

Yeah, so that's not what you're talking full control, You're talking about more.

Alex Constantinescu: 44:22

Well, I think I'm going to have to maintain control somehow, and I am actually in the situation that you mentioned, that my personal income depends a lot on this business.

Biro: 44:34

Oh yeah, but I again, I think it's hard to kind of let go and delegate and things like that to other CEOs and so on. But if you find people that are trustworthy and not just trustworthy but also really good at their job and passionate and love it, and you see in them the same hunger that you seen in you 10 years ago, right, or five years ago, I think, I think that's a recipe like we, and I advise this to absolutely everyone. If you're going to find the co-founder, whether for your product business or for your consultancy and so on, Think of all of the people that you worked with before at different companies or in different situations even customers and so on that you might have spent a bit more time and either find a clone of theirs or try to nudge them and say, hey, you know, we've been working really great in the past years. Or you know, Johnna, come over and help me with this this, this I think that's the best approach. Like we were able at Jekyll to build a company and have amazing engineers and so on, because we knew a couple of guys and those guys worked with other people and then they brought people in and so on. So it's kind of like a network relationship kind of thing. Yeah, sorry.

Alex Constantinescu: 46:01

Yeah, no, I wanted to ask you because you talk about people now and actually have a question for you on that. I know we share this idea of remote working, cross-border build business and so on find the best talent.

Biro: 46:16

Yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 46:16

And so I want your advice on that. How did you manage to choose the right people in order to still build company culture remote and even more? You have a culture that promotes bringing new ideas on board and not just executing.

Biro: 46:33

Well, there's. There's a couple of things, and this might sound for many boring, right, but this is the most tested, battered way to to have a culture that you, as a founder, can still recognize and enjoy five, 10 years later, which is really understand what your personal values and desires and do's and don'ts are From experience, from working in other companies and exploring various cultures and so on, and write your values, your own values, right as a person, yeah, I value this, this, this, this, this, and then translate that into professional value. So figure out, okay, if I like this, this, this, this thing in in in a person, in a work environment, in this or in the work environment, in the way I operate with technology and this and this and that, how can I apply that to the work environment? And then write them up? And it can also just be purely I didn't like that thing in the other company, so I'm going to, I'm going to think of a way for me not to do that right, once you create your, your values, right, your company values, which is your CEO values in a sense, then, when you start hiring your questions, especially on the culture fit segment of your interviews, or revolve around figuring out if they're a fit and they would get along with everyone else. That's kind of like lives by those values and that's what their beliefs and diversity of the group and so on relates to around revolves around those values and so on. Now a hack to get people that can pull together and so on is, like I mentioned earlier, get the people that are already working for you and you really enjoy how they work and you find them really high in professional A plus players. Get them to bring other people Because if, if they have this specific style and this vibe around them and their skillset are in this range of quality, then they will recognize more often than not. So I rarely, rarely had a person where they would be really good and they would bring me someone that was sub mediocre. Yeah, that did happen once or twice. But then I realized, hold on, this person cannot judge like they're. They don't have that ability to judge people, to classify, to characterize people in a sense. So the very good, talented team members that brought one or two people that weren't a fit usually were a bit agnostic. They didn't have that sense of what is, what is quality that I relate to in a person and why not. They're very inclusive, let's put it like the very, very inclusive people that don't have that nuance of thinking of. I really like this person, right? No, they like everyone. So usually those were the ones that brought. The quality wasn't there, but a lot, usually a lot of people that are very hardworking, determined and passionate about stuff. They also have this you know great, recognizes great, right. So they would have people that they really like at work and they would recommend them to you. So I think that's the best way to quickly get people, but we didn't have a very thorough hiring process. You know, we brought a lot of people from our existing people. We test them a little bit, we gave them a bit of a trial period, realize this is an identical person to this other person, right, with their own traits and their own character and so on. But when it comes to the output of work, man, I'm getting the same output from this person that's been here for two years. That's amazing, right. So that feeling is so great when you see, when you get people on and they just immediately that's and I think that's I. You know, I think there's a lot of you can heavy load hiring process in such a way that you hire the amazing people. But that requires a lot of energy from you, from HR, from the hiring department and so on. If you're at the start, this is the hack. Just think of great people that you worked with, bring them on and then have them bring other great people.

Alex Constantinescu: 52:09

Yeah, nice, nice idea. Okay, what about dealing with the, the fact that everyone is remote working? Did you organize maybe someone recurrent to in-person meetings with the team? Or how did you actually bring people together to make them collaborate? We, it's something we struggle with.

Biro: 52:31

Yeah, we didn't. We had our first and only full team get together in September in Brighton in September last year, after working for years with the team Okay, did something change after you met? I think yes, like I do believe that in-person interactions are super important on how you digest someone, on how you understand them, on how compassionate you get. It's very it's quite difficult when you're across a Zoom call. So I do think that meeting at least once a year with your full team and not bringing them around yourself, but actually making sure that they naturally have their in-each-others presence more than their in-your presence- it's very easy for people to just revolve around the CEO because he's organizing, especially if you're a small team and you don't have organizers for the off-site and you're organizing and you're guiding people and so on. plus you're the boss, so it's a lot easier for people to just revolve around you. So you have to craft that off-site in a way that people spend time with people, not people spend time with the founder, with the CEO.

Alex Constantinescu: 54:00

That's important as well, right, the one-to-ones and so on.

Biro: 54:03

But people should mix and spend time together. They go for a hike, they do this, they go in a workshop two, three people from the team, and so on. You're not included. You're over here doing a one-to-one with a different person, and so on, and that helps them bond rather than just focusing on you. And you know, because this is one of the things that I see quite often, you go to off-sites and the founder is the star right. They're the celebrity in the group and those off-sites become the founder, sharing the vision of what needs to be, and so on, the Steve Jobs type of you know off-sites and so on. And what do you see, at least in public, because you know I've never been to one right, but what you see documented and so on, it seems like everyone was revolving around him. That's not very healthy and you're literally transforming an event where people should connect with each other. At the end of the day, people will work more with each other than directly with you as the CEO or the founder, right. So those relationships need to grow, not the relationship with you, although that's important as well for the vision.

Alex Constantinescu: 55:18

There's a part we struggle with.

Biro: 55:19

So those are important, but ultimately, I think you also should work with people that have experience of working remote, just plain and simple, someone that doesn't have the experience they will need a lot more of an in-person touch right, They'll struggle quite a bit to humanize people across the Zoom calls. If you worked remote for several years with a variety of people, you've been on off-sites, you're used to this lifestyle, you know how to handle situations and conversations and everything remote and you're also more compassionate because you got to that point where when you're talking to a person on Zoom you're kind of you're compassionate by experience in a sense, Because you met another two, three people that were very alike like this person and you actually met those people in person at off-sites, at previous companies and so on. So again, because of experience and time spent on in this kind of setup, you're a bit better placed in a sense, better equipped, let's put it like that. So I think that's you know. I'm not saying don't hire people that never worked remote, because then we're not inclusive. But with those people you need to realize that the entire team needs to realize that they don't have the experience, they'll find it a lot more struggling and they need to be accommodating. So if you've worked remote for a long time, you need to be the one that's accommodating towards those that are struggling a bit. And then again off-sites maybe you as a founder can also do visits and so on. Oh, because you're also traveling quite a lot. You know when you're next time you're in Costa Rica and so on. Oh well, I have someone there, let me visit. Or even, let's say, next year. You know you have five, 10 countries where you have employees. Go on holidays in those countries and visit the cities, the towns where your employees are and just spend some one-to-one time with them. So at least they get that connection with the founder. And then once a year you have your off-sites and so on. To be honest, there's no silver bullet with any of this. There are people that are trying. There are so many blueprints and teachings out there on how to work best with remote teams. One thing that I would say is it's very hard for me to not see a person. I try in person right at all. I got used to it over the years because we've done that quite a lot. Emotional intelligence is an important factor to building a successful business and so on, and seeing a fraction of your team through remote sometimes can be hard. So you know, consolidating it with in-person stuff is very important. I never minded the office hours, right when the world was, you know, office office office. I never minded, I miss particularly the coffee breaks. The water cooler discussion, the coffee breaks and so on. It is a bit of a mix of emotions there, because wherever you talk to, people are like, no, that was a waste of my time, just need to put my head down and work and be efficient. Some of us really like that. I used to love those as well.

Alex Constantinescu: 59:33

I wanted to ask you about your exit. If it's not too personal, no, go ahead. So how do you decide when to exit? What were the options? What were the difficulties? Do you regret it most of all?

Biro: 59:46

I regret everything I do every single day of my goddamn life.

Alex Constantinescu: 59:51

I'm joking.

Biro: 59:53

Now there's a okay, so let's untangle that a bit. So the first question was how did we decide, yeah, when to do it? How did we decide when to do it? Yeah, did I mention why we decided to sell?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:00:11

No, are you interested in that?

Biro: 1:00:12

Let's start with that, because I think that that might be kind of a scene mood setting for a lot of these things. We decided to sell quite fast after we actually started and started building a lucrative business, as in. We'd not decided to sell as in okay, we're not in it anymore, we're going to sell but we decided that our fate as a team is to be part of a bigger team, work with more people like us and have less stress. And that less stress part is a double fold One. You know it's stressful. You know it's stressful to be a founder and entrepreneur. You have to deal with so many things. Your time off is not time off, right. You constantly think about your business, you're obsessed about it. You get emotional constantly about it. And you know and we love that as founders and entrepreneurs though, it's stressful when you don't have it for a while. You get to miss it. It's how we're wired. It's like you know, I want that fiery love right when. Like I want to be able to go to ups and downs and ups and downs and so on. That's how I feel, like I'm progressing. If it's happiness, constant happiness, then are you progressing. If it's constant, you know monotony and meh, right, are you progressing? So we, we itch for that, for that tumultuous ride in a sense, right so, but I think both Nikkie and I, and especially me, I have this this ups and downs, like I have. I have periods of my life where where I operate at high frequency and then I have periods where, like I need, because, because I burned out my entire energy in this high frequency- I can't relate to that. You know you need to, or period where it's like I just I want to silence in my head. Right, I want to break away from my head and my emotions. We wanted to have a period where we just focus on our skills and our professional growth, without the stress of a business and all of the ups and downs and so on. And the other bit was we wanted to finally kind of settle down, like for us. Another component stress component was where over 30, we don't have our house, our home, we're living rent, we don't have the certain means right. So we're still the early twenties hackers and entrepreneurs that are living from door to door, in a sense backpacking and you know, not at that level right, in a sense, like you just have rent and so on. But it doesn't feel like you're settling down, it doesn't feel like you're. You know, I'm now in my high, I have my house, I have my dogs around, I can walk in my garden, it's like finally take a proper vacation. Yeah, vacation, and you feel like you're, you're settled in a way, right, I feel that your identity is really quite, you know, tumultuous. Yeah, do have a constant. In your early twenties, when and I'm talking about entrepreneurs not everyone's the same, not everyone thinks and wants the same things, but as an entrepreneur and someone that wants, and you know, chase his success and and chases professional growth and so on, you're, there's one constant is your itch, your need for this growth in entrepreneurship. The rest of this is chaos and that's that's kind of. Your identity is in crisis. Often you change hats and you change identity is quite a lot because you move there, because everything is so there's no constant, right. The only constant is this I know that I'm very passionate about business, but everything else is up in the air, right, but, as we were discussing earlier, after a while you want to. You just want that constant to not be just one constant. You want multiple constants. You want to be just in one place and and just settle down, settle down, settle down. They just call it like that. So these are the two stress factors that we wanted to remove, you know, at least temporarily, right, and that was, that was our decision because, again. We worked really hard and that's the thing we started Jekyll in 2018 and for two years we were working full time jobs and running Jekyll. And then 2020 came pandemic all of the craziness. All of us suffered quite a lot over that period. It was a very intense period. 2021 is quite a lot, but at the beginning of 2021, as we were growing and starting to generate significant revenue like, like, why? Like we were not very attached to the Jekyll brand per se. Why? Because we could. We could be the same individuals, having the same contributions to Atlassian ecosystem as we were at that point, and do amazing things, maybe even more amazing because we have more people to do it. Why are we torturing ourselves just so that we say one day, oh, we sold the business for 50 million or 100 million and so on? Is that why, I mean we, we don't care about numbers, right? In that sense, I don't care. I don't you know and this is one of the other things that I've learned was I had a very fixed number in my head for an exit, even once we took the decision right, because, you know, before taking decision to sell, we were like, yeah, we're going to build a SaaS business, oh it's, it's ramping up, is, and you have all. You have these examples, this kind of like cookie cutter example of a company getting seed investment, then going for series A, b, c, getting hundreds of millions of investment and then exiting, hopefully successfully, for hundreds of millions or something like that, and I think that's the. You know, that's, that's the wrong. I can say that's the wrong approach of thinking, because those companies are one in a dozen right, so not all of us average Joe's will get to experience that ever. And I'm okay with that right, I've never, never had this. So that's when we sat in 2021 and we were like why this is skitted, this is be part of a team, and we don't. We don't want to build a billion dollar company, we just want to do cool stuff. And then but I still had a price in my mind. I was like, yeah, I'm only going to sell for 20 million because if I get 20 million for Jaxo, I'm going to be able to do X, y, is it right? I'm going to be able to buy a house, maybe two houses, one for my mama, one for me, um, and I'm still pretty much paying my mom's mortgage now, which which I'm super proud of. But in my mind back then I was like I'll just buy her the house. I don't buy right off the house. But then I, having conversations with people that exited and sold companies and so on, I realized that I was quite narrow minded to think that 20 million is the amount that will make me happy, because, at the end of the day, we wanted less stress. We wanted to settle down and have less stress for this period of time. It's not 20 million that gives you that. It was just my thinking. Oh, I can do this, this, this I can, I can start the. VC and do that and do that. So, safe to say, we sold for way less than that right. But again, after realizing that this artificial storyline that social media and regular media in general kind of implants in your head around you have to have these many millions in order to be successful and be happy is is very damaging, because we had to take a step back and look at well, what do we want to achieve? What are, what are our goals? Well, we want to get a house and we want to sit down. We want to work with cool people. We want to have holidays. Does that require us to sell for 20 million? No not really, but it took. It took conversations with people that actually went through friends of ours that got acquired and exited and so on. I said bullshit, you'll be happy with that way less. You know, once you're above 2 million or something like that, doesn't make a big difference for you. You know finances.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:10:33

It doesn't change your lifestyle, doesn't change your daily basis.

Biro: 1:10:36

If you, if you have 2 million upwards of an exit, and that's your money right, that's your revenue and so on, and you're not have to invest it in something else and so on, you're, you're good. You're good because you know, unless you want, unless your goals are boats and fancy cars, and things like that and flashy, then of course it's very easy to spend. But no, we're creatives, we're nerds. We're cool, cool projects and so on, and that's that. And, honestly, the reason why I'm saying is damaging is because you could have a lucrative exit, right, get a decent payout, work with amazing people. But if your vision of success is basically directed by social media and of you know, news and all of these examples, then, one, you'll be miserable if you take an offer that's less than what you think you should be worth, and so on, hundreds of millions and so on. Or two, you, you take the wrong decisions and reject some opportunities that could be life changing. So so, yeah, that was the. That was the story of how we decided. And then, and then eventually we were like, well, why, why are we trying to get to 20 million? It makes no sense. Let's just, you know, do it now. And you know our, our acquisition did happen one year earlier than you know where we were projecting. You know it's like this 20 million exit and so on, but fundamentally there is absolutely no difference. It would have made no difference financially, I would say. And actually we got to win some really great opportunities and partner up with, you know really great company early on, where it might have not been the same opportunity a year later. So, that, yeah, that's, that's. That's the history of it. What was the second question?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:12:54

Among the options. And so let's say I have a startup I want to exit and for people that don't really understand how that works from an administrative or legal point of view. So what is the relation afterwards? And, yeah, options and difficulties basically. But I wanted to say about your answer that is so inspiring that I'm considering more to sell my business now.

Biro: 1:13:18

It's like I'm gonna sell my business for five grand. I don't need money.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:13:22

I'm gonna live in a tent, yeah, but like especially two parts, being a part of a bigger team and doing even better things for the customers being able to do that. I think that's very inspiring. And, yeah, much less stress. I mean, I did not have a vacation in six years. A proper vacation, yeah.

Biro: 1:13:42

And then that's, you know, that's, that's what you say. We say, oh well, you know, I went to, you know, to Monaco last year for Formula One. It was amazing, but I feel that feel like 50%. What am I talking? 50%, probably 70, 80% of the time, Nicky and I were talking about Jekso.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:14:01

Of course, and we had. Wherever I go, I still carry two laptops.

Biro: 1:14:04

Yeah, we had the PM 72 just around the corner. It was. It's never a proper holiday that you don't think of things yeah and yeah, that's. That's that Like. Yeah, I don't think figures are that important as well. And yes, you're right. And you know, randall R C O Alafair said you know in the announcement that they're giving us a megaphone to amplify our voices, and that's 100% true because in the last two years I've been growing in building, creating content, helping others in the communities and the ecosystem and so on, and I love that. It's so fulfilling to me to just do stuff and hear people's stories, that you know the type of content that we create and so on. Help inspire this or that or help them keep up with stuff is very inspiring to me. So I always wanted to kind of double down on that. But when you're a CEO and you have a business, it's really hard to double down and just focus on this because you're right. So, and that's it. Like we're getting a megaphone to be able to double down on the stuff that we want, like that is a dream and that's. I think that's what people need to get for themselves. People sell because that's trendy and everyone's selling nowadays. Sell, get acquired, be part of a team, be financially stable and so on. Those are, you know, when you sell, that's what you have to think about. Why am I doing this, right? Oh well, I have these two opportunities and these companies. I could actually be a really successful professional right Exited founder. I have that badge. That's great, and everyone in this company and this company that are my options would really appreciate the expertise that I'm bringing on. I'll get to work with more customers, bigger customers. Oh, and I'm getting an exit. Now I'm getting an exit amount that can help me settle this. Oh, and I have weekends. Now I don't need to think about work. Oh, I'm finishing at eight. I don't need to think about work and that kind of trumps everything in a sense. Right, because you kind of want that and I don't know if you're the same, but I'm sure that eventually I'll have an itch to start something right, but for now I'm good to finish at six, eight, whenever I finish, and just relax and be with my family or go on weekends, mini trips, go on proper holidays and so on. Those are quite important. Sorry, I went back to the same topic. Yeah, let's discuss the options and what is the process of so with options and I think that traditionally, you can sell a business, or you can get a choir right, or you can enter a partnership, which a strategic partnership, where you get a large portion of your company acquired right, but you still own some portion of it, some part of it, some options, sorry, some shares in the company. Those are three options. Now it really depends on the type of business that we're talking about, because if we're talking about product, all three are on the table, right, more or less. It depends fundamentally, what buyer will look at is and this is you know, it's a very basic thing, but they will look at how healthy your business is today. One and what are the opportunities right, what's the where you can get with this business, and anything that could be a red flag as not a healthy business needs to be surfaced even before you sign a letter of intent and you get into an exclusivity deal and you go through due diligence. So this is what this be one of the advice that I give anyone don't leave skeleton on skeletons in your closet to be because you're like. Well, we'll discuss those in due diligence. I would say, if you have something in your back, your mind, about oh boy, I'm not sure about this, pull it out and discuss it, mention it off front. Well, a lot of times it might be okay, but you know the M&A team that you're talking about. Yeah, it's fine, let's figure out during the due diligence and so on, but just make sure that you know those. Let me ask this I'm sure that I'm, because I feel I'm talking here, but I might not giving you what you want. So, in terms of options, are you referring to what? To the types of acquisition, or what?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:19:26

Yeah, what you said is already answered my question. So, the strategic partnership is, for example, what is getting more and more proposed to me in the services business.

Biro: 1:19:37

With the strategic partner. Your agreement needs to be super bulletproof. Yeah right, the last thing you want is to get a specific deal, get very limited or no resources to help you out and you're working and stressing the same or even more than when it was your, your own business, and so on. So, like, that needs to be really well crafted and Drafted so that you feel like it's a fair deal to you, right, like, oh, I'm getting this much amount of money for this much amount of Shares in the company and maybe here we can touch a little best practices like how much shares, how much equity should you give out from your company? Well, it really depends whether you want to remain in control or not, because if you, you know, let's start there.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:20:35

Yeah, that's the most people want to keep control.

Biro: 1:20:38

You'd assume, but it really depends. Why would you want to keep control, for example?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:20:44

Well, you're right, I mean in my case, in my personal case, is because my income depends a lot on my company. That's basically all I, what I've built my whole life. Okay so it's hard to give that away to someone yes very true and to trust them that they're gonna do well with.

Biro: 1:21:01

Right. So let me let me ask this following question. If you'd get an offer where, let's say, someone wants to buy 60% of your company and give you a Most recurring salary Plus you get the rest dividends From 40% remaining, would you take that deal?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:21:23

Probably, not, what would today not? Right but I would have to understand more about what happens when I give away 60% of my company, right like what? What do they have power to do next?

Biro: 1:21:35

it really depends, because in a lot of these of share distribution and share agree shareholder agreements, it really depends. Sometimes they would be drafted to say You're not allowed to sell the company or get new investment without the signing of the rest of the shareholders.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:21:59

Yeah, no matter how little they own, okay.

Biro: 1:22:01

Yeah, that can be one or it can be. You have to have, you know, the majority control to do so. It can be as as little as that to as High as well. We have the ultimate power to to sack you as a CEO and and put a new CEO in and do this and do that and do that right. So it really depends on what the clause is of. That is because this is what I would look at.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:22:35

Mm-hmm.

Biro: 1:22:35

Yeah, well, it makes sense. You wouldn't give Like you wouldn't give more than you know 40, 45% if you want to keep control, given that you want to, to ensure that this still stays your revenue for for a very long time. It it really depends. I think the one important aspect is to get to know One the, the buyers business and really understand whether there are Hard core opportunities for you to continue to skyrocket, because then you're like I can make double, triple the revenue that I'm making now by owning 40 or 50 or 60 percent versus a hundred percent. And that's in Proportuity because this company is so big and has so many Projects that that's never gonna run out. So that's definitely something I think. The other thing is M&A team and so on and how you get along with them and how well you understand each other and so on. So you have to kind of Surface all of these details before you get into a All-awaii, because once you got into all-awaii you can't talk to anyone else. A lot of these letter of intent Agreements means you're exclusive to me as the buyer for the next Three months, four months, six months, while we do do diligence and we come to an agreement of what the final deal is those letter of intense usually also have the Drafted, the rough agreement of what you're gonna get. But that can change along the way depending on the due diligence, but also means that over that period you Can't really talk to any of their competitors to see, so it might be locked in for six months, yeah, and plus it takes time from you. The diligence takes time and energy and stress and so on. So I do really advice for people to really Think it through look at the team, look at the details, look at everything they can look at and surface, before getting into a All-awaii, because then you're locked in for a while. Right, the with the others, with the other options selling probably not an option for for Consultancy, because you know you're selling the rest of the team. How about you, like? You also mentioned that you're quite critical to the operation and acquisition. Yeah, acquisition is, is is another option. But again it means that it really depends because if you get an amount I know two, three, four eggs or something like that of your Last year revenue or something I know exactly how it works with consultancy, I think is kind of like like that with product is you have annual recurring revenue this much and you get like a 8, 10, 12, x of that is quite straightforward. It really depends because if you get an, an amount that you can live off of for two, three years, right, and then you're also current, currently hired, because you got acquired you're, you're working for it, for the company and say you know you're there at least two years, four, five, and you don't have any clauses in your agreement that keeps you from building another company. Of course you're gonna have clauses of non-compete and so on, but if you're getting into a product, that's some that. I think that's Different enough for it not to overlap. It depends on the company. But if you're in that setup, getting a really good salary, you're not planning to leave. But if you decide to, if you get pissed off for any reason, decide to leave, you have a two, three year salary from the, from the transaction, right from the acquisition transaction. You might think, well, I'm, I'm good, like I'll build this product and and I'll get it funded and I'll do a great job and so on. The one advice that I would have is Because I see you talking about that, you know that being your bread and butter and so on, like the business and so on. Take a step back and and and look at whether you're seeing that business at as the perpetuity safe Place for yourself, and why you're seeing that like that. Because and I'm not saying like you can you can have it as the. This is my safe space in a sense, financially. This is the business that I can get money constantly because I control it and I know what it is. But in the same time, it could keep you From opportunities if, if you don't step outside to look at what, what would be some of the other options. Like, I mentioned this option. I'm not saying that this would be the best option for you, but there's it. You know, there's a chance that if you step back and you say, but if I put a with B and C, that's actually might be good. So it kind of gives you a wealth of options. And Even if you go back to the original right and you say I Love my business, I'm gonna keep my business, it makes me decent money and so on. At least you took this a step back to look at all of the options and you and you're a lot more confident with how you perceive I. I can only always pivot, pivot and do this and this. Hmm, if I, if I'm bored or if I, if or this is not working, or I need something else, or I need to accelerate my product, and so I can just do this, even that stepping back and looking at your options, really crafting them, and saying if I would really go down this path. A, b, c, that's a pretty decent.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:29:25

Set up. Yeah, no, and I want to answer that no, I don't see the safety is coming from from my current company. For me, safety comes from financial freedom. To one of my values is freedom, and here I could talk about freedom to move I travel whenever I want to work from anywhere but also to be safe from a financial perspective and For financial freedom. In order to feel safe, I think you need passive income, and having a services business is not passive income.

Biro: 1:29:56

Yes, yeah, definitely.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:29:58

So what I'm doing actually invest my income into other mm-hmm Depends, real estate Stokes, whatever that would offer me a passive income, and from that I feel safe. And this allows me to take risks with my company as well and Know that, okay, I can still Put something on the table, no matter what.

Biro: 1:30:22

Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree, and I, I think, Just between you and I, I think you're doing a great job by thinking about product. Thank you because that's you know, that's, that's where that's, when you get to a point where you you think about, you think about Scaling and growing rather than sustaining, is very easy when you're in a, have a consultancy Business to look at how do you sustain? Because you have to sustain, yeah, with it, yeah, you have to sustain a product as well and your customers happy and so on. But at the end of the day, it your focus is quite a lot on growth and Expansion, and so, okay, well, I don't know if I answered all your questions about it. We can. We can continue the conversation. Yeah, thank you after, after the, the cameras are off as well. Before we wrap it up and thank you. I think this is a really brilliant conversation, really engaging.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:31:30

Totally agree. Thanks a lot for the insights, for answers.

Biro: 1:31:33

No worries, I'm just a fool. That failed a lot, and there's just a couple of my thoughts. I'm sure that and I'm hoping that we'll get an input from the rest of the community of misfit founders Right. To close it off, I have three questions that I ask every single guest. Okay, and you know what those questions are because I send them to you, that bats. So number one is what's a quote that you leave there by?

Alex Constantinescu: 1:32:03

Yeah, do what you love. Love what you do. I Was, I would say, this defines me a lot since basically my personal life and my my work life Mixed together. Yeah, that's a lot and if you don't like what you do, you Go crazy yeah you will never be able to put in into your business 12, 16 hours a day and so yeah, very good, very good quote, very popular quote and very good quote right. So question number two what is your?

Biro: 1:32:35

book that you really love.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:32:39

Well, I don't read a lot of fiction books, so it's more personal growth and so on, although with some exceptions, of course, I Think I would choose atomic habits. Atomic habits yeah, but it's by James clear, if I'm correct. Yeah, yeah, and it's in a few words. It's about how you, you, you can grow by Setting small habits that you do Constantly, and then you can associate them with something pleasant and but on, on a personal note, how I would describe it is, since I'm a numbers guy and I like investing, and so I think Compound interest does not only apply to financial stuff. It will also apply to to your own growth and to healthy stuff. And, okay, if you do a small exercise today and a small exercise tomorrow, and on the long run, these actually adds up a lot.

Biro: 1:33:43

That is. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if I read it. It's a very famous book. I don't think I read it. I think I need to pick it up and read it. I need to take a note of it. The last one, when this is an interesting one, a good habit that you advocate for.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:34:02

Yeah, I think, is building a workflow or a system that you don't leave any Important question unanswered. This, again, is something that I apply a lot and really defines me. I'm one of those people that, for example, my system is, I'm one of these people that opens every single email. You know, and I believe, even if I I don't have a solution at the moment, but if just by being responsive and yeah, that that actually Grows my, my personal brand and the, the trust people have in me and, yeah, I would say, is my competitive advantage in the professional yeah.

Biro: 1:34:47

Yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:34:48

I've.

Biro: 1:34:49

That's. That's a really good one. I've been, I've been quite process oriented and I see patterns everywhere, everywhere, I look right. So whenever, whenever, whenever I see a set up or Disorder in a sense, I'm I'm seeing patterns and I'm seeing. So I think that's, that's, that's one. One thing for me is, yeah, as a good, good Habit. So you, you read all of your emails.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:35:20

Yeah open every single them, of course, from the first sentence I know if it's important or not.

Biro: 1:35:24

Yeah.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:35:24

I do open all my emails.

Biro: 1:35:27

Okay that you know that, that you must be such a, such a Peaceful, peace of mind type of person. You know, do you know how many unread emails I have? How many, 35,000? Oh my god, yeah. But you know why? Because, like you, I scan right. So I scan stuff but I don't open. Like I scan on, if the title is not there, I don't open it. And you know, sometimes I have I look at my inbox and I'm like Fuck, do I have important Missing? Did I miss anything? So I've you know, I definitely praise you for and I think that translates to life in cause as well, of course we.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:36:09

We answer every single request whether or not we can do it and, yeah, that gains trust, of course.

Biro: 1:36:15

So yeah, that's really good, right, Okay, well, thank you for joining me.

Alex Constantinescu: 1:36:21

Thank you for inviting it.

Biro: 1:36:23

It's a pleasure. It's one of the first episodes and it's great to have a part of it and looking forward to continue the conversation offline and in the communities. So if you have any questions about our entire discussion today or if you want to contribute, put in the comment also in mention. We have our own misfit community. Find the link in the description. Join our conversation and We'll see you in the next video. If you like this video, thumbs up and subscribe, and and soon next time.