TW: Alex, tell us who you are and what does your business do?
AS: Hey, Todd. I am Alex Shevelenko, the founder and CEO of RELAYTO. We help anyone who knows how to use PowerPoint or sends PDFs become a magical content creator. They turn into web designers in seconds. Democratizing interactive and web content is sort of the special sauce of what we're doing.
Well. And this is a huge thing, right? Because everybody uses PDFs to send a deck or information and it's boring, it's flat, it's two-dimensional. How to bring this to a more colorful way of presenting your data?
So look, the start was the good news. Everybody knows what is PDF. Everybody knows how to create it. The bad news is it looks like everybody else's PDF. What we decided to do is help people take what they have as a PDF or a PowerPoint and turn it into a website.
What does a website have? It has navigation that's web-like so you could immediately get to the right bits. It has videos that are embedded inside. So you can enrich it with all the goodness of the web while the PDF or the PowerPoint is still the base.
You could start bundling content into hubs, right? So you have this PDF, that video, that other PDF. Instead of sending three attachments and a video link, you bundle it into an experience hub. Then you can set security to control who accesses the content.
And finally, you get the analytics to know what is actually working. Did the viewers get on page five and did they actually click on that video? Did they share it with other people that they were supposed to? You can really capture the digital body language the way that websites do, like on the consumer side, but we don't really get a chance to understand that on the business side. And sometimes the most important messages that we send out are the worst communicated ones, the worst understood. That's the tragedy of the modern buyer journeys, sellers, and marketers that we're trying to fix.
We offer a microsite that is essentially an informational site where you're sharing information with people. There are many templates so you can just tweak the intro and send off the one you like. I mean, prepare once, send it out 100 times, and you can personalize it. If you don't have your PowerPoint worked out, we have templates of PowerPoints or Google Slides that you could start using and they're already optimized to look like they're going to be a killer website. Some of them are microsites, but they could be also flipbooks, which are reimagined books, a much richer media.
We now work with videos. You can make a static video interactive without thinking too much about it. This will ensure your audience has a good experience and understands what they need to learn from the content.
TW: All right, so now I know what you do. Who are you doing this for and how is it benefiting them?
AS: Well, we've been very fortunate. We've been backed by great institutions like The Wharton School. Some of our earliest design partner customers are great companies like Accenture and Salesforce.
The common thread with companies like this is they were leaders in consumerizing B2B. Accenture was the first one to do advertising back in the day. Salesforce is like Disney for B2B companies. They really create. Kids love their Salesforce toys more than they love their Disney toys.
We've been very fortunate. We learned from them. We kind of grew with them, we met their needs, and then recently we opened this up. So now anybody can bring their great idea to life and make sure it has a chance at success in the noisy world.
But we owe a lot to these large companies and obviously, they start in one place. And because PDFs are everywhere, presentations are everywhere, microsites are everywhere, it sort of spreads and expands across. So that's been our growth story.
TW: That's awesome. Not every day you hear people with a business that has clients like that. I mean, enterprise solutions are hard to create and develop because they all have internal teams. Tell me about this growth journey, because as I said, the companies you're mentioning, Salesforce, Accenture, and companies like that, to produce a product that they will actually incorporate and utilize is not an easy chore. How did you determine to create something that they could use as opposed to starting with a solopreneur? I'm curious about the mindset there.
AS: Yeah, great question. So a couple of things. One, we bootstrapped at the beginning. When you're bootstrapping, if you go to a solopreneur, you're going to get exactly what the solopreneur has, which is nothing as far as paying you.
You might get feedback, but it's not going to pay the bill. We took a philosophy that we would rather work with small teams in these large organizations that have budgets. So they're kind of solopreneurs or small teams or underserved teams inside a larger entity, but they're not starving.
And if they found a valuable solution that would help, then you look at the other reason, you look at somebody like Accenture. They are the world's largest reseller of Microsoft Office. Probably for Adobe platforms. We love these platforms. We are not trying to kill PowerPoint or PDF. If you love those tools, we’ll help you to make the most of them. For us, it was very complimentary, we saw the big opportunity, and then it was customer funded.
That was one idea. The second kind of what I mentioned is in my past life, I worked at great companies like SuccessFactors which became part of SAP and led SAP's cloud journey.
I interned at Salesforce when I was at Stanford Business School. And what I learned from there was that having flagship customers that are awesome does help. So we didn't do a lot of selling, but we did reach out to Salesforce and Accenture, "Hey, do you guys want to use us?" They told us to mind our business because we were a little startup, a couple of guys, and an idea. But eventually, they saw what we can do and they've been great innovators. They make us very proud to be on a journey with them because they're innovators inside these large companies.
TW: So you just brought up a really good point, and I think that a lot of founders kind of forget this. The fact that you've got these big companies like Accenture who are staffed with normal people.
AS: Right. We have this image in our minds. We seem to think that everyone there is a giant and somehow they're smarter than us, they know better than us, they've got better tools than us. And the reality is they're just people trying to pull levers to move business. They have to work a lot internally.
I will tell you this, they are disciplined in terms of security. We had to take a lot of attention in our early development to make sure we have enterprise-grade security architecture that passes the necessary requirements for companies that sell security solutions.
Salesforce is the largest cloud vendor, so cloud security is a big deal for them. We were very fortunate that they took us through a journey of passing their security requirements. That was an enterprise, so we didn't need to go sell to the CEO of Accenture on day one.
The exciting thing about no-code platforms is that you could start with individuals and teams. Over time, they share it with other people. I mean, you share it with one or two people on a team, and all of a sudden the other team members, "How did you do that? That is so cool!" That helps when you have creative customers. They start getting internal recognition and so we're getting people like, "Hey, I want to get recognized too!" It's psychological, right?
Unfortunately, because of COVID and the way the world is, we can't go and take you out, buy you steak, have a nice red wine, and convince you that we're awesome. Let's start with something substantive. But how do we make that substantive experience feel interesting, natural, and high-end, to a degree that reflects our value?
TW: I think that when you start at an enterprise and build a structure around their requirements, it makes it so much easier to taper down as opposed to starting with small guys who have no requirements and then building up into an area requiring more work. I mean, in a sense, that's really the hard route. But now that you've gotten it, it's easier.
AS: But I think it was very hard. And, Todd, I think the credit should go to our development team because they've architected it, so it would be sufficiently easy to use for anybody.
The way to succeed in the enterprise is actually to create an awesome experience for individuals. And I think that's what a lot of people miss. They think the way to succeed as an enterprise is to hire a bunch of expensive reps that have 300K on target earnings and then use their relationships and do dinners. There's nothing wrong with that for some solutions. It does work for some solutions.
You got to find what's the immediate value that you could get. Oh, well, "I'm going to succeed with my most important project because I'm not going to look like a douchebag that talks about digital transformation but shows up with a PDF piece of paper, which is analog paper. I'm going to show you the way of digital transformation. It is going to be amazing. Follow me. Afterward, I'm going to fax it to you just to make sure you get it right." This is silly, dude. It is silly.
TW: Match your product with what your perfect client would want and need, and it's much easier to grow down. I think that you've demonstrated in just a few minutes proper growth and scaling tactics are to attack your dream client first, then taper it down and dumb it down for the people that are great clients, but they're not your dream client. You know what I mean?
I think, Todd, what we're learning is we're evolving. Right? We've been very surprised by commercialization. Obviously, larger clients mean more revenue. But the beauty of something that's fundamental to human nature and business is communication. All of us have to do this.
I'm not even anymore sure that a mid-size organization is no longer a dream client because they know some tools already and they are just on board really quickly. They go and create great things and then they go sell to the enterprises or some other people. And those people go, "What is that amazing thing that a tiny startup is pitching to us that we don't have ourselves?" Because of the viral nature of what we're building, we love all sorts of clients, right? Whether it's a nonprofit or a large business.
TW: Well, hit me with your biggest challenge because we've talked about the fun of the growth of your business. Talk to us about the hurdles you've had to hit. What's been the hardest thing about getting your business to this level? Where are you right now?
AS: As an early employee, I could have raised the money and yet I made the choice to bootstrap it, work with the customers, and take the longer route.
I think that was not the obvious choice. It feels very smart now that the startup funding market is imploding. But at the time it was counterintuitive that we received some money from strategic advisors and CEOs of other cloud companies. It was sort of relatively small compared to what we could have done or what other folks were doing.
That challenge forced us to be very nitty and very gritty, work on the product, be scrappy and resourceful, and I would trade that culture for nothing.
But yeah, back to our connection in high school, I was fresh off the boat, an immigrant. What I remember is I barely spoke English and I joined the high school wrestling team. I was not the best athlete, but I got the award for the one that is the most endured, the one that sticks. I think that was sort of that determination. That's a bootstrapper right there. I have to be grateful for that challenge.
Speaking of high school, what else did we learn? Well, somebody when I was just kind of saying, "Hey, I want to go to a good university", told me, "You need to show leadership skills." I just barely spoke English but did I know? And I knew how to play chess. So I became the president of the chess club in some Amish natural leadership role.
I was not the best player. But I think when you play chess, you do see the long game. You have to react in the moment, but you have to kind of play it out. And I think that eventually, towards the end of high school, I did figure out how to be a real leader. It was the ability to see the long game and a couple of steps ahead that allowed us to make that decision.
TW: Well, I love that. That's some great advice. And honestly, I think the lesson that you learn from chess is you could be in this battle with somebody just moving your palms back and forth, and all of a sudden you recognize they slip up, and then you have an opportunity, right?
And I'll just say this, we went to high school together, and when we were in high school and you were fresh off the boat, I remember how scrappy, innovative, and eager you were to join this new American culture you were part of. To see you now, 30 years later, as someone who has taken the time to go through these other business growth journeys, build businesses, be part of such an exciting movement, and has the vision to say, "I grew up in such a different place, and now here I am selling products and services to multibillion-dollar organizations. How cool is that?"
What advice do you give to people who are out there thinking, "There's no way that my future has this in it?" What do you tell people like that?
AS: That's interesting for context. I was born in Ukraine, in Kyiv, which is new right now, but at the time was not at all. And what do I have to say? I think it's one of the magic of America and the industry in America, where I got the spirit of immigrants proving everything is possible. Early to bed, early to rise, work your butt off, or build your product, or whatever it is. I think there is that spirit that comes.
But I also would say if somebody told me at that age, "You're going to be living between London, Paris, and San Francisco, working with great companies, building technology that reimagines the book. You're going to be married to a French lady." That wasn't in the goal, right?
So I would have said, "Papa, this is not possible." This happened, but life was unpredictable. And I think being open is part of what entrepreneurs need to do. Have a plan, but it can be adaptable. I think adaptability is key.
The world is different now. The beauty of running a business globally wasn't a real option back then. So my advice is that the world doesn't limit your own self. Be out there, meet great people, and be open.
TW: I admire your parental capacity mixed with your entrepreneurial capacity. So I need to take lessons from you. How do you do that?
AS: That's the most important thing for me because my kids are not at all impressed with any of the stuff that we talked about. “How good of a dad are you?” That's sort of the real question. I'd say the entrepreneurial journey is not somehow separated from the life journey.
TW: Agree. The entrepreneurial journey is your life journey.
AS: Right. Everything's a part of it.
TW: Who do you look at in your network as you try to get things off the ground and build your business? Is there someone that you have in your network that inspires you to keep it going?
AS: I've been super blessed being bootstrapped. There were a few folks that helped us before we even knew what we were doing, and one of them was Aaron Au, co-founder and CTO of SuccessFactors, where I grew up professionally in the SaaS business.
But I'd say most recently, we've been very blessed to work with Dean Stoecker, who is the founder and CEO of Alteryx. They democratize data and we're democratizing digital experiences. We're learning a ton from him. I love having inspirational leaders on the journey.
TW: There's a lot of background that Alex and I share together. But to be totally honest, I don't think we've connected in 30 years since we graduated. But I will tell you right now, the journey that I've seen and the sparkle in your eye when you talk about your business, your growth, your family, and all these things… real growth is possible.
Thank you, Alex, so much for being here. It's been great to reconnect, and I hope this episode does impact some people's lives, and I think it will.
AS: Awesome. Thank you, Todd. Great to reconnect.
TW: For those of you on a Growth and Scaling journey, trying to figure out where you're going to go in your business, one of the first things you got to do is what Alex did. Know your avatar, know the type of persona that you are trying to build your product around, and go for it.
I love that he bootstrapped because it drives you to quick action to make sure that your product is delivering what your ideal client wants. He did this. He grew the business and now he's on his way through a great trajectory of growth and scaling.
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The fastest way to build digital experiences. We empower businesses to convert PDFs, presentations and other content into interactive experiences & webpages with instant branding, analytics & more
