An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Consistency is key. Getting up every morning and putting in the work can be hard, especially if you don’t see the fruits of your labor immediately, but don’t despair. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, then another step and another one. Keep going, every day, every week, and don’t stop.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Arbov.
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, the day after he was laid off from his job, Ben signed up for an online coding bootcamp and set out to make his idea of investing in his niece’s future a real, live platform. Today, Ben is the founder of the growing startup Greatest Gift, the financial gifting platform for children’s long term savings.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Sure thing, thank you for having me!
I was born in Dallas Texas to Israeli parents and moved to Israel at two years old when my dad moved back to open his own small business. Growing up I always loved solving puzzles, figuring out riddles and building things (think Legos, school projects, and activities in the Israeli Scouts).
My parents have always been a huge influence on me. My mom taught me values of hard work and helped me get my first job at the age of fifteen, handing out flyers, then my second job in a flower shop, and the list goes on! Basically, I’ve been working at every opportunity I’ve gotten since.
My dad taught me the value of saving money and also pushed me to take on leadership roles, including becoming an officer in the army.
I enlisted in the army at eighteen and became an officer when I was twenty. Being an officer in the military taught me to make do with limited resources and accomplish the mission at all costs.
More recently, when the COVID pandemic hit New York, I was launching a coworking business for the company I worked. Naturally, demand for office spaces drastically fell when the pandemic hit, and I was laid off. Like many of the readers of this series, I had an idea for a business. The day after I was laid off, I began learning the skills I needed to make this idea a reality.
I think the combination of values, passions and the right timing set me up to make and launch Greatest Gift.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’s hard to choose just one, but this is one of my favorites — “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater” — Albert Einstein. The quote really helps put things in perspective for me every time I find myself stuck or in a new challenging situation — there’s always someone with a tougher problem to solve. It reminds me that I’m not the first and not the last person to try and solve a problem.
Plus, as a math major in college, I was quite literally worried about my difficulties in math on a daily basis!
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I really loved reading Blue Ocean Strategy written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne and recommend it to everyone looking to innovate or start a new business. The book offers a structured approach to innovation and frameworks of understanding who your target users are and what your value proposition should be, while giving real life examples of companies that performed incredibly well with new ideas.
One specific lesson I learned from the book is that innovation is not only in the utility of a product, but it can also be in the business model. Products and their economic engines are inseparable, and identifying the right value add aspects of the product can help you reduce your expenses.
I particularly like the framework that guides you to eliminate, reduce, raise and create factors of your business or product to help you create an idea that doesn’t compete with your competitors and offers a true value proposition to your customers and end users.
The book helped me develop Greatest Gift’s value proposition — on the one hand a financial gifting platform that makes monetary gifting for kids fun and easy, on the other hand a resource for parents that helps them on their financial parenting journey by providing a curated collection of financial products, guides and tips. The combination creates a value proposition that is relevant to parents, kids, family and friends, while relying on a solid business model of affiliate marketing.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Of course, and I hope I can help a few people execute on their ideas.
It really just starts with putting one foot in front of the other and putting in the time to work on turning the idea into reality.
Break down the execution into different work streams. Then break those down again. Keep breaking it down until you reach individual tasks and knock those tasks off one by one.
Consistency is key. Dedicate time to developing the idea, a couple of hours twice a week after dinner, an afternoon every weekend.
When you’re just starting out, your focus should be on fleshing out your idea and understanding how that idea can turn into a business that adds values to customers on one hand and has a viable economic engine on the other hand.
Focus on the potential customers and end users that your idea will help and figure out the details of how your idea can help answer their needs.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Researching existing solutions or ideas is an important step in starting a new business, but just because solutions exist doesn’t mean your idea (or execution of it) doesn’t add value to the world.
Start by talking to people who would care about your idea and see if they know of other solutions that already exist. Don’t be too worried about sharing your idea, you said it in your last question — many people have good ideas all the time, but people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business.
If there are solutions, that can actually be a good signal that there is a need for the idea!
A simple google search can help you find solutions, and if you really want to dig deep, look into online communities on Reddit or Facebook groups and search for your ideas.
If you find versions of your idea, try to understand if there is anything you can improve or differentiate from the existing solutions with your idea.
Think — what does your idea do better? Are you better situated to execute the idea? Workshop your idea to provide a better solution and figure out how to provide the most value to your potential customers.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Absolutely, let’s talk execution. By now, you have an idea that answers a need or solves a problem, and ideally you spoke with a few people to validate that the need exists.
Whether you’re making an app, a website, or a physical product, you should always start with the drawing board. Make sketches of your product, first a high level skit, then deep dive into the details (I used Figma for my platform).
If you think your idea is something novel to the world that hasn’t been done before, look into patents. Google Patents has an easy to use search engine that helps find other patents in the field. After you see a few other patents, try writing a rough outline of the patent and then find a patent lawyer. A good patent lawyer will help you defend your new idea in the best way.
Now that you have a validated idea, sketches, and potentially a patent, it’s time to make your first product. In the tech world this is called an MVP — minimum viable product, while in physical products this would be a prototype. What they both have in common is that they have the least amount of features and sophistication, while achieving the main purpose of your idea, i.e. solving the problem at hand.
When talking about tech products, this step may take a few weeks or even months. You’ll need someone to write the code. This could be yourself if you know how to code or feel comfortable enough learning online (there are great resources and online bootcamps that can help you with this). In order to build my platform Greatest Gift, I took an online web development bootcamp on Codecademy, and completed my coding education with google whenever I had gaps.
If you’re not comfortable building out the code on your own, you have two other options. The first is to find a partner that knows how to code and build out the product and business together. Look for people in your network — friends, old coworkers, college classmates. The second option is to find a development house that builds out MVPs, but this option is probably the most expensive one. It’s hard to accurately estimate how much work will actually need to happen, and every change can get costly.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Some people won’t like your idea or product. Ten hardcore fans of your product are better than a thousand dispassionate supporters. I had a few people who were really excited early on that wrote great reviews about the product and shared it with their circle, leading to new customers early on.
- Things start out slowly. Give it time, and if you truly believe in your idea, remember you’re in it for the long run. Going from idea to a live platform took us almost a year at Greatest Gift. The first user was hard to get, but eventually things started rolling with a steady growth in users.
- Consistency is key. Getting up every morning and putting in the work can be hard, especially if you don’t see the fruits of your labor immediately, but don’t despair. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, then another step and another one. Keep going, every day, every week, and don’t stop.
- Celebrate your wins. There’s a long road ahead, so make sure to celebrate hitting those milestones along the way. I still remember the dinner I had with my fiancé when Greatest Gift went live! All our little celebrations help me recharge for the challenges ahead.
- Adapt your mindset as the company grows — from maker, to team leader, to CEO. When you’re just starting out with a new idea, your focus is on making the idea become a reality. Once your idea is a reality and you have a product that customers are using, shift your focus to building out your team. Finally, focus on building a company.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
First, check that the idea answers an existing need, for the reader, a family member, or anyone else.
Develop the business model and understand the unit economics. Make sure you understand how much it will cost to make on a per unit or per user basis.
Now that you have a solid idea that answers a need and has a solid business model behind it, make the first product and get one customer to buy it. Just one.
Focus first on making that prototype or minimal version of your product. Stay laser focused, don’t add the bells and whistles. This is your chief maker phase. If you don’t have the skills to make it, learn online. Learning enough to make your own prototype will help you manage the process later when you scale and handover the production to a team or outsource it completely. You don’t need to be the expert but knowing the nuts and bolts of your product will help you troubleshoot and manage it down the line.
Remember, all you need here is one product with one customer.
Now do the same with 50 other customers.
Whenever you hit a milestone, set a new one that’s more ambitious than the last and change your mindset as needed.
Getting one customer may be easy if you know a few people that could use your idea but getting a thousand customers may be challenging and might require a different approach.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Making something new can be a costly endeavor, so in my honest opinion I would recommend saving your much needed funds for other expenses, like your own living expenses while you work on your idea, engineering, manufacturing, tech costs, and legal fees, just to name a few.
Instead, try finding someone in your network that has gone down this path of making something from nothing before and reach out to them for a coffee chat. No one understands the problems entrepreneurs face more than other entrepreneurs.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I think it’s really a question of timing for your business. I’m a big believer of bootstrapping the beginning of the business, everything from idea to launch.
Bootstrapping early on will teach you to be disciplined with your capital spend. This is the time to be scrappy and develop your own skillset, problem solve and rely on your own abilities to adapt and grow.
It also helps you preserve your equity for later stages when you can really benefit from large capital plays to fund growth.
I think reaching the stage that you have product-market fit is a good point to go down the venture capital path. Having product-market fit means your idea (now product) is answering a need in the market and your business is growing rapidly. This is the time to take on capital to accelerate your growth even more aggressively.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I try to make the world a better place through my professional work and my personal life. In my professional capacity, my startup Greatest Gift helps power up children’s financial futures. We provide financial literacy for parents and children, and give family and friends the tools to invest in children’s futures.
On a personal level, I often help other aspiring entrepreneurs with their journeys of making something from nothing.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Start early.
This is true for parents and families about saving and investing for their kids, but also for entrepreneurs or people with amazing ideas.
Starting can be the hardest part, but as soon as you start, you’ll be on the path to something great.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I’d really like to meet behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely and discuss motivation around saving and investing for our kids. I’ve studied psychology and economics in college and have been working on driving parents to action and encouraging them to start saving for their children’s futures early on.
Professor Ariely has had a major influence on my work, and I would love to meet with him to share the insights from Greatest Gift.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Thank you for the great opportunity! I hope some of these help readers start something of their own.
Making Something From Nothing: Ben Arbov Of Greatest Gift On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
