Mikita Mikado de PandaDoc

Jeroen: Hi Mikita. It’s great to have you on Founder Coffee.

Mikita : Bonjour Jeroen. Je suis heureux d'être ici.

Jeroen: You’re the Founder of PandaDoc. For those of us who are not so much into documents and things, what does PandaDoc exactly do?

Mikita: PandaDoc helps to make sales customer-centric with beautiful digital proposals, contracts, signatures, payments, and workflows around those documents. That’s what we do.

Jeroen : S'agit-il principalement de concevoir des documents, ou plutôt des signatures ou des flux de travail, ou encore de tout cela de manière très horizontale ?

Mikita: All of that in a very horizontal way. We basically plug into your CRM system, allow you to build a library of templated collaterals – be that proposals, contracts or quotes. Then your sales team can save tremendous amount of time generating those documents, delivering those documents to the end customers, collaborating with the customers, and negotiating the deals. Then finally, enabling the end client to sign on the dotted line.

Jeroen: Yeah, yeah. It’s the whole document process. But all around sales, if I hear it well.

Mikita : Oui, nous nous concentrons sur les ventes.

Jeroen : D'accord. Est-ce parce que vous étiez vous-même vendeur auparavant ou d'où cela vient-il exactement ?

Mikita : Eh bien, l'idée que nous pourrions dire est née d'une douleur interne. Je devais vendre. Il y a de nombreuses années, mon cofondateur et moi-même dirigions une société de logiciels et nous construisions des logiciels pour d'autres. Nous devions faire beaucoup de propositions de vente, et nous trouvions le processus extrêmement fastidieux, et nous voulions construire quelque chose qui résoudrait ce problème interne.

We built a product, not PandaDoc, had a decent success with that product, and the product aimed at just small web design agencies, helping them to do proposal automation. Then we discovered that there are a lot more documents involved in the sales process, and a lot of the clients that purchase that product used it for more than proposals – for contracts, for SOWs, for invoices, and yada, yada.

Yeah, that’s the story behind PandaDoc. I’m going to say four and a half years ago, maybe even five years ago, we came up with the idea, a horizontal, all-in-one, quote-to-cash software. We launched it about three and a half years ago.

Aujourd'hui, PandaDoc aide près de 10 000 équipes de vente à être centrées sur le client et à être plus efficaces.

Jeroen: Yeah. You’re saying you had a software business with your co-founder. Is your background in software?

Mikita: Yeah. I’m a software engineer by trade.

Jeroen : Et vous êtes originaire du Belarus, n'est-ce pas ?

Mikita: That’s correct, yeah.

Jeroen : Vous avez grandi en Biélorussie et avez étudié l'ingénierie logicielle. Qu'avez-vous fait exactement par la suite ? Avez-vous travaillé avant de créer une société de logiciels avec votre cofondateur ou était-ce la première chose que vous avez faite à la sortie de l'université ?

Mikita: I had all kinds of jobs. I had jobs when I was a kid. I used to wash cars, and I used to sell berries on the farmer’s market. Then I used to do work in construction, and sell whatever I can sell, be that Pogs. I don’t know if you remember those or Nintendo cartridges or mobile cell phones. You name it.

Then I got this really good opportunity to go to the US. I took it, had about $400 in my backpack, and I flew to Honolulu, Hawaii. There, I had all kinds of random jobs. I had been bartending. I worked at the airport flipping burgers, at a café. I did moving. I did cleaning. Like, you name it. All kinds of labor jobs you can do out of Craigslist, I probably did them all.

Enfin, peut-être pas les rencontres occasionnelles. J'ai zappé celle-là, mais pour l'essentiel, je me suis occupé.

Jeroen : Était-ce avant ou après avoir étudié l'informatique ou l'ingénierie, ou pendant la même période ?

Mikita : Bien sûr.

Jeroen : Bien sûr, d'accord.

Mikita : Oui.

Jeroen : Une main pour retourner les hamburgers et l'autre pour coder.

Mikita: It’s funny, but that actually what it was. During the day, I was flipping burgers. During the night, I was trying to catch up on school back in Belarus because while in the US, I had to transfer to study remotely, so that I get a degree. Plus additionally, in Belarus, if you don’t go to school, you go to military for a couple years, and it’s very different. For the most part, you just shuffle snow there, so I figured I better get that degree.

Jeroen : Oui. Êtes-vous allé aux États-Unis avec votre famille ou tout seul ?

Mikita : Il n'y avait que moi.

Jeroen : Il n'y avait que toi.

Mikita : Oui.

Jeroen : Quelle a été l'opportunité qui vous a poussé à partir aux Etats-Unis sans votre famille, pour étudier à distance ?

Mikita: I mean, the average salary in Belarus was something like $300 or $400 a month. It’s not that much, as you can imagine. So I wanted to be able to build, I always wanted to have and run a business. I thought that, I don’t know why, but probably the American dream is very well-marketed, so I really thought America is the best place to do that.

Oui, je voulais faire quelque chose de significatif dans ma vie. Je voulais avoir une vie décente, une vie décente pour ma famille. J'ai donc fait ma valise et je suis parti aux États-Unis.

Jeroen : Cool. Avez-vous fait quelque chose entre vos études et cette startup avec votre cofondateur ?

Mikita : Oui, j'avais une boutique de conception de sites web. Lorsque je venais d'arriver aux États-Unis, j'ai fait toutes sortes de boulots au hasard, mais j'ai commencé par créer un site Web et par faire un peu de référencement sur ce site, en augmentant, en réduisant le trafic, en générant des demandes de renseignements sur Craigslist à propos de la conception de sites Web. J'en ai fait une petite entreprise.

J'avais un employé et moi-même, et j'avais aussi quelques personnes que j'avais engagées au Belarus. Mon cofondateur était l'un d'entre eux, et nous étions déjà amis à l'université. C'était en fait notre premier voyage. Nous avons créé des sites web ensemble.

Jeroen : D'accord. Puis vous êtes passé d'une manière ou d'une autre à la création de logiciels.

Mikita : Oui, nous avons commencé par des sites web, puis nous avons créé un certain nombre d'extensions pour différents systèmes de gestion de contenu web. Nous les avons mises en ligne et avons commencé à les vendre. Grâce à ces extensions, nous avons également obtenu des clients qu'ils personnalisent, modifient ces extensions et fassent des choses plus complexes.

At some point, I decided to pack my things, and go back to Belarus to be able to hire people, and build a software business – which is what I did. I want to say that was 2007 when we started that company. We grew it to like 30 employees. Then Quote Roller, which is the proposal product, and PandaDoc came around. That’s another story.

Jeroen : Votre cofondateur est-il toujours basé au Belarus ?

Mikita : Non, il a bougé.

Jeroen : Il a déménagé ?

Mikita : Il a déménagé aux États-Unis. Il y a deux ans et demi ou trois ans. Il dirige aujourd'hui notre bureau de Floride.

Jeroen : D'accord. Il semble que vous ayez toujours été intéressé par la création de startups. Qu'est-ce qui vous intéressait tant dans ce domaine ?

Mikita: I don’t know. I just like building. I loved Legos when I was a kid.

Jeroen: It’s the building.

Mikita : Oui. J'aime le processus, mettre les choses en place, les faire démarrer, les voir réussir ou échouer. J'aime ça.

Jeroen : Y a-t-il des choses spécifiques ? S'agit-il de plus d'entreprise, de plus de produits, de plus de marques ou de tout cela à la fois ?

Mikita: All of them, yeah. I wouldn’t say there’s one that I love the most. I like them all.

Jeroen: If you see yourself building these things, are there any other startups or founders that you’re looking up to that you’re like, “Wow. The things they built are just amazing. I wish we would be more like that?”

Mikita: I mean, I look up to a lot of people and a lot of companies. I try to learn as much as possible from them. If you think of any well-known SaaS brand, there’s going to be a story of a lot of work and a lot of struggle behind them. It’s really, really hard. Yeah, there are a lot of people and a lot of companies that I look up to and I admire.

Jeroen : Oui, c'est vrai. Quelle est votre ambition avec PandaDoc à l'heure actuelle ?

Mikita : Il y a trois choses auxquelles mon cofondateur et moi-même tenons beaucoup.

La première est que nous voulons apprendre et progresser, et améliorer ce que nous faisons. Deuxièmement, nous voulons avoir un impact, et lorsque nous avons lancé l'entreprise, l'impact que nous voulions avoir était d'avoir environ 1 000 entreprises utilisant notre produit. Cela semblait vraiment, vraiment cool. Puis cela a changé. C'est devenu 10 000. Puis cela a changé. C'est devenu 100 000. Puis ça a encore changé.

It was like, okay, so making our customers successful is really cool. It’s amazing. It’s a hell of an impact, but how about we look around. Dude, people are building careers at PandaDoc.

We’re having a blast, they’re having a blast. We’re all learning. We all are making an impact. The impact that the business started to make on people’s lives, on their careers is also huge. The internal impact aspect of it added, is quite amazing.

If I can help someone to build a career, hell yeah, that’s awesome. The impact is a very big part of the ‘why we are doing what we’re doing’.

Then finally, we want to have fun. As long as we’re learning, as long as we’re making an impact, and we’re having fun, we’re good. Those are the key values and they say that values aren’t goals, and I would agree with that, but for me, they are so close together that it’s very, very hard to separate.

Yeah, I want PandaDoc to be a successful business. I want PandaDoc to be a place where people are learning, where we are making an impact on the world, on the community we’re in, and then I want to have fun while all of that is happening. I want the same for our clients as well. I want them to have fun while they’re using our product.

Jeroen: Yeah. Now, I saw that you’re well on the investment track right now. How, because nowhere in these values or goals, I heard about financial goals, while probably for the parties you took on board, this is the most important metric? How do you combine these things?

Mikita : Comment puis-je combiner les mesures financières et ?

Jeroen: The fact that their goals are different from yours. Goals align with impact somehow, but it doesn’t align with fun, and it doesn’t so much align with learning.

Mikita : Je pense que oui. Je pense vraiment que c'est le cas.

Jeroen : Avec l'apprentissage ?

Mikita: Yeah. With both actually – having fun and learning. It’s impossible to build a successful software business if you’re not having fun. What we do is highly cognitive work. You can’t perform highly cognitive tasks out of fear or be bored to death, and innovate.

It is just that those things don’t work together. It’s not how our brain works. Yeah, I think actually they do go hand in hand.

Now, in terms of the impact, most definitely this is aligned with financial results; as long as our customers are happy. Well, first, actually, as long as your employees are happy, then your customers are going to be happy. Your customers are happy, you’re going to do well. So it’s all connected. It’s all intertwined.

Jeroen : Oui. Quels sont les moyens que vous utilisez pour vous amuser ?

Mikita : Quels sont les moyens que nous utilisons pour nous amuser ?

Jeroen : Qu'est-ce que cela signifie dans l'entreprise ? C'est mettre un baby-foot ou quelque chose comme ça ?

Mikita: [laughs] A foosball table…

Jeroen: Today I read on The Intercom Blog that they don’t put a foosball table because work is serious, and you shouldn’t put foosball tables because that’s not serious.

Mikita: I see. We don’t have one in San Francisco. We might have one in Belarus. We do have a ping pong table though.

Jeroen : Une table de ping-pong ?

Mikita : Oui. Nous avons une table de ping-pong, pour être tout à fait transparents.

First of all, I think for work to be fun for anyone, it’s important to own what you do. It’s important to have a stake at whatever is that piece of work you’re involved in. It’s important to understand the vision, the mission and the goals. It’s important to understand the direction of the company. If you’re all in and you get it, then it’s a lot more fun than to just do the job, if you know what I mean.

Jeroen : Je comprends ce que tu veux dire.

Mikita: I don’t know why I’m doing it. I don’t know what’s the purpose of it, what’s the point of it. I was told to do it, and I’m paid, so I’m doing the job. Yeah. When things are not like that, when things are mission-driven, vision-driven, when you truly care, it is a lot more fun, and when you own what you’re working on, when you’re completely bought into the stuff you do.

Jeroen : Cool.

Mikita: I don’t want to pretend we’re doing an amazing job on that front. But we try to be there. Like I try to basically enable others at PandaDoc to own their part of PandaDoc. That’s number one.

Jeroen : Propriété.

Mikita: Yeah, ownership. Number two is the ability to travel, ability to interact with other cultures. I mean, half of our business, half of our people are in Belarus, and the other half is in the US, and we try to blend people together, blend the offices, blend the functions within the business. It’s not easy, and it requires a lot of work from each employee, but it’s different, and we try to be different.

We try to mix and match cultures, and there’s a travel budget. There’s an education budget. There’s a budget for everyone to have fun. So whenever we’re doing really well, we travel somewhere together, and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, then finally, just regular, I guess, startup-y ways of having fun. We do have parties. I think a lot of people at PandaDoc are friends, so we go to shows together. There’s this weekend, a couple of folks from Belarus visited. We went surfing.

Notre vice-président chargé du marketing est venu, nous avons donc formé un petit groupe. Le week-end précédent ou les deux précédents, nous avons organisé un barbecue. C'est le genre de choses que vous faites. Beaucoup d'entreprises le font, et nous aussi.

Jeroen : Revenons aux choses sérieuses. Que faites-vous au quotidien ?

Mikita: What is it that I do on the daily basis? At this point, I communicate. Really, that’s what I do on a daily basis. Yeah, I mean, there are 160 people at PandaDoc, right. When we were at 30, I would answer this question, “Oh, I do some things on product.” Or like, “This.” Or, “That.” Or, “Blah, blah, blah.” But I don’t really do anything anymore.

All I do is talk. That is actually my most important job right now, to communicate the vision, the goals, the mission, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and just repeat it over, and over, and over, and over.

Then I work with the executive team and the rest of the company on strategy of the company. Again, a couple of years back, this was very vague, and it’s like what do you mean ‘strategy’? What do you mean you ‘work on strategy’?

Mais aujourd'hui, cela devient beaucoup plus tangible. Je travaille sur la stratégie. Je fais beaucoup de planification. J'essaie de m'assurer que la stratégie est solide, de la soumettre au stress, d'obtenir un retour d'information, etc.

Yeah, then finally, of course, external relationships – be that with investors or analysts or other CEOs or we’ll also stop there. Oh, and partners, yeah. That’s a big one.

Jeroen: Yeah. You’re mentioned that strategy became much more tangible now. What does that mean?

Mikita: It’s like I actually devote a lot of time to it, and I do it. Yeah. That’s what it means.

Jeroen : D'accord, vous faites de la stratégie.

Mikita : Oui.

Jeroen : D'accord.

Mikita: It’s like basically I would probably build 10 presentations a quarter on all kinds of different topics. There’s a master presentation for the company’s existence. Then it changes over time a little bit, gets tweaked, and it needs to be messaged, and blah, blah, blah. Then out of it, there is a yearly plan, and that gets tweaked, and that gets messaged. Then, there’s a quarterly plan, and that gets tweaked, and that gets messaged. So on, so forth.

Jeroen : Avec toutes ces choses, qu'est-ce qui vous fait avancer ? Qu'est-ce qui vous donne de l'énergie ?

Mikita : Qu'est-ce qui me donne de l'énergie ?

Jeroen: Yeah. You’re doing all these things for years now. How do you keep going?

Mikita: I don’t know, actually.

Jeroen : D'accord.

Mikita: I don’t know. I wouldn’t be able to answer precisely what gives me energy. I think I’m a normal human being, so winning definitely helps to release the right hormones, and keep me excited, and motivated towards inventing something, coming up with some kind of ideas. Or I really like finishing projects, however they come out, before that successful or unsuccessful. I just like getting things done. Interacting with people, that also makes you a lot happier. Yeah. Those things help you move forward, and of course, my family is a huge support.

Jeroen : Vous avez une femme et des enfants ?

Mikita : Oui, j'ai une femme et deux enfants.

Jeroen : Comment faites-vous pour garder l'équilibre ? Travaillez-vous beaucoup à la maison ou allez-vous surtout au bureau ? Quels sont vos horaires de travail ?

Mikita: I mostly go to the office. I don’t really have a set schedule, but if I’m not working before nine, then I don’t know, something is going on. I don’t really have a set schedule. Sometimes I take a flight in the middle of the week or try to work outside of the office just to basically reset my brain.

My job is not about putting a lot of hours in. It’s not how I believe I can be effective. My job is about making the right decisions, and that requires a clear mind that’s not triggered by anxiety or that’s not tired or fearing or whatever negative emotion that we might have because of that.

Jeroen : Comment gardez-vous l'esprit clair ?

Mikita: Oh, there’s a ton of stuff I do. Ta, ta, ta, ta, I meditate. I like to do morning runs. I surf. Surfing is amazing, and surfing in California, where I am, means surfing in the cold water. There is something about the cold water – be that cold showers or surfing on the West Coast in Central California, it refreshes you. It recharges you, and gives you that calm. Surfing gives me calm. What else?

Jeroen : C'est un, comment dire ?

Mikita : Entraînement.

Jeroen: Yeah, it’s quite a big workout.

Mikita : C'est un entraînement.

Jeroen: I think surfing is cold in most places, at least as far as I know. Like if we go surfing in Spain or so, it’s pretty cold. If you go to, I think Bali, perhaps could be warm. I don’t know.

Mikita: Yeah, dude, I lived in Hawaii, and there it’s beautiful.

Jeroen : Chaud ?

Mikita: It’s so warm.

Jeroen : Oui.

Mikita: It’s really nice.

Jeroen: Is that where you mostly like to spend your time when you’re not working? Family and sports or surfing?

Mikita: Yeah. Family and sports. Honestly, if I can live in the forest for my vacation, for like a month, I would totally do that with my family, and surfboard or something. Something like that. I’d be really happy.

Jeroen: Yeah. That’s also what you do, if you wouldn’t work on PandaDoc, would it be that or would it be having another company?

Mikita: I don’t know. I really don’t know. Honestly, I thought about it, but I don’t know if I get bored, like if I will get bored really fast, but I’ll be sure to try. I mean, it’s just kind of like seeing the difference because the pace of life in Silicon Valley and the pace of a startup is very high. It’s intense, right? Yeah, sometimes you get to really wanting a break or a little bit of time to relax. The past five days, totally served that purpose. It was enough. Yeah, I don’t know if I can do a lot more than five days.

Jeroen : Lisez-vous des livres ?

Mikita : Oui, mais j'écoute beaucoup plus. J'écoute beaucoup plus de livres ces jours-ci.

Jeroen: What’s the latest good book you’ve listened to and why did you choose to listen to it?

Mikita: The latest one I’ve listened is called Quiet Leadership. It’s a good book, and it’s about management, but based on the theory of management based on neuroscience. That was a really interesting book.

Then prior to that, I listened to Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, very good book, extremely useful to executives. Actually, it’s extremely recommended for anyone as it is on how to have uncomfortable conversations that are hugely important to have.

Prior to that, I read a book about the CIA. Doesn’t matter what it’s called. Then prior to that, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, amazing book. I recommend it to everyone. Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that I’ve listened to recently.

Jeroen : Dernière question, si vous deviez recommencer avec PandaDoc, qu'auriez-vous fait différemment ?

Mikita: Oh man, a ton of things. I’ve done so many things wrong. I think the biggest thing I would change is that I would focus on people more. That’s definitely the case. I’m not necessarily the most, oh, it’s going to be hard, it’s a terrible thing to admit, but I’m very analytical. I’m not super empathetic.

Jeroen : Oui, plus axé sur les tâches, moins sur les personnes.

Mikita : Exactement. Et c'est quelque chose que je changerais, la proportion de cela. Je changerais cela.

Jeroen: Yeah. Cool, well, that’s all I have for today, Mikita. Thank you for being on Founder Coffee.

Mikita : Tout le plaisir est pour moi !