- Speaker #0
It's almost half of my life already spent in Romania and most of my professional life, actually.
- Speaker #1
First of all, you were coming for two years. When did you realize you were staying in England?
- Speaker #0
We decided to go in North Romania, in a city named Iache. And I was chosen to take the lead on this new premises. Even if I thought that maybe I will come back to France, all the time a new opportunity takes me backward. keep me here. UiPath was already a kind of a scale-up. This was after the series A, 200 employees almost, you know, when I joined.
- Speaker #1
Hello, it's Luca from French Tech Bucharest. I'm super happy to welcome you today to this new podcast of French Tech Romanian Touch, together with Gregory Rondin, working for Veridion. Gregory works in a lot of scale-ups in Romania. We share a lot of insights related to his past experiences. and we'll talk about the importance of customer success for hyperbolo. I also want you to be very thankful to Hotspot for hosting us today in this amazing co-working space. And yeah, stay tuned, we're gonna welcome Gregory Rondin right now. Hi, Greg.
- Speaker #0
Hi, Luca.
- Speaker #1
Thanks for being with us today.
- Speaker #0
My pleasure.
- Speaker #1
So today we're going to talk a lot about first your experience here in Romania, and obviously all the experiences you've been through. in beautiful success startups, which became scale-ups and more. And afterwards, we'll talk more about your job in customer success and how is it important for scale-up. And also, of course, ask you more personal questions related to your career path. And of course, you've been living in Romania since quite some years now.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, quite a while, yeah.
- Speaker #1
Good. So let's start from the very beginning. So as far as I know, you're in Romania since almost 20 years now. Yeah. Can you share a bit of insights on what brought you here? What was the start of your journey in this country?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So yeah, 20 years, so starting to be a while. I can almost say that I used to be French. You too. The fact that it's almost half of my life already spent in Romania and most of my professional life actually here because I was born in France close to Orléans. I prefer to say Orleans, you know, it's more trendy. Orleans, yeah. But the city is named here. So I did my study, childhood study there. I graduated in computer science, so I used to be a developer. And yeah, in France, you have this great opportunity to have nice internship. I mean, it's real internship. It's not, you know, two weeks internship. It's six months sometimes. And most of the time, you can have the option to be hired by the company. And I had very... I got very lucky on that and I met Pantaloge on the way. That brought me to Romania. So that was the main trigger of the decision to discover. So yeah, indeed, maybe when I was young and when I was thinking to go abroad, go international, maybe Romania was not the top of the list. But most of people that have some kind of stereotype and this is completely wrong. I guess we will deep dive on that as well. And yeah, so very nice opportunity. I say, yeah, why not? Let's say for two years, maybe see how it works. You know, I mean, this is what I sold to my mom. Say, OK, well, I'm not living so long. 20 years. Get rich. And yeah, so I at the beginning, I used to live in Brasov. So I guess it's important as well in how I discovered Romania, the fact that it was not Bucharest, it was not, you know, close to the French community and so on and so forth. So I was from day one really immersed, you know, in the country and with all the habits, you know. So I was around me. let's say 99.9% of Romanian colleagues and this was very helpful, I guess, for my integration.
- Speaker #1
So if I understand well, so you first got an internship at Pentalog. Yeah. Then they offered you a job in Romania.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
I want to understand a bit more this process. How many years did you spend at Pantalog before they made you this offer? Why Romania? I think Pantalog is also in other countries as well. Why coming to the Romanian market? What was the project there? And as you said, you thought it would be for a two-year period. Was it also part of the project at the beginning, professionally speaking?
- Speaker #0
I will make the long story short. Pentalog used to implement a product and depict Romania for various reasons. The CEO had some connection here through the university in Orlia. And they decided to go there because very good technical level French speaker, the francophone level and skills are very well developed there. So actually it appears like, you know, an evidence for them. And so when I joined, the Romanian, let's say, premises was already open for a while, I guess four years, something like that. And so it was well established, you know, so I did not came in an unknown field, you know, everything to discover. I mean, the biggest part was already done. So the team was there and it was a brush off. and Kishinev, I guess, in Moldova, in the Republic of Moldova, that were already open.
- Speaker #1
And when did you... So as you said, your first four years were coming for two years. When did you realize you would stay longer?
- Speaker #0
Oh, I guess this build-up, you know, on the way, because what was very... good in this journey is I have the opportunity to have multiple hats and maybe more opportunity that I could have if I stayed in France, for instance, where maybe in France you have to wait to have a certain level of experience to access some of jobs and responsibility. And it was not the case here. And actually, if you were all in, actually, there were a place for you, let's say. And Pantalo got this very special and nice aspect to give, you know, kind of responsibility and the chance to make a difference also to young people. I mean, we kind of all started from an internship. So it was the funny part. And I guess this is what is creating also the... the team and the mindset. And I was still for... when I went to a point and then I forgot the creation, sorry.
- Speaker #1
I wanted really to understand like what made you stay more than two years. Because the point was temporary and basically...
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah.
- Speaker #1
But what was the tricking point?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly. So I started from the different opportunities and then... starting developer project manager and the company was growing very fast so we decided to open different premises in in romania and not only but romania was pretty well covered at the beginning and so yeah we decided to go in north romania in a city named yash and i was chosen to take the lead on this on this new premises so very well great challenge for me. At the time I was not a Romanian speaker, let's say. I was capable to understand a few words but not really fluent. And for me it was important to learn fast, especially in this role of, let's say, delivery manager, in order to not create this barrier of language or to be the foreign manager and so on and so forth. Back into a 2007, you know, this was a bit tricky. Now it's not the case anymore. But yeah, for me, it was important. But it was also important to continue my integration in the country and in the society, you know. So that was really important. So this new experience kept me for three years more, you know. So and then came another opportunity, you know, and so on and so forth. So even if I thought that maybe I will come back to France. All the time a new opportunity takes me back or keeps me here, you name it. And well, you know, time is flying so...
- Speaker #1
It's been 20 years already.
- Speaker #0
Like that.
- Speaker #1
That's really cool. Okay. So we're going to talk afterwards about your experience at UiPath, the CloX AI and at Verigen. So in total, you stayed 12 years at PentaloG. Yeah. Which is a lot. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
But again, you don't feel it that way. It was very fast. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
What do you think are the main, I don't know, pillars that this company brought you? Career-wise, how did this company build you? If you stayed so long, it's probably because, as you said, you learned a lot, you had to go through a lot of new opportunities. But what is it that this company brought you professionally?
- Speaker #0
Well, I can say almost everything, because when you start from scratch, from the beginning, from the internship, actually the first experience will be a huge marker on your career. the way you will operate and also build your values and so on and so forth you know so the culture was was very strong i mean it's still i can consider it still a family for me uh i'm still very well connected with most of the people over there you know it's our close friends and you know this is what is making a cool story kind of you know and um yeah this mindset um was very strong and yeah once again i guess i lost the thread and afterwards so you went directly to uipath so uipath is romanian's most successful startup
- Speaker #1
that became a scale up and and yeah the biggest basic success story in romanian tech i have a lot of questions related to this topic So first of all, when did you join the company and what were your motivations? And then we can dig into other questions.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So I joined in later 2017. I decided to change my job because, yeah, after 12 years, to link to the previous question in Pantalog, I was wondering what I'm good at, what I'm capable of. But I wanted to change. It was a long time in IT services and I was eager to work for a product. I was really, really attracted by the product industry. And, you know, doing my research about what I can do, while I Google, you know, looking for some position, and now with ChatGPT maybe I can put all the information and he can find you the perfect job. But it was not the case back in time. So I have to look a bit of what can suit to my profile, you know, what I like to do, what I can do, what I can't do, and so on and so forth, you know. And this, let's say, drive me toward this customer success jobs. And it was pretty new. I guess it was introduced by, I don't remember, Google, Microsoft. I don't remember. A big one. a major company that came with that concept of customer success. So I guess first customer success starting 2013, 2014, something like that. So it's not a new one. And yeah, and guess what? Because everything happens for a reason, you know, looking to what I can do and the opportunity came, you know. So UiPath was already a... kind of a scale-up. It was after the Series A, 200 employees almost, you know, when I joined. So that was the main trigger, let's say, to embark in this rocket ship. That's how we call the company for a while, especially during all this funding raise that was... It was crazy and it was insane.
- Speaker #1
Did you feel the potential of the company before joining or you were just like satisfied with the job that they were offering? Like was also the potential a big motivator or you were only interested by the job?
- Speaker #0
There were some key words, buzz key words that were really sexy and cool around the company because we were talking about... robotics, automation. So it was really brand new and trendy stuff before. well again the ai and machine learning era so it was really uh really attractive for uh for many people and uh so you know it's like some that ring about a bulb light and uh so it it was really yeah really attractive to to to jump to jump in this endeavor can you share so
- Speaker #1
As far as I know, when you joined the company, you said there were 200 people, and when you left the company, there were like 3,000 people. Yeah. This took four years,
- Speaker #0
more or less, right? Yeah, more or less, yeah.
- Speaker #1
Can you explain some of the biggest challenges that you had to face in this time?
- Speaker #0
Because-My challenges or what I see of the-On the company and how it eventually impacted you or so. For the company, I guess another aspect that was very important for me was the culture. When I joined, there was only one value. It was humble. And again, I really embrace that part. And it was real. You know, I'm always fighting against those values that are written on the wall and doesn't mean anything. People walk close to it, but doesn't see it, doesn't feel it. You know, the humbleness was something very strong at UiPath. And I remember at the beginning when you were looking for help and you're going to someone and you see... well, can you help me with something? It was not like, oh, yeah, send me an invite on the end. No, it was not like that. It was stopping, taking time to yourself. So for me, it was really a very important step, the culture. And back to your question, I guess that having that hyper growth and this increase of number of employees, it was very, very... kind of complicated to contain and to maintain this culture. Other values join the humble, but I will always keep that humbleness value on top of my mind. As you can imagine, this changed a bit. The company also had layoffs along the way, so it's starting to introduce a bit of fear in the mix. So not necessarily not necessarily good vibes but yeah so this is one of the aspect of the challenge the product as well so and now I will link that to my job especially it's because it was something new it was important to be well connected to the customer to really learn and understand the way they are using the product be able to capt these needs loop back with the product team and you know having all this time uh this this loop of uh they want that we can do that we deliver that and so on and so forth to to keep all always this motion and uh again if you are listening to the customer to bring you know this uh uh i mean to understand their needs and uh and bring that into the product you know you can if you want thinking that this is the feature that they will need. But I guess that getting that from them will be always better and you will be right on the spot. You can have some, let's say, sexy feature that can join the product later on. But if you serve them with what they are expecting the most, there is a chance that... you will be successful and you will continue to have this effervescence around the product.
- Speaker #1
And I think it's, so if I fully understand, so basically your customer is successful, we'll come back on this later. You really need to understand what the customer needs in order to be satisfied with the product. I think in the case of a scale-up, it's extremely hard because you need to deliver very fast. And I think you also entered in a very competitive market with a lot of other companies that came in the market. And how do you think you were able to deliver versus competition? Did the company have a lot of flexibility or was it getting more and more difficult as the company was growing to be able to deliver the right product to the customer?
- Speaker #0
So I guess one choice that I've made at the beginning, especially around customer success, I remember that Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO, wanted to have a more technical profile for the customer success to be able to capture but also manage, handle a request from a customer on the spot. To avoid this, again, I'll be back to the team and I will come back, get back to you and so on and so forth. So it was really to shorten this back and forth discussion and to have this dynamic, having something every time in motion. So being in this really fast speed mode in order to grow very fast on that. So I guess it was a smart choice. For sure, you know, it won't be the case for every product, you know, because UiPath, there is a part of implementation. So it's a robot you have to implement. So there is a bit of, you need some technical skills to be able to start an automation and to program the implementation, to program the automation. So, yeah, I guess it was smart and it was really helpful, especially at the beginning. to speed up that team that was able to, again, speak the same language as the customer on technical purpose and be able also to explain it to the product team, avoiding many different intermediaries.
- Speaker #1
Is there anything you would have done differently during your four years there?
- Speaker #0
Me personally, maybe be bolder. I mean, it was one of the values as well. And in Pentalog, maybe I live in a sweet bubble. And when UiPath is starting to grow very fast and a lot of, let's say, people coming for big and established... Corporate, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft. So, you know, it was a different mindset. They were able to play politics a bit. I don't like really much politics. That's why maybe I'm still interested in more dynamic and scale-ups companies. So maybe I was not well-skilled and well-prepared for that. But you learn along the way, you know. So it was not something I could do differently at the time. It's something that I've learned. Maybe if I now back in time with that new knowledge, maybe it could be a bit different. It was kind of the takeaway when I decided to leave. And maybe to anticipate one question, it's because the company went too big on my opinion. The job was not the same when customer success at the beginning was able and in charge of really, you know, the digital transformation roadmap of a customer. to be the main actor, to drive the customer in that way, because automation was top of the list. Back in time, it was the most important now because of the AI event. Maybe it's a bit different, but back in time, automation was one of the best and the main leverage to accelerate savings and so on and so forth.
- Speaker #1
After UiPath, you joined Fluix AI. another sexy startup, we can say, coming from Romania.
- Speaker #0
Large Series A.
- Speaker #1
So you've been staying there for a year and a half. So when I saw your LinkedIn profile, I realized one thing, you're a very loyal employee. However, this seems to be a bit like a shorter experience.
- Speaker #0
You can be loyal in one year and a half.
- Speaker #1
This is also correct.
- Speaker #0
But I know what you mean.
- Speaker #1
So yeah, I have a lot of questions here. First of all, what attracted you to... leave UiPath to join FlowXAI. What precipitated the move after one year and a half in the company?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, well, I guess the reason I left UiPath, I covered it a little bit. Too large corporate. And my main trigger is I consider that I'm a builder rather to a farmer, let's say. I like to have my action implication counts. You know, like what you are doing, you feel that there is an impact on the company, on the organization. You're a large contributor. When the company is big, you know, you're like a drop in the ocean. What he's doing or what you're not doing does not make that much sense, you know. So that was the reason I thought that I still have the energy because it's also... One very important question you have to ask to yourself when you're joining an early stage company. It's to be able, I mean, to be sure that you have this energy, to give this energy, because it's not a hate hour job. You know, you're not counting the hours spent in front of your laptop. So it's a different stuff. I thought the product was very, very, very sexy as well. It was still around kind of the automation, but maybe on the... larger scale of the process. So it was a more high level of the process. And it was, again, early stage. And I guess that maybe one of the regrets of UiPath was to not join on very, very early stage. You know, so when it was 20, 30 employees. So I was attracted. I had a good feeling with the team at the beginning. I did my job. I was spread. between pre-sales and customer success, a bit of delivery, you know. So when it's a small company, you need to be good at everything or at least maybe bring your experience where you think it's useful and share to maybe a younger organization, you know, what you've learned from previous experience. But, you know, one takeaway, one observation here, it's maybe... When I joined, I was to label UiPath. And it's useless to try to replicate, to make a copy-paste of a previous experience. Every company is different. And I guess many ex-UiPaths have made this mistake to say that if we succeed there, we can succeed everywhere. It's not really the case. I mean, it's my opinion. And you really have to adapt. maybe it took me some time to reset and to avoid to make some, you know, parallel and link to what we've done in UiPath to think that it would be the right thing to do.
- Speaker #1
Just a question here. Do you think this mistake is more on your side or also on how people perceive you?
- Speaker #0
Oh, it's mostly on my side. Maybe for them it was interesting, let's say, or useful that I had this previous experience, for sure. But they were not asking me to copy-paste the UiPath organization.
- Speaker #1
No, but you may have people who have high expectations, you know, if he did it, he should be able to do it with us.
- Speaker #0
And yeah,
- Speaker #1
well, because things are different, sometimes expectations are not met.
- Speaker #0
Again, UiPath or not, the expectation must be high, you know. I mean, especially when the team is not that large.
- Speaker #1
Everyone needs to be top notch.
- Speaker #0
All in, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, but very great adventure, very great journey. I love the people there as well. I mean, I had a great time. I decided to leave because I didn't really feel that I can bring more value. I also felt kind of I was not linked anymore with the value. And for me, it's a huge trigger to feel, be part of the adventure or not. So I guess I had a kind of aha moment and I said, OK, maybe it's not a bad thing to continue. I also maybe make the switch where I pass to Flux a bit quickly. I forgot to take time for myself. My son was really young at the time. And I said, OK, maybe it's the right moment to try, you know, this sabbatical period. So I decided to jump off, take some time for myself, reset a bit on what I would like to do. You know, same as I did when I quit Pantaloog to say, OK, what I'm good at, what can I do? And so on and so forth.
- Speaker #1
Did you make most of your sabbatical or did you feel quickly bored? with the desire to accomplish something else.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it was not a one-year sabbatical. So I guess I quickly trying to find a new opportunity. And maybe it was a mistake because I'm not fitting on a limited job, for instance. So it's not the way it works. Maybe for some profile, but when you're hybrid... when you have kind of starting to have a large experiences you can do different stuff you're not fitting in into a job description so so yeah maybe I take the wrong way and I should have maybe take more time for myself but I did not destroy all the all the moment you know I also did some coaching for myself when in the past I was completely against off but It was a good opportunity to bring good questions for myself, to expose yourself into different scenarios and so on and so forth. So I had to open the network back and so on and so forth.
- Speaker #1
So the sabbatical was not really a break, it was a way to step back a little bit and think about the future by doing some self-assessment.
- Speaker #0
Exactly.
- Speaker #1
And okay.
- Speaker #0
But you know, I... Really, at the end of 2023, because this is when that happened, my conclusion was one of my best years. You know, I ended the year, 2023, with that really great feeling of I did something good for me. And in the summer in 2023, I also joined Veridian. So, you know, it was like I did a great move, you know, that feeling of job done. You make the right choices, you try to, you succeed actually to ask yourself what you want to do. During that break, I was really interested by data. So it's not, again, everything happened for a reason, but I was a bit bored of platform, you know, software is a UI and something like that. So I was maybe more attracted about data, big tech, machine learning, all this. buzzword again and I found Verigion around the way.
- Speaker #1
So how did that happen?
- Speaker #0
Well networking, people that making connection with other ones, let's say, okay, maybe it's a great time for you to have customer success. I guess Florin, the CEO of Verigion, was maybe starting to think about it and you know, maybe for him it was also an opportunity. You have one discussion too. doing an assignment and continue the process of interview. So exposing yourself is in the outside the comfort zone and it's always great to go through this hiring process. It's really, it's make feeling you well because you receive kind of validation of outside and the validation of your experiences.
- Speaker #1
this is what how that happened networking okay um so now that you joined very young it's been a year and a bit more than a year right yeah yeah uh first of all can you share also some words about the region and and secondly i really want to insist on something when i when i saw you at how to web you were so happy to talk about the region as a company yeah and it's something like You know, like when you work in startups, scale-ups, like, you know, it's hard. You need to work a lot. You need to go through a lot of like, you know, different subjects. And sometimes the motivation, like people, people want to tell it's great, but you see they're tired and they just want to take a break. But like, you just seem like super excited about joining this team. And I really want to know more about that, like in detail.
- Speaker #0
Okay. So first of all, very good. Deep tech company that is mostly delivering filmographic data. So that means that we are building digital profile of a company. How we are doing that is actually we are calling the entire internet looking for public sources that give information about a company. And when you have a company, you will have a set of attributes, data points, that are very interesting for... many different companies in different use cases. To give you an example, it's an insurer carrier would be very interesting to understand what their customer does. So what the business does, kind of, to evaluate the risk and so on and so forth. Because Veridon will analyze some of the description and having... You can go to... to know the legal information about the company, but you won't have that much about what they are doing effectively. But looking at the website, looking at what they are doing, looking at About Us, looking at the product there, you can understand the business. And for an insurance, it would be very useful to evaluate the risk that can have. So they can apply a specific policy based on what the customer is doing. We can... be able also to understand what a supplier manufacturer is doing, what kind of product. So we can accelerate for a supply chain or for a procurement team the capability to serve the right company that is doing this right product as well. So there is many, many use cases. What is doing differently, I guess, it's on top of the data that we are collecting, we bring our own machine learning model that are able to, well, create no data point, having this global understanding on an information, giving this determinism, so giving the proof of where we found the data. You know, it's not serving the data. This is it. We can having the proof and explain why we consider that this is the revenue of the company. What is the... What is the description like that? What the risk can be like that? And then when you have all this information, you can extend. So now we're starting to look at the news. The model will understand what the news is about. Is it margin acquisition? Is it ESG? And so on and so forth. Then you can classify. You can extract information from the news. You can give some confidence score about... I don't know if it's an ESG, is it bad, is it good? So plenty of information linked to the profile. And then when you see it as a whole, it's making sense. So you have the profile, you have the company, you have the group that is part of, you have all the information about this company and the group, and so on and so forth. So it's really giving a new way for insurers. market intelligence firm and so on and so forth to access this information. Because, let's say, other competitors like ZoomInfo, DNB, Dan and Bradstreet are sitting on quite very statical information. So we can say dead information if we are looking to the registry itself. Then they are collecting information by call center. So, you know, we can refresh. the entire internet and all the information every week you know so it's it's game changer to their capacity with a call center doing that so yeah it's uh and well there is so much uh project into the pipeline as well uh the the data team the machine learning team is really working so good together and so hard at the same time that yeah there is really great thing to to come along the
- Speaker #1
how big is the team right now around 50. okay and um what what do you see okay there are you understand there are like features updates uh like product updates happening but like what is the vision of the company like need and long term vision
- Speaker #0
of the company well it's uh it's serving and having the data exposed as much as possible. But I guess that it's always making that a bit differently and not just serving a data point to say, yeah, we have it. It's mostly to have this entire context. I mean, determinism is an important word for us and in what we are doing. And extend the use cases, extend the portfolio for sure. So, yeah. And by the way, an interesting as well, we have our own infrastructure for the GPUs. So we decided to not go to the cloud. And we have the GPU at the office. So it's making like even, you know, not the startup garage, but, you know, having those kind of hardware. In the previous office, they worked. really close to us so we can hear the and feel the heat. Now they have a proper...
- Speaker #1
Storage.
- Speaker #0
Storage, yeah.
- Speaker #1
That's really cool. And yeah, like I was, we were discussing like how amazed, like how excited you were about working there. Like what, what makes it culture?
- Speaker #0
Sorry, I cut you because where are you going? Yeah, culture is, I remember that CoolPrit, one of the great guys from IEA, written some article and say, strategy, its culture at breakfast. And actually, it's key to have this well-established culture into the company. Veridion is doing great in that way. Why it's great? It's because open mind, very honest, direct communication. It's like no filter, but in a good way, not in... you know it's not it's not harsh you know it's just we are able to telling the thing um paying attention is it this disrespectful or not um and yeah so i found a really great team there young team i feel the i felt old at the beginning there but very talented it's clear that a very let's say they paid attention of every hiring. No, because I'm hiring myself, also hiring people myself into the company. I can see the other way of the, to be on the other side of the table. And yeah, it's a specific process, but it's a good one. They pay attention of very lot of thing. And then it's something that continue along the way. So the culture, the product, the fact that it's around data, and then I was the main of the big logo. So I never see a startup at this level of development with so big logo in market, intelligence and insurance and supply chain as well, you know. So it was, for me, like, okay, something happening. I mean, it's not by mistake or... you know that you can have this kind of uh this kind of logos so you have the feeling that you joined very young at the right time well you you had to say where you had path it was a bit later on uh yeah yeah yeah well earlier is even better i mean uh the company is uh almost five five years old now uh but they they did a pivot so so yeah no i guess i joined the right time yeah um after the seed uh now we are running to the series a so that's the right time you know the process are not well established there is a lot to build back on my previous point you know so having your action have an impact yeah having an impact and that's the first time really the first time i feel that my experience from the previous jobs It's first appreciate, so that's important, and bringing value. Well, I guess this is coming together, you know, if you feel appreciation, you will bring even more value. But yeah, that's, and honestly, after one year, I still believe that it's the honeymoon, you know, so it's still, my motivation is still very high. So it's not like after the three months, I guess this is a marker, you know, after the three months.
- Speaker #1
You know,
- Speaker #0
yeah,
- Speaker #1
you know exactly.
- Speaker #0
So it's still here. And yeah, everybody is really, really committed to this adventure. So I'm very confident of what will come next, whatever it's come, you never know, but which direction it will go. But yeah, very confident.
- Speaker #1
That it's going to be the next successful thing.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, for sure I would like to believe that. And what is the success, you know?
- Speaker #1
It's very subjective.
- Speaker #0
Yes, it's value, it's logos. Well, again, all of this is coming together. But let's say the value will be important.
- Speaker #1
Good. So now we've done a pretty detailed overview of your career path. I want to understand more. So you've been doing customer success. since quite some time now. I first want to clarify a bit what is the goal of customer success. I think it's a job which is very often misunderstood by people. And also, when is customer important in a company? Is it a certain phase in terms of growth? Is it for certain type of companies? So on and so forth.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So why it's important? It's important because it will be the very unique link that you have between your customer and the product. Okay, so I guess the best way to sum up is customer success is the voice of the product in front of the customer and voice of the customer in front of the product. Okay, so that's a very specific thread and way of communication. So to capture that information, it's... it will be key. It's really a lot of common sense. It's about creating a relationship, a long-term relationship. It's about making the person you are working with on a day-to-day basis from the customer side successful. It's about understanding what the customer is doing with your product, how they can gain advantage and how they can extract best value. of this product, how we can capture the KPI, how you can present that to the business or the executive, and so on and so forth. So it's really having all these elements around the different interactions to make sure the customer made a great investment and made the right decision to use your product.
- Speaker #1
So if I understand well, it's a bit different than account management because management is maybe more sales-oriented job. It's also different from support job. So it's kind of in the middle, if I understand well.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so sales is sales. So they have to generate revenue. Shouldn't be the case for... Customer success, even if it's a leverage in that revenue growing, the important is always to have this strategical view. Support will be more tactical. We need this right now. We have this issue. We have to correct it and so on and so forth. With customer success, you have to understand what the customer wants to do, what are the success criteria for that, and how you're building the... plan together to reach that direction.
- Speaker #1
And to come back to the timeline, when is customer success important for a company? Because it seems like you join customer success in companies that were already, they found their product market fit they're just ready to ramp up. Is it a phase which comes at that time or you think it's more related to the type of product you're offering to customers?
- Speaker #0
So the timeline. So yeah, the right, the good timeline is maybe when you start to have a more mature product. For sure, customer success at the beginning, maybe you won't hire this profile to do only customer success. It will be part of the pre-sale as well. And it depends on the size of the team, you know, because it's important, especially at the beginning, it's good at. a bit everything to touch on different aspects of the company also to understand the structure and and and and then when you're starting to have bigger customers when you feel that the level of touch should be higher it will starting to be important to have people that are more dedicated to that relationship because an engagement with a customer can take some time you know so If you are on a weekly basis of touch base, for sure you will have some action to execute after each of that weekly. So, yeah, I'm not really happy with that answer. Well,
- Speaker #1
I think it's... I think it's very important also to create a very good relationship with salespeople because salespeople tend to sometimes create a relationship, sign the contract, and then... That's it. Like their job is done, they get their commission, so they move to the next customer.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Is that challenging for you to build a relationship with a salesperson to make sure the transition is smooth and that the customer feels there is continuity in the relationship?
- Speaker #0
I guess it's important to be, I like to say, two in the box. So having a strong, again, communication with your account manager. because they are not aware of everything that is happening on the ground, when I mean the ground is in day-to-day activity with the customer, because as you said, they are managing the high level of the relationship with some executive and not connected especially with people that are hands-on on the product and using the product. So it's important to keep this good communication to make them aware of what's happening, again to detect if there is potential upsell. It's important also to have some important milestones, we name it the QBR, the quarterly business review, where you can bring the exec, the account manager, your champion, let's say from the customer side, to share what's happening, to share what we do, to share and to define the next step of the strategy. So it should be a very healthy relationship with the account manager.
- Speaker #1
Okay, that's clear. And do you sometimes join sales meetings with the account managers before having that logo? Do you already establish a relationship before signing them or does it come only afterwards?
- Speaker #0
Usually we prefer to, let's say, invest, let's say, the customer success team when everything is settled. Okay, cool. The first implication of the team will be the onboarding. So let's say when it's a inside kickoff, we present everything that should happen, the onboarding phases, so always giving as much as predictability we can. So it's important to have everything discussed, defined with a specific timeline and organization for the customer to exactly know where we are going. For sure, it will come also with... his constraints and you know you would like maybe to go faster but because it's a large company they will have constraint to uh to well execute in in in that manner of time so yeah the onboarding and then the the hyper care or the production uh period takes place okay good uh more on a personal note
- Speaker #1
So you've been acquiring experiences in scale-ups, startups, and so on and so forth. You have quite a complete career at this stage. What do you see next? Do you think it's also time for you to create your own company? Or in contrary, you have this feeling that maybe you achieved quite a lot professionally speaking and it's time to step back and maybe focus more on personal matters?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's still open. Let's say that besides this activity and my day-to-day job, I'm really close and connected to the investment and startup ecosystem, especially in Romania. So investing myself in some companies, be part of some VCs as well. So I'm aware of what's happening. I have a really... huge admiration for people that are jumping, you know, making that jump to create their own company. So I can't say that I'm not interested in. I will look at the good ideas and something that is meaningful for me as well. For sure, you know, working 12 hours per day doesn't offer you to have this mental space. to think about it but i keep that inside in in somewhere in my in my head so why not uh i will fight hopefully to not be part of a corporation sorry it's it's uh well you never know again i i don't want you never say never yeah never say never or putting every every company you know in the in the same box but uh yeah Again, back on what I said previously, it's important to be aware of what is your level of energy, what you can really invest in. in what you're doing. I mean, if you're an employee, if you're the CEO, if the founder and so on and so forth. But yeah, the funding part sounds good to me.
- Speaker #1
I want to talk more about like Romania because it's been here since 20 years. What are the competitive advantages for startups to become scale-ups while being here? And in contrary, what are the areas making things more complicated?
- Speaker #0
So I guess that technical skills were always a huge and big advantage for Romania. So people that are really able to create, to bootstrap on the product and having a product first. They can build really fast a platform, showing. So I guess that's a huge advantage. The ecosystem especially. in the last 10 years, accelerated a lot. VCs, investment, maybe UiPath also brought a different spotlight.
- Speaker #1
It contributed to that too.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, on Romania. So that's a really good thing. But maybe people started to see Romania a bit differently or starting to see Romania. And yeah, this... energy so people are not especially expecting something from state helps and stuff like that they are really eager to jump in and then see what what happening so they don't have this fear what can be better not better but what it's complicated it's maybe the market size so it's not easy to maybe launch a product that will fit only for for Romania so I guess it's a common A common recommendation is go international from day one. Again, depend on your product. Don't want to go into generality.
- Speaker #1
I had this discussion with some friends, like Romania is big enough to push startups to create things nationally, but it's too small to make it work. Like some countries are so small that startups are all, like Estonia, for example, the country is so small that every startup from Estonia has to be born global. Romania is big enough that you believe you can start in Romania and then launch somewhere else, but you cannot only stay in Romania, you know? Yeah,
- Speaker #0
yeah.
- Speaker #1
It's a bit in the middle.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So, but there is some, again, depends on the target, the socio-professional target of your product. But there is some early adopter. I saw a lot of people eager for, you know, technology or... new ideas, new products, new concepts, and so on and so forth. So this is not bad. I guess maybe what could be better is, you know, in France, we have all this BPE or all this investment from the state or, you know, the loan for zero interest and so on and so forth. So I guess this is missing a bit. So people have to go love money or find other way to bootstrap and start on the investment. sibling or you know this crowdfunding platform are good and and also brought a lot of leverage and options more investment as well so it's still something that is building up um
- Speaker #1
and it's on the right track yeah i really think so i mean you there are more and more successful stories and that of course help you know the dynamic is there yeah and a more and more active investors community. Exactly. Great. So I think we covered pretty much everything. I think it's been more than one hour anyway we are talking. Really? Yeah.
- Speaker #0
In 20 years, one hour, it's the same.
- Speaker #1
In one hour, we made it. Yeah, thanks a lot, Grigori. It was super nice having you.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, absolutely.
- Speaker #1
I'm looking forward to watch this podcast afterwards when we will be finally editing and stuff. Yeah, thanks a lot again. and see you very soon.
- Speaker #0
Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
- Speaker #1
Thanks, everyone. Bye.
- Speaker #0
Bye.
- Speaker #1
Thanks a lot for watching. I really hope you had a lot of fun. It was pretty amazing. I think Greg shared a lot of amazing insights. Please don't forget to give a like, to subscribe on the channel you're listening to the podcast and see you to the next episode. Bye.
