Banko Stoyanov: Success Does Not Necessarily Mean Things Get Easier

A conversation with Banko Stoyanov about the decisions that build a resilient business, the trust behind digital infrastructure, and leadership in an environment of constant technological change.

About Banko Stoyanov

My name is Banko Stoyanov, and I am one of the owners of CooliceHost.com. I am also the marketing manager at CooliceHost, a hosting provider specializing in accelerated and protected hosting services.

I hold a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a specialization in marketing strategy and business development. I have a strong interest in data analysis, consumer behavior, cloud technologies, and marketing. I would describe myself as someone who is constantly learning and regularly following the latest technologies and industry trends. In my free time, I explore the world through frequent travel and stay fit through running and exercise. You can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook.

I. Beginnings and Turning Points

1. What specific event set you on the path you are on today?

Honestly, there wasn't a single moment when I woke up and said to myself, "This is it! Starting today, I'm starting my new life this way, in this field." Rather, it was a combination of several situations where I gradually realized that if I wanted something to change, there was no one else to do it for me.

But rewinding the tape, there was one particular moment when I just decided to give it a shot to see if the IT industry would really be a good fit for me. Without having all the answers, without being fully prepared and, importantly, without being particularly sane. Sometimes that's exactly what helps - if you wait until you're fully prepared, you run the risk of waiting until retirement.

2. What was the first decision in which you truly risked money, reputation, or your career?

The first major decision was when I had to bet on myself instead of the safe option. It's quite an unpleasant feeling, because while you're risking other people's money, it's somehow easier. When they're yours, you suddenly start seeing all the possible scenarios - including the most apocalyptic ones.

A specific case I can think of is investing the last of my money in a site, it was a little eCommerce and a little marketing - at the time two main channels were strongest - SEO and PPC (search engines with their organic and paid results). Well, I wasn't wrong.

Then I had no guarantee that it would work. And I guess that was the important part - to make a decision, even though there are no guarantees. After all, a person rarely receives a certificate in advance that he made the right choice.

3. When did you first realize that what you were building could become something significant?

I think that was when I started to see that I wasn't the only one who believed in the idea. There were people who started recognizing it, recommending it, and saying, "This actually makes sense."

It's a very different feeling than when you just think you have a good idea. Because we all have good ideas. We usually also have at least three before breakfast.

The real signal for me was when it started to have results and interest beyond my personal motivation. As things turned out, the idea of ​​selling online in the international market in not so competitive niches at the time was more than good.

4. What moment in your journey looks successful on the outside, but was actually very difficult on the inside?

There are several such moments. Sometimes from the outside it looks like everything is going great - there's development, new opportunities, people are congratulating you and saying, "Wow, how well he's doing."

And inside you have 17 open windows in your head and you wonder which problem to solve first.

But I don't have anything specific, there were many and they constantly followed the path of our development. I don't want to sound skeptical, but I definitely want to give a clear idea to anyone going down this path what awaits them - solving problems is everyday in the business world. Somewhere more difficult moments, somewhere lighter, but they accompany everyone constantly. Therefore, I cannot give an exact answer here, because these are very difficult moments.

One of the most difficult periods was just when things looked their best from the outside. Then expectations became greater, so did responsibilities, and mistakes now had a higher price. I've learned that success doesn't necessarily mean you get easier. Sometimes it just means that problems have become more expensive.

5. What decision would you make differently if you could go back five or ten years?

I would probably act bolder and a little faster. At the beginning, a person thinks too much about whether he is ready, whether the moment is right, whether everything is well enough polished. This is the decision I would make differently - to make decisions thoughtfully and boldly.

Over time, you realize that you will almost never have 100% certainty. If you wait for all the conditions to be perfect, you will most likely miss out on quite a few good opportunities.

And I would give myself one more piece of advice: not to take every mistake as proof that I've gone wrong. Sometimes you just took the wrong turn. That doesn't mean you have to go back to the beginning. And what is better than a mistake - it gives you a lesson that you will hardly learn in any other way, with the same "power".

II. The Business

6. What real problem does your business solve and why should the client choose you?

Simply put – we make sure the client's site, app or online business is there when their client needs it.

Hosting is an interesting business because when you do your job well, almost no one thinks about you. The website works, the email arrives, the system is available, and everything is fine. The problem begins when something stops. That is when everyone suddenly understands how important hosting is.

Our job is to give the client not just a server or disk space, but security, stability and peace of mind that behind their business there are people and infrastructure they can rely on.

Why choose us? Because hosting and cloud services are not merely items on a product menu for us. We try to see them through the client’s eyes, as we ourselves did for decades: what happens if the client’s website goes down on a Friday evening, if there is an email problem, or if the business suddenly receives ten times more traffic?

And yes, we prefer to fix the problem before the customer knows it even existed.

7. What is your biggest competitive advantage that a competitor cannot easily copy?

Technology can be copied. The price can be copied. Even some services can be copied quite quickly.

People, culture and accumulated experience are more difficult to copy.

In our business, the customer can see characteristics, parameters and prices on our site. But it can't see all those situations we've been through—problems, crashes, unusual workloads, migrations, complex cases, and hundreds of small solutions that build expertise over time.

It's something you can't just buy and install.

And perhaps most importantly – for us, the customer is not a ticket number. Behind every site is someone's business, and sometimes someone's salary. It changes the way you look at your responsibility. We focus on personal treatment and good communication with each and every one of our clients.

8. Which metric do you watch most closely when you want to know if the company is actually doing well?

Of course, we keep track of revenue, profit, number of customers, and all those wonderful numbers without which a financial report would look suspiciously empty.

But if I had to pick one metric, I would look at customer retention and long-term value.

In hosting, it is very easy to attract a customer with a good price or promotion. The more interesting question is: does it stay with you in a year, in three, in five?

And an even better sign is when a customer starts with one site, then adds a second, third, VPS, server, or other service.

Then you realize that you didn't just sell hosting. You've earned trust and helped grow a business.

9. Which business decision of yours in the last 12 months produced the greatest measurable result?

One of the most important decisions was to continue investing in infrastructure and automation (AI), rather than just looking at the short-term bottom line.

There is a temptation in our business: if something works, to say "OK, why touch it?".

The problem is that the infrastructure does not like this approach. Technologies change, customer requirements change, the workload grows.

Therefore, for us, investing in better infrastructure, more automation and better processes has a direct effect - less manual work, faster service, fewer problems and the ability to serve more customers without a drop in quality.

After all, the best automation is the one the customer doesn't even know exists. Solved a problem before it was even noticed.

10. What part of your business brings the most value but remains almost invisible to the customer?

Probably everything that happens behind the screen.

The customer sees a control panel, site, price and several buttons. It doesn't see the infrastructure behind it, the monitoring, the backups, the security, the prevention, the optimizations, the automations, and the people who keep things running.

And that's exactly the paradox of hosting - our best work is often invisible.

If everything is fine, no one writes to us: "Well done, my server is working perfectly today."

Write to us when it's not working.

Therefore, some of the most valuable work is precisely that which never reaches the client as a problem.

11. Which source of revenue did you turn down because it was not right for the company?

We have turned away deals when we have seen that the customer is only looking for the lowest price and their expectations are for premium service and constant personal service.

It's a combination that usually ends badly for both parties.

Of course, every business wants to grow. But there's a difference between "we want more customers" and "we want all kinds of customers."

We prefer a client for whom we can create real value and with whom we can work long-term.

Sometimes the smartest business decision is to say, "Maybe we're not the best fit for you."

And that's actually pretty liberating. Especially once one realizes that not every invoice is a good invoice.

12. Which initial thesis of yours about the market turned out to be completely wrong?

In the beginning, we probably believed more than we should that the customer chooses hosting mainly on technical parameters and price.

Over time, we realized that technical characteristics are only part of the solution.

It matters a lot to the customer and something much harder to measure - how they feel when they know their business is in good hands.

When you have an online store, a company site or a system that brings you money, you don't just want "some server". You want to know that if there's a problem, someone will pick up the phone, figure out what's going on, and start fixing it.

It has also changed the way we look at business itself. We don't just sell resources - CPU, RAM, disk space or traffic.

We sell peace of mind that something important to the customer will continue to work.

And this, it turned out, is much more important than how many gigabytes they write to the table.

III. Leadership Decisions

13. What is the most difficult decision you have made as a leader, even though you knew some people would not accept it?

One of the hardest decisions to make is saying no to something that at first seems like a good opportunity.

In the technology business, there are always new ideas, new products, new markets and new technologies. And if one has a little more enthusiasm, one can very easily decide that one must do everything.

But at some point you have to say, "No, we're not going to do that."

Not everyone always agrees with such a decision. Sometimes I myself have not been very happy with him. But leadership isn't just about saying yes to good ideas. Sometimes it's about keeping the team from having too many good ideas at once.

Especially in our business where one wrong direction can mean years of work.

14. How do you decide when the data shows one thing and your intuition tells you another?

First, I check the data one more time. Then I double-check them, because one has to respect numbers. They are quite ruthless about self-deception.

But if after that my intuition keeps telling me otherwise, I don't ignore it.

Business intuition is not some magical superpower. It's usually accumulated experience that your brain processes faster than you can articulate it.

So I wouldn't choose between data and intuition. I would use the data to figure out what's going on and intuition to ask the question, "What might we not be seeing?"

If both are in conflict, I'd rather make a small test than a big bet.

15. When was the last time you admitted to your team that you were wrong? What followed?

It happens more often than I'd like. But this is exactly what distinguishes a good guide - the mistakes from which he manages to derive maximum benefit and knowledge.

The last time involved a decision where I was convinced that a certain approach was the right one, and after we implemented it, the results showed otherwise.

I told the team directly, "I was wrong here."

And to be honest, nothing dramatic followed. The earth didn't open up, the servers didn't stop, and no one put me on their "ignore list" for any future offers.

On the contrary, we started talking much more specifically about what we didn't foresee and what we could do better.

In my opinion, a leader who never admits a mistake usually has one of two problems - either he doesn't make enough decisions, or he doesn't have people around him who dare to tell him he's wrong.

I prefer not to allow the second option.

16. Which decision do you never delegate?

The final decision on the direction of the company.

I can delegate a huge part of the execution. I can trust people for technical solutions, processes, customers, projects and operational matters.

But when it comes to where the company is going and what we don't want to be, that's where I think the leader has to take responsibility.

Because it's very easy for a company to gradually start doing everything it can do instead of what it should do.

And those are two very different things.

After all, someone has to watch the compass. He doesn't have to drive the boat all the time.

17. Which decision do you no longer make personally, even though you used to have full control?

Almost all operational solutions.

In the beginning, it is very difficult not to control everything. Especially when the business is yours and you are used to knowing the answer to every question.

At some point, however, you realize that if all decisions have to go through you, you haven't built a company - you've built a very complex form of personal dependency.

Today, I prefer that people make their own decisions, even if sometimes they make them in a different way than I would make them.

It's also one of the most difficult transitions as a leader - to accept that "different from me" does not mean "wrong".

And when it starts working, you know you've actually built a team, not just expanded your to-do list.

18. How do you know when a person is ready to be given more power and responsibility?

Certainly not when he starts asking for more power.

Rather, when he begins to take responsibility without anyone officially giving it to him.

When he sees a problem and doesn't just say, "This is a problem," but says, "This is a problem, and here's what I think we should do."

When he can make a decision with incomplete information. When he can say "I don't know". When you make a mistake and don't start looking for someone to blame.

And perhaps most importantly, when he starts thinking not only about his own task, but about the consequences for the whole team and for the client.

Then it makes sense to give him more freedom.

Because real responsibility is not about having the final say. It is about knowing that if things go wrong, you will be the first to raise your hand and say, "I will fix it."

IV. People, Culture, and Trust

19. What behavior do you never tolerate, no matter how good the person is professionally?

The lack of correctness.

You can be the best programmer, sysadmin, or salesperson in the world, but if I can't trust you, at some point that becomes a bigger problem than any technical skill.

I don't tolerate blame shifting either. Everyone can make mistakes - it's human. I'm more interested in what you do after the mistake.

If the first reaction is "but he told me", "but the system was at fault" or "but how do I know", we usually have a bigger problem than the error itself.

I'd rather have a person say, "Yes, I made a mistake. Here's what I'm going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again."

This is much more valuable than a person who never admits a mistake because it is always someone else's fault.

20. What must an employee do to earn your trust?

To be predictable in the best sense of the word.

If someone says they will do something, they should do it. If there is a problem, they should speak up in time. If they do not know, they should ask.

I don't expect people to know everything. In our business, this would be quite an ambitious requirement, because technology changes faster than one can refresh one's passwords.

But I expect them to be honest about what they know and what they don't know.

For me, trust is won not with one big gesture, but with many small situations in which I see that the person can rely on himself and I can rely on him.

21. And what would someone have to do to lose it?

To lie to me.

Error can be corrected. A bad decision can be analyzed. Even a serious omission can be fixed.

Deliberately covering up a problem is much harder to fix.

If someone says to me, "We have a problem and I don't know how to solve it," my first reaction is, "Okay, let's solve it."

If I find out that the problem has existed for a long time, the person knew about it and just decided not to tell - then the conversation is completely different.

In business, it is especially important to understand the bad news in time. Monday's bad news is a problem. The same news after three months can already be a disaster.

22. How do you know if company culture actually exists and isn't just text on the wall?

Very easy - you watch how people behave when no one is watching.

Not what it says on the site. Not what we wrote in the presentation. Not what we tell new hires.

You watch how a man talks to a colleague when he is angry. How to respond when a customer is difficult. What does he do when he has made a mistake. And whether he helps the other when it is not formally his task.

Culture is best seen in unpleasant moments.

When things are going well, all companies have a great culture. The real test is Friday night, something is broken, the customer is waiting, and no one wants to stay another two hours.

Then you understand what you have really built.

23. When should the client's interest come before short-term profit? Give a specific example.

Quite often in practice.

Especially in hosting there are situations where you can make more money today but lose credibility for years.

For example, if we see that a certain configuration or service is not suitable for the particular customer, it does not make much sense to sell it to them just because we can.

We can take the money and say, "There, the customer has made his choice."

But if after a month he has a problem, the first question will not be "Why did you pay us?", but "Why did you recommend him to us?"

Since we are completely customer-oriented, the specific example comes precisely with what solution to offer him. We often choose the most suitable from a technical point of view and at the same time - budgetary. We have never allowed ourselves to sell something more expensive for profit - misleading the customer in the long term is a bad strategy that we have never applied in our practice.

To me, the right approach is to say, "This is not the best solution for you. You'd better do something."

Yes, you might lose a sale.

But you can win a customer for years.

And the best part is that sometimes that client comes back and says, "That's exactly why I chose you."

24. What is the hardest feedback someone has given you that turned out to be true?

That sometimes I try to solve too many things on my own.

At first, this seems like a strength. You know everything, you follow everything, you participate in everything and you are convinced that this is how you control the business.

But at some point you realize that this is not control. It's a bottle cap.

If every decision has to go through you, the company only grows as much as your personal time.

It was unpleasant feedback because it was true.

I gradually learned to delegate not just tasks, but real responsibility. And to accept that someone can do something differently than me and the result will still be good.

This is probably one of the hardest lessons in management: to stop being the most important person in any task.

Because the goal is not for the company to work well when you are everywhere. The goal is to work well even when you're not there.

V. Failure, Pressure, and Crises

25. Which mistake cost you the most—money, time, or trust?

The most expensive mistakes are usually not the ones where you lose money. You can make the money again.

The more expensive mistake is the one where you lose time or trust, because both are much slower to recover from.

We have had situations where we invested too much time and resources in a direction that later turned out to be wrong. In retrospect, the signals were there, we were just too enthusiastic to see them.

This taught me something very important – not every idea you've invested a lot in is worth continuing to invest in.

Sometimes the hardest decision is to admit that you were wrong and stop in time.

26. Which crisis subsequently proved beneficial for your business?

Almost any serious crisis is useful if you are willing to do the unpleasant analysis after it.

We've had situations where something didn't work out the way we expected, and the moment it happens, the last thing you think is, "That's great, that's going to be a great lesson."

Then you just want the problem to end.

But then you see where the process was weak, where we relied too much on one person, one system or one assumption.

Some of our best processes today were born precisely from such unpleasant situations - the protections and speed of our services.

In this sense, the crisis is like a very expensive consultant - you don't hire her voluntarily, but after it has already come, it's good to at least take notes.

27. What is the first thing you do when you realize that a serious plan is failing?

First I try to stop the emotional reaction.

This is harder than it sounds.

When you have invested time, money and people in a plan, the natural reaction is to start defending it. Looking for more arguments why it "actually almost works".

So my first question is, "What is actually happening, not what I wish was happening?"

Then I divide the problem into two parts - what we can save and what we must accept as a loss.

I'm not trying to save every idea at all costs. Sometimes the best solution is to save people, time and resources and let the plan itself die.

The plan has no feelings. No need to reassure him.

28. Was there a time when you actually considered giving up? What stopped you?

Yes. There were times when you thought, "Maybe this isn't worth it anymore."

Especially when problems pile up one after another, you start to look at each subsequent obstacle as proof that you should stop.

What has held me back is mostly the feeling that there is still more to build.

And, of course, the people around me. When you know that other people have invested time, trust and energy in the common direction, the decision is no longer just personal.

I don't think an entrepreneur should be someone who never gives up. Sometimes giving up is the smartest decision.

The point is to distinguish "this isn't working" from "this is hard right now".

These two things look very similar when you are tired. But they are definitely not the same.

29. What's keeping you up at night right now?

Honestly – not so much the competition as the speed at which the industry is changing.

In the technology business, you can do everything right for the last five years and still not be prepared for the next five.

New technologies, automation, AI, cyber security, changes in customer behavior – everything is moving very fast.

And the biggest question is not "How do we stay good at what we do today?" but "How do we stay relevant in a few years?"

This is healthy insomnia.

It's unhealthy to wonder why you sent the email at 11:47 PM.

30. What risk do you see for your industry that you think most people still underestimate?

I think one of the big risks is that more and more people take the infrastructure behind online businesses for granted.

While the site is running, nobody really thinks about where the data is, who has access to it, how backups are made, how systems are protected, and what happens if something seriously goes wrong.

And at some point, a small mistake can have quite big consequences.

The other risk is related to automation and AI. They bring huge opportunities, but they also create a new type of problem – more automated processes mean more things that need to be properly secured and controlled.

So I think the future of hosting won't just be a matter of who has the faster server.

It will also be a matter of security, reliability, automation and, above all, trust.

After all, the customer does not buy a processor and RAM. He buys the confidence that his site will be there tomorrow morning.

And that's a pretty serious responsibility, especially when "tomorrow morning" is Monday.

VI. Innovation, AI, and Change

31. What technology has really changed the way your company works, not just the way you talk about it?

For us, it is not one particular technology, but automation as a way of thinking.

There are a huge number of processes in hosting that used to require a person to monitor, check and execute something manually. The more of these you can reliably automate, the more time people can spend on things that actually require human judgment.

This has changed the way we build our services.

And there's an important difference here - we don't automate just to say "we're automated." Automation only makes sense if it makes the service faster, more reliable or easier for the customer.

After all, the customer does not care how much modern technology is behind it. He just wants to push the button and make the thing work. Which, by the way, is a pretty reasonable requirement.

32. Where is the use of AI already bringing measurable value to your organization?

For us, AI makes sense mostly where it can save time and help people make decisions faster.

We use it as a support tool for analysis, processing information, generating and summarizing content, preparing solutions and automating repetitive tasks.

But we are not at the "AI will run the company while we drink coffee" stage.

Rather, we use him as a very quick colleague who never asks for time off - but sometimes you have to carefully check what he told you.

This is important because the measurable value for us is not just "we use AI". It is in the time saved, the faster response and the opportunity for people to concentrate on the more complex cases.

33. What decision would you never leave entirely to an algorithm?

Decisions where the consequences for the customer are serious require context.

You can automate a process. You can automate a check. You can use AI to analyze vast amounts of information.

But when it comes to a decision that could seriously affect the customer, their business or their security, I want a person to have the final say.

The algorithm might say, "The probability is 87%."

I would ask, "Okay, so what does the other 13% mean?"

That's where the problems usually live.

34. Which process in your industry do you think will not exist in its current form five years from now?

Many of the purely manual operations.

There are processes in hosting that have historically been done by a human step by step because it was the easiest to do.

Today we can already automate a huge part of them.

In five years, and at this pace, maybe even sooner, I think the client will expect even more things to happen automatically - configuration, diagnostics, optimization, monitoring, response to certain problems.

But that doesn't mean people will disappear.

On the contrary. Their role is likely to change from people who perform routine operations to people who design the systems, control the automation and step in where judgment is needed.

In other words, the future probably won't be "man vs. machine," but "man who knows how to use a machine."

35. How do you distinguish real innovation from well-packaged hype?

Very simple: we look at what remains when you remove the presentation.

If a technology sounds amazing, but doesn't solve a real problem, save time, reduce costs, improve security, or create a better customer experience, it's probably more of an interesting demo than a business innovation.

We ask some very boring questions:

What problem does it solve? How often does it occur? How much is it worth to us today? And what will actually get better?

If there is no good answer to these questions, we can safely wait.

That's the great thing about technology – you don't have to be the first person to try every new toy.

Sometimes it's smarter to let others burn their fingers and then see if the stove was really hot.

For me, the real innovation is the one that after a while we no longer call "innovation". We just started using it because it works.

VII. Bulgaria and the Business Environment

36. What is the one thing that, if changed in Bulgaria, would speed up your business or sector the most?

If I had to pick just one, I would say less administrative friction and a more predictable business environment.

I'm not necessarily talking about some kind of revolution. Sometimes the biggest change would just be to make things happen faster and more predictably.

When planning an investment, hiring people or building infrastructure, the most valuable thing is to know what will happen in six months or two years.

Entrepreneurs are generally used to risk. This is almost a professional deformity for us.

But it's good to take the risk of the market and our own decisions, not whether a procedure will be completed on time.

37. What advantage does Bulgaria have that we ourselves systematically underestimate?

We have very good technical people and a relatively high concentration of people who can handle quite complex tasks.

There is also another thing - the size of Bulgaria.

We usually take it as a disadvantage, but from a business perspective, a small market can also be a great testing ground. You can try something, get feedback fairly quickly, change it, and then get out.

We also have quite a few entrepreneurs who are used to working with limited resources. This sounds like a disadvantage, but it actually creates an interesting culture of ingenuity.

In short - sometimes we are small, but we are quite "good". And that's not a bad combination.

38. What most often makes talented people or companies look for development outside of Bulgaria?

Probably a combination of the scale of the market and the sense of opportunity.

If you are a very good specialist or entrepreneur, the natural question is: "Where can I apply what I can to a larger market?"

Bulgaria has a limited domestic market. This is not something we can change with a good marketing campaign. The volume will always remain the same, with trends towards a slight development with the developing online trade.

So I think the right answer is not to try to keep every person at all costs.

It is more important to create companies that allow people to work from Bulgaria, but to think globally.

Because today a Bulgarian company does not necessarily sell only to Bulgarians. In many sectors, you can be physically in Sofia and have clients on several continents.

This is an opportunity that years ago simply did not exist on this scale.

39. If you had to invest your own money tomorrow in a Bulgarian industry other than yours, which one would you choose and why?

I would look for companies in industries where Bulgaria has a combination of good people, engineering expertise and global market opportunity.

If I had to point in a specific direction, I would look at technology companies that develop products and not just sell services to the local market.

The reason is simple: scaling.

If you have made a good software product, it is not necessary that your next client will be from Sofia, Plovdiv or Varna. It could be in Germany, USA, UK or somewhere you haven't even thought of.

Of course, I would look very carefully at the particular team and business model. After all, we don't invest in industries, we invest in people and companies.

Otherwise, I too would like investing to be as easy as choosing a coffee. Unfortunately, with investments, a mistake costs a little more.

40. What needs to happen for more Bulgarian companies to achieve global significance?

I think we need to start thinking globally from day one.

Many companies first say to themselves: "Let's conquer Bulgaria and then we'll see."

The problem is that for some products Bulgaria is simply not a big enough market to finance the next stage of growth.

We need to have more companies that start out asking, "How can this work in 20 countries?", not just "How are we going to sell it here?"

And we must recognize that global success requires a different type of organization—capital, management, technology, sales, marketing, and the ability to attract strong people.

We have talent. We have entrepreneurs. We also have companies that have already shown that it is possible to create a business for the international market from Bulgaria.

The next step is to have more such stories.

And perhaps the most important thing is to stop accepting as something exotic the idea that a company that started in Bulgaria can become global.

After all, Google didn't start out as "let's see if it takes off in the neighborhood first."

VIII. The Leader as a Person

41. What trait of yours has most helped you get this far?

Probably persistence. I wouldn't call her stubborn, although sometimes the line is quite thin. When I believe something makes sense, I have a hard time giving up at the first problem.

Over time, however, I realized that persistence only makes sense if it goes with a willingness to change your approach. Not giving up on the goal, but being able to admit that the way you went about it isn't working.

This helps a lot in business because almost nothing happens exactly according to the original plan.

42. Which trait of yours gets in your way the most?

Probably the tendency to want to solve too many things myself. On the one hand, it makes you close to the business and understand the details. On the other hand, at some point you start to become the narrowest place in your own organization.

There is an unpleasant truth: if all the decisions have to go through you, the problem is not that you have a lot of work. The problem is that the system doesn't work well enough without you.

It's something I'm constantly working on. Not always successfully, of course—otherwise I wouldn't be human.

43. What do you say no to much more often today than you did ten years ago?

Of things that sound interesting but don't have a clear enough meaning.

I used to get excited about an idea just because it was new, complex, or technologically interesting. Today, I first ask: what problem are we solving, who are we solving it for, and what will get better next?

I also say no to too many simultaneous priorities. Because "everything is important" usually means that nothing is a priority.

I also learned something else — turning down a good opportunity is sometimes necessary to have the resources for the really important one.

44. What do you do when no one around you has the answer?

First I try not to pretend I have.

It's quite liberating. If no one knows the answer, there is no point in playing the theater of who looks the most confident.

I break the problem into smaller parts, collect information, look for people with experience in the specific field, and if necessary, we do a small experiment instead of betting everything on one big hypothesis.

Sometimes the best solution is to just give yourself some time. Not every problem can be solved with two more meetings and three presentations.

45. Who has changed the way you think about leadership, and how?

I would not point to one person as the only teacher. My biggest influences have been the people from whom I've seen first-hand what it means to be responsible—including people who have shown me what kind of leader I don't want to be.

Over time, I realized that leadership is not so much about having all the answers. Rather, it's about creating an environment where people around you can make good decisions without constantly waiting for your approval. I have tried to take experience, knowledge and direction from every employer, partner, colleague of mine over the years. I also read a lot. However, the combination of theory and practice is completely through your mind, building your way of thinking and leading.

And perhaps most importantly, being able to say "I was wrong" without it feeling like a loss of authority.

Quite the opposite actually. In the long run, that's how you win it.

46. What book, conversation, or event genuinely changed a decision you made?

For me, it was more often conversations and real situations than a specific book.

It's been conversations with people that have helped me see that sometimes I'm trying to optimize something that shouldn't exist that way. This is an important distinction—making a process faster is one thing, but realizing that the process isn't needed at all is quite another.

And that's exactly what gradually changed my decision-making. Today, I ask myself more often not only "How do we do it?", but also "Should we do it at all?".

In business, this is often the much more valuable question.

IX. Success, Meaning, and Legacy

47. What does success look like to you today and how has your definition changed over the years?

In the beginning, success was much easier to measure — more customers, more revenue, bigger team, more growth.

Today I look a little differently. Success is having a business that works well, customers that trust you, people on the team that are developing, and enough freedom to be able to think about the next years, not just the next month.

Over time, you realize that it's not very impressive to build something that constantly requires you to push it with your shoulder.

To me, success is creating a system that has its own momentum — and people who make it better than you.

48. When would you say you have built not merely a successful business, but an enduring one?

When the company can change without losing its character.

Markets change, technology changes, customers change. If the business can adapt to all of this without starting from scratch with each change, then you already have something sustainable.

There is another very important test — what happens when the founder is not in the room.

If everything stops, then you have created a job for yourself. If things continue, develop and people make decisions, then you have already created a company.

49. What do you want people who worked with you to say about you in 20 years?

I hope they say I was someone they could count on.

I don't expect anyone to remember every decision, project, or business outcome. These are things that time changes.

But if in 20 years someone says, "He was fair with me. He gave me a chance. He said things directly. And when it was difficult, he didn't hide" — that would be enough for me.

And, of course, I'd be happy to be told that I was at least occasionally funny. Otherwise, 20 years is quite a long period for a serious biography.

50. What would you want to remain of your company if, one day, your name were no longer attached to it?

I want to remain the way the company treats its customers and its people.

Technologies will change. Services will change. The name can be changed. Even the business model may look completely different.

But I would like the idea to remain that when the customer chooses the company, he knows that there are people behind it who will take responsibility when something goes wrong.

For me, this is a much more valuable legacy than a specific product or technology.

If CooliceHost can one day exist beautifully without me, I'd take that as a compliment, not a problem.

51. What do you want to be remembered for?

Not so much with what I've owned or achieved, but with what I've helped create.

I want to be remembered as someone who had the courage to start, to take responsibility, to change my mind when the facts required it, and to empower other people to become better.

If someone later says, "This guy built something worthwhile and along the way helped other people build something of their own," that would be much more meaningful to me than any title.

After all, business is temporary. The people you've impacted and the things you've left behind are much more long-term.

Personal and Quick Questions

1. Do you work best in the morning or in the evening?

In the morning. The head is emptier, and at least for the first few hours, no one has yet managed to add 14 new tasks.

2. Coffee or tea?

Coffee. A pretty predictable solution.

3. Phone call or email?

It depends on the problem. If it can be solved in two lines — email. If after five e-mails we are already writing a book — phone.

4. Office or work from anywhere?

Both. The important thing is that the work happens, not that the chair is at the right address. But there are things for which live chat is still indispensable, although this is where conference connections always come to the rescue.

5. Do you plan everything or improvise?

I plan the important things and improvise for the rest. Otherwise, the plan very quickly begins to feel like a contract.

6. Which app do you use most during the day?

Probably the communication apps – Gmail, K-9 Mail, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Firefox & Chrome browsers. At some point you begin to realize that a large part of the day is spent switching between conversations, tasks and information.

7. Which word do you use too often?

"Why?"
Sometimes it's a useful question. Sometimes it's probably a little annoying to the people around me.

8. What skill would you like to acquire immediately if you could?

To be able to learn new things much faster. In technology, it's almost a superpower — by the time you get used to one thing, the next one is already there.

9. If you had a completely free day tomorrow, how would you spend it?

No schedule. Probably good coffee, time outside, nice food and as few notifications as possible. And the most important thing is that "just one quick task" does not appear.

10. Which country would you visit tomorrow?

Japan. The combination of technology, culture, history and a completely different way of thinking is very interesting to me.

11. Paper or digital notes?

Digital, but for some ideas, paper still wins. There's something different about sitting down with a sheet of paper and throwing things out without thinking about form.

12. Book, podcast or video?

A book when I want to understand something in depth. Podcast when I'm on the go. Video — when I need to see how something is actually done.

13. What song almost always lifts your spirits?

It's hard to pick one. It depends on the day. But if there has to be a universal answer — something energetic that already in the first 20 seconds makes you work a little faster.

14. What do you always carry with you?

Phone, wallet and headphones. And probably at least one thought about work that I haven't officially invited with me.

15. What food would you never refuse?

Pizza. This is one of the few systems I see no reason to optimize.

16. Early meeting or late meeting?

Early. By the afternoon, the calendar already starts to resemble a game of Tetris.

17. Sea or mountain?

Mountain, but the sea has very strong arguments for summer.

18. What technology do you wish already existed?

A truly reliable personal AI assistant that doesn't just answer questions, but understands context, remembers what's important, and can take on real end-to-end tasks.

And that I don't have to explain everything to him three times.

19. If you could have dinner with one person from history — who would you choose?

Leonardo da Vinci. Not so much because of a specific invention, but because of the way he looked at the world — simultaneously through science, art, engineering and curiosity.

I would have a lot of questions.

20. One word that describes your life right now?

Movement.

Because there's a lot of work, a lot of change, a lot of new things to learn, and almost no sense of being "done." And that's probably what's interesting.

Success does not necessarily mean things get easier. Sometimes it simply means the problems have become more expensive.