Making Something From Nothing: Patricia Recarte Iguaz Of KADO On How To Go From Idea To Launch

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Don’t compare yourself to what you see in the news. Those “megarounds” you hear about only represent the 1% stories, the ones people like to talk about. The reality is that the other 99% are ordinary founders, who struggle just like me or you.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Patricia Recarte Iguaz.

Pati Recarte Iguaz is the CEO and founder of KADO. Previously, she held leadership positions in early-stage European startups, leading their corporate strategy and expansion efforts. Pati started her career as an M&A Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley in London.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I have always been a bit of a nerdy girl. I never played with dolls, and I used to love (and still do!) puzzles and science games. I was very attracted to anything space related and wanted to be an astronaut or space engineer. However, due to a mix of the traditional Spanish culture and my family being very involved in the legal sector, I was persuaded that a career in law was the best for a woman. This led me to studying Law and Economics, but I soon discovered that it wasn’t for me. I still finished my studies, but soon after I started working in investment banking in London. Being very numbers driven, I really enjoyed it, but was still very attracted to the tech ecosystem. I slowly started pivoting in the right direction, working for several startups in London and Barcelona, before I finally decided to move to the US to start writing my own story!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I asked for strength, and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for courage, and God gave me dangers to overcome.

I believe entrepreneurs are not born, but are made, as we all face different life situations that build our personas. Having to confront difficulties and to get out of my comfort zone has helped me build the character I needed to get to where I am today. Even now as a founder, I continue to face many challenges, many of which I fail, but help me grow.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, impacted me on two levels. On the personal level, I also come from a very traditional family — lawyers -where entrepreneurship has never been embraced. From the moment I decided not to take on a professional career in law and work in investment banking, to when I started working for tech startups that were not break even, to starting my own technology business, all of these have been key milestones in my life that may have been a bit difficult for most of my family members to understand.

On the business level, the knowledge that even Nike, being where it is now, also went through big struggles at the beginning, both with fundraising and initial growth, gives me hope for my company and its success.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

There are two key aspects to take into consideration. The first is to do your research and build your business plan. Who are your competitors? How big is the market? Try to draft a first P&L and to lay down potential costs and how you expect to generate revenue. Don’t be afraid of thinking you may be wrong in your projections. The truth is, you are probably 99% wrong, but it’s still good to get an initial sense. Feel free to ask different people from different backgrounds to help you out with figuring out the cost base. The second is simple, and ironically also the Nike slogan: just do it. You need to really MAKE THE MOVE. In my case, I resigned from the startup I was working at in Barcelona and signed a rental in NYC! There was no going back, and I needed that push to get to where I am today.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

Research is important, and it will help you know about what is out there. However, something many people fail to do is understand how you can be better than the competition and how you can find your differentiating factor and add additional value to your users or clients. There is a very high chance that someone else has done something similar or in the same lines of what you are planning to build, so my suggestion would be to either find a niche that has specific needs within your vertical, improve what is already out there, whether at the product level or operationally, or find your “twist” or a key differentiating factor or advantage, such as specific features or patents.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

My case is that of a B2B SaaS, so this may only be applicable to certain companies.

• Start by doing your research. Interview people from your potential target market and try to find their pain points.
• Build your initial P&L with expected costs and needed resources, as this will help calculate financing needs.
• If you can, build a very simplistic prototype that you can test out with your interviewees, use to confirm hypotheses and better shape your product roadmap, which will help you learn to prioritize what is important.
• Once you have a better idea and understanding of your MVP and costs, you will come to the point where you need to find initial funding. If you are short on money, you can try to find a good external agency to properly design and develop the MVP of the product. However, I recommend building an internal team, as they will better align with your vision and really work hard towards the same goals.
• Find a lawyer or mediator for trademark/patent registrations. You don’t need a big law firm to do so; there are many smaller and affordable law firms that specialize in doing the paperwork, like Rapacke.
• Ensure you have a registered company. If you are after VC money, it has to be a Delaware C-Corp and you will need to find a local registered agent (Harvard business services is a common one).
• Then just go on to production! Try to get an MVP to market as fast as possible, as this is key for testing.
• Start generating relevant content from the very beginning, as this will help either with SEO or with building a community if you are after end customers.
• Try to launch small test campaigns with a basic landing to generate expectation and a waiting list.
• As soon as you get your MVP to market, test, test, test!

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

• Be very careful when engaging with UX/UI agencies. Many introduce themselves as real UX researchers, but the reality is that they limit themselves to UI work. This entails having very nice screens which nobody understands how to use.
• Your first employees are key and you need to make sure they are purely aligned with your vision and fully understand what it means to work in a startup. The learning curve is very steep and it’s a tough process! I made the mistake of hiring someone too quickly, and it ended up negatively impacting the team.
• Rejection will be part of the day-to-day, so it’s best to start growing a thicker skin. It may be discouraging at first, but everyone goes through the same turmoil!
• Don’t compare yourself to what you see in the news. Those “megarounds” you hear about only represent the 1% stories, the ones people like to talk about. The reality is that the other 99% are ordinary founders, who struggle just like me or you.
• It’s OK to make mistakes! People don’t expect you to be perfect. Initially, I really feared failure; later on, I learned it is all about testing, failing, gathering feedback and improving your product or workflow.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Research is the first key step, both at the competitor and market level: understand what is out there, how you can differentiate yourself from the competition and how big the market is. Then try to better understand your potential customers or users by interviewing them. They will help you shape your product. Finally, start with a prototype to test your hypothesis and ensure you are working in the right direction!

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I always believe that starting on your own is the best way to go. As a founder, it is key to be absolutely aware of the problem, customer needs and market; and the only way to do so is by being completely involved from research to execution. In my case, beyond research, I even went to coding school for a few months so that I could fully understand the state of technology, what my competitors were doing, and be able to speak directly to my engineers.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

It depends on several factors. The first is your own set of skills; can you cover everything that is needed on your own? Do you need very specific technical skills which require hiring talent? If you feel you are fully capable of controlling most of the verticals, from ops, to marketing, to sales, to tech, try to bootstrap as much as you can!

The next is speed of development. Would you rather take development at your own pace or really try to speed up? If you want hyper growth, then VC is for you; however, consider the caveats.

That brings us to the next point: are you ready to share the decision making process or involve others in your board? That will be a common request by VCs, and you will have to frequently update them with reports, KPIs, board meetings and involve them in all major aspects, even in hiring of key personnel.

Last thing to consider is: are you tackling a huge market and do you plan to become a unicorn? If your idea is to become the next multi-billion dollar company, then you will need VC money. Your shareholding will dilute, but it will just be a smaller piece of a considerably bigger pie.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I’ve had several leadership roles at different startups. I have served as a mentor to many of my employees, being an example of hard work and resilience and reminding them that achievements never come easy!). I still have old friends and mentees that come to me to ask me questions about career moves, whether they should start their own projects and how, and I always try to guide them as best I can.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

One of my objectives in life is to narrow the gender gap. There are more and more women in entrepreneurship, but it is still difficult to find them in tech! I would love to inspire other women to get out of their comfort zone and to not be afraid of undertaking new challenges and of making that compatible with family life. I’m 28, got married 2 years ago despite crazy working hours, and hope to have kids soon… and I am not planning to quit my startup!

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble). She is such a great example of a hard-core full-time mother and entrepreneur, leading a massive company that for sure has endured lots of stressful moments!

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.