Building Mobio: how I met my co-founder, the journey, challenges, and key tips for establishing a strong initial partnership in a startup

entrepreneur, start-up, inspiring, journey, success, challenges, perseverance, innovation, motivation, lessons, passion, failure, growth, advice, mentorship

Hello everybody. I'm Sergey Konovalov. I'm CEO and co-founder of Mobio. We are mobile app advertising agency. And here's my story. I found my co-founder by the ad. It was 11 years ago and now our company is a leading mobile app agency listed on the London Stock Exchange and has millions of dollars in annual revenue. But let's go back to 2013. In 2013, I had just finished my three-year long startup project. It was a classic startup with angel and VC investments. We built wishlist applications in social networks and monetization tools at the same time. It was our mistake and we closed the project. To better understand my situation, I was a 31-year-old man, recently divorced, raising my 3-year-old child, no car and just living in a parent's home. Although I had almost never worked as an employee, I was looking for everything that helped me with my current situation. I visited many events, industry events and for sure I reviewed hiring ad. And one time I saw the ad that described the position on commercial director. Well, at the appointed time I met, we met in a cafe. Alex was, as I know later, 25 years old guy who was very active and he wanted to find a co-founder and he made that ad to invite potential candidates and talk and try to understand what they can do together. It was his first meeting and the last one. We spent around two hours in conversation about marketing trends and what was going on in industry. He was from the mobile developer field. In fact, he felt that it was the right time for the mobile revolution. And I have experience in setting up and managing a company. Right in the cafe we made an informal deal that we started a new entity and started working day by day, investing all of our time and effort to build a new company in the mobile application marketing field. Well, and I remember that in two days we signed some simple paper which described that we have 50-50 new entity, which will be set up in three months after successful work together. And then I just came every day to co-working. He came too. And we just began to call potential clients. We thought about our unique approach, launched our marketing and promoted ourselves. And in a couple of months we signed a contract with a huge client. And in a year we reached our first million dollars in revenue. Well, in the next seven years, I spent more time with the co-founder sitting in front of him in the office when I spent time with my wife, actually. We made all of our decisions together. It was an awesome time. Finally, in 2020, Alex made an exit and started a new company. I continued to manage Mobio and now I'm still working in Mobio as CEO. Well, a few takeaways. Believe in yourself, trust other people and do your best to build your company.

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