7 questions for 1 startup: Botsever

Hey everyone,

This is Sergei, editor of Startupt.co. I hope you're all doing well. Today, I want to kick off something a bit different, something a bit more raw and real. We're planing to start a new series in our Monday Edition of the newsletter that focuses not just on the glittering success stories we all love to hear, but also on the less glamorous side of the startup world: failure.

Failure is a topic we often shy away from. It’s uncomfortable, it's disheartening, and it can feel like a blemish on our professional lives. But here's the thing—failure is a fundamental part of the entrepreneurial journey. It's something we can learn from, something that makes us stronger, smarter, and more resilient. And it's something we need to talk about.

So, let me start with my own story. Two years ago I launched a startup called Botsever. We had a good vision (I'm still sure about this vision): intelligent bots that could analyze data and generate content, from news articles to social media posts. We made some great strides—we were finalists in several competitions, including the EIT Digital, Vilnius Techhub and WebSummit Alpha program. But despite these accomplishments, we didn't make it. By the end of 2023, I had to pull the plug.

Why did we fail? A combination of factors. I was a solo founder and struggled to find a co-founder, which meant I was juggling too many roles. I was hesitant to take risks and too cautious about spending, which slowed our progress. I didn't listen to advice about starting sales early and was too shy (yeah!) to pitch to investors. These were mistakes I only fully realized in hindsight.

Admitting failure wasn't easy, but it was necessary. Reflecting on the journey, I learned invaluable lessons. I learned the importance of moving fast in a rapidly evolving market, the need for a complementary co-founder, and the necessity of embracing the startup world's rules—speak loud, take risks, start sales early. Most importantly, I learned that it's okay to fail. What's not okay is not learning from it and not getting back up to try again.

This newsletter you're reading now is also a sort of startup for me. And this time, I'm applying all those hard-earned lessons to make it better.

As we embark on this new series, I hope these stories of failure will resonate with you, teach you something new, and perhaps even inspire you to take that leap, make those mistakes, and learn those lessons. Because in the end, failure isn't the opposite of success—it's a part of it.

Looking forward to sharing more stories with you all. Let's embrace our failures and turn them into stepping stones to success.

📊 Market size. Quick look

The marketing automation market continues to show robust growth, driven by increasing adoption across various industries such as BFSI, healthcare, retail, IT and telecommunications, media, and entertainment. This expansion is reflected in the projected revenue, which is set to rise from $5.86 billion in 2023 to $13.71 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) that underscores the market's dynamism.

Key insights reveal that email marketing remains the predominant area of usage, with over 60% penetration among users. Social media management, paid ads, and content management also see substantial adoption, each benefiting from the efficiency and enhanced decision-making capabilities provided by automation tools. The market is not only growing in size but also evolving in sophistication, with advanced features like SMS marketing, campaign tracking, and account-based marketing becoming integral to comprehensive marketing strategies.

In 2024, the industry is expected to generate $8.23 billion in revenue, a figure projected to more than double by 2032, surpassing $21 billion. This exponential growth can be attributed to the increasing demand for more efficient marketing operations and the continuous innovation in automation technologies.

According to industry reports, around 61% of marketers anticipate an increase in their marketing automation budgets, reflecting confidence in the technology's ROI. Key benefits driving this investment include improved customer experience, better use of working hours, and enhanced decision-making processes.

Overall, the marketing automation market is poised for sustained growth, presenting lucrative opportunities for vendors and key players to capitalize on the expanding demand across various applications globally.

💡 Botsever's Pitch deck summary

Name: Botsever

Location: Vilnius, Lisbon

Overview:

We develop intelligent bots that analyze extensive data sets to uncover hidden insights, trends, hazards, and more. Our solution automates data analysis and content creation, transforming raw data into valuable content.

The Problem:

Organizations, including companies and news media, face challenges in managing and analyzing large volumes of data. This process is often time-consuming, resource-intensive, and complex, leading to missed opportunities and valuable insights.

The Solution:

• Self-trained Bots: Bots that autonomously analyze data sets, identify trends, insights, and hazards.
• Data Formatting: Converting raw data into a standardized, usable format.
• Content Creation: Generating content from analyzed data, including reports, news articles, blog posts, and social media updates.
• Ready-to-Use Bots: Pre-configured bots for specific industries such as sports, stock market, entertainment, and weather.
• Custom Development Framework: Tools for developing custom bots tailored to specific data sources and content needs.

Revenue Streams:

• Subscription (SaaS): fee per month per ready-to-use bot, plus a one-time installation fee.
• Custom Development: fee per month per bot, with a fee for custom bot development.
• Data Analysis Services: Pricing to be determined.

Market Opportunity:

• Content Marketing Market: Projected to reach $584 billion by 2027.
• Digital Newspapers and Magazines Market: Valued at $32 billion, growing 5-6% annually.
• Data Analysis Market: Expected to reach $329.8 billion by 2030.

Competitive Advantage:

• Data Enriched News: High accuracy and speed in generating news content from data.
• Reports and Analysis: Independent of content management systems (CMS), allowing flexibility and efficiency.
• Big Data Usage: Leveraging extensive data sets to provide deep insights and valuable content.
• Focus on Content Marketing and News Content: Specializing in creating targeted, high-quality content for these sectors.

🧩 7 Questions with Sergei Yakupov

Q: What was the startup about?

A: Botsever was a service that was meant to be able to write content based on big data analysis. We wanted to do some content based on data: news, reviews, social media posts, whatever. The most important thing there should be the ability to dig deep into almost any data sets to find some hidden patterns, trends and to make content based on these discoveries. And we planned to make it in two steps. First — creating content based on streamed data (sport news, news about stock markets, weather etc.). Second — to create a data analysis service itself. And we managed to create a prototype of the bot that wrote news about football and stock markets. During our journey we were among the finalist of 5th cohort of Vilnius Techhub in 2022, we were incubated in BuildUp Labs (Rui and Raquel, thank you for your help very useful and important conversations!) and Startup Lisboa (João, you are the best!). Also, we were the finalists of EIT Digital in 2023 and were selected twice to participate in WebSummit Alpha program. So we did some things good, I think.

Q: Can you describe the process of creating this kind of news?

A: Sure. It is simple in terms of logic: we plug into some data sets (via API or with database interface), find the data we need, extract it, use it to create visualisation if needed, create text based on the data in a format we need (news, post, review, report etc.). Then we combine data, text, visualisation in the ready-to-use piece of content and send it to the platform. It can be sent as a draft or published. That was our initial model. Then we decided that text would be much better if we use our own pre-trained LLM to polish it (that was in the summer of 2023). Initially it was a templated text (we deconstruct the templates on pieces and then combined them in one — that helped us to have more or less new text everytime we created news). We choose Llama2 for it. But then the industry of genAI exploded.

Q: How did you decide to stop it? Was it hard to admit that you failed?

A: It was hard do decide to stop as I spent quite a lot of my own money to develop the project. First I didn't think about stopping do it as a failure, I thought about it as decision to save money. But then I started to analyse all the path, my decisions, all that I've done, and it came to me, that... well... that was a failure. I started to think about quitting in September 2023, when me and my team polished the code to relaunch our prototype website by WebSummit, where we were going to take part. The key point was our tempo, we were too slow, I was too cautious and don't want to take a risk from the very beginning. And that period last September was the pick of this my attitude. By November, I finally run out of money and as I promised to myself that if I don't make some breakthrough by the end of 2023 I quit, the decision appeared very obvious. It was not very hard to admit. Frankly that was a relief. I pay my team all the money they earned, we talked a little, I thanked them for the great job they've done, and we parted our ways in December 2023.

Q: So what was the main reason for it? Just running out of money?

A: Not exactly. Running out of money was, I would say, an aftermath of real reasons. I made a lot of mistakes as it was my very first startup. I was a solo founder and failed to find a co-founder. So I had to do a lot of things by myself, that was exhausting, don't do it, delegate. Then I wasn't a good listener, when people with a great experience told me to start sales. I've always been thinking that the idea to sell even before you have a product — is a very bad idea. I've read a lot of books about startup people who started sales before they got the product and I thought it was like cheating and not fair to the customers. Another reason is that I was too shy to come up to investors and pitch my product. And more over I realised that I hate pitching. I do really like to talk about my product, but pitching is a disaster for me, I can't stick to the slides, can't speak condensed (I think that I'm missing something if I condensed the pitch). I needed to be more engaged in startup ecosystem here in Portugal. And finally — one of the most important thing I failed was not accepting startup world's rules: speak loud, take risks (hire people, spend more if it is vital to expand fast), don't be shy, start sales before you have a product.

Q: What are the lessons you learned doing your startup?

A: When I decided to quit, I sat down and started to reflect a little. Maybe not everybody were born to be a startuper. As my wife tells me everytime — "you are the person who need to have results as fast as possible, long run without small wins will demotivate you". I think, she is right. I think my startup could succeed if I did all right from the very beginning. I didn't mention this before, but we develop the prototype too slow, we even had a hiatus (almost 10 months) when I'd been thinking about if I should proceed. So the next lesson — be on time and in time. Today's markets and industries are evolving extremely fast. And being late — is a very obvious reason to fail. So think and do fast. And fail fast (100% true, because then you'll have time, and resources — both internal and external — to start something from the scratch). Don't do it alone, there are a lot of people who could be your co-founder, but mind that not all people will be like you — you need someone who will be not you but even opposite. In my case — I can generate ideas, be a motor, be a team leader, be even a motivator (but not for myself, sorry, Sergei). But I always need a person near me to be a pragmatic CEO. I couldn't find this person as I was thinking about him or here as my future friend, soul mate if you want. But that is not a right way to search for this kind of co-founder. Anyway, the most important lesson is simple: if you feel like doing startup and believe in the idea — do it, make your own mistakes, learn lessons, fall, get up and do it again. Don't give up (sorry for being Tony Robbins).

Q: Do you think is it important to tell about fails?

A: 100% sure about that. You do two things while telling about your fails. First: you describe your path and can spot something you didn't spot before and this can help you and the one who is listening to your story. As they say — stupid people learned on their own mistake, but smart — on others'. Second: It is always helpful personally to admit it, you become stronger and stop being ashamed of this.

Q: What's next now? Do you think that you can start a new startup?

A: It depends on what to call startup. This newsletter that I've started more than a month ago — also a startup (sort of). So now I'm trying to implement all personal and professional lessons I've learned doing Botsever here in Startupt.co. I do really like to be inside this ecosystem in Portugal, be some part of it. I like highly passionated people there, that create a lot of interesting, cool and useful things. And above all now I'm focused on my main business — consultancy, the agency that helps news media and content departments of the companies to set it all in a proper way.

🎧 Music to go deep

Today's playlist is all about songs that were written about being strong even if everything is not okay, agianst you. We hope these songs will help you to have your head up high. Spotify Playlist

That's all for today! See you next week. And don't forget to check your email on Thursday — you'll find a regular Startupt.co newsletter with the most important news about startup industry in Portugal.