Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Kirill Makharinksy, co-founder and CEO of Enki, the company that helps teams with adoption of business intelligence and data tools. Kirill, thank you so much for joining the show all the way from London. So I know the time difference must be brutal but from our conversation before the show, I know you, you split time between London and, and and San Francisco, which is, you know, a previous home of mine.

So, really interested to hear about your background, your experience, the companies that you founded, the things that you've learned along the way and, and what you're working on now. Before we get into all of that, what were you doing before you started Enki?  

Kirill: Julian great to be here and let's do it. Yeah. Excited to chat. Mm-hmm. before Enki. Well, it depends how far we go back. So, at before, before university I had very much a kind of had to adopt to a lot of changing things, whether it's different schools different experiences. My parents moved to the UK when I was five, so I only started to learn English.

Then we moved to south of England and I was mostly, luckily school was all the subjects in which you can get tested. I didn't quite well in, so I was much more into more subjective subjects like art and music. Played the piano. Pretty much every day from 10 to 18 got quite involved into art.

And then once I started thinking about university math was the kind of big area I got into. GEB was a kind of big book that influenced me. And for about two months at university, I thought maybe I could become a mathematician or at least was thinking about that. And thank God pretty quickly.

I wasn't going to be one of the best in the world at that, and pretty much at that point started to get interested in building things. Startups certainly Europe back then, everything was very nascent in the startup world. So to basically you know, my, my hack to get into it was to help start the entrepreneur club at Oxford, which is where I studied.

And right after studying, I moved to San F. Worked at a company called Slide for a couple years in the data and product team, and then started my first company. And Enki is my third company that I co-founded, but my first one as ceo.  

Julian: Amazing. What was the, you must have had some kind of internal motivation. Did you always think you were going to start once you made the decision to move from mathematics and start the entrepreneurial club and start this journey what inside of you was kind of driving you to start a company? Did you always have that? That feeling that you needed to, And also when you did have that kind of inclination to move in that direction, start your own company were you just searching for an idea at the time?

Were you gaining skills? I always like to learn about. The, the conception of, of the entrepreneur before they really dive into, you know, projects. Because I think it speaks to how they, they think about you know, what they're working on. But yeah. Tell me a little bit about that time. Did you always think you were gonna be a, a founder and, and you know, have an idea and, and, and, you know, go in that direction?

Kirill: Yeah, I think initially it's all about making a difference, right? And building for me it was the. magic Of building something out of nothing. Right. And that's I think it's, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are, are excited by and addicted and it's a very rewarding experience to build something out of nothing and have a large number of people get real tangible benefits from that in a way.

and you know, if you hadn't done that, that thing would not have existed. So for me, that's personally super motivating. Exciting and that's why I pretty quickly got addicted to, to building things. And then obviously as you get more experience, you, you figure out which direction of building is, is most relevant for you, your skills and what, and what's long term exciting.

Julian: Yeah. What, what guided your direction in building? Was it the, you know, different things you were seeing in your own life that, that problems that you wanted to find solutions for? Yeah. Was it a little bit more of the market? How did you view what you wanted to build and make the decision in, into the direction she wanted to go?

Kirill: Yeah. Prior to Enki, it was very opportunistic. It was more around just trying to be around the, the smartest people, because I was, I mean, there's still a lot to learn. You know, I'm not, I'm not so naive to say that I know everything. Now by far not, you know, you, you gotta, you gotta stay on your toes.

Stay, stay hungry, stay foolish, right? And, but you know, when you start your entrepreneurial journey and you literally know nothing. You, you, I mean, the best. To, to, to learn and figure out what you want is to surround yourself with exceptional people who are smarter than you, more experienced than you, who are building things you're excited about.

And that, and that's what I did, right? So when I started the entrepreneurship club at Oxford, it was, you know, I was coordinating a lot of things, but in reality it was just a hack for me to get around myself, Folks who had already. Built things and had figured out something to a certain extent, unlike like me.

And then my first company, I was technically a co-founder, but I was very much a junior co-founder. My, my co-founder who was the ceo, who was very much the number one in the company and I was learning a lot from him and really, really his right hand man. And, and just make, getting the company doing all it took to get the company off the ground.

Yeah. And. My, my second company that, that was an equal co-founder setup, but I was not the ceo. So it was a similar dynamic, but that was much more of a market opportunity driven by the, the ideas of, of my co-founder there. And so Enki, which I'm working on now, is, is really first company where I, it was inspired by my ideas and I think the.

That I formulated what excited me most and when I started the company in terms of the origin, I really thought, what is something that motivates me super long term, you know, hypothetically for the rest of my career, right? Startups are, it's an up and down journey, right? I I know to what extent folks are on the ADHD spectrum, but I'm, you know, not, I'm not high up there, but I've got a little bit.

And so, you know, one day you. You, you just think, ah, this is this no point carrying on, and the next day you just feel top of the world. Right? And so there are ups and downs and, and I do firmly believe, as cliche as it is, that if, if you don't have around you if you're not working on something that you're excited about long term, no matter what the downside, it's going to be so much tougher.

Right? And so for me, what's personally motivating is helping improve people's habits and helping. The little things they do that provide a lot of cumulative gains to build things that drive innovation and, and make a big difference. So that's, that's the big motivator for me. I was lucky enough to be one of the first investors in, in Car, the meditation app.

So that's an example of a company I was involved with on the investment side. That helps build habits on. In terms of in terms of rest, meditation, sleep and then Enki specifically, we help professionals improve their habits in terms of being more efficient and productive at work. So that, that's really my, the, the big picture in terms of what's super motivating for me at that point and realize that I want to spend pretty much you know, almost exclusively my energy in terms.

Building and investing around that theme.  

Julian: Yeah, I, I, I definitely wanna dive into Inky cuz I think there's so much value out of building a tool that that helps other professionals really get into a, a high proficiency level with whatever they're using. because it, it, it accumulates so much success in the day to day operations.

But selfishly, I want to ask about this, this first experience that you had as kind of a junior founder, because currently, I, I, I'm in a similar position with my co-founder where he's. You know, ran a cute few companies. This is my first I would say now that you coined that term, Junior Co Foundership.

And so one thing I do struggle with is it's hard to know where the ownership lies as someone with less experience and how to really make decisions maybe, I don't know if you've had a similar experience and kind of balance out the, the necessities of what you need to do for the company, but also.

The career and personal growth because, you know, they, I think they do take a lot of attention. Did you find yourself, do you find that it was difficult to balance those out? You know, the, the necessities that you needed to do, the tasks that you need to accomplish and making sure that you were personally growing and learning as a founder to.

Then, you know, whether it was continue that company or, or move in another direction in the future. Did you find that difficult? And if, and if you did, what were the ways that you balanced that that learning experience and also, you know, creating results and, and and, you know, earning, you know, or excuse me building and opportunities and with your, with your company.

Kirill: I think the main thing to focus on is, are you on. in a sustainable way. But are you on the steepest possible learning curve in general? Right. And this is especially important in the, at the start of the, at the start of your career. And so, I the reason I was at Slide for only a couple of years and then moved on to start the company.

It was initially called You Noodle, then it rebranded to quid, Now it's commercial with Net Base. Was because I felt it, it was the right timing to change my, my learning curve. And I mean, you talked about balancing that with any relationship with co-founders, that is probably the most important. Thing for, in particularly young and first time entrepreneurs to, to, to figure out and get mentorship in, maybe even get therapy in right, is because it's just like with your investors that joined the board, but your co-founders in particular, it's, it's in many ways a marriage.

Right? And yeah, there's biggest reasons for startups failing, certainly. Few years is our co-founders not getting along, not working together, not figuring out all their differences in terms of motivations and what, what makes them tick. Right? And so that whole, you know, I essence had a bootcamp in for, for multiple years.

And how do you navigate various tensions, opportunities and problems and dynamics between co-founders? So for me specifically, this is why I was at slide for a couple. that was a startup and I was employee, not business employee number 10, I believe, but. It's, it's still didn't, didn't feel like like I was growing as quickly as I could do.

Then I was mm-hmm. In a setup at quid for four years. So I think at three and a half, four years I realized that by, by the point, by that point, it was time to start what would feel like my own baby company-wise. And so, yeah, you know, I left, I left the company on very good terms with my, with my co-founder and.

Ended up consulting the company for I think a year or so after that, but ended up moving on to start what ended up being my, My previous company.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. How do you, Was there anything that you did proactively or took the initiative in to make sure that you were on that steep learning curve? What, what were you asking questions?

Were you setting up meetings? Were you looking at certain pieces of knowledge? Regular. How did you kind of make sure that you were learning everything that you could at each moment and also, you know go going through the ebbs and flows of, of emotional strain that startup startup takes. How did you ensure that you were doing that?

Kirill: I think the number one thing is I mentioned before is surrounding yourself. people who, who you can learn from. And I think that a lot of folks say that, but you could a few people do that in a systematic way. So one of the, one of the things, for example, my I got inspired to do from my friend Sam, Sam Chattery, who's a CEO of Class Dojo, is that for any problem or issue?

You're thinking about or need to figure out, whether it's by yourself or with your co-founders, is, is to actually have on hand, and if you don't have on, have, list the top five people in the world that you are somehow direct, directly connected to, or can get a connection to who could help you solve that problem and discuss that, and then try to actually reach out to those people and actually ask for.

Right. I think a lot of the mistakes, a lot of certainly I made early on was to kind of not reach out for help enough from people in general. Mm-hmm. . I think part of that is a kind of. Story there in terms of kind of upbringing and it's influenced by parents and how that works as well, and how they, they are receptive as well.

So that's kind of a separate psychological chat, but I think 80 plus percent of entrepreneurs just don't ask for help enough and don't reach out to, to, and ambitious enough in terms of reaching out to the best people in the world who. Them in terms of discussing a specific topic. And so, short answer to your question is, I wish I'd done that better, but I try to make the most of my time in San Francisco and just build you know, the, the main value of, of San Francisco certainly earlier career is, is it's got some of the smartest folks in the world, certainly in tech.

And so you have to make the most of that. You have to, you have to. And, and not just in a, in an abstract way, which everyone would agree with, it's, it's be systematic about it. So, you know how many folks that that might be relevant for you either today or for your career. Have you, have you built a real or strengthened a relationship with in the last week?

What about the last month? Right. So just thinking about that in a more systematic way.  

Julian: Yeah, no, that's incredible advice. And especially for young entrepreneurs learning and the whole process of, of growth because I think, like you said, a lot of people think about surrounding themselves with smart people, but don't necessarily know the mechanics behind it.

So it's, it's cool to see not only what you've learned, but how you proactively kind of set up the system to do. Moving on to Enki because I think it's extremely exciting to to think about this idea of enabling professionals to be more proficient at different tools. And, and you mentioned, you know, this is the accumulative success or the accumulative learning that that leads to success.

What got you into Enki in particular? What was the inspiration behind? You know, going from quid to something that is gonna enable professionals in their careers to become better at, at the tools.  

Kirill: I mentioned my long term motivation, which is making it easier to improve habits, and I was, I think a lot of people have thought about notion of why, why does a systematic, customized experience well, it's not that customized.

I wouldn't say school is customized at all. That's a kind of a problem that many folks are working on. But lots of forcing functions for you to actually improve read books and learn in a structured way. Why does that stop? Enter the workplace and, and start a full-time job. And given a lot of things have changed in the last 10 years in terms of proliferation, of, of tools and techniques.

It's cliche, but it's true that the, the everything's accelerating in terms of. What's out there, tools that are out there and folks that, that don't stay on top of them are going to fall behind and in consequence companies as well. So I just saw that as a massive trend and opportunity. More for the, for the long run and more specifically in terms of how we came up with the ideas that I, I saw the impact of internal universities and data academies and mentorship programs, which are run by the top companies in the.

Right. So the Airbnbs, the Facebooks, the Googles and the Amazons of the, of this world, they've, they've got a little bit of a secret which is the fact that they've got these, you know, they're not very sexy, so very few people know about them, but they, they have high quality mentorship. And training programs for internal employees.

Now, they're not done very efficiently and we want to help improve how they run in their efficiency. But that's a separate story. The most important thing is only the elites in terms of professionals have access to, to these to, to these benefits. And, you know, bigger picture. What's interesting for me is, is professional athletes, right?

They have, they have coaches for every aspect of their performance, right? Why don't you, why don't you, you know, if, if you're a listener, you're pr you probably don't. And, and in fact, employees at some of these top companies, so there's literally only a handful do, do have that. But it's done very inefficiently because it's very, very difficult.

It's very difficult to scale because you need to match everyone with a mentor in the right way. It needs to be customized to what they're doing at work and so on. And so I saw the huge benefit of, of these programs, and I just want to democratize that experience for for all professionals. And it turns out mm-hmm , you know, we started to do that.

With software and our network of experts.  

Julian: Yeah. How do you, how does anke kind of affect that experience? Is it the tooling that you use it, is it the structure? Is it the learning? Is it the, the network that you've connected with? What ways are, are you solving this problem with access to resources that will, will improve your, your professional, whether it's ability or the tools you use, the, the system you.

What is Enki doing specifically to to change this?  

Kirill: So the key thing is to get employees at scale. So whether it's a large number of employees at a large company or even, even if you have 150 employees in your company, it's just, it's just very, very hard to get a large number of them to, to learn. Be very good and non-trivial tool.

Right? So, I mean, very simple example, if, if a company has a couple of hundred people and implements Tableau, for example, or Power BI or Looker, or a tool like that, right? Which, which are great. The problem is on if you just let your employees use 'em. The reality is only five to 10. You know, five to 10% of them at most are actually gonna be using, using those tools.

Cause it's, it's, it's, it's a change of behavior. It's a process. And so, so that, that's what we help with is we, instead of having five to 10% of people using those tools, we, we can we can get up to 70 or 80%, which, which, which is a huge impact in terms of efficiency, leverage, and speed of execution for the company.

In terms of how we do it. Super high. It's essentially three components. One is that, one is that we have a network of experts which a client company can plug into and use their own employees as experts. But we have a network of experts and each employee at one of our partners is matched with one of those experts who essentially keeps them on track, provides accountability, answers their questions, and helps them apply to, to their work.

So the first thing is the one-on-one guidance, which is. Absolutely critical. And this is what they do at Google. At Airbnb. At Amazon, they provide this one-on-one guidance, right? Which is absolutely critical for someone to, to get coaching. The second thing is everything's focused on end goals, right?

So you don't want to. . The problem with online courses is, aside from the fact that no one finishes them, is the fact that they're not applied to specific workflows and use cases, right? And so we focus laser focused on specific workflows customized to each employee, right? So someone isn't just going to be learning looker, they're gonna be learning how to build a specific dashboard that improves an existing work.

With the help of Looker as an example. And the third thing is we are, at this point, we spent four years on this. We are definitely without being humble, the best in the world are getting a large number of people to actually come together and do things which are not critically urgent, but very important.

Right? So it's a people op. Problem of how do you get hundreds, if not thousands of people to actually work through exercises, which will make big Deni an impact on their productivity, but they just won't have time for in their own ways. Right? So there's cohort based learning. We have smart notifications, which you integrate with Slack and email.

We have lots of discussion prompts. We have a systematic process. In terms of conversations with the mentor that are part of the platform, right? So all these things are essentially forcing functions to get a large number of busy professionals to actually go through the steps necessary. To learn non-trivial tools.

Julian: Incredible. Tell, tell us a little bit about the traction. Who are you working with now? What have you seen in terms of the results of, of increased productivity? Tell us a little bit more about the, and the growth of the company. You know, kind of where, where, where you've seen kind of month to month to month the success of, of companies adopting your platform as a way to, to teach their internal.

Kirill: Yeah. So we have we have a B to C product, you know, consumer product. So individual employees, individual folks who are in between jobs can use our app to sharpen their skills. So we have. We have a couple of million users of that product and about 10,000 of of them pay for a premium version, which is basically more interactive and has a bit of mentorship built in.

And then we have an enterprise version, which is our product for teams. And there we have several large partners where most of their employees are on the platform. And they're using our platform to get up to speed with tools that their companies are using. The impact is, is, is, I mean, it's incredibly motivating, right?

Because we, we, we have non-technical folks, a lot of non-technical folks, you know, who would think that you know, when we mentioned Python to them, they're like, Oh, this is, this is a snake, right? We have non-technical folks who didn't think the could do anything but what they've been given. And suddenly they feel like they've adopted superpowers, right?

And without this process, which. Integrated in their company, they just wouldn't have been able to do that. Right. So it, it's incredibly motivating to see that impact from folks who just wouldn't otherwise have been able to do that. And the reality for companies, companies have a lot of people like that who who may be smart, but just they, they don't they don't have the.

And having been taught this at school or previously, how to use these tools and the impact on the company is huge, right? Because folks have streamlined workflows. They work faster. We show to companies, to our partners actually how much time is saved because of faster workflows and also how much time is saved across all teams because of increased efficiencies.

So that's kind of why companies enjoy working with us, cuz we can actually show a very specific ROI in terms of hours. Of each employee from being on the platform. So, and that translates to increased leverage, right? Because the, the faster you move the more leverage you have for efficient growth.

And at the end of the day, that's what separates the fastest growth companies. So the stripes and the Airbnbs of this world. From, from the rest is how quickly they execute. Not just within their core teams, but long tail across every single unit. And how efficiently.  

Julian: Incredible. What are some of the biggest risks that Enki faces today?

Kirill: It's just, it's just a case of it's just a case of growth really, in terms of, you know, we already are. In a way that we're really happy with our consumer product is growing more than 10% every month, just organically without any advertising. And the companies that we're partnered with are kind of some of the fastest growing companies in the world, and they want it to stay like that.

We're helping with scale their team performance, so we're happy with our growth, but you know, like, like, like any entrepreneur or ceo, you know, should be, you should be. With how can you accelerate that growth and how can you make it more efficient? Right. And so for me it's less of a risk. It's, it's more around kind of increasing that, that, that, that that slope.

Because really confident, we'll build a big company. It's just a question of how imp impactful it will be in a few years time. And so that's kind of what I, what I lose sleep over every day is like, how. Maximize the, the, the chance of that kind of accelerating as much as it could on a weekly and monthly basis.

Julian: Yeah. If everything goes well, what's the long term vision, for Enki?  

Kirill: Well, look, I, I firmly believe every, and this is what's super me, for me, every professional should have a mentor for the tools and skills that are optimal for their role and for their career. And there should be a systematic process to ensure.

That is something that's customized for you and in line with your long term goals. Right? And what, what that leads to is a dramatic impact on the efficiency, efficiency and productivity of that employee. And for the company. It, it massively impacts leverage of, of how effective they are. Right. And so that's interesting.

That's, I think that's really exciting because that, I think is one of the biggest ways to impact innovation and economic. in generally globally, right? Yeah. So that's, that's the goal is I, I, I really believe every, everyone has the capacity, Every professional has the capacity to have a mentor that's, or multiple mentors that are helping them adopt the tools and skills that are As important as possible for their work and their longer term career.

Julian: Yeah, Yeah. I, I love to always ask this question, one for selfish research, but also for my audience. What keeps you motivated? What, what are ways? Cuz you know, the, the journey of being an entrepreneur, like you mentioned earlier, is sometimes you feel like, you know, everything's crumbling underneath you, other days are on top of the world.

What are some ways that you kind of stay motivated throughout, you know, the different yeah, the different circumstances of what a startup faces.

Kirill: I think two things come to mind. One is what I mentioned before is what's motivating for me is seeing the impact, right? It, it, it's very tough. So I, I, I like to go out, even, even from a B2B product, you know, I want to meet and chat to the employees at our company, at our partner. To, to, to see the impact and is it, is it a nice to have impact or is it actually something that which we see a lot, which is just life changing.

Right? And that's, that's super motivating, right? And by the way, what one, one really important take away maybe for every entrepreneur is to, is to really share that impact to the rest of the team. Cause that's incredibly motivating. Not just for you, but to everyone on the. Believe me, like your developer that's working on a feature and then season one of the Slack channels.

How how that feature is loved by, you know, even if it's a small number of users, but a certain number of users has made a difference, it's incredibly motivating, right? It's and so share those wins that impact across the team. And you know, we have multiple slack kind of channels of share sharing.

Some of those. The impact as well, and that that's incredibly motivating for the team in general. So that, that's the first thing. More kind of the entrepreneurial answer. I guess the, the, the less you know, entrepreneurial answer is I, I think travel, everyone talks about traveling and seeing the world.

I think one as, as, as something that, that's very beneficial. I think one non-obvious benefit is, is you see just how problems are solve. And how people live in different situations. Right? And that's that's motivating first of all because of it helps you figure out how to solve problems from different angles, right?

In different ways. And secondly in the end of the day, I think if you're building something that's, that's that's impactful and important, it needs to be on a global scale, right? And so understanding your, your users, your customer, From a global perspective from as early as possible is both motivating, but, but really very important.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Another bonus question I, I love to ask founders as they come onto the show just for, you know, inspiration and, and ideas to help not only me, but, but my audience is what books are people have influenced you the most, either early on in your career now or, or or at any point in time while you were going through this entrepreneurial journey.

Kirill: Let me see. So the first one that comes to mind was probably the first book I read cover to cover, which is a very cliche book, but maybe not at the age that most people read it. So I think I read The Seven Habits of Highly Affected People when I was 12, and that was around the age when I was, I think at 11 was when I started being 11 to 13 was my period when, when I was a bit of a, a know-it-all with my, my parents.

I thought I I thought I knew everything and figured it out. Yeah. That was the time when my youngest brother and sister who were twins, they were born when I was 11. I remember giving them advice, about how to, how to raise their kids. I was, I was giving quite a, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know know if, not sure if aggress is the right word, but certainly opinion, feedback as if I already knew a lot about the world.

Right? And so those two years were probably the only two years when I. A lot of tension with my parents, and I remember between 12 and 13 I read seven Habit of Highly affected people when I was 12 covered to cover. And that had a big impact on my relationship with, well, people in general, but specifically with my parents because I started to see things from their point of view and a lot of advice there.

So, you know, give that book to your 11 year old. If, if they're any reading. And then, then what comes to mind is when I was 15, 16, started to, started to think about the future and my career. I remember Richard Branson's autobiography having a big impact. So he, growing up in England, he was the number one entrepreneur in terms of PR and folks my age were knew about.

And so his story was inspiration purely in terms of bias to action. In terms of that side of leadership and just making things happen and like I mentioned before, making something out of nothing and the magic around that and getting people to, to experience that in a, in a, in an amazing new novel interesting way.

So that was a, that was a big inspiration at that age. I remember when I was 18, I was starting to think about, I was applying for math at Oxford, and I remember ge b the leisure b. In inspiration. That was, that was in my brief, I think, year when I was entertaining the idea of being a mathematician. So I, I really enjoyed the philosophical and abstract nature of, of systems and math, Well, I say, I say systems.

I only later realized what what I was really excited about was how systems are built, right? And so I think since then in my adult career, I've, the books that I focused. Primarily or exclusively are those that help me understand people better and help me understand systems better. Right? And so, yeah.

How could, off the top of my head, the you know, Antifragile and Atomic Habits books like that, which help me understand both the psychology of people and how they operate. And also, yeah, also how systems are built up and in, in effect, when I think about it, that's, that's what excites me most.

Kind of combining psychology with systems in a, in a way that's magical for people other people to experience realize. That's, that's, that's what gets me up every morning.  

Julian: That's, that's amazing. And thank you so much for sharing. I know we're close to time here and I, we can talk, I think more and more about, you know, the entrepreneurial journey philosophy, but also you know, ways to kind of strategize as you grow and, and build a successful company.

But before we go give us your plugs. You know, what are your LinkedIns, your, your Twitters? Where can we get involved in where can we be a part of the mission that Enki is serving?  

Kirill: Well, Kll is a relatively unique name. It's, it's pretty well known in the eastern European world, but I do, I am at Kll on Twitter and on Angel List, so that's I didn't have to buy those.

I I was, I was an early, I was pretty early on both of those. So I'm at Kll on Twitter and and AngelList. And then on LinkedIn. I'm Kirill on LinkedIn. I'll just search for my name. Krinski. But yeah, mostly active. Twitter if anyone wants to continue or start a conversation there. Yeah. .  

Julian: Yeah.

Well, thank you Kirill so much. Not only have we learned so much about your journey, just as, as through, you know before as, as an early entrepreneur, but now to where you are and the systems you've built, the knowledge you've gained and, and what's really exciting and motivating about what you're doing now.

So thank you so much for being on the show. I hope you enjoyed yourself and I can't wait to share this with my audience. But again, thank you.  

Kirill: Thanks a lot Julian, and great to chat and good luck to everyone. Go build something important. .  

Julian: Yeah.

‍