Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
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startup. from grants to investors to tips and
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Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Tomas Blackjak
from Lead, Tomas, welcome. Thank you for having
me and hello, Ricardo. It's a pleasure having
you here. Would you like to introduce yourself
to our audience? Yes, I can introduce myself.
So basically, my name is Tomáš, as you already
mentioned, and I'm from Czech startup called
LeadSpeaker. And I am responsible for operation
and product development. And basically, LeadSpeaker
is a company that's building lead generation
platform. And basically, a lead generation platform
powered by AI and that's That's all what we are
doing right now. And how did the company get
started? Because we were talking before and I
know it's not the first iteration, so how did
it happen? Basically the company started seven
years ago. Our main founder, Vlaski, basically
he doing the startup scouting for the tech events
and for the corporates like Cisco and etc. and
basically the company began as a startup scouting
company for accelerators and corporate innovation
labs and etc. And basically for those campaigns
we need to find the relevant startups we need
to find relevant contact emails and we need to
contact them and ask them if they would like
to apply into Accelerator or some innovation
lab and etc. And that was the beginning of everything.
Basically, first three years when I joined Delete
Speaker, we were more like agency, not a startup.
Basically, we have some our development on our
site already done. but basically we still thinking
about only the startup scouting and how to scale
the startup scouting in a startup scouting field.
But this industry is really limited and one time
we basically sit with all the people and start
thinking of how we can scale and what we can
do as a next. And we take a look what we have
developed, what we are doing, and start thinking
that everything what we are doing for these startups,
we can do for everyone in B2B business. Because
the process is the same. You need to find relevant
component, you need to find the relevant people,
and you need to basically contact them. And that's
how we involve into building some solution for
the B2B regeneration. And that's the real story,
how we start building the first B2B regeneration
platform. But previously, we basically built
everything like some part of a technology, but
also as some type of a managed service. So our
typical tickets before was in thousands of euros
and basically clients come to us. Basically we
have a technology and we manage the service for
them. But this was really tough for the scaling
because when we start the scale, we just for
scaling with some amount of clients, we need
to hire more people. And in some time, that was
not all. Basically, we cannot keep the scaling
up like that. So a year ago, we totally squashed
everything, what we have. We've unfortunately
fired most of the team members and start switching
fully into SAS platform and SAS business. And
at this moment, we have basically built the SaaS
platform for B2B regeneration. And we have first
hundreds of users that play around with our platform.
And at this moment, the business plan behind
that make us more sense than before. Because
previously, we was focused to scale really fast.
And the only way how to scale how to scale fast
in our point of view was scaled by the people
and also scale basically the higher tickets or
higher tickets or plans. But at this moment,
when the GPT come and open the APIs and etc,
there is huge, huge potential what you are able
to do. and we start integrating everything. And
at this moment, basically, the platform is really
great. And basically, what we plan to do, we
still planning to involve the AI more and more
into whole generation. And I think in next two
or three months, we will be able to launch and
show to all our users a full AI -powered sales
agent that will do the lead generation and pre
-sale cycles automatically. You mentioned all
this transformation and change within the business.
But I'm assuming these were quite stressful moments,
right? You know, changing from one product to
the other and then having to let go of people.
How was, you know, how do you deal with that?
To be honest, there was a few tough moments.
Basically, first tough moment was when COVID
come here and basically all the businesses were
in a lockdown and no one knows what to do. So
basically in that time before COVID came, we
just signed up the first investment round. But
after we received the investment, everything
was locked. And basically most of our clients
and most of the deals was paused because no one
knows how business goes or how they can operate
etc. And three months after COVID started it
was pretty tough and it was more about the risk
management than not about scaling. But after
three months After three months basically we
manage everything and also the situation in Europe
start basically going home and a lot of people
switch into online business and basically a lot
of companies, a lot of type of old businesses
like manufacturing companies and etc looking
for some solution for lead generation. So we
were really great fit for them. So during COVID,
after that, after people start adapting into
online, it was okay for us. But first month was
really tough because we received the money. We
just need to scale and the whole market was frozen.
But after that, market start be slowly alive
so we adapt really fast and we start scaling
up basically in one year for 20 clients to 400
clients or something just like that it was really
fast and basically when we received the investment
we were team around nine people or something
just like that and after a year After a year,
since we received the investment of our team
around 35 people. So that was a really, really
huge, huge scale. We start building the marketing
team, we start building the first operation,
we just start building the first processes as
a normal company. And we keep the scaling up
with those people till So next thing what happened
and next thing what really influenced us was
a war at Ukraine because we were in a higher
ticket sales so basically our typical customer
value for one customer mean for us lower tickets
was around 2 ,000 euros and typical ticket was
around 5 ,000 euros. and basically we managed
for them the regeneration, we were running the
campaigns for them. Basically it was somehow
the agency plus our technology behind and after
basically the war on Ukraine started there was
a second issue and the second issue was markets
that sentiment in Europe basically again similar
as COVID. No one knows how market will go and
everything just stopped. And you couldn't do
a single advertisement anywhere because all the
news were always occupied by the war in the Ukraine.
So any marketing campaign was completely ineffective
because you can be the best marketer but the
news on the Ukraine will always go on top. And
that was, to be honest... That was a hell for
us, total hell, because at this moment, we have
the operations of over 400 active client projects.
And basically from clients, we just start us.
Start getting back at this moment. We don't know
what we can do and the market is not ready So
we would like to pause the campaign or we would
like to decline the campaign so basically in
half year of from almost 400 clients or we go
only up to 50 or something just like that and
It was basically really really tough all for
us because we just scale up the team and we just
need to manage to pay the team members. We also
have some plans for the scaling up and when this
start happening we just need to change everything
and we still are waiting if the market will go
on or no. But by the end of 2022, we decided
that the situation is not better and we started
slowly and during December 2022, we were team
around 60 team members or something just like
that. So during December, we needed to fire around
20 team members and that was a really first tough
moment because they were pretty good. It was
really tough to hire them because previously
before the war at Ukraine in Czech Republic and
also here in Central Europe was really an issue
to find out good employees. There was a really
basically everyone after covid trying to hire
someone and it was really really competitive
so we spent a time to hire a team and after that
we just need to fire first 20 of the team members
and but we still we still waiting even market
will better or not and We waited till April of
2023 and in April 2023 nothing better is happening
on our side and basically we still have a tough
to close new deals because everybody was scared
and it was a really high amount of money, but
no one wanted to buy so it does not make sense
to invest into marketing, into sales, and into
those solutions. And basically, in April, we
just sit with all the people that have some state
as a lead speaker. And we start thinking what
to do as a next. and we decide to totally change
our business model and we just start counting
how much money we have on our bank account to
develop something totally new to survive. It
was really sad because we just take a look on
the list of 40 people that we have and we start
saying how we need those persons. those people
to develop the new new faith and basically after
that we decide to keep only the developers and
a few salespeople and rest of the team we decide
to fire and basically in this time we fired we
fired next 20 40 40 people basically That's a
tough moment, isn't it? Because that's a lot
of people losing their jobs. Yes, it was really
tough and also it was really tough to communicate
with them because those people worked pretty
well, but basically it was total risk management
and basically there were people and on the other
side, okay, we can keep those people next. one
or two months and wait if something will be better
or not. And if not, basically we do not have
all the money to pay those people. So that was
a really tough moment for us. And basically for...
In our point of view we just, I think basically
in that time the decision that we made was the
best decision that we could have made in that
time. Because unfortunately we fired most of
our team. We keep only the developers and a few
other people. Basically at this moment we are
the team of 12 people and most of them are the
technical people. and after that we have two
salespeople. But it was a let up. And the decision
that we made was built fully software as a service
platform. And what we have developed, technology
from the past, what we are solving, how we are
solving the lead generation campaigns. Previously,
we just took those technologies and start building
the interface and slowly and slowly integrating
the technology that we have and at this moment
we have the least vector platform and we are
still surviving and we starting the scaling up
again but it was a it was a really tough it was
a really tough moment and i hope that i will
be a void for For now, all the similar moments
that we have basically a year ago. I was wondering,
when you're making these decisions, which are
hard decisions, what were the investors saying
to your company? Were they saying, you know what?
You need to make the cuts. We'll back the idea.
We believe in you as a team, but there are changes
that need to happen. How was that managed? Because
that's the hard thing, isn't it? Basically, the
investors support us because also for them it
was lose the whole company or basically agree
what we are doing and help us with some type
of transformation. And I need to say we have
really great investors because in tough time
they help us. They sent us some additional money
that basically helped us to execute and build
the platform that we have right now. And with
different investors, I think LeaseFaker, basically
with different investors, LeaseFaker cannot survive
basically because investors in tough time really
help us. and at this moment also trying to help
us and advise how to do it. I was wondering because
you guys are based in Czech Republic, right?
How is the ecosystem there? Is it easy to launch
a company? Are people willing to invest or actually
it's quite the opposite where there's a lot of
taxes and it's quite hard to launch something?
Basically, here are two points of views. On the
one, basically, we have a really strong ecosystem,
a really big ecosystem. We have the big companies
like Freightboard, like Make, etc. And we have
also really big VC investors, for example, Credo
Ventures, Reflex Capital, Kaya Ventures, JNT
Ventures and etc. Basically those investors are
big with comparing with other countries that's
surrounding the Czech Republic. But about everything
there is still a lot of paperwork. But here,
the startup ecosystem somehow works. It can be
better, but it can be also much worse. And at
this moment, the Czech government start working
on improvement, like laws about the startups,
about the employee stock options, et cetera.
So basically, the government slowly optimize
optimize here the startup ecosystem and how startup
ecosystem works. But with comparing with countries
like USA, where the startup ecosystem is developed
over 20 years or 30 years, you cannot compare
the paperwork and etc. We just need to take a
look that startups are new in Central Europe
and Basically, those investors and those startups
is the first generation of startups. And we have
there something as a startups over 10 years or
maybe 15 years. So everything is developing and
everything is slowly improving. Interesting.
Now we talk a lot about how many changes you
had in the company, how hard it was to transform
from the original idea to what you have right
now. How do you keep yourself balanced throughout
all this? Because this is a lot of stress we're
talking about, right? This is not easy. So how
do you keep yourself in balance? Basically, in
the first transformation, I was totally unbalanced.
Basically, I ate a lot of junk food and I I basically
drank a lot of coffees and basically a lot of
energy drinks and from a guy that weighted around
80 kilograms I gained to 120 or 114 or something
just like that. That's a lot of junkies. So but
after that I just started I just start work with
myself because when I was in this unpleasant
situation I made a lot of bad executions and
basically at this moment I just totally switch
my mindset and my priority at this moment is
each day to do something for myself. And for
me, I'm visiting the gym almost every day. So
the workout is one thing that still keeps me
sharp also in the work because it's helping me
to reduce stress. After that, I practice the
cold showers each morning. That's the other really
helpful thing. and after that one or twice per
week I'm doing the sonas and basically those
are the things that I'm doing and I see on myself
that I have more energy also when some shit happens
at work I'm more basically I'm not that I don't
know how to say it properly. Basically, I...
You can deal with stress better than... Yeah,
that's the right word. Sorry for that. Basically,
I'm dealing with stress much better. And also,
I'm trying to eat healthy. So, that's the four
points of what I'm doing for myself. And I think
that's really important. uh for uh for everyone
that's trying to build something new uh to keep
uh keep yourself so in a in a sharp and keep
yourselves health uh and uh basically when you
when you will eat the junk food every day uh
and uh when you will sit in only under computer
uh unfortunately this is not sustainable and
uh in some time it's done in start to take some
tax back and usually the tax back that is taking
is a bad execution or you are everyday retired
and etc. That's a common theme. We talk with
me and my co -host Harry. We end up talking with
a lot of founders and they all say the same thing
which is actually you should take the time for
yourself. Because it's a bit like a car if you're
not taking care of the car it's not gonna run
anymore is it i need to change your every once
in a while change the brake pads all those things
and i think we always forget to do that as as
you know when running business because i don't
have time to do that actually that is the most
important thing. Because if you're not able to
produce anymore because you haven't fed yourself
properly haven't taken care of your health. That's
the end of the business right that's it yes.
I was running how important is for you to have
a good circle of people around you like because
there's that saying you know we're the with the
some of the five people that surround this so
is it have you found that to be true in your
case. And I was also in a situation where I have
around me some toxic people. Also here at work
we just have a few toxic employees and they are
only taking us the energy. But they had really
great performance. So basically we were in a
position when we saw for example they have really
high cells. or they have really high delivery
but the rest of the team was totally bored, totally
tired for them and we really didn't know how
to work with that because on one side we would
like to keep those over performing people but
on the other side basically those people was
problematic in a group. and it takes us around
six months to do some final decision after that
all the toxic people was a fire and at this moment
I just need to say that was one of the best things
that we can do and that's also the recommendation
when you are building the small company and you
hire some toxic toxic people doesn't Don't care
only about the performance. Take care also about
the relationships. Because by the end of the
day you can have one over -performance person
that over -performs everybody else. But next
five team members totally demotivated because
this toxic person basically... is in a group
with those people. So my advice when you hire
someone toxic, basically you are able to see
in one month or two months how those people act
in a group, in a workspace and etc. So hire fast
and fire faster. So basically that's my advice
because it does not make sense to keep those
overperforming people because that is that average
performers will be under average and only one
reason will be the one over -performing person
that you hired because he or she can be toxic.
Interesting. And what were the key lessons you've
learned in all these years? What were the things
that you say, you know what, just do things this
way because that's the right way of doing them.
What were the key ones? We talked about health,
we talked about, you know, firing fast when people
are not right for the company. We also talked
about how do you deal with, you know, stress
and stuff like that. What else would you like
to tell us about, you know, how to manage all
this? Because it's not it's not an easy journey
we're on. Basically, first advice. does not make
sense to take a look for some shortcuts. And
shortcuts can be some, some boosters for your
energy, some basically things how to how to how
to manage stress and etc. And it does not make
sense. I was in time that I drank 12 cups of
coffee per day. And it was This situation was
really really not good and with this is also
the connected Further business is really important
to sleep basically try to invest into sleep or
try to sleep each day at least seven and a half
hour because when you basically doing the night
night shifts also the short term It can looks
like you really boost your company. You really
belt or something in fast but by the end of the
day you most likely burn out because of that.
So sleep, no shortcuts and energy boosters or
something just like that. Basically when you
start drinking over two cups of coffee per day
you should start thinking what you can improve
in your lifestyle. After that you need also the
support relationships outside the work because
when you have a partner when you come at home
for example after 10 hours at work and they start
argue with you this is also not good also you
need also look outside outside the work and try
Trying to find the things next to work that will
make you happy because time to time in startup
of startup life There is a tough years not only
the tough months and you still need something
in your life that you make you happy and That
keep your positive mindset. For example for me
is a work out thing and the saunas and etc and
go showers So find something just like that,
that's still keep your mind keep your mind positive.
Also, when when company is going down or is a
tough and you also need to stay basically when
something come come to be tough. uh and uh come
to be unpleasant you just need to keep uh keep
going keep going and uh stay and uh after that
you can overcome all also the toughest or toughest
things that that happened to you because uh when
when somebody uh somebody asked us a year ago
uh if we be there in next year we didn't know
and uh but we stay and we are here and basically
at this moment each day we have dozens new users
we have a lot of positive feedbacks we also catching
big big accounts and that's only only about the
mindset and about the people around us because
when somebody after first uncomfortable things
say okay this does not make sense for me And
this is not a person that you would like to have
you in a team or around you if you are doing
something in a startup or if you are building
something, something new. Interesting. And what's
next for a lead speaker? What does the future
look like? Basically, for the lead speaker, as
a next, we plan to switch the 100 users or 4
,000 users. At this moment, the earliest thing
that we're planning during the first week in
June, we plan to launch our product on Epsom
and get also some some users from the United
States and not only from Europe, because at this
moment, our regeneration channels are more focused
on Europe -based users. So we would like to take
a look outside of Europe. And basically, after
that, automate a lot of sales processes as we
can. testing the first AI agents that are able
to do whole pre -sales cycles. And you don't
need to hire intents. You don't need to hire
basically the SDRs. Only what you need to say
to AI agent is what you are selling, what is
your ideal customers, and what is a buying intent
that you would like to track. So for someone
can be the buying intent of some. job post for
someone, it can be some new, some new basically
published on the website for someone can be the
LinkedIn post for someone can be some like comments
on some post on a social networks. And at this
moment, in a time of AI, we are able everything
scrape on one place with AI to classify if that
is relevant or not. If it's relevant, find the
relevant contact details, personalized message.
For example, I saw a post about this and this
and this. And basically, that's the something
that we can help you with. And this is our solution.
Come to our call. Basically, our goal is make
the lead speaker should make the sales as easy
as possible. And that's what we are building.
But taking us time at this moment, we have the
generation platform with normal ability to send
multi -channel multi -channel campaign at the
leads directly from LinkedIn. We are launching
some first workflows at Monday, but end goal
is have fully AI agents that Ideally, take a
look online on your website, ask for some additional
questions, and after that, start running the
pre -sales campaigns for you. The future is bright.
I was going to ask you, if people want to reach
out to you, Thomas, how can you do so? Basically,
you can find me on the LinkedIn, basically Tomáš
Blačák, or you can also reach me out via email,
thomas .leedspeaker .com. And for the emails,
I usually reply until four days. On the LinkedIn,
I usually reply during one day. So I highly recommend
basically reaching out via LinkedIn. Okay, sounds
good. Tomas, thank you so much for your time
today. I really appreciate it. I also thank you
for your invitation and for the podcast. So thank
you. My pleasure. Thank you. This podcast is
also sponsored by startupnetworks .co .uk. Startup
Networks, it's an online forum where you can
find all the resources you need to run your startup.
From grants to investors to tips and tricks on
how to be successful in your startup. This podcast
is sponsored by openexperts .com. OpenExperts
is the place to go if you're looking to talk
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