“Everybody who's joined this company has primarily joined it because the problem we are solving is something nobody else is doing.”
— Alex Mans

Today's guest is Alex Mans, serial entrepreneur, founder and president at FLYR Labs. FLYR is a company radically transforming air travel through cutting edge technologies that are years ahead of what has been commercially available. Backed by notable tech figures such as Peter Thiel, FLYR solves complex problems with beautifully engineered solutions to help leading airlines around the world unlock their full potential.

Even before founding and building FLYR, Alex has been building software and hardware products since 2007. In this interview, Alex takes us through his journey of entrepreneurship. But more importantly, he talks about the advantages and opportunities of solving the really hard things that no one else is!

“The way you retain people is by finding people that you're confident will be able to mold with the company as the company evolves.” — Alex Mans

Highlights

What does being a DJ have to do with company-building? Find out!
The duet every founder (or founding team) has to master — selling and building.
The competitive advantage of solving the hardest thing during the toughest times.
Scaling a predominantly technical, engineering organization!
Hiring— finding present capability and future potential in every early hire.

“Don't be afraid to think big, keep pushing hard.” —Alex Mans

Transcript

Alex Mans

Thank you, everyone. I'm Alex Mans. I'm the founder of a company called FLYR. And I think the timing of his interviews is very, very cool, because we find ourselves in one of the most challenging times for the industry, we operate in travel, our primary customers are airlines. We ingest data, and we use that to intelligently and contextually forecast the future and establish how they (airlines) should be pricing their tickets to maximize revenue.

We're about 70-75 (at the time of this interview) people, we raised capital from the likes of Peter Thiel, Streamlined Ventures, who was also on your series, I think a couple of weeks ago.

I myself, I'm Dutch-born and raised in the Netherlands. I moved to Silicon Valley about six years ago. But I've been doing startups ever since I came out of high school around the age of 15.

Jon Low

Oh, thank you. So how long ago is that?

Alex Mans

I'm 29 right now. So I've been doing startups for a while.

Jon Low

So tell us a bit about, you know, growing up in the Netherlands and, you know, and getting straight into startups from high school. What was your thinking at the time? What were your passions? There was obviously aviation, something that's important to you. But I'm sure you have a rich number of other passions. Yeah, talk us through some of that, because I myself, I'm not too familiar with what the ecosystem is like in the Netherlands, I met a few Dutch entrepreneurs. But we'd love to hear more.

Alex Mans

Actually, you'll find a surprisingly high number of Dutch entrepreneurs in the valley. Actually, a good friend of mine put together a list. And I think the average capital raised is something like $45 million over the lifetime of Dutch entrepreneurs. He just only took the list of those that actually came and stayed, not the ones that left. So, it might be a bit biased.

But yeah, so the Netherlands, so it's a very different place than the United States, right. There's a bit of a saying in the Netherlands, which is one of the reasons why I came out here. And that is that ‘average is good enough.’

And as a kid, I've always wanted to, you know, build things, and the easiest tool or mechanism to build stuff was a computer. So, from the moment my aunt had a computer, when I was like four, four years old, or something and sort of teaching me you know, — I always wanted to do more, I always want to want to go further, I want to do more, I want to do bigger, I'm going to build things.

And so about the age of 10 or so I taught myself to, you know, build websites and build basic programs in JavaScript, and then eventually that grew from there. Then during high school, I find myself building scheduling software for local high schools. That was more coming out of an ad hoc opportunity than anything else. The father of my best friend in high school was the dean of the school. So that kind of came together that way. But I really enjoyed building and creating things and creating software.

And then I kind of found out along the way that you can actually make money doing that and building value and still being you know, enjoying yourself while doing it. So, by the time I finished high school a few years earlier than other kids— because I skipped the last two years of primary school in the last year of high school — I had the option to either, you know, continue doing what I was already doing.

I had already incorporated as a kid, my parents were very graciously helpful in taking me to a judge and making me legally an adult when I was 14. So, they've been very supportive of this. But then I had the choice out of high school— do I go and build a company or do I go and study like everybody else? I was going to study physics in the Netherlands, but I decided a few weeks before the start of the school year that I was going to build a company instead. And I've been doing startups ever since. This is my third one.

A third real one, I should say that the one was actually real money that was invested. And we had a team but coming to the US has been a big positive shift for me, right, the extended network, the capital, the other entrepreneurs, the focus on, “Don't be afraid to think big, keep pushing hard.” Don't be afraid to know, try and be above average. Like all those factors played a role for me to pack my suitcase, jump on an airplane, and come to Silicon Valley six years ago.

Jon Low

Wow, that's amazing. And I'm sure your story is unique. But obviously, we've heard very similar stories from other immigrant entrepreneurs, who are equally if not on par with you in terms of intelligence. And one of the things they share about is, what a breath of fresh air it is to come to, say, the Valley in terms of pursuing your aspirations in innovation and startup.

But one thing that they often overlook is like, not overlooked, but they don't talk too much about is how challenging it is to actually make your way out here. When you fundamentally have a different mindset or ideology towards life and work. I'm not sure whether you experienced that yourself? Well, if you did, it'd be interesting, if you could unpack some of that for us.

Alex Mans

Well, I think it is not a coincidence that a lot of very successful entrepreneurs in the Valley or in the states in general happen to be immigrants, right? I think the people that are leaving the surrounding they grew up in tend to be the people that realize that that surrounding is not the place for them to grow or develop, right.

And if you argue that there is a like, there are certain components to being a great entrepreneur. And then I would also argue that people that are great entrepreneurs tend to be the ones that make that move to begin with, right. So, I don't know the numbers. But I wouldn't be surprised if the success rate across immigrant entrepreneurs is exceptionally high compared to American born entrepreneurs simply because you have a natural selection of those that are looking to leave their original environment and come to the Valley.

And I think I'm not surprised at all by seeing so many immigrant entrepreneurs, and for me, like the Netherlands is a great country, right? Like, it's, I think it's one of the happiest countries on earth in terms of people and education is great. And there's a real ecosystem developing for startups. And there's a ton of really amazing startups coming out of the country, particularly around Amsterdam, in similar ways that Berlin and Paris and London have been developing as going to startup hubs in Europe. But it still compares nothing like Silicon Valley, or the United States, I would say.

But between the capital, the experience and like minded people, is primarily the network, the network effect is incredible in Silicon Valley and across the country. And, you know, I've lost count of the number of people that I was introduced to that then ended up leading to an investor or hiring somebody or a potential customer.

Jon Low

And thank you, thank you, we totally agree with you. know you've lost count, but what are some of those memorable experiences of network effects that you've had when you first came to the Valley, and you know, how meaningful that was for you, maybe your confidence, or even to the extent of clarifying the conviction you have in what direction you want to take as a founder?

Alex Mans

Well, there were a couple of examples, I think, one that I also because he was on your show before, Ulass of Streamline Ventures is great. It was amazing. He sits on our board. So, I'm pretty close. But I met Ullas at some point shortly after I moved here. And this was before I knew how fundraising works. And it's kind of mostly networking.

While we were actually raising capital, I went to this event at the runway, which is in a Twitter building on Market Street. And that was a bit of a pitch competition for like entrepreneurs presenting what they were up to. And Ullas walked up to me afterwards, I hadn't even spotted him “Hey, you know, we met.” And it was funny, because he is the guy who's supposed to, you know, run into dozens and dozens of people every week, and he was the one to come to me.

I am in front of him, you know, a year after we originally met and be like, “Hey, we spoke about this. Didn't you do XYZ?” So yeah, that's correct. And we got talking and a month later, he led our seed round. And that's an example of like, where in many other countries they would probably call it coincidence, I think in Silicon Valley, that's an example of what's very common, right?

That's commonplace. That happens all the time when it comes to kind of the network effect of running into people or being referred to people, but people haven't heard about you, like the number of people that have heard about our company, even though they're in a completely different space, and they're not a customer base, especially with all sort of enterprise SaaS. Like the number of people that I've heard about, as is far greater than I, you know, than I would have ever presumed, and again, network effect, right.

Jon Low

Great. Thanks. And, Alex, you know, Arjun and I have had the opportunity to build a relationship with you and FLYR for some time and collaborate in some aspects of its business. But one thing that we notice about you as a founder is, you're a builder. And you have a strong technical background. But you're also not afraid to speak and present— what we would say, are the softer skills involved in a startup, is that something you developed? a, Is that something you inherently had growing up since you got straight into startups at 17 years of age?

Alex Mans

Yeah, I think actually, the technical interest in building things might have followed my natural extrovert kind of focus, wanting to sell stuff. As a kid, I don't think I've ever told the story. But like, you know, my family would be over my uncle's, my aunts, and my cousins. As a kid, I was like, eight years old, I would like to give these little DJ shows in my bedroom, and everybody would come upstairs, and it would be exclusive to the door, right. And I would be doing DJ shows.

And this is embarrassing, I shouldn't be saying. So, I've always enjoyed, I've always enjoyed, I would say, putting on a show, engaging and communicating to people. I think that over time, as it is transformed more towards, you know, deeper discussions and trying to build value, right, whether that's building a business or raise capital for ourselves or for others, or have deeper discussions about you know, economy, or you know, why it is Silicon Valley works or doesn't work.

And I think I enjoy having those conversations, because it helps me build a better understanding of the environment around me, which I think as an entrepreneur, leading a company is something that you need to develop, to get better at what you're doing, and to also develop your instincts that you become faster at doing the right thing.

Jon Low

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that story. Arjun has something to add to that.

Arjun Dev Arora

Yeah, I was gonna say, as a DJ myself, I really appreciate you sharing that story.

Alex Mans

So it's hilarious like, I would be DJing for my family. And at the end of the year, in primary school, I would be the one bringing in my equipment into the primary school for the end of year party for all the kids. And I found out that my speakers weren't quite equipped for large stuff, and I would blow up my equipment with last three different very cool challenges.

Jon Low

And, you know, you say an interesting thing that I think that you've always had this recognition of this importance of what I call EQ, or engaging with human beings, in terms of building a team, a startup team. And, you know, that's something you've consciously mentioned to us as something that you've paid attention to, as you lead FLYR. And my understanding is FLYR, as a company is very much intentionally designed to be technically heavy on the team and just by the nature of the solution that you're bringing in a market.

What are what are some of the things you've been paying attention on in terms of enabling technical talent without trying to force them to be someone or something they're not, but at the same time, fostering a bit of that EQ a bit of that softer skills and communication and the importance of culture and camaraderie within an increasingly growing team that's distributed nature across multiple cultures?

Alex Mans

I think in our business, we're an Enterprise SaaS, we deal with a handful of customers that are multimillion dollar a year contracts, right? So, we are different from many startups that are building culture around fair consumer customer engagement. And we were much more focused on technology and the numbers performance.

And while I completely understand how some startups build their culture around, you know, intense excitement between the leaders of the company and team and you know, pep rallies, and that's not really what we are, what we are.

What we do do though, is that we have incredibly smart people, that and when I say smart that doesn't mean heavily educated and academical, right? If somebody can do the job, I don't care what your resume looks like. So, and then we have, we also have people that really care, they care about the problems they're trying to solve, they care about solving them well. And this is particularly also to like people that are technically very skilled, because they like to deliver something that works.

Now, if I go back to the values that are important to me, and that I tried to instill in the rest of our leadership team as we try to build a business, and that I believe our primary drivers are retention and happiness of a team.

The first one is enablement, right? It is not my job to tell people what to do, or how to do it, right. It is my job, as a leader to direct the business. But the way I think of it is, as soon as a company is past 10-15 people, it basically becomes a very big ship with a very small rudder, right. And so my job becomes more like picking the targets far out, and enabling the team to get there and to make sure that they have where they need to perform.

Secondly, and this is something I think is forgotten a lot, and that is, we all expect people in our organization to make the right decision. But nobody can make the right decision if they don't have the variables of transparency they need to make a decision. So, a big part of what I try to do, what I try to have the rest of the management team do is make sure that people have the information and the transparency they need to make the right decision. And then, and it's fine that the right decision turns out to be wrong, right.

And then third, it's more like the ownership piece, right? Like people are going to be extremely committed if you let them run with something and give them ownership. And especially in our company, sometimes that means that people might get overwhelmed by the complexity or the size of something they're asked to do. But at the same time, that's where the skill sets and their ability that they were hired for impart will kick in, and they'll always figure it out.

So, between the enablement focusing on providing transparency and giving them ownership of something, I think we can foster a culture of very high retention, happiness, happiness tied to the work you're doing and the satisfaction you're getting from it. Especially like I said, because our business is a lot less tied to, you know, millions of consumers that are tweeting about how happy they are about the product, right?

We work with airlines, we build pricing systems, for airlines, everything is data based, right. And that responsibility is huge, right? Our software has to set the prices for 10s of billions of dollars of revenue for, you know, a handful of customers.

Jon Low

Thank you. Thank you. And, you know, I think you've been involved with FLYR for over several years is that correct? In terms of what you've seen, what are some of the main reasons your talent chooses to join FLYR?

Alex Mans

So if I go back to some of the current leadership team at FLYR, so our chief architect and head of product, Cole, I remember hiring Cole at my kitchen table as our very first hire in the company. Cole had just finished a second degree in Data Science at the University of San Francisco, he was extremely quick to pick up on industry specifics on problem solving questions. So, I hired him purely based on I believe he could become the person that the company would need, or he could mold into the skill sets and things that company would need, because the reality of startups is they change, right, but he called a pivot or whether you call it a realignment or whatever it may be right side of change.

The way you retain people is by finding people that you're confident will be able to mold with the company as the company evolves. And in our case, we started the business as a consumer, a travel company, forecasting prices and helping consumers. We then pivoted to B2B to see where we would sell our products to big travel companies as a reseller agreement, and then we pivoted to Enterprise SaaS providing software to price for airlines. And if I look at the team, which has an extremely high retention, the one skill set or characteristic that identifies them very much is they're all very capable to mold with the company as the company changes shape. And I think that that's been a key kind of component of building a really strong team that is retained and is extremely successful as the company evolves.

Jon Low

Oh, great. And for a lot of those team members, are they most excited about the problem they're solving? Or do they have different motivations across the board?

Alex Mans

Everybody who's joined this company has primarily joined it because the problem we are solving is something nobody else is doing. It is technically extremely complex. And the outcome can be very profitable and fruitful for everyone. So, I think that in that order, I would say is why people have joined and stayed with the company.

Jon Low

Wow, very exciting. And as you think about the roles that you'll need to hire for, as you grow FLYR as a company, do you believe that that is still an important criteria that needs to be satisfied for anyone looking to join FLYR in the future? Are there new criteria that you're looking for as well, now that you're a more mature company?

Alex Mans

So, I think you already mentioned this earlier. So we're very technical, heavy, we have no sales, no account management, we have none of that. It's all engineers and data scientists, right. So, like, we have, like 70 engineers and data scientists, even the managers are very technical.

So, as we grew as a company, and as your organization of engineers grows, right, many, many other SaaS companies, if they have 70 engineers, they're probably the size of 200 or more people in total, right? In our case, it's 100% engineers. So, we have to build a company that can support the engineering organization you typically find in much larger companies.

And that's not too challenging. But that's been quite an experience, right? How do you manage that many people? How do you scale a tech team that is technical very, very, very quickly? And I think, as you scale the company, of course, we do need more process, right. And we do need to have people that are experienced with, you know, hiring and scaling that team.

So, two skill sets, I would say, we are more actively looking for skill sets of people that you know, have done this before, right? Because, like, while early on, or on small projects or on dedicated small teams, you can experiment, right? If you have 70 people being dependent or engineering teams of 20 people being dependent on functioning well together, you cannot really afford, you know, throwing a hail mary.

So I think, I think in our case, when it comes to the managers, and the staff engineers, you know, those tend to be also very heavily graded on have they proven to do it before because as a start up, you can't afford spending six months hoping they will.

Jon Low

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for entertaining a question that just came out of the blue. Yeah. And just because we're, we're heading towards the end of the interview. What are some of the things that you are most excited about in terms of you and the FLYR team achieving both in the short term in the long term?

Alex Mans

So, I think on a very specific flyer specific level for us, the current pandemic, and global economic situation that is devastating to Airlines has exposed the gap of capability and the need of capability that exists with these airlines, right?

Well, traditionally, they were kind of okay, with these legacy solutions that have existed for 20 years that power their pricing and their e-commerce, it's now become painfully obvious that those solutions are not given the flexibility they need, right.

So, for us at FLYR, it's one of the biggest opportunities we faced, like since our founding, right? Like, we are the only company right now that has the ability to operate and perform under the new conditions right of this, everybody keeps saying this new world, right. But like, under this new environment, like this new context, if I expand that to more general levels, I would say there are tons of companies out there in different spaces in every vertical that have an opportunity right now to to use the fact that they that they are either better equipped to shift into a different direction, or to use the fact that why they were previously competing with incumbents.

They now turn out to be the kind of innovator that people want, right. So, I think there's a lot of companies out there that can turn this kind of tough time into strength. There's also a lot of companies, I would argue the one that are less innovative and more copying what's already out there. They will have a really, really tough time. Right. So, but I strongly believe we're on the opportunistic, positive side of that equation. And while for us, it means, you know, impact revenue in 2020, we're looking at a leapfrog opportunity in 2021 and beyond.