Fireside chat with our CMO: Stoking the entrepreneurial fire
We interviewed the CMO and Co-founder of Aument, Sacha Landesmann about becoming an entrepreneur, self-exploration, and creating a platform for online stores.
Q: What led you into the entrepreneurial world, Sacha?
It was something that I had been thinking about for a long time. I wanted to have something of my own, a company or entrepreneurship that I was responsible for, in terms of having greater possibilities to steer my own course.
It also has to do with what I saw at home. My relatives had their own businesses, not in software though! My dad was a merchant in the construction industry and had worked with my grandfather, who was also in material supplies for construction.
My grandfather on my mother’s side had his own workshop at home (is the return to remote work in my blood?) where he fixed typewriters. My grandmother on the other hand was a seamstress. She was a proper freelancer, always doing her own thing and working when she could perform best.
My mom had her own vocation, though she didn’t have her own business. As an employee, she was fully committed to her mission as a public school teacher.
Q: What was it about your relatives that you most hoped to emulate?
Seeing them work on their own ventures or as part of a team made me realize that not everything is about years of experience. While opportunities might be unequal, our dedication to our craft, whatever it is, is something we can be admired for.
I also saw that, while jobs have a component of need, for survival, not everyone needs a job in order to prosper. Depending on the social, historical, and particular context of each person, becoming an entrepreneur might be the best path for some, and I think it’s for me!
What I saw in my parents and grandparents was dedication — a commitment to doing good work. That, teamed with honesty, is key to being an entrepreneur and is definitely the route I wanted to emulate.
Q: What would you like to change about your workstyle, to suit running a company?
I feel like I have a long way to go towards having a real methodology or organization. I tend to flex my work schedule and projects to how I feel and that can seem quite disorganized to an outsider. I wouldn’t give time management advice to anyone! I once signed up for a time management course and I didn’t do it because I didn’t have the time…
For me, the pieces fit together with this way of working. If someone joins the team who is super methodical, I will love watching them work like that! That’s the kind of colleague who gives full visibility of what they are doing, and I do think I’d like to work on this.
Q: What do you love about your co-founders?
What we all have in common is this desire to create something adjacent to our core, which is helping store owners get sales right now. When the four of us started out, we did so hoping to achieve a differential product or service that would allow us to make life easier for other people. Today, those people are store owners. But tomorrow, who knows?
On personal levels, Emilio is like a locomotive, he has a lot of energy, is effusive and outgoing. That contrasts to me because I’m more patient and introverted, so together we create a nice balance in Growth projects.
Mario, on the other hand, is someone I’ve worked with for a long time so we match up very easily. Mario’s background being similar to mine gives us a common ground to understand each other quickly. That’s unusual between a CMO and CPO, in my experience! It’s our secret weapon at Aument that lets us scale product ideas rapidly.
I’ve worked with Alan much less time of course, but what’s great about him is his commercial vision. Even with his tech background, he grasps our global business vision like no one else and that contributes to all of our teams!
Q: What’s next for Aument, in your opinion?
Whatever bridges the gap between brands and their customers is what we’ll keep doing. The destination is to improve the customer experience — the transport method is less important. Today, we’re solving communication issues, but we could go anywhere with Aument! Perhaps a financial arm could be on the cards, in which we facilitate access to credit for business owners.
We don’t think our conversions today are as related to our marketing or website’s effectiveness, as much as they are the product itself. The users who install and stay are suggesting to us that Aument lived up to the hype, and really kept its promises in terms of sales generated.
Once users start seeing how much money they’re gaining and customers they’re winning back thanks to Aument, they are hooked!
The next problems we solve might be how to create content for your product, how to produce it at scale, how to ship it, on time delivery or even how to build a team of people to help you take your business to the next level: exportation.
It does seem, however, in our internal meetings that we always come back to the idea of creating a community. The founders do have the vision of creating a social network for people with enterprises or their own online stores. I think it’s something the team wants and I know it can be done progressively, as more online stores discover our marketing automations.
Want to explore the outstanding marketing automations that Sacha is building? You can have Aument up and running in a few clicks!
