Startup Failures & Scaling to $16 million ARR – Ep. 30

[00:00:00] Nick Velkovski: And I, I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck", "pitch deck 101" and stuff like that.

[00:00:16] Nick Velkovski: Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then, he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it.

[00:00:27] Nick Velkovski: But like, he was like, "I'm, I'm not going to invest. I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea, but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:00:39] Nick Velkovski: And it was literally kind of like a brute-forcing type of thing to get, to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we, we were, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:00:52] Nick Velkovski: Yeah, I mean, it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay, have you hired anyone in your life?" We're like, "No." They're like, "Have you been to a job interview?"

[00:01:04] Nick Velkovski: "No." "Do you know how to hire people?" "No." They're like, "Okay, before we wire the money, go, open offices, hire people, stuff like that, and then we are going to do it."

[00:01:15] Nick Velkovski: Fun, fun thing is that Heyreach couldn't scale past 8,000 MRR for the first six, seven months after we launched. Like, we were trying to sell to everyone. We were trying to sell to recruiters, sales teams, agencies, individuals, stuff like that.

[00:01:30] Nick Velkovski: And Ilija, I remember this, in October 2023, he came to my office and he was like, "Dude, I have had 597 calls so far, and I do believe we should niche down to lead gen agencies."

[00:01:42] Nick Velkovski: First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, Heyreach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors.

[00:01:58] Nick Velkovski: We didn't have a senior person. We couldn't get a senior to join the company.

[00:02:02] John Karsant: Let's call, let's chart you're trying to get to 20 million now. That's your next step, right? How many people on your team have worked at a 20 million dollar company?

[00:02:11] John Karsant: This is what my coach always tells me. He's like, "So how are you going to get, how are you going to know how to react and how are you going to know how the company needs to be and operate at that point if no one on your team has ever been there?"

[00:02:20] Nick Velkovski: But I also always say, say this thing, like, you can create luck. You can put yourself in situations where you become lucky.

[00:02:28] Nick Velkovski: And yeah, you cannot control when's the moment when you become lucky, but if you put yourself in enough situations where you can get lucky, at some point, you probably are going to get lucky. So yeah, you have to work toward becoming lucky.

[00:02:42] John Karsant: Welcome back to Prospecting Pros, and on today's show, we have Nick, see if I pronounce it right, Velkovski?

[00:02:50] Nick Velkovski: Velkovski, yeah.

[00:02:52] John Karsant: Velkovski, who is the founder and CEO at Heyreach. Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it.

[00:02:58] Nick Velkovski: Thank you for having me.

[00:03:00] John Karsant: So, what I like to do is start off every show just by getting a little bit of your background. How did you get to the point of actually starting a company, what many people dream about doing and never have the guts to do?

[00:03:11] John Karsant: Like, walk us through maybe through college and then your first few jobs and, and the ups and downs, and how you got to the point of actually starting Heyreach.

[00:03:21] Nick Velkovski: I wanted to be a founder and have my own startup since I was in high school, I would say, like when I was 17, 18 year old. I finished high school and then I went to study computer science and engineering.

[00:03:32] Nick Velkovski: Fun fact, I was thinking between astrophysics and computer science, so I'm glad I chose computer science.

[00:03:40] Nick Velkovski: The first year of studies, I wanted to drop, drop out. I mean, I didn't like the whole university type of thing, but I liked building things, I liked like-minded people.

[00:03:54] Nick Velkovski: And I met my mentor, who is currently VP of Engineering at Heyreach. He taught me how to code, and he was building a startup back then, so I kind of like joined him.

[00:04:04] Nick Velkovski: During university, like I started and failed, I would say like maybe 10 plus projects. I met Stefan, my co-founder, first year of university. We became best friends, listening to the same music, having the same interests and stuff like that.

[00:04:18] Nick Velkovski: And we were like, "Okay, let's try to build our own company." We failed, as I said, like 10 times. We had a bunch of businesses. But apparently, when we were last year of university, we developed a Reddit marketing tool called Howitzer.

[00:04:33] Nick Velkovski: And I kind of like discovered Indie Hackers back then, the forum, and I learned about building in public. So I went on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Indie Hackers, on Reddit, talking about building business in public.

[00:04:46] Nick Velkovski: And long story short, we raised the biggest investment in Macedonia back then for my tool Howitzer. It was half a million dollars. Back then, with those money, you could build like a whole building in Macedonia.

[00:04:59] Nick Velkovski: We burned the money in a year...

[00:05:00] Nick Velkovski: ...pretty pretty late, I would say, a few months ago, when the whole world was already vibe coding and doing things. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, but like, I would have done it earlier because like, I'm a huge believer in using AI to automate things. Right now, I kind of like got back into coding with Claude as well. So, yeah, those are those are the three things I would kind of like separate as mistakes that I can remember right now.

[00:05:35] Nick Velkovski: The good things: niching down, for sure. The riches are in the niches. So, that's that's one of the stuff. The second thing is, I really do believe that us choosing to integrate instead of build everything all-in-one is the second best decision. And the third best decision is hiring this team. Like, I really do believe that we have one of the best teams out there. Like, I spent a lot of time hiring these people. I spent a lot of time vetting and picking who to bring into the team and put them into the right position. So, yeah, I think that's that's the third best thing.

[00:06:16] John Karsant: Hiring's so key. It's it's one of the hardest things I've I've found as a as a founder in growing a company is hiring. It's very difficult to find that those like really solid, rockstar employees. The other thing that I've also learned over time is like, so you have a goal to get to a certain threshold in terms of revenue. Let's call it let's chart you're trying to get to 20 million now. That's your next step, right?

[00:06:44] John Karsant: How many people on your team have worked at a 20 million dollar company? This is what my coach always tells me. He's like, "So how are you going to get how are you going to know how to react and how are you going to know how the company needs to be and operate at that point if no one on your team's ever been there?" And it's it's just a great it's like he's right, you know? It's like you kind of have to, if you know you're onto something, you have to hire ahead of where you're at so you can ultimately get the team to that point. Otherwise, I mean, you can get a little lucky like, you know, I think both of us have to to start a company, never having you started a company before, but like, just to get a lot of traction, there is a little bit of luck involved, right? And so, yeah, I think we both lucked out a little bit

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[00:10:00] Nick Velkovski: And I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck," "pitch deck 101," and stuff like that.

[00:10:16] Nick Velkovski: Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it. But like, he was like, "I'm not going to invest. I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:10:40] Nick Velkovski: And it was literally kind of like a brute-forcing type of thing to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:10:53] Nick Velkovski: Yeah, I mean, it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay, have you hired anyone in your life?" We're like, "No." They're like, "Have you been to a job interview?" "No." "Do you know how to hire people?" "No." They're like, "Okay, before we wire the money, go, open offices, hire people, stuff like that, and then we are going to do it."

[00:11:15] Nick Velkovski: Fun thing is that HeyReach couldn't scale past 8,000 MRR for the first six, seven months after we launched. Like, we were trying to sell to everyone. We were trying to sell to recruiters, sales teams, agencies, individuals, stuff like that.

[00:11:30] Nick Velkovski: And Ilija, I remember this, in October 2023, he came to my office and he was like, "Dude, I have had 597 calls so far, and I do believe we should niche down to lead gen agencies."

[00:11:42] Nick Velkovski: First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, HeyReach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors. We didn't have a senior person. We couldn't get a senior to join the company.

[00:12:03] John Karsant: Let's chart your... you're trying to get to 20 million now. That's your next step, right? How many people on your team have worked at a 20-million-dollar company? This is what my coach always tells me. He's like, "So how are you going to get... how are you going to know how to react and how are you going to know how the company needs to be and operate at that point if no one on your team has ever been there?"

[00:12:20] Nick Velkovski: But I also always say this thing, like, you can create luck. You can put yourself in situations where you become lucky. And yeah, you cannot control when's the moment when you become lucky, but if you put yourself in enough situations where you can get lucky, at some point, you probably are going to get lucky. So yeah, you have to work toward becoming lucky.

[00:12:42] John Karsant: Welcome back to Prospecting Pros, and on today's show we have Nick... let's see if I pronounce it right... Velkovski?

[00:12:49] Nick Velkovski: Velkovski, yeah.

[00:12:51] John Karsant: Velkovski, who is the founder and CEO at HeyReach. Thanks for coming on the show, appreciate it.

[00:12:57] Nick Velkovski: Thank you for having me.

[00:13:00] John Karsant: So, what I like to do is start off every show just by getting a little bit of your background. How did you get to the point of actually starting a company, what many people dream about doing and never have the guts to do? Like, walk us through maybe through college and then your first few jobs and the ups and downs and how you got to the point of actually starting HeyReach.

[00:13:21] Nick Velkovski: I wanted to be a founder and have my own startup since I was in high school, I would say, like when I was 17, 18 years old. I finished high school and then I went to study computer science and engineering. Fun fact, I was thinking between astrophysics and computer science, so I'm glad I chose computer science.

[00:13:40] Nick Velkovski: The first year of studies, I wanted to drop... drop out. I mean, I didn't like the whole university type of thing, but I liked building things, I liked like-minded people. And I met my mentor, who is currently VP of Engineering at HeyReach. He taught me how to code, and he was building a startup back then, so I kind of like joined him.

[00:14:04] Nick Velkovski: During university, like, I started and failed, I would say, like maybe 10-plus projects. I met Stefan, my co-founder, first year of university. We became best friends, listening to the same music, having the same interests and stuff like that. And we were like, "Okay, let's try to build our own company."

[00:14:21] Nick Velkovski: We failed, as I said, like 10 times. We had a bunch of businesses. But apparently, when we were last year of university, we developed a Reddit marketing tool called Howitzer.

[00:14:34] Nick Velkovski: And I kind of like discovered Indie Hackers back then, the forum, and I learned about building in public. So I went on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Indie Hackers, on Reddit, talking about building business in public.

[00:14:46] Nick Velkovski: And long story short, we raised the biggest investment in Macedonia back then for my tool Howitzer. It was half a million dollars. Back then, with those money, you could build like a whole building in Macedonia. We burned the money in a year. We failed the product because, like, it lacked, first, like, the business model was a leaky bucket, and second, Reddit didn't like what we were doing.

[00:15:00] John Karsant: And I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck," "pitch deck 101," and stuff like that.

[00:15:16] John Karsant: Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then, he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it. But like, he was like, "I'm not going to invest. I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea, but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:15:39] John Karsant: And it was literally kind of like a brute forcing type of thing to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:15:53] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay, have you hired anyone in your life?" We're like, "No." They're like, "Have you been to a job interview?" "No." "Do you know how to hire people?" "No." They're like, "Okay, before we wire the money, go, open offices, hire people, stuff like that, and then we are going to do it."

[00:16:15] John Karsant: Fun thing is that Heyreach couldn't scale past 8,000 MRR for the first six, seven months after we launched. Like, we were trying to sell to everyone. We were trying to sell to recruiters, sales teams, agencies, individuals, stuff like that.

[00:16:30] John Karsant: And Ilija, I remember this in October 2023, he came to my office and he was like, "Dude, I have had 597 calls so far, and I do believe we should niche down to lead gen agencies."

[00:16:42] John Karsant: First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, Heyreach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors. We didn't have a senior person. We couldn't get a senior to join the company.

[00:17:

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[00:20:00] Nick Velkovski: ...and this was the first project that Clay had back in the day about organizing like Clay Clubs in different cities. [00:20:15] And he was like, "Hey, you want to do something with us like HeyReach and Clay Club Warsaw?" And we're like, "Okay, let's try it." We went there, people loved it. [00:20:30] We showcased some things, we showcased the integration, we shared some some knowledge, some template, stuff like that, and people really loved it. So we're like, "Okay, let's try to do it again on another place." We did Berlin, we did Valencia, we did Barcelona.

[00:20:45] Nick Velkovski: And slowly we saw that, you know, in the era where everyone is, you know, selling digitally, you're on your computer all the time and stuff like that, people really value in-person connections. [00:21:00] Like they value person events, they value interesting conferences, they value parties and the whole human nature. So we were like, "Okay, let's try how this thing is going to work for us," and it worked really well because we are really big on ecosystem, on partners, on creators, on experts, stuff like that.

[00:21:15] Nick Velkovski: So this paired super nicely. We have, we are hosting an event around a place called, which is going to be with GTM Cafe. [00:21:30] I'm not sure if it's public and I can share it, but yolo. We are hosting bunch of these events in different cities, and we even started doing a thing where if there is an event happening and one of our experts or partners is in the city and we are not there, sometimes we kind of like get them to talk on our behalf and be kind of like the HeyReach representative. So yeah, events and the ecosystem game is pretty big for us.

[00:21:41] John Karsant: And you guys think you'll continue to do that into the future?

[00:21:44] Nick Velkovski: Of course.

[00:21:46] John Karsant: Yeah?

[00:21:47] Nick Velkovski: Of course.

[00:21:48] John Karsant: Awesome. Well, if you come back to Barcelona, I was out of town when you guys were here. I was in, I think I was in Colombia, but I'll have to attend the next one.

[00:21:55] Nick Velkovski: Sure, for the next one, I'm counting you in.

[00:21:59] John Karsant: Um, so you've had a lot of success, right? You talked about you went from 3 million ARR, 3 and a half million to now you're up to 15, correct me if I'm wrong, 15 or is it more?

[00:22:10] Nick Velkovski: 15.5. We are going to cross 16 this month.

[00:22:13] John Karsant: Which is insane, right? So you guys have got a lot of traction. Talk to me about three things that you look back on on the past few years, three things you've done that you wish you hadn't done, like mistakes essentially, [00:22:30] and three things that were like like the best decisions that you could have made, like like you said, focusing on lead gen agencies rather than selling to every literally everybody. Like what were some of the things that what were some of the mistakes and then also looking back like what were some of the really good decisions you guys have made to help to help like put more fuel on the fire for this growth?

[00:22:46] Nick Velkovski: Yeah, um, let me start by the mistakes because I think it's kind of like harder to remind them. First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, [00:23:00] and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, HeyReach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors. [00:23:15] We didn't have a senior person, we couldn't get a senior to join the company until 2025, I think, beginning of 2025. So like none of the senior developers wanted to work with the juniors, [00:23:30] nobody was kind of like taking taking us seriously, or 2024, I'm not sure. But I would have added seniors much much earlier.

[00:23:33] Nick Velkovski: Second thing, I would have paid attention to the data and the analytics and main metrics much much earlier because like we didn't have any, [00:23:45] do you remember my my LinkedIn post about, "Hey, we reached 8 million, HeyReach 9 million, 10 million," and when I was sharing the good and the bad? Well, the data is a mess was present since we were 2 million in ARR until we were like 11, 12, something like that.

[00:24:03] John Karsant: You figured out a way to fix it?

[00:24:06] Nick Velkovski: Not fully, but granularly, yes. So like tracking the whole user activation, the user onboarding, where we are dropping people and stuff like that. [00:24:15] And funny enough, like we we solved it a month ago with, um, where people are dropping or something like that. So I wouldn't say that we are super polished when it comes to data on on all fronts, [00:24:30] but it's a work in progress and is like one of the most complex features because probably you cannot attribute everything to a perfection. So yeah, it's kind of like I I would have paid more attention to this or even hire a business analyst to to be in the company from from day one and figure this out.

[00:24:47] Nick Velkovski: And third mistake, I would have gotten into AI stuff faster than we did. Like we were, we we started adopting AI into development and testing and support and design and stuff like that pretty pretty late, I would say, a few months ago.

[Warning: Gemini stopped because this chunk reached the max token limit. This segment may be incomplete.]

[00:25:00] John Karsant: And I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck", "pitch deck 101" and stuff like that. Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian.

[00:25:20] John Karsant: He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it. But like, he was like, "I'm not going to invest. I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:25:39] John Karsant: And it was literally kind of like a brute-forcing type of thing to get, to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we were, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:25:53] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay, have you hired anyone in your life?" We're like, "No." They're like, "Have you been to a job interview?" "No." "Do you know how to hire people?" "No." They're like, "Okay, before we wire the money, go, open offices, hire people, stuff like that, and then we are going to do it."

[00:26:15] John Karsant: Fun, fun thing is that HeyReach couldn't scale past 8,000 MRR for the first six, seven months after we launched. Like, we were trying to sell to everyone. We were trying to sell to recruiters, sales teams, agencies, individuals, stuff like that. And Ilija, I remember this, in October 2023, he came to my office and he was like, "Dude, I have had 597 calls so far, and I do believe we should niche down to lead gen agencies."

[00:26:42] John Karsant: First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, HeyReach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors. We didn't have a senior person. We couldn't get a senior to join the company.

[00:27:03] Nick Velkovski: Let's call it, let's chart you're trying to get to 20 million now. That's your next step, right? How many people on your team have worked at a 20 million dollar company? This is what my coach always tells me. He's like, "So how are you going to get, how are you going to know how to react and how are you going to know how the company needs to be and operate at that point if no one on your team has ever been there?"

[00:27:20] John Karsant: But I also always say, say this thing, like, you can create luck. You can put yourself in situations where you become lucky. And yeah, you cannot control when's the moment when you become lucky, but if you put yourself in enough situations where you can get lucky, at some point you probably are going to get lucky. So yeah, you have to work toward becoming lucky.

[00:27:42] Nick Velkovski: Welcome back to Prospecting Pros, and on today's show we have Nick... let's see if I pronounce it right, Velkovski.

[00:27:50] John Karsant: Velkovski, yeah.

[00:27:52] Nick Velkovski: Velkovski, who is the founder and CEO at HeyReach. Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it.

[00:27:58] John Karsant: Thank you for having me.

[00:28:00] Nick Velkovski: So, what I like to do is start off every show just by getting a little bit of your background. How did you get to the point of actually starting a company, what many people dream about doing and never have the guts to do? Like, walk us through, maybe through college, and then your first few jobs, and the ups and downs, and how you got to the point of actually starting HeyReach.

[00:28:21] John Karsant: I wanted to be a founder and have my own startup since I was in high school, I would say, like when I was 17, 18 years old. I finished high school, and then I went to study computer science and engineering. Fun fact, I was thinking between astrophysics and computer science, so I'm glad I chose computer science.

[00:28:40] John Karsant: The first year of studies, I wanted to drop, drop out. I mean, I didn't like the whole university type of thing, but I liked building things. I liked like-minded people. And I met my mentor, who is currently VP of Engineering at HeyReach. He taught me how to code, and he was building a startup back then, so I kind of like joined him.

[00:29:04] John Karsant: During university, like I started and failed, I would say like maybe 10 plus projects. I met Stefan, my co-founder, first year of university. We became best friends, listening to the same music, having the same interests and stuff like that. And we were like, "Okay, let's try to build our own company." We failed, as I said, like 10 times. We had a bunch of businesses. But apparently, when we were last year of university, we developed a Reddit marketing tool called Howitzer.

[00:29:34] John Karsant: And I kind of like discovered Indie Hackers back then, the forum, and I learned about building in public. So I went on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Indie Hackers, on Reddit, talking about building business in public. And long story short, we raised the biggest investment in Macedonia back then for my tool Howitzer. It was half a million dollars. Back then, with those money, you could build like a whole building in Macedonia.

[00:30:00] John Karsant: And I, I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck", "pitch deck 101" and stuff like that.

[00:30:16] John Karsant: Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then, he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it. But like, he was like, "I'm, I'm not going to invest. I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea, but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:30:39] John Karsant: And it was literally kind of like a brute-forcing type of thing to get, to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we, we were, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:30:53] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay, have you hired anyone in your life?" We're like, "No." They're like, "Have you been to a job interview?" "No." "Do you know how to hire people?" "No." They're like, "Okay, before we wire the money, go, open offices, hire people, stuff like that, and then we are going to do it."

[00:31:15] John Karsant: Fun, fun thing is that HeyReach couldn't scale past 8,000 MRR for the first six, seven months after we launched. Like, we were trying to sell to everyone. We were trying to sell to recruiters, sales teams, agencies, individuals, stuff like that.

[00:31:30] John Karsant: And Ilija, I remember this, in October 2023, he came to my office and he was like, "Dude, I have had 597 calls so far, and I do believe we should niche down to lead gen agencies."

[00:31:42] John Karsant: First thing is, I would have hired senior people earlier in the team, and I wouldn't have built the product with juniors because, fun fact, HeyReach initially was built by juniors, completely by juniors. We didn't have a senior person. We couldn't get a senior to join the company...

[00:32:03] Nick Velkovski: Let's call, let's chart you're trying to get to 20 million now. That's your next step, right? How many people on your team have worked at a $20 million company? This is what my coach always tells me. He's like, "So how are you going to get, how are you going to know how to react and how are you going to know how the company needs to be and operate at that point if no one on your team has ever been there?"

[00:32:20] John Karsant: But I also always say, say this thing, like, you can create luck. You can put yourself in situations where you become lucky. And yeah, you cannot control when's the moment when you become lucky, but if you put yourself in enough situations where you can get lucky, at some point, you probably are going to get lucky. So yeah, you have to work toward becoming lucky.

[00:32:42] Nick Velkovski: Welcome back to Prospecting Pros, and on today's show we have Nick, see if I pronounce it right, Velkovski?

[00:32:50] John Karsant: Velkovski, yeah.

[00:32:52] Nick Velkovski: Velkovski, who is the founder and CEO at HeyReach. Thanks for coming on the show, appreciate it.

[00:33:00] Nick Velkovski: So, what I like to do is start off every show just by getting a little bit of your background. How did you get to the point of actually starting a company, what many people dream about doing and never have the guts to do? Like, walk us through maybe through college and then your first few jobs and, and the ups and downs, and how you got to the point of actually starting HeyReach.

[00:33:21] John Karsant: I wanted to be a founder and have my own startup since I was in high school, I would say, like when I was 17, 18 years old. I finished high school and then I went to study computer science and engineering. Fun fact, I was thinking between astrophysics and computer science, so I'm glad I chose computer science.

[00:33:40] John Karsant: The first year of studies, I wanted to drop, drop out. I mean, I didn't like the whole university type of thing, but I liked building things. I liked like-minded people. And I met my mentor, who is currently VP of Engineering at HeyReach. He taught me how to code, and he was building a startup back then, so I kind of like joined him.

[00:34:04] John Karsant: During university, like I started and failed, I would say like maybe 10-plus projects. I met Stefan, my co-founder, first year of university. We became best friends, listening to the same music, having the same interests and stuff like that. And we were like, "Okay, let's try to build our own company."

[00:34:21] John Karsant: We failed, as I said, like 10 times. We had a bunch of businesses. But apparently, when we were last year of university, we developed a Reddit marketing tool called Howitzer.

[00:34:34] John Karsant: And I kind of like discovered Indie Hackers back then, the forum, and I learned about building in public. So I went on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Indie Hackers, on Reddit, talking about building business in public.

[00:34:46] John Karsant: And long story short, we raised the biggest investment in Macedonia back then for my tool Howitzer. It was half a million dollars. Back then, with those money, you could build like a whole building in Macedonia.

[00:34:59] John Karsant: We burned the money in a year.

[00:35:00] John Karsant: And I didn't even plan to raise. Like, I was getting messages, "Hey, are you fundraising?" And my reply was like, "Yeah, we are polishing our deck. Can I send it in a week?" And I'm going on Google and writing like, "how to create a pitch deck," "pitch deck 101," and stuff like that.

[00:35:16] John Karsant: Funny enough, we also had a conversation with Reddit's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. He saw our tool, he reached out to us. Back then he had a fund, 776, I think that was the name of it. But like, he was like, "I'm not going to invest, I just want to see who are the guys building this thing." And he was like, "Kudos for building it. I had the same idea but couldn't, you know, it didn't pass the Reddit's board."

[00:35:40] John Karsant: And it was literally kind of like a brute forcing type of thing to get the funding because if we didn't get funding, we were literally bankrupted at that point.

[00:35:53] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean it was a real company. Like, the investors, before they funded us, on the last call, they were like, "Okay..."

[Warning: Gemini stopped because this chunk reached the max token limit. This segment may be incomplete.]