Slav Kulik of Plan A Technologies: Five Strategies I Used To Grow My Business To Reach Seven Figures In Revenue
An Interview With Sara Connell
Be honest. At each of my three startups, from the first right up to Plan A Technologies, I have prioritized this. I am honest with my team, my clients, my loved ones, and myself. You may be tempted not to be — when you’re struggling, it might seem easier to pretend everything is amazing. If you’re going to be able to last long-term, however, you need to be able to face hard facts and have the discipline, work ethic, and belief in your plan to overcome them.
As a part of my series called “Five Strategies I Used To Grow My Business To Reach Seven Figures In Revenue”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Slav Kulik.
Slav Kulik is the CEO/co-founder of software engineering and digital transformation company Plan A Technologies. This is the third software company he’s co-founded. He was previously Chief Technology Officer at OfferCraft and Chief Software Architect at MacroView Labs, both of which were acquired in 8-figure deals.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I love to build things, I don’t mind taking risks, and I’ve loved coding since I was a kid…those are usually good ingredients for a tech entrepreneur. I started as an engineer, had some great mentors, and really threw myself into my work. Later in my career I met some partners who helped steer me toward startups, and once I went down that path there was no going back.
Can you share the most interesting or funniest story that happened to you since you began leading your company? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Plan A Technologies is my third startup. I previously co-founded and sold MacroView Labs and OfferCraft. Those were great companies that scaled fast — we got both of those companies from zero to seven figures within the first year, so when I started Plan A Technologies, I felt like I knew what I was doing.
But wow — Plan A’s growth has been off-the-charts. Within a year and a half of launch, we blew past seven figures and into the eight figure range. At my last startups we would generally hire one or two people per month, but at Plan A we hire one or two people per day. That intensely fast growth sounds exciting at first, and it is, but it’s also an incredible challenge, as you have to hire quickly without compromising your standards. We’re super selective and only hire about 3.5% of our applicants, so this meant that we needed to build a huge recruiting team. I had to throw a lot of the lessons and expectations I had from my first two businesses out the window. It was a reminder that, no matter how much you’ve gone through, there are always new experiences. It was also a reminder that there are always complications: even the best news can bring potential problems and vice-versa.
I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Do you have a book in your life that impacted you and inspired you to be an effective leader? Can you share a story?
I am a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It’s a reminder of how a driven person can find great financial success, but in a way that is empty and ultimately destructive. I look at it as a cautionary tale, a reminder to think of your clients and think of your team and think of what you really want to accomplish, even if it undermines short-term profits. When you build something that lasts, it is a result of careful planning and disciplined practices, not usually a happy accident.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We’re fortunate to be working on quite a few exciting new projects! We’re working on some really promising solutions in the casino vertical, in financial services, and in healthcare.
On the healthcare side, for example, we’re helping create new features for telemedicine solutions that enable patients and clinicians to use new remote diagnostic tools. We’re also improving the security and privacy of conversations, as well as introducing AI components into the discussion so that it’s easier for the caregiver to identify potential issues and review a post-care impartial analysis of their performance. Obviously, this can be incredibly helpful for many people. One big care healthcare problem is that people just don’t see doctors regularly enough to catch potential health problems when they’re still easy to treat — often this is because they don’t have physical access to a physician. Remote care can change this.
Awesome! Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers about the business you’ve created?
Sure! Plan A Technologies is a software engineering and digital transformation company. Organizations come to us to either improve or advise them about their existing software, or to build them a great new software product. We handle everything from creating prototypes and mobile apps for startups to modernizing complex software infrastructure for Fortune 500 companies. We also do a good deal of software development-as-a-service work, where we provide our clients with ongoing engineering help.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Three things:
First, experience. Not only have we built hundreds of enterprise solutions used by millions of people, we have deep expertise in a few industries. We’ve developed really terrific instincts and have a really strong perspective on both what needs to happen and what should not happen. We can save our clients a lot of time and a lot of money because we’re not groping around in the dark trying to figure out what to do…we’ve usually done something similar before so we can hit the ground running fast.
Second, we treat our staff with respect and trust — our engineers are happy. We have a lot of competitors who have a sweatshop mentality, and the teams are just miserable. That makes for a pretty unpleasant working relationship and leads to awful turnover rates, which really annoys clients. Our turnover rate is incredibly low, and part of the reason our clients love working with us is that our folks go the extra mile and treat them like friends.
And finally, we are totally honest with our clients, and we are available 24/7. We often have clients who ask us to build something giant from scratch that they don’t necessarily need. If there’s a better or cheaper way to get something done, we tell them and even help them set it up — even if it costs us a big project. We view ourselves as trusted advisors to our clients’ businesses, and helping them be smart and save money builds incredible trust. We’re available for them any time they need us, even if it’s on a holiday or after hours.
What was your vision when you started this business? What’s the WHY behind the work that you do?
As I mentioned, I love to build software. My co-founder, Aron Ezra, is the same way. Before starting Plan A Technologies, we used to get several calls each month from friends and old clients from our last businesses who would ask us for advice about how to fix some kind of broken software platform, or how to create something new. Friends who were at startups or friends at big enterprises would complain about how they couldn’t find someone they really trusted to get the work done right. We used to joke about how we could create a pretty cool business one of these days if we started actually charging for our advice and doing the work ourselves…we were right!
We’d love to explore the traits that help you achieve your success. What were the mindset obstacles that you had to overcome in order to reach the place of earning a million dollars? Can you tell us what you did to overcome them?
I think it is easy to focus on what comes naturally to you and harder to think in terms of scale. For instance, before my first startup — way before then, actually, as I moved into leadership positions — I had to accept that I could not code everything myself. It sounds obvious, but it’s actually a real challenge for many people starting their first business. Many founders are tempted to do all the work themselves. But there are only so many hours and you can only do so much work. You need to see the big picture, which means training and trusting other people. This is less important when getting to your first million — in many businesses you can manage to hit seven figures and still do most of the work yourself — but this becomes critical as you move past, say, five million. Eventually you run out of hours in the day and you need to start delegating. And as you get to ten million or fifteen million of revenue, you really need to start creating the infrastructure necessary to support a larger enterprise.
Another important obstacle: you need to learn to be okay with little failures. It happens to everybody. You’re not going to win every RFP, you’re not going to always hire your top candidate, and you’re not always going to be able to make everyone happy. You can try…I sure do…but sometimes things don’t work out the way you hoped they would. You need to learn from those experiences, but you also need to let them go and not dwell too long on them.
What were the external obstacles that you had to overcome in reaching these milestones? And how specifically did you overcome them?
The biggest one for me is time. If you start a company, it’s very easy to let your professional life devour your personal one. You need to figure out how to make that work and be at peace with that. I was fortunate enough to have my family support me. Which is not to say it was easy. It was (and is!) often incredibly hard. I was at a dinner last week in Aruba with my wife — my first mini-vacation in an embarrassingly long time. We were two hours late because I had been stuck on client calls. The moment I sat down I got another emergency call that I needed to take…which lasted another hour. We finally had dinner, and during dessert I got interrupted yet again. It happens. But we all knew what I was getting into and believed it was worth it, which makes it manageable.
Was there ever a point where you wanted to give up on your journey to creating a million dollar business? How did you work through that panic point? Please share a story.
I always believed in what I was doing and had faith that it would work out…but, hell yeah, I mean, when you are first starting out and you don’t yet have any clients it’s scary and hard. At my first business, we spent five months after building our platform just trying to get our first client. Think about that. Literally five months of nonstop calls, knocking on doors, sending pleading emails…only to hear a whole bunch of no’s from everyone. You start to wonder, “Umm…did I just make a gigantic mistake?”
But then once you do start getting those clients, you start building real momentum.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
So many. My family, my mentors, my teachers, my friends. They’re the biggest ones. But if I had to limit it to one person, I guess I’d call out my co-founder, Aron. We have now been at three startups together. He was the CEO on the first two, while I now fill that role and he moved over to the Chairman role. We’ve been in the trenches together from the start. It’s an incredible help not to be alone in that moment, to believe in someone else and know they believe in you.
Great! Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Strategies I Used To Grow My Business To Reach Seven Figures In Revenue”. Please share a story or an example for each.
First, you need to get the right idea. Start by talking to friends and family. When you pitch the business idea, are you seeing smiles and nodding heads or blank stares and confusion? Do people get it? Or are they politely pointing you in a different direction? Then do a competitive search. Is your idea already being done? If so, can you compete?
Second, you need great people. What’s your founding team like? Are you in agreement in how you see the business? If you already have doubts or disagreements, things could fall apart quickly when you’re facing the stresses of keeping the startup alive. It is a difficult but necessary task to get rid of people who are a bad fit: you must be prepared to make these tough decisions with a startup, usually very quickly.
Third, find what is clicking with customers, listen to them, and try to repeat that success again and again. Are they complaining about something? Fix it as soon as possible. Are they saying something else is pretty great? Ask them why they like it and use that in your future sales pitches. Build features around those successes into your product roadmap.
Fourth, have a plan, but don’t be afraid to improvise. For our first startup, we thought our big market was going to be colleges and universities…we never ended up signing up a single college as a customer! Instead we ended up seeing huge success with casinos, which we never anticipated — so that’s what we kept chasing.
Fifth, be honest. At each of my three startups, from the first right up to Plan A Technologies, I have prioritized this. I am honest with my team, my clients, my loved ones, and myself. You may be tempted not to be — when you’re struggling, it might seem easier to pretend everything is amazing. If you’re going to be able to last long-term, however, you need to be able to face hard facts and have the discipline, work ethic, and belief in your plan to overcome them.
We are sure that you are not done. What comes next? What’s your next big goal and why? What plan have you put in place to achieve it? Why is it a stretch for you? What will achieving it represent for you and for others?
I feel I am still growing into the role of CEO and I’m excited to keep going with it. I was the Chief Technology Officer at my last company, so this is my first time in the CEO position. I’m ultra-focused on continuing to grow Plan A Technologies while maintaining our standards, or even elevating them. My goals for what’s next are really focused on scaling up Plan A even more.
You are a person of enormous influence. 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. :-)
I would have given you a different answer a few months ago, but at this point, as a Ukrainian-born American, I would just urge the world to support Ukraine in its struggle to be free of this horrible war.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders 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 with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)
Jeff Bezos. I have a million questions for him!
Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and our readers. We know that it will make a tremendous difference and impact thousands of lives. We are excited to connect further and we wish you so much joy in your next success.
