Mike Dragan is the cofounder and COO of Oveit, a global company focusing on live experiences technology, both virtual and in-person. Oveit was started in 2016 with the goal of improving how brands deliver live experiences to their customers and now serves over 3000 customers across 4 continents. Mike has an experience of over 15 years in building digital products, with a focus on digital shopping. He has worked with some of the largest consumer brands in the world, advising on their digital go to market strategy.
Mike Dragan is also the author of the “Understanding Omnichannel Retail – beyond clicks vs. bricks” ebook, a guide for companies that understand consumer behavior across media. He holds two degrees, one in International Economics and one in Computer Science.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Oveit all about?
Oveit builds technology for live experiences. We started Oveit in 2016 years ago with the idea that the world has changed to a point where experiences are in a lot of cases more valuable than goods.
4 years later we serve around 3000 users from all over the world with event registration technology, cashless payments technology for live events and our latest product and the one we are most inspired by. This product is called Streams.live, a way for merchants to sell and buy goods in a live stream. We think this technology will transform the way people connect, trade goods and will create a new type of job: the superstar sales associate.
At the core we’re happy to help people build experiences that bring people together and enrich their lives.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
For the past 17 years I’ve worked in digital media, mostly helping companies either improve their presence online or market their brands. I started as a web designer when I was 20, when I was still in college. I got a job at a local cybersecurity company. At that time cybersecurity was not actually a coined term and “to cyber” had a whole other meaning. I worked there as a web designer, mostly trying new stuff on their webpage and trying not to do too much damage. I was so passionate about building web pages that when they hired me and asked what salary I wanted I was caught off-guard. I didn’t think I could do stuff I loved and be paid for it. I’ve asked for what I thought was a good compensation and they’ve offered more. What I’ve asked for was lower than the minimum salary.
I stayed there until I got decent at my craft and afterwards moved to a local digital agency where I’ve built a team and became a Creative Director. That was kind of a nice way of saying – you will do less creative work and more management. And I did.
I started my first company at the age of 25. It was a digital agency called MB Dragan. It was basically my name because when I started, I thought it’ll just be me, doing freelance work. Customers liked what I was doing so I started hiring some awesome people. We won more than 30 prizes on digital innovation, opened three offices to handle customers from other cities and life went crazy. I had no real management training so by the time I was 30 it went supernova. It was too big to manage and too small to sell. I had to close it after it was clear it was not sustainable as a service or for my mental health.
While I wouldn’t file this experience under successes – I did learn a lot. The most important things were that a. I will build a product company next and b. Marketing is too important of a service to be done for other companies.
I started an omnichannel retail software company with my current co-founder. Omnichannel means all channels. What we did was we helped merchants sell both online and in-store, using the same software. We grew the company and sold it to a larger company as we understood there is a limit to what we could achieve in this space. Our customers were usually large companies with large budgets but also a bit too bureaucratic for us.
In 2016 we started Oveit with the idea of making it easier for event planners to manage their events and make more money from their live experiences.
Meanwhile I managed to finish college, mostly because my mother insisted on it. Truth be told I like learning, so I actually continued my education and now hold two degrees – one in Economics and one in Computer Science. While not working on Oveit, I continue my studies and I’m now doing an MA in bioinformatics.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
Since the beginning we tried to listen to our customers and improve our product. We will take this same approach from now on.
As our customers become more successful, so do we. Last year meant a big dip in our customers’ business, due to the decrease in the number of live experiences and many of them moving to virtual events.
As such, we tried to help our customers by building virtual event software that can help them accept payments for their events and also allow them to sell goods while the event is streaming. This helped us continue to stay afloat and helped our customers generate new income, at a time when they really needed it.
So far, we’ve raised just enough capital to help us improve our services. We plan to raise a series A round at the end of 2021 to help us grow even faster, as we expect the live experiences market to quickly evolve in 2022.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
The biggest problem was the Coronavirus outbreak. Our core market is live experiences such as large festivals or conferences. Both were hit hard in 2020 so we needed to adapt.
If we wouldn’t have launched Streams.live to allow event planners to handle virtual events we would have probably closed shop. But we did launch it and we’re very happy we did. It took a lot of work from our team and they’ve built an amazing product that integrates event registration, ticketing, chat and many more features that help live experiences become amazing.
But the key differentiator was something we’ve built kind of like a side-feature: live shopping. This has proved to be the secret sauce for our upcoming growth. We now see that this is a transformative technology that will help commerce evolve in the next 5 years more than it had in the past 70.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
I’ve made loads of mistakes and it’s easy to look back on them now, but it was not all that nice at the moment. First one was starting an agency. This is a terrible way to build a business if you are striving for scale. If you need some quick bucks for you and maybe some freelance buddies – sure – start an agency. If not – focus on shipping some form of product. Either yours (what is generally viewed as entrepreneurship these days) or someone else’s (commerce – something us humans have been doing for thousands of years).
The second mistake was not raising capital. I thought I could bootstrap my way to a million bucks. It’s very, very hard to pull off something like that and very taxing on your mental and physical health. There are many VC funds out there and asking for money is part of building a business. Of course – you will get a lot of no’s – and we did get plenty but the good thing about people telling you no is it doesn’t cost a thing. Once you understand it’s just a numbers game – you’ll be fine. The more no’s you get, the closer you are to a yes. Obviously – you shouldn’t just hunt for people that say “no – we will not fund you”. Try to understand why they won’t fund you. Be flexible, adapt and in the end, you will reach your goal.
Third mistake was focusing too much on the craft and too little on the financials. I am a very technical person. I like coding and designing apps. I like bits and servers and databases. But a business is a very complicated system to pull off and its essential metrics lie in the financials. Revenue, profit margins, annual and monthly recurring revenue, forecasting, cost of goods sold and all these financial indicators – they are really, really important. Ignore them and you are basically flying blind.
Forth and probably the worst mistake was trusting my guts too much. I’ve heard somewhere that 95% of our brains don’t understand English. Those 95% still act like we’re living 20000 years ago. Not really helpful in the age of electric cars and AI. This means we are not evolved enough to just trust our guts. Get data. Understand the data and act based on that data. I now understand that yes, Jeff Bezos might trust his guts, Elon Musk might as well but their intuition is much better than mine. I should get data.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Our biggest key differentiator is our commercial features. Simply put we are a financial and commerce technology company that works in the live experiences space.
Yes – you can do ticketing with a lot of companies. But there is only one company that will help you preload the ticket with valuable addons, a virtual wallet and help you build an event that is accessible both online and in person. And we took that even further. Events and live experiences can now be used by all sorts of companies to sell their goods in a combination of shopping and entertainment. We call this shoptainment.
We think we are at the forefront of a revolution in the way people create and monetize live experiences, both online and in-person.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I listen to podcasts and walk. Usually at the same time. I’ve found that audio is a much better format to assimilate complicated information than text. When combined with walking or running it also helps me retain information longer by being associated with a great activity.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
The first book I would recommend is Zero to One, by Peter Thiel. Simply put – it’s relatively easy going from one product sold or built to one thousand or one million. It’s super hard to get from 0 to that one product that has a product-market fit, that is loved by customers and really is useful.
The second book I would recommend is Debt: The First 5000 Years, by the late David Graeber. While not an easy read (from multiple perspectives) it offers a great view of the world we live in, on the basis of our current society and economic system. This is a book that has transformed the way I look at the world.
The third book is Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nicholas Taleb. The world around us is messy and chaotic. Yes, we may get a sense that it’s orderly as it seems we have a somewhat stable social system, but the fact is that it’s all very fragile. If you understand that there is no safe space and though some things thrive in spite of this, you too can become Antifragile.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Passion is useless. Try to strive for virtue and consistency. Do something that is useful to other fellow people every day and try to make it better. Passion will leave you when things don’t look pretty or they’re boring. Virtue will stay and guide you.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Good products and happy customers. Our competition is big and getting bigger. The way we’ve grown is by making our products better and helping our customers succeed. We work in an industry where our work and our software are seen by millions of people every month. If it’s good they will notice and use it. If it’s bad – they will notice and tell their friends and followers.
That’s a pretty good incentive to strive for great products and happy customers.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would buy Airbnb stock and hold for the next 10 years. On a shorter term I would start a live-video ecommerce store. I think that live commerce will transform the world in the next 10 years. I truly feel that within the next 3 years we will have a company that will make Amazon look small in the future and this company will be a live commerce retailer.
So, pick up a decent ring light, a smartphone, find some great products that you love, and start a live commerce store. If you need guidance, reach me at mike@oveit.com and I’ll guide you through the setup.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Find a co-founder, find a market you know you can deliver value for other people, raise funds and start a business. Give yourself a try. If it doesn’t work – there’s no shame. You’ll have an interesting ride.
Most important: take care of your mental health and your close relationships. This is what will really matter when you’re older.
What is your favorite quote?
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
– Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher and Roman emperor in his spare time.
How can we get in touch with you?
Drop me an email at mike@oveit.com or on Twitter at @mihaidragan. I blog about ecommerce at netonomy.net
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