Latest / Glovisor Podcast / He Built a Craigslist Competitor in Brazil | The Cataqui Story - Pars Barghandan [Ep 79]
Transcript
- Pars Barghandan: it's like a Tinder for gigs. So you scroll, you find the gig you want, contact the guy, and just do it and get paid. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Welcome to the Glovisor Podcast, where we explore business growth, communication, and personal development through real conversations with people who make an impact. Our guest is a serial tech entrepreneur and author recognized for building and growing innovative tech companies. He drives business growth, advances technological innovation, and delivers lasting impact through strategic leadership and operational excellence. Glovisor welcomes Pars Barghandan Pars Barghandan: Hi Joe, how are you? Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Great thanks. A pleasure to have you here today. Pars Barghandan: Yeah, it's great to be here and I'm looking forward to it. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Excellent. So can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Pars Barghandan: Yeah, so I'm first of all Iranian Turkish startup founder and I was born and grew up in Turkey, then moved to Iran, and then after that Sri Lanka, and then now I'm Switzerland I'm in Switzerland. So I'm five times founder, two times exit, and right now we are heavily focusing on our new startup, Cataqui Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: All right. So let's go back a little bit. So five times founder. So these were all tech companies? Pars Barghandan: Yeah, so all of them were heavily focused on technology and basically intersection of technology and some impacts to the humans, right? So the first one was a safety app, second one was a fashion app, and then we went to the different companies in between, and at the end, like the last two was one of them was Noxy, which was a telecom company, which went through a private acquisition, and right now we are focusing on Kataky, which is helping people to live. being unemployment and you know heavily focusing on finding gigs and side hustles whenever you need Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Hm. Now, before we go on, I I know some of the other things that people are always thinking. You created tech company, right? It's a startup. And then it becomes Google overnight. Is that how it happens for every single startup you've done? Pars Barghandan: No, no, no, no, no. I mean, there's a long, long thing that happens. I also mentioned that in my book in Amazon, which is the first 5 a.m. And you fail a lot in this whole situation. You know, first of all, the first startup that I had, it was just like I was thinking, okay, you know, we found a company, tomorrow we become the Google, you know, I become a billionaire and everything is going well. But that's totally the dream, you know. you will learn a lot of things during these steps and you can basically see like you need to minimum have two three businesses and really learn from it. Like okay, you can go to the universities, learn like study business, study economics, study all of these things, but these are just theoretical part of the situation. And when you start in a business and if you don't have a rich uncle for sure, you need to be your own accountant, be your own marketing specialist, be your own business executive, decision-making guy, and be your coding guy, you know, all of this stuff. So you need to learn all of these things step by step. And basically, I would say there is a lot of blood and tears on this whole situation of building something. And you should never give up. That's basically the most important thing. Like you will fail a lot, a lot, a lot. You will face a lot of challenges, but at the end. there will be either a successful company that you build or there will be a great you know, background knowledge and that you can really join to the corporate world if you want. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: so here you are, you have this amazing dream and an amazing idea. It's one of these startups. What happens to the startup itself? It just fizzles out or what what is that moment where you're like, okay, this is it, we're gonna have to move on to the next project? Pars Barghandan: it really depends on the situation. So first of all, ninety-nine percent of the startups that failed in my startups before, except Noxie and the other one that we had an exit, was because of the founder conflict. So either one founder gets distracted with a lot of other projects, doesn't have enough motivation, has other priorities for sure, and in that case, you know, you cannot do this stuff alone for sure. Like There were times that I tried to do this stuff alone. I said, okay, no problem. I either will found that will find another co-founder or I'm gonna just, you know, do it myself. You know, you'll become the brave guy that is gonna, you know, become a warrior or stuff. but yeah, I mean, 99% is the founder conflict and this stuff. the second part is you basically don't have a good market for your product. You know, you think. You start with a solution and then try to look for a problem, but that's actually the wrong thing most first time or second time founders do. So what you normally should do is first get a problem, do not spend too much time on it. Just try to you know build an MVP or some simple stuff that you can test the market. And if that really works, then you can go all into that product, you know. So basically problem, then solution, not basically solution to problem. These were the two things that really we experienced a lot in the products, Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: I love that you're sharing this information. Now, if when you say that you're gonna test the product, do you have a specific number in mind that if you hit a certain number, you're like, This is it. This is gonna work. We when we need to produce more from there. Pars Barghandan: so basically the way at least I work is not just like specifying this like a like a minimum benchmark or something. for sure. We have different benchmarks that okay, you know, we have to reach to this certain point to see okay, the market is validated, etc. This is actually the base of having like starting a business. But when we really want to do the testing phase of the product. we consider like we try to enter in a violent way. So what I mean by violent is basically consider that like start up as a child and your child is getting kidnapped and you need six you know lawyers or attorneys right now. What you do, right? You go all in, you find what you really need to solve that problem, to test it, and all of this stuff to save your child. And basically, this is what we are doing in this aspect. So we heavily focus on gorilla marketing and violent market entry, with the lowest cost. Because we take care of every operation by ourselves. We do the tech part, we do the marketing, we do the business aspect. And this is basically how it works. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: I love that you're mentioning gorilla marketing because I don't hear enough. And I tell you, it's one of the looking back at one of my businesses, I just went all out in the gorilla marketing and it was the very beginning. And then the business ran for a decade on just the initial momentum that was thrown into it. And I always tell business owners when they're first starting out, I said, give it a try, because you don't know. And I think sometimes it's very valuable. So I'm glad that you brought that up. but You know, I want to go back to those two times exits. How does that work? I mean, that's probably it sounds like a dream come true right there. Do they knock on your door or do you chase people down until they finally connect with you and see your vision? Pars Barghandan: the first thing is the networking part. So first you need to build that network and it's not something that you'll you're going to build in one startup or two startup. you're building it over time. That's the first thing. the second part is that the timing, you know, even if you have the greatest idea, greatest team, greatest product, everything, if it's not the right time for that product, 99% is gonna fail. And this is actually a proven proven model that I did research about it a lot. the first product was an entertainment company which was heavily focusing on the intersection of being a web builder and also an entertainment platform, like a digital casino, so that influencers can build their own legal casino and then interact with their own audience. and that one went through a private acquisition with the very close private network that I had. And I was a solo founder there. So it was just me developing it, testing it, and all of this stuff. And I would say that time was the like we had a very good timing at that point. I would say like this is not a new idea or it's not an innovative idea. Okay. There is some small innovations on it, like automations, etc., before AI is coming, right? but you know, at the end it was the timing aspect. And it went through the acquisition, and then after that, it gave me like some space to really think about and what will be the next project, and at the same time, it gave me more respect, right? So, this is the first thing that every startup founder wants to have, like, okay, I sold my company. Now what's gonna happen? At the same time, for the second startup, it was a bit more challenging because. it was a telecom company, and then you have giant telecoms that are like, you know, spending billions of dollars on infrastructure, and then you are just a new startup coming to the market. And I would say that that time, first the innovation, second was the team, and the third one was basically the heavy PR that we did. about the Noxseed, the the company that we had, and about me as the founder and the visionary. on how we are really chasing the you know the next revolution on the telecom industry. And for sure we had a great product as well. Like if we didn't get acquired, we would have a lot of chance to really, you know, change the market as well. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah, I'm sure. That must have been so exciting. But now that you've had a lot of space and time to think about it, you're working on a new project, Cataqui Tell us a little bit more about that. Pars Barghandan: basically me and Ryan, my co-founder at Cataqui we met at Startup Bootcamp, which we received our first investment for Noxie, my previous startup. And Ryan was also working on his own previous crypto company. And you know, we had a really good connection together after finishing the startup bootcamp process. We just, you know, we were just chatting with each other and all of this stuff. And after Noxie getting acquired, I said to Ryan, Hey, you know, I want to do something else, you know, something di a bit different, more like a customer base because what we were heavily doing were B2B. Like most of the startups that I built, the first one was B2G, B2C, the second one was B2B, B2C. Like there was a lot of you know too much too many things going on, but I never had a marketplace, you know, that and that's why I said like let's just build a marketplace focusing on geek economy. And why we don't help people to have something like Craigslist in the US. in Latin America or in other developing countries. And you know, after that we were just like, bum, maybe we found the next you know, idea that we can either sell or just build it ourselves. And you know, after that we did a lot of research about what we need to do, etc. But basically in simple words, what Cataqui does is Helping you to find gigs whenever you need. For example, either you're a you're a full-time employee after your job is finished, you're going home, you need a side hustle. Instead of doing Uber, if you don't have a car, you just, you know, it's like a Tinder for gigs. So you scroll, you find the gig you want, contact the guy, and just do it and get paid. So it this works like this. And for people who fully want to rely on the gigs, you don't need to work anymore. You just scroll, find the gig you want to do. And do it and earn your money. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Do you handle the payment gateway? Pars Barghandan: No, no. So that's actually one of the biggest challenges we were facing because we wanted to handle the payment part and also get a commission out of it, etc. But unfortunately Brazilian market is a heavy regulated market on financial part and Cataqui is a Brazilian company, but the parent company is in the US, so it's a Ventury Inc. And what we had to do is dealing with a lot of foreign currencies and exchange rates and all of this stuff. So we said okay, we are not going to handle that part. We are gonna charge a subscription, a very small subscription on the people who are posting the jobs and it will be fully free for the users who are, you know, looking for the jobs. So that's basically what we are doing right now. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: what made you choose the name Cataqui? Pars Barghandan: Cataqui actually is like there's there are different stuff in Brazil named Cataqui. but basically it's it's a slang of go get it. So basically it's like this. And Ryan told me that, and I said, Is it easy to pronounce in Brazil? Is it like you know something people know, etc.? And he said, the audience that we are targeting are the people who are looking for the jobs who are most of the time as out in the street and all of this stuff. So they already know this language. That's why I said, okay, we need to, instead of being like a company that has too much distance with our audience, like being a luxury VIP company providing job, we can be like more similar to the audience that we are leaving, right? Instead of being like a top brand, we just be like exact same as our audience, have the same language with them and all of this stuff. So it feels more comfortable on the brand psychology for them. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: what made you choose Brazil? Pars Barghandan: So first of all, we wanted to launch it in the US, right? Because we said, okay, we have Craigslist. For sure, it has a very huge audience, like a hundred million users per month or per year, or something like this. And the problem was okay, you know, it's already established and we don't want to enter mark intermarket like this without because we don't have too much budget for marketing and advertising. Like I will tell you in the in the next steps, like what we did for the gorilla marketing for Cataqui. But we said, okay, let's just conquer one side of the market, right? Because I see the markets as a war, you know. Either I take it or the other competitors, there's no other thing in here. and what was happening is that Ryan said, okay, first, Brazil is a very local and heavy community-focused region, and people are really. Focused on using WhatsApp on a daily basis. And that's how we integrated WhatsApp in Cataqui and heavily focused on WhatsApp communications and our WhatsApp bots. And at the same time, you know, we want to focus on Switzerland, Europe, and this stuff. And we said, okay, you know, we don't want to deal with too much regulations on data protection and all of this stuff, you know, because there's different regions and all of these things. And at the same time, we want to focus on single country that has the highest community that is looking for side hustles and gigs. And on then employment rate is very, you know, low. So that more unemployed people exist and they are looking for better opportunities. And then just being, you know, in a corporate life because the education level in Brazil also is not that high. So the amount of people that know English, because if you want to go for a corporate role, you must know English. And the amount of people who knows English is very low. So these people unfortunately don't have any chance to only focus on gigs, side hustles, and day-to-day jobs. And that was the greatest market that we could say, okay, let's just focus on this market right now. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, yeah, if you don't mind, I would love to hear a couple of the examples of your guerrilla marketing. Because think about it. Here you are, you're producing something from the other side of the world, and you're coming into a new market, another language, and you're saying, hey, we're gonna take over Craigslist. You know, and how do you do that? Pars Barghandan: I mean there is a lot of funny stuff here in Between. Like me and Ryan was like I started learning Portuguese, you know, Brazilian Portuguese as well, you know. And at the same time, you know, I actually did a lot of research about because I need to first understand the audience to then decide on what would be the business aspect or what would be the marketing, like how I'm gonna do the marketing for those people. So I need to really think about like what they really think on a daily basis, right? It's exactly like an actor. Like if an actor wants to play a like a serial killer, he really goes and understands how they really think, right? On business we we do this stuff as well. so basically I understood that they are heavily relied on church communities, NGOs that are just looking for the job job finding NGOs, and also it's very very local than we think. So They are heavily focused on outdated Facebook groups, outdated WhatsApp groups. And one of the things that we did for the gorilla marketing was Ryan, like I paid a a friend of Ryan and Ryan and his friend went to the Sao Paulo's like the the beach area and they put a game like How many push-ups you can do, and you would win if you do the push-ups. And this way we grabbed like a lot of audience there on the beach. And then he was distributing the QR codes at the same time while they were playing, right? And the first one who wins, like first 10 people that like winning these push-up competition, they got like a gold subscription that we were probably I mean, it's not gold subscription, but basically the free annual subscription. So that they could just, you know. do the scrolls and finding jobs without limits. That's also another plan that we bring later. And at the same time, what we did is we said, okay, in Brazil in the streets, there's a lot of you know brochures, banners and all of this stuff, but people really don't look at it, right? And what we said is that instead of just putting our company name and then the slogan and the QR code to download the app, why we just don't put like a Big QR code and an arrow. That's it. No text, nothing. Like this would grab the audience, like, I mean, what is this? Right? Why there's no text? Why there's no company? Who what's happening? Right? And we received a lot of scans. Like the analytics that we had, my god. We received a lot of users scanning those QR codes. And we said, I think we found this. And I mean, another reason that we got a lot of you know analytics and a lot a lot of traffic to our website. Was we like I did a research on which train stations or subway stations are the most populated one for the people who are looking for the jobs or who are going to the corporate, like going to apply for a job or this stuff, right? And we place those you know, flares in these parts of the like the subways. And that was one of the effective methods that we did. Like this is just two of them, like. on the digital aspect, what we did is we spammed in the Reddit communities. So we created 14 to 20 Reddit accounts, all with the Brazil region and all of this stuff, and we started commenting and acting like a Brazilian unative user. that is saying, my God, I found this app. It's amazing, but has a user perspective, not as a person who is developing it. And this way Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah, that's yeah. Pars Barghandan: we build the trust between the users that, my God, there's a new app and all of this stuff. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now you you so you've already sampled the market and how is it going? Have you had any like real success stories that you can share with us? Pars Barghandan: yeah, so currently we finished the pilot in if I'm not mistaken, it was five, six neighborhoods in Brazil, in Sao Paulo City specifically, because Brazil is huge. Yeah, I mean it's a very huge region, right? so we did those pilots. We received if I'm not mistaken, more than five to eight K active users using the app on the private pilots. And at the same time, you know, the biggest problem in every marketplace is the seeding. So basically, it's a chicken and egg problem. Well, you have people who's gonna job post the jobs, or you're gonna have people who are gonna use the app first. Like which one's coming first, right? And we fixed this problem in the beginning. So, what we did is we had like initially the first day that we launched the pilot, we had more than 100 jobs per day posted in our app. And Currently we have like more than eight hundred jobs on a on a every two, three days is updating, right? And ever all of them is closing like the because if someone applies and the job gets closed, that time is like the closure of jobs is like less than thirty, forty minutes. So basically both sides of the marketplace are now happy and that's why we are aiming for like the full launch by next week. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: I can't wait to hear more about this. Now, who are you looking forward to connecting now that Cataqui is about to fully launch next week? What who should be contacting you right now? Pars Barghandan: so first of all, we really need to have a great you know, marketing team as well because we are not going to do this stuff alone. We received a lot of offers from investors who's gonna really invest on the product. so we are currently considering some of them are from US, some of them are from Brazil as well. so we are currently need to like heavy focus on our HR and really bringing new people to the company. Because we will have a lot of operations going on. Like this during the pilot time, we didn't had enough sleep. I would say like less like two, three hours or something like this. And especially Ryan was like, I I think he didn't sleep for three days, or it was something like this. I mean, he's sleeping right now. You know, I'm I'm in touch with him right now. But like this is the issue. We really received a lot of positive feedback, which we were not ready for it, right? And right now we need to Grow the team, get new people heavily focused on marketing side because it's a digital product. you know, we are getting some new developers, but basically this is what we need. New executive people for sure as well, right? Because who have enough experience on this region, like the Latam region, that also works for us because more minds would help us to have better strategies on how we are gonna, you know, draw the next steps for Cataqui. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, what would you say is the most important takeaway that you want our listeners to remember from today's conversation? Pars Barghandan: So, first of all, you know, when you're starting a business, you don't need to spend a lot of money on it. So if you don't have money, if you are don't have the rich uncle, this is not the base for starting a business, right? You can spend more time on learning some basic stuff that you need to to have those businesses. Never give up. That's the first important thing. Like if peop like people around you are gonna tell you, my god, it's not going to work. Go work for a corporate life, have your insurance, have your life, and just enjoy, you know, have kids, have family, etc. But at the end, especially if you don't have a family yet, I would recommend just heavily focus on the startup, never give up. This is the time that you need to work on it so that in the next twenty years you're gonna be the successful guy that everyone is mentioning. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: awesome advice for sure. And you know, I always like to say it's the same thing. It's it's a good is the enemy of great, right? While you're you're you're Pars Barghandan: Exactly. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: absorbing that good and you're enjoying it. Sometimes we just don't step out and go for the great. what's Pars Barghandan: Yeah, exactly. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: so where can people connect with you online and and what resources are available? Where should they continue this conversation? Find out more about Kitaki. Pars Barghandan: Yeah, so first of all, if they just search kataki.com, it's the first one in Google. And at the same time, if they want to reach out to me to get more advice or more ideas on what they are doing in their business, for sure I can also help with my expertise. And they can just Google my name, just say Pars and that the first result is me, hopefully. and also they can connect me on LinkedIn with Parsbarghandan at the same time. And my website is also parsbarghandan.com. Which they can reach out to me. So if they just no need to remember my last name because it's a bit hard, you know, if you had the challenges. So I would say just Google Pars startup, Pars Founder, I will be the first result I'm Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Pars, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and and all of the guerrilla marketing ideas that you shared. I love these. Pars Barghandan: Yeah, it was great to meet and also be here, Joe. I hope the audience would also find it useful and I will be looking for the comments, you know, to see like what people are talking about as well. And yeah, I mean it was great to be here. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Thanks everyone for listening. If this episode inspired you, make sure you share it. And don't forget to follow the Glovisor Podcast for more conversations that make an impact. Till the next time.