An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Assess your skills and see if you can collaborate with someone that can complement your skills to execute the idea.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marc Castro.

Marc is the founder of Datalyse, based in Cardiff. He has the vision to help both small and large businesses across the UK to become more productive by providing the tools and the practicality to automate processes and operate their business globally whilst being local. Through this, he believes he can help increase productivity, lower costs, accelerate revenue, and empower employees.

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”?

I was born in Barcelona, Spain, and moved to Bristol when I was 12 years old. Then I attended Cardiff University in Wales. From an early age, I had a passion for IT software & hardware, even attempting to be a programmer to create the things I envisioned. Yet, a frustrating inability to learn to program led me to become a top performer in other aspects such as strategy, product, sales & finance, marketing and to lead and support my colleagues in their relevant fields.

I am now focused on a deeper purpose at Datalyse to build the world’s easiest sales outbound software. We provide purpose-driven businesses with the ease, functionality, and automation to double their conversion rates.

Values such as kindness, collaboration, empathy, self-awareness and purpose are the main driving factors that are close to my heart — making a positive contribution to society. Providing happiness and deep fulfilment in how we engage with one another on a daily basis is important, especially with the rising number of people. Recognizing that mental health is actually a situation that we need to address. This is prevalent in situations such as those who work in call centres and we are here to make that change.

My drive is to build Datalyse into a successful and impactful Sales Outbound Software company and use the financial success to invest and support other conscious entrepreneurs. By doing this, my aim is to have a positive and high impact on the entrepreneurial community.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is an important quote that means a lot to me and my character. For me, the way to conduct yourself is to add value to everyone you meet no matter who they are. To understand that your words are powerful and are used to either harm or build others up. It will keep you humble as you focus on others and not on yourself when interacting with others.

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?

The book that has made the biggest impact for me is psycho-cybernetics by George Maltz. The best lessons I learned are the way you see yourself and the capability to believe in yourself no matter the short-term circumstances. To have the ability to know where you are, who you are in this moment, and having the role model being oneself in 10 years and trying to become that person now.

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?

The biggest lesson is knowing what intangible skills you have can produce results. Knowing where you are good at. Understanding what skills you need to learn and the most important of all collaborating with someone that is the opposite of you to be able to execute the idea. A clear example is my ability to understand marketing, manage a business, and being able to be consistent in communicating with stakeholders.

From a technology standpoint, I had to find my business partner Marc Gallucci who is a rare unicorn in product development and together with the power of us two has been able to execute the idea.

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?

Believing that your idea is wrong and trying to understand the fundamentals of that idea. Doing the research and understanding the resources you have at your disposal and the current technology that you can use to leverage your idea in a way that produces outcomes for your customer. Understanding you can’t boil the ocean, rather being able to tackle a sub-niche and being able to cater to the pain points that have an economic impact that has value to that business.

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.

Being a tech business this process is pretty unique to a standard product or service based business. But there are two tips I like to share that are relevant to any kind of business model, and that were essential in getting my idea to where it is now.

Firstly relationships, remember that nothing great in this world was achieved completely by one person. They had friends to encourage them, mentors to guide them and family to nurture them. So when you’re taking your idea to an initial minimum viable product, find your most supportive people and put it through their hands and get their honest feedback. This will allow you to perfect the product and get an idea of which retailers should be stocking or distributing your product.

Secondly, think about your tools. We’re in the new technological age of Adobe, Canva, Youtube. Knowledge and creative tools are at your fingertips so when it comes to attracting great manufacturers or finding the right retailers, always go back to those reliable knowledge bases and tools to get you there.

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.)

  1. Don’t try to tackle 3 products at once.
  2. Start with a sub-niche not try to be everything for everyone.
  3. Get yourself a mentor that is 3 steps ahead and one that is 10 steps ahead.
  4. Don’t follow superficial metrics, be factual, realistic even if it hurts is the only way.
  5. Get a support network when things get hard because they will get hard.

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?

  1. Have an audience or talk to 10 customers that have current issues.
  2. Assess your skills and see if you can collaborate with someone that can complement your skills to execute the idea.
  3. Create an MVP with barebones that solves one pain point that creates value to the customer.
  4. Customer feedback is paramount and do any iterations needed.
  5. Find a way to make it repeatable and scalable with clear outcomes and tangible value to the customer.

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?

No, unless you are partnering and collaborating to develop that idea. It can become very capital intensive and they would not have the same purpose as you. Yet, it can be a great idea once you have developed a product that you have gotten traction and are in need of improvement.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

Bootstrapping must be the first option unless it is a product that requires intensive capital to start research and development for the product in aerospace, science, or manufacturing. Even then you must have clear evidence and demand for that product. Bootstrapping means that you must be able to get traction, get some clients, and have results, capital is for when you need to jump spring to the next level and speed up. Otherwise, you will be stressing about money, obtaining more money whilst you are jumping off a cliff whilst building your business, and focusing on superficial metrics. Don’t make it harder for yourself.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I am on this planet to create a more purposeful, conscious, and loving world. Datalyse is the vehicle that allows us to create success to support other conscious entrepreneurs. To create small ripples and inspire others leaders by adding value to them and allowing others to become matter. A leader is someone that thinks beyond themselves and wants to create an impact that has a societal impact and lives for this.

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.

Women are the third exponential power in this world. They can allow the world to grow exponentially. In tech, in government, in finance, in space, and are by nature conscious beings. Change is not happening quicker because we keep crawling in this issue instead of acting on the importance that it carries. From equal pay, access to capital in entrepreneurship, programming, and equality in business boards.

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.

For me, a person of great influence has been Vishen Lakhiani from Mindvalley and author of the “Code of Extraordinary Minds”. His book changes my perspective in the conditioning that society believes how life should live. Instead it is about creating the life you want to live in what makes you happy. It allowed me to mould myself into who I wanted to be and what made me happy. To understand that success is about how much value and impact you can have in others.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.


Making Something From Nothing: Marc Castro Of Datalyse 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.

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