About this podcast episode

Bill Raymond chats with Vazgen Tadevosyan and Edik Baghdasaryan about their bold move from running a consulting firm to developing their own gaming product. This episode is a masterclass in how to navigate significant business shifts without losing focus.

Vazgen and Edik dive deep into their journey, sharing the lessons learned from balancing consulting services with product development. From overcoming technical challenges to keeping their team motivated, they provide actionable insights for anyone considering a similar pivot or looking to succeed in a highly competitive industry.

✅ Discover how Edik and Vazgen created a consulting company to help clients scale

✅ Learn how to maintain client trust while pivoting your business

✅ How to ensure flexible and dynamic teams during a time of transition

🎉 Learn how to fund your own gaming-focused company using consulting services business

Transcript

(transcripts are auto-generated, so please excuse the brevity)

Edik, Vazgen, and Bill Final 2

[00:00:00]

Introductions

Bill Raymond: Hi, and welcome to the Agile in Action podcast. I am your host, Bill Raymond. And today I’m joined by Vazgen Tadevosyan and Edik Baghdasaryan.

You are both running a consulting firm and decided to change directions from consulting to turning into a product company. This is quite a pivot, which is why we’ve titled this podcast Pivoting with Purpose.

But before we get started, could you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about Milies? Why don’t we go ahead and start with you, Vazgen?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Personally, I’m a technical person. I have 11-12 years development, actually. Well, I met Edik, I think nine, eight years ago. We have done a lot of projects together and we have decided to create our first company. We have created Milies I think four years ago, and it was quite a good journey for us.

We have started to do outsourcing in the starting, yeah [00:01:00] but we understand what, that we can build the big businesses from perspective of technical and we understand that it is something that we can already start to think to create our own projects our own startups. I think we’ll share more details about the startups and everything in the next chapters.

Bill Raymond: Sure. Yeah, I’m looking forward to getting into that. Edik, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit?

Edik Baghdasaryan: Sure. I’m also coming from a technical background, And as a kid, let’s say I also always had a dream of creating a big company, so we saw all of these success stories on the news, on the LinkedIn, and everywhere. But when it came to the reality, me and Vazgen, we realized that it looks a little bit different then what is shown on the media.

So yeah, and I’m looking forward to share our takeaways, our learnings, our mistakes.

Bill Raymond: Yeah, I’m looking forward to this.

Pivoting to include products

Bill Raymond: Before we talk about how you accomplished that, can [00:02:00] you share a little bit about your journey on where this company started and what you were focused on?

Edik Baghdasaryan: We were trying to build our first product attempts to build the startup, we were very unexperienced.

We didn’t really know much of like how this really the game of the let’s say product development of the investor relationships of the marketing of the sales and development how everything let’s say, connects together and what really makes a good product and good company. So we went through a lot of challenges we tried to fundraise our first product, which was a little bit out of our domain. We understood that it’s not going to be a success and we decided to let’s say bootstrap our own products.

Okay for the future and that’s how we began doing consultancy, so we are very good at software development. So that’s how we got good connections with some big enterprises, our main market [00:03:00] targets the German and USA markets. So we got big enterprise partners from there.

This is how we were able to generate some, revenue and some profits, which we can later use to Bootstrap our own products to have some budget for them, because it’s always costly, so it takes a lot of money and effort and time to build a product, and it’s never guaranteed that you will succeed with that, so most probably it’s going to be just a waste of money, but I guess if you follow your dream, it might become true one day, so that’s what our path looks like.

Consulting Services and Challenges

Bill Raymond Audio: Vazgen what are some of the things that you are doing with customers from the consulting perspective?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Mainly we are providing a scaling services. We are solving the issues there and we are preparing you to get the first customers and Increase your customer base. This is the first case for the small companies, but there was an issue with a big company that they have done quite [00:04:00] good marketing campaigns for Black Friday, but seems to be that application from a scaling perspective was not ready. And it took six months to build a lot of new stuff, refactor a lot of new stuff for this e-commerce application to be able to overcome that Black Friday.

And they made, I think, $46 million in a day and we had just a minute or two minutes down for 24 hours. The cases is different for big companies and for small companies. Yeah, but this is the main thing that we are doing for them.

Bill Raymond: So what you’re doing is you’re either helping to build custom software or helping the customer expand their solutions so that they can scale with customer needs.

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Yes, basically, yes.

Bill Raymond: It’s so interesting to me because, we think that we’ve all come this far, you know, with the instant, just press a button and suddenly your product is on the way with [00:05:00] Amazon, or, the website’s always going to load, and if there’s a lot of people going to a site, then it just suddenly bursts and gets bigger. And then when there aren’t a lot of people on the site, it gets a little bit smaller. But the fact is that that’s actually a pretty big engineering problem, and not everyone has been able to solve for that.

What I think I’m hearing from you is that they still have those scaling problems because it’s not something that’s, if you will, baked into their entire infrastructure.

Vazgen Tadevosyan: And there is actually the problem quite big for new startup that they’re building a product. They have built something with low code, no code tools, but it’s not gonna work.

The second part about the enterprise is there is huge companies that they build very heavy applications and legacy ones, to be honest, and now it should take very big effort to transfer this old stuff to the new services, new [00:06:00] structure, and everything.

Edik Baghdasaryan: When it comes to the no code and low code tools to build products fast. So it really helps when you are building a MVP to present something to the potential investors, but when your product starts growing, so the problem is that having some custom features outside of the template that you are offered by the no code tools is becoming pretty challenging.

There are many cases that custom software is required and by scaling so we usually do optimizations, some database scaling we can do some security audits, so there are many things that many challenges that come along the way once your product starts to grow.

Bill Raymond: Yeah, and I can understand that this is one of those things that I think is also very interesting is almost every major company nowadays offers a no code, low code solution. And it reminds me back in my old days when I first started doing software programming, I would use Microsoft [00:07:00] Access. It had a database In the back end, it had a forms builder, it had reports. It was great. I could fire up an app really quickly. Then when I want to share it with more than five people, I can’t. And now we’re just talking about new low code solutions that maybe can serve a few hundred people, but then can’t scale to thousands or tens of thousands. And I can completely understand where you’re coming from there.

So Edik, what is the product and what specific market does it fit in?

Exploring the gaming product

Edik Baghdasaryan: We are working on a gaming product. So we offer a marketplace on the gaming website for Counter-Strike players.

Bill Raymond: Two very different markets here!

Edik Baghdasaryan: Yeah, I’m a gamer myself, so I used to play a lot of games, so that’s why I love this industry.

Bill Raymond: For our audience that may not know what those types of items are in the marketplace, could you explain it a little bit more?

Edik Baghdasaryan: Yeah, definitely I can explain it. Counter-Strike It’s a shooter game where you go and you can shoot [00:08:00] the other players. I used to play it a lot in my teenager years and what we do is inside the game, you can buy or get some items, some skins for your weapon.

And these skins actually, they cost a lot. So there are skins that may cost like 10 grand, 20 grand. For example, recently the record, the highest sales was for $1.5 million dollars for just a in game item skin. In our website they can come they can buy and sell their skins. They can make some profit and they can later play some games using their profits.

Bill Raymond: $1.5 million I’m in! I’m sold!

Edik Baghdasaryan: Yeah, so it’s a pretty huge market and it’s very interesting.

Bill Raymond: Okay. So that’s good. Hearing two very different types of roles.

Balancing consulting and product development

Bill Raymond: Are you sharing staff right now? Are you doing this whole shift over to the gaming market, or are you keeping both of these businesses running as part of the same company?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: To be honest the resources [00:09:00] is shared. Maybe there is some kind of resources that we are sharing, but now to separate people for a product development and also for the startup is quite important because building a product I mean that you are entered to the long term game, yes. Consultancy should be one year, two years, yes. But if business succeed, that you are doing from perspective of startup, you are there for maybe even for all your life. And the domain knowledge, training of people on specific cases, on specific domains, on specific challenges that they should have, it is a critical one.

There is a huge domain knowledge needs to be put in there. You have to spend a lot of time to play to understand the people who is playing.

Edik Baghdasaryan: We learned also another big lesson here. So previously we were trying to do everything on the product development. It means be [00:10:00] doing development, be doing the marketing, be doing the sales, the financing, like everything.

But it’s really super hard to do that all and to build a great product you need a great team where everyone specializes in their domain. So for this last product that we are building right now, that we are working actively on it, so we teamed up with a great let’s say another two founders.

So this is a joint project and they’re covering the marketing and the promotional part of the business and we are focused on the development part of business. So everyone does whatever they do the best, and by the combination of these two teams, we are able to get a good product. We are able to promote it well and get customers and get some revenue.

So this is, I think, a very critical lesson that many first time founders, they missed that.

I’m sure that there’s people that weren’t familiar with, shifting into some completely [00:11:00] new gaming space. And then you probably had some people that were excited about it because maybe they really enjoy that kind of a space.

What are some of the changes as leaders that you needed to make in order to create a space for your product teams to succeed?

Team dynamics and flexibility

Edik Baghdasaryan: The first thing is team motivation, right?

So when they know that they are building their own product, so it’s another kind of a motivation that everyone gets. They are very worried about the product. They are very worried about everything that they do because it’s like their own product. So of course, like everyone is super responsible when working on our partner’s products as well.

So we take it super seriously as well. That’s no joke. But when you work on your own products, so you can see like everyone is motivated and happy and they want to go extra mile. So besides that we got to change a little bit our teams, let’s say we had to make them more flexible, right? Because with our [00:12:00] flexible dynamic business model that our company has, you have two different stories.

It seems like two different companies, but that’s all is done under one roof in a single room, let’s say. So we had to train our teams to be super flexible. Okay, so they can quickly switch, let’s say, between the products, between the ideas, between the projects. Okay, so this team flexibility is actually what allows us to, be like above the competition, be very fast, be very effective.

So we do not lose a lot of time on the switching. Okay. And also besides that, so we had to train like a specialized product development teams. Our approach is a little bit different than the other consultancy field. So what we try to build is a domain specific product development teams.

For example, it can be e-commerce that we are specializing in, or a product management solutions, or a blockchain product. We had to do a lot of trainings to achieve that, not only for [00:13:00] the developers, but also for the product managers, and our UI designers, so that without understanding the domain, they cannot really give a good value and a good quality.

So that’s our approach to the, for this question.

Bill Raymond: We talk a lot about Agile and Agility in this space. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing right there. You just defined it, the ability to really understand complex environments and have people that are motivated and excited to work on these different types of products, and also have the flexibility to try new things.

Vazgen, I guess I would love to understand from your perspective, how does this shift impact you and what are some of the things that you did to help mitigate risks that you might encounter with your consultant customers?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Yeah, actually there was an issue once we announced about our product and I have changed some status in LinkedIn. I got several different messages what’s going on there? I said guys [00:14:00] this is the title. I’m keeping doing the things that I’m keeping. I’m just a co founder of the firm that my co founder is taking over.

There are no any risk and no, we’re working together for a while and it wasn’t an issue. We overcome there.

Lessons learned and advice for founders

Vazgen Tadevosyan: What I would say, Bill, what I have learned from this journey, basically, several bullet points that we can mention there.

The first thing that you have to think is to build a team. In the starting, it was just about the people the people coming, going, and it’s normal. But then you understand that the real asset that you are getting, it is about the team that can solve a problem. From this point we’re coming to the problem, how to make team better and better. This is the journey that you have to put a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of everything to build the team, to bring the [00:15:00] people, to teach them, to also pass the way because you can’t train anybody in several days or several months. You have to pass all this journey together to understand a lot of things.

This is the second one. You have to keep training your team every day, daily basis. What I love from our team, I have seen a lot of good teams to be honest, but what’s the difference between us that we are super dynamic and it helps us to operate in several different domains and cover several different things.

It’s also very important to appreciate the work that your people does because, as I said, company is not the name of the company, and it’s not the location of the company, or I don’t know, a LinkedIn page.

The last part that we are super transparent with the people our six month meetings that we are sharing everything details what [00:16:00] going on there, which kind of achievement we have, what we are thinking, where to invest and what to do. We said to the outsourcing team, let’s say the consultancy team, very direct, guys, that we are doing consultancy to put money on a startup. It is very straightforward. It is not a science we don’t want to buy. I don’t know the helicopters and this kind of cars or anything else. We are just operating here and putting this money to our dream basically.

And people came there, I think. They’re sharing the dream with us.

Bill Raymond: That’s wonderful. Thank you. I really appreciate hearing a positive transformation story [laughing]. We’ve, We’ve heard so many bad ones, you know, and it’s nice not to be on the big case study list of the people that really decided to pivot but didn’t really think through what that was going to look like.

Do you have any last minute thoughts for [00:17:00] anyone listening to this podcast? Because, it’s very interesting to me. It doesn’t really matter if you’re going from a consultancy to a gaming product company to whatever. AI is here now, for example, and everyone’s trying to pivot to use AI. I’m here in San Francisco, and every time I go to some sort of a meetup or a user group, there’s a company saying we just trashed that other product idea, and now we’re doing this AI idea.

And there are a lot of people that don’t necessarily know one or the other, right? There, there’s still all kinds of getting used to this, even though machine learning and AI has been around for a very long time, there’s this new modality of using it. And so a lot of people are trying to make this shift and it’s not really working necessarily the way that they were hoping it would.

So for those people that are realizing now, all of a sudden there’s this tectonic shift that they’re making, like you are doing right now. What are some tips that you can give to our [00:18:00] listeners that would help them? Start with you, Edik.

Edik Baghdasaryan: So that’s absolutely true, Bill, that everyone now is pivoting to the AI. So the same thing happened like a few years ago when everyone started pivoting to the Web3 and the blockchain. But, there is this saying that says when everyone tries to dig a gold, sell them a shovel. So that’s what essentially Nvidia did.

Now they 10x their company value and like they become top one in the world without essentially doing AI development. They just sell the GPUs and everyone uses that. So yeah, the last minute tips I would give for the founders and everyone listening, like the journey, it sounds really interesting.

It is really interesting, but it’s truly very hard, and it takes a lot of dedication, motivation, okay, and you know why you are doing that, and because you’re sacrificing a lot of things, you sacrifice a lot of free time, your free time with family, your friends, [00:19:00] okay, your rest, your weekends, your nights and evenings, so everything, and a lot of money as well. So there should be a proper motivation, and I think no one is guaranteed to succeed, but After all, if you put hard work and if you put also smart work so you can increase your chances of success, okay?

And once you make this success so you really feel that it was worth it. So that’s what I would say.

Bill Raymond: That’s great. Thank you. And Vazgen, how about for you in terms of your transformation ideas and insights for anyone listening here?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Yeah, I would say that learn a lot, guys. Because it’s the main thing that you have to do. There is a lot of things that will be automatically done. Maybe some luck, maybe I don’t know, something will happen. But lack of knowledge nobody can actually fill. Learn a lot about the domains, about the things that you are doing, and train your people the way that you have operated and make [00:20:00] them to understand why they are doing these things. What’s the reason of doing so? It should be, I don’t know, money. Say you will get a lot of money, but they have to understand why they are doing so. And if you find the people that you can share a dream, it is, I think, dream work. It is not work.

It is the place that you are operating. You are going and achieving your goals. Bill Raymond: Thank you for that. I

Final thoughts and contact information

Bill Raymond: really appreciate the time that you’ve both spent on the podcast today. I am excited to see how your journey continues. Before we wrap up, Vazgen and Edik, how can people reach you?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: They can reach by LinkedIn. We’ll share the LinkedIn of our company, our personal LinkedIns that they can reach us.

Bill Raymond: Great, and if someone wants to reach out and talk to you about either of these topics, whether it’s, your consulting firm or the transformation that you’ve made, is this something you’re open to chatting with people about?

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Yeah, sure, [00:21:00] we can even in our company we have a free consultancy if you have any problems that we can quickly in 10 minute call or 20 minute call help you. We are eager to do so and we are open to help everybody, I think.

Bill Raymond: That’s wonderful. Thank you both so much for your time today. I really appreciate it!

Vazgen Tadevosyan: Thank you too, Bill!

Edik Baghdasaryan: Thank you too, Bill!

Speaker: Thank you for listening to the Agile in Action Podcast with Bill Raymond. Subscribe now to stay current on the latest trends in team, organization, and agile techniques. Please take a moment to rate and comment to help us grow our community. This podcast is produced in affiliation with Cambermast LLC, and our executive producer is Reama Dagasan.

If there is a topic you would like Bill to cover, contact him directly at Bill.Raymond@agileinaction.com.