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Determining the scope of your business is one of the most important steps in creating your organization. Whether you want to serve your local community, provide for a region, or service the world, you need to organize your business to fulfill these aspirations.
As you expand your scope, the logistics involved can become increasingly difficult. Oftentimes, this keeps entrepreneurs away from global goals, except for the incredibly ambitious ones.
I got the chance to interview one such person, whose passion for entrepreneurship turns his attention and constantly pushes him to strive for global accomplishment. Jonne Bovellán is a co-founder of The Extravagant Company, a business whose “experiments” attempt to provide significant digital solutions without being restricted by regional boundaries.
For insight into a globally oriented business, see what Bovellán had to share about his work with The Extravagant Company.
What was Bovellán’s path to The Extravagant Company?
Bovellán’s educational background comes from graphic design and computer science. These are paths that he feels served him well in founding a tech startup. But in addition to his educational background, Bovellán shared that he always held an interest in entrepreneurship.
Regarding his time before founding The Extravagant Company, Bovellán noted, “I worked in a few different startups and then I was actually co-founding two other companies with our current cofounders.”
What was the driving force behind founding The Extravagant Company?
Before the company was ever conceived, Bovellán and his cofounders had a product known as Exolyt, which persists to this day. It was while working on this product that they realized they needed to take it more seriously. “At one point we realized that, okay, we need to take this from this hobby level to the actual company level.”
When establishing their formal business entity, they decided they did not want the name to be the same as the product. They didn’t want to tie an entire business to a product if they weren’t sure of its lasting success.
After conducting the common iteration process that many companies will go through in their early stages of deciding names and branding, they decided that “The Extravagant Company” described them well.
What is the focus of The Extravagant Company?
Bovellán and his co-founders are passionate about creating solutions that can globally scale. They don’t want to be limited to a certain country or region, so their business is focused on creating digital “experiments” and new products that can enable global growth for the companies that use them.
As Bovellán puts it, “If we have a super good idea that we really believe in, we might allocate some technical resources or other resources to try out that idea.” It is from these experiments that they look to add new products to The Extravagant Company lineup.
What challenges did Bovellán face while co-founding the company?
Since this was Bovellán’s 3rd cofounding experience, the process for The Extravagant Company faced fewer obstacles than a first-time founder might. That being said, Bovellán did offer some lessons that he learned in his previous ventures and some general advice that he’s heard in other discussions as well.
One of the biggest things that founding companies should look to do, according to Bovellán and many other founders, is to focus on marketing. Being able to connect with those customers who can really find value in your product is important for getting your business off the ground.
What does the platform Exolyt do?
As we mentioned before, Exolyt is the platform that The Extravagant Company hosts. If you aren’t already aware, Exolyt is, as Bovellán describes, a “TikTok analytics solution”. The platform helps provide businesses with actionable insights from social media platforms like TikTok, to brands and media agencies.
Through this work, Exolyt helps businesses work more efficiently as they can cut out a lot of the manual work that usually needs to be done when handling data analytics. The Exolyt platform helps businesses uncover consumer behavior in these social media platforms, which they can then use for actionable insights.
Bovellán gave an example of how Exolyt could help businesses decide on their best path for product development, or how to make the most effective marketing decisions for success with the help of the insights gathered from a site like TikTok.
This Exolyt tool sprang forth from conversations Bovellán, his co-founders and their extended circle would have, which brought up the fact that so much data was available in these social media platforms, yet businesses would still have trouble taking advantage of it for growth.
What does The Extravagant Company’s product journey look like moving forward?
For The Extravagant Company, they don’t have a clear product pipeline moving forward. Their philosophy for growth is based on capitalizing on moments of intense inspiration that allow them to excitedly pursue a new possible experiment. “Maybe we’ll have some cool idea and we cannot sleep until we do it.”
For now, all of the company’s focus is placed on Exolyt, as they have found that a lot of interest has been generated around the product. The foreseeable future will see The Extravagant Company seizing this opportunity and really pushing to secure their value in the market.
How has The Extravagant company managed its expansion so far, and what would Bovellán suggest for other founders looking to scale?
Bovellán credits a lot of The Extravagant Company’s early success to their SEO optimization efforts. Since their founding, a lot of effort has been put into optimizing content for Google.
Outside of the content they produce, Bovellán has found that being featured in other publications and getting reviews from other businesses is a great way to reach new customers in the B2B space. Testimonials and blog post mentions are key, as honest stories about your product can help businesses feel comfortable with further engagement.
Bovellán’s advice for founders looking to build their own SaaS companies
Bovellán has experience founding many companies at this point, so he offers a great perspective on what it takes for new founders to find their way in the business. The first thing Bovellán tells me is important? “Building one thing at a time”.
By focusing on one product, one area of the business, one goal, Bovellán feels that you can better put your best effort forward, rather than split your focus and performance across multiple fields.
The next important topic Bovellán brings up is how people can tend to hesitate in their work and begin to stall on their goals. His advice for this scenario? “I’d say it’s always better to do something than nothing.” As long as you are putting effort into something, even if it is not up to your standards at first, you can improve and build upon it. If you make no effort at all, you guarantee failure.
What’s next for Bovellán and The Extravagant Company?
As Bovellán looks ahead to the future of The Extravagant Company, he is excited about scaling up Exolyt and being able to bring more people on board to help achieve their vision. “Now, we…have the capability, financially and otherwise, so that we can focus on this.”
So far, Bovellán and his cofounders have done all the work themselves, but as they receive more funding and find their success, they look forward to expanding their team.
If you want to keep up with Bovellán and the experiments at The Extravagant Company, then make sure you visit their site to stay updated with their adventures.
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