I spoke with Dmitry Dumik, CEO of Chatfuel, a California chatbot startup and YCombinator resident. This is the sixth in a series of interviews with masters of their craft about the product approach, behavioral psychology and technological entrepreneurship.
I'll tell you a story. I recognized you in absentia through a mutual friend in San Francisco as a person who has quite good remixes in Soundcloud. I listened to the mixes and then thought: βThis guy is not bad.β So, I want to ask everyone why you mixes on Soundcloud?
This is the fastest way to understand if you are a person or not. For example, you meet a girl on Tinder. You send her a mix - such, you know, that touches the strings of the soul, makes you make discoveries, dive deep into yourself ... And she is silent. You go and then swipe to the right.
Building communities
We are now talking at your place, in the "Good House" by Andrey Doronichev, a top manager at Google. Tell me, how did this house-commune turn out?
We got together a couple of years ago with Doronichev and his wife Tanya, and Andrey proposed this idea. They drove her back and forth, decided to take a step into the unknown, such leap of faith.
The main reason why they invested in it: the main predictor of a happy life is the presence of meaningful and deep social connections. In fact, it turned out to make a family 2.0: a home-community of people who are united by common cultural values. This is the most important, everything else builds on top of this.
In this house, there was a magical feeling of a family to which you want to give, in which they are happy to support you. You come home, knock on the next door and share something, or call somewhere. Or maybe you're just complaining about life.
This minimization of friction is very important in life, it cannot be compared in format with joint trips somewhere to the city or to nature. Outings are some kind of organized events. At home you see everyone as real, you learn something new about yourself through others. And you remain with a feeling of fullness.
I haven't yet interviewed the guests while they are doing yoga.
(Does "downward-facing dog") Welcome. In family 2.0, this happens.
Why is it important to gather your people around you?
This is a manifestation of one of my main values ββ- absolute freedom. Spending time with the people you love is the highest manifestation of this value.
You've had a life and a community for seven years now, both in San Francisco and in Moscow. How do you combine it?
Every year I spend half a year in San Francisco, and a few months in Moscow. Lucky: I have two houses. When I fly from Moscow to San Francisco, I feel that I will miss Moscow. And also in the opposite direction.
Now the world is so distributed that the concept of the house has changed. Home is not a geographic point. Home is the place where you are surrounded by the people you love.
What would you advise to do in terms of community for people who have just moved from their homeland abroad?
It took me two years to be able to call San Francisco my home. During this time, a circle of people important to me appeared. In general, there are three ideas.
First, I would find predictors to find my people based on their values. There are many public people - you can read someone on Facebook, then try to find a meeting with such a person.
Secondly, you can walk around the places where people gather - conferences, meetups. For this, there is Eventbrite in the States, Timepad in Russia. For example, I "click" with conscious, self-reflective people. Yoga or a master class about behavioral psychology is where I can meet such people. There, usually people went some way, came to some point. In a new place, I often just go to yoga, and then I go up to people that I like for some reason.
Thirdly, in a completely unfamiliar place, I am looking for places to party with a high probability of meeting free people like me. For example, something similar to Burning Man. When I was in Rio, I went to different nightclubs, but in the end I came to some kind of "Burner" party. There were simple and open people, I really liked it there. In Los Angeles, it was the same: at the Burning Man party, I made friends with some cool people. These are predictors for me that people will share my values.
What is Burning Man for you?
A utopia where you can live a week of the year. This is a place where a set of values ββis radically declared, moreover, in such a way that people follow them. Values ββabout the freedom to express yourself, the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to learn, the freedom to be a child, to play, to fool around, to admire.
You know this feeling, when you are a child and for the first time you see an elephant, you are like: βFuck it, elephant!β. Same with Burning Man. A feeling of childish delight, which can be perceived by adults. You feed on it, return back to the ordinary world, and think what you can do to transfer these values ββinto reality.
Technology career
I remember a dozen times when you joked in front of me about your hometown of Taganrog, where you lived until the age of 20. Do you miss him?
The main value is people. If I miss it, it is because of some associations with people. My family is in Taganrog. But now it hurts to go there. Everything is falling apart there, the historical heritage is not preserved, it is not getting better. The city is shrinking. It hurts to watch.
By the age of 25, you had a cool career at Procter & Gamble in Moscow, a lot of money, a car, everything. Even the prospects to lead the European IT department in Geneva. But you dropped everything and became an entrepreneur. Why? Tired of dealing with laundry detergent?
I still don't use washing powder!
Actually, for two reasons. First, I didn't find enough meaning in what I did. Didn't see how my actions affect the world. Second: to be able to surround myself with the people I choose. Build your community around your values. Corporations are big structures, they already have their own values, which are difficult to do something with.
The story was like this. When I worked at P&G, we created a charity startup - a platform where you could earn money with your actions and send them to orphanages. Then I realized for the first time that there can be people in the team who do not think about money, who are burning with the idea, they do not need to push, that is, apply the entire arsenal of classical management. Self-igniting motivation. People are on fire, you get fed from it, and not vice versa.
At some point, we went to orphanages and gave these same gifts for the new year. I still remember that feeling: my actions led to results, and even what! It was like an awakening.
You took and moved yourself to the States, passed the selection in both 500 Startups and YCombinator. However, the Mint project, which was successful in Russia, did not go to the States. Tell us how you brewed and what happened in the end?
Mint was built on the basis of VKontakte, where there were many opportunities for developers through the API. In the states, the Facebook API has been very limited since the stories of social games like Zynga. The product did not enter, there were no opportunities, they suffered for a long time. Pivot, looked for options, took different social networks - Reddit, Tumblr. They suffered for 6 months.
And then one warm summer night, Pavel Durov announced chatbots in Telegram. I realized: here it is, a new platform. When websites appeared, I was still small, when mobile applications happened - stupid. And here: here are chat bots, and here I am - young, handsome, and at the same time I can realize it. Jumped into this story with the team. Slept for 4 hours. First we made a store, then a platform for creating bots, then an advertising grid. When they came to apply to Y Combinator, we had 5 million users in 11 months.
Who supported you the most during this turbulence?
Most of all - Andrey Doronichev, a director at Google and an angel investor. When my Mint project started working on the Russian market, I wanted to bring it here, to San Francisco. And here everything is difficult. And here I meet a person who listens to my pitch and immediately gives several tens of thousands of dollars in angel investments. Although here in the States, in general, there was nothing at all.
This is a story from the series βDamn, since such a dude believed in you, he cannot be mistaken.β On this energy, I went to 500 Startups, and when I was already drunk on chatbots, I went to Y Combinator in 2015.
Do you recommend Y Combinator to startups?
Yes. But looking back on my experience, I want to say that I overestimated the impact of accelerators on business success. Someone is suffering - they say, they didnβt take us, what the hell. But for a startup, this is such a long game that not much depends on a three-month accelerator. So many startups after YC beer!
It is important to have a trait that here in the States they call grit, that is, perseverance. They hook you up, you fall face down in the shit, shake yourself off and move on. The ability to feel the need of the world, people and the market, high-quality communication - these qualities are much more important. YC will not give anything that could not be obtained without these qualities. And most importantly: YC will not give these qualities themselves.
As they say, the tumbler wins. Well, look: your company Chatfuel, a Facebook bot builder, is growing briskly from year to year. At the same time, the chatbot industry, after the peak of hype, is experiencing a period of natural disappointment. How to pass this period?
You know, according to the latest data, you have already gone through this period. We are already at the stage of the βearly majorityβ, there is a rapid growth.
It's hard to get through this stage. After Facebook opened the chatbot API, we had 147 competitors. Nobody knew what would happen: volatility, everyone is trying to listen to the gurus, looking into the mouth of venture investors. Everyone was constantly looking at each other, copying features. But these are all second-order signals. And most importantly, it is a signal from customers. We need to direct our attention there. We managed not to inflate the team, we tried to do everything very economically. Many competitors simply did not have enough runway to run.
You needed money for a project, and a Google executive invested in you. Raised Series A on Chatfuel - and did it not with someone, but with Greylock Partners and Yandex. I decided to organize a product management competition, and the top experts were on the jury. The feeling that you are looking for a βtopchikβ in everything. For what?
So more fun. I have a friend, he gave me the Hogan Assessment⦠Judging by my profile, I'm a real hedonist.
But in fact, it's all about the same value - about people. I get great pleasure from communication, entertainment and working with interesting people. I started for this. It is interesting for me to give out the image of my thoughts on a scale so that the people to whom he responds could add or object. People who are on the same wavelength with me received a signal, our probability of meeting has increased. And, of course, I will advertise on the channel - 300 rubles per post will not be superfluous!
It seems that now they are asking for at least 500 rubles - look, do not sell too cheap. The question is this: no one succeeds in winning all the time in life. How to develop your philosophy of defeats and victories?
This is the strongest delusion that such a philosophy is needed. It is important to develop a high philosophy. If you feel great along the way, then no matter what the result is, the result will be net positive. The modern education system with its metrics kills the essence - the joy of the process of learning and work.
Watching you, one gets the feeling that you live your life as fast as the Barrichello drives his car. What keeps you from burning out and grounding yourself when you feel like you've gone too fast?
I am driven by desire and interest, what will happen next. I have never been able to answer the question: βWhere do you see yourself in 5 years?β A year ago, I did not know that everything would be like this. Now I look at how I organized everything - and it's great. It's like a product to design your life: mindfulness practices, hangouts, boxing, etc. Now everything seems to be perfect. Simply space. But everything has even more depth. There is a constant interest and a feeling that you can find out how else it can be.
If we talk about how not to burn out ... There are several levels, like in Maslow's pyramid. The foundation is my practices, my structure. Wherever I fly or fly, I can turn on this structure: surfing, kundalini yoga, regular yoga, meditation. Then there is the middle level - these are tactical actions, vertical coherence. Short-term actions should be aligned with long-term goals. Sometimes you notice that you tactically do things that devastate. You start a diary of activities, write every evening: do I want to do this, why. The third level is the direction in which I am moving. It's like a beacon, like the North Star.
Entrepreneurship
Who is an entrepreneur? Describe the general psychological portrait.
It seems to me that this is a person with a deviation in the psyche and an increased tolerance for pain. He can endure pain and do something about it.
Tech entrepreneurs are modern rock stars...
Yeeeee!
β¦ But recently, articles have often appeared about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in reality. Recently scientists from UCSF that entrepreneurial traits such as openness to new things, creativity and emotional involvement correlate with bipolar, depression, ADHD. What can you say about this?
Fits my definition. This is logical. Here you are an entrepreneur. At some point, you wake up and think: we need to save this planet. Therefore, it is urgent to organize life on Mars. At the same time, you believe that you can do it. A normal person in his mind would not allow himself to think about such a thing. But you are an entrepreneur, you immediately start a stormy activity, organize people, make a mess. And then you wake up at some point and you understand: βDamn, what have I done. What the hell is Mars?! But it's too late to do it.
The article to which She is very truthful.
What were the top 3 lowest points in your entrepreneurial career? And what did you do to get out of the holes?
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When I came from university to work at P&G, there was a moment. I come to acquaint the head of the line with decades of experience. I say: βHello, I'm Dima. We will be implementing an IT system to improve the performance of your pipeline.β He looks at me and says: "Boy, go to $%#". It was an important moment to learn how to work with objections.
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Moving to the States. Everything went wrong. Unfamiliar market, unfamiliar country. It quickly became clear that compared to the Americans, Russians do not know how to sell at all. But I somehow could have thought at the age of 26 that I could come to the most competitive place on earth and be successful. At some point, things were going so badly that I had to borrow money from a friend in order to somehow pay salaries to employees.
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Change of motivation. When the motivation of competition and the desire to prove something to someone disappeared. For example, to prove that a guy from Taganrog can compete with dudes from Stanford⦠This motivation has changed to internal, based on my own values.
You often repeat the phrase "dementia and courage." What qualities do entrepreneurs need?
These are my qualities inherent in me. They took me to the most interesting moments in my life. But it's hard for me to recommend them to anyone. Something inside me cannot fully recommend them for development to all subscribers. (Laughs).
To be honest, I will say this: any action is better than inaction. Because you learn from action, and from inaction you let things go according to the default scenario, you begin to feel inner helplessness. You can't be in control of life, of course, but then you're not even in control of making your own decisions. And this is very toxic garbage, it destroys in the long term. I have seen many people with analysis paralysis. This is when you analyze everything, find 200 reasons why something will not work - instead of doing and receiving feedback from this world.
Top 3 things you need to know to scale anything?
First, a fundamental understanding of how people make decisions. We are ruled by emotions, rationality is just a lawyer for our emotions. People are irrational by nature.
Secondly, choose the right cloud infrastructure.
Third, a little luck.
If you were currently choosing between a managerial career in a large company and your own project, what things would you advise him to weigh?
I would advise to reduce the feedback loop, that is, those systems in life that give feedback on your actions.
School, university - these are fig systems, these are "amber organizations" that are not optimized for receiving feedback. The information there is outdated by default.
Cool feedback is to go try to sell something, build a business, do something in a small startup. When you see your actions and their results, you will receive life wisdom faster, and you will know yourself better.
The highest value is to know yourself and not live according to other people's ideals. Either you know yourself and control your life, or someone else controls it. It is quite possible that this will lead a person to a corporation, but it will be a conscious choice without different βwhat ifβ.
Team and culture
You live in San Francisco, while most of your team is in Moscow. What do you do to keep the company running smoothly?
One of our values ββat Chatfuel is openness. We do not have a clearly defined hierarchy. We implement a number of principles of turquoise organizations. Maximum openness. Anyone in the company knows how much we earn every day. We do not have a hard division: technical people can do something that is in the hands of sales. This is the foundation self-induced motivation. People do not just do what they say, what is important to them, they take the initiative, take and bear responsibility for themselves.
Do you give people black uniforms when they go to work?
We try to get high. Even sweatshirts were made so that they passed the face control of a pretentious Moscow club. And yet, this is our plan B: as a last resort, we will sell merch. (Laughs).
What do you need to know to hire top employees?
What kind of relationship do they have with their parents? (Laughs).
What are the most important things for building a culture in a company?
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Understand yourself. Because you can't fake culture. Culture is not what is declared on the poster, but what you do.
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Be honest with yourself. Understand the things that you have. And what is not. There are no miracles here - you have to start with yourself. Because if you are talking about openness, and no one can come to you and send three letters, then this is no longer part of the culture. People sense lies. You won't get any culture, and you'll compromise yourself.
What are the top three grocery businesses in the Valley right now?
I refuse to answer this question! Having lived through the hype cycle, I realize that my conscious choice is not to follow the hype trends. The most successful business is one in which the direction and mission of the company resonates with you, and you enjoy what you do.
Behavior change and product approach
As you know, changing habits is difficult. However, some succeed. You worked a lot in this area, went to vipasanna more than once, experimented with diets, sports, and spiritual practices. What does an adult need to know in order to change?
Bhagavad-gita. Can be children's, with pictures. (Laughs).
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Read about behavioral psychology to understand how we make decisions. We make 90% of decisions automatically. Daniel Kahneman wrote about this in his book Thinking fast and slow.
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Learn patterns of behavior change. With a specific structure, plant. For example, there is a BJ Fogg model from Stanford, which explains how triggers, opportunities, and motivation are interconnected.
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Start with positive motivation. Find meaning, depth, get high from the activity. Focus on the positive feeling, give yourself that positive feedback. So that the brain gradually relearns.
Top 3 skills you wish your kids had?
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Take responsibility for your life.
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Do what you like.
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Get high.
Biohacking - is it good or not?
I have a good friend who formulated the Five Principles of Matskevich. Guess what his name is.
A very difficult question. Continue.
Five principles:
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Having deep emotional connections;
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Sleep;
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Healthly food,
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Sex with a loved one
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Physical activity.
If you expand, then the psyche and the body were formed for tens of thousands of years. Changing something with a tablet is like poking around in a microcircuit with a screwdriver. But these five principles - they have been tested by thousands of years of evolution, I believe in them.
Mindfulness
Your room looks like we're in Bali. Coincidence?
We are aware of only a small percentage of the information read from all organs of perception. And therefore, it is important for me to arrange the space in such a way that it broadcasts how I want to feel. Here, at home, I want to relax and recharge my batteries.
Recently, two opposing opinions about meditation and mindfulness practices have often been heard. One is that this is the path to calmness and liberation from anxiety, the second is that all this leads to neuroses and will not lead to good. What do you think about this?
It seems to me that all things related to awareness lead to the same place: to understanding yourself, understanding your place in the Universe. This place is nice, calm and harmonious. But in order to get there, you need to go through many different states, go through such things and look into such corners of yourself, where it is scary, painful and not very desirable to look into.
But it's like in the matrix - you ate a pill and there is no way back. Yes, there will be sausage along the way, but this is part of this path. This is sold as a set. And, in the end, it's always interesting to see what's next.
Source: habr.com