This episode of #TBNE features serial entrepreneur Alex Svinov, Founder and CEO of Insquad where they are building the #futureofwork. Alex talks about his journey on his early first startup success, getting a big head, and then failing on his next venture. Alex talks about what it takes to build a scaleable startup and some of the challenges and the bit of luck he has gotten along the way. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
This episode of #TBNE features serial entrepreneur Alex Svinov, Founder and CEO of Insquad where they are building the #futureofwork. Alex talks about his journey on his early first startup success, getting a big head, and then failing on his next venture.
Alex talks about what it takes to build a scaleable startup and some of the challenges and the bit of luck he has gotten along the way.
Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
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Creative Director: Maxim Sokolov, www.maximsokolov.com
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EPISODE 73:
ALEX SVINOV
INTRO
00:00:07:15 - 00:00:29:11
Rob Napoli
Bear nation. How we doing? This is your host Rob Napoli back again for another episode of the Bear Necessities podcast. Today we have a great guest calling in actually from Poland right now as he's at a an event conference. So he's doing this on the road. Alex, Svinov how.
MAIN VIDEO
00:00:30:01 - 00:00:35:20
Alex Svinov
Svinov that's. Yeah. Oh, hey there. Oh, right. Yeah, I know.
00:00:35:20 - 00:00:40:00
Rob Napoli
It's awesome, Alex. What? So how's Poland right now?
00:00:40:19 - 00:00:42:15
Alex Svinov
Oh, it's very, very hot.
00:00:43:01 - 00:00:43:18
Rob Napoli
Is it really?
00:00:43:18 - 00:00:53:17
Alex Svinov
Yeah. Yeah. Hot summer. You know, everybody, you know, ladies wearing almost nothing. So it's not like. Not like. Yes.
00:00:53:24 - 00:00:59:17
Rob Napoli
Yeah, it's very. Yeah, very European. Hot summer. I love it. And so what what conference say that for right now?
00:01:00:15 - 00:01:07:13
Alex Svinov
Well, it's not exactly a conference. It's the event that we're doing for developers to promote developers join our platform.
00:01:08:04 - 00:01:38:10
Rob Napoli
So so it's an end squad events. Your company have an awesome even cooler. So for those that don't know, Alex is a serial entrepreneur. He's a four time founder. He's had one exit, one failure, as he likes to say, three successful businesses. He also is an angel investor. And what, ten plus startups right now? And currently, he is the CEO of a company called In Squad, which is building the future of work and his passion is building high performance remote teams.
00:01:39:02 - 00:02:02:23
Rob Napoli
And he's a father of three and a Buddhist in his mind. So, Alex, thanks for joining us and we're really excited to chat with you today specifically around a couple key things, right? You know, the fact that you have found that seven different companies and you actually talk about one exit, one failure. Three successful business. I want to kind of dig into what that means.
00:02:02:23 - 00:02:42:14
Rob Napoli
But before we do, I think it's really interesting to how you got your start into entrepreneurship. Right. So we were talking pre-show for this, I don't know, Alex, prior to 2008 and the crisis was in investment banking, he was doing mergers and acquisition and then everything changed at that time. And you start to get into Archbishop World. So talk to me a little about the investment banking side and how you got into that and when you got to that point of feeling, you know, as your awards hopeless after that crisis, like how did you kind of rebound and go into this different avenue that's taking you the last 10, 12 years?
00:02:42:20 - 00:02:45:03
Rob Napoli
You've seen some great success and lessons learned.
00:02:45:24 - 00:03:15:12
Alex Svinov
Yeah. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me here. It's a great, great to be. I think I probably want to start with my beginning of my career. I actually a computer science graduate. So I was in I, you know, tried to to to become a software developer that was early 2000. That was dot com times. And it didn't really work out to me because a software developer is somebody with a certain mindset.
00:03:15:12 - 00:03:37:15
Alex Svinov
It's not only about your knowledge that you have, but of course I could write to code. I can still write code, but I cannot become a great developer and I've seen so many guys are out there doing great, so it didn't feel like that. And then I went to, you know, investment banking because I had good enough numbers in finance and I spent maybe ten years there.
00:03:37:15 - 00:04:03:03
Alex Svinov
And at some point I just felt like, well, I was pretty much in that midlife crisis, right? Yeah. I was like 33 and I felt like, you know, I could do more. I could, you know, not not even maybe a financial advisor. I wasn't thinking a lot about money at that point, but I could do more rewarding stuff, you know, I could do things that could really change lives.
00:04:03:03 - 00:04:31:20
Alex Svinov
And and software development came naturally because this is the other thing that I you know, I was very well aware of. And I also I also my previous career in finance also gave me a lot of insights into how real companies are run. And it kind of helped me overcome this, you know, general knowledge that you have to be genius to run the company of right there.
00:04:32:04 - 00:04:51:14
Alex Svinov
The processes there are ideal. They are not right. So I felt that, you know, I really want to do something. And that's when I gave myself a promise. Okay, I don't want to start a company every every two years. And to this date, I think I'm pretty, pretty close to that. So that promise.
00:04:51:14 - 00:05:15:00
Rob Napoli
That's awesome. Yeah, it's right. You know, I think I think there's a lot there. Right. Like everyone wants to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And that's a it's a long path to get there. And it's a different that's also a different experience to being a founder and CEO of your own company. Now being a CEO of 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, 100 billion company have very different levels of involvement, very different level of skills and things that you have to do.
00:05:15:00 - 00:05:36:05
Rob Napoli
And so, you know, as you're kind of going through that, understanding that there is more of an impact that you can make by doing your own thing and taking what you knew and taking what you learned in the investment banking world and mergers and acquisitions, which I think when you're in that space, it's high powered, it's high touch, it's high intensity.
00:05:36:05 - 00:06:00:15
Rob Napoli
You're learning a lot about companies. You get some really interesting things like the due diligence process. So you're starting to understand what may come, what makes companies that succeed tick because of your role there. And so getting to see that and then turn that is as a CEO is pretty cool. So you talk about these different businesses you've grown when you made that transition, started doing it.
00:06:00:18 - 00:06:17:12
Rob Napoli
What were some of the things that because you're like, I'm going to make this challenge and do this, or smart things that kind of like smack you in the face like, Oh shit, I wasn't ready for this. Was there any big kind of, Oh shit, moments start in your first company or how did that first one kind of kick off and run for you?
00:06:18:20 - 00:06:44:02
Alex Svinov
Yeah, well, actually, I think the first company I founded was I got lucky, I think, because I for whatever reason, it didn't really take off and there was no, like, real challenges there because, you know, a lot of things that, like you mentioned I had before and then I kind of felt that, you know, well, maybe I'm genius at that.
00:06:44:05 - 00:07:02:19
Alex Svinov
I was like, okay, I'm going to start right, you know, next, next start up. Like in two years time because of this in the first company. And things went really well and, you know, I didn't really need it to need to be there full time. It was like a venture capital base, right? So it was growing at 23% a year.
00:07:03:06 - 00:07:28:16
Alex Svinov
And and it right now, it's a it's a great company's got like 15 million revenues and still growing. But it's not you know, it's not does not require any of my time at this point. And then then I started a next startup and there I got smack, right? I did. Because I thought that I'm a genius now I can do whatever, you know, whatever I want and was a complete disaster.
00:07:29:00 - 00:07:48:20
Alex Svinov
I mean, you know, I didn't work on a team as as you know, as persuasively as I should have. I did not think about my co-founder. You know, I did not check that the product market fit. And and the worst of all, I, you know, I was doing business with government and never again I'm going to get into that.
00:07:48:20 - 00:07:54:20
Alex Svinov
So so that that's that's what you know, really smack me at that point at that time.
00:07:55:18 - 00:08:22:05
Rob Napoli
So you know as you know you had that first one that you used the word luck. Right. And, you know, I think you said something really interesting to me off camera about, yeah, there's a bit of luck to being a startup founder and and that has a little bit to do with it and tell me kind of share with me like what you made a really good point about it, right?
00:08:22:05 - 00:08:27:06
Rob Napoli
So it's kind of tell me like what your vision on luck as a founder and what it means to a startup.
00:08:28:11 - 00:08:53:23
Alex Svinov
Yeah, I think luck is a very controversial word because obviously, don't get me wrong, you know, you cannot you cannot just do something great, just out of pure luck, I think. And always like and you can it's not only about start ups. If you want to become great athlete, you know, you can have a good you are lucky to get a great buddy.
00:08:53:23 - 00:09:19:06
Alex Svinov
But you know, a lot of people get great buddy and then they drink beer or they don't exercise whatever. So it's I think it's important to me, luck is as they as they are phenomena is important in a sense that when you're doing something, you really got to believe in it. Right. And and it's when you're starting a startup, it's always a question.
00:09:19:06 - 00:09:43:23
Alex Svinov
There is a million things that can go wrong. You know, typically I put a plan and I'm certain that everything will go wrong, but I have a plan, but everything will go wrong right. So luck in this sense is something that I think gives me some sense of, you know, sense of that, you know, things are going to turn right ultimately.
00:09:43:23 - 00:10:05:23
Alex Svinov
Because a lot of times and I've been in this situation for many times when you think, you know, there is no sales there, very little sales, you know, there is a problem with a product there, a problem with a team. And you're like, this is all so aggravating. And when you like put this all together, it's like, you know, Oh, no, I want to give up.
00:10:06:04 - 00:10:29:15
Alex Svinov
And at this point you should just breathe out and you think a little bit, you know, that things may change immediately, very fast, you know, and this is this is where I think luck comes along. So, you know, you do other things right. But for some reason it doesn't work out. Well, maybe tomorrow it will. So try to get so luck is something that motivates me.
00:10:29:15 - 00:10:38:07
Alex Svinov
Wake up every morning and you know, try to do it again and again. Maybe change a little bit what I do, but still yet carry on. So this is what it is.
00:10:38:21 - 00:11:11:02
Rob Napoli
So I love that because you know, there is a quote that goes all around our high school and our culture always says is luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Right. And so well, I think that's valid, right. You have to be prepared for the opportunity. That's where people get really lucky. There's also this this kind of random element to luck, that if you have belief, if you are doing the right things, you're putting one foot in front of the other that that happens sometimes and you can't rely on it.
00:11:11:23 - 00:11:32:16
Rob Napoli
You can all you can do is just hope for the best and go after it. But those that tend to be super lucky are those that tend to have high belief in themselves. I believe in what they're doing. They tend to prepare hard for what they're doing. So and those kind of random opportunities happen. They're ready to step through and take that.
00:11:32:16 - 00:11:46:14
Rob Napoli
And I think, you know, when we look at it that way, everybody like there's people out in the world that are lucky. There's people that are unlucky, but you can manufacture some of your luck, but you can't rely on it. What you can do right, what you can do is focus in. And so I love that kind of attitude on that.
00:11:46:14 - 00:12:06:05
Rob Napoli
And I really think that, you know, timing and start ups that you kind of, you know, I've talked about is timing is everything right? And sometimes you have the right product at the wrong time. You can have the wrong product at the right time and there's nothing else in the market. So your product takes off and then you can pivot.
00:12:06:13 - 00:12:15:00
Rob Napoli
There's so many things that kind of happen with timing. It's a bit of luck, right? And so this is where knowing what to do and when to do it.
00:12:15:09 - 00:12:37:02
Alex Svinov
Yeah, actually, I really love the way, you know, this manufacture your own luck because and I had and one of my start ups, I had the wrong product, but at the right time in the market and because of the market it was was ready even my product, which was, you know, not exactly, you know, solving the problem, it was like solving part of it.
00:12:37:09 - 00:12:51:12
Alex Svinov
It was still a pain in the ass to use, but there was nothing better than that. And it really took off. And that in two years time, you know, we refactor the product, we've improved it. And then at the end then it really took off the second time.
00:12:51:12 - 00:13:19:00
Rob Napoli
So that's how it goes, right? And then I think that the other thing that I thought was really interesting, right, is your first company, you kind of struggled and then while your second company, you talked about, you didn't you got snap because you didn't really bat at the mark, you didn't listen to your customers. And so kind of showing that there are two and you think about companies three and now four, what did you do differently as you moved on from the lessons from your like the failed experiment of the company?
00:13:19:00 - 00:13:36:00
Rob Napoli
Like what was, you know, you kind of thought you're a genius after the first one, the second one smacked you down. What was the big thing you took in the companies? Three and four from that experience that you feel has allowed you to become the entrepreneur and leader that you are today?
00:13:37:03 - 00:14:01:07
Alex Svinov
Yeah. Thank you. Great question, because I think, you know, it it cost me a lot of money to learn what I've learned, obviously, the time and effort after my second failure, I wrote myself an email and, you know, I made it, you know, very important. So it's always in my mailbox and I get in a subject line
00:14:01:07 - 00:14:27:19
Alex Svinov
Right. You know, lessons learned from this start up. It's what's called help a lunch and lessons learned from the startup. And then every time I'm looking at some new venture, not necessarily even at my startup, but when somebody comes along and says, Hey, would you be interested to to invest in this in this story? I would always measure against against what I've learned there and my findings.
00:14:27:19 - 00:14:53:13
Alex Svinov
So a few things that I I'm you know, looking at, number one is that use the sales and the customer right. Do I believe that this customer really has this need and why do I believe that? Right. And and if I'm starting my own startup, first thing I do is I don't hire anybody at all. I go and sell myself.
00:14:53:14 - 00:15:13:19
Alex Svinov
I do the first sale. And after that, I, I hire somebody to help me. Of course, this probably wouldn't work, you know, in in in the in the space where you have to invent and you and your formula or you invent in, you know, I don't know, a meat from in there or something like that. Of course it wouldn't work, would there?
00:15:13:19 - 00:15:30:24
Alex Svinov
But in the spaces where I am in, I'm always capable of selling something even without having product. Okay. You can say, you know, sorry, I tried, you know, whether it would work or not. You think I see that there is a demand I'm going to go and, you know, make up the supply.
00:15:31:05 - 00:15:49:20
Rob Napoli
Well, I love this. Happy to hear because I love this because I'm big on this. And I've talked about this a lot on this podcast. I believe that founders need to know how to sell first, even if it's not your natural things. If you can't sell your idea or your product, how to even like to the market or let alone.
00:15:49:20 - 00:16:07:15
Rob Napoli
How do you sell to an investor, right? How can you sell yourself like, hey, this is going to be the next big thing and you should give me, you know, 100,000, 200,000, $1,000,000 to go build this if you can't sell it to anybody. So you need to have that at some level, be able to sell the idea to others to validate to the market.
00:16:07:15 - 00:16:23:14
Rob Napoli
If you can't do that as a founder, I think that's a hard stop. So I love that you share that. And as an investor yourself, that's something you also look for in the companies you probably invest in. Look at that team in their ability to what they have or who who they have to sell off and from.
00:16:24:00 - 00:16:48:13
Alex Svinov
Yeah, absolutely. And and the second second thing is, when I'm looking at what I didn't what I did wrong is the team right you if you want to something to build something big, you got to you know, you've got to have co-founders. You alone cannot do it. All right. Even though I have a lot of expertize in marketing, in sales, in writing code, I cannot be doing that.
00:16:48:18 - 00:17:05:08
Alex Svinov
You know, I don't have 220 hours a day. So and being able to sell this idea to your team is is actually quite as important as being able to sell it to anybody outside. Right. And to your co-founders.
00:17:05:08 - 00:17:20:02
Rob Napoli
Yeah. And I love that because that when I say if you want to go fast, do it alone. If you want to go far, do it with others. Right. And so I think, again, this is what I think is really important about startups. You got to be fast, early and smart and keep it lean, do it by yourself.
00:17:20:02 - 00:17:30:00
Rob Napoli
But once you validate, you need to start pulling others in to allow you to like go farther because you can't do everything by yourself, you know, it's just impossible.
00:17:30:14 - 00:17:54:05
Alex Svinov
Yeah. And yeah, that's true. And, and I think one was there and and yeah, the third thing is that, well, this is but this is, you know, my own thing, you know, don't try to do any business with government. This, you know, if you can see if you can only sell to the government, it's probably, you know, not a great idea.
00:17:54:05 - 00:18:11:18
Alex Svinov
I wouldn't be interested in that. It's not that I you know, nothing against the government. Government is evil, but, you know, there is nothing better to, you know, to distribute that the wealth or take care of where people cannot take care of themselves. That's fine with me, but I don't want to be doing that.
00:18:12:01 - 00:18:31:15
Rob Napoli
Well, I feel. Yeah. And also I think, you know, people don't understand it's selling to government agencies usually take 12 to 72 months to process and then because of the nature of governments, people are leaving every year to four years if you don't get in in a certain time frame. And so they knew takes over, you start from scratch all over again.
00:18:31:22 - 00:18:56:02
Rob Napoli
So your sales cycle immediately becomes longer and government is limited. You only have x amount of people you can go after versus a bigger market. Is that while there's a lot of money there, the market small, it's very congested and you have long, long sales cycles. So I'm with you. I'm on out when people talk to me like we're the government's like, hey, good luck.
00:18:56:02 - 00:19:08:02
Rob Napoli
I've done it in the past a little bit. I recruited for a government agency for a little bit, but like, not my forte. It's, it's its own beast and I don't recommend it.
00:19:08:22 - 00:19:26:24
Alex Svinov
Yeah, I think it's also the fact that, you know, when you are out there on your own and you, you know, you've got a lot of options, you can try things, you can try that and you can try to find your way if you think, you know, I'm going to be, you know, doing business with government, you're pretty much stuck on one way.
00:19:26:24 - 00:19:51:12
Alex Svinov
And there's certain, you know, certain procedures that you have to install in your place. It may be fine if you're a large corporation and you have you know, you can have a five year plan to, you know, to get into the government procurement system and so on and so forth. But it's definitely not that as a startup venue that I would, you know, recommend that that type of thing.
00:19:51:20 - 00:19:58:11
Alex Svinov
So these are the three things I was, you know, I wrote to myself an email. I tried to look at it every every time opportunity comes along.
00:19:58:20 - 00:20:17:18
Rob Napoli
I love that. I think those are three great things. I think that we should all do that. I mean, you know, for me, I have lessons that I have learned across my years and I've written them down and have turned them into like different like mottos and things because it allows you to understand, like, this shit is hard.
00:20:18:20 - 00:20:37:17
Rob Napoli
Building a startup within a company is really fucking hard. And to do that multiple times is even harder. I mean, you know, the first one I was like, Hey, awesome about a genius that going like, Holy shit, I'm not a genius. I learned some shit third and fourth. And so, you know, we get to this point where you are today, you know, you're building you're now in your kind of fourth company.
00:20:37:17 - 00:20:41:13
Rob Napoli
Which company, by the way, was the successful exit was at one three.
00:20:42:05 - 00:20:42:14
Alex Svinov
The number three
00:20:42:14 - 00:20:59:05
Rob Napoli
Number three. So let's I quickly I want to talk about that because I recently went through an exit this year my business partner and I sold our US go to market sales and service business. We were able to get acquired and it was a really cool thing and it really unique process. So I just wanna kind of dig into that.
00:20:59:14 - 00:21:11:01
Rob Napoli
What was that process like? Like how, how did you build that to get acquired? Was it built to get acquired? Did someone just kind of randomly come to you? What was that experience like going through it?
00:21:11:10 - 00:21:33:10
Alex Svinov
Yeah, yeah. The company really has to do a lot with the process of that, that the business was structured and it's a the platform to generate leads to the back to for the banks. And this, by the way, you know, from my past experience, I'm from Russia and this was this was there a startup that I did in Russia?
00:21:33:21 - 00:22:00:09
Alex Svinov
And the way banks in Russia work, just like I'm in, you know, in the U.S., they are very slow to adapt to new technologies. So basically what went in is something that everybody should have done themselves. We did a good sales engine that would allow the customer to easily fill in the form and, you know, get a score and receive an offer from a bank.
00:22:00:09 - 00:22:21:12
Alex Svinov
And like 5 seconds. Right. And that we had to integrate this platform with 25 banks. And and ultimately, you know, this, this I'd say niche was like full of competitors. So at some point I was like, you know, I won't be spending a lot of time there anymore. And one of the banks was like, Yeah, we're really like your technology.
00:22:21:20 - 00:22:39:02
Alex Svinov
We want to, you know, we want to actually run a bank on it because we want it, you know, we weren't we'll take out our old technology and replace it with you, with what you guys create. So it came in naturally, although there was a lot of bumps along the way and you know, the whole process took about.
00:22:39:11 - 00:22:41:01
Alex Svinov
I'd say nine, nine months.
00:22:41:07 - 00:23:04:19
Rob Napoli
Yeah, that's awesome. And so as you've kind of like had that successful exit, so you've had, you know, good startups, you've had failed startups, you've had an exit. Now you're on currently within squad building, you know, the future of remote work. How has all these experiences kind of changed the way that you look at this entrepreneurial journey, or has it?
00:23:04:23 - 00:23:09:20
Rob Napoli
Is it similar to what you've done the past? Is this something a little bit different?
00:23:09:20 - 00:23:39:00
Alex Svinov
Well, one thing I can say for sure is that every startup is different you've at. Because even though, you know, you may build the same product or similar product, but the time is different, your consumer is different, your market setting is different, your competitors are different. And this has a lot reflects a lot on, you know, the qualities that you need to bring in into your startup to to make it successful.
00:23:40:05 - 00:24:09:12
Alex Svinov
But however, there are a few things that are, you know, they're very, very similar. Number one is I'm very, very careful of who I think would be a good partner or co-founder for myself. So I would think not only about their qualities and, you know, their their experience and their knowledge, but also their personal traits, how they how they handle their, you know, stress situation because stress will be along the way.
00:24:10:13 - 00:24:32:15
Alex Svinov
Things will go not according to the plan. So that that is one thing. Another thing is, like I said, you know, first I sold to my first customer and that was way back then. And early last year, I, you know, I sold to my first customer and that's even started thinking about I didn't have any product, you know, I did it myself.
00:24:32:22 - 00:24:51:03
Alex Svinov
So my first developer, you know, I hired a recruiter to, you know, to find the developer quickly and that and that work and that kind of work, you know, if you do a small scale, but it kind of walk the plank, we need a platform to do it on a bigger scale. Yeah. And so, so this is probably the second.
00:24:51:03 - 00:25:14:08
Alex Svinov
And the third thing I think, which is very important is that, you know, to big something, to build something big, you really need to think big, right? You need to raise the bar because that my last business or it's like it was a success in revenue like $5 million a year, but it still is like, you know, it's not a lot, right?
00:25:14:11 - 00:25:39:15
Alex Svinov
I mean, if you want to build a $100 million company, you have to think about huge market. You know, something great shift. And this is what I this is what I found through my past experience, you know, with a remote work, with a, you know, not being able to find developers quickly. This I found that there is this huge opportunity that we're trying to capture and try to help the other fellow startups.
00:25:39:15 - 00:26:16:03
Rob Napoli
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was say hiring quality software developers has been a struggle since I was in the industry back in 2011. I started my career in software recruitment. Now it's recruiting developers for Fortune 500, US 100 companies. And so even back then, right, it was huge because there are something like maybe a little bit over something like there was like four there's like 40,000 jobs or something like that, like jobs posted across all platforms and only about 4000 to 6000 qualified candidates on the market.
00:26:16:14 - 00:26:33:16
Rob Napoli
And it's like there is such a delta and that was for Java TV at the time, right. And so as you kind of figured out and that was in the US, right? So for a U.S. market, not the global market, right. So it's like, okay, how do we find remote? And the problem with remote or offshoring is how do you manage it?
00:26:34:09 - 00:26:54:18
Rob Napoli
Communication standards, time of work, quality of work and stuff. You can kind of create a platform. And I do love how recruiting has come into there's like creating more platforms. I've, I've seen a couple putting it into a platform where that you kind of remove the need for. It's like, let me email you a list of resumes and you get back and it gets lost.
00:26:54:19 - 00:27:13:03
Rob Napoli
We forget. It's like, no, hey, like you can go click add boom, boom, boom, boom. Like you can kind of pass back and forth. And the more that we can create a true future of work with like really good communication and we see this with freelance work all the time, how can we put that into an enterprise level platform?
00:27:13:12 - 00:27:31:20
Rob Napoli
I think it's a really cool idea and I'm excited to see because I've paid attention to this industry a lot, even though I haven't been in it since 2015. I've worked for a lot of companies in this space and talked to a lot of people and I still have that passion for this there. Yeah, well, I joke all the time, but I had this experience happening.
00:27:31:20 - 00:27:48:20
Rob Napoli
So this is my it's technically my third job out of college. I went to a small recruiting firm doing like health care recruiting. It was like four months. It was out. Then I went to Wells Fargo and did a loan processing for the HARP refi after that, because I came out of college right after that, it all happened.
00:27:48:20 - 00:28:06:21
Rob Napoli
So it all happened in 2008, 2009. We started recovering in 2010 when I came in the market and we're like, Oh shit, there's really not a lot of jobs on the market for new grads. So because we're recovering from all this, and then I went into recruitment and so I sat down for my first client meeting and it was the director of I.T. Applications for Nationwide Insurance.
00:28:07:11 - 00:28:21:17
Rob Napoli
And we're at the coffee shop as a had you on a cup of coffee it's like no cool sit down because I really need some Java. And I was like so I talk about so I just got up and grab a cup of coffee. I gave it to him and my boss is face and why this show
00:28:22:16 - 00:28:39:22
Rob Napoli
And he started laughing and so here is that all right here so but other the meeting like we've worked with them before but is like Rob I have a challenge for you I want you to do a presentation on what Java is and JTV. So I went to the store and got a Java JTV for dummies.
00:28:39:22 - 00:29:00:13
Rob Napoli
He also talk about cold fusion. So I got cold fusion for Dummies and I showed him how cold fusion sits on the front and on top of Java on the back end. And after that he became one of my best clients and I did a lot of work with them. So I always have a soft spot for this industry because I had a very real experience where I look stupid and I had to like prove myself as a 23 year old kid who didn't no shit
00:29:00:13 - 00:29:34:09
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I know we're getting close to time, but I wanted to ask you this question. So as you're building this really cool future of work platform, the team you have in place, you're also a part of the Forbes Business Council. You're also at a mentor and an investor for Alchemist Accelerator. And, you know, in a day and age where we are all doing multiple things and a lot of stuff in for entrepreneurs that my audience that listens is a big thing we always get is like, how do we manage all this stuff, right?
00:29:34:09 - 00:29:53:13
Rob Napoli
Like, I'm a hustler. People always ask me how I do it. How do you manage it? Because you're managing, building, trying to build a really cool, big company. You're right now in Poland hosting an event. You run these programs, you're in an angel investor activity with ten plus investments. And you write for the Florida Business Council. So how do you how do you balance out your time?
00:29:53:13 - 00:30:04:09
Rob Napoli
Plus, you're a father, right? And you have your family. So how do you balance out your day and your week to be the person you need to be for all these different organizations that people in your life?
00:30:05:08 - 00:30:29:18
Alex Svinov
Well, yeah, I would you know, I would start on a low note that I probably should be, you know, should be spending more time with my family than I do. That's that's that's that is I'm certain. And but that's I think that's the fate of any co-founder because, you know, your startup is your baby, right? You wake up in the morning, hey, hey, I got to write this couple of emails, right?
00:30:31:12 - 00:30:57:12
Alex Svinov
You got to be obsessed. You got it. You got to, you know, got to give yourself to that. But the important point is that you have to wait at least and prioritize. That's the only the only way you can succeed in doing multiple things. And you don't don't try to fit too many things in in a certain time because they won't fit, right.
00:30:57:18 - 00:31:24:24
Alex Svinov
If you think that you will fit five things, you know, five calls in 2 hours. No, you won't. If you think that you can do two presentations and you know, ten sales calls and fill up with a 20 guys that you spoke spoken last week. No, you won't. And you know you know, I think it's important to be to be honest with your with yourself, what what capacities you do have and what capacitance you do not have.
00:31:25:10 - 00:31:49:12
Alex Svinov
And at the point when you are ready to scale, when you you know, when you know that the product is good and you know, your your you are certain that that this is the right, you know, niche that you should be pursuing. Just hire people and try to delegate everything that is not essential to creating that most value to your customer.
00:31:49:22 - 00:32:18:21
Alex Svinov
And this is again the reason why I am certain that the future of work is with the platforms like Insquad is because hiring is not the value creation for any startup hiring results in building a product that is a value creation. And because of that, you can certainly outsource that. So my my role is outsource everything that is nonessential leave for 3 to 4 things.
00:32:18:21 - 00:32:30:22
Alex Svinov
You would do it in any given day. And if you have like 20 sales calls and you think you're super busy and you are super productive. No, you're not. Because it's not it's doesn't work like that. So so this is my rule
00:32:31:16 - 00:32:49:21
Rob Napoli
I love that. I think that's really smart. I mean, I ran a outsource sales as a service company for three years is the one that we exited because a lot of times when people enter the market, they don't know what they don't know yet. And so, you know, so these things can be outsourced. And I think you made a great point, like bringing the right co-founder to these things.
00:32:50:04 - 00:33:10:07
Rob Napoli
You are the way you build a team with this kind of future of work is there's certain people that you need to build with you to offload responsibilities. And then there's a way to build the team, to offload the work, to get things done, and that you can still value all of your team, whether they're part of the core team or the outsource team.
00:33:10:07 - 00:33:32:05
Rob Napoli
You can still value that contribution. You can still create that culture. You can still have those moments of collaboration in different ways. And I think that as we adapt to this remote world and the new future of work as founders in these companies who are building culture and these things. So the biggest thing I this like, wow, I want to build a great culture.
00:33:32:05 - 00:34:05:01
Rob Napoli
I want everyone to, but most people are working remote anyways and more people don't want to go back than do. I'm big fan of going back to an office, but I love that you can work from anywhere right? So you have to kind of figure out like there's ways to build that and that that's part of like the thing of being an entrepreneur is building the right systems in teams and people in place to do the things that you can't to make it about the product and that the product is giving value and serving your clients because that's kind of like the win, right?
00:34:05:01 - 00:34:12:05
Rob Napoli
So making sure you understand how you build. So I love that you kind of mentioned that and it's a kind of big key thing for for you and what you're building with Insquad
00:34:12:10 - 00:34:38:23
Alex Svinov
Yeah, I just want to reflect a little bit because I think a lot of people don't appreciate how important the processes are within the teams. You know, how important it is to, you know, to offload as much manual work to the processes and to technologies because this is the only way to free up, you know, your mind to do things that really, you know, cannot be kind of the automated and then are really value creative.
00:34:39:19 - 00:34:45:09
Alex Svinov
And once you've done that, you're, you know, you got day free for doing whatever you want.
00:34:45:15 - 00:35:18:23
Rob Napoli
Yeah, well, I love that you brought this up too, because this is something I was discussing the other day, is as humans, we really don't multitask, right? We content switch contexts, switch really fast, but we don't only multitask besides, you know, you're to test, test, test, test. Right. So people like I'm a great multitask I really probably are not you're just context you're good at context switching and if you don't figure out how to offload to those things that could be offload so that you don't have the content context switch as much and you can like get things done, you're going to free up more time for you to be the most valuable version of yourself.
00:35:18:23 - 00:35:39:00
Rob Napoli
If you're like, Well, if I have more time for you, would I do with it? Well, as the founder of a company, you could be doing X, Y and Z, or you may need a fine as the founder or as a co-founder or as a CTO or as the CSO or as a C r. What can you do with that time to be the best version of yourself for you and your team and the company?
00:35:39:12 - 00:36:00:15
Rob Napoli
And like, if we can get more teams to look at that and figure out how do we offload and processes and automate the manual stuff that makes us seem busy, right? Because we're on emails all day. Our job is not to be fucking writing emails all day, but it takes 8 hours of our day. That's not us being the best version of ourselves.
00:36:00:15 - 00:36:22:14
Rob Napoli
And so I think it's really important for founders out there and anyone at any level. How do you become the best version of yourself? How do you create your processes, create your works? You can be the best version, especially at that C level in an early stage start up, because your job is building culture, your job is building a team, your job is building a product, your is building a brand, your job is building all these things.
00:36:22:22 - 00:36:42:01
Rob Napoli
And you have to be the best version of yourself to do that. And I just I find that that so many people miss that. And that's what I love about part of the problem solving with Insquad is that, hey, we're creating a great platform so you can offloads and other stuff so that you can be the best version of yourself and have the best version of yourself available, your team and your customers.
00:36:42:04 - 00:37:13:18
Alex Svinov
Yeah, absolutely. And this is you know, when we're actually when we're hiring that, you know, the second or the third developer to our team where, you know, my team, my my my CTO, he did not fully appreciate the idea of what he was, what we're doing. But once he started, you know, once he spent like half of his time interviewing, interviewing, interviewing and, you know, with no with no results and, you know, months, you know, like one month, two months, three months passed by.
00:37:14:01 - 00:37:19:13
Alex Svinov
He was like, you know, I'm fully in it. You know, I want technology, I want automation.
00:37:19:13 - 00:37:41:03
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I see the times it takes. Those experiences stuff, it takes those mistakes, right? To figure that out. But once you figure it out, you really start to see why you become the best, the best version for yourself and your team. So, Alex, thank you so much for for for being on for jumping on the call from Poland
00:37:41:03 - 00:37:51:15
Rob Napoli
And before you host your event later today, where can my listeners find you? How can they learn more about you and Insqaud and what you're building?
00:37:52:02 - 00:38:20:22
Alex Svinov
Oh, sure. Yeah. It's great being being here. And if if you were a late seed or a be around startup looking to scale with offshore developers, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and get a free get a free consultation from me. I'm also advising and I'm building remote teams and my LinkedIn is Alex Svinov That's a the Alex Svinov I'll be happy to chat with you.
00:38:21:12 - 00:38:48:03
Rob Napoli
Awesome. I will make sure to have that in the show notes so you can easily click on his LinkedIn profile, find him, reach out to him, let him know where you heard him from and get it going. Alex, thank you so much for being a part of today's episode. For all those out there and bear nations make sure you like subscribe, write, review, do all those things to help this show out till next time stay well and rise up.
OUTRO
00:38:51:02 - 00:39:00:18
Rob Napoli
Bear Nation. Thanks for listening to the bear necessities of entrepreneurship. We enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe and leave us a review.