Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yelena Rymbayeva. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Yelena, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Our startup works in the field of film and video.

The biggest problem is resistance to change. The film industry is quite closed and conservative. The latter surprised us the most. It seems that everyone understands that digitalization is inevitable, but in practice, industry representatives are not ready to change their habits, even if they are the cause of stagnation in many processes.

Yelena, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We have created a platform that creates a bridge between film and video producers and talents.

My partner and I had little experience in shooting commercials, clips and short films, and in different countries and on different continents. Surprisingly, we were faced with the problem of gathering a team everywhere. Everywhere it was limited to “word of mouth”, but we wanted a more objective understanding of what kind of specialists there are in this city, what the cost of their services is and whether they are free on the date we need.

It takes time to figure out these details; there were no platforms that solved this problem—only talent agencies that oversaw the industry’s tops, the cost of whose services exceeded our entire budget.

Considering that video is now absolutely necessary everywhere, and not everyone has the budgets for feature films or advertising of the Procter & Gamble level, we realized the need for such a service.

And so the Assist.video was born.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

At the time of the creation of the startup, I had experience as a project manager and completed a master’s degree in media management.

However, the realities of startup development turned out to be a little harsher than I expected.

When we first started work, everyone was inspired by the idea and the support of the audience. We worked tirelessly, quickly grew a team, and quickly attracted the attention of major representatives of the film and video industry.

We worked with such zeal for half a year and then faced the consequences of such an active mode of work: team burnout, decreased productivity, loss of market novelty, and slowing growth.

The previous experience was no longer applicable, and the time had come for, as I would call it, business self-education.There was no time to take full-time business studies, I had to solve current problems.

I was very far from entrepreneurship, unlike my partner, which, of course, helped. However, I had to learn skills that I did not enjoy, such as different types of sales, negotiations, tax optimization, and personnel management.

For a startup at the pre-seed stage, we already had a large team to cover each competency with a new employee, and even if we did, this knowledge was still needed to control the result.

Immersion in incomprehensible and not very attractive areas was painful for me, but today I even fell in love with sales and personnel management. Unfortunately, I still treat negotiations as a given and a necessity, without much enthusiasm.

But this is exactly what a partner is needed for; she knew how to do all this and she liked it.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

PR and marketing are all very good and really work, but in our experience, especially in such industries, you need to work for word of mouth.

This can only be done by paying personal attention to each project, bringing it to the desired result, even if you go a little beyond the scope of your project (sometimes, without a contractor on our platform, we offer specialists from other sources). And, of course, constant personal contact with the audience; impersonal social media, of course, slowly grows the audience and reminds of ourselves, but when the brand has a “face” – it works many times more efficiently.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://assist.video/