the story of when we "scared" a big player from launching in the philippines

I believe in our product, I fully believe in my team's capabilities, but it is still cool to have someone else reaffirm that we are doing well. This is a story of one of those rare occasions we felt good about ourselves.

So it was around Feb last year, we got this email from a foreign market research company, one of the biggest in Japan and in the world. They said they were visiting the Philippines and would love to visit our office to chat. Companies never reach out to us, mostly it is the other way around, specially big players like them, so we found it interesting.

We ensured to have everyone in the office for starters. Note that we only rent a small room (fit 6 people comfortably) in a co-working space, so having all of us 15 was a challenge. We also reserved extra conference rooms and meeting rooms to look like we own the whole co-working office space.

We were an insecure bunch of people meeting with a giant company with 3,000 employees - we kinda overcompensated a bit.

So we picked the visitors from the ground floor, had the usual friendly chat going up, and we entered the office. Everything was as planned, people looking busy, I bring them to a workstation that "surprisingly" is filled with people working on a  functionality we love bragging about. Everybody tried to look like they were busy.

Then we entered the conference room.

Two Malaysians in pressed clothes and thin glasses. They opened their laptops with minimal fuss and started talking about their company like a pre-recorded video. They talked about their size, how massive their reach is, and of course their service. 

They were doing EXACTLY what we are doing, and they are trying to convince us to just let go of our current technology and processes, and instead just be a sales arm of their company. They tried to convince us that the best way to go is just to be a local company that provides them with clients - that it would be more profitable for us since they rule and we suck.

But they were wrong.

We f*ckin had a better product. 

We had 4X faster service, 

our database is way, way more expansive 

and we do it efficiently enough that we currently undercut their price by half and still make 3X profit over direct cost.

I was quite surprised. They were big. They have been in the industry for decades. They had a lot of clients. I expected better from them.

So I told them that I would talk about our company first, then they could asses how we could best work together. I had a small dose of confidence in me, thinking, our product is a little (or maybe a lot) better than theirs.

So I did a demo, what best way to explain something right?

So we ran our portal, targeted the base, ran the survey and had the data in 5 minutes.

Our visitors were surprised. We were surprised they were surprised.

They gave their small praises, we politely downplayed ourselves, then they uttered words that really made our day, gave us hope, probably not that important for them, but for us it was everything:

"Okay, seems like we are not expanding in the Philippines. The Philippines is yours."

I did not know how to react. I looked at my team, they seemed to have the same feeling. The silence was a little awkward that I just stood up, reached my arm for a handshake and said, "thank you".

We walked them out, of the building, and went back to the office.

In the elevator going back, I immediately asked Carl and Luis if what I heard was correct. They excitedly said yes. We were giddy.

We went back to the office gathered everyone and told the story. My people were elated.

We work everyday with the hope that we could make it, that we are creating and selling a product that is awesome. It is true, but beneath it, all startup founders would empathize, there is always this voice of doubt whispering: this is sh*t and would not work.

As a bootstrapped (we only have one angel) startup, we never really got a lot of outside validation. We did not get validation from investors, or the constant press cheer for having a high valuation. We get our "validation" with every company using our product, for every peso that comes in to our bank account, that is our validation.

But just like any company, everyday, we are burdened by customer complains, operation issues, financial issues, all of these combined really f*cks up anybody's confidence. So again, having a big honcho backing off our country, because our product was "scary" enough, was a well needed ego boost.

So again, back to work creating our "scary" product.