Patricia Recarte is a young, female entrepreneur living in New York City. Pati has experience in fields like fundraising for startups and investment banking and knows the importance of networking and growing businesses through meaningful relationships. That’s why she created KADO Networks, a remote networking company during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I’m Pati, a Spanish-speaking entrepreneur living in New York City since the summer of 2020. I am also the co-founder and CEO of KADO. In college, I studied law and economics and worked as an M&A investment banker at Morgan Stanley in London. Being very attracted to the tech ecosystem, I pivoted and started working for startups: first at Fever (an event discovery platform) as Head of Finance & Investor Relations, participating in their Series B fundraising; then at 21 Buttons (a fashion-tech startup) as Head of Corporate Strategy and Expansion. Once I decided I wanted to start my own business and before moving to NYC, I underwent a coding boot camp with Le Wagon.

What inspired you to start your business?

I’ve been raised in a family of lawyers, worked as an investment banker, married one, and have been surrounded by people from the services industries. It occurred to me early on that success in these industries is very tied to networking, relationships and trust, and not necessarily tied to technical knowledge. However, ironically enough, less than 5% of lawyers in the US use relationship management tools of any sort, and the same is true of the other verticals! Traditional CRM-incompatibility, focused on transactional sales and marketing leaves business connectors and generators spending 50%+ of their time on networking, managing follow ups post-initial contact and working on business development. This represents a big market gap and an opportunity to increase efficiency, billable hours, and times to closing.

KADO comes in as an AI-driven one-stop solution, helping relationship-driven businesses: 1.) Activate clients and close follow-up gaps through interactive business profiles, and 2.) Reduce time to closing and increase value per hour through a fully-integrated and curated client manager.

Where is your business based?

We are split between NYC and Madrid. Business (sales, marketing, operations) is based in NYC, while development is based in Madrid, where I’m from. There is great talent in Madrid at more affordable rates than in the US. 

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

I started by doing my research, interviewing people from my potential target market and trying to find their pain points. For this purpose, I built a very simple prototype that I could test out with my interviewees and use to confirm hypotheses and better shape the product roadmap. I then built an initial P&L with expected costs and needed resources, as this would help calculate financing needs.

Once I had a better idea and understanding of the MVP and costs, I started raising money from family and friends. That led me to hire my first employees! As soon as I got an MVP to market, I started testing it and improving it day after day.

5. What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

Being focused on B2B and enterprise marketing is very tricky. It doesn’t work like a consumer / DTC brand. Our target user is not impulsive in the decision-making process and already knows what he or she wants when they go online looking for solutions. Therefore, ads or paid marketing doesn’t really work.

We are very focused on content generation and PR to establish ourselves as an authority in the space. SEO is another important tool, as these are people who already know what they want and will use Google to find it. Therefore, it’s key to ensure we appear at the top of Google results.

Together, with the above, we need to start working on referrals and reviews. That will be the second aspect companies will take into consideration.

6. What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Go to marketing and getting our first clients! We did a lot of beta testing for free and interviews with potential clients, while also improving the app at the same time. We have been offering it for free to individuals, as having some mass of usage is critical for SMBs and enterprises to move forward. Potential customers often ask about the number of users or need some name-dropping to be convinced.

For our first paying clients, we started with discounted rates. It’s important to get some names in at the very beginning, when the app isn’t fully complete, and when you have no precedents as examples. The best way to make your product compelling is by offering it at a competitive price point.

7. How do you stay focused?

Knowing that I am fighting to solve a problem that has always been proven difficult to decipher gives me motivation. Many have failed in this sector, but that also means there is great upside and potential if things are done right.

Other than that, I try to get my mind off of things from time to time, either by running, or going out with friends. Clearing the mind helps with refocusing later!

8. How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

We are a mix between a relationship manager and a networking digital business card app that offers a 360 solution unlike anything else out there. We offer just the basic features of each vertical that are actually needed for that 360-degree experience.

9. What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Blogging and SEO for sure! Most of our leads come from the same couple of blog articles and Google searches.

10. What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Get ready mentally for many “no’s” and fail often. Entrepreneurship is a road of trial and error. What’s important isn’t that you never make mistakes, but that you recover fast and learn from them.

11. What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

App: Calendly → I love being organized and efficient. (Reason why I also love KADO, as I am a typical target user.)

Book: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time → I’m a bit of a science nerd, I love reading books that spark my curiosity, rather than reading novels.

Blog: I am not a blog reader to be honest. I tend to read newsletters from general market / news updates like Axios, or listen to the podcasts of the FT or the Economist.

12. What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

Jira: I lead product management, so it’s a great tool to keep track of sprints and releases. 

13. Who is your business role model? Why?

I don’t have a particular business role model. In general, I really admire every single person that throws themself into entrepreneurship. I love hearing their stories of failure or success. Every person has a unique story and perspective to bring to the table. No one story or experience is better than the others. 

14. How do you balance work and life?

That is something that I am still trying to work on or improve. I’m married but have no kids at the moment. I still do very long hours and find myself working many times over the weekend. I try to at least go to dinner with friends and take part in sport activities some weekends. However, what’s key is to make sure that I can have dinner at home with my husband every evening.

15. What’s your favorite way to decompress?

A long run and some boxing! I have tried meditating many times, but it has not proven to be right for me.

16. What do you have planned for the next six months?

KADO is still at the very early stages of it’s story, so there’s still a lot to come. Up until now, we have been very focused on user discovery, growth and doing some micro-pivots at the feature and prioritization level to ensure we have a clear and proven path for the upcoming years. Our next short-term goal is to focus on revenue and generating the attention of enterprise accounts. KADO’s goal is to help not only professionals, but overall businesses grow through meaningful relationships. It’s actually at the enterprise level where we see our biggest potential!

17. How can our readers connect with you?

Feel free to connect with me on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-recarte.

You can also learn more about KADO by going to kadonetworks.com.

Happy to talk anything about networking, product and AI-applied SaaS  (which is where we want to head). Thanks!