An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

You will learn just as much about yourself as you do your business- I did not anticipate that I would learn this much about myself when this journey began, but when you are working on something that is bigger than you, it is important to make sure you understand who you are so it does not affect the company.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Simone May, CTO and Co-Founder of Clutch.

Simone is the CTO and Co-Founder of Clutch where she leads the company’s efforts in translating their customer’s needs into their product and technical functionality. Her interest in the world of technology and seeing what software can do began at a young age as she grew up with two engineers as parents and developed a passion for math, science and tinkering with all sorts of technical gadgets and projects that her parents worked on. Prior to Clutch, Simone was a Consultant at Accenture where she learned how to build a product from the ground up focused on learning first what the product’s clients’ needs are and then how to translate their needs into something technical. She has a passion for democratizing access to information and innovation that no one has had before, and leveraging technology to make the world a more equitable place.

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 am originally from Atlanta, GA. I grew up with both parents who were engineers, I thoroughly enjoyed Math growing up and I also loved to tinker with things, especially when my mom got her first laptop. I was always playing with it when I could and exploring all aspects of the software. I think because of the encouragement I got from both of my parents, it led to my confidence and interest in the STEM field.

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

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I think this is relevant to my life because I am a young black woman in Tech and although I grew up with a privileged background, that never changed the fact that I was still black and had to learn how to operate in spaces that I was not always comfortable or seen. This quote has helped me to get through life by focusing on the things that are within my control.

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?

Michelle Obama’s book ”Becoming” resonated with me a lot in my early adulthood. I truly appreciated her transparency throughout the book and it honestly made me feel seen in my own way. Here is this amazing woman who so many people have admiration and reverence for and she is able to be so open and vulnerable about her feelings, mistakes and judgements along the path of her life. It made me realize that even Michelle Obama, was not perfect and still isn’t, even when she had to be the best to get to where she was at.

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?

I think for us, part of translating an idea into a business was literally just working on it a little bit everyday in order to reach the goal. Understanding what your goal is, is also important. When I first called Madison with the idea, we literally got on the phone the next night and made a super messy google doc with an outline and brain dump of our idea and how we wanted to execute it. We kept flushing that out by conducting research around it and seeing if it made sense. At the time we did not have all the tools but we were equally motivated to see where the idea could go. Our original idea was to actually create a platform for students to use on their university campus that would allow them to order food to their seat at sporting events. From there, we did research on who else was doing something similar and started thinking about what kind of product would make the most sense (big mistake, but that’s a story for a different day). I leveraged my connections in the university space to hire college students in exchange for a credit to help us kickstart our MVP. Madison leveraged her dad as an entrepreneur to help us become incorporated and be a legitimate business. From there, the rest is history.

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?

This is actually something that I learned over time, competition is actually your biggest validation. If someone else has already done or attempted to do what you are doing, it means you have identified a real problem and maybe your unique perspective might create better results for the people in the space you decide to serve. I actually think one of the most important things you can do when you have an idea is conduct competitive analysis and try to find as many people out there who are doing what you are trying too. I would say they are a good resource for identifying how you can avoid reinventing the wheel while also keeping the solution personal to your vision. In terms of how, I think Google is honestly your best friend but also just start talking to people in your network about your idea, they might actually know a competitor of yours without you realizing it. I would also recommend deciding what questions you are going to ask yourself upon conducting your research so you do not become inundated with all the different competitors out there. Last but not least, figure out what they are doing and how you make it special and valuable.

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.

I can speak from my perspective as CTO building a software solution:

1. Ensure you have a good understanding of the audience you are trying to serve and the problem you are trying to solve.
2. Create a project plan, something that outlines all of the requirements you have as an owner to create the product — it can be a brain dump at first but then streamline it over time before you put anything into action.
3. Create process flows for yourself around those requirements, something that allows you to think through (i.e. creating a process flow for “User can sign up” requires you to think through the requirements of how does your particular user need to sign up and what information is important to collect during their initial interaction with the system?
4. Create deadlines and priorities around your requirements so you can prioritize what is most important to complete in order for your audience to see value and feel satisfied.
5. Just Do It (like Nike says) — I came from a Software Engineering background, so I knew where to research and find the right tech stack, however if you are completely new to this space, leverage your network and friends to see if they can point you in the right direction to get started. I would also recommend educating yourself on the space you are trying to enter and trust that whatever knowledge led you to this point is something that is also extremely valuable.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

1. Do not build a product, build a solution — Having an in-depth understanding about the problem you are solving will make your product that much better and it will be something people might actually want to use.
2. It is important to bring your team along the journey — If your core team is not bought in on what is going on, their motivation to work with you and on the business will diminish.
3. You are not perfect and you will fail at a lot of different things — I always prided myself on basically having all of my ducks in a row, but when you are doing something this new and challenging, life will get messy and you have to learn to roll with the punches and quickly learn from your mistakes.
4. You will learn just as much about yourself as you do your business- I did not anticipate that I would learn this much about myself when this journey began, but when you are working on something that is bigger than you, it is important to make sure you understand who you are so it does not affect the company.
5. Everything will be okay if you remain honest, ethical and diligent — there are a lot of obstacles we have faced and I know we will continue to face, but just remain humble and understand that regardless of how things go, you will be okay and this is a journey (marathon) not a sprint. Everything will work out how it’s supposed to, but not how you expect it too.

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?

I would recommend that they start by writing everything down that they have in mind and finding a way to tweak it until they can put some action behind it. If you are building a software product, I would recommend that you learn what Agile Methodology entails so you do not become overwhelmed with building everything at once.

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?

I think it depends on the person’s level of experience in what they are trying to build or the industry they are trying to tackle. I would not recommend hiring anyone until you have fully decided on the solution you are building and why you are building it.

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

Venture Capital is something I would not seek out until it is absolutely necessary unless you can find an investor that cares about your iterative growth as a company and not the bottom line (which is rare). Bootstrapping until you cannot anymore is a way to have full control over what you are building without someone breathing down your neck to produce real results. Angels or Accelerators are another good way to ensure that you are able to build with more control as well. Eventually, if you want to scale your solution, VC is definitely the way to go.

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

There are 2 main ways I have been able to pay it forward so far. One is we are constantly prioritizing diversity in the workplace and I believe our team is a reflection of that. I do my best to remove my implicit bias when it comes to hiring. Additionally, I am invited to speak a lot and I tend to be as transparent as possible; I do not believe in gatekeeping strategies or what’s really going on in the world of building companies in my perspective.

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.

I would want the leadership in the workplaces across the United States to reflect the diversity and intersectionality of this country.

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 would love to meet with Michelle Obama to be honest — I know that is so cliche but she just seems so direct, honest and transparent, I would just love to talk to her about life.

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

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Making Something From Nothing: Simone May 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.