The First Customer - Redefining Strategic Consulting for a Changing World with Founder Tomé Duarte

In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Tomé Duarte, the Fractional CTO and Founder of Penguin Objective.

Tomé shares how he started the year strong with a record-setting Q1, crediting his meticulous use of spreadsheets for managing his operations and cash flow. Originally from Portugal, Tomé explains that he lived in Brazil and Ireland before settling back in his homeland, though his primary market is North America due to the fast-paced business culture. He emphasizes how the U.S. and Canadian markets align with his preference for growth-oriented and fast-moving business environments, contrasting this with the more traditional approaches often seen in Europe.

Tomé discusses the origins of Penguin Objective, a company name derived from a government-issued list in Portugal, which resonated with him due to his connection to Linux. He explains that Penguin Objective focuses on providing fractional CTO services to pre-seed and early-stage startups, helping them navigate tech strategy, operations, and development challenges. He also delves into his entrepreneurial background, inspired by his father's civil engineering business and built on experience from previous ventures. Tomé talks about refining his ideal customer profile (ICP) and offering over time, shifting from large enterprises to startups that better align with his values and goals, while also sharing the importance of being adaptable and open to opportunities that may arise unexpectedly, much like his symbolic encounter with a frog mascot at a Web Summit event.

Let's explore the vibrant streets of Porto and uncover Tomé Duarte's journey of resilience, innovation, and creative leadership on The First Customer!

Guest Info:
Penguin Objective
https://iamto.me/


Tomé Duarte's LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomeduarte/

Connect with Jay on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/
The First Customer Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcast
The First Customer podcast website
https://www.firstcustomerpodcast.com
Follow The First Customer on LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/

Transcript

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by Tommy Duarte. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. We worked so hard on getting the name proper, Tomé Duarte. did I get it close?

[00:00:42] Tom: yeah, 

[00:00:42] Jay: All right, it was close. as long as it's close.

I was I wanted to say Tommy Duarte just to mess with you Penguin Objective, is a consulting firm. We're here about today Tell me how are you man? How's business doing so far this year

[00:00:55] Tom: I'm good. It's been a great start of the year. A lot of stuff that had been in the works in Q4 that kind of unlocked now at the beginning of the year. So, a couple of busy weeks, and it looks like Q1 is going to be a record set for me. So, quite happy about it.

[00:01:12] Jay: this is not on my questions list But i'm just curious. How do you keep track? of what you're You know, cash flow and your ins and outs. And is it a spreadsheet? Is it quick books? Is it some sort of tool? Like, what do you use to kind of keep, so you know that Q1 is the best year of your business so far?

[00:01:31] Tom: I'm very much a spreadsheet man. I used to in, in previous roles, working for, you know, startups,I had to manage budgets and so I got very familiar with, spreadsheets as a tool. So even my CRM, is a spreadsheet for me. Also, then I use Notion for the actual detail, but from a bird's eye view, everything is one massive spreadsheets that I keep track of everything.

[00:01:57] Jay: Wow.more power to you, brother. I feel like I always get lost in spreadsheets. So I did not grow up in them. I do things like typically it'll be like a first draft for something for us. We'll do it in a spreadsheet and then we'll move it to tool. But, Well, very cool. So, you are from, not America, which is a great thing for us to have some more international guests.

Where are you from? Where did you grow up? And, did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?

[00:02:24] Tom: Okay, so I'm based in Portugal, in Porto to be more specific, born and raised, but then move around a bit. I lived in Brazil for about a year. I lived in Dublin, for three years. and then I came back here, once I decided to start the family, have kids, et cetera. so now I'm currently based in Portugal, but primarily work North American markets, a few projects here and there from Europe, but my primary markets, is the U S and Canada.

[00:02:49] Jay: And why do you think that is? is it, I found the same thing. And I'm curious what your answer is. why do you think that is?

[00:02:54] Tom: For me, it's deliberate, it's, I like the business culture, everything moves fast, it's straightforward. a lot of business owners, I'm not going to say everyone, but a lot of business owners have a growth mindset that, you know, it's not about cutting the pie, it's about making the pie bigger. And I like to work Under that mindset.

and so I feel like it's the right choice for me. Don't get me wrong. I'm European and Europe is definitely a strong market, but it is. very much a traditional market in the way it operates and the way business happens. and while I know how to do it, it's still feels more at home for me to do business with people that have a much more fast track mindsets.

And so that's why it was a deliberate decision of that's where I want to operate in. and luckily so far, that's been the case.

[00:03:42] Jay: Beautiful. I've kind of heard the same thing. very traditional model that a lot of European, it's just the startup culture is just different in the United States. like I said, I like the pie analogy, you know, making a bigger pie. And I just trying to get a bigger, I like that. Did you have any entrepreneurs in your family growing up?

Did you kind of have anybody you look to, to kind of say you wanted to run your own business eventually?

[00:04:06] Tom: yeah, I grew up, so my mom was a teacher, but my dad had his own business, nothing related to what I do here. It was a civil engineer, but you know, I grew up from a very early age watching the ins and outs, the good and bad of that lifestyle. And it's always something that I've looked up to.

So, actually throughout my whole career, I've only not worked for myself for six years. So I could do that. Decade of, at the beginning with three businesses, then was kind of hitting a ceiling in terms of my skill sets, my ability to run the business and okay, I need to learn more. So I stopped joined, at the time web summits, stayed out for five years, then moved into a different startup for, another year.

And then. At the end of 2022, I was like, okay, this little voice in the back of my head keeps going, you know, why am I working for somebody else? Why am I not building my own business? And I decided to go back on my own. And so that's when I started to what I'm doing now.

[00:05:06] Jay: What was the, what were those things that you thought that you kind of neededneeded to improve on as a business owner? Well, why did, what made you stop and go work for web summit for a while?

[00:05:18] Tom: Primarily three areas. one was people management. I had, like, I knew that I wanted to grow a business. I would need to Be able to manage people very effectively And also I have had co founders That's a very different relationship than having an employee and apart from that. I have contractors freelancers still It's a service based relationship.

It's not having someone that is 100 with your company day in day outso that was definitely something that I knew I was lacking and I needed experience second part was Understanding curiously enough, how to manage the financials in a much more professional way, in the sense of knowing, you know, understanding what does it mean?

What's what is a PNL statement done properly? Not this little mess back, almost like back of the book calculation that I was doing at the time. and the third one was a customer acquisition. And I have no understanding whatsoever of the difference. Paths you could take, but also how to, you know, segment the market, identify a niche, define your offering, understanding repeat value and compound growth.

Like I had glimpses of those things from listening, you know, from more experienced entrepreneurs about it, but not in a way that I could actually hit the ground running and apply it. So it was all very It felt like luck. It wasn't, you know, there was a lot of hard work to make that luck happen, but it felt like luck most of the time, and I wanted to be in an environment where, you know, be in the room where everyone else is smarter than you, kind of thing.

[00:06:57] Jay: And what, did you learn that stuff from your time at web summit or did you engage in some additional kind of education? Like how did you pick up the pieces that you needed?

[00:07:10] Tom: Well, I mean, I'm knowledge driven above all else. So I'm always the kind of guy that's like picking up a books, listening to audio books, listening, podcasts, consuming contents. So that's always been a constant pattern for me, but definitely working at Web Summit and Kenco then were accelerators because one thing is to read about it and listen about it.

Once you're actually doing things, that's, it takes a whole different tone and you just go through the lessons so much faster because, you know, it's in your face, you need to do something about it, it's your responsibility, someone's going to come asking and say, okay, is this done or is it not done? And so you need to figure out How to tackle challenges, how to work around them with people or around people.

I feel like those six years were absolutely fundamental for me to now come. But this is technically, this is my fourth business, but at the same time, it's the first one that I feel, okay, I'm actually a professional and I'm doing this not as a young kid. That's trying to figure out things, but don't get me wrong.

I'm absolutely still figuring out a lot of stuff, but it's, You know, I feel like at least the bare bones of the flows and how things should be are in place because of those lessons learned. and those have to come through experience. There's no other way than doing.

[00:08:30] Jay: No, I agree. So, tell me about Penguin Objective, first of all, what does the name mean, or where did it come from? and second of all, what do you guys do, and kind of who do you serve?

[00:08:44] Tom: Okay. So,in Portugal, when you incorporate the company, you can pick a name and it's a longer process, or you can, pick a name out of a list that the government issued with like, I don't know, 10, 000 names or something. I knew I wanted something in English. I knew I wanted something that would be agnostic enough that I could base my business around.

tech because I wasn't super sure what my offering was going to be at the time.and when I saw Penguin objective, I'm a very big fan of Linux. I like ever since I was like 14 years old. and so I saw Penguin. Okay. This reminds, this connects to me weirdly enough on an emotional level. Let's go with this one.

so that's the story of the name. there's a funny story, about the mascot for Linux, from the designer that originally drafted it, that it's meant to be a penguin right after it has a big fish and it's feeling really comfy, really like, oh, this is So nice. And so it kind of clicked for me and that's how it came 

[00:09:41] Jay: I love that.

[00:09:42] Tom: yeah. it's just like, sometimes there's little things in life that just connect dots, in your head. and what we do is, fractional CTO practice, focus on the precedence stage startups. So strategy ops and code, obviously all around tech, but helping companies bootstrap, or start to accelerate.

Yeah. depending on the stage they're at, with. Not just, you know, it's not, Oh, let's contract someone to develop an app. It's okay. We know we have a business opportunity. Maybe we already have some tech in place and we're seeing challenges. Maybe we don't have anything. How do we get to the next step?

And that's really where it folks.

[00:10:20] Jay: Beautiful. Um, and so who was your first customer?

[00:10:26] Tom: So my first customer was very lucky for me. It was. Two serial, two serial entrepreneurs spotted an opportunity about the business opportunity in the market. They know very well, but it could only be driven by tech and they had no experience managing a tech company. So they came to me first for advice, not even to engage.

I think similar to how you started your company, it's like, Hey, do you still do?

And so it was very similar. It's like, hey, I'm. I have this thing and I want to get it started, but I don't know how, like, can you just give me some pointers? And I was like, well, you know, that's what I do. Like, do you not want to have a serious conversation about it?

and that's how it started. And so, you know, anything from pitch deck, tech strategy, engineering strategy, proof of concept, MVP, it's been, it's been a whole thing. I'm still engaged with that, at this point and It's been a very interesting thing. I knew one of them. they had been my customer for my first business 10 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that.

and we've always kept in touch, but hadn't really done business together, in a long while. and so that's the person I knew. The other one I knew nothing about, but it's been very fun working.

[00:11:37] Jay: Beautiful. and how has your, you know, customer profile changed since you started? How have you honed that in? Is it the same exact thing you set out to do is, did you know what you set out to do? Is it just kind of morphed naturally by the clients you've gotten? what does it look like now?

As it was, you know, we started.

[00:11:55] Tom: Very different, like complete opposite. My, my first target were, and it was enterprise and I've quickly realized that it's not the market that I want to be in because of how long everything takes, but also to bureaucracy getting in the way of getting things done. You know, what I said earlier about, I like that moving fast mindset, even with the right people within an enterprise, There's still a huge structure behind them and around them that needs to be navigated.

and so my first, target was to do legacy applications and legacy infrastructure upgrades. Why? Because it's just something I really enjoy. I've always, so I work across, the stack. So, dev and info. And I've always loved to tackle those kinds of issues where someone, you know, the teams are afraid of, what's there.

They know there's a server there. They can't touch. They don't really know why, or an app that no one really changes because it's Too fragile at this stage, it's been on for like 10 years and I love that kind of challenge. So my first, outbound client, not someone that came to me, was that through inside sales, like proper researching the client, figuring out how to get in touch, understanding opportunity, lead generation, all that kind of stuff.

and then after that first experience, I still tried to do a couple more and then I realized, you know, what, who are the majority of the people that come to me for advice. They're starting businesses or they're at early stages. Can I help them like reasonably and enjoy what I'm doing? Yeah. Like I like helping other business owners kind of start their team, figuring out the path, figuring out.

The things that they don't know about that they should know about, within the tech realm. and so I shifted completely. and thenas a side note here is I had, that was one of my biggest challenges at the beginning. I hadn't defined my ICP. I hadn't defined my offering. So I was just. open to everything and anything, right?

You're starting a business, there's no cash flow, there's no projects on the pipeline. It's like, okay, whatever comes my way, you know, it's going to work something out. get the car going and then start driving. and it took me a few months to kind of really lean in on the problem of, okay, I need to be very clear about who I want to work with and what I want to help them with.

and so in the end I ended up with two key things. One is a list of disqualifiers for anyone that's, either I'm searching for or, does outreach to me. And two, a very clear set of, okay, this is the process I go through in discovery to understand whether this is going to be a good working relationship or it's not, and that's anything from.

Company size because of the impact on decision making to what kind of tech stack they use To even the fact whether are they serial founders or first time founders still trying to figure out everything about this world and it took a while to get here, but now it's in a stable condition Of

[00:14:52] Jay: I love that. it's something that I think people wing, they wing it for a very long time, but I love having the process around, you know, really ultra qualifying those leases are coming in. a frog slightly to your side. it was a frog we talked about. a while back, can you tell the story of the frog?

I

[00:15:14] Tom: so that's been with me across country moves even. that was acquired in 2016 at the end of my first web summit event, working the event. and that's a mascot for a different company. That was my first ever client. So as in. Serious client, like big company, they're a company that was the first search engine in Portugal before, before Google, like at the time where you had like AltaVista and Yahoo and like directory websites, and they started one, just like 12 college kids got together, did their thing, they got acquired by the biggest telco in Portugal.

And then a few years later after that, I worked with them for three years or something like that. when I was still in college and building a project for them to manage some things at a national level. and because it's. Like, it has such an emotional thing for me of, like, that was my first big client.

I found it on the stage when we went to take the staff photo at the end of the event, center stage. Like, big stage, I think 20, 000 people arena or something like that. and it was just dropped behind the sofa and I was like, oh, okay. I'll grab it and then it's like it's moved countries with me.

It's always there. It's just a reminder of Where I started I guess, 

[00:16:33] Jay: favorite part of the 

[00:16:33] Tom: you never forget where you come from,

[00:16:34] Jay: whole my favorite part is that you found it. It wasn't like somebody gave it to you It wasn't it

was justit very much kind of describes You know your journey and a lot of other people's journey is like you there's no Nobody's going to come hand you know

[00:16:50] Tom: Yeah, you gotta keep your eyes open and

see you got to look at what life throws you and kind of see, can I make something out of this? Right? like with my first company, I started it as a game server hosting company, right? Hosting a game service for like counter strike and stuff like that.

That turned into a pivot to web hosting because people started coming to me asking for web hosting because they knew I had a server. And then that started my third business was, which was a web and DevOps agency. Like sometimes it's not sometimes. So like, I'm a strong believer that you got to go for what kind of scares you, but that's, if it goes well, it's going to be amazing.

Like, and that's how you've got to look at it. And it's a matter of keeping your eyes open to what's popping up and going, is that something I would enjoy. Great. Is that something I'm going to be able to tackle? I'm not super sure. Okay, let's figure out a plan and let's see if it's worth doing it.

and I'm a strong believer in that.

[00:17:48] Jay: I love that. Um One other question about Your current user base, and I hear this, or your client base, how do you do outbound towards people who haven't? Started a business yet, or who are just like, you know, cause part of your, you know, your customer profile is those pre seed companies, even companies that haven't really built anything yet. Are you putting yourself in places where people like that may be looking for people like you, or is there some other method that you're using to find these folks? Cause I always, I had another friend of mine who runs an agency. for non technical founders and I always told him it felt like he was playing a game of whack a mole, right?

Where it's like somebody pops up and says like I have an idea and you're like wham You have to hit them like as soon as they pop up as opposed to you know, you know Series a or series b company which there's information on you can find them There's places to go to get more information. How are you? Finding those people who are just have an idea and are trying to build this thing Like how do you do outbound towards them or is that more inbound?

[00:18:55] Tom: So I have two different channels, one for the ones that I've already started and one for the ones that are yet to start. The ones that are yet to start, usually one of, one of three things happen, right? Like Either they're starting to ask around about specifics, and, Reddit is a great place to find people that are trying to start something and you have lots of subreddits from like, you know, the startup subreddit to the entrepreneur to the, co founder, like find a co founder and stuff like that.

I literally just try and be as helpful as I can, to everyone, like whether that's comments, whether it's seeing a post and sending a private message and going, Hey, like, look, I've tackled, you know, this part of the challenge that you're asking about, and here's what I've seen this, and this and that, like, just basically don't go into this pitfalls, kind of thing.

and it's very, you know, it's like any networking, you just try to reach as many people as you can and add as much value to them. With no, like without a catch, no strings attached from that. A lot of those conversations turn into, Oh, like I could actually use, well, not a lot, but enough, I could use help with this and that.

And at that stage it's like, well, okay, this is what I do. Like, if you want, we can look at a retainer model or something like that and go from there.That's one part of it. The other part is, network. As people know what I do and they, you know, they think of me, they think of FractionalCTO helping early stage companies.

Naturally, that means that when they hear about something that is related in some shape or form, which sometimes is, you know, people saying, Oh, I need a website or people saying, Oh, I'm thinking of starting a business. They talk to their friends, right? They have, they're uncertain. They ask around that eventually someone refers and say, Hey, you should talk to him.

so for pre SID, that's primarily where I focus.

[00:20:47] Jay: Got it. Very cool, man. Love your story. We'll definitely be following along the two man journey. If people want, actually, I have one more question for you, right, and give out your information, non business related question. If you could do anything on earth, what would it be. And you knew you couldn't fail. What would it be?

[00:21:13] Tom: A non profit of some sort, probably around homelessness. and like something that could have a life impact directly. Not necessarily something big, you know, if I could spend my time just helping others, I think that's where I would start. Because that's the. basic thing that allows anyone to then continue to step up, you know, and move up.

And I think that's where I would start.

[00:21:45] Jay: I like that. I've never heard that answer before. So that's a great one a non profit for homelessness. I'll put it in for consideration of a great answer That's a good one. if people want to find you if they want to find more about penguin objective How do they do that?

[00:21:58] Tom: LinkedIn is probably the best way to interact with me. I'm very active, not a open poster, but very active. so just my name, LinkedIn, other than that, will send you to my website and you can book a call or, learn about my experience, et cetera.

[00:22:14] Jay: Beautiful. We'll link everything in the description. too many. It's been fantastic, buddy thank you for your time today. Have a great rest of your week and a great weekend. Okay.

[00:22:22] Tom: Likewise. And thank you for the invite.

[00:22:24] Jay: Thanks, buddy 

​