Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google PodcastsWe spoke to Xenia Muntean, Co-founder and CEO of Planable about the experience of being in a startup accelerator program, trademark trolls, culture advice, as well as when to trust your gut.
Xenia Muntean is the CEO and co-founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 6000 teams worldwide.
Before Planable, Xenia was running a social media marketing agency, and a large chunk of that work revolved around building editorial calendars. The process was super manual and clunky, and as she put it – for a millennial, this didn’t feel right. She knew that she could do better. This ultimately led to the inception of Planable.
The episode is packed with actionable tips, funny stories, and failures that hopefully you can learn from. Hope you enjoy the episode and let’s jump right into it!
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Quick bio
Name: Xenia Muntean
What she does: Co-founder and CEO at Planable
Xenia on the web: LinkedIn | Twitter
The one reason to listen to this episode: Xenia and her co-founders’ journey into the Techstars Accelerator in London. It took four tries and different iterations of the product to get into the program. Beyond jump-starting their business growth, the team’s biggest learning was on meeting the right people at the right time. But that’s not all – the insights that turned Planable into what it is today only started taking shape after the team graduated from the program.
Top tips from this episode
If you’re looking to raise startup capital, pick your timing very wisely
Being part of a startup accelerator program is fun. You get to experience the joy and the energy brought by the community and social networking events. But there is also the hype around the demo day, where graduates can present their pitch company to investors, media, corporates and public in general. While it is an opportunity to get external validation and initial investment, jumping on the same bandwagon with the others is not always the best choice for you and your product.
This was the case for Xenia and her two co-founders. Although it wasn’t the right timing, the team understood the importance of sticking to your own path, rather than riding the wave just because everyone else is doing it.
“What works for other people doesn’t work for you, and you know, just stick with it. Craft your own path”.
One way to fuel your company vision? Trust your gut feeling
It’s good to base your company vision on what’s happening in your market and what’s validated by advisors. It keeps the attention on the product, and what’s important for your customers. Xenia likes to add gut feeling to this equation. It helps her not get caught in the weeds and stay focused on the variables that stir the company in the right direction.
For example: building a feature that is highly requested by your customers might sound like a good idea. But is it a good fit for your company in the long run? Does it speak to your ideal customer?
In Planable’s case, an extremely upvoted feature is analytics – a data dashboard where people can see how their posts perform on social media. Rather than following a popular request, the team decided to trust their gut feeling and focus on what massively moves the needle for the company.
Having trouble figuring out which features to prioritise for your product? Xenia suggests focusing on your ideal customer segment.
Ask yourself “are those the customers that you want to build the second version, the third version, fourth version of your product and so on? Is that the direction you want to grow into?”
Episode Highlights
Transcript excerpts from the interview
Why culture matters when you’re growing a team
“It’s a very, very important aspect. I think where you see it best is when things go wrong. When you hire someone that doesn’t fit with your culture, it’s you know, great, professional, someone super smart, but just not the best fit in terms of your culture. That’s when you’re going to see the most signals. You’re going to feel the most that okay, culture is extremely, extremely important”.
The tangible elements that encourage a great company culture
“there’s a bunch of things that go into culture. Not just the values that you stick with: the leadership, the communication, but also some of the material things. The technology that people use, the tools that they use. Giving them the best tools so that they can be super productive, giving them the best resources so that they can feel valued is also, I think, very important”.
Why you should hire for culture add, not just culture fit
“You might think that they’re checking all the boxes, and communication skills. They seem great, they have a great experience, but you just have that gut feeling that you don’t click with them. The chemistry is not there”.
Top quotes
How to approach a startup accelerator application
[05:52]
We almost didn’t have a product. We had a few mock-ups and a few beta users, an email list (…) but I was already applying. I knew that they don’t explain rejections. That wasn’t the purpose of why I was applying but rather just building a habit out of it.
[06:14]
I knew that if I apply multiple times, I’m going to improve the way I write those applications, that I’m going to figure out in the end what’s going to help me out. Next time I’m going to read somewhere articles about what makes a good application for an accelerator. So every time it’s like a different iteration that makes it better and better.
On deciding what to build next
[22:49]
We get a lot of our feedback from our public roadmap, and we implemented it very early on when we were in beta. That has been a tremendous help for us to figure out what features are important for customers and what features are not.
[23:05]
At the same time, you still have to have your own strong vision as a company (…). Then you also have to figure out if that’s something that you want to do as a company. Maybe it’s not.
[24:39]
If you build everything, every feature that someone requires, you’re gonna end up with a very clunky product.
On the company’s hiring culture
[38:57]
We ask them to give us five questions. And we take that very seriously. If people don’t give us five questions, we don’t care if those five questions are good questions or not. But if they can’t give us five questions, then that’s, in my opinion, a sign of their interest in the company, a lack of interest in our company.
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