Omer (00:10.000)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Renat Zubairov, the CEO and co founder of Elasticio, a hybrid integration platform that helps businesses connect APIs and on premise and cloud applications quickly and securely.
In 2012, Renat and his co founders were working for a company where they were doing a lot of integration work.
They realized that they weren't the only ones feeling the pain and and eventually they came up with an idea to build a SaaS integration platform.
They used their savings to start the company and spent the first six months building a product.
But they didn't talk to any customers.
So when they eventually launched, it was hard for them to find customers.
Even giving away the product for free didn't help much.
But when they started charging for their product, something interesting happened.
They started attracting better quality customers and the feedback they got from those customers allowed them to build a better product and serve those customers better.
They realized that they could charge even more for their products by targeting larger companies.
Today, a typical customer pays them around $10,000 a year and they're currently doing around two and a half million dollars in annual revenue.
And they've been growing at over 100% year over year for the last three years.
Renat shares the story of how they've built Elastic IO, what they've been doing to grow so fast, how he wishes that they charged much earlier for their product, and the impact of not thinking big enough when they started.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Renat, welcome to the show.
Renat Zubairov (02:09.450)
Hi Amer.
I'm really excited to be here.
Thanks for invitation.
Omer (02:13.010)
Do you have a favorite quote you can share with us?
Something that inspires or motivates you or gets you out of bed every day?
Renat Zubairov (02:19.490)
Yeah, sure.
I think I will not be the only person with this quote, but especially in the startup area.
But it's a quote of one of the co founders of Twitter.
He said timing, perseverance and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.
I could really, really feel it.
I could really understand this quote every time I see some success stories, but also some failure stories because I think everything goes hand in hand, success and failures, especially in the startups or in any innovative area.
Omer (02:50.700)
Oh, that's.
That's so true.
You know, it's just like you look at what's happening out There and you hear some story and you think, wow, those guys launched and they just had amazing success.
But you don't see what they did for the 5, 10 years before they got to that point.
Renat Zubairov (03:03.100)
Yeah, absolutely.
And actually it's the best example I have there, which I constantly mention to my friends and colleagues is like, you know, the company called Rovio?
Maybe Rovio does something.
Yeah, yeah.
You might guess, like the Angry Birds.
The.
The game Angry Birds was which game it was sequentially what they did.
The first game, second game, third game, and then they did the Angry Birds.
You can guess how many games they did before.
Omer (03:29.930)
Yeah, I have got no idea.
Renat Zubairov (03:31.930)
It's actually 36.
Omer (03:34.003)
36 games.
Wow.
Renat Zubairov (03:36.950)
And then Angry Birth.
Omer (03:38.630)
Yeah.
And you hear this story in so many places.
Like the other day I was watching an interview with James Patterson, the author who's written so many books, and I think his net worth is close to a billion dollars.
And he was saying that the first book he wrote was rejected by over 40 publishers.
So there's this pattern, you see this over and over again, that it's not just about SaaS.
Right.
It's just about every time we want to do something, we want to create something, there's a process that you go through.
Renat Zubairov (04:12.160)
Yeah, absolutely agree.
That's right.
Omer (04:14.400)
Okay, so let's talk about Elastic IO.
Did you just refer to it as Elastic?
Renat Zubairov (04:20.160)
Basically?
No, actually, the IO is essentially a part of a name and an important part of a name because we are coming from a developer background and I'm originally a developer, and IO for developers is something they have to do in any project.
Right.
Doesn't matter what it is.
And for us, elasticio is pretty much a very good description of what we do.
This elasticity in input and output is actually the very core of elasticio.
Omer (04:48.190)
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, like, you know, my domain is sasclub IO, but the only reason is because I couldn't get sasclub.com right.
But for you guys, Elastic IO actually makes sense, right?
From in terms of, you know, what the product does, you know, input output is a big part of exactly that.
Integration.
Renat Zubairov (05:07.040)
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah.
And Elastic IO, we are just like you mentioned, an integration platform, right.
So we connect different systems, being IT systems in the cloud, systems on premises for traditional kind of older legacy customers, legacy systems, as well as a mixture of these.
And for us, when we founded Elastica, elasticity was their property of the cloud, which separates, say, it's a bit statistic, but like the men from the boys, you know.
So the elasticity is their unique property of the cloud.
And without elasticity it's more like a lipstick on a pic.
It's really cloud washing.
Omer (05:49.680)
So in a nutshell, how would you explain what the product does, who's the target customer and what's the big problem you're helping to solve?
Renat Zubairov (05:58.470)
Actually with Elastic IO we are helping to solve a problem which existed since the beginning of it.
It's an application and data integration.
So we let different systems speak to each other and let our customers build processes which orchestrate data and applications through cloud and on premise.
So for example, the E commerce orders from Shopify Shop would appear in the ERP system and and also the visitor or let's say customer data will be automatically synchronized between, I don't know, CRM system and maybe a marketing campaign systems like Marketo.
And this problem has actually very much existed since like last 30, 40 years already.
There are numerous of other ways to solve it and with Elastic we are just bringing this solution to the cloud.
So, so we are from Gartner naming an integration platform as a service and we try to solve this problem for two groups of customers.
One of them is middle sized businesses, so not into SME, that's in the middle sized businesses.
So let's say 50 plus employees or maybe less 50 to 5005000 employees, companies with large number of systems they're using.
And the second group of our customers are software as a service vendors or software as a service founders and IT teams of software service companies.
Who is challenged by every customer?
How can I integrate your SaaS tool with my ERP, CRM?
Whatever.
Omer (07:40.050)
Got it.
When I looked at the Elastic IO website initially like my first takeaway was like oh, this looks very similar to a Zapier.
But when I sort of started digging into it, I realized it was quite different in terms of the problem that you're solving.
So just for people who might be thinking the same thing, can you just help kind of explain how you're different?
Renat Zubairov (08:06.550)
Oh yes, basically we are more like an enterprise version of Zapier, let's say as I said, this integration problem is not something new.
So there are whole market size or market segments existed before ipass existed like extract, transform load applications, ETL applications, message, middleware and so on and so on.
And what we do is something similar to Zapier, but we are targeting a bit bigger companies or let's say more professional users of IT which demand a more comprehensive but also at the same time maybe more complex or more flexible solution compared to traditional existence.
That or Zapier kind of use case.
Omer (08:56.449)
Can you give me one example of that?
Maybe just so we can kind of help people understand the type of integration or the type of complexity that a customer might be asking for, asking you to help solve?
Renat Zubairov (09:05.529)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And this is actually also in, we can talk about later.
In our founding story, when we started with this, there was some very basic use cases, right.
Where Zapier started, where if this and that started, like if something happened here, something should happen there.
If I have my invoice in my invoicing application, I want to store it in my Dropbox, right?
And these are pretty basic, similar use case or simple use cases.
The complexity of these use cases is because I have, I know 50 different invoicing applications and maybe like 5 or 10 different storages like Dropbox, Google Drive and so on.
And when we started running to our customers with that, obviously there are some people who said, okay, great.
I also, Mike, I'm ready to pay for it.
But my biggest pain and biggest headache is how do I synchronize complex data like orders in my e commerce system with my ERP system.
Right.
And this unfortunately from the complexity and from flexibility goes far beyond like basic file here, file there, use case, which pushed us more towards the more high value, maybe in a sense more expensive area.
However, the price is just a differentiator for the customers.
So we just moved up the market more or less from like basic use cases where we just, I don't know, a simple event based integration into the more business critical integrations where we synchronize business critical data between applications which are not, let's say fancy or shiny and more traditional applications like for example, SAP, erp.
Omer (10:44.120)
Got it.
And then in terms of pricing, you mentioned that.
So I'm looking, the plan started around €200amonth and then for enterprise customers it can go up to €5,000amonth and higher, Correct?
Renat Zubairov (11:00.300)
Absolutely.
And you can see also we don't have a free premium plan or free plan freemium business model like Zapier for example has.
And pricing can be seen as a reflection of a value.
Right?
But at the same time it is also a filter.
I mean the pricing is amazing, is a task of amazing complexity.
I think we can talk about pricing maybe two hours, but pricing in generally for us it's also a differentiation for whom we actually targeted and how much attention and investment is required to solve the different level of problems for the customers.
Omer (11:41.990)
Okay, got it.
And in terms of revenue, you're now part of a publicly traded company, so These sort of numbers are public anyway.
What are you doing in terms of revenue at the moment?
Renat Zubairov (11:54.540)
Last year 2018 we did, if I'm not wrong, 2.3 million euro revenue, which is I think $2.5 million.
And year before we did again, if I'm not wrong, around about like 1.2.
And the year before was 500.
So we actually consistently growing 100 plus percent year to year for the last three, four years in a row.
And this gives us actually a very good foundation for the growth and also for the future.
And one other part of I think important KPI for us as we are part of a public trade organization, it's actually all visible.
And the company called Envites, which is a German company, in Germany we are also profitable and cashflow positive since last two years.
If I'm wrong, actually three years already.
Omer (12:48.370)
Okay, great.
So let's kind of talk about like how did you start?
Like where did the idea for this product and business come from?
Renat Zubairov (13:01.090)
As I said, this solution or the problem we are trying to solve with Elastic is not something new.
And me and two of my co founders, we were working in this area for like last six years before founding Elastica or eight years I was working for a company called Talend, which is one of our competitors now.
And one of my co founders, he worked for a large international bank which is also very much deep into the integration, data integration, application integration.
And working there we saw how much challenge the traditional software vendors with the traditional software vendor business model, which was based on perpetual license, which was based on maintenance fees, were not really compatible with the way how modern cloud based software service companies were working and thinking.
And part of the challenge was definitely a technology.
So the software, the service and cloud in general represent a significant technological shift, right?
This lift and shift kind of ways of transforming on premise software into the cloud software just does not work.
And again, that's why Elastic, right?
So this is the unique property of a cloud software for us.
But the biggest challenge is not technological, it's also a business challenge because selling a subscription software shift the risks in the equation between the vendor and the customers significantly.
If we are thinking about perpetual model, I will exaggerate a bit, right?
But customer buys a software, a vendor takes a DVD and throw it over the fence and then saying dear customer, now it's your problem, right?
And when we're using a cloud software or software as a service, the software vendor is responsible and most of the time taking over the responsibility for providing a service and hosting actually the software they created and this gives absolutely new power to the user as a cloud software.
Right?
Because they are no longer, it's no longer only their problem how the software run, how to run the software, how to upgrade the software, how to maintain it and how to monitor it.
But also now it's all now a vendor problem and represent a significant value add for the customers.
Many of our customers nowadays, especially when I'm talking about direct customers, not the software as a service or EM customers, they have a legacy integration platform which they could not effectively host, monitor, maintain, and they see a lot of benefits by moving into the cloud based solution like Elastic IO where the maintenance, upgrades, updates as well as operations of the integrations is actually shared between us and them, not only on their shoulders.
Omer (16:09.590)
Okay, so how did you guys get started?
When you've seen this pain, you're experiencing it.
How did you get started with the product or the business or even deciding that this was a business that you were going to invest your time and money in?
Renat Zubairov (16:23.230)
We realized that this kind of transformation, and the cloud transformation is very significant, is actually a once in a lifetime chance for us to really start something new, to really make the difference and ride this wave of transformation.
And we actually quit our kind of day jobs when actually started even before a little bit.
But then we realized that as an entrepreneurs, you have to jump off the cliff because otherwise people won't take you serious.
Right.
And like I don't believe in entrepreneurship part time, right?
You either in or out, there's nothing in between, unfortunately.
So we jumped and founded Elastic IO.
And the first year we're living from our own savings from friends and family and fools and also some support from the government because in Germany there's definitely very good Social Security and this kind of stuff which are supporting also new businesses initially.
And then after a year we found the first seed investor and grew the company further.
Omer (17:29.780)
And how long did it take you to build the first version of the product or did you build an mvp?
How did you get something to market both in terms of time and did you spend any time talking to potential customers or you guys felt like you knew this well enough, this problem that you were confident to sort of go ahead and just start building the product?
Renat Zubairov (17:50.540)
To be honest, looking back, we spent far too much time doing technology or programming and we should have spent this time speaking to the customers honestly.
And this is a.
Omer (18:03.980)
But that's the fun part, isn't it?
Building the product is the fun part.
Renat Zubairov (18:06.860)
Yeah, and it's, it brings a lot of satisfaction.
Right.
Every time or every day you set your targets.
By the end of the day you achieve your targets most of the time and then you go home happy.
Your, I don't know, unit tests are green and everything is full.
It's good.
And we thought we are like outside of our comfort zone right by, oh wait, we have no employer, we're self employed now.
We founded a new company, but looking back, we just spent too much time doing coding and too few times speaking to people.
However, it somehow worked out after a year with the technology we built.
Actually we launched the first version of Elastica maybe six months after and it started to attract other people's attention.
Many people got excited.
I think it was about the time Zapier guys also started and if this and that was already there.
So many people said, oh, it's like ifttt.
And some people say, oh, okay, it's like Zapier.
And yeah, its comparison was actually pretty much valid.
However, the integration platform as a service was a completely new market and we were actually very lucky with this market as the market just exploded in the following years.
Omer (19:20.430)
So you guys spent about six months building the product and then how did you get the word out?
Like how did you find those initial customers?
Renat Zubairov (19:31.550)
Yeah, one of our co founders was very good at spreading the word of the moss, you know, so it's really talking to people and, and spreading the word about us.
So we managed to participate in a number of events.
You know, I think we were on all startup events around our area and maybe most of Germany.
I should also say it was 2013 and unlike now, the startup ecosystem in Germany was maybe, I don't know, 15% or maybe 20% from the size of today.
So there was not too many events, which is, I think good because otherwise we just spend too much time on events.
Right, but we were participating in many events.
We were also doing exhibitions through kind of startup programs and also online marketing.
Omer (20:18.930)
Okay, wait, let's just talk about the events before you go on about content marketing and Quora.
What was your participate?
You said participating, but what were you actually doing at the event?
Were you guys just turning up and finding people to talk to?
Were you trying to sponsor an event?
Were you getting a booth and trying to get to talk to attendees?
How are you making this work for you?
Renat Zubairov (20:39.210)
I mean, initially when we were self funded, our marketing budget was nearly non existing.
So most of the time there's a few events we made in the first year were kind of startup events where we don't have to pay for a booth, but we Got like presented a booth and one of the largest event we wore was event called sibit.
It used to be a biggest IT exhibition in Germany and Europe actually.
And there we like as a startup we got some free booths, free places to expose ourselves.
We also went to Dublin and basically a couple of events like this without any, let's say financial exposure except maybe traveling tickets and maybe hostel places to sleep.
Omer (21:25.860)
Yeah, actually I was watching some guy on YouTube and I was pretty impressed with some of the youth hostels across Europe, how good they are.
Renat Zubairov (21:33.020)
Oh yes, that's, that's true.
Yeah.
This is sometimes also Dublin.
One was not great, I'm honest.
I will not go there again.
Omer (21:43.660)
Okay, so let's talk about.
We'll get into content marketing.
But you mentioned Quora.
So what were you doing there and how well was that working for you to find customers?
Renat Zubairov (21:53.210)
I think in the first year maybe like a significant two digit number of our referrals came from Quora and if I'm not wrong, maybe just maybe from two.
Three questions in Quora which I answered and I think one of them was the difference between like what is the difference between if sys and that and zapier.
So that was one of the traffic generators for us.
And another especially in the first days there was some significant number of visitors we've got through Hacker News.
I think we made it to the first page of the Hacker News on the weekend.
I didn't remember which was exactly this, but it was pretty significant.
I think we got first few hundreds of signups out of this event.
We tried later to post it and boost it.
Never made it again.
I don't know, maybe Hacker News become some essay and our efforts are so little.
But at the time we just got in the first page and then we wrote one of the blog posts about a particular feature of very, very new technology called Amazon Web Services, especially the cloud front.
And there was very very technical blog post about some, I don't remember HTTP header behavior or something like this.
After that, when one would Google Amazon cloudfront, we were like the link number two after the cloudfront because of this blog post.
Omer (23:28.820)
That's pretty nice.
Renat Zubairov (23:29.620)
Yeah.
And it's I think generated over multiple years, I think maybe like tens of thousands of visitors to our website.
Although potentially not related, but it's kind of technical audience which is also beneficial.
Omer (23:46.060)
I forgot to ask you, were you charging for the product right away?
The six months you built it, you launched, was there a beta period where people were just able to try the product for free before you Charged or did you say from day one we're going to start charging?
Renat Zubairov (23:59.180)
Yeah, we actually started a beta or a private beta.
Initially we were not charging for it.
And we tried to learn from the behavior of the people and retention and other online KPIs, how people use it.
And later on we introduced a freemium plan with freemium model just to realize later again, a filtering power of pricing.
Right.
Because eventually we realized people don't take you serious if your price tag is zero.
Omer (24:36.050)
Well, especially the kind of companies, if you're going after larger companies, I think that's completely valid.
When you launched, did you have a specific customer in mind?
Had you already decided we're going to go after this size kind of company, or were you kind of still fairly open to kind of figuring out who that customer was?
Renat Zubairov (24:58.990)
Initially when we were kind of bootstrapping, let's say initially we were like software developers, right.
We were maybe romantic, I'm sure.
Right.
And we were very much into like the freemium and conversion and like selling something for $20 a month to large number of people.
And this is, I think, a very valid business model which work on some potential scale.
And also the bootstrapped model could potentially work.
However, later we realized that I would say support and handholding efforts for smaller customers or the customers or smaller pricing plans is more or less the same or equal to the support and maintenance efforts for larger customer accounts.
However, the feature set is definitely different.
But then we basically pivoted to more expensive, or let's say more expensive pricing plans, which especially which was bigger kind of customers and bigger kind of companies.
Because obviously I think the sweet spot for software service products, especially the ones which are bigger in the total volume, is definitely not something which is, I know, selling something for five euro a month or five dollar a month, but more in the thousands of dollars.
ARR.
Omer (26:23.390)
How do customers find you today?
Is there still a lot of inbound marketing that's helping you generate leads?
Renat Zubairov (26:31.240)
Yes, the inbound channel is, I think over the last years the most reliable channel for us, partially because of the market.
As I said, we were very lucky to be in this market.
We were very lucky to be in the early phase of this market.
So the interest to software as a service integration platform or integration platform as a service, grew significantly.
Like when we're speaking to analysts, right?
They say a previous generation of our software, of our like class of software, which is enterprise service bus, is a saturated market.
So every customer has at least one or more enterprise service buses already.
So the new growth of potentially potential companies in this market is through replacement of a competitor.
While for an iPass, especially in the last few years it was like explosive growth of over 80% per year of a market expansion market size, which led to the fact that we have a lot of competitors just by the number and the market consolidation is in progress, but not yet there.
But that was a lot of interest from potential customers.
Switching from the old, let's say legacy way to do it to more cloud way to do this.
Omer (27:51.060)
You also do some cold emailing and cold calling to drive sales.
Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Like how much do you do and how well does that work?
Renat Zubairov (28:04.900)
To be honest, it didn't work that well.
Although initially I think like two years ago it worked better than later.
So in the last year we as I think many people in the industry there is a very nice book called Producible Revenue.
Unfortunately the the name of the authors I forgot already but it gives a very interesting framework of working and one thing I didn't realize when I was reading this book is that when this book is published then basically this is a method which everyone else will also use, right?
So the especially in the area of marketing, once people start speaking about the marketing way to generate leads, this way of generating leads will not work anymore because it's already too late.
And initially the email, cold email was working pretty okay I would say and cold calling.
But what we have witnessed that the cost of lead acquisition or generation of a lead went significantly up over the last couple of years there.
So we starting from next year we will not focus or significantly decrease the number of cold calls and cold email campaign we will do.
Omer (29:21.100)
And then did you do any paid ads, AdWords, LinkedIn ads, anything like that?
Renat Zubairov (29:27.580)
Yes.
Oh, that was a waste of time and money to be honest.
Maybe we were doing them wrong.
I could not exclude this.
We were not bigger company and we have only that much of resources.
But at the same time the bidding structure of AdWords, which is excellent decision for Google, right?
But maybe not as great for everyone else, in combination with a higher number of bigger competitors in the market drove the cost per click to area where it's very hard to justify compared to other channels.
So we are not doing AdWords anymore.
We did AdWords, we did LinkedIn campaigns with Facebook, we didn't.
We did Twitter campaigns and unfortunately we were not able to generate a compelling lead acquisition cost there through this channel.
Omer (30:23.450)
So there's a distinction in terms of your customers and I want to just talk a little bit about that, because you have basically you have like direct customers and then you sort of have a reseller model.
Right.
Is that the right way to think about it?
Renat Zubairov (30:40.390)
Correct.
It's more like an OEM model.
Yes.
Omer (30:44.390)
Okay, okay.
So the direct one is straightforward.
Somebody finds a blog post, arrives at your website, tries the product, gets in touch, et cetera.
Right.
And they start using it to solve their needs.
Talk about this OEM model, like how does that work?
Renat Zubairov (31:00.470)
Oh, the OEM model is actually something we initially didn't heard about.
But after speaking to our customers and also the ecosystem, we realized it's very good, it's huge potential and it's actually working very well for us.
Now we have very big customer names as OEM customers, like one of the biggest telecommunication companies in Europe, German Telekom or Deutsche Telekom, as well as number of others also in US and in the Middle East.
But the typical EM customer for us is actually a software service application.
You could imagine there are big number of software service applications on the market and obviously the cloud lives from low customer acquisition costs and software which in customer perception does not suck.
Right.
I mean it's a software which is easy to use, compelling, understandable and easy to learn.
Right.
Which leads to the fact that many software service applications are focused on particular vertical.
Right.
There is a CRM for link building, there is, I don't know, accounting applications for hair solvents, I don't know.
And very, very specific kind of applications which at the same time help a lot with learning curve of particular areas.
So it's very easy to understand what's going on in particular niche.
If the software service application is niche specific.
But at the same time it means that there are many, many, many software service applications people use.
I will give you an example.
I mean, we're not a big company.
I think in total with elastic IO we are around about like 50, 60 people.
And together with our parent company we're like maybe 200 Roundabout.
But even in our like 5060 people company, we counted recently and we use Roundabout 50 different software service applications.
Which means like every employee have one his own software service application.
And this leads to the fact that every software as a service application now is challenged with a way to provide a consistent business value as a part of a bigger process, as a part of a business process which span across multiple software service applications.
And typical answer to this is when a customer is coming and they ask like, can you work with these guys?
Can you integrate with that application?
Can you integrate with this application?
The typical answer Is yes, of course we can.
Here's an API do it yourself, right?
Which is not particularly easy for the customers because obviously it's just pushing the problem to the customers of integration as well as it's not particularly useful in the sale process because the sale of software service application becomes slower and customer will ask more questions about the API and they need to do a proof of concept and they need to do to find the people who will integrate and so on and so on and so on.
So with OEM offering of Elasticio we actually offer an embedded integration platform which has all applications Elasticio has available for the customers of software service products.
So the answer can you integrate with this or with that?
It's very simple.
Yes we can.
Here, here's a ready made solution.
Just activate it and then it will start working for you and for your customers immediately.
And by this we first of all shortening the sales process, right?
So the answer is very simple.
And second, we make application much stickier.
Like the stickiness of application which is integrated into the customer processes is by factor maybe like five.
I would say in our experience more sticky means the churn will be reduced significantly compared to application which is just standalone and can be replaced anytime.
Omer (35:23.360)
Okay, got it.
So before we started recording, one of the things that you said to me was, hey, you know, when I look back, I feel like we didn't think big enough when we started out.
Yes, tell me more about that.
Renat Zubairov (35:41.930)
When we were starting, it was our first company, it was our first startup, right?
And when people asking us like investors or potential partners, like what is the target size of your market?
We didn't paid too much attention.
We need to know what the target market is.
But we as many people, like we as humans, right?
We have a very, it's very complicated to realize or to imagine a big number, right?
Like it's very hard to imagine or feel how much.
A billion, Bigger than a million.
And for us we didn't have this experience to think big and we weren't really realizing what the potential markets are and what this growth opportunity we had before us, which had potentially some negative effect in our conversations with many people.
And this is something maybe to do with our cultural background.
I'm not originally German, I'm originally coming from Russia, but living in Germany since already 18 years.
And especially in Germany, the people are very risk averse, right?
At the time when we founded Elasticio, it was very complicated to get an access to the capital.
And also the growth models or examples of the significant growth were not there.
In Germany at the time because most of the German companies are middle sized companies built over generations and generations.
And by not thinking big enough to be, I think it was one of the mistakes that we missed some very big opportunities.
Omer (37:32.150)
Okay, that's a good lesson.
Good.
Sort of some reflection to look back.
And I think all of us can sometimes do that.
Right.
Just we've got to challenge ourselves to think a little bigger.
And I've always been kind of blown away by so many founders that I've spoken to.
When on the face of it, you look at the product and you think, okay, that, oh, they're very focused on a very specific hyper targeted market niche.
And you're like, that doesn't look like a huge opportunity.
And then as you sort of start talking to them, you figure out like how well they're doing, how much they've grown the business and how much opportunity there still is.
It's always a constant reminder to me about there's no sort of finite cake that gets smaller with everybody going in.
There's constantly opportunities out there and it's a much healthier way to sort of think about running a business as well.
Renat Zubairov (38:26.740)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
It's not a zero sum game.
Right.
Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, they generating the value is they're not pulling the value from somewhere else, right?
Omer (38:39.540)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
All right, we should wrap up and getting onto the lightning round.
So you're going to get seven fast quick fire questions here.
Are you ready?
Renat Zubairov (38:52.690)
Yeah.
Omer (38:53.650)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Renat Zubairov (38:57.410)
That as an entrepreneur you have to jump off the cliff.
Right.
You have to be committed and you are either in or out.
There's no in between.
Omer (39:06.940)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Renat Zubairov (39:09.660)
The one recent book I read was very nice, called Thinking Slow, Thinking Fast.
It was written by the psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics, which is very unusual for Nobel prize winners.
It's about two kinds of thinking we have in our head which are constantly competing.
And it's about instincts and how actually we think and feel as humans.
Omer (39:40.550)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Renat Zubairov (39:45.270)
I think it's a good extension of the initial quote which I mentioned.
I believe the preservance, persistence and patience, these are the important characteristics of a good founder as well as optimism.
So this combination keeps me up every morning and getting out of the bed.
Omer (40:05.400)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Renat Zubairov (40:09.160)
Initially for me it was a calendar, like Google Calendar.
Like the rule of thumb is everything which Is not in my calendar doesn't exist.
But now all the time to the calendar.
I have a new kind of super tool for me which I use like every day, multiple times.
It's actually a Dropbox paper.
I'm not getting any referrals here, but I just really like the way how they created a tool which is so intuitive and easy for doing meeting notes, meeting minutes to really fix what we discussed.
And I do it for every meeting, for every conversation I have, which sometimes people believe I'm just mad, but I really, really find it useful.
Omer (40:57.580)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Renat Zubairov (41:01.260)
Actually, I'm in the process of rebuilding parts of my house right now and the kind of idea of a smart house or smarter house is very compelling to me right now.
And what would be very interesting for me to dig more about it once I will have more time is really like how this home automation and smart home ecosystem works and why actually there's no clear winners there.
So I could not really understand why there's no like Google does it, Amazon does it, but still there like 55 different standards, like no, no clear winner.
I'm really curious why that doesn't work, but I just don't have time to dig into it.
Omer (41:44.770)
I'm really into a lot of that stuff and every time I buy something I wonder to myself how much more complicated I'm making life.
Because you know, every kind of piece of it's got its own app, it's got its own kind of setup.
It's, you know, just bringing the whole thing together in a way.
At some point you're going to be like, okay, I'll probably have to throw all this away and somebody will come up with this end to end solution which might make sense, but right now it's not there.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Renat Zubairov (42:15.930)
One of the interesting facts that some people know and some people don't know about me is actually the area where I was born and grown up and it's actually very, very far away north in Siberia, in Russian Siberia.
And the particular interesting fact about this place is definitely the temperatures which are there.
I still have lots of friends living there and they really enjoy a bit warmer winters now.
But at the time I was a kid there when it was minus 55 in the winter.
So it's minus 55 Celsius.
Oh my gosh, in the winter then part of the school people could stay home when it's minus 60s and all schools are closed, but only when it's 60.
So when it's minus 58, it's still, oh, my God.
And, yeah, that's basically an interesting.
It's an interesting part of my life.
Omer (43:15.060)
It is, it is.
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Renat Zubairov (43:21.780)
It's actually my kids and family.
I really like to spend time with them.
And sometimes I'm spending maybe less time than I would like to, but I really enjoy spending time with them.
I have three kids.
My son is already 16, and my youngest daughter is actually only 4.
So it's a lot, a lot of fun spending time with them and also see them grow.
And it's a lot of, I'd say, entertainment to talk to them and also to play with them.
It's really amazing.
Omer (43:52.480)
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was my sister, I think, who once said to me, before I had any kids, you know, if sometimes it can feel like 99% of the time, being a parent is, like, really hard.
And sometimes you ask yourself why I did this, and then there could be this 1% moment with your kids that makes up for all of that.
And it made no sense to me at the time, but now as a parent, I totally understand that.
Renat Zubairov (44:17.640)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more on this, actually.
I'm like 4 years old, 10 years old, and 16 years old, so you can already see the pattern here.
When the kids grow up and go to school.
And then we were like, with my wife.
Okay, that's like, the fun part is over.
Maybe we need a new one.
Omer (44:37.810)
Yeah.
Okay, great.
So, Rena, thank you for joining me.
It's been great talking and kind of learning more about Elastic IO.
If people want to find out more or think it might be able to help them, they can go to Elastic IO and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Renat Zubairov (44:55.000)
Oh, so you can just ping me on Twitter with my surname or just drop me a line on Renatelasticio.
Omer (45:02.680)
Awesome.
Thanks again.
It's been a pleasure and I wish you all the best.
Renat Zubairov (45:07.480)
Yeah, thanks, Omer.
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you and looking forward for also your future episodes.
It's really exciting.
Thank you.
Omer (45:17.310)
Yeah, yeah, we did mention that.
That you're actually a listener as well of the show.
Renat Zubairov (45:22.630)
Yeah, I'm really, really pleased to be.
To be here and I will be very proud.
I will show to all my family and kids that's awesome, love.
