Challenges of small manufacturers to organise their production and inventory, with Kristjan Vilosius of Katana, Estonia

Episode Notes

• The story behind the first manufacturing and inventory management tool that helps small business scale faster [3:00]
• What makes Estonia one of the best countries to start a company [6:30]
• How Katana brings in the point of truth [8:54]
• Why focusing on a specific customer niche is a winning strategy for inventory management platforms [12:23]
• The ways in which Katana is trying to become an integrated app [18:08]
• How Katana supports manufacturers producing highly complex products [25:18]
• The differences between Katana and Excel that make your life and business easier [29:36]
• Trends for small manufacturing in 2019 and beyond [33:02]
• If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [35:21]
• If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [36:46]
• Why make your leg day in the gym on Monday morning [38:24]
• How to bring out the best of people in an international team [39:40]
• What is the best way to reach Kristjan? [37:40]

Contact

• E-mail: kristjan.vilosius@katanamrp.com
• Kristjan Vilosius on LinkedIn

Episode Transcript

Challenges of small manufacturers to organise their production and inventory, with Kristjan Vilosius of Katana, Estonia

Balint: Welcome to the show, Kristjan.

Kristjan: Hi, thanks for having me.

Balint: I'm really happy to have you at the show. I've had the chance recently of studying your product and I even got to talk to you guys, your colleagues before this interview and I thought afterwards that wow, this is a company that should be introduced in this podcast. We should share some infos because you have some useful stuff to share with the listeners who struggle with managing their workflow, makers, crafters, artisans who build things to sell. So I'm really, really happy about this that we can make it happen.

Kristjan: Thanks again for having me on the show. I would love to talk about our product and how we help manufacturers and makers and crafters around the world.

Balint: I'd say let's jump into the topic. So can you tell us about Katana and what you do? What was the trigger event which made you start the company?

Kristjan: Yeah. I'd start with a short background story on how Katana was born. It was back in 2014, if I remember correctly. I was helping a friend of mine set up a manufacturing business that produces custom made wooden doors and windows for the renovation market. And what my friend had discovered that this market had a lot of middlemen in workshops and smaller factories selling to agents, agents selling to wholesalers, wholesalers selling to retailers and so on. And you can imagine the markup being added along the way. So what he decided to do was to go for the direct-to-consumer business model. The idea was to build a branded manufacturer that sells to the end consumer directly via their own e-shop. And while I was helping him set up his business flows, I was trying to find a suitable software package that would support the inventory and manufacturing flows of such a direct-to-consumer manufacturing business and I identified a clear gap on the market.

There were lots of modern and reasonably priced inventory management platforms available but they seemed to be…. It seemed to me that they were all built for top shippers, retailers, distributors, meaning that they either did not fully support manufacturing and inventory management flows or they were lacking raw materials and subassembly management and so on. And then there were also software packages available that really included solid manufacturing and raw material inventory management support but those were enterprise level and the cost there is like tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. So you could say that Katana was born out of that frustration and we have the ambition to build the perfect manufacturing and inventory management tool for a modern manufacture that can really support this traditional B2B sales approach that many manufacturers still have today but that can also support a direct-to-consumer sales model via online channels that we are seeing more and more on the market.

Balint: And so it's like scratching your own itch because you had this problem while helping your friend which is I think one of the best ways to start a company because you can conceptualize and you can create hypothesis about what problems some individuals might have but if it's your own problem, you're only solving the problem for yourself.

Kristjan: Yeah, in a way, yes.

Balint: It's powerful. And your friend is already a customer by any chance? I mean I was wondering.

Kristjan: Well, when we started building the product, he already had the workshop up and running. And by the time we reached the stage where we would have been a suitable product for him, he had already moved to a larger scale kind of factory level manufacturing. So he was going faster than we were. But we learned from his experience and basically built the product that would help other smaller manufacturers that are looking to scale and really help them along that way.

Balint: Similar manufacturers as him.

Kristjan: Exactly.

Balint: Yeah. It's really a good story how the company was born. And where is the company located?

Kristjan: The company is located in Estonia, in Tallinn, so I mean we are based in the European Union but most of our customers are actually based in the US. I would say half of our customers are in the US and the other half is in the rest of the world. But Estonia is really a great place to start a company. There's a massive amount of talent and you know a really, really supporting ecosystem and I'll give you a fun fact. I'm not sure if you know it but we are using Skype at the moment to record the podcast. It was actually developed in Estonia. It was the first unicorn out of Estonia and many others have followed. So by now actually Estonia is with the highest number of global tech unicorns per capita in the world.

Balint: I knew about Skype and I think you have, correct me if I'm wrong, like the e-government a pretty modern one so you can file many things electronically.

Kristjan: Yeah, e-government is also kind of a very big export article for Estonia. It seems to be a lot of interest globally for that. And yes, we have a e-government solution and the way that the citizens of Estonia kind of are exposed to it, this is for example tax declarations. It literally takes a minute to file your annual tax declaration. I know that in many countries it takes hours or days and costs a lot of money.

Balint: Yeah, that's really good. So really the atmosphere there is conducive to starting a company because the atmosphere is pretty good in terms of startups but also in terms of administration.

Kristjan: It's pretty easy to start a company and to run a company so I highly recommend it.

Balint: Yeah. All right. And can you tell us more about the Katana? And also how do you see the main challenges for manufacturing, for hardware startups, especially in terms of organizing the company and how does your solution fit in? So what kind of you know other companies beyond your friend's company like a furniture manufacturer could make use of it but like what kind of business does it have to be - you know manufacturing complex products or easier products, more simple products?

Kristjan: I'll start with explaining you sort of a typical customer pain point that we see when we are talking to our leads coming into Katana. I mean if they are a direct-to-consumer businesses, then usually how the story goes is that there were a few friends that you know started their branded manufacturing company, let's say producing leather backpacks or electric bikes or organic cosmetics or something similar. They typically start with Excel or Google sheets so they have a spreadsheet for products, spreadsheet for inventory levels, spreadsheet for production recipes, bill of materials, spreadsheet for sales orders, for purchasing orders and so on and so on. And all these spreadsheets are typically linked with each other but they need constant manual updating despite the links because managing a complex inventory and multi-level subassembly based manufacturing recipes and bill of materials it just gets very, very difficult with Excel.

In the beginning usually know they can cope with this but as the team starts to grow, if there is already like 5 to 10 people, then the spreadsheet links they start to break. People get many versions of the same document. There's arguments about you know whose version is the accurate one so they lose the point of truth. And then when they adopt Katana, I think Katana brings in that point of truth. It tells them the right inventory levels and it helps to prioritize the manufacturing and sales activities to make sure that your sales and manufacturing is always aligned.

So when you want to scale your manufacturing business this becomes you know the big pain point here that when you start to scale and typically your manufacturing and your sales get misaligned that results in often stock outs and missed deadlines and unhappy customers. Basically, Katana helps you to make sure that you have your manufacturing and sales aligned and the live inventory that is built into Katana which you don't have to manually update it works in the background in live all the time, makes sure that you always have an optimal level of finished product stock as well raw material stock in your inventory and it helps you make sure that you never miss a delivery deadline to a customer. So the only way to scale your manufacturing business successfully in the long run is to keep your customers happy and Katana helps you achieve that.

Balint: You mentioned the Google Sheet and Excel as some typical solutions people use when trying to manufacture and sell their products. I know about these advantages to do this maintaining the different databases but in the end this linking is a problem. I think another company that is working with smart sheets is Airtable. They also have this issue linking the tables, the basis, they call it like that. And I think you really solve this way a problem if these have been the common solutions. Are there other alternatives nowadays on the market? Because you mentioned that that time when you helped your friend's company that your solution was, at least you implied it, was unique. What about today? Are there similar solutions?

Kristjan: What we see today is that inventory management platforms, SaaS platforms like Katana but that are focused on the final product inventory management that were built for you know drop shippers, retailers or distributors and so on, they have started slowly to move into the manufacturing scene. It means that inventory management platforms have started to build their manufacturing modules. They are still rather basic today but I can assume that over time they will try to expand the functionalities. But we believe that this only kind of further supports or strengthens our business case that this cloud transformation and digitalization processes in small manufacturer scene is really taking place now. And there are older players also moving into the same territory where Katana is. So we are really seeing this digitalization, automatization process ongoing in our sphere and we really want to be the leaders of that process. I think it very much links to what you see on an enterprise level the manufacturing companies. There is a movement, I'm sure you are well aware of Industry 4.0 and you could say that we are seeing evidence of these same trends happening also in small manufacturing and workshop level. And basically, Katana wants to be a leader in this process. You could call it Industry 4.0 for workshops. So we basically want to bring the same solutions to the small manufacturing level.

Balint: That's really important. So you would say that other companies that are coming up with similar solution they've been more focused on the inventory management and they're slowly moving into incorporating manufacturing aspects but your offer is more focused and more integrated, takes a more integrated approach which offers a more detailed and better management than competitors.

Kristjan: I think in the end it comes down to focus. I mean you could build a SaaS product and try to convince yourself that you know everybody can use it. I could build an inventory management software and say that it’s perfect for dropship or is perfect for retailers, perfect for distributors and perfect for manufacturers. But in practice it rarely works like that. I mean focusing on a specific customer niche is typically where you succeed and a SaaS product that is solving the inventory and production management for manufacturers. We are built by manufacturers for manufacturers. So we are coming from another direction and we believe that being so much focused on manufacturers only will eventually be our winning strategy here.

Balint: If you want to target everyone, then in the end you don’t target anyone.

Kristjan: Exactly.

Balint: So I think focus is extremely important because you can easily spread yourself in with your blogposts. I mean you have tons of articles on your website which I really like. I went through a majority of them and I think they are really valuable. So you're really trying to create an ecosystem around this, around your product and educating the customers.

Kristjan: And that's the idea here. I mean if you discuss that who is the ideal customer of Katana, then you could say that today the ideal customer is a friendly manufacturer and selling mainly through their own e-shop and we had a very solid integration with Shopify and actually half of our customers are also Shopify sellers today. Half of our paying customers. So we have a solid integration with Shopify that includes stock sync with the store support and so on and so on. And of course, we also have customers from more traditional B2B manufacturing that are perhaps not selling today on their e-shops or online channels at all. But using Katana also opens up the opportunity for them to really go for that direct-to-consumer approach either today or later in the future.

But in terms of industries it's quite a mix. We have this joke internally that we initially hoped that we would see some kind of industry focus based on the first paying customers but actually first 15 paying customers that we had, that was already a while ago, but the first 15 customers that came on board to Katan were from 15 different industries. So you know we have electronics, we have food and drinks manufacturing, leather working, jewelry, apparel, cosmetics, you know, CBD, you name it. It's really, really a wide range. But most of them are really kind of cool like family businesses that are often really supporting the local communities and they're just super fun to work with.

Balint: I can imagine that. You quickly mentioned the enterprise level Industry 4.0. And in terms of enterprise level solutions you know that are these abbreviations like ERP, enterprise resource planning or MRP. Can you tell us about the differences and in which category does your solution fit?

Kristjan: It's a good question and I try to be brief in my answer. Actually, it's a rather complex topic. These terms have been changing over time but MRP used to be a bit of a narrow term that referred to material requirements planning. It's basically a process or software that would help manufacturers plan their raw material needs for their manufacturing activities. Now, ERP, enterprise resource planning, as you said, it covers a wider range of business flows including purchasing, sales, HR planning and so on. However, what has happened over time is that the term MRP has evolved and has moved closer to ERP. So nowadays when somebody says MRP it's more often referred to as manufacturing ERP. It means it's a software system that covers all your critical business flows like an ERP does but it has been built specifically for manufacturers and this is where Katana is also categorized. So when we talk about these abbreviations we often say that Katana is a manufacturing ERP as it covers all your key business flows and you order fulfillment flows. So we are not that focused only on your material requirements planning but we also make sure that your entire order fulfillment flow from sales through purchasing and manufacturing to shipment is covered inside one product.

Balint: All right. Regarding the previous point I wanted to mention or quickly tried to elaborate on some related topic which is that first you mentioned that you integrate with Shopify which is the e-commerce platform and half of your customers are coming from Shopify, the others are B2B customers. But regarding other integrations and you know the ERP kind of functionality that you have what kind of other integrations do you have?

Kristjan: Yeah. I mean Katana is still a relatively young product. We are kind of the new kid on the block here. So we started with our Shopify integration. And as I said most of our customer base today is from Shopify. The first accounting integration that we released was with QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online and this is also available. So many of our users are also using QuickBooks for their accounting flows and they are now fully and automatically integrated with Katana. And when it comes to additional accounting integration then Xero is expected to be released later this year. And if we look at the data coming in from our customers, then we can see that I would 80-90 percent of all small manufacturers that are contacting Katana are typically using either Quick Books or Xero for their accounting flows.

Balint: And what about the non-US customers because I guess QuickBooks is for U.S. customers? Is that correct or not?

Kristjan: Well, QuickBooks is already very global. I mean you have QuickBooks France, you have QuickBooks India, you have QuickBooks Australia and so on and the same is actually with Xero. It's strong in Australia, strong in UK but they are also present elsewhere. So they are really global nowadays. And they're also market specific local accounting software is available on different markets and Katana is not natively integrating with them but of course then the CSP import exports and Excel export import flows help there. And of course, Katana has a built-in API also. We are using Microsoft services architecture. However, we have not yet released the gateway for it but we will do that over the course of this year which means that pretty soon customers using some custom platforms can also integrate those flaws with Katana so that they would be automatic.

Now when it comes to e-commerce platforms, then in addition to Shopify we are really seeing a lot of interest from WooCommerce shop owners followed by BeCommerce, Etsy and Amazon handmade. So probably those four e-commerce platforms will also get integrated with Katana in the near future. And finally, in addition to accounting workflows and e-commerce integrations we're also looking into shipping platforms. For example, ShipStation is very strong in US and that has been requested quite a lot by our customers. So we are really looking to turn Katana into an integrated app that you know speaks well with all the other leading platforms that small manufacturers use in either accounting, e-commerce or shipping.

Balint: I think it's important to discuss these integrations and outlook because again probably the customers who want to try, give it a try or use it even in the future they want to know what the perspectives what they can expect and how the company will grow. I really like this that you have the API which will be released soon so you can integrate it into different workflows because you can you know hire somebody probably who would take care of this API integration if you have other platforms and project management solutions that you use for managing other aspects of your business.

Kristjan: And I mean Katana already has received interest from several integration service providers on the market. So as soon as our API becomes public we actually can also offer it to our customers, service partners that can build rapidly integrations that they need for them. This is also turning into a kind of standard model that SaaS products like Katana that are kind of relying on integrations they also have a network of service partners that can really offer the service at the quality level, at a high-quality level due to their customer base.

Balint: Yeah. Very nice. Regarding the users and the industries and the typical products which your customers manufacture the complexity could it be useful in your product even for manufacturers that manufacture really complicated, really complex products so not only just you know leather bags or iPhone cases or other small manufacturers but you know it could be like a company which wants to manufacture high priced products, let's say for food and beverage industry? Actually, I work for a company currently we do have a complex product on the market. So does it work also for such cases with many parts software and hardware?

Kristjan: Yeah. We have seen like really interesting use cases among the customer base of Katana. For example, we have customers that have like a really long bill of materials not like you know tool free materials but like 100 different components that are put into one product and Katana fully supports that. Then we also have customers that are really using many levels of subassemblies. I think that Katana supports today's seven levels of subassemblies, it’s products inside products inside products. You know what I mean. So I don't have any customers that actually have seven levels of subassemblies. I mean it's a common approach in manufacturing that you should try to flat out your bill of materials as much as possible so I would say that most of our customers are using you know either they have a totally flat bill of materials or they're using one-two-three levels of subassemblies. But you know three levels of subassemblies this means that you can already have a very complex product structure and Katana can handle it. There are some really, really cool and complex products being built on Katana that have these complexities that you mentioned.

Balint: Yeah. Because you know some of the complex products, high-priced products, they are manufactured in small quantity, you know customized products and that’s why if you're talking about small manufacturers inside that category, you also have you know like a subcategory which is like a complex products but then your solution is applicable also for such manufacturers.

Kristjan: Well, I mean when we started Katana and when we were talking to small manufacturers out there and learning about their business flows then what we realized in the very beginning is that it's a mix in terms of manufacturing flows between make to order and make-to-stock. We quickly realized that there are companies that are fully producing make-to-order. These are often producing high-priced products that are built custom to a customer order. We also saw that they are manufacturers on the market that are purely manufacturing to stock. And we also saw that there is a lot of customers that are using make-to-order and make-to-stock as mix which means that their fast moving goods they keep on stop and they manufacture them based on reorder points. So they always have a safety stock level available and these are more higher priced or more slow moving production or custom products they typically manufacture make-to-order. So we built Katana from day one so that it can support all flows. So in Katana you can do make-to-stock manufacturing orders and you also do make-to-order manufacturing orders and run them in parallel.

Balint: That's a really good that you pointed out this differentiation, this difference. I saw it in your program, in your software that you do have it. I think it's really good that you explain it how it applies to the complex products.

As for the actual use of your product, your software, I really like the [unintelligible] so you have the visual cards, buttons where you see the status for your inventory and for your order for ordering also the materials, the supply. I really like you know the Lean principles in terms of you know a Lean startup but also Lean manufacturing because it brings you know a substructure into your thinking and into your organization and [unintelligible] is one of the tools. And do you see some other ways how would then access solution work in terms of you know trying to do exactly what you're trying to do? Because I think it goes back a little bit to the beginning of the interview when you started talking about the access solution and I still think that many people would like to keep on trying and you know squeezing out as much as possible from the Excel solution without realizing that there's an easier life.

Kristjan: Yeah. I have to agree with you there. I mean it's not super easy to move from Excel to a SaaS product that manages your inventory and your production. The complexity there is that you would need to first kind of upload quite a lot of data into Katana to get it started. I mean you have to upload your products, your production recipes or your bill of materials, your material list. your inventory levels. your customers, et cetera. So this migration process takes a little bit of effort. It's something that you can easily do on your own as Katana is kind of cell phone portable. We are also there to help you along the way if you take that project on so there is a customer success team in Katana that can help you implement Katana or consult you along the way but there is really a lot to win if you take on that journey.

I mean if you compare Katana with Excel it's difficult to compare because they work in a very different way and just let me explain how. I mean with Excel you need to constantly upload your worksheets, your inventory levels, your linking between the files and so on. In Katana it's different. You just run your business. What I mean is that when you want to make a sale, you create the sales order. When you want to make a purchase of raw materials you create the purchase order. When you want to ship something out, you click the button. When you want to schedule something for manufacturing you click the button. And Katana in the background all the time ensures that your inventory is always accurate in live and Katana always manages your manufacturing and sales priorities so you don't have to kind of spend time on manual updating. You can just run your business. And that is what is very different from Excel.

And now coming back to the beginning of your question regarding [unintelligible], then I think one of the key differentiating factors in Katana is that we are a visual tool which can be a bit of surprise for people coming from Excel. I mean people coming from Excel are usually accustomed to working with kind of plain black and white spreadsheets with you know lots of numbers in many rows and columns. In Katana we revolutionized this approach by introducing red and green visual start to sparse which really give you an instant total view of what is going on in your sales, in your purchasing or on your manufacturing floor level. And if you combine these visual dashboards with a live inventory running in the background, then you really have an ideal tool to manage your business flows in your workshop or in your small factory.

Balint: Yeah. I like it that especially small manufacturers they work with a low amount of resources and I don't think that they should be spending time trying to fix Excel when it breaks.

Kristjan: I mean spend less time on Excel and spend more time selling your products or talking to your customers. This [unintelligible] succeed.

Balint: As they say for small businesses, “You should spend less time working in the business rather than working on the business.”

Kristjan: Exactly.

Balint: Just a final question before moving on to the next round of questions. You know there's this ultrafast round of questions. I can't help asking this. What do you see as trends for small manufacturing in 2019 and beyond?

Kristjan: Yeah. It's a good question. I mean I think we've covered most of the…

Balint: Quite a few things.

Kristjan: Quite a few things. But I just you know kind of sum up here. I mean we see that direct-to-consumer trend is a clear winner. We see more and more companies you know manufacturers being established that go directly for the direct-to-consumer approach and there are also many traditional B2B manufacturers that are starting to adopt this direct-to-consumer approach by setting up their own online store or starting to sell on marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, etc. And everybody seems to be trying to you know cut out the middleman. I mean I guess it just makes sense. There's so much margin, profit margin lost along those distribution lines that it makes a lot of sense to cut it out and really online platforms have given us this opportunity. We see that manufacturers they really, especially branded manufacturers, they really want to control their sales channels and access the end consumer directly to ensure this high quality customer service and to get direct feedback on their product from the end consumer. And just the old distribution models they don't support that. And the other thing of course is what we also mentioned before is this Industry 4.0 transformation that is going on really full speed on an enterprise level. We see it more and more also taking place in the world of small manufacturing. And cloud platforms and cloud computing is clearly winning and on-premise solutions are slowly dying out. More and more companies are rather trusting their enterprise platforms to cloud service providers SaaS products and they just don't want to keep their own on-premise solutions and servers and IT support on the [unintelligible]. It's a waste.

Balint: I'd say then let's move on to the last round of questions. So this means I'm going to ask you four questions that it would be good if I could get short answers.

Kristjan: I'll try my best.

Balint: All right. So if you could go back in time like in the movie Back to the future to the time when you were younger black in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself?

Kristjan: A good one. I would probably tell myself to really kind of worry less and enjoy the ride, I think. I mean early 20s I guess you know as a teenager in my early 20s I was I was kind of pushing myself hard you know thinking that you know I'm not doing enough and I guess it took me a while to realize that it's not only about achieving your goals or your life goals. It's also about enjoying the journey. So I would probably tell myself to you know worry less and enjoy the ride. I wouldn't give any other hints like lottery…. What you call it? Winning lottery numbers or that you know I should buy Bitcoin or something like that.

Balint: Yeah. All right. Sounds good. I agree with this. We should all enjoy the ride. You know like typical example is that when an astronaut is preparing to go to the Moon or to go out into space when they reach that goal, they have no other goal sometimes. And then they are really disappointed instead of enjoying the ride.

Kristjan: Exactly. Very good.

Balint: Before and beyond. The second question. If you had to name a book which one had the biggest impact on your thinking?

Kristjan: On my thinking?

Balint: Especially the entrepreneur thinking.

Kristjan: Oh, I guess from business books I'll probably go with the classics like Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It's really fascinating to kind of read the journey of you know Lean principles that were implemented in Toyota and how that kind of transformed you know decades later the startup culture in the States that were based on the same Lean manufacturing or Lean startup principles with the idea to eliminate as much of waste as possible along the way.

Balint: Yeah. The Toyota Production System.

Kristjan: Exactly. I would probably say that but when you say thinking in general, then I think one of the recent favorites I would bring out the is Harari’s Homo Deus. I really love this book. It really expands your thinking on how we as a race we evolved on this planet and where we are going.

Balint: Harari’s…

Kristjan: Harari’s Homo Deus.

Balint: Harari’s Homo Deus.

Kristjan: Yeah. Look it up. It's a really good read.

Balint: Okay. All right. Good. I'll take a note and it's going to be all in the show notes. Third question. I'm amazed by habits and how this can help us reach our goals and even enjoying the ride. Do you have some routine that you like and that you're proud of or not so proud of?

Kristjan: You mean like a morning routine?

Balint: Yeah. Or even daily routine which you really don't want to stop doing because it gives you so much.

Kristjan: Yeah. I have two times a week morning gym routine. Well, I guess many, many people have you know something similar but the reason why I have a morning routine is perhaps somewhat different. Like many guys I hate leg days. So what I typically do is that I do my leg workout in the gym on Monday morning. And the reason why I do it on Monday morning is because if you know even the rest of the week it's looking to be you know quite intense and difficult to manage, then I know that when I'm done with this I know that I got over the most difficult part of the week already on Monday morning. It gives you kind of a good feeling of you know success even if everything else turns bad.

Balint: Eating a frog for the morning, as they say.

Kristjan: Yeah. You know, start with the hard stuff.

Balint: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. The last question. In your work, if you had to pick some cultural differences, which one you wish you knew before and how did you resolve those issues? Because you know you mentioned you have customers from the U.S., worldwide. Maybe you've come across some cultural differences or colleagues, international colleagues.

Kristjan: Yeah. I have to give you a bit of background info here. I mean Katana today is… Although we are based in Estonia, we are quite an international team. About half of our team members are not from Estonia. We have people from the States, from UK, from Romania, from Congo and so on working in Katana. So it is really a company of different cultures and different habits mixed together. And building an international team it's not easy. It's super fun but it's not easy because you have these cultural differences. And I will give an example. For example, Estonians are like super introvert like I mean if you compare to people from the States for example and you know if you want to build an international team I had to kind of step out from that introvert self and then you know really socialize with the team members. I have guys from the States or from the UK coming in the morning you know wanting to chat about you know how was it last night and how was the weekend and so on. And Estonians are like hardworking introverts. And I have to kind of push the team to more open up and socialize. And it's the same with our customers and most of our customer success team is actually from the States and our content writing team is mostly from UK. We could say that we have put some of more socializing types in the forefront of our company. Lots of developers from Estonia so you know they are more perhaps introverts. So we're trying to bring out the best in the people that we have in our team and fit them into roles where they can really excel.

Balint: Yeah. Excellent. I like this. So you’d really have to take care of these international differences even at your company inside for the staff so that they can work together efficiently.

Kristjan: Exactly.

Balint: Nice. We've got to the end of the interview and then one last question. It’s about your reachability. What is the best way for listeners to reach you - by email or social media?

Kristjan: I would say that if you are interested in the product, then Katana like many other modern SaaS products out there we offer live chat support which means that if you go to Katana’s homepage which is www.katanamrp.com, then there you have a nice chat widget on the bottom right of the screen and you'll feel free to drop a line there and we will come back to you shortly. And if you want to explore the product, then we offer a 14-day free trial so feel free to sign up. Give Katana a try. It comes loaded with demo data and some helpful getting started guides. So you can really you know get the feel of it very, very quickly. If you would like to reach me, then I think I would be best reached by email which is kristjan.vilosius@katanamrp.com It's kind of difficult to spell I hope but you can put it in the notes. Or via my LinkedIn profile which I hope you can also share with the listeners.

Balint: Yeah. I'll do that. It's going to be online at the hardwareentrepreneur.com. There will also e link in the podcast notes. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. I really, really enjoyed this interview. Thanks, Kristjan.

Kristjan: Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for your time and it was a real pleasure to be here.

Balint: Thanks for sharing all these infos. Thanks.

Kristjan: Thank you.

***

Give it a shot. Try it for free. Sign up at katanamrp.com or search Katana on the Shopify store, Shopify App Store. They have a 14-day free trial. No credit card needed. When you sign up, use the promo code “hardware”.