Igor Faletski

Date: March 16, 2017

Name: Learn how to scale a startup with Mobify’s CEO & Co-Founder

Presenter: Igor Faletski

There are key success factors which all successful entrepreneurs need to follow to have successful startups in technology sector. Brainstation Vancouver invites Igor Faletski, the Co-Founder of Mobify, to discuss his entrepreneur experience in tech space. In this presentation, Igor Faletski will share his leadership principles that help him start and scale his company. Entrepreneurs will learn his business insight on building the right culture in an organization.

Igor Faletski is the CEO and the Co-Founder of Mobify. He has passion to make mobile commerce simpler and effective. He is also the External Advisor Council for Simon Fraser University in the faculty of applied science. He was a Front-end Engineer for HSBC and Incognito Software before he started his business. Moreover, he was awarded BC Business top 30 under 30 in 2014 and he was the finalist in Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year 2013.

Fireside chat with Igor Faletski

Igor Faletski was born in Russia and came to Vancouver when he was 16 years old. When he was young, he loved computer and owning a computer was his childhood dream. While he was attending Simon Fraser University, he started to learn Startup. He originally had a career plan of becoming an engineer, but he saw the opportunity of growth in mobile phone platform. He founded his first company and eventually turned into Mobify.

Faletski believes the environment in the faculty of applied science was not a place for entrepreneur. It was a place to enhance the ability to build complex system. However, Faletski has the eager to work on hands-on for future education.

Innovation was his link to e-commerce. He explained his professor took his idea of bus schedule system to press release. The idea caught the attention from Translink. Afterwards, Faletski formed a company to sell that software system to Translink. Faletski emphasizes selling to government is a slow process, which can take over a year.

Faletski found his other co-Founder, who he met at school. Faletski believes school is a great place to meet future business partner. All Mobify’s co-Founders have similar background, so it was easy for them to divide up the work. However, they are weak in business. They needed to take additional business development courses and they had a mentor to help them in business. Eventually, they were able to take software from retail to enterprise consumers.

Faletski believes the key for success for is never stop learning. It is important for entrepreneurs to control how they learn. Entrepreneurs need to have enough passion on what their companies are going to be in the future.

“Jump in first, figure it out later”

“build parachute as you fall”

At the beginning, it was “sink or swim”. The pressure forced Faletski to take necessary actions to be successful. It helped them increase velocity. Now, Faletski concentrates on coaching program because he believes investing in people is the key to success. Helping team to level up is one of the top priorities.

Faletski mentions there are 3 core areas to be a strong leader.

• Visionary
• Relationship
• Execution

Visionary focuses on making good decision. Relationship builds on good foundation, and execution helps entrepreneurs keep track. As company gets bigger, entrepreneurs need to learn how to leverage with other employees. Building an effective communication culture is essential. Design mobile friendly environment is important because it can help entrepreneurs understand their core value from people.

“Culture fit is the key. The right culture gets the right people involve”

Faletski believes many great startups start in Vancouver, but they eventually branch out. Vancouver is a friendly environment for startups, but there is still a gap of global experience. Vancouver has great opportunity, but it is still at mid stage. Top talents and investors are still in United States. Faletski emphasizes there is nothing wrong with Vancouver; however, Vancouver is categorized in a friendly, but not competitive environment.

Faletski had the opportunity to interact with Microsoft. He defines Microsoft as a more customer centric. It is a good future partner. Faletski advices young entrepreneurs to join an existing startup to gain experience. By spending time in big waves that have long term vision, they will build up the foundation of their network. Faletski is looking forward to virtual reality, Bitcoin, and finance sectors. As for artificial intelligence, Faletski believes there is a big trend on machine learning. Machine learning is the key engineering skill in the future. There are more mobile companies coming in future.

“What is next to mobile? More mobile”

Faletski uses twitter following, podcasts, and books to enhance his business development.

Questions and Answers

At early stage, investors were not paying attention to Mobify. They notice Mobify when opportunity grows. Faletski is fortuned to have many small companies come aboard with Mobify. Culture is not the perks for Mobify; in fact, it is how Mobify executes. Mobify focuses on performance culture because execution is the key to compete with others.

Faletski focuses on 3 principles in performance culture.

1. Communication
2. Accountability
3. Leadership

Communication helps everyone to be on the same page. Accountability focuses on corporate goals and how to track these goals. Leadership helps new leaders know they matter to the company. Faletski believes investing in middle management is an important part of success.

In the hiring process, entrepreneurs need to ensure candidates have the culture fit. The next ten new hires are what determine the culture in company. Entrepreneurs should have conscious bias on hiring process. Company cannot be great without diversity. Faletski looks for curiosity and the characteristic of taking on execution.

Originally, Mobify shows only 1% traffic in retails. Now, Faletski notices people are now shopping everywhere. Entrepreneurs need to create shopping journey experience, yet people are looking for simplicity. Website is still strong in Canada and United States, but in Asia, WeChat is growing. Canada is still behind in payments, and consumer adoption in Europe is still ahead.

When it comes to investors. Faletski believes if the company is not successful, it does not matter how much ownership they own. They need to make sure investors fit and they should not just go for money. Faletski suggests entrepreneurs too look for vision fit, long-term fit, culture fit, an extension leadership. Advisory board is great as long as it has to address to the gap. Mentors are great if their messages align with company value. Moreover, entrepreneurs can form a peer group to evaluate each other.