Tell us about yourself?
Technology and High-Scale Product Development expert. Huge fan of smooth UX and great CX. Driven by strong compliance with Data, Cybersecurity, Design, and Development standards. Constantly striving for the best results.
What do you think is the single biggest misconception people have when it comes to startups?
That all truly great ideas will make great products and be successful. It’s so much more – starts with an idea, heavily depends on team and execution, also on founder network, and a bit of luck!
If you could go back in time to any moment from your journey, and give yourself one tip, what would it be?
Do a lot more due diligence about everyone and everything – starting from co-founders, investors, partners, all the way to employees. Nobody should ever be exempt.
What makes you stand out as an entrepreneur?
Experience and technical background. Started as a developer, moved to management. Had the privilege (and luck) to meet and work with some very smart people on some pretty interesting problems.
What are some of the best working habits you’ve gained over the past couple of years?
Deep focus (nice reference to that in the book with the same title), even better remote working habits, and an ability to cope better with the unknown (due to the pandemic).
Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?
Pijus had spent a decade at the bailiffs’ office where he saw that the process included mostly repetitive and manual tasks that had little visibility.
He brewed the idea to bring tech innovation to legal for a long time until he met with his childhood friends Martynas and Sarunas, who had worked in product and tech development on a daily basis (in fintech, healthcare, etc). Together we came up with a hypothesis that technology can greatly improve the whole process and the experience on both sides.
Where do you see your business in five years?
Ideally, we will have proven our operational model with enough clients and debtors, moved to a couple of new regions, expanded our product portfolio from a focused offering (of debt collection) to a wider one (credit, credit history, payment collection).
What do you think the biggest challenge will be for you in getting there?
Sales, since our focus is B2B, which tends to have a lengthy sales process. Building a stellar sales team will be a challenge in itself.
Talk to us about your biggest success story so far?
We have been prototyping for less than 6 months so far and have already managed to prove our MVP (with organic and paid acquired clients). Due to our focus, we already signed our second bigger partnership for debt collection.
How do clients and customers find you? Are you much of a salesperson for yourself?
A combination of paid ads and direct sales (a much bigger focus on the latter). None of the founders are salespeople, but we decided we must understand sales of our product enough at least at the start, so we can build a better sales team going forward.
What one tip would you give to fellow startup founders?
Try to not only build a cool product but also understand if anyone will actually pay for it (or use it enough for the founders to find a monetisation model).
And finally, what do you hope the future brings both you personally, and your business?
Personally, I’m hoping to have more interesting problems to solve (in terms of work challenges). Business-wise I’m looking forward to expanding the team and developing our product further, so definitely looking forward to expanding our client list in order to keep testing our product and bringing value to the partners.
