Upwork Intro - Rafael, Founder & CEO, Zendog Labs

Hey there, welcome and thank you for checking out this intro video! You are probably here because you have to solve an important and urgent business problem and are looking for help. I have good news for you. You came to the right place. I can help you with that.

Professional experience

Now, you're probably wondering why I am qualified to help you, so I'm here to tell you more about myself and how I work so that you know what makes working with me special. Let's get started.

The first point is that I've been a Principal at Roivant Health for the last 4 years. You can think of Roivant Health as an operational VC in New York that has done some incredible things. We raised >3 billion from top VCs like Softbank Vision Fund and Founders Fund and have most recently gone public on the NASDAQ through a SPAC. What Roivant does is launch startups and then drop its employees into these startups. That has given me broad exposure and experience in all kinds of areas, starting at the more strategic level with things like developing a go-to-market strategy or even the vision and thinking about what the company should be doing based on what the competition is looking like and what the market is looking like. I also executed on the product that has been built through commercial, i.e., sales, and ultimately demand generation through marketing – certainly two important areas of what I've been focusing on in the last couple of years. “Back-end” has also been an important area of focus for me. That involves things like finance, from tracking your expenses and modeling out what your cash burn is going to look like in the next couple of months or years, to preparing what you need for working with VCs, like building discounted cash flow models or revenue projections, thinking about what your unit economics are. And then certainly also things like recruiting, project management. If we were to summarize: the entire spectrum of what you need to do on the business side of building a company.

Before Roivant, I started two companies myself. That means I know what you feel like right now and the kind of pressure that you're under. Let me tell you a little bit more about Eatearnity and Maison Baum, the two companies that I founded. Eatearnity has been an end-to-end experience in company creation and scaling. I identified the problem, defined the vision and mission, and strategy for solving that problem, and then went on to hire a team, both the co-founders and freelancers. So, I know how tricky it can be to find good freelancers on Upwork. I was also involved with designing, developing, and then releasing the product on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store – which are the two major app stores in the world right now. We then started to scale the business by acquiring users. We got to about 10,000 users, mostly through paid social on Instagram and Facebook – which were wonderful channels before iOS 14. Eatearnity was a platform model which essentially connects B2C and B2B. We started to sell initial deals to our target market.

Before starting these two companies, I've spent time in banking and in consulting and then also in the special forces in the Swiss Military. That's a little bit more about myself in terms of professional experience.

Academic experience

In terms of education, I have an MBA from the LSE and Duke in London and North Carolina, respectively. I also hold a bachelor’s from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, one of the top business schools in Europe, and Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Why I am a growth consultant

You're probably interested in why I'm here and why I'm doing this. There are two reasons why I'm on Upwork: the first one is that I love building startups and helping anyone that is trying to do that with the challenges that they're experiencing. I know how hard it is to build something and there are not a lot of things out there that will support you in doing it. That's my mission here. And then the other point is once you've caught the entrepreneurial bug it won't let you go, so I'm here to make cash and extend my runway for building the next thing.

How we will work together

Let me tell you more about how we would be working together if we were to partner here. What will always happen if you work with me is that, before we even have an introduction discussion, I will start researching your company and the problem that you have, develop questions, and an initial framework for how I would solve the problem that you are experiencing. At that stage, we will jump on a call, discuss questions, and get to know each other. Once we had that call, I will continue to think about the problem and write a proposal that outlines which steps I will take to solve your problem. I think it's important that, in the steps and the framework that I built for solving your problem, I don't suggest unnecessary things. I will only suggest what I think are the most relevant tasks that you have to accomplish and go through to solve your problem. I will tell you how long it will take and what it will cost, whether it's hours or a total amount if we work on a project basis, so that you have transparency. If you like the proposal and we start working together, we will likely have a kickoff meeting to clarify a few things in terms of questions and approach and then I will start working and deliver outputs pretty much immediately and share those with you once they are at a certain degree of maturity and as we are approaching critical milestones in the decision making between directions A and B that my research can take and the work that we do together. We will have additional interim check-ins to discuss and make sure we are all aligned on what we are supposed to expect next and then ultimately there will be a final presentation, a handover of the work and then I hope we stay good business partners. You can expect far above the average type of output and work that you find on Upwork. I've been on your side, I know what it typically looks like, and rest assured this is not the quality that I work at.

What makes working with me unique

I think that's a good segue into thinking about what makes me unique and why you should partner with me. I think the first point we have kind of already touched, that is I have broad experience in terms of company building, which gives me a broad skill set, all the way from strategy through to execution – all the business things that you work on. What's also important when you work with me is that I have a process for solving difficult problems. It's important to have a process like that because if you don't have one you do one-off-wonders – which is much more challenging than having a repeatable approach. Then, I guess through my experience in the military, I've developed insane attention to detail and am very reliable. You can rest assured that I will deliver work on time, on quality. What's also important is that I don't do a ton of projects at the same time. I focus on one if it's large enough for me to be busy and you'll get my undivided attention. That leads to a higher quality of work. Even if we ultimately stop working together, once our partnership is completed, I will be available for quick check-ins, to coach you, and do sparring sessions whenever you have critical business questions that you're thinking about. I'm here to build long-term relationships and, while I do want to earn cash, it's much more important to help you and your company thrive as much as I can.

Call-to-action: Get in touch now!

That brings me to my call-to-action: If you like what you hear and what I said in the last, my god we're already at almost nine minutes, you can see that I like to talk a little bit too much, reach out to me, get in touch, we set up an introduction call.

Feel free to shoot me a note about what you think about this video. It's the first video that I'm publishing on Upwork, so I'm pretty excited!