Meet David Okuniev and Robert Muñoz, the Co-CEOs and Co-Founders of Typeform.
Born in Belgium and later educated in England, David Okuniev started his professional career as a musician. Expression through music soon turned to expression through product and brand design, which led to David founding the Barcelona-based design studio, Fat-Man-Collective.
While sharing a co-working space, David later met Robert Muñoz, and the two co-founded Typeform.
Today, David is joint CEO and sweats over everything product and design-related. Robert Muñoz, Co-CEO & Co-Founder Robert Muñoz co-founded Typeform with David Okuniev in Barcelona in 2012. He is the Co-CEO and heads the organizational and business side of the company. Previously, he founded Pulpolab, a Barcelona-based digital agency specialized in web production. Before that, he worked as interactive director at the advertising agency GREY.
I connected with David Okuniev and Robert Muñoz to talk about communication, startup life and data.
Tomas Laurinavicius: What’s your elevator pitch?
In business, we thrive when we care about each other. It all starts by getting to really know someone. At Typeform, we help companies get to know their customers and employees better by making the data collection experience more conversational.
Typeform is a tool that combines the human element of email and chat with the data-structuring capabilities of web forms. Now you can quickly and effortlessly collect information from your employees or customers in an engaging, conversational way.
Laurinavicius: How did your first pitch deck look like?
Looking back, it was pretty basic but had what it needed: a problem that we were trying to solve, a market analysis and opportunity, a strategy for capturing this market, and proof of our early concept. You can check it out here on Slideshare.
Laurinavicius: What is the essential problem you’re solving?
People don’t like filling in web forms, and that’s because the standard way of collecting data online is outdated. Methods for interacting online have evolved, but too many people are still writing in boxes and clicking little buttons. Going from face-to-face conversations to online forms is a big step. We facilitate this jump by helping people and companies interact with their customers or audiences at scale. Not only do you collect the data you need, but you also control the impression you leave—now the customer experiences your brand at every touchpoint.
Laurinavicius: How did you get initial traction?
We put up a webpage before launching our Beta version that said “We’re reinventing data collection.” It didn’t take a lot to convince people that data collection methods needed an overhaul. So people were eager to try it out, and we got around 6,000 sign-ups from that.
The early versions also had a “powered by Typeform” button in the footer of the app. People who filled out a typeform were curious about this new technology, clicked the button, and went on to sign up themselves. That was the beginning of our viral loop, which remains our main driver of growth today.
Laurinavicius: What is your unfair competitive advantage?
The first thing is our design DNA. We’ve always been a UI/UX-focused company. So when it comes to designing the product, we start with a “people-first, data-second” mentality. The second thing is that we’re based in Barcelona. It costs less to run a business here, which lets us scale faster than places like Silicon Valley, where we’ve also just opened an office. Barcelona also has a great quality of life in a desirable location in Europe, which has helped us attract varied talent.
Laurinavicius: What were you doing before getting into the business?
David Okuniev: I was running a small design agency called Fat Man Collective. I started off designing for agencies, then began doing UX/UI design for other startups. And before that, I was a musician. I finished school, started a band, made some albums, and gave lots of people a headache.
Robert Muñoz: I also had an interactive design agency, called PulpoLab, based in Barcelona. Before that, I was the interactive director at an ad agency. No crazy music career for me.
Laurinavicius: What is the most valuable lesson you learned?
First, invest in culture from the start. You have to create a place where people want to work, and a group of people who want to work together. Second, bring in experienced people early, especially when you’re scaling quickly. It’s important to have the right hiring processes in place, and to find people with specialities that compliment existing talent. Third, we relied a lot on intuition when we were getting started. We’re still not afraid of intuition, but we’ve come to rely a lot more on UX research and data-informed decision making to drive us forward.
Laurinavicius: What is the best decision you have ever made?
David Okuniev: For me, it was when I decided to leave my music career and move to Colombia. That’s when I made the jump to design. It opened me up to a whole new way of thinking, and gave me the mind change I needed to see that anything’s possible.
Robert Muñoz: When I was running PulpoLab, we had dedicated resources to explore new ideas, experiment with new ways of doing things, and create spinoffs. One of those side projects led to Typeform.
Laurinavicius: What is your biggest achievement so far?
David Okuniev: My highlight was getting Iggy Pop to do an overdub on a track I wrote for the video game, Driver. For the soundtrack, they invited Iggy to do an intro and some of the tracks. You can check it out here.
Robert Muñoz: My biggest achievement has to be bringing a twin boy and girl into this world while trying to scale Typeform. As if CEOs don’t lose enough sleep already. I actually looked like Iggy Pop in those first months.
