Victor Bolu is the co-founder of webautomation.io which helps businesses extract data from websites without having to write any code. Victor’s background is as a Management/IT Consultant (15+ Years) delivering complex IT/Strategy projects for blue-chip enterprise companies. He is also a Technology enthusiast, father, and lover of all things vintage.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is WebAutomation all about?
The web is the most powerful data source, but all that valuable data is trapped behind web pages. Getting that data out in a structured form is exceedingly difficult, especially if you are not an expert computer programmer.
Most people that could benefit from the data are either not able or not willing to write code. Webautomation.io helps businesses extract data from any website without writing code, using easy-to-use self-service tools. This data can then be used to monitor your competitors products or pricing, generate sales leads or understand your audience better.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
My professional background is as an IT Consultant delivering complex IT projects for the enterprise working at companies like Boston Consulting Group, Accenture & Deustche bank
How we came up with the idea was when I was running a price comparison website that relied heavily on web data extraction. I was struggling with maintaining and building the web data extractors due to my limited knowledge of writing the code. A trusted friend referred an expert developer, Ozcan Yukaribas (now my co-founder), to help. It was not too long before we both got frustrated: me with having to rely on someone else every time I needed to update the code; Ozcan with spending hours repeatedly building custom web scrapers.
Ozcan built a considerably basic user interface to create and maintain web data extractors without writing code. This was when we had the “aha” moment and realized that so many other people like us would benefit from a tool like this.
While we were doing our research into the viability of our idea, we discovered that thousands of the exact same web data extractors were being built to extract data from the most popular websites in the world.
We expanded our vision to also consolidate and prevent people from re-building the same web extraction tools, instead using ready-to-use ones which we make available to them.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
Our mission is to empower SMBs by giving them access to information on the web without barriers so they can use data to grow their businesses. We plan to achieve this with our master blueprint:
- Create the biggest library of ready-to-use web data extraction tools
- Open our platform to developers to build, host and share their ready-to-use tools, making money from the usage
- Continue to invest in R&D around WebAutomation, in turn providing our customers with the best in class technology solutions
What was the biggest problem you encountered building this product? and how did you overcome it?
We are building a no-code self-service web scraping tool for non-developers. Traditionally web scraping tools are built for developers due to the technicalities needed to understand how the web and webpages work. The biggest challenge we had was building a developer tool for non-developers who are not familiar with the underlying concepts and are less patient.
To mitigate this problem, we had to constantly involve our users in testing every single feature throughout the duration of the product development lifecycle. This of course slowed down our development process as we were forced to keep simplifying the product to allow our users to use it without much friction. The constant testing and feedback cycle from our ideal customers forced us down a path of simplicity and a product which they can now use without having to spend a lot of time reading documentation.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from them?
The main lesson we learned was not to hire people that you could do a better job than. We made the mistake of hiring some “cheaper” developers to help speed things up. It ended up being a costly mistake as we had to rewrite the entire code again
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Based on feedback from our customers we discovered that web scraping follows the 80/20 rule i.e 80% of web scraping is done on only 20% of the websites in the world. Our strategy then has been to have “ready made web scrapers for these popular 20% websites. This gives our users 10X faster time to get their data without having to build or learn any new tools. This is the differentiating factor that makes our customers love us
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I always try and learn something new every day that can help me with my business. I do this from customers, colleagues, advisors, news, books, and podcasts. Hence, I try surround myself Smart, experienced people who can show me new things
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
My Favorite books are:
- Rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would use most of the money in sales & marketing. Sales is the best way of funding your startup, I would try and get money upfront from big customers and find a way to deliver as a service and use the money to keep developing my product.
What is your favorite quote?
“Anything doing is worth doing well”
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Anytime I think of giving up or doing anything half-hearted I remember this phrase and give it my 100%
How can we get in touch with you?
- You can contact me at victor@webautomation.io or find Victor Bolu on LinkedIn
- Website: WebAutomation.io
