An Interview with Roman Kropachek, Co-Founder and CEO of CleverFiles
Most software founders would love to have a product as established as Disk Drill. So why would CleverFiles, the company behind it, want to look beyond its biggest success?
For Roman Kropachek, co-founder and CEO of CleverFiles, the answer comes down to a principle familiar to any investor: don’t put everything in one basket. A successful flagship product can support a business for years. But what happens when the market changes? And how do you build something new without taking your attention away from what’s already working?
We asked Kropachek where he sees the next opportunities for CleverFiles, why he doesn’t believe every new product should be monetized from day one, and what can go wrong when a company tries to grow beyond its flagship. His answers reveal a business philosophy that favors experimentation, but not at any cost.
1. What made you realize that relying on one successful product could become a risk?
Roman Kropachek: I’ve always thought about software businesses in much the same way I think about investments. You wouldn’t put all your money into a single stock, no matter how good that stock looks, right? So why would you build an entire business around just one product? The principle is pretty much the same.
A successful flagship product is a tremendous advantage. You have an established brand, an audience, market experience, a product that already generates revenue. But it also creates a certain dependency. Consumer preferences change, technologies evolve. A market that looks extremely attractive today might be very different five or ten years from now.
That doesn’t mean you should stop investing in a successful product. The opposite. You want to protect and strengthen what you have while also developing other opportunities. The important distinction is that diversification shouldn’t mean launching products simply for the sake of having more products. Each new venture should make sense on its own.
That’s really how I see diversification at CleverFiles. We want products that serve different needs, in different markets. If one market slows down, the entire business shouldn’t have to slow down with it.
2. How do you balance investing in your flagship product with building entirely new ones?
Roman Kropachek: I don’t believe a company should move away from its flagship just because it has become successful. I still see considerable growth potential in Disk Drill.
Even in a mature market, there are opportunities to improve how you acquire customers, communicate product value, and turn interest into actual sales.
Look at our Disk Drill recovery software. We’ve been in this market for years, and I still see plenty of room to grow. People searching for the best data recovery software have a lot of options, so we have to keep earning their attention. Sometimes that means improving the product. Other times, it’s about reaching the right audience through search, advertising, or simply doing a better job of showing people why Disk Drill is worth choosing.
At the same time, I believe it’s important to create additional sources of revenue. A new product can introduce the company to a completely different audience and create opportunities that wouldn’t exist within the original market.
For me, the balance comes down to priorities. The core product deserves continued investment, while new ventures need a clear business rationale and a realistic allocation of resources. I don’t want us to neglect a product that’s already successful just because a new idea looks exciting. But I also don’t want to wake up five years from now and realize we missed an opportunity because we were too comfortable with what we had.
3. What do you look for when evaluating a completely new software market?
Roman Kropachek: I usually start with demand. Is this a problem that enough people experience, and are they actively searching for a solution?
A technically impressive product isn’t necessarily a viable business. You need a market large enough to justify the investment.
The next question is how you can reach those potential customers. Some markets have significant demand but are extremely expensive to enter. Others offer more realistic opportunities through organic search, advertising, partnerships, or other distribution channels.
Development costs also matter. If you can build and validate a useful product without an enormous initial investment, you have more flexibility to experiment.
But there’s another question that I think deserves just as much attention: will people actually pay for the solution?
You might identify a market with substantial search traffic and relatively little competition, but that doesn’t automatically mean there’s a viable business opportunity.
A category such as data recovery software has a relatively clear customer problem and an established commercial market. Other categories may attract considerable interest without a similarly obvious path to revenue. I try to evaluate all these factors together: potential demand, customer acquisition, development costs, and monetization.
4. How has AI changed your approach to building and launching new software products?
Roman Kropachek: AI has changed the economics of software development quite dramatically.
Tasks that previously required considerable time and development resources can now be completed much faster. For example, one study found that developers using GitHub Copilot completed a programming task 55.8% faster than those without it. Small teams now have access to tools that make prototyping, development, testing, and iteration far more accessible.
For me, the biggest difference is how much less you have to risk just to find out whether an idea has potential.
Not long ago, you could spend months and a substantial amount of money developing a product, only to discover that nobody really wanted it. Now, a small team with the right skills and AI tools can get something useful in front of customers much sooner. That changes which ideas are worth testing in the first place.
I think this creates particularly interesting opportunities for companies that already understand online customer acquisition. If you can identify a promising market, build an initial product efficiently, and introduce it to users, you can evaluate the opportunity much earlier.
Of course, AI doesn’t eliminate the need for experienced developers, quality control, or sound product decisions. It also doesn’t guarantee that people will want what you build.
What it does is reduce the cost of testing assumptions. And when experiments become less expensive, businesses can consider a wider range of opportunities without committing the same level of resources to every idea.
5. Why would you launch a new product for free instead of monetizing it immediately?
Roman Kropachek: Because immediate revenue isn’t always the most valuable outcome during the early stages of a product’s life.
Sometimes the first challenge is simply convincing people to try something new. Even a good product can struggle if nobody knows it exists or if customers don’t have a reason to trust the company behind it.
Offering a useful free product can help overcome that initial barrier. We’ve actually seen how powerful this approach can be. When we first entered the data recovery market we experimented with a free version. We were up against established competitors, and instead of trying to outspend them on marketing, we gave people a reason to try us. Users started recommending the software, bloggers wrote about it, and we built an audience that would have been very expensive to acquire through advertising alone.
That experience definitely shapes how I think about new products. Take Clever Cleaner, for example. It’s a free storage cleaner for iPhone with optional premium features. The free functionality gives people a chance to see its value before they spend anything. And from a business perspective, that kind of trust can be worth a lot.
There is a wider business principle here: a product can create value for a company before it starts generating substantial direct revenue.
A growing user base can help establish brand recognition, generate feedback, and demonstrate whether the product solves a problem people care about.
Of course, you still need to understand your costs and whether a sustainable commercial model is possible.
I think it all depends on the product and its market. In some cases, immediate monetization makes sense. In others, it may be more valuable to prioritize adoption and evaluate commercial opportunities as the product develops.
6. What’s the biggest mistake companies make when entering a new market?
Roman Kropachek: One mistake I see is confusing market demand with monetization potential.
These are two very different things.
Let’s say you discover that hundreds of thousands of people search for a particular type of software every month. Looks promising, especially if existing solutions aren’t particularly good.
But those searches don’t tell you how many people are prepared to pay.
Perhaps users expect the functionality to be free. Perhaps the problem is too minor to justify a purchase. Or maybe people need the solution only once and see no reason to subscribe.
You can have a technically excellent product, strong traffic, positive feedback, yet still struggle to generate meaningful revenue.
That’s why I think monetization should be part of the initial market evaluation, even if you don’t plan to charge customers immediately.
7. How important is customer retention when deciding which products to build next?
Roman Kropachek: Retention is extremely important. There’s a reason Harvard Business Review continues to emphasize its impact on long-term business performance. But I think companies need to look at retention in the context of how people actually use a product. Not every type of software lends itself naturally to frequent use.
Take Disk Drill as an example. Someone might lose important files, need a solution urgently, recover their data, and then have no immediate reason to use the application again.
That’s not a weakness in the product. In fact, it may mean the software did exactly what the customer needed.
But from a business perspective, it creates a different relationship with the user than you would have with a product people open every day.
The same is true of any product that solves an occasional problem. If people only need your main functionality once in a while, that functionality alone won’t give them a reason to stay with you over time.
One way to address this is through complementary capabilities. In the data recovery space, for instance, backup and data protection features give people a reason to use the software between incidents of data loss, rather than only after a problem occurs.
That doesn’t mean every product needs to become an all-in-one solution. Adding features simply to keep people coming back can make software more complicated without actually improving its value.
I think the real question is whether you can offer customers a reason to maintain a long-term relationship with the product.
That’s something I pay attention to with every new product idea. Will someone use it once and forget about it? Will they come back every month? Will it become part of their routine? You can build a business around any of those situations, but you need to know which one you’re dealing with.
8. How do you prevent new ventures from distracting your team from the core business?
Roman Kropachek: This is one of the biggest management challenges associated with diversification.
It’s relatively easy to come up with new product ideas. The difficult part is creating an organization that can pursue those ideas without losing focus on what already works.
Every new venture requires attention, resources, and decisions. If responsibilities aren’t clear, it can become dependent on people who are supposed to be focused on other priorities.
And that creates a problem. Your core business shouldn’t have to absorb every challenge that appears in a new project.
I believe clear ownership is particularly important. Each venture needs someone who understands the market, accepts responsibility for results, and can make informed decisions about priorities.
There also needs to be a clear way to evaluate progress. Otherwise, an experimental project can continue to consume resources without anyone seriously questioning whether the opportunity still makes sense.
That doesn’t mean teams should operate in complete isolation. A company can benefit from shared expertise, established processes, and lessons learned across different products.
But collaboration needs boundaries. Supporting a new venture shouldn’t automatically mean interrupting the work of established teams whenever a problem appears.
Another point is that not every experiment will succeed, and that’s okay. What matters is recognizing when an idea deserves more investment and when the evidence suggests it’s time to reconsider.
I don’t think the number of products you launch is a good measure of success. You can build ten products and end up with ten problems. I’d rather have a few that can stand on their own and contribute something meaningful to the business. That’s what diversification should accomplish.