MSC Rendezvous || Laszlo Kardos, Trekhunt
In 2018 July, we launched a large-scale coworking hub to support Budapest-based startups. We like to launch early and learn fast. The first teams moved in even before the construction was ready. We are more than grateful to have our Beta Community on board, and we would like you to meet them too.
How did you get into tech? What’s your background?
I studied computer engineering at BME and Karlsruhe. Actually, I started a finance master degree at Corvinus too, but dropped out, because I got an engineering job at Bosch. I still had my interest in the business side, so later I took a consulting role at PwC. Corporate culture was not really my thing, but I’ve gained valuable skills. I was ready to start my own business. I thought. Then we failed with the product studio that we started with a few college friends.
Again, it was a fun ride, and we’ve definitely learned how NOT to build an agency or a product.
Then I joined Prezi as a Senior Product Manager. Prezi was one of the first Budapest-born startups that had a SF office and raised money from prestigious investors like Accel Partners. Back then we were 50 people. When I left 2 years later it was a team of 250. I grew with the team on an extremely steep learning curve, but with the growing size of the company I felt less impact on certain directions and felt that I want to join a smaller team again.
After Prezi, I joined my university friend’s flourishing mobile app focused product studio, Distinction. It was soon acquired by Skyscanner, so we’ve turned the agency to the product center of the company’s mobile dev efforts. Then, I moved to Japan, and spent 15 months there helping Skyscanner’s joint venture with Yahoo!JAPAN. Then, the London office followed for another year, when I quitted last year and decided with my wife that it’s time to move back to Budapest.
Amazing journey. When did you grow the most?
I believe it was in Prezi. “Stretch” is a core value behind the company. It stands for being ready for self-improvement with a growth mindset. I grew a lot professionally and personally as well. Perhaps, the biggest realization about myself was that I am not as good as a thought I was. I was confident in myself and my skills. I was used to being one of the best during my studies and previous gigs, and first, it was hard to face that suddenly there were a lot of smarter people around me. Also, I had to realize some of my shortcomings and the huge room for improvement in my leadership- and other soft skills.
Going through your impressive track record I wonder what do you think: Would you encourage young aspiring entrepreneurs to start right away, or do you think people with several years of experience and domain knowledge have better chance to succeed?
I guess it really depends on the person. The only thing that matters is what can you bring to the table from previous experiences. It boils down to what kind of social patterns you saw from your parents, the education you went through, and the kind of people who were around you. Essentially where can you gather the knowledge and skills to reduce the chance of doing too many stupid things and failing. Some people might be luckier than others and they might be ready to start a startup as a freshman. For some, it’s better to gain a few years of experience in the job market. Generally, it’s much easier to start up than it was 10–15 years ago. One of the reasons is the endless quality resources online, that are accessible to anyone. That being said reading articles and watching training videos will never replace hands-on experience.
So what do you do now?
I am building two early-stage startups. Both run by the same team, both are marketplaces. Trekhunt is an outdoor adventure tours and activities marketplace. Everything from climbing, cycling, hiking, paragliding, wakeboarding, snowboarding. Basically, anything that is adventurous and outdoor. Not museum tickets, restaurants, hotels or flights. Adventures. We believe we can do a better job of helping people discover these and gain amazing experiences.
The story started when one of my co-founders — who is also a climber and tour guide — approached me a couple of years ago (Prezi era) to do a business around tours. It was not the right time back then, but we started to test and validate many ideas.
Fast forward couple of years, when we had a stronger intent and better ideas we got Dimitar and Akos involved, as Co-Founders. Dimitar — who was previously a colleague at Skyscanner — had another startup, CarSpending (now Motomoshi) which is helping car owners to track the services they use for their cars and to rate providers. We quickly realized that there are many synergies running two marketplaces. Whenever we solve a challenge in one of our businesses, we can apply some of the learnings to the other. This is why we decided to set up a holding-like ownership structure and do the two startups simultaneously.
In the next months we will see which of these two will achieve more traction and where should we invest more focus. Exciting times and a lot of work ahead.
You lived for a while in places like Tokyo and London. How do you see Budapest’s tech scene compared to other cities?
Tokyo is very unique in many senses, it’s almost impossible to compare that city to any other in many aspects. There is basically no startup ecosystem. Compared to London we are way behind though. This is reflected mostly in the volume and quality of startups and money. Now, there are many funding opportunities in Hungary too, but there is a lack of “smart money”. We don’t have enough good investors, who have relevant international network and experience in building and exiting tech companies. We need more people who become wealthy and knowledgeable after building startups, and who are ready to “give back”. This process started 60 years ago in the Silicon Valley, we only started a few years ago.
But we’ve started. Look around there is a little “Skyscanner-maffia” forming up here.
Hehe. Yes! I guess there will be “Ustream-maffia”, “Prezi-maffia” and “Skyscanner-maffia”. It refers to a circle of people who previously worked together for certain companies, but later started new ones and replicated their successes. Eg. the famous PayPal maffia lists people like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.
I am more than glad to see some of my previous colleagues starting new business or to see Balint (editor’s note: Balint Orosz — ex CEO at Distinction) doing angel deals. Extra happiness that now we can work again from the same place, here at at MSC. :)
All these guys could get an amazing job or start a project wherever in the World they want. It’s promising and comforting that they stay and want to prove (again) that it’s possible to do international success stories from here.
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