Latest / Unstuck Pod / From One to Many (Nouhoun Diarra and Jamie Schneiderman)
Transcript
- speaker-0: I really appreciate you taking the time to chat today. And I'm really just trying to capture your experience working with me. That's what we're going to really focus on getting. So I appreciate you doing it. But to start off with, I'm just going to ask a few questions to get a little more background about you that everybody understands where you're coming from, what you've done, et cetera. So maybe you can tell me about you and sort of a little bit about your career, what you've done, where you've come from, and we'll keep going from there. speaker-1: Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for the opportunity to chat about this. My name is Nuland Jara. I'm from Mali originally. I came to Canada in 2012 and I've enjoyed my time here. I'm a technologist, I would say, like with a huge focus on software engineering. And you know, since I came to Canada, I've in Toronto and I really like, I did a lot of work in mostly, you know, developing application and in a lot of companies and... different type of industry, including one of your past companies as well, which was a great pleasure to work with. And actually, by the way, I learned a ton of things there, including how to really increase my conscientiousness and focus on better understand my personality. that was a great thing at the ClearFreeze and CareySpark. Anyway, so I do like to build things. ⁓ Github software, that's my specialty. That's where my strengths are. And I've done that a good number of years. Now I've decided to spend much more time devoted to building a company with a specific product, solving real world problems. And I think I enjoy that. Yeah. speaker-0: Well, let's talk, let's talk about the company. So what's the company? What are you doing? Love to hear it. speaker-1: So the company I'm building is called Prodash. And of course the name of Prodash actually evolved over time. Initially I had some very ugly names to be honest, but anyway, but with time, time improved. I learned to focus on like who I'm actually serving and know, derive a good name from that. But anyways, so Prodash, the idea of Prodash came from a good friend of mine who was a client company down in Quebec and you know, so. My friend needed some help ⁓ automating her task, including having a virtual receptionist who can answer calls when the team is busy working. so that was the initial technological challenge. And he fortunately coincided with the, ⁓ you know, the development of Gen.ai. And I said, you know what, this is a great opportunity to jump on that and use Gen.ai to solve the problem. Right. So. And that's what I've been doing a good number of months now. The mission of Prodash is to help service businesses achieve more. That's what we are set to do. We want to be like, we are, we are an accelerating factor for them. And we are productivity software too, like helping them do things that they would normally take two hours to do in just a few minutes. Like one of our customers who in construction business right now. actually spends more than two hours per quote, because construction quote can be a little bit complex. You're preparing a basement renovation or things like that. can be quite complex, lot of research, bringing pricing things together. But with the help of Prodash, now they're able to actually generate a full-fledged quote in minutes. So Prodash is there to accompany small service businesses to do more. And so save time and make more money in the process. We use, of course, Gen.ai heavily to automate all sort of the daily business tasks. So that includes from AI voice assistant, picking up calls, answering SMSes to task management. You send out your team on the field. They need to take pictures before and after. work and generating code, invoicing, all those flows are automated in Prodash so that your business is actually on autopilot. Now, of course, after starting the journey on Prodash, quickly realized that I was not fully equipped, right, to do the business part. And I'm sure that's where you came in. And I was like, ⁓ you know what? Jamie just started this new business, you know, where he's doing coaching. I've seen him actually do build companies, right? Taking them to height. And I'm like, you know what? And if Jimmy's available now to provide advice, why not talk? speaker-0: I appreciate that. When you reached out to me, it was great. Would always be thrilled to chat, but it was great. And it was great that we did that like about a year and a half ago. So thank you for sharing that. That's great. So before, let's talk about the difference between before you and I started chatting and after you and I started chatting. So in your mind, how would you describe the difference in the state of the business? Like any of the results of the business, anything you want to comment on sort of the before and after. and what changed. speaker-1: The business started with one customer. Now that kind of like gave me a little bit of tunnel vision really at the beginning because like, you know what? I have this one customer who likes the product. We're solving your problem for that one customer. Before meeting you, of course, as a software developer was very busy building, building the product. And I was very product-centric and a little bit of tunnel vision as I already mentioned, because like we have this single customer. trying to meet the need of the customer, which is a good thing. But of course, a single customer is not going to pay the bills down the road. So, Prodash at that time was really like a lot of building, not really knowing zero strategy in terms of how we really take the product to market. How do we make it profitable? And actually, who to focus on? Like, you know, what is the segment of market to focus on? At least from the beginning, right? Like, how do we really attack? the market and deliver a solution that people want. So actually zero strategy. was it. only strategy was like, oh, you know what, we have one customer in this industry. Maybe if we're good enough, other customer in this industry are going to follow. Right. But nothing quantified really. We just want to make that single customer happy, which was not a bad thing necessarily, but it didn't like, didn't have really a bigger pitch revision, no strategy. So most like, you know what, let's see what happens. That was, that was Pradash before we met Jamie, you know, to discuss the opportunity. Now, after we met you, the first thing you brought us was how do we think about the problem in a structural way? Right. To me, that was like a framework. You gave us a framework. How do we think about it? That was actually very, very helpful. And one more important thing is that the way you schedule the meetings was also very helpful. Like it helps us. First of all, you ask very hard questions. So that's actually good because that helped us like think about our product. Are we a little bit on the moon or are we really building something that can solve your real world problem and that has the potential to grow, right? So really hard problem about who's the customer, what is the market, what is the size of market, what tools the customer is actually using today. And so you took us from a very product-centric way of thinking about the problem to a problem solution approach, right? And a market approach as well, because at the end of the day, the product has to be self-sustaining, right? that's big picture. That's really how I like the contrast between the before and after. Yeah, of course. And, you know, we can get into the details of... ⁓ speaker-0: I'd like to, so I want to get into, I do want to get into the details. I appreciate you sharing that. I want, I'm curious in your mind without us chatting, where do you, where would you be? And then with us chatting, where are you? Like in your mind, how do you view that difference? speaker-1: Okay, so without us chatting, would have ended up with maybe a pretty product that solves a bunch of technological problems, but likely with no customer. Because when we talked, one of the things you really mentioned is to like, first of all, our approach was like to go slow in order to go fast, which I actually like it pretty much suits my personality. I'm not necessarily rushing things too much, right? So I really like that approach. helps to build a good foundation to jump from there. Now, one thing you really mentioned to me that made a huge difference was, hey, you know what? How about you go and acquire 10 customers, Present your product, explain, and see if you can get 10 customers, right, to kind of validate what you're building, right? And that exercise changed completely the game for us, completely. That exercise was so useful because it helps us, number one, like, value of the product overall, but actually it helps reorient our product to see, you know what, it's not so much about what you imagine that the customers need. The reality on the ground was actually quite different. We started purely with like voice assistant, which was very smart, answering questions and things like that. The customer service and salesperson and all of that, which is great. But it turns out the actual customers that need our product, they like that. But they needed more than that. They needed actually a system that sort of helped them put their business on autopilot. Because these people are typically like very busy, involving their own business day to day, helping their team. So they don't have a luxury of lot of time, not necessarily a very tech savvy either, right? So they want something simple that can achieve complex tasks. Now, without us discussing with you, We would have probably built a complex tool, but that wouldn't be solving what customers actually needed. Like for example, our customer, we have a good number of customer in the construction industry. are, there's so much about how you make quote easy. Like, and that's a very big pain point for them. But how would we have really known that maybe we would have spent a couple of years building a great product, just launching it, going on, ⁓ you know, like doing a bunch of, G-TAL ads and things like that, and hoping that will capture a lot of customers. But with the Discovery World and that strategy session we had with you, was much more of a, know, test your idea from now. Don't wait like too long, right? Talk to real potential customers and actually go and find customers. and look for people who would like to use this. If there is no, like if as a person, probably like... I can find 10 % interested in this. Maybe it's a sign that there is no market for it, right? So, but anyway, so that was, that was really a great thing. Of course, like we talked about ⁓ a lot of good things. You helped us define like everything from, you know, from our target market, the size of the company we're going to target. specific industries to the product market phase, to the go-to-market strategy, to some cash flow projections and all the good stuff that we went through. speaker-0: So, so let's talk a little bit about, you know, some of the specifics, right? So when you and I started working together, or before we did, you had one customer and today you have how many customers? speaker-1: So right now I have about 10 customers, which is a huge, like that's a huge change. And the good thing is that after our discussion, just kept that single customer. We kept building for that single customer and helping the single customer. And then we kept like solidifying the product, sharpening it, making it better and more ready for more customers. speaker-0: Yeah, oh yeah. speaker-1: So, but the good thing is, so we spent a lot of time, so there was a huge amount of time, right? Because I wasn't doing that full time. So it was like, you know, when I get time, I spend it, you know, invest some time building products. But after only launching products a few, a few months ago, that's where we acquire all of these huge number of customers very quickly. So that's, you know, that's, you know, that's a huge for change. And It shows that the go slow to go fast is actually working. speaker-0: That's exactly what I was going to ask you. Right? I remember you and I talked about going slow to go fast. And it's like, it sounds like you sort of nailed that in terms of the way you've been thinking about things, right? Which is it feels painful to go slowly, but you're learning and getting it right. So that when you turn it on, really turn it on, it can happen much, much more quickly. That's, that's awesome. speaker-1: Exactly. you know, one more interesting thing is that like, because we work with you, it helps us structure the way we present our company, you know, like in a much more, I would say, like it's not really PR, but like in a much more standard way that, you know, the public and, you know, potential investors can easily understand. After we talk, like, so it helps us present our mission and our product. to companies in such a way that they actually take us more seriously and they understand what we're doing. So we speak a much more common language like in the startup world. And we were able to present it to Google while we're building. And Google say, you know what, we believe in you. Your idea seems good. Google give us ⁓ some cloud credits, as well as actually invested in some of our POCs. We worked with a Google implementation partner and Google invested actually money to help us build products. which was a really big win for us and accelerated our mission. That's amazing. Yeah. speaker-0: So, so let's just, let's talk about sort of going forward. So you've made, went slow, got it right, figured it out, taken a recent big jump, right? In terms of number of customers and going down the right path. Talk about the next 12 months. So how much do you expect this sort of to continue in terms of the growth, growth rate and where you're headed? speaker-1: So that's a really good question. Next 12 months, we want to accelerate our growth a lot. Hopefully like a thousand percent in the next 12 months. And I think it's achievable with the framework we have. And now that the product is really like quite, it's not like a dream anymore. It's a real product that people using on a day to day. We think that We're going to be attracting more customers here in North America, US, Canada, to using Prodash. And we actually believe that it's like, we could really break even mid next year, mid 2026, like at least our personal goals and things like that, you know, we can actually break even with the amount of growth that we are pursuing. At least that's our target. So with the framework you gave us, like we are really like... Trying to do this, minimize the churn as much as possible, of course, putting in place a good customer success team and approach. And at the same time, keep building our customer base incrementally, right? like, we add like, let's say we add five customers this month, we're really going to do everything to keep those five customers. Next month, we want to add like 10 customers and so forth. You know, the month after that, 15. Anyway, like, you know, that was... speaker-0: ⁓ It's a very steep growth curve. is. speaker-1: It is, it is, it is a steep growth curve. anyway, so that's, that's a little bit of that. But at the same time, we're really listening to our customers a lot and we keep building our product. We don't want to be product-centric. We want to be actually program resolution-centric. But yeah, so meaning that we don't give priority to so much what we think the customer will need. really like, in this field, seems pretty clear to me that the, the customers... The way the customer approach the problem is really the most important thing. yeah, in the next 12 months, I would say we're targeting a thousand percent growth in terms of number of customers because we are still at the very beginning. The statistic may sound outlandish, but it's not outlandish. That's like living from 10 to a hundred. speaker-0: No, no, no, no, but it's just saying it. speaker-1: Actually, it's gonna be I mean we hope to be much more at us. So hopefully that's like our minimum, right? Like, you know speaker-0: I think you're in, you're in, you're talking about scale, you're seeing the curve, is great. know, listen, I'm thrilled. Like I'm so thrilled because when we first start to talk about it, I thought you were onto something. There was something big there and it's like, I'm glad to hear that our conversations help you. Like the work that we did together helps you set this up. So now you can finally go there. It's great. So let me ask a, so sort of last question for me. Would you recommend working with me to other companies? One. And, and then the second part is why should somebody in your view work with me? Like why would you suggest that? speaker-1: Yes. So I would, I would definitely recommend that companies work with you, be it like experience, I mean like a startup or even well established companies. Because first of all, work with you in the past, I know your background and you have experience in all sort of like industries at different level as well. And you have taken your startup to multiple levels from zero to the very top. you know, you went through a lot of challenges. Your advice is not really from a textbook. It's truly tested. that's one thing I would say about your services. So I think that's really important. And number two is that you, when we first met, first session, you really ask hard questions. that actually, that helps a company very quickly ⁓ get off the very idealistic path and have a more realistic. view of what they're working on. Right. So to me, that was, that was really critical. And the third thing you give us a framework and a framework that we are following that actually has been very successful. I mean, that we've been successful following today. So we've been following that framework. On top of that, the framework also included how you look at finances, not from like very complex view, but from Basic view that's good enough for a company like us, but it's very important to have good view of how you intend to grow, how you intend to make the venture ⁓ profitable. So I would definitely recommend your services because you actually help companies see the reality, right? And you don't sugarcoat it and you help companies actually ⁓ develop a strategy. that will work, that is very likely to succeed in the real world. So that's why I would recommend a lot of people talk to you because the way, as I already mentioned, talking with you is not like a generic guy, like a generic YouTube guy who's trying to give very fluffy and startup advice. So it's from somebody who was... It's really tested. yeah, that's why I would recommend your services a lot. speaker-0: Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. it's, listen, I love it. I love it. And I'm thrilled to hear that the business is going great. And it's exciting for me. That's the goal. That's what I'm after, right? Is like helping you be super successful. And so thrilled to hear that that's what's going on. speaker-1: It is. We're happy and we'll be happy to actually talk to you again if we hit any road bump or are we willing to advise to actually even accelerate our growth more. We'll definitely keep in touch. speaker-0: No, I appreciate it. listen, thank you so much. really appreciate it and appreciate the time. And I say best of luck as you continue to grow. think it's awesome. So, ⁓ thanks.