Hi everyone, joining me today is Hendrik Trotsek, CEO and founder
of the company Hopo. An open source project turned
into a full-fledged company and I love the learnings.
He shares everything from gradually growing this company
to finding the right value with your software and doing so in a
resilient way. I think his perspective is quite
unique. So I'm sure you'll love this
episode but have to give a big, big shout out to his goal
friends. You know who you are, so enjoy
the episode. The company that I, that I found
at Hapo together with, with my colleague Joe, it's, it's always
been like we've always had the goal of the, the, the work
itself isn't the end goal, you know, and I've always like a
long time, I was working mostly by myself.
I still had Joe from time to time, but I was mostly working
by myself. And at the same time, you know,
I was really like, it was going well and I was, I was, I was
really happy at work. And I know like I know myself, I
can work forever. Like I don't stop if I get
started. And that's kind of one of my
problems. But what I and then I have this,
I have this interest in golf, like I'm, I'm a big golfer.
And so I had this a couple of years ago.
I was like, OK, I'm just, it's going well, like I'm working,
but I also want to do this. So I decided, OK, I'm just going
to give golf like a, a shot. Like I'm going to play a lot of
golf. And so I started doing like, you
know, 3 or 4 week, sorry, 3 or 4 day work weeks and just do the
take my hobby to like a more fun level.
And so, and that that's always been like with me through these
years, like I play, I play a lot of golf.
And we have now, now that the company is growing.
We're four people right now. We, we're, we're really trying
to, to foster that four day work week.
And so we kind of force people to have a hobby.
And I know this sounds, it also sounds like, you know, it's a
privilege to be there. Like if, if the, if the revenue
wasn't there or the money wasn't there, we wouldn't be able to do
it. But I also think like with like
the status quo and like, you know, with venture capital and
everything, it's just the norm that like you go to work, you
say you work 40 hours a week, but you work way more and we
provide for you and everything. And I, I think it creates, I, I
don't want to say the word like burnout, but it doesn't, I don't
see people being all creative and happy at work, you know?
And so that's really been one of the, I think one of the main
reasons I started a company is to be able to like, do something
for yourself. Like you're every hour you spend
like working on product, because I love working on product, like
programming. It's my, it's my craft.
And so every hour you, you do that and that kind of feeds into
you, you get the benefits yourself and you get to decide
how you use those benefits. And so just making sure to take
time to do fun things outside of work.
It's really important. That I really, whenever people
come on that have this story about something they create and
they get so much energy out of that, I always think it's very
inspiring. But you're different in the fact
that you're not aiming for, let's say, the moon shot hockey
sticker of that. A lot of people that I talk to,
I wouldn't say a lot, but some people that I talk to definitely
try and aim for that, Right. I feel like that's the norm.
You go as fast as humanly possible, you get injected with
the cash flow, and then you excel and you you hire
enormously and that's it. That's what also venture
capitalist ones. They want just growth basically,
and more money. Yeah, but you're not like that.
I don't, I think I don't like taking that risk.
And also I, I, I, I know the statistics and saying no to
investment, which we have done several times is a way to say,
hey, we know that the odds are not in our favor.
Like we're, we're most likely not going to win this.
And I think with, you know, the growth that Apple has had since
since it started in 20, I think I started a company 2017.
No one would be interested in that.
Like it's it's not the hockey stick.
It's like, you know, it's, I don't know, it's, it's a.
Steady growth. Yeah, steady growth, but it's
too, too small, too slow for anyone to like really invest
like a lot of money. And actually like some of the
discussions or talks that I had with investors kind of led me
into being more proud and more like confident that this is the
way to go. I remember 1 talk I had, don't
remember the name of this person, but he basically said
like, you know, it, it sounds like you've got something really
good. Like one option is just hey, to
say no to me, Like to say, hey, I, I don't want that.
Like, because we will find people.
He said, like there will be others who are ready to like,
yeah, and who are ready to like, you know, throw themselves
completely into a project. But it sounds like you've got
way too much good stuff for that to risk that.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
You know, I'm just so just focusing on like building a good
product. And I find, you know, one of the
things I think that has made Hap O successful is the fact that I
really love doing support. Like I, you know, when you
build, when you've written the code yourself and someone has an
issue, you're like, Oh my God, I, I probably screwed something
up. You know, there's a, there's a
bug here. I'm sure I'm the one
responsible. So you start looking into it
and, and sometimes it's just like, you know, oh, maybe the
documentation was kind of not up to date or, and then a lot of
times there is a bug and you're, because then you find it and
then you have someone who's affected by it.
You fix it within, you know, a few hours sometimes and the
satisfaction from me and from the person who is reaching out,
because most people, let's face it, they, they probably give up
before they reach out. So when when someone is asking
actually like sending you a message and you get to talk to
this person, it's a fantastic feeling, you know, And so that's
one of the things because if I talk to investors, they'd like,
well, should hire, try to get like a, a first line support
from, you know, it could outsource it.
And then yes, would that make our end users happier?
No, like, because it's just like we're just buying time and most
if we find that people are reaching out to us about
something that, you know, maybe it's a documentation issue,
maybe it's maybe they haven't. Sometimes, you know, you have
support where people misunderstood your product.
That's also a case. And we always, I think we always
see these as a moment to like, OK, let's, let's improve that.
Let's make it more clear that when they land on this page,
it's about signing up for this product and not something else,
you know, And so and then all the efforts you make kind of
feedback into your product and then your product becomes more
stable and consistent and then you have less support.
So it's just like win, win thing.
And sometimes when it's going too well and no one is having an
issue, you know, like you're kind of waiting for that spark
to happen. It sounds like a super
fulfilling process though of like continuous situation and
continuous improvement. And it's very contrasting to
what I've seen in the market. And I always use this example of
video games because used to buy a video game and I would get a
CD and it works or it works or it has bugs and you can never
fix it. Yeah, nowadays with software,
you bring something, you launch a video game, you have a day one
patch and then a week 1 patch, and then a couple weeks you have
another patch. And they all fix bugs and they
all do improvements and it's always continuous, but it will
always launched with a lot of bugs.
And I feel like as soon as you get kind of this cash inflow and
more people on board, they have a vested interest in you
launching and adding value as soon as possible, regardless on
if those features are actually usable or if they are in use in
the 1st place. It's just adding everything on
top of things to go as fast as possible and to eventually just
cash out. I feel like, yeah, this path of
gradual development and product improvement and like excellence
and quality, I'm happy it exists.
I'm really happy you're on that path.
And I think it might be fulfilling for a certain type of
person. Yeah, I think the other path is
also fulfilling in a different way, maybe one that I didn't
don't really exactly understand currently.
It definitely is more of a monetary aspect.
And I've never been on either path, but I always like ideating
on OK. I feel like at some point I will
start something that is my own. Yeah.
And then it's a question of OK, which path do you want to take?
Yeah, I think the path will show itself.
Like for me it was very much like I had already started when
I realized like this is the path that I I'm going down.
Like I've always been building tools and products, you know,
had a couple of open source projects, nothing like really
big, but just kind of fun programming projects and
something that fixes a problem. Like as a software engineer, you
like, you fix a problem, you're super happy.
Doesn't matter how small or big it is.
It's the best feeling. Yeah, it's the best feeling.
And so if you have a problem or if you can fix a problem for
many people, then and then so the I, I always, I also had that
idea, you know, like one day I'm going to start a company.
But the starting a company is that's like a side sidebar, like
it just happens on it has to happen.
But you, if you, if you're fixing something, if you're
making something better than and that could be a product that
that's then you started the company.
How did you do that? Because the so the path that
people are on, I feel like it can happen naturally, like
you're explaining it. And I've also seen companies
that are like, OK, we have this certain software and we want to
open source part of it because we've seen a community aspect
helps building the software. So that's like the path they
want to go in. Yeah.
Or indeed where someone has something open source and
they're trying to create a product around it, but there
might not be anything to productize.
Like there might not be a good model for it.
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about open sourcing, but I
cannot talk about, OK. So I think, I think a lot of
open source projects that have turned into products, you know,
they, they start building a product or start building a tool
or something and then they get some traction.
The community starts like providing pull requests and, and
patches and stuff like that. That didn't happen for me.
Like we had an open source project.
Yes, we did get some pull requests, but you know, like on
the order of 10 or 20 or 50. Like it wasn't a big community
thing. But what it did was it did give
us the confidence that companies can make use of this.
And I think also, you know, Joe and I built the open source
project and Airbnb started using it, which was really big for us.
Huge, to be honest. Yeah, it was huge for us.
And I think that plus some other like not, not, I wouldn't say
large, super large companies, but Airbnb definitely like
sparked that. And then we, we kind of got the
reassurance that like, OK, this, this could be a real thing still
like get going to Airbnb and saying, hey, we're going to
start charging you for this. That was not a yeah, that was an
awkward conversation. But there was some like, I
really, I mean, I appreciate their take on that too, because
they acknowledged that it was a tool that they had invested a
lot of time and effort into integrating with.
And so they basically, they, they were more worried.
They weren't more worried about the money because like, it's
still like nothing for them, but they were more worried that I
was just going to abandon this, you know, because at the time it
was just me. Oh yeah.
And like. Huge risk, yeah.
Huge risk, Yeah, yeah. Imagine yeah, because they were
I mean, they have thousands of developers, of course, and they,
they really like if if Hapa was broken, I mean, they still
they're still using it. And if Hapa was broken, they
they like block things from getting of course merch and
everything. So all of them were impacted.
Yeah, it's, it's a it's, it's a big, big thing to, to, Yeah,
big. Sorry.
Like risk? Yeah.
Yeah, but yeah, so that that kind of got us started and and I
like moving back to Sweden because I was I was having a
kid. Sweden seemed like a better
place and it definitely is to have a kid.
It also just gave me the confidence to like invest some
of the, the money that I've been saving up.
Like it wasn't a whole lot, but enough to, to give myself a
little bit of a runway and to have the guts to like reach out
to, to Airbnb and some other companies saying, hey, can you
pay? And and yeah, that's how it
started. I love that journey.
It's, it's incredible. I I would be like looking if I
were to be in that position, it would also be a huge scare,
right, Because Airbnb is a huge company like you mentioned.
If 1000 engineers are, let's say you're users and you create
something and it has a bug and those thousand people are
impacted. Yeah, like it can be any
thousand people, but it's specifically if it's within
Airbnb in that company, it would, it would be a bit
daunting, I would say. Yeah.
How do you manage kind of that feeling of grandness that your
product is kind of being adopted?
Yeah, I don't know, to be honest.
I think part of it is just like forgetting, like, yeah, don't
think about it because like, yeah, something can happen at
any moment. And, and most of the time I'm
because I was living in Sweden, they were on the West Coast in
the US, most of them. And so when something broke, I
wasn't there. I mean, I, I, I still have the
support numbers for them to call and, and I tried to stay on top
of things all the time, but I don't know, just things happen,
like things break and everyone who is working with software,
they, they know it's going to break sooner or later.
And so just a lot of support from them, I would say.
And just rolling with it, just trusting yourself that you'll be
able to fix stuff when they happen.
Yeah, yeah. Awesome, I love that as well.
I'm very curious to hear your take on kind of products that
are out there nowadays because I feel like from a software
engineering hat, if something is not free for me to use that's
either open source or from a company perspective, that hurdle
will already put me off and I might not even give it a try,
right? If I need a license to
something, then getting a license versus trying another
free option. I'll go with the free option if
it solves my problem and then usually I'll stick to that or
I'll try a few different things and see what the benefits are
and I'll choose based on the free options, right?
This licensing model I don't think has longevity anymore
other than like more enterprise related things like an ID or
something. And also for a piece of
software, either open source or product to be out there, it
needs to have a certain level of maturity.
But do you agree with that? Because you mentioned, OK, we
put this open source software out there was not even the goal
of creating a company around it, but it found adoption.
Was it mature enough for you to say, OK, it had that level of
maturity that you need to strive for, or what's your take on
that? I mean, it did, right?
Yeah. But.
If you had asked me if I'd been on the podcast, I'd say no.
Really. Yeah.
Because I think if, if you're not like somewhat embarrassed by
some of the stuff that you built, like you're not, you
haven't put yourself out there. Like, I mean, I'm writing code
and, and, and sometimes you're touching code that I don't, I
don't like, I started with Kubernetes and stuff like I
didn't know anything about that. But yeah, no, I don't.
Sorry, I kind of lost track here the question.
No, it was more of maturity. You mentioned OK, it was mature,
but you wouldn't have said it was mature back then.
Yeah, but I think I just trusted myself though.
It's mature enough. And of course the the fact that
that people were using it and I saw that, you know, it's it, it
creates the like a feedback cycle of like, OK, it's not
horrible at least. Yeah.
I mean, yeah. I think that's fascinating.
Like the fact that you're saying, OK, it, it was mature,
right? Because that's what happened.
That's more history. But back then I didn't think it
was mature enough. I'm wondering how many people
are kind of facing that, that are developing something without
it being put out in the open. And they don't put it live here
because they don't think it's mature enough.
Because of that either hesitation or more so, imposter
syndrome. Oh yeah, that that's a feeling
you just got to. Get rid of, yeah.
Just let go. You have to put it like you have
to get it into the hands of users and and the sooner you can
charge the value that the product has for it.
Like if you're, you know, like if, if it's a start up with
venture, a venture backed start up, they sometimes do this like
they build a product and it's like it's a good product and
then they start charging people. You know, it's a couple of bucks
here and there, like it's not much, it's not enough.
And then they never reached the point where like, oh, we can
actually charge them what, what it is worth or what we think
it's worth or even just being sustainable because we have told
them that like this is a cheap product.
We just charge them like $5 per user per month.
And then, but then in reality, it should be like 50 and then so
the sooner you get to 50, you don't have to have a lot of
customers like that. That's one thing I've learned
like, and, and also, you know, you talk about if there is a
free option that you can try out, I think that's great.
Like we, we do that too, Like you can use hap O to a certain
level for free, like, because that's just the way people start
using tools And, and and that's not, I think for us, it's not
about like trying to lure someone in it.
It's just about like, how are they, how are they going to try
it if it's not, if there's no free option, So as simple as
that. But if, if there is a tool, if I
see a like a sauce tool on the market that does not have the
free option, I'm like, Oh my God, this must be amazing.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Yeah, because if you have the guts to like say, hey, you know,
yeah, we just, we charge people, of course, like you.
Yeah, you can try. I mean, we'll, we'll show it to
you like, no worries that it's. I would love to get there.
Like, I don't think we're going to get there now, but yeah,
yeah, that would be fun. I.
I don't know what. I think it's a new perspective,
like I haven't heard that one yet that you're so confident
that like we don't need a free model.
Like we have customers and this, this is it.
Basically you get what you pay for and we have high quality.
But this price model that you talked about, right, not
underselling yourself with regards to what you're putting
out in value, I feel like that's going to be difficult.
Did you extra experiment with like different price points and
like different plans or how did you finalise what you have now
versus kind of the learning path?
Yeah. I mean, there's been some back
and forth, yeah. But honestly also the the
resources and the time that we've had to like put into
optimizing that pricing, for instance, it just hasn't really
been there. It's it's not until recent times
that that we've done that. And you know, going from doing
this myself to bringing in more people, there were some
contracts and some like pricing that I'd set that was just like
it's. Not going to work.
Yeah, it's not. Going to work, you know, And I
was so afraid of like touching it.
Like I just wanted to like, let's just these are great
people, I love them, but can we, can we not talk to them?
And they're like, no, we have, we have to talk to them.
And so that, that has been a project over the, the last year
or two. And, and one of the things that
really, because we've based, I think we've raised our prices,
you know, 30% or something overall a little bit depending
on how much you're using and everything.
But I had a, a conversation with a friend in the Co working
office. He, he works for a company
called Look back, who's the sauce company?
Like you user experience testing.
And we were talking to him and, and we were telling him about
how we're reaching out to people like raising prices.
It's not fun. And he was like, that's great.
Like just make sure that you lose some customers and we're
like, what, what are you saying? Like not lose, but if you do
lose customers, like if you, if you raise your prices, like you,
you might lose a few that maybe weren't, they weren't ready,
they, they didn't see the full value of it.
And so that's been really, and, and it's still like hard for me
to talk about because I, I don't want to, you know, you, you have
customers and, and, and, and they're great and you, some of
them are fantastic. And then you're talking to them
like, hey, we're going to like, we're going to charge you a
little bit more. It's hard from, from my
perspective, it's hard. But I think if someone came to
me and did that, well, like, yeah, it's, I mean, I would,
there are some tools that that I would happily pay a lot more for
that I think are like underpriced.
I'm trying to. The first thing that came to my
mind is because I had a recent conversation about this is my,
my hairdresser keeps upping his prices and, and I keep going
back because it's like the best haircut that I get.
And I if I go out somewhere else, they mess me up.
It's like, yeah, I think it's worth it.
Yeah, I mean, you have a good haircut, so.
Thank you. I went, I went recently.
But it's like, yeah, I I think it's ridiculous at some point.
But even though I think it's ridiculous, it's still worth it.
And I keep going back. That's the value it has for me.
Yeah, I think it's similar. And they probably lost.
They probably lost some customers.
I I think so, but. But maybe this hairdresser is
able to take, you know, 5 clients per day instead of
seven. And then you have two hours of
like an hour extra everyday to do something fun.
That would be great, you know, and that's that's kind of how I
think we should get it. Yeah, very interesting.
You don't go for volume, but you go for quality and value.
I mean, we also want volume. Of course, yeah, like volume is
up, but it's not the like you can have volume as a goal,
right? And then you go quickly, you
deliver something kind of surface level and then you try
and aim for as wide of a net instead of the depth that you
offer. Now, I think it's a different
kind of playing field and I love that you're coming onto a
podcast like this or just sharing your learnings in
general. Did you have a network of people
that you could contact to and kind of ask these questions with
regards to? Like you mentioned the example
of, OK, we're upping prices and it would make me feel
uncomfortable as well, you have that network.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I didn't know I had it,
but I do. And I think often times when you
when you when you have a something really hard, like a
hard problem to solve and you start you start talking to
people, like some people will be interested in in helping you.
And yeah. And the the Co working space is
is great for that. I mean, we have, I don't know,
it's probably like 30 companies or something and not all of them
are relevant like in the same field as us, but you know that
they're, they're always going to be people that, that have gone
through similar things. Like we've gone through.
Another thing we've done is Hapa's been a Swedish company up
until like, and now we're in the process of moving that to the US
and not a lot of people have experience doing those things.
So being able to tap into to some of our, our contacts have
been, you know, helpful. Yeah, I.
Love that. Yeah.
Like you came across to me in our first conversation also now
just as a really genuine guy. And I feel like the people that
are authentic and are asking for help, usually people are kind
enough to help you out then. Yeah, I I never noticed it.
And it's only that I notice it because I reach out to people
for podcast stuff. Yeah.
And then people love it. First of all.
It's also because Ioffer something, but then the network
that I have from that, I don't tap into it often, but I
definitely know that the relationships that I build up, I
can rely on if need be. I'm really happy that you said
that you didn't even know it, but when you kind of reached out
that it was that kind feedback that you were looking for.
And that helpfulness makes me happy to hear that that, yeah,
that's there. Yeah, not knowing it.
Also, we, we had this project of I, I don't know Joe, my
colleague, he, he found this blog post about sending 100
emails as it as a like tool to reach out to more people.
So you take, you just take 100 of your contacts like your
network. People don't think they have
that many, but they do. And they just sent like a
personalized e-mail saying, Hey, I'm, I'm doing this thing now.
If you have anything that can help me support, I'll be super
happy. If not, hey, just hello, nice to
meet you, Nice to talk to you again.
Like it's, it's good to keep in contact.
And of course, you, I don't think you really can your
network you kind of build over the years, like just being a
nice person. I think people who are where
it's too obvious that they're like trying to build a network
just for the network itself, it kind of, I don't know, maybe it
flips me off a little. Bit yeah, a little bit off
putting, yeah like I don't know what triggered it, but I have
this thought that the first CEO that I ever had, I, I maybe
talked to him a handful of times, right.
It's a big organization. My first job ever somehow has my
e-mail. And every Christmas for the last
6-7 years, every new Year, he sends like an e-mail.
But I think, I think he does it to everyone, though.
Yeah. So I don't know how genuine this
is, but he's so consistent with it that I, I know his name.
I know what he's doing because that's like what is in his
e-mail. Yeah.
And he still wishes everyone a happy holiday and a happy New
year. It's like, yeah, I can't, I
can't fault him for that, even though it might be like a
network thing. Yeah.
I don't mind it to be honest. I think also like if if you're
ACEO person and you keep contact with your network, there are
probably a lot of people that are going to be happy to yeah,
to have that contact you. He's showing or she's I didn't
know. Yeah, yeah, showing that like I
I still like think about you every now and then.
That's that's great. I I hope, I hope it's that, that
I'm not just the name in the e-mail list, but.
I mean, it's probably. Both.
It could be both. Both, it could be both.
Yeah. I just thought it was like, I
thought of doing that. And then I feel like, would I be
genuine enough to like, do that? I don't know.
Like early on, I made so many friends working, right, Because
that's how I like to work. I like to be myself and the
people that like me for who I am.
We become friends usually. And then maybe I use the term
friends loosely because afterwards I'm horrible at
keeping touch. But I do notice that if, for
example, someone moves abroad and I'm there, that I can reach
out and we'll have a have a beer, We'll have a good laugh.
Yeah. And it's like, even though I
don't know it's there, I'm happy that it is there, basically that
there are people that those relationships that you've
created, those are there and they can even stand the test of
time. In a few years, you can still
reach out to those same people, and I think they'll make time
for you. And you can still have a lot.
Yeah, that's awesome, to be honest.
Yeah, like tomorrow, No, two days.
I'm seeing my friend JP. Yeah, like, I don't think I've
talked to him and ten years, Wow.
But he saw that I was going to the Netherlands and he was here
as well. And we're gonna meet up.
It's gonna be fun. Happy to hear.
Man. That's awesome.
Yeah, I was wondering about this.
I read an article and I talked about kind of founder mode,
especially when you're a software engineer, you have a
technical background, you're part of a start up is very much
hands on and it can get to a point, depending on the company
size that you get into more of a leadership role and your hands
on doesn't become hands on anymore.
Yeah, because you talk to people and those people do more of the
hands on. That's how you create a team and
sometimes even the company hierarchy with regards to what
you do now on a day-to-day. Has it changed?
Kind of compared to the beginning, are you more involved
in marketing and sales and stuff like that or are you still very
much hands on? Did you talk to my to my
colleagues? No, no, no, absolutely not.
I genuinely. Yeah.
But yeah, it has definitely, it is changing, you know, going
from like one or two people to to a team, even if it's like a
small team, it changes your responsibilities.
I mean, I am the CEO of my company, but I'm still very
hands on. I think we're not in a position
yet where I can I can be hands off and I don't know if I want
to. It doesn't sound like you want.
To no, no, I mean I'm a, I'm, I'm a craftsperson, like my, my
thinking. I start thinking when I put my
hands on the keyboard, like I, I'm not like, you know, go to
meeting. I, I could do that to like a
creative like brainstorming session, but it's not until I
actually start typing that I'm creative.
And I think, I think it's going to be like I, I don't see myself
as ACEO of, you know, like a company with 50 employees.
I would, I would find someone to do that.
But I'm, I am very, you know, I'm very invested in this
company and I wanted to succeed. And my colleagues right now,
they're really helping me. I mean, we've had some such good
like conversations in the last couple of weeks.
We had one kind of like very emotional thing where all of us
shared our weaknesses. Like we were very open to, you
know, what are my weaknesses and how can we support each other?
And it was very humbling like to read about, you know, like I am
a person who is sorry when you when you don't like people like
touching your things. Like I'm territorial, like I'm a
territorial person. I don't it's not something I'm
proud of, but I am. And then you have to knowing
that really helps because then you can adapt to to being a good
leader for that person. And you know, and another
person, it might have been me and I avoid delegating.
OK. And the longer but the longer I
wait, let's say I have to do this thing and it doesn't have
to be me, but I kind of said to someone that I was going to do
it or it needs to get done. And then I keep postponing it,
postponing it and then to a point where like, Oh my God,
it's so late. I should really do this.
And then I have this tendency of like, just like pushing it even
more away. And I've learned that like, I
have to be able to delegate at that point too.
Like even when it's too late, I have to ask for help.
There was this like e-mail I really needed to send.
I kept telling people I was going to do it.
And then we had this discussion around a weakness that sounds
like, OK, I just, so I, I sent the e-mail, but I, I, I asked
for help from the, from, from my colleagues and it was resolved
in like 15 minutes. And then I've been stressing
about it for, you know, months. And so that's, that's, yeah,
there. I mean, I have to at some point
figure out how to be a leader for people going forward because
we're going to grow and. Yeah.
It's not just leadership that like those those conversations.
I I love the example that you gave.
For me, it's always whenever you're forming A-Team, if you
can, and usually you can, you just have to take it and, and
use that autonomy to learn from each other and learn about each
other's preferences and learn about each other's weaknesses.
I'm not in a product management role.
I love to learn about what people want to learn.
If I see that learning opportunity, I put the person in
that place. They're going to be the happiest
they've ever been, basically. Yeah.
I check up on them and see, do you like this certain piece of
work? Do you want to do more of this?
So I'm aware of that. I accommodate for that, I get
certain emails and I have no problem postponing emails or
replying later. Like I, I have my list in my
head of what I think is important and emails usually
sometimes are not on there, but I have this other person.
And when there's an e-mail, they have like this, this burning
feeling inside that there's something undone.
And they're like, are you going to reply to that e-mail?
I'm like, well, I wasn't planning on it.
If you feel like I learned that this person has that and I gave
them the autonomy. If you need to reply, reply.
Yeah, don't wait for me. Yeah.
They're like, thank you. And then they do that.
Like that's our our modus operandi.
And only through time and only through having those
conversations, knowing each other, can we be effective as a
team to do so. Yeah, I think it's immensely
valuable, especially when you're as a team responsible for
everything at the end of the day.
And that's the case for your company.
Yeah. Yeah.
How was it? Because you you mentioned, and I
think I would be the same. You have a vested interest,
right? You're invested in this product.
You've done this for many years. It's your thing.
Hiring new people and giving that piece away and delegating
is already challenging. How do you hire the right
people? How was it having someone new on
board? I mean, it's great.
Yeah, that's good. Hiring itself like it's sort of
I mean these are, these are people close to me and you know,
it's someone's neighbor. It's, it's, it's, I think for
me, it's been harder to, I haven't actively looked for
people to, to, to join, but I have.
And when someone is really excited about something, because
I will tell people about what I do, of course.
And then, but I need that excitement, you know, I'm, I
need someone to want to start working here.
And so I, we haven't got to a point where we're like actively
hiring, you know, it has kind of grown a little bit, you know,
amongst friends and amongst, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's
more like a family, family company that way.
Yeah, I think going forward, I'm always going to look, look for
people who are excited about what we do.
And I, I also, I'm very honest about the fact that we're not
like halfway is a screenshot testing tool.
It's testing like front ends and and UI for people.
It's not super exciting for everyone.
Like it's just a tool that's going to be there.
But I need people who are exciting, excited about, you
know, building a product long term.
And when you find those people, it doesn't really matter what
they what their skill sets are, because you're going to find,
you're going to find the, their place in the company and, and
what they do. I like that a lot.
Like that's very different from an answer that I've heard where
it comes to Indeed. Like these are the things to
look out for. You hired people that you knew
or that are close to you. Yeah.
Does that also come with a downside though?
Because that's at least my assumption that you can have
some heavy-handed conversations. Yes.
And that also can affect those relationships.
Yeah, but I think at least from for now, when we're we're still
a small team, if someone gets upset, they don't have to have
the filter of, you know, he's my boss or he's this colleague that
I don't really know. Yeah, they're like these are
very close to me. And so I can say what I I can
tell them what I think. And so the conversations are
more honest. I think.
I think the, the weaknesses discussion that we had was
wouldn't have happened if we weren't wouldn't have been that
close, you know. And so I think they're they're
pros and cons, but right now more pros than cons.
That's amazing. And like what?
What's better than working with the people that you love?
Like it's these people. I these are the people I want to
be around. So why not do that like?
I mean, there's a saying that when it comes to like the time
you spent, you might see your colleagues more than some parts
of your family. And especially if you could
combine those two. I see.
I see the benefit. I talked to a few friends that I
had in in high school and they started a company together.
They sell sold bubble tea because that's like they worked
at a company out of university, same company, same group of
friends. And those two guys decided to do
it themselves, built a webshop, we're selling different diverse
types of drinks. And then one person said, OK, we
need to go right. One person said we need to go
left. And that's where it like
clashed. And one person said, it's either
my way or the highway and they're not friends anymore.
And I was like, man, like if that's the risk, I don't know if
it's because either of them is like more like stubborn than the
other or maybe not flexible enough or maybe not.
Like you also need to have an experimental mindset.
You try both and you see what sticks, right?
And you save the friendship rather than the company,
basically. But that story just broke me.
I was like, man, that's I asked one of the guys, I was like, do
you think you could still be friends?
He was like, hell no. I was like, man, that's really
sad. Like that would be the risk.
I feel like working together with people that are close to
you, but then it's also your responsibility to make sure it
doesn't break the relationship. Yeah, definitely.
I think it's inevitable like it's going to happen at some
point that we just have to like trust each other enough that we
have no I'll intent doing this. And I think, you know, I think
the the money being our own, like we have no one like
external investment. It's just our, we've invested in
this ourselves, our time and our passion.
It makes it easier, you know, because otherwise you, you have
investors and then you have an opportunity to like, because
we've been contacted about from, from a couple of different like
larger companies that want to, you know, either like acquire us
or hire us as like our talent for the stuff that we're doing.
But we know that like we have a, we have a very.
Like the product that we're building works like it's going
to continue growing. Like that's a very good feeling
to have and and that kind of sets everyone's trajectory going
the right way. It's not going to fix all the
indifference or the, the like discussions that we have around
where we're going. But I also maybe it could work
because I think I'm the most stubborn in the company and I
think that's part of why I'd like it's been me most of the
time, just myself. And so all the decisions that I
made that mean I had to do them. They're not the greatest, but I
did them and they some of them really worked and I'm going to
stick with most of them. No, no, I'm not I I can have
strong opinions, but what it what is the saying like strong
opinions loose They held something like that.
I. Like that a lot?
Yeah, That's great, man. Thank you for coming on and
sharing your story. It's been fun.
Honestly, Congrats on all your success.
Like I think it's red that I meet a person that's like so
genuine and does it their own way with like good principles
and good values. And I think that's what I feel,
at least when I'm talking to you.
So thank you for coming on and sharing.
Thank you for having me, it's been a lot of fun.
I'm going to round off here. I'm going to put all Henrik's
socials in the description below and some stuff about Hopo.
Check it out, let me know what you think and we'll see on the
next one.