Ondřej Coufalík from Survio: Never give up
Starting your own business, full of beans and determination, only to watch it sink a few weeks later due to a global economic crisis, that is certainly not a smooth beginning. An experience just like this is what’s brought Ondřej Coufalík, CEO of Survio, enough strength to start playing hardball. Along with his companions, this ambitious Czech started a small company right after finishing his studies. Providing bespoke IT development, many would think that the crisis must have killed the business. Ondřej can however prove that it has given him more than it has taken.
Many years have passed since these stressful times and currently, Ondřej is leading a company whose influence is being spread around the globe. As soon as this year, he is planning on attacking the magical revenue line of $2 million, and possibly even getting much further than that. Survio, which is nowadays providing a user-friendly platform for creating online surveys, is now stood before the redoubtable US market. It might change the entire company’s vibe but most probably in a rather positive way.
How did you get the idea of Survio?
In the beginning, we weren’t at all focusing on online surveys. We were just a bunch of students developing various custom e-shops and websites. The idea to build a survey platform was however already there and eventually ended up being our side-project. It has, actually, an interesting background story. My friend Martin, former Survio co-founder, had to fill in a lot of paper forms during a hospitalization. It inspired him to create an online tool for such forms and we took the first steps in 2008.
How difficult was the start and what challenges did you have to overcome?
We know what starting from scratch feels like. We’ve done it twice. Together with Martin Pavlíček we had made two unsuccessful attempts at launching online survey applications before Survio. The first was called Likeex and the second was ANAsurvey. Starting your own business, full of beans and determination, only to watch it sink a few weeks later due to a global economic crisis, that is certainly not a smooth beginning. When the Lehman Brothers bank crashed and caused the big economic crisis in 2008, paradoxically enough, it helped us.
One of our American friends lost his job and could thus dedicate more time to selling our product. We then started cooperating with many interesting clients which brought us a nice financial support as well as a huge respect for everyone who works with custom development as it’s really not easy at all. The whole business started going downhill after several years which, I think, we took as a main trigger to start doing what we really enjoyed. After all, during all those years, we had been developing Survio as a side product anyway. At the same time, I met Vít Vrba, founder of Webnode, who had offered to invest in us. That was the real deal-breaker and a kick-start for the survey platform.
Today, we’re aiming at a $2 million revenue and entering the US market.
Who is your target audience?
Everyone who needs to make a decision, needs answers. Survio is a perfect platform for gaining data about respondents’ needs, expectations, preferences, opinions, etc. The questionnaire can be set for anyone from customers, potential customers, employees, colleagues, friends. Anyhow, we can define four main groups: students, SME’s, government institutions and corporations.
What is the USP of your startup?
We provide a high-standard customer service to both non-paying and premium customers. The analysis of survey results and reporting is of a very high quality and everything is very well tuned for mobile phone use. Survio’s also easily connectable with any internal CRM systems via API, which is convenient.
Survio is now localized into 16 languages and offers over 100 ready-made templates in all translated languages which is something that most of our competitors do not have.
Our main goal is to be user-friendly survey platform which can be handled by everybody. That is our main competitive advantage. Our users don’t need any special knowledge for creating their own surveys. Users can find advice on our blog with many useful tips and tricks. Survio interface helps to solve all the steps of the survey process. Every time you know where to click.
On the one hand, I see the biggest challenge as satisfying local customers that often have very high expectations. On the other hand, we are used to working hard and it is not carved in stone that the only success comes from Silicon Valley.
Can you describe a typical workday of yours?
At the beginning of every work day, I sort out emails. Afterwards, I am trying to dedicate time to the team, usually in the matter of HR, management etc. There is also time for reading tech, startups, economic news, further observing innovations, what is happening around our competitors, and of course articles and studies useful for self-development.
Lunchtime I spend with my colleagues or with interesting people outside of the company e.g. clients, fellow tech leaders, we are talking about life, technology, business, stories that inspire us. There is also the part when I am focused on the product, it is in my nature. What is more, nowadays we are finalising its new version, so, I test, give feedback, suggest improvements etc.
It is possible to say that in general, my day is divided into 25% dedicated to people in Survio, 25% reading/studying, 30% product, and 20% analytics and management of finances.
