Yaro Yashnyk is the founder of pipl.ai – an EU-based cold outreach SaaS that eliminates 90% of manual workflow for anyone who is sending cold outreach. For more details, visit their website!
Today, we sit down with Yaro to learn more about his journey as an entrepreneur.
Q. Tell us a little more about your journey as an entrepreneur – how did you get started? What inspired you?
Yaro: I got into sales and SDR back in 2014. I started in a small Ukrainian lead generation company–nothing sexy. I had a couple of great quarters that secured me fast career growth, so I rose to the Head of Sales Development role quite fast.
It sucked. Mainly because my team and I were making tons of money for our employer, but not for ourselves. So, we decided to launch our own lead-gen business back in 2017, which grew to 30 employees and was sold in early 2022.
The idea of pipl.ai came when I needed to throw out the final batch of cold emails–every single step of it was a pain. Scraping lists, validating emails, writing icebreakers, and the list goes on. These are things we struggled with every single day, so that’s how pipl.ai was born.
Q. What’s one thing in your routine that you do consistently that has made a huge difference in your personal or business life?
Yaro: It’s simple: having breakfast with my kids every day (I’m a dad of 3 little boys). Daddy can’t fail them, period. So, this is what moves the needle every day.
Q. Who are your mentors and inspiration? and what knowledge or insight did they give to you that was valuable?
Yaro: A lot of people have inspired me. For example, my wife taught me the importance of saying “let’s calm down and think strategically.” My first boss taught me the art of saying “fuck off.” And my children teach me how important it is to just be present.
Also, I can’t be more grateful for @GerogeTen! This guy knows how to write killer copy and is a master at teaching how clients THINK.
Q. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Yaro: The most satisfying moment so far is when we got the first 50 paying users for pipl.ai. It was the hardest thing ever and the entire team put everything we knew into action. So, reaching that first milestone was very satisfying.
Q. How do you market your business, and which tactics have been most successful?
Yaro: We started growing by just putting a simple landing page together and prompting people to sign up for our product waitlist. We just used basic prototype screenshots and good copy.
I leveraged my audience of 3K subscribers on Twitter to get the first 50 users. After that, we used every channel to get more eyes on us. Including Reddit, LinkedIn outreach, cold email, Facebook Groups, and Quora.
What made the most difference was applying our listing to every single directory I could think of. That was the real growth driver!
Q. What have been your biggest failures or challenges?
Yaro: I’m not good at hiring. In fact, I’m incredibly bad at it. The first team we put together didn’t deliver a working product, so I had to go to Jakarta for a month to set things up properly and get another engineer to hop on the team.
Q. How did this failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
Yaro: I understood how influential other people’s work is on my personal success and well-being. Now, I invest a lot in hiring great team members and surrounding myself with the best communities.
Q. If someone was to create a TV show about you, what would it be about and what would it be called?
Yaro: It would be a live comedy about an entrepreneur raising 3 kids. It’s like working from home in the middle of a zoo. Imagine hopping on Zoom calls all day long while you can barely hear yourself!
To keep up to date with Yaro and pipl.ai, connect with him on Twitter!