Michal & Piotr.

Piotr: When we first started, our ambitions only went as far as the borders of Poland. Of course, in our presentations to investors, we showed them that we had global plans, since this is what you’re supposed to do in presentations, though we were really focused on the here and now. Going global was a distant dream, too beautiful to be true. Success abroad, while hard-earned, still came as a great surprise for us. There were no benchmarks, with practically no other SaaS companies in the country. We didn’t even know there was such a thing as LiveChat.

Michał: Our first user account was for PLN two thousand – wow! We didn’t want to start a revolution; we wanted to create something that people would buy and use. So when we got our first customer, then another one, then another, and then more… We knew that we were creating something that would be used by thousands.

Michał: Piotrek is sensitive to consistency, just as I am to change. Nothing would have come of this if we hadn’t complemented each other so well. I would have brought this company to the edge of disaster 10 times over with my love of implementing new ideas all the time, but Piotrek always had my back. Versatility has always been our major advantage. We make the perfect team.

Piotr: Sometimes we are asked if we feel hostage to the popularity of “Sadek” in the media. This comes easily for Michał, he has a knack for it. It’s in his blood. From the outside, it may look like he is only building his own brand, but when he was offered the position of Head of Google in Poland, he refused. We have full confidence in each other and use this popularity to attract new customers.

Besides, nobody knows “Sadek” abroad! Who is “Sadek”? And 3/4 of our business is made up of clients from outside Poland anyway. So, while popularity may help, it doesn’t do the heavy lifting for us.

Piotr: It is possible. We are living proof of this. We’ve known each other for 18 years. We met in college, worked on seven projects together, and had nothing to show for most of them. Patrz.pl was the first one that we sold. We got PLN 200,000 on paper for it. Unfortunately, only a few days later the client went bankrupt and we never saw any of the money. 

Michał: No other two people in the world have such similar views about what is fair and what is not.

Michał: Before the launch of Brand24, things were so hard that we had to look for side jobs just to get by. We had mortgages to pay and children to feed and raise… we were on the edge. It was then that we decided to give 51% of our shares to the VC fund.Despite our troubles, we never wanted to sell our shares. We never wanted to quit. Moreover, reality has shown us that we do not need a majority vote; what is important to us is that we have an influence – this is the most crucial part.

Piotr: Handing over 51% of the shares of a company is often perceived very negatively on the market. In retrospect, we know that things could have turned out a lot differently… it was a bit of a gamble. Fortunately, we were lucky and surrendering the majority of our shares did not become a problem. The fund gave us a lot of leeway and supported us with its specialists, it was a good deal for those times.

Michał: There is no alternative past. There is just one: the one that happened. I wouldn’t change anything.

Piotr: The founder is no less prone to fuckups than any other team member. At one point, Michał was convinced that we needed to offer our users a subscription for PLN 19. But the VC fund did the math and said that introducing a subscription like this would entail real losses. Fortunately, they were right. Even if you are the founder of a company, you can still be wrong. This is important to remember. 

Michał: Having a strong team relationship. Different work ethics and different goals cause disruption: while they may be minor at first, they can lead to mutual alienation over time. In the past, we observed people being marginalized just because they didn’t fit in with the company’s DNA. Sadly, we had to let them go. A shared vision within a team is necessary to achieve success.

Piotr: There’s more: the respect of those around you is more important than money. It was our good reputation that helped us get through the toughest moments that we had running our business. And the toughest one was indisputably our dispute with Facebook.

Michał: Coach

Michał: It all started with an article suggesting that we collect sensitive data from Facebook and make it public. That was just a drop in the ocean; we were getting our data from various sources and didn’t check them very thoroughly and then… it happened. A week later, a letter came from FB’s lawyers about blocking our company and private accounts. A shit storm broke out. Journalists were just waiting for something like this. All of Poland learned that Brand24 had been blocked by FB. The video in which we explained the situation is the most popular one that we have ever published. Many people only found out about our existence then. Not much of a consolation… 

The churn from abroad quickly returned to its previous levels from before we got blocked, but within Poland, churn remained very high. Nobody outside of Poland read the online journal Wyborcza and being cut off from Facebook did not make Brand24 any less attractive to our customers. Even at its worst, when revenue fell by 40% for 6 months in a row and we had to lay people off, we didn’t even think for a moment that it was over. 

Piotr: We had only been on the stock exchange for a year and we were afraid that shareholders would want our heads for this. We did not know, then, that our case was not unique. Many publicly traded companies run into problems, even worse ones than we did. In the end, it was just fear. Many of the employees whom we had to let go, then, are back working with us again.