February 14th, 2020. Probably the best day in my entire life.
The whole day felt like it was straight out of a movie. I was sitting in a Lufthansa plane, moving
to the United States, leaving Europe behind, and ready to start my new degree at Harvard and MIT.
Honestly, I've worked for the past 10 years day and night just for this moment.
What could possibly go wrong?
China has identified the cause of the mysterious new virus
Harvard university is moving all of their courses online
Students were told that they need to be off of the campus
Not knowing what to do and where to go my friend Alexander suggested we go to Florida,
and stay with a family friend for a while, until we figure things out
We thought that we would stay here for maybe one week or two
but surprise surprise we ended up being stuck here for the foreseeable future
I know what you're thinking. Terrible, right?
Having grown up in a tiny apartment in postwar Croatia I had never seen
such a giant and beautiful house in my entire life
But just like everyone else,
I slowly started to get bored so I started looking for some new things that I could do
As everyone I knew started picking new hobbies, such as knitting, baking or doing yoga.
Alexander and I would sit and talk for hours every day
about how we could make the most out of this weird apocalyptic extended vacation
By sitting actually mean chilling in the pool the champagne for some extra inspiration
And just like that, Alexander convinced me that we should start a company
At the beginning, it was all fun and games.
Honestly, I wasn't even sure it would actually go through with it.
But one thing was searching that was the end of our extended beach vacation
Okay, let's get serious!
First of all, we needed a problem to address
Alexander had this great idea that we could offer remote personal assistance to busy people,
and help them organize their lives
At the same time news started to pour in from Croatia,
which is my home country, that the economy was completely falling apart
The economy was so reliant on tourism, that a lot of young people lost their jobs
Therefore we went ahead and spent $50 on a job ad in Croatia,
which within just one week received 500 applications
And I'm not talking about unqualified people.
Some of them had master's degrees in law, psychology, and business
It was completely crazy!
Seeing this reaction, we knew that we had a chance to create a real and impactful business,
so we decided to go all-in!
A few days later, we started training in selection rounds for 25 out of 500 people,
and we picked a launch date just 4 weeks ahead
So yeah – four weeks later, and we have a total of...
...4 clients!
And excluding our parents, let's actually bring that down to just 2!
Anyways, we had already hired 5 people at this point
and I, a broke college student had taken out
a considerable amount of loans just to pay for their salaries
So at this point, there was just no way of backing out anymore!
So we did figure out that our concept of
doing remote work was perfectly timed, because of the pandemic
And remember timing is almost everything when it comes to startups
However, the idea to center this around personal assistance was really just terrible at this moment
Personal assistants normally help with bookings, with trips, with restaurants, travels, etc.
But guess what: nobody needs that during a pandemic when they're sitting alone at home!
Knowing that we were just weeks away from bankruptcy
and getting personally financially screwed
Our only way out was to get really innovative
And let me tell you: fear and stress are great motivators!
As we had no connections in the world of business, our only way of finding new
clients was cold calling and cold messaging people in Switzerland in the United States
It was a slow, frustrating, very humiliating process,
that was mostly just met with bitter silence
At some point, out of desperation, I even reached out to the CEO of Nestlé's research department
And yes, I'm talking about a multi-billion dollar corporation Nestlé
And I asked him if he needed a personal assistant
Obviously, he already had like three assistants to handle all of his needs,
so he had no reason to hire us
However, for some reason, he seems to have liked me
Or honestly, maybe he just felt sorry for me
But either way, he connected me to his HR director
Given that everything was operating remotely anyways, they decided to give us a chance
This initial income bought us enough time
to operate for several months and continue searching for new clients
After weeks of desperation and a very bleak financial situation,
finally, a CEO of a US-based company came back to me
He told me that his head of marketing had just quit,
so he was wondering if he had anybody who had a background in digital marketing
Knowing that this was probably our last chance to survive,
I simply said yes without actually thinking about it
And after the call, the first thing I did was google what digital marketing actually means
We had about four weeks to start a digital marketing project with this new client
Therefore, I very quickly started hiring!
Behind the scenes, it was complete chaos!
But on the outside, it looked as if everything was running smoothly
This experience and the very positive feedback that we got from our client made us realize
that we actually had a good future as a digital marketing agency
Therefore, two months later, we grew to 15 full-time employees
including graphic designers, web developers, SEO specialists, and more
Things started to turn around,
and we were suddenly making enough money to pay all of our employees' salaries
Even though we were not yet at the point where we could pay ourselves, this was a huge success,
because it meant that we could operate without outside investors
Nowadays, are transitioned out of the company.
Alexander and the team are able to handle everything on their own,
so I'm able to focus on my PhD and all of my research at MIT
Almost two years later, I can just laugh about all of these things that were happening back then
For sure, it was extremely stressful but,
I think I learned so much for the future for new startup ideas
Anyways, if you like this video please give it a thumbs-up, and consider subscribing to my channel.
This is the first video in my channel and I'll be talking a lot about startups,
about new ideas, about MIT, and so many things that could inspire you
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time!