182 - What If Onboarding Let Users Stay In Control? with Karel Papik

Welcome to Product Led Growth Leaders. We've got a great guest for the show today, Carl Papik. Carl has a background in video games and building all kinds of little uh companies here and there. Um, he's been a serial co-founder and a CEO many times uh for many startup ventures.

Today he is founder and uh is what is it, co-founder, I'm sorry, of Product Fruits. Product Fruits. So we're Product Fruits, that's right. So we're gonna hear all about that today.

Carl, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting me, Tomas. Excellent. Yeah, thanks for being here.

Um, so let's start off with talking about the problem that you solve. But before we get to the solution to the problem, what's the problem? Help steep us in that. Uh well, mainly it came from my background.

I I used to be a game developer, or I started up several game studios and uh a lot of casual games also, and we were also always fighting like with the adoption and onboarding for the new player because the game is a commodity which you don't necessarily need, right? So the adoption must be really great, and onboarding must be fast and really punchy. So that's where my background mostly is. So when I met Ladya, who was uh which is the first founder of Product Fruits, who was building uh this platform, I was amazed by its very early capabilities, and then we joined our forces together.

And hopefully, now I am a little bit contributing. So now, yeah, we are, I would say, AI user journey platform. So we are far beyond the DAP, like digital adoption. And basically, we are offering a set of agents which are able, sorry.

Let me let me jump in just really quickly before that, before I get into how you're doing the solution. I want to make sure the audience is up there with us in in and appreciating the gravity of the situation. So when you're dealing on the regular consumer market, you don't have minutes, hours to impress people and to steep them into what they're uh what you're building, you got to get them to fall in love immediately. And any level of friction that happens is a threat to your ability to uh to get uh new customers, to be able to convert those customers.

So when you're talking about the onboarding experience, um, in your example that you gave is video games, but I imagine it possibly might go beyond video games. But are you talking about um onboarding the person to understanding what's going on or bringing them in? Is it what exactly are we talking about here? Yes, I I would say that you know a lot of companies are now fed up, pumping money to do marketing and then losing 95% of customers in a free trial, for example.

So now the digital adoption platforms and user journey platforms are even more important than they used to be. And you you are absolutely right that you know we have zero patience now, it's even worse than it used to be. You know, our brains are totally damaged by TikTok and and short shorts on YouTube. So we have zero patience.

We need to see the value immediately, we need to fall in love with the product, with the with the platform. So that's uh that's what that's what we do. We are we are kind of interface between any user and any any platform, and it's not just about the onboarding. So we are, for example, able to do discovery call, like we are inviting you in the in the application, ask you what's your use case, what you are looking for, how big is your team.

While in the old times, you know, you have to fill some forms, and people had tendency to fill some misleading informations, right? So, but now you know they can have some conversation, and based on this conversation with this discovery agent, we are tailoring the experience in the application. What's the end product for the company? So if the company has a product and they're deploying um your solution, do they end up with enriched uh information about their user base?

Is that what it is, where normally you would have to ask them all these form questions? How does that come together? I I don't want to force a square square peg in a round hole if I'm getting it wrong, but just correct me. What you describe, it's uh very vital and important part of the application.

But let's say I I used the example with the with the Discovery Agent. So Discovery Agent has has some discovery call is you, and based on this, he's tailoring the experience. And by tailoring experience, I mean that he is showing you in the application some stuff which you might be interested in, right? So you we talked previously about integration.

So let me show the integration, and another agent, our onboarding agent, is able to point on the screen, talk to you, show you the stuff, right? And we have kind of a copilot, which is able to solve some issues, some problems, and and and so on, and talking about the feedback, which is super important. So, based also from based on all these conversations, we are able to generate feedback for you. So, we are also using it also in our application.

So, I am able to ask, for example, where are Product Fruits users are struggling most in the last two weeks? Why they are not adopting more this tool, for example. So, another agent is going through all this conversation, all this feedback, and preparing something that we are calling outcome. So it's quite a lot also about the product feedback.

Okay, great. So I'm the company that puts out the product, and there's a whole bunch of there's the core product, and correct me where I'm wrong here. There's the core product that I'm building, the core value that we're putting our time and energy into. But then there's all these peripheral things that need to be there.

So perhaps onboarding or some kinds of uh, you know, discovering stuff about the customer and some other things. And I don't want to build each and every one of those and put uh my development team on all of those different tasks. I can take your agents, plug those in, and those can take care of a lot of that for me. Is that what's going on?

That yeah, you describe it very well. I should record this and and and send it to our sales guys. Yeah, you describe it very well. Yeah, and and then from the user's side, they're going through presumably a mostly normal experience.

So I download the game, okay, great. And now let me start playing the game, and maybe it's helping to onboard me somehow, or at some point it asks me a few questions, and and and uh you I imagine you probably get that, try to get that as frictionless as possible over time. Where am I off on that part? Well, I'm not sure if you refer to the games or to B2B applications.

Let's let's pick a use case. It's it's quite similar, actually. You know, we are trying to use uh some techniques which we learn in games and use them into the B2B SAS because, well, we are selling to the companies, right? I now we have 1300 paying clients all around the world, but the and they are using our product to millions of and millions of users, so it's always about integration, about about communication with some end-user client, and they want to have more human-like conversation.

And by the way, like big big thing for me, like personally, why I enjoy doing product fruit, especially now with the AI capabilities, which is a game changer for us. We are lucky that we can really utilize AI in a meaningful way. Was I was I was kind of struggling in uh in primary school. I was actually expelled from the second grade.

It's unbelievable, but I was. Yeah, I was really super, super annoying uh pupil, student, because you know, this teacher they always forced me what to do. You should do this, follow these steps, do read this, do this, this example. And I hated this.

I want to do the things on my own, and that's what we are doing in Product Fruits, because we believe that user, the human being, want to own his experience, he wants to own his onboarding, he she wants to own her adoption, how she's interacting with the product. We are here just to help you. We don't want to tell you now you should do this, you should follow these points, you know, to achieve something, like the checklist. I hate checklists.

We offer checklists, and a lot of our customers are using it, but I still believe it's more about the conversation with the AI and really like imagine product fruits is kind of like having some invisible body sitting next to you, and it's always helpful, always in good mood, super patient, and it's able to help you with anything you might need. And he's not worth forcing you to do the stuff. How do how difficult or easy do you find it to add the AI functionality in a seamless way?

Because one of the things we observe out there is so many companies struggle to add the AI, but put it in a way that um kind of goes along with the rest of things. And for a lot of folks, it's just uh a lot of companies, it's a continuing battle. It's an in a continuing evolution where everyone's trying to figure it out. I don't know what your opinion on all of that is.

This is so complex uh topic, I would be able to talk about it hours. But like I my personal feeling is that the problem is that there is too much money on the market for for AI, you know. Everybody, like all the investors and everybody wants to invest only in AI, nothing else. If I would have a cure for cancer and would be talking to VCs, they would ask me, but is it powered by LLM?

Is it is it? It's insane, right? Again, we are lucky that our AI makes sense because we are luckily in a segment where we can really benefit from AI. But a lot of companies and subjects are trying to add AI in a way which is really not bringing any meaningful value for the user.

So that's definitely the problem, and we are we are at least now definitely the most advanced uh user journey platform in regards to AI because we really nailed it. It was actually funny because about 15 months ago we were deeply depressed with Slavia because we were afraid that AI will take everything from us, and we are more or less on the rigid way how to do the stuff. And then we decided, okay, whatever, fuck it, and we will we will rebuild the platform with the AI in the heart.

We will never add some AI flavor here and there. We will just close our eyes and dream about the user user journey platform which we always wanted to build, and now voila, thanks to AI, we are able to do it. Yeah, you know the other thing I think about, Carl, is we're all becoming sober from the promises of just a few years ago. So AI comes out, it's absolutely amazing, and we start using it and using it and using it.

The more we use it, the more we see its limitations. And we're like, well, wait a second, it does not just instantly solve all problems. And you do need people in there to be the glue in between these chunks of AI here. And um, and yeah, I think that's important for people building a product.

You've got to think about what do I want the product to be, period, and then look at the toolbox. And if you pick up the AI tools where they're needed, then you use that. But at the end of the day, it's about making a great product. Um, yeah.

Um, thoughts on that? And also how do you keep you're bringing some building something very innovative? Do you um build your team or construct your team and team philosophies in such a way that it caters to you all having to think uh innovatively, or are you just trying to keep your hair from being on fire? How does that that team synergy come together for you?

Uh yeah, great, great question. And I will be very honest. I have no other chance, just to be honest, because that's the way I'm wired. So we we went through some wild times.

I was pushing AI internally in the company. You have to use the AI. We are AI company, we want to use it for the all processes because I was afraid that we are behind. Everybody is using AI for optimization of uh campaigns, product, whatever.

I can read it on the LinkedIn and I felt we are behind. And I was pushing, I was pushing a lot, and I was pushing too much, I was pushing beyond the level when it stopped making sense, right? And uh now we have product manager. Uh he we have don't we don't have product department, there's just one guy, Martin, Martin Fishera, and he's super brainiac, and he's capable to use the AI in the way which is super efficient, right?

So he's working like for five people and he's able to orchestrate everything together, so that that's great, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do the same stuff in um in other departments because sometimes it doesn't make sense. So, and also the problem with AI, I see, and I met this problem in the in the product fruits, I mean internally, right? Is that you will always get some outcome, some output which sounds and look great, but is it really true if you know what I mean?

So that's what we are doing in in product fruits. We want to make sure that the information you are getting from Elvin, which is our AI, are always correct, right? So we have a lot of processes how to double check how he's answering, and you can also adjust and tune his answers because when we are selling uh our solution, still a lot of our clients want to use the old analog world, I would say the step-by-step tours and hints and knowledge base, but they are slowly but steady adopting the AI in a meaningful way, but there are still some roadblocks for better better adoption of AI.

Um, your product, how much does it overlap with the space of product intelligence products? So when I think about things like Pendo or uh Full Story and this class of products that, you know, they're built to sort of be this partner with your product where it gives you intelligence and it helps you fulfill things. Are you trying to do anything in that kind of broader space? Or are you trying to be more focused and say we're gonna solve this uh this focused uh set of problems?

How do you relate to that space? Uh well, full story acquired our competitor, actually, competent another company from Czech Republic. They are living like 200 kilometers from us, and they acquired them a few months ago because they saw synergies between their platform and their analytic, like full story analytic platform. So it's it makes sense.

You know, we don't want to build analytics like really analytic tool, we just more believe in some cooperation and integration with the analytics because analytics is really a big thing, so we don't want to really build it. But in regards to the intelligence, uh for example, we have the outcomes where I can ask our Elvin, this is the example I gave you, about behavior of our clients, where they are struggling, and so on. So instead of looking off to some funnels in analytics, which is sometimes quite confusing and very complex, you can use it.

Fine, we are also using it, but you can also take a look at it from the different perspective. You can look at you can ask AI like what our customers are asking on the chat, where they are struggling, how they are consuming the onboarding. And our AI is able to give you really good uh insights. Okay, when I um download an app and the app is using lots of product fruits.

And by the way, uh for everyone listening, we've been speaking with Carl of Product Fruits. Go to productfruits.com to check it all out. Um, if I'm using the app and it's they're using product fruits, what are the things that I'm experiencing where I'm actually kind of interacting with your app?

Like, like, like at some point I see a survey or I a chatbot comes up and I start uh talking to it. What are the things that I literally see that are coming from your product? Uh the goal is that you will have the seamless experience. So you are not able to distinguish between the original application and our layer, which is typically on the top of the application or embedded inside the application.

But what you see is typically the copilot, which is kind of checkbot, but our copilot is able to point on the screen with some arrows, talk to you, has memory, context, is able to generate the tours, the step-by-step tours and stuff. So that's what you see. You can also see, for example, surveys in the right time, our AI summons some survey and ask you, well, are you satisfied? NPS survey, churn survey, whatever.

And again, you know, we are feeding this information to the to the product department folks, and they can work with this information. And we have now quite a neat thing. For example, I just saw the prototype this morning from Lady because Ladya is the guy behind the product fruits, he's the first founder, and uh uh and uh he he showed me the prototype of some uh AI AI personality which is going through the application like an like a human and and trying to work with the application, and is able to give us some information about friction points, problems, and so on.

So today we actually tried this tool on our product fruits, and it told us in in this part of product fruits, users might struggle because I'm struggling. So that's another way what we are, another tool what we are putting on the market soon. Oh, that's so cool. And then for all the founders out there who are listening and they might be vibe coding their product or they might be having a lean team and they're thinking about, hey, should I be using product fruits?

What are some things that they should be thinking about? Well, if if you are some I would say simple application with simple use case, maybe you don't need it. But if if the application is more complex, right, and you have different use cases, different target groups, then product fruits is something that you will definitely benefit from. And uh you don't need yeah, sorry?

No, no, so not to cut you off, but like maybe if I'm starting solving a larger use case that's got maybe more moving parts and not just um uh something super, super simple. Yes, uh, but it's also about, for example, target groups. If you have, I don't know, a lot of target groups from different countries, I don't know, VIP uh clients from uh from Germany and agriculture people from Singapore, whatever, right? So in other applications, you have to build onboarding and adoption for these different groups using some flags and using some segments, and it's complicated while in product roots you can do the same, but you can also just uh just so-called annotate your application, describe your application, connect your knowledge base, and we take it take care about everything, including uh automatic translations and stuff.

So you are not ending up with complex uh zillions of product tours, step bicep tours, and you don't you don't know uh conditions, how they start, and so you will leave everything to AI and we are generating the stuff on the fly for the right user in the in the right moment. Excellent. Uh Carl, how do people get started with product fruits? We've got productfruits.

com. Is there any kind of consultation or do they just kind of just click and get started? Yeah, you can you can you can try free trial. We have like two weeks free trial, uh, or you can have a demo with our people.

We are not really too pushy in sales, so you can talk to implementation managers which are able to put together this you some some use case which you are interested in, and then you can you can you you can start implementing it. Excellent. Sounds good. All right.

Well, hopefully everybody goes and checks that out product fruits at productfruits.com. Carl, thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you.