Julius Černiauskas

During the meeting with the client, you start showing them your SAAS, but none of the functionality works. How do you behave? 😨 😱 😁 I wish I had seen a discussion on this as this is precisely what happened to me, and the way I decided to behave during the meeting did not bring the best result. How I behaved: - I got very lost 😑 - I started to get distracted and tried to do the same thing several times, hoping that it would work soon 🤦‍♂️ - My speech got confused 😕 - The voice began to crackle and tremble 🤐 - The neck and face were covered in red marks 😡 I tried to tell a joke to improve the situation, yet there was no response to the joke, and after that, I barely remember what happened since I wanted to disappear from this planet. 💩 I took the whole situation too personally and felt like I had done something terrible. What could I have done better: - I could have shown him the presentation I had on that tool I showed the demo  (in my case, I had a presentation with GIFs of each functionality, so that could have saved me) 💡 ✅ - I could have been transparent with the client and told him why it was not working. 💡 ✅ (in my case, it was a demo account, and our dev team was releasing significant updates. That's why it didn't work) - I shouldn't have taken it personally. It was not my fault. I should keep putting it humorously and not get down after the first joke didn't work. 💡 ✅ - I should have asked the client if he was up for rescheduling the demo or if he was okay with me explaining how the tool works. 💡 ✅ (In my case, the stress got me; I didn't even consider this option) -  If the client has agreed to continue, then visually describe to him what functionality we have and how it works. 💡 ✅ You live and learn 😁 What would you suggest in this particular case, or how did you escape a similar situation? 😛 #SAAS #SAASFail #ClientMeetingBlunders #LearningFromMistakes #SalesTips #SaaSDemo #DemoDisaster #SalesFail

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Here is the question to B2B SaaS in the first place, however it might be for any B2B business, I guess. We at UXPressia WANT to talk to our customers to know their problems, challenges and other stuff we can help them with. It takes us from 1 to 7 emails to get them on the call. And they are not back and forth emails. They are mainly unanswered emails. We are happy when it is 1-2 emails, but when it goes to 3-4 or even 6-7 it is really frustrating. Some of them just don't reply at all (that might be another question). How are you dealing with that? How do you keep this number low? 

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⭐ Here’s a recap of some key marketing updates from the past week ⭐ 🇺🇦 Supporting Ukrainian Media IAB Ukraine has launched a recommended list of Ukrainian YouTube channels. This initiative is designed to boost Ukrainian content visibility. Advertisers are encouraged to join the movement, helping to strengthen Ukraine’s media landscape and support local creators. 👁️‍🗨️ Meta’s AI-Powered Background Generation for Ads Meta is testing an AI feature that automatically generates ad backgrounds, creating more contextually relevant visuals for products. This tool pulls from existing product catalogs, making it easier for brands to create engaging, on-brand ads with just a few clicks. ▶️ TikTok’s Active Users in Europe A recent report reveals TikTok’s monthly active users across Europe, illustrating the platform’s strong reach throughout the continent. This data offers valuable insights for brands looking to expand their social media strategies in various European markets. 🔥 Australian Firefighters’ Charity Calendar 2025 On a lighter note, Australian firefighters have released their 2025 charity calendar, featuring cute pets alongside the firefighters. This beloved tradition raises funds for charity while delighting fans with endearing and heartwarming images. 🌐 Google Shopping Gets an AI Upgrade Google has announced a major update to Google Shopping, integrating AI to accelerate searches, provide personalized recommendations, and add new tools for filtering products by price. This revamp aims to improve user experience by helping shoppers find relevant products and deals faster. 💡 Meta’s Collaboration with Blumhouse Productions Meta has partnered with Blumhouse Productions to test its new AI video model, Movie Gen. This model creates realistic videos, generates audio, edits videos by adding objects or changing backgrounds, and can produce high-definition clips up to 16 seconds long. This partnership highlights the growing role of AI in entertainment. Stay tuned for more updates! #MarketingNews #IABUkraine #MetaAI #TikTok #MarketingTrends #GoogleShopping #MetaUpdates #MovieGen #DigitalTrends #ContentCreation

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Owning and running an IT company for more than 16 years makes me watch closely how the job-requirements are changing and one thing becomes really obvious to me. In the future the job of the Developer is going to be more about "thinking about how to solve a business requirement" and less about "coding the requirement someone else has thought about". Low Code and AI will do todays developer's jobs. So what does it mean for Developers? From my perspective every developer needs to see themselves in a different light. Developers need to become the hybrid between Business Consultant, Requirements Engineer and Developer and then they will have a real edge over the Developers staying in their focused proficiency. And these are the people we definitely need as IT Companies in the future. Developers will still be very valuable as they have an understanding of code and datastructures, but their jobs will definitely change. #developers #requirementsengineering #futur #ai #business

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So far we've collected 1,565 growth tactics for e-commerce and I realized that all actions can be summarized into 4 types: 1. Sell more What to influence: the number of products sold, increase in orders and customers, traffic, increase in conversions. Management complexity: high Impact on profit: medium At what stage is important: growth 2. Sell more expensive What to influence: price optimization, upsell, subscriptions Management complexity: high Impact on profit: high At what stage is important: maturity 3. Sell faster What to influence: purchase frequency, sales promotion Management complexity: medium Impact on profit: medium At what stage is important: all stages 4. Spend less What to influence: reducing returns, optimizing logistics and inventory, etc. Management complexity: medium Impact on profit: high At what stage is important: maturity -- Are there any other action groups I have overlooked?

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Budget dilemma for start-ups: How much product and how much professional sales?   For every start-up in the software industry, the focus at the beginning is on developing the product. However, after the first presentable prototype, there is nothing to stop you from tackling the marketing of the new baby. A product demo is quickly developed and the website has already been prepared. But how do you go about sales? And above all, who? Well, someone in the team will be found for it. If in doubt, one of the founders will do it anyway. Perhaps there is already a COO or CFO. A dedicated sales colleague? It will work out somehow, anyone can do that - the main thing is that product development progresses. If necessary, you give a discount to get through to the customer. An experienced salesperson can always be brought onto the team later. The list of important tasks and functions in a start-up is varied. This abundance must be distributed across a few shoulders. It is quite clear that you have to make compromises here before you can take the next step in growth. But I keep seeing start-ups with interesting ideas and business models that underestimate the complexity and effort that a promising sales approach entails. And the tight budget does not allow for professional salespeople and a sales manager. Additional staff is particularly painful because of the long-term commitment that this entails. It is of little help to be told that the total costs of an established software product provider are roughly distributed as follows: one third product development, one third administration and management, one third sales and marketing. Development comes first. It certainly will not work without investing in building up market access. Of course, it is best to do this with experienced staff right from the start in order to place the product on the market with force from the very beginning and to quickly win the first customers. This is exactly where you can achieve a lot with an external consultant as an interim manager for the sales that is being built up. Of course, such a service is not free. However, you still have the flexibility to stop this advice at short notice. You get some breathing room with a tight budget. If the interim manager is experienced, the training is manageable and productivity remains high. Well, there you go! There is a way to implement the same excellence in sales early on as the product promises anyway. Both are possible, take a look here: bizconz.eu.

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My last post was two months ago, so it's time for an update. As a founding developer or a developing founder, you always run out of time—either for development or all the other stuff. After two months in coding mode, it’s time to share an update. The articles by Stefan Grasmann, covering his interview with Jón Egilsson from Monerium, the commentary by Dr. Sven Hildebrandt on recent developments at Deutsche Bundesbank, and Jakob Bosshard's post about Janus Henderson Investors exploring on-chain asset management have led me to the conclusion that I should speak up again. Why? Monerium has always been a pioneer in bringing EURO e-money to the blockchain. Monerium was the first to achieve compliance with EU regulations, and they did it well—especially for us developers who need a way to bring cash on-chain. They’ve delivered excellently. If you want to leverage the possibilities of a Turing-complete money execution machine, there is no better way. For non-developers: this is HUGE! Dr. Sven Hildebrandt spoke about Deutsche Bundesbank because the bank is explicitly searching for someone to operate its platform in a private, hybrid public environment. The latter is important. While there are arguments for private blockchains, I believe in public ones. The reason is simple—there were arguments for intranets as well, and while they still exist, it was the internet that made the difference. I believe it will be the same with private vs. public blockchains. We now have a protocol for value transfer. Do we really want to limit it to in-house transactions or just for a set of institutions in Germany? Sure, we can imagine exporting our private tech to the whole world, but let’s be honest—the probability is tiny. Do we really want to be a gated financial community while everyone else plays without us? (Hint: BlackRock deployed their BUIDL fund on the public Ethereum blockchain!) Jakob Bosshard mentioned Janus Henderson Investors, a $360B asset manager, taking its first steps into blockchain by partnering on a tokenized treasury fund, joining industry giants like BlackRock. This is amazing. Every asset manager will move on-chain in the next ten years. That’s my prediction. Why? The technologies mentioned above will streamline the process of setting up funds, monitoring investments, and investing in funds in an unprecedented way. Our proof of concept shows how you can set up a fund infrastructure, including a payment channel and product pipeline, in minutes—obviously without BaFin approval (that takes a bit more time 😉). All transactions are transparent, secure, and verifiable because we use public blockchains. We use Enzyme for the fund infrastructure, Cashlink for issuing eWpG-compliant fund shares, and Monerium for achieving settlement times of 30 seconds. Check out our One-Pager if you want to learn more: https://shorturl.at/uJct6 What is your take on this?

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🌟 Wow! Ambizion conference in Estonia Was Mind-Blowing! 🌟 https://lnkd.in/e7nasnkj Thanks to the organizers for creating such a dynamic gathering of Amazon sellers. It was my first time attending, and I didn't realize the community here was so strong! 🚀 Key Insight: Vincenzo Toscano highlighted the game-changing potential of brand analytics — why aren't more people using this?! 🤯 And Matt Altman's deep dive into his 9-figure Amazon business was packed with actionable takeaways. 💡 I loved all the presentations and meeting so many brilliant minds. I'm already excited about next year's event! Jani Vihervuori: Seller Spotlight Panel - Unleashing Triple Seller Wisdom Diverse journeys, challenges, and triumphs in the Amazon game. The interactive discussion left us inspired and full of tips. Neeme Rõõs: 10 Business "Myths" We Have Ignored Over the Last 10 Years Challenged common business practices, showing creativity and flexibility as keys to success. Eye-opening and thought-provoking. Yulia Blinova 余莉: Nearshoring - A Game-Changing Concept for Your Amazon Business? Highlighted nearshoring benefits for agility and supply chain efficiency. Relevant and insightful in today’s market. This event was a goldmine of knowledge, and each session left us with actionable insights to boost our Amazon businesses. Can’t wait for next year's event!

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This week’s podcast episode is very special to us because it features Blendrit Elezaj, co-founder of Tactica and GIG Education. Tactica has been our digital marketing partner for quite some time now, and our cooperation has been outstanding. In this episode, we discuss global teams, remote work, sales, and job market trends, focusing on the Balkans and Kosovo. Blendrit told us about his company’s journey. It originated from a small country and later successfully expanded to the point that it now has 75 U.S. clients. Their work is done remotely, and they even set up an in-house academy to train new employees. We all agreed that working with global partners is the absolute best solution. The price is fair, and the service quality is high. Take it from me: I’ve been partnering with Tactica from Kosovo, developers in India, and AI developers in Ukraine, and their work matches, if not surpasses, the quality found anywhere else in the world. However, we also took a critical approach to job market trends. With such globalized work, employee job hopping is on the rise, posing a significant challenge for business owners. Listen to the full episode to hear more about investing opportunities and the diaspora’s effects in Kosovo, a hidden gem of entrepreneurship in the Balkans.

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Once "Google Shopping" appeared in Ukraine. It was a breath of air for all ecommerce websites. Extremely profitable time for each online store. But, what about services and B2B areas? All these businesses have been struggling with overheated ad auction and extremely high "cost per lead" since the last 5-7 years. So, where is that "breath of air" for them? The answer is QUIZZES. I'd say, it's quite unforeseen for others, but "EasyQuizy" really helps to attract cheaper leads for the same ad budget due to high conversion rate and interaction level. And it has a lot of cases. Accounters, lawyers, attorneys, brockers, building services and materials, online consultants and teachers, B2B sellers could save a lot of money, just trying "EasyQuizy" instead of boring landing pages or classic websites in order to advertise their business. I'm not afraid to say, that "EasyQuizy" for services and B2B is like a "Google Shopping" for all ecommerce online stores. It has a high probability level to attract cheaper requests despite the expensive cost per each click from ads.

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Once, we started a project on the wrong foot. Now, it’s my favorite cooperation for 6th year in a row. 👏 On top of that, the client and I are discussing future steps for the next 1.5 years. It sounds perfect now, but back then, it didn’t seem to be happening. It started with planning a mobile app but ended up switching to web development instead. Then, we underestimated the project. It turned out to be a bigger job than we expected, and the fixed price model we used caused some delays in project delivery. Still, the performance was good! Now, it’s even better with a dedicated team working on it. The takeaway? It’s not always about the start, but it’s definitely about the finish. These results wouldn’t exist without the understanding and straightforward communication we’ve maintained through the years. How has yours longest partnership started?

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Companies that do not use AI will have a significant competitive problem. 🚨   In conversation with Wirtualnemedia.pl at this year’s Meta Marketing Summit I shared my personal perspective on the role of Meta’s AI solutions and creativity for advertisers during peak season including these 3 key insights:   📈A large share of profit is dependent directly on your creative assets! Especially if companies have optimized every step to achieve the best possible campaign effectiveness.   🎨Creative diversification is an important element to your competitive advantage. Looking at its production efficiency AI tools can speed up the entire creative process - in some cases up to 10x faster.   📱Video content already accounts for half of all time spent on Instagram. Taking advantage of its ad placement and utilizing creatives specifically for #reels is a must.    More intel shared in my interview here (beware it is in polish): https://lnkd.in/dRzNnytJ #Meta #advertising #performance #Creativity

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Decades old recipe to attract retail customers; it never fails. Most of the times this discount is not a real concession, but we fall for it easily, and every time. If it is a sale of FMCG in a hypermarket chain or sale on expensive designer branded items in high-end shops, all classes equally get attracted and rush to, when a "Reduction Sale" is announced. Is it same like gambling with hope of winning? knowing that the house always wins. Or like , buying of stocks speculating high return in (usually) short term. Or it is going after cryptocurrency not as currency but as speculative 'investment' aka gambling.

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I can't wait to share some updates on CaptionKit! You can compare two videos: before and after. In the first version of the app, when generating subtitles, we didn’t pay much attention to pauses, which led to breaks. For example, the start of a new sentence could end up at the end of the current one (take a look at the words I’M and STAY). In the new version, we implemented a more advanced system based on splitting and further analysis. As a result, we’ve eliminated ‘orphaned words’ and improved synchronization. We're submitting it for review today!

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I keep hearing about some relevant events, usually too late. So I'm scratching my own itch. Here is a list of events related to data and/or AI in Estonia in the next 6 months. This is assembled from multiple different sources and is probably very incomplete. These are all in Tallinn unless otherwise specified. Focused on data and/or AI: September 18th - Data catalog insights, part 1 (https://lnkd.in/dhgUMiSD) with Maria Zukova and Anna Kovaleva. Following events on September 25, October 9th and 23rd. September 19th - ProductTank Tallinn (https://lnkd.in/dki7DK4a) at Katana Cloud Inventory, featuring Andres Aava and Krete Paal. September 24th, Tartu - Data science seminar "AI in Action" (https://lnkd.in/dZEXnRcz) October 1st - AI idea day (https://lnkd.in/dfvj6rC5) October 4th, Tartu - Digit (software conference) (https://digit.dev/), with a lot of AI and data topics October 28th (5 days) - Helsinki Data Week (https://lnkd.in/d2aX5J4c), featuring Joe Reis 🤓! The AboutUs page of the event is awesome. November 12th - AI conference (https://lnkd.in/de9R--7H), gathering all the local heavy hitters, including Gerlyn Tiigemäe and Sandra Reivik of AIPowerment! 🎉 January 23rd - Marketing Analytics Conference (https://lnkd.in/dq6twgTF) Related to data: October 10th - Impact Day (https://impactday.eu/), Gert Lõhmus and SelectZero have a session based on data. I believe most of the conference is fairly data-driven. October 24th - HRxTech (https://lnkd.in/dZK8Sr6C) with specific AI topics. November 14th - Telia Digital Hub (https://lnkd.in/dQQnw2kr) with an insane speaker list! January 30th - Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025 (https://lnkd.in/d-2SPe3q), has a separate data track. --- Please let me know in the comments of any other events and I'll include them. The plan is to post an updated list once a week.

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What connects these terms: CRM, Senior Developer, Agile, Scalable? All these terms are slowly becoming useless as they lose any real meaning. They're overused, used as shortcuts, or simply for marketing and sales tactics. Client Relation Manager - people use the term CRM for any IT system used in a company, whether it's for resource management, warehouse or order handling, or even for handling email campaigns. Agile - I'm starting to lose track of what this word really means amidst job postings for "agile and energetic teams." Is it related to project management frameworks? Rarely. Scalable - "We have 1000 users and still no performance issues" - this is how overengineering is justified, or the claim that the application is truly ready for heavy traffic. And the best one: Senior Developer. I've seen CVs of developers with 3 years of experience in 1 project and nothing more, yet they proudly claim the title of Senior Developer. But their current employer could bill the client at the Senior Developer rate because of it. I conducted a job interview for another company for a Ruby Senior Developer position with a person with just 1 (yes, one!) year of experience. And this person was cleared for such an interview by the HR filter. Perhaps because she claimed to have "2 years of experience in conversations with developers." I won't try to formulate a complete definition of a Senior Developer. But one thing I know for sure - I wouldn't call a developer a Senior Developer if they are afraid of working with Legacy Codebase or cannot understand how valuable for self-improvement they can be. Writing greenfield applications from scratch is enjoyable; it allows you to apply new technologies and try fresh and innovative approaches. But mainly, it allows us to see how our juniors handle things when their actions aren't burdened by the entire "legacy" project. The real magic happens when we have to deal with code that has "been through the mill." Code that users interact with daily. Code that generates revenue. And code that requires expertise and thorough analysis of "pros and cons" when considering a refactor idea. This is where an ambitious developer can truly spread their wings and prove that they deserve the title of senior. So, how do we handle legacy projects to derive enjoyment from them and ensure that we possess that senior quality? In the comments, a link to Paweł Bartulewicz blog post, where he shares his thoughts on this topic, after years of mainly working on legacy projects.

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With Kateryna Dmytriieva shared some insights and data about Loyalty Programs and their performance. Could be interesting for somewho - read on MMR.ua If you want to join Uklon Loyalty Program with your brand and achieve extra results - try to reach Kateryna https://lnkd.in/ePbXmR7t

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