Transcript: Hande Cilingir: [00:00:00] We would like to be the biggest marketing software company in the world. I don't mean by, you know, biggest in terms of revenue, biggestin terms of number of people. Biggest means for us having an office in every region, you know, being a market educator, market builder or market maker in those regions. But the most important thing is we would like to do best, not in terms of total revenue, not in terms of the other stuff … but in terms of providing the best value for the online market. Stephen Cummins: [00:00:27] Now, Istanbul. Is it a good city in your opinion to build a business. Hande Cilingir: [00:00:35] It is a good city because investment opportunities are growing very fast - and there are not that many very big start-ups in terms of, let's say, huge potential. And the other thing is we have very big cost advantage compared to the rest of Europe or the US. Stephen Cummins: [00:01:02] I'm Stephen Cummins, and this is part two of a three part conversation with Hande Cilingir, CEO and co-founder of Insider. She takes us through the evolution of the company, and gives us a bit of a Turkish history lesson. And she gives her perspective on work life balance for founders. Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS! The show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS scale-ups! [00:01:40] How did you first get product-market fit with, you know, with insider? How did you find your first buyers, and how do you decide … ‘Ah! That’s what we need to build?’ Hande Cilingir: [00:01:51] Whenever we go to a market, we do three things. The first one is, of course, me seeing some potentially accounts. They should be like a big sales or small sales or, you know, mid-sale. So that's the first thing. After that, what we are doing is we are working also with other companies who have operated in those regions … and understand the difficulties in the markets. And also we started to also do some sales, or try to get them. And also get the information from the influencers, et cetera. And all of that information is coming together to create our product market fit. And after that, now we have optimised a little bit. Yes, we are also trying to catch this product, product market fit with that research. But the good thing is, after getting all of that information, since it's a very major and basic needs of the online businesses, we naturally found our product market fit. Stephen Cummins: [00:02:52] Okay. And, you know, it sounds like whoever your competitors would be are not that big in Eastern Europe or in APAC. It sounds like first mover advantage is very strong in some countries in the region. Hande Cilingir: [00:03:07] Yes, in some countries, in some regions – yes, we have definitely a first-mover advantage. We are the market educator, we are the market influencers. So we are, you know, we are the the first ones who entered the market. Stephen Cummins: Who will be your competition in the US? Hande Cilingir: I think we still have this competition. I would call them the major competitors … you know, like the big guys …  Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and others … but they're clunky. They are difficult to operate. Difficult to integrate. We have also some competition in the point solution side - like you now… a recommendation engine or only personalisation tools. But I think 3 things are going to help us overcome this form of competition, because they are the things which makes us unique. First of all, product innovation. Second one is, of course, establishing our own partner success teams locally. And the thing is in the sector, educating the market is important and you can only do it with B2B marketing … where you are going to utilise content marketing. So our local marketing teams,