Jana Nurmukhanova: why we decided to leave Amazon and start Witailer

Do you have a brilliant and innovative idea you would like to turn into a business? Are you afraid of leaving a secure job to launch a startup? We interviewed Jana Nurmukhanova, COO and co-founder of Witailer and ex Senior Manager at Amazon Italy to understand how she and her colleague Federico Salina left their jobs at Amazon and decided to start their own business, Witailer. Jana drew our attention to the main challenges they had to deal with to launch a startup and revealed us what they are missing of working in a big company. Read the full interview below. 

 

Last year you decided to leave Amazon and found Witailer, what prompted this decision? How did you decide it was the right moment to start your business?

Before starting Witailer, we had worked for Amazon in Italy for close to 5 years. Federico was responsible for the Health & Beauty category (contributing to launches of innovations like Dash and Pantry) and I was managing the PC and Office Products (after having launched Fulfillment by Amazon in Italy and managed it for 2 years).

While there, we continued to meet Italian and international companies that were investing in the channel but not fully exploiting its potential, either due to lack of focus or resources.

So we said why don’t we support them from outside using our extensive knowledge and tools and processes that we can build and scale. In the summer of 2017 after a few months of thought and back and forth between us, we decided to leave Amazon and start up Witailer. We knew it was the right moment as we could see the acceleration of the e-marketplace channel both in terms of its growth and the interest it is generating.

At this moment e-Marketplaces continue to grow significantly (+27% in 2017) and new ones are being launched monthly (like Carrefour Marketplace, Yandex, El Corte Ingles). Many of these marketplaces are giving direct power to brands to manage their performance, the way that Amazon has done since the beginning, creating more need for services like ours.

At its heart Witailer has the objective of helping brands accelerate and maximize the e-marketplace revenue opportunity while reducing complexity. We empower companies with specific competencies, technology and account management resources and provide them with end-to-end services from strategy setting to execution (marketing, SEO, pricing, logistics) to analysis and reporting.

What are the most important challenges you faced when you founded Witailer? What were the most important resources you could rely on?

The most important challenge initially was gaining the traction in offering these types of services to large companies. We are the first e-Marketplace solution company in Italy and given that it’s a new reality and companies are not yet accustomed having a specialist support them on this channel, we had to be able to clearly explain what we do and how we can bring distinctive value. However, in a matter of 6 months we have been able to build an impressive portfolio of 25 clients including companies like Lavazza, 3M, Breil, Universal, GSK and others.

The second challenge (and one that we continue to face) has been hiring the right people. Even though we have the pressure to grow fast and add to the team, we continue to insist on high standards as we focus on delivering scalable and high-quality services to our clients. It is not easy to find people with strong prioritisation, communication and project management skills who can also innovate and build tools/processes that scale.

The most important resources we relied on so far have been our vision for the future of this channel, our data-driven approach and our skills. In a matter of a few months, we have built many solutions that help our Account Managers be efficient in offering the services and a back-end that supports automated reporting and drives distinctive insights for our clients. For sure we can do more in this space, and this is why we continue to look for people who can not only execute well but build and innovate.

Is there anything you are missing from working in a big structured company? What are the pros of working in a startup?

There are definitely some things we miss like free coffee (and having actually the time to go grab it). But jokes aside, for sure we miss Amazon and the people.

The pros of working in a startup is the fast decision-making process and the ability of every person to have a significant impact on the business. Even our interns have the ability to build something (for example a reporting dashboard) that can be very useful to the business and our clients.

If a person is proactive, flexible and has the knack for innovating, the opportunities to impact the business and to learn are immense. The other pros include flexibility, ability to work both at highly strategic and operative level and the ability to directly see the impact on the clients in the form of results.

 

Do you know many young Professionals, like you and Federico, who are pondering to start their own business? What do you consider to be their main blockers?

Yes, we do, in fact almost weekly get approached by friends who are considering starting their own companies. The number one blocker by far is the fear of the bureaucracy and red tape when setting up a new business in Italy. Our experience has not been so negative thus far, but we actually expected the setup of the company to be much worse. The second blocker is probably the fear of failure as people here are less accustomed to risk taking.