”Jaakko, we need to talk”

I had a scary moment in January. I was really tired (and according to rumors, possibly a little bit hungover) when I pitched No No No to a live audience in New York. After my pitch was done, I was walking among the audience when this big dude with a large head and a beard approached me, stared fiercely into my eyes and said: ”Jaakko, we need to talk!”

I didn’t know what to expect. Had I done something I should be worried about?

Turns out I hadn’t. Berker continued: did you know there is a service just like No No No in Turkey? I said I hadn’t even heard about it. ”It has millions of users and the owners are filthy rich”, Berker continued.

We kept talking and I learned Berker, or Ben as we call him, used to work for Renault in Turkey running their customer service. Ben told me Renault needed an independent, external auditor to measure the quality of their customer service so they voluntarily made a deal to start using Sikayetvar which literally means ”I have a complaint”.

Renault was really happy with Sikayetvar and Ben had been wondering why something like this had not been done in the US yet.

We stayed in touch and kept talking. One thing led to another and less than three weeks ago we made a decision that we’re going to hire Ben as our first US employee!

Two weeks ago I flew to New York and we spent the last two weeks working together. It feels weird to have someone in our team who, in a way, knows more about our business than our founding team does but I am not complaining. Quite the opposite actually, the last two weeks have been extremely interesting. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working together with Ben.

And what’s even better, traveling together, sharing a room for a week and going through first arguments teach you a lot. And we came through with flying colors.

Here’s a video of our first white board brainstorming session. The sneaky bastard had filmed us without me knowing anything about it. ??

Welcome to No No No, Ben! ??