Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of be remote podcast we have for today's episode Bahadir. He's the co founder and CEO of fabricator. fabricator is a supply planning and software that minimizes the revenue loss of DTC brands direct to consumer brands by preventing out stock outs right so this is a pretty interesting domain you are on to lead in fact, I see the future of e commerce more of DTC I can see that picking up wave across multiple different categories whether it's cosmetics supply chain and things like that...........
Read More
So, like even so you're onto something big. Yeah, this is a space that I keenly follow and pretty excited about. Like I'm so body over to you probably a quick introduction about you and your company fabricator. Yeah.Thank you very much. So a bit about myself, maybe a My name is bahadir. I'm originally from Istanbul, Turkey, currently located in Germany, Berlin. I started my career as a data scientist in telco. And then I moved to different startups and corporate roles as a product manager. I did work in like tourism, travel, FinTech, Robo advisory, and finally ecommerce. And so at fabric cutter, we're building a supply planning platform for direct to consumer brands, where we prevent them running out of stock by forecasting their inventory needs, and then planning it according to their lead times with manufacturers. We know this is a big problem in the industry, because the two C's are limited by the lead times they have from their manufacturers. When a traditional retailer is running out of stock, they can just source products from the market by going to wholesalers, it's ready to supply if you pay for it. But for the ABC Company, it needs to get manufactured from scratch. So the lead times are long and running out of stock is an expensive problem. That's why we started this product in November. It's quite fresh. Actually. It's imputed of our original product, which was a manufacturing management platform, where we were serving to the market from the other end from the manufacturer side. And now we switch sides and helping the brands on the other end.Awesome. Awesome. So for everyone on the podcast here today. So Bobby, has a very interesting story of starting the company fully remotely, and also doing the complete fundraising remotely. Right. So he has been a product manager himself. And we during our episode today, like when we'll talk more about how to operate in a product management in a remote setup. And also from a founders perspective on how do we run the company remotely, probably the fundraising. So whether you have really, really exciting story, especially rightly fit for the times, I think the audience would be super excited to hear your story by the end. So probably I'll start with the first one. So like I mean, so. So how's your journey as a founder being a founder, especially in a remote setup, like I'm and so how was your fundraising journey? Probably your hiring part, like from a founders, like even 30,000 feet view, like from Bob don't view? So how is the remote for you? And how is it going as of today?Yeah, we have a pretty interesting story about this because in 2018, we founded fabricator, my classmate from university. And right after we founded the company, I moved to Germany because I already had a contract here, everything was settled. So that that was kind of an interesting coincidence. But that actually made us a remote company from day one. We founded the company in Turkey while I was in Germany, and we hired people, we acquired more than 250 customers in Turkey, and they're all doing physical work like their manufacturers. So normally, I would go visit them by car. And that's actually the reality of the industry too. But we managed to get everything done remotely for two years. We ran the company bootstrapped until 2020. And then for 2020, our goal was to get invested to scale up our company because at bootstrap, we mentioned the scaled up to a point we wanted to get more relativity. And the initial plan was to raise some funds from an accelerator in the United States. So for that reason, I flew to us to New York in March, where Corona wasn't a thing yet. Yeah. Yeah. And while I was getting like pretty interesting intros and meetings with investors, accelerators, all of a sudden, our neighborhood in New York, got the lockdown like first incident started to happen. And I just flew back to Germany with a rescue flight like we bought the tickets and then took Finding three hours, it was it was like a movie, I felt like the doors were super clear. In my not prepared, we don't have hand sanitizer, we don't have masks all the journey. And then when I came back to Germany, the world was already in lockdown. And I didn't leave my home for four months and that sense. But as a company, we had to make a decision. So our option for raising funds from us was not an option anymore. And we had to find an alternative way, as we already always did. We did a very swift move and start to approach accelerators, investors in Berlin. Me being here for three years helps me with the network. And we got funded by a German fund called API x, which was an accelerator when we joined. And now they're very early stage VC funded by Porsche, the car manufacturer that you know, and Elsa, media company x Springer. So, starting from there, we did the whole fundraising and due diligence, removed and online.Well, this is super exciting. In fact, congrats on your fundraiser, especially during such a difficult times. Like I'm an area, it's I assume, like, that's one crazy experience that you had in New York, I still remember like, especially when the pandemic started, like, especially the New York and New Jersey part, the East Coast, like even so it was having like so many cases, we used to hit so much news about that particular region, like when he was like full of cases, like very concentrated in terms of COVID. Like, I mean, it was pretty crazy. I think I think we all survived COVID. That way, I think we like even so I think, thank God. So like, I'm uncertain. So hopefully things will be better going forward in terms of how things are shaping up. And congrats on your fundraise. This is pretty crazy experience, by the way. And so. So how is the due diligence and other experiences like m&a fundraise? Like? Probably if you can touch upon few points? Like how is your pitching, like, even so, generally, when you're talking to investors, like when so there's a bit of body language element, they figure out how you are confident your body wipes like me. So the entire entire, what we call a real world scenario, right? Because all of that, in the virtual world experience like when probably on a zoom call. So and in fact, even getting the documents signed, like getting the contracting done, and like him, and so probably the due diligence aspect of it, like I mean, so, in fact, the one due diligence is probably the numbers in terms of finances like I'm in, so how you're doing and all. But generally, investors also wanted to talk to some of the employees, customers, existing customers, potential customers, like they also want to do a lot of market research. And given that you're in a physical, like, supply chain segment real you some of your clients are in a real world sort of so how was that experience in terms of the overall fundraising journey?Yeah, pretty, pretty good question. Thank you for that. Our case was a bit actually extremely difficult because we were in supply chain business. And Around this time, like last year, April, May supply chains were broken. And manufacturers were having a hard time procuring their materials from China. So everyone was asking the question, if it is a good time to invest into a manufacturing app, because seems like it's going to stop, and we were asking the same question to ourselves as well. And then we started to, like health check calls with our existing users. Just ask them like, how are you doing? Are you going to your factory? Are you able to source products? And then we found out that they were actually having difficulties sourcing some products from China and overseas? And then we start to think like, what what can we do with without any financial expectations or any any revenue for us like we want to help because if the industry goes down, if our manufacturers don't produce, we don't bring bring any value. And then we build and have to say, like a support network for manufacturers, where they can list the raw materials they need and the materials they produce. So the local producers, manufacturers in Turkey, were able to exchange products with each other if they are not able to source it from other other countries. And we had quite a good momentum there. A lot of companies signed up listed their products, it also psychologically helped them. When we called and asked, like, how are you doing? I'm not selling anything. I'm not trying to push anything to you. I'm just wondering, like, how are you doing as a manufacturer because you're in the difficult times. So that was a very relieving call for most of our users. We got pretty good feedbacks at that point. And we include this included this in our pitches, even though this is not going to be our core product. This shows the investors that we are swift in a way that we are able to adapt to the changing conditions. And this is the benefit of being an early stage startup. Because big corporates takes longer time. Yeah, like, if you're a one, two people, 10 people company, you are holding the steering wheel, and you can you can ride it to the way you want. So if you do it smartly, I think it helps a lot, which was appreciated by the investors that we talked to, in terms of due diligence. I, I agree with the difficulties of pitching online. First, like, I don't like sending PDF pitches or PowerPoints over email, because like, it has a it needs to have a story the narration adds on top of the your presentation. And I was think I was already thinking like, how can we make How can we overcome this communication difficulty. So just as we are doing now, I recorded videos on zoom, pitching, and then I send out the video plus the pitch deck, if they want to go back and look into details, which worked pretty well for us. We did a couple of due diligence talks, where they asked like detailed questions to more to understand inside of our brain, like how we think about this business. And then, of course, we opened our data rooms where we have the financial plans and everything, we shared the contact numbers of our current users, so they would do kind of a reference check. So everything everything worked well, actually, because especially if the investor you're talking to is used to invest in international companies, that that's how it is done. I mean, no one jumps on the plane to your accelerator, you know, only super big ones. I guess, if you get accepted to yc, then you get a plane ticket to pitch in San Francisco. Otherwise, it's not very viable.Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome. I still remember the times body like I mean, in fact, across the world, all the supply chains were getting disrupted. Even we can, we can still see the tremors of that like, even in the auto supply chain. As of today, a lot of car manufacturers keep saying that we don't have enough chips to the impact that we have seen in the manufacturing during that time. But still, we are seeing the ripples, even today as of today. But I think I think what you're doing really makes sense. Like I'm effectively helping people to predict their own inventory, and probably order that ahead of time so that they have no disruptions in their supply. I think I think you're probably right fit for the right time. But I think the world has seen how impactful the supply chain disruptions can be in terms of probably over dependence of China. And few things around that, like man, I think the world is realizing that they want to have a distributed supply chain and things like that. So I think, but they're looking for the audience. Like me, if you can throw some light in terms of what exactly is fabricated? How are you guys structured? How are you set up remotely? Like I mean, so how does your day to day stuff looks like and what's your role in general, I recommend looking at in an outfit like a startup ligament. So how does the whole journey looks like? So that would be a really good start.So more about the product you want to hear, right? Yeah, I think fabricated Yep. Yep.So during the pandemic, we also did the product pivots, with our learnings from the manufacturers. We have seen in a very good momentum in the e commerce and b2c brands, we're also getting bigger and bigger with the rise of e commerce. So we decided to use our experience in manufacturing by helping brands on the other end in their supply planning. We noticed like last year, everyone noticed what is the cost of running out of stock when you cannot force your products. And this was actually a pretty good hot topic for most companies on ecommerce. So we had our early talks with our target users, asking them how do you manage your supply and dance with was mostly exiles sending them over email, if they're in China, the manufacturers you send them over reach at. So like depending on the suppliers location, the methodologies were different. But in the end, there was one problem the two C's on the data of the user of inventory and everything. It's it's the power they have compared to the typical retailer or brands. But managing that data is difficult. It means that pulling data from like different resources, marketing, inventory, subjects supply chain, and catering everything together to find one answer, like what products do I need to restock when and how much so we designed a product where we connect to their Shopify stores. Shopify is our first integration, where we read their inventory history, sales data, and forecasts when each product is going to run out of stock. And then on top of that, we use the supplier data and what is the lead time for this products and in order to not run out of stock, when is the latest date that they should restock this item. And then that's how we prepare the planning for them. Now we automated this plan, we categorize their products based on their sales performance. The top priority ones should be restocked First, the ones which are not selling that very well needs to be liquidated by putting on discount or something. So arbitrary is helping them to plan, forecast, execute their plans, send purchase orders to their suppliers. And it's a b2b SaaS app, I forgot to mention, like, what is the format, you don't need to install it, it's available on your Shopify App Store. So the merchants are just like click install, it's ready doesn't need an installation. It's a self service tool. So it actually makes our job quite easy. And that sense, since we're serving to global market, every every customer is in a different time zone. And as a small team, we don't have the capacity to have live support 24 seven, right. So in order to make it work, you need to build your product in a very clear way that everyone can do self onboarding, and the user guiding should be very good inside the app. So that's, that's what we worked on and overcome the difficulties in that sense. But yeah, that's fabricator in a nutshell.Awesome, awesome. So if so this is for audience. But if any of you guys are facing any supply disruption, give a shout out to Bob, he's reachable on LinkedIn. And we'll tag his profile on the podcast as well guys, like, just feel free to reach out to Bobby, like for any supply related stuff, if you're ready to see brand, especially. Awesome. So this brings me a very interesting thought process, right. So I have been a product manager before myself and building a really product like an especially at the early stages of product building. We keep calling this the zero to one game, like when building an MVP, most viable product. So it's a lot of experimentation. It's about like talking to designers, or talking to customers day in day out, figuring out if they're liking the product, it's like, it takes a while for the product to get established. And especially the early stage of the product is where we keep talking to stakeholders. We constantly gather information, we constantly gather their feedback, everything about the product usage and setup that things and also how was the journey like in terms of building a web product, especially like the SAS product, the pros of this product? How is the journey like in a remote setup? Yeah.So first, we build prototypes. On XML. Every almost every b2b SaaS product is competing with XML, right? So we build it. We build prototypes on Google Spreadsheets showed around to our prospective customers, we use some automation solutions like Zapier to make it look like a real product that's working, for example, one of like, in the prototype users were typing the inventory they want to source. And then magically, they were receiving an SMS on their phone saying that, Oh, I just sent it to your supplier. If you accepted press one, press two, that actually wasn't even an automation. When I'm doing the live demo, my co founder was on the phone, keeping my phone on the desk is listening. And when the customer does that he was sending an SMS manually. So that's that's how we treat it. It's kind of like a Mechanical Turk kind of a solution we did there. And it worked. Because the is an early stage product, you just need to pass the message to the other side, what problem does it solve the early stage users, early adopters, they don't care how it looks, they look at the problem if it's solved, or if it's promising for the future. And then they jump on the board. That was the first stage for us. That's how we learned the problem is real. They're interested in the solution. And now it is time for us to invest into the real product. And that point, although we love doing product design on both like Ui Ui side, we wanted to go simple. So we just looked at bunch of UI libraries, and bought one of the teams on like team forest and started to build on top of that, that actually helped us quite a lot. We didn't waste any time in designing components. So similar to our MVP approach, we were able to build something quick. But then we started iterating on it, like we had some customers from Shopify, the people that we don't know, first, you start with people, you know, so you can talk on a daily basis. If something goes wrong. You can always say I'm sorry. But if it is a real customer that you don't know, then you need to have a solid product running right? Because apology will not save you from getting a one star review on the App Store. So that we start to work with one of my favorite designers is someone that I knew from my previous job. I actually have Team in a company that I was working as a head of product. And then I moved on to fabric cutter journey, he moved on to another company, I hired him as a freelancer. He helped us quite a lot. On the UX side, we, of course, we had to do a lot of asynchronous work, because my team is located in Istanbul. And I'm in Berlin. My designer is in Berlin, too. But we are still removed. Because remote. Yeah, there's no we're all at our homes here. It was the same when we were in Istanbul. This is our second startup with my co founder, the first one was in 2015. Like there was no problem like Corona, but we were still doing it removed. Because traffic, Geminis stumbled is crazy. You wouldn't want to waste your three hours going to the other side of the city. So sometimes you just have to be removed. And if you see the advantages of the remote, that's actually quite beneficial for the company as well. And yeah, for the designer, what we did, I talked to customers, I took notes, I recorded every customer meeting the user interviews that I was doing, I like doing jobs to be done kind of interviews with our users to better understand what challenge they're trying to solve, what are the alternatives? By documenting everything properly, I pass it over to our designer. So then we can work in an asynchronous level, then he creates a sketch some sketches, it can be even on a napkin, you know, and then he sent me a picture. Good. Let's move forward. And then we meet. By doing that we take out a lot of unnecessary discussions during an online call, which can take like four or five hours, right? So we split the tasks into this and recommending, if we're talking about remotes, like one thing I emphasize for myself, document everything. It is not only removed, but also for traceability in the feature. It's always good to look back, like what were your thought process? Because you change a lot of things as a founder in the early stages. And sometimes like, I don't remember how we made this decision. Right? Soyeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a very good point that you brought up earlier. I think documentation is the key for efficient remote work, especially with the UI UX teams, and even for our own sanity, like to keep all the decisions documented or not. I think that's a good point. I think that you mentioned earlier in terms of the tools or the way you guys operate in terms of tech stack, like and so what are the tools generally that you guys use, especially for collaboration and things around that, like multiple teams? How does the day in day out like, looks like work? Looks like?Yeah, yeah. From the product planning perspective, I have to mention clubhouse, not the audio change one, not the one that you're looking for. Thinking of the moment you mentioned clubhouse, I was wondering like that Not that this clubhouse was in our life before the cool clubhouse, it's clubhouse.io. It's, it's basically like JIRA. And it's perfect for early stage teams, you can sign up for free. I've used it in an in another DTC company I was working at with more than 60 product people, including engineers, I was very happy with that in that company. And then I moved it to fabricator. And that's where we plan our backlog. Do our strategic planning. So maybe a bit more detail about product process we have, we have milestones for every quarter, but we don't actually know they recorded, we don't plan more than six months, because it doesn't make sense for us. So we always smaller goals. And we set a milestone and then break it down to epics, and then go down to stories. Stories also have tasks. So we track our work based on that, of course, we're changing a lot of things on the way but it's a calibration for product, we use clubhouse, and it is integrated to our slack. So whenever someone makes an update, we did the slack notification. That's that's where we keep our documentation as a source of truth. On top of that, we have user interviews, where I document on our Google Drive. And I think, like I was talking about my with my co founder like what, what are our favorite remote tools before the podcast? And I counted a bunch of tools. And he said, You didn't count Google suite. You didn't count Google Drive as like, Yeah. Why why I didn't count that. And I realized Google suite is basically like, water and electricity. It's It's a neat, like, so it's like everywhere, everywhere. You don't look at it as a tool anymore. I mean, you will need has to be there. Yeah, it has to be there. That's right. That's right. You put in Yeah, that's that's where we keep our financial plans and like other strategic level things where we access less often I think, as a company, if you're going for a remote stack, you should look at things from the format of the data like are you going to keep them in text rich media video. And then also frequency, if you're going to reach something very frequently, it's better to have an easy access to like, it could be a clubhouse for product management, and more any other note taking Trello could be something else. But if you're going to reach these documents, a bit less frequent than Google Drive is the way to go. And there are different different things that you can use. So that's, that's one way to approach it. Other than that, of course, I mean, we are using GitHub for version controlling and ticketing on more technical sides. I don't even I'm not even sure if we should count them as like remote tools, because they're they vary in our lives. Everywhere. Yeah, yeah, they are. At least Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. What else we have, I mean, similar to GitHub, hot jar, or a full story kind of tools. You also use them for building engagement with your users like how they use it to understand and empathize with them. Other than that, I think, yeah, analytics tools figma. We are using for design collaboration with our designer, we do all the comments and collaboration over figma. Once the design is ready, then I move it to clubhouse. So that's kind of the workflow we have on that side.So how do you manage different time zones? So if you have distributed teams, like them, and so probably, especially, let's say, if they're in us and or any other different time zone, megaman, how do you manage? Like, do you have something like a overlap, you make sure that the entire team comes on a daily Scrum agile, like human any Scrum call or things like that? So how do you manage the coordination across different distributed teams?Like currently at fabric cutter, it's not difficult because the time difference between Germany and Turkey is just two hours. Only like early morning calls can be tricky. Because I'm in Germany, and it's very early for me when it is no, because we found the middle way. Like we had our daily talks at 9am, Germany, 11am Turkey. So that was fine. I think within the team, it's easy. What's more difficult for me, the user interviews and the customer talks, because most of our customers in us. Yeah, there is there is no practical solution for this like you. As a founder, I just don't sleep when they have the only solution. I am using HubSpot meeting calendar. So I sent this like meeting link to my customers. It's like I'm flexible on my calendar. But I made sure that I sleep between like 2am to 7am. So I'm not bookable this time slots here. Another way to manage and one of the tools that I started use during the pandemic is loom. So if a customer is asking a question about a product feature that they didn't understand, I quickly record the loom video and send it to them. They can watch it while I'm sleeping. And then that's how we keep the asynchronous communication with our users by recording videos.I think I think loom is really really helpful for asynchronous I think we have seen that really working for us as well but I think that's a good good especially meant for this asynchronous communication awesome. So how are you seeing remote in general by the day see the trend of future of work like especially remote going forward as well like hopefully, we all get vaccinated the interviewer will come back to regular work like I mentioned in terms of normalcy and things like that. So do you foresee we being in remote setup like I'm given the advantages we have seen with remote working just like you mentioned in Istanbul, it takes three hours from one side of the city to the other side, like the commute, the daily commute problems and all this stuff. Do you foresee like I'm working in a remote setup? Even let's after two years, like how do you see that in general, your thoughts on that?I think it will never be the same as before. Now everyone understood the remote with its benefits and also difficulties. So before digital nomads were cool, right? Everyone's like I want to become a digital nomad. I can pursue my idea. That's perfect. But that was a minority. Now the general public, the whole industry knows what it is like and now people start to think I mean, you know it better than me you're in the West Coast. Right? So Silicon Valley, people are fleeing from there they using their salary, living a better life in Colorado.Exactly. I have seen enough of my friends migrated to Texas, Austin and all Less places, which lever they like in this specially from the Bay Area. And they are buying like such big rich houses now like they used to live in pretty small compressed homes now they're like cable completely very different people.So So now like our company is going to be able to bring these people back to these expensive cities. I don't think so. And I don't know why they would, because companies are paying crazy rents for the office space. Now I see like a lot of good trends where companies invest his money into their employees, work from home set up sending them gifts regularly keep the motivation and connection up. So like this, this is going to stay like this, I think there will be some group of people who will want to go back to office. And so this will bring us to the hybrid solution. And that's where I also like it, because in remote, I'm missing most human connection. As a product manager, you are actually a bridge between your teammates. So you get friends with everyone you understand what are the strengths and the weaknesses of everyone in the team, like what what pieces them off or like what they like who they like to work with. And then you take a look at similar information and make things work by bridging people, right. So when you are working remote, it is difficult to read emotions, it is difficult to understand the reactions of people, you don't know what's happening after or before the call. But if you're into, you can tell if someone's upset, broke up with his girlfriend, you can take coffee, you know. So we're missing all the coffee conversations about like coffee breaks, smoking breaks, water, coolers, checks, these are the thing that makes people feel like they're connected. And now this is missing. I see like a lot of tech solutions tries trying to tackle it. As far as I see, there's a lot of good products out there. And I think VR is going to be also a solution there like a lot of giving out VR glasses to have your AP Fridays. But it's cool. But I don't feel like we are there yet in terms of it's a progressive technology. But yeah, will be difficult. What I'm curious about about the remote industry in general. Now I'm wearing my CEO hat and thinking about more boring stuff. Like if I hire someone from a different continent from a different country, how is it going to work in terms of compensation? Are you still going to pay your Silicon Valley employees the same salary, even though they are living somewhere in South America, that where life is quite cheap? How is it going to work with the legal legal stuff like intellectual property, NDA and in India, all the documentation you have in terms of your terms, like if there's a conflict, which legislation will be in place, which countries legislation that you will follow text, like all of these things as a CEO of freaking me out, because these are not things that you can easily solve with tech solutions. These are on the bureaucratic country, like country level, these are the these are real world problems, real world problems, as they say, right, yeah. Right. So now I'm expecting to see countries to step up and say that we are flexing some rules and regulations for remote workers, where you can hire anyone from any country, we will have this like bilateral agreements with other countries that we work with to make it easy. I guess today, friends announced that they have just like, announced an online application for digital workers like remote workers, which is a good step up. And Estonia was already doing digital residency. So I'm expecting to see more and more innovative steps from from governments in that sense.Awesome. Awesome. Since you're from Turkey, like and and so how is Turkey as a place for remote working? So I have been a digital nomad for the last four or five years, personally traveled about 50 countries so far, like when so I didn't get a chance to visit turkey yet. But how is for a digital nomad? If I'm a digital nomad, I just want to go to Turkey was there for three, six months. So how is that experience? Or like what do you suggest for anyone planning to travel to Turkey to do digital nomad stuff?Yeah, well,that that was my dream. Actually, as a Turkish person, I want to be a digital nomad in America, because the natural beauty in that country is amazing. Like if we had this plan where we want to buy a van, and with a very strong mobile internet, so while two guys at the back coding, one is driving and then we take shifts and tour around the country. This kind of cut on us, I would say awesome. Paying paying for the gas by writing code at the backseat. So this kind of dream. And I was doing a lot of camping in Turkey. So I that's why I know like a lot of natural beauties. That's That's the best part in terms of culture, Turkish people are quite hospitable. And you will, you will never sleep hungry any night, they will be always coming to your door with the hot also offering you. So it's a very good country in that sense. And because of the currency difference, it's a sad reality of the country and holidays. But if you earn dollars and euros, it will be a heaven for you, you will have the best food and the best holidays that you can.Yeah, that makes sense. Any must visit places in Turkey that you would suggest for digital nomads.Oh, well, everyone starts from Istanbul, I think Istanbul is a good summary of Turkey. It's kind of like a mosaic of the cultural diverse culture. And getting a sense of the country in Istanbul is like internship 101 to Turkey. And then you can go to more traditional parts. I think west coast of Turkey is beautiful for the coast looking at Greece part. Great part, the islands we have are amazing. I think like the only only limitation I see there is just having a solid internet connection wherever you go. Okay, that'll get you sorted out. I think that's what makes it awesome. So I'll probably make a visit sometime. That's in my checklist. Like I was a guide in Turkey so I can help.I know how to reach out to them. Super cool. So how is baja there? Outside of work like man? So what's his personal views and things like that? Like when So how? Like, what are the hobbies or interests that you generally do other than running fabricator or getting occupied in the work? So how is body resin? In person in general body like, um, so probably about your hobbies or things that you're crazy about? your passions?Yeah.That's a tough question for me asked me anything. But when you ask about the hobbies, I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none. I jump from one thing to another quite fast. But one thing I've been consistently doing is cycling. I really like going around the city exploring places that I would never explore. Like, it's not a highlight on the Google Maps. But I still want to go see that I make like fake excuses for myself to go see villages around Berlin, which is very nice. Another thing I've been doing consistently was community building. So I really like bringing people together. On any occasion. It could be product management, it could be support groups, like NGOs, and kind of things. In Berlin, I had a very good friend organizing a product meetup, maybe it's a shout out from here. It's called on product. And nowadays, because of Corona, anyone around the world can join on product meetups online. So just look for it on the meetup.com is on product. But we were organizing product meetups inviting product leaders from different companies small and big. And we were host like they were hosting us at their conference tolerance for treating us with pizzas and beers. So our tickets were always sold out, not sold out, because we were not selling them. We were just it was a free organization. But it was always booked out in the first two days. So remembering back like what we were doing, it was quite a fun. That's that's what I enjoy most. And I'm actually looking forward to do something similar online nowadays. Maybe inspired from your podcast, I can start a DTC podcast?No, I think i think i think i think that's the trend. In fact, the new clubhouse is also the trend. And I would suggest, give it a shot, especially the audio on the podcast and the clubhouse ones. I think that's a way to build in the community. By the writing this, this will become a pretty good stuff. Awesome, awesome. So what are your top three favorite books about the segment? So if you have to name the best that you have read so far, like or something that you're reading for our audience? What are your top three favorite books? Yeah.So the first one is probably very well known by product managers, but it's called competing against luck, the story of innovation and customer choice by Clayton Christensen, who sadly passed away last year well, one of my alters favorite authors who might learn to jobs to be done at practice from him. That's like a bedside book for me. I always go back to this book, whenever I feel like lost in customer interviews, the second one book and gifted by my co founder last year as a New Year's gift, it's called the hard thing about hard things by Ben is my favorite as well. This is my favorite as well. It is amazing because you don't only get to learn about what kind of a path he went through as a founder, but also as a human, a lot of emotion in that book, like the ups and downs, I can totally relate to when you feel like oh my God, this shit is going wrong. Do you know what I'm gonna do? I have people on the payroll, and then the highs of the story where you are okay, we're gonna rock this. But always this roller coaster. You feel this one. You're reading the book from Ben. And it's an amazing book. Awesome. Also, the third one is a bit different. Maybe you can relate to that. The it's a book called think on these things by Gita, Krishna Murthy
