How interactive forms transform customer onboarding with Vlad Gozman

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Is he the Elon Musk of startups in Austria?

Vlad Gozman is the founder of multiple companies, non-profits and launched TedX Vienna. His latest venture is Involve.me which is an innovative interactive form that transforms the customer onboarding experience.

Before moving to Vienna, Vlad founded and sold a tech startup in Romania. We talk about:

- his approach to delegating and finding people who are better than him to take over certain projects

- building digital products and analog communities (like Tedx Vienna)

- the go-to-market strategy for InvolveMe involved cold acquisition, targeted marketing campaigns, and a freemium model

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Previous guests include: Arvid Kahl of FeedbackPanda, Andrei Zinkevich of FullFunnel, Scott Van den Berg of Influencer Capital, Buster Franken of Fruitpunch AI, Valentin Radu of Omniconvert, Evelina Necula of Kinderpedia, Ionut Vlad of Tokinomo, Diana Florescu of MediaforGrowth, Irina Obushtarova of Recursive, Monika Paule of Caszyme, Yannick Veys of Hypefury, Laura Erdem of Dreamdata, and Pija Indriunaite of CityBee.

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Transcript

Eric (00:03.794)
So today I want to touch up on three different things really. The first thing is that you're the co-founder of multiple startups and organizations, companies like InvolveMe, which we're going to get into in just a minute, StereoSense, AdSpy technologies. You're also the co-founder of the Austrian startups and founder of TEDx Vienna. I mean, what are you? You're like Elon Musk or something? You know, you're just...

You're just able to kick ass in multiple projects. So we're going to talk about that. The second thing is InvolveMe, which is an AI powered interactive for, for building or using better data collection for forms, you know, to increase website conversions and personalizing the onboarding experience. And then finally, the last thing we'll talk about is that more than 3,000 businesses are using InvolveMe. And I want to know what your go-to market strategy was and what were some things that you did that had success?

gaining traction, but then also some failures. So with that, we'll get right into it. And how are you able to manage all of these projects at once? That's the first thing that I want to know about.

Vlad (01:10.502)
Yeah, so thanks for having me, first of all, Erik. Great to be here. Secondly, thanks for the sort of generous intro.

I would say though that even though I'm the founder of several companies and nonprofits, operatively I'm not active in all of them. So my main focus is InvolveMe, which we've launched in 2019 and that's where I'm operatively managing the business, the team, growing it and so forth.

The others I helped start in some I've exited or partly exited. And the nonprofits are actually managed by my wife. So, yeah, there you have it. I mean, I can talk a bit about all of them, but yeah, you lead the way.

Eric (02:10.362)
Now this reminds me of a quote, and I think it was by Navar. And he said something like, if you're not thinking or learning or delegating, then you need to outsource everything else or something like that. You know, those are like the three things that you can't really outsource, but if you can outsource something, go ahead. Is that sort of your approach to like, Hey, once I've got something off the ground, then let me kind of hand it off to somebody else who can run with it.

Vlad (02:22.934)
Yeah.

Vlad (02:35.042)
to a certain extent. I think it definitely was...

I think it still is one of the hardest things that I had to do and learn how to do and accept that something can be handed over to someone else. So yeah, I think you get to a certain point with some projects where the best thing you can do is to find people who are better than you and then to hand...

to hand them the reins and they might do things differently and you need to accept that and you need to live with that. And you know, as a founder, you know it and people listening know it too. You have your hands in all aspects of a business, especially at the start. And you can do that to a certain extent, but as it grows...

you need to learn how to delegate. And that's one of the key things in growing businesses, I would guess.

Eric (03:38.862)
Yeah, what's really unique about you is that you're not just creating businesses, you know, for profit businesses. You've got organizations like TEDx that you started in Vienna, and then also another startup community in Austria. So it seems like you're giving back to the community as well. Is that another one of your philosophies is, hey, if I'm doing well in business, I want to make sure that I can do what I can to help others succeed. Has that always been your personality, Vlad?

Vlad (04:07.946)
I think I love to give back definitely, but these communities, especially TEDx, was something that I started while I had moved to Vienna. So really at the early stages of me being in Vienna, so I had a...

I had already founded and exited a small consulting company in Bucharest, Vienna, in Bucharest, Romania, sorry, before moving to Vienna. And, um, when I came here, I really didn't know anyone. So, uh, setting up a community, um, or being part of one was something that I thought would give me, um,

sort of a head start into a new country basically. And so it was less about giving back for that. Now it turned into that definitely over the years because as it grew and I had my startups and my digital SaaS businesses that I was running, these communities were a way for me to still

share knowledge, offer a stage to others who could share knowledge. And it's all about that, getting people together. And I would like to say that I love to build digital products and analog communities.

Eric (05:32.602)
I like that. I like that. And I love that because when I came to Bucharest, I knew nobody. But one of the things that I started doing was throwing these little cocktail parties, micro cocktail parties, 15 to 20 people and inviting people that I thought were interesting and I would love to meet in person, but I was unable to because, hey, I'm a parent. I just don't have as much free time and my evenings are booked. I'm making dinner and putting kids to bed. Right. But I think it's one of the best ways to gather people that

meet, build relationships with, and then also be sort of a connector with other people. So it seems like you have that same approach to Vienna, but you took it on to a bigger scale with TEDx. I never thought about that, but that's a pretty good idea. I love that.

Vlad (06:14.586)
Yeah, I mean, and you know, like when you get people together from different backgrounds, similar to TEDx and TED events, we know that are interdisciplinary both on stage and in the audience, you know, magic happens. You can't predict what the outcome will be, but there are definitely sparks of serendipity. And I'd say that this TEDx journey that really I started as a as a as a nonprofit doing.

profit doing it on the side, now morphed into something very big. So after 14 years, actually, my wife and the team behind TEDxVienna is working together with TED to bring the first TED conference in Europe to Vienna based on the topic of AI. So it's called TED AI.

And it's happening on three continents. One is North America in San Francisco. One is Asia, most likely in Singapore and one in Europe in Vienna, organized by the team behind TEDx Vienna under the leadership of Alina Nicola. So yeah.

Eric (07:23.834)
Yeah, it's so exciting. So exciting to hear that. So this is gonna be a weird question. What gives you more fulfillment? Is it doing projects like, you know, like TEDx, right? Growing something that's micro, and then now you guys are sort of like on the world stage for TED, or do you get more fulfillment from building a startup? And what I mean by fulfillment is, hey, my dream job was being like a marketing director, having a budget, having a team, and I did that.

But I got fulfillment not just at work, but from something else that I did on the side. I just want to hear what you think about that.

Vlad (08:01.718)
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I personally, I get different kinds of fulfillment from, the different activities, but I would say my, my main joy is building products that where I see that there is a scale I love.

Don't get me wrong. I love analog communities and I love bringing people together and seeing that. As I said, the sparks that happen when, when people connect. And I've seen companies being founded out of that and, um, other communities being founded out of that, but a product seems to me like something

that can scale well beyond you and live past you, even more so than a community. The fuel behind a community will always be people in the community, but also managing it, growing it. Also behind a product, but the product can grow to a stage where, you know...

Eric (09:00.976)
Yeah.

Vlad (09:12.814)
you'll have so many small moving parts in terms of team that the product can outgrow that. And I think I'm fascinated by the fact that it can reach scale. So for instance, with InvolveMe, we started out, it's a bootstrap business, and we started out global from day one, and it works. And since then, it's now almost five years past,

It's easier than ever to start digital products and grow them with a relatively small team to a global audience and that is something that fascinates me.

Eric (09:54.35)
I get it. That makes sense. I think of like Phil Knight and Nike. You know, I'm thinking of those amazing entrepreneurs who created these great brands that people love and it can associate with. And there's like, you know, there's meaning to them behind the iconic symbol or the brand name. Good. I love it. Okay. Second thing I want to talk about, let's talk about Evolve Me. And this is an AI powered interactive, you know, form better, form builder.

Vlad (09:58.306)
Hmm.

Eric (10:18.97)
And I know it can personalize the onboarding experience. I was on the website. I was kind of messing around with it and I thought it was fascinating. And so where did you get the idea for this? And then how did you go about launching it and, and trying to get funding for it? Did you have to get funding for it? Did you have to build a team? Did you do a lot of coding yourself? Tell us about that one.

Vlad (10:39.47)
Sure, sure. So maybe to first of all, at Involve.me, we're on a mission to make it as easy as possible for businesses to involve their customers in meaningful digital conversations and interactions. And in these interactions, they, we enable them to get valuable zero party data around their customers.

And you said it, I mean, you hit the nail on the head to achieve this, we leverage no code and AI to simplify and automate the creation, personalization and automation of forms that are then used on websites basically to convert more traffic. And we have over 3000 businesses, over 3400 businesses at this point worldwide that use it.

But to get to this, we started really with things that don't scale, similarly to how Y Combinator would advise you. So we actually started with something completely different. We were building a CMS for virtual reality applications. The only common denominator, I would say, would be no code. So we tried to do a platform that would allow you to do it with no code.

When we started to realize that there is not a market for it or not a well developed market for it, we were looking for things to pivot, but in the meantime, to finance the team, because we already had a team of three people, additionally to the founders, to us.

we started doing some agency work and this agency work was basically us creating involve me type interactive forms for different clients such as universal pictures for instance in the dock German speaking area.

Vlad (12:37.97)
And then in interactions with them, we sort of validated the idea of a product and then started building out an MVP and rolled that out. So yeah. And then in April, 2019, we launched officially the InvolveMe platform. Yeah.

Eric (12:55.626)
OK, what are some key questions that businesses should be asking when setting up an interactive forum like yours? And let's just say that this is a SaaS business.

Vlad (13:06.218)
Yeah, yeah. So first of all, the business use case that we solve most and foremost is gathering customer data and enabling you to know who your customers are so that you can convert them better. And to do that,

we have built this no-code drag and drop interface and powered it with AI where we automate part of the creation process with AI, but then you can still use a drag and drop editor to customize the created content. And use cases are very much centered around the...

the first touch point, so lead generation, lead qualification, scoring leads, verifying them and then automating this flow. It might be inbound sales or it might be a marketing flow. And how our customers do that, if it's a SaaS business, for instance, right, they might offer a set of products.

And they would use InvolveMe to create something like a product recommender. So an interactive form where you choose a few options, right? And at the end, it generates the best fitting options for you from that SaaS company. But to see them, you would email gate them, for instance. And in the email gating, right, we

We include different tools like verification and so forth, and then also integrate with your tool stack, your CRM, your marketing automation, your scheduling tools, and everything lives on your website. So you sort of, you create the content and then you integrate it on your homepage or wherever that touch point is.

Vlad (15:23.134)
And it seamlessly integrates in your website. So it doesn't look like a third party tool. It has your brand identity. So the hurdle for your audience is as little as possible.

Eric (15:39.086)
Yeah, so for example, if you're a business that's maybe interested in, I don't know, trying to close more leads through a code calling or something based on the different questions, the result could be like, hey, here's case studies on how to do that, or even customer testimonials or something, but pertaining to whatever the answers were from the questions. That's pretty neat, because like you said, most businesses will either try to...

I guess, link you to somewhere where you can go and maybe fill out another form or request a phone call with a specific salesperson that deals with that. But nothing really in real time. That's pretty cool.

Vlad (16:11.984)
Hmm.

Vlad (16:17.93)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you can make that happen as well. But as you said, you would define these customized, personalized paths. So the personalization happens on the one side and you can use AI to give custom feedback to what the input of each user is, you can use obviously the personal data in the personalization, so addressing users by name and so forth.

guide them to their custom paths according to their answers. They might go to a sales call scheduling if that's the path that makes sense, but they might also go to a custom price quote that they directly see that is calculated based on their input and then they can make a choice and you sort of automate parts of the process, whether it's sales, whether it's onboarding and so forth.

Eric (17:17.83)
Cool, cool. Okay, let's talk about our third topic here. And how did you get this to be successful? You got over 3,000 businesses that are using InvolveMe worldwide. What was your go-to-market strategy here? I know you said you try to do things that don't scale. So what were some of those things in the very beginning?

Vlad (17:36.106)
Yeah, so definitely the beginning was a lot of cold acquisition. So trying to get to those 10 customers where we have a lot of touch points with them and can learn from interacting with them about their needs, basically. That helped a lot. And it was doing things that don't scale mean that...

we actually build a lot of these types of interactive forms by hand, right? Like we coded them before creating the platform to see what the common denominators are and to see where some differences might arise, so we know how to build the platform to cater for...

all of these needs. So I think that was very important in the beginning. And then I think a pivotal moment was when we converted the first, I think it was something around like 13, but you could say like 10 for ease of understanding purposes. But the first 10 customers converting them from sort of an agency type approach where we would charge them for

maintaining and creating some new forms on a monthly basis.

we converted all of them to a SaaS model, which for them, it was cheaper, definitely, than what you would pay an agency. And for us, it validated the fact that there is a SaaS model there that we can pursue. So I think that was extremely important. And then getting to the first 100 customers was, again, very, very interesting. You asked me before, and I didn't answer that, we don't have institutional funding,

Vlad (19:35.704)
bootstrapped SaaS business. It's profitable. It does seven figures in ARR. After the first 13 customers, we converted fully to SaaS. And so we don't have any other revenue than the recurring one. And the first 100 customers, it was interesting, because we tried to do a different approach.

than the first 13 were very hands-on, local, true acquaintances, right? Like, do you know the sales and marketing people from that company, right? Oh, is it Hankel? Is it Universal Pictures? But they were more or less in the German speaking area where we can get a hold of them. For the...

Eric (20:12.178)
Mm-hmm.

Eric (20:17.306)
Mm-hmm.

Vlad (20:26.05)
Getting to 100, what we wanted to see, this ties back to what I was saying before, that times have changed a lot for the better, for the entrepreneur who wants to go with a product on a global scale. But we wanted to test that idea. Can we get, can we do, can we have something that is global, basically, from the get-go? And...

What we did is not rocket science, we looked at what is the platform where we could programmatically, performance-based, can get most scale, right? And it was Google, at least at the time.

And we set up a few campaigns and actually put some money to validate that. And yeah, from the first month it started to convert. And so...

We grew out of Google, I would say, but Google was a good testing ground because it gave us the scale to see, oh, can we target just the US and get just customers from the US? And yeah, we could, and it was a great proof of concept.

Eric (21:44.806)
Were you sending people directly to your home page or were you creating specific landing pages for the keywords campaign?

Vlad (21:51.21)
Yeah, we were creating from the get-go specific landing pages. So, you know, people might not search directly for a use case like custom price quote calculator to automate inbound sales. So, this is a mouthful. It's very long tail. You would get users coming in through this, but not on scale. But what you can get on scale is definitely...

online form builder, online quiz builder, online survey builder. And we went with these and had specific landing pages from the get-go, not with all of them, like one by one and we kept adding. And that traffic converted because it was spot on. You search exactly for that, this is the tool. And we implemented...

a freemium model from the beginning so you can test out the product but actually even use it with if you have a simple contact form for instance and you get less than 100 submissions or up to 100 submissions per month. You can use the tool for free. It has some branding on it. Obviously to create sort of this flywheel.

effect, but it also provides value. So people could already convert to a free account and then find out either through more usage and limitations or limitations on features if it's useful for them enough to sort of convert. And some did.

Eric (23:36.122)
Who's the forum great for? What types of businesses and industries?

Vlad (23:40.47)
Yeah, it varies. So obviously we're pretty.

broad, but we have, if you go on our website, you will find that we have specific industry pages for around 15 industries. So with specific use cases, sort of their main use cases. So I can give you an example, for instance, real estate, right? So we have real estate businesses that use InvolveMe.

a lot for lead gen and qualification. So what they would use is they would create property valuation calculators that they would put on their website. So they would have a form with a calculator in the back, with lead generation gating and so forth, that...

their potential customers can go to and get some value from and in the process they would share their contact details so they can be funneled into this sales process. So if you have a home and you want to sell it, you can go on one of our customers websites, they have a property valuation calculator, you input your data and then you would get after you get also your personal information, you would get a valuation for your home and they would

Vlad (25:04.564)
it for this valuation, let's get into business. So this is sort of an example of how it would work. Yeah.

Eric (25:06.637)
Right.

Eric (25:10.374)
That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, good example. Okay, I've got some rapid fire questions for you now, Vlad, are you ready? All right, the most exciting thing you did in the last 26 days.

Vlad (25:19.673)
Yeah, let's do it.

Vlad (25:25.43)
In the last 26 days, I helped my wife launch the waitlist for TED AI 2024 in Europe.

Eric (25:37.774)
Okay, fill in the blank here. I grew up in blank and my favorite thing about that city is blank.

Vlad (25:46.51)
I grew up in Arad and my favorite thing about that city is that it was so small that you knew almost everyone.

Eric (25:59.458)
Okay? What's the most deaf-defying experience or act you've ever done?

Vlad (26:07.246)
jumped out of an airplane.

Eric (26:11.392)
Okay. What's the craziest thing you ever did to make money or save money?

Vlad (26:18.074)
Oh wow. Um...

Vlad (26:28.538)
I've created...

I've created a project to get European funding for one of the biggest petrochemical companies in Eastern Europe.

Eric (26:46.455)
Okay, okay, last question for you here. What's a favorite TV show that you can watch again and again?

Vlad (26:52.354)
the office.

Eric (26:56.356)
Okay. All right. All right, Vlad, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. I'm going to put links to your website and your LinkedIn profile.

Vlad (27:09.066)
Well, I think LinkedIn is a good place to go. Vladgosman.com is another one where I'm a bit playful. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Erik.

Eric (27:18.702)
Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. All right, thank you. Thank you, Vlad. Cheers.

Vlad (27:21.954)
Take care, bye.

Eric (27:26.126)
Okay, I stopped the recording. Yeah.