Hallo, Cristian. Since we’re talking about start-ups, I’m risking putting myself in the place of investor. I’d be interested in the idea, traction and team. Shall we begin with the team?

There are five of us. We’ve been together for a long time. And what’s important, we’ve already gained the joint experience of “fails” of start-ups. So, Veezify is not our first start-up, but we’restill together and haven’t scattered away.

Team stability is a good indicator. Tell us about the “fails”. And by the way, when have you managed? As I understand, you are a team of peers, and now you are only 20 years old...

We began to build the first start-up five years ago, when all of us were 15-16. We had an idea, but no experience. We wanted to achieve data compression without losing quality.

Do you mean compression, for example, of music files so that the sound quality is not lost?

Including this. We probably were doing this for almost a year, until we abandoned this idea. We didn’t achieve any significant result, but we learned well how to use “libraries” for programmers.

It sounds like you had “fails” as well?

Yes. Our second “big” idea grew out of our age. You see a girl on the street, you want to meet her, but you don’t know whether it’s worth getting to know her. We had the idea to create a dating application that could scan people thirty meters from you and help people getting to know each other.

I think there were enough applications of this kind on the Internet? Weren’t there?

As we were young, we didn’t even look for analogues for a long time. Since in Chisinau no one uses anything similar, and no one uses anything, that is, it makes sense to try ...

Honestly, I don’t remember hearing about such a Moldavian application. You didn’t bring it to a working prototype, did you?

In the course of work, we realized that there were strong competitors that we could not cope with. And we tried to “deploy” the project in the field of business. To make a tool for conferences so that, using the same principle, people could find each other according to their mutual interests and begin to communicate ...

AND?

Then we stopped again. Even LinkedIn has a similar functionality. And there are a number of similar specialized applications. So, we also relate this story to our “fails”.

I can say that you have a 100% stable team if you keep working together …

That is. While we were dealing with all this, I and my friend noticed that we had peaks of productivity at different times. I work best in the morning, and he work bests after dinner. But we undertake the tasks from the task board during the day quite “mechanically”. There is a general list of tasks, and we go through it.

It seems that you begin to tell me about the idea that you are currently working on, but I haven’t yet grasped the essence.

The purpose is to optimize the outcome of the tasks, when the team of programmers is working on a common list of tasks, so that the tasks match the current efficiency of the programmer as much as possible. In our case, Iundertakedifficult tasks in the morning, and my friend in the afternoon.

Then the team leader should be almost a psychologist to “feel” the team at such a level.

This is the aspect that we decided to automate. We made a chat bot that communicates with the team, analyzes the current “state” of employees and tasks, and based on this information distributes tasks from the list.

Hm. The idea sounds attractive, but it doesn’t seem to me simple at all. I have a million questions on the go, how everything works. It would be interesting to “touch”. Is it already possible?

Exactly. We’ve been working for six months now. There is a mathematical model, there is a prototype that is about to become operational, we’re now finishing the work on its core. We even involved psychologists to integrate in the software the possibility to take into account precisely the current state of the person, rather than just his/her “profile” qualities.

The idea seems to me difficult to implement, but definitely interesting. I’ll not ask about sales revenues, so far. But have you already thought about ​​monetization?

Yes, of course. This will be a monthly fee for each “connected” employee. We’ve already found companies that are ready to test our project. At some point, we wanted to write our task board, but stopped in time and focused on our task, it will correspond with the already existing task boards, as there are already quite powerful applications that everyone uses. It’s enough for us that they give us their API.

And you called this start-up Veezify? And how do you finance it, who gave the investment?

We are still working somewhere and Veezify takes all our free time. For example, I work in a small media agency, I’m responsible for advertising on Facebook.

Ok, this is a good strategy to get started. But, if the project goes well, you’ll have to look for investments. Do you already have a search plan?

We look forward to participating in accelerators. We already have two small Veezify victories. In Moldova, Artcor held the pre-accelerator Yep! Starter and we won a trip to Estonia. Last December, we won Start Battle in Kiev. Now we’re collecting money for a trip, and we‘ll apply for participation in serious accelerators. This is the level of Tech Stars, where one can earn 120,000 Euros and move for three months with the team to work there. This year we really expect to succeed with Veezify at a serious accelerator, and then we’ll think about the next step.

Good luck, Cristian...

If you are also passionate about start-ups, then don’t miss Chisinau Demo Day 2020 on 4 February. If you already have a start-up, you can present it to the interested community on this day. If this topic has just started to captivate you, come to get acquainted with Moldovan start-ups and their founders. Find more information by clicking on the link.

Pavel Zingan