On Disrupting The Industry And Building An Outsourcing Marketplace For Businesses
I am Wouter Delbaere, CEO and co-founder of Mangtas, a curated marketplace for B2B services. Being Belgian, I am fluent in Dutch, but growing up in the Philippines, has made me fluent in both English and our local language: Bisaya, as well. I lived there for 10 years and throughout my life, I have also lived in 10 different countries (coincidentally, having been a football player in my youth, 10 has always been my player number). I now live with my wife and daughter in Singapore, which is also where the Mangtas headquarters is located.
At Mangtas, we aim to disrupt a 700B industry by providing reliable B2B outsourcing solutions. While we are a 1-stop-shop for project-based outsourcing, our vendors primarily cover Software & Tech, Digital Marketing, and Lead Generation services, services of which are mainly delivered to startups & scaleups, for now. Even though we’re just over half a year old, we’ve already amassed a 700 vendor strong platform and we are about to complete our 100th project, currently having a 90% repeat purchase rate.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I used to run a regional FinTech business as part of a larger parent company. It was a stable and well-paying job that involved working together with 200 people, 10 products, and 10 different markets. However, I decided to leave this all behind smack in the middle of a pandemic to follow my dreams. For some people, quitting this type of job may seem crazy. But adding the looming uncertainty of a pandemic plus having a pregnant wife to the mix? Let’s just say pretty much everyone in my circle thought I was a nutcase.
But I saw things differently. A crisis like Covid-19 requires businesses to innovate if they want to stay in the game. I made it my mission to find a way to help deliver solutions for this type of problem and make a difference. I initially felt this pain point while I was working on another business idea in the SportsTech space (but that’s for another starter’s story). I experienced firsthand how unreliable outsourcing can get when I was looking for extra help with building my tech. It proved to be unbelievably difficult to find and attract the right talent and if I did find some, it was often unaffordable. Freelancers also often proved to be a hit-and-miss exercise, with people coming and going, making the process unsustainable and time-consuming in the long run.
In the end, I found that agencies, on the other hand, were the best strategic solution for the long haul, however, I again, found myself in a crux: I didn’t have a good place to start. For freelancers, I knew which platforms to turn to, but for agencies, my only available option was Google.
As I was discussing this over a beer with one of my co-founders, we realized that there is a massive opportunity to disrupt a 700 billion dollar outsourcing industry. During the pandemic, businesses have had to embrace remote work, while also experiencing a massive shortage in access to qualified talent pools which started paving the way for a boom in outsourcing.
With the majority of B2B services vendors still scattered across the globe and only discoverable via Google, now became the best time to disrupt that space and effect a big change. Where that was the exact scenario for freelancers 10 years ago, became the case now for vendor agencies and businesses aching to connect with them.
And so our journey began. I, together with a great set of co-founders that have known each other for decades, pooled our resources for our self-funded startup. Having done B2B outsourcing for most of our adult lives - both as clients, as well as vendors – coupled with my knowledge on how to build software myself, gave us all the ammunition we needed to immediately get started and quickly validate the idea.
Within a week we had a prototype built and 5 vendors signed up. 2 weeks later our first outsourcing project kicked off - earning our first bit of revenue on our B2B marketplace. Since then, we never looked back.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
If we would have built exactly what we originally envisioned, our platform wouldn’t have been fit for purpose. It would have had all bells and whistles but it would not have been aligned to our fine-tuned positioning and what the market needs.
So instead, early on, we’ve adopted a rapid prototyping approach - in partnership with our early adopters - which enabled us to validate, learn & evolve in an agile manner. This allowed us to verify critical hypotheses throughout our startup journey, including our business model, growth strategies, product-market fit, our ability to execute as a team, and much more.
The initial version of the platform (web app) was built by myself out of my home office. As months passed we started forming partnerships with universities and talented interns started pitching in. As of the start of 2022, we finally have a full-time CTO…and I can finally hand over that hat and focus on being a full-time CEO.
We brand ourselves as “Mangtas”: I grew up, together with 1 of my co-founders, on an island in the Philippines called Negros Oriental, where the term “Mangtas” means exceptionally skilled & talented. We found this not only represents our roots, but also the quality of our people and the vendors on our marketplace.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Mangtas, as of this writing, is 100% self-funded. We are a lean team: run by co-founders, a couple of full-time hires, and a handful of interns. We also partner up with several agencies that support us with software development, digital marketing, and lead generation (all vendors on our platform of course!). These allow us to keep our costs at bay.
The success of a startup lies completely in having the right balance of fully committed people with complementary skill sets, experience, and networks.
We took the approach of launching a BETA version of what we had built as soon as possible - gaining early traction and immediate feedback. We launched our platform version one a couple of days after we came up with the idea, and evolved from there.
Eventually, it took about 2 months for our platform to mature, and for the vendor, sign-ups to start growing exponentially. On the contrary, for our project pipeline, after just 1 week we, unfortunately, had to stop our outreach. The demand from clients became too overwhelming to handle - which was a truly fantastic validation of our business idea. However, this also highlighted the fact that organizationally & technically, we weren’t ready yet to scale.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
As mentioned previously, we currently have a 90% repeat purchase ratio. Once our clients experience dependable outsourcing services from our vendors, purchases organically occur in a self-service manner. The key for us is to ensure that the overall experience remains trustworthy.
While we certainly have ambitious growth targets, we carefully control the rate at which we scale up to ensure the reliability of the matching and vendor selection and that the service delivery & overall user experience isn’t compromised. We do this by being hands-on in our vendor selection, vendor vetting, and match-making process. This helps us understand all the critical aspects of the business, and use this deep understanding to fine-tune our internal workflows and automate the right processes.
As a business, this is also why we are currently hyper-focused on a couple of core outsourcing services; while clients continue to come to us for outsourcing across Software & Tech, Digital Marketing and Lead Generation services, there are some very specific, high-demand services to build tech platforms of the future (scaled microservices, blockchain, virtual reality, metaverse, etc.). Here, we have seen a scarcity in reliable supply, and we have recently decided to give this gap our full attention. So far, our growth has been 100% organic, with strategic partnerships at its core. I am glad to share that Mangtas now covers 30 markets worldwide.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Like all businesses, we have a steady yet evolving set of goals and objectives. Our humble startup plans on growing 10 times more in the coming years and we do this by leveraging on strategic partnerships, as well as, rolling out an AI-based match-making strategy for more streamlined and efficient collaborations on our platform. Additionally, we also plan on doing a deep dive into outsourcing services that help deliver the Tech of the future such as virtual reality, metaverse, blockchain, and scaled microservices to name a few.
In the long run, we at Mangtas aim to create a complete outsourcing ecosystem by seamlessly integrating our outsourcing solutions into businesses around the globe. The more we learn from our agile approach, the better a platform we can build, incorporating integrations like financing, metaverse-based collaborations, upskilling of talent, donations to charitable institutions and so much more.
In a nutshell, our goal is to become your 1-stop-shop for reliable and quality B2B outsourcing across all deal sizes and project complexities.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Throughout this journey, I have learned some valuable lessons. When it comes to being a part of a team, my experience has taught me that having the right team in place is ultimately what matters the most. However, this is also by far the hardest thing to get right. The success of a startup lies completely in having the right balance of fully committed people with complementary skill sets, experience, and networks.
When it comes to timeliness, as difficult as it may be for us to currently find competitors to benchmark on, I know we are not the first to think about this. But I also know that the timing is right. Outsourcing boomed as a result of the pandemic - with freelancer platforms growing up to 700%. We do possess an unfair advantage of being able to use the freelancer platforms as templates and adapt them to meet the unique needs for B2B services.
All in all, I approach starting a business the same way as I do endurance sports: gradual, balanced progress, and always with an eye on the prize.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
To support our business, we love nothing more than to use 3rd party tools for collaboration, communication, virtual office space, video messaging, customer relationship management, product development, analytics, content, etc. – we live in an age where cloud-based subscriptions are extremely cost-effective – and we certainly aim to maximize this.
For internal and some external communications, we mainly use:
- Office 365
- Gather in partnership with Virtual Chair
For our Dev Team:
For our Sales Team:
- Pipedrive
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
For our Marketing Team:
- Clickup
- Google Tools
- Ghost
- Envato Elements
- Adobe Stock
- Shutterstock
- Canva
- Adobe Tools
- Riverside
- Matchmaker
- Xero
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
My inspiration comes from trusted entrepreneurs around me that are building something out of nothing; I regularly catch up with founders who I admire - not only to share notes but also to have a sounding board throughout this rollercoaster of a journey.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Every day, I find that I learn something new. For aspiring entrepreneurs, my top 5 tips would have to be the following:
- Make it your priority to form the right team.
- Always validate your assumptions ASAP.
- Forget perfection; speed matters more early on.
- Grit and drive will get you far.
- Do what you do best, outsource the rest.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are a fast-growing start-up and we are always on the lookout for talented people who can help drive our product development, marketing, and sales forward. Please don’t hesitate to send your resumes to [email protected] if you’re interested in joining our team!
Where can we go to learn more?
We are currently present on several channels. Feel free to check us out, follow us and engage with us!
- Website (sign up as a client to find services, or as a vendor to deliver services)
- Blog
- YouTube
- Podcast
- Or you can always get in touch with us at [email protected]!
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
