Choose Your Advice

Choose Your Advice

Ignacio Doncel

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

7/27/2020

Or listen using the plugin below:

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

choose your advice uh do you do diligence when it comes to advice i mean those genetics can be applied to everything you can be applied to uh every aspect of your business but when it comes to advice that's where it's more important [Music] hey everyone this is devon miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i am your host uh devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's also the uh founder and managing partner miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with patents and trademarks and um today for the inventive journey as always we're going to talk through the uh a great journey of uh someone that uh created and founded a funny and unique company name is ignacio and uh he is uh he's uh as i guess a bit of an entrepreneur serial entrepreneur done a few things went to really wanted to focus on reducing a little bit of the carbon footprint as well as making what all of us uses on the paper front of greeting cards and thank you cards and take that into a much better digital age so welcome on to the podcast thank you thank you thank you for having me on so you're absolutely welcome thank you for coming on so maybe with that i did a bit of an intro but uh i'll turn it over to you to do a much better intro than i can ever do so maybe introduce a little bit about your journey and where things got started and what brought you up till today sure uh well the journey started um thousand miles away from here i'm natural um seniors of spain and uh and i was born there you know raised there until it was about 30. um and then um you know i've been an insurance company with working my way up in in food distribution and manufacturing and one of the companies i work for send me here to the states uh to do something it was supposed to be like a six month project that has become uh uh uh 20 something years already in this country longer yeah and so yeah i um i i studied my mba here and uh and after that uh the uh the governor of spain uh in the year 2000 uh just you know hired me to work for the commerce department um and i stayed there working in florida in miami um but really um taking care of the other industries of spain for the entire united states so um yeah i started working with everything from publishing to media television movies education everything that had to do with the service sector industry um back then it was you know the the 2000s so everybody was happy money was flowing and and the digital transformation was taking place and so you know i had the the great opportunity of uh being in the in the in the best country for that right so um i started seeing that transformation taking place in in in all these industries and got a a lot of sense about you know the needs and the uh and the uh and the and the the offer that was out there for uh for every single of these all of these industries working with spanish companies that wanted to come here that wanted to do something and started to export because you know you remember in 2008 it was you know the whole explosion and then budgets got constrained uh and everybody from the digital transition became a digital need for a lot of companies and so um a lot of spanish companies decided to try to export uh and so they they used to come to the uh uh you know to the to the office to the uh to the commerce department um office in miami and and explain their projects um i i was lucky enough to be able to travel a lot through the united states to you know congresses conferences con trade shows and things like that and so um you know i i was i was very much in tune with the with the american consumers um and so yeah i started you know studying all these industries from the inside giving advice and uh to spanish companies that wanted to establish themselves here and and about that time i was a very late adopter myself of technology you know i i don't even i don't even remember if i had a facebook account but you know i still have my blackberry i'm so happy with my blackberry and everybody was like there's a thing called the iphone and i was like what and so you know i'm a samsung guy i like andrew i didn't even know that uh blackberries were still around i thought they went bankrupt so that's news to me back in the india was a thing i mean again i was i was still hooked up to my blackberry and i was i used to fly you know i was looking both sides you know and everybody had you know iphones and and android phones and i was like who the hell is going to use that and and and so yeah i was a late adopter but you know slowly but surely i became aware of of you know the major shift of of many of these companies you know and we're talking about 2008 so there was it was a crazy company called netflix who wanted to do the poor saps wanted to to bankrupt and do something against against uh uh i don't even remember the name yeah blonde bastard and and so you know all these things started to take in place and i started to pay attention all this and all these things and and seeing the disruption from the inside and seeing the disruption of many well-established companies uh by by just common sense right by just you know applying technology in a sense that or in a way that was fit to the needs of that time and so yeah that's pretty much what i was doing there um [Music] you know my my daughter was born in 2008 too he wasn't obama kid not literally but we started going to parties and we started to go into birthday parties and and start celebrating stuff and so i remember that time there was this printing company from spain who landed at the office and they they was they were making high-end greeting cards you know like the fancy stuff um you know five bucks up um and they were like yeah because we do that and we wanted to export you know greeting cards to the us and i was like and i had no idea about about this this industry or what they do or you know the type of money that that you know that they make and so you know as i always do i do my research and i went to the numbers and uh and i was surprised i was surprised about how much uh is a 20 billion dollar industry um you know very high concentration um and and uh and then it started to look at the you know um at the carbon footprint that they have and and and i'm a you know a nature lover and a person of the all your stuff which i think is very interesting so when you got into looking at so i guess a couple of questions what do what makes a high-end greeting card and i i probably the opposite end if i usually go and see which one is the cheapest one that has the right message on it i buy that so what is a high-end greeting card or what makes up a better greeting card well it was just it was just a material it was just the fact that they had uh you know a high-end paper like a like a a much you know thicker paper with a lot of graphics and a lot of design and these are you know for like weddings and and and baby showers things that are you know very you know it's not like like a typical birthday party or a birthday but they were much more in the high end so that's what you know these people were making and they're still companies especially indonesia some some others in india who are specializing here in the states too who are specializing that type of card so how many one other question i didn't mean to hijack your journey and we'll certainly get back to that but just because i never really i use greeting cards and you know birthday cards and thank you cards but i never really thought much about them so is there a is it a pretty competitive marketplace is there a lot of players in there i know hallmark is one that i always see but that's the only one i probably can even think of but is there a lot of players or a few players is a pretty centralized or how does that work yeah it's it's a it's a it's a very concentrated industry they're like three or four major players uh here in the states is of course you you name them hallmark american greetings which was you know uk greetings and there are another uh uh two or three major players in europe and and some in asia uh their local players were for obvious reasons you know the green cards don't maintain value if you export them unless you do it in massive quantities uh because local you know local manufacturing is much more cheaper in other places so um so yeah those are those are the major players you set them and then there's a lot of minor specialized players who are now are trying to make an inroad in the industry which is more about you know handmade designs something especially for you uh which are some people who are also calling us and not offering us their designs to to put on on on with you so you know we're starting to to think about those ideas for you okay so go ahead so you have all these major players you've now kind of had first heyday of industry and then things start to get kind of pulled back is you get into you know what is now 2008 2009 and the housing market is crashing and money's getting tighter and with all of that you decided it was a perfect time to start your own business right yeah with all that you know we started to get a much less activity in in the uh in the commerce department and we were like you know we're getting bored actually and so uh my daughter like i said you know was born at that time and we started to go into parties and starting to see all these you know craziness with the green cards and and cars that were you know thrown away very next day so it was in one of those parties where i see you know you're attending you just received a visit from a company a printing company and you see those cards and things that start to you know go around your head and and uh and so yeah i decided they said you know there's got to be some more value got together with a psychologist a friend of mine in a sociologist which is another um guy who i know from many many years and and they told me you know the value the value is in in the in the signature in the handwriting uh but there's also a traditional component behind it you know this there's a tradition of going to the car and the effort of somebody going to the car and getting in and selling it and that's the value of it so it's not just the thought that counts you actually have to do some things that you're telling me yeah exactly that's why that's why we're uh you know people are you know walking to wish you as opposed to just sending a facebook message because a facebook message just just says i remember yeah but when you take the time to write something to doodle something and to attach a picture with your voice then it becomes much more meaningful and so um so yeah you know i started to think you know what is the substitute value of something that is so rooted in tradition because it's gonna take a while to to convert and to to have adoption in something like this and and you know what would it take uh so you know we started thinking about okay what if instead of sending the car from me to you which is a an e-card you know something that hasn't been successful because of you know the lack of value obviously from something that is made up um what if instead of that i put together you know the dedications of of your 20 friends or all your classmates or maybe everybody who wants to say get well and that might be part of your network or yeah or that might be people who don't even know you but they want to say you know uh get well and and and donate make a new donation so we started thinking about putting together voices putting together uh dedications bring together gift contributions and putting together you know images uh and so there was a lot of a lot of putting together so we started piece by piece we were a small group uh and we so we started piece by piece and we started working with the voices first then with it with the signatures it took a while to do that because if i remember right when i talked and correct me if i'm wrong by all means you're not don't have much of a technical background or programming your software background so i get you you have this idea right and you know putting words in your mouth but you had the idea hey we're going to now look to make what it is or greeting cards that people like to send or thank you cards or whatever cards it are now make that over to digital and first you'll learn from the industry you know e-cards don't work if all you do is just send out an e-card and type a message in or have it automatically generated doesn't have the the heart and you know doesn't have the touch and the feel doesn't make make people feel you know like it's you're putting thought into it and so then you say okay now we need to actually make this bring in that human nature back into on the electronic platform of doodling or signing you're making colors or drawings and pictures and video and whatnot and maybe also give contributions so you come up with that idea so now how do you move into implementation because if you don't you know that seems to me a lot of software play right and a lot of platform a lot of programming that so how do you start to make that transition to hey i've got to find people that can build this for me yeah that was that was that was a step right the step is okay so so from idea to go to something that that is going to work and and something that can be finished and to make into a product that not only works but it also fits you know the markets and the things of the people so you know i studied look around and see you know who can advise me who can who can guide me on this because i was like totally blind uh and i didn't know anything about infrastructure about you know frameworks programming languages nothing at all plus this hadn't been done before so you put those things together is even more complicated because there was people talking about many different technologies that could work but i wasn't able to judge those technologies i wasn't able to say okay oh you say it makes sense but instead of going with you know react and node we're gonna go with all the different you know type of language uh to make it work faster to be able to exchange between the backend and the front end because we're gonna need that so there was a lot of trial and error and the two first years um i was uh advised but by someone that it wasn't the right person in the right group and so it was two years in the garbage practically uh and so when we talked about that you also had to make a pivot right so i think that you mentioned that you originally kind of more did an app and it was on the phone and you thought hey that would be a great platform yeah i won't steal too much of that and you can fill it in more but if i remember i kind of said that was one where people downloading an app for just a single use and you know hard to get people to adopt for hey i want to send a card i want to do a quick thank you now i gotta download an app figure it all out and do a one-off and then you know i'm not going to use the app for a while more so that kind of also sounds like it was a pivot is that is that recollection right that's that's exactly right that's that's that doesn't mean doesn't mean one of the main uh uh problems that we that we had was that was to do just set the bases wrong and from when you say the base is wrong it doesn't matter what you do later on if the bases are wrong these are wrong and the bases were uh made um into into into apps into an android and an ios app uh because everybody was making up at the time making options making absolutely it was a thing and and a lot of people started you know were having and doubling every single thing just to try it and so yeah we decided to go with apps and and having people to download an app to make a card but also download the app to sign the card uh and so that didn't go well didn't go well because when we had the product ready and started the test uh even though the functionality was working perfect and and it was you know very very nice well-built and you know experience and the flow was very good the fathers the mothers the teachers everybody was saying listen i don't want to have to download i love it because i love the uh the result and it was for the teacher and we have to do it for the teacher and we'll do it but it's a pain having to download an app signing in putting my my email and everything else just to sign a card i don't know what i'm gonna sign the second card i don't know if it's gonna be in two months or in two years so you know one of the things we do very well and with you is we listen and so uh once we have that feedback from three different people we made a small focus group and sure enough you know 90 percent of the people said you know downloading a nap is too much it's too much of a hurdle so we said okay so but i mean because that you know without letting you jump too quickly past it so if you're because by that point i think you said you've been in there what two plus years developing and putting in the time and effort and everything else so it wasn't just you know hey we spent a month on this and we got to start over it was a good amount of time effort we had the app going and everything else so a couple questions in there just to dive a bit deeper so you know one is how did you get and no offense by any means man but how did you get you know two years in and you know not realize that this was a problem meaning you know was it a lack of hey because and i and i i'll really admit i do the same thing you start to drink your own kool-aid right you start to think hey this is awesome look at all the features we can do look at all the cool things we can do anything everybody will love it as much as you are and one thing i've had to learn myself the hard way so that's why i said i'm not picking on you because i've learned the exact same lesson is sometimes you want a focus group you want to go out and actually you know as much as i hate the term minimally viable product and the reason i hate it is not because i don't get the idea behind it because it always means it sounds like i'll put out the worst product as quickly as i can and hope people like it which i never liked that idea but it is almost that idea of let's get a product both focus group it figure it out so you know did you skip over that step did you not think about it or what kind of where was the disconnect for the couple years i would i would go into the into into into tips with you to ask you how would you make that focus group because i i bet you if you make that focus group the first thing you would do would be to download the apps and have the phones ready so that was much more fundamental instead the fundamental step wasn't the functionality which is what 99 of the focus groups you know focus on is the flow how do you do it and that wasn't the problem the problem was a much more fundamental problem it was what type of platform and and no that's a very good point i don't know that i would i would probably do the safety you set up the focus group you're saying hey let's see how they like it let's test it out we got all the phones ready now you know try it out and you almost missed that step which is probably the big step but i would have probably done the same thing yeah and we did it and we did and we did focus groups as far as function id goes we did fox group and that's exactly what we did and and uh and and the people who we did it with that was the first thing they did was through okay let's download the apps have the phones ready and then even to the to the to whoever is going to use it and then get that feedback and we miss that fundamental step is what is the real platform plus at that time browsers were not as too not so developed that they will offer a very nice um you know a functionality as far as what we wanted so you know we have to say also that that when you tried chrome you know i'm talking about you know many years ago didn't have all that you know a functionality built in uh and they were much more um they weren't behaving as as as well when you use for instance you know chrome in an iphone right now is is pretty much seamless you know you can use here and they work perfectly and back then there was still a lot of protecting my platform and so you had a lot of problems having to adapt the product to different browsers um would have been not that i thought about it and discarded it because i'm not trying you know that was a big mistake but um but even if we have tried there would have been a lot of a lot of problems trying to adapt something in a web application that would work across different different processes it sounds like further almost you're gaining if you do data in the sense that you know if you would have tried to do it on the web platform when you very first started web wasn't far enough developed it didn't have the functionality and yet you do the app and the app didn't work so it's almost a matter of timing wasn't timing wasn't on your side when you initially started it was until afterwards when you figured out that the app wasn't work then the web website had caught up a bit more is that a fair fair summary yeah yeah that's exactly that's exactly what happened and and but of course i mean there was a lot of other things that we were developing at the same time you know in the back end and and the voices and everything else so it wasn't it wasn't a complete waste of time uh but but yeah yeah that's that's a fur that's our first lesson so i mean and i'll quit peppering with questions if i find it interesting we'll ask one more so when you're when you got to the point you're saying okay as much as we love the app we think it's really cool it has a lot of great functionality and once they downloaded it you know everybody loves the type of thing but you have the problem of getting them to download it how did you decide okay we've got to pivot we've got to change we've got to do something different in order to react to the market you know kind of what how did you make that decision that was a hard one that was a hard one and i had to involve not only myself but you know my family my you know my my my investors and everybody else you know we have to we have to really sit down and say this is what happened and and what are we going to do about it and so you know there was a lot of there was a lot of you know uh a lot of wows and a lot of you know how can you do this and um but yeah you know it was it was a matter of going you're moving forward or just stopping and and going back to uh you know to a nine-to-five uh work or doing something different and i wasn't i wasn't ready for that um and i'm no quitter so um i said you know we're gonna we're gonna do it and and we just do need to change the team uh the team that we had was a team that specialized in apps uh they're all over the world because we have developers i've had developers like in may probably think different countries but we had to find the right developing team uh for the webinar and so that was that took you know another two months of interviews and and flying and and but finally we got you know a team that was able to to translate pretty much everything that we have on the apps uh into you know a web app and that that will work and that gives you know customers and users a nice experience and that was a that was a hard decision to make yeah no i i could imagine i said that pivoting is never easy and the farther you get into a product the harder it is to pivot because you already have so much time effort resources and everything else into it that the farther you get in you you try and talk yourself out of how can i adjust the product rather than pivot right so i i really appreciate that so so now fast forwarding till today you made the pivot it's now online you do the web portal how's it going people like it worthwhile pivot covens build it how is it you know how's it going you know it's going very well um um you know we've been uh we've been so busy especially since since comey um you know my wife was was joking and saying you know you took a global pandemic to get your product really appreciated and i'm like yeah but uh you know the truth of the matter is that you know we're working with more than 400 schools that have done you know from graduation cars to birthday parties the woman birthday cards and class birthdays uh hospitals companies that now are much more decentralized and and delocalized and they're working you know with you to celebrate to you know thank you to you know uh retirement cards um you know autoboy cars for a job well done of course birthdays and so is is is super busy right now we had to migrate because our servers weren't um working 100 because we were you know prepared for for you know a whole bunch of traffic but not that much and so we had to migrate these uh last two weeks we've been migrating servers uh to a much more you know largest server in aws and so he's quite busy he's very busy today this morning we had a conference with a huge uh organization uh who wants to implement with you for pretty much everything you want to do a lot of different types of cards now without even asking for it we have people um in platforms like fiverr and some others who are want to sell our cars so they say you know what if i want if i buy cars from you and then i personalize them can i sell them i will like yeah you know so so there's a lot of things that we didn't anticipate and they're happening right now people who are calling from uh you know from from india from pakistan yesterday was maybe for yesterday on monday there was a whole university in pakistan that wanted to do like um graduation cars for everybody you know from from now on like every year because you know families are everywhere nowadays and everybody wants to have the signature of grandpa or grandma and so and so yeah he is super busy right now we're very thankful um and and the feedback that we're getting is what keeps us going i mean the feedback you should see you know the type of feedback that i would get is it's really remarkable no that's awesome so if i were to do now say now we've done that you've finally made your pivot starting to go well as you said it took a pandemic for everybody to want to get in touch use your product which i think is a great pivot or you know don't want to profit off of the pandemic by any means but i think it was a good way for people to understand what the importance of your product and what how it could be used and how it could connect people so now you look at it say next six months to a year where do you guys go where what's the path you'll take well we'll continue growing uh there's uh this i don't we don't see demand now getting back i mean now we have uh hospitals implementing that as part of their um of their you know cars for for for patients which is like a it's like a little meal that that works you know continuously and and we have you know a lot of those meals now are starting to work uh schools that the principal says and i want to donate my birthday today to the pta and so the principal makes a car everybody signs and everybody makes a little donation because on wish you you can place um a donation website or or a paypal account we don't get any commission from donations or anything people get sent to the actual website where you know uh of course donations are gathered of that particular school or pta or ptl so those things are becoming really popular uh teacher appreciation day has been huge i mean we've been we've been having teachers cars like like you know amazing um and so and so yeah i mean we see continue working in the same way continue working with the schools hospitals companies and of course you know people like you and me who have kids and and uh yesterday was somebody who have was like a kid animation company something like that you know these people who come dressed in frozen or whatever and uh and so you know they wanted to they wanted to celebrate and uh they they normally go to places like gymnasiums and places like that or you know particular homes uh individual homes and they they were like okay we have all this data from all these kids who you know we've been celebrating birthdays for three years and we wanted to continue you know uh doing that and and you invite people into that card so everybody who signs if you put your little logo or your contact information all these people get you know uh uh all of a sudden they know who you are so if you're the character and you are you know elsa from frozen and you're in the car for this kid and you put you know contact me here if you need me you know 20 people are gonna sign the car they're gonna keep it because if you sign it you have access to it and that's your your business card right there so that's another thing that we haven't even thought about and somebody comes along and says can i use it for this i was like yeah you can use it we're like okay so this this you know a lot of these things that come you know every day that we haven't even thought about and and uh and it's very surprising well that's cool that's exciting so well we're hitting towards the end of the podcast and there's always more things that i want to hit on and never enough time to do it unfortunately so maybe we'll have to have you back on but i always have my uh two questions i asked towards the end of the podcast so we'll kind of jump to that part of the podcast now so when maybe we've already touched on them a little bit as we've talked throughout but the first question i always ask is what was the the worst business decision you ever made the worst business decision i ever made was probably to assume that that because i didn't know technology the people who knew technology at that time were also good enough to to interpret the business dynamics around that technology so it's one thing to know technology very well that you have to know your customer and your user and to have that avatar really well defined if you really really want to make a product that fits and because the new technology didn't uh that app that we were talking before in that that part of of selecting something that was not in tune to the needs of the consumer that was my my biggest mistake and so um technologies technology it doesn't mean that the people who know technology are the best ones to advise you or to advise anyone in in business decisions no i think that's a good because a lot i work with in different businesses i do and i mentioned serial on you know dude run and co-founded several businesses i think you're absolutely right you have some people that are great technologists mean they can co-grade they can make great products but doesn't mean that they're doing it based on what you instruct them to do right meaning if if you tell them hey i want this and this and this they'll make a great job of it doesn't mean that they're the ones that are going to tell you this is how you should do or they shouldn't be telling you either way this is how you should do it or this is what's going to work in the marketplace or this is what customers are going to like or anything else i think there's a difference sometimes it's even it's even it goes beyond because sometimes for them a type of technology for them might be more easy to code easier to code or easy to work with and so but that has a lot of business impact so i give you an example you know that with you when you make a authentication or sign a card you can animate it so you know when you click it the animation comes and then you see that person how that person signed so that is the technology that is contrary to a static image so we had a whole discussion i remember like three years ago about what to use should we use this or that and for my developers it was much easier to work with static images it's much more standard you have all the technology over there but at that point i already have i had my i had made my my big mistake so i said no no we're gonna do it this way because this is an added value to the card and if we have to work a little harder or some find somebody who is an expert on this you know type of technology we'll do it uh and so yeah i totally agree with you that that um that you have to you have to keep them you know separate yeah yeah all right now i'm gonna jump to my second question so second question is so somebody that's just wanting to get in started in the startup just get going or just barely started their startup what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh choose your advice uh do you do diligence when it comes to advice i mean do you think this can be applied to everything you can be applied to uh every aspect of your business but when it comes to advice that's where it's more and more important so you know the same way you go to a doctor and it's a doctor and it amazes you about his knowledge and everything else and then if it's something serious you go to a second doctor or even a third this is the most serious thing probably that you're gonna do in a few years uh so don't go to only one doctor go to several doctors and listen and listen and put together that and that is the best i mean this is not anything new we've heard this you know many many times in in other places but that is something that you cannot escape um and then after yeah and then after that you know have a have a communication skill uh so get people who they can really communicate with uh language cannot be a barrier because you know then there's a lot of interpretation and and i develop a whole system on drives to communicate with my developers and it's very graphic and it has a lot of arrows that come back and forth and little tags here and there so you know when you have even when you have people who are native speakers or or bilingual make sure that you communicate with graphically and anything you want them to do explain it then you know put a graphic to it and and and say you know this is the way i want it and do your little doodles or whatever it is but that saves a ton of money so far to summarize almost and one is get a second opinion or a third opinion or a fourth opinion or but don't just take the first opinion that you get especially if it's something critical to your business make sure that you educate yourself or at least have a good enough foundation within makes to make a decision as to what will be best for your business and then two is to communicate graphically make sure that communication is not a barrier and that people are well understood and you communicate things well so that they can execute on which i think you're both great pieces of advice well far to do it so people want so as we reach the end want to make sure that they know how to reach out to you whether it's they want to use your product they want to be part of your company they want to invest in your company they want to just reach out to you for whatever reason what's the best way to connect up with you as well it would be ignacio wish you dot com which us wish and then y-o-o um.com and uh you know that's my email that's all right perfect we'll make sure to direct everybody your way i think your product sounds like a really cool one i can certainly see why it can make a difference both on carbon footprint as well as connecting everybody up so thank you for coming on the podcast it's been an absolute pleasure it's been fun to talk through your journey um for everybody else it's a listener want to invite you to uh certainly subscribe to our podcast if you're listening you can hit the subscribe button on any of the platforms if you want to be in an uh guest on the podcast just go to inventivejourney.com apply to be a guest on the podcast and if you're needing any help with any patents or trademarks certainly feel free to reach out to us we always want to make sure to take care of startups and small businesses so thank you again for coming on ignacio it's been really fun to talk through your journey and i wish you the success on for your future journey thank you very much thank you for having me on [Music] you English (auto-generated) All Recently uploaded