[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. My name is Jay Aigner. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by Tanya Isa. She's the CEO and founder of KitSF, CEO and founder of Trinity Education Group. Hello, Tanya. How are you?
[00:00:41] Tanya: Hi, Jay. I'm fine. Thank you. How are you? Thank you for having me today.
[00:00:47] Jay: You are very welcome. And we'll pretend like this isn't the second time we've tried to do this today. We've had a little bit of a hiccup, but we're here. We're rocking. Everything's good. We're good to go. I'm glad to have you on. all right. So, I was going to say, You're probably the first person from Ukraine that I think I've had on this show.
[00:01:02] Tanya: so, congratulations on being the first with that, and I'm very glad to have you, as a, you know, staunch supporter of Ukraine. Thank
so tell me a little bit about where you came from, where you grew up, you. Yeah, thank you for this question. So, yeah, my name is Tanya or Tatyana. I live in San Francisco right now. I came from Ukraine, so I left Ukraine two years ago. I grew up in Donbass. This is the East. part of Ukraine, which had, you know, this strategy in 2014, when, the military conflict started, then I moved to, the capital of Ukraine, that year, and yeah, two years ago, I happen, I was happy to visit United States the second time in my life, and, yeah, I decided to stay in San Francisco.
So now I'm here. so, I started my first business, in Donbass, in Donetsk. This is the huge city with more than 1 million people. Like, population is more than 1 million people. So this is, this was my hometown. And at the age of 27, I guess, I decided to change my life, to quit my job. to borrow first money and just to open, like, to launch my first business ever.
so that was the start of my journey. when I came to the United States, I met my co founder and we decided to launch a startup. so, talking about my Ukrainian business, this is the... Language Center, so we are an international, we are an exam preparation center for international exams, like TOEFL, like SAT, IELTS, FCE, like Cambridge exams.
in the United States, in San Francisco, we are mentoring, senior software engineers, overseas senior software engineers and machine learning engineers. mainly from South Asia, and we, educate them on how to get a job, in the Bay Area or in the United States and how to relocate to the United States and obtain a U.
S. work permit.
[00:03:35] Jay: So how, what was the turning point for you? What made you decide to start your own business back when you were in Ukraine?
[00:03:43] Tanya: I guess it was ingrained, like, inherited, some features. So I always, I was always ambitious. and I felt that I was doing something wrong, like working for someone, doing something, useless. and then I just wanted to do my own business, always. at the age of 12, I had my personal small business.
I, sold newspapers on the streets. That was my initiative. So, my mother just helped me to, to buy the newspapers in a wholesale store. And then I just distributed these newspapers on the street and had my first money as a kid.
[00:04:39] Jay: Oh, I love that story. what did you, what was the problem that you identified, that you thought that Trinity was the solution for? what was the problem you went to solve?
[00:04:51] Tanya: I guess there was no any problem. It was, I just. Pursued my personal ambitions and I found the right co founder
and persuaded this person to join me. then I found, like, fundings. and we just launched the business. Found first customers, and developed the company. what, but we did have a problem.
We didn't know anything about entrepreneurship. you know, we are kids from the ex USSR. It's like it's a post Soviet country.
Entrepreneurship was illegal in the USSR, so my parents are not, we were not aware of how to do business. And when Ukraine was born, the country was born, and Ukraine became independent, people came to the entrepreneurship because this was the only way to earn money.
Just for your understanding, and for all Americans, we didn't have, like, simple food, in, the grocery store. We didn't have milk, we didn't have carrots, or, we didn't have cheese, or bananas. It was,something special, like, twice a year, for my birthday, and for my, for the New Year Eve, or, so, or Christmas Eve.
So, well, I just, I started doing that and, I made lots of mistakes.
[00:06:29] Jay: Oh, so what, who were, I mean you can't, you don't have to name names obviously but, who were your first customers for your business? How did you get those first customers?
[00:06:40] Tanya: Well, if we are talking about Ukrainian company,this, the first customers were people, like, from the streets, because, I found the office in the very center, like in the downtown, of Donetsk. This is the city where I started the business. And, I created, you know, this tabloid or, you know, banner with, like, English for everybody.
and just people came into the office and applied for the courses. with the American company, everything is much more complicated because we work, on Indian market. Like, the Indian market is a supply market and the U. S. market is a demand. And it was much, it was a more complicated, and we spent more than a year on a, on acquiring the very first customer.
And how did you actually get them? How did you find them? How did you make, how did you sell to them? How did you actually get them to become a customer? Oh. that was a long route, which we had many MVPs. We tested lots of ideas. India is very unique market with own culture traditions and,it's in Asia. What works in the U. S. doesn't work in India. And it's not easy, being a non American or American to sell something to an Indian person.
that's why... Okay, we try to, sell consultations, then course, we created courses on a special platform. We try to sell that. And then, after... After several months of constant trying, lots of mistakes, fails, we decided to, acquire lots of business partners in India, like Indian representatives.
in India it's quite popular, well, people, Indian people trust you if they know somebody who knows you. So, recommendations work.
[00:08:55] Jay: hmm.
[00:08:56] Tanya: We signed more than 100 business partners, business agreement with business partners and then they started generating, leads and clients for us. So that was my first, success and, that's how I acquired first customers in India, with the checks, 5, 000.
So wonderful.
[00:09:26] Jay: So you mentioned, I think, before the call or earlier, how different it was to start a business or run a business in Ukraine versus the United States. I'm just personally curious, what are some of those differences? What were the, you know, was it, I know I'm sure it was cultural, but was like, what were the big differences between,
[00:09:47] Tanya: Mm hmm.
[00:09:47] Jay: you know, if you were to start the same business in both places in Ukraine and the United States, what are the big differences between those two places?
[00:09:55] Tanya: yeah, I thank you for this question. I guess the first difference is that the size of the market. The U. S. market is the biggest market ever. paying customers and huge, check size. Ukraine is a small market. And, people have, you are absolutely right. They have different mindset. And the different values.
I mean, they would rather spend their own time on investigating something or researching something, rather than just pay and forget and get value. In the US, people value their time, and in the US, the competition is extremely high. That's why the quality of the service is also very high. so, being on the US market is quite challenging.
And I would, frankly speaking, 90 percent of, foreign immigrants, not immigrants, like people who came from different markets, Ukrainian, European, or any other, they have, they face lots of challenges in the U. S. market, on the U. S. market because, it's highly competitive, it's different culture, and they just quit.
[00:11:15] Jay: So, what did you do differently, in your Ukrainian business compared to your American business? Like, how did
[00:11:23] Tanya: Oh.
[00:11:24] Jay: the American industry compared to the Ukrainian?
[00:11:29] Tanya: well in, Ukraine, I, had lack of knowledge of entrepreneurship and also I bootstrapped, I mean, I did bootstrapping, in the US I understood that, we would rather go with the venture model business model, so it's crucial. To raise funds and find investors money and launch company as soon as possible and scale company as fast as possible.
because, you know, investors love growth, revenue, growing revenue. And, of course, the dream of each founder, every founder is to exit, to do exit. like this. So, the difference, what was different in the U. S., we did a lot of testing before we started, sales, and then, I made more than 500 or 700 calls with potential customers, with, competitors, and also, with the mentors and advisors.
because in the, US, I understood that having a mentor is crucial as well. like advisor, it's called advisor.
[00:12:51] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:12:52] Tanya: I guess more than thousand calls. yeah, that's what I made. And it's more about networking, communication, asking questions, so learning, testing, pivot and pivoting. So.
We do not success right now with this business model or with like in this direction We pivot we change something and try it again.
[00:13:18] Jay: So how did you learn all this stuff? How did you learn all these different, it sounds like you had to learn... About the American market, and about how to do business, like how did you I mean, it seems like a lot of stuff to learn in a short amount of time. how did you do that from, you know, was it reading, was it knowing people, like how did you acquire all this knowledge that you needed to have?
[00:13:41] Tanya: Well, first of all, I met a genius co founder
[00:13:45] Jay: that always helps. I always said that, I hear that story a lot. Yeah, having a genius co founder is a good place to start.
[00:13:51] Tanya: True yeah, but he paid a lot Figuratively, I say that paid a lot for his knowledge because he made a huge amount of mistakes The second point is, Y Combinator Startup School. This is a must for every, for each entrepreneur to watch it. It's absolutely free of charge on YouTube. this is the top accelerator in the U.
S. Like, in the world, I would say. In order to enroll into this, like, The competition for this accelerator is higher than for Stanford. It's about, like, Twenty, I guess, twenty two thousand, businesses, like startups, applied this year. and they take only two hundred, I guess, or three hundred
a day. well, this is the second one.
And the third one, just learn more about your peers, and other entrepreneurs. So, use Lunch Club. use LinkedIn, go to LinkedIn, and I just, reach out to many people on LinkedIn. if this is the entrepreneur, or the person who works at the field I work, I just, text this person and ask for coffee.
Because I live in San Francisco, and that's why I can meet this person, and discuss some interesting questions in person. Not online.
[00:15:26] Jay: Right. I love all those answers. Alright, well let's change gears a little bit. just personally, what are three kind of things you do health wise to keep yourself, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally healthy? What are some of your top things that you do?
[00:15:45] Tanya: Oh, that's It's a lovely question, work life balance is important for every person, but for entrepreneurs, it's kind of impossible, but try to stick to, in my opinion, I'm trying to stick to three, like, things, points, first, sleep enough, eight hours per night, per day, then, work out, it's vital, it's necessary.
Personally, I swim, three times per week. I try to swim. I try to do so. And I do small yoga, like, ten minutes in the morning, just to refresh
[00:16:27] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:16:28] Tanya: Like, to wake up. And, the third one, I guess, this kind of, to keep your mental health, on the right level, just, if you... Sometimes we have some problems and we cannot influence on them and we can change it.
So just don't think about that. Focus on that, that you can change. The, on that things that you can make impact or influence on. That's my personal wisdom.
[00:17:03] Jay: I love all of those. those.
are great. that is a lot of wisdom. Alright, so, you know, I do, a mystery question at the end, but I'm gonna change it up a little bit because I have a,a specific question I want to ask you, what is one piece of advice, the top piece of advice you would give to, any non American, maybe they're Ukrainian, maybe they're anywhere in the world, what, you know, for a young entrepreneur, what is the top thing that you would tell them to do? and maybe it's the same thing for somebody that's in America, but I'm just curious if there's something different. You know, if there's a young entrepreneur sitting in Ukraine right now happening to listen to this, what would be your number one advice to them?
[00:17:51] Tanya: Well...
Interesting question, I know. if you want to start a business, the first thing that you should do, just watch Y Combinator Startup School. Watch all episodes. and just don't limit yourself. Do your business. I mean, start your business. Launch your business. And be successful.
[00:18:21] Jay: I love it. that's very straightforward. I have not watched those videos, but now you're making me want to go watch them. So maybe I'll go watch them too. I'll put them in the links to the description. Alright, well let's wrap it there. If people want to find you, Tanya, what's the best way to do that, and if they were to find KitSF or Trinity, what's the best way to find you or your companies?
[00:18:42] Tanya: what is the best way to find my company? you may find it on LinkedIn and just go to the website.
[00:18:49] Jay: Okay, what's your website URL?
[00:18:52] Tanya: it's kitssf. com
[00:18:56] Jay: Perfect. And, they'll be able to look you up, I'll include the spelling of your name. in the episode notes so that when I, since I, you know, I've had such trouble, saying it out loud, they can find you. they can find you on LinkedIn. Well, Tanya, you have a very cool story and I think you should be proud of it.
It's very cool. you know, you left somewhere and, you started a business in two continents, two different countries. That's very impressive. Not a lot of people have done it in one market, let alone two, so congratulations on your success. I wish you continued success. you're fantastic, and I hope you have a good rest of your day, okay?
[00:19:30] Tanya: Yeah, thank you so much for these questions and yeah, you're absolutely right that But India is absolutely unique and also I, as I had more than, I guess, 600 calls with India, with Indian partners and just clients from India, I decided to write a book about
business culture in India. So now I'm working on that.
[00:19:56] Jay: I love that.
[00:19:57] Tanya: this is my personal experience, how to deal with business people and how to deal with culture in India. Yeah. Because. You know, the sales here are absolutely different. So you may find me on LinkedIn, and you may find my company, on the internet, kitsf. com.
[00:20:16] Jay: Absolutely. Yes, and let us know when your book comes out, and we'll make sure we share that as well, alright? So,
alright, well
enjoy the rest of your afternoon, and you have a good week, and we'll talk to you soon, okay?
[00:20:27] Tanya: Yeah, Jay, thank you so
[00:20:28] Jay: Thanks, Tanya. See ya.
[00:20:30] Tanya: your time.
[00:20:30] Jay: Thank you.