111 - Designing and Monetizing Data Products Like a Startup with Yuval Gonczarowski

Today I’m chatting with Yuval Gonczarowski, Founder & CEO of the startup, Akooda. Yuval is a self-described “socially capable nerd” who has learned how to understand and meet the needs of his customers outside of a purely data-driven lens. Yuval describes how Akooda is able to solve a universal data challenge for leaders who don’t have complete visibility into how their teams are working, and also explains why it’s important that Akooda provide those data insights without bias. Yuval and I also explore why it’s so challenging to find great product leaders and his rule for getting useful feedback from customers and stakeholders. 

Highlights/ Skip to:

• Yuval describes what Akooda does (00:35)
• The types of technical skills Yuval had to move away from to adopt better leadership capabilities within a startup (02:15)
• Yuval explains how Akooda solves what he sees as a universal data problem for anyone in management positions (04:15)
• How Akooda goes about designing for multiple user types (personas) (06:29)
• Yuval describes how using Akooda internally (dogfooding!) helps inform their design strategy for various use cases (09:09)
• The different strategies Akooda employs to ensure they receive honest and valuable feedback from their customers (11:08)
• Yuval explains the three sales cycles that Akooda goes through to ensure their product is properly adapted to both their buyers and the end users of their tool (15:37)
• How Yuval learned the importance of providing data-driven insights without a bias of whether the results are good or bad (18:22)
• Yuval describes his core leadership values and why he feels a product can never be simple enough (24:22)
• The biggest learnings Yuval had when building Akooda and what he’d do different if he had to start from scratch (28:18)
• Why Yuval feels being the first Head of Product that reports to a CEO is both a very difficult position to be in and a very hard hire to get right (29:16)

• “Re: moving from a technical to product role: My first inclination would be straight up talk about the how, but that’s not necessarily my job anymore. We want to talk about the why and how does the customer perceive things, how do they look at things, how would they experience this new feature? And in a sense, [that’s] my biggest change in the way I see the world.” — Yuval Gonczarowski (03:01)

• “We are a very data-driven organization. Part of it is our DNA, my own background. When you first start a company and you’re into your first handful of customers, a lot of decisions have to be made based on gut feelings, sort of hypotheses, scenarios… I’ve lived through this pain.” — Yuval Gonczarowski (09:43)

• “I don’t believe I will get honest feedback from a customer if I don’t hurt their pocket. If you want honest feedback [from customers], you got to charge.” — Yuval Gonczarowski (11:38)
• “Engineering is the most expensive resource we have. Whenever we allocate engineering resources, they have to be something the customer is going to use.” – Yuval Gonczarowski (13:04)

• When selling a data product: “If you don’t build the right collateral and the right approach and mindset to the fact that it’s not enough when the contract is signed, it’s actually these three sales cycles of making sure that customer adoption is done properly, then you haven’t finished selling. Contract is step one, installation is step two, usage is step three. Until step three is done, haven’t really sold the product.” — Yuval Gonczarowski (16:59)

• “By definition, all products are too complex. And it’s always tempting to add another button, another feature, another toggle. Let’s see what we can remove to make it easier.” – Yuval Gonczarowski (26:35)

• Akooda: https://akooda.co/
• Yuval’s Email: y@akooda.co
• Yuval’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goncho/