A Great Startup in 3 weeks by Pasha Pedenko at EIA Porto 2022

1. A Startup in 3 weeks
Pavlo Pedenko | July 2022

2. Pavlo
Pedenko
Product @ Wise
🇺🇦 in 🇬🇧
@graver_ua

3. Participated in EIA 2013
(before it was cool)

5. Built (and failed) a startup at
APIA 2018

9. Indeed, it is possible to build a
new product in 3 weeks.

10. It is also possible to:
- Find a Pakistani CTO
- Build a product for Chinese customers
without speaking Mandarin
- Get the first 1000 of users
- Find you first investor
- Receive a term sheet
- Turn it down
- Meet your future employer
…while having fun (and not sleeping too
much)

11. Wait, future employer?

12. The Intro: Pasha meets Wise

16. Money without borders:
Instant, convenient, and
eventually free.

17. Send money:
Send with the real
exchange rate.

18. The borderless
bank account:
Send and receive
with the real
exchange rate.

19. Our debit card:
Spend in any
currency, anywhere
with our low
conversion fees.

20. We are solving a real problem

21. This problem is
massive.
We started by
focusing on
personal users.
$200B
$40T
Corporate
and Supply
Chain
Small
Business
Personal
users
Source: McKinsey Global Payments report 2016; TransferWise
analysis
Foreign Exchange Volumes and Revenues ($B)
Volume ($T) Revenue ($B)
100%
75%
50%
25%
0%
Our focus
so far

22. Fast
Cheap Easy

23. We aim to be 10x
cheaper than the
banks 0.7%
2.5%+
4%
5%

24. We move money at
speeds previously
thought impossible.

25. We make it easy and
convenient for our
customers.

26. This all adds up to a
product that
customers love and
recommend.
90%

27. The foundation for a Great Startup
can be built in 3 weeks.

28. How?

29. Secret sauce:
- Build a diverse team
- Find a real problem to solve
- Focus on your customer
- Build - measure - learn
- Market and distribute
- Have fun!

30. The Team.
Chapter One | A Startup in 3 weeks

31. Start with WHO?

34. Strong and diverse teams make
companies successful

35. A good friend doesn’t equal a great
partner

36. A friendship founded on business is
better than a business founded on
friendship

37. Not people you know. People you need.

38. The Problem.
Chapter Two | A Startup in 3 weeks

40. Most entrepreneurs start with an idea.
That’s why most entrepreneurs fail.

41. 2011: The peer-to-peer money transfer service?

42. 2015: The alternative to banks?

43. 2017: The borderless account?

44. 2018: The infrastructure?

45. Wise as a solution has changed.
The problem has remained the same.

46. The 3 rules of a good problem

47. #1
Find a real
Problem to solve

49. $ per
product
# of products
#2 Make sure the problem is worthwhile to solve

50. #3 Don’t build flying cars unless you know how to
build them

51. Your resources are always limited. Use them wisely.

52. The Customer.
Chapter Three | A startup in 3 weeks

53. How to know what the customer wants?

56. World Bank: largest outbound remittance flows
🇺
🇸
🇦
🇪
🇸
🇦
🇨
🇭
🇩
🇪

57. 🇺
🇸
🇦
🇪
🇸
🇦
🇨
🇭
🇩
🇪
🇪
🇺
🇬
🇧
🇦
🇺
🇺
🇸
🇧
🇷
≠

59. New user growth is strongly correlated
with customer wishes.

60. Only your customer can tell you what
they want.
Not World Bank. Not Google.

62. If you don’t know where to find your
customers your product will fail.

63. The Build-Measure-Learn.
Chapter Four | A Startup in 3 Weeks

64. BUILD

65. What problem are you trying to solve?

66. We have just built an MVP:
Minimum Viable Product

67. You can start with a spreadsheet and a chat room

68. MEASURE

69. How likely are you to recommend Wise to
your friends or colleagues?

71. NPS 50+

73. NPS 0...50

75. NPS <0

77. Sweet. But what if we are not live yet?

78. Product Market Fit Survey

79. Superhuman. How did they built a
ridiculously overpriced email client?

80. Somewhat disappointed should become
very disappointed

85. LEARN

88. Paper prototypes are still cool

89. Don’t innovate too much
No interface and no adoption.
Cool concept though.
Interface customers are used
to. Gread adoption as a result.

90. Help them to achieve their goals

91. Make sure your team knows the customer
Uber: from one size fits all app to Uber Lite

92. The Marketing.
Chapter Five | A Great Startup in 72 Hours

94. @nilan
p
@balazsbarn
RATIONal
Rational Emotional

95. @nilan
p
@balazsbarn
RATIONal
Product Cause

96. @nilan
p
@balazsbarn
RATIONal
Fast
Easy
Cheap
Fair
Transparent

97. … of users join via
word-of-mouth
referral.
75%

98. Word of Mouth is the
biggest driver of growth

99. Cool, but where to get users now?

100. Start with free
channels
And show traction!

101. Find PR
opportunities
And get exposure!

102. Give some money
to Facebook and
Google
And try to scale!

103. The Conclusion.

104. ● Prefer a diverse team over a boring one.
Especially if they challenge you with hard questions.
● Fall in love with the problem, not with the solution.
Make sure the problem is big enough for people to care.
● The only way to know what your customer wants is to ask them.
Google and World Bank will likely lead to false conclusions.
● Build-Measure-Learn.
Don’t trust opinions. Trust facts that you learn from your customers.
● Predictive marketing model is a key for unlocking exponential
growth.
Build a product so great that people will talk about it to their friends.
Great Startup Recipe: 5 lessons to nail.

105. These lessons are not just
entrepreneurs.

106. Engineering
Product Management
Operations
Customer Support
Marketing
Public Relations
Investor
Business Development
Government Relations
Design
Finance
In a Great Startup, every role uses
the same core principles.

107. Thanks!
P.S. We’re hiring. Go check out
transferwise.com/jobs