Dmitry Dumik, Chatfuel: about Y Combinator, technology entrepreneurship, behavior change and awareness

I spoke with Dmitry Dumik, CEO of a California startup to create Chatfuel chat bots and resident Y Combinator. This is the sixth in a series of interviews with the masters of their business about the product approach, behavioral psychology and technological entrepreneurship.

I'll tell you a story. I recognized you in absentia through a common friend in San Francisco as a person who has some pretty good remixes in Soundcloud. I listened to mixes and thought then: “And this guy is not bad.” So, all I want to ask, why are you collecting music in Soundcloud?

This is the fastest way to understand your person or not. For example, you meet a girl in Tinder. You send her a mix - such, you know, that it touches the strings of the soul, makes you make discoveries, dive deep into yourself ... And she is silent. You go and then swipe right.

Creating communities

We are now talking at your home, in the “Good Home” by Andrei Doronichev, Google's top manager. Tell me, how did this house commune?

We met a couple of years ago with Doronichev and his wife, Tanya, and Andrei proposed this idea. They drove her back and forth, decided to take a step into the unknown, such a leap of faith .

The main reason why they invested in this: the main predictor of a happy life is the presence of significant and deep social connections. In fact, it turned out to make a family 2.0: a home-community of people who are united by common cultural values. This is the most important, everything else is growing on top of it.

In this house, in a magical way, there was a feeling of a family to which you want to give, in which you are happy to support you. You come home, knock on the next door and share something, or call somewhere. Or maybe you just complain about life.

This minimization of friction is very important in life; it cannot be compared in format with joint forays somewhere in the city or the countryside. Outings are some organized events. At home you see everyone real, learn something new about yourself through others. And you stay with a feeling of fullness.

I have not interviewed the guests yet while they are doing yoga.

(Makes a "dog face down.") Welcome. In the 2.0 family, it happens.

Why is it important to gather people around you?

This is a manifestation of one of my main values ​​- absolute freedom. Spending time with people you love is the ultimate manifestation of this value.

You have seven years of life and community in San Francisco and in Moscow. How do you combine it?

Every year I spend half a year in San Francisco, and several months in Moscow. Lucky: I have two houses. When I fly from Moscow to San Francisco, I feel that I will miss Moscow. And also in the opposite direction.

Now the world is so distributed that the concept of the house has changed. The house is not a geographical point. Home is a place where you are surrounded by loved ones.

What do you advise to do in terms of the community to people who have just moved from their homeland abroad?

It took me about two years to be able to call San Francisco my home. During this time a circle of important people appeared. In general, there are three ideas.

First, I would find predictors that allow one to find one’s people based on their values. There are many public people - you can read someone on Facebook, then try to find a meeting with such a person.

Secondly, it is possible to walk in places where people gather - conferences, meetings. For this there is Eventbrite in the States, Timepad in Russia. For example, I “click” with conscious, self-reflective people. Yoga or a master class about behavioral psychology is where I can meet such people. There, people usually went some way, came to some point. In a new place, I often just go to yoga, and then I go up to people who I liked for some reason.

Thirdly, in a completely unfamiliar place, I am looking for places for parties with a high probability of meeting people as free as I am. For example, something like Burning Man. When I was in Rio, I went to different nightclubs, but in the end I came to some kind of “Berner” party. There were simple and open people, I really liked it there. In Los Angeles, it was the same thing: at the Burning Man party, I made friends with a few cool people. These are for me predictors that people will share my values.

What is Burning Man for you?

Utopia, in which you can live a week of the year. This is a place where a set of values ​​is radically declared, and in such a way that people follow them. Values ​​about freedom of expression, freedom to be yourself, freedom to learn, freedom to be a child, play, fool around, admire.

You know this feeling, when you are a child and for the first time you see an elephant, you are like this: “Fuck, elephant!”. On Burning Man as well. The feeling of childish delight, which can be perceived by adults. You relish them, return back to the ordinary world, and think what you can do to transfer these values ​​to reality.

Technology Career

I remember a dozen cases where you joked with me about your hometown Taganrog, where you lived for 20 years. Do you miss him?

The main value is people. If I miss, then for some associations with people. In Taganrog my family. But now it hurts to come there. Everything is falling apart there, the historical heritage is not preserved, it does not get any better. The city is shrinking. It hurts to watch.

By the age of 25 you had a great career at Procter & Gamble in Moscow, a lot of money, a car, everything. Even the prospects to lead the European IT department in Geneva. But you left everything and became an entrepreneur. Why? Tired of washing powder?

Washing powder do not use until now!

In fact, for two reasons. First, I didn’t make enough sense of what I was doing. I did not see how my actions affect the world. Second: to be able to surround myself with the people I choose. Build your community based on your values. Corporations are large structures, they already have their own values ​​with which it is difficult to do something.

The story was like that. When I worked at P & G, we made a charity startup - a platform where you could earn money by sending your actions to orphanages. Then I realized for the first time that there may be people in a team who do not think about money, which are burning with ideas, they don’t have to be pushed, that is, to apply the whole arsenal of classical management. Self-igniting motivation. People are lit, you are fed up with this, and not vice versa.

At some point we went to orphanages and gave these same gifts for the new year. I still remember that feeling: my actions led to results, and how! It was like an awakening.

You took it and transported yourself to the States, was selected and in 500 Startups and YCombinator. However, the successful “Mint” project in Russia did not go to the States. Tell me how you brewed, and what happened in the end?

Mint was built on the basis of VKontakte, where there were many opportunities for developers through the API. In the states, the Facebook API was very limited after social games like Zynga. The product did not go, there were no opportunities, they suffered for a long time. Pivot, looking for options, different social networks took - Reddit, Tumblr. 6 months suffered.

And then one warm summer night Pavel Durov announced chatbot in the Telegram. I understood: here it is, a new platform. When sites appeared, I was still small, when mobile apps happened - stupid. And here: here are the chat bots, but here I am - young, beautiful, and at the same time I can realize it. Jumped into this story with the team. We slept for 4 hours. First they made a shop, then a platform for creating bots, then an advertising grid. When they came to Y Combinator, we had 11 million users in 5 months.

Who supported you the most during this turbulence?

Most of all - Andrei Doronichev, director of Google and the angel investor. When my project Mint earned on the Russian market, I wanted to drag it here, to San Francisco. And here everything is difficult. And here I meet a person who listens to my pitch and immediately gives tens of thousands of dollars of angel investment. Although we here in the States, in general, nothing at all was.

This is a story from the series “damn, since such a dude believed in you, he cannot be mistaken.” With this energy I went to 500 Startups, and when I was already chatting on chatbots, in Y Combinator in 2015.

Do you recommend Y Combinator to startups?

Yes. But looking back at my experience, I want to say that I overestimated the effect of accelerators on business success. Someone is suffering - they say, we did not take that for garbage. But for a start-up it is so long a game that there is not so much that depends on a three-month accelerator. So many startups after YC pivot!

It is important to have a trait called grit in the States, that is, perseverance. You cut, you fall face in shit, shake off and go on. The ability to feel the need of the world, people and the market, quality communication - these qualities are much more important. YC will not give anything that could not be obtained without these qualities. And the most important: YC will not give these qualities themselves.

As they say, the roly-poly wins. Well, look: your company Chatfuel, the designer of bots for Facebook, is growing vigorously from year to year. At the same time, the chatbot industry is experiencing a period of natural disappointment after the peak of HYIP. How to pass this period?

You know, according to the latest data, already experienced this period. We already have the “early majority” stage, a rapid growth is underway.

Experiencing this stage is hard. After Facebook opened the chatbot API, we had 147 competitors. No one knew what would happen: volatility, everyone is trying to listen to the guru, they look into the mouth of venture investors. Everyone constantly looked at each other, copied features. But these are all signals of the second order. And most importantly - this is a signal from customers. It is necessary to direct attention there. We managed not to inflate the team, we tried to do everything very carefully. Many competitors simply did not have enough runway to reach.

You needed money for the project - and Google's top manager invested in you. Raised Series A on Chatfuel - and did it not with someone, but with Greylock Partners and Yandex. I decided to organize a competition for product management - and top experts were on the jury. The feeling that you are looking for a "topman" in everything. What for?

So more buzz. I have one friend, he did the Hogan Assessment to me ... Judging by the profile, I am a real hedonist.

But in fact, it’s about the same value - about people. I get great pleasure from communication, entertainment and working with interesting people. I started a telegram channel for this. It is interesting for me to give out on a scale the image of my thoughts, so that the people to whom he responds might add or object. People who are on the same wavelength with me, have received a signal, we have increased the probability of meeting. And, of course, I will give advertising on the channel - 300 rubles per post will not be superfluous!

It seems that now they are asking for at least 500 rubles - see, do not be cheap. The question is: to win all the time in my life no one succeeds. How to develop your own philosophy of defeats and victories?

This is the strongest misconception that such a philosophy is needed. It is important to develop the philosophy of the buzz. If on the way you are kayfovo - then whatever the result may be, the result will be net positive. Modern education system with its metrics kills the essence - the joy of the process of learning and work.

Watching you, it seems that you live your life as fast as Barrichello drives. What helps to not burn out and to be grounded when you feel that you have accelerated too much?

I am driven by desire and interest, what will happen next. I could never answer the question: “Who do you see yourself in 5 years?” A year ago, I did not know that everything would be like this. Now I look at how I organized everything - and this is awesome. It's like a product to design your life: mindfulness practices, parties, boxing, etc. Now everything seems perfect. Simply space. But everything has more depth. There is a constant interest and feeling that you can learn how else it can be.

If we talk about how not to fade ... There are several levels, as in the Maslow pyramid. The foundation is my practice, my structure. Wherever I flew or flew away - I can include this structure: surfing, kundalini yoga, ordinary yoga, meditation. Then there is a middle level - these are tactical actions, vertical coherence. Short-term actions should be aligned with long-term goals. Sometimes you notice that you tactically do things that devastate. You make a diary of activities, you write every evening: if I want to do it, why. The third level is the direction in which I am moving. It's like a lighthouse, like a north star.

Entrepreneurship

Who is an entrepreneur? Describe a general psychological portrait.

I think this is a man with a deviation in the psyche and increased tolerance to pain. He can tolerate pain and do something about it.

Tech entrepreneurs are modern rock stars ...

Yeeh!

... But recently there are often articles about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in fact. Recently, scientists from UCSF conducted a study and found that entrepreneurial traits such as openness to new things, creativity and emotional involvement correlate with bipolar depression, ADHD. What can you say about this?

Falls into my definition. This is logical. Here you are an entrepreneur. At some point, you wake up and think: you need to save this planet. Therefore, it is necessary to urgently organize life on Mars. At the same time you believe that you can do it. A normal person in his mind generally does not allow himself to think about this. But you are an entrepreneur, immediately unfolding vigorous activity, organizing people, arranging a brawl. And then you wake up at some point and you understand: “Damn, what have I done. What the hell is Mars ?! ”But it's too late to do that.

The article you referred to at TechCrunch is very truthful.

What were the top 3 lowest points in your entrepreneurial career? And what did you do to get out of the pits?

1. When from uni came to work at P & G, was a moment. I come to meet the head of the line with experience of several decades. I say: “Hello, I'm Dima. We will be implementing an IT system to improve the performance of your pipeline. ” He looks at me and says: “Boy, go to $% #”. It was an important point to learn how to work with objections.
2. Moving to the States. Everything went wrong. Unknown market, unfamiliar country. It quickly became clear that, compared with the Americans, Russians do not know how to sell at all. But somehow I could, at 26, think that I could come to the most competitive place on earth and be successful. Cases at some point were so bad that I had to borrow money from a friend in order to somehow pay the salaries to the employees.
3. Change of motivation. When the motivation of competition and the desire to prove something to someone has disappeared. For example, to prove that the guy from Taganrog can compete with the guys from Stanford ... This motivation has changed to the inner one, based on my own values.

You often repeat the phrase "dementia and courage." Do these qualities are necessary for an entrepreneur?

These are my qualities inherent in me. They brought me to the most interesting moments in my life. But I find it hard to advise someone. Something inside of me cannot fully recommend them to be developed by all subscribers. (Laughs)

To be honest, I will say this: any action is better than inaction. Because in action you learn, and in idleness you let things in by default scenario, you begin to feel internal helplessness. You can't be in control of life, of course, but you are not even in control of making decisions yourself. And this is a very toxic garbage, it is ruining for a long time. I have seen many people with analysis paralysis, “analytical paralysis.” This is when you analyze everything, you find 200 reasons why something will not work - instead of doing and receiving feedback from this world.

Top 3 things you need to know to scale anything?

First, a fundamental understanding of how people make decisions. We are guided by emotions, rationality is just an advocate of our emotions. People are by nature irrational.

Secondly, choose the right cloud infrastructure.

Third, a bit of luck.

If now you were choosing between management career in a large company and your project, what would you advise him to weigh up?

I would advise to reduce the feedback loop, that is, those systems in life that give feedback on your actions.

School, university - this is fig systems, these are “amber organizations” that are not optimized for receiving feedback. The information there is outdated by default.

Cool feedback is to go and try to sell something, build a business, do something in a small startup. When you see your actions and their results, you will get life wisdom more quickly, and you will know yourself better.

The highest value is to know oneself and not to live by alien ideals. Either you know yourself and control your life, or it is controlled by someone else. It is quite possible that this will lead a person to a corporation, but it will be a conscious choice without different “what if there would be”.

Team and culture

You live in San Francisco, with most of your team in Moscow. What are you doing to make the company work smoothly?

One of our values ​​in Chatfuel is openness. We have no pronounced hierarchy. We introduce a number of principles of turquoise organizations. Maximum openness. Anyone in the company knows how much we earn every day. We do not have a hard division: technical people can do something that is in charge of sales. This is the foundation of self-induced motivation . People do not just do what they say is important to them, they take the initiative, take and bear responsibility for themselves.

Do you give people a black uniform when you go to work?

We try to get high. Even sweatshirts made such that they passed the face control of the pathetic Moscow club. And yet, this is our plan B: as a last resort, we will sell merchandise. (Laughs)

What you need to know to hire top staff?

What is their relationship with their parents. (Laughs)

The most important things to build a culture in the company?

1. Understand yourself. Because you can not zaimekat culture. Culture is not what is declared on the poster, but what you are doing.
2. Be honest with yourself. Understand the things that you have. And what is not. Here, without miracles - you have to start from yourself. Because if you are talking about openness, and no one can come to you and send in three letters, then this is no longer part of the culture. People feel a lie. You will not get culture either, and you will compromise yourself.

What are the three grocery businesses in the Valley that are the coolest?

I refuse to answer this question! Having lived through the HYIP cycle, I understand that my conscious choice is not to follow the HYIP trends. The most successful business is one in which the direction of movement and the mission of the company resonate with you, and you enjoy what you do.

Behavior change

As you know, changing habits is difficult. However, some succeed. You worked a lot in this area, went to vipasanna more than once, experimented with diets, sports, spiritual practices. So you need to know an adult to change?

Bhagavad-gita. Can nursery, with pictures. (Laughs)

1. Read about behavioral psychology to understand how we make decisions. With 90% of the decisions we make automatically. Daniel Kaneman wrote about it very well in his book “Thinking fast and slow”.
2. Learn patterns of behavior change. With a specific structure, plan. For example, there is the BJ Fogg model from Stanford, which explains how triggers, opportunities and motivation are interrelated.
3. Repeat from positive motivation. Find meaning, depth, get pleasure from the activity. Focus on the positive feeling, give yourself this positive feedback. To the brain gradually retrained.

Top 3 skills you would like for your children?

1. Be responsible for your life.
2. Do what you like.
3. Kayfovat.

Is biohacking good or not?

I have a good friend who formulated the "five principles of Matskevich." Guess what his name is.

Very difficult question. Keep going

Five principles:

1. The presence of deep emotional ties;
2. Sleep;
3. Healthy food,
4. Sex with a loved one
5. Physical activity.

If you expand, the psyche and the body formed tens of thousands of years. Pill something there to change - it's like a screwdriver poking around in the chip. But these five principles - they have been verified by thousands of years of evolution, I believe in them.

Mindfulness

Your room looks like we're in Bali. Coincidence?

We are aware of only a small percentage of the information read from all organs of perception. And therefore it is important for me to arrange the space in such a way so that it translates how I want to feel. Here, at home, I want to relax and recharge with energy.

Recently, two opposing opinions about meditation and the practice of awareness have often been heard. One is that this is the way to calm and release from anxiety, the second is that all this leads to neuroses and will not bring to good. What do you think about this?

It seems to me that all things related to awareness lead to the same thing: to understand yourself, to realize your place in the Universe. In this place is good, calm and harmonious. But to get there, you need to go through many different states, go through such things and look into such corners of yourself where it’s scary to look, it hurts and you don’t really want to.

But it’s like in “The Matrix” - you ate a pill and there is no way back. Yes, there will be sausage along the way, but this is part of this way. It is sold complete. And, in the end, it is always interesting to see what's next.