Aloa founder David Pawlan started the company because he wanted to “bring transparency, accountability, and humanity to the software development economy.” To do this, the company uses a three-part approach: the Aloa Partner Network, the Aloa Platform, and the Aloa Product Strategist.
For the the Partner Network, David Pawlan wants Aloa to “connect people to a pool of highly vetted vendors overseas.” In total, the company works with 10 partners, scattered across South America, Eastern Europe, and India, which they vet “from a pool of over 7000 firms overseas.”
Secondly, David Pawlan created the Aloa Platform, which is a “suite of software tools that streamlines and automates the boring and tedious tasks related to software development search, management, and payment.”
Finally, David Pawlan brings an Aloa Product Strategist onboard. The company introduces their clients to “an industry expert for every project” who will them “find the right software partner;” “manage the project from beginning to end;” and “facilitate the interaction between the client and the software development team.”
At Aloa, David Pawlan has created a company that offers a platform “for outsourcing software development for startups.” He believes that tech companies should help build a world where “anyone can innovate freely,” though currently he sees that software keeps it from happening.
David Pawlan founded Aloa because he also believes that “running a business hard,” but “software development shouldn’t be.”
Check out more interviews with tech industry founders here.
Each “failure” gets us one step closer to the right solution. David Pawlan, Aloa
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
David Pawlan: My name is David Pawlan, I am 24 years old and a Co-Founder of Aloa. Along with my four other Co-Founders, we actually started Aloa while in college at Vanderbilt University. As we were just having fun, building out apps and doing student tech consulting ourselves, we stumbled upon the pain point that so many entrepreneurs face: how to predictably and consistently build cost efficient software. We were in college, and had nothing else to do with our time (kind of joking, kind of serious!) so we decided to research it and see if we could figure out a solution. We fell in love with the problem of outsourcing software development overseas. At a high level, we believe in a world where anyone can innovate freely. At that time, we saw software development as a barrier to innovation, so that is what our focus became. If we can facilitate innovation, cool things will happen. Pivoting in 2018 to the model we have today, we are now three years old (all of us graduated) and have grown Aloa to a multi-million dollar business and have worked on almost 150 different projects.
Jerome Knyszewski: What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?
David Pawlan: Definitely! So it all really started with our head honcho, our Captain tried and true, Chris Raroque. As I just previously mentioned, while in college, we were building out apps and just messing around with tech ourselves. Over time, Chris slowly put together the team that we have today. With tons of different applications and ventures pursued, different teams came and went, and over time, one person would stay here and there. Fast forward to 2018, the team was settled on five us, with myself as the last member to join this dream team.
The Aha Moment really came when we were looking to build out our own tech team ourselves. We were in need of extra developer resources and had to figure out how to go about expanding the team. As students, we didn’t have a ton of money, so we simply couldn’t afford to hire any software developers in the US. We looked to students too, but it just wasn’t a reliable route as students, of course, had to often prioritize school over side work. We decided to look overseas, and everyone we talked to warned us against it. A disturbingly majority of people we spoke with only discussed the horror stories and instability of software development outsourcing. Now, think about it; why have we figured out how to predictably and consistently work with overseas talent in every single industry, except for software development. In an age of digitization, why is the most digital industry the one we struggle with the most? With that realization, we were in love. We fell head over heels for the overarching problem of outsourcing software development. We knew that there had to be a better way than how it is currently being done, so we went back to the drawing board and began to research, focusing on the existing pain-points, focusing on how we could take our first step at creating a world where anyone can innovate freely.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
David Pawlan: Oh, of course. Before I get into a story, it is important to recognize that the only thing that has kept us going, through thick and thin, is passion. We’re passionate for what we’re doing, we believe in our mission and believe in the value of our service. Since we are in love with the problem, any hurdles or bumps aren’t deterrences, but learning opportunities as to what doesn’t work. Each “failure” gets us one step closer to the right solution.
The moment that stands out most to me had to have been New Years of 2019/2020. All of us were on our separate family vacations, and in the matter of hours, we had three client fires hit us at once. For me personally, the fires hit the moment I got to the resort with my family. As my family got situated and hit the beach, I went straight to some seating areas, pulled out my computer, and got to work. We were all hands on deck as if all three client fires burst into flames, it very easily could have been the end of Aloa.
As a team, we all worked tirelessly through the days. Over the span of the next 3–4 days, we worked together to keep our spirits high and handle each situation in a practical and organized manner. As each of the instances are related to clients, I can’t really go into much detail of the situations, but my oh my was it stressful. We ended up getting through it, and looking back, it was actually one of the most fundamental turning points of our company, teaching us incredible lessons that have led to some of our most important development processes. Even though the experience was an emotional rollercoaster, it showed me that I am on the right path, as my passion was able to outshine my fear.
Fail fast, fail frequent. If you don’t take a leap of faith, you’ll never learn if you can fly.
Jerome Knyszewski: So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
David Pawlan: Things are going really well today, which really does make me smile each time I say it. It is nice to look back and see how so much hard work and determination has led us to where we are, even though we are a team of 24–26 year olds.
Through our learnings, our passion, our grit, and resilience, we have continued to iterate our process to further our mission. Our quality of service gets better and better with each client experience, and the desire to continuous learn will always guide us forward.
Today, in this moment, we have around 20 active clients and are expanding our business offerings, as we look to make a splash in the B2B invoicing space. We felt pain-points ourselves (similar to our founding story of Aloa), so we decided to try and innovate to build a payment invoicing solution that solved our pain-points. We ended up building a platform that decreased our collection times by over 80% and saved us over $21,000 in processing fees. AloaPay (aloapay.com) is now live and building a waitlist of users.
Our ability to grind and always push forward has put us in a position to keep our eyes open and always look for opportunities. Fail fast, fail frequent. If you don’t take a leap of faith, you’ll never learn if you can fly.
Jerome Knyszewski: You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
David Pawlan: The three main traits that have helped me succeed are pretty clear in my mind: passion, authenticity, desire to learn.
Passion. I spend my Sunday’s getting excited for Monday. Most people don’t work on Sunday, so that means I can’t be closing deals and helping companies grow. Monday is such an exciting day of the week because it is the start to the energy of opportunity. If you’re dreading work the next day, you aren’t passionate about what you’re doing, and your path to success will be much, much, harder.
Authenticity. If you ask anyone who has had a conversation with me surrounding anything I’m doing, they’ll all tell you how authentic and genuine I am. I want to be doing what I’m doing, and it bleeds through to my conversations! I am genuinely interested in my work, and love speaking with people to not only learn about their work, but see how I can learn from them. I remember when I first moved to Chicago after college (pre COVID), my friends would go to happy hours after work; I would go to networking events. Of course, sometimes I would have a fear of missing out and be envious of my friends. By and large though, I didn’t care what they were doing, because I wanted to be doing what I was doing. I was excited, engaged, and hungry to learn.
Desire to learn. If you aren’t eager to learn, you aren’t growing. One of my greatest strengths is my recognition of my gaps. I know that I have a ton to learn. One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” You can always learn something from someone, always strengthen your own skill set. I see each opportunity I speak with someone as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to grow. I’m excited to learn, I live for it. So no matter what I’m doing, no matter what industry I get into, I’m going to have some aspect of excitement because it just means that I have a whole new roadmap of learning ahead of me.
One of my greatest strengths is my recognition of my gaps. I know that I have a ton to learn. David Pawlan
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Began Leading My Company”? Please share a story or an example for each.
David Pawlan: Learn to walk, before you run.
“All overnight success takes about 10 years” — Bezos
Too often people’s perspective on entrepreneurship is skewed by availability heuristics. We only hear of ‘overnight successes’ in the news and via media, but in reality, this is of course not common, and not what entrepreneurship needs to be! You don’t have to follow the status quo and raise money with the intent to sell. That is of course a profitable and glorified route, but it isn’t the ‘right’ way to do it, as that is the beauty of entrepreneurship, there is no one way. For us, it is about diligence, patience, and building something sustainable that maintains our integrity. We started Aloa by focusing on early stage startups, first building an understanding of what we were doing before growing as a business. We focus on our customer experience, and in doing so, we’ve built a business that people love. By staying small and focused, we have been able to truly iterate on our process and grow with a smart mentality that maintains the integrity of our business, rather than getting out ahead of ourselves.
Uncertainty is opportunity
While you can extrapolate this phrase to reflect entrepreneurs starting business by filling industry gaps, I intend to point this phrase more towards internal operations. I just turned 24, so going into this, I knew that I had much to learn. One of the most helpful and important pieces of advice given to me was that in anything you try to do, someone has probably made ‘beginner’ mistakes before you. If you can learn what others have done, you can avoid hours and hours of failed effort. Where you are uncertain, you have opportunity. If you don’t know how to do something, reach out and network. Talk to people who have done it before you. Don’t make mistakes that you don’t have to. If there isn’t a concrete answer/direction in your mind, backed up by logic (not just gut), then you have an opportunity to learn/grow. Anytime I am getting into something new, I always make sure I spend my first few weeks just researching. I cold outreach and jump on calls with experienced professionals, asking questions and learning their stories. When I was tasked with taking charge of Aloa’s marketing initiatives, I didn’t actually start doing anything until I had talked with over 20 different marketing professionals, learning their opinions, perspectives, strengths, advice, etc. You can find the answers you’re looking for before you even know the question to ask, you just have to be hungry to learn.
Re-orient the definition of failure
People ask me if I’m afraid to fail. I say no, because I know that I will fail. Failure is synonymous with entrepreneurship. Whether you fail at something small, like an outbound lead generation tactic, or large, such as your business itself, it’s all part of the process. Failures give us opportunities to learn and grow, to iterate and be better. If you can’t accept failure as a blessing, as a learning opportunity, then failure will drag you down rather than push you forward.
Don’t chase the money, chase the dream
This piggybacks off of point 3 — if you are only focused on money, then any failure will be really painful. If you are focused on the dream, then failure is only helpful. If you build the company, money will come. It is really hard to not focus on the dollars, and especially once you start making money, it is hard to not focus on making more rather than maintaining the integrity of every minute detail. This came back to bite us at one point (I actually briefly talked about it earlier as a time when I questioned what I was doing with trying to start a business), so we took a deep breath, and re-oriented on our dream. Every month, we now do a re-orientation session to keep our focus on our dream of creating a world where anyone can innovate freely. If we focus on the dream, financial success will follow.
Don’t expect to go to happy hour with friends
Your company is your baby. Everyone on the surface knows that it takes all of your time to start a company, but people don’t really embody what that means. Your friends will be going to happy hour or watching football on Sunday. As much as it may pain you, these are sacrifices you have to make to invest in yourself. Come to terms before you dive in, that this is the commitment you’re making.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
David Pawlan: For sure — you can keep up with Aloa and our efforts through our LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blog. You can also follow/connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m not really too active these days, but I am always eager to engage with those who want to have a conversation.
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
David Pawlan: Absolutely, thank you for taking the time to hear my story!
