I’m Marie, my startup just pivoted and rebranded, AMA 🔥

Hey @smalter! Thanks for describing the cycle you go through - sounds exciting and also a bit maddening 🙃. And I can totally relate! Our path went like this… dogo (pitch deck software) ---> Draftsend (PDFs with audio) ----> FYI (document search) ----> Nira (document access control for IT). For the first two of those ideas our excitement fell off a cliff as soon as we launched. I attribute the drop in excitement for us to a lack of understanding of the customer. With those first two products, my co-founder and I did minimal customer research. We really didn’t deeply understand their problems and existing solutions to the problems. We were shooting in the dark a bit. And so once we launched, there was nothing solid supporting the products. We could have made them work with a bunch of effort and time, but the foundation of customer needs was missing, which meant the products were doomed. FYI and Nira were totally different. We lived and breathed the customer. This focus on the customer automatically bakes in learning, and also begets constant improvement of the product. We did all the research you can think of. Surveys (NPS, product/market fit, feature value analysis, pricing), customer research calls, sales discovery calls, user tests, user research calls, analyzing usage and funnels, competitor research. Because FYI and Nira started with the customer, our excitement never waned. We did, however, end up pivoting away from the document search product. That’s because we found a much bigger opportunity to pursue, and were pulled there by the customer (IT teams). And thanks for the excitement about Nira :) We’re excited too! And I can’t wait to see what you’ve been building too.

@marie_prokopets huh! that's really interesting because i saw a high level of customer obsession and research with dogo and draftsend, at least compared to what i would normally do 😛

@smalter Definitely not that much for dogo and Draftsend :) We just did a bit of UX research, and had a few conversations with users and potential customers but they were pretty biased.

@smalter @marie_prokopets Thanks for sharing the journey of learning. From the perspective of Activity Theory, Pivot means the Transformation of Object.

@smalter @marie_prokopets this is so excited to read, It actually normalice the different stage of struggling but how we need to keep going and focus on the customer until finding the right path.

Hi @lylemckeany! Love this question! Thank you! I've found that my writing goes in stages, depending on where I'm at in my life. - When I was a child, I loved writing poetry. And angry notes in my diary about my parents (sorry Mom and Dad). The writing was essential in helping me process emotions. - When I was working in consulting, I wrote bits of a few satirical graphic novels about the corporate world. I loved creating fantastic worlds out of the mundane. - During my time working in the alcohol industry (and after), I wrote multiple comedy screenplays and TV pilots. Though I loved my job, I wasn't fully satisfied. I used any extra energy I had outside of work (and my social life) to write. It was glorious and brought me so much joy. I do hope to get back to this type of writing again soon. - As a founder, it's challenging (at least it is for me) to devote large swaths of time to creative writing. Plus, I am pretty singularly focused on solving painful problems for customers and building a massive business. So my writing has shifted to blog posts, all the things I write for work (I love making documents!), and then - and this is key for me - journaling / self development work. I do a ton of writing about what's arising in my life and what my emotions are. It helps me work through issues, realize things about myself, learn/grow, be able to reflect. It comes out in a variety of ways - sometimes poems, sometimes regular journaling, sometimes stories. For me, writing means exploring the self. It's about processing experiences, observations and thoughts. Writing needs space and time, and I do believe that creativity can be forced (i.e. scheduled for a certain time). I believe that the more we write, the more we can process the things happening in our lives and grow as people. It's also a brilliant method for capturing one's state of mind in order to look back at it later.

@marie_prokopets Thanks for the thoughtful answer! Writing has done all those things for me too. I write what I call personal, vulnerable, and sometimes funny stories about the messiness of life. There's been a marked difference in my mental health since I've made creative writing a priority the past year. It's magic.

@lylemckeany That's beautiful! Thank you for sharing :) Writing really does have the power to heal / help us grow / bring happiness! I'm so glad to hear you've made it a priority in your life.

@marie_prokopets Totally agree with "the more we write, the more we can process the things happening in our lives" 👍 One Q about journaling: are there any routins around this? Something like weekly review when you re-read all notes of past week etc. Thanks!

@pavel_ivanovsky I don't have a routine as it relates to journaling, but if you figure one out I'd love to hear it! Typically I just journal as things come up. Though your question makes me wonder if I should set some scheduled journaling time :) Another method I've tried is from The Artist's Way: https://www.amazon.com/Artists-W... You do what's called Morning Pages where every morning when you wake up you write down 3 pages worth of journaling, in order to clear all the crap out of your brain so you can have more room for creativity.

Hi @inboundy! Here’s what I look at when it comes to M&A and investment. I may have missed a few things, so feel free to ask followups :) Market - How large is the market today? How large can it be in the future? - What characteristics does the market have? - What about margins / financials? - What kind of complexities does the market have? (for example, lots of regulations, supply chain issues, high costs, etc.) - Are there tons of competitors? - Are there no competitors? Why? - What are the barriers to entry? - What are the market risks? What is the likelihood of those risks hurting the company? - Can the company overcome negative market dynamics? Why/how? Team - How kickass is this team? - Are they flexible? - How quickly do they learn? - What competencies does the team have? - What deficiencies does the team have? Can they overcome them? - How mature is the team? How well do they take feedback and evolve based on it? - Have they done this before? - Are they thoughtful? - Do they move quickly? - Do they handle setbacks gracefully/bounce back quickly? - What are their values? - For an acquisition, will the founders be involved? In what capacity can they help? Are they a valuable asset for the brand? Product and customer - What makes this product special? - Who is the customer? What are their attributes? - Who is the buyer? What are their attributes? - Does the buyer/customer have budget for this product? - What do customers think about the product? - What is the customer pain this product is solving? - Is the product hard to build? Growth potential - Why will this product become huge? - What is going to propel company growth? - Is the brand well known? - What can be done to grow the product even more? If the deal is an acquisition, there are also a bunch of considerations around why the team/brand/product is a good addition, like cost savings, upsells for customers, the addition of technical expertise, etc. All of this said, acquisitions and investments are often more emotional and less fact based. A competitor might be ominously looming, ready to snatch up customers, and so a company makes a less than rational decision to acquire it or another similar business. A brand has a cool factor that an executive really wants, so they make the deal go through. Someone wants a piece of technology, so they overpay to get it. As much as people try and try to objectively quantify, numbers can help tell the story that someone wants to project.

Hi @vartikamanasvi, I really really love these questions, thank you for asking them! Q: How do you find focus in this world that is noisy and chaotic? I think of the world as having lots of channels that I can tune to, and I then choose the channels I want to focus on. For example, one channel I avoid indulging in too much is social media. I never have the Facebook app installed on my phone. I also delete Instagram every time I notice myself spending too much time on it. And I don't put Twitter on my phone either! Any social media apps go into a folder on my phone called "Say aloud before opening" so I remind myself to be present to the fact that I'm going on them by literally calling it out, out loud. I also know what channels I want to focus on, like my business, coming from my heart, being happy, productive, laughing, relaxing and filling myself up (like with nature), and my friends and family. When my life deviates from the things I want to focus on, I do a lot of reflection and look to figure out why and what I can do to get back on course. It's not easy work at all, but it's absolutely worth it. Q: I'm curious how do you think about your life's work and purpose? As a general rule, I believe that the more I work on myself, the better person I will be for all the people I encounter in the world. Even when things are tough, I hold on to this belief, and the knowledge that I will come out of tough situations as a better person who can make a bigger/better positive impact on the world around me. I do this through a lot of self development - things like journaling, identifying patterns I want to change, thinking about how I can evolve/grow, being present to how I am in each moment. Years ago a dear friend taught me about the concept of being a gift to the world - the aim is to be the best gift to the world that you possibly can be. This enabled me to be happy, go after achievements, learn, and live life how I wanted to. All because it would result in a positive impact for those around me. This is how I look at my life's work and purpose. So one simple question to ask yourself is, how can I be the biggest gift to the world? On a more practical level, I allow myself to have goals and desires, but also allow for my path to be shaped by chance (and perhaps a bit of destiny, too). I've had a bit of a meandering career (undergrad in business, MA in english literature, consulting, corporate strategy/innovation, comedy writing, startup founder). In some cases I failed to do the thing I wanted to do, which led me to change paths. And in others I chose a different path when something new was presented to me. What helps is to release attachment to the outcome, and to allow what arises to arise. I also think it's OK to not have a clear answer about one's life purpose and work. It's OK to figure it out as you go. The journey is full of learning and growth - and (in my opinion) that's really what matters the most.

@marie_prokopets @parasuraman_sethumathavan Hey @marie_prokopets, my Q is very similar to one of Parasuraman, I'd just tune it a little: what was the process you went through to move from large corporations (PwC then huge wine and spirits company) to a start-up? Seems corporate jobs you had are not exactly IT/SW/Tech-related: was it an obstacle during your "corporate -> startup" transition? Большое спасибо!

@parasuraman_sethumathavan - happy to answer questions, thank you for asking this one! When I was going through the change from corporate to startup, I didn't have any kind of specific strategy or framework for making the switch. In hindsight, there were a few things I naturally did as I transitioned from working at large corporations to being a founder. Consider leaving (for way too long) - I spent 3 years considering leaving. This was far too long, though I don't regret the delay, as I had really brilliant experiences over those 3 years. There were a few stories I had in my head that caused me to stay for far too long (mainly fears about leaving) - I'd recommend watching what stories you might have about leaving a role and spending some time figuring out if they are real or just stories created by the mind to keep you safe. Think about what's next - Ask yourself: what would make you happy? What's the ideal scenario for you? Can you achieve that scenario? What's the worst case scenario? Talk to startup people - Speaking to people who have the job you'd like is incredibly helpful. Get their perspective about the pros and cons of what they do. Make sure you're not sugarcoating the reality. Being a founder is incredibly challenging, and also incredibly rewarding. Make sure you get the full picture. And of course, see if you can get connected to the right people. I met my co-founder because a founder friend of mine connected me with another founder, who I then met Hiten through. Make the jump - Get over your fears (or ignore them!) and make the jump to do whatever it is you want to do. You'll likely realize that all or most of your fears were totally phantom fears and there was nothing to them.

Thank you @marie_prokopets for the insightful answer.

@parasuraman_sethumathavan @pavel_ivanovsky Hi Pavel! Happy to help :) Check out the answer to your first question in this thread, let me know if I missed anything :). As for your question about my transition from non tech to tech and whether it was an obstacle - the answer is that it was absolutely not an obstacle! My biggest hack for learning new things quickly is to ignore the initial lack of knowledge and just dive in (see my answer to Marco's question about how I learn new skills). Had I approached learning software from the perspective of "oh gosh this is something I don't know, it's a huge new skill I have to learn, I'm terrified" I probably would have taken a lot more time to get up to speed. Instead, I just asked questions, listened, read a ton, and did the work. There will always be things that you don't know, and with time and effort, you can absolutely learn them.

@omerperchik thanks for the question! Hiten and I loved building the document search app, and would have continued working on it, except a better idea presented itself. We stumbled upon the idea for Nira (our new brand) when we were talking to one of our document search app customers. He was literally freaking out because people who shouldn't have had access to his company documents still did have access. Our tool showed him that, even though it wasn't what we built the tool for. In some cases, the people who were able to get into his documents had maintained access to company documents for years, even though they no longer worked with the company. We created some mock up designs for a new product that would solve the access issues, and shared them with some IT folks. That's when we realized that we were really on to something. Every IT team we talked to had the issue we wanted to solve. We were completely pulled to pivot. The toughest choice was deciding if we should build the IT tool in addition to document search, or focus entirely on the IT tool. So we took a bit of time to think about whether we should drop the document search tool. Here were a few things that helped us decide to focus entirely on the IT tool. - Committees ruled the buying process: In trying to sell our product to companies, we quickly learned that there was no one buyer or single owner for document search tools. Instead, there were committees. The committees, unfortunately, struggled to get consensus and make decisions. We met with committee after committee and saw enterprise search initiatives die again and again. - Too many apps: The need to build integrations for different collaboration apps was huge because every company used a different set of apps. Google Workspace, Office 365, Box, Dropbox, Dropbox Paper, Miro, Notion, Coda, Figma, and more. This meant we had to integrate with app after app. We ended up building 24 integrations before we paused the effort. - Inadequate APIs: We learned that early and new APIs, while exciting, are a drag. Some products took years to add APIs, and once they were ready we quickly realized their functionality was inadequate for what we needed to build. Plus, even the APIs of more established apps were missing information we needed to populate our interface. It became a never-ending mountain of work and even then it would lead to an inconsistent experience for our customers. - Adoption issues: Our goal was to have widespread adoption of our tool across an organization. It’s usually called “wall-to-wall” adoption. But oftentimes departments use specific tools in isolation from the rest of the company. Even though a company might use G Suite, the legal and finance teams might refuse to use it and instead collaborate on Office 365. How could we expect our search tool to get full company adoption if the collaboration apps can’t in the first place? - Locked down auth: Our strategy was to get adoption from the bottom up within companies. A groundswell of employee app usage would mean that we’d be able to sell in at the company level easier. Except many companies lock down the ability for employees to authenticate with apps without permission. Some even lock down the ability to download apps or install chrome extensions. We realized we wouldn’t be able to scale the business and get wall-to-wall adoption without a top-down sales motion.

@omerperchik @marie_prokopets Hi Marie, Typically (at least in my view) companies store documents internally and delegate employee access via Active Directory group membership/account. So your solution is for companies that store documents outside their networks correct?

@omerperchik @john_mirochnik you can check out our website here to learn more about how we solve the problem for IT teams: https://nira.com/. this is a problem that companies of all sizes have with their cloud-based document apps. as you can imagine we've built our product based on a ton of customer research, the method you mentioned where access to documents is clean and based on Active Directory groups isn't one that we've heard used by companies. in reality, document access is extremely messy and there's a ton of risk that companies are managing.

@marie_prokopets you mention that you and Hiten " loved building the document search app, and would have continued working on it, except a better idea presented itself." >> I'm curious what advice would you give someone entering the document search space? Is it a dead-end? It seems that the problem is real (I've seen it first hand!) and there aren't really good solutions out there (except for usefyi of course).

@dmarquez we believe that document search is still a massive opportunity. what we discovered is that in order to create the best possible experience possible for customers, it would take a level of engineering and product effort that - at the time - we were not willing to invest once we found the opportunity with Nira. The advice I would give to someone who is trying to build in the document search space is to really narrow down what apps they integrate with, deeply understand what the user and buyer personas are, and make sure the APIs they need to work with can enable the functionality for their target customers.

@mrcpiras Hi Marco! Here is my favorite way to learn new skills: Do it! Diving right in to the new skill is the best way to learn it. Even if you feel uncomfortable. Even if you're worried that you can't do it. Just dive right in. The more you think "this is new and hard" the harder it will be to learn the new skill. If at all possible, don't even think about how you don't know much about the skill. My current Slack status is "Just get started" - the idea is if you just begin the task, you're more likely to get it done :) Repeat! Keep at it, even if initially you aren't as good as you'd like to be. Practice makes perfect :) Or at least, good enough. Be present! Observe how you're progressing at learning the new skill. Being present to how you're doing helps you understand where you should dig in even more. Observe where you can improve, and then focus there. Be kind to yourself! Don't get critical if you can't do something right away. Learning new skills can take time, and that's ok. Ask questions! This is key. Feel empowered to ask any and all questions you have. Getting answers to your questions helps you learn faster. Don't be embarrassed about the questions, and don't overthink it. Just ask! I do have to say Marco, you are great at this 😃 Seek knowledge! If it's possible, learn about the new skill from experts. Read about it from people who have done it before. At the very least, you'll feel more comfortable and confident, which will help you learn faster.

@marie_prokopets thanks Marie! Historically I've been more focused on learning from experts rather than trying to do it myself. Now I'm trying to switch my focus and spend less time learning from others and more time learning from my experience. Surely there's a balance and I'm trying to find what that balance looks like for me :) Interesting that you mentioned to be present to how you're doing. I journal my progress in... you'll like this: documents! I've a document for any skill I'm learning and I write down my biggest learnings there.

@mrcpiras I love this Marco!!! So good that you're keeping track of learnings. Also probably is helpful for you to see how much you're growing :)

@mrcpiras I started meditating as a kid! At the time, a thick paperback book about yogis drew my attention at the bookstore (this was back before buying books online was a thing or reading them on Kindles, of course). I really loved the pictures of people meditating in the book, and I would mimic the poses, sitting silently in lotus position with my eyes closed and focusing on my posture. I wasn't able to meditate for long periods then, but I did feel grounded and peaceful. So back when I first started, I didn't really have a knowledge base or discipline. Now, I'd say I'm much more confident and have a deeper understanding of what meditation means and does to me. Now, as soon as I sit down to meditate and close my eyes I drop in (to the quiet and the energy of it all) pretty quickly. I tend to meditate in silence without any specific methodology, but I do sometimes use a few practices (breath work, posture, visualizations, guided meditations). I do sometimes get caught up in my thoughts, though I do my best to be present to them and allow them to pass without attaching to them. I tend to like to meditate for 15-20 minutes at a time, though even a few minutes is quite helpful.

@marie_prokopets funny that what drew you to meditation initially were the poses. They're quite fascinating indeed! I started meditating because of the general health benefits and I've never paid much attention to the poses. Maybe that can be my next step! :D

@vishals If only starting a new alcohol brand were as easy as celebrity endorsement or marketing :) A ton goes into it, here are a few of the points: Category: Which category is the brand in? Is the category growing? Is the product you want to make going to fit well into the category? Will it be differentiated? Brand: What does the label design look like? What's the name of the product? What bottle shape will it have? Packaging design: What's the packaging going to look like? This includes the label, and any elements of the bottle like the glass and stopper/cork. This will need to all be considered with the lens of materials cost, too. Flavor profile and liquid: What's the product taste like? Is there a special way to produce the liquid? Does it take time and sit in barrels first? For how long? Are there special flavor notes you're trying to create? Sourcing / supply chain: Where are you getting the packaging? Is it cost effective? Is the quality there? Can they give you the quantities you need? In the time you need them? How about the liquid - how are you going to create that? Do you have a good facility to produce it? How do you get the final package to the distributor? Finance/Planning: You'll need to figure out how much everything costs, how much you need, how much you'll sell the product for. Sales: Who is selling the product for you? How do you get it to distributors? Are they incentivized to sell it in to retailers? Marketing: There's a ton of positioning work to be done on the brand before it launches. How much money do you have to spend on this? How will you reach people? What marketing are you doing in the store? There are a million ways to market alcohol brands, so there are a lot of choices to make. This is also where celebrity endorsements/deals come in. Legal / regulatory: There's a ton (at least in the US) to do on the regulatory landscape. You'll need approvals from the TTB and that can take time.

@marie_prokopets Very very insightful :) Thank you.

@dom_rodwell We don't have an explicit process today to generate ideas. So it's fairly unstructured. Ideas come in the midst of customer research, and either sit in our brains, in notes from discussions, or in documents about future features or learnings from research. This isn't scalable, but it works really well for us at this stage. Eventually all the ideas are translated into a feature prioritization spreadsheet which includes engineering estimates, and then prioritized based on difficulty to build vs. the business reasons for building them. As for how I apply learnings from my different interests and activities to ideas at work, I don't do anything explicit here. I've been lucky to have interests and a career that taught me how to spot patterns quickly, how to process tons of data and come to conclusions, and to be creative. So all those things are naturally at play for me while coming up with ideas for Nira.