Behind Big Layout Data - bootstrapping MVP in 3 months, in love with the Dubai founders community

For this 2nd newsletter, I was sitting with Elena Hmelovs and Andrejs Hmelovs, the two founders behind Big Layout Data.
Elena, Andrejs, it was pleasure to meeting you and talking to you - thank you for sharing your honest oops and ups while building your start up in Dubai.

Now, let’s jump to the real talk!

Could you share what's Big Layout Data about? What's the product?

We build an easy furniture widget. The main idea is to connect real estate with the furniture stores.
When we moved to Dubai year and a half ago, we rented an unfurnished apartment and it was such a pain to buy everything. We didn't know how where to go, we didn't have a layout of the apartment. It was very difficult. We found out this is a problem.

We had meetings with some real estate developers and they told us they would like to provide furnishing services but it's complex as each customer has totally different preferences. So we created an easy furnishing widget that could be embedded to the website of real estate agents or developers. They can improve the overall customer experience and use traffic on their website to generate revenue from the sales commission.
The customer finds apartment of their dream but it isn't furnished, press one button, see the total budget of the furnishing and order. Just like that, in 10 seconds.

How did you validate the idea on the customer end? That people will trust and use this service via real estates?

Before we registered the company, we made a research and had about 20 respondents. They confirmed it is a pain. And they'd rather buy from the furniture house or real estate agent website, not from us. So they see just powered by Big Layout Data and this is it. The purchase is conducted on the website of a furniture store.

And what's the business model for you?

We get commission from the furniture store and share it with the real estate.

The overall price actually comes with a discount for the customer, because furniture stores always have a percentage of the price blocked, dedicated to interior designers, bloggers or other services like us. They have this already in their price. So we just want to change the route.

What's your background and how did you split roles in your company?

We're married and the first start up that we did together was 10 years ago, it was a sports equipment retail. We were selling tapes. It took 5 or 6 years for us to test different business models. And we ended up selling this. It was very small, but we sold it. And after that we worked in corporations.

We’re developing this MVP on our own. Coding is the main part for Andrejs. The relationship with businesses is on Elena. And we got some help from the team of our previous start up, helping with the design.

What was the journey of setting up a company in Dubai for you? Any learnings from this part? I know it often leads to some oops moments, unfortunately.

When it was time to set up our company, we already had experience from the previous start up we worked at here and knew what not to do. And that's having a middle man. The start up was set up with an agent in Meydan freezone and once you have an agent, you have to do everything through them - even things like salary certificates. Meydan freezone just couldn't talk to us directly. It was crazy. And crazy expensive too.

So now, we established our company with In5 and they helped us a lot. I would say they did everything for us. And they didn't ask for any equity. So it is only ours. You just upload all documents, fill all the forms directly on their portal and this is it. In 10 days you get the company registered. And the same with visa.
Well, actually with visa it's not perfect, as I'm still trying to get my visa for two months. But we registered the company very easily. The price was approximately 1,000 AED/year for company registration. Their offer is really good. You just have to go through their selection process.

And mainly, In5 has a great founder community, they offer activities and events, like a boot camp about fundraising. We love them.

There's another incubator, Hub71 in Abu Dhabi. They offer free accommodation to founders. I think they also give away some cash and they register your company for free and they don't take equity. That's just super amazing. The only problem with Hub 71 is that they have a strict selection process. Well, it's obvious as well. So I know some startups that didn't succeed with Hub71 came to In5, where the selection process is less strict.

Now to the fuck up side. Share some with us too!

You have an idea, you test it, you find out that it was bad, you change it. That’s how the startup life goes.

For example last year, it looked like we'll sign a contract with Danube home. But they stopped answering our emails, so it didn't work out yet. We expected them to be our first furniture store. So we put them into our widget anyway, to showcase how the product can work, however we don't have any contract with them. Same with OC home. Property layouts are publicly available, so we were able to get those for the MVP.
Most things don’t work out as you planned, you have to build a new way.

Also, users often suggest improvements, features - like having 3D furniture. Great idea, but we can't bare the cost now. Each 3D model costs about $50 to make. Imagine how many items each retailer has. That's a huge cost they won't pay.

Andrejs: Every time we download this widget, my heart stops. We're showing it to our partners and obviously anything can happen. But no big fails so far.

You mentioned you had the idea of simplifying the furnishing process for 2 years. You started building the widget in March 2023. It took three months to build. What's next? What's your next goal?

Well, we need to have contracts. We want to embed the widget first to the furniture store's websites. They can increase their average cart value, people will be able to explore more product from the same furniture house in a very convenient way. They won't just buy a sofa, they will also buy a carpet and a coffee table that matches well with the rest. Signing contracts with real estate agents and furniture houses is the main goal now.

What's your strategy of approaching new partners - real estate agents and furniture houses?

We have two options:
First option is messaging over LinkedIn. We collected their contacts and trying to reach out.
The second option is to find an advisor in furniture industry. This is what I'm trying to do.

The next step we plan is to go to Saudi. We've been to Riyadh last year, we just love it. There's such a big construction there. They need furniture! And we are ready to provide it. The market is booming there and they are so open to technology, to expats. It's not very common that people are so open. You can just call anyone. I loved it. In order to expand, we need cooperation with developers.

Any recommendations or tips you would give to starting entrepreneurs (except joining In5 ;))?

Many people think when you start a startup, you need to just find funding as much and as soon as possible. I don't think it's the correct strategy. Because if you do this, you just give away your company to an investor. And why would you work 15-20 hours a day for a company that is only 10% yours?

You have an idea, talk to people, potential customers, really understand if this is something people want. You need to validate before you put your time and money in it.

At the first stage you should have your own money for at least a year. Anything can happen and you should have it. And you should control your costs. I think it is important not to, for example, hire people at first, because you have a huge upfront cost with hiring. You can do a lot yourself.

Andrejs: Obviously not everything can be launched through an MVP, some ideas are revolutionary, huge. You cannot fund it on your own. And then if you can get some big money and do this big idea, it's okay. But if you don't have these opportunities, I think just start small and test with the customers.

What was the cost of putting the MVP life?

It was really minimal, most of it is our time, we're not getting paid, obviously. We're also in the Microsoft startup program, which covers some engineering spend. There's a lot of things we got for free thanks to In5, so running the widget is not much. We spent couple couple of thousand AED + our time.

What are the main learning / networking resources for you here in Dubai?

I have a quick answer. ChatGPT.

But overall, for us, it's the Russian-speaking community in Dubai.
We also follow a Youtube channel. This kind of venture investors club. It's called Startup Kotiki - Startup Kittens. For example, there's was a pitching contest. It's really interesting, because if you hear other people pitching their ideas for 2 hours straight, you start noticing the mistakes and you can learn a lot from it.

The best learning from this was how to talk about competitors. If someone tells they don't have a competitor, they either didn't search hard enough or it's because nobody needs that product. Every company has a competition. If you have an online learning platform, your competitor isn't only Udemy, but also for example Netflix - because at the end of the day, people are deciding it they're going to watch a movie or learn something on your platform. And you have to think like that.

They also gave us advice to find startup founders that failed in your industry. And I think it is an amazing advice and we did it. We talked with as many startup founders with existing businesses and the ones that failed. It helped us to validate our idea because someone already did it. They got fundraising, they got partners. So we know it's possible. Investors are interested, furniture stores are interested. They have a little bit different model. But still, it helped us a lot to validate our idea. And we just approached them on LinkedIn or through Crunchbase, asking if we can share some knowledge. They all were open to talk.

Aren't you afraid someone will steal your idea or replicate the model if you're talking to your direct competitors?

Founders community for example like In5, it's a community of serial entrepreneurs. It's easy for them to start something new. So each time when you pitch in front of your fellow founders, your idea can't be "borrowed". But if you are afraid of this, you can't go forward.

So you need to know how to protect yourself, find your advantage. We have some knowledge about how the market works and we have collected a database of all houses in Dubai for example. This is something we have and others don't, so just to copy our ideas is pretty tough.

Any last thoughts you'd like to share?

I didn't think it was important when we started but I would like to mention that community is crucial. I thought you should have your team and just work with the team. But community is really important because there is exchange of ideas, exchange of views, where to go, what conference to visit, what's the best accelerators, sometimes founders can exchange investors. It is important to actually tell other founders about your idea, to pitch to other founders because they can tell you that you suck for example. These are very smart people, these are the people whom you want to have the feedback from because if you can't sell your idea to other startup founders, it's likely a bad idea.

Andrejs: I agree and I really recommend going through some accelerators, because this is filter to understand that you to do something good that another people can accept. Because if you can't sell this new idea to founders, to some accelerators, I think it will be very difficult to sell to investors and customers. So if you have this problem, you need to sit down, relax and understand what to do, and do it better.

Thank you for reading!
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Kristina🙋🏼‍♀️