Angel Invest Boston is sponsored by Peter Fasse, top life science patent attorney.
Federico Cismondi, co-founder of Sal’s portfolio company doDoc, is back on the podcast to talk about the company’s acquisition and the lessons he learned from the initial raise to the exit. A charming and instructive conversation with a thoughtful founder.
Click here to read the transcript of this episode.
Highlights:
Why Getting the Best Patent Advice is Indispensable
Sal Daher Introduces Federico Cismondi, Co-Founder of doDoc Which Was Recently Acquired
The Problem that doDoc Solves
“This is the platform for those people who need workarounds because Google Docs just doesn't cut it for them, or Microsoft Word…”
Federico, as CEO, Learned He Needed to Delegate More
doDocs Pivot from Academic Clients to Pharmaceutical Clients
doDoc’s Near-Death Experience and What Federico Learned from It
doDoc Was Initially Built with Unsuitable Technology - Making a Dog Meow
Entrepreneurship in Portugal - What Argentina and Portugal Have in Common
How the Exit Came About
“...we try to create settings for people to share their ideas, to present them and to run with them. Sometimes they don't even need the validation from a supervisor...in order to run with that idea…”
Federico Cismondi Spoke with 1000 people to Get 24 Investors for doDoc
Spending More Time with His Co-Founder Than with His Wife
Federico Cismondi’s Parting Advice to Founders
Transcript of, “doDOC 2”
Guest: Co-founder Federico Cismondi
Why Getting the Best Patent Advice is Indispensable
Sal Daher: This podcast is brought to you by Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson. The biggest assets of a startup are its team and its intellectual property. Make the most out of the great efforts of your team by getting the best advice on building your intellectual property portfolio. I urge you to check out Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson. Fish & Richardson is the foremost patent law firm, and you should not skimp on patent advice.
Welcome to Angel Invest Boston conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today I’m delighted to have on a founder, a successful founder, Federico Cismondi. Welcome, Federico.
Federico Cismondi: Hi, Sal. Thanks for having me here.
Sal Daher Introduces Federico Cismondi, Co-Founder of doDoc Which Was Recently Acquired
Sal Daher: Federico is one of the founders of doDOC. He's been on the podcast before, some years ago. The company had an exit recently and the investors are very happy. I thought I'd have Federico back on to talk a little bit about the original vision, how it was ultimately implemented, how the exit came about, and what the future is for doDOC under its new ownership. Federico first let's recap your biography.
Listeners should know that there is another podcast, which I think I'm going to call doDOC One and this will be doDOC Two. doDOC One goes deeply into Federico's biography's backstory from Argentina, and also the founding story of doDOC, this international team of Portuguese Ph.D.'s and postdocs, and an Argentine postdoc and MIT and they have the best soccer team of any startup that I know.
[laughter]
Sal Daher: Anyway, Federico, start just a little background on you.
Federico Cismondi: Very good. First by training, I'm a biomedical engineer. I always like to say I think of myself, not as a businessman, not as a salesperson, but as an engineer with the definition in mind that an engineer always tries to find cost-effective solutions for a problem that nobody else can solve or has been able to solve yet.
I think that view of myself applies a lot to the company, to doDOC that we always try to go after that objective, solving a problem that nobody else had solved before. A little bit more about my background, I did my bachelor's in biomedical engineering, then a master's in nuclear physics, then a Ph.D. again in biomedical engineering, focused on artificial intelligence and that is when I started getting more involved with software.
Sal Daher: This is at MIT.
Federico Cismondi: That was at MIT, exactly.
Sal Daher: This is where you connected with your co-founders.
Federico Cismondi: That is when I met Paulo and Carlos, my co-founders and that is when the ideas started brewing, let's say, we started suffering the pain of having to go back and forth with scientific documentation in terms of scientific publications, but also documentation that could be used in clinical trials.
Sal Daher: Well, let's frame the conversation here. Tell the people what doDOC does.
The Problem that doDoc Solves
Federico Cismondi: Very good, super important. doDOC provides a collaborative editor for what we call scientific documentation. For people learning now about doDOC, the main difference between doDOC and Google Docs or Microsoft Word is that the level of collaboration that you need to have for scientific documents in which you work with, citations, you work with a lot of authors with different permissions, different roles, different responsibilities in the documents is very different from what you can do with Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
People end up having to create a process that is based on workarounds to use those platforms. That was the main trigger for us to come up with the idea behind doDOC and to create doDOC and to build the product around that idea.
Sal Daher: Basically, Google Docs for enterprises that need accountability, auditability, it can be audited, you know exactly who made the change, when, very controlled environment. Let's set the stage here. You saw the problem as a postdoc or a doctoral student at MIT of putting together these massive documents. A submission to the FDA, for example, can be million-page PDF documents. A document like that, somebody makes a mistake somewhere, there’s no way to find out
Federico Cismondi: That is exactly it. Not only that, there are what we call the practicalities of the problem, and then the risks associated to some of those problems. As for the practicalities, we've all experienced either Word-- in some cases, Google Docs just crashing when you go with a serious document. I call a serious document a document north of 50 pages. You have autosave so you don't lose what you're doing, and every two minutes, the document freezes, you cannot edit it for 15 seconds, and then you go again. That is not the way to collaborate with those documents.
Now, if you move north of that and you go to a thousand pages, 2,000 pages, it's absolutely impossible. What do companies do with this? They're breaking these documents into little pieces, and they send them around so people can collaborate with them and actually introduce the contents through their reviews and all that, but that is when the risk is introduced because you're sending floating versions of documents either over email or using a document management system, but it's a headache. It's a headache.
Then somebody, on top of that risk, has to compile all the information that comes back and put it together as a single document. If you have not been careful with the versioning system that you use, you might end up combining parts of documents that don't belong together because they are not up to date. Major risks, they are major problems and that is what doDOC solves, is allowing that level of collaboration.
When we say scientific documents, we use a word for clients, for people to feel related to, but when you said an enterprise collaboration, that is probably the best internal definition that we use because at the enterprise level, pretty much any type of document, not just scientific, but also financial documentation, banking documentation are super heavy. They need this level of collaboration, and people have to find these workarounds to work with them.
“This is the platform for those people who need workarounds because Google Docs just doesn't cut it for them, or Microsoft Word…”
Sal Daher: This is the platform for those people who need workarounds because Google Docs just doesn't cut it for them, or Microsoft Word, or Adobe Acrobat, or whatever they're using.
Federico Cismondi: Exactly.
Sal Daher: Let's compare the original vision of doDOC, and then what ultimately was successful in the market. What was your theory about what the market needed originally?
Federico Cismondi: Our first focus was with scientific publications, and not just that, but thinking of the education market. Not necessarily going after companies that do publications but going after universities. Very soon, we realized that the variability of the documents was really high for us to be able to develop a product that was solid enough for that use case. Second, the sales cycles were just too long working with universities.
Federico, as CEO, Learned He Needed to Delegate More
We were not able to have the traction that we expected to have. On top of that, the vision that we had was that we needed a much smaller team to tackle this problem. We thought that a CEO, a CTO could actually spend part of his or her time coding which-- [laughs] There were several mistakes in the beginning, but-
Sal Daher: This ambition, yes [crosstalk].
Federico Cismondi: - then we realized that it was just not possible and that we needed to build a strong team, a multidisciplinary team around the founders in order to be able to tackle this problem seriously. On top of that, we were lucky enough to have a very strong network of contacts that started putting us in contact with a different market.
That was pharmaceutical companies that do a lot of publications and not only that, they work with other scientific documentation, clinical trial documentation, regulatory documentation, and all these documentation has the basic same problems that the scientific publications that we were wanting to tackle at the beginning.
Sal Daher: That's the world you came from, so you thought that that's where you got to be.
doDocs Pivot from Academic Clients to Pharmaceutical Clients
Federico Cismondi: Exactly. That was the evolution from thinking, "We are going to focus on scientific publications for universities and for education", to say, "There are actually companies, there is an enterprise market that we can go after with different dynamics with a different sensitivity to the problems", because it's interesting when you look at universities, the people writing these articles are students or postdocs, and there is an assumption that they have all the time in the world to spend with the articles, but when you look at pharmaceutical companies, they don't.
They actually do need to save time and get those publications out as soon as possible, same with documentation that they have to send to an agency.
Sal Daher: This shift to pharmaceutical companies, and the discovery that you couldn't just do it with a CEO and a CTO, and so forth, you actually needed a strong team.
doDoc’s Near-Death Experience and What Federico Learned from It
Sal Daher: I remember at one point that, to your credit, you confessed to the investors that you guys had had a data loss from one of your pharmaceutical clients. Do you care to tell that story? For a data software platform, that's the cardinal sin.
Federico Cismondi: I have to say that that is last minute having the governor calling and saying, "Do you know what? Let's save these guys." It's pretty much like that. We were that close.
[laughter]
Sal Daher: The governor called and reprieved you when they were about to pull the lever on the electric chair.
[laughter]
Federico Cismondi: Yes, exactly. It was that close and the issue was that, even though when we started bringing talent to the team, there was no change in the leadership. This is, I think, a key issue because as years went by, we were able to look at that problem with more maturity and with more knowledge to understand what was the real trigger, because you can say, "Well, the wrong database was being used, the wrong protocols were being used." No, the real problem was the wrong leadership was being used.
The CEO, in this case, myself, was intervening in the processes of how the architecture for the databases and the system was defined. Bad idea. Even after bringing talent, we did make those mistakes. I think there was a major change in the evolution of the company when finally we transferred ownership and leadership to our chief product and our chief technology, and then other people that started joining and taking responsibility on different positions in the company.
Sal Daher: That was a matter of delegation to professionalize the operation of the company.
Federico Cismondi: Yes, and trust.
Sal Daher: When you realize that's a minimum viable product approach to things doesn't cut it when you have high-value documents that you're maintaining on your platform.
Federico Cismondi: It's interesting to realize that you think you can do these things because you have some knowledge of coding. Unfortunately, is part of the arrogance that you need to have at the beginning as a CEO, you need to believe that you can do everything.
Sal Daher: Founders have to have this conceit that they can do anything.
doDoc Was Initially Built with Unsuitable Technology - Making a Dog Meow
Federico Cismondi: Very soon you have to realize that you can’t, if you keep on going on that train, it's just bad news. Just for the technical people, because I think they might find it interesting. The platform was built using technologies that were not for that and we were literally making a dog meow, and we got it to a certain extent.
Sal Daher: Yes, but didn't meow very well [laughs].
Federico Cismondi: We got it to do it to a certain extent, but it was just not going to cut it, as you said, these clients needed a different level of technology, a different architecture, just basically different knowledge applied to the technology that we were selling to them, in order to deliver the value that we were promising.
Entrepreneurship in Portugal - What Argentina and Portugal Have in Common
Sal Daher: You recovered from that and then you built a team. Now it should mention, Federico is from Argentina, Carlos and Paulo are both Portuguese Ph.D. holders in different disciplines, you met at MIT. You guys ended up having a company that's between the United States and Portugal. That sounds like a really fun group.
Federico Cismondi: [laughs] It has been a lot of fun. Earlier today we had a meeting with our larger family now, when we were talking that, about the culture of our company and how it developed and I have to say, I always repeat this, I can be biased because I'm not Portuguese, so I can talk about the Portuguese culture and say good things about it without being married to it.
At this point, a big part of my heart is Portuguese, so I'm not sure how unbiased I am. But yes, that was the culture. That was the culture that gave origin to doDOC too, that idea of what Portuguese people think of themselves, that they are travelers, that they are adventures that being a small country, they can take on the world that although they did it many years ago, they feel very they can do it again.
Sal Daher: I think what happens is that Portugal became the country that time forgot, in Europe way stuck out on the Western end of Europe, they had some lost decades. Then you have this whole new generation that's growing up that is very much part of the European Union. Countries like Portugal and Spain have taken to the EU project like crazy. It's really been transformational for them.
I like the entrepreneurial energy that comes out of Portugal. Because this is a country; static, very tiny little country with things that are very centralized. They have opened up to the world into entrepreneurship, they have realized the fact that they've-- time have stood still for them. There's a hunger for achievement, a hunger for innovation, this ambition, this appetite, which is really admirable. I see this with the Portuguese, I see this with the Turks. The Turks also have this feeling of having lost time. So, this tremendous energy, and then you couple that with Portuguese culture just being fun. Wine, sun, wonderful seafood, sad, sad songs. Soccer.
[laughter]
Federico Cismondi: Many people said there is a lot in common between Argentinians and Portuguese people, and I always said, "What do you mean?" "Well, look at Tango and look at Fado. None of them are very happy, but actually, we both love it." It's very interesting.
Sal Daher: [laughs] When you look at Argentina, they're basically Galicians with Italian accents. They make fun of Gallegos but they're Gallegos. Portuguese are Gallegos. First cousins were the Galicians. No, they're more than first cousins. They're like cousins where it's the sister of one guy married the brother of the other.
Federico Cismondi: Exactly [laughs]
Sal Daher: [laughs] They are close. I think that's why there's this very close connection between Argentina and Portugal. It's just a wonderful country. I like the entrepreneurial culture of Portugal. You see some very interesting startups. Argentina, Portugal connection makes for a tremendously fun company.
How the Exit Came About
Sal Daher: Now, tell me about how the exit came about? How did you connect with the acquirer? Tell me a little bit about the new company that you guys are part of.
Federico Cismondi: The new company we are part of is Envision Pharma Group. We started having contact with Envision probably, I would say, 18 months ago, maybe a little longer. Before the pandemic, when there were still industry events and conferences, do you remember those times? [laughs]
Sal Daher: Good memories, yes. When we went to the conventions, did everybody wear a mask? I don't remember.
Federico Cismondi: No. Those were the good times. We like to remember as the normal time.
[laughter]
Sal Daher: They are good to hear.
Federico Cismondi: Yes. We started meeting common clients and hearing the client coming to our booth and saying, "Guys, you need to integrate with the product that Envision has because that is what we use for that." Then, maybe the same client go into Envision saying, "You need to integrate with the product that doDOC sells because they would work very fine, and they would deliver much more value for us together".
Sal Daher: Recapitulate for me a little bit the activity of Envision in general.
Federico Cismondi: Very important. Envision tackles several activities of information management, workflow management, within medical affairs.
It is not just scientific publications, but it covers several other areas. Now, in particular, for scientific communications, they have a product called Datavision. Now, within a broader platform, that is called IEnvision. I know why I'm saying several names, but that is the product that the clients were requesting to have integrated, Datavision, IEnvision with doDOC. It does make sense, actually, because, in the case of Envision, they are the market leader in this segment.
We were the new kids on the block and we did not have the capabilities to manage the workflow or the rest of the process. Basically, to notify people when they have to do something to keep track of hours to then maybe generate some invoicing, billing, or something like that associated to the numbers on top of that. The idea was for doDOC to focus specifically on document or content collaboration, and then feeding within this much larger umbrella in which a lot of other information is being managed and produced.
As you can hear from the story, it is a natural fit, but then I think the most important part was realizing the natural fit with the people within Envision, because products can work fantastic together, but then people have to work well together, if not, it doesn't work. Since the very beginning, we had a lot of interaction with different teams, which is another difference. We've had other partnerships and the truth is in none of the other partnerships, we started collaborating at so many levels so quickly. The sales teams working together towards crafting a value proposition together with product that would make sense to communicate to the clients, and then marketing coming up with communications for that.
Again, always people from both companies, then the product team actually working with the outer product team, coming up with the interfaces and the processes, the user stories. Finally, the developers working like a single unit and communicating. Everybody always reporting bi-weekly. What is the experience? Great. That's it. It was sort of a short meeting, they said, what do we have to discuss? Nothing, everybody has been up to date because they are talking pretty much every day so that was a very good sign and a sign that made them the process of when we came to the point of the exit, being a no-brainer.
Sal Daher: How large is the team now?
Federico Cismondi: Right now, counting only people from doDOC we have 25 people. We are starting to look at different products in our roadmap. As I mentioned, we have been mainly focusing on what we call Word-like documents, so documents that are divided into pages, that you write the contents and the contents flow from page to page. We are going to start focusing on other products. Bringing the same paradigm of collaboration, as you said, registering every single action so it is auditable. Keeping all the specific needs from scientific documentation within those products, but looking at a file formats like PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel. Looking at different ways for collaborating with the information and again bringing in the same level of real time collaborations that we brought to documents.
Sal Daher: An enterprise-grade collaboration tool for documents.
Federico Cismondi: Exactly that. I always try to be careful with the comparison saying, "Well, it's like a Google Drive. It's like an Office 365" truth is we are focusing on a segment of the market on a market segment that is under-serviced. When you see the applications that are being used in enterprise, they are consumer applications. If not, we need to go and try to find the difference between the Word version that you have in your personal computer and the one that you cover at a workstation at the company, there is no difference. You might say, "That is great. I only need to learn one." That is true, you only need to learn one, but that is assuming that one size fits all, which is not true. A product that has been prepared for consumers cannot be good for enterprise and vice versa.
Sal Daher: That's too complex for the consumer, too many bells and whistles.
Federico Cismondi: Exactly.
Sal Daher: Very good. What's the road ahead for you guys.
Federico Cismondi: With these new products coming up, we are looking into expanding our team quickly. Bringing in people with a specific knowledge, but also making sure that we don't affect the culture of the company. I always come back to the culture of the company because when we look at the numbers of people that has left the company since the beginning, we see in our surveys, in our review meetings the satisfaction level, we don't want to affect that. We want to grow fast but without necessarily affecting that, at least affecting that negatively. Making sure that we bring people with a lot of knowledge, but that also matched the culture of the company.
Sal Daher: How would you describe the culture of the company?
“...we try to create settings for people to share their ideas, to present them and to run with them. Sometimes they don't even need the validation from a supervisor...in order to run with that idea…”
Federico Cismondi: Absolutely. I think the best way of explaining it is that I know many people say this, that the CEO or the manager is not really the person that is going to have the best ideas, but we try to create settings for people to share their ideas, to present them and to run with them. Sometimes they don't even need the validation from a supervisor or from a manager in order to run with that idea, which is super important because presenting an idea is one thing, presenting a minimum viable concept of that idea is completely different. Itself, much better that idea, so we allow people to run with that.
Besides that, we respect a difference in terms of race, differences in terms of gender, difference in terms of anything. We love accents, and as you can hear, mine is a strong one. We love accents. We do have a rule that is everybody has to do a tryout for the team and very likely join because we always need new people in the soccer team. They have to like soccer. If they don't, they have to get exposed to it.
Federico Cismondi: You can always be the goalie.
[laughter]
Federico Cismondi: We have men and women everybody plays soccer in our company. It's across gender definitely. I think on top of that, it's looking at everybody in the company as more than a colleague, as a real family member. When you look at a person like that, you are definitely trying to discover the virtues so could you help that person shine brighter and also discovered the defects so you can help that person improve. If those defects cannot be improved, to live with them in a happy way and not just as a person, but as a team again understanding where the limitations of everybody are and respecting them, and trying to build around that and accommodating. Because in the end, everybody has to be happy. It cannot be just the shareholders. It cannot be just investors. I think when you have happy interns, he's already a good sign, a very good sign because it shows that the rest of his structure is going to go well.
Sal Daher: That's excellent. I've always liked doDOC. I remember when Michael Mark (My Interview with Super Angel Michael Mark) introduced me to you guys, I said, "Oh geez, these guys they're going to do something." Michael had actually worked in the document space decades ago. He'd been in a document management company and he thought you guys had a lot of promise. You went through Techstars. Do you want to talk a little bit about your experience with Techstars and how it helped you in the company?
doDoc’s Experience at Techstars Boston
Federico Cismondi: It was a wonderful experience because we learnt a lot. Our background, although I had previous experience with another software company, it was under a different model. It was not built using a risk investment or venture capital. It was a different model. The way I saw things was completely different. It was for me like taking a very accelerated class about how to build a company and how to grow it fast. Obviously, it seems that I missed a few classes because of the mistakes I was talking about before [chuckles].
Sal Daher: Coming to think of the mistakes is that you managed to avoid this one, you're going to make the other one. You're never going to be perfect, but you recovered. You've got a reprieve from the governor.
Federico Cismondi: Yes. I come to say that meeting investors through Techstars was fantastic because not only you get that initial seed, that initial money that allows you to develop your company, to grow your company, to take the first steps. Also, you start understanding how to present your idea, then your company, then the results of your company, to your investors. How to communicate with them, how to be more efficient with that. Sometimes how to convey that information in a way that you can get advice, so it doesn't happen again because truth is, mistakes are super useful. You always learn from them, but sometimes you don't have the time to analyze it fully and fully learn from it. Presented that mistake to a person that has a lot more experience can help you a lot in terms of processing it faster and taking that lesson home quicker.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Do you have any other thoughts on fundraising? What you think you did well in fundraising? What would you have done differently? Maybe you can recapitulate a little bit of how many raises you did and so forth.
Federico Cismondi: I think can mention numbers in terms of numbers of investors, not necessarily money, because I think it's more relevant to talk about that. I think since the incorporation of the company and since the first fundraising round, I spoke with between 900 to 1,000 investors. Of those, we had in total 24 investors that were distributed among a pre-seed round, a seed round, and a series seed round. In pretty much, if you look at those 24 investors, it was pretty much like eight in every one of those three rounds.
Federico Cismondi Spoke with 1000 people to Get 24 Investors for doDoc
If you look at the conversion rate, 24 out of a 1,000 is not very good, [chuckles] but yes. The thing is that is where you also learn a lot too. You never have meaningless conversations, but you might be talking to the wrong audience. The same thing happens when you are trying to sell something, you're going to have a really bad conversion rate if you're talking to the wrong audience,
Sal Daher: You have to find the right audience. Would you agree that raising is to a great extent a search function, finding the person for whom the company is the right investment?
Federico Cismondi: Yes. I think from my responsibilities as a CEO, that was the main one and then probably the most distressing one. At the same time, having a lot of fun doing it, because again, for a person that was doing it for the first time like me, you keep learning continuously, and how to present the same message, the same information crafted in a different way so that audience can receive it in a better way and process it faster.
Then understanding how to tell the story of how things are going with the clients. When they see these, I don't mean either lying or portraying things in an unrealistic way, but if you can focus on having 1% of the workforce of a large company, or you can focus on having 2,000 users. See how you're saying exactly the same thing, but one is the big number and the other one is a small one and you're not portraying a different situation. You're just showing numbers that make people feel more that evolution that you feel every day as the CEO looking at things.
Sal Daher: I think one thing that you did very effectively is you communicated really well with very consistently timed reports to investors. Then you always follow it up with an offer to talk and explain, or have a conference call to fill people in online, which allows them to ask questions and so forth. Not necessarily people took you up on every one of those, but I've always thought that showed that you really were interested in maintaining lines of communication open with investors. I salute you for that, for your communication skills are very good. Is Carlos Boto with you as well in the new company?
Spending More Time with His Co-Founder Than with His Wife
Federico Cismondi: Yes, Carlos and I, he actually says that he spends more time with me now online, but more time with me than with his wife. That is actually, I think, what he tells his wife. He says, "Well, if Federico can tolerate me for so many hours and you have the rest of the day, take it without complaining" [chuckles].
Sal Daher: What's the division of labor between you and Carlos?
Federico Cismondi: That is a very good question. I think in practice, there is very little because we work carefully enough to cover our backs and keep the other one knowledgeable about everything that was going on to be able to cover different angles. For example, if I'm going to go do a presentation for an investor, he also needs to know how to do a presentation for an investor, because it might happen that because of geography, it's easier for him to go there, or because there might be two investors at the same time.
Same thing for sales, same thing for operations. It's just that, of course, it's just natural. Some people have a better capacity or the just do it better, for whatever reason they just do it better. Either because they get the flavor of it faster or they're just simply better at doing it. Those things where we saw that Carlos was better or I was better, we tried to be careful to say, "No, just you do it".
Sal Daher: Play to your strengths.
Federico Cismondi: Yes. Exactly.
Sal Daher: That's a good move. Very promising team. A very happy team. Is the impressions that I have. All the investors are very happy. I mentioned doDOC and Michael smiles. I can’t say that he smiles at every startup that I mention. Smiles with doDOC. Very good. As we think of wrapping up this podcast, I'd like to open up the conversation to let you address things that you think are important for this audience of founders, people who are thinking about finding companies of Angel Investors, what would you like to communicate to them?
Federico Cismondi’s Parting Advice to Founders
Federico Cismondi: There is one reiteration, I think, from the previous podcast, when I participated, I think for a similar question, I mentioned hire fast. Don't take too long to hire talent and to bring talent to your team. I never get tired of saying the same thing. I know sometimes it's difficult to trust, to delegate, especially in an early stage because you think that mistakes can be just too costly. Truth is, you are creating a snowball that is going to really come back to bite you in the heels. It's just not sustainable and the risk that you're trying to avoid by not delegating becomes much higher every day you don't do it.
It's just that hiring fast and trusting people and delegating responsibilities. Of course, holding hands, you cannot expect the person that starts doing something to know from the get-go what to do. Sometimes you're not able to bring a person with years of experience, sometimes it's just a few months, so you have to hold hands, but always giving space for that person. For us all the time, I know we are very lucky, but when we look at other companies, we see that most of the time when you delegate people step up and do it better than you, because they have more bandwidth, because they just have more knowledge.
Sal Daher: That's a very powerful observation for CEOs and other top-level people in the company. This is very difficult for founders to delegate. Transitioning from just getting a company off the ground to actually managing a growing enterprise and building a team and so forth. That is the hardest thing to do. You and Carlos Boto both have done this splendidly and I salute you.
Federico Cismondi: Thank you.
Sal Daher: I thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast and to add a coda to your wonderfully interesting story.
Federico Cismondi: Absolutely. Thank you very much, Sal.
Sal Daher: Thank you very much, Federico Cismondi, co-founder of doDOC, an exited company. This is Sal Daher at Angel Invest Boston. Thanks for listening.
Sal Daher: I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.
[music]