Icanpreneurial Story: Hari Haralambiev

Icanpreneurial Stories is a series of interviews with Icanpreneur customers who are sharing their entrepreneurial journeys and how the Icanpreneur platform contributed to their success. Through these stories, we aim to inspire and empower other entrepreneurs to achieve their own success.

In this Icanpreneurial Story, we met Hari Haralambiev, Team Coach & Co-Founder @ Tochka 2 and Co-Creator of SoftSkillsPills.com.

After working 11 years in a tech company (starting as a software engineer and moving up), Hari left his exec role and co-founded Tochka 2, or as it is now known, Soft Skills Pills. For the past 8 years, he and his team have focused on helping tech professionals improve their soft skills and training them to build strong dev teams. Additionally, he is the author of the leadership newsletter A Leader’s Tale and the co-host of the podcast for tech people, Radio Tochka 2.

Tell us about your company/product and your vision.

We’re a small team of tech & HR people, who believe that learning should be interesting, useful, and actionable at the same time. That's why we often use play as a way of learning.

We have coached 350+ dev teams on how to be both high-performing & people-caring and ~4000 tech people to improve their communication skills.

Soft Skills Pills is the platform, created to share our experience and knowledge but without the need for a traditional trainer. It’s full of practical tips and products that help you to master and train your soft skills in order to become a successful team leader, build a high-performing dev team and be a confident teammate who everyone wants to work with.

What motivated you to go after this specific problem?

I’ve been an engineering manager and I know how hard it’s to balance and take care of all the issues: team, tech, people & project.

If you solved only technical problems – everything would be OK. But today we all work with people. And this is the real challenge.

I saw the impact of the right training in communication & leadership skills.

Your company started as a services company offering coaching services for tech teams. How did you decide to create a product, and what was the biggest challenge in that transition?

Together with my team, we knew we needed to help more and more people in tech work better together. That’s why we created the Soft Skills Pills platform, so every tech professional can master their soft skills and make their teams stronger through experiential learning in a fun and easy way, and practice real-world cases from the tech industry.

The biggest challenge was to translate our training approach into our products. We wanted people to have a sandbox environment through the products as well, where they could experiment safely, get actionable tips, and practice their skills through an interesting and fun experience.

What challenges were you facing before using Icanpreneur?

None of us had experience in developing products. When we decided to transition from being a fully services-based company to one that develops products, we entered entirely uncharted territory.

Once we knew what we wanted our products to be and how we intended tech professionals to use them, the next big challenge was how to successfully take them from development to market.

How did Icanpreneur help you overcome these challenges?

Let me use a metaphor – the Icanpreneur platform is like our compass and map, providing directions and guidance through this uncharted territory of developing and promoting products.

We have felt much more confident and assured about what we do since we started using the platform.

What significant milestone did you hit most recently?

We managed to develop one of our most sought-after services by tech leaders into a product. TReE Team Scan is our newest product, a team assessment tool that provides a snapshot of your team's dynamics.

It allows tech leaders to quickly and easily discover new & difficult-to-spot insights about their team. And it also offers a safe way for team members to speak up about tough issues.

What often happens is that tech companies throw senior engineers into leadership roles because of their strong technical experience. But most leave them on their own to find out how to deal with people and team issues. Now, tech leaders have a tool to gain a complete understanding of their teams and make positive changes.

We are glad that the people who have purchased the product see value in it and gain real benefits for their teams.

What impact has your success made on your industry or market?

Many more dev teams have become stronger and perform better together after our team coaching sessions.

I believe that with all the content we share publicly (for example on our podcast for tech people - Radio Tochka 2), people have become more aware of how important the people skills are. And how these skills make their lives easier and help them perform better at their jobs.

The next step is to have an even greater impact with the Soft Skills Pills platform. Through it, people have more opportunities to tackle work challenges on their own more easily by having the necessary tools for that.

What is one unexpected lesson you learned during your entrepreneurial journey?

One of the most important lessons we learned is related to focus—having and maintaining our focus on our strengths and the experience we have.

For example, it took us some time from the beginning of founding our company to realize that our focus shouldn't be solely on developing people's soft skills. All of us come from the tech world and have lived through the same challenges that people in this sector experience. That’s why, when we decided to focus on developing soft skills specifically for people in tech, our services business took off.

We also learned that we need to maintain and leverage everything that sets us apart from other training organizations. We believe that learning can be easy, enjoyable, light, and engaging, and it should be experienced through practice and hands-on training.

What is the one thing that made Icanpreneur an outstanding platform for you?

The team behind the platform consists of true experts in the field of product development. These are professionals who not only want to share all their experience and knowledge but also aim to do it in a very practical and actionable way.

Where can our readers try out your products and stay updated on your latest developments?

On the SoftSkillsPills.com platform, you can find everything we do: our products, services, and free valuable content. You can also follow me on LinkedIn, where I share daily tips on building strong dev teams, as well as updates about our platform.

Thank you, Hari, for sharing your incredible journey with us. Your story is a testament to the power of purpose-driven entrepreneurship. At Icanpreneur, we’re proud to support innovators like you as they turn challenges into opportunities and create lasting impact.