[00:00:15] Ghazenfer: 

Hello, I’m Ghazenfer Mansoor, host of the show where I interview entrepreneurs, startup founders, business owners, and leaders of SaaS firms and startups.

We explore their business journeys and discuss how they create innovative software solutions for their enterprises. This episode is brought to you by technology rivers, where we bring innovation through tech and AI to solve industry problems. We’re a software development agency where we provide two main services.

First, helping businesses in the process of automation. We help them improve their operations through AI and technology. And secondly, we worked with solid founders, entrepreneurs, product owners in creating innovative software solutions, web, mobile SaaS products. Most of our work is focused on the healthcare sector where we assist health tech companies in developing HIPAA compliant web and mobile products.

If you’re interested in working with us, go to technology rivers.com and tell us more about your project. We’ll love to chat with you. I have Chad Franzen here from Rise 25 who has done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, and we have flipped the script here today, and he will be interviewing me today.

Chad, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:24] Chad : 

Hey, thanks so much. Great to be here with you. I’m looking forward to finding out more about Technology Rivers. So let’s just kind of dive right into it. Tell me, how do you, how do I ask this? How do you guys, how do you really work at Technology Rivers? 

[00:01:38] Ghazenfer: 

So, we’re a software development company.  We work with entrepreneurs, startup founders, product owners. We build software products that’s our sweet spot, whether it’s healthcare or other vertical healthcare is the majority of our work. So, we have a really defined process in terms of how we work, just like anything else, any other field, like without the process there is chances of failure, we have this whole process of blueprint.

And we’re, we go through the really defining everything before we actually work on it. Just like, ’cause as you, if you build a product and then there are changes, then it costs a lot. 

[00:02:20] Chad : 

So kind of in the software world, as clients come to you, what are some challenges that they often face, and how do you handle that?

[00:02:30] Ghazenfer: 

So, the two main areas that we work on, one is like we work with entrepreneurs. We have ideas and they want to change certain things in their domain. They have a new idea. They bring innovation. So that’s where we come in and we help them solve those problems. The bigger one that we see is more on the SMB side, where as the companies are growing to a certain size,

They have struggled using different tools because they have very custom specific flows for their business and those flows are not able to have like they’re not able to high that to existing software. So usually you, you need a really, a custom tolerant, could it be an integration? Could it be a building?

The whole new custom? But you do need tools. So that’s where those customers come in. They’re struggling with how the tech can solve their problem. And then secondly, even many times, like what is feasible? They don’t know. And then once they define that process, they don’t even know how to really go about it.

Like it’s so easy, so common, but at the same time it’s very challenging. It’s so complicated. There are so many service providers out there, so many solutions. What do you really pick? Like how do you know this is. The right solution for me, solutioning is the job. So this is where we, again, we go back, I’m going back to our blueprint process where like really it’s initially as you come up, talk to the customer, really do the discovery, figure out exactly what needs to be done.

And that’s where like once you identify, okay, this is what we wanna go build it. Then you have to go through this blueprint process. So I’m gonna elaborate a little bit more on that, as we talked earlier, the blueprint is like, just like if you’re building a house, Like if somebody comes to you and says, well, I wanna build a house.

How much does it cost? Or how do I do it? It’s like, there are so many different options, right? So even when you’re working with the builder. They, what they do is they work with you. They define the blueprint. The blueprint is a process where you define every specific detail of the project. That means how many garages, how many rooms, how many floors, So those, we do need those on the software side as well.

How many interfaces do you need for the customer? Do you need a vendor? Do you need employees? What permission level, what things they can do? How many different payment integration do you want? Just a credit card or ACH or PayPal? Any of those details in all those blocks, how the user will interact.

like how will they interim, if there is a problem, how will they communicate all those things. Those need to be defined first. So once you have that strategy defined, you have the blueprint defined. That’s what will give you a roadmap towards how to really build that. So this is just still a blueprint, it is just the beginning of the process.

But you can’t have the right timeline the project plan if you don’t have really clear details of what needs to be done. 

[00:05:39] Chad : 

Do you have an example of how that blueprint process has helped prevent costly mistakes or delays? 

[00:05:46] Ghazenfer: 

Yeah, absolutely. And in many cases, so I’ll give you an example.

So let’s say, think of it this way. You  build a product and, let’s say you added a chat feature, you added an integration and as you started testing with a customer, you realize, oh, they don’t care about the chat. They only care about this X feature, right? Or, you already built a lot of those features and that cost you a lot.

Or maybe you spent a good amount of your initial budget for their VP, on building the features that you didn’t need. So, the goal is you build a very tiny version, initial MVP, limited feature, put it in front of the customer and then start to test out. And as you are getting feedback, you are improving on it and building those.

So it’s important that you go through this process because otherwise you build something your customer does not need. And that means you have to re redo. And then there will be more cost of building the new thing that you didn’t. Essentially you could use the same money to build what was needed as part of the MVP as well.

And we have seen that a lot all the time that happens where if there’s no real plan, you’re building so many things and then, you know, do you really need those 

[00:07:07] Chad : 

At Technology Rivers? How is your operation kind of structured? 

[00:07:13] Ghazenfer: 

So every  project is different. So, most of the time we have team members, we have a project manager, tech lead, the architect, and then the development team. We have a project coordinator. There are different team members. We’re a hybrid team. We have a team of developers offshore. We have people in the US and we’re in six countries. So, we’re a remote company.

So our offshore team does sit in one office, but, from an overall business operations perspective, people are spread differently, and this is where the process comes in. We have everything well defined as a part of the process, because if you don’t have the right KPIs, you can’t manage those products.

[00:07:57] Chad :

So what are the benefits maybe of having a remote environment like you described with team members, you know, across multiple continents? 

[00:08:05] Ghazenfer: 

Oh, there are benefits as well as there are challenges. Obviously, you really need FaceTime as well. But the bigger benefit is obviously the flexibility.

You have people in different time zones, so some people could be working late in our evening when the local people will not be available. A lot of folks would be done at the nighttime. When we are sleeping and we wake up, some of those things are done. It’s giving a lot more bigger window work. So that’s one of the big benefits.

And then the bigger one is on the tech side, is the challenges on the tech talent. It’s hard to find developers. I mean, we see those challenges. Tech is changing so frequently you need a different kind of developer, and then it’s hard to find. So it’s not about finding the cost, but also finding the right talent.

So now you have access to the whole world’s talent, and then you can get those talented people that could help you on a different project. 

[00:09:04] Chad : 

So speaking of tech changing a lot recently, AI has changed a lot. Has in fact has kind of taken part of everybody’s lives. How are you kinda leveraging AI in your business to help customers and your business?

[00:09:18] Ghazenfer: 

So, yeah, AI is impacting a lot and it’s gonna change our business and it is already changing a business. So there are two pieces on the AI side we do. One is using AI in our own business to help us solve problems. And secondly, building AI products for our customers. So, for the first part, we use AI for so many things, like even for code generation, for testing, for test coverage, checking.

We can even do, let’s say you design an application in Figma, we have an AI model where we convert the design into code. And then train the AI to use our own coding standard as well. So that’s helping us to develop much faster than our competition. So we’re using AI for documentation, for code coverage, for code quality and many other things.

Like even let’s say like you have, I talked about the blueprint process. You talk like the, we, we have those sketches we can use ai. To convert those sketches into a pro working prototype. So that’s a big time saver. Obviously those are not perfect. They need to be trained. It has its own challenges as well, but we’re heavily leveraging AI to solve those problems and that not only helping us, but helping our customers also, getting those things getting done quicker and cheaper than it used to be.

The second part of the AI, we’re helping our customers building AI solutions. So, for example, in one of the apps we use AI to scan the golf ball, detect the playability, the models and everything. And you gradually need to train that. So there are a lot of those types of solutions. We’re building the custom model, training them or leveraging the existing LMS and improving those and solving specific customer problems.

[00:11:22] Chad :

 How frequently does that change with dealing with new developments in Ai? 

[00:11:27] Ghazenfer: 

It’s changing all the time. So that’s the challenge of AI or I would say in general in tech like things, whatever you have today may not necessarily have the same two months from now. So I mean, the bigger part is staying on top of it.

We have, we call it a Tech River Lab process where we have people just looking at all these new things, working on it, creating prototypes. Those are helping us get up to speed and at the level, but again it’s still a tough journey because there’s a lot happening on the tech side.

[00:12:06] Chad : 

When a client comes to work with you, can you tell me about what it might cost them in terms of a financial stand? 

[00:12:14] Ghazenfer: 

It’s a tough question. So it’s, I mean, it’s really hard to know how much it would cost because every project is different. We talked about the blueprint, we talked about the house example.

So it’s like building a house on land. It could cost 100k, it could cost 5 million depending on the specifics. And that’s where that process helps us get towards the cost because initially everybody would love to have everything at the Apple quality, but they’ll love to have it as cheap as possible.

So how do you bridge that gap? Right? So, but do you have the money to create at that level at the same time? So yeah, those are the challenges. So this is where the process comes in, and then we gradually go towards that, figuring it out as part of a process. What do you really need and how much would it cost?

The cost of each of those components would be, so I’ll give you, like, for example, It should have a payment process or subscription. Does that mean one kind of credit card? Multiple credit cards, ACH,  and then there are so many other ways of making a payment. If you include all of those, there’ll be a different cost versus if you just have a credit card processing.

Right. So depending on the specifics then we know how much it would cost. 

[00:13:34] Chad : 

As we kinda wrap things up here, what are some, maybe some important values that help drive your company? Help drive technology rivers. 

[00:13:41] Ghazenfer: 

So I think the bigger one we talk about is the fairness part. So fairness is very important in our business.

We talk about, whatever, like the values are where obviously you live by what you share with your client vendors. Any person we are hiring, any client we are working with, any vendor we are working with  are we fair with our vendors? Are we fair with our employees, our partners? Because that’s, that’s the key.

And again, the meaning of that is very deeper getting things done. transparency, integrity, those are obviously important ones, but those are, I would say, those are implicit. You can’t run a company, you can’t do anything if you’re not, if you don’t have integrity, if you, so for us, the one that I care the most is, is the fairness part.

[00:14:35] Chad : 

Okay. Good to know. Hey , this is one of your first podcast episodes. What are you most looking forward to about doing this podcast? 

[00:14:43] Ghazenfer: 

So, my goal of this podcast is to interview other entrepreneurs, startup founders, and understand their journey. What are the paths they have taken in terms of building the startup, growing the startups, and different challenges that they’re running in and then more specifically, the tech startups. 

[00:15:04] Chad : 

Okay. Sounds good. Hey, it was great to talk to you today. Thanks so much for having me and we’ll look forward to future episodes. 

[00:15:10] Ghazenfer: 

Thank you. It was great to have you.