Peter Swaniker is originally from Ghana, West Africa, where he studied software engineering. He immigrated to the United States to marry his American girlfriend and launched his career in tech in California. He started as a developer at a variety of companies and studied at night to get his MBA while working during the day. Eventually, he cashed in his 401K plan and invested everything into starting Ximble, a new company that made scheduling software. Seven years later, Ximble was acquired for an eight-figure amount.
In early 2021, Peter launched monitorQA, a mobile inspection software platform used for health and safety audits. He had the idea when speaking to a restaurant manager during the pandemic and learned that they did all the health inspections using paper forms and spreadsheets to track non-compliance. While Peter faces many of the challenges that other black founders face, he is optimistic about 2021.
What is monitorQA all about?
monitorQA is a software platform for doing inspections and audits of multiple locations. It’s used by retail stores, restaurants, and any other business that sends inspectors into the field to audit health, safety, and quality standards. The data is collected via a phone or tablet using our mobile app. Headquarters can then slice and dice the data to get valuable insights into their operations and spot trends in non-compliance. This allows companies to take action to prevent non-compliance in the future and catch emerging issues before they become big problems.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
I studied software engineering in Ghana, West Africa, and then moved to California to marry my American girlfriend. I ended up working at a bunch of random tech companies. Eventually, I knew I wanted to start my own business and I invested my life savings into a SaaS tool for employee scheduling. It was a tough grind, but in 2019 we got acquired for eight-figures.
Fast forward to 2020, in the middle of the pandemic I was dining outdoors and started chatting with the manager of the restaurant. He told me that it was really hard to keep up with the changing restaurant regulations regarding COVID. He showed me all these paper checklists they were using across all their restaurant locations – and immediately I thought that there had to be a better way. That was the spark for monitorQA.
As we prepared the business plan, it was clear that there were many industries that were still using paper inspection forms, and this represented a big opportunity for us. So, we built a product that is affordable, super easy to use and has insightful dashboards and reports that help businesses make better decisions. Paper forms and spreadsheets can’t provide the level of operational intelligence that our software can.
How have the pandemic affected you or your new business?
On one hand, the pandemic has been great for us. It has heightened awareness of health and safety standards on the part of businesses, employees, and customers. It has also accelerated the adoption of new mobile technologies.
On the other hand, raising investment capital has been harder than ever. As a black, immigrant founder I don’t have the same network as entrepreneurs who went to college in America and who have worked in Silicon Valley their whole lives. Normally, I would get out there, pound the pavement, and attend networking events in order to meet potential investors. But COVID has reduced my outreach to simply cold emailing investors, which frankly, has not been too successful. It’s frustrating because we have a product, customers and are generating revenue, but at the same time, we see pre-product, pre-revenue startups raising millions of dollars in venture capital on just an idea.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
The biggest mistake I made as an entrepreneur came when I was starting my previous company. Before starting that company, I researched the industry and knew the problem we wanted to solve – but I didn’t spend enough time with actual potential customers. I built the software and when we finally brought it to market, we realized that there were some fundamental flaws in it because we didn’t understand the detailed needs of the customer. The business logic that informed the software was wrong. We had to completely rebuild the software. Since then, I learned to completely immerse myself in the world of the customer before building. Don’t underestimate how much you should study your customers’ needs.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
Exercise. It’s way too easy for founders to completely lose themselves in their work. But it’s so important to take care of your body too. The body and mind are connected. You can’t let your body fall apart without there being consequences to your mind. I find that even a quick run gives me more energy and clarity to power me while I work. I also believe that my subconscious works on solving problems while I’m exercising.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
As a kid in Africa, I grew tomatoes in our backyard and then sold them to our neighbors. I’m glad I didn’t pursue that idea too far because I don’t think I’d be a very good farmer.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
There’s one thing that most founder CEOs must do that they’ve never done before: raise investment capital. I’m a software engineer, not a salesman, so raising capital is new to me. I’m learning how to open the door to potential investors, and how to pitch them. I’m reading a lot about the venture capital fundraising process, and it’s really helpful to me. Ultimately, everyone does sales, so a lot of what I’m learning I can apply to other areas of the business.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
I wish I knew that having a great piece of software is not enough for a successful business. In the movie “Field of Dreams”, the actor Kevin Costner says, “If you build it, they will come.” Well, that is not true in business. Having a great product is the first step. But breaking through a noisy marketplace and convincing people to part with their money in exchange for your product is way more challenging than technical folks acknowledge. I have a deep respect for the brilliant marketing and salespeople I work with.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Put the service back in “customer service”. Honestly, it’s the easiest way to grow your business. If you obsess over your customer service, your customers will tell others. You need to spend money to provide customer support anyway, so why not make it amazing? That way, you convert a cost center into a revenue center. It creates a virtuous cycle of happy customers, referrals, and low customer acquisition costs. This is one of the ingredients of success for monitorQA.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would use the money to build a basic prototype of the product. I’d either hire an offshore developer or use some of the great no-code tools that exist now, and build the minimum viable product. I’d then get that into the hands of some beta testers and improve the product a bit more and raise capital based on that. That $1,000 can quickly turn into $1,000,000 in investment capital.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Know thyself. Self-awareness is important to understanding your own strengths and weaknesses so that you can build a team that compliments you. At first, being a founder is all about you because there is nobody else. But the moment you get traction, it’s all about your team. You’ll need to put together a team at record speed and if you get it wrong, it can create an unstable foundation on which you’re building. Of course, all the other entrepreneurial maxims are true too: don’t be afraid to fail, constantly learn, iterate quickly, etc. But without self-awareness, it’s hard to process everything that is happening to you.
How do you personally overcome fear?
I try to constantly push myself out of my comfort zone. I set a big goal, feel some fear, and then use that to power me towards the goal. Sometimes I reach that goal, sometimes I fail, but I always work through that fear. When I lift weights, I love setting an audacious goal and then I start chipping away at it. Or even something as simple as cold calling investors; it’s always a little scary because of the potential rejection. But eventually, you build up a tolerance, and you can push yourself further and further without being paralyzed by fear.
- I use Ahrefs for SEO. It’s such a great tool, and SEO is a big source of high-quality leads for us.
- We use Slack for collaboration. I don’t know how we worked before Slack.
- And of course, G Suite or Google Workspace or whatever they’re calling it these days. But that suite of tools from Google is the workhorse for every company I’ve been involved in.
How can readers get in touch with you?
I’m happy to connect with readers. Check out monitorQA to learn about our mobile inspection software. I’d love to hear any feedback your readers might have. I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn. I try to publish some of my thoughts there, but I’ve been a bit inconsistent lately. Also, readers can message me via Twitter @monitor_qa_ or search for us on Facebook.
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