This week,
Website Planet had the opportunity to interview Karol Andruszkow, CEO of Ulan Software. We discussed the company’s beginnings, how it evolved, and how the company differs from similar websites/companies.
Please present Ulan to our audience
Ulan Software is a Software House specializing in creating and scaling e-commerce and marketplace solutions. All of the marketplace platforms and online stores we develop for our clients are built based on our original solutions – tools we have been developing for over 8 years.
While I’m on this topic, I need to mention that our tools are built in the best possible microservices architecture and leading technology stack for e-commerce: PWA, NestJS, VueJS and many others.
We dedicate our solutions to startups and large companies. From the beginning, we can complete the entire project by designing a product and writing every single line of code to implement it on the market. We operate in such a model due to our history and experience: many years ago we were responsible for creating digital products for multinational corporations. Later we decided to invest money in making our products and became startupers. This gave us a deep understanding of every aspect of product life.
Now we work with top companies, and for one of the global corporations, we are building the whole business, from A to Z.
Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
Although each of us (the founders of Ulan Software) has extensive experience in programming, is a programmer by degree and has always wanted to start a software house, we did not decide for many years. Why? We wanted to establish a Software House that would not just provide programming services as most such companies do.
We wanted to build a responsible company specializing in creating IT products from A to Z, from the first idea to successfully scaling that product in the target market. We wanted to set up a company that understands exactly how products are built. And, after all, a product is much, much more than simply the code behind it. A product is also understanding the target audience, understanding what happens to the product when it goes to market, understanding not only the IT details but more importantly, the marketing aspects, UX/UI, generating traction, scaling, the investment side of the business and much more.
Each of us (the founders of Ulan Software) has created our startups, with successes and failures that have shaped us. We have worked on developing products for large corporations many years ago, and participated in projects worth more than 1,000,000,000 GPD. We worked in many countries in Europe and the US, all to understand how to design, create, implement and scale products in the global market.
It wasn’t until we gained this knowledge that we decided to invest our own money and devote many years of work to building our own solutions. In the process, we suffered many failures and successes but gained even more extensive knowledge. At that time, we already knew how to set up an agile and specialized company, such as Ulan Software is today.
Today, we are creating the intelligent solutions of the future – thoughtful digital products ready to be deployed and quickly scaled in the target market. We are specialized in the entire process, from start to finish. This is our great advantage in the market and a great asset for customers because working with us is much more convenient. Another advantage is that we provide clients with access to our technology – already ready for implementation. This speeds up project implementation incredibly; we save many months of work, sometimes even years. For the client, this means incredible savings in time and money, which is invaluable, especially for startups that depend on stable cash flow.
Our operating model and our values, all this I am talking about, is reflected in our branding. We are currently working in different places worldwide, but we all come from Poland – in Polish history,
the Ulans were nimble horse soldiers, an elite cavalry unit. Ulan was such an agile warrior, such a ninja but with Polish roots.
We don’t have a horse in our logo, but we have a unicorn. This is a conscious choice – we have always wanted to create unicorns, startups worth billions. Now we are responsible for such projects for our clients.
What services do you offer?
We’ve Development, Service, Testing, Marketing, and Sales teams and thus provide services in every area of product development and commercialization:
- Product development from A to Z (from design, through implementation, testing, building pilots, deployment, scaling, further product development and maintenance)
- Product design – From the first draft to the last line of code and beyond
- Web development
- Building custom-tailored online marketplaces for demanding companies
- Vue.js development
- Low-code, No-code, drag-and-drop development
- Mobile development
- Remote control development
- Repairing existing products,
- Implementation of our technology, e.g. microservices for an existing solution,
- Scaling of existing solutions,
- Optimizing existing solutions in terms of technology as well as traction,
- Customized services depending on the needs of our clients.
What separates you from other similar websites/companies?
First of all, our experience in building products from A to Z and our experience in creating startups. We have always worked on building scalable solutions and understand how to build innovative products.
We have a start-up-type team, rather than a corporate team – this makes us much more efficient, which our clients greatly appreciate. We always have a unique approach to each project and put a ton of heart into each one. This also makes the way we run projects unique.
Also unique is our offer, which we have refined over years of work. We are very respectful of our and clients’ time; hence we can take the whole process on ourselves. They appreciate it very much.
Who are your typical customers, and what do you think is the main challenge that your product solves for them?
- Large global corporations looking to build a new business or new products under their brands
- Marketplace&e-commerce platforms
- Startups
- Companies with large numbers (hundreds of thousands or even millions) of current customers, want to commercialize that value, for example, by implementing a marketplace or social-business platform.
- Banks,
- Telecoms
- Retail chains
- Shopping malls (we have special digital tools tailored for shopping malls and ready to be implemented in any mall)
How do you envision the future of your industry?
I think the world is becoming more and more integrated, interpenetrating and digitizing by leaps and bounds. Therefore, we already need to build very high-quality solutions, ones that can integrate very quickly with other solutions or products. Such trends perfectly demonstrate this as omnichannel, which generates the need for a single key to controlling dozens or even hundreds of different sales channels. This trend will continue to grow – with a single solution, companies will want to scale sales in all channels without making the most common, costly mistakes. We have been building our platforms with this in mind for years so that they can achieve the modern goals set for them.
Very soon, a critical role will undoubtedly play No-Code and Low-Code, allowing us to build modern IT products and solutions much faster. Over the past several months, we have received a massive number of inquiries from customers about No-Code, and it is more than likely that the number will continue to grow.
We have been predicting for some time that IT would go this way. In 2014, we started building bowwe.com, a No-Code/Low-Code platform that allows you to create websites, landing pages, micro pages and online stores with the quality of a software developer, but 10 times faster. Over the years, we have continually invested in our tool and expanded it; hence, you will soon be able to build any web and mobile application in BOWWE.
I have already mentioned digitalization, but I would like to say some more about that. It will play a huge role. All industries are moving to the Internet. Soon almost everything will be possible to do online, and people will visit physical establishments less and less often. This does not mean that they will completely disappear.
On the other hand, if people visit them, they will look for convenience, security and the certainty that they will have something done there even better than on the Internet. With this in mind, we created our platform for shopping malls, which helps to move part of the mall business to the Web and scale it, while at the same time we’re finding new opportunities to use and commercialize the physical space. This is what Ulan Software is betting on and investing our money in: e-commerce, No-Code, Low-Code, digitalization, and commercialization of the community created around the company.
That’s why, for example, we built our solution –
the BOWWE Builder – in such a way that it could be the creator of anything. Currently, the most common BOWWE feature is the creation of code. Still, in the future, it could just as well be a Product Designer or a creator that visualizes various products in different spaces. We want everyone could use such a builder and use it in whatever way they want, e.g., customizing shoes in any way they want and at other times customizing furniture for a particular interior and so on. This is how we invest in our products – to make them future-proof for different groups of people.
For more information, I recommend visiting our website ulansoftware.com.
