We had so much fun celebrating the Regional stars of Central European Startup Awards 2016, and it was an absolute pleasure to get to know some little known “fun facts” about the people and personalities from which these stories are born. Revisiting the trials, tribulations, rocky roads to success was so much fun that we’re not done yet!
CESAwards2016 boasted our strongest line-up yet, and one of the closest contests we have ever seen! It would be totally un-fair to overlook some of the most exciting entries from the competition and so; we proudly continue our interview series;
The National Rounds of Startup Superheroes!
Some of you may be familiar with the struggles of trying to motivate young children into doing their share of the household chores (seemingly a chore in itself). Or perhaps you already have a young role model and are looking for a way to reward their hard work, whilst investing into their future. Homey allows you to do just that; it’s the amazing app that lets parents assign chores, give rewards, and teach children about smart saving and financial planning for a stable future.
This concept earned Homey the prize of “Best Early Stage Startup” at the Slovenian CESAwards ’16 National Finals, and we were glad to have a chat Sanja Zepan, CEO and co-founder at Homey for a uniquely frank and colourful perspective on the entrepreneurial landscape of the CE region, as well as what we can expect in the near future.
“Can you tell us in one sentence what Homey does?”
Homey enables parents to assign chores to their children and reward them with allowance that they can transfer directly to the child’s bank account to teach them financial literacy and promote long term saving.
“We all know entrepreneurship is a difficult road to take, especially in the world of technology startups; are there any mantras, hobbies or routines that you use to keep your mind and body healthy?”
Well, I don’t really want to read any more advice on mindfulness and yoga for startup founders. Life isn’t busy just for people in startups, it’s stressful for everyone — employed, unemployed, founders, parents, young, old. We all do the best we can in given circumstances and there’s no need to compare our diet and fitness regimes.
I don’t want to make it sound like being let’s say; “a gardener” is super easy or I’m above fast food (especially since the sad reality is, a lot of busy stressed and poor people can’t afford to not eat unhealthily) or even tell people I work out sometimes, because it nobody’s business.
“We all do the best we can in given circumstances and there’s no need to compare our diet and fitness regimes.”
“Talk me through some of your most challenging moments as a newcomer to the tech ecosystem and its respective markets? Some spectacular fails, or rocky roads you had to walk through?”
We started our startup quite naively — thinking about users and not monetization. If we figured monetization out at the beginning our path would be much easier. If we could start again, we would probably launch the allowance transfer feature right away and we would also start charging right away. We also undervalued our products, because we mistakenly presumed that US mobile apps market is not that different from European. We were charging 1€ for one of our in app purchases, and it sold well, but then our mentors from the US were surprised by the low cost and asked us how we got to that price. They challenged us to increase it to at least 5 and we reluctantly agreed, thinking our sales would plummet. We’re selling just slightly less products, but making a lot more money now.
“What do you value most in people? Especially those in your team?”
“Hard work, active involvement, open mind. Our team is still small and we believe in team work and keeping everyone in the loop. Everything gets done faster if we know we can rely on one another.”
“What excites you the most about your work, and what is the moment that you are most proud of?”
Because of the number of users we have right now, I deal with customer support a lot. My favourite time of the day is reading all of the emails we got during the night and replying to our users. On one hand we learn a lot about our product, about our market, about people in general, and that’s all really important, but hearing how people use and love something that we built always makes me smile!
“Why did you and your co-founders decide to build something like Homey? What was your initial inspiration or problem you wished to solve?”
We started making a product for room-mates and then all these moms and dads were writing us emails how they want something just like it. We’re now making a product for families and we’re not parents ourselves. Maybe that’s an advantage, since we’re learning so much about different parenting styles! We wanted to solve the issue of fighting over chores and we’re still doing that, but now we also want to create a perfect tool that will make family life easier.
“What do you anticipate the most for the technology you use at Homey and your market in 2017?”
We’re enabling parents to transfer money directly to the kids existing bank account. We would like to see easier and faster ACH transfers, while also keeping everything as secure as it is. We’re also really excited about trends in use of bank accounts and payment cards among kids. Modern day kids aren’t growing up with paper money and piggy banks full of coins anymore and since they’ll probably transact only online when they grow up, it’s best they learn the value of money like this too.
“In your opinion what are the single best and the single worst things running a startup from Central Europe?”
Coming from Slovenia means our cost of living and development is cheaper, which was definitely a plus when we were starting out. It’s easy to bootstrap a business here, since European countries offer a lot of securities that just aren’t available to young people in the US. On the other hand, investors here don’t take as much risks with early stage startups and the whole ecosystem is less developed. Even people are less entrepreneurial and it’s harder to find employees willing to take risks (even if potential benefits are greater) working for startups.
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Stay tuned to our Facebook for startup stories from the regions’ best and brightest, as well as updates on CESAwards2017.
