"A true entrepreneur is someone who doesn’t need external inspiration" with Olga Lapshinova

Olga Lapshinova, Email In Detail CEO. In 2019, as the leader of a development team, Olga founded a new company, Email In Detail (emailindetail.com), which focused on email solutions. Backed up with 16 years of experience in computer file converters, the team developed powerful apps that help people prepare emails for legal actions and archive them.

Can you tell our readers about your background?  

I studied to be a translator at a prestigious university. In 2000, our teachers were not familiar with computers, and we students dreamed of automated translation. Then, together with our friends from the technical university, we wrote a translator program. This first student startup was my passport to the world of software developers. Working outside the office and for oneself was a dream in 2002, and I managed to realize it. Our entire team worked remotely: we developed programs, posted them online on our site and partner sites, and made money. I remember that once we had to spend a lot of time explaining to the tax service why we didn't have a landline phone. Now such a thing wouldn’t surprise anyone, but 15 years ago, everything was different.

What inspired you to start your business?  

I like to help people who are struggling with computer problems, unidentified files, and programs to open them, and I think I'm good at it. That’s why, while still working in someone else's company, I decided to create my own business. Making complex things simple definitely inspires me, because the more complex something is, the more difficult it is for people to choose the right solution.

Where is your business based?

We have an international team: our webmaster is from Chile, our designer is from Spain, our technical support staff is from India, and our developers are from different cities in Eastern and southern Europe. From the very beginning, we decided to work remotely, but we always meet online once a week to exchange ideas and support communication within the team. This format of work gives us many advantages, and now it also saves us from the consequences of the pandemic.

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

In 2003, my two partners and I founded Softplicity, a niche developer of file converters. Back then, new file formats were appearing every month, and people still converted music to MP3 to listen to it on portable players. Today, any browser can open a PDF file without converting it; however, there are areas where file formats are still important. When we were developing a line of converters at Softplicity, we were often contacted by lawyers or tax advisors. They needed a little more than an email converter. Based on our engines and their wishes, we created our first email solutions. 

The first steps in the new business were more painful than I expected. Since we had registered our previous business back in 2006, we did not take into account that much had changed during that time. We spent a lot of resources on legal issues such as registration of software rights, obtaining a digital signature, and so on. All these things had been implemented in the previous project for a long time, but we had to start the new one from scratch. Finding and hiring staff for a new company was also different from all our previous experience working in an established team. I conducted more interviews in the space of a couple of months than I had in the previous 5 years.  

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

Throughout my career, I have spent many weeks directly communicating with lawyers from all over the world. In every state of the USA, I have a favorite law firm, where I know the owner personally. And I know that many offices and lawyers are used to looking for the same computer guy for a number of tasks. We also help them solve these tasks in-house, without involving third-party specialists or poring over technical manuals. When that happens, it gratifies me immensely and reminds me why we do all this.

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

We came on the market just a year ago, armed with the experience in software development that we had gained as partners of the old business. The main problem then was building our own brand and strengthening the trust of users in our products, which we already completely believed in.

The biggest challenge for us was to reconfigure our technical thinking. At a certain point, we realized that it was important to stop looking at the solution from the developer's point of view: "This is how it should work," and start looking at it from the client's point of view: "This is how it will be easier and clearer."

Managing a remote team also caused some difficulties at first. We have very independent employees, and I support initiatives without requiring to approve every detail. However, along with a great deal of independence comes a loss of human contact. We tried out a lot of different tools and finally settled on Trello, which allows you not only to set tasks but also facilitate interaction between all the team members.

How do you stay focused? 

I’ve been reading a lot of books lately that answer such questions. It’s always been important for me to see the big picture and know the direction of the company, to understand what each employee is working on. Regularly reviewing our goals and objectives helps me do this. Oddly enough, yoga and meditation also became familiar tools of my business a long time ago. I also made sure to surround myself with the right people. Sometimes I think that I’ve completely lost control of what’s happening, and at such moments I’m surprised by the well-coordinated work of my team. 

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

In the 16 years preceding the foundation of my current business, we learned all the nuances of working with almost all formats. Those who have recently started developing programs for converting email will have to work hard to master the same skills. There are many email processing products on the market today, but those are usually large cloud solutions that require a monthly payment. We occupy a fairly narrow niche, offering the most simple desktop option. You buy it once and use it freely, periodically installing free updates. We also tried to make the interface as simple as possible, while keeping the capabilities as powerful as possible.

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

Make good products and get the deserved appreciation from users. My team has never had the task of becoming the largest player in the market. We are a small company, and that’s our strength. Thanks to that, we can afford to constantly stay in contact with our customers, and that’s the best strategy for improving the product. We are flexible, respond quickly to changes, and are able to implement almost any request in a few days. Whatever the client comes up with, we will be able to implement it, even if 90% of our other clients will never use it. 

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

In my opinion, a true entrepreneur is someone who doesn’t need external inspiration. They just can't live any other way. If you need the motivation to become an entrepreneur, you should seriously consider a regular job. Entrepreneurship is not the type of hard work you should be inspired to do. It's a way of life. 

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

I regularly read the blog Indiehackers.com. It helps me to understand the specifics of running an online business, and learn about new tools and personal entrepreneurial experience. It turned out that sales were not our strong point, so Anthony Iannarino’s books have become our ABC's for building sales. Everything about marketing was covered by Philip Kotler. Strategic marketing was given good treatment by Jean-Jacques Lambo; I highly recommend his book for those who want to know all the moves in advance.

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

As I mentioned before, we actively use Trello in the company. We didn't settle on that program right away; we had tried many other similar planners before, but Trello fits our business tasks best. We use Zoom for weekly online meetings, the Zendesk platform is convenient for support, and the Sell program from the same developer is our solution for sales. All sorts of tables, from the content plan of the site to the stages of new product development, are stored in Google Docs, and we use Mindmeister for more global plans.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I’m not a big fan of new-fangled ideas, and I believe that everything in our life develops according to relatively traditional models, including business. Philip Kotler has always been a marketing guru for me, and remains so to this day. By the way, he recently gave a lecture on how business and marketing will be transformed in the coming years, and that definitely gave me something to think about.

How do you balance work and life?  

As a mother of three children and a passionate lover of travel, I’m glad that I was able to create a company where a work-life balance is possible. We spend most of our time in different countries, so I work wherever there is an Internet, as do most of my colleagues. My children see me much more often than the children of people who spend five days a week in the office. We don't need to go to an office and comply with a dress code (thanks to that, by the way, we were able to hire two very talented introverted developers). Freedom is generally one of the key values of our team. Freedom from convention also includes the freedom to work at your convenience. The main thing is that tasks are completed by a certain deadline, and employees decide on their own what time of day or night they work on them.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?  

The most common way to blow off steam for me is communicating with friends. Also, ever since yoga and meditation came into my life, the tension, in general, began to accumulate much less.

What do you have planned for the next six months?  

Conquer the top of the charts of industry portals with user reviews of software products, such as Gartner's Capterra, G2.com, and TrustPilot. I would be very pleased if readers of the FemFounder community tried some of our products and supported us with reviews on those portals. Businesses have always been our target audience, with almost no home licenses. In the context of the crisis caused by the pandemic, we began to receive questions about providing free or cheaper licenses. My team and I always respond to such requests. Since March, we have been providing free licenses to medical and educational organizations. In addition, we have adapted free versions of some of our products for personal use. This is our support for those who find themselves in a difficult situation today.

How can our readers connect with you?

Any time! Email me at olga@emailindetail.com