Episode 39: The Scalable CEO

Hey listeners, welcome to SphereCast, a podcast all about technology, technology advice, technology inspiration, and how real entrepreneurs have used technology to build their businesses from the ground up.

If you're wondering how technology can support your business goals, rest assured, our guests have been there and done that.

Scaling a company isn't easy. Each and every process, tool, ritual, and routine has to be analyzed under the scalability microscope. Questions are asked: will this survive if we grow? Is there a better option? Team roles and responsibilities aren't exempt from this process either.

Teams grow, teams shrink, teams are phased out, employees learn new skills. And the role of CEO and founder changes too, doesn't it? The person who once had their hands in many pots suddenly changes into something different, something more scalable.

It's Luke here for another episode of SphereCast, and this week I speak with Francois Casanova, founder and CEO at Fitogram. Fitogram is a digital service that takes the pain out of administrative logistics for fitness professionals and business owners. Fitogram offers comprehensive online booking, payment processing, customer management, and accounting, all in an easy-to-use SaaS platform.

In its own words, Fitogram believes that nothing should stand between people and their passion for sports. In 2012, Fitogram began as a humble Germany-based startup. Since its inception, the company has grown its customer base to tens of thousands of fitness providers across more than 11 European countries.

With the growth, Francois's role has shifted from a fully hands-on CEO to more of a visionary, casting direction for the company and trusting his team to see the vision to reality. On the podcast, among many other things, Francois discusses entrepreneurship, leadership, and trusting your team to do what's right. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Francois Casanova.

Hello everyone, this is Luke from SphereCast, and today we have with us Francois Casanova. Francois, welcome to the show.

Hello Luke.

So Francois, I'm going to start with an icebreaker. Can you share with us something that not many people know about you?

Yeah, sure. Only the, I mean, some people that I work with a lot and my close friends know, but I have actually been sleeping in my office, not now, but for more than four months in the middle of the of the funding, the funding part of funding the company, which was a tough part. And I sure got expelled from my flat, and I had to retreat to the office to run the business. So yeah, that was kind of a very interesting part that was back in 2013 and '14. But yeah, definitely quite interesting moments.

Wow, thanks for sharing that. What did you learn from it? Like was there any epiphanies or, you know, anything that came out?

Well, I mean, the whole thing about perseverance, right, and, you know, keeping at it and, you know, knowing the the bigger vision and why why you're doing that. I mean, it's not that I was so bad into a position where I had to to live, I have I have a family, right? But I founded a company in Germany. And so I'm, as you can hear, I think it's not a secret anymore, but I'm French. And yeah, and I founded a company in in Germany. And I was a sole founder at that time. I had a co-founder at the beginning, but then we pivoted. And then I ended up continuing the adventure alone.

And I was in Germany there, and yeah, I didn't really have a family there or friends. And for me, family coming from a, you know, my family, they are farmers back in Corsica. So if I would have to go back and ask for help, then I would have to stay there, right? Because I wouldn't have enough money then to to go back. So I just decided to kind of, you know, streamline everything and just, you know, stay at the office. We had I had more money on the bank account of the company than on my personal bank account, so that was kind of the way to make it better.

And if we push the story even more, the day I got expelled from my flat or when my landlord said, 'Hey, now you need to leave because you are not paying the rent anymore.' And again, I was not, I just also pushing, I was pushing everything as maximum. It's not that I was not paying the rent, but I knew that I had a caution of, you know, I paid for three months in advance, and so for three months I stopped to pay because I knew that the landlord had the money that I paid three months in advance. And then when that ran out, I just left the flat. And that's the day, and really you cannot make up the stories, is the day I met our first large investors that did our seed round.

And the day the day I left my flat or I got expelled in a way, that's the day I had my first meeting with Müller Medien, who became our seed investor and basically changed the the the course of the company. So that's kind of kind of crazy moments, yeah.

It's quite a good story there. So, you know, they say when one door closes, another one opens. So I see a message there.

Yeah, that's that's exactly that. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Sometimes you have to, you know, leave things behind. And with a lot of my friends, you know, like when when somebody gets pushed out of a job or something they really love, they absolutely despise it, or go against it, fight against it, 'Why is this happening to me?' But, you know, you meet them a few months later and they're like, 'The best thing ever happened to me was this.'

Yeah. I forgot which author it was, but, you know, I'm part of an entrepreneurial club for a long time now. And one of the the event we organized, it was an author that created that that that wrote that book. The title was 'Leap and the Net Will Appear.' And I think that's kind of very very true for every entrepreneurial journey. Like you just have to go, and, you know, stuff happening by themselves, right, if you really work hard and go in the right direction, you make stuff happen. And that's kind of, you know, I can say for on on my my personal journey, that's definitely true.

Yeah. You do what's in your hands, and somebody else will take care of the rest, you know. Yeah, I agree with that.

Okay. People often don't believe their luck, but I think there's a there's a lot more to there's a lot more to the world than our eyes can see, so yeah.

That's correct.

Okay. With that, with those personal thoughts, I think we'll move towards business and tech, okay? So I'll start with the the venture you're in right now. You've you've been in this for a few years, as you've given us a little bit of a story already. So in your own words, what is Fitogram, and why did you start this company? Why are you so passionate about it? Or are you still passionate about it? I mean, I have to ask you.

Yeah, definitely, even more, even more than I've ever been. So Fitogram, it's we we are helping fitness professional to manage their business by basically offering them solutions to focus on what they love, you know, doing sports or providing sports, and we take care of the whole, you know, scheduling, booking, online payments, and so on and so forth. So that's really what we do. We are software that that helps fitness professionals. And yeah, completely in love in love with that, with that with that journey, definitely, yeah.

So is it meant for the fitness trainers who are freelancing and helping, you know, just booking jobs, et cetera? So could could you tell us a little bit more? For for the audience, like what what does your product do?

Of course. I mean, you you can see it as a as a basically a booking tool. So our our main target target are what's a small- and middle-sized studios. So yoga, Pilates, CrossFit, personal trainers as well. You know, EMS, that's very popular in in Europe. So all those type of of like small boutique sports providers, we basically offer them tools to put their schedule online, manage their schedule, get their customers to book, to manage their customers, do a bit of marketing with their customers. So the whole infrastructure, that's kind of what we provide. So I could say a mini ERP for the for that that industry.

Amazing, amazing. So democratizing the the the the fitness world and bringing...

I would say digitalizing it.

Digitalizing, okay. A lot of you know, this this is a buzzword I think, 'democratizing,' because it's not that monopolistic, I guess. So.

That's true.

Yeah, okay. Digitalizing the world. I like that. I like that. I think that's a better one.

Yeah, we we started, sorry, yeah, we started in Germany back back in 2012 and '13. And now we are live in more than 11 countries, mainly in Europe. So it's actually we are not international, because we really when we when we launch a country, there is so many specificities with currencies, of course, but also with legislations and the way, for example, in Italy you need to upload a doctor certificate if you want to go to be in a gym. So there is like so many many part that we really focus now on every market, and we are now live in 11 countries in Europe, and yeah, serving tens of thousands of fitness providers, yeah.

So entry to a market is is different for different countries and you're just diligently going through that process, right?

That's correct. That's correct. If we want to be competitive, yeah.

Okay, okay. I I appreciate that. So could you just talk us through the product journey so far? How has the product developed over the past five or six years? I would imagine there's been leaps made in terms of the technology. Could could you tell us that, and then I'll ask you another question on that.

Sure. I think it developed not as much as you think, but the technology behind of course evolved tremendously. What I mean is like what we do has been the same now. I mean, we we we created our software in 2016. Before that, it was more focusing on marketplace and helping people finding a place to do sports, and then we evolved into a software in 2016, when we acquired another smaller software and then we integrated their technology.

But basically, the the the first sketches we had, and I was the product manager at the time, were very similar to what we have today. But if you look at the product in itself, it's completely different. So the logic is the same, but the way we of course improved our UX is tremendous, and and the infrastructure behind it. You know, when we scale, you know, when when you start with a few you know, hundreds of of of studios, and now we have tens of thousands, it's completely different infrastructure. So the product is kind of the same, the size of the team, you know, multiplied by by five, and the yeah, the rest. So the the details is pretty insane how it has it has evolved.

So the engine got more sophisticated, and the product looks and feels different. So tell me about this process. We ask this to a lot of entrepreneurs. When you are creating the first version of the product, what was the mindset back then, given, you know, the funds are limited sometimes, and you've given us a story on that. So was it like, 'Let's do cheap and dirty, prove the model, the find the product-market fit, and then we will rewrite the whole app?' Or was it like you kept some things in mind when you created the first version?

The way we looked at it is so there were already some players in the market, and we looked at it at how how can we address the market as fast as possible and basically putting ourselves against the competition by being either more efficient, more local, cheaper. So these were kind of elements we looked at, and how we can replicate those software and like the features that our customers expect as fast as possible, as best as possible, to be competitive. So that's the way we looked at. And then we made a trade-off on different points.

So some features were very complex, we decided to isolate them. And and other ones were like, you know, needed, so we we we developed them as best as we could. But the team was really very small. It was two developers and myself, so really very small, yeah.

I see. So the focus was the customer and what they wanted, give them it within means, and see how see how it goes.

That's correct. I think if if you use the the terminology of today, it was a sales-driven approach...

I see.

...where today we have a product-led approach. So that's we look at differently the way we evolve now. It's like basically how can we serve, how can we improve our product so that it help it help us grow, and not that how can our sales team can make us grow. So it's a bit of a different perspective.

I spoke with a CTO at one of the fintech companies in Chicago. That was the first episode, never got released, just so you know. So so he he he talked us through this process, and he he said something like, 'You first deal with the existential risk, which is like how can we get the first paying customer, and you think about everything else later on.' So it's all about, you know, how how you can get over those risks, and then once you find your secret sauce or formula, then you scale from there. So I I'm in tune with that completely.

In in terms of the challenges that that you tackled through this process, would would you share us, you know, some of the choices that you made or something you settled on and why that was the case? Something that, you know, a good example, perhaps, that you could talk about.

Yeah. I mean, over the past, I mean, the journey was has been already like it's already nine years. We're going to celebrate our 10-years anniversary next year, which you know, it's crazy to to think about that. But we had to reinvent ourselves almost every year, if not every six months.

That has been the biggest journey. And I will give you one example, is basically when when stuff start to get got a bit more serious with, you know, we have been always VC-backed. So when, you know, we got into like a more Series A type of of financing, then it was like, okay, now it's it's more serious. It's not Francois that can do only the product and like, you know, come in the morning and just, you know, decide a bit, or we have those kind of more casual approach.

Then we had to implement a better a better framework to work. That's kind of what I mean. But when we had to switch to OKRs, so it's a very well known framework of of of organizing a team and a company.

Yeah.

Yeah, that came from Intel. Intel actually use it for the first time, and then Google was like very famous to implement it. And yeah, and then we followed, of course, a bit later. And yeah, that was that was a very big switch because that helped us reorganize, align everyone. And since then, I would say that my role and the role of the management is really to serve the company and not the other way around. I don't see myself as a leader, I see myself as a servant of the of the business, because the team is really doing the the big chunk of the work obviously.

And that has been a massive switch on on reinventing itself. So it's not really a technology switch on this one. It was more like a perspective and organization switch. And that was very transformational, and that helped us unlock so much potential and growth.

Very wise words there. Thank you for sharing that. Can we say this was also the most valuable lesson in this journey so far, or do you have a different answer for that?

You get lessons every day, right? Like, you know, challenge with the team, like HR challenge, these are very humbling lessons. But this one in terms of organization, yes, is really changed the trajectory of the business. It was really the like I can say there was the day before and the day after we implemented OKRs and we become, I would say, a bit more professional, where before it was really kind of scrappy and amateurish.

Okay. I see. Interesting. So, I think it it might feel a bit similar, the next question, but could could you could you tell us what what do you feel are the most difficult decisions that you have to make as a CEO? This is like just let's say from the CEO point of view. Like top three things that you find like challenging to decide, very difficult to settle on.

Yeah. The hardest for me right now is actually not to intervene and to let the team go. And this is this is kind of very hard, because of course when when you are CEO, like you you feel that you need to help, and you need to be involved, and you need to know everything. But you can't do that. Definitely not.

I mean, we are not doing it's not a massive business we have, but it's still like, you know, it's like more than 50 team members. We have four independent tech teams. So it's like a lot of people that that are doing every day a very precise work. And of course, I cannot understand everything. And and my my role is would is has to be what's we what we're going to do next quarter.

And every time I see that I'm trying to involve in in a quarter, like so when I try to get into the day-to-day work involvement, that I see that there is a lot of friction. Right? Because that's the way it is. Like the team like to be independent. They're doing a very good work. And intervening, that is something I try not to do. So that is very difficult, because you go deeply into, I would not I would not go to too hard on philosophy, but it's a bit like your ego, where you you feel you need to help, you feel you have to.

But sometimes it's better to maybe ask questions, discuss a bit, challenge, but not intervene. So that's that's very hard part. And of course the other hard part is basically making HR decisions. You know, those are always hard, especially, you know, we went through quite a turbulent phase over the past 18 months with the pandemic, and yeah, this is of course that was, you know, learned a lot from there, yeah.

Which is my next question. So how has your organization gone through COVID-19? And and I'm sure there's a story like how you adjusted to it, so would love to know.

Well, first, the first I remember very well that that that actually intervention of It was not that I'm not going to go into US politics there, but I remember it was the weekend when Donald Trump first intervened about, it was the 15th of March, and I was with a friend, we were watching TV. I was with a friend at home, which then was not possible anymore for a few weeks, of a few months in Germany. And that was kind of the weekend where like, 'Oh, damn. On Monday, I think maybe we're going to have have to like everything will be shut down.' And that happened, that was the the start of the lockdown in Germany.

So I remember like that that weekend very well. And the week before, I took or we took a hard decision of asking people not to come to the office anymore. So that was like it was felt like a crazy, massive decision, which now feels okay, it's pretty normal to work from home, but at that time, it's like, 'Okay, guys, we ask you not to come.' Like so these these are kind of that I remember that very well.

Not not on the anecdotal part, but more on the on the on the like how it changed us, like we thought that everything will go away, right? We were a business of people doing sport and making booking for sports facilities, and from one day to the other, that that went away.

But again, my team, you know, because we operate in 11 countries, Italy was in lockdown, I don't know if you remember, but Italy was really hardly affected by the crisis. And my team kind of decided to kind of enable the Italian providers or sports studios to do online classes. So we kind of made a quick fix and a quick adaptation into our software to make people be able to do live live classes.

Online streaming.

Exactly. And that was early early March, early March. And it felt like, 'Okay, that's cool. Seems like a good idea, guys, I like the innovation.' And from one day to the other, the whole Europe needed that solution.

Right.

And we actually grew, I think, 500% during the pandemic thanks to that little thing. So that became a big thing. And and we developed like online studio tool to enable, you know, people all over Europe to to use our service to to basically to beat the pandemic and to do sports at home, which became a big deal. So actually, for us, it was a good thing, and and we were able to adapt. And again, this is the power of the team. It's the decision that came from the team. And yeah, so that was a good thing, yeah.

Amazing. Teamwork makes the dream work, they say.

That's correct. That's correct. And I mean, it it's a podcast, so it's going to be hard for me to explain that picture, but the the way the first wave happened, that was the growth of our of our usage on the on the software, which was...

Offsite, yeah.

...yeah, which was pretty pretty pretty exciting.

We have seen a lot of industries that have come out of COVID quite strong and actually been able to go through that increase in demand as well, so.

Yeah.

That's the business and tech part, Francois. I'm going to move into the personal bit now. So could you describe us your typical day? Is there such a thing as typical day?

Absolutely not. There is typical week, though. That's I mean, that's also that's I like to be fairly organized, but also leave a bit of of part to to adapt. But yeah, I I see more as a week, which which sometimes tend to slow down an organization when you think weekly, because of course then you have a weekly rhythm with meeting with your, you know, direct report and so on, but no, there is not a typical day, but there is typical week, and I will just explain you quickly.

It would start on, you know, Monday, Tuesday, very heavy meeting days, with catch-up, one-on-ones, you know, basically team updates, OKR updates, and check-ins. And then the middle part of the week would be more for external meetings. So for example, what we're doing today or, you know, catching up with clients, and so on. And and then the Friday would be like, you know, closure, making sure that, you know, if there is a problem that that happened during the week, having some times for for one-on-ones and stuff like that. So that's the way it look it looks.

Right now a typical day is also like, I think we chatted a bit earlier, but I am actually preparing for, not preparing, I'm doing an Ironman in two weeks. So there is a lot of sports involved, so that's working from home really helped not to have to commute. Of course that freed quite quite a lot of time every day to be able to do that. But yeah, that was a bit of a crazy endeavor, and I'm looking forward to finish it now.

Okay, you're prepared, I guess. Looking forward to, yeah. You you wish it's it it was tomorrow, I guess.

Yeah. Actually no, I hope it's not tomorrow because I don't feel great right now, but yeah.

All right, no problem at all. So let's talk about your career a little bit on the personal side. So do you wish there was something you you had known before you began your career, or any any lessons? I mean hindsight is always good, isn't it? Like, you know, you look back and like, 'Oh, I wish I had known this.' So and and I know it's it's not always, you know, the things you do now are not possible because you, you know, because you were what you were back then, so. But is there anything you would like to change maybe or think back and say, 'Hey, maybe'?

No. Absolutely not. Nothing to change. I'm not the type of guy that look back too much. I tend to look forward and I don't want to have regrets, because why why would you live with regrets? It's not a a life worth living. So I don't really look too much. I'm very happy with, you know, my situation and and and I think really really, I mean, I read a bit of philosophy in or I used to, and like Stoicism is a big thing for me and so...

Oh, I like that.

...I'm I'm kind of thankful about, you know, everything. I tend to be thankful about about about the way we live. And and, you know, especially here, you know, being in in Western Europe, I don't think there is too much to complain. So maybe I'm going very deep answer for that for that question, but no, very happy.

Okay, great. So which books do you read on Stoicism then? I've got a few myself.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm more Ryan Holiday type of fan, so 'Ego is the Enemy,' yeah.

Oh, yeah! I have a I have a few books of his, by the way. There you go.

Yeah, yeah. 'Obstacle is the Way,' 'Ego is the Enemy,' these are these are the two...

I've got 'The Daily Stoic' as well.

Yeah, 'Daily Stoic,' true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, that's that's more the way. I try to after after reading or listening Ryan Holiday, I tend to I try to go a bit into older, like proper philosophy books, but they are a bit hard to read.

Marcus Aurelius.

Yeah, of course. I got I actually got the book, like one of the interpretation of Marcus Aurelius, but it's very hard to read and more complex. So I like I like the Ryan Holiday part. But like I tend to I don't read a lot of books, but I tend to listen or read a book a lot, the one because there's so such a wealth of knowledge a book, when you think about it. Someone that spent so much time to basically research a good book, obviously. So I I tend to actually master a book rather than reading too many books, if that makes sense.

I like that. I like that. I think the same, in a way that I I I like Ryan Holiday, so I don't need any other authors to help me, because I think then I can must, you know, you can just follow it. I also like Robert Greene, who I think Ryan Holiday he's Ryan Holiday's mentor as well. So I like a bit of Robert Greene, so Ryan Holiday is one of them. And and yeah, I once spoke with Ryan Holiday, just so you know.

Cool, yeah, great. Really interesting interesting chap, yeah, that's for sure.

When he when he wrote the book 'Conspiracy,' I I reached out to him and we spoke about the book, and he he was really happy and he he pointed me towards a website where I could get a copy of signed copy of his book, so he was it was really kind to do that.

Yeah, he he has definitely a bit of an edgy part on his personality that that's that's clear as well, yeah.

Yeah. Okay, amazing. So we're going to move on, shift gears a little bit. So how do you unwind? Like, we've talked about your working week, so what happens in in your life on the weekends?

Sports.

Yeah.

Yeah, don't tell that my girlfriend to my girlfriend too much, but yeah, right now is right now the last the last few months has been a lot of sport, of course, because when I do something, I try to do it well. And now that I'm doing an Ironman, I try to do it well. So I kind of want to race it, and not to just do it. So that involve quite quite a long weekends of of sport.

And from time to time, I really enjoy a good party weekend as well. So that's kind of the the two, like, you know, seeing my friends that I actually don't see a lot, my my very close friends, you know, being in Germany and not not in France, and at some point, you know, we're a bit spread all over Europe. And now travelling is not easy, but like yeah, a good party with like-minded people and also a lot of sport, yeah. This is how I unwind.

Amazing. I've got to ask you something about the party. So you're from France, so what what is your favorite drink?

Oh, it's beer. Beer. I like beer. It's not yeah. I think beer, you you find beer everywhere, but yeah, I like I like a good beer, a good very cold beer. That's my favorite drink, yeah.

Okay. Any anything you would recommend? Because I'm a beer lover as well.

Yeah, sure. I mean, my my all-time favorite beer is, I think, is Duvel from Belgium.

Aha, Duvel, yeah, definitely. I remember where I had it as well last time. I had it under the bridge, London Bridge, there's a little bar, so I had it there with my father-in-law, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. And also like it's it's quite strong, so you don't need too many to...

Acts quickly. Yeah, you don't have to have too many bottles.

Exactly. Exactly, so good Duvel. And and I also like a good a good cold Guinness. Reminding my my time in in in London.

Freshly poured, I guess.

Yeah, exactly, so Guinness extra cold, yeah.

Yeah, okay. Good choices there. Excellent. We're going to move into the final part of the podcast, Francois. So you're a technology leader...

Yeah.

...and I'd love to know how you stay on top of latest technology trends and innovations. What do Do you read? Do you listen to something? Do you listen to SphereCast, maybe? I I would love to know.

Yeah, I do actually now listen to SphereCast since since you invited me on the podcast. Yeah, I listened the the all the the latest episodes. Actually almost all the episodes, or at least I browse through them, and the and the and the and the latest one. So yes, definitely. I also I think podcast is a big is a big part of the way I I kind of get informed and keep up to date. I also read, you know, a couple of blogs or, sorry, a couple of newspaper. TechCrunch, for example, I think I've always...

Yeah, I get their emails all the time, yeah.

...yeah, but yeah, TechCrunch is the one, you know, kind of I go a bit every day and just check around. Also the way I look at technology is also the business part of it for me, more than the technology part of it.

Okay.

So what are the trends and how the the the the business is evolving? So that's kind of very a way I look at it. And peer discussions. So, you know, like a a call with friends or entrepreneur friends, and so on and so forth, yeah.

Prior to COVID, we I hosted some CTO roundtables in London and Zurich, by the way, so. And we would just have leaders like yourself in a closed room and you guys go through, you know, your own discussions and solve some problems, share, you know, successes and failures. That was the idea. So we created a group because now no longer we can do these events. So we have a group on LinkedIn.

It is just growing, so we have like, I think, close to 50 CTOs as part of it. We'll try and I'll invite you to that later on. But we don't have many conversations there, though, yet. I don't know. We're just going through so much right now. We're trying to understand where we can focus, you know, and I'm hopeful that it will grow at some point.

But you know how I get in touch with the new technologies is also from my team that asking me, 'Can we use that? Can we have budget for that new technology?' And then I kind of My first answer is no, obviously. And then I look around and what it is, and and I think my my team actually proud proud themselves to use always like some, you know, very good technology. So it's always a bit interesting, yeah.

Okay. So that, yeah, I I I find that, you know, the the engineering teams are like very excited about new toys that come in the market and they're always like, 'Hey, we want this. We want to use that.'

Yeah.

'We want the the best version of Slack.' And, 'Oh no, there's something else now, Notion. Let's use that.'

Yeah, I think which is interesting is that like every time it's that would like especially on the infrastructure side, it's the the reasoning is that that will help us help us basically increase the speed of the of the infrastructure or build faster. And if we would have increased the the the speed of the of the builds by now, it will be a microsecond since I since I've been hearing that over the past five years. They always need a better technology, so that that's quite funny, but I mean I understand them. But this is, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Where Where do you host, by the way? Is it AWS or GCP?

AWS, yeah.

AWS, okay. Okay. I mean you did streaming, so I guess AWS have a lot of cool tools there. Readymade stuff for streaming. We did some research on that last year as well, while the whole pandemic thing was happening. So, okay, cool.

Yeah, there is there is another technology that actually helped us a lot is is a company called Mux. They do basically infrastructure for video. Basically, they provide you an encoder system. I would say it's a Stripe, but for the digital world. So they they provide you with infrastructure, and then you have to build it yourself. Very very interesting technology, very efficient. And that's something we we built. M-U-X, Mux, yeah.

I see. Mux. Okay, I'm going to have a look. Okay, interesting. Great. So Francois, what what continues to be the biggest challenge from the technology perspective for you?

It's not really a challenge in terms of technology, but it's it always continued to evolve. I think that if you if as long I mean, it's always somehow a need to improve the platform, improve the efficiency. I mean, we are scaling always. I think that's we are lucky to have been growing since we founded the company all the time, so we need to keep up with with this with scaling up our infrastructure and doing that efficiently, with a team that is not scaling up as fast as our infrastructure.

So juggling a lot around a lot between maintaining the the current infrastructure and adding new features or or leveling up, this is this is very very challenging. That's where technology is helping us a lot. Like the way we do DevOps right now, it's very efficient, you know, with Kubernetes and so on. If we would have the the the infrastructure we had three years ago, we would need probably five people full-time to do that, when now we are able to do that with very one strong DevOps and another person that's learning DevOps, that's a previous developer. So, you know, those those big new advancement, that's really help us.

Did you find it challenging going from marketplace model to SaaS model, I guess, you went software as a service? Was there anything interesting you you want to highlight there when you did the switch? Or were you already geared always geared towards the software as a service?

No, we the way the way it happened is like we had this marketplace that was not functioning very well, because it's the market at that time and I think it's still not ready to to have people buying their, I don't know, €150 yoga membership on a marketplace. And if they buy only a €10 day ticket, our commission is will be very low, and then we have to do paid advertising to get that person on the platform. That means that we have a negative margin for every purchase. So the way it was good for us to get traction, to get known, but the the the the business in itself was a bit flawed like flawed from the get-go.

So the way we looked at SaaS and and switching to software, it was really hard, because it was, you know, building a new technology from scratch, there were already players. And what we ended up doing was acquiring or merging with another small startup from the same area, actually. Like we we looked at two two different companies, and then we ended up, you know, getting a team that was actually in the same building that than we were, it was kind of a startup building at that time in Cologne, Germany, and and that's kind of how we we we we got the team on board. And that that helped us to use their technology at the beginning, and then rebranding it into Fitogram and and, you know, then getting the software there. But yeah, very challenging, for sure. Very challenging.

And I mean, to to explain you how challenging it was, I think we still pay the price today of decisions we made five years ago in terms of, you know, going something Because, you know, the thing in in our world now is that every time someone opened their computer, their mobile phone, and want to use a software, they have Facebook, Google, Instagram in mind, very very strong UX, very well executed product, very fast and very efficient. And when they open Fitogram, they they simply expect that quality.

But we don't have the same amount of people and the same resources to be able to do that. And that means that we had to cut corners, find a way to make something look good, but maybe scrappy on the backend, build a massive monolith application, and so on and so forth. And this is a price which kind of still pay today. Took took take a lot of time then to develop microservices to make the application running fast and efficiently. And I think we are there, but it took us a lot of time to you know, decision we took to make something fast and quick in 2016 took like, you know, in 2020 we're we're still a bit dealing with that to a certain extent.

I see. I see. The change in the architecture, et cetera, making those independent services so perform- performance of the application is is faster. So and and customers don't see it, so they only see the the UX, and they want everything easy and in front of their eyes, and there's only so much space, so I appreciate that.

I was I I I I'll give you an example. I was I I had to do something with an accountant today, and he said, 'Can you find this on this bank application?' And I had, you know, I opened the application and there's like 20 different areas you could go into it, et cetera, and I couldn't figure out where I needed to go to get that document for them. And then I had to call the bank, and it took me 25 minutes speaking with them to get there, and then I got there, and then I realized it was in front of me all the time. So yeah, and I spent two hours in this afternoon doing it. So do you think I like my bank app? No.

Yeah, you cannot underestimate the the value of a good UX, yeah, yeah, or a good customer journey, maybe more than UX, yeah.

Agree.

Okay, so we're going to come to the final part of the podcast now. It's about leadership. So I'd love to know from you, what do you think are the top three attributes of a good leader? I mean, of a leader nowadays. Let's not say good leader, bad leader, because I think that's a matter of perspective, isn't it? So top three attributes of a leader.

Yeah. A good listener. I think it's about understanding and and listening about your team or your market, and and really taking the time to do that, I think is very very important.

Then the the abilities to to generate trust from your teams. I think people will not be able to follow you. The idea of a leader is to have people that that can generate followership, right? That's kind of the the definition. And for that, you need to establish trust, or fear. But fear that will not last so long in an organization. So so trust there, so listening and trust.

And then the what people expect from a leader is is able to make decisions. And so having developed a decision-making pattern that that you follow, so that your decisions are always I wouldn't say like understandable, but they they are consistent. So using as much of consistent decision-making pattern, I think these are the three or for me these are the three characteristics.

I've heard the first two from other leaders, but I didn't hear the, you know, in our some of our podcasts, I haven't heard the last one. Decision making consistency in that. I think the the second part that you talked about trust, a lot has to do with the decision making, and if that is consistent and based on values of the organization, then I think a lot of there's a lot of trust and teamwork is better, so.

Okay. So with those wise words, Francois, I want to thank you for taking part in our podcast. I really enjoyed speaking with you. I hope you as well. You enjoyed.

Thank you for having me. No, it was really good. Yeah, yeah, really enjoyed it.

I want to wish you all the best. We'll be rooting for you and following your success. In the meantime, you know, I'll be in touch in a few weeks' time with the next steps. And I'm also going to, you know, hopefully have you here in about let's say six to nine months' time, and we'll do part two with you.

Yeah, we'll be we'll be up for that, yeah. Hopefully more growth and and a better infrastructure.

A special thanks to our podcast guest this week, and once again to our sponsor, Sphere Partners, for bringing this episode to life. If you enjoyed this episode, drop SphereCast a five-star review on iTunes, and share this content with your network. For any relevant links or notes from this episode, check out our podcast website at www.sphereinc.com/spherecast. And always remember, when you think you can't, technology can. See you next time.