In this episode of Automate, Delegate, Eliminate we chat with Ashik Wani about his SaaS, DocAcquire!

Ashik is a customer driven technology evangelist, with executive-level experience identifying and implementing enabling technologies that facilitate business processes and strategic objectives. He is the Founder of DocAcquire, a SaaS platform which enables businesses to automate document centric business processes. 

What does DocAcquire do?

• DocAcquire helps any business automate any back office, data-centric processes.
• For example processing invoices
• Specifically, they want to help businesses do less, and do it beautifully.

What makes DocAcquire different from other document parsing softwares?

• Ashik saw that a number of parsing softwares were clumsy, expensive and difficult to use.
• He wanted to make a product that was easy for businesses of any size to adopt.
• DocAcquire was made so that the initial user journey is seamless and the software is easy to configure.

What was your Origin story, how did you decide to start making DocAcquire

• Ashik started as a software developer before being promoted to high level leadership positions.
• He worked for an insurance company that sought to digitize their paper-centric processes. They built a platform that would scan the paper documents and automate a lot of the processes.
• That got him thinking about the information inside those documents, and what could be done with it.
• It took him 3 years to come up with a proof of concept.

What was it like taking the leap from working for someone else in a secure job, to starting your own SaaS company?

• The first thing he did was to have a chat with his wife to tell her what he intended to do. She was supportive.
• Financially, his job at the time was incredibly stable and didn’t tax him. But what he wanted was something that would allow him to give back.
• So he took a leap of faith and started his company.
• Initially, he didn’t pay attention to things like sales and marketing, he was interested in building the software.

How did you transform from an engineering only start-up to a full SaaS company with marketing?

• Ashik had made sure to do his research beforehand, looking at competitors and other SaaS products and how they did things.
• He acknowledges that he spent too much time trying to add too many features into the software.
• He started with a website and some basic SEO, which made him realize he needed to change his focus.

What difficulties did you face when starting your company?

• He spent a lot of time trying to please our technology business partners, which helped in the long run, but took too much focus away from initial marketing efforts.
• He bootstrapped the company instead of looking for investors, as finding the right investors is in itself a full-time job.

How much should a bootstrapped founder have to invest in their business?

• Ashik recommends at least 70-150k in the bank before you attempt to bootstrap your business

What advice would you give?

• Don’t become too attached to your initial product, becoming too attached will make you less likely to listen to critique that you can use to better your product.
• Start small.
• Have a vision, and use it during the difficult times to keep you from being distracted and always keep moving towards that vision.
• Sell the solution, not the product.

How does the company look now as compared to the early days?

• From just Ashik to a full team and partners and resellers.
• Partners in the USA, Ireland and now Australia.

 

Resources:

Websites: 

DocAcquire

Data Automation

Books mentioned: 

The Lean Startup

The Challenger Sale

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