Specialised in feedback tracking solutions for web development agencies, TrackDuck recently raised 200.000 euros in a seed round from French Kima Ventures and Lithuanian Practica Capital. Catching up with Edmundas Balčikonis, co-founder and CEO of the startup, we found out that this was the first collaboration of the two investors and the round itself “took longer than expected because of differences in laws in Lithuania and France”. But this wasn’t a let-down for the team. More than ever, Balčikonis said they will try and gather more experience for the next time and “prepare better and plan for longer periods of negotiations and dealing with documents”.
Meet the team
The three founders, Balčikonis, CTO Yauhen Ivashkevich and CDO Anton Schevchenko met in 2013 at the Estonian Hackathon Garage48 in Minsk, Belarus where they won the “Best B2B Project Prize”. TrackDuck now has a team of seven people, one from Singapore (currently working in Lithuania), three working full-time in Vilnius and three in Minsk. Having the team split in two locations “only adds extra challenges to the development”, said Balčikonis.
So it comes as no surprise that they are planning to use the money to bring the team together in one place – Vilnius – and as Balčikonis explained, “expand the team with a few more people, start more marketing activities and launch new features and integrations.”
Let’s start from the beginning…
The project started with six months of bootstrapping until the team joined the Startup Sauna accelerator in 2013, and received a 13.000-dollar pre-seed investment. Several months later, in January 2014, they already had a new version of TrackDuck launched with first paying clients and a plan to break even in half a year.
Currently with more than 4.000 clients in 89 countries, their SaaS seems to be the new thing on the market. It works on a monthly subscription, with three options available for freelancers and digital agencies starting at nine dollars and one for enterprises to white-label and install TrackDuck in their servers.
And a piece of advice
“Less startup events and parties,” said Balčikonis. “More sales and talking to the clients, and then coding.” At the end of the day, “clients are the only people you should really listen to.”
