ASEF Podcast

Episode #35: Tech for Nature with Tom Vodopivec from Bird Buddy/Wonder

• ASEF Podcast • Season 4 • Episode 35

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In this episode of the ASEF Podcast, we explore the journey of Bird Buddy/Wonder, a Slovenian startup that has successfully blended AI, computer vision, and hardware to create a smart bird feeder loved by over half a million people worldwide. Joining us is Tom Vodopivec, COO at Bird Buddy/Wonder, who brings deep expertise in AI, startups, and venture capital.

We dive into:

  • The Bird Buddy journey, from Kickstarter to $100M in revenue
  • How they approach market validation and product developmen
  • The challenges of scaling a tech company across Slovenia and the USA
  • Market differences, talent education, and international expansion
  • What’s next for Bird Buddy/Wonder and the future of tech-for-nature startups

This episode of the Business & Technology vertical was hosted by Frenk Dragar.

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, learn more about ASEF on our website and consider donating to support the ASEF's mission and programs!

**00:00:00 --> 00:01:23 - [Frenk]**
Hello and welcome to the ASEF podcast. My name is Frenk Dragar, your host of the Vertical on Business and Technology, where we explore how companies leverage innovative technology, the ecosystems they operate in, and the state of entrepreneurship in Slovenia with an international perspective.
Today, we're diving into an exciting Slovenian startup success story, Bird Buddy, a company that has blended AI, computer vision, and hardware to create a smart bird feeder loved by over half a million people worldwide.
Joining us today is Tom Vodopivec, chief operating officer at Bird Buddy. Tom has a PhD in AI, and before Bird Buddy, he was a data scientist, startup advisor, and VC investor, helping early-stage companies scale with data-driven decision-making and strategy. Today, as COO, he's helping Bird Buddy grow into a global brand, recently expanding into the Wonderline, bringing AI-powered tracking to insects and plants as well as birds.
Together, we discussed the Bird Buddy journey from Kickstarter to $100 million in revenue, their outlook on market validation and product development, the challenges of building a tech company across Slovenia and the USA, the market differences, education of talent, and what it takes to scale a business internationally, and what's next for Bird Buddy and the future of tech for nature startups.
So without further ado, here is Tom on the ASF podcast. Tom, welcome to the podcast.

**00:01:23 --> 00:01:27 - [Tom]**
Thank you very much for having me. Hi, Frenk. Hi, everybody listening in. Thanks.

**00:01:27 --> 00:01:32 - [Frenk]**
Let's dive in. So what is Bird Buddy, and what problem does it solve?

**00:01:32 --> 00:02:02 - [Tom]**
The main purpose, the main vision of Bird Buddy is to give nature a chance to compete for our attention. Okay? So it's about bringing nature closer to the eyes, closer to your heart. It's about connecting people with nature. This is how it all started. Currently, we're doing this really well with birds. And as you already mentioned a moment ago, we're expanding into much more than birds, into all the living world around our home. And more about this later on.

**00:02:02 --> 00:02:06 - [Frenk]**
All right. Thank you. When did you get involved with the company? How did that start?

**00:02:06 --> 00:02:55 - [Tom]**
I've been with the company for three years now. Okay? As you mentioned, I've been an advisor for startups and getting venture capital, so how to fundraise, how to grow fast, how to prove your growth, how to prove the reliability of a business to acquire financing. Right? And this is how I started, advising the executive team. And then gradually, my role expanded, and I got deeper and deeper involved until it became a full-time role, not just looking at the company from outside and being all smart about how it should be done. I was given the tools in the hand and said, "Okay, dude. Come help us, and let's do it." Right? And we got really good along with the founders and the executive team. So I picked up the tools, and we started working together.

**00:02:55 --> 00:03:10 - [Frenk]**
Awesome. So the company started... So if we move back a bit, how did it start with the founders? What were the first steps? I was told there was, like, a Kickstarter journey. Can you tell me a bit about that?

**00:03:10 --> 00:04:32 - [Tom]**
Exactly. So the company is originating from two Slovenian founders. And I came later to the party, but I'm super proud of them, and I regard it as a by-the-book case how you build a startup, really, from scratch to international success. One of the founders came from a family which had relations with conservation of nature, natural parks, and this kind of stuff. The other founder came from the video game industry. They were friends, and when they put their heads together, this idea came, maybe we can bring nature in a playful way, in a modern way to people. Right? And this is how the first idea came alive. And the validation happened through the Kickstarter campaign. Really, actually, before Kickstarter, there was validation done in the form of market testing. Those who are familiar how do you validate the market, collecting leads, how much you pay for a lead, how much you pay for showing advertisements, and then converting those to emails, this is the test that was done before Kickstarter. Based on that, the two founders found or let's say gathered financial support from local business angels. Also, praise to those local angels who took the leap of faith...

**00:04:32 --> 00:04:41 - [Frenk]**
...so early on. And with this money, they went to Kickstarter prepared. So Kickstarter was not a validation campaign anymore. It was really a sales campaign...

**00:04:41 --> 00:04:49 - [Frenk]**
...you know, that was ought to be successful because the proof was shown was gathered before Kickstarter even.

**00:04:49 --> 00:04:56 - [Frenk]**
Okay. Nice. So they set up, like, a landing page. They collected sign-ups or, like, pre-orders?

**00:04:56 --> 00:05:21 - [Tom]**
Exactly. Exactly. You know, from an idea on a piece of paper, to a value proposition, to a couple of designs, 3D designs, and a lender with a fake brand name, and just driving ads to this page and seeing if people would be willing to buy for it. So you get to the very end where you have to make a purchase, and then the purchase fails.

**00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 - [Frenk]**
Right? It's good enough. It doesn't matter.

**00:05:23 --> 00:05:58 - [Tom]**
The intent is what matters, and then you can measure how much you had to pay to get one person to show purchase intent. And then after a couple of iterations or the first results were showing against industry benchmarks super strong results, like, you know, costs in the range of dollars a dollar or below. And based on that, they did the first physical prototype. This physical prototype was then used for the Kickstarter media materials and the visuals and all of that. Before that, it was all digital and, you know, ideas translated into a lender page.

**00:05:58 --> 00:06:06 - [Frenk]**
That's great. And so basically, you don't invest a bunch of money into developing a full product before you have some market validation.

**00:06:06 --> 00:06:10 - [Tom]**
Exactly. Exactly. That is the rule number one. (laughs)

**00:06:10 --> 00:06:17 - [Frenk]**
Okay. Nice. So after the Kickstarter success, how did the company scale after?

**00:06:17 --> 00:06:32 - [Tom]**
The first Kickstarter, this was at the end of 2020, okay, and beginning of 2021. It brought in something like five million. It was the most successful Kickstarter historically in this category. Okay? And...

**00:06:32 --> 00:06:33 - [Frenk]**
So that's consumer tech or...

**00:06:33 --> 00:06:36 - [Tom]**
It was a garden consumer, something like that.

**00:06:36 --> 00:07:21 - [Frenk]**
Yeah. This category. And this also created some tailwind from, you know, financial markets' interest. So it was then easier to fundraise. So the two founders went on to close the seed round, basically. And already in the seed round, brought on board some major funds outside of Slovenia. So this was still happening, you know. So the first angel in Slovenia, then a good or let's say the best local venture capital fund from Slovenia, and a pretty reputable one from UK, from London. And this is how they got the first money in. With that, they started to assemble a team. So the development had to start. The headcount went from two to something like 30 people...

**00:07:21 --> 00:07:21 - [Frenk]**
Oh wow.

**00:07:21 --> 00:07:51 - [Tom]**
...in the beginning of '21, or let's say during 2021. And then with that money and with that headcount, they started engineering and developing the product to fulfill the promise of Kickstarter. And so in those in that year, the company was doing mostly pre-sales, so it was not a push on marketing. The marketing was done, right? The sales were done. There was a commitment to the market, to the customers, to bring this to market. So 2021 and '22 were mostly about developing.

**00:07:51 --> 00:07:57 - [Frenk]**
Nice. Were there any growing pains? So, like, going from 2 to 30 seems like a...

**00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 - [Tom]**
At that point in time, they were not visible yet.

**00:08:00 --> 00:08:00 - [Frenk]**
Mm-hmm.

**00:08:00 --> 00:08:04 - [Tom]**
The next year, the company went from 30 to 90 people.

**00:08:04 --> 00:08:05 - [Frenk]**
Wow. Okay.

**00:08:05 --> 00:08:10 - [Tom]**
Okay? So when I joined in, I joined in at the peak, something like that.

**00:08:10 --> 00:08:27 - [Tom]**
...and then the growing pains started to show. If you don't have a really strong experience or a good methodology how to scale, then you kind of get, start getting in your own way, right?

**00:08:27 --> 00:08:35 - [Frenk]**
And with a too large of a headcount, too bloated of a headcount for what you want to achieve, you are not lean anymore, right?

**00:08:35 --> 00:08:47 - [Frenk]**
So a lot of overhead starts happening and actually this was one of my first tasks when I came in the company to make some space to breathe again, and to become lean and move fast...

**00:08:47 --> 00:08:52 - [Frenk]**
...in the way as the company used to when it was 30 or less people.

**00:08:52 --> 00:08:56 - [Frenk]**
Yeah, of course. And this is kind of the whole strength of a startup is to move fast, right?

**00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 - [Tom]**
Exactly.

**00:08:58 --> 00:08:59 - [Frenk]**
So you need to keep that in the DNA.

**00:08:59 --> 00:09:14 - [Frenk]**
Okay, awesome. So okay, you brought in more people, and they started improving the product. Maybe we can talk a bit more about what the product actually is. So there's a hardware component and there's a software component, right?

**00:09:14 --> 00:09:15 - [Tom]**
Yep.

**00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 - [Frenk]**
Yeah, can you tell me a bit about both and we can just...

**00:09:18 --> 00:09:18 - [Tom]**
Yep.

**00:09:18 --> 00:09:19 - [Frenk]**
...talk about it.

**00:09:19 --> 00:10:10 - [Tom]**
As the product is today, and I'm also super excited to tell you later more about what it will be tomorrow, it's a birdhouse, a bird feeder where... so it's a piece of hardware, it's consumer electronics, okay, so it's a piece of hardware, it's a birdhouse, bird feeder that you pour in the seeds and it has a camera, a camera module. And then, you know, you put it in your garden and the birds come and they eat from there, and the camera module has proximity sensors and when there is a bird or any animal really, any animal activity in front of the camera, it captures photos and videos, it sends them to the cloud, it does computer vision recognition of what's in the image, what type of animal, what type of bird, which individual bird even, and then this sends it down to you to your mobile app, okay?

**00:10:10 --> 00:10:30 - [Frenk]**
So there is an iOS mobile app, there is an app on Android mobile app, and there is where you get these daily notifications of nature from your own home, your own garden, or maybe your friend's garden, or maybe your father's or mom's garden because you gifted it to them.

**00:10:30 --> 00:10:47 - [Frenk]**
So it's kind of these daily, daily moments of happiness instead of getting tedious notifications about stuff happening around the world, you're getting this beautiful, peaceful, zen content of beautiful animals, birds in this case, you know, that you are taking care of at home.

**00:10:47 --> 00:10:53 - [Frenk]**
That sounds really... yeah, in this world sometimes we need a bit more positivity sometimes.

**00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 - [Tom]**
Exactly, that that's the whole idea, yes.

**00:10:55 --> 00:11:07 - [Frenk]**
That's great. Okay. So okay, hardware, that probably changed quite significantly since the first kind of idea All In Digital, yeah, what version are you on now?

**00:11:07 --> 00:11:34 - [Tom]**
Yeah. We have... so in terms of hardware, you can look at it from a perspective of pure physical components like industrial design or pure electronical components, right, so the quality of the lens, the camera, the sensitivity of the sensors, and the capacity of the battery. The current generation out is the current is generation two, and we are going to launch generation three end of this year.

**00:11:34 --> 00:12:45 - [Frenk]**
And next year then already the generation four is already in the shaping. Now, so how did it change from the beginning? The purpose is what matters. So the purpose didn't change, and this is what is most important that you keep a common thread like an anchor on what the heck you want to achieve with it. Then it's just about the technology that's available on the market at that point in time, the state of the art available, to see how well you can deliver on that purpose. So from the first to the second generation, a wider camera angle, a shorter time to wake the device up, a better sensitivity to low light or better sensitivity to colors, things like that on the electronics and optics. In terms of the physical design, you know, you figure out that maybe it's not super smooth how you fill the seeds in the tray, you know, and then improvements there, or magnet is not strong enough to hold the camera in place, little improvements like that. You know, always if you go out with a product that you're immediately proud of, you're doing something wrong, you're too slow, you're really... so the first version must always be clunky, otherwise you're too slow.

**00:12:45 --> 00:12:46 - [Frenk]**
And then you...

**00:12:46 --> 00:12:47 - [Frenk]**
You iterate and...

**00:12:47 --> 00:13:18 - [Tom]**
...and you iterate on it, exactly. Let, let the... go outside of the four walls, right, let people tell you what works and what doesn't. So that's the dogma here. And on the software side during these four years as you mentioned, AI is becoming the new norm, right? So something that we didn't even think of being possible like four or five years ago, generative AI LMs are unlocking today.

**00:13:18 --> 00:13:37 - [Frenk]**
So software is seeing a major overhaul from the beginning being, quote-unquote, "just" an app to collect images, it's now becoming an app or a user experience where you can interact with nature. You can give a name to an individual bird.

**00:13:37 --> 00:13:39 - [Frenk]**
An individual bird?

**00:13:39 --> 00:13:40 - [Tom]**
An individual bird.

**00:13:40 --> 00:13:40 - [Frenk]**
Wow.

**00:13:40 --> 00:13:47 - [Tom]**
AI could identify an individual bird and expand this to all animals. It's totally doable today already.

**00:13:47 --> 00:14:12 - [Frenk]**
And you can also with generative AI give a personality to animals. They can speak back. You can chat with them, right? So you can make it playful, educational, deeper, right, you can give a voice to nature although it's "fake," quote-unquote, because it's generated with AI, the point is the purpose, why you're doing this, to bring it closer to people and vice versa.

**00:14:12 --> 00:14:34 - [Frenk]**
Right. And so you mentioned hearing from users, right? So it's not just the founders have an idea, it's all planned 10 years in advance. So we talked about iteration. Were there any features that you kind of saw some user patterns, or maybe you got some user feedback, and that kind of helped shape what the product is today?

**00:14:34 --> 00:14:40 - [Tom]**
Yes. Maybe not specific features, but really a direction of the product.

**00:14:40 --> 00:15:22 - [Frenk]**
So one thing that we still haven't really cracked or understood, we want, we wanted to cre- have an user experience that doesn't require a physical piece of hardware, right? So that could be only an app-only experience, you can grow faster, you can deliver value faster, you can reach so many more users faster 'cause they don't have to buy a relatively expensive piece of hardware and wait for it to get delivered and all of that. And we've tried a couple of angles and they didn't work. The main angle that our users taught us was nature is beautiful, it's pretty, it...

**00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 - [Frenk]**
...so playful, but it's not a game.

**00:15:25 --> 00:15:38 - [Frenk]**
You know, and we were trying to gamify this a little bit too much and we figured out, okay, it's good to make it easy and kind of some of those instant gratification things, but it should be much more than that.

**00:15:38 --> 00:15:45 - [Frenk]**
So we tried to gamify the experience into an app only, software only, and it really didn't work out, you know?

**00:15:45 --> 00:16:46 - [Frenk]**
And we still haven't figured that out, and maybe sometimes for the future, we'll see. So this is a learning what not to do. On the other hand, a learning what to do from our customers came, we figured out that half of our user base, our customers, buy it as a gift. It is their perception of a perfect gift to their parents or their aunt or uncle or grandchildren, you know, and we learned that this aspect of keeping the premium quality, the look and feel, despite not being the primary purpose, primary purpose is nature, right? But keeping a premium quality in terms of build, in terms of aesthetics, in terms of user experience, is super important. So we are keeping that as our main strength, one of the main strengths, and really looking looking on the lookout to keep it up with every new iteration of the product and not degrade that. So this was a direct learning from our customers.

**00:16:46 --> 00:17:11 - [Frenk]**
Okay, nice. So we're iterating, you're improving the product, what do you spend the most amount of focus on? So is it maybe a bit more into the AI, yeah, how are you kind of leveraging these new algorithms that are coming out, maybe computer vision? Has it become easier over the past four years with this kind of technology trend?

**00:17:11 --> 00:17:29 - [Tom]**
Short answer to your final question here, yes, it's becoming easier to achieve the same things we set out before. On the other hand, we must not fall back because now there is... We must not fall asleep, okay? Because...

**00:17:29 --> 00:17:59 - [Tom]**
...with all the new technology that's coming out, if we don't leverage it, we'll fall behind, right? So maybe to the first part of the question, where do we put in most of our R&D? By our perception, R&D starts with ideation and validation. So the first marketing tests, this is not marketing, this is market validation, which is the first and integral part of any research and development, hence the research, right?

**00:17:59 --> 00:18:29 - [Tom]**
So a lot of effort is put into market validation. Like, any serious bigger initiative, before we put any serious development into it, goes through, again, landing pages. A mock landing page or a fake landing page by oftentimes deliberately not using the Bird Buddy logo not to skew the sentiment of the customers, of the market, 'cause you know you have social proof, you have a reputation and it might increase, bloat your numbers, right?

**00:18:29 --> 00:19:07 - [Tom]**
So you don't want that. You want an impartial signal from the market if this is something they even need, and then you test out a number of value propositions, angles, use cases that you present directly to the market, and you pick out those that the market understands the best, and then you start developing your MVP, minimum viable product, based on what the market said. At the same time, any product person or strategic entrepreneur will tell you, "Don't always listen just to the market. You should have your vision and stick to that." So there is a balance...

**00:19:07 --> 00:19:21 - [Tom]**
...when, how much to listen to the market, and when to say, "Okay, we tried this three times, it doesn't work," or when to say, "We just haven't yet presented it the right way." So this is the trickiest part when to decide this. At some point you have to either kill an idea, which is...

**00:19:21 --> 00:19:54 - [Tom]**
...which is always hard to do, right? But it should be done. Or then you decide to double down and actually go into developing some mock-up prototype and then, again, do a market validation. In terms of AI, we are actively... So we have a team dedicated for that and actively exploring and comparing the offering on the market, and you start out with, I don't know, ChatGPT API and just integrate that, and this is exactly how we did it, and then we have a feature, it's called Nature Chat, and you can chat and...

**00:19:54 --> 00:20:21 - [Tom]**
...learn about nature and all these things. And at the same time, we are exploring the capabilities of all the other models, and for the sake of cost efficiency, 'cause it would be an unbearable cost if you would run ChatGPT... Also, it wouldn't be, um, I would say, uh, it wouldn't be most healthy to run all those algorithms for every person clicking on a mobile phone every time, right?

**00:20:21 --> 00:20:37 - [Tom]**
So not respectful towards nature because of energy consumption. So we're looking at the energy consumption/cost, right, and the capability of these models, so quite a chunk of R&D, especially in the last 12 to 18 months is being also in this exploration.

**00:20:37 --> 00:20:47 - [Frenk]**
Interesting. Especially this kind of balancing between the almost scientific kind of validation part and the kind of visionary part. So, yeah.

**00:20:47 --> 00:20:47 - [Tom]**
Yep. Yep.

**00:20:47 --> 00:21:01 - [Frenk]**
Interesting. So talking about these experiments, one of them, I suppose, was the Wonder line. Can you tell me a bit more about that? So that's moving away from only birdwatching into also insects and smaller animals.

**00:21:01 --> 00:22:02 - [Tom]**
Exactly. Exactly. The mission of the company, like I mentioned at the beginning, it stays the same. We're really doubling down on it. The entry angle in, just connecting people with nature, was through birds. We are... We feel we are very successful there and we feel we're the market leader in that segment, and we feel we got it, kind of. We understand this, we know how to do it, we can incrementally work on it. The market is far from saturated. There is plenty of opportunity in birds only. We feel with the advent of AI and making it so much easier to recognize any plant, any animal, any wildlife around your home, it's actually opening us a door. Why wait and why we only own birds if we can do really to the full extent what we set out in the mission to do? So Wonder is really going to be the next name of the company. So Bird Buddy will be a product line...

**00:22:02 --> 00:22:56 - [Tom]**
...within the Wonder brand, the Wonder universe. Uh, and Wonder comes from let's bring people daily moments of wonder. This is the whole idea, leveraging nature and helping nature in return. So Wonder products will still feature a camera. Camera is the eye looking into the world, gathering the information, but from that image and video, you can, with the help of AI, recognize so many things, you know, so many things, all the plants that are growing in your garden or indoors. You can recognize the humidity of the soil. You can recognize when the first butterflies start coming in when the season is, and the butterfly might come and tell you with a notification, "Hey dude, look, the season is coming. There is 10,000 more my friends coming next week. Prepare the flowers." You know?

**00:22:56 --> 00:22:56 - [Frenk]**
(laughs)

**00:22:56 --> 00:23:01 - [Tom]**
So you can bring it to the people in a playful yet educational manner.

**00:23:01 --> 00:23:03 - [Frenk]**
And also maybe a bit interactive, right? So...

**00:23:03 --> 00:23:05 - [Tom]**
Super interactive. Exactly.

**00:23:05 --> 00:23:16 - [Tom]**
You know, you might have, like, instead of saying, "The soil is dry, you should water your plants," Sammy the Sunflower could tell you, "Hey dude, you forgot to water me for a week. That's not the best."

**00:23:16 --> 00:23:18 - [Tom]**
You know, "Have you forgotten?" Maybe guilt tripping you...

**00:23:18 --> 00:23:18 - [Frenk]**
Yeah. (laughs)

**00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 - [Tom]**
...you know, for the fun of it.

**00:23:20 --> 00:23:26 - [Tom]**
Or the tree might tell you, "Oh, it's stinging me again. There is a caterpillar climbing up. Look at that."

**00:23:26 --> 00:23:26 - [Frenk]**
(laughs)

**00:23:26 --> 00:24:18 - [Tom]**
You know? So that's the idea. The technology is already allowing us to do that, and this is what the Wunder new brand, the new product line is all about, bringing this to life. We did some validations. You asked about validations, right? We did some validation last year already to figure out if our user base and our own understanding of the market expands beyond birds, and the first tests were very positive last year. That's why we put in significant design effort and brain effort to, yeah, shape and design the whole Wunder products. It's two categories of products, and we brought them to the market, let's say, to showcase to journalists and the professional side of the market at CES conference in Vegas in January 2025...

**00:24:18 --> 00:24:40 - [Tom]**
...this year, where the reception was super positive. We were, like, in Wired, in TechCrunch, in Wirecutter, in all of those main worldwide technology outlets as among top 10, top 20 startups or companies, cool products that they've seen, so super positive reception. This was the step number two of the validation.

**00:24:40 --> 00:24:43 - [Tom]**
The step number three is going on Kickstarter in one month.

**00:24:43 --> 00:24:56 - [Frenk]**
All right. Looking forward to it. Maybe just a tangent. I also wanted to kind of mention, yeah, CES or trade shows in general. How was your experience? Like, what's the value for your company of this?

**00:24:56 --> 00:26:02 - [Tom]**
You should really know why you're doing it. Okay? It is a massive investment. It's a massive investment primarily of time. Of course, how much money you want to pour in depends how big of a booth you want to have and how much prototypes you want to bring there and all of that stuff. But primarily, it's about focus. So are you gonna put in, like, just, I don't know, two salespeople just to mingle and hang out and keep the pulse on the market? That's valid, totally valid. Do that. It's worthwhile. It's worth it. You wanna show something to the world or do some validation or maybe awe somebody, okay, then think through how much is this really worth it and how big of an effort it's going to be. I can tell you from throughout our example this year, we put in some considerable resources. It was, like, the major focus of the majority of the team. We are it's 50 people currently at the company, so more than half of the people worked on this for a month or two at least. So this is a major yearly project...

**00:26:02 --> 00:26:22 - [Tom]**
...if you will, with the primary purpose, let's test if Wunder is perceived by the professionals and journalists as we perceive it. You know, just a strong validation whether we can do that, and it was super positive. Uh, so we are happy, and we have now proof to double down on the investment, you know?

**00:26:22 --> 00:26:36 - [Tom]**
And the other one was our existing partners, so strategic partners, they mostly being a big factory in China, a big factory in Mexico, a big factory in Thailand, you know, producing all this stuff...

**00:26:36 --> 00:26:47 - [Tom]**
...or shipping out, shipping in, or a big advertiser, Amazon Cloud hosting all of our service, so our biggest partners that help us operate our business, to bring them there...

**00:26:47 --> 00:27:02 - [Tom]**
...show them how optimistic, how ambitious we are, and also, we just closed the last year, our top season is always quarter four, the Christmas season, we had super strong results in November and December...

**00:27:02 --> 00:27:44 - [Tom]**
...so we came to, in January, to the CES trade show equipped with great business results from just fresh out of the oven, and with a ton of visionary, very ambitious, but still already to some degree validated products. And we sat with all our strategic partners to the table, and we negotiated for better terms, for better payments, for better prices, for a better strategic cooperation, allowing them to be kinda co-investors or persuading them to be co-investors to help us together grow even faster. So this was the major value of the trade show, all of trade show for us, and also, it's visibility and strategic strength of the partnerships.

**00:27:44 --> 00:28:17 - [Frenk]**
Awesome. Keeping in line with this kind of international business topic, so this company started out in Slovenia. It then quickly moved to the US, so I guess the headquarters in the US, and there's a lot of R&D in Slovenia. What are the challenges of this kind of switch? And especially, you know, there's a big ocean (laughs) between the continents. I'm sure there's differences in the markets. There are differences in the engineers, sales. Uh...

**00:28:17 --> 00:28:17 - [Tom]**
Yep.

**00:28:17 --> 00:28:18 - [Frenk]**
...can you tell me a bit about that?

**00:28:18 --> 00:29:10 - [Tom]**
Yeah. Um, maybe somebody would say, "Okay, it's the US market. It's the European market. It's all this, like, Western developed world, potato, potato." No. It's pretty far away from that. It's the culture is significantly different. Okay, not that significantly different as between Europe and China, for example, but the way US, the United States operate as a competitive market, economical market is something very different from how we are used to operating in Europe, where it's much more fragmented, compartmentalized across industries or across countries. So the first difference is, if you want to succeed on the market, on the US market, you need to have some knowledge of that. You need to be aware. You need to have some cultural insight, especially if you go consumer, right?

**00:29:10 --> 00:29:47 - [Tom]**
If you go business to business, it's a different story. I'm talking about, but in this case, consumer markets. You need to understand how people live there. Otherwise, you can't bring a product to them. It's a different way of life. Also, US, it's a whole continent. It's different, West Coast, East Coast, you know, Midwest, it's all different. So first difference is this. You need some insider knowledge about the US culture, the US market, to be able to position a product there. The other big difference, and also lack of knowledge that we have in this region here or in Central Europe or in Slovenia and the Balkans, entrepreneurship.

**00:29:47 --> 00:30:17 - [Tom]**
Okay? What it means to build an ambitious, fast-growing company, fast-growing startup. How do you set up a cap table, equity, shareholders? How do you... Where do you get the first money? How do you get out to the venture capital funds, those that can really open the doors, like, for years ahead? Now, this is something that is in Europe in general, slower. It's a slower industry. Europe is not venture capital lead.

**00:30:17 --> 00:30:38 - [Tom]**
You know, US and China are, right? So, um, this is a major difference, and if you have a network or connections or mentors or people you trust in US to set up the company in the right way from the get-go and open you the doors to the first couple of investments, this can make or break the whole venture...

**00:30:38 --> 00:31:06 - [Tom]**
...regardless of the idea. Right? So these two aspects come, you know, the market and the financing, and then the third aspect when it comes to running the business or staffing the business and operating the business, it is related, it is related to what we just said right now. The talent here, also how it's regarded, like, internationally. We have really good domain experts. We have really good engineers...

**00:31:06 --> 00:31:22 - [Tom]**
...really good technical talent. Um, so when it's a specific domain, also designers, like, really, really good here in Europe, in Slovenia, in this region here. Where are we lacking and where are we weak is really, like, entrepreneurship.

**00:31:22 --> 00:31:30 - [Tom]**
Entrepreneurship, sales, uh, but not sales like we're used to, this kind of Balkan way of sales, right?

**00:31:30 --> 00:31:31 - [Frenk]**
(laughs)

**00:31:31 --> 00:31:35 - [Tom]**
Like the true essence of what it means to put a value proposition to the market, uh...

**00:31:35 --> 00:31:53 - [Tom]**
...research it, you know, understand what the people on the market want and need and how they perceive it. And then you make a sale, which is a commitment to deliver them something. So this, I would say, the health interpretation of what a sale is, it's almost a validation and a promise, right?

**00:31:53 --> 00:32:06 - [Tom]**
And then you bring the value to them. So this perception, and this is very intertwined with entrepreneurship, you know, how we created create something that people need, want, and they pay for it because they want to pay for it...

**00:32:06 --> 00:32:30 - [Tom]**
...not because you kind of, I don't know, hype them into doing it or clickbait into doing that. So this is skill sets that are very rare here. There is no schools that teach this in a really, like, not even curriculums, you know? There is entrepreneurship on these kind of technology startups is still in the early stages here, you know?

**00:32:30 --> 00:32:54 - [Tom]**
You can count on the ten fingers the amount of successful technological startups coming from Slovenia, from this region. There is some, there is some really good ones, but it's really few of them, not yet enough to build a culture across the country. And this relates so to the third, to the another type of talent that is hard to find here which is product people.

**00:32:54 --> 00:33:06 - [Tom]**
Okay? So product managers. So what it even, what even is a product manager is a concept that is very alien to the to this region here. It's almost an entrepreneur.

**00:33:06 --> 00:33:51 - [Tom]**
It's almost an entrepreneur, and it's super hard to find good product managers around here, especially because you need some that understand the target market. So in our case, you know, developers, operations, customer support, customer engagement, also designers, good, great in Slovenia. Finance for the financial markets in US, we need in US. For the venture capital markets in US, you need in US. For accessing the Target, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart retail chain stores, you need somebody who understands the language of those retailers in US. You know, for developing a product for those markets, you need a US product manager.

**00:33:51 --> 00:34:16 - [Frenk]**
Super interesting. So breaking down some of these topics a bit more, I really like you mentioned education as one of the major topics. I also agree or, like, we've heard even on this podcast in previous episodes of, like, youth entrepreneurship, we've talked to with some VCs, some university spinouts, we have great engineers and our technical and domain skills are world class.

**00:34:16 --> 00:34:17 - [Tom]**
World class, yeah.

**00:34:17 --> 00:34:24 - [Frenk]**
But this entrepreneurship, yeah, I guess maybe we don't have such a history of this. This is probably one of the factors.

**00:34:24 --> 00:34:25 - [Tom]**
For sure. That's for sure. Yeah.

**00:34:25 --> 00:34:33 - [Frenk]**
Yeah. And then I also think it's hard to teach this in a school. I don't think you can become a great entrepreneur by-

**00:34:33 --> 00:34:33 - [Tom]**
Reading books. Reading books.

**00:34:33 --> 00:34:35 - [Frenk]**
... studying entrepreneurship, right? Yeah.

**00:34:35 --> 00:34:36 - [Tom]**
Yes.

**00:34:36 --> 00:35:03 - [Frenk]**
You just have to do it, right? And I think this is why it's great that companies such as yours are kind of doing this, are pushing what the state of the art in our kind of local region is. Um, and hopefully when a company becomes successful, you know, at some point there's either a sale, acquisition, or something, they become out of these entrepreneurs, out of the founders especially or the early people, uh, it becomes kind of a cluster. Like we-

**00:35:03 --> 00:35:03 - [Tom]**
Exactly.

**00:35:03 --> 00:35:05 - [Frenk]**
... we've heard of the PayPal mafia and stuff like that, right?

**00:35:05 --> 00:35:05 - [Tom]**
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

**00:35:05 --> 00:35:07 - [Frenk]**
And then these people start more companies-

**00:35:07 --> 00:35:08 - [Tom]**
Exactly.

**00:35:08 --> 00:35:09 - [Frenk]**
... and the cycle kind of spins up.

**00:35:09 --> 00:35:17 - [Tom]**
Exactly. Exactly. And on this point, I will call out, like, Silicon Gardens is one such institution-

**00:35:17 --> 00:35:23 - [Tom]**
Venture Capital Fund and aggregation of this kind of people here in Slovenia, and they are trying to do exactly that.

**00:35:23 --> 00:35:25 - [Tom]**
And kudos for that. And I-

**00:35:25 --> 00:35:27 - [Frenk]**
And by the way, Gregor was-

**00:35:27 --> 00:35:27 - [Tom]**
That's okay.

**00:35:27 --> 00:35:29 - [Frenk]**
Gregor Hribal from Silicon Gardens-

**00:35:29 --> 00:35:29 - [Tom]**
Silicon Gardens.

**00:35:29 --> 00:35:31 - [Frenk]**
... was on the previous episode of the podcast. Yeah.

**00:35:31 --> 00:35:35 - [Tom]**
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. So you already know all about him-

**00:35:35 --> 00:36:18 - [Tom]**
... and about them. Praise to what they're doing and they're trying to achieve exactly what we are talking right now. And there is still just a handful of these kind of entrepreneurs, but you have to start somewhere, right? And you mentioned, you can't learn this in school. It's... We should teach this in schools so that you have the basics and then you have to learn this by doing. There is no other way. The major inhibitor here is the cultural history, okay, and the way how our earlier generations were taught of entrepreneurship or not even taught of or even they were guarded against entrepreneurship as something that's not super welcoming, you know?

**00:36:18 --> 00:36:38 - [Tom]**
So this is the legacy that we are trying now to overcome and become, however it might sound, more American in this way of thinking. You know, there is pros and cons, there is a good balance. We definitely need to become more American when it comes to entrepreneurship and creating new value and be audacious about it.

**00:36:38 --> 00:36:41 - [Frenk]**
Yeah. Exactly. So we can learn from the good parts, of course.

**00:36:41 --> 00:36:41 - [Tom]**
Exactly.

**00:36:41 --> 00:36:43 - [Frenk]**
We need to kind of incorporate them.

**00:36:43 --> 00:36:43 - [Tom]**
Yep.

**00:36:43 --> 00:36:45 - [Frenk]**
I'm sure they'll be different in Europe.

**00:36:45 --> 00:36:45 - [Tom]**
Definitely.

**00:36:45 --> 00:36:48 - [Frenk]**
And this is what happens. You can't just copy-paste something-

**00:36:48 --> 00:36:48 - [Tom]**
You can't.

**00:36:48 --> 00:36:50 - [Frenk]**
... from some other area.

**00:36:50 --> 00:36:50 - [Tom]**
Yeah.

**00:36:50 --> 00:36:53 - [Frenk]**
But I'm also looking forward to kind of seeing the development of this-

**00:36:53 --> 00:36:54 - [Tom]**
Likewise.

**00:36:54 --> 00:36:55 - [Frenk]**
... over the years.

**00:36:55 --> 00:36:57 - [Tom]**
It's still to come and it's gonna be awesome.

**00:36:57 --> 00:37:10 - [Frenk]**
Yes. Okay, um, maybe do you have any advice, so kind of still on this topic of Europe and the US, any advice for any entrepreneurs, any companies looking to expand in the US?

**00:37:10 --> 00:37:42 - [Tom]**
Yes, plenty of, but I would say get your foot on the ground there. So many say you don't really need to be in US to run a successful US business. That is true to a certain stage or a certain extent. Also, the two founders that started the company, one of them was in US previously with some of his earlier companies and also in a US accelerator and the East Coast and the West Coast. So he knew the lay of the ground, right?

**00:37:42 --> 00:39:24 - [Tom]**
So you cannot do a successful business just remotely. You don't need to be there full time, at least not at the beginning, but get there, get a network, get some people who will help you on the ground, at least in the initial stages how to set up the company right. So Bird Body was from the very early get go incorporated in both Slovenia and the US. And then at the first opportunity for a serious external investor in the seed round, the proper corporate structure was set up so that the Slovenian is a subsidiary of the US. These kind of things might be for somebody that's not used to, might be a formality or technicality, but it's really not. It defines... It can bite you in the ass in like a year or two or three later on and create some major setbacks while if you set them up in the beginning, it's super simple if you just get from the right angle the right advice. So you need to spend some time there to understand the local rules of the game, both the market and how you should grow the startup, and have somebody fully present in US that you can trust and rely on not just as an advisor but also in operations wise, executionally, right? So this is the primary advice, okay? Don't try to do it just remote, 'cause it won't happen. The other advice is what we discussed before. Don't hypothetize what the market wants. Go and ask it, right? Go and ask it and do tests and this is how you will understand what the US market is really about.

**00:39:24 --> 00:39:26 - [Frenk]**
Validate it, yeah.

**00:39:26 --> 00:39:26 - [Tom]**
Yep.

**00:39:26 --> 00:39:34 - [Frenk]**
Awesome. Okay, so I think we can close up briefly. So what's next for Bird Body?

**00:39:34 --> 00:40:40 - [Tom]**
The very next thing is, and all our eyes now in the next couple of months is the third Kickstarter. So the first 2020, the second Kickstarter was in 2023 when we launched an adjacent line on the Bird Buddy line for hummingbird feeders, and now Wonder is coming. The Wonder products are coming in April. We're going to go on a Kickstarter campaign for a month, so that's what's coming next. It's exciting and daunting at the same time. The early tests show promise. The Kickstarter campaign will really tell us if we can scale on what we're seeing the signals from the market. So all eyes are on that, and so we are positive, of course, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it. Ask me end of May, you know, if we are doubling down on that, and then next year, we are going beyond birds and into all the trees and plants and the little animals and squirrels and bugs and ladybugs in your garden, you know? That's the point of it.

**00:40:40 --> 00:40:42 - [Frenk]**
All right, I wish you the best of luck.

**00:40:42 --> 00:40:42 - [Tom]**
Thank you so much.

**00:40:42 --> 00:40:45 - [Frenk]**
And I'm going to be keeping a close eye and (laughs) following-

**00:40:45 --> 00:40:46 - [Tom]**
Thank you.

**00:40:46 --> 00:40:46 - [Frenk]**
... the campaigns.

**00:40:46 --> 00:40:47 - [Tom]**
Thank you so much.

**00:40:47 --> 00:40:53 - [Frenk]**
Awesome. Um, just closing off, do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

**00:40:53 --> 00:42:30 - [Tom]**
I would relate to the discussion about what entrepreneurship even really means. So I did and I still do, I'm happy to mentor and coach and part being of some accelerators and also did it myself directly with some companies to teach or convey a sense of how to succeed as an entrepreneur, as a startup entrepreneur, okay, as a technology startup entrepreneur, and there is one consistent... I kind of narrowed it down to one consistent trait that is missing, unfortunately missing, ambition. Okay? So ambition. If there is one thing that I want to convey and I want to see more around here, and I want to really inspire or instill in anybody who dares to go an entrepreneurial path, be ambitious. Like, if you'll be ambitious, if you'll be hungry for succeeding, whatever success is in your definition, you know, if you'll be hungry, you will overcome mountains. You will be happy to shift bricks, but you will also be happy when you succeeded every next milestone that you break through with your venture, with your startup, your product, your idea. So ambition is the main thing that I think is lacking here, and so my advice would be go big or go home, right? And you can go big because we are really, really smart. We just don't know. We don't know how smart we are. We don't dare to, so just go big.

**00:42:30 --> 00:42:40 - [Frenk]**
All right, thank you, Tom, for taking the time today, sharing your insights, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Stay curious, and we'll see you in the next episode.

**00:42:40 --> 00:42:44 - [Tom]**
Thank you very much.