Meet not8, Winner of the Startups of the Year in Amsterdam

This interview series celebrates all the phenomenal Startups of the Year Winners. Today we are talking with the CEO & co-founder of not8 - Yaroslav Medvedev. Congratulations, well-deserved! The HackerNoon community is excited to learn more about you!

What does it mean for you to win this title?

Thank you, it’s a great honor to be named Startup of the Year! We are super excited :) It’s a great milestone for our team and a recognition of our efforts.

What sets you apart from the competition?

Honestly, it depends on who you consider as our competitors - but I’d say that the main differentiating factors of not8 are:

• ability to work with live websites and apps

• real-time multipersonal collaboration

• multi-format feedback (text, video, screenshots)

In 2024, we are also adding the AI assistant that will act as a product review companion, which will be another differentiating factor.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Vlad & I have been working together since 2021 (we had another project before co-founding not8), and two main things that I like about our team is that (1) our values match, (2) our skills are complementary, so our responsibilities are clearly divided - Vlad covers everything tech-related, and I cover everything business-related.

We both faced the problem of unstructured and ambiguous feedback at our previous jobs and experienced the pain firsthand, which makes us great candidates to solve it.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Hmm, I like building things, but I’m not technical. So, if I couldn’t build things in my own company, I would probably do that at somebody else’s. I think I’d work in a Product Management department.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Since not8 is still pre-revenue, our key metrics revolve around product usage. We measure the total number of installations, the number of active users, and the total number of notes left.

As of today, we have 1500+ registered users who left 9500+ notes in total.

Tell us how your startup is changing the world.

Obviously, not8 is not one of those startups that tackle the fundamental problems of humanity, but we help teams build better products faster. With not8 Product Managers, Developers, Designers, QA, and Marketing Specialists can spend less time talking and iterating and focus on what matters the most - building great things!

How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2024?

Haha, I don’t think it will change much in what we are going to do, to be honest. We will just continue pushing forward, making our product better and our users happier.

What goals are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2024?

We have a big roadmap, but let me share a few main things. First of all, we want to create a not8 widget so our clients can collect feedback from external users more easily (users won’t need to install anything anymore to leave feedback). This is particularly interesting for enterprise clients with a large number of website visitors - e.g., eCommerce platforms.

Another big thing we are going to work on is an AI-powered digital companion. Our AI assistant will automatically test your software for bugs, check that all UI elements comply with your brand guidelines, analyze your website content, and suggest improvements, both from marketing and SEO perspectives. It will provide contextual comments with suggestions right within the product you build and engage in conversations with your team.

Which trend(s) are you most excited about in 2024? Share your reasons.

AI obviously, it’s omnipresent, everyone is talking about it, and unlike many other over-hyped trends, I think this one is real. It has low barriers for entry (millions of people already use tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity) and high retention (I use AI tools almost on a day-to-day basis, and half of the people I know do so as well).

I don’t see any other technology eclipsing this trend in 2024. To be honest, it will just continue developing and getting better.

2023 had been another crazy year, especially in tech, with layoffs and the Generative AI takeover! Which trend are you most concerned about? Be as brief or as detailed as you like.

Layoffs are happening because less venture capital is available now, especially at the later stages. Companies are forced to cut their expenses and raise money on lower valuations than they raised just a couple of years ago.

This is obviously a concerning trend, but I have a feeling that “VC winter” is coming to an end.

Share your biggest success so far and/or your biggest failure so far.

Building not8 to 1500+ users, getting into the top 1% of applicants who get the investment from Antler, and raising $270k are definitely my biggest successes so far, but hopefully not the biggest ever, haha. I try to get better every year, this is just a beginning.

And failures… Who cares about failures? Let’s not talk about them :) Let’s just say that not8 is the 5th project that I’m working on. It is the most serious one as well - it’s the first time I’ve raised VC money and the first project of mine that I’m working on full-time.

Working on something full-time is a completely different experience than working part-time, I must say. A lot more is done because you don’t shift your focus to anything else.

We would love your feedback on HackerNoon as a tech publication! How has your experience been with us?

So far, so good :) I’ve just recently become your active reader and community member. Honestly, I think what you are doing is great and HackerNoon is an invaluable resource for startup founders - it keeps you updated about all the latest trends and insights in the tech industry.

Any words of wisdom you’d like to share with us?

I think staying adaptable and open to learning is key in the current environment - everything seems to develop and change so fast. When we were starting out (which was just 1.5 years ago), almost no one knew about ChatGPT and Generative AI - now, almost every startup seems to have some AI functionality.

But staying adaptable doesn’t mean running after everything that is currently considered a “hot tech.” It is about understanding the needs of your users and leveraging emerging technologies to make their experience better. Users first, “hot tech” second.