Focus on the people and the rest will follow — Tytus Gołas, Tidio
Today we publish my interview with Tytus Gołas, Co-Founder and CEO of Tidio.
Tidio is one of the fastest-growing IT companies in Europe, supported by Inovo Venture Partners since 2019. Their flagship product is a live-chat app powered by unique chatbot solutions that helps small businesses all over the world serve their clients efficiently. It’s one of the #TOP5 most popular live chat solutions in the world. In 2020 Tidio doubled in size. They now hire 120 people and plan to grow the team even more by the end of 2021.
I sat down with Tytus to discuss:
✅ Tidio’s approach to People and Culture and the three key metrics they use in this area
✅ What does it mean to recruit correctly?
✅ How does Tidio work on building and implementing company’s values?
You can also find this episode on: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spreaker.
Hi,Tytus.
Hi, Michał.
To start, could you tell us what Tidio is as a company, as a product and what you’ve been able to build so far.
Super. I think that I’ll start as I tell candidates at job interviews. We started Tidio seven years ago. We founded Tidio originally as a live chat. It was created de facto in two weeks. But a lot has changed in the last seven years. From a team of 3 people, we currently employ 120 people. We’ve pivoted from a live chat to actually become more of a customer service platform for small businesses offering not just live chat, but also chat bots and contacts management. We have our own email marketing tool. At this point, we are moving more towards a customer experience platform. That is, if you are an entrepreneur starting your adventure on the Internet you are going to need two things: 1) Hosting, like Shopify and Wordpress or any other platform on which your website will be based, and 2) Tidio, which will handle that traffic, so that customers can chat when they arrive on your website. So you can send marketing emails or remind them about your product when they leave the cart. That’s exactly what we do and I think it seems like we’re only a few percent in of this whole thing.
There are many, many live chats in the world. In Poland, we have several. If you could tell us a bit about the scale. How you have positioned yourselves in this market? How big a company, beyond those 120 people, you’ve managed to build to this day?
When it comes to live chat, which is just one of many products we offer, it is at about 6% market share at the moment. We are right behind LiveChat, and some statistics show that we are actually ahead of LiveChat.
6% of the market, globally, of all live chats?
Yes. Every 16th live chat is de facto a Tidio live chat. That’s a large number. We’ve been growing dynamically on this market. The last quarter the market growth was flat, which means it wasn’t growing, and in that time we grew one percentage point. Based on statistics that are reasonably reliable. So, yes, that’s how it looks at the moment.
When will it be number one?
I hope it won’t be long, the sooner the better.
And what is the distance to number one?
At this point, we have about 300K sites we serve and number one is Tawk and it’s at 700K. Only we charge money for our product where Tawk doesn’t. So this also really shows how rapidly we’re growing. At this moment we’re winning that percentage of the market faster than them. They’ve probably grown in the last three months .04 to .05%, I’d have to check the numbers, we have grown over 1 percentage point, 1.1 to 1.2%.
So you are in the chase. I hope that in a few years we can record another show where it will be an unquestionable number one.
And not just live chats.
Yes, and not just in live chats. Listen, you are one of the best founders/product people I know. What challenges do you have in terms of product at the moment?
You know, this product looks very different now than from when we started our partnership. Three years ago it was really one product-related team mostly focusing on live chat. There was a moment when we were working on chat bots and it was a product that made quite a difference, too. At this point, Tidio is planning to have over 11 product teams. At this moment, it’s about 4 or 5. We essentially want to double. These challenges are very different because it’s different when you’re creating one product category than when there are several categories. In each one you have to compete with some one who has 100% focus. And client challenges are different. The clients that we have are often small businesses where the product must be easy, the product must be available, the product must meet their requirements and work on a large scale. This is a challenge because when you have a large scale if you change any feature it doesn’t affect a couple hundred or thousand people but rather several hundred thousand different users. So, it’s hard. At this point, product management looks completely different. I think we are also blazing a trail when it comes to managing multiple products within one company. Really as part of one big product because it’s not that we have Tidio email marketing under a separate domain, Tidio chats bots under a separate domain, Tidio live chat yet another domain. Everything is in one product. If you come for live chat you must have the relevant experience and if you come to work on chat bots you have to have the right experience, too.
You put a lot of focus on building the culture of your company. The people and culture department is important for you. Out of those 120 people, how big is the team that is responsible for that department?
At this moment, we’ll be gathering close to ten people and next year we will definitely be scaling this team. This is one of the most important teams because it’s the team that hires other teams, the team that takes care of what kind of company culture we build, what it’s like to work for us It’s the team that has a huge impact on those areas. It’s a no-brainer that the people and culture department was always important and is one of the most important teams at Tidio.
I think most people when they hear this will be rubbing their eyes in amazement that out of 120 people, 10 are working in that department. When we were invested you had one person on this team. Why did you decide to put such a large focus on this very function?
You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and when I look at the different startups or companies the problems were often human ones. For example, you can’t launch another acquisition channel because you don’t have a person to oversee it. You can’t run another product category because you don’t have the right person. It’s crucial, if you want to grow you need to be the fastest to hire the best people possible. Only they have to meet certain requirements and must have some kind of competence. The problem is that these people are ultra scarce in the market. It’s not like it was 20–30 years ago. The market is completely different. Before someone might have had 10, 20, or 30 years of experience in a category. Now, honestly, the categories form one by one. Probably, 10 years ago we wouldn’t even be talking about blockchain because it was such a new and niche technology that no one in the mainstream put much focus on it. So… Acquiring highly qualified specialists is a hard task. It seems to me that especially now when globalization is more powerful than it’s ever been. Polish technological companies have never raised their wages so quickly. Never have so many foreign companies recruited people in our country. We’re not really talking about operating in Szczecin or Warsaw or Poland, but we are talking about the whole Europe. Soon, we’ll be talking about the whole world. The fact that we aren’t talking so much about the States, though that is happening too, it’s because there are problems like the time difference for which there will probably be a solution as well in the future.
How much time do you spend aside from the department, on this very aspect?
I would say 20 to 30% of my time in a week.
This is a lot…
Yes. I count recruitment. I count all conversations about culture. Building a culture is such an ongoing process; we often wonder looking at our core values what direction we want to go. In this direction or that direction. Whether something matters or it doesn’t matter that much. We spend a lot of time maintaining this culture, making sure it’s getting better and better, recruiting new people; there’s quite a bit to it. There are recruiting plans… When you look at our general cost structure, people are the biggest value and you really have to commit a lot of time to it.
I remember once I was talking to Mariusz Gralewski (Docplanner), one of his first team members was a person taking care of people and culture — Lucek Samułowski. Many people asked him: “why so early”, and he said a very wise thing “I had a few person company and I’m supposed to build a 1,000-person company. The key is to bring in great people to make them even better and keep them. There’s just no better investment than that.” And I think it’s great that you are going in that direction. But, I will tell you that culture and values are often buzzwords and people don’t really know what’s behind them. So, what does your 20% of focus mean? And the people and culture department, how do you work on it to have a cool culture and good values?
You know, let’s break it down. For example, if we’re talking about just the people and culture department at the moment I work with Ewelina who is a great specialist. The way the department looks and the fact that we recruit people so quickly, all the good stuff that gets done is 95% to 99% due to her.
I’m sorry to interrupt. In regards to the speed at which you recruit people, what is your tempo of recruitment?
It is about 25 to 30 people a quarter.
Wow. So, 10 people start every month.
That doesn’t seem like much, but it is 10 people that you need to train. 10 people that have to report to the leaders. So, we actually have to build a structure. It is also 10 people that must be found. Often times, it’s really a struggle to get people to join. It used to be that there was, for example, a textbook 50-person funnel of people that applied where 15 came in for interviews, 5 got the test assignment, and 3 got bids. Then I hired either person 1, person 2, or person 3. Now, it’s reversed. We’re the ones competing for the best person. It is us who are competing for the most talented people. It is not at all that they are competing for us.
Going back to culture and values.
When Ewelina and I spoke about how the department was supposed to be constructed and what things we want it to account for — there are three things. That is the rate of recruitment. Meaning, how fast and what quality of people we hire. For example, we look at how many people get through the probationary period. How many people stay with us after a year. It is not about quantity. It is not about having 30 people apply and then hiring all 30. That’s totally not the point. The point is to get people acclimated to the culture. For us to be satisfied with them and for them to be satisfied with us. That’s important if not the most important thing. The second thing is it’s all about eNPS, which stands for employee net promoter score. In other words, the metric that shows if our employees would recommend a job at Tidio. Would you recommend a job to your friend or wouldn’t you recommend the job? And our eNPS is steadily going up. A year ago, in Szczecin, in a completely different organizational culture, our eNPS, with fewer people, was between 40 and 50 for the whole company. Those were completely different conditions. Now, the eNPS has passed over 50. Fluctuating between 53 and 55. Despite the fact that we have a large number of people coming in, we’ve dealt with many human cases and resolved many of those cases. The culture is also completely different and it’s a big accomplishment. It’s a problem when companies get bigger, then the NPS is going down because the whole environment is changing. You no longer work in one team in Szczecin where you like everyone and you’ve all known each other for two years. Suddenly, these people are all over Poland and if not all over Europe. And the third thing, which for me is the most important as the CEO of Tidio, is recruitment for the VP positions. And that’s the thing that’s probably the hardest thing about this job.
These are the people that answer directly to you.
Yes, VP, C-level. It’s the people that are directly reporting to me. And for those positions we have two recruitments happening this year. We’re looking for a VP of Customer Experience and we’re looking for someone for VP of Acquisition. These are extremely hard to recruit. We’re not really talking about Poland, though we are trying to find these candidates in Poland. But there are few SaaS companies,there are more internet companies but often times they are not based on the same foundations on which Tidio is based. So, we’re having a hard time finding specialists who could tell us, “I did this, this, and this. Because from my experience you should do it like this.” We want people like that and we’re looking all over Europe. Direct search all across Europe. For example, for the position of VP of Acquisition, these attempts of contact when we counted recently were between 600 and 1,000.
You contacted that many people?
Yes, and we still haven’t found the right person. For the other position of VP of Customer Experience it’s going a lot better and faster. But, it’s generally at the level that we close the recruiting after 150 interviews. It can really be like that. By interviews I mean, full screening and the first conversation.
I remember once you went through a recruitment workshop and afterwards you said to me that it was a game changer for you because you weren’t recruiting properly before and now you’re doing it right. What do you mean you weren’t recruiting properly? And what does it mean to be recruiting correctly?
Ray Dalio said that: “if you look at yourself from a year ago and you don’t see yourself as a a fool then you haven’t really learned anything.” I would say that we did not know how to recruit then, but now we do. I guess if you ask me next year I’ll give you the same answer. But, yes, it was a huge game changer. You happened to organize that workshop with Lucek Samułowski for which I am forever grateful. Lucek really showed us what real recruitment is all about. Not a recruitment based on a gut feeling or emotions but rather an attribute-based recruitment so you have the base attributes of IPA intellect, passion, ambition; and on top of that you have 4 or 5 attributes of a given person. For example, result-oriented, are they focused on the results. For example, if we have candidates for an acquisition position, then we ask, “okay, you did this marketing campaign”; they say: “yes, I did this campaign. It was organized in such a way. I hired this person. I did this and this and this.” “Okay but how did it translate to KPIs?” “Well, it affected them in this way.” “Okay, but the market overall was growing. How do you know that those actions affected the KPIs?” Only a very small number of candidates can actually answer those questions. Each one of these attributes is a book with another dose of information, with another dose of questions. So, this is a really big thing and we are constantly deepening our knowledge. Each of these attributes can be studied for years. And it can take years to learn these attributes. Every recruiter that joins Tidio should know these attributes and that is what is happening. It’s a completely different level.
If you had to give one or two pieces of advice to Tytus from two years ago or a founder who’s at the stage Tidio was two years ago what they should change in their recruitment or what they should put emphasis on, what would that advise be?
I’ve been thinking about this, it’s a good question. First thing, remote recruitment. What happened in 2020 was bad but the shift to remote work has been a good thing for organizational culture. I would definitely initiate a remote recruitment right away because it simplified so much for us. That’s one thing. The other thing, I think I would probably expand the people and culture department much faster than I did. I believe that we were too slow off the start. Even when you and I spoke during the first round, we were planning 20 to 30 recruitments a quarter. We were talking about 30 and we brought in two people. Only now we achieved the level that we were talking about two years ago, around the time of the previous round.
You mentioned that what happened in 2020 was a big plus for you guys. When we were investing, you only had the office in Szczecin. What have you gained from the changes forced by the events of last year?
What happened in 2020, by definition, wasn’t anything good. But in the context of the transformation it sped a lot of things up. Yes, we had an office in Szczecin and we were pretty cut-off, which was a mistake.
I remember when I am trying to convince people and we even had this hypothesis that Szczecin is a nice location because it is close to Berlin and you can come drop in from Berlin every once in a while. Did you open the Warsaw office before 2020?
No, we opened in 2020. We did it mainly because for us the office is a very important part of the culture. Warsaw was becoming a place where, after Szczecin, we had the highest number of people. The experience we offer candidates is that you can work from either the office or home, you decide. There are people who don’t show up in the office for six months and that’s okay. If you have the need to go to the office, you can. I do. I’m in the office everyday. At Tidio you can work in the way you want. You know, creating some sort of rules like some companies do where they have a big office and you have to show up two days a week because that’s what they want. It makes absolutely no sense. The office doesn’t exist for us to control people, to observe whether they come to work or not. But rather, it is an element that helps you be even more effective. To allow you to work with more pleasure and as something that positively impacts you as a specialist, manager, etc.
I’ll go back to the one thread that we touched on: core values. When we were investing you had values and today you presented some new values. How do you develop values? What are values for? How much time does it take? I’m interested how you did it.
This is also Ewelina’s contribution. I was part of the process, but didn’t set anything up. I can tell you what I observed from the perspective of my engagement. First, Ewelina organized a meeting with management and with individual teams. Using that as a base, she drafted various values. Then, there were further meetings that bounced scenarios off of different teams. Finally, we all sat down and talked, “okay, this is learn and share. This behavior is OK. This behavior is not OK. What do we think about it?” and we discussed every behavior for several hours. During this we asked each other, “learn and share: Is it okay for someone to go to a conference and learn something he’ll want to pass on to others, but he won’t talk about it.” “Yes, it’s okay but it would be nice if he would also write a note or maybe say a few words at the daily.” So these are things that we want to promote. And it was the same with other values like: be fair, our deepest value that we are fair in regard to our employees. Or even: focus on impact. These are the fundamental values that drive us.
In regard to values, I carried out a similar process with Stefan Batory at Booksy. I remember we had a conversation where Stefan said, “half the people, when faced with a situation where the optimal decision is ambiguous, make the decision that [he] would take while the other half make the absolute opposite decision.” We agreed that is what values are for. Values are a beacon that are supposed to guide you in situations that are not binary in their resolutions. You can take a look at the values cheat sheet and decide in which direction you’re going. For example, at Booksy there was a value: merchant first. It’s gone know, but we had it. It was in the company’s DNA that the barber was at the center. When situations would arise we would always decide in a way that favored the barber.Even if it didn’t make obvious economical sense for the company. You all said something cool, “that there shouldn’t be empty slogans on the walls.” How are you going to work to keep those values alive?
We came up with something we call the Core Values Competition. We organized it for a few quarters. We will be renewing it now that we added new values. It works in such a way that you have the 4 values we have and you write different stories related to them. For example, focus on impact, our technology chief who also does pricing related things sat for three months and worked on a new price list. When he released that price list it completely changed the trajectory of our growth in recent months. These are all manner of stories that any of our associates can send in. The person who wins gets some nice rewards, but the most important and symbolic reward is a golden pair of Kubotas. It’s an honor to have the golden Kubotas. And I’ve got yellow ones.
Maybe one day you’ll earn them,you’ll fulfill one of those values and merit some of your own.
I’m cheering myself up with the yellow ones.
Yellow Kubota’s are awesome. I am an honored Kubota sandals from Tidio user as well. Moving away from HR a bit… I always have this thing when we see each other — I see that you’ve got some new tools or products that you’ve implemented. What have you recently implemented from framework solutions to products that have had a big impact on the company? What you might recommend to other startups?
I’m trying to limit this because when our financial chief joined us he said, “I like apps, they make things easier for me.” And he comes in and he says he’s never seen so many applications at one company. For me, it was a sign that I was overdoing it. Besides, the more of us there are the more selective we have to be with our apps. They must meet all safety standards. There are things that we just have to pay attention to. We can’t use the first app that comes along. The data must be secure because often this is the data of our employees or clients. But lately I’ve fallen in love with Airtable. It is a phenomenal tool. We moved a lot of processes to Airtable. This is a tool that you really are able to tailor to your needs. Many of the tools that we wanted to code ourselves e.g. a qualification tool for conversations: “what the conversation was about?” we are able to move that to Airtable. It’s multifaceted. I highly recommend it. For me, Excel is always in my heart. I’m a big fan of Excel. I even make notes in Excel. Its at that level. But Airtable is really something cool.
You recently mentioned to me that you’ve been able to deal with payment churn.
Yes, Profitwell. They have a churn module. It’s amazing. When you get on the product you see it’s not the prettiest product in the world. But if you look at the math and how they self-produced analytics, it is something amazing. When they calculate churn they really show how they get that result. For example, promoting a question about the card when the customer goes to the product, translating messages into specific languages, sending messages in the correct time zone.There are a lot of churn preventing actions. And I might add that it sounds very trivial and anyone can say, “Okay, I can also implement these actions. Why should I pay someone for it?” But, it’s not quite like that because they’ve really been thinking about it. Spent a lot of time on it. Even sending emails is perfect. To provide a comparable experience we’d need probably a few months at a minimum just on emails, let alone the rest.
Tidio is one of the more mature startups, I would say in the top tier when it comes to the Polish backyard and even globally. What advice do you have for those who are listening that are in earlier stages?
I’ve been wondering if in the last 10 year since I started this adventure, could I have done something better? Could I have done something differently? I’m sure I could have and if I went back in time with my current knowledge it would look very different. We probably would have reached our current growth rate in 2 to 3 years instead of 7. We would have totally changed it. I like what you told me recently. You said you talked with one of the better investors in the States asking, “how we can create even bigger funds? How can we get in the next league?” He answered, “Time. You meet X amount of founders and have good relationships with them. They’re going to exit. You’ll have a relationship, know people. And eventually, you’ll be informed about deals which would otherwise be unavailable.” And I guess I’d say the same, it’s all about time. Time and determination. And learning. That this is the best advice. I still feel that a year ago when I look at my actions, I rub my eyes with amazement. I remember when INOVO invested, I would have never invested in us. I know the way you invest in startups. It’s often just people and you may not even look at the company. Because if you look at the company oftentimes there’s nothing to look at. You focus more on the founder. When there is one meeting and then the next one you observe the founder. You look at how this person learns, how they react to feedback. It is a very person-centered approach. But I also believe that’s the answer. Development and time. I think it’s hard to make some things go faster.
I think it’s really cool what you said, the thing that made us chase you for a year with term sheets …
I wouldn’t put it like that.
That’s because you showed an incredible learning curve. What you’re talking about, how do you see what you did a year ago, it was just a different company a completely different way of doing things. It’s the best indicator. It’s worth taking a snapshot of the company, the way we did with Tidio. What it looks like after 12 months. If we feel that there’s a gap that means we need to shift gears and start growing. For us as a VC fund, it doesn’t matter if we look at you today and you are here, here, or here. It is more important whether you have this angle or that angle because we’ll be there with you for seven years. And it doesn’t matter from which level you start. The important thing is how quickly you grow. We have a couple of companies that are in later stages from the first portfolio. Stefan Batory in 2015 compared to today’s Stefan Batory, he couldn’t even stand next to him. Over the last 6 years he has learned so much. And Booksy, as a company, has grown a lot.
Tytus, lots of super cool insights and thanks for talking to me. I’m impressed with the way you’re building the company culture and of this human centered process. I’m convinced that it will pay off in the long run, so to speak. And the question is what can we wish you for the future in business and privately.
In business and privately, wow. Satisfaction in all aspects. That what I do amuses me. I guess that’s it. Satisfaction and continued growth, these are the most important areas.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you have that satisfaction. I’m hoping that along the way that unicorn and decacorn appears.
Can I add something? I always said it was going to be a unicorn. Recently, that has changed; it’s going to be a decacorn. Even $100B. It doesn’t matter, I think it’s more about how much I’ll learn and how much the people I work with will learn. That we have a lot of fun with what we’re doing, because we are also the kind of company that when you join us we want you to have fun. Of course the work is hard. Of course there are other things but also so that at the end of the day you can to say, “okay, this was a good decision.” This is how we would like to think about ourselves as well. In 5 or 10 years later we don’t want to sit down and say “we worked too hard. That we left the office at 7 or 8 p.m. and that we didn’t have time for anything, and now we’re changing our lives 180 degrees.” I know stories like those. I’d like it better if it was a marathon and not a sprint.
Ray Dalio in his book ‘Principles’ says that he focuses on having meaningful work and meaningful relationships. I’d say that’s pretty close.
Yeah, I think that’s even better than satisfaction.
Listen, I wish you satisfaction and that decacorn along the way as well as meaningful relationships and meaningful work. Thanks again for the talk.
Thank you, too.
Inovo Venture Partners is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof, Archbee and AhoyConnect. Our second fund reached a total of €54M.
For more information visit: inovo.vc
