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Welcome to Founder 2 Founder, the ultimate podcast for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for ordinary. Hosted by Sardor Umrdinov, founder and CEO of Home Alliance - a $100+ million tech-enabled home services platform operating nationwide.
From bootstrapping his first business to building a horizontally and vertically integrated empire, Sardor brings you raw, unfiltered conversations with successful entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and game-changers who've turned their visions into multi-million dollar realities.
Each episode dives deep into the real stories behind business success - the failures, pivots, breakthroughs, and strategies that actually work. Whether you're scaling your first startup, planning an exit, or looking to acquire your next business, you'll get actionable insights from founders who've been there and done that.
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- How to scale from startup to 8-figure valuations
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- Home services industry insights and opportunities
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- Leadership, team building, and operational excellence
- Fundraising, private equity, and wealth building strategies
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"Partnerships are everything. Success is not a solo journey." - Sardor Umrdinov
My today's guest has spent his career operating at infection points. Sometimes that means stepping into the businesses that are underperforming and need to be turned around and other times it's the opposite. Guven Donmes, a global business executive with experience across tech, retail, and food delivery. Previously held leadership roles at Samsung Electronics, Proctor and Gamble, Domino's Pizza, and Magnet. At Domino's Russia, he helped lead the company through rapid digital growth, and the London Stock Exchange public listing. He scaled Magnet Omni's food tech business to a nearly $2 billion revenue run rate. Today he leads Canvas international expansion and global growth strategy.
Genchin welcome and let's start from why Canva. Pleasure to be here. Um it's a good question because Canva is a already a very successful company scaling very fast. Um what really attracted me was the what the company stands for which is empowering the world to design but like the way also it's worded uh to build the world's most valuable company step one and step two to do the most good that you can with it and that really attracted me and uh especially the founders personality and the the amazing values that uh the company uh has. It has a unique culture um and it has amazing set of values that really attract me like one of them is um setting crazy big goals and making them happen really attract me or uh being a good human uh at the same time. So which actually you asks you to keep the bar very high for leadership and I'm really really attracted uh to the mission and to the values to the culture and try to contribute and I believe it's still private right it's not it's private it's it's private and it's I think one of the largest private startups and which is what is the valuation um it's like uh right now it's like around 40 billion 40 billion according to the latest round. We got it. If you had to define your core strength, are you a strategist, operator, people builder or really answer is something else? I think the answer is I'm a student. I there are situations where I need to be the builder and I built. So second uh second part of my food assignment was I need I needed to build technologies to run a 50,000 Korea workforce efficiently. So I was a builder there. Um whereas uh there was a there was a moment um in my last assignment when I was in retail company and I start with only one business unit. I end up running four business units and uh and I almost became like an operator. So because like each business unit had already CEOs and I was like you know managing those CEOs and I became more of an operator because the business became part of the bigger business and we reached uh between 5 to 8% of the total revenues became online for the whole company and our starting point was 0.6. So that's why it became part of the bigger machine. So I start act like an operator. So I never define myself as an operator or a builder or um I think what's really important is like I'm a student and I adapt. So you know you look at the situation that you are in and the challenge that you are in and then you try to adapt to the situation. Let's start at the highest level. When you look back across your career, what is the repeatable pattern behind your success in difficult situations? I was in difficult situations repeatedly actually in my background and uh I think the most common pattern was although it evolved over time was getting a very strong team around me I think that was that was almost non-negotiable and it's something that um is a skill I was able to develop over time and got better and better. And the second one was always looking at things from the user, the consumer, from the customer standpoint and understanding what really matters. And probably the third one is using first principles to come up with solutions or maybe actions that may not look very popular or expected at the time. um but deeply understanding root causes and just doing what really matters or something that I really felt like you know could work to solve the root cause of issues. So probably first principles thinking um probably I would say these are the ones uh that mattered. uh how do you determine uh what is priorities what is important at that time from which direction from the fires coming out or from the plan from the goal uh from the P&L there are things that depend on the situation and there are things that are fundamental so I'll start with the fundamentals that don't change in any situation whether the the the problem that I'm trying to solve could be a turnaround situation where you need to change the course of the business um which is going in the wrong direction or it could be another type of challenge which is accelerating something you know a business that already has you know um has certain traction but like trying to accelerate that um whatever is the situation my approach that doesn't change is always starting with the with the users and uh one of the first things that I whenever I take any business or I take in a new role or any leadership role or even in my own, you know, family business. Um, it's always starting with the users. Users, you mean the customers, correct? The the customers. Yeah. It could be users. Uh, you know, if you're dealing with an application business, it's users. If if it's you're selling something, it's the customers and and making sure that really really understanding what's why customers buy you. Mhm. And it's amazing that sometimes you would be amazed like how many assumptions are there even by the teams or the people who are running those businesses may not always fully understand what really clicks with their customers and I'm always very curious about why do customers buy something and and why what what what's the thing that really drives them to buy that product or service and and and I'm always starting there like you know why would a person go to that particular store and why would a person use that particular app. So I'm always starting there as a starting point as a repeat buy or the first buy mostly as a repeat buy like because I really want to understand what what makes a business you know what how does a business keep going right so but by the way it could be a business that's declining it still has customers and those customers are still coming I want to understand why those customers are coming and because there's always a reason that I want to understand and I want to amplify that I want to understand the root cause of that and second thing is then I want to understand the people who are not buying it or who are not using it and I want to see the difference between the two and it comes from my uh background of maybe working in Proctor and Gamble working with the foundations of marketing doing so user research in the beginning of my career uh for the first 13 years in my in my career and I was very much trained on marketing and you customers. So understanding the drivers of the purchase and understanding the barriers of the purchase is always the first step that I I try to do. Did you all had the same approach to the users or customers or it have evolved during your career depending on the companies and if it have evolved how it have evolved from the customers to the users? I think the uh first of all I think because all these companies are different right is different magnet is different yeah delivery club is completely different the dominina pit is different proctor and gamble Samsung all has a different approaches yes and no uh but my understanding of the business doesn't change actually this is fundamental like I'm always trying to understand why do the customers buy us like you know that's that's fundamental like what is the value that we create and then Second thing is why do customers not buy us? So they are aware of us or they're not aware of us you know and what's stopping them you know what's the barrier having this understanding this is like you know I think the the starting point it's not end point but it's the starting point and it doesn't matter which business you do whether it's like you know a food delivery company or a retail company or a you know a a design application like it doesn't matter so I think the the foundations are the same however how it evolved over time is I became a much more obsessed customer of my service over time. This especially happened with as I moved from more you know traditional business to a more tech oriented business or app oriented businesses because there you can consume the service way more and I became sort of like very very obsessed uh user of my or the customer of my app. I can give you an example. When I was running a food delivery company, um we were competing within the teams in three years, I made close to 1,000 transactions as a customer. And and I won the game. And the closest to me was our CPO. And by the way, he also respect to him, he was like 650 or transactions. And these are paid transactions like from my pocket. and um and and all my team was always like uh uh you know uh criticizing me for like oh you know Gwanch again found the corner case of course I find the corner cases because I'm using the product. So being an obsessed uh customer of your own product or service I find it is a a very very uh healthy habit uh to really deeply understand the the the customer experience. So basically you purchased you said thousand purchases you did was it three years? Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Within within the food delivery 100%. But you don't look you're too scared. Well, you your food should be really good. I remember that like I was waking up and first thing I was doing is like, you know, making a making an order for takeaway coffee. Like a takeaway coffee is one transaction. And I was always like you know even at lunchtime I was ordering lunch but I was ordering my drink with another you know transaction. So I was maximizing for the transactions but in real time I was maximizing for the learnings. Right. Right. Makes sense. I don't think many many of founders of us do that. But can you it would be the same for the smaller size company versus large company or not. It's the same. You have to taste your own medicine. Yeah. And uh you also have to taste the medicine or the product or the service of the competition as well. I can give you an example from my family business. There was a moment in Turkey in it was somewhere around 2015 2016 and my family business like also because of the microeconomic situation in Turkey started to go down and we started to lose transactions. It's a handmade burger restaurant chain and there was a moment like we started to really lose customers and lose transactions and micro economy was also not going well at that time. However, the food tasted the same. The hamburgers tasted the same. We didn't change anything. We didn't change pricing but it was going down. And you know the economy was not doing well. But we also noticed some competition coming up. And at that time you know again I'm partners with my sister and her husband and we were discussing the root causes. So I decided to go to the competition and I went to the competition and I saw something which was interesting which is they didn't necessarily offer a better product. It was just lower price and at lower portions and we always uh you know uh took pride in offering big portions for great value and the you know I came back saying hey we have to reduce the portions and maybe we come up with a different different maybe meat right so a different product which we might call differently and we need to make it more affordable although we were in an affordable segment we I said like we need to make it even more affordable and at the same time maybe change the the the meat uh quality ingredients uh to make it lower cost and that completely came because I tasted the competitive the product whereas I remember at the time like you know um for them for my sister and her husband they were like hey you know we don't want to change anything on the product right so um I convinced them to do it and long story short this this uh we launched a lower priced burger with a smaller size at the time with a different uh ingredients still you know quite healthy and tasty that became 30% of the business. So even if you know that you know your product well you still need to taste the competition and that's my learning out of that. And even sometimes you you are in the industry, you know your business inside out, you have to keep an open mind and you have to keep experiencing the the competition to really put your also product into a place and I think that might also give you an idea. I think this is method and this is mindset. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Fascinating.
But how how quickly you can determine and tell if the business is fixable or not? I think it's pretty easy. There was a situation where I took in a business which I thought that um you know could be fixable and you know after one year we had to almost like shut down the business and uh I think it's easy especially when you look at the users or the customers what they are buying what they are using and then looking at whether you can increase that value equation or not with what you have and that was a situation where we were running a um restaurant point of sales software as part of the food delivery business and it was obvious that this business is device based it's very old you know the new cloud technologies already came in and this device based install based business can it survive or not and I tried a lot for that like I tried for a year like really on a stride change the teams created new you know innovation streams and everything but one thing became super obvious for us is we couldn't increase the value for for the for the customers. So when you cannot increase the value, you don't have a future for that business. So I think getting to that conclusion can I really really drive value here uh is getting to that conclusion fast would help you to take a decision whether that business is still investable or maybe sometimes you should you should just you know so basically that was a red ocean right that yes when you enter to underperforming business what do you focus on within the first 30 days the first thing as I said is uh I talk with so so so I think I'll tell you what I don't do okay the the the thing that I never do is I don't meet with and I don't listen to presentations and I don't meet uh you know um I I try not to have any meetings inside the office. I try to get outside and meet with as many users and stakeholders as possible. So because before I shape my mind and my impressions with presentations or existing thinking or existing paradigm, I want to establish my own perspective and my my own experience. So the first thing that I normally do is you know I get outside and I arrange either user research, I talk with people. Um it could be in the case of a you know application I could find the users of that application and ask questions. In the case of a retail company I would simply go uh to that uh retail store and do shopping myself and talk with people. Um sometimes you I organize like official research um because I want to hear from more users but I try to build Do you do the same thing with Canva AI now? Um we actually do believe it or not we do and we do user research all over the world and actually we've done uh you know research recently in Mexico and Brazil and my second week I was in user research in Poland and Germany and Netherlands and not only the user research we also met with the uh our uh creators and also other stakeholders which we call them the canvastors during in this period as well and that was my second week already and that really helps me to see the product from the outside before you get really deep inside to the business. Yeah. Because then in the organization you get blinded you only see your internal part right you don't really see what the customers are facing on other side 100%. Um and then this also helps you to see to keep your I call it the customer intuition because like you need to always keep the customer intuition because that helps you to take the right decisions based on you know what really matters for the customer and believe it or not like uh it's very easy to start looking the depth into deep into the business and then start looking at the margins and then start looking at you know some internal metrics and then you try to start maximizing for some of those metrics, but that does not mean that you're maximizing for the user experience. And what really especially if you're in a business where you want to turn on the business, you want to maximize for the value. Mhm. Now, how do you maximize for the value like you know who who decides on this like it's not you and it's not your finance partner, right? So, it's actually who decides for that is the is the customer. So you usually need to understand why the customer is taking that decision and you need to maximize the value for them before you decide on like or you manage the metrics. So that's why I have a very clear prioritization in terms of maximizing the value of any product or service ahead of the other things. But then the question is is this affordable is this marginable and this is where the difficulty and the challenge comes. So I can give you an example from my food delivery uh experience. Um I took a company it was like 2000 it was before COVID and the company was losing around hund00 million dollars per year and it was like really losing tons of money and the company was also losing uh um lost 45% market share uh to the uh competitor who launched and because the time was the food delivery in the first era was all about the marketplaces. The second stage of food delivery was with own couas which became a completely you know completely changed the margin profile of the business. The first era was all about marketplace which is you take the commissions and you're a platform and it rewards the network effect the number one and it was highly profitable business. There is a second era of the business where you started to manage your own quers and you maximized the customer experience. Actually all those companies started to burn insane amounts of money including us and and and I took the company in that stage and the question was do we go back to the marketplace model to make money but then we would be losing tons of share versus the competitors uh or we continue like this and then you know how do we sustain our business while growing so that was the challenge the first thing I remember you know I looked at was the retention where where the decision comes on that like do you normally make that decision yourself or it comes from the board obviously when you're assigned to a company like you know and I was assigned as a CEO of the company at that time you align the expectations and the expectation from me was like turn around this company like you know we want growth but we want sustainable growth like meaning you know you had to reduce the burn and make the company sustainable and break even a bit the you know in the acceptable time that we can fund it. So that was the expectations. So first you align with the board about the expectations and then then it was up to me about how to get there. Uh because I could cost save our way or you know but that wouldn't make any sense because if you start with a cost saving then you're not maximizing on the value. So that's why you have to maximize on the value. So the first thing that we did at that time was we looked at the retention and it was obvious that the retention of the customers who used our own service was better and which was the way to grow. So I mean the answer was very clear like you know we had to run with our Korea service but we had to make it more sustainable but how and this is where the research comes in and this is where the outlook comes in. So then you start being very curious and this is where you know we said hey we're going to go with the curious because that there was better service but we need to make it more sustainable and we need to make this service better and this is where the research came in and I started to look at around the world and at that time I recall in China uh the the company metan delivered the first um profitable results with Korea delivery um even before co because of the efficiency and they they gained efficiency with the um with the intensity of the orders but also what they call the dispatching algorithm which is all done with the data science and that was that was a clue for us and then you know we started to dig deeper into it and then long story short after four years um you know COVID came in obviously it was a big luck and a big proponent for us but after four years the we grew from $200 million GM to $2 billion GM 10 times and then we also made the company uh break even on the restaurant side and the key to that was mostly completely supercharging all the uh dispatching decisions like which is ka movement decisions completely automating it one automating it 100% and using the data science I remember you know the first time I joined the company we had like two people in data science and honestly at that time I didn't know what data science is. So uh you know that was year 2019 and I didn't know what data sciences and what's analytics and so I had I spent three hours with our head of data science which is the two people right so we had three-hour talk and after I talked with him and I was so impressed I said like we have to solve everything all the problems with algorithms and long story short by the time that uh you know I left the company and because we ended up you know getting to two billion getting to uh break even and then we uh our competitor bought us. So we exited you know uh and uh that that that was the end result and by the time that we exited we had like 60 data scientists 60 data scientist grow to 60 from 2 to 60 and we were pretty much deciding almost everything with data science and these are the years of no AI now we are very spoiled by AI right but these are the years no AI right so and uh and not really fully understanding you know what data science is you know at the beginning but you know and implementing it across all the work streams. Interesting.
What do the most leaders misunderstand about transformation? I think it's a very good question. I think the uh I'll start with a very common problem which is when you are in the seat where you need to transform your own company. This is very difficult when we talk about transformation stories. Typically the story goes like the company needs to be transformed because industry changed, something happened, the company's not performing, maybe management made some wrong decisions and then typically what we know is a new leader comes in to transform the company. That's what we know, right? So and then you know they come in and uh they change things and they try to transform and change trajectory of the company. For me I think the even before that I would roll back. I was in situations where I had to transform the company that I was running. Mhm. So you know I'm running the company and I'm getting certain results and I still need to transform the company because the company gets to a point or a size or a situation where you need to change things. Mhm. And the first thing that leaders misunderstand is they don't see that need. They don't recognize that need. You determine that based on understanding the next chapter of growth or the next chapter of the company requires you to do things differently. So can you read that or can you not read that? So as a leader um I think this is super difficult to do especially especially when you are in a company when you are getting certain results. So I'll give you an example uh to make it very very concrete. It was my first year uh leading uh food delivery company and you know I go into the company and uh the growth is stalling. the competition is really really very very you know very technologically very advanced competitor and I need to you know grow the business and I come from more marketing background and I have good growth skills that I tested several times and you know by understanding my by leveraging most of my the the understanding of the food skills and the margins and so on I made deals with McDonald's at the time and you know for the food delivery company and then reduced the cost of promotions. Instead of giving discounts of 30%, I gave Big Mac for free. But then I paid for the food cost of the Big Mac which was significantly cheaper than giving discounts and which was still very popular. And so that was just a kind of a growth hack and that that kind of you know skills helped us to actually double the business. At the same time we were just expanding into you know not only the big city but also to the regions as well and that gave us a growth and we doubled the business in less than six months and you know and we're seemingly from the outside we look quite successful because sales are going up and we're going to the regions and promotions are way more efficient now. So it looks great. So I was in that situation but I started looking around and I'm you know also I'm looking at China and I'm looking at Europe and I'm looking at like Latin America and trying to understand what's going to happen next like you know and one thing that really really bothers me is our business like from unit economy standpoint is not really significantly improving and at that time again those years maybe 2019 2020 we were still flush with cash. I mean, the world was printing money at that time. So, you know, I started to sense like, what if the cash goes away? So, what if we're not we don't have access to, you know, capital like this? And then I'm looking at the burn rate of the business and I'm thinking like, you know, can we really sustain this? What if, you know, this all goes away? So, I think it was like kind of a paranoia and at the same time also thinking about what if I double this business again with such, you know, unit economy, I will just increase the burn. So this kind of thinking led me to think oh my god like you know I'm actually on the wrong path because just scaling a lossmaking business is just scaling the losses. Now this looks very maybe from the outside very obvious but actually it's not because you know when your investors are you know incentivizing you for growth and everybody is like applauding you for growth and your team is very happy and everybody feels very successful. We double the business in an environment like this. You come in and say and this is what I did. I said like one day oops I think we have to completely change our approach and I think we have to maximize for efficiency and while driving our retention meaning we have to reduce our delivery time from 57 minutes to 30 minutes. And we have to instead of like spending for marketing we have to earn our growth through retention. And this meant that we have to build completely new muscles and skills through data science and efficiency uh and really invest into that area which we call it the operations side of the business instead of the consumer side of the business. And that also meant that we were completely overinvested on the consumer side of business, the application and the technologies and we had to completely build new muscles on the operational and logistics side of the business which is Korea management and Korea application and understanding them better and the algorithms and the data science. And when I shared this vision with my team, I also said that we have to do that very fast and we have to shift uh people from you know one side to the other and the resources one side to the other and we have to make that shift very very fast and maybe it was too fast but like I draw the sense of urgency and there was actually no external reason for me to do so and and this was very difficult because the change was not welcome by my team and maybe the way that I did it was only from the team or the board as well? Uh the board I was able to convince the board because I had quite a good track record up to that moment and they were they were okay with it. Uh although they were nervous with the with the pace of the change but like my team showed a huge resistance because the psychology was we're successful everything is working. Why do you why do you change and why do we have to change that much and why do we have to change that fast? Yeah. So and at the same time um people were not so much incentivized maybe to learn new skills like you know moving from you know consumerd driving application product. You would do it differently if you would do it again. Honestly I wouldn't change the timing at all. I would just explain why. Yeah. Um yeah, I will just explain why more. Uh because maybe I didn't explain so much why because I felt the sense of urgency, but I don't think that I passed that sense of urgency really well and that frustrated my team. And actually what happened is my team, you know, uh was not on board with the change. So 70% of my leadership team uh left. Mhm. And I was like left with like they left because it was elsewhere was easier to burn and grow. 100%. Obviously. And and also like uh we should also admit that some of them did not have the skill set. Neither did I have the skill set to pivot the company from a more consumer-driven company to an operations technologydriven company. Mhm. I also didn't have the skill set. I had the vision but not the skill set. Neither are team because because at that time time made it to do that. Right. Correct. So we were not because the external capital is shrinking then you have to stop the bleeding. You actually turn around for efficiency for kind of a more from the VC to PE kind of direction. Yes. But we were not asked to do it. I just foraw that because because it would come anyway. Yes, but it didn't. And that's important because there was no external trigger for that. It was more of my realization one day and and it happened because it didn't trigger because of the economy. I guess because of the because of the economy being isolated before it it didn't affect. Yeah. Also like it affect everything else except isolation. Correct. And also the capital was cheap and but I'm talking about the year of 2020 and the capital was cheap. And then what happened is actually the the the capital became very expensive as of 2022 2 years later but like because I somehow like you know saw that coming. I didn't I didn't see that coming. I just felt this cannot go on forever and we got to be ready for the next round. And I draw that sense of urgency and as I said like my board was skeptic but supportive. you know they were quite kind of neutral like they were like you know hey so far you know the results are okay so we we we're going to give you a chance to do this my team was not on board and I lost my leadership team most of them and uh I had to rebuild new skills and a new team from scratch but that uh helped me to really using and it was it was uh delivery club time. Yeah, it was Europe time.
You meant earlier about the transition and uh you said different challenges or transitions transformations are needs to be done by new leadership or different view. One subject kind of is triggering uh a thought. If you look back, Guange would be who did from 200 million to 2 billion who is doing it first time would do better job on that role or you now if you go back and do it again the same route would do better job. someone who have done it before the same trajectory and another one is a founder who would try to get from that 200 million to two billion uh or someone who works on two billion and actually steps down to two 200 million and tries that who do you think can do better that transa transition I think the change yeah I think because it's a big change yeah it's a huge change uh so first of the I can definitely tell you the skill set that I needed to run $200 million business to grow it was absolutely not nec not enough and not fit for running the or getting to the $2 billion business. I had to build complete different skill set along the way along the way along the way along the way. So and actually the one of the reasons that uh you know part of my team or the majority of my leadership team left me is they felt like they don't need to develop a new skill set and they didn't want to adjust that much. Okay. You evolved and you had to build a skill. Now if you if now you have build a skill but you can easily manage now probably two billion and further. But if you get to run again the same route, do you think it's feasible for you or too easy, too hard or it's it doesn't uh fit it anymore because now you are used to working with different sizes? No, I would I would very uh actually I've done it so I would very comfortably to do it again. So and and actually I did that. So when when when delivery club was like acquired by the competitors we exited and I had my very loyal and very capable team of 40 people and by the way like so in any company like there's always the first layer which is your leadership team which is 8 n 10 people and then in relative who runs the company is other than the leadership team is the second layer and for us that was we called it the extended leadership team and that's like at that time it was like 40 people. Mhm. And those 40 people they stayed with when the competition bought it, they didn't really care the first layer. They cared for the second layer because they would migr the competition uh pretty much like uh didn't need the management layer because uh it was direct competition. So they you know they basically bought us out in order to just Oh, they didn't really need your infrastructure by the way. Exactly. They didn't need only needed your clients users. Exact. Exactly. So we had like 40 40 people with me and then I went into another retail company at the size of $250 million back again and I rebuilt the same thing again in a different environment. This time it's a retail company brick and mortar company and which is very much incentivized for profit and we were incentivized for growth. We were we came in with a mission to drive the growth in a sustainable way and we had very very little time to bring the company again into profitable growth and I had to do that again. So basically I've done what you are asking and which one was easier or faster the second one was the second time was way easier way faster basically. So if if as a founder I'm looking for the CEO who going to take the company to the next level. So I have to actually find someone who have done it before 100%. Uh this this not a secret. So um if you read uh principles by Ray Dalio uh he's one of his principles is to hire the people for the challenge that you want to present to them who has done that at least twice successfully in their past. when I took that you know the when I took on that challenge for the second time um we were way more equipped way more equipped and actually our market results also came in very fast because the turnaround came the the the the growth came in in 6 months and then the turnaround of the profit and reaching profit and profitability and everything came in in 18 months so it was way faster that business the magnets that e-commerce block was already generating 200 million correct it was already exists. You didn't really build it from scratch. It was there. You had to just scale it further. Right. Right. Well, the difference was the following. So the the the company was doing that money with the aggregators basically with the food delivery company that I was running before. So and we had to grow it. But you cannot grow a business that is so dependent on aggregators because you're dependent on aggregators. So that's why we had to build our own service inside the retail company. But then that would require to build all the technologies from scratch because we didn't have that and we built the whole technologies from scratch again. But again it's very expensive because you're running your own careers and uh again like you know leveraging the same learnings and all these expertise we were able to do that and by the time that this time we did it faster and we reached profitability in 18 months and uh we also reached $2 billion run rate uh in less than three years and uh basically the results came faster but I was able to go into the second assignment with 40 people who done that before who knows you know exactly what they are going into and that's why we achieve results faster.
Okay, let's do the five rounds. Uh it's going to be just quick answers. One decision you are proud of? Hiring a players and creating strong leadership teams. One decision you regret delaying? Maybe not starting my own business earlier. Biggest illusion about leadership? thinking that people listen to you because of your position. What breaks first at scale? Skills. So people and the teams. In one sentence, what game are you really playing? Value creation and impact. If you get to start a business, what business you would start? Anything that improves people life with a small or a big margin doesn't matter. But something that really improves people life. What decision at Canva right now that keeps you up at night? Building a strong a very strong international team. One competitor you take seriously that nobody talks about. I think for me I don't look at the competitor names per se. I always look at the own behavior of the of the users because that's what you need to change for them to create value. If you had to cut 30% of the company tomorrow, where does it come from? I'm glad we are not in that situation. The biggest illusion founders have about AI right now. Two maybe. One, it's going to come faster and it's going to impact their business sooner. Two, it doesn't solve the problems that the founder themselves create. It doesn't solve all the problems. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you have to just create a lot of them and then see what the customer will say. Yeah. And go backwards. Mhm. So basically good AI is not going to compensate for poor leadership. Yeah. One hire you made too late and paid for it. So many. So maybe I have a lot of examples of that. What would break first in Canva doubled in size in 12 months? Hopefully we will not be in that situation. Good answer. In one sentence, what game is Canva playing? Really? Empowering world to design in 2030. Does Canva still exist as a stand one company? Yes. So, if you're building something right now, scaling, fixing, or trying to figure out your next move? There is a lot here you can actually take and and apply. Guvench, I really appreciate the time. This was a really great conversation, a lot of insights. Thank you.