SaaS Scaling Secrets
The SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast reveals the strategies and insights behind scaling B2B SaaS companies to new heights. Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility, leads conversations with successful SaaS CEOs, exploring their challenges, triumphs, and the secrets that propelled their businesses to the next level.
SaaS Scaling Secrets
The Bet That Doubled a Business Travel SaaS' Clients in 2020 with Luca Carlucci, CEO of BizAway
Dan Balcauski hosts Luca Carlucci, CEO and co-founder of BizAway.Luca shares BizAway's mission of simplifying business travel by integrating technology with travel agent services. From a humble beginning with just a booking platform, BizAway now caters to over 1700 corporate clients with over 300 employees. The episode explores the shift towards a comprehensive travel agency model, the acquisition of a machine learning company, and the challenges and opportunities faced during the COVID-19 lockdown. Luca emphasizes the importance of client feedback, maintaining a motivated team, and making informed, calculated risks in scaling a business. The discussion provides insights into the complexities of managing both tech and service-oriented operations, leveraging AI for efficiency, and prioritizing human touch in customer interactions.
01:51 BizAway: The Elevator Pitch
02:53 The Evolution of BizAway's Business Model
04:43 Scaling Challenges and Complementary Services
06:16 Operational Complexities and Customer Segments
15:51 Acquisition Strategy and Integration
30:21 Leadership and Growth During the Pandemic
Guest Links
time is the most valuable asset. We try to learn from each experience, especially the ones that cost us more money that's why you really need to care and do things without using impulsiveness or just gut feeling. But it has to be a composition of tool. Like maybe the gut feeling could be something that triggers you to look into it, but then you have to be diligent and structured, to understand that it makes sense. It was good timing or very bad it's a point of view, but in 2020, we were a team of 28 people, 2.5 million at the time could go a long way for that small team. that allowed us to look at things in a rational way with a cold head rather than being scared about what is gonna be happening next month. It's been good to be counterintuitive keeping on pushing in 2020. listen to your clients, first of all because you cannot have a solution without understanding how it's gonna benefit the client.
Dan Balcauski:Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside storage and the leaders of the best scale up B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited to welcome Luca Carlucci, CEO, and co-founder of BizAway, a business travel management platform that combines technology with human travel agent services. Luca has scaled BizAway to over 300 employees across eight international offices while serving more than 1700 corporate clients. Luca, welcome to the show.
Luca Carlucci:Thank you.
Dan Balcauski:Luca, before we dive into your scaly journey, give us the elevator pitch. What does BizaWay do? Who do you serve?
Luca Carlucci:Well, BizAway is a solution that has been designed to bring peace of mind to our clients. as you may know, business travel is the second biggest voice of cost in any p and l right after the payroll. And it's something that we strive to make a breeze. Both. To the traveler, obviously, but also to all the other stakeholders involved into this business style function. So you can imagine about hr, you can think about all the cost control, all the finance part, and this is what we tell about. We really want to have business travel, something that is sorted out by BI way, so that all the resources internally to the company can focus on the core of the business.
Dan Balcauski:And Bue correct me if I'm wrong, you operate as both a technology platform and a travel agency.
Luca Carlucci:Correct. We have
Dan Balcauski:So I'm curious when you decided to start BizAway, how did you decide that operating model versus being a pure play sort of technology provider, could you help walk me through what that early decision process looked like?
Luca Carlucci:No, it was very organic and natural in itself. Consider we started being just a technology company, was me and my co-founder, the CTO we created the initial booking platform at the, at the beginning was only for hotels. All the other verticals were coming along during our 10 years after. years from launch, we had all the four verticals This way because the clients were asking us for that. But two years in into our journey, we became also a travel agency because we saw that there was a need, not just for a booking tool that of course is the heart of our technology, also. A, a complete solution would've passed to a service component that is our travel agency service that goes along with the technology itself. So that's why BizAway is a complete one-stop shop for everything business travel.
Dan Balcauski:So you started out as pure technology, and then two years in you started adding this, agency services component, was there a, a specific customer experience or set of experiences that convinced you that that was the right approach? I imagined if you're starting out as a pure play technology platform, it sounds organic, maybe that's at the time it might not have been so clear cut.
Luca Carlucci:No. It started just that because we were two people and we didn't have the resources to be at travel agency at the time. But the more we got successful, I'm talking about attraction. There was this request coming from the clients
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:we decided to satisfy it within umbrella of
Dan Balcauski:So I'm curious, obviously this podcast is called SaaS Scaling Secrets, and so, Scaling, pure technology platforms has its set of idiosyncrasies. I'm curious, how did you find managing both, technology platform and services side of the businesses you grew? Were there any particular challenges or turning points along the way? I, obviously it sounds like you, you'd made that initial pivot two years in and then I imagine, that's grown significantly in eight years since, what have you learned about Scaling two sides that and how they're, are they different? Are they complimentary?
Luca Carlucci:They are definitely complementary and the complementarity of it comes from the fact that you have to have technology in order to be able to scale a full fledged service in a more than proportional way. Compared to the team itself. Because of technology we have more than 90% of our bookings that come within be way without any human intervention, also in the post-booking management. We have around 8% of our bookings and it's still a lot, but it's. If you look at the big picture, not that much that require human intervention that comes because of the complexity or because of the limitation of APIs and such. And so to have service included in the solution actually gives superpowers to the solution itself and still maintains the scalability of the tech solution altogether in our value proposition.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm. As you've scaled both sides. I'm curious, so you said like the eight per like 10, eight, 10% around there is, requires sort of human in the loop. Is that driven from different like customer segments in your marketplace? Or, or do you find that like, it just depends upon the, the specifics of a particular booking of, of what drives that that split.
Luca Carlucci:the right answer is it depends, but let's say it's more lenient to towards the second option. So the one related to the idiosyncrasies of different tips. For example just to give you a sense, if you have to manage a group of more than nine people. Generally APIs for hotel bookings don't allow managing this. And for example, if you wanted to decouple a group maybe of 18 people into two groups of nine people, the price for the first group is gonna be different from than the price of the second group. So probably because of that, it's better to this manually as a group working towards. The final provider so that you can have first of all, all the service related to the guarantees of the full booking because it might even happen that they don't have enough rooms to satisfy the second batch of nine people. No. To the APIs, that's why it's way better to manage good bookings or complex bookings. I'm talking about, for example, tickets with different point of reliable, depending on the segments. These are things that as of today is still possible to provide additional value to expert a travel expert desk, as we call it with Ivis.
Dan Balcauski:So I'm curious, you made this decision, two years into the company and then now you've scaled, you've added all these verticals. I'm curious, like with the addition of this human touch component Scaling both sides, what operational complexities emerged that you didn't anticipate what you guys made, that you and your co-founder made that decision two years into the company?
Luca Carlucci:Nine years ago we were not yet thinking about working around the clock for all the time zones in the world. So that's definitely something that when we started with, use a lot of ingenuity to satisfy. And now of course, we are very well structured to work around the clock with people that are. each time with all the languages that are needed, consider that. We don't outsource any. Part of our customer service journey, let's say. So everything is in-house with a very high level of satisfaction and quality. So because of that, we are really well managing the shifts. The fact that of course, if I want to have serving somebody in South America. And it's the daytime. I cannot use our night shift for the emergency in Europe, but it has to be somebody that locally can provide the level of service that they expect and that we
Dan Balcauski:Hmm. Yeah, I can imagine that's quite, quite a trick when you have international, global operations with all the human touch. You've gotta yeah, have people on, on, on call when, when those people's business hours. It gives you our business focus.
Luca Carlucci:the clock at the moment, like you
Dan Balcauski:I.
Luca Carlucci:it any time, and you will be served in any language that we serve.
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious as you look at your investments how do you think about, hey, well, we're looking at going into a space or, or solving a problem if you're going to solve this technology first versus human first. Like you mentioned before, the. APIs of some of the providers that you interact with. And, you mentioned things like splitting groups, right? And so obviously that presents, with your integration partners, you're like, well, there's not really a, a clean way to sort of integrate this off the, off the bat. Is the premise that like you're going to sort of lead with humans and then figure out the way automated a after the fact? How do you approach it with both sides of the operation?
Luca Carlucci:It's first of all, the main point is to satisfy the client. So we start with that first, with that understood and entire eyes. And that's something that is also part of our culture to be proactive and liable towards the client. We then figure out. What is the best way in a more scalable way and the way that makes sense business wise to do so like technology always comes into the picture. Nowadays with ai, it's already two years that we are playing around with, we are using it especially for the internal processes rather than customer facing because, we want to still maintain a level of service and perfe perfection towards the solution that now AI is still not providing not yet. I'm sure is gonna arrive at some point, internally, processes can be very much slim to ai. And this is something that we're doing with a few tools already for two years at this point.
Dan Balcauski:So yeah, putting these to the customer first leading with technology even to make the humans in the loop more efficient. So besides those operational complexities, like what area that's particularly complex, like when you get a humans in the loop is pricing. So I'm curious like when. Running a, a tech and services business.'cause, humans have a, usually a significant variable cost, much higher than running additional storage, compute for an additional customer. I'm curious how has that impacted how you've approached pricing and packaging for customers that need this additional level of service?
Luca Carlucci:There are different levels of SLAs. So depending on the client and also on the willingness of the client to pay, there are different level of service. Consider our lowest level of service. Is what in the market is considered already one of the highest. We are talking from a very high level of service to a white glove kind of service, At the top. And this doesn't really depend only on the account, but it depends also on the personas within the account. There are for example clients that we serve in pure Tech way for the back of the company. And then there is maybe some. C-suite travelers that are served in a different way because they don't book for themselves, but there is a booker or a travel arrange that manages them. So there is a different type of relationship in that case. And maybe that might be even a dedicated service team for that particular number of travel arranges. No. We really care about making. Everything that the client wants, the way that is the most efficient, but also the most satisfactory at the same time. This also, as you just said has an impact on the pricing, of course. If you want very white glove kind of service where we get the booking requests from the traveler danger, but then we service the actual traveler already with the boarding pass with the information of the itinerary. Of course they also have the app so everything gets pushed into the app in the pockets. So it's a very, complete experience that
Dan Balcauski:Mm
Luca Carlucci:to different stakeholders in the same customer journey.
Dan Balcauski:mm.
Luca Carlucci:course there is a higher price for that. And the pricing, what we do is generally. We have a price per booking that is the price per booking that is related to the main contract. then there might be a packaging, like for example, you have for these fixed amount per year a number of travelers that might be served with this level of service by this dedicated team, and this as
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:price.
Dan Balcauski:So within a particular account, let's just make sure I was tracking what you said. So you said there's you may have perhaps a volume of customers within that account who are, or, or employees within that account who are just using, the, the tech enabled components of your platform. But then, there could be senior executives who are more white glove. And so with your, you're offering, you're, you've been able to sort of differentiate and say, Hey, there's, there's, because oftentimes when you think about some of those like service enabled components, so like, professional services or training or onboarding services or, cus named, customer success management, like, you might think about that Scaling to the entire, if you have a seat based model to the entire seats per account, but you've been able to just. Segment that within that account and say, Hey, there's only 10 people who need white glove. And so we're able to, to price, to that, to satisfy just that executive. I'm curious, was that was that your original understanding or was that alerting that you guys had to adopt and, and modify over time?
Luca Carlucci:Generally it's always an evolution of the value proposition that comes from listening to the client and see what we can do to satisfy them even more. Always.
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
Luca Carlucci:It's very important in my opinion to have a continuous dialogue. With the clients, me, myself I'm still, involved with some of the clients in a periodic calls or we also have many points of contacts and also structured ones that in order to receive feedback not only by the users, but also by the responsible of the accounts. And we also have periodical interviews. We really care. And I think listening is already of the solution when you have an opportunity.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I want to pivot a little bit'cause I know that you had recently had acquired a company called a aveo. Is that the, how you pronounce it? Just tell us, tell me a little bit about aveo and then I guess what, walk me through what led to that decision to acquire them.
Luca Carlucci:That acquisition was mostly led by an interest in the technology. They were one of the first players to try to play around machine learning in the business level space. I think they had done quite good job in. this part the business model and application of this tech towards that. In fact we have incorporated this tech and we are working on some quite interesting developments that are gonna come up in this part of the solution. I cannot talk much about this.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Yes. Understood. Understood. No, no, no need to announce your roadmap on air. So it sounded like you acquired them for mostly the technology around what they were doing in machine learning,
Luca Carlucci:Totally.
Dan Balcauski:artificial intelligence.
Luca Carlucci:of course, within the acquisition there was also a very good team that we added to ours. It was a good operations for us to carry out.
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious the decision to acquire them is a big one. And so something that I'm sure many leaders face, opportunities to acquire different companies. I did, other. Other approaches like building the cap capability internally or, partnering with them or, or, or companies like them come up as potential alternatives.
Luca Carlucci:Yeah, definitely. The point is that to produce internally what, we are looking forward, let's say, because it's not done yet. it would've taken longer without the acquisition in the meantime. So it's still something that definitely speed us up on the production line towards the delivery of that particular feature that we are about to offer to the clients. Definitely we could have not have done the acquisition and instead of releasing such feature in Q4 this year, we would've released it in Q3 next year. But, time is the most valuable asset. So, since we found that there was a very good mix and fit between the opportunity and ourselves, so we went for it.
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious. So, yeah, timing sp speed to market often a big driver that sort of pushes in folks in favor of acquisition. I'm curious as a leader during that process like. How did you I guess manage that decision process? Like, did you guys have an internal team that was, looking at like, actually like scoping out, like the build and then is, was it a very some of these. Are like, yeah, we can put the spreadsheets together, but at the end of the day, it's sort of a, a, a, a gut feeling decision. Was it the, did you have advice from like external advisors who was helping you sort of shape that decision? I'm curious. Like, I, I actually, I didn't ask you, but was this your first acquisition as a leader?
Luca Carlucci:and not the last one. We are now in the process of another, but, what we acquired was a company that I knew and I was in touch with for a couple of years already. So it was not some last minute decision, but it was something that developed over a time. And again, the the value of this acquisition is to be faster towards our goal. So, to do that was a decision that involved, of course, the alternative, we do it in internally and we get to a certain objective in a longer time period. Or we take the risk of an acquisition because an acquisition is always carrying risks with it. In the integration of the people, in the integration of the technology, if there is a technology in the integration of the portfolio of clients, if there are, there is a portfolio of clients to integrate. So it's of course also something that as. Discrimination in terms of decision making on the feeling that you have, that you can do, that you
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:overcome that risk, let's say. but of course there are also some external that we use from advisors from, due diligence providers, let's say that we also do in order to de-risk the this already risk operation. So,
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Well, yeah, the number of acquisitions that don't like everything looks really well on the deck and everyone, pops the champagne when the deal's signed. But then the number that just end up not working out is, monumental given, given, given.
Luca Carlucci:that's probably one of the most likely outcomes. Consider that BizAway wants to be a consolidator in the market. Properly because of this, we are getting smarter about how to do acquisition in a positive way, in a way that everybody that is involved wins and in a way that the outcome is what we desire to be.
Dan Balcauski:Well, given that it was your second one I guess any it sounds like you had an established relationship with these this company for several years before, so it wasn't what we'd say the us it wasn't a shotgun wedding by any, any, stretch. There's a long, long courtship period perhaps. I guess any, given it was your second one, any surprises? I think either in the, the deal process or in the sort of post integration that was surprising for you as you went forward with this, given it was your second.
Luca Carlucci:Oh, generally like we try to learn from each and every experience, especially the ones that cost us more money than, I am quite, comfortable with the second one because we, for sure didn't make the mistakes we did in the first one for sure. We made new mistakes that we will not repeat in our third one, so that's why also I really care about this because I can tell you the first one that we made was two years and a half ago, and I can confidently say that it was a success.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:one that we did at the beginning of this year. He's already looking good in terms of return on the investment. And
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:that we are planning on doing and potentially finalized before the end of the year is also something that we've been working on for a very good amount of time. So it's a process that takes time is not. Fast in itself. Then of course if you compare to other tasks, it might be faster, let's say. But of course, like it requires a level of diligence, due diligence that is first to how much you pay. Because that's also if you are paying something that very little, then you are willing to take more risks because you are not spending that much. But if something is quite, presenting presenting quite a good chunk of money, especially in selective terms what you have available, then you want. To make that bullet Sure. To hit the target. No.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
Luca Carlucci:that's why you really need to care much and to do things without using impulsiveness or just gut feeling. But it has to be a composition of tool. Like maybe the gut feeling could be something that triggers you to look into it, but then you have to be diligent and structured, in order to understand that it makes sense. As an.
Dan Balcauski:That makes sense. So earlier, you said you did acquire them because of their technol, their ai, and natural language processing technologies. I'm curious, as you've integrated that technology stack into your company is. Anything any challenges that you found that have been unique to integrating those technical capabilities? Like one thing is obviously just even from an engineering perspective, these type of systems can have very different profiles in terms of quality assurance, right? Because you, you can ask at least I, I haven't, I haven't played with your system directly, but, folks have played with some system like chat, GBT for example. You could ask the same question 10 times and maybe it gives you the same answer five times and then five different answers the other time. I'm curious, like, and, and obviously that that's only from, a QA perspective. I'm sure there's other things, anything that's been surprising as you've integrated that, that technology into your, your company that has been useful or memorable for you?
Luca Carlucci:First of all, disclaimer, I'm not a technical guy, so,
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Yeah.
Luca Carlucci:very deep on that. But what I can tell you is that what we acquired. Was more than knowhow towards the application of machine learning to business travel, to the business, travel work, let's say, rather than a piece of code that we copied in, including our stack. Consider that also the languages were different, so for sure we are gonna do work it all. And the company historically was smaller than ours, and of course was not having the level of QA on the product that we have. So we have to make sure that everything that we release is at par with our standards. So there is always the need to rework or adapt potentially also, change
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:You acquire in terms of technology. I'm talking more on a generalistic level rather than this particular, experience. But again, what speeds you up is the talent that you get and the know-how that you get.
Dan Balcauski:That makes sense. And, and yeah, I, this is not a technical interview, so, will won't will pass you that the so one thing that I'm curious about kinda similar to, with, with services, a big question folks always have is, obviously these machine learning systems have. Usually a, a different cost profile from, what they've been used to running for, just like storage and compute as well. Not only the fixed cost, if you're actually developing AI systems, which could be quite expensive as, as meta has noted, having to just go, go higher sort of baseline researchers those, those, that's how it can be quite expensive to acquire, but even to, to run it can be, could be significant. I'm curious like. What, how you've approached, integrating these AI capabilities in terms of your commercial strategy. Are these things that you've identified customers are willing to pay more for and therefore are, are segmenting them in, into areas or parts of your product where you're trying to use them to drive, upgrade? Or like, how are you thinking about that set of components as it pertains to your commercial strategy?
Luca Carlucci:So what I'm looking at, AI and machine learning components. It is more of a way to reduce cost rather than a way to increase marginality on a single instance, let's say.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:I could potentially charge more for a feature that has AI in it, especially in the moment of hype as we are now. And, but what I care about is that the client is always extremely satisfied with our solution. And if to be extremely satisfied with our solution, it goes for me to make an investment in AI that provides potentially an additional layer of information or whatever is gonna be the case. To in real time, to the client, to the traveler, to whoever the stakeholder is. It's a good investment. It's an investment in detention. It's an investment in maybe faster acquisition or these all like I look at in a way that I don't have to go and charge my client more for something that I decide to offer within the umbrella of services that I do offer. I see it as a way, as a route be more convenient on microstructure
Dan Balcauski:Mm. Mm
Luca Carlucci:let's say.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. That's, that's fascinating.'cause I, I, I think that's we're seeing a lot of that. I think there's a lot of the adoption right now at least in production use cases, are around these sort of cost saving aspects versus revenue generating. And I think it may be a, a matter of time before those, those get tapped out. But I think that's, we're, we're seeing a lot of sort of customer service type use cases, right? That, that are traditionally more like cost centers. Like how do we get, let more humans out of the loop? Actually you provide a better level of service on that because oftentimes I don't know about you, I don't want to talk to a human if a machine can answer my question.'cause there's usually a
Luca Carlucci:on the easy questions makes a total of a ton of sense. So,
Dan Balcauski:hmm.
Luca Carlucci:That where we have to be very good at discriminating, which kind of service level we want to offer, at which point in the value journey of the client how so, consider, like there are many services out there already that you already get. Maybe frustrated not to say another word with the machine that you just repeat three or four times. I want to talk to a human. I want to talk to a human. I want to talk to a human also. And you end up putting talking to, actual service representative of the company. That's a bad ai. Application, in my opinion. it's something that on the paper okay. We had instances that have been answered by our machine learning or by our ai, let's say. But in reality, the fifth instance is still the first one was waiting for the human to talk to. So that's also. The complexity that we have now when AI is still at its beginnings and still there is a ton of value in the human interaction.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, I, there's yeah, I think there used to be a website where you have those phone trees for, you dial a customer support number, and there used to be a website that listed for every corporation, like how you, the numbers you need to press to get to a human faster. I think. You, we, we have, yeah. We, we learned that lesson with those phone trees. It seems like we may need to, a lot of companies may need to relearn them again with these AI customer service bot. But I, I applaud your approach. I think that's a, that's a healthy perspective and very customer-focused. So I, I wanna pivot a little bit. Just so you know, you've been running BizAway for 10 years now. That's a lot of longevity in the, in the tech world especially. No, no overnight successes, right? 10 year, 10 year overnight success. I'm curious how has your approach to leadership changed during that time? I'm sure you know you, or you're saying like zero to zero to two years, you and your co-founder, I'm sure very different company, very different dynamics than what you're, the organization you're leading today, over 300 employees and multiple international offices. I'm curious, like how has your approach to leading the company changed? And, and maybe that's in terms of like the different eras that you've experienced of like Yeah, it was, it was, it was one thing, one to 10, another, 10 to a hundred. It's been very different, after a hundred, I dunno how you think about it, but kinda curious of, of how you've, you've needed to adopt your style to the growing of the company.
Luca Carlucci:Definitely consider that is the first time that I built a company to this stage. Like, what people would call a serial entrepreneur. This is my third company, but, of the other company were even close as successful as BizAways definitely. With size, there are changes that are to size itself I enjoyed, would say, every step of the way so far and I'm looking forward to the next with even more enthusiasm. But I can tell you already that of course, the phase zero to one, the one where I was just with me technical co-founder pushing, be away. And doing everything that was non-technical while micro founder was coding the basics of what BizaWay is today. It's extremely satisfactory because you are having an impact that is at extremely noticeable day by day. Of course, this changes already when you are in the phase one to 10. That we've been, with the parenthesis of the pandemic that you can imagine for a travel company is not an easy thing to navigate. We've been lucky. But also strong into that parenthesis properly because it could have been the end of BI way. And so I would say two things. We've been lucky on the sense because we had raised some money just before the pandemic in November, 2019, so
Dan Balcauski:Whew.
Luca Carlucci:yeah.
Dan Balcauski:timing.
Luca Carlucci:It was good timing or very bad it's a point of view, but we could face at the time in 2020, we were a team of 28 people, 2.5 million at the time could go a long way for that small team. And that allowed us to look at things in a rational way with a cold head rather than being scared about what is gonna be happening next month. No
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:with a very strong creed and belief business hours would've come back. remember perfectly when in the middle of the whole, complexity of the times in 2020. Even the gates came out with an editorial saying a business table is done, or something in the line. like, of course I have a ton of respect for that personality. And I would say oof. Like even this guy says, this didn't die, but I don't believe it. No. And it was based on conviction. On belief of put to the test. At the end we are social animals like we are having now a conversation to a screen and it works and it's fine, but if we had to do more, the screen would not be enough. We would
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:meet, we would need, like, if we were to cooperate on a project it would be very beneficial for us to meet in person. Like I have advisors that are from the Valley and the likes, and we meet every three or six months because otherwise the relationship goes still in a way, so. With that strong belief, I would say that that was the other component other than luck, that made us persevere and to plan, for the worst, while hoping for the best. And we managed to go on actually in 2020. We more than our base of clients, though. They were not booking, they started booking in 2021 when the lockdowns and the borders blockage got lifted and 2021 also, we continued sailing selling to the clients. So. Steady balance for us has been ex extremely strong, and since then we've been doubling organically year over year, every year. So that's very strong on the performance side. That's why also we managed to raise the money that we have done so far and we are keeping on going very strong on that.
Dan Balcauski:That's fascinating. So you just said that 2020, you doubled the number of clients during 2020.
Luca Carlucci:correct.
Dan Balcauski:Seems that's incredibly surprising. I guess what was the, what, like what are the conversations like at that time? Like they're signing up with this idea that like, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna book travel with you next year when this all ends. Like I just,
Luca Carlucci:It was funny. It was
Dan Balcauski:yeah.
Luca Carlucci:Consider half of the calls they would say, call me back in six months. Call me back in next year. Call me back when this finishes, whatever. And of course. You respect that and go on. But also there were tons of professionals that have responsibility of the business level budget that they were doing nothing during those days. So they were very willing to listen. also we had very little to no competition at the time because everybody made furlough. Everybody made, it cost reduction plans and whatever. So like we were competing against little to nobody. No. It's been I think good to be counterintuitive keeping on pushing in 2020. Consider that. We started 2020 with 28 people. We finished the year with 62 people, remember it's very clearly, properly because it was a very big bet on my side. a calculated bet, first of all, because we had. The resources to do that.
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
Luca Carlucci:because the belief that come back was very strong into our, mind. And then of course, in if you remember, in Europe at least has been already some freedom of traveling at the end of Q3, and then by the end of Q4. Also there been lifts around, around the border and stuff, so there were already the signals of COVID, let's say,
Dan Balcauski:So you not only didn't have furloughs, you grew headcount almost doubled during that time period.
Luca Carlucci:and
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious and you said you had this belief you made this, obviously that's a bet. I guess what, what made you so confident or like, was there, like, I, I imagine a lot of people were just like, the sky is falling. Uh uh, I.
Luca Carlucci:we had some investors that were saying, look, you have to do, furlough is a responsibility. You have to protect all the cash that you have. And stuff. And luckily no, it was not all the investors like this. Most of the investors actually supported me in my decision. And again, like it's a belief that is rooted in our way of being like can you imagine not traveling? Can you imagine not meeting new people in their life? Can you imagine? I think it was difficult to say then. But if we think about ourselves, again, we are social animals. We really need to not being reduced to talking to a screen all day,
Dan Balcauski:yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I definitely feel that. And I just remember, during that time period, I, there were, plenty of, not only Bill Gates, but I, I saw plenty of op-eds of like. It's the end of New York City, for example, like the New York City is, New York City is over, right? No one's gonna wanna live in like these close cities anymore. Everyone's gonna flee. And like, yeah, now their, rents are back through the roof and, it's causing other political problems. But we'll we'll leave that alone. Look, this has been fascinating. Just wanna start wrapping things up ask you a few rapid closeout questions. Are you up for it?
Luca Carlucci:Of
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. When you think back, all the people, spectacular people you've had a chance to work with. Anyone who pops to mind that's had a disproportionate effect on the way that you think about building companies now?
Luca Carlucci:Sorry, can you repeat the question? I didn't.
Dan Balcauski:yeah. Okay. No worries. Yeah, so when you think about all the spectacular people that you've had a chance to work with, is there anyone who pops to mind who's had a PR pronounced effect on the way that you think about building companies?
Luca Carlucci:Yeah, one of my tutors or sorry, one of my mentors that is gon that is currently the global CEO and president of the group. I'm lucky enough that I know him. From his experience before even when he was CEO of DNH group, he always said, how much important is to have a team that is not only aligned, but also not to have, And I quote the word assholes in the team. something that he has also put in the s of his current group. And it's something that makes a ton of sense, not only on the headline, of course, because it's surprising to read in the backlog policy, but in terms of. What stands behind this phrase? It makes a lot of sense that you want to have an environment that is positive that each and everyone contributes to and is happy to be involved in. And that's something that really, really resonates with me. I've been working in environment that were not the best in terms of, of toxicity, let's say to say that in my employee experience before, like many years ago at this point generally when I was into making a company, I always didn't, I knew what I didn't want to create as an
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Luca Carlucci:And when somebody that is so, relevant and especially so, an authority the space says the same it goes a long way. I'm actually very thankful to him. Like, plus he's a very supportive and pleasant person, so I'm thankful for that.
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. Well shout out to Frederico. Was that his name? Frederico if I gave you a billboard, you could put any advice on there. For other B2B SaaS CEOs trying to scale their companies, what would it say?
Luca Carlucci:It would say, listen to your clients, first of all because you cannot have a solution without understanding how it's gonna benefit the client. And that would be one. And the other would be make sure that your colleagues aligned with you and that they're happy.
Dan Balcauski:Make sure your colleagues are aligned with you. And no assholes.
Luca Carlucci:And also it
Dan Balcauski:no assholes.
Luca Carlucci:If they're not aligned, they shouldn't be. At least, I hope I'm not.
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. Luca, this has been great. If our listeners wanna connect with you, learn more about BizaWay, how can they do that?
Luca Carlucci:They can come to our page www.BizAway.com to learn more about the service offering that we have, they can just tie us out, and I'm sure they're gonna be satisfied with the solution in the service.
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. I will put that link in the show notes for our listeners that wraps up this episode of Ask Scaling Secrets. Thank you to Luca for sharing his journey and insights. For our listeners who found Luca's Insights valuable, please review and share this episode with your network. It really helps the podcast grow.
