Watch or listen to this episode below.

Brief summary:

Our podcast guest for this episode is Tanya Vucetic, CEO of Blockforms. Listen in as Tanya shares her startup journey, and how her company began from zero traction to now gaining national traction in the midst of global pandemic.

Key insights from this episode:

• (at 2:57) Tanya shares her love for travel and why she decided to move to Hong Kong.

• (at 6:52) Tanya tells the story of how her company Blockforms started and how the pandemic had changed their narrative.

• (at 12:58) Tanya talks about her ‘fuel’ is getting through the obstacles of running a startup amidst the pandemic.

• (at 13:41) Leila and Tanya discuss how less women pursue math and science careers and Tanya’s viewpoint of math being feminine. Tanya also shares her style of leadership and it’s implications.

Want to make sure you don’t miss future episodes?

Sign up here and we will alert you every time a new episode comes out.

TRANSCRIPT
FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
SEASON 2 Episode 9: Leading a Startup During the Pandemic — with Tanya Vucetic, CEO of Blockforms

INTRO: Today's guest on FUEL podcast is Tanya Vucetic. She's the CEO and Co-founder of a software startup called Blockforms. She's a data scientist by profession and has personally built technology ranging from algorithms that recommend which items can and can't be shipped together in a box,  to monitoring how well you're brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush. 

Tanya shares with us today how she launched block forms just before the pandemic and is really proud of the fact that with her team, she was able to go from zero traction to having national traction now.

We talked about a few different things, how she experienced the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur, especially amidst a worldwide pandemic. We also touch on what drives her in regards to Math and Science, and also her opinion on leadership, her own personal style of leadership and how that's been influenced by math and by her view on femininity. I know you're going to get a ton out of this conversation. Without any more delay. Let's welcome, Tanya. 

Leila Ansart, Host
So welcome, Tanya. It's great to talk to you this morning. I'm really thrilled to have you here and to have you willing to share your story with the listeners about who you are and what you've overcome. Why don't you take a minute, as we begin, to just share a little bit about your professional background.  Help us understand who you are, what makes you tick, and then we'll get into more of the meat of the matter. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Alrighty. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and speak with you today. Again, my name is Tanya Vucetic. Im the CEO of a company called Blockforms software company. I am originally from California. I'm a beach girl and I studied Economics at UCLA. I got my MBA in Hong Kong and I'm really passionate about Math and Science. That led me to a career as a data scientist. I jumped head first into entrepreneurship about three years ago. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Wonderful. Those are a lot of cool experiences in regard to your education. What made you decide to go over to Hong Kong?

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Well, I am a first-generation American. My mom's from Mexico and my father's from Serbia. I have a good grasp of Europe and Central America and South America. I didn't have a sense for Asia at all. I'm a pretty adventurous person. In 2015 I sold everything that I owned and moved to Hong Kong without, admittedly, being able to point it out on the map. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Wow, okay. We've got some major bravery in your genes here, for sure. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Yeah. We're a small family but we're very international, and Asia was calling me. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Oh, that's wonderful. How did you find your experience there? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
It was very enlightening. I fancied myself a very international culturally aware person being from California originally next to San Francisco, living in Los Angeles now. It was a very humbling experience to be on someone else's turf and operate under their rules and assimilate that way. I think it's made me a more open, understanding, curious and empathetic person. 

Leila Ansart, Host
All really important attributes. I always tell people when we talk about what they could do to expand their vision of the world, that the main thing is just travel. Travel for fun, travel with mai tais on the club beach once in a while. But more so travel as a local and try to understand the local culture and experience it in more of an authentic way. I think I've been fortunate to do a little bit of that myself. It's awesome hearing about other people's experiences and feeling like, yeah, it certainly haven't lived in another continent, much less a country, but even just to travel opens up your eyes to so much. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Definitely. I think it's a crucial part of being a leader because everyone has a different perspective and comes from a different world. And I'm very sensitive to “my way or the highway” or “because I said so”. I think it's really important to offer an explanation and be conscientious of what makes different people from different parts of the world tick, and traveling is key to doing so. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Were you always that way, Tanya, or did that kind of evolve in you as you had that experience? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
I think I was because growing up, I wasn't American enough. And  based on my appearance,  I'm very fair and blonde, I definitely wasn't recognized as Mexican. When I‘m in Serbia, you know, I grew up in the US so  I'm also not Serbian. I'm definitely a mix. In order to reconcile my own experience as an individual, I think my curiosity for other cultures, whether it's countries or religions, or even belief systems. That’s always been the fiber of my being. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I always find it interesting when we can take our pain and turn it into some part of who we are. Whether that's part of our purpose or part of our defining view -- the lens that we see the world through. So that's awesome. I'm sure it was difficult many times growing up, not feeling like you had that perfect fit. Cultural background or present belonging because of your cultural background, but look at what that's developed in you.

As the CEO and co-founder of Blockforms, you mentioned you ventured into entrepreneurial territories three years ago. We're talking just before the pandemic, give us the play by play. Like, how did this happen and how excited were you? And then when the pandemic happened, how did this affect you and your company? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Absolutely. We were sitting around a coffee table, ideating on what our software does.  For the listeners, our software automates forms. Really complicated forms are digitized into one form, but you're actually populating all of the forms, saving yourself a lot of time. And we didn't know each other originally. We were introduced by a mutual friend and we made a lot of the stereotypical mistakes, especially in the software world of not scoping the product perfectly the first time and not understanding our users for a long time. And yeah, things evolved. The software became real. As soon as we started marketing it and applying for accelerator programs, that’s when the pandemic hit. It was really challenging to navigate keeping the spirits of my teammates up and my own spirits up when we had zero traction as a company and the whole world became very reluctant to make any quick decisions. 

All the conversations we had around doing like a pilot program or anyone even consider signing just came to a screeching halt. We started to change our narrative. And what software do, It makes working from home even easier. People don't want to spend their time doing data entry, especially alone in their homes. So [we] reduce the amount of time people spend doing that, we became quickly more intriguing to our customers. And in June of 2021, we signed our first national customer. I say one customer, but it's actually hundreds of users. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Well, that's exciting. It sounds like the giant stop sign in the middle of the road that the pandemic was, in terms of anyone adopting your software, being willing to try it out was released, I guess, from you shifting. You said “I shifted our narrative”. Tell me about that process. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
That's been the hardest part, the storytelling about why, what we've built is a necessary tool in the workplace, especially companies that do have to execute a lot of forms to do business. We started really talking about the insurance space and our target customers were so niche, employee benefits, insurance brokers, and that was important for building the product to really understand their sales cycle, because it mirrors a lot of businesses sales cycle. But when it came to pitching, whether it was investors or customers, we were way too narrow. 

We needed to zoom out because truthfully the product is industry agnostic. We can build this adaptive solution to any forms. And the pandemic really tested us to do so because these insurance brokerages -- so much red tape, they are massive. It's hard to get the right person in front of you to have this conversation, let alone getting them to make a decision on behalf of such a huge organization. 

While we are doing so, it's necessary that these contracts are awesome in their size. It's just a longer sales cycle. Then we decided to zoom out and go for adjacent industries, or even one of our customers is in the property management space. Those were a lot easier deals to close because we changed our narrative. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Interesting. How much of that was a trial by fire experience. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
All of it. Just throwing things to the launch seeing what sticks. That's entrepreneurship, right? There's no manual. You just have to keep going and take feedback, incorporate that feedback and adapted to whatever you're trying to achieve. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah, absolutely. The valleys and the peaks that the entrepreneur journey brings are thrilling and depressing consecutively over and over, if you're truly honest about it. That journey is one that requires so much personal resilience and so much internal fortitude. What I, on this podcast, I like to call ‘fuel’. 

What do you think your fuel was, amidst all of these obstacles that you've breezed over -- Well, we were just talking to customers and then the pandemic hit like one sentence. Right. But it's recent enough. We all know that was a giant freaking book, not just a sentence that was so many obstacles, all rolled into one title-- the pandemic.  Through all of this, Tanya, what kept you going? What was the driving force? Besides the obvious, right?  We all need to eat and sleep somewhere safe. What was the thing that kept you going? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
I would say two things. One being, I really believe in the product. I have no reservations about the potential of its growth and its usefulness to the average person. The second thing being my teammates.  I don't know if I would have survived being a solopreneur, the fact that we are a team that made this commitment to each other and that we all went through the same emotional experience, fortunately at different times. We could lift the chin up of each other when one of us was feeling down, but that was huge to our survival over 2020. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's awesome. How important is this idea of girls pursuing math and science careers? How important is that idea to you individually? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
I think it’s extraordinarily important and I think it goes back to that identity crisis as a small girl, because one thing is, I find math so beautiful and empowering and even feminine. For me, it was a common language across everyone. Like my grandmother who didn't speak English could help me with my math homework. It has been a tool that has opened so many doors for me and my passion for math and getting particularly young kids excited about math. Even more specifically young girls is what motivates me to lead by example and eventually dedicate myself to that work. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's really beautiful. I know when you and I talked before (we had the pleasure of chatting prior  to today's discussion), you talked about how you see math and science as feminine. I've never heard anyone say that. I really want to hear more about what you mean by that, if you would share. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Sure. I  have given the subject a lot of thought and growing up, being good at math and science was always labeled masculine.  I think it's because when we're small, we quickly label things as good or bad. And that's part of our maturation into adulthood. But I find math very delicate, for instance, one things wrong, the whole thing falls apart. I find it very powerful and femininity is very powerful. It's global, it's international and that's where  I extract the femininity from mathematics and science. 

Leila Ansart, Host
So that's really interesting. I think as so many individuals that I know, and there's certainly a movement around encouraging girls to pursue STEM, to pursue the math and the science careers and addressing the fact that so many girls lose their confidence about pursuing a future in those fields. In their first ‘double digits’, as my daughter calls them, my daughter who's 14. It's interesting to me, the way you described it, I don't think I've ever heard it described in that way. How would you, if you were talking to a young man, how would equate that metaphor? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
I think men embracing femininity, first of all, is extremely important. There are many men out there who are detail oriented, who work in hyper-specific jobs and are very empathetic as individuals. The fact that we even label these things as masculine and feminine is dangerous. When we, as human beings embody both and my tendency to lean on math and science as being feminine is to compensate for the mislabel of it being a masculine trade. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I completely agree with you and we didn't even get to go here on our initial discussion. I'm actually quite excited to talk to you about this. I feel like labels create meaning. Label an experience and you change the emotional experience that you had. You say, you come home from a hard day and you say, man, that day sucked. You have an emotional reaction when you put that label on it versus saying, man, it was a difficult day. I really showed how my resilience pushed me through. You could call that whatever you might, but your emotional response comes from the labels that you use. I firmly believe in that.  I'm a big believer in the power of language and how it affects us, et cetera. I've always thought that these terms of masculine and feminine, I think they're a bit outdated. I would like to see a new term and I have a few ideas of my own that I'm not ready to share. I'll tell that to you offline. I think that it might benefit us to consider, like you said, the fact that as humans, we embody both. We have the ability to be strikingly empathetic. We have the ability to be quick decision makers and lead a group and be more driven in our communication and decision-making approach. We have both of those. So why must we choose one? Why does it have to be so polarizing to be one or the other versus just what is the type of energy I need for this situation and how can I step into that type of energy and develop that in myself. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
When I was younger working in finance, I thought that I needed to be more intense and assertive and not wearing makeup, pull my hair back in a bun, wear clogs to work. It took me a long time to unlearn those things and really enjoy all aspects of myself and celebrate that I like to wear earrings and I like to wear colorful clothing and that has nothing to do with my job. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Right. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
So, yeah, I'm just agreeing with you here and everything that you said. We are multi-faceted and I am not an intense, aggressive person at all. I lead my company through nurturing and listening and then in return, my co-founders are like, Tanya, take the lead in pushing me onto the pedestal. We have just the best dynamic. 

Leila Ansart, Host
It's interesting. So many companies right now, we're talking about post COVID, we're talking about this era of the great resignation, the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it. Many people leaving their organizations for something better as we're all kind of a little tired, little disheartened, maybe not all. Okay. Maybe there's a few that aren't. For those of you listening, I give you a pass. 

The far majority of those that I talked to in the work that I do are quite often, unless their company has a very intentional culture. They're tired, they're worn out. They're realizing that, maybe a realization that would have taken them another 10 years to get to, that things need to better in the workplace. So much of that stems back to company culture. In my opinion, so much of that stems back to leadership and the type of leadership that you choose to employ in dealing with your talent and your people. 

You mentioned as a leader, you lead with a more feminine what you would call. Well, maybe since we've said that's out of date, maybe we need to just say a more empathetic approach. What do you think has been the impact of that in terms of retention, in terms of motivation of your team? 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
The fact that we're all still together after how hard it's been, I think it speaks for itself. Even in times of low cashflow, people have been willing to be patient for being compensated because not only do they believe in the product that they believe in the team, and part of that is attributed to leadership style. Life is hard. We're all humans. In our small team alone,  we've had divorce, we've had parents getting sick. We've had people getting married and a lot of that and people moving across the country, it's being a human being. 

When I reflect back on my career, up until this point, everything is about the people that you work with. What you're actually doing on a day-to-day basis is for me a much smaller component of my overall happiness and health when it comes to the workplace. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah, so true. Tell me, do you have any specific stories that you could share around this drive that you have around your team pulling together around your passion for women and girls embracing the math and the sciences? I mean, give us a story to help us get to know you even a little better. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
I always get asked about my experience as a woman in male dominated industries. It's a complicated question because I've never been a man. I have nothing else to compare it to, but I do very much have my experience. 

One of the jobs that changed my life most was when I was in my early to mid twenties and I was working for an aircraft leasing company, working in devaluation pricing, the leases, commercial jets, and the people there were very supportive of my career. Men leaving books on my desk, pointing me to which chapters to look at when it comes to credit worst evaluation. In the same environment, I had one individual who insisted to help me to the point where I felt really uncomfortable and even locked me in his office at one point and told me to go ahead and report him  to HR and he would end my career in aviation finance. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Oh my goodness. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
That was an important experience for me because it wasn't about what happened to me, but I had to be very careful on how I reacted and I didn't go to HR because I didn't have a lot of faith in our HR, but I did go to my boss who spoke to them, his boss, and all of the other men that worked with me really supported me through that impossible threat and uncomfortable situation. 

My takeaway from that experience that I want to share with the listeners is to always communicate what's going on and not be afraid of these environments, where the demographics are not identical to your own because the majority of people are on your side. Things happen but the way that the people I actually worked directly with resolved the situation, really empowered me to keep going and keep trusting other people. Don't be afraid of math and science because the environment isn't a bunch of people who look like you yet, and because there are more people are good than bad. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I firmly believe that as well. I think depending on individuals experiences, that can be an easier truth to align with or not. I think as the saying goes, “there's a bad apple in every bunch.” I think it's less about pointing out that bad apple and instead pointing out the experiences that we have in common with each other, where we want to get ahead, we want to have a meaningful life. We want to be able to work with people that we respect, who drive us, who inspire us and who we can make a difference to as well. So that's a good reminder and it's solid advice to perhaps take a step back from the typical, what's it like to be a woman in a male dominated industry and instead think about, well, that is what it is now, but instead let's choose to look at the good in humanity that surrounds us so much of the time. Thank you for sharing that. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Mentors come in all shapes and sizes and forms. I've been very fortunate that I have been led by some pretty impressive people, both men and women. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's awesome. Tanya, tell us about what's next for your company, for Blockforms and what listeners can do to get involved, to reach out to you. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Yeah, I'd love to. Blockforms is fundraising right now. I have decided to do a portion of that fundraising via equity crowd funding. What that means is you do not need to be an accredited investor. The minimum investment level is a hundred bucks. I just wanted it to be very accessible for the average person and we're doing so through a platform called microventures. I believe you'll be able to access the link easily from this podcast recording. And what's next for us for fundraising. So we can grow. We have more demand than we can handle. We're excited to develop this software as a more off the shelf solution. Right now it's very specific to the large enterprises that are using the software. Eventually this will be something that an individual can buy for their own small practice, whether they're a dentist or they're running bookkeeping, we're all dealing with forms. 

The company's name again is Blockforms and we're on MicroVentures. And my name is Tanya Vucetic. I think I'm the only one on LinkedIn since my last name so unique but my LinkedIn contact details are also attached to this podcast recording. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yes, absolutely. If you are right now heading over to LinkedIn to look up Tanya, her last name is V U C E T I C. It has been amazing Tanya to chat with you, and hear about your journey and the life lessons that you've experienced and have been willing to share with me and with the listeners. Thank you so much for your generosity and sharing and for all the listeners out there, I do urge you to look up Tanya. Check out Blockforms and what they're doing, and if you're inspired and want to be a part of helping her business to grow, take a look at the fundraising link that we'll have in the podcast notes. You can be a part of her journey as well until we talk again, Tanya, thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day. 

Tanya Vucetic, Guest
Thank you. It's been a pleasure and I look forward to speaking with you again soon. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Thank you.