Meet The Clouders – How a burning idea became a real app for parents

Welcome to our ‘Meet The Clouders’ series. Today, we’ll be talking to Łukasz Ostrowski, our Demand Generation Manager, who focuses on helping us drive demand generation and inbound revenue at 10Clouds. Łukasz has a background in development, and has recently created a service called Placówkowo, which is a web app that helps parents to choose educational institutions for their children. It already has its first fans and has even been reviewed on Spider’s Web. Let’s find out more.

Could you tell us a bit about your career journey from development to growth hacking?

When I first thought of what I wanted to do career-wise, it was marketing. With agency experience, working with companies like Kamikaze and Deloitte Digital, and collaborating with brands such as Estee Lauder Group, PepsiCo, Mazda Polska, and Amrest, I can confidently say that I have acquired enough experience to become a full-stack marketer.

The next step was evolving towards leveraging my knowledge to maximize revenue within a set budget, using my acquired experience. During this time, I spent over a year as a Java developer, which allowed me to understand the ins and outs of software development. Thanks to my experience as a programmer and my over 10 years of marketing experience, I decided to specialize in growth hacking for the IT sector.

What gives you the most satisfaction in your role?

The greatest value I derive from my work is seeing that my actions translate into concrete revenue for the business. 10Clouds provides me with significant flexibility in choosing strategies, allowing us to quickly iterate campaigns and replicate approaches that genuinely benefit the business.

Generally, I really value the flexibility that 10Clouds offers in terms of being a remote-first company. This is particularly useful as a working parent of two small kids!

What do you think the role of a Growth Hacker will look like in 5 years time?

In the era of AI, marketing is changing rapidly. A significant challenge in Growth Hacking is the accurate collection and understanding of data, crafting stories from it that lead to sound conclusions. Already, with AI tools, you can save 50% of the time spent on daily data work, providing more time for data-driven decision-making. I believe that in 5 years, everything will be focused on making the right decisions.

Tell us a bit about the project you've been working on

From my very first years in marketing, I always dreamt of having something of my own, a project where I could put to use everything I’ve learnt over the years. The challenge was to come up with something that was genuinely needed, something that solved the ordinary person's problems.

How did the idea for Placówkowo come about?

Well, having the two most wonderful kids in the world, I myself encountered the problem of choosing the right nursery and later preschool for them. It turned out that 75% of the facilities in my local area weren’t even listed on Google Maps, and I heard about their existence by word of mouth...

Spending long hours at the playground with other parents, we came to the realization that there was currently nowhere online where you could easily and conveniently discover all the nearby educational facilities.

Everyone had bad memories of searching, wasted hours, and even money spent on reserving spots at facilities where, for various reasons, they eventually didn't send their children. Therefore, the idea of "Placówkowo" was born in my mind – a useful ‘one stop shop’ educational facilities.

What are your future plans for the product?

I have ambitious plans; I want Placówkowo to become the go-to place for searching educational facilities in the near future. Looking for a car? Think of OtoMoto. Need tires? Think of Oponeo. Searching for an educational facility? Think of Placówkowo!

The service has been running for three months, and already we have over 2000 facilities, but it's still a small percentage of all nurseries and preschools across Poland.

I hope that in the coming years, every educational facility will be present on Placówkowo.

Currently, we have nurseries and preschools, but next year, we'll be adding other educational establishments like primary schools, high schools, vocational schools, and in two years, higher education institutions. Additionally, there are many plans on how to improve the service; we have a lot of work ahead in terms of UX/UI and updating the criteria that parents use to choose suitable facilities for their children.

Thank you Łukasz.

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