One-on-one with BookingKoala co-founder Vivek Prajapati on building a good team
BookingKoala is a platform for service-type businesses. Its purpose is to help you start a service from start to scale. From home cleaning to pressure washing, the small business ideas are endless. Its robust features include a website builder, where you can build your website right on the platform within several hours. Then your site […]
Published Date - 4 May 2022, 05:06 PM
BookingKoala is a platform for service-type businesses. Its purpose is to help you start a service from start to scale. From home cleaning to pressure washing, the small business ideas are endless. Its robust features include a website builder, where you can build your website right on the platform within several hours. Then your site will come with all the tools you need to grow your service effectively and efficiently. All this can be done without hiring expensive designers and developers, which is ironic because today, our guest is the CTO and co-founder of BookingKoala. Vivek Prajapati is in charge of all things related to the company’s development, and he will share with us some tips on building a great team.
How did you have the courage to hire your first employee?
It was pretty easy as we transitioned from a service company to a product development company. It was always the vision to develop world-class products out of India. Being a service company initially helped as we could understand the requirements of a good product, whether from a UI UX perspective or hardcore development. So doing it for others gave us an understanding of how things should be done, and during that process itself, we tried our hands on some small digital products, which saw a little bit of success and gave us the necessary confidence to do things our way.
How can you tell someone is a good fit to join your team?
I don’t think that one or rather a couple of interview rounds can help us evaluate if a person is the right fit or not. So initially, look for basic technical skills and, more importantly, a positive attitude. Only when they join the company do we start the actual process of the interview, which means we let them experience the company atmosphere and give ourselves time to understand them. The one thing we are looking for, or rather the most important thing I am looking for, is integrity.
When starting BookingKoala, did everyone believe in the project?
I would say No and Yes. When I first decided that we could do something like that, everyone hesitated. That was because making BookingKoala required exceptional commitment, which we had never done before. We had no money. I would say not much technical skillset to match the requirement of a world-class product either. It felt like this huge mountain we had to climb, which required a steep learning curve. It felt like a journey from which no one could back off if started. So I understand the initial resistance from everyone and the reasons behind it. After we started and the clients began to come in, there was a shift. I felt the energy, passion, commitment, and zeal to improve this product. The entire team felt the same, and I witnessed that my team was second to none. To this day, we feel the same energy, in fact, more than ever before. We have a chair in our office that has customer written over it, and it is one of the first things that someone notices when they enter the office. That attitude reflects in our day-to-day work, as we strive to make the product better for our customers.
How long does it take for someone to learn how to code?
Learning code is a continuous process. Each day is an adventure and an opportunity to get better. As the company grows, the roles change. Earlier, we needed people who could wear different hats, but now things are more settled. The onus is now to do something the right way and have a long-term vision towards things that require a deep understanding and expertise in a specific domain, given the fast pace technology changes that are coming daily.
What is your day-to-day schedule like?
You mean day-to-night schedule. Haha. It has started to change from what it took to right now. Well, as I said above, we are very aware of what our customers want from us and are committed to bringing their ideas to life. We want the software to adapt to our customer’s business models, and technology should empower them and not hinder them. We want to see them thriving and play a small part in their respective incredible success journeys. So both as a co-founder and CTO of the company, my day-to-day activities are now more inclined towards laying the foundation for big things that we want to develop. Which mainly involves understanding the technology better and simplifying it for the team as our team is relatively young. Customer support helps be in synch with customer expectations, and yeah, product planning and execution as well.