Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
The Future of Agency Work: Navigating AI and Growth Strategies with Szymon Boniecki
Are you ready to explore the dynamics of running a successful consultancy in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape? Join us as we sit down with Szymon Boniecki, co-founder of Monterail, a pioneering Ruby on Rails agency. In this engaging episode, we dive into Monterail's remarkable journey over the past 14 years, sharing lessons on growth, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), and the delicate balance between client expectations and service quality.
The conversation highlights the importance of adaptability in the face of changing industry demands—from discovering the right marketing strategies to understanding the nuances of maintaining client relationships. Szymon sheds light on how embracing a primarily inbound marketing approach has bolstered Monterail's reputation and client acquisition over the years.
We tackle pressing questions such as: How do you remain competitive in an era where AI promises more efficiency at lower costs? How do you manage your operational scale while still delivering exceptional value to your clients? The episode offers insightful answers along with practical strategies that any aspiring consultant or established agency leader can implement.
With heartfelt anecdotes from both Szymon and host Alex, listeners will find themselves not just inspired, but also equipped with actionable takeaways to elevate their own business strategies. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from industry leaders! Make sure to subscribe, share, and leave us your thoughts—how do you approach growth and adaptation in your consultancy?
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars. I'm Alex, ceo and founder of Mars Days, and in today's episode, we bring you Szymon Boniecki, co-founder of Monterail, also co-CEO of the company that was founded almost 15 years ago. Monterail it used to be a Ruby on Rails agency. It started off as such, as we did, in 2014. They started a little bit earlier than that, but that was one of the companies we look up to and we in fact, work together in a project or two in our early beginnings of Mars Days, and with Simon, we actually have a very, very insightful conversation that goes two ways. We keep asking each other about the future of the company, the future of the industry, how do we perceive AI, how is this going to optimize the kind of work that we're doing, if that will help you to reduce the cost of the projects or increase the development pace and whatnot. So this is a two-sided conversation, with two people running companies that are bootstrapped, that are on the boutique side of things, but have pretty different philosophies about how to expand the business. So this conference is pretty, pretty interesting for people who want to start a consultancy, a studio, an agency whatever you want to call it. So, without further ado, let's jump right into the episode. I'm excited and we're live. Welcome to the show. It's funny.
Speaker 1:We connected at the very beginning of the creation of Mars Space. We reached out to the companies that we wanted to be like. Monterey was one of them. We said how many companies out there are doing Ruby? It was not surprising that not many big companies were doing Ruby. And it was not surprising that not many big companies were doing Ruby. Perhaps it was Rakuten, it was GitHub, airbnb and the like but no corporate agencies like the big force weren't doing Ruby. So it's mostly boutique agencies and you were one of them. You were one of the very few that actually answered back, so thank you for that. It's great that we stay in touch. We actually worked together in a project in 2014 or 15, in the very beginning. I don't know if you remember that but uh and um and after that we haven't kept in touch, but I have been following your newsletter blog and 14 years that's a hell of a run. Congratulations for for that.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Alex. I've been following podcasts and everything you do as well. I really liked. I remember that you've mentioned. Oh, we just started, we want to be like you. And I was like, wow, someone wants to be like us. We just started, anyway, as a window, let's see what it has to say.
Speaker 1:It's funny because now we're getting these kind of emails ourselves where somebody is like oh, we're creating an agency, we want to be like you. I had two meetings last week in Madrid and they're like we want to be like Mars Race, we follow your podcast and whatnot. So in a way, it's a way of paying back right to the ecosystem. So I think there can be so many lessons learned. On the other hand, I think, well, we're not that big of a company. So, yeah, I can tell you the do's and don'ts and mostly, if you don't experience yourself the fuck-ups, you will not learn from them, Like we don't learn, we have never learned from fuck-ups from other people. I don't know if that's the case with you guys, who were your inspiration when you started ThoughtBot, ThoughtBot yeah, and then on the way a couple more.
Speaker 2:At some point I wanted to be like ThoughtWorks. We're not quite there yet, but I think ThoughtBot is still a pretty good benchmark, honestly.
Speaker 1:It's funny because ThoughtBot was the other company that answered back. I think I think it was only you and Thoughtbot of the entire world. We sent out an email to like 60 agencies, maybe Plataformatech in Brazil, I think those guys answered too. I remember talking to some Brazilian dudes back in the day, thoughtbot funnily enough, we made a really good friendship with one of the managing directors, who quit the company shortly afterwards and started working with us, and I think that that was particularly helpful. But I don't know what is the thing about Thoughtworks that you like, because I think more like into the consulting more than developing. Right, they're both of a reference. They're a reference in both worlds, but I'm not I'm not following thought works that much. I'm not that familiar with what do you like about them?
Speaker 2:and they also begin with thought all right yeah, exactly, they're misleading, yeah we should change our name to thought something um, thought rails and thought based. Yeah, yeah, exactly so. It's always been our aspiration, um, and I think the last year and a half has shown the the huge power and in adaptability, organizational adaptability and that's why I think the benchmark there's no benchmark for me right now, it's just to be adaptable and do your own thing.
Speaker 1:So marketing was like in the center of your beginnings, right? So content marketing, like, for instance, we've so. Content marketing Like, for instance, we've never done paid marketing. We don't do outbound because we don't like it. I think it goes against our principles. It's for other companies, just not for us. But we focus 100% on inbound and it's work wonders.
Speaker 1:However, 90% of the deals I bring into the company is because of my network. It's because I just move around, go to conferences and talk in podcasts and meet people. I meet three different people every day, right, and so I generate this kind of deal flow, and then 10% the other 10% of the deal flow comes through the website or maybe like 1% residual, something else. You know, sometimes it's Twitter, sometimes it's a, a podcast, sometimes it's this event or something else, but so I would say we have a lot of you know, a lot of like our faces as ceos or leaders or founders of these companies.
Speaker 1:We, we work through recommendation and I think that's very important. That's why I'm saying like I don't know if getting on the cover of a magazine or something like that, or getting on TV or the radio would really bring much more revenue. The times we've been on TV was like something really small and was really stupid and didn't have any sort of effect. But happy clients, they keep bringing projects and I guess that's the same with you. You guys have got a lot of recurrence right with the happy clients, I guess.
Speaker 2:Do you have any metrics on that?
Speaker 1:Do you calculate metrics on client retention or something like that? Yeah, we do, oh nice.
Speaker 2:We've been trying to put some methodology into this but in the end we always fail, you know. I mean, the numbers are, the volumes are so small in terms of, you know, we run around 35 projects at a time, you know, and, and yearly that's maybe 50 to 60 unique projects. So you know, these numbers, these are not high volume numbers that you can bring some, you, you know you can bring some knowledge, some expectations, but not so many, I think. But yeah, we measure client retention, returning clients, you know, and referrals. This is the most important metric of all. I think there's been this article in Harvard Business Review years ago and it's called the Only One Number you Need to Grow, and it's an article about NPS Net Promoter Score, that if people answer, how likely are you to recommend this company? 8 or 9 or 10 out of, or ten out of ten? This is your sweet spot, because people will keep, actually keep recommending you. Um, and we measure that. Uh, sometimes, I think, even too often people are fed up with answering these NPAs like every quarter.
Speaker 2:We changed it to, I think, half a year right now. Um, but yeah, so we measure that. Um, I think sometimes you can't, uh, you just can't. You can't make everyone happy and you know that's, that's obvious truth. But when you run a service company, you try to make everyone happy, right, especially with the the bigger you grow, the bigger complexities there are, the bigger hiccups there could be, the bigger compromises you make, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you know we do outbound, we do that kind of stuff you know, like, you know, uh, salesy, all that thing, we really want to grow Like, we like growing Um, and so in that sense I I think, uh, you realize at some point you just can't make everyone happy Because if you do, in service business you'll drive yourself crazy and sad. But true, you know, and I've heard this multiple times from founders running service companies that they're just, they had mental problems at some point because they tried to make everyone happy and it wasn't possible. You know, and you just have to. You just have to pick up the phone call that someone is not I mean the figurative phone call that someone's not happy and just accept it. You're doing your best. You know they're doing what they have to make the phone call because they're not happy and that's it, end of story. And you just do your best effort to make up for that. And this is what I keep saying to my team, I mean the team that manages the projects and manages the company.
Speaker 2:We can't make happy, we aspire do, we want to um and but and uh, there is very little space for mistakes, especially lately. Man, you clients are easy to turn. So if you make mistakes, it's a very good always a very good opportunity to lose a client. You know and I think we've been doing a pretty good job recently on making everyone sort of happy we're not getting full. You know we're not getting the full NPS from everyone, but you know we're not getting full. You know we're not getting the full mps from everyone, but you know we're not either giving out discounts.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're in service business, you know what I'm saying. Like if you fucked up, you have to make it. You know, give up the disc, right, um? So yeah, I think I think you have a huge responsibility on yourself, man, that you bring in the deal flow, and I guess it depends from person to person. I don't think I would be able to myself to live with that thought. I'm the deal flow, to be honest. That would be too hard for me. I mean, I bring in the DFL, to be honest. That would be too hard for me. I bring in the DFL, but it's just part of the DFL. So I would rather ask the question to you how do you handle this? What's driving you?
Speaker 1:I suffer from a lot of vertigo. The first seven hires, something like that by hire number 10, I was like yeah, whatever. But I remember I had never hired the person my two co-founders they had in previous companies. For me it was first company and, moreover, I am a developer by trade. I learned how to do sales by running this company, but they appointed me as the director of sales or in charge of sales because I spoke english and I traveled a lot and they thought that was a good recipe. Right, I said like let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:We have six months if not, we shut down right. And I remember that you know, things picked up really from the very beginning and we hired our first employee six months into the company. Right, it was like could have gone wrong, but it went really well. We hired somebody eight months. We hired somebody else. By the first anniversary we had already three employees, which was crazy, but with every one of them I remember that suffering a lot of vertigo was the case, because I was like okay, so now this man's salary depends on me.
Speaker 1:And the other funny thing is one of my co-founders, jordi, joined full-time one year after we created the company because he had a really good position at another company and he had a child. And we're like, dude, don't risk it, you know, just take it easy, just join when this is very stable, if it ever becomes very stable. And when he joined, you know, I was like, wow, because I knew him. We've been friends since childhood and I know his wife, I know his, I knew his kid. I was like, oh my God, this is going is going like this, took it all on me emotionally. And and then a couple more hires and I got over it. I saw like, oh, the company's growing steadily. It's stable and so I got used to it. I know it's a huge responsibility to be responsible for 90 of the deal flow, but I think I mean, if I die tomorrow, like we've got a plan B right.
Speaker 1:I mean that's based on your worries.
Speaker 1:I think you should die tomorrow, but yeah, still, exactly, I'm not going to be here. So fuck if I care. But no, of course I want the best for them. But I know that if I left the company for whatever reason, because I wanted to do something else, I could still be the face of the company, which are of like an un-executive chairman or something like that be associated to the brand, direct or deal for to the company. So I know that these most likely the um, you know, the likely outcome uh would be this. Uh, I'm not, you know other things of the company could do somebody else. What I think I am irreplaceable for is bringing so much revenue into the company. All the rest you know the blog, the marketing, the sales somebody else could do it.
Speaker 1:Maybe leadership we are a co-CEO, the three of us, so I'm not really that necessary, so to speak. So I don't know if that answers your question. So you're three co-CEOs, sort of Outwards. I'm the only CEO. Then we've got a CTO and COO, but internally we adopted the titles only to appeal to other people, to talk to clients, because initially I was CMO. Actually we kind of like it wasn't comfortable the first years, the first three, four years, because nobody wanted to be the CEO. But I think everybody, like the three of us, wanted to be the CEO, but we were like we don't want to be above each other because we're best friends, right? So we're like let's keep it at the same level. No CEO, we're like three different profiles. But then I realized that people didn't want to talk to the CMO for projects.
Speaker 2:They wanted to talk to the CEO, and that's why I said look, I made the case.
Speaker 1:It's like, hey, outwards I will be the CEO. Internally I'm not really the CEO Like we operate internally. I'm not really the CEO like we. We operate internally like the three of us are CEOs internally. But it's weird, it's always the elephant in the room and the old hires because they we have a very low employee attrition. So most of our employees have been since the beginning of the company and they have seen me as CMO, right, but the three, four new people we've had in the last years they assume I've always been the CEO and they don't know the full story. So that's why explaining it in a podcast it's really great. How's it play out for you guys?
Speaker 2:We're two co-CEOs and that works well for us.
Speaker 2:I don't think it would work everywhere. You probably know it by yourself. I mean, it works, it just works, but I wouldn't write the business article. Hey, this is your number one business strategy to do co-CEOing. I think it just depends really on the company dynamics and your dynamics between you two or three in your case. But I think it right now it works really well between me, between me and my partner. We're two co-founders, two co-ceos, two partners to own the co-owners. Everything's 50 50. Um, it's just like a marriage man. I've known this guy longer than my wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:It is like marriage, and I see what you're saying. There was a CEO in the beginning, but then there was no CEO and it always created some kind of friction.
Speaker 2:We just called ourselves co-founder I mean, everyone was really comfortable talking to a co-founder, but they didn't have the executive sort you know what co-founder, but what right? So then we made the choice with co-CEO, because you know we could go with CIO, chairmen of this world, whatever. But it showed off that there is some kind of a friction, because, hey, co, doing something is friction, you know, by just pure logic. And we just went hey, you know, if we do co-CEO, someone might just remember us hey, this is the co-CEO, guys, that sort of thing. But did you find that? Hey, this is the co-CEO guys.
Speaker 1:That's really it, but did you find that, talking to corporates, the titles have much more?
Speaker 2:importance or not really. Sort of yes, sort of yes. And from what we've learned again, monterail is the biggest company I've ever worked in, so I have no prior experience but from what I've learned is it helps to have all these ladders of roles even made up so you have the matching role on the other side. You know everyone's, you know this is in business books and it actually is actually sadly true. Well, not really sadly. And let me give you an example. One of our clients, one of our major clients, is Prada. Yeah, and it's a really difficult project. When you actually go, you know it's a lot of work and it's impactful.
Speaker 2:And the person that runs this project right now is our COO and she is just, she is the best at it. She keeps the lights on. She's been doing for like over a year. No one could keep up with her to keep the client happy. She's so experienced and they like her so much. But at the same time she's the COO so she can just make calls as she goes, as in this decision, that decision, she has all the business context. She goes, you know, as in you know, this decision, that decision, she has all the business context she wants. She has a very broad decision-making scope, so that helps.
Speaker 2:But on the other hand, it's kind of limited because when Prada wants to escalate, they just escalate to her because you know, there isn't much else, there isn't anyone else above her, there is me and my partner. But they wouldn't do that because they just want to talk to her, because she's in the project and she's been in the project and they just go to her and there is no one else. So obviously we need to have a proper structure there, etc. So when things really hit the fan, they should go to her. So yeah, in that sense I think there should be the appropriate structure. When you're doing big projects, I think Big projects, but you work with corporates as well, right, yeah, since I mean since early on.
Speaker 1:But you, you work with corporates as well, right, yeah, since I mean since early on. But I think, like by year three we got the first one. Then by year five we mostly turned to corporates, for whatever reason. Normally the reason I gathered it's because, um, at least in Spain, they have like a certain threshold under which they're not able to hire you. Like, if you don't make, if you, if you're not older than five years old as a company, their procurement process will just like not accept you, or under a million in revenue, so stuff like that. And so we, we were, you know, immediately disqualified from the get-go.
Speaker 1:After year five that was not the case anymore, and so we started getting I don't know. Hp and a couple of our clients were acquired Now, like Spin got acquired by Ford, for instance, we got into Ford. Valuation metrics are acquired by Citadel Securities in the US. So we got into a couple of corporates because of that and then some others. I just did the sale myself, but yeah, for me it was not so much they want to talk to the CEO here, but I think me was not so much the they want to talk to the ceo here. But uh, I think they appreciate having, like, for instance, I still I'm the only project I've ever managed in the company or, since year one is our biggest client right now, which is citadel. Just because of a personal relationship I have and in terms of discussing certain things of importance and of value with them, they appreciate that the CEO is involved in the project, but I think it's more like the exception than the rule here.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's still good to be involved, right? Sometimes?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Hopefully it's fun for you.
Speaker 1:I like it because otherwise I would. There were five years in which I didn't manage any project, and so I lost the sense of how we work internally how we invoice, how we talk to the clients and whatnot, and so this way I mean I'm not super involved but I do reporting talking to the client and whatnot, and I see I have the conversations going and I know not to the nitty gritty details of every task, but I know the project and the phases and whatnot.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think that it's good to have. That was going to be my next question. One of the struggles we've always found is scaling ourselves Like redundant I don't know if that's even a word Creating redundancy for the founders so that somebody else can take over and you scale yourself up, you upgrade yourself without losing touch with reality. But at the same time you know that if you're managing projects, you're coding, you cannot scale a company. How time you know that if you're managing projects, you're coding, you cannot scale a company. How do you manage that yourself? Because you had to do it. We haven't had to do it yet and I don't know if I want to do it.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I'm very lucky to have such a great team working with us.
Speaker 2:Seriously, it's just a gut son, you know, and you know our C-team, cgo, chief delivery officer, coo it's a, you know. These are very experienced people that I just like working with and they have very good grasp on the industry and our company and very good gut feelings where our company is going, so I feel super comfortable having them. Then there is the heads team, or so-called. Usually we would call them directors, but we call them head of technology, them head of front end sorry, head of technology, head of finance, whatever and these people are very good at their very specific fields as well and, again, that's very comforting. And these are what I've learned.
Speaker 2:I mean, they were instrumental to scale before 2022, let's say right, let's say 2022. I think we can both agree. 2022 was the breaking point and where the service industry sort of collapsed I mean sort of collapsed right, um. So they were instrumental. The management team was instrumental to scale because they were doing all you know. They were making sure we actually hire the right people. We hire as fast as we can and the processes are in place, or if there are processes, they take care of that, and we all had to align all the time, like we've done. Do you know?
Speaker 1:skating up framework yeah, so the rockefeller happens to point out, it turned very hernish type of thing.
Speaker 2:So we did that in 2021. Uh, we, we went through the whole scaling up course, uh, with daniel marcos, who is the co-founder of uh, uh, of uh, gazelle's it's called and we've been doing a lot of aligning you know, hey, what's going on here, what's going on there and that was instrumental for the scale. And then now these people are instrumental to keep delivering the value because they have the experience and they're the ones most experienced working with clients. They know how to deliver value to clients and, again, that's comforting in the end. Totally different realities, a little bit different expectations towards the role, but eventually instrumental to what we're doing, and we've been lucky and happy to be able to create a man-in-a-team 100%.
Speaker 1:Look, I could be talking to you all day about the 14 years of Montreal, but I don't want to ramp up without asking you about AI. Not because AI is trendy, it's because you post a really good question on email, and that's actually the challenge that we're working on right now, which is, you know, prices are going down, salaries are also receding and our kind of companies find ourselves in the situation, or the difficulty, that people want to pay less for our projects just because there's AI out there, right, and they think, like, how can you become more efficient? We're working on this. We still don't have an answer.
Speaker 1:We tried, you know, templating projects. We tried working with component libraries so that we don't have to do a design from scratch in every project, and we're trying AI, but we're still not at the point where we see a significant increase in productivity, like maybe you're oh yeah, unit tests, okay, we can do this, but I don't know. Have you guys found any answer as to how AI is going to? Obviously, it's not going to replace us, not in the short or mid term but how can we use it to our advantage to become more efficient and cheaper?
Speaker 2:I think that's the paradigm shift we've all been waiting for, you know, for the last 15 years, Because we've been building apps the same way since 2025, 26 or something right, when Redis started off picking off, and then all the frameworks, et cetera, et cetera, and everyone was waiting, hey, what's going to change in tech, what's going to be the thing? And then Web3 came in in 2021, I think big time and everyone was like, okay, this is the paradigm shift, the blockchain. But everyone was like, okay, this is the paradigm shift, the blockchain. But it was all. It was a bit, you know, shaky because of all the crypto part to it, et cetera, et cetera. And it finally turned out not to be the paradigm shift we all waited for, because blockchain is still. You know, there are still amazing blockchain projects. I keep following amazing blockchain companies, but you know it's not the paradigm shift. But the AI was the paradigm shift and we just live.
Speaker 2:We're just living through this. You know and one of our, one of our gurus and past clients and said this recently to me in tech, everything is in shambles right now because, no, you know, no one really knows. You know where it's getting, where it's heading, you know, with ai and and the recession, etc. Etc. And for at some point there was a very strong narrative the there is the recession in tech, so everyone will going to be saving money using AI and this is the solution to everything. But it all failed, at least for now. So we believe strongly that AI can automate a lot of stuff, and we've been automating stuff, but I think not as much as we still like to. I think first, it has to do with how things have, how things have been done for the last dozen years. We built scalable, complex, stable software for months. You know, these are kind of projects that we're all you know, you and I, our companies, companies are used to build and this is how our teams have done it so far. So the mindset is this has to work. There are no shortcuts, even though every time we have me and my partner, we have a meeting with new joiners, we keep telling them hey, one of our core values is actually figuring out shortcut and how to make things more effective.
Speaker 2:But I think the way we work right now and the type of projects we have, it's still difficult to adapt everything as it's adapt, as in, okay, benchmark being what we're seeing on X Twitter. Let's say, right these days, right, what people are creating with things like Boltnew or Softgen Cursor. This stuff is just amazing, right, and this is the benchmark in everyone's populist minds. This is how fast software should be done. But when I look inside my company, it's not, and obviously I know why not, but I think it's, you know. When I look inside my company, it's not, and obviously I know why not. But I think it requires specific mindset that it still has to change a little bit in our minds. Software can be done a little bit differently. It takes curiosity in, you know, in developers' minds, in our minds too, because it's so hard to keep up with those tools, man. I mean, every month there's something new.
Speaker 1:I know, I know that's one of the things I struggle the most with is I'm living half-baked projects every week Side projects, not company projects but it's like, oh, I want to try these. Um, versals v0 okay, perfect. Then boldnew okay, I'm gonna try. Then, you know, I don't end up doing anything substantial because, oh, there's something that is slightly better. I'm chasing the new shiny thing. Maybe that's why I'm the ceo, right. But at the same time, that creates a lot of frustration because I keep accumulating a lot of corpses right in the background and I'm like, okay, I got to finish some of these and my feeling is that I don't actually complete anything.
Speaker 1:I don't get anything substantial in AI precisely because of that, because it's wow, it's flashy, it goes well for the demo, but most of these tools they are not helping us because probably they're engineered for product-based companies but not for service-based companies. The only thing that they really work for like, for instance, one use case we found with Verso Verso's V0, is it's great for prototyping, something to show to the client even before it starts. Right, the client comes up with an idea look, I want this. We did it for a company like a company from andora. They wanted to have a marketplace for second-hand cars and we're like, okay, we're just going to protect prototype like this so that in the, the sales process, look, it can look like this.
Speaker 1:And they're like, oh, wow, it's got our, you got our, you know our branding and everything it's there Outside of that. Well, if we refine it further, maybe we can skip one phase of the UX UI project, but not much more right? Not more than say, like what Bootstrap brought us in 2014. Or you know, component libraries two years ago or something like that. I don't know. You know it's yet not very substantial. That's why I was asking to see if you guys had something more substantial. But seems like we're on the same boat in this and this we still got to figure out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're figuring it out. Uh, we have, uh, we have person entirely in the company that has a dedicated time to actually, you know, uh, implement this across the company. Um, and yeah, the results often we saw, we, we see, hey, what's possible, is like, wow, how can we implement this? And uh, but uh, yeah, like you're saying, it depends on the type of a project. We do a lot we do get, we do see a lot of uh, potentially in the sale, sales process, like you're saying, um, representing the prototypes.
Speaker 2:I think for developer one-on-one with code. You can also use models. You know, hey, I'm trying to do this. How do I should do around that, especially with remote work and everything that people are not in the same office, not much around serendipity around. You're not jumping, you know you're not. You're not bumping into people and asking, hey, how should I solve this? You know you're not. You're not wasting people's time on slack, how I should. You're just asking the model hey, what should I do? And that's one way to do it. And obviously this is happening and we just set ourselves a goal into measuring what are the potential productivity gains. But again, keep up with all the tools and what's the the, you know the end goal it's this, is this difficult I think, um, so, like you're saying, service companies, many different projects, many different contexts.
Speaker 2:So you know there is a different solution. I think there is a different frame. I think there is a different framework. You know, sort of framework, workaround solution for each kind of client project, right?
Speaker 1:so that's why it's so difficult to scale it across service companies 100% and to wrap it up, we always like to have the signature question of the podcast and people are like, why didn't you tell me this before I needed to prepare? Like no, we don't want people to prepare for this. But uh, everybody fucks up.
Speaker 2:Right, we want you to share what's been your most expensive fuck up as a company owner back in 2015 or 14, we were struggling with scale, so we were still 30 small company, I think, 20 ish, 30s um, and we were running full steam um right now I know it's called. We had the product market fit like there was demand for messaging. You know what that was out there Ruby and Rails experts from Poland that was the claim at the time, and we've developed our CTO and a few people from the team have developed a huge Rails open source thing and we went with it to London for a Ruby event and this is where our CTO did the presentation. Hey, we're releasing this and everyone was in awe nice.
Speaker 2:So we were, you know, riding high, you know really making ourselves a name back then and back there and we get approached at the same event by a guy from penguin books, yeah, and he's like hey guys I have this project that penguin books has been thinking about for some time, to digitize everything that we do.
Speaker 2:And this is the project we want to do and we thought it should be in Rails and maybe you should do it. And I was like nice, this is the great opportunity of the time. Bankman Books, big Rails project, nice brand we just got it by doing open source. And what else we could do better? Right, so we came back to.
Speaker 2:Poland and we started analyzing how can we, you know, fit the project into our current scale? And looking, you know, left, right, you know, trying to squeeze everything in and out, we were like, no, we can't take any more projects. And we told Penguin Books no, we can't do it. And I think I should have done more to actually fit because it would be, you lost it. No, we told them we can't do it, oh well, thank you for the opportunity, but we don't want to take it. Did they come back?
Speaker 2:No no no, Afterwards, you know when we were ready in like a year, he was like well, I'm already working on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, normally. I mean, this is one recurring problem we've always had, we've never solved. You know, a big company comes knocking on our door. We say have no capacity. That happens once, it's okay. Usually they come back. But if that happens twice, they don't come for the third time. Right, we lost.
Speaker 1:I mean, we were providers for rakuten in the early beginning on mars based, and for after two years project stopped because it finished and we took on other clients and they came after a year like, hey, you guys got any capacity? No, sorry, done. They came back after six months. You guys got capacity? No, we don't. They didn't come for the third time. And it happened with a couple of other big firms.
Speaker 1:Usually, and usually you know they, they find somebody else and, um, and that's it, they don't need your services anymore. So that's why that really resonates with me. So sorry to hear about that and thank you for sharing. Um, it's great that you share. That's why I always share lots of my fuck-ups too, because I think that the newcomers to the industry, they, they, they can be learning from us. And it's not all shiny, it's not like all golden when you're running a company. Your size or our size it's. You know, we got particular fires and fuck-ups every week, so I could, I could, I could be filling a house with all of them. Look, there's one minute left. Zimon, you've been extremely generous with your time. Thank you for sharing all the learnings and experiences and whatnot. I'm rolling out the carpet for you. You've got one minute to say how can we help you, how can the community of Life on Mars, mars Space, help Monterey or you personally? Let us know what is going on and what can we expect from you in the future.
Speaker 2:We're looking for people who are super passionate about low-code and how can AI can speed up development. The people I've been talking to, the, the youngsters, have been really inspired and and that's something really exciting. Right now that's happening and this is where, uh, we want to go back to our beginnings really. I haven't mentioned that, but you know, we started a company because we thought web development or software development was broken at the time. You know.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Like then man, yeah, and the software was ugly. So what we wanted to do is to make beautiful software quickly, and you know, most of the time this is what we do. But these days, you know, making that kind of software takes a lot of time and hopefully it's still beautiful. So what we want to do again is to jump on the fast and effective developing software again, and we're looking for people who are passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Nice, thank you very much. Thank you very much and best of the luck in your continued success to Montreal for many more years. Thanks, alex, and that's it for today's video. Feel free to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, because that will help us to grow the channel, the Life on Mars podcast and I'm recording this outro because we hired a marketer new director of the podcast that is David, our newest member in the Martian spaceship, and he told me that this is going to help us to grow the channel. So, if you're interested in our interviews, in our long ramblings that I record occasionally, or if you have new ideas you have new people that you want us to interview. You got new ideas for performance. You have some questions for us? Feel free to share them with us in the comments down below and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.