FounderMetrics: Biro Florin

From one podcast host to another! Ifty Nasir chatted with Biro Florin, the co-founder of Jexo and the host Misfit Founders podcast.

If you aren’t familiar with it, Jexo is an Atlassian marketplace app cloud security participant for Jira Software projects.

Biro shares his journey, and how networking, alongside good timing and a stroke of luck, can truly help a business flourish!

Catch the highlights below - or click here and listen to episode three of the podcast in full.

The beginning of a lifelong journey

I was born and raised in Romania in Eastern Europe, and that's where I started my entrepreneurial journey. My dad was an entrepreneur, and I think it was inevitable that I would get into business.

I tried a couple of things in Romania, but nothing to do with technology or SaaS or anything like that. I made it quasi-successful, but then things went a bit downhill, and I eventually decided to drop the business I was running, which involved hair extensions and cosmetics.

So again, completely different. Eventually, I decided to move to the UK.

When I moved to the UK, the first thing I did was look for projects to do freelancing. I was fascinated by software and was on websites for SaaS products that were listing SaaS products before Product Hunt was super popular.

I was inspired by a lot of the stuff I saw there and tried to emulate it. I built chat widgets, hosting platforms, social media widgets - everything - but nothing really stuck. So eventually, I went into employment and spent five years working for a company in London.

Building Jexo

Jexo started more like a lifestyle business. We just wanted to build our playground, not having to work for someone else and someone else's rules, as is usually prevalent in large businesses.

We wanted to have our small work nook where we could continue to grow as product people and have a nice, relaxed life. 

We decided to build B2B SaaS applications for project management, specifically in the Atlassian Marketplace. Atlassian makes tools like Confluence and Jira, and they have a marketplace where you can install plugins into your Jira and enhance the functionality.

We decided to go down that route because we knew Jira inside out and had seen some gaps that we wanted to fill with our applications.

At this point, we were still full-time employees, working for two years while also building our side gig. As we were building it, we started getting these aspirations towards having our own playground and our own business.

Working with investors

When we decided to seek seed investment, none of the UK opportunities materialised. The actual investor that ended up investing in us came about randomly.

There was an individual from Germany, Christian, who has a company in the Atlassian ecosystem. He is a marketplace vendor like us but a bigger one, making quite a lot of money. 

We had regular conversations while we were actively looking for investment. In one of those conversations, he told me, "Oh, I'm looking to invest because I want to diversify a bit. So, let's chat." And the rest is history!

I've been part of so many pitches recently as an investor myself, and I see how hard some startups have it nowadays.

That's why I tell everyone: make friends, make as many friends as you can because you might get opportunities along the way. And don't look for opportunities when you make friends. You know, that's the whole point.

This is the craziest story ever, and I keep telling it because we were so lucky. I mentioned that the investor came to Edinburgh, we chatted, and then decided to partner up!

Success metrics: traffic 

We were in a marketplace, getting constant traffic to our application's landing page. It's difficult to stand out in a crowded marketplace, but in smaller marketplaces, there are things you can do to position your application high up in the ranks to get the right eyeballs on it.

We were getting the right eyeballs on the apps that we had.

We had three apps on the marketplace and knew how to position them. We also made friends to ensure they were considered for various programmes.

So, we were getting a constant influx of traffic to those landing pages, as well as trial installations. Over time, based on trial numbers, it's easier to work out how much of that converts to paying customers.

So that's what helped us figure things out. Every single app needs to offer a 30-day trial. We knew upfront what the income would be, and we saw that traffic was constantly increasing, enabling us to forecast.

I had a really nice, neat spreadsheet tracking installation count growth per month, what that translated into conversions into paying customers, the revenue, the gross MRR churn rate per month, and then how we should spend that.

Should it be spent on people, contractors, expenses, marketing, and so on? Once you have the numbers, you can start planning things out.

Moving on

I have now left the Atlassian ecosystem and am embarking on a new adventure.

The reason we started the company was to avoid the intense stress and pressure of working for someone else, under someone else's rules, and being part of a culture that we might not be okay with anymore. We realised we were rapidly heading towards a place where Jexo might not be that different.

I think an important piece of advice is to recognise that the 'what if' is actually a distraction.

It undermines the freedom to play the next game because you're thinking, well, if I'd done that. No point in that - we move on.

Listen now

You'll find Biro's episode and more from FounderMetrics wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify. You can also watch the interview in full on YouTube. Don't forget to like and subscribe!