Jobs: Dmitry Dumik, CEO of the chat bot platform Chatfuel

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

About a million-dollar startup, moving to Silicon Valley, and practicing meditation regularly.

“My main focus is vision, culture and working with obstacles to growth” - about the CEO's mission in a startup

Dima, tell us who you work and what project are you doing now?

- I'm the CEO of Chatfuel, the leading chatbot platform for sales and marketing automation via Facebook Messenger. In three years, we have grown from a startup of two people to a company with hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, a team of 30 people and an annual revenue of several million dollars.

This is great! How did you manage to achieve such a result in a relatively short time?

We started a year before Facebook opened the API for creating chatbots on Facebook Messenger - we made a platform for Telegram. They tested everything there, already knew what to do, and were the first in the world to launch a platform for Facebook. In the winter of 2016, they went to Y Combinator, closed the round of investments from Greylock, Yandex, 500 Startups, YC and other funds.

What are your responsibilities as CEO?

- My role as CEO is constantly changing. At first, the division was simple: I did the entire grocery part and did the business, and my partner Artyom Ptashnik was in charge of the entire technical part. Now my main focus is vision, culture and working with growth barriers.

Vision is where we want to go and what we don’t want to do. The second part is especially important in a startup, where the market is still new, developing, and it is not always clear what the product will be like and what strategies will work.

And the ability to say “no” helps to free up mental space and creativity for those directions where we are interested in moving.

Culture is who we hire, promote, and fire.

You can formulate the principles of culture as much as you like, but people look at actions, not words, and draw appropriate conclusions.

And the last one is understanding the limitations, first of all, our own and the team's, which can hinder development and growth. Last year we grew 10 times, and the most difficult thing is to manage to change and help the team grow together with the business.

“My recommendation is to start experimenting as soon as possible in life” - about the first steps in a startup, education and moving to Silicon Valley

How did it all start?

- My father has his own small business, and since childhood I was inspired by entrepreneurship. The first attempt was in the sixth grade, when I was one of the first in school to have a computer with Internet access and I began to earn money by selling abstracts that I downloaded from the Web.

Things went well: at some point I owned 100% of the abstracts on the school's honor board. After some time, the business had to be closed, but pleasant memories remained.

In the second year of the university he went to America under the Work and Travel program, got a job as a lawn mower.

Once I fixed a computer for my boss and a rumor spread around the area that "a hacker from Russia is mowing lawns." So I got a second job as a programmer.

In my third year, I went to the States again, found customers, and when I returned, I hired classmates and organized an outsourcing company, which collapsed six months later, because I had no management experience at all.

In my fourth year, I went to Procter & Gamble, where I spent five years leading the implementation of IT systems for business. But at some point, I took part as a mentor in the charitable project 1Minute and realized that I love the dynamics of a startup, burning eyes and a sense of meaning in what you bring to this world. This is how my career as a startup began, with all its joys and tears.

Where and for whom did you study? And was higher education useful?

- Studied at the Taganrog State Radio Engineering University, majoring in Computing Machines, Systems, Complexes and Networks.

In the family, all are excellent students, expectations were appropriate, but it was boring to design outdated microcontrollers against the background of Google taking over the world.

Therefore, the main skill that I trained at the university is how to achieve goals with the minimum expenditure of time and effort. The diploma with honors was never useful to me in the future, but all my projects and undertakings gave invaluable experience.

It was always interesting for me to do things with my own hands, to try and see what happens. Otherwise I don't have enough dopamine and I quit.

I even read books like this: if there is a specific task, I have enough motivation and interest to finish and immediately apply, otherwise I just give up.

My recommendation is to start experimenting as soon as possible in life. To do something, to try, to fill cones and understand whether it is yours or not. In general, I believe that the modern education system kills a person, introduces a toxic definition of "normality" and prevents people from knowing their real self.

Why did you decide to develop your business in the USA and not in Russia?

Initially, it was a desire to prove to myself that I can. I can be successful on the global stage, compete with Stanford alumni, and have access to the world's best resources and minds.

Later I realized that this is about freedom - one of my main values. I want to have complete freedom of movement, self-expression and self-realization. The USA is not an ideal country with a bunch of its own problems, but now I know that I can move to another state and build a business from scratch. There is no more fear that it will not work.

“We are building a culture where colleagues are interested and good with each other” - about difficulties and corporate culture

Tell us about the work difficulties: what have you faced or continue to face, how do you solve them?

One of the main insights of recent times: the company is a reflection of the founders, with all their limitations and problems. Recently there was a situation: the guys gave me a feedback that as soon as things don't go the way I want, I tend to stick in and try to solve the problem myself.

This worked at the very beginning, when the movement format was sprint: either you decide, or the company will die. But it does not work now, because I take away the autonomy of my colleagues, I do not give them the opportunity to develop and I overload myself. You have to learn to run a marathon.

Business in this regard is an amazing tool for knowing oneself, which instantly gives feedback. You do something in the company and you see: did it work? If not, why not? Where is the installation that gets in the way? It's like a psychotherapist, only on a scale.

Let's talk in more detail about the team. Who works with you and how to get into your team?

When hiring, I look at two things: professional efficiency and culture fit. Professional efficiency is a combination of base and dynamics. The base may be low, but a person moves very quickly and wants to develop - take it. Or the speed of development is less, but a lot of experience is also suitable.

The second most important component is cultural fit.

I'm not interested in building a unicorn, I'm interested in building a unicorn and having fun along the way.

And the presence of deep social connections is one of the main predictors of human happiness. Therefore, we are building a culture where colleagues are interested and good with each other. I agree with the thesis of Sean Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: first you become happy, and then successful, but not vice versa.

Can you tell us more about the competition for product managers "Antihyp product: create a product whose efficiency is more important than noise"?

- Gartner described the cycle that technologies and products go through:

First a surge of expectations, and then disappointment. As Zuckerberg said: "People overestimate the potential of technology on the horizon of two years and underestimate on the horizon of 10". This is exactly what happened with chatbots a couple of years ago.

Despite the fact that a useful use case has been found and is already being successfully used by many companies, there is still a misconception in the market that chat bots do not work. This myth gets in the way of hiring and growing a business.

At the same time, we faced the problem of onboarding: how to help our clients understand the value of chatbots and create a solution on their own. This is an acute problem for all Internet companies.

At the junction of these two problems, the idea of a contest for products and designers for the best onboarding solution was born. We invited top experts to the jury, recorded educational interviews and handed out a million rubles as prizes to the winners.

30 teams sent us their solutions, the whole process was public, and the results can be viewed.

After the end of the competition, the Telegram channel turned into a place where I share my insights on business and mindfulness.

“I make part of the calls on the balance board to improve the balance for surfing” - about the workplace, meditation and sports

Let's move on to your workplace: what does it look like?

- The first half of the day I work from home to catch the Russian time zone and the guys in the Moscow office.

After lunch I usually work from our San Francisco office.

Key gadgets: AirPods and Bose QuiteComfort 35 noise canceling headphones, Oura ring to track sleep quality and physical activity throughout the day, UPRIGHT posture tracker, MacBook Pro, thermos mug, iPhone XS and a couple of wireless chargers for it.

I make part of the calls on the balance board to improve the balance for surfing. There is a yoga mat next to me: I have a few favorite sessions of 15–20 minutes, if you need to cheer up, have hard focus or anxiety.

What do you do in your free time?

- Over the past few years, I have formed a supportive structure of practices that help me to live difficult moments, to be more aware and happy.

Meditation is the observation of sensations, thoughts and states. When we switch to the observer state, there is a choice of how to act in a given situation.

Do not react according to the usual patterns, for which you are then ashamed, but exhale and look at the situation from the outside. The effectiveness of meditation has been confirmed by research, and structural changes in the brain on MRI are noticeable just eight weeks after starting the practice. Stress decreases, quality of life improves.

Surfing is the quintessence of sport for me, the connection of body and soul. It requires good physical fitness: endurance, flexibility, balance are needed.

And, of course, spiritual practice. Meditation on the horizon on a line-up in anticipation of a wave, a reminder that if you are covered, then you need to relax, and not waste oxygen, and, of course, the state of playfulness and flow when you are on the wave. I try to get out several times a year.

Kundalini Yoga is a practice that, through breathing exercises and the body, allows you to very quickly plunge into a state of meditation, experience repressed emotions and learn to be an observer.

I do Kundalini and meditation every day, for a total of about 1–1.5 hours. I wrote more about practices in my Telegram channel.

Life hacking from Dmitry Dumik

Books

• "", Frederic Laloux - a book about the evolution of companies, where the so-called turquoise organizations - "organizations of the future", or "living organizations" are considered. These are successful firms in which instead of managers - coaching and self-management, and instead of KPIs - goals and values.
• "", Ayn Rand is a book that inspires you to believe in yourself and do as your heart tells you, not society.
• "", Kelly McGonigal is a good systematic and deep study of willpower with a lot of practical advice on how to work with it and develop it.

Serials

• "The Eighth Sense" (Sense8) is a series by the Wachowski sisters about a group of strangers who gained access to each other's consciousness. Through this meta-construction, the concepts of love, community and unity in the world are very beautifully revealed.
• Billions is about business, tough decisions and moral dilemmas that stand in the way of billions of dollars.

Podcasts and videos

• TED Talk on Happiness - Findings from the longest-running (over 40 years) research on happiness in humans.
• Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is a meditation lecture for Google employees.
• - TED Talk, which talks about the essence of meditation and what happens in our brains.

Blogs and Websites

• Stratechery.com is one of the best technology, strategy and business blogs with a good analytical approach.
• Startupdigest.com is an excellent digest with a selection of relevant meetups and conferences for those who come to the valley.
• Ponchik News is a telegram channel by Alexei Ivanov, a designer from San Francisco, about how to apply a design approach to relationships, self-knowledge and strategy.
• Dumik - Entrepreneurship and Mindfulness is my Telegram channel for top entrepreneurs, products and designers, where I write about mindfulness and business in IT.
• Waitbutwhy.com is Elon Musk's favorite blog. Very deep longreads on topics ranging from procrastination to the cosmos - that make you really think.
• Dayoga.ru and yogaglo.com - video lessons of kundalini yoga in Russian and English.