This digital product and service design studio is specialized in helping other companies to innovate and grow
Unexpendables is a startup located in Bilbao focused on improving the digital side of large accounts using the satisfaction of its users as a lever. Looking ahead, its founder, Sergio De la Casa, considers that “it is necessary to focus on promoting efficient user experiences, which in the business fabric of the Basque Country is below its counterparts in other territories”. To do this, it plans to ‘gain muscle’ through a reinforcement of the current staff, composed by six people, and the financial support of Seed Capital Bizkaia Mikro.
Regarding the emerging user experience market, Sergio De la Casa, with more than 17 years of career behind him, highlights that, apparently, we are living “a moment in which, even being a fashionable term, an illusion has been created where it seems to be more service than what really exists. But this happens because there is very little knowledge of the subject and many times services that are not fully user experience are offered. We are, in terms of detail and concept, more a boutique than a department store”.
User experience as a lever for business development
Despite the fact that it is a term that has gained visibility in recent years, user experience is a discipline that emerged more than twenty years ago to analyse the behaviour of people when behaving in front of digital interfaces. It does not only build more efficient businesses, but companies have proven that they can optimize their digital development budget up to 100 € for every euro invested. “The user experience basically uses user satisfaction as a lever to articulate business. We are not an NGO. We want reasonably satisfied users because they recommend more, buy more, have more recurring use of the services, and have a higher average ‘ticket’. Paradoxically, it is surprising how little attention we pay to the user experience when it is the main cause of death for digital initiatives”, says De la Casa.
Value proposition in the Basque Country
Led by Sergio De la Casa, Unexpendables was born in late 2012 as a design studio for digital products and services that uses a user-centered approach to help other companies to innovate and grow. “The decision to create the company was based on the vocation for this work and on the belief of having a real value proposition that we wanted to see if it fit in a place like Euskadi”.
Five years later, Unexpendables has managed to establish itself in the market and remain in Bilbao, without moving to other more favourable business environments in principle. Along this path, it has had to overcome difficulties and draw consequences on which to base its future. “We are a small studio, we are in Bilbao, and I usually talk about things we have learned for years”.
Year-by-year learning
The first year we found that we could not put all the eggs in the same basket. In our second year, we got clients in Madrid and Barcelona and gained a name, which showed us the importance of going out to sell. The third year, the fundamental learning was that we had to focus less on development, because it turned us more into a ‘softwar’ factory than a design studio. “It was also that year that I was father of twins and we began to see that we could not walk alone, that we needed strategic alliances with other companies that, later, have worked very well. The last great learning has been that we only make sense on a strategic level and not on a tactical level, because we compete with companies that are many times bigger than us, that by brute force can displace you from any opportunity”.
Support from Seed Capital Bizkaia
A recent loan obtained from Seed Capital Bizkaia has facilitated the described growth process. “The help has been very useful for guaranteeing a sufficient cash flow for the development of our company because, although we are small, we work for large clients such as Bankia, EDP, Barcelona City Council or Grupo Prisa and, sometimes, you need mechanisms for financing that allows you a minimum of security”
Future challenges
This growth is also reflected in the incorporation of more professionals to the company with long-term job prospects. “We are interviewing people who live in Madrid or Berlin and we think that, if we are going to bring them, it must be so that they stay, not so that they leave us the day after tomorrow. We need people who know how to work as a team and who are able to think, not just cut and paste, because we have to solve new issues that perhaps nobody has solved before, and we have to imagine them. There is a very important difference between solving an exercise or a problem. In an exercise we know in advance the way towards its resolution, but in a problem we do not know the a priori solution. You have to look for it and in that way not only your tools come into play, but also your aptitudes and capacities as a human being”, highlights De la Casa.
