A Conversation With Roland Pokornyik of Chamaileon

Designing an email is easy, right?

Just write copy, drag and drop a few pictures, change the font and hit send.

Right?

Wrong. Email presents some of the trickiest design challenges in the digital world. With old HTML standards, limited style commands and over 15,000 variations of clients to handle, email design, production and approval is a massive job. That's where platforms like Chamaileon come in.

Chamaileon re-imagines the workflow of email production — 10x faster without coding! Founder and CEO Roland Pokornyik Chamaileon zoomed in from Hungary to speak email with host Matthew Dunn.

Roland's entrepreneurial journey — bringing a company to global markets from Hungary — is fascinating. He's been involved in the growing startup scene in Hungary, and seems extremely optimistic about its future. Chamaileon, likewise, has a bright future, with hiring and growth in the works — also global! COVID reshaped the world, and entrepreneurs like Roland are adapting.

Host Matthew Dunn adds a personal plug for Budapest — 'most beautiful city'.

If you've ever contemplated going for it and starting your own company, this is a great conversation for you.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email my guest today, all the way from Hungary, Roland, Pokorny CEO and founder of Chameleon. Right, Roland. Welcome

[00:00:23] Roland Pokornyik: everyone.

[00:00:24] Matthew Dunn: Thanks. Good afternoon to you. Good morning to me, a husband and father of two girls. I think your LinkedIn bio.

[00:00:30] Roland Pokornyik: Yes, indeed.

[00:00:32] Five year olds,

[00:00:33] Matthew Dunn: 10 year olds, 10. Okay. You're going to be, you're going to be a busy guy for a few years here.

[00:00:40] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, thankfully my wife is pretty supportive of me running a business and, you know, having familial. Somehow together. So yeah, like many say you cannot be successful without a supportive vibe

[00:00:54] Matthew Dunn: in this case.

[00:00:56] Amen to that, bro. Fill people in a bit on, on Chameleon. You know, how long, what focus, how it's evolved. If that

[00:01:05] Roland Pokornyik: we started quite a while ago. Or first product was called EDM designer. It's still available. It's an email builder tool, the focused only on the pain point of creating emails without touching the email code at all.

[00:01:25] The we had the white label business. So we white label at the editor interface for various ESPs, and we also had a standalone product. But the more, more significant revenues came from the white label business. And after a while we decided that the. The actual customers or prospects we had conversations with were looking for something more complex, like an email production tool that they can create the emails they can deal with the design, the content updates, iterate on the messages and do it in a scalable manner.

[00:02:06] And the Vietnam. Really strongly built in team collaboration. And that's, that was sometime, I think in 20 16, 17 ish. Then when we got this interest and there were already some guys That's it for email Dave around by the time I knew it personally. And I know that you had the conversation with him, but there were some, some solutions already existing, but the, we haven't seen any that.

[00:02:40] Pretty much bundled together the no-code approach with this scalable email creation process. And that's

[00:02:48] when

[00:02:48] Matthew Dunn: the, would I be fair in summarizing that what you just said is you went from, sir, you went from a tool for a single person to really addressing the process for the organization.

[00:02:58] Roland Pokornyik: Yes, yes, exactly.

[00:03:00] Like the process of the workflow as a whole and the team collaboration that I think. By a few years ago, think it feels like two years ago. If you got interest from a huge publisher from the U S and they were looking for real time collaboration, meaning that. They had bunch of journalists working on their newsletters early morning and it took them too much time and they were looking for a tool where they could collaborate, like as if they were using Google docs.

[00:03:36] I see. And that's when we invested the, of. Resources, time and effort, all those combined to be at the real-time collaboration into Chameleon. And the, we were the first one to have it, but of course it's, it's not the biggest thing that you can do to be the first one, because others are also adding this functionality, I guess, you know, we speak to the same kind of customers and that's just how.

[00:04:02] The, the whole industry and the needs of female teams evolve.

[00:04:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, you're, you're being unduly modest. I got to say, because. Re real real time real real-time touching of email layout. Like I'm working on it, you're working on it a lot. As you said, Google docs. That is not a technically trivial thing to pull

[00:04:24] Roland Pokornyik: off.

[00:04:24] No, it wasn't. I'm not the technical person. Yeah. I think to something like nine months for a team of. Three to five people, not necessarily Dave, we're working on sometimes and other things, but I think apart from the real time collaboration, the, the undo redo was challenge. That was

[00:04:45] the

[00:04:45] Matthew Dunn: thing. Wow.

[00:04:46] Wow. Yeah. That's big. That's big. And,

[00:04:50] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, I think they would be able to talk about it for an hour or two

[00:04:56] Matthew Dunn: or three.

[00:04:57] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. Yeah. So it was technically a challenge and we know that it's, it's extremely useful for some customers. Many other still have a more linear process. So we need to combine somehow the, the more linear process with this real-time capability.

[00:05:18] And V we try to stay more of a service providers, like a software as a service provider rather than agency, but we do have customers to get started and what they are looking for nowadays. Is. It's still efficiency. So that's the key term everybody's looking for efficiency. So maybe it's not as exciting, but they are looking for efficiency and they want to be able to speed up the email production from.

[00:05:50] VX in some cases to Metro of days or hours, and that's what we have a solution for. And just for example, they get compared with taxi for emails, tenants will, or dispatch lack. So there are some providers in this space and of course, each of us have benefits. We have been focused on two key areas. One is the design flexibility.

[00:06:20] Sylvie tried to create a software that enables you to do as a March as possible from a design perspective. And the second thing is the HTML quality. Which is something that, you know, you hear that, okay, the emails are responsive and that's what everybody has been telling to their customers. I think from sometime 2013, when we started.

[00:06:48] Yeah, many providers thought that, okay, these are busy. Males are responsive, but if he's ran late moose or email on acid tests, it quickly turned out that, okay, they are mostly responsive, but that's a far from ideal. So that's very innovate and that's where we invest a lot of resources. But. The clients, this is a minor detail for them, at least for those who, who are looking for the efficiency part.

[00:07:19] So there are. Various solutions to the same pain point, just from a different respect, but, you know, that's why it's, it's great to have the chance to market your solution and talk to customers online pretty much anytime

[00:07:35] Matthew Dunn: time, anytime. Well, you're a you're again, you're being, you're being a duly modest. You, you have pretty much a global customer basis.

[00:07:45] Yeah,

[00:07:45] Roland Pokornyik: pretty much from day one, Sylvia never focused on selling locally. Yeah. Hungary is not a big market anyway. And the. There are on too many providers. ViDu have handful of hungry and customers, but not because we went other after them. It's more of us. Some, some people were just surprised and really applied in Hungarian to support message.

[00:08:12] Oh, are you from hungry? They said, oh yes, we

[00:08:14] Matthew Dunn: are. This a matter of fact. Yes, your English is fantastic. And my hungry. Non-existent unfortunately, least so far. Darn it. It's not

[00:08:24] Roland Pokornyik: an Duolingo, I guess, but

[00:08:26] Matthew Dunn: I would need to know different it's one of the few languages like the, the, the, the dot back to Indo-European Hungarian is is a very unusual branch of human language.

[00:08:37] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. They say it's among the hardest languages.

[00:08:41] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I've heard that as well. I've heard that as well. It's

[00:08:44] Roland Pokornyik: it's not, it's not too tempting for people to learn, unless unless you have a hungry on life or you, you just like, you know, Budapest, there are many people traveling to be the best, not in COVID times, but

[00:09:02] Matthew Dunn: will you open the door?

[00:09:03] Okay. I didn't start this, but I got a chance to. Budapest four years ago and it is easily the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I would go back to Budapest before I would go to Paris before I would go to New York before I'd go to London. It's my God. What a beautiful.

[00:09:23] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, I, I moved out from Budapest, but of course I, I visit the city quite often.

[00:09:29] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are more and more people. Mostly freelancers, you know, like digital nomads who choose to stay in the past. There are many coworking places. If you go out, I think you typically hear people speaking English. It's now pretty pretty usual for, for us. The startup scene is evolving.

[00:09:58] Not as fast as we would want it, but there, there are great opportunities in this regard and V have a strong technical talent in hungry, less, less strong from a sales and marketing perspective. So I think a good combination is, you know, if someone's. Is experienced in sales or marketing and is willing to start a company.

[00:10:26] They should try to stay for a few months, network, meet new people. Maybe they will be able to find a technical co-founder. There are many people looking for technical

[00:10:38] Matthew Dunn: co-founder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not, not, not, not easy anywhere. But, but the, the, you know, the model you mentioned. Let let let's let's let's say it's fair to say sales and marketing is a very, is a, is a more cultural and language based thing than say for example architecture, infrastructure and code.

[00:11:02] One of the, one of the email platforms that we partner with Back in dev team is in Romania, their front end to F team his in India, in their office and, and, and sales and biz-dev are us. And they get to coordinate around the clock, but it works. It works better for them somehow. Like, and, and that's, that's an economy that's quite new and unusual and different in, in, on any, any span of years.

[00:11:32] Like, wow, what a, what a world? All of a sudden, huh?

[00:11:36] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, of course, like COVID changed our lives too. As a company, we turned into full remote company, but most of the employees, firstly, are from Hungary or around neighboring countries. The. We are now hiring. We're not willing to hire three or four people.

[00:11:58] Some of them from brassio some other from, I think, somewhere from Africa, Pakistan. So it's going to be quite diverse. We have two people, one from Coratia and another one from. To a nurse, but she is she staying in Paris. So, you know, it's, it's just so nice that, you know, you can be at the company now from the comfort of your home and serve customers all over the globe.

[00:12:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And eliminating that, eliminating that, you know, 10 mile barricade of, you know, the officer's there. So you have to live with. Has has opened those thousand mile and 10,000. Barricades of, you know, having a, having a developer, having a colleague, having a co-founder in another country. I had, I had Barris Ergon as, as a, as a guest a while back founder of email platform.

[00:13:01] And he's a man of many parts to Turkey. First time I talked to him, he was in Ukraine when we had the interview, he's moved to Portugal, but I checked in on him and because he said, He had developers in Ukraine and he was telling me that they were trying to get some of their technical employees out of Ukraine via Romanian, get him to where he is in Portugal.

[00:13:25] So, so as we extend work, we also extend relationships and you know, our need to connect and care for one another.

[00:13:34] Roland Pokornyik: And I, I think of course the, the same happen to companies and to email teams. And that's why the collaboration aspect is extremely important for some of them. Of course, if their team is. Locally concentrated, then not as much important, but since most of the teams became distributed, I think that's one of the reasons why this need became even more visible and people were reaching out to us and to the fellow providers with similar needs.

[00:14:06] Matthew Dunn: And so COVID good for business.

[00:14:11] Roland Pokornyik: For some businesses. Yeah. But yes, for, for software as a service businesses, I think yes. For most of us it worked out and We, I think pretty much everybody reinvested the revenues into building something even better. So there was the innovation is still ongoing. Although email is, is the oldest online marketing channel, I would say, but the innovation is ongoing.

[00:14:41] And now from email industry perspective, I see that there's some consolidation. Going, going, so there are acquisitions, right? I expect to see more acquisitions coming. And that's pretty natural. What I usually question myself is what would happen in Nike 10 or 20 years. So that's the, those are the exciting questions and the it, I think I first started to.

[00:15:14] Have these questions. Then I went back to my high school to speak to young people about my carrier path and you know, the entrepreneurship because. I think I went to the same class with 30 people 50, 50 divided between girls and boys. And it's only two of us. So we were classmates in high school who actually founded the company.

[00:15:45] So I was asked to talk about entrepreneurship and I was like, okay guys, who uses email? And then. One or two guys showing their hands and from 30 people high school, Daver like, Well, five years old ish, a crew of 12 years old. And it was, I think like three or four years ago that I made this question and I was like, okay, what do you use them?

[00:16:18] And, you know, they used instant messaging. So not email. That's why? I don't know the answer to this question. This is something that I think about on a regular basis. Okay. Variably, they expect to see email in a longer timeframe. Yeah. I'm not sure what's your take on it.

[00:16:43] Matthew Dunn: I'm a get the opportunity. Speak at a conference in June and I made the mistake of sticking my hand way up and taking a big swing at a, at a, at a, not quite future of email topic, but, but definitely what are the factors that are, that are shaping it now?

[00:17:00] So I've been thinking about that as well. I will, I will give you the brief version of my take because the speech is not finished by any measure yet. I am an messaging platforms. Plural are, are, are, are definitely gonna Jostle in and, and take some attention space in some market space that perhaps email had to itself for a long time. As they remain proprietary, plural, many of them and not interoperate. I don't think, I don't think they'll really displace what, what we've been doing with email, because there's not one platform now there's a, there's a legislation in the EU that the DMA digital markets act, I think it's called.

[00:17:47] And that says if it, you know, if it passes an and is enforced two different things that says if, if, if Chameleon decided to create a messaging platform I am style platform. You could go to apple and say, you have to inter-operate with our, you know, Chameleon. I am platform. And in theory, apple would have to accommodate that.

[00:18:11] Will they do it. We'll see we'll we get peace on earth interoperability and all messaging platforms talking to each other. So there's really only one messaging platform that we'll see. You think keeping an email list coherent and clean is a pain in the butt while you're trying to do it with, you know, 50 different address and message formats.

[00:18:33] So, and this is accidental. Right. This is accidental. The, the fact that the spec and standards of email were fixed frozen a good quarter of a century ago. Right as the, as the net, you know, exploded as the digital infrastructure for the planet. And, and we got adoption of email and those, like those standards are.

[00:18:56] They haven't evolved a whole lot. Right? Fair, fair statement. Email standards. Haven't evolved a whole lot. I am, as I am was a later and a, and a follow on and late enough where it became a commercial, a competitive landscape rather than, oh, look, there's the standard. Let's compete on top of the standard if you will.

[00:19:18] So from that perspective, I, I just don't expect. Messaging to, to get its crap together and be singular rather than plural.

[00:19:28] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. Actually a friend of mine, he has a company called V cart and a day focused on messaging for Shopify owners. And, you know, I think he would be the one advocating for messaging.

[00:19:42] And I say that, okay, maybe it's true for a certain generation, but I don't think that. It would be convenient for them to enjoy the same kind of promotion in, in form of messaging compared to email. So either messaging will turn into something like email or the opposite way around.

[00:20:03] Matthew Dunn: Right, right, right.

[00:20:05] Right.

[00:20:06] Roland Pokornyik: In case of email, you can rather decide when you want to open it. Do you want to open it or not? And the. I know that there is a thing, what SMS marketing in the U S it's hardly existence here. You know, I would, I would really hate receiving messages I'm

[00:20:27] Matthew Dunn: with you. But why, why would you hate receive messages, marketing messages?

[00:20:31] Roland Pokornyik: I guess because of the push, because

[00:20:34] Matthew Dunn: you'd look right, because it would get your attention because if I texted you. You'd probably read it within five weeks. Yeah. And most likely, most, most likely it might. My phone literally just now in ping and I happen to have set the ping it's my best friend. So he's got his own unique ping and I had to, I had to go like this and hold my hands up.

[00:20:58] So I'm not looking to see what the message is. Well, I'm in the middle of a conversation with Roland from out from Hungary. W backtrack to your, do you think about the high school and, and to be fair, this is, this is what I would call a sample set of two statistically. I have two sons and, you know, they grew up with more than a fair amount of digital stuff in the house, but I watched their adoption of email as, as you know, as, as they grew into adults.

[00:21:26] And if I'd asked them at 12, at 14 email that had been like, eh, right. But at least then us, you know, us teenagers becoming adults. When they went through the college application process, all of a sudden they had to pay attention to email. Why? Because that was how that whole coordination and marketing was done.

[00:21:51] Colleges send a lot of glossy brochures and a lot of glossy emails. That was the on-ramp for them. And now I know both of them have at least three. Different addresses and they do stay on, you know, on top of their inbox. And stuff's like the workplace because it's still the neutral carrier email. The, the workplace and business will, will continue.

[00:22:19] To use email. And so I E your 12 year olds Migo had don't need it, but if they, if they have a job in 10 years and go, oh, I don't want to email a client, I'll do it on WhatsApp. It'll be like, I'm sorry. W w who asked you, right. Get in your inbox and pay attention and deal with it, right? Because it is a common carrier and an international common carrier, which is a big deal, right?

[00:22:43] Messaging platforms are our messaging platforms are quite fractured in terms of. Dominance in particular nations or regions, whereas email absent China specifically.

[00:22:55] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, China. We experienced that because my co-founder and the CTO guy had a chance to travel to China with a program for startups and oh wow.

[00:23:07] He started pitching about or email creation platform and they were like email yeah. Email. We use.

[00:23:16] Matthew Dunn: Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:20] Roland Pokornyik: So the, we have customers from that region, but only from Hong Kong. So

[00:23:26] Matthew Dunn: interesting. Interesting.

[00:23:29] Roland Pokornyik: It's a fashion brand. They are one of the first bigger customers for the company. And it's quite funny because we, we use the name EDM designer and EDM stands for electronic direct mail.

[00:23:46] And hungry and that's how this name came up. Fitch. It doesn't make any sense for people in the U S but it's still funny that we get some Australian and Asian customers because they use the same EDM expression for email or marketing emails. Oh, okay. Wow. Wow. And the, they do send the. Yeah, steel, but mostly to, not to China, but to Korea, Japan, and some other

[00:24:20] Matthew Dunn: international market.

[00:24:21] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. And they do have a website they ask for email addresses. So I guess there are some people still in China who using. It's maybe it's something that they view in the chat

[00:24:34] Matthew Dunn: queue. Yeah. Yeah. I had read if, if, if you have a Chinese colleague business contact, whatever, after you ask them for their email address it, the literally have to pull out their device and look and search.

[00:24:47] They won't necessarily know it. And I would bet businesses. Business cards are always a great diagnostic. Right? What what's on what's on top, right? It used to be business card with physical address and phone number, and then it was physical address, phone number. And then we started attaching the email address.

[00:25:05] And now you get salad, right? Like email address, LinkedIn address this address, Twitter address, like dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig thing. But I don't expect to see an and here's, here's a good we'll we'll make this the litmus test you. And I just came up. I would be surprised to see a messaging address on a business card because which one?

[00:25:28] Right? Which 1:00 AM I supposed to use? Is this a Weechat address? Is this a WhatsApp address? Is this a Facebook, you know, instant messenger. You'd have to give me context. You couldn't just give me a dress. You'd have to say Facebook. I am, here's my address. You know, we chat, here's my address, WhatsApp.

[00:25:46] Here's my address, all that crap. And I know Facebook wishes. They could consolidate it that, but I don't think they will. And I sure hope they do. Yeah,

[00:25:56] Roland Pokornyik: there are some solutions where you can look up your neck if it's available or certain social science. Yeah. But yeah, it's hard to, it would be hard to stay concise with various messaging platforms.

[00:26:09] Yeah, I, I think email is stay strong. It's just. It was interesting to hear your point on the third option. So maybe it just happens later. So that's what

[00:26:22] Matthew Dunn: maybe, maybe, but we're, we're at a, we're at a stage where that voluntary cooperative adherence to standards that, that helped the digital ecosystem grow so rapidly in the last 20.

[00:26:40] Is is falling off somewhat and I'll, and I'll pick on an email specific example to give us a different topic to go into on when apple announced their mail privacy protection last June, they said, well, customers are worried about spy pixels, whether or not that's true. I don't know, but that's what they said.

[00:27:01] And what they meant was because email can be told, go fetch this Emmet. A lot of, a lot of data got returned with that image, fetch and email marketers in particular and CRM companies. And so on utilized that, that, that one little bit of feedback that one little bit of this thing got open feedback, but when apple said we're going to mass that we're going to proxy that image fetch among other things, they stopped adhering to the HTTP specifications.

[00:27:35] The cash header specifications in related specs that say, for example, don't cash, this image, apple ignores so voluntarily and it helps to be a trillion dollar company or whatever they are now voluntarily said, oh, we don't quite have to play by the HTTP rules. Why? Oh, for these other reasons, we went through a stage where voluntarily, or because you knew it would grow your more.

[00:28:00] Playing by the playing by the RFC rule book, internet rule book for, for standards helped you go places and grow. And now you see companies starting to fudge it and starting to selectively ignore. If they think it's better for their business or apples, apples rationale their customers. So we, you and I could publish an IBM spec tomorrow.

[00:28:23] No one would write to it, even if it was brilliant. Right. Why? Because they think they're going to win with the proprietary, you know, I'll get my market, you get your market thing.

[00:28:33] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, I think I wasn't the one. To monitoring this part of the word too much. I'm more on stuck in the design and the process and the side of, of email marketing.

[00:28:47] I, I spoke about dark mode a live event that was one live event eventually in December in Valencia organized by Andrew Bonar.

[00:28:58] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, definitely on a while back

[00:29:03] Roland Pokornyik: he's organizing no. And other, even in, in Valencia. Yeah. It, or somewhere around, at least it's in, it's in the summer and it was nice.

[00:29:14] It's been, and it's for a few days, I think he's, he's trying to make people, email people just visit. He's not this nice country and just have fun. And, you know, that's, that's the best thing about a live event. And I heard that the

[00:29:32] Matthew Dunn: two live event yourself. Yeah.

[00:29:36] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah, this, this one in December, and that's where I spoke about dark board.

[00:29:41] So I, I, I dug deeper into dark mode and it's a nightmare. So you mentioned

[00:29:49] Matthew Dunn: a nightmare.

[00:29:50] Roland Pokornyik: I have to say that from the. From, you know, as a private person, I can say that the outlook produces the best dark mode experience. It's really surprising, but it does better in terms of readability and in terms of, you know, making the email.

[00:30:10] Enjoyable on dark mode. I think outlook does the best job, but for the other. So apple may or genius, each of them do it differently. And it's hard. It's again, the lack of standards for anything in email. And that's why, you know, it's, it's a painful. Cold email steel. And that's why solutions like ours can leave.

[00:30:36] It's our bread and butter. The, the, the lack of standards.

[00:30:41] Matthew Dunn: That's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. Good point. And, and, and not only lack of standards, but on the, on the actual looking at the email. And I think I read that there are something like 15,000 legitimate combinations. Email client plus operating system plus version plus probably localization.

[00:31:02] Like it's ridiculous. Oh, yeah.

[00:31:06] Roland Pokornyik: Maybe it's even, it's even more. I think what, what was funny, funny, I prepared for, for a few weeks for this specific presentation and I did my last round of tests and I decided to test create a testimonial that I only had famous brands color. Matched fit the high enough contrast text.

[00:31:30] And that's what I sent out. So colorful stripes with text, and then it turned out that, oh, apple does change the color. But in my previous version, I added. Austin image into this Stripe. And since it had an image, the color didn't change. And I thought that, okay, nothing changes in apple mail, but when I did my last round of tests, it turned out, okay, it didn't change it because there was an image.

[00:31:59] And then I was like, oh, come on. I need to add another 10 slides because I just realized it. But it was better to realize it before the presentation, because otherwise I would have to. It's nothing you need to worry about.

[00:32:15] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You need to worry about it. Turns out it is you yourself have a design background?

[00:32:22] Roland Pokornyik: No, I'm not a designer or originally I'm an online marketer and economics. That was my original. But I, I came very interested in design a few years ago from a UX UI perspective and also from a conversion perspective. And I think we started dealing with design from the day we came up with the idea for this product.

[00:32:53] Yeah. But I, I don't actually design things myself. So I, I wouldn't say. I would be able to assign you a nice looking email because that's just not me. I'm more of a, I would say I'm a half geek person. I never became a developer, but I understand them. I know what they say. Yeah. I understand designers I'm somewhere in between.

[00:33:20] I'm interested more in the figuring out. Why do people do what they do? When they see something. So it's, it's not about how nice something it is, but how, how effective or how yeah. How highly compared thing I'm, I'm a marketer. So I look at conversions.

[00:33:41] Matthew Dunn: No, no that's well, and Martin, you know, marketers like applied design, applied communication, you know, applied, fill in the blanks where at the coalface, I, I, I think the phrase is.

[00:33:54] Interesting. I, I find myself going back in my head to your, your observation that out of your 30 classmates, only, only two of you ended up as entrepreneurs. My observation is as a fellow entrepreneur, it it's irksome that entrepreneur has become. Kind of the fad of the day rockstar term, immuno everyone, all of a sudden everyone's an entrepreneur and I'm like, it's harder than it looks kids.

[00:34:28] It's not all glamorous. It's a hell of a slog. It's a lot of work. It's not predictable. Like what, what, what did you tell those high school kids about being an entrepreneur?

[00:34:41] Roland Pokornyik: I thought them, I think a lot about the upside downs and that's something that you have to prepare for. I mean, mentally, and you know, if you start a company where you need to invest your money and not only time, or, you know, Viva, I wouldn't say lucky enough lever, the lever worked a lot to get investment in the very beginning, but the.

[00:35:10] We managed to buy out the, the investor. It was, it was a painful thing to get the investment, especially because I broke my big tool just that morning with a kettlebell that fell off a shell shelf. And that's how I pitched for, I don't know, like 50 minutes to get the investment and it was. It was the start of, you know, enjoying the pain as an entrepreneur.

[00:35:40] It was physical bane. So it's, it's not what you normally would expect, but I think that was a message to myself saying that, okay, you got. Hey, man, this will be tough. Anyways,

[00:35:55] Matthew Dunn: if you want to be an entrepreneur, step one, get some kettlebells.

[00:36:00] Roland Pokornyik: Oh, I've heard advice, but that's, that's how it just happened. So there are many upside downs, I think, even for those who, who, who managed to raise a bunch of money and that's how they build their, their company.

[00:36:17] We have our own. Startup mafia, not in the same vase or VR, not trying to murder other entrepreneurs, but you know, the, they sit down together and exchange ideas and discuss challenges, you know, do introduction. Like you would do if you, if you've ever in a portfolio company for a bigger VC, with a great track record, it's something similar.

[00:36:50] And that's where the picket exchange ideas about pretty much everything. And, you know, there are many who. Who are just going down, who are giving up after a few years. So the, the, the people who are in this group changed a lot, and we see that, I think what's what would be important for those who are looking to start a business is just the networking part.

[00:37:15] And being through relationships, don't, don't jump right into it. Or if you feel that, you know, you are prepared, It doesn't matter the sooner, the better that's what I say because I was 27. I think they'll work 20 something, 26 man to be in. We started the company and I already had my first kid first. And.

[00:37:46] Lifestyle. So then this other guy who I mentioned to you, the founder of this messaging company, they founded the company back in the university at 20, the age of 20 or something like that. And they, they, Dave were so smart. They managed to grow fast. They got investment from visibility, invest investors also from the U S so I, I try to encourage young people when I see the passion.

[00:38:19] And when I see also the, that kind of, you know, endurance or. Go wherever they want to. And David do it, that kind of attitude. And that's what I say that. Okay. Go for it. No matter if you will say it doesn't matter, you know, there's a place to live. You can stay with your family. Your costs are pretty low.

[00:38:43] Why don't you just do it? Yeah.

[00:38:45] Matthew Dunn: So, no, I, that, that, that's, that's really good advice. And I mean, if, if it's not, it's not a screw. To found a company and have it not turn into a huge business. Like in fact you have 90%, 90% probability that's, what's going to happen. Think of it as an education. Think of it as, I mean, you're going to learn stuff.

[00:39:07] You won't learn any other way, particularly about yourself, I think. And in your twenties if you do that do you have a lot of years left to, to take those lessons and do additional things with.

[00:39:20] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. Yeah. And then sometimes go out to a startup evens. I, I like to speak with those who are in the, who are young and they are very early on their journey because they are the ones who, who can make a big difference in a few years.

[00:39:40] I'm I'm just always trying to encourage them to do it guys. Yeah. If you need help, just let me know. I can intro you to a few people, whatnot. So I think the pay it forward mentally is, is, is the reason why I like. Yeah, I think a software start up, you know, if we are not a startup in, we, we're not just starting now.

[00:40:06] So we've been around for a few years, but we are still not large business. We are small and I don't think that this business would have a hundred employees anytime soon. So maybe that's not something that we would aim for, but we are. We just wanted to focus on a few things, right. We can stay strong and have a certain percentage of the market.

[00:40:30] Pretty much that's it. And but you know, you, you can dream big, but I I'm very much in favor of B2B businesses because that's where you can charge money. And that's very rare. Somebody will pay for what you provide them. Yeah, I don't understand. B2C

[00:40:50] Matthew Dunn: season is a tough, no, thank you. Tough turf, man. No, I, I agree with you there, there are

[00:40:58] Roland Pokornyik: some for whom it paid, pays out on the, or another, but it's so much harder,

[00:41:05] Matthew Dunn: right?

[00:41:05] It's a scale game. Although I'll give you one, I'll give you one B to C niche that, that I think is a little bit. And, and that's, that's really blossomed in this COVID post COVID period. And that's specifically knowledge learning education selling a course or a package of knowledge on filling the blanks, whatever it is.

[00:41:32] Yeah. I find I I've been around it. Right. Just edges. And it, it, it feels a bit B to B, even though it's B to C. Because it's still, you know, like can be completely digital. It's, it's, it's about, you know, stuff between your ears. It's not physical, tangible shipping kind of stuff like that. Products to consumers I'm with you.

[00:41:56] But, but the, the, the knowledge creation knowledge economy is, is an interesting and growth niche for, for consumers. I think it's exploded in the last year or so.

[00:42:11] Roland Pokornyik: You know, the page news letters

[00:42:13] Matthew Dunn: or newsletters. Yeah.

[00:42:14] Good

[00:42:14] Roland Pokornyik: example. Yeah. That's a, that's something I, I encourage people to do instead of starting a business when they early on, because yeah, because I think you get to know a community that you would be able to market to if you have any solution. So I think it's a good entry point.

[00:42:35] Yeah. It's low effort, but you would have faced very similar challenges as if you were starting any sort of business. Yes. And yes. And if you, if you have a paid newsletter, you will need to provide value. So you feel research one topic very deeply. You will get to know. Those people, their needs. So I think that's a good starting point.

[00:43:02] Matthew Dunn: Great. That is terrific. That's just terrific advice. There's a, there's a, I think he's Australian, there's a writer blogger. I don't know what you want to call him. A man who makes a lot of words named Tim Denning, who I, I read fairly frequently on, on medium. And he said, he said something very similar to what you just said.

[00:43:20] He's like, okay. Make yourself write and publish or send every week for a year straight by the end of that year, your life will be different. And I was like, Hmm, that's pretty good advice.

[00:43:36] Roland Pokornyik: Yeah. And I think that's, I, I, I was surprised to see that the paid newsletters are a thing now, but yes, for some

[00:43:48] Matthew Dunn: reason, sub stack and like emails got this whole.

[00:43:52] Odd new life going on. Is it publishing world

[00:43:57] Roland Pokornyik: publishing is really strong. So we speak a lot with publishers and many of them don't have a paid newsletter, but they, they are used the third group so much strong, stronger. So I think. It would keep growing for, I don't know how many years, not too long. So it's, I would think it's, it's a hype and I, I'm not sure if it's, if it's really a change, if there's really a change in the way you would expect to consume news or Learn about new things.

[00:44:32] Yeah. If that would be really your inbox, maybe if there are some tools that can help you consolidate or, you know, be selective with what you consume, then PBS think maybe vide became so much powerful. Is that people. Stay at home because of COVID and they, they didn't have too many face-to-face conversations and some topics that they exchange with their fellow colleagues.

[00:45:05] Those were the topics that they got news about from the newsletters. So somehow I think maybe somehow it's related with the change of. You know, all these was and everything. So, so this rapid change in our personal and professional lives, maybe that's somehow influenced it, but I'm just guessing. So I'm not,

[00:45:28] Matthew Dunn: I wonder, I wonder, I mean that one's going to be talk about our 10 years, you know, sort of 10 years, what's going to happen window.

[00:45:37] Well, let's take it as a given. We'll still be emailing people in 10 years. I think that's fair. Right? What will be, what will be the modalities of use of email? I wonder if straight up marketing emails have, have, have a longterm have the same long-term viability because the inbox is so darn noisy.

[00:46:01] Natural constraints of email. Like they're not that rich and they'll never be legit media bundles, email messages and, and I'm kinda dotting to something that's surprised me about three weeks ago, one of the big. Enterprise email platforms in the U S Zeta global actually partner for campaign genius bought a newsletter company, our CMX, and I was like, that's unusual.

[00:46:32] Right? You think ESP, you know, sends in volumes. Yeah, production flow and all that other stuff like newsletter company. But I got to tell you if, if there's if there's a company that wants to stay on brand relationship with me, a regular high quality content that interests me newsletter is has a very different bid for my attention than sell, sell pitch, pitch, sell, sell pitch, pitch, right.

[00:47:00] Cause I just get, I may tolerate it, but it's true. It's repetitive and something new, something useful, something insightful on a fairly regular basis. The content that's valuable for its own reasons. Hmm. That's interesting. Kind of a content marketing play in email.

[00:47:22] Roland Pokornyik: And do you pay for news letters?

[00:47:25] Matthew Dunn: I do.

[00:47:26] Boy. Did you just tee that one up and let me swing at it? Yeah, there's a newsletter and I mentioned it frequently. There's a newsletter called written by one guy, Ben Thompson that I pay for. And it's, it's pretty much the top pick for me to read every morning in my inbox because he's wicked, wicked smart, and incredibly prolific on.

[00:47:48] And I'm like, of course they pay for strategic reality. My God, that's such, such valuable insight for me. And he doesn't really commercialize it. Stratec reach product is Stratec Curry, right? He's not doing strategically to sell, you know, servers or cloud computing or something like that. He could, but I don't think he would.

[00:48:07] Do you ever newsletters?

[00:48:08] Roland Pokornyik: No, I'm not. I think it's only because I. I consume, I focused. My learning patterns or, you know, I focus my interest on the certain topics and there aren't too many use letters that would be relevant to me, or at least I'm sometimes be reluctant to lead long form emails. So I'm, I'm, I'm the person who's trying to scan information, get as much as possible fast and.

[00:48:46] Sometimes I feel that it's, it's not the, not the newsletter or, you know, I just visit regular sites that I, I come back to them. I go back to look for what I'm looking for.

[00:48:58] Matthew Dunn: Gotcha. Gotcha. We'll roll the neck and tie you up for an hour. And we could do most of that. Just just talking about your journey as an entrepreneur.

[00:49:07] I do want to wrap up to free you up for your next meeting, but. Quick question. You said you're doing your prepping for a half iron man.

[00:49:15] Roland Pokornyik: Yes, I do. What,

[00:49:17] Matthew Dunn: what, what happens in a half iron man?

[00:49:21] Roland Pokornyik: It's 1.9 kilometers swimming as a warmer than 90 kilometers. I don't know, in mice. So it's 60 miles or something in cycling and then a half marathon.

[00:49:36] So it's.

[00:49:37] Matthew Dunn: Wow. That's

[00:49:40] Roland Pokornyik: very, and the goal is somewhere around six hours.

[00:49:42] Matthew Dunn: Good for you. Good for you. That's awesome. You'll have to, you have to drop me a note and tell me how it went. Yeah.

[00:49:50] Roland Pokornyik: I I'm confident that I will be able to do it. It's already worked up from a health side. Yeah, because I lost like 15 kilos that's I don't know, in pounds, but a lot.

[00:50:03] It's a lot.

[00:50:05] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You look great. You look great and stay away from the. By the way when you're getting close, now

[00:50:14] Roland Pokornyik: you can enjoy yourself while you're cycling too. So it's not a problem, but I think that's, that's like a last note advice to anybody building a business is to take a close eye on your health.

[00:50:30] That's, that's really, really important to be in a good shape. And you struggled with any business related challenges, but it's easy to give up on working out when you have other problems.

[00:50:43] Matthew Dunn: Great advice. Well, we'll wrap my guest. Thank you for making the time to connect has been rolling. Pokorny tech founder, CEO of Chameleon.

[00:50:53] Roland. It's really been a pleasure.

[00:50:55] Roland Pokornyik: Thanks for having me. We met you in. Awesome. I mean, getting my name. Thanks.

[00:51:02]