Latest / Glovisor Podcast / He Built a Craigslist Competitor in Brazil | The Cataqui Story - Pars Barghandan [Ep 79]

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He Built a Craigslist Competitor in Brazil | The Cataqui Story - Pars Barghandan [Ep 79] · Glovisor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's like a Tinder for geeks. So you scroll, you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: find the gig you want, contact the guy and just
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: do it and get paid.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Glowvisor podcast, where we explore business growth, communication,
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: and personal development through real conversations with people who make
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: an impact. Our guest is a serial tech entrepreneur and
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: author recognized for building and growing innovative tech companies. He
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: drives business growth, advances technological innovation, and delivers lasting impact
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: through strategic leadership and operational excellence. Glowvisor welcomes Pars Bargadon.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hi, Joe. How are you?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Great, thanks. Pleasure to have you here today.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great to be here, and I'm looking forward
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Excellent. So can you tell us a little bit more
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: about yourself? Yeah.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So I'm, first of all, Iranian-Turkish startup founder. And I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: was born and grew up in Turkey, then moved to Iran,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and then after that Sri Lanka. And then now I'm
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: in Switzerland. So I'm five times founder, two times exit.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And right now we are heavily focusing on our new startup, Kataki.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: All right. So let's go back a little bit. So
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: five times founder. So these were all tech companies? Yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: So all of them were heavily focused on technology and
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: basically intersection of technology and some impacts to the humans, right?
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So the first one was a safety app. Second one
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: was a fashion app. And then we went to the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: different companies in between. And at the end, like the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: last two was one of them was Noxi, which was
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: a telecom company. which went to a private acquisition. And
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: right now we are focusing on CatechQ, which is helping
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: people to leave being unemployment and heavily focusing on finding
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: gigs and side hustles whenever you need.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Now, before we go on, I know some of the
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: other things that people are always thinking. You create a
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: tech company, right? It's a startup. And then it becomes
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Google overnight. Is that how it happens for every single
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: startup you've done?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no. I mean, there's a long,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: long thing that happens. I also mentioned that in my
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: book in Amazon, which is the first 5 a.m. And
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you fail a lot in this whole situation. You know,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: first of all, the first startup that I had, it
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: was just like I was thinking, OK, you know, we
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: found the company. Tomorrow we become the Google. You know,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I become a billionaire and everything is going well. But
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that's totally the dream, you know. you will learn a
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: lot of things during these steps. And you can basically
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: see like you need to minimum have two, three businesses
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and really learn from it. Like, okay, you can go
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to the universities, learn like study business, study economics, study
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: all of these things. But these are just theoretical part
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of the situation. And when you starting a business and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: if you don't have reach uncle for sure, you need
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to be your own accountant, be your own marketing specialist,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: be your own business executive, decision-making guy, and be your
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: codering guy, you know, all of this stuff. So you
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: need to learn all of these things step by step.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And basically, I would say there is a lot of
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: blood and tears on this whole situation of building something.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And you should never give up. That's basically the most
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: important thing. Like you will fail a lot, a lot,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a lot. You will face a lot of challenges. But
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: at the end, There will be either a successful company
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that you build or there will be a great background
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: knowledge and that you can really join the corporate world
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: if you want.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: So here you are, you have this amazing dream and
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: an amazing idea. It's one of these startups. What happens
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to the startup itself? It just fizzles out or what
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is that moment where you're like, OK, this is it.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to have to move on to the next project.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It really depends on the situation. So first of all,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: 99% of the startups that failed in my startups before,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: except Noxy and the other one that we had an exit,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: was because of the founder conflict. So either one founder
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: gets distracted with a lot of other projects, doesn't have
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: enough motivation, has other priorities for sure. And in that case,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you know, you cannot do this stuff alone. For sure,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: like there were times that I tried to do this
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: stuff alone. I said, okay, no problem. I either will
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: find another co-founder or I'm going to just, you know,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: do it myself. You know, you'll become the brave guy.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: This is going to, you know, become a warrior or stuff.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, 99% is the founder conflict and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: this stuff. The second part is you basically don't have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: a good market for your products. You know, you think,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: You start with a solution and then try to look
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: for a problem. But that's actually the wrong thing most
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: first-time or second-time founders does. So what you normally should
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: do is first get a problem. Do not spend too
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: much time on it. Just try to build an MVP
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or some simple stuff that you can test the market.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And if that really works, then you can go all
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: in to that product. So basically a problem. Then solution,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: not basically solution to problem. These are the two things
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that really we experienced a lot in the products.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I love that you're sharing this information. Now, when you
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: say that you're going to test the product, do you
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: have a specific number in mind that if you hit
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a certain number, you're like, this is it. This is
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: going to work. We need to produce more from there.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: So basically the way at least I work is not
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: just like specifying like a minimum benchmark or something. For sure,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: we have different benchmarks that, okay, we have to reach
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: this certain point to see, okay, the market is validated,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: et cetera. This is actually the base of having, like
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: starting a business. But when we really want to do
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the testing phase of the product, we consider, like we
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: try to enter in a violent way. So what I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: mean by violent is basically, Consider that startup as a child,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and your child is getting kidnapped, and you need six
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: lawyers or attorneys right now. What do you do? You
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: go all in. You find what you really need to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: solve that problem, to test it, and all of this
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: stuff to save your child. And basically, this is what
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: we are doing in this aspect. So we heavily focus
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: on guerrilla marketing and violent market entry. with the lowest
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: cost because we take care of every operation by ourselves.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: We do the tech part. We do the marketing. We
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: do the business aspect. And this is basically how it works.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I love that you're mentioning guerrilla marketing because I don't
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: hear it enough. And I tell you, it's one of the,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: looking back at one of my businesses, I just went
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: all out in the guerrilla marketing. And it was the
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: very beginning. And then the business ran for a decade
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: on just the initial momentum that was thrown into it
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: and i always tell business owners when they're first starting
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: out i said give it a try because you don't
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: know and i think sometimes it's very valuable so i'm
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: glad that you brought that up but you know i
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: want to go back to those two times exits how
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: does that work i mean that's probably it sounds like
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a dream come true right there do they knock on
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: your door or do you chase people down until they
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: finally connect with you and see your vision um.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: The first thing is the networking part. So first, you
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: need to build that network. And it's not something that
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: you're going to build in one startup or two startup.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: You're building it over time. That's the first thing. The
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: second part is that the timing. Even if you have
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the greatest idea, greatest team, greatest product, everything, if it's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: not the right time for that product, 99% is going
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to fail. And this is actually a proven model that
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I did research about it a lot. The first product
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: was an entertainment company, which was heavily focusing on the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: intersection of being a web builder and also an entertainment platform,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like a digital casino, so that influencers can build their
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: own legal casino and then interact with their own audience.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And that one went through a private acquisition with a
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: very close private network that I had. And I was
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a solo founder there. So it was just me developing it,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: testing it and all of this stuff. And I would
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: say that time was like we had a very good
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: timing at that point. I would say like this is
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: not a new idea or it's not an innovative idea. OK,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: there is some small innovations on it, like automations, et cetera,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: before AI is coming. Right. But, you know, at the end,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it was the timing aspect. And it went through the acquisition.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And then after that, it gave me like some space
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to really think about what will be the next project.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: At the same time, gave me more respect, right? So
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: this is the first thing that every startup founder wants
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: to have, right? Okay, I sold my company. Now what's
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: going to happen? At the same time for the second startup,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: it was a bit more challenging because It was a
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: telecom company. And then you have giant telecoms that are like,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: you know, spending billions of dollars on infrastructure. And then
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you are just a new startup coming to the market.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And I would say that that time, first, the innovation,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: second was the team. And the third one was basically
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the heavy PR that we did about the Noxi, the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: company that we had and about me as the founder
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and the visionary team. on how we are really chasing
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the next revolution of the telecom industry. And for sure,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: we had a great product as well. If we didn't
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: get acquired, we would have a lot of chance to
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: really change the market as well.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that must have been so exciting. But
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: now that you've had a lot of space and time,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: to think about it, you're working on a new project, Kataki.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit more about that.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Basically, me and Ryan, my co-founder at Kataki, we met
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: at Startup Bootcamp, which we received our first investment for Noxy,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: my previous startup. And Ryan was also working on his
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: own previous crypto company. And, you know, we had a
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: really good connection together after finishing the startup bootcamp process.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: We just, you know, we were just chatting with each
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: other and all of this stuff. And after Noxy getting acquired,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I said to Ryan, hey, you know, I want to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: do something else, you know, something a bit different, more
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: like a customer base, because what we were heavily doing
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: were B2B. Like most of the startups that I built,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the first one was B2G, B2C. The second one was B2B, B2C.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of, you know, too many
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: things going on, but I never had a marketplace, you know,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and that's why I said, like, let's just build a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: marketplace focusing on gig economy and why we don't help
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: people to have something like Craigslist in the US, in
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Latin America, or, you know, other developing countries. And, you know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: after that, we were just like, boom, maybe we found
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the next, you know, idea that we can either sell
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: or just, build it ourselves. And, you know, after that,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we did a lot of research about what we need
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to do, et cetera. But basically, in simple words, what
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Catechi does is helping you to find geeks whenever you need.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: For example, either you're a full-time employee, after your job
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: is finished, you're going home, you need a side hustle.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Instead of doing Uber, if you don't have a car,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you just, you know, it's like a Tinder for geeks.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: So you scroll, you find the gig you want, contact
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the guy and just do it and get paid. So
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: this works like this. And for people who fully want
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to rely on the gigs, you don't need to work anymore.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: You just scroll, find the gig you want to do
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: and do it and earn your money.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Do you handle the payment gateway?
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: No, no. So that's actually one of the biggest challenges
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: we were facing because we wanted to handle the payment part.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and also get a commission out of it, etc. But unfortunately,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Brazilian market is a heavy regulated market on financial part.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And Catechi is a Brazilian company, but the parent company
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: is in the US. So it's Venture Inc. And what
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: we had to do is dealing with a lot of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: foreign currencies and exchange rates and all of this stuff.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So we said, okay, we are not going to handle
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: that part. We are going to charge a subscription, a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: very small subscription. on the people who are posting the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: jobs and it will be fully free for the users
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: who are, you know, looking for the jobs. That's basically
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: what we are doing right now.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: What made you choose the name Kataki?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Kataki actually is, like, there are different stuff in Brazil
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: named Kataki, but basically it's a slang of go get it.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: So basically it's like this and Ryan told me that
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and I said, is it easy to pronounce in Brazil?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Is it like, you know, something people know, et cetera.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And I said, the audience that we are targeting are
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the people who are looking for the jobs who are
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: most of the time out in the street and all
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: of this stuff. So they already know this language. That's
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: why I said, okay, we need to, instead of being
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: like a company that has too much distance with our audience,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: like being a luxury VIP company providing job, we can
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: be like more similar to the audience that we are leaving, right?
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Instead of being like a top brand, We just be
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: like exact same as our audience, have the same language
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: with them and all of this stuff. So it feels
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: more comfortable on the brand psychology for them.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: What made you choose Brazil?
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: So first of all, we wanted to launch it in
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the US, right? Because we said, okay, we have Craigslist.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: For sure, it has a very huge audience, like 100
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: million users per month or per year or something like this.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: And the problem was, okay, you know, it's already established.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to enter a market like this without,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: because we don't have too much budget for marketing and advertising.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Like I will tell you in the next steps, like
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: what we did for the Gorilla marketing for Kataki. But
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: we said, okay, let's just conquer one side of the markets, right?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Because I see the markets as a war, you know,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: either I take it or the other computers, there's no
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: other thing in here. And what was happening is that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Ryan said, OK, first, Brazil is a very local and
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: heavy community focused region. And people are really focused on
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: using WhatsApp on a daily basis. And that's how we integrated,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you know, WhatsApp in Qataki and heavily focused on WhatsApp
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: communications and our WhatsApp bots. And at the same time,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we want to focus on Switzerland, Europe, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: this stuff. And we said, okay, you know, we don't
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: want to deal with too much regulations on data protection
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and all of this stuff, you know, because there's different
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: regions and all of these things. And at the same time,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: we want to focus on a single country that has
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the highest community that is looking for side hustles and geeks.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And then employment rate is very, you know, low. So
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: more unemployed people exist and they are looking for better opportunities.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And then just being, you know, in a corporate life
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: because the education level in Brazil also is not that high.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So the amount of people that know English, because if
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you want to go for a corporate role, you must
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: know English. And the amount of people who knows English
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: is very low. So these people, unfortunately, doesn't have any
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: chance to only focus on gigs, side hustles, and day-to-day jobs.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: And that was the greatest market that we could say, okay,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: let's just focus on this market right now.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Now, yeah, if you don't mind, I would love to
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: hear a couple of the examples of your guerrilla marketing.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Because think about it. Here you are, you're producing something
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: from the other side of the world. And you're coming
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: into a new market, another language, and you're saying, hey,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: we're going to take over Craigslist. And how do you
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: do that?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is a lot of funny stuff here
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: in between. Like me and Ryan was like, I started
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: learning Portuguese, you know, Brazilian Portuguese as well, you know.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, you know, I actually did
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of research about because I need to first
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: understand the audience to then decide on what would be
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the business aspect or what would be the marketing, like
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: how I'm going to do the marketing for those people.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So I need to really think about what they really
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: think on a daily basis, right? It's exactly like an actor.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: If an actor wants to play a serial killer, he
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: really goes and understands how they really think, right? On business,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: we do this stuff as well. So basically, I understood
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that they are heavily relied on church communities, NGOs that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: are looking for the job, job finding NGOs. And also,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: it's very, very local than we think. So they are
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: heavily focused on outdated Facebook groups, outdated WhatsApp groups. And
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: one of the things that we did for the guerrilla
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: marketing was Ryan, like I paid a friend of Ryan
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and Ryan and his friend went to the Sao Paulo's,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: like the beach area. And they put a game, like
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: how many push-ups you can do and you would win
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: if you do the push-ups. And this way we grabbed
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: like a lot of audience there on the beach. And
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: then he was distributing the QR codes at the same
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: time while they were praying, right? And the first one
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: who wins, like first 10 people that like winning these
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: push-up competition wins. They got like a gold subscription that
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you're probably, I mean, it's not gold subscription, but basically
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: a free annual subscription. So they could just, you know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: do the scrolls and finding jobs without limits. That's also
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: another plan that we bring later. And at the same time,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: what we did is we said, okay, in Brazil, in
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the streets, there's a lot of, you know, brochures, banners,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and all of this stuff. But people really don't look
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: at it, right? And what we said is that instead
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of just putting our company name and then the slogan
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: and the QR code to download the app, why we
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: just don't put like a big QR code and an arrow?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: That's it. No text, nothing. Like this would grab the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: audience like, oh, what is this? Why there is no text?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Why there is no company? What's happening, right? And we
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: received a lot of scans, like the analytics that we had. Oh,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: my God. We received a lot of users scanning those
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: QR codes. And we said, I think we found this.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And I mean, another reason that we got a lot of,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you know, analytics and a lot of traffic to our
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: website was we, like I did a research on which
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: train stations or subway stations are the most populated one
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for the people who are looking for the jobs or
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: who are going to the corporate, like going to apply
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: for a job or this stuff, right? And we place those,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you know, flares in these parts of the, like the subways.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And that was one of the effective methods that we did.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Like this is just two of them. Like on the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: digital aspect, what we did is we spammed in the
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Reddit communities. So we created 14 to 20 Reddit accounts,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: all with the Brazil region and all this stuff. And
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: we started commenting and acting like a Brazilian native user
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: that is saying, oh my God, I found this app.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, but as a user perspective, not as a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: person who is developing it. And this way we build
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: a trust between the users that oh my God, there's
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: a new app and all of this stuff.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Now, so you've already sampled the market and how is
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: it going? Have you had any like real success stories
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: that you can share with us?
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so currently we finished the pilot in, if I'm
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: not mistaken, it was five, six neighborhoods in Brazil, in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Sao Paulo city specifically, because Brazil is huge. Yeah, I mean,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: it's a very huge region, right? So we did those pilots.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: We received, if I'm not mistaken, more than five to
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: eight K active users using the app on the private pilots.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, you know, the biggest problem
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in every marketplace is the seeding. So basically it's a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: chicken and egg problem. Well, you have people who is
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: going to post the jobs or you're going to have
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: people who are going to use the app first. Like
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: which one is coming first, right? And we fixed this
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: problem in the beginning. So what we did is we
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: had like initially the first day that we launched the pilot,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: we had more than 100 jobs per day posted in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: our app. And currently we have like more than 800 jobs.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: on every two, three days is updating, right? And all
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of them is closing, because if someone applies and the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: job gets closed, that time is like the closure of
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: jobs is like less than 30, 40 minutes. So basically
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: both sides of the marketplace are now happy. And that's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: why we are aiming for like a full launch by
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: next week.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear more about this. Now, who
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: are you looking forward to connecting with? Now that Kataki
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: is about to fully launch next week, who should be
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: contacting you right now?
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: So first of all, we really need to have a great,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: you know, marketing team as well, because we are not
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: going to do this stuff alone. We received a lot
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of offers from investors who's going to really invest on
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the product. So we are currently considering, some of them
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: are from US, some of them are from Brazil as well.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So we are currently need to like, heavy focus on
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: our HR and really bringing new people to the company
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: because we will have a lot of operations going on
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: like this during the pilot time. We didn't have enough sleep.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I would say like less, like two, three hours or
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: something like this. And especially Ryan was like, I think
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: he didn't sleep for three days or it was something
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like this. I mean, he's sleeping right now. You know,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I'm in touch with him right now, but like, This
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: is the issue. We really received a lot of positive feedback,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: which we were not ready for it, right? And right
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: now we need to grow the team, get new people
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: heavily focused on marketing side because it's a digital product.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: You know, we are getting some new developers, but basically
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: this is what we need. New executive people for sure
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as well, right? Because who have enough experience on this region,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: like the LATAM region, that also works for us because
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: more minds would help us to have better strategies on
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: how we are going to, you know, draw the next
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: steps for Kataki.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Now, what would you say is the most important takeaway
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: that you want our listeners to remember from today's conversation?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: So first of all, you know, when you're starting a business,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you don't need to spend a lot of money on it.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So if you don't have money, if you don't have
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the reach on call, this is not the base for
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: starting a business, right? You can spend more time on
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: learning some basic stuff that you need to have those businesses.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Never give up. That's the first important thing. Like people
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: around you are going to tell you, oh my God,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it's not going to work. Go work for a corporate life,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: have your insurance, have your life and just enjoy, you know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: have kids, have family, etc. But at the end, especially
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: if you don't have a family yet, I would recommend
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: just heavily focus on the startups. Never give up. This
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: is the time that you need to work on it
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: so that in the next 20 years, you're going to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: be the successful guy that everyone is mentioning.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Awesome advice for sure. And, you know, I always like
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: to say it's the same thing. It's a good is
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the enemy of great, right? Exactly. You're absorbing that good
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: and you're enjoying it. Sometimes we just don't step out
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: and go for the great. Yeah. Exactly. So where can
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: people connect with you online and what resources are available?
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Where should they continue this conversation? Find out more about Kataki. Yeah.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: So first of all, if they just search kataki.com, it's
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the first one in Google. At the same time, if
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: they want to reach out to me to get more
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: advice or more ideas on what they are doing in
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: their business, for sure, I can also help with my expertise.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: And they can just Google my name, just say Parse,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and that the first result is me, hopefully. And also
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: they can connect me on LinkedIn with Parse Bargandon at
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the same time. And my website is also parsebargandon.com, which
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: they can reach out to me. So if they just,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: no need to remember my last name because it's a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: bit hard, you know, if you had the challenges. So
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I would say just Google Parse Startup, Parse Founder, I
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: will be the first result on Google.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Parsh, thank you so much for joining us. We really
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: appreciate your time and all of the guerrilla marketing ideas
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: that you shared. I love these.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great to meet and also be here, Jewel.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I hope the audience will also find it useful. And
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I will be looking for the comments, you know, to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: see like what people are talking about as well. And yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was great to be here.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Thanks everyone for listening. In this episode of Inspire You,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: make sure you share it. And don't forget to follow
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: the Globalizer podcast for more conversations that make an impact.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Till the next time.