MARTIN OMANDER: Hi.
My name is Martin Omander, and I welcome you
to Google Root Access, the show featuring actionable startup
advice.
My guest today is Nelson Pereira,
co-founder of the start-up TOPdocs.
Thanks for coming in today, Nelson.
And could you tell us a bit about your start-up?
NELSON PEREIRA: First, thank you for having me here, Martin.
TOPdocs is a cross-format and cross-cloud-platform word
processor for mobile and web, allowing people
from different clouds to collaborate together
on Microsoft Office documents, Open Office, and Google Docs.
MARTIN OMANDER: Great.
So how come you got started, or noticed
that this was a problem?
NELSON PEREIRA: Yeah.
It started three years ago when I
was teaching UI and UX design in college.
And I started my PhD in digital media back then.
And I wanted to use these all-new devices,
the tablet madness, to work outside the office,
leaving the laptop at home, finally.
But I start to face all kinds of problems.
Compatibility of the software wasn't there yet.
So after are a lot of research and trying to find apps,
I decided to build my own tools.
And then I went to Miguel, and I challenged with him
to join to the project.
He jumped in right away.
He liked it.
He liked the idea.
Well, yes.
Let's build this.
So we started researching for technology,
how to fix a problem, where to start.
And on that search, we found [? Flochan ?],
which is the third team member, which was also
working on this kind of problem.
So we team up together, we start building,
and we are very proud of what we achieve right now.
MARTIN OMANDER: Great, great.
So I think, Nelson, right now, many of our viewers
are thinking, what are these guys thinking,
going into such a crowded market space, online document
collaboration?
We have the Microsofts, and Googles, and Apples,
and Dropboxes of the world already
in there building solutions.
How do you think about entering such a market?
And where do you see your niche?
NELSON PEREIRA: Exactly.
There is a lot of good tools out there.
All these big players are creating amazing products,
but all of them are for their platforms.
And that's where the big problem is.
And that's the problem that we are trying to fix.
Because if you use your Google Drive as a cloud space
to sync all your files and devices,
and you're happy with it, and then you go to mobile
and you start to try to edit those with Microsoft Office,
and that's not possible, because Office is locked to OneDrive.
And that's why we have a niche and an opportunity
to work on this very high-competition field of text
collaboration documents.
MARTIN OMANDER: So you're saying your strategic opportunity is
then that these cloud providers don't support each other very
well.
But you can be that layer to support everybody.
NELSON PEREIRA: Exactly, because we are creating a solution that
will help people from Dropbox or Google Drive
to collaborate together on a Microsoft Office
document, which, right now, is nearly
impossible in the mobile space.
MARTIN OMANDER: I see.
Are there other strategic opportunities like that,
features that you see the big players are
lacking in or lagging in?
NELSON PEREIRA: Yes.
One of the most critical is interoperability problems,
because all these big players have
their own format for collaboration.
And they are not very likely to push
for supporting each other's formats.
So when you try to edit on mobile, example for Google
Docs, trying to edit a Microsoft Office document on mobile,
you end up with a very hard moment.
The document destroyed.
Loss of information, footnotes, objects,
when you go back to the computer.
So you need to trust your mobile tool to perform those editings.
And that's the other place where we
think there's an opportunity and a problem to fix,
because the big players won't try to push each other formats.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
So what if Microsoft or Google or Apple
comes out the next biggest developer conference
and announces a new feature that duplicates something
that you've built?
Isn't that a big risk?
NELSON PEREIRA: Exactly.
We are very aware of this situation,
because every summer, every major tech company,
like Google I/O conferences, they announce new features,
a bunch of start-ups just die.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
NELSON PEREIRA: Because they are very tied to the ecosystem
and to a specific problem.
So what we're doing is we are trying
to be as platform-agnostic as possible,
trying to be independent, and try to fix problems
that these big players are not likely to fix
in the next coming times.
MARTIN OMANDER: Got it.
So many start-ups are, like you, working
within existing app ecosystems.
What advice would you give to them?
NELSON PEREIRA: Well, first, find your niche.
Find a specific problem that those big players
won't fix for the coming times-- because they don't want it not,
because they don't have the resources to do it,
because they have.
And also try to be as independent as possible
from these platforms.
Try to find your business and your way of working,
and not being tied to just one app ecosystem.
MARTIN OMANDER: Oh, so span multiple systems.
NELSON PEREIRA: Exactly.
As many cloud platforms and mobile operating systems
as possible.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
So that sounds great, in theory.
And I'm sure a lot of start-ups would love to do that.
But isn't that awfully hard?
NELSON PEREIRA: Yes, it's hard.
And that's why we started it, because it
was a great challenge, too.
But if you go to try to fix the hardest
problems, but real problems that people really have,
you'll end up in a space that also
is less crowded, like start-up competition.
And you may have higher possibilities to succeed.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
I see.
Well, thank you very much for sharing your experiences
with us today, Nelson.
NELSON PEREIRA: Thank you, Martin, for having me.
MARTIN OMANDER: That's it for today.
I hope you found something useful that you
can use in your start-up.
If you have comments on the show,
please enter them in the YouTube Comments section.
We love reading your comments.
We read everything you write.
Finally, if you're a high-tech entrepreneur,
go to developers.google.com/startups
to find out how Google can help you.
That's it for today.
See you next time.