“The main reason was to find a way for effective communication between the client and the provider and providers’ internal team” says Povilas Vytautas Dudonis, the CEO and Co-Founder of Serfy. This week Startup Lithuania introduces a startup that runs a task management system and helps to optimize communication inside a company. Find out the main challenges that Serfy has accomplished before and after launching the management solution.

So what is Serfy? How does it work? 

Serfy is a task management system for effective business relationships. We help companies to interact with each other in an issue management context and optimize the lifecycle of it. 

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

Serfy power is in its companies network. On average one client has 7 different service providers: cleaning, building administrator, HVAC, office supply, etc. 

It is tedious to communicate with each service provider in a different environment. Mostly they have their software and ask clients to communicate with them via their portal. 

We have figured this out! Companies that use Serfy can report to any provider. If the provider uses Serfy, he will get all the benefits of being in the network. If he doesn’t – he will receive the tasks reported via email. 

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product? 

The main reason was to find a way for effective communication between the client and the provider and providers’ internal team. 

Serfy is built by hundreds of companies. Every company that joins the network shares its knowledge and preferences. All we have to do is to listen and adapt to their needs. 

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

The first official release was in 2014. 

The most significant challenge was to commercialize the product and find a competitive advantage in the niche market. We tried to overcome it by listening to our customer wants and needs we kept updating the software to create additional value. Still it wasn’t enough to successfully commercialize the product. Therefore we kept educating the market by using a customer-centric approach. Also, we analyzed how Serfy helps to optimize the workload and increase customer satisfaction. Slowly our customer base began to rise.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

We target retail, gas chains, shopping malls, real estate management companies, HVAC, building administrators, hotels globally. 

Serfy has Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, German, English, Russian customers. 

What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

The main challenge is to keep the high development speed while sustaining the quality of the product. Finding the balance between the needs and wants of customers is crucial as well. 

One powerful way of keeping the scale is to talk to existing and potential customers. Also, it’s very estimable to have and work for a vision of the product.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

We are funded by angel investors. At the moment, we are not looking for extra funding. 

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Serfy was founded by me (Povilas V. Dudonis) and Algirdas Stasiūnaitis.

Povilas Vytautas Dudonis, the CEO of Serfy. “With 9 years of experience within digital marketing and IT, Povilas is a street-smart entrepreneur with an analytical, inquisitive mind. He enjoys diving deeply into the details to discover problems and new, innovative solutions. In his spare time, he loves to code, ski, kiteboard, drive motorcycles, and read.”

Algirdas Stasiūnaitis, the CEO and Account Executive. “Algirdas has been in sales and entrepreneurship for 10 years. When it comes to helping companies modernise through technology, he’s a true hustler. He constantly challenges the status quo, and believes things happen naturally, but only at the right place and the right time.”

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

For the past three years, we have been growing by 200%. 

We have already helped to solve more than 80 000 issues. 

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

We have validated the product and we know it brings great value. At the moment, we are targeting the Polish market and looking for new opportunities there.

Thank you for the interview!

Check more interesting interviews with Lithuanian startups here.