Omer (00:11.280)
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 Oleg Campbell, the founder and CEO of Reply IO, a SaaS platform that puts your email outreach on autopilot while keeping it personal.
Oleg is a developer who grew his previous startup from zero to $150,000 a year.
But sales flatlined after that and he couldn't figure out how to keep growing.
He believed that his lack of sales experience was a major factor, so he took a part time sales job where he basically worked for nothing.
It was totally commission based and in the six months that he worked there, he didn't make a single sale.
But he learned a lot about sales and that experience also helped him come up with the idea for Reply.
So he moved back to Ukraine where he was able to cut his living expenses and that allowed him to hire a developer who could work with him on Reply.
And this is when his newfound sales experience really helped him.
Not only was he able to close more sales, but he also understood his target customers, who were mainly salespeople, much better.
And in four years, he's gone from zero to $180,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
We talk about how he acquired his first customers, what he did to grow the business, and we discuss how he's grown a business doing over $2 million a year.
It's a great story with some great lessons and I hope you enjoy it.
Oleg, welcome to the show.
Oleg Campbell (02:02.730)
Hi Omer, thanks for having me.
Omer (02:05.850)
So I'm going to start with my usual icebreaker.
What gets you out of bed every day?
Is there a favorite quote you want to share with us or maybe just in your own words, like, you know what drives you every day?
Oleg Campbell (02:16.090)
Yeah, what drives me, it's building great products.
I want to build great products and maybe more of them.
And the favorite quote?
Just the truth is simple.
The truth is in simplicity.
Omer (02:30.370)
Say that again.
Oleg Campbell (02:31.570)
The truth is simple.
The truth is in simplicity.
Omer (02:36.290)
Nice, I like that.
Why do you like that quote?
Oleg Campbell (02:40.290)
I think when you master your craft, you understand that things are simpler than it is.
So basically, usually when you're learning or just and not expert in some area, you would do a lot things to basically achieve the same result.
You could do with little.
And this understanding only comes with experience and at the end you understand that everything is simple.
Yeah.
Omer (03:08.890)
All right, so let's talk about Reply.
Can you tell us in your own words what does the product do?
Like what is, what's the problem you're trying to solve and who are your target customers?
Oleg Campbell (03:21.490)
Reply is a sales acceleration platform.
So basically what reply do is help sales people automate the day to day routine task.
The main thing the product do right now is automate sales outreach.
So basically reply allows to get in touch with your potential customers or even your inbox inbound leads in semi automated way.
A semi automated way means that reply could send emails on your behalf as well follow ups.
If there is no reply until the reply gets received and all the emails sent they look like as they have been sent manually.
So we directly collect connect to your email account and for the end user it looks like sales rep message him and doing all the follow ups.
Omer (04:11.630)
Cool.
And who are your target customers?
Who's kind of like the ideal user for reply?
I know you talked about salespeople, but it kind of seems broader than that.
Oleg Campbell (04:19.790)
It is salespeople.
But funny thing, when we went into this space we actually found out that before there was no system for automating personal emails, there was a lot of marketing automation systems that can automate marketing emails.
So basically no newsletter emails.
But we release reply for sales.
But soon after we find that many other target audiences use our product.
So we've seen people using it for account management.
So basically talking to existing customers on a personal level at scale recruiters use reply to outreach potential candidates and then business development people using to reach out to partners.
I've been using it to reach out and get meetings books with investors as well.
Another one like huge use case, it's journalist outreach.
So different startups reaching out to journalists through deploy.
Omer (05:22.870)
Got it.
So you launched the company in I believe it was in 2014, right?
Oleg Campbell (05:30.230)
That's correct.
And 2015 we started development and 2015 we launched the product.
Omer (05:36.710)
And where did the idea come from?
How did you come up with this idea?
Oleg Campbell (05:40.310)
The idea came from me being curious to understand what sales is about.
I had previous startup and where I was working as a developer and as well I did all the marketing for the startup.
But one thing I didn't understand or we didn't understand in a startup, that's how we should do sale.
We even had budget to hire salespeople but we don't know what to do.
So basically I understood that not only myself but probably a lot of people, a lot of developers, entrepreneurs have no idea what sales is about and I wanted to figure out.
So I started working as a sales rep for One company that was a pure commission beast and I would even say it was kind of part time job but I was working there for six months.
I learned everything about sales.
I read all this latest materials, materials on sales.
I did a lot of sales conversations actually didn't sell anything but I did learn, did learn a lot.
And I learned and I was able to find a thing that I was missing in my process and I wasn't able to find any good solution for my needs and decided to build the tool that I would use.
Omer (06:58.350)
So you were a developer doing marketing.
Oleg Campbell (07:00.990)
Yeah.
Omer (07:02.190)
What a combination.
Oleg Campbell (07:03.950)
Yeah.
Omer (07:06.110)
Why did you decide to go and get this basically almost go and work for.
You were working for free for six months because you didn't sell anything and
Oleg Campbell (07:13.230)
you were commission based on.
Omer (07:15.080)
Why did you decide to do that?
Like what was the problem like with this previous startup?
Was it just because look, there's a big sales problem here.
Did that startup fail and you felt like okay, before I go and do something else I need to kind of understand sales.
Like what was the driver to go and spend those six months learning sales?
Oleg Campbell (07:32.120)
On that first startup we reached some point, I think it was 150k in annual revenue and it was just three of us.
So that's a decent money to live.
Actually even there was two founders and one employee and I would say the startup was doing okay.
I could have good lifestyle, I don't need to work and I may satisfy on that, but I didn't want to satisfy.
And for a year I was trying to break the 150k kind of mark and was not able to do it.
So I decided that it's the time probably to put this project on autopilot and go and build one that will allow me to get to this milestone and 1 million annual revenue.
So basically since I had money flowing from this startup that was on autopilot, I decided I didn't really need any salary and I thought it will be just easy way for me to to find a startup and just suggest mission based work for them and as well for them.
There was a no brainer to start working with me since that will cost nothing and I could bring some sales to them.
Omer (08:50.400)
So when you took this sales job, you didn't take it to go and find an idea for a startup, you did it because you wanted to learn sales.
So once you figured out what that next idea was, you were going to do a better job at breaking the $150,000 a year.
Oleg Campbell (09:04.970)
Yeah, that's right.
So I think first thing I wanted to understand what a sales is about.
And as well, I was thinking, thinking to build a product in sales niche.
So I had this idea again, if I find idea to build some product there, instead of just building sales product right away, I thought I want to learn sales and understand it first.
And the best way is not by books but by starting doing stuff.
Omer (09:32.940)
Okay, so you kind of found this gap from your own experience of being in sales and that's how you kind of came up with the idea for reply.
What did you do?
So once you decided to build the product, what was kind of like the vision for the product in those early days?
Oleg Campbell (09:54.140)
The first thing what I did, I was at that time at San Francisco.
So I flew back to Ukraine where living cost is much, much cheaper.
And I cut my salary and was able to hire one senior developer out of my salary.
So that's how we get started.
Myself and one senior developer myself doing business development, just building website, kind of doing all this marketing and customer development stuff and developer obviously building product as well.
I was doing Joa ux, all the kind of design part.
That's how it gets started.
Omer (10:32.930)
How long did you guys work on that product before you shipped the first version?
Oleg Campbell (10:37.250)
I wanted to build the first version, first better version and get first money as soon as possible.
So for me it was kind of as I would say, race or game.
I didn't want to spend years and then get first money.
So it took us four months to build beta version and get first customer and then it took us another six months to release like release version.
And after that we launched on the product hunt and things start picking up in terms of getting and getting more customers.
Omer (11:11.900)
Before you kind of move back to Ukraine and kind of cut your salary to hire this developer, did you do any kind of validation?
Did you go out and talk to potential customers to figure out if this was a good idea or not?
Oleg Campbell (11:27.430)
Not really.
So what I thought, I understand, this is a great idea.
And I hired a developer, he started building and the same time I started doing customer development.
And then while I was doing customer development, if I would find out that this idea is nonsense and I would pivot.
So basically I wouldn't ask do you need this?
And if they say no, I would say, sorry, if I ask do you need this?
They would reply, no, I'll say, but what do you need?
So I would learn what they need and then pivot my development.
Omer (12:06.320)
That sounds to me like the idea that you had initially that you wanted to build versus what you ended up building based on Those customer development interviews was, was different.
How did the product change over that time?
Oleg Campbell (12:20.090)
No, I think it was quite the same.
But initially I wanted to do like really a lot of different, different stuff.
I wanted to add social, I wanted to add Twitter, etc.
LinkedIn.
But what do we find out during all this work?
That people are just did emails and good with emails and we have a long way to go with emails.
So we kind of stayed with emails for a long time.
Recently, not recently we added phone calls and only right now we want to add different messaging channels.
Then I believe that's the future.
So basically idea stayed the same.
Omer (13:01.720)
So four months you build the product and you said that's how long it took you to get your first customer.
Was that customer one of the people that you had interviewed when you were going out and talking to prospective customers?
Oleg Campbell (13:14.040)
Not no.
So because that customer came for Quora.
Omer (13:18.340)
Okay.
And so I want to talk about that, but I was just curious of the people that you interviewed when you were doing the customer development, did any of them become customers?
Oleg Campbell (13:27.140)
I don't really remember from what I know, no.
But I found my co founder like doing this customer development.
So I was talking to a lot sales rep and one of them I really liked in terms of experience and knowledge.
So I ended up even with something bigger than just a customer.
So that was useful.
Omer (13:48.980)
Okay, so tell me about Quora and how you found that first customer.
Oleg Campbell (13:52.660)
So Quora.
Actually I would recommend Quora to any startup.
It's the best way to start.
Obviously I did it my first startup and with the second, basically you would go on Quora and find questions that people would ask which is related to what you do and would answer that question.
And then Sansquare has a really good big audience and it's ranking high.
The questions from Queer ranking high on Google, the questions get a lot of traffic and a lot of people would use the questions and obviously your answer.
And that's how it gets started.
And as well, we were using a small trick.
So sometimes you could even ask a question by yourself from different account or anonymously and write a reply.
And then in two weeks, if you search by keywords in your question, you would find out you being like the core answer would be on the top of Google.
That's a good way even to get some SEO ranking app for your kind of product, not directly through your website, but through Quora questions, you were kind
Omer (15:10.270)
of going in anonymously, asking the questions and then logging in and answering the question.
Oleg Campbell (15:15.430)
Yeah, there was just few of them but that's could, could and people.
Right now, I would say right now, Quora went a long way.
And yeah, there was a lot of different, different tricks.
Omer (15:26.710)
Now were you kind of mentioning the product when you were answering those questions or, or were people just kind of finding a link in your profile or something and coming that way?
Oleg Campbell (15:37.060)
Initially we didn't have even product to show.
So basically there was a landing page that shows how product work and link for the demo.
And basically someone who's interested would leave the email and I would get in touch with him.
I will set up a call and show the daily versions that we had.
And if someone who needs a product and ready to work with early startup, and there was a good number of those people, they would basically sign up and the initial price was super low.
And as well for initial first customers, we were doing a lot of customization.
So for them it was as well win since they know that they can get a lot of for cheap and we customize, etc.
Omer (16:28.750)
You mentioned pricing there.
Like, do you remember what you were charging those early customers?
Oleg Campbell (16:33.230)
Right away we set the price to be $70 per user, but for these early customers I think we were.
Yeah, we cut price to like 50.
And maybe there was a couple customers that I sell even for $20 for a few seats.
But the price, I mean that's good to do probably maybe one or two first months when your customers actually your free QA team since had a lot of bugs and we didn't have a QA team and most of bugs were reported by our customers.
Omer (17:05.760)
And I guess at that stage, you know, it's still kind of a bit of validation going on there.
Right.
So even if someone is willing to pay you $20 per user, that's a good sign that you're headed in the right direction.
Oleg Campbell (17:17.600)
Yeah, that's right.
Omer (17:19.560)
Okay, so you've built the product.
You said it took another six months to kind of get the release version.
You're getting some leads coming through Quora now.
Content marketing was kind of a big component as well in terms of driving growth, right?
Oleg Campbell (17:38.600)
Yep.
But I think even before we started doing content marketing, the first thing we did, and I want to share the.
That was launched on a product hunt.
So I could say after product hunt things did really started picking up for us.
When we launched on the product hunt, we ended up being top two in all day and out of product hand we got 600 registrations during two days in first two days.
And yeah, basically that's how we got market to know about us.
And send them somehow.
I even say would probably if would not.
Even if we would not do even content creation, customers would come, they would come through word of mouth, that would come from someone mentioning us somewhere, etc.
And one good tip, before launching your product or product hand, you could test the audience by launching some free product like we did.
So first before launching our full featured product, we did some small free product that we launched in the product hunt.
And that's actually did for us really good job.
Since as a company we were featured like twice and got twice more traffic.
And I've seen right now as right now as well, a lot of startups would come up with a smart brilliant free tools and would publish them on qua.
And those tools would get a lot, a lot of applause, maybe even more than if they would just publish their main product.
But that indirectly again goes to their main product.
Omer (19:12.810)
What was the tool that you, you kind of initially offered to get on the radar?
Oleg Campbell (19:17.290)
So the tool called Name to Email.
So that's the tool we actually create over weekend.
It's a simple plugin, but really I think good idea.
And to validate that right now we have 20,000 users using this tool.
It's a Chrome plugin and we published launch on the product hand.
We got 500 upvotes and interesting team.
I think it was just how to see by accident we have someone from Business Insider noticed the tool and they posted article on Business Insider and as well the article on Business Insider get another 10,000 views.
I thought I believe we get few thousand installs of our Chrome plugin right away.
And again and when you install Chrome plugin it's inside of it says powered by reply.
So people would know our brand or could check it.
Omer (20:12.220)
Yeah, I mean that's a smart strategy.
I've seen a few, few companies do that and if you get it right, then it's a great way to really get a broad reach across.
Because if the tool is serving a valuable purpose, solving a useful problem, there's a certain sense of virality that's kind of naturally built into something like that.
Oleg Campbell (20:35.190)
Yeah, that's correct.
And as well, what I've seen is sometimes if you have some boring product you want a hundred on the market, you will not have much success launching a product hunt.
But what you can do, you can release some one fun feature and launch your product.
Basically launch this feature or position this feature as a, as a product.
And I've seen company been doing that as well and working well.
Omer (20:59.620)
Yeah, interesting.
Okay, so product hunt that got you the 600 signups in two days.
So now that sales funnel is starting to fill up pretty quickly with new leads.
And then we talked a little bit about content.
So tell me about what you did around content to.
To start generating more traffic.
Oleg Campbell (21:21.830)
We would write for our blog and as well I had a.
At the time I had a portal called sales hacking or sales for hackers.
I don't remember the name.
And I would write some really cool sales hacks that I was finding that I was using and posting it there.
It actually did get some traffic and I'm really sorry that I didn't.
We didn't keep up with this post portal.
Eventually we shoot that down since I didn't have just focus for it.
But basically people would and how marketing work.
For example, once I had a call with customer and basically he's telling that first he saw a reply on the product hunt, then he saw our core article and then he find the sales tools and after that he decided to sign up.
He seen that we're doing a lot of different stuff and we looks like an expert.
So basically by doing this content or product hunt launch we had a kind of few touches with this potential customer audio.
That's how content would work.
After that we would create again some useful content.
I was sharing my experience.
I was sharing my experience reaching out to some sales leaders getting like 37% reply rate which is huge.
And I would share them on some niche sites.
There was a site called closing Call.
There was a list, there was a rating ranking of good sales article.
There was inbound growth hackers.
So those community where you could kind of post content and people could find.
Omer (22:55.580)
Got it.
You said it was a portal.
What do you mean by that portal?
Oleg Campbell (22:59.940)
I mean basically I would say that it was just a blog.
Blog on sales hackers.
Okay.
Okay, cool.
One thing I just want to mention that's really small that again we have the over 600 signups and then we connect to all the 600 signups.
So we set up replies that way that if someone sign up for reply reply would start emailing those customers.
So basically we were using our own system reaching out and getting on a call with our trial leads.
So that's as well helped us a lot.
And right now we have 15% trial to customer rate.
And that's as well because of we do follow up with all leads and we do get on a call with people who is open for that does
Omer (23:47.910)
reply help me build the list of prospects or does reply make sense for me to use once I Already have an email list.
Oleg Campbell (23:57.350)
We can help you build a list.
Basically we have marketplace inside of our platform.
The marketplace adds list of different different partners or just sales tools that you could use to find contacts.
We used to have a direct integration with one of these partners.
It didn't work well so we shut them down.
But what we think about is probably in the next few months we'll have another integration and will with different partner and will again allow you to search contacts even inside of reply.
But from what I suggest right now, since finding leads it's really really specific to for different people, for different companies.
There is no good solution for everyone.
So the best way is go to marketplaces we have or you can find any list online with different sales tools and find a sales like lead generation tools and find what database gives you the best results.
Omer (25:00.190)
I'm also curious like when an email gets sent out from reply you said that you can integrate it with your own mail system.
So if I'm using Gmail or G suite I could integrate that with reply when that email is sent out.
How easy is it to tell if that's I actually sent that email or it's in your almost like a semi automated email.
Like does it have the, you know, the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email?
Is that required?
You know, are there any other sort of giveaways that this came from a system as opposed to a person?
Oleg Campbell (25:37.650)
There is a way to set up reply in that way in a way that there will be no opt out link in text.
So it will look like it has been sent by you.
But we'd recommend to use opt out links and all these techniques for outbound emails.
But if you send inbound emails to your target audience again you could remove the opt out link.
So again it will be looking as someone sent manually and myself a few times I've been answering to emails thinking that it was sent personal to me.
But actually it was sent by reply.
And then people were telling me there is no way to see it.
And as well what we have, what we have, we have a feature again if you still want to be compliant with can spam act and you send outbound emails or even inbound usually in text, you would say if you don't want to hear from me anymore, just let me know.
You could say it anywhere.
And then in our system we have a mechanism to detect unsubscribe or opt out requests.
So we actually have machine learning to detect that.
If we detect someone send unsubscribe Stop anything like that.
We'll stop sending emails to this person.
So basically can spam act say that you need to provide a mean to receiver to unsubscribe and this mean could be a link but it could be just you mentioning if you don't want to hear from me anymore just let me know and then our system would detect that and stop prospect automatically.
Omer (27:10.800)
Oh that's good.
So it doesn't necessarily have to.
You can still be can spam compliant but you don't necessarily have to have a hyperlink in the email which takes unsubscribe as long as you have a statement in there which says let me know whatever as you said and they reply.
You can kind of auto unsubscribe them that way.
Oleg Campbell (27:30.830)
Yeah, that's right.
And as well what I've seen Gmail has right now most of signature most emails what I receive I don't really read the signature or it get collapsed.
Right.
So if you add their opt out link many people would not see it.
Omer (27:46.530)
You talked about the machine learning and there and that picks it up.
So I mean there are some obvious things like if someone says unsubscribe they reply with the word unsubscribe.
Right.
That's a basic scenario.
But what if someone says, you know they reply saying I'm not interested or don't email me again or F off.
Do you pick up those kinds of things as well?
Oleg Campbell (28:06.450)
Yeah, don't email me again.
We will definitely pick that up if I'm not interested that probably we will not be able to pick that up since we have a category said not interested and basically you will classify it differently.
They need explicitly probably tell it.
I think with this machine learning mechanism that could be errors so that's why again used should be used accurately.
Omer (28:33.170)
Right, Right.
I guess you have to be careful with that otherwise you could get a lot of.
You could easily get a lot of false positives and start unsubscribing.
Oleg Campbell (28:40.530)
Yeah but again mostly people don't worry about that.
They will just say yeah just leave me alone with stuff that we would recognize that as do not contact intent.
Omer (28:54.210)
Now another kind of aspect of kind of any SaaS business is if you're offering free trials is converting those free trials into paying customers.
And when we were chatting you had mentioned that your support team has played a big role in helping to drive up those conversions from free trial to paid customer.
Can you tell us about that?
How does that work?
Oleg Campbell (29:24.620)
That's a good question.
So we use intercom chart on our Inside of our application on our website and we were able to achieve one minute medium response time.
Which means 80% of our requests get answered in less than one minute.
There was 20% of them could be answered.
It could take much longer.
For example, if someone emailed at night.
But most of them we answer really quick and that gets noticed by customers.
First of all, again, they will be able to understand system better or just solve the problems.
So mostly they email to support if they stuck somewhere.
Basically if we help them solve them problem and use system, obviously they will convert better as opposed they didn't understand something and didn't just leave another thing what we do, our customer support would look what kind of customer it is.
And if you see it's coming from some company like in a bigger size, let's say 50 plus people just by domain, it's easy to check.
The support agent will suggest demo support agent will answer question as usually and then mention that we could personal demo for him and his team that's supporting helping us drive demos.
So demos drive more conversions.
Omer (30:49.190)
So it just sounds like one of the things that you guys did was basically whoever was signing up for a trial, you were kind of giving them support as if they were a paying customer.
Oleg Campbell (30:59.690)
Yeah, that's right.
Omer (31:01.530)
What is your conversion rate like typically?
Like what percentage of trials convert into a paying customer?
Oleg Campbell (31:08.490)
We have 15% trial to customer conversion rate.
And this being for a while we have this number that's pretty decent.
That's really good.
And I think as well, I think it's more than industry average since we try to talk and open to talk to each customer who signed up again in future it may change me.
You may want to talk only to bigger customers, but now we have resources to actually talk to everyone and want to be that open and transparent for everyone.
And sometimes we get like really good voice on that when people coming to us and seeing that get turned down by some of our bigger competitors since they are too small for them and we understand probably will not make a lot of money on these customers and probably they turn them down since it's some small fish.
But again we want to work with them mainly for this reputation.
I think right now word of mouth, I think at the end it pay offs.
Omer (32:06.170)
Okay, so in terms of revenue, what are you guys doing?
Oleg Campbell (32:08.050)
Right now we're at 180k in the monthly revenue, so getting slowly to 200k.
And I said slowly since right now we see our business growing a bit slower that I as a founder would want.
It's steady it's growing, but probably a bit slower than I would want and expect.
And I think there's a lot of this because I believe the market has a lot of.
Already have a lot of tools similar to what we have.
And so market gets some penetration or some stabilized a bit.
So the growth now we have grows, but it's more stable or more slower than it was before.
Omer (32:49.510)
But it's still like, I mean, in terms of where you started, like you were saying, hey, I've got a business that I can't get more than $150,000 a year.
And there was three of you, right, when you were doing that?
Oleg Campbell (33:02.230)
Yeah, actually, yeah, I could say three of us.
Yeah.
Two founders and just one developers as we hired.
Omer (33:10.400)
Yeah.
And now I guess what, within four years you've gone to $180,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
So you're, you're already at what, over $2 million a year.
That in itself is a, is a great story, but I know that it hasn't all been smooth sailing.
Right.
I mean like you've had your own with the ups, you've had your downs as well.
So if you kind of look back at the last few years, what do you wish you'd done differently in terms of business?
Oleg Campbell (33:43.920)
It's hard to see once again, if something is not working, we try to recognize it quickly fix and just find another thing to do.
And again, just moving fast and executing solves a lot of problems.
I think one learning thing that I had from last few years is not forgetting about work life balance.
So I think many and a lot of entrepreneurs had an experience when they would burn out or had some health issues because they were working too much.
Similar thing did happen to me around two years ago.
So basically I stopped doing sport or lost a bit of my balance in terms of sport and meals and sleep and working a lot and as well spacing out on every and each small thing.
And then there was a time I had a too many trips again was trying to do everything, having like three or four trips, trips at all.
So I wasn't on a flight, on a plane for a few days at all.
And then in the morning I would coming for another meeting in another city.
I would not eat much or not eat at all, drink few times of coffee.
And then all of a sudden I was walking on the street and feeling like, like I could lose conscious and my pleasure went up and I had no idea what's going on with me.
I didn't lose the conscious, which is good thing.
I went to the hospital.
But basically what I had here is just.
I know how to call it.
It's error in my body.
Right.
Because of the stress and all the things where I did put my body.
So after that good learning point for me that I don't need to stress on business where and as well I need to have a work life balance and as well.
And stress appeared because once you have a startup, something small, it's fun, you have nothing to lose.
But once you start hiring people, you think things picking up, you see you have revenue growing.
I think at the time we were over 50k in MMR and then I would start to worry that we could lose something that Gmail could ban us since we or we have some troubles with emails.
So I was worrying too much and I think that's kind of added to that.
Omer (36:08.500)
Yeah, I mean I don't think that's an uncommon thing in terms of entrepreneurs and you get to a stage where you can easily think about nothing but the business and it's very hard to shut your mind off and it's easy to sort of get into a situation where you're so immersed or in flow with what you're doing that you forget to eat.
But yeah, I mean luckily it didn't turn into anything serious with you but it was probably an important wake up call or a warning sign that hey, something's got to change.
Oleg Campbell (36:42.550)
I think it's a good.
Yeah, I think I'm looking for it as a good sign.
So if your mind or yourself can tell yourself to stop or slow down the body will tell you.
So better.
Omer (36:55.350)
Right.
Oleg Campbell (36:55.750)
Wait till that point.
Omer (36:58.150)
I mean talk about responsibility.
So 2 million a year revenue and then you have.
I think it was.
You said 45 people.
Oleg Campbell (37:04.870)
Yeah, we have team of 45 right now.
Omer (37:08.190)
Are they all in Ukraine or do you have some in San Francisco?
Oleg Campbell (37:11.550)
They're mostly in Ukraine and we have actually office in Toronto.
So we have eight people in Toronto right now.
Omer (37:19.070)
Got it?
Yeah.
Cool.
Okay, well it's time for the lightning round.
So I'm going to ask you seven questions.
It's a quick fire round.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Oleg Campbell (37:31.740)
Okay, ready?
Omer (37:33.020)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Oleg Campbell (37:37.500)
If you want to become someone or achieve something, talk to someone who is already there.
Omer (37:43.740)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Oleg Campbell (37:47.500)
I would recommend a book of Richard Branson Losing my Virginity.
It's a book on business but you will read it as a greatest adventure book.
Omer (37:59.720)
I love Branson.
Great recommendation.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Oleg Campbell (38:08.920)
Persistence.
Sure.
Omer (38:11.320)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Oleg Campbell (38:15.640)
More habit.
Right now?
Right now I start to go sleep at 10pm and wake up at 6.
And being consistent with that, it's helps a lot.
Omer (38:25.540)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Oleg Campbell (38:30.020)
I probably would do something that is not online, not software with hardware.
Hard to say right now.
Omer (38:38.820)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Oleg Campbell (38:42.740)
I was once fired from a job actually, when I'm working as a developer in Canada, since I was working on my first startup during some working hours.
Omer (38:53.800)
And you got busted?
Oleg Campbell (38:55.000)
Yeah, a few times.
Omer (38:57.800)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Oleg Campbell (39:02.040)
I think it's sport.
And recently I learned to do kite surfing.
Omer (39:06.920)
Kite surfing?
Oleg Campbell (39:07.840)
Yeah.
Like Branson?
Omer (39:10.040)
Yeah, like Brighton.
So what's next?
Looking for an island in the Caribbean maybe?
Oleg Campbell (39:15.000)
Yeah.
Omer (39:18.280)
Awesome.
Oleg Campbell (39:19.580)
Cool.
Omer (39:19.780)
Oleg, it's great to chat again.
This is something that we've been trying to set up for a while, so it's great to have you here and for you to share your story.
Now if people want to find out more about reply, they can go to Reply IO and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Oleg Campbell (39:40.860)
They could email me.
It's Oleg Reply IO.
Omer (39:45.350)
Awesome.
Cool.
Well, stay healthy.
I wish you all the best and good luck in the future.
Oleg Campbell (39:51.910)
Yeah, thank you Omer.
It was my pleasure to be here with you.
Cheers.
