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Discover the remarkable stories behind successful startups on 'How I Became...'.
Join me, Kelly Yefet, as we dive into the journeys of extraordinary founders, marketers, investors, and industry experts. Uncover the breakthrough moments, challenges, and strategies that propelled their ventures to greatness.
Each episode delivers inspiring narratives and practical insights for entrepreneurs of all stages. Get ready to be captivated by the untold tales of innovation, resilience, and triumph in the world of startups. Tune in now to fuel your own entrepreneurial journey.
Interested in marketing and growth support for your business? https://www.kellyyefetconsulting.com/
Kelly Yefet (00:00.26)
just doing this proactively. But thank you so much Vitali for joining. I know like we struggled to get some time on the calendar, but I'm happy we could make this work. I'm excited to hear your story. I did like a little bit of digging, but I'm really excited to jump into this with you. I'm just turning my phone on silent because otherwise work will bug me.
Vitalii Dodonov (00:17.61)
Thank you.
Kelly Yefet (00:27.748)
And you saw the podcast question, so you have an idea of what we'll talk about. But generally, I try to make it flow and we'll just dig into areas that I think are interesting. And if there's something that you are passionate about talking about, we can just dig into that a little bit more. I'm going to kick it off with just a bit of an introduction to you and a little paragraph that I wrote. I don't know if you saw it in that in our.
Vitalii Dodonov (00:43.182)
Okay.
Kelly Yefet (00:57.656)
um, doc together, but I'll read that out and then we can get the ball rolling. I don't release it as full video, um, but I do do some marketing. So I'll use some of the clips if that's okay with you.
Cool, other than that, you ready to get going?
Vitalii Dodonov (01:16.014)
Let's go.
Kelly Yefet (01:19.492)
Today, I am welcoming Vitaly Dodonov, the co -founder and head of engineering at Stan. Originally from Russia, Vitaly moved to Canada in just 2014, bringing his expertise from Deloitte and eBay to the world of entrepreneurship. With more than 20 ,000 global customers earning over 50 million annually, Stan is revolutionizing the way creators monetize their money, monetizing their work.
Vitali, a first generation immigrant is passionate about empowering people to work for themselves. Join us today for a conversation around the success behind Stand and explore the journey of its co -founder Vitali. So Vitali, thank you so much for coming on the pod today. I'm really excited to jump into the story of you and your business. And I think the strongest place and the place that makes the most sense to start is just a background on yourself and...
How did you get to where you are now? And maybe a quick background on Stan as well.
Vitalii Dodonov (02:19.726)
Uh, okay. Let's, uh, uh, let's maybe start with the time I moved to Canada and, uh, I'll go over high level and then we can dive into, uh, areas that might sound interesting. So I came, um, uh, I came to Canada when I was 18 for university. Um, the hardest thing that I've done in life by a long shot so far was actually learning English. Uh, I realized that I had an opportunity to go abroad and, uh, the last grade of school, uh, back in Russia and there was only half.
Kelly Yefet (02:29.284)
Okay.
Vitalii Dodonov (02:48.526)
a year left before I could pass the exam. So I was in a very expedited fashion in learning the language I didn't speak at the time. There were only three colleges, not even universities in Canada, that were accepting students with such a low score in English as mine. But eventually things kind of worked out and I got accepted into the University of Alberta, got an engineering degree, graduated, got a new grad job at Deloitte, later moved to eBay. Interesting corporate journeys.
But fundamentally what I think is really important or what's most correlated to my success is all the work that I've been doing outside of work. One of the things that's primary is, you know, you come in, you do the work that you're expected to, and then all the outside of work hours, you just work on yourself. And for the three years that I've been in corporate, I spent working on my own ideas and learning to code and trying to come up with something that would resonate in something that would eventually be called entrepreneurship.
Becoming an entrepreneur is like starting a business is not something that, you know, when you go through the journey, you think about. But one of the things that I wanted to do as a kid is just to be working on something of my own, whatever shape it takes. And three years into trying different things and like essentially building up my skills that I've landed on an idea around helping creators monetize. I worked specifically with finance creators at the time. And I built a platform that few customers were making a few thousand dollars per month on.
And one of my early customers actually came to me one day, we did a user interview with him and said, hey, I know this other person, John, who is currently fundraising and he is looking for a co -founder. He's working on the platform called Stan. Do you want to chat with him? And I said, sure, why not? And then we got on a call, spent about a month founder dating and realized that we have the same vision for the future and decided to build this company, Stan, together. And...
three years fast forward, I still edit.
Kelly Yefet (04:47.972)
amazing journey. You totally glossed over the fact that you learned English, came to Canada, and then got an engineering degree. Like, you say it in one sentence, and yet I'm sure that that was a very challenging experience. How was that? How was learning English and why engineering?
Vitalii Dodonov (05:09.518)
Um, so the fact that it was engineering made it easier on learning English because like math heavy programs make it, you know, numbers are numbers on languages language. So that was a little bit of a, uh, of help. Um,
Vitalii Dodonov (05:25.582)
I forgot your question. Can you please ask that again?
Kelly Yefet (05:27.236)
I was just asking, that's okay. I think I wanna understand a little bit of the journey from Russia to Canada, learning English. I think in the back of your head, you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur, but you chose engineering. Was that strategic? Did you think that choosing an undergrad in engineering would help you propel some sort of entrepreneurship journey down the line?
Vitalii Dodonov (05:54.702)
So the story there and for me choosing the program comes from when my dad and I were kind of exploring what I should be doing with my life. What I kind of was set on is that I want to make it big and I want it to be successful one way or another. So the vision of, you know, working for yourself eventually was kind of there. But I'm also coming from a very kind of normal family where you need to work to make a living and kind of very traditional mindset.
And my debt position at the time where it's much easier for you to learn a tangible skill that you can make sustainable income with and then translate into business as opposed to learn business, for example, and then not have a tangible skill because business is very opportunistic. It's kind of into management right away, but you can't do anything actual unless you invest into learning it. So to me, it was a step -by -step process where it's like, okay, let's first, you know,
Kelly Yefet (06:38.86)
interesting.
Vitalii Dodonov (06:50.092)
establish the first base and learn how to make money fundamentally and then grow from there. And that seems to be kind of a more reliable bet. So that's, that's why engineering. The second piece is kind of naturally physics. Math is something that I naturally gravitated towards. So decided to start there because it was easier as well.
Kelly Yefet (07:08.868)
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, right off the bat, one of the themes that I'm hearing from you and this I hear throughout, you know, every entrepreneur story is being able to take on risk. And the fact that you just moved to Canada, learned a new language, meant from the get -go that you are open to taking on risk, which in entrepreneurship you have to be OK with. So let's talk a little bit about.
You did your founder dating, you guys figured out, okay, maybe we want to build something together. What did that look like in the early days of Stan and what was your role in the business from the get go?
Vitalii Dodonov (07:53.258)
So between my co -founder, John and I, essentially the role was he was the business creative visionary co -founder and my role was engineering a product. What I am genuinely passionate about is building. I like building systems when it comes to software technology. I like building systems when it comes to building a company. A lot of internal leadership is kind of within my area of passion. So we kind of split it up.
like this. So, John was like, hey, let me focus on go to market and figure out where the customers are coming from. That's his unique ability, Strong Suit. And my unique ability and Strong Suit is to build a high quality product very, very fast. One of the big reasons why Stan is as successful today is because in my personal opinion, I have the best engineering team in the world and the amount of things that we can ship per day, per week, per month is just unmatched. And that made all the difference.
Um, one, uh, interesting, uh, insight I wanted to share with you, uh, on, on the notion of taking risks and, um, how, you know, people approach thinking about entrepreneurship. That's something I've learned from actually Alex Hermoso in one of his YouTube videos. Uh, he talked about, you know, people who are generally tends to fail. They don't understand the risk reward profile and they tend to take two risky bets for what's on the other side. Uh, people who are more educated and
tend to be more successful, understand the risk reward ratio effectively. And therefore in the long run, they tend to succeed, but people who are the most successful take bets where there is no downside whatsoever, whichever outcomes that is, it's still going to be a win, which is an interesting way, way to think about it. And I have a conservative risk profile. Like I wouldn't be someone who is just dive all into this without, you know, any chance of return. And part of it,
comes down to when I graduated. So think of a first -generation immigrant in a new country, no money, no relatives, like everything is back in Russia, approximately 100K in debt, like a job that I was holding onto because that's what I needed to stay in the country. My risk at the time was not actually living on the street, running out of money. My risk at the time was going back to Russia. And nothing is wrong with Russia, but when you invest four years into setting yourself up in a new country and then you accumulate this much.
Vitalii Dodonov (10:13.07)
you know, debt as the price to pay for it. It's like there is a lot to lose if you actually mess it up. So, for example, as much as I would love to go into entrepreneurship right away, as soon as I could, my priority at the time was to actually focus on immigration and make sure that I could stay here so I can build a sustainable future going forward. So, for example, could I have started the company earlier or be more risk averse and going for it? Certainly, but that wouldn't be wise from my perspective.
So when I'm thinking about like, what is the right time to start and how do you manage like all of this? The answer from my perspective is as soon as possible, but you need to be at a place where you're actually ready to do this. And three years into essentially building up my foundation in Canada was the time where I felt it was the right time.
Kelly Yefet (10:59.3)
And three years is still generally quite fast. I think it goes to show that your dedication was there, your prioritization was there, so you could get to where you are now and how you define yourself now. Which brings me to the next question that I want to ask you. I know the title, so co -founder and head of engineering, but when you think about your role in the startup space, how do you define yourself? How do you look at your role?
in entrepreneurship.
Vitalii Dodonov (11:32.526)
It took me a few years to realize it. And I think one topic that's worth kind of diving deeper into is the topic of your professional identity and it's like, how do you talk about like, who are you? Like, are you head of engineering? Are you a CTO? Are you an engineer? Are you someone else? A founder in itself is what I've come to realize has a very full and well -defined scope. And that's the professional identity that I hold onto.
Because if you really try to kind of break down what the job of a founder is, like in the court, like in just the three years of building this company, I've held like a dozen different jobs, starting from, you know, engineering, QA analysts, like just data analysts, data scientists, spent quite a bit of time lately in customer support, leading engineering team, bunch of hiring all across functions. It's like a full spectrum of what you would do in a professional realm. And as a founder, kind of when it comes to...
you know, an identity. Once you've started a company, essentially your job is to fire yourself from everything you're doing as soon as you can, AKA replace yourself with someone else. So you'll get time and mind space to find another problem so that you can go there and figure that out and then fire yourself from there and then get to, um, get to the next one. So to answer the question founder is the identity and the job is to find a way to not have a job. And essentially that's the only two things you operate with with certainty.
Kelly Yefet (12:56.644)
It's funny, someone previously on an episode said something really similar about as a leader, you have to constantly be firing yourself and leveling up because the company hopefully is growing at a rapid pace. Therefore, your role within it also needs to be constantly changing. So it's awesome to hear that this is a repetitive theme, especially entrepreneurs listening and thinking about, OK, how do I make sure I'm being the best leader or really thinking about growing the business? It's...
you know, take a second and reflect. Are you where you were six months ago or three months ago? And if you are, maybe you want to change things up, which if you're constantly growing and changing and firing yourself every six months or so, when you look back and all of those changes, what have you been most proud of in your journey so far?
Vitalii Dodonov (13:50.702)
There is one thing that I'm proud of by far more than anything else. And that's the kind of team that we've assembled. There is a lot of conversation when it comes to startup world and corporate in general. Like for example, when you're evaluating a manager, like what managers tend to do the best or what leaders tend to do the best. And one could argue like around the frameworks, like goal setting or like management, feedback, planning, like all of the...
You usual suspects, but what I've noticed and what I've seen firsthand myself is the only thing that truly matters. That's probably like 90 % of your success is the kind of people that are with you shoulder to shoulder working on the idea that they all share the vision of and being able to unite those people and kind of go with them in the same direction is first of all, incredibly hard, uh, but also remarkably, remarkably rewarding. One of the things that, um,
I think is just the testament to this. Stan is one of the companies that is in the top 1 % of how efficiently we run the business. So currently we are making about 15 million in RRR and the company is under 20 people. I have only seven engineers on the team, which is remarkable compared to most other startups and businesses that are there. But the reason that I've been able to get us here from kind of the...
The talent perspective, specifically on the engineering side, is because you actually go and you have dozens and dozens of interviews and you say no to remarkable people who are just not yet there where you'd like them to be to get the absolute perfect fit onto your team. So getting the team together, the one that I've been able to assemble, the biggest achievement by a long shot.
Kelly Yefet (15:43.94)
That's a huge amount of impact per person or per engineer on your team. And when an engineer is sitting there and thinking about, you know, the changes or the tests that they're doing, it has a massive impact because there's only, you know, seven or I'm sure if you include yourself, eight of you, that's such an amazing thing to do. How do you think about hiring? Like, is it, are you looking for potential? Are you looking for someone who's gonna be perfect right now and they can hit the ground running? What does that look like?
look like if you don't mind sharing.
Vitalii Dodonov (16:16.686)
Uh, yes, of course. And, and I have a different mindset that, that most, you know, established companies and, um, uh, starting out founders as well. Um, so first of all, one of the things that we tried and we stopped doing is, uh, we don't hire anyone below the very senior level when it comes to people. So if you want to work at Stan, then realistically we're looking at seven to 10 years of experience where you are at the prime of your career. And it's important for, for a number of things. Um,
So first of all, when you're trying to build something, you're not, you know, building for operational efficiency or you're kind of trying to run the company the right way. You essentially are trying to create something that doesn't yet exist in the world. And your chances are going to be diminished by the lack of skill set in your talent, because it's just not the kind of problem you want to be dealing with. It's like, for example, is this a good thing for the world to bring in interns, those who are willing to work for free and help them learn and share?
kind of the opportunity to work on something cool with them. And it's like, great. But at the same time, what you're also doing is you're spending your time in mental space. You're spending the time of your most valuable people, the senior folks to educate someone else. And all of this is deviating attention from what you really should be doing, which is building this company with 100 % intensity and passion. So number one is senior talent only.
Number two, there is kind of a cliche argument around A players. So there is senior in terms of seniority and how much they know. Then there is also the caliber of humans they are. There is an argument that an A player is going to produce a thousand X output on a B player, which is something that I believe in and I'm trying my best to be able to identify one from another. And this...
Kelly Yefet (18:05.252)
How do you do that? Like, what does that look like?
Vitalii Dodonov (18:10.094)
There is, it can be a couple hours conversation on this topic alone. Let me just, the third point that I actually think the most important one when picking the team. The biggest lesson that I've learned in 2023 from one of the founders is this, growth doesn't equal head count. And this is where I think most people get it wrong because essentially the smaller the team size you have, especially if everyone is great,
Kelly Yefet (18:14.084)
Okay?
Vitalii Dodonov (18:38.83)
the less communication complex you have and the farther you can move. And it's like, imagine you have a tiny little boat and you're trying to like go all the way forward and like you're steering through the ambiguity versus you have like a ginormous ship with a, you know, a ton of people just stopping that thing is going to take you probably like a kilometer distance. So what's really important is in my opinion, is to keep the team as small as possible while increasing the talent density, like literally maxing it out. Those would be the three things.
Kelly Yefet (19:12.004)
think it's really smart. I've been a previous company where growth equaled headcount and we went from, you know, a company of still big 4000 people to call it 16 ,000 or so over three years. And, and we've seen that so many tech companies, right? Like they, they do well. And that means hiring 100 new headcount a day. And you implode on yourself because you
the communication crumbles, the impact per person crumbles, all these things start to crack and it ruins the culture as well. So I'm curious, so it's great one that you are able to continue to drive so much impact and success with Stan while keeping the team really tight. I'm curious what that means for culture. Like, is it a group of type A?
keener workers? Is it everyone kind of chilled? Like how does that come together as a team when you are managing a big amount of success amongst a small group of people?
Vitalii Dodonov (20:17.326)
It's both of those. So by type A, I don't mean type A personalities, I mean A players. So everyone is an A player, everyone is a hard worker. Like one of the screening questions I asked at the interviews, which is not commonly accepted, but I do think that working hard is what's required to be part of a startup. Are you comfortable working 60 hours per week? Are you excited about this? And what you'll see is 20 % of people actually will say, you know,
Kelly Yefet (20:24.14)
Okay.
Vitalii Dodonov (20:42.446)
You know what? That's not for me. I'm focused on family. I have all those other things and that's totally cool. Not everyone kind of sees the world this way. There's going to be another 20 % of people who are going to be, oh, only 20? I thought you guys are doing 100. I'm all in for it. And I was like, okay, well, now it sounds like we got something to talk about because I want to hear how you spent your 100 hours in the past building and get on the same page with them. So they're hardworking, but here's another thing that is...
more people come into the team, the feedback that they're sharing with me is that everyone is super chill, which is different, right? On one end, on one side, you have like extremely hardworking, you know, A player people and on the other end, everyone is chill. And I think that really comes down to the kind of people you're hiring and being able to, again, identify those A players because for people who are a fit for a startup in kind of the fully committed sense, it's the people who don't see work.
Like work, it's like work is part of my identity and work is, you know, what I do if I didn't do like, if I didn't have, you know, anything, I would still do the same thing. Maybe working on a different project and whatnot. And finding those kinds of people is where things actually start clicking. Like, it's very unfortunate when you're bringing someone to a startup and they're like, you know what? I have a hard cut off on Friday at 6 PM. And it's like, many of us would like to do it and many of us get, get to do it, but it's, it's not what you come into the startup for. You come into the startup to grind, you come into the startup to make a name for yourself.
You come into the startup to build something meaningful and everything else comes second. And once you're able to identify and bring those people in, then it's both hardworking and chill and rewarding.
Kelly Yefet (22:17.156)
Yeah, I think it makes sense. I know you said it's not always asked in interviews and you guys do. I think it's really important. It's setting the expectation from day one instead of being like, oh, no, you know, everything's very light here and you'll be fine. And then they get started. You've wasted your time hiring someone with unrealistic expectations and, you know, they're unhappy from the get go. So it's just about encouraging that culture that makes sense. And
how you guys are building. And it's great that everyone's there with the same expectations from day one, which it kind of brings me to the thought around metrics and measuring success, both for the individual, but for the company as well. And maybe you can talk on that a little bit, but also how your success metrics have changed over time. Because I'm always curious from...
you know, day one to where you guys are now, how you continue to reflect on your success metrics and evolve them because you probably keep hitting your goals and need to stretch further.
Vitalii Dodonov (23:26.158)
Yes, there is a two -folded answer to this as far as metrics themselves are concerned. So there is nothing particularly unusual there. We are looking at the number of active customers that we have. We look at how much money we make with them. We look at how much money our customers are making. We are looking at what fraction of our customers exist. We're just comprehensively evaluating the success of a B2C business. What we do slightly different though is...
When we are thinking about what to work on and how we are setting goals, like for example, this year's goal that we have for the company is not to make X number in revenue, or it's not yet this number of customers. Our goal this year is to actually build the very best product in the market. And as ambiguous as it sounds, it's very clearly defined on what does it actually entail in terms of feature party with competition, what it means for the customer, how it translates into brand. But...
by essentially focusing on something that drives the metric as opposed to metrics themselves. Cause like, if you have the best product in the market, like, of course users are going to come. If users are going to go, of course they're even just going to go up. But just by sitting here and saying, Hey, I want a hundred thousand customers. Like that doesn't lead anywhere. So we are trying to kind of look at what is actually driving. And for us, product is a large component along with few other verticals. And we try to go after them. So when we are thinking of goals, we are thinking about like qualitative customer first.
Kelly Yefet (24:42.5)
Right.
Vitalii Dodonov (24:55.694)
objectives and then metrics are kind of more for guardrail and it's like, well, if you do this, then approximately you are going to be somewhere there. And that sounds good to us.
Kelly Yefet (25:05.7)
Yeah, that's really interesting. How do you, when you're thinking about the goal of this year is to build the best product, how much of the feedback is coming from your customers and users to help inform what does that actually look like versus you guys saying, hey, we can do something really different and really cool. Let's show it to the user. Like, is there a relationship there that helps drive that definition of the best product?
Vitalii Dodonov (25:34.026)
Certainly there is actually three inputs that we have into the equation of what to actually build. So number one and probably...
Vitalii Dodonov (25:44.782)
The strongest, maybe at par with the second strongest, is the customer feedback. So on average, we get 150 emails per day from customers either asking questions or sharing insights or feature requesting something. And we have essentially internal processes to take all of this and say, what is it they're actually wanting the most and prioritize from there? So being customer informed is a very strong theme for us as a company. So this is one vector that informs our product decision.
The second is the founder vision. We started this company for a reason and we are really passionate about helping people make living and work with themselves. And, um, kind of when you were thinking like this, there is a world where the current customers are not all the customers that he wants to serve. So we are really spending time with our head in the cloud. And it's like, in the future world that we are trying to create here, like, what does it look like? What more we can do? So that's the second. And the third, just internal ideas where, you know, conversations are happening, ideas are flowing around.
Other companies are doing something cool and interesting. For example, OpenAI coming around enabled a lot of things to exist that didn't exist before. Customers aren't going to ask for it yet, but it's like, well, we can do this. Why wouldn't we? So there is the third vector of just internal team informed and what we as a group think we should build next. And then we sit together, discuss and semi -optimally prioritize what to work on first, what to work on second, and go with that.
Kelly Yefet (27:12.164)
So I see a bit of like where you guys are going and what this year looks like. I want to take a second to go back and talk about building the business from day one and how you, as you were coming on as a co -founder, identifying the problem that you were solving and you as yourself, like joining this business, knowing this is a real problem and this is something I want to participate in solving. How did you come to that?
Vitalii Dodonov (27:46.51)
So when you were just in the beginning, you essentially have an idea and you have some validation. So in terms of what to build first, we kind of landed on the idea because John and I felt strongly that like there is business to be created and that there is a real need. And we had few people from my previous business and from the customers that John gathered together. It's like people, at least some people want to have something like it. So that was essentially a strong enough motivation for us to go raise and to
commits to it full time. And then that's essentially the starting point. Once you've started, I think what's truly important is to be hungry and very high energy when it comes to moving forward. Because if you approach it from the perspective and it's like, you know what, there is nowhere to rush. Not many people are working on this. Let's do one thing this week, one thing the second week.
what we tried to do in a sec, okay, there is, so we dreamed up a really big vision in terms of what he wants to create. And we're like, right now we are five years behind of what it actually needs to be. So let's go all in on trying to achieve this and approach it truly, truly with intensity. And not all the bets that we had in the beginning worked out. There were a few initiatives that we believed very firmly in where we were like, let's do the stores this way. And we are going to pivot the whole company direction because this makes sense to us.
And it didn't work out at all. And it's like, we thought it was a great idea and apparently nobody cared about it. And customers were like, Hey, can you give us this previous way back? And we kind of tried to, you know, uh, wrestle with it a little bit. And eventually it's like, well, I guess we needs to, you know, pivot back again and, uh, you know, step back and reevaluate. And that's what you do. But essentially the, the speed of ideation and kind of just try to go as fast as you can, as far as you can and pay close attention to how the things are being adopted. Um,
just pretty much the way.
Kelly Yefet (29:50.084)
question on that and I'm always so curious about it. When you're, you know, whether it's creating the business or a feature within the business, when do you know to pivot and iterate on that idea versus sunset that idea? Because I would assume in the early days of a feature, or if you're, you know, completely iterating something,
the users might be like, oh, I don't wanna learn something new. I don't wanna try something new. Just take me back to the original version. So it's like, how do you balance that decision or that seems like you think in frameworks or in threes? Like how do you figure out sunset or pivot?
Vitalii Dodonov (30:35.438)
Um.
So I think there is a way to intellectualize this and put numbers to it. Practically what I've seen is things are generally intuitive. You get into this hoping to see an outcome. It's like, wouldn't it be wonderful if we ship this and in a month this is going to happen? And then you ship it, and in a month, not only that didn't happen, the 10 % of that didn't happen. And then you essentially have an opportunity to say, well,
Okay, we've learned something, maybe let's tweak the details and try again harder, or it's like, well, that doesn't seem to stick, let's move elsewhere. And I think one of the advantages of operating with a highly performant A player team is everyone challenges each other as well as they challenge the status quo. And a lot of ideas are coming from like people, it's not just me as a company have this idea and it's like, hey, this is my idea, I want to work on it. Hey, this is his idea, he wants to work.
And then they go and then once we essentially get together, whether it's all hands or like weekly business review meetings, we're like, we talk about it. So it's like, what did we think going to happen? Like what actually happened? What's happening next? And once you have smart people sitting around the table, what you see is very intellectual argument. And it's like, is this still worth pursuing? And it's like, is your path forward makes sense? Should we spend our time somehow else? And it like evolves around there in a more kind of traditional, you know,
since there is a conversation around experiments and hypothesis testing and being very clear about what the objectives are, which is a large company trying to be a startup way of doing it, which is also cool. But it's like, things are moving so quickly where you're like, building anything takes no more than a week. So let's just go build it. Let's see what happens. And if it's not a screaming success, then let's move on. And if it's a screaming success, let's double down.
Vitalii Dodonov (32:28.27)
as opposed to, it's like, oh, we made a 10 % improvement, therefore let's double down. Like you don't do that as a startup. It either works remarkably well or it doesn't work at all. And then if it doesn't work at all, you move.
Kelly Yefet (32:38.692)
I feel like that as the framework, like is it a screaming success or no, because you're not gonna waste your time on something that's like pretty good. It's like in these early days of the company, everything has to be a clear winner. That makes sense. So.
Vitalii Dodonov (32:58.414)
Uh, Kelly, hold on before, before we move to the, uh, to the next topic, one of the things that I think is worthwhile for us to talk here, um, is how you were thinking about ideation before you've actually started a company that you've kind of figured out product market fit. Ed, because one interesting thing about Sanand that's something for, uh, for, for listeners to be kind of mindful at, we kind of hit off on the product market fit, like right off the bat. There was actually no time.
like in, you know, specific stamp period, especially when, when I was part of it, uh, where it's like, we were doing the wrong thing and we needed to do like a drastic pivot. For example, when, you know, Instagram created Burgon and they're like, well, this is just too much stuff. Let's grab the whole thing. Let's just do the pictures. It's like, for us, the first thing that we've done, like actually worked quite well. So it was like always building on top of it with like slightly left, slightly right, but it's like, we know what you're doing. Um, what most people face and it's like 95, 99 %
founders is actually before they find product market feed where it's like, I have an idea. I have no idea whether that's going to work, but I am very passionate to work on it. So let me double down. And so in my journey, I've actually spent two years working on one idea. So the kind of, and I was very persistent, which I think is an important quality to like for a founder or for kind of a human who's committed to have, but it's like at the same time, you know, working for two years on the idea that is not likely to succeed and being ignorant about it, like is also not the most efficient.
way to approach it. Um, so one of the things that I see, mistakes that I see founders do is committing to, to the vision as opposed to the notion of figuring something out and being very open to the idea that what they think is best is not going to work. And the way to find it is actually very, very straightforward. So my mistake, and I think a lot of people are struggling with this is essentially thinking like this. I have this need.
And therefore there's got to be other people who have this need. And if I make this perfect solution that I would love using, and by the way, it's going to take me a year to do, then people are going to also love it. And then I'm going to have a business around it. It's like textbook. No, one of those things where you don't believe it until you actually do it yourself. I've done it myself. So, um, what, what the true testaments to the product market fit is and where any company should.
Vitalii Dodonov (35:23.886)
be starting is with a customer and finding someone who truly has the need for what is it you're trying to build. It's like, if you're trying to create something no one asks you to, and when you tell other people about it and they're like, Hey Vitaliy, where do I pay? I want to have it the first thing as soon as you release it. And it's like, you're trying to solve the problem that doesn't yet exist in the consumer mind, which is like a very uphill battle to take. So if there is one piece of, you know, advice or other point of view on how, how to look at this.
It's really critical to, for example, first start with five or 10 customers who is like, Hey, I would actually be very excited to build what you're using. And this is kind of a solid starting point. And even better starting point is like, Hey, would you be open to like, you know, you're transferring me a hundred dollars. So kind of, I can invest it into building this. And in a month, once I have the MVP, I can give you first taxes. And they're going to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just, you know, not serious about it. It's like, yeah, no problem. I'm really into it.
that idea around finding other people who are excited about what the future looks like in the same way you are before you invest it all the effort is very, very.
Kelly Yefet (36:30.436)
Yeah, I think that's a great tip because you do see a lot of people, you hear that if I have this problem, everyone else has this problem. Well, one, maybe, maybe not. And two, maybe other people do have this problem. Are they willing to spend money to fix the problem? And that's kind of where your business comes in. So how did you guys, it wasn't just luck. Like what went into finding that product market fit so early on?
for you and John.
Vitalii Dodonov (37:02.234)
So, honestly speaking, John found product market fit for the idea of Stan himself, and that's a very exemplary way of doing it. So he essentially looked at the world in 2021. So that's the middle of COVID. And he quit his job before he's like, I want to build my own company because that's what I am excited about.
Kelly Yefet (37:19.108)
Mm -hmm.
Vitalii Dodonov (37:26.574)
He's like, what company should I build on creator economy along with crypto at the time was like at the really top. He's like, well, let me become a content creator and see what's out there. And then he became a content creator and he built a following talking about essentially the entrepreneurship and the notion of building in public. And then after a few thousand followers, he's like, okay, I kind of get what, you know, content creation is about. Where is the money? And that's where kind of the realization came that.
Like if you are a developer or if you have budgets to, uh, a budget to hire developers to build like a website and create products for you, then you can probably figure it out. But that's not the most people. And it's like most people just, you know, became content creators because it's COVID, they're stuck at home. There is nothing to do. And there needs to be like a very easy way to start doing some sort of business online. And the whole foundation of Stan is that it allows you to do a lot of things when it comes to creating digital products. But what's most important, it's extremely simple and easy to use.
Like you can have your digital business set up in like literally 15 minutes from this very moment. And it's going to be like pretty good, right? Right out of the box. So he, he did that himself. He created a store for himself, a few other creators, which I was like, Hey, what is this? Can I use that too? And that's when he knew it's like, there is something to be built around this. And that's kind of how the whole idea took off. And once he was sure he's like, all right, I want to double down. I need a technical co -founder. And this is where John and I met.
Kelly Yefet (38:51.3)
That's so exciting. What a cool way to quote unquote, stumble into your business. Like he really found a problem. He dug into it. He became his target audience and then built something for that, which is really cool. What are you most excited about for Stan looking forward as the creator economy kind of, from what I'm seeing growing rapidly becoming...
not just big brands, but really every brand is using some sort of creator within their campaign, within their programs. I think it's really going mainstream, which is a great opportunity for businesses that are supporting these content creators. So when you look forward, whether the industry itself or Stan, what are you most excited about?
Vitalii Dodonov (39:45.326)
I think businesses working with content creators to a large extent has always been there through other means of advertising or promotion. And it will continue to be there and likely grow. What I'm really excited about is slightly different part of this equation, which is I think content creation is going to play an increasingly more important role in humans lives when it comes to personal brand building and creating an identity online that will.
in some shape or form be tying into income, whether you are making money for yourself, selling something off your own, or you're using that as a distribution to like spread the word about your name to get more business to whatever is that you're working on. So in the past, there is kind of this model where, you you graduate, you get a job and you work there and that's how you make money. But now there is so much more opportunities around it. One of the things that we validated.
is people are willing to pay for education and I would feel very comfortable paying for education to another person, compared to a university, for example. Because if I wanted to learn how to do design, why would I go to design school while I can find a designer, content creator whose work I appreciate and it's like, hey, can you coach me? Can I take your course? Can we have some form of relation? Can I buy the textbook that you might?
have created with how you think about design because I don't care about the diploma, I just want to get the skill and it's much more efficient that way. So I'm excited about the world having more of this going forward and I think it's going to be an upward trend for a period of time.
Kelly Yefet (41:26.434)
It's such a interesting perspective. I have not thought of it that way, but this like peer -to -peer learning as maybe the traditional education systems become less pronounced, less important to the individuals, but you still want to learn, you still want to grow. So perhaps it is about learning from one another and looking to someone who has developed a really strong skill and learn from them. I know.
As an example, my husband has done a lot of renovations in our house and if he doesn't know how to do something, he'll look to YouTube, his go -to construction guy and learn from them or fishing or whatever it may be. We each have our YouTube stars that we go to to learn from, but if you could formulate that a little bit and pay for it, I don't see why that wouldn't happen, but I like.
Vitalii Dodonov (42:20.558)
Also think about it from the perspective of like what your husband would be able to do as someone who is into, into renovation. Because chances are he's like, if you spend some time on it, he's probably better at renovation than 95 % of other people. And then add a small component of him just creating a little bit of content around like what he's into when it comes to like just redoing the bathroom and sharing the approach he's taken, how like he picks the materials, how he thinks about the work to be done, how he thinks about hiring the contractors and whatnot.
This is valuable content to begin with, but then at the same time, it's like me who knows nothing about renovation. I was like, well, there is this guy who also is like, you know, not professional doing it, but like he clearly knows more than I do. Maybe I can learn something from him. And chances are there is a digital product that with an appropriate price that I would be willing to purchase from him. If he convinces me through his content that he can.
Kelly Yefet (43:12.644)
Yeah, it's such a cool future and also unlocks additional revenue for so many people, whether it becomes their full -time job or it's something on the side. And going through Stan to help support you, you know, finding this additional revenue makes it really exciting for the future of this growing industry.
Curious about you. So you've had quite the journey from moving here to Canada, going through the corporate world, becoming an entrepreneur. When you look forward, what are you most excited about?
Vitalii Dodonov (43:53.806)
look forward from here. I think there is...
I think there's many ways to define success, right? And I would argue that I am successful by a lot of conventional measures already. And what I would also add to that, which is also important to recognize, I think I've been successful from, you know, the very, very beginning. Because when, um, when you think about what is it you're trying to do and where to next, what's truly important in the end of the day is how you feel at the end of the day. Say if you just.
you know, ask yourself on a scale of one to 10 before going to get, am I like six, am I nine, am I like 11 out of 10? And if the answer is close to 10, then you are exactly where you want to be. So now I'm at a place in life where for me, it's like constantly in nines and tens. And of course you have like bad days and something like truly upsets you. But for the most part, it's, it's, it's truly a luxury and it's a very humbling experience to be at a place where you're able to create sources of income for thousands and thousands of people around.
the world with the kind of intellectual product of you and with the execution product of you. And I think this is very, very exciting. So whatever the future looks like, and in terms of what's next, I'd love to continue doing that and help as many people as I can and just being part of this ride of a lifetime.
Kelly Yefet (45:21.508)
Amazing. My last question for you. The name of the podcast is How I Became. And you've shared a lot of your journey and both yourself and Stan. So if you were to name this episode, how Vitaly became fill in the blank, given where you are at this present time, what would you name your episode?
Vitalii Dodonov (45:45.582)
It will certainly be how I became a founder. And I think it ties into what we talked about in the beginning of the conversation. And I actually want to expand on this a little bit. So being a founder and entrepreneur at large is a mindset. It's not a job. It's essentially just the way of looking at the world and seeing opportunities. And it's like, somebody does this this way. I wonder if you try to do it differently. Like, would it be helpful to somebody, to a lot of people, to every single person?
Um, so when, um, when people think about becoming founders or getting into entrepreneurship and they have this kind of process where I need to do this and then I need to do that and I need to do that. Uh, there is the risk management component that we covered a little bit in the beginning. Uh, but, um, what I would encourage everyone to, uh, kind of practice if they have kind of the idea of becoming a founder and entrepreneur is it's all about looking at the world and trying to start something. And once you try enough, there will be a time when an opportunity is going to.
come to you and make things possible. So for me, it's definitely a founder, whether it is right now, 10 years from now, whether I'm working for Stan, like, or start another company, what have you. It's about being someone who looks at the world, find something to improve on, and just goes after that.
Kelly Yefet (47:03.94)
Well, Vitali, congrats on all of your success and what you've built and where you are today. And hearing where you guys are going is really awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Is there any where people can follow along with your journey and Stan? And I can link that in the show notes.
Vitalii Dodonov (47:23.182)
Just my LinkedIn account would be the best. I create content every day. So that's a great way to stay in touch.
Kelly Yefet (47:29.188)
and I read it consistently, so I vouch for that. It's really great content. Again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, and I'm very excited to share this one out.
Vitalii Dodonov (47:39.918)
Thanks for having me, Kelly.