Glass Ceiling: Oksana Goncharova, MD of Ansarada's Material Information Platform

• A leader's view of Ansarada's Material Information Platform.
• Career path from Rocket Internet's The Iconic to Ansarada.

Perspective from a senior woman leading product at Ansarada.

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Glass Ceiling Podcast.

My name is Gina Baldessari and I am your host and the editor of Startup Daily.

Now the Glass Ceiling Podcast has been away for a little while but we're back and better than ever and I'm really excited for this first episode.

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to grow the business from ground zero in Australia to a multi-million dollar business.

Grew the team to more than 300 employees in just about four years.

So she has a fascinating story about that experience and what it was like and how she then came to be at Ansarata.

So take a listen.

today, I was looking through your LinkedIn and you have quite the fascinating background.

So I wanted to start at the start and ask how you went from working in management consulting to, you know, finding your way into the sort of tech space.

I guess when I was young, I tend to follow the crouch and the Korean consulting was something that every student in my class was aspiring for.

So that was a natural choice.

And I finished my degree in Milan in Italy and I got all for the job in Bain, so I accepted.

It seems prestigious.

It's great to have a resume.

But very quickly when I started working in consulting, I realized it's not for me because it's like, I don't know, it's like passion or ownership of the sense of building something great, the sense of uncertainty, I guess, because the career in consulting is very predictable.

Like you do one thing for two years, another thing for three years, and you step, you go through the ladder, which is not for me.

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So then I was approached by the guys from Rocket Internet.

They found me through an ex-colleague of mine.

And yeah, so I got over their job in Singapore and I accepted.

So what was it like joining Rocket at that time?

Because, I mean, they're obviously huge now, but going back a few years it was a bit different.

So what was that like at that time?

Yeah, I have to admit I didn't know who they were.

When I first was approached by them, it was a friend of mine who, got us in touch and he told me they're building a fashion business and I loved fashion and it's going to be fun it's something you know you're going to build something from scratch which sounded really exciting for me but I have to admit for me it was a huge risk because I didn't really know the brand name I didn't really know much about technology either I remember the first day I joined and I was asking about all this like can you do ICM and I was like I see what trying to google it and I'm like no like no you're going to be head of ICM in two days so it was really it was a big challenge for me is a big change of pace but you know if I learned one thing from this experience and sometimes you have to just take a risk and trust that you know your decisions and your gut will take you where you want to be and what were the key lessons that you learned in the first like year or two that you were there as you said it was a huge like change of pace and different to what you were used to I guess the main lesson was you shouldn't be afraid to put yourself in a situation which are out of your comfort zone that's where the magic , you know, being a bit uncomfortable.

I had to learn a lot of things just on the job.

Anything that I learned in my fancy degree was not very relatable at all.

It was very hands-on because we were a start-up team.

We were four people building a business.

So we were responsible for everything from finding an office to hiring people to building a business plan to managing an engineering team.

This was all like a huge learning curve for me because, as I said, I could hardly understand how to operate my Mac at the time, let alone understand anything about technology.

But that's what made it so great because then it gave me my MBA in tech.

Within six months, I've learned so much that I couldn't imagine learning it elsewhere.

I think just being open-minded and being able to learn quickly, not being afraid of...

It won't be perfect from day one, but that's what makes it great because then it's an opportunity for you to improve.

led to the Iconic.

What made that a challenge that you wanted to take on board?

Well, frankly, it wasn't my decision.

I got to know I was going to Australia the day before I went to Australia.

Oh, wow.

We were talking to my boss at the time, who was the head of Asia Pacific.

We were in Berlin, and he was just talking to me.

He was like, I'm going to Sydney.

How about you come with me?

to Australia is so far away.

It's like, no, but it's a great market, and we're going to launch our first business there, you learn a lot, let's go.

And then, you know, I'm a very, you know, I like to take, I like challenges, and I like to take risks and chances.

So I said yes, and then he's like, okay, well, get ready, we're going tomorrow morning.

So that was literally a story.

And I was never supposed to move here permanently, it was only supposed to be for three to six months, and I thought, well, great, you know, I've never been to Sydney, I might as well just try it out.

After it was a lot.

, like, when I was younger.

So, yeah, so that's how it happened.

And then one thing after another, I had an opportunity to go, like, I spent some time in Asia with Rocket as well.

Then I had an opportunity to go back to Europe.

But then, at that time, it was just about one year mark since we launched Iconic.

And finally, go from this place where you try to explain to people where you work.

And they're like, what?

Like, who?

Like, to the place where you would say, okay, I work with Iconic.

And you can see people recognize the brand.

Like, oh, yes, I know Iconic.

I bought something there.

and that's just an incredible feeling where you start something that you never know if it's gonna work and nobody like when we were trying to recruit first people our first office was in our warehouse the same place and people would come in and they would think we're completely dodgy it was just looked so messy and it was hard because we're trying to recruit people from BCG's and McKinsey's and we're trying to create yeah this is an amazing opportunity like who are you guys to the place where you know the iconic is a household name now.

But that was this year, one-year mark, where we finally got to the point where, you know, we were recognisable.

And that's what made me stay, because I wanted really to see this grow, I wanted to see it through.

And what was that first year like before you hit that mark?

What were the kinds of...

I mean, it's one thing to come to Australia to launch a sort of globally recognised brand, but you were, like you said, you sort of started from the beginning here, to, you know, like people didn't know who you were.

Like, what was that like?

It required a lot of trust.

You had to trust that you would succeed because, you know, not every day you would come to work and things don't work out and you think, oh, what the hell am I doing?

I remember my parents tell me, what are you doing?

Come back.

But you have to just believe that you're doing the right thing and it will work out.

We grew really fast, so we hired a lot of people in the first year.

We had a lot of pressure because we knew that, you know, we had literally one year capital.

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We had to get to a certain mark within one year.

Otherwise, that's it.

We didn't have a lot of time.

So it was hard.

It was working 24-7, but it was also exhilarating.

It was amazing.

I remember we celebrated the first order.

It was great.

And we had a little bell in the office that every time someone placed an order, it would ring.

Right now, I wouldn't know, but you probably have a thousand orders a minute.

So I kind of wouldn't imagine that.

to these early days, just working really hard, but then still getting this early success.

It was an incredible feeling.

Yeah.

And what was it like, the response from the retail market in Australia when you guys launched, and how was it trying to navigate that as well?

Well, first, we were considered some sort of hipsters that nobody took as seriously.

Nobody really, you know, believed in.

It was a lot of arrogance that all the brands would never go to retail.

is not going to happen especially my luxury brands and I know now that iconic has quite a few brands in the you know contemporary claw high tier big brands I remember the first time we the first big brand we got on board was Nike it took a year and a half of really hard work and talking to everyone and flying to the US to get them on board so it's a lot of yeah it was a lot of you know disbelief at first but then I remember when it first when we actually started getting in some market share.

That's where even the heads of big retail firms here reached out and wanted to have a conversation and wanted to discuss some sort of rules of engagement and it became really interesting.

So I think, you know, it often happens in industry when you disrupt someone.

People just sit on the sidelines, so it's just, you know, oblivious to what's going on.

You know, it's like who said that, you know, there are two ways you can go bankrupt.

It's gradually and then it's all at once.

So that's what kind of happened to retailers.

and what was the reaction or I guess support that you got from the Australian like tech or startup landscape at the time or what kind of landscape was there when you first came here because I guess the iconic is like like people know it's an online retailer but it's not really seen as a startup like it's never really been seen in those terms yeah I think I don't know why I guess it's part of that it backed by , so probably we had a lot of capital compared to a normal startup.

Part of it may be in the fashion industry, or maybe it's not as such an innovative product.

So that's one thing I have to say that wasn't as exciting because you were building a repeatable business model.

So it's not creating something that new.

But I have to say, in spirit, Iconic was a lot like a startup.

It's a lot about innovation.

It's a lot about innovation, not in the sense of a business model innovation, but innovation in the way you deliver it, in digital marketing, in engineering, in products.

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There was a lot of this startup spirit.

I guess you had to, and we deliberately, we made efforts to get into the startup community, to do, you know, like meetups, like tech meetups, to support younger startups, to do a lot of, you know, to produce a lot of content on that.

So I think we had to put yourself out there and build these relationships.

So, yeah, that's been, it was a deliberate choice for us once.

And now, for example, the Iconic is part of Tech Sydney, I know.

, so we're trying to support and always been trying to support the community.

Yeah.

And then after the Iconic, you went to Investable?

Yes, for brief.

It was more of a project rather than a permanent role.

Right, okay.

So what got you interested in, you know, then looking more at the sort of startup side and getting involved in that community?

Well, I guess it's always been my interest in Rocket.

When my job before I came to Sydney was a lot about on the investment side of things.

in Berlin, it's the Headquarters in Berlin, it's the investment side.

So you look at less about business operations, you more look into investments and investment opportunities and building another strategy and portfolio strategy.

So I've always been interested in that.

And then I jumped into operations with Iconic.

So I always was interested to go back.

And as Iconic grew, I stayed there for about four years.

It's just became a completely different game.

to go back to something new and create something new.

So that's where I did it deliberately.

I took some time until I found what new to do.

So Investable was moving.

It was part of the community as well.

So I did a few projects for them while I was working on my own startup in the background.

Yeah, so your own startup, Rabble.

I mean, you mentioned before the Iconic was really hard and you had the backing of Rocket Internet behind you.

So what made you be like, .

I think it's a natural way because you learn a lot and it's probably might be easier to start with someone backing you up.

Then you learn a lot of mistakes and lessons and then, you know, it's always tempting to go and do it on your own.

I want you to create something new.

I want you to create new technology.

And that's the idea through working with Rocket because it's not just the iconic.

I worked across other startups.

as well.

And you can see, then working in the startup community, you see so many businesses that you meet and passionate entrepreneurs and people who have unbelievable ideas and are so passionate about their product.

But so often they neglect the whole company corporate side of things.

That might seem a bit boring and they don't really understand it, but then it comes to, it's so heartbreaking to see when it comes to the time to raise capital or hire people in your business or create a new sub-structure or go through an audit or, you know, if you want to sell, that's where it becomes, you know, the mistakes you make in early days.

So the things you're just unaware of, you're unable to maximize your potential, you're unable to raise capital, you're unable to sell for a good price.

Now, I've seen this happen so many times.

And on the other side, investors, they want to help because it's their best interest.

But again, they don't have the tools or the ability to communicate properly with the companies and to be able to help, you know, raise their potential, kind of raise the bar the way they operate.

came from where my idea of Rabble came from because I've just seen this you know when you see the this you know these things happen every now and like all the time people just unable unless you have a back of a crooked internet who actually has done this before they have a lot of experience and know exactly what to do for younger startups for smaller businesses it's really hard so that's where the idea of Rabble came from coming up with a platform that actually helps educate businesses of what's required not just to build a good product but to build a good business and then and being able to eventually, you know, go through any raise or audit or eventually sell with ease.

And then what led to you joining Ansarada?

That's an interesting story because I never wanted to work for anyone again.

So I really was sad.

My mind was sad on doing something on my own.

I wanted to build my own company, my own culture.

And I was raising capital at the time.

And I got introduced to Sam, who is the founder and CEO of Ansarada through mutual acquaintance in ABC.

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So I was pitching to Sam for Capital because I thought, well, you know, he might be interested personally and, you know, there are some synergies with what Ansarada is doing.

So I was just presenting my investor deck.

And then throughout my presentation, I could see his face was going a bit something strange.

Like, this is weird.

What's going on?

And then basically he said, look, I have to show you something.

And he took me to this, you know, they have this green room recording Ansarada thinking room for very, very new early projects.

And he basically had a very similar idea with Rebel that he's been thinking for a while and he's like I want to do something very similar and I was my first reaction was I was shocked to be honest and I think he was shocked as well because of just the way we thought about it and I already had the mock-ups of the platform and all that and then he essentially said look do you want to go and do it on your own or do you want to do it together and I thought about it but for me yeah and I said yes let's do it together and that's the material information platform that's right you're working on, so can you explain how does it work?

So the company has been around for 12 years and we've built our reputation as a Datroom business.

So the Datroom is, you know, it's a piece of technology that, you know, it's a platform whenever you want to do big events, so you're raising capital or you're selling a business, you need the platform where you want to present your business securely to other parties.

So that's what the Datroom is.

And it's pretty commonplace.

It's quite a complex piece of tech because it's built on the AI and allows you to, you know, like it's really high, like high in security.

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But it's pretty commonplace.

So we have a few competitors.

The product's been around for 12 years.

So the thinking was, I explained to you where my thinking came from.

So the thinking that Sam had, for example, with his experience with Ansarada was that they've seen a lot of bad, bad deals happen every now and then.

And we know, if you look at how that runs operate, there's so much intelligence there, so much knowledge.

So we know actually what good looks like.

on the transaction success when eighty percent of the times it's not and the reasons that's pretty simple the companies are just not prepared they're not prepared to answer the questions they're not prepared to present the metrics and not prepared with documents that they need and even you see these deals fail over and over again you're like for we must there must be a way where we can take this knowledge that we know how transactions work and make it you know available to people much earlier so that they don't like face these situations so and you know and I wanted to build the same thing is something that again helps the same the same with the same idea helps companies understands what required as a business how to operate the documents and being able to manage it properly so what the platform does it's it's it's essentially it's extending offering funds rather instead of having a datrum on the transactional basis it's a platform where any business from a small startup to a big company with corporate M&A function can assemble all their documents information metrics it connects it through an IPIC store your financial systems HRs and creates this intelligent layer of information.

So at any point, when you need to present yourself to an audit or investors, it's all there.

And it also, there's a system of scorecards so we can benchmark you against our algorithm.

So we run an AI algorithm, all the deals, like 20,000 deals that we've run.

So we know exactly.

So if you're a startup in a tech space in Sydney, that's documents you need.

If you're a healthcare company, like biotech company in the US, that's what you need.

And then the company can, you know, create, bring their team together and assign responsibilities for maintaining this information.

curating it and you know eventually protecting themselves from risk because all the documents are verified and being able to you know act on any opportunities that comes up and looking at the the startup side of that or startups and how they can be using this what understanding do you think at the moment Australian startups have of the need to you know get on a platform like this or even you know have this document I think in many cases unless you go through something and unless you have to like go through a cap race very often you just don't understand or you don't realize what you need it's very simple you don't know what you don't know and I've been in this boat myself I was a start-up too and I remember when I tried to register my business and I had to come up with some documents for cap race I had no idea what I was doing I had friends I was going to ask but in the end of the day everyone had different opinions and I was just I wasn't sure what what I'm to do.

So I think the level of awareness is quite low.

When we do speak to someone who has raised capital at least once, it's a no-brainer.

They understand exactly what we're speaking about, and that's why we've had the most success.

People who've been through the pain at least once, it's just, yes, of course.

They don't want to spend time on assembling this information.

You know, there are statistics that we spend at least six weeks a year looking for information all you have.

It's just a fact.

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And how can the platform or even the team walk clients or users of the platform through the process and what they need?

What kind of relationship do you have?

with clients?

Oh, it's very hands-on.

So we have a customer success team, we call them.

So if you become a customer, the first thing we do is we organise a call or a meeting.

So we talk you through the platform.

It's very highly customisable.

So we look at parameters such as which industry you're in, like which location, how big you are, what are you preparing for, do you need an audit, do you need a raise?

And then we essentially create a custom solution for every company.

We help them set up, connect them to their systems.

I wanted to stay because of that.

And then, you know, I just fell in love.

I guess with Sydney, with the country, and I wanted to build my life here.

Meeting people within the Australian community inspired me as well, so I decided to give it a try here first.

But I always had international ambitions.

I always wanted to start something in Australia, but then bring it globally.

And I think, in that case, Australia is a really good landing pad, because the market is really similar to, say, the U.

S.

or the U.

K.

, but at the same time, it's quite condensed.

, say, the Australian customers are genuinely working B2B.

They're a bit less risk averse than, say, some other markets.

So it's a good way for a startup to start and then test the product and then scale it globally.

I read a Q&A you did and I wanted to ask you about it because you mentioned something really interesting, which was you said a lot of entrepreneurs in Australia don't understand empathy, which I found really interesting.

So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that and explain that.

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I think it's a common thing.

You can sometimes drink too much of your own Kool-Aid and you understand your product.

But what's really important, even if you're trying to sell something, don't sell what you have.

Understand what the person needs.

That's number one quality in anything.

And having the empathy for your customer, what they're really thinking about is what will help you get to this product market fit faster.

Very often, too often you get this idea in your mind, you think it's brilliant, and then you're just going like, this is what you need.

But the person is like, no, but maybe I need something else.

is a prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.

So before prescribing a solution, you have to diagnose what's happening with the customer.

And I think that's what I've seen a lot.

Not just in Australia, but I think it's a common thing in entrepreneurs to get too passionate.

I've never heard that before, but that's a really good way to put it, that you wouldn't prescribe something without the diagnosis first.

So if you put it that way to founders, they'll be like, oh, yeah.

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And what do you think are the key opportunities for startups in Australia at the moment?

What do you think are the exciting things about building a business here?

Well, I think the opportunities are really limited because the scene is very ancient.

Just five years ago when I first came, six years ago when I first came here, there was hardly anything.

But now you can see the communities, you can see the government starting to think and bringing the talent.

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I think there's a lot.

The world is increasingly becoming more and more global.

So that obviously helps.

Specifically, I do think that in focusing on new technologies, that's one thing if I look at what I've been doing with Rocket, for example, why it sort of was exciting.

It's slightly different to where I think as a startup, what we're doing with Ansrata, for example, where we're creating, it's bold, it's risky, but we're creating new categories.

Something doesn't exist in the world.

In a way, what I would personally like to Australian startups to take a bit more risk.

and not trying to look at the trends and build something in a similar vein, but trying something new.

And Australia is a perfect market because it doesn't have the scale and perhaps the capital that exists in, say, China or America, but it's a great market to test absolutely brand new ideas and then being able to scale them.

Where we work now, for example, our platform is focused a lot on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

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You probably think it's another buzzword, but we've invested a lot in that because we work in the space of information, and that's where these as well as gamification technologies that are able to...

What we aim for is essentially automating the whole due diligence process.

So if you go to any transaction, instead of trying to lose 10 kilos in three months, you just have your regular exercise program with the platform, and then you go in, and then it's all done.

So I think that's really powerful, and there's a lot of talent here.

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So I think there's a lot of opportunities to do something new.

And looking at Ansarata as well, what, like we mentioned before, what kind of understanding startups have for their need to go through due diligence and have all this documentation ready.

What kind of appetite do bigger companies and corporates have for getting on a platform like this and embracing AI and machine learning to take them through the due diligence?

diligence process instead of outsourcing it to a consulting firm or something like that.

Well, consulting firms are expensive.

And being a consultant myself, I do think that the industry is rapidly being disrupted by all the new tech.

That's one of the things, you know, because if you look at the fees that you're paying consulting or legal fees, and often these fees are not even, you know, not even for the advice, but just for the fact that you bring the number of lawyers to look through documents for 10 years and you pay, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's really inefficient.

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So it's actually the bigger companies, they understand it a bit better.

Back to our conversation on startups, I think sometimes they're a bit too naive to understand actually how the business operates.

But that's why we have a separate product for startups.

You start pretty much almost free, and then you grow, and then you get set up, and then once you raise your capital, then you start paying.

But most, if you look at our clientele, a lot of the majority of this comes from mid-market to bigger businesses, because they're a bit more experienced, they understand exactly what it costs them.

And the more transactions , the bigger the problem.

So there are some companies that acquire businesses, business amounts.

That's a lot of ways just managing all these processes, which we automate.

Or if it's an asset manager, for example, real estate is really big in Australia.

So real estate is a big industry for us where they do a lot of divestments, investments, and they see a huge impact immediately once they implement the new technology.

But it requires a leap of faith.

For your first customers, with the new products like that, your product market fit, the role to product market fit, , and the first, you know, five customers will be really visionary.

But the funny thing also is a bit, you know, there's a bit of FOMO in the industry.

So the moment the first few people implement this, then it's really easy to get to the next 20 or the next 100.

Then you become defensible.

Yeah.

So Anserrata raised a funding round earlier this year.

What are the key goals for the next sort of 6 to 12 months?

We have two main goals.

One is transforming the business entirely from where we were, , which is a transactional business with Datroom.

So the way it works, if someone has a transaction, you're going to pay for the Datroom as a standalone contract.

You finish your contract, that's it.

With the platform, it's a recurring SaaS model, so it's a B2B platform.

Obviously, it's a completely different quality of revenue.

And for us, transforming the business entirely, everything we do transactionally to the always-on, it's better for us, but it's also better for customers.

It's much better, back to this analogy with regular fitness and exercise, , rather than trying to shed 30 kilos and pay a lot of money in the end.

So it's beneficial for both, so that's a big, big, big focus.

That for us means also transforming the way we operate, transforming our sales and marketing teams and customer success and the products.

Everything changes, but it's exciting as well.

And the second biggest focus is global expansion.

So we're still Australia first, but we want to become, next year we want to be America first and more global, more presence globally.

you give to other young girls or women starting out in tech and looking to build their career in tech and startups?

Well, my main advice is I think it can be intimidating at first, and it was for me.

But it's really not that different whether you're moving or a man.

The one thing is to have the confidence in yourself and the trust in yourself.

I think as females, we often tend to doubt ourselves too much.

Like when you rehearse the same thing or you ask questions until you know it's perfect, you don't speak up.

And I've been there myself, you know, 10 years ago.

You have to teach yourself to, you know, to have the trust in what you do, to have a bit of trust in your instinct and your gut feel and be confident.

Also understanding where you're really good at, who you are, and then being able to find the place where you can really kind of maximise your potential.

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