Close
"At first I believed my life would transform when I would be able to quit my job and work for myself. Then I thought it would transform when my income hit six figures. Surely, when it hit eight figures. Having reached that level I can say yes, it feels good, but you still wake up the next morning and everything starts all over again. Opportunities will appear by themselves when you try hard, work a lot, and make mistakes, as long as you make mistakes quickly. Then over time you start making fewer of them than others." So says Ignas Žagrakalys as he launches into a wide-ranging conversation on what goes on behind the scenes when creating a business, from idea to implementation. He also shares the most important lessons he himself would have wanted to know before starting a business.
- You have achieved some very impressive results in a relatively short time – your company is only 5 years old. Did you always see yourself going into business?
- I had nothing to do with business until I was a teenager. There are no entrepreneurs in my family or close circle: my mother is a teacher, my father an engineer.
I remember one summer we were spending time in Palanga (a Lithuanian coastal resort). Sunbathing wasn’t for us, so we read a lot of books – practically everything we could find locally. One of the books I read was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It might seem a bit naïve today, but that book changed something in me. The idea that you can make it on your own really resonated and I liked the insights about entrepreneurship.
Towards the end of my school years I got a payment card from a bank that also allowed me to make payments through PayPal. This meant I could buy goods online from all over the world and conveniently pay for the shipping costs too. So, I started offering this as a service to friends, adding a small markup. While this was a shortlived venture, it was probably my first step towards entrepreneurship.
I finished school when Lithuania was at the peak of the economic crisis. I didn't know what I wanted. I stayed in Šiauliai and started studying audiovisual arts. I quickly realized that perhaps this wasn't the path for me. So instead, I went to Denmark to study business. I finished my studies and returned to Lithuania where I got what seemed like a dream job at a bank. However, my career there as a Data Analyst didn't last long because big office politics wasn't for me. So I started thinking about what else I could do, which led me to started a company with one acquaintance. During the day I was responsible for sales, in the evenings I worked on technology-related solutions. I told myself: “when this activity starts bringing in as much as my day job, I'll quit the bank and do it full time.” Well, that is what happened, but unfortunately the business then failed. It did leave me with many lessons though.
During those years I built up quite a strong network of various connections. I also clearly understood that I didn't want to return to employed work. So I then teamed up with with a partner from Denmark and together we started a joint business in Copenhagen – a digital marketing agency. Everything happened at lightning speed, and after a couple of months we were already hiring our first talents. And these were all people from Šiauliai. Everything went very well and we grew rapidly. After about 5 years of working together I parted ways with my partner as our priorities had diverged. I returned to Šiauliai and transferred all my expertise into Sixteen.media.
- You’re currently living in the Northern Lithuanian city of Šiauliai, and Sixteen.media is also based there. Why Šiauliai?
- Copenhagen is a great city, but I personally really missed Lithuania. I would return every month both because of family and because a lot of our team was based here. Then the final stimulus for me to move back was when Russia invaded Ukraine. I struggled to understand the attitude towards this conflict in Western Europe. For me, it was a very personal matter as my family had suffered under occupation themselves. So, I realized that I had to actually do something, not simply make declarations. So I moved back to Šiauliai, where I grew up. I admit that I am still adapting, it’s an ongoing process. But this would be the case if I had moved to Vilnius as well. What is important is that the conditions here for creating global products are really good.
- How is Sixteen.media doing today? And what, in your view, is your recipe for success?
- Today, Sixteen.media is a global digital advertising agency. There was a time when we worked with businesses from Australia and Western Europe to the US. Currently, we are working solely with the US market. The bar to enter the US market is high, but once you are in then everything accelerates and the results are very positive. Our clients are consumer software developers and we bring to the table strong technical knowledge in this field. For example, we have very deep knowledge of cybersecurity products.
About half of our team works from Šiauliai and the other half works remotely from different countries. We had some thoughts about expanding our operations even more, and I talked about this idea with many different experts. Ultimately, I hold the view that as long as everything is working well with a small team, it is better for us to stay small. Everyone on our team is an absolute professional, they all work a lot and have wide remits in their responsibilities. We have automated our processes down to the smallest detail. We will grow if the need arises, but for now our current scale is working just fine.
Fundamentally, I probably favor safer solutions rather than very risky ones at present. My goal was to create a business that generates revenue, and then you can take on experiments. We have already reached this second experimental stage. We have been testing different ideas for the past three years or so, and we have now settled on legal and technology solutions.
- So that is how you started developing your own products, such as Consumer Shield, right? What is it about?
- Right. So at present, I probably spend 50% of my time on Sixteen.media and the rest on Consumer Shield.
Consumer Shield helps people navigate the tangle of civil lawsuits in the US. We provide our customers with information and help from experts to get them the compensation they deserve. As part of our solution we are also building a platform that can deploy technology solutions for lawyers, legal action funds, and more. We launched in early 2024 and we have currently helped over 100 individuals to resolve their legal cases. We are still investing more into this start-up than we are earning, but I would say that by the end of this year we should achieve a breakthrough. Then it will be a case of improving the product, growing faster, and becoming a marketplace for legal services.
- Based on your own experience, what do you consider to be the most important lessons when it comes to building a business?
- It is hard for me to give advice. To tell the truth, I don’t know if I would do everything the same way again, and if I did, I don’t know if that would ultimately succeed.
When I was in my early 20s, I thought less about what could go wrong. I just pushed through, did what needed to be done, and worked an inhuman amount. I have seen the recent interest in the so-called "996" work culture, which comes from China and is becoming popular in other countries too. This is when you work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week. I guess you could say that was my baseline. What have I learned? Firstly, you don't have to delegate everything. At the beginning you can definitely do everything yourself. Secondly, don't be afraid. Even if you are introverted you can be very successful at sales. And thirdly, go out and meet people: take the first step, build connections, go to conferences and so on.
- What principles do you follow in business today? What helps you achieve your goals?
- I don't burden myself or the team with paradigms or theories. I feel good when those around me feel good. By the way, my brother Pijus is working with us now. He is 8 years younger than me. With every project he is improving fast, and everything is going excellently with him. Now I can't even imagine how things could be any other way than having him on the team.
So probably the most important principle is to select the right people. And then it is important not to control them, but to inspire them. Set clear goals and don’t engage in micromanagement. When needed, have difficult conversations and support growth – their growth, and the team’s, and the product’s.
- You are also an investor yourself, everything from start-ups to real estate. What do you think is the most important factor in building a successful business? What do you focus on most when you are investing?
- What matters in today’s economy is having an idea that the market needs. So, the first steps should to be: checking whether there is a need in the market for this solution, getting feedback, and then improving the product in response to this feedback. What pays off is having a clear objective, stats and sincerity.
In terms of attracting investment, my advice is “learn to sell”. Because attracting an investor is really doing sales. So learn to sell, whether it is selling an idea to an invest or selling a product to the market. Of course, it is also important to create solutions that create value.
As an investor, I myself romanticised investments in early-stage start-ups too much. I invested quickly and heavily into them, but later I realised that the best place to invest was my own business.
- If you were to start a new business now, what field would it be in? Where do you see opportunities?
- At the risk of sounding cliched, I would say artificial intelligence is an important field - we still have many discoveries to be made in this area. I am also fascinated by defense solutions. So I would definitely look for something that combines these two fields – technological solutions for defense. I believe that with today’s technologies, you can build any product reasonably well and reasonably quickly.
- What would be your advice for Lithuania? What is needed to increase the number of startups and unicorns here, and how can we make Lithuania the best country in the world for enabling unicorns to grow?
- First of all, I would probably advise all of us to have more courage to start things as early as possible. I say this because over time our tolerance for risk decreases, while the number of commitments we have grows, so starting something new gets harder. That doesn't mean it is impossible, but it is harder. For example, I see that the middle class in Lithuania is already strong, and from this we can expect some laziness to appear, along with less tolerance for risk. Therefore, as a country, I would suggest we first put emphasis on promoting an entrepreneurial culture.
Second, we need more people who can create high added value. This means working with education and aligning our knowledge more closely with future trends. Another component is trying to bring back the diaspora, which we need to work on much more actively than we are at present.
Regarding short term changes, it is important to remember that if we want large economic growth to come specifically from the technology sector, and if we want to generate a larger gross domestic product and put more taxes into the country's budget, it is very important not to raise taxes too early. If our tax regime is less favorable for business creation and growth, the majority of companies will simply move to other countries, especially today. Competition is fierce, a fact that Europe may not yet have realised. Lithuania has the opportunity to start preparing for the future earlier. The most important thing is to make sure we don’t trip up our own potential.
Ignas Žagrakalys was interviewed by Rūta Pukenė, Head of Ecosystem Development and Community Relations at the Unicorns Lithuania.
