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Podcast

Almas Abulkhairov on building a remote distributed company in pandemic and insights on hybrid work

by Pushpak Mundre February 19, 2021

Almas started as a young scientist at the Institute of Space Research at Russian Science Academy. he has been working for two years on a big research project on which he developed research, analytical, and large data processing skills. Now Almas Abulkhairov is Chief Executive Officer at SpatialChat
Get in touch with Almas 
Get in touch with Pushpak
Visit us – Crewscale

Transcript

Hello, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Be Remote Podcast. I'm your host Pushpak. And today we have Mr. Almas, Almas is CEO and founder of spatial chat. He has done his education from Moscow, Russia, and now he is in his country running his company completely remotely. So welcome to the show. How are you?..........

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Hi pushpak.. Thank you for inviting me to this podcast. Very excited to be participating.Thank you so much for joining us. So let's talk about spatial chat. So what exactly Spatial chat is, and yeah, what exactly it is.Spatial chat is a virtual event platform with high emphasis on networking experience. So what our customers use Spatial chat for exactly, our customers, and we have 1000s of them already. So far, they're using our product for virtual networking events, or their online conferences, they use it for townhall meetings or brainstorm sessions inside their internal company meetings, as well as a lot of universities, schools. Worldwide, hundreds of them in the United States in a quarter of universities of Japan are using it for online education, combined with poster sessions. So they're what unites them. What is the common playground is that we have a better breakout experience that zoom offers. So they are all choosing us instead of zoom, because of the easiest networking experience, as well as reliability on scale.Right, so I was about to ask you how exactly it's different from zoom or other platforms, right. So at zoom, we can only like meet and we can have an event. And also, is there any difference between zoom and a special chat?Yes, first of all, we are not competitors. We do different things. Okay, zoom is a one to many communication products. I mean, basically, it's a one person speaking while 99 Listen, it's a one to many conversation, while things like spatial chat is many to many conversations, where you can easily switch topics by moving to another group discussion. And groups can combine or separate into clusters. And that's the simulation of real life. gatherings of large amount of people like coffee breaks, company wide team meetings, conference after party events where many too many people.Yeah, so since when did you started spatial chat, is it started in a pandemic or it was available before pandemic as well.First build of the product happened in December 2018. So a little bit more than two years ago. But we were too lazy and busy with other business activities. Okay. So it wasn't until March 20 20 when we decided to launch it more officially and start to make it a business. That's funny history. So we are as the company we started in April 2020.Okay, so the product was ready in 2018 only, but the actual work started in pandemic, right.Yes, the story was very funny. So the pandemic struck the entire world. And it was March and in March. City, restricted everyone from working at the offices. Don't ever want to go home. Yeah, so that's what made us go home and we were two companies. I mean, we are a group company. Two days later, after everyone was bored and missing each other in their homes. One of our colleagues told, Hey, guys, did you remember, one year ago, you created something with the circles moving? Can you redeploy, please? And we're like, Okay, I'm calling my partner. Men. Can you redeploy that circle stuff? I forgot that I even forgot the name. So we redeployed. That was Friday. Two hours later, we invited the entire company to the spatial chat event and it was so fun. We spent two hours there. So that we had an initial feeling that Wow, now people have the strong motivation to use such product, Why not giving this demo prototype to other companies were friends with? So we did it. And several other big companies with hundreds of employees used spatial chat as well for their own internal meetings. And that recession was like 45 to 70 minutes, which was tremendous for a prototype. Like, bare bone project. Yeah. And after that, we decided to make it more beautiful and launch officially on product hunt. So April 20, of 2020. Was the the number one official officially being in business. Awesome. That's a really nice story. Yeah. So what spatial chat is a completely remote company, right? Do you have employees either around the globe, right. So what made you, you know, pick remote, remote work personally.That decision goes way back to several years ago, when life separated us. With my partners across the globe, we moved to different countries, different cities. So we may be some of us worked at the office, including me. But technically, we were apart anyway. So office was just a shell to go away from home. In reality, me and my partners were always remote, okay, in relation to each other. But we missed each other a lot. And things like zoom never substituted the real life presence of each other. Yeah, so this is a little bit of stereo that led to several years of research of disrupting online communication in order to get back the feeling of each other's presence. So yeah, we started being remote like that. However, when the pandemic hit, we didn't have any choice. We didn't have any choice, likeeveryone else remote mode.So everyone was remote so far, by default, yeah. Then we were thinking we are remote anyway. Yeah, let's find new team members across the globe. Let's not be limited to particular city or country. So today, we started as 4 & today, we are 16 people from five countries, Israel, France, Japan, Cyprus and Russia. So our team members are from five countries and to enjoy this and to enjoy this. It gives a lot of diversity and not be limited to particular markets. You can find the best talent out there.. Quick history of being remote.Yeah,that's awesome.So what kind of challenges did you face while working remotely while building a remote team? Because like hiring people is a big challenge right? And you were hiring all these people remotely? Then what kind of challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?So first is not the challenge but the must have to since we are remote and international everyone must know English English well so we are technically limiting to searching only people with spoken English wherever they are, but that's not the main issue. The main issue here is to you know officially you we all everyone is working full time on in their balconies in their apartments at home but sometimes team miss each other and we talk to each other only on daily or weekly meetings. I mean, the official business stuff like work related Yeah, but there's one thing that all of us including you do while in the office, we sometime go to kitchen and meet each other meet each other from different departments while making some coffee drinking some tea and so on right yeah, so these are the magical thing or, or however funny it may sound we meet each other in toilets. Yeah, they meet each other in toilets or kitchen or office cafeteria. Some unofficial freedom of thinking freedom of thought.Yeah, and to quickly discuss like when we discuss this on weekly meeting, but anyway, what do you really think about this, maybe we can arrange some other stuff. So this is where creativity so we supplement or now are experimenting and it proves well. We are doing like every day like at four or 5pm we have automatic modifier notifying everyone that everyone feel free to go to our spatial chat kitchen. I mean inside spatial chat Yeah. So you don't have to, but you can ,people from different departments meet each other that So, so that that happens. This is one this is work related challenge, one work related challenge. Most of us also have children and families requires a new level of discipline. It requires your family to embrace that. Maybe you are at home, but they must treat you like you are not at home that you are at work. This is one problem. Another problem is the children. Not caring that you work in every time jiggling. But what amazing stuff I learned about people this year from I was talking to customers from United States, Japan, Brazil, Australia, India, Germany, Netherlands, wherever we are, we are actually same people with same problems in all of these countries. There were people with children screaming in the background. Yeah. And I like there is not so much difference between our soul.Yeah, that is so true. They should like every zoom call, if you are well settled, or like married, then of course, there will be children. That is a normal thing, right?That's a normal thing. Yeah. normal thing.So like, are you planning to go back to the office like after the pandemic was over? Or, like, you'll be remote? Like you will be remote forever?most probably will remain remote forever. There is the possibility to have some headquarter. But we have we already have people from five countries from 10 different cities, there's no way I can imagine of telling them to move to one particular country and see, I can't envision that. So we are Yeah, remote by default. So you how you guys are basically 16 employees in 5 countries, right. And they are distributed in five countries.Yeah, exactly. Correct. That's one thing. Sometime in future, I hope the pandemic will stop. So we will have to meet each other at least once a year or, or better several times per year. Like I recall it the summit, annual companies summit, there should be some one place in the world where we can gather and just drink some beer, and just see each other. Because it's our human nature. To see each other I mean, to feel that I feel like to watch in the eyes to feel the presence. Maybe that's what evolution has made made us.So yeah, like, you guys are from five different countries. So once a year you can choose, you know, one country and let that in. So in that way you can travel to another country also. And you can meet also, that's amazing. No, it's like a World Football Championship or Olympics that each time they have new country. The same, the same here.So I was wondering, like, how do you measure the productivity of employees remotely? Like suppose if you're in a workspace or office, then like, it's easy to monitor or like, you know, like people are in the cubicles and we can see that he or he is working, they're working. So at remote, so but when you are the remote company, so this kind of task are like kind of difficult, right? So how do you do that?The only measurement is the amount of work done. We don't care when the when I'm sorry, when moment.Yeah.We don't care when people start or end their work day. We just only care them to gather at weekly or daily meetings. But otherwise, they feel free to work whenever they need to be. Anyway work happens when it happens. Even pre pandemic in office mode, there are a lot of smart books off which with half of them I agree telling that work doesn't happen at work. So there's work doesn't happen at work meaning at the office. So yeah, amount of work done is the only measurement. So, in engineering we have understanding the number of tasks done in support, we have an understanding of number of support cases then, in sales, we have an understanding of how many 100 leads have we processed this week. Who do we talk to what is the percentage of the funnel and so on. And this works. This is also connected into the with the nature of reality of working from home at home. Anyway, your family distracts you. Then you need to go to cook some food or your babies need some changing of their pants if you know what I mean. mean? Yeah, so distraction happens anyway. Or you have to not work for the next two hours because you need to make your baby sleep. So sometimes you, you postpone some tasks, you separate your day in several workers, several working ranges. Yeah.And the productivity hours are different for everyone, everybody, right? like someone who's a morning person who wakes up early in the morning and do the work. And some people they like to walk, you know, like late night, so right. So it depends from person to person. But if you are an office, then everyone will have to come at the same time and work but that's the one advantage of remote work so you can work when you are comfortable with basically.Yeah, what, what else helps us We are currently at this we let's call it in the beginning. We're at the fragile state of product market fit development and initial business model traction. What benefitted us that most of the team was in the plus ministry, our timezone difference. We didn't have 12 hour difference, though, still, there is no 12 hour difference between team members like it also helps to at least have some normal overlap, where they can comfortably meet and meet each other anyway, only after we grow more. After we grow more we will be able to afford people from other from United States I mean, in terms of timezone timezone, comfortability, compatibility, compatibility and availability. Until then, we have been operating basically from Iraq or Eastern Europe. Yeah. And we don't, we don't like, we don't need to see that someone is working, we don't need to see your face and to end to hear that you're clapping on your keyboard. It wasn't working at the office, it will don't it won't work.Yeah, it's about trust rights, trusting the employees. That's what matters.It's about trust and actual productivity, productivity can be measured by amount of work done. What else? What else if there's something we have observation, but in that world, so more than 70% of Western I mean, American and European enterprises agreed the day confirmed, remote only work this year, or allowing employees to freely choose whether they want to work at office or at home. So that's called hybrid work. So this year, and maybe in the next year will be for some companies remote only for some companies hybrid, but most probably it will be office only for a small percentage of modern enterprises anyway. What and what is the hybrid work is when only some fraction of your team less than 50% go to office, go to office, we have to experiment in other in other friendly company. So some, there was a decrease in productivity in one summer quarter, because entire team was at home. Okay, and the guest and they guessed that the problem was in, in the lack of meeting each other in the toilet or cafeteria. That was the real problem. So now part of the team is good. I mean, the team leads are sometimes going to the office in order to meet each other in toilet and in meeting rooms. But what hybrid means there is that like you, me, and the third guy, we are in the office together in one room, but we are seeing and talking to our team with zoom or spatial chat in remote. So we are together offline, but everyone else is online. That's called hybrid. Got it? It will transfer into that that's the natural. That's the question. That's the topic of human nature, the symbology. Still, you need to feel each other.Do you? Do you want to go hybrid in a future? like where do you see the future of remote work? Like what are the things that you are curious about in your industry? And do we think maybe in future you will go high blade? Or Yeah.So remote work was is a very high motivation. That the pandemic was the high motivation for millions of people to embrace this remote work in to see in practice that it works. Otherwise, they didn't have enough motivation to experiment. Now entire world sees that productivity decrease so much. And sometimes it's, it's the same, not worse than pre pandemic. So what happens With the combination of some economic problems, namely,yes, a second, like there was some voice going on, like, I don't know, is it because of your earphones or something?Better now,yeah, I spent. So we were talking about like, what are you what, which other things are doing this about you mode was kind of like maybe going hand in hand.Yeah. So simple facts. Now, a lot of people worldwide, practically. So embarrassing today, that remote work works. Second, a lot of economic troubles happened with the within the world in many countries, so that there is a lot workforce now available. And you can now see that you cannot limit your now you are able not to limit yourself to a particular city or a country, you can search for the best talent anywhere, it's actually very cool. What we have seen is that, in close regions, their salary level is not so is there is no, not so much difference between salaries, as well as people are. It's very rare to find, for example, WebRTC engineer, it's very hard to find good WebRTC engineer, because this is a relatively relatively new field of work. Everyone is an iOS or Android engineer, if you know what I mean. But so WebRTC is something very hard and new. So it's hard to limit yourself by one country. So we extended number of regions, we were looking for such people, also, we are serving customers globally. So we must have some local presence in Europe. And ultimately, we need some presence in the United States. Today we are we are solving this issue by working in shifts. So like today, I'm the one working until midnight, in order to be able to go to with our American customers. Tomorrow, there will be Michael leak, working until midnight, calling to them and so on, we are like working in shifts, but ultimately with the growth. It should be a local presence in order to serve customers in daytime.So what did you learn from starting a company which you wouldn't have learned from anywhere else? Basically?That's a very good question. That's a very good question, what we learnt and also what we always guessed, but didn't have any chance to test and try, we were forced, we were forced to do this time with spatial chat, for example. For example, the most important thing is to test the demand or on your product, as well as understand how to earn money. So it needs to, you need to test whether you can earn some money, whether there is a demand. So there's a product market fit focus. Because that's the focus we haven't done and the focused our attention to build our own video infrastructure, for example, we can do it, we can do it even now. But it will decrease our company focus, as well as maybe it will won't be necessary because the product might fail. So thanks to this logic, we we understood that it's now business now we can think about the future a year ahead. And think about own research and development in this matters. Also, what we learned Next, I have never done b2b enterprise business myself, me and my partners, we were all we were always b2c, like the consumer business entrapreneurs I didn't even know words such as invoice or order form that they learned in spatial chat, because Apple and Google Play handle this for us with the in app purchases, right? So we experimented with business sales, I mean, talking to customers writing emails, making proposals and so on, and they drove 60% of our revenue. Thanks to that, we were able to talk to our customers. So b2b business, what excites me and this is my first SAAS business software and service business is that instead of talking to 10,000 users, indirectly through the funnel conversion analysis in analytic software, you talk to hundreds But directly, you learn faster, and you get the feedback faster. And to see all of the emotions and feedback whether they need it or not.How do you do that?Just schedule a call with our customers. questions we, initially we called in zoom, then we switch to calling with everyone in spatial chat like you and I did the last time when? Yeah, yeah. So SASA business is is a cool thing to run, just talk to people directly, not talking to them through the funnel or AB test conversion analysis. That's the cool thing. Yeah. So yeah, the priority is to do as less as possible in order to prove that that's the scalable and repeatable business model. On the if you have guarantee of that, a proven guarantee of that you can think about the rest, the rest. So at the beginning of any startup, think about distribution channels, rather than the magic idea and vision test distribution channels, and how to monetize this, once you get this and how the economics work. How the economics work.Yeah, like, because if you're starting a product, right, if you're starting a startup or something, then it's really important, like it should make them money, right? Because you are investing your time you're investing your energy. The first you know, point which you mentioned that, of course, it should make money, then only it makes sense, right? Otherwise, you're just like, wasting your money or time and money, maybe resources.Also, we proved the idea. I don't like this idea, but it's a working idea we should work upon is like, Don't Don't be afraid to break things, break things and move fast.Yeah.Spatial chat first version lunch on product hunt was very expensive to handle. It has a lot of bugs. It was a super basic functionality. But it worked there. And we started charging them money for updated products with more capacity and capabilities. It broke. We were like, Oh my god, I'm sorry. There's some failure, we refund the money. But at least we knew that people pay for that. And we are honest people if we see that we failed or we failed, because it's not our fault. Because it's other infrastructure fault. It happened many times. But we were like, okay, we prove to prove to ourselves that there is a demand of that people are ready to pay for that. And people who we failed, we are refunding the money, and also proving to them that we care, and we will improve next time. That's the cool thing. about not being afraid and grow things.Yeah. So what are you really into outside of work? What do you do? What do you like to do in your free time?I'm, uh, I have family. I have a wife and two kids. I have only three interests. One is to spend some quality time with them, and just work together to play some games together. Second time with computer I am computer gamer myself, I like to play some games one time each week. By weekly at least. In number three, just just watch Netflix and do sports. I do sports several times per week like boxing.Which series you are watching on Netflix right now.Star Trek Star Trek Next Gen. And snowpiercer snowpiercer. Recommended.is there any founder or entrepreneur, basically that you're following or studying?Is there some intrapreneur that I studied? I mean, yeah.You follow you study? Yeah.Try to learn from? Yes, there's only there's several of them. But there's only one I can. I'm learning from? That's my former investor. When I was a bit younger. One gentleman who is now a billionaire, invested in my startup, and I learned so much from him. For example, what separates successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurs are born with the instinct. How to save more politely of not wasting the time, not wasting the time with. But that was there was a more explicit version, I mean that the waste of time on bullshit that you don't need to do. For example, real entrepreneur is bored of doing something for more than half a year that doesn't have any signal for success, either growth or money. If you don't see this, you should stop stop that you do and doing the new stuff. That's what I learned. That's one thing. But what what the next, what is the next thing I learned? In order to make disruptive company, you should make three things built best solution to make a small niche very happy. And that niche exists in an already existing several billion dollar market. Right, number three, that Nisha will dominate in this market within the next five to seven years. So we have a proximity, proximity chat niche. And we are one of the best solutions for that inside an online event market that's already growing. And the market and the niche is growing as well. And the market is growing. And the niche inside the market is growing. So that's the idea that we are pursuing.Yeah, awesome, amazing insights. Anyone who wants to start like a company like this, like three insights, which you said are like important like this. So what's your favorite book, any book about life or about business, which is your favorite book?So today, my favorite book is hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz, fund the DMZ. I'm still reading this. I don't like reading books. I don't read too many books. I started in Russian, MIT, where we prefer small books in instead of large books. We seek for wisdom not. So I'm one of people who I'm kind of person who doesn't read 100 books per each year. I think that's a waste of time. But hard things about hard things is one of those books you should read. It's about real challenges for the CEO in real companies in real tough situation. But what was the another book that changed my mind more than 10 years ago, that helped me to to pursue the right thing, not the wrong thing. That was just the Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Have you heard about this? Yeah, it explains the concept of assets and liabilities, right? And puts your logic in the right place.Yeah, this is one of the classics of finance and entrepreneurship. The found like a lot of like, I talk to a lot of people out of founders and they say, like, I added this exact product in the early days and it like completely changed my perspective and mindset about life and business.Exactly. Because they don't teach you this at school or university. Yeah, you need some wisdom.Awesome. Thank you so much, Almas. It was really great talking to you. Like, we got insights not only about remote work, but about entrepreneurship and about starting companies and what to do and what not to do. So it was really great talking to you. Thank you so much.Pushpak Thank you. The pleasure was really mine. see each other awesome. Bye.Bye.

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