Asia Tech Podcast recorded an interesting conversation with Esmar Mesic, Head of Product at TrueProfile.io. TrueProfile.io is a career toolkit that gives ambitious healthcare professionals everything they need to build a successful career overseas.
Some topics discussed by Esmar:
- Esmar’s big opening from working with the biggest telco company at that time
- Why it is important to ask oneself questions to understand one’s strengths and weakness
- The importance and effectiveness of training oneself to have an ‘I’m always there to try’ mindset
- The breakthrough from Esmar’s big fail
- Why the hiring process is so critical
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- I Used to Think Speaking More Is Cool but It’s the Other Way Around
- Everything Should Be an Experiment, You Never Know What’s Going to Work
- Failure Is an Integral Part of Success but It’s How You Treat It
This episode was produced by Stephanie Ng.
Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):
Michael Waitze 0:03
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to what I’m considering a very special edition of the Asia Tech Podcast today we are joined by Esmar Mesic, I always try hope I got it right, the Head of Product at TrueProfile.io as well thank you so much for coming on the show. How are you doing?
Esmar Mesic 0:22
Thanks for having me, Michael doing great. And I’m here in Bangkok with my team and you got it right. It’s actually <Meshitch>, which is super hard to pronounce for American speakers. So I do the best. Thanks for having me, buddy. Thank you know, you rock. Thanks for having me.
Michael Waitze 0:35
It is my pleasure. Before we get into the main part of this conversation, can we get a little bit of your background for some context?
Esmar Mesic 0:41
Well, I pretty much spent my whole life building products since kind of, we had a chance to to meet very briefly. And people are kind of wondering where I’m coming from and whatnot. So actually, I was born in, in the country, which doesn’t exist anymore, which is Yugoslavia. It was born at 86. And then country was being torn apart in the war in early 90s. But I’m originally from Bosnia, which is a very awesome, small country in the central to south part of the Europe. And actually, after my degree in electrical engineering, and I remember back then, I mean, we didn’t have a chance to study computer science and whatnot, I had a chance to actually start to work in one small home company where we were building products. And I kind of didn’t didn’t want it to ended up in an engineering world because I never kind of find myself like a geek guy or someone who will love to do things like that I was more a people person, someone who likes to speak someone who likes to present someone who kind of love psychology love to understand why people are behaving like they do. And I guess throughout my other interests increases, I ended up in a product development. And this is what I’m doing right now. I mean, now to be honest, I’m super happy because product as a discipline is giving you a lot of different angles on different things. So you have their product design, which is already awesome, you’re going to build the journeys for the people who eventually they’re going to use your product or your app, you have a marketing, which is another way of expressing yourself. And then you have this creation part where people will sit down and code right, which is also a bit complex, where you need to understand scalability, reliability, and all of these things which today’s product needs to have.
Michael Waitze 2:37
Do you have memories of I don’t even know what to call it right. So again, tell me if I get this wrong. But do you have memories of like pre independence? You know, you’re born in 1986. Which to you might feel like a long time ago, but the older you get, the less far away it seems in a really sort of paradoxical way. But do you have memories of like,
Esmar Mesic 2:56
so the only memory which I have, of course, was our parents moving in a nice apartment, of course, Yugoslavia was a communist country back then. And my dad was running the factory, coal factory back home. So we had a chance we actually were being given a flat in a town. And I remember moving there it was, everything was super new. Everything was everything smells very nice. But in the end of the day, I guess very quickly, maybe healthy health for a year down the line. I remember myself standing on the balcony, and hearing the gunshots. That’s actually when the war started. Right. So and that was, that was that was my early memory on that one. And actually, I started to go to school in the basement. That’s that was also a very funny part. Because I kind of I mean, it is big because other kids had the chance to start to go to school properly. But since the war broke out, that was the only way to do it.
Michael Waitze 3:55
How much information do you have, but what was going on in other countries? Do you know what I mean? Like were you able to see like, yeah, like this, but other people live like that kind of thing. I don’t
Esmar Mesic 4:03
remember actually. But someone brought a satellite dish at some point. So we started to watch German channels a lot. Fair enough. It was very funny. And we didn’t of course have a debt amount of the informations. But we had a chance, of course to mainly watch the TV and because the local newspapers will give you what’s happening locally or around the country, but and plus was like, let’s say NBA matches are recording. So for the NBA matches, which we used to watch on VHS, specifically bowls versus jazz these these years and whatnot. So that was pretty funny.
Michael Waitze 4:41
Did you really watch those NBA games?
Esmar Mesic 4:43
Yeah, of course pre recorded ones. And for you it’s almost like a live game. You know? I mean, what’s going to happen because you don’t know the result of it right? So some of the older older folks might not tell you that. Like Jordan one bulls won the game. So
Michael Waitze 4:59
when did you find the Move out of the country and where did you go first? So
Esmar Mesic 5:03
actually, I stayed there, I get my master’s degree in electrical engineering and I hear my first job over there. But the first kind of a bigger openings from you happen when better chances in the career actually happen when I joined the company called at the time, Nokia Siemens Networks, they were actually the biggest telco joint venture at that time, what year was that? 12 years ago or 13 years ago? 2010, I would say, Okay, again, the benefit of that was working with with a, probably the biggest telco company at that time in the whole world. And this is why this joint venture happened, right. But it was an unhappy marriage between Nokia and Siemens, because Siemens is a technology company, they want to innovate, they want to grow. And this is actually when they pull out from the deal. And Nokia was a heavily sales driven company. So whenever you marry these two different worlds, and actually I’m reading a lot these days, is your company product or innovation lead, or is it sales lead? And it depends, someone prefers more sales than then product lead anyway, just didn’t ended up well, because after just two years of being there, I was laid off. why? It’s because I used to work in apparently unprofitable product line, which was, at that time, fixed line and fixed broadband, DSL networks and whatnot. Of course, everyone was moving in a mobile world these days. But to be honest, are looking from this point of view. And people talks a lot these days about tech layoffs. Some intermediate happened 12 years ago, all the time. And yeah, happening all the time. Yeah, exactly. So it was honestly one of the best things that happened to me because I had a chance to explore other worlds other industries, not just to be tied with telco. And I’m so happy to happen to it’s weird,
Michael Waitze 6:55
right to celebrate getting laid off I was laid off to at the end of my career, and I could not be happier as my friend when they did it. I smiled and the guy was like, we just laid you off. And I was like, yeah, thank you. Can I go home now? Because everything else that opened up become that but here’s the other thing. And I’m curious if you felt the same way? Or even in retrospect, if you did, do you feel like you’d learn so much by being in that environment, particularly back then with Nokia, and Siemens being part of a joint venture where wasn’t really well liked on both sides being in two different types of companies? And learning about a bunch of things? Maybe that you didn’t know beforehand that now you can drive into what you’re doing today? Does that make sense?
Esmar Mesic 7:33
I mean, totally, because I had a chance to, first of all learn corporate politics on such a high level. Yeah, I used to learn, learn how to drive bigger projects, because let’s be honest, if you’re working in smaller companies, the scale of the projects, or let’s say the certain millions of dollars, right, but this was a huge thing. And I wanted to work on something huge. But then what happened is that when you were kind of, at some point, sick of big companies, and that’s what I’m doing, apparently, so far, I have always ups and downs, right? Sometimes I want to go to work for a big company. And everything is so big things are moving so slow. Then I said, Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go to the startup, then your startup, you’re faced with uncertainties, and we’re faced with something which you cannot deliver, then there is no money and runway just is empty for you in the next couple of months. So it’s kind of on and off, if you know what I mean. But a lot of learnings if I need to do that, I’m not sure how I mean, how you felt, what was your key takeaway from that. But for me, it was definitely prepare me for stuff in the future.
Michael Waitze 8:39
Let me share something with you. Because it’s a really good point. One of my buddies, and this was when I was working at Deutsche Bank for a short period of time was just this incredible technologist, just incredible. And it was kind of right at the beginning, at least in the US of when startups were starting to become part of the social conversation, right? And I asked him, I said, Dude, you’re so good at this, why don’t you just go out and build your own company? And he said, I could do that. But great. Technologists like to solve big problems. And big banks have so many big problems, they almost unending, they don’t run out. That’s true. It changed the way I thought about the way technologists look at it. Because for me, I just thought, don’t you just want to go build the stuff you want to build? Because I didn’t know back then. That the constraints on small companies are the things that keep people at big companies and the politics inside the big companies and the things that throw them out into smaller companies. That makes sense.
Esmar Mesic 9:29
Exactly. Totally. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 9:32
So I was happy to learn that as a 30 something year old, and I think about that all the time now. Right? And I can’t get out of my mind when I meet technologists but you said something else really interesting. Earlier you said I’m super interested in people and in psychology and the way people act, but you got a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Did you do that? Because no, but it’s super interesting, right? And obviously being any and having a master’s degree in E is super useful. But are people sometimes personal prized when they meet you a guy that has a master’s degree in electrical engineering, which seems like something seems Yeah, like something that’s super dry. Just how thoughtful you are and how interested you are in the psychology of humans and how they react to changes and stuff like that. Are people surprised? That’s
Esmar Mesic 10:15
true, because they will usually expect someone purely techie guy, or someone who will come and maybe get them bored with a lot of tech details, right. But again, I don’t know, maybe it’s something that I brought it from my family from a house because my granddad was, was a person who used to working in a hospital. And he was very polite with everyone. My mom did the same. And maybe that’s something which you brought brought from home, this interest in people, right, General general interest in people. What I learned throughout the years is that I’m trying to I’m trying to listen more, because I used to think that speaking more is cool. Which isn’t to be honest. It’s the other way around. So I’m trying a very small amount in in very big ears. I mean, why why people because just just sitting there and watching what triggers them why they react, why the React, why someone might be pissed off on someone and kind of this this deeper level I generally it because at some point, I was also trying to discover myself because at age 25, and I when I was laid off, I didn’t know who am I? What I know to do very well. What would be what would be my next move. So I try kind of to ask myself these questions. What are you good at? What are you better at? Where do you need to improve? And honestly, it helped me a lot, because it’s better to ask yourself, I guess these questions before then later. Yeah. And honestly, I’m spending my free time reading a lot about this. I have even favourite scholars. It’s Dr. Plum, Paul Blum flown from, from Yale University, a warm recommendation to check his Intro to Psychology core reading it down right now. from Coursera. It’s really awesome, really. And actually, the, the whole scope of the psychology how he’s starting explaining the brain how we react with something, then explaining the relationship within yourself and between your family, your, your kids, then your, your Wi Fi. And so it’s awesome. Honestly, one recommendation,
Michael Waitze 12:22
I need to ask you this, because I love this thing. And I actually may make this the title of this episode, which I don’t normally say so early into most of my episodes, I want to make sure I get this right, a very small mouth and very big ears. Is this letter? Is this a literal translation of something that’s like culturally said to you in your home country? Or is it just something you made up? Do you know what I mean? In my
Esmar Mesic 12:43
home country? It’s the opposite. I mean, but I guess it’s not just my country, but people tend to have a superficial conversation that they think should their buddies with someone, right, especially over the beer and, and I guess a lot of valid communication or something useful between two persons get lost, because no one listens. Right, right. And, since I’m really interested in also in venture capitalists and Angel angel investments, usually you can jump quickly by listening startups. So they can, let’s say, try to do something and you might act smart, but eventually, you’re just gonna make a mistake, telling them what to do. So I tend tend to be a vise person, try to sit, try to hear and not try to jump to the conclusion and just say something to be smart. Right? Again, I’m trying to teach myself to do that, because it’s kind of making me I guess, a better person by the leader in my positions. And eventually, you can learn way more than just speaking out. Because when we speak, Michael, right, we just say what, what we know. And I’m just right now repeating all of my memory and retrieving what I literally learned so far. But if I just shut up a bit and keep quiet for a minute, I might learn something from him. Right? That’s the beauty of it.
Michael Waitze 13:53
Yeah, I mean, look, I say this often. But when I do these recordings, it’s something like 70%. Guess 30%. Me and most of that is because I feel like I’m learning something from you. And I feel like if I keep my mouth shut, I can learn more than if I pontificate. That’s just the way I feel about it. I want to ask you this, too, you know, you had this experience of being laid off, and you’re 25, it made you not even reconsider. But just think about like, who am I? Who am I not? What do I want to be? What do I not want to be? And this interest in psychology, and if you tie all these things together a little bit, and I don’t think a lot of people equate this with technology companies. But one of the things you talked about at the presentation that you gave in Vietnam at the NFC summit was the growth hacking, and I don’t think you can get away from the psychology of humans. And growth hacking. Like I think those two things go together. And I’m curious if you can tie together for me how the tech side of you translates the psychology interest you have into the growth hacking. Does that make sense?
Esmar Mesic 14:52
No, totally. Well, growth hacking definitely. At some point is a vital part of any product growth as I said, We as a person, as a company, which is just nothing but a group of people, everyone wants to grow. I mean, it’s kind of the nature of the people. The good thing about human psychology is, and there again, there’s also a good book by near I love hooks, it’s called Hooked. He acts he is explaining how digital products are trying to hook people. But it’s, this might be debatable because of the way how, how far products went in terms of exploring human false rainfalls, and definitely very famous examples of growth hacking, increasing of retention rates of using, let’s say, mobile apps, like Pinterest data, pedestrian scroll, Facebook, having this buzz on the comments and likes and whatnot. Tick tock with these videos, which are keeping your your your attention pretty much all the time. I mean, it’s not just just that in a bad way, of course, it was very beneficial to the companies who did that. But from again, using the app or promoting the app, it’s like old school way of doing things in some some manner. Because if you just think the product, who you want to launch in, in a supermarket, right, you need think about the design or the packaging, you need to think about of, of the label of it, you need to think about the price, you need to think about the placement, is it on the shelves, which when you’re just entering the store, somewhere behind maybe a delivery to the stores. And I’m trying to also think from that point of view in terms of how digital products are being met, the ones which we have coming back to the topic, how actually, these human interactions with product can can be helpful for your growth, right. So you’ll literally see how they using. And if they don’t like it, you try to improve it. And
Michael Waitze 16:52
I don’t know when this happened to me, but it must have been like 10 years ago, I was mucking around on YouTube, that I ran into this thing called Everything is a Remix by this guy named Kirby Ferguson. And I want to connect this to what you’re talking about in growth hacking, because I don’t think this is new. Right? In other words, if you think about Yeah, yeah, if you think about offline businesses, you know, having a salad bar where you can have as much as you want is a growth hack, right? Because it says exactly, it says, I’ll bring you in, and then you’ll order a really expensive steak and I can charge you whatever I want for the steak, because you feel like the salad is free kind of thing, right? Or all you can drink, or ladies later. And it seems these are all growth hacks. But technology then lets you do it at scale. Right. And that’s true. Yeah. But here’s the other thing. And I’m really curious about your opinion on this, we talked about this a little bit at the at the, at the summit, but maybe you can expand on this a little bit more. And that is putting a salad bar in takes a tonne of time. It’s physical capex, and you don’t know if it’s going to work or not. And if it doesn’t work, and people think there’s going to be a salad bar there all the time, you got to remove it as well. But in technology, and you can’t have a salad bar and not have a salad bar at the same time, unless you have two outlets that are right next to each other. But tech allows us to do growth hacking away we’re testing and iteration become so much at scale. Walk me through why that matters so much.
Esmar Mesic 18:17
In my again, personal view is everything should be experiment, right and everything you should compare, AB kind of right. And you because you never know what’s gonna work, what we tend to do, or the teams which I’m working with is we are not calling these like lists of the features or whatever we want to develop a product wise, it’s more like it’s experiment. If we can test it, it will be out. And we’re trying kind of more to, as you said, on the scale, right? That’s, that’s super important. Yeah. Because there are tools these days, which kind of allows you even without a significant amount of time to spend to develop something to quickly check what’s better, right? And in my own view, we should have solid bar, we should have it. Because again, you don’t know Will it work or not. I’m always there to try. And that’s why I’m encouraging my team and especially the cost of trying in today’s world index world, specifically having tools which are let’s say offering your freemium options, and you can use them for a couple of days are also very convenient. Right? And why not? Yeah, and then the most important thing during this is actually a learning curve. Right? That’s, that’s what what we’re trying to do here. But
Michael Waitze 19:30
there are a couple of things here that are really important, right? In other words, at least in my upbringing, and I’m a generation ahead of you, right, it was difficult to convince people to take a risk, and particularly if you joined a large organisation, you know, they used to have these commercials give it to us that these commercials on TV is more when I was a kid that said like, it was an 18 T commercial instead, nobody ever got fired for hiring AT and T that’s how they started competing with some of these other new phone companies because you may not get anything new and innovative, but you weren’t going to get something that didn’t work kind of thing. Right. And how do you encourage people to feel like it’s okay to fail? Because when they fail, they fail at scale to right. And yet, if they learn something that’s true, yeah. How do you how do you encourage people to do that on your teams, but just in general, because that’s hard? No,
Esmar Mesic 20:15
that’s the hardest part. So the reason why we are actually in Bangkok is, I wanted for the first time that team feels that we are collaborating together and having a co creation of the future things on the roadmap for the next year, which we want to build, collaborating with, with mighty minstrel profile here in Bangkok. And this is, for the first time, we’re actually we are bringing the team fully in roadmap development. And you can see that it’s about the culture is I guess, and where people need to become comes from, because it’s still in some cultures, even back home, if you fail, you kind of you’ll fail. I mean, that’s almost the end of the world and nothing happens. But I don’t I don’t know anyone that these days, however, when they find a success is, is successful, and who didn’t fail at some point in his life? And the failure is an integrative part of it. It’s just how you treat it. Is it? Like the end of the world? Where you say, okay, things are very, I learned this now. I’m gonna try that. So I like actually NFQ abbreviation. And that’s, yeah, it’s a number of fucking quit. Right? So that’s what you should kind of kind of do. I mean, and this is a smile.
Michael Waitze 21:27
I think it was you that said that, or Thomas that said it, that translation of those initials is actually super important, right. And again, to be clear, it doesn’t mean keep doing the same thing over and over again, it just means you’re going to keep learning
Esmar Mesic 21:39
exactly. Keep going. I guess learning is also something which I value throughout my life. Because I think if you if you know, something, if you’re passionately or a general interest in something, it’s just a positive thing around. And so again, a couple of Phil experiments, which we’re running right now in through profile, or some people will just stop, right. So they try something they stop. And then I’m just trying to look look at them. And for couple of occasions, I tried to push them say, Guys, you tried once you let’s say send an email blast, you fail, and nothing happens, right? Let’s do more light. And then I’m trying to kind of push them to encourage them. I know, again, it’s in my own view, it’s mostly about does people come from either a region or a country that’s number one. Number two is they of course can change if they are in organisation, which I encourage you to fail. And if you train yourself if you have that mindset, if you embrace that mindset of constant change of being able to fail, good things happen, right?
Michael Waitze 22:41
Do you have and you can say no to this right? But do you have any examples of like a crazy idea that someone came to you with and just said look, I think if we do this this thing is gonna work and you’re like, that’s insane, but why not try it? And then it didn’t you’re like, Okay, keep going. You don’t I mean?
Esmar Mesic 22:56
Actually, it was a $10 million idea and it’s failed miserably. Oh, tell me that. That’s the reason why I came to Dubai actually, we wanted to end it was of course one of the crypto projects but look, it happened 2017 right to 1819 Whatever it was, it happened throughout these years. And we were so happy with rebuilding actually our crypto token utility token based on you can buy let’s say a property or pay a hotel stay or use it for some sort of E commerce purchase purchases and we look to deliver the product we had a huge amount of the team members working on it from various continents awesome right? So I landed here in Dubai after after that COVID started anyway product was being killed whatnot. But you know, all the time when people say this is amazing idea this is going to work you also try try at some point to convince yourself Yes, this is going to work. And we did everything by the book. Right? We went out there we did a product discovery. We engage a super amazing team from London they did beautiful design. We they said don’t mention blockchain is gonna confuse people. We said we will not work fine, right. And then at some point, we just got there we were paying like $25,000 for Microsoft cloud services, which we’re not even using. And to be honest, it was a big fail right? And I’m glad that this happened because it just again taught me a lot and I guess it just set me up for being here again because luckily I didn’t spend my own money wasn’t attend to those of your money but it was still telling me exactly go ahead by student 10 $10 million of Phil Phil idea. So I don’t know sometimes it’s good to engage yourself as well in things like that, because I don’t know anyone again in product world who was able to succeed from first and they just launched a product and usually second time found So third time founders are someone who had the chance to try things a lot before would be successful. And you know, this stat, that probably the most successful founders are the ones in their mid 40s. They already have a life behind them. They’re super skilled in the work in life. So it’s the right time to do it.
Michael Waitze 25:21
It’s so weird. Like, I feel so comfortable at my age, knowing that there’s so much stuff out there that I don’t know, like, everything looks clear to me, it doesn’t mean that I know more. I’m just like, oh, I don’t know that at all. And I’m comfortable admitting it. Because you know what I mean? Because I’ve been through all these things. And when I was 25, I knew everything. And I mean, everything was better. That doesn’t mean that right?
Esmar Mesic 25:42
Yeah. Well, that’s also one of the things I didn’t know. I mean, when you are pretty young, you’re you’re asking yourself, but what’s there still to learn? I think I already know a lot. I mean, I was so fucking stupid at that time, honestly. It’s so true. I mean, when your
Michael Waitze 25:57
team building though, right? Because it’s so hard. Like, I don’t know how it works today. But I remember when I was interviewing people to work on the team, where I was, like, just trying to find the right methodology for figuring out if they would fit in if they had the right mindset and all that stuff, or do you iterate that as well,
Esmar Mesic 26:12
it’s still hard. I mean, I need to say that people haven’t changed a lot. And you can see that throughout the COVID. Had throughout whatever is happening these days in the world, I think that I don’t know it’s, it’s, I always have this funny saying right about, you never know how to find the perfect fit in the person who is going to be on your team. So let’s say you just need a one position, let’s say for like marketing manager, you never know you’re gonna find a good one or either, let’s say a tech lead, who will help you to do that. And the funny thing is, what we had in one of my previous companies is that let’s say we want to hire a person, and that person just didn’t kind of he or she isn’t the right fit, right? And then eventually, you will say what to do. And then you might say, Let’s hire him. But then the management of the company might say, well, he’s just the health of the company. He doesn’t still know everything. Let’s just give him more time, right? Then year will pass by year will pass by and listen to this. Then they ask again, what do you think about Michael, for example, still sucks, right? He’s, he sucks. Really? I mean, probably it’s not his his thing, whatever. And then they will say, but yeah, then Michael is only one year in the team. I mean, we should keep him right. And then you kind of start living living with a lot of people around you cannot contribute to what eventually you want to do. During hiring, I really look dry for the people who understand product rather than and of course, I’m trying to hire people, according to similar values, which myself and Tim are having, right. But again, having all of these breakthroughs, check GPT AI, even a blockchain is the technology or new things, right? The knowledge is moving super fast. But again, coming back to human psychology and us as humans, we are not doing that. Right. So I’m not so much sure why because that’s, that’s, that’s what struck me most to be honest, we still want to get involved. You’re fighting about some ideals, we’re fighting about whatever. Right? Which in today’s world, I think it’s so passe. I mean, there’s again, so stuff to learn and other things to be explored.
Michael Waitze 28:19
I agree completely. Do you think the way that companies deal with data, data infrastructure, particularly around growth, right, because it’s got to be based on stuff you’ve already known, like, we did a tonne of back testing of market activity when I was sitting on a trading desk, right? And the more data we had the better decisions we thought we could make. But then it kind of felt like everybody needed to be a mathematician and an algorithm missed and a data scientist to be able to do the job. Do you see the same thing happening with what you’re doing as well?
Esmar Mesic 28:48
Exactly, thing because people when they do, I didn’t know how it takes on their products, they usually add everything, right. And what they ended up is having a noise of the events, which they could not track, which then of course, you can only get a meaningful outcome or the meaningful data out of it. So again, whatever I’m doing, I’m trying to get a common sense, start small, right? At least put the matrix song, let the people start to use your product, then try to make sense out of it. And then try to add a lot of stuff later on, not right away from the beginning. And there is actually no mathematicians or even data scientists who will do the work for you. So what we’re trying to do in my teams is that we want, we want to select the tool for you or for everyone, for every stakeholder in organisation who can just have a one link, they can open up a website, and they can see everything, whatever they are interested into. So we usually have, let’s say amplitude, or maybe Google Data Studio, whatever people use these days. And you go there and depends on the Alexa marketing campaigns depends on the Northstar metrics, which you probably might have there. We have our charts, we have dashboards, and that’s how we communicate to each other And the one of the examples which I get from my previous organisations was new management coming in and telling us what to do. Right. But because they were thinking that’s the right way to do. And that’s such a very simple thing. But when you show them the data, say, hey, this, this does work, don’t change the table back, of course, they don’t have any chance to change it or they, it’s not in their intention to push you right, because they also think initially that something might work better than then what what they find out, it’s kind of the nature of humanity with this coming in. Right? They want to change everything. Right?
Michael Waitze 30:33
Look, this has been a great conversation. And before I let you go, I want to ask you one more thing for you. Where are you based? Now you based in Dubai? Yeah, I’m
Esmar Mesic 30:41
living in Dubai for three years now. Okay. We love it as a family. To be honest, it’s still a bit. A bit longer. Yeah, we love it so much, honestly. It’s such a convenient place to be here.
Michael Waitze 30:53
Well, that was the thing I was gonna say is it’s so close to Asia, right? So like, if you were still in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, it doesn’t really matter. It’s far away. But in Dubai, you’re super close, but still leaving home going away for work for like a week or two weeks? What was the what was the idea for you and the team of coming to a bespoke event which I frankly, consider one of the best, if not the best tech events. And I don’t just say that lightly. I posted about it actually today, like the NF key Summit, what’s the big benefit to you guys as a team.
Esmar Mesic 31:24
I also said that during the conference, and for me personally, and for the team, one of the biggest thing is networking. And second biggest thing is of course, learning from other teams like us, fair enough, because the business track was pretty meaningful. It was along the lines of the growth hacking, which, which was the speech which I gave over there. So honestly, just a super positive thing. And I think being in Dubai as a strategic location, you have a five hours left and right, you can go to Europe if you want for five hours. So you can go far east in five in five hours, and NFU Summit is a place to be so um, this is I mean, how we met so I hope I’m going to come next year as well.
Michael Waitze 32:10
I hope I’m gonna get invited back because Well let’s find out. Anyway. This was awesome Esmar Mesic, the Head of Product at TrueProfile.io That was awesome. Thank you so much for doing this today.
Esmar Mesic 32:24
Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the chance to speak with you but you have a nice one and speak to you soon.
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