Episode Transcript
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What's up, listeners? It's Elisha. Welcome back to the For the Creatives podcast.
Today, I'm coming to you from the Tropical Innovation Festival in far north
Queensland, Cairns, Australia.
And I'm here today with Paul Wynn and Alad from Madoo. They are the innovative
minds behind this startup.
These founders have created this really interesting startup that combines the
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coaching industry with innovative tech.
So, stay tuned as we explore their journey from Canva to creating a startup
that's all about empowering coaches and their clients.
Let's get into it. Hey, Paulwyn and Alad. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Do you guys mind introducing yourselves and just a bit about what you do in your startup?
Great to be here, Elisha. I am Paulwyn, co-founder of Ching Technology Startup.
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So we build software for coaches and their clients to collaboratively document
the coaching journey and visualize progress and make that coaching journey more
tangible so that they can reach new levels of inner development faster. It's amazing.
Thanks for having us, Alisha. My name is Alard and I'm the designer and co-founder
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together with Polin, as well as life partner.
That's amazing. And we're here at the Tropical Innovation Festival,
which we'll touch on in a moment.
But I have a question for you because we're at the Innovation Festival.
This is a bit of a wacky innovation question how
would you design a pair of socks that never get lost in the laundry there's
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no right answer or maybe there is i'm gonna give you a smart ass answer through
a process of iteration yeah the question is what would be features of socks
that never get lost i guess you would maybe not design the socks but design the rest of the laundry.
I have my answers I would just make them huge,
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I at one point I was thinking oh you make him sticky but then I was like no
then they'd stick then they could yeah yeah that wouldn't work well now diving back into,
Madhu and your startup. So what started that journey? Like, why did you start Madhu?
Started with my time at Canva. And Canva has an internal coaching team where
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there are coaches who help people from all across the company with their inner
growth and development.
And so when I was at Canva, I went from being an individual contributor software
engineer to leading a group of over 100 people distributed across many three
different continents in just few years.
So Canva was growing like crazy during that period.
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And that is a huge amount of growth to go through as an individual in a very short period of time.
So coaching was super helpful for me in helping me grow and it was incredibly transformative.
So that's how I recognized the power of coaching.
But then in the process, we noticed that we were using a patchwork of different
tools like emails and pen and paper and different things to track that coaching
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journey, which meant that a lot of the value that I'd accrued through the process was lost.
So that's how we got started thinking about how can we build a tool that unintrusively
sits in the coaching process and amplifies the power of coaching.
So that's where the idea started.
And then we played around with it for a while, did some research,
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talked to a lot of coaches, and then I convinced Alad to join me on this crazy wild adventure.
And here we are. yeah thank you for
sharing that within your current roles what
does your day-to-day look like in madu yeah i
think i could speak to we we were building up until very
recently we were building quite a lot so that
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day was actually had a very relatively structured week where we almost worked
around the clock or at least had work for the products going around the clock
because we had a group of engineers that were abroad in europe and so we had
a nice little handoff going where where you would have stand-up actually at
the end of the day and work together with them on.
Any blockers that they would have and set them up for
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success like during the night and then in the morning we
could do any code review and usability or sorry
quality testing in the morning and have that ready for the day and then during
the afternoon work on kind of like new new features and new ideas brainstorming
and things like that for where we wanted to go next and so we had a nice little
i guess conveyor belt going for for a while and right now we're more in acquisition mode Yeah.
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So now our days are a bit more mixed.
But what I love is that it involves a lot of customer conversations,
a lot of interaction with customers.
Previously, we were very focused, like Alad said, on the development.
And now we're focused on, yeah, before it was product development,
now it's business development for this little while.
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And then that will shift again in about a month's time. Yeah, that's great.
It's a really interesting journey, the startup journey, isn't it?
Wearing so many different roles and hats and stages.
Now, there's a lot of young creatives and aspiring entrepreneurs as well who
may be listening to this.
And with every episode, I'm just continuing to explain and define different
terms that maybe not everyone knows.
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So when you say you're in acquisition mode, what does that mean?
Where is the business at when it's in acquisition mode, the startup?
Yeah, I can take that. I think it depends on the stage and the phase of the
startup that you're in, what you mean when you say acquisition.
And for us at the moment, that is really, so we have a few different channels
through which we find our customers.
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One of the big ones is referrals from our existing customers,
referring other people that they know.
And at the moment, we have a very high touch process to onboard them into Medoo.
And that involves demos. channels but it
also involves conversations in understanding their coaching
practice so it's a lot of storytelling about our
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journey as well as listening to them and then demoing the
product and bringing them along for the journey into the product
so that's what we mean when we say acquisition but
at the same time there's also other acquisition pieces that
we are working on which is our blog so
that is more focused on adding value to
the coaching community but it there's also an organic channel through
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which people discover us rather than us having to
find them so we spend a lot of time thinking about
what we write on our blog doing that and and then
the other acquisition piece is events so
we have a small but growing community of coaches and
we organize events for them online where we can come together
bring speakers bring people who they love
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listening to and talk about topics that are interesting for them
so that's another kind of a focus for acquisition so
this is all packaged in that one word thanks for
explaining that and with your startup madu
at the moment what is a challenge that you're currently facing and working through
i think one of the challenges at a very high level is balancing our time between
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all of those things like what paul and just described is you might see is like
a lot of stuff to do and like writing content and creating content can take
up as much time as you give it being.
Doing a podcast, you know that it always feels like you could do more in that space.
And so basically deciding on the trade-offs that we want to make of what would,
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figuring out what would give us the biggest impact and trying to put our time there.
I think that's a challenge that we're figuring out as we go along and are constantly
tweaking just our efforts, really.
Yeah. Yeah. We do a stand up every morning to align on priorities for the day
and try to set goals for the week, for the month, so that we know what we're working towards.
But absolutely that is one of our big challenges and
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the other one from building the business point
of view is so we've got early traction we've got
early customers we're starting to see some really involved and
engaged customers which is really exciting but the
challenge is how do we scale this and how do we scale this really
quickly with as little capital as
possible like we're happy to spend all our time on this
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we have a great community of friends and supporters and
advisors helping us but it's really that scale is our next challenge like how
do we scale up and how do we reach as many coaches and get them on board as
quickly as we can yeah grow yeah okay thank you for sharing that as either founders
or people in the innovation ecosystem or the startup ecosystem.
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I think we all you know we might wear different hats
and have different roles but sometimes we find that we've all got this really
specific thing that we're really good at we just personally like thriving and
I know a few other people call it this and I like to call it this I like your
superpower what would your superpowers be or your strengths your thing that
you're really really good at maybe we do the reverse like Alan says what.
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You have some time to think. Thank you, Elisha. I think Allard's superpower is he's a designer.
So I think his superpower is really being able to break down a complex problem
into its foundational pieces and then building the solution from the ground
up. I think Allard is great at doing that.
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Me as an engineer, on the other hand, I like to rush to solutions sometimes.
And I tend to want to be like, okay, here's the problem.
Let's figure it out you know and but that's not how
it works when you are doing something creative like building a
product that doesn't exist at all so I
love that about Allard even though sometimes it can
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be like we talk past each other because of that
difference in our way of thinking I think that's a
lot of power I think it's really
funny that you mentioned it in that way as well because I
was literally gonna say that kind of the inverse of
that being your superpower superpower and that like that that's exactly
like where we find i guess our friction and our kind of like our
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synergy as well yeah that's also why i think we
are good we're a good team yeah so the i think
paul and superpower is not the part of like let's jump to a solution i don't
think that's the superpower i think the superpower is we need to get something
done like we have a timeline like that that's great that you have a thousand
ideas allard but like we have to we have to deliver deliver something within a month?
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What are the concrete steps that we do to get there?
And how do we miss one or like make a misstep? How do we get ourselves back on track?
And I think that Owen's really good at that. Just keeping order. Yeah.
It sounds like you both have like really complimentary sort of,
you know, strengths and skills.
Yeah, that's great. So sometimes Mondays get a bad rep.
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Okay. A lot of times you'll hear, you know, you probably heard,
thank God it's Friday because everyone can't wait to get to the end of the week.
I'm continually trying to reframe that narrative myself and be excited to get out of bed on Monday.
So do things and have things in my week in my life that make me want to get out of bed on a Monday.
So my question to both of you is what gets you out of bed in the morning and
what is the big picture for Madhu? do?
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Yes. So we were talking about this earlier yesterday, actually,
about the highs and lows of startup life, but also the grind of it.
So yeah, it is like it is a tough journey.
What drives us, what keeps us going is the passion for the space and the vision
that we want to create, which is that I truly believe that the answers to the
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world's biggest problems start start from inside of us.
And if we cannot change ourselves and grow ourselves, then we can't expect to
do that externally to the world around us either.
But we don't have to do that alone. Like it's not something that you and I have
to sort of struggle in our own little silos with. And that's where coaching comes in.
Coaching is super valuable in creating that transformative change that lasts.
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I know this from my own experience, as well as millions of people around the
world have had the benefit of coaching.
So understanding the power of coaching, the power of that inner growth and development,
and the fact that it's even more important in a world that keeps changing underneath our feet.
So my passion, our passion for that space and the vision that we want to create
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is really putting technology, any kind of technology, putting it to use to help
people grow all themselves and live their best lives.
That's our vision for the future. So I try to remind myself of that every time,
every day, and especially when it gets difficult and to get through those difficult moments.
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I think, yeah, Poe said it super eloquently. I feel like that that's the kind
of like highest level goal that we have.
So to give you another one, perhaps make it a little more personal.
Another thing that we do both share on coming from our backgrounds of being
an engineer and a designer is that we really want to build something that is beautiful and useful.
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And then just the act of building and the act
of going through those motions of creating a product in
kind of the way that we see as being like
the right way to do things and finding the right
things to do yeah that's something that we both enjoy as
well and then if we put that energy behind something as
like as high and as righteous almost as like trying to fix the world trying
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to help the world solve its problems by supporting inner growth yeah that becomes
very powerful yeah i love the process i think the monday to friday or like you
know what you said of of everyone's like, thank God it's Friday and then Monday is horrible.
I think that is a symptom of not loving the process.
And being in love with the process means that you don't, sometimes we lose track
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of weeks and days and you don't have that sense of, oh, it's weekend.
So it's fun. And the rest of the week is not.
It sounds like you both have a really inspiring mission or vision that's pulling
you along, which is great.
And it sounds exciting as well. Like just being able to create and design something
new that people can use as well.
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Well, thank you both for sharing a bit about Madoo and a small part of the journey
and where it's at the moment.
As we wrap up, I have some questions for you about the festival today.
So we're here at the Tropical Innovation Festival.
How are you guys enjoying it?
I'm loving it. I think it's super fun and having really good conversations with
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other founders and just hearing the stories like where they're at and what their journey was.
And I guess having shared experiences and seeing what I can learn from them
and what we can share from our journey that they can learn from.
And I think, yeah, it's just really, it's energizing to share those stories. Yeah.
(14:38):
Yeah, I'm loving it as well. I think what the Tropical Innovation Festival does
really well is to bring together a high density of people who are amazing,
just incredible innovators, creative people, people who've been extremely successful
at business, but bringing them
all together into the one space and then creating a sense of serendipity,
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like, you know, just creating more surface area for interesting and lucky things
to happen because it is more informal than a traditional conference.
It's not as heavily, strictly structured.
It creates space for those magical moments to happen by bringing together that
density of amazing people and creating the space for lucky things to happen.
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I think that's very special about the festival.
I agree for sure. I experienced that just on the first day, the first few conversations
with just random people and the different connections that were made and the
conversations that were had.
I I just love how Tara and Kea put together this festival.
But thank you again for coming on. Thank you for sharing some of your thoughts
and where things are at. If people want to find out more about MEDOO, where can they go?
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They can check out our website. It's medoo.life.
We also have a blog which is linked through there. So subscribe to our blog
if you like hearing about coaching and personal growth and inner development.
Thank you guys. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the event. Thank you so much for having us.
Thanks, Elisha. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the For the Creatives podcast.
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If you're inspired by Paul Wynn and Allard and what they're doing and you want
to explore more about Madhu, you can visit them at madhu.life.
Now, if this episode was interesting or you think it might be valuable to someone
else, we'd love it if you can leave a review on our podcast page on whatever
platform you're listening on or send it to a friend.
Either way, stay creative and catch us in the next episode.