A Born Entrepreneur Talks Startups, Product Blueprints, and Global Scaling

[00:00:00] Todd Merrill: Hi, welcome to Tales from the Sky Lounge. It’s a podcast about business, consulting, and venture investing. We get out there in the world, and we talk to people who are making it happen, and we get their stories. And if you could subscribe, it really helps us get our word out. Today, in the Sky Lounge, we have a guest, Ghazenfer Mansoor.

Hi, Ghazenfer. How are you?

[00:00:26] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I’m good. How are you, Todd? Thanks for having me.

[00:00:28] Todd Merrill: Ghazenfer, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

[00:00:33] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Okay. So, my name is Ghazenfer Mansoor. I’m based in Virginia. I’m originally from Pakistan. I grew up there. I moved to the United States in ’99, and I’m an engineer by background. I have a computer science degree, and I came to the US in ’99 working on Java, and then gradually got into mobile. I got into the mobile space pretty early helping a European telecom, Solaris Net, in helping them on a mobile project. And then later on, got into more and more mobile because of my experience on that side.

This is even pre-iPhone and Android time. And then the iPhone and Android came, obviously things changed. Along with other software engineering projects, mobile has been one of my core areas where I focused. Along the way, then in 2015, I started a company, Technology Rivers. We started as a mobile app development company, which is to help companies build mobile apps, but then gradually got into more and more focus on product development, helping startups in the product development, and helping companies improve their operations through technology.

[00:01:49] Todd Merrill: Wow, very cool. A lot to unpack there. It’s really cool talking to a fellow computer science nerd, and I remember those old Windows mobile devices way back before Android and Apple. The Flip phones. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So mobile’s been going on a lot longer than a lot of people give it credit for.

So you started life in Pakistan, and obviously you did some software and then made it to the United States. Maybe talk about your experience. You probably have a pretty nice cushy job if you’re in telecom at that point. What made you decide to go start a business on your own? What was that process like?

[00:02:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, it’s you’re right, that’s a harder decision. Nine to five, it’s easy. You make a good amount of money, and especially the area I’m in, Washington, D.C., a lot of government contracting, relaxing jobs. But yeah, that’s not for everyone. I tried to stay away from as much as I could. Different challenges, different places. So, I’m an engineer by trade, but looking back, I didn’t realize I gradually got into the business by initially just doing the consulting, and then as I was doing different consulting, I started to figure out certain things I liked, certain things I didn’t like.

 Then I wanted to build a startup because the tech people like to build products. So I started a recruitment software startup. It’s a SaaS company. What I didn’t know is the startup is gonna be really hard. I thought oh, as an engineer, you just build, just build a strong foundational product, build a really good engine, customers will come, and then suddenly there was a surprise. You built it, nobody was coming. And then there was a whole lot of excitement like, there was a lot of time and money spent learning and redoing stuff because you build it, build something strong, but if nobody was using, then went back to the whiteboard, started the UX and everything, and redid. And then we got the customers.

But there was a whole exercise that we spent like two years on. And that whole journey became, I would say, that’s the thesis of the new company that I built because that was just a learning that I did along the way. But even looking back now, I think there were things that I was doing even while I was in Pakistan which I would say are more entrepreneurial, doing things along the way, even when I was in school, tutoring people, doing some side projects.

Most of the time, the typical nine-to-five employees, they don’t look for other things. But somehow that has always pushed me towards initially doing something extra to make money, and I think later on you find a purpose. So that’s exactly what happened to me. At that time, I didn’t know it. Even up until a few years ago, I didn’t realize, but looking back, I can see that all of this thing, these were probably something internal that had this entrepreneurial mindset that I wanted to do.

[00:05:06] Todd Merrill: So, your product company, you got in business and then you made some software and then the dogs did not eat the dog food, so to speak. You didn’t quite find product market fit. What did you do? Did you pivot to something else or did you how did you proceed from that point? When did you decide, okay, this piece of software is not making money, we need to do something different? What was that like?

[00:05:31] Ghazenfer Mansoor: so, yeah, so the pivot, it wasn’t really a pivot, it was just the approach of the product development.

[00:05:37] Todd Merrill: Got it

[00:05:37] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Because being an engineer you feel like, oh, you really need to build a strong or a solid scalable product.

[00:05:45] Todd Merrill: Right.

[00:05:45] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then, but it’s not. Like, you have to,

[00:05:48] Todd Merrill: Yes

[00:05:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: like the user experience and other things. Like being coming in from backend engineer initially, obviously a lot of those things are missing. So I learned the product development part, like how to really build the product. So that’s what I was referring to the experience that I got along the way in terms of building a product and selling it to the customer. That’s the experience that I learned a lot.

[00:06:14] Todd Merrill: Got it. And then, so today you’re running Technology Rivers, and you have business on several continents. What is it like running a business on multiple continents? It’s gotta have some very unique challenges. You have culture and time zone and payments and all kinds of crazy stuff that you have to worry about.

What are the things that you have experienced that are challenging and different about running a multi-continent business?

[00:06:48] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So the multicontinent definitely has its own challenges. So we have people in Pakistan, Philippines, Italy, Dubai, Turkey, and South America. And then different parts of the United States as well. So all these obviously come with their own challenges. But the big benefit that I see, it forces us to build the process, to do things the right way. What we noticed the problem even afterward is even sometimes challenged with the productivity of people within the same office, because a typical traditional way is like there are people in the office, they come in, and people are going to others in terms of getting the work done. 

So whether it’s asking a question or… So a lot of time was wasted. When you’re remote, then it forces you to do things differently. Where like writing, using the document, the checklist, everything. Because if it’s not communicated, it’s not communicated. Things are not getting lost in that, “Oh, this was the talk, something that was done in a meeting,” but not really, like nobody remembers. Things like that. So that forces us. So I see it as a benefit of being in a multicontinent. But yeah, it still comes with its own challenges. It takes time, obviously, and then understanding the culture of different people. Different places have different norms. You’re expecting one thing, the other.

So that’s one of the bigger ones. Money itself is another problem, but now those things are becoming easier because with all these different companies moving to remote locations, there are a lot more services available than there used to be.

[00:08:35] Todd Merrill: So you have people all over the planet. Do you own real estate? Do you have an office somewhere, that people come into, or do you let everybody work from home, or what’s the thought there, in your head?

[00:08:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So in Pakistan we have our own office. That’s where everybody comes to the office. But even there, we also have some remote people that are available, that are working from home or different places. But other places are mostly people working from home. So we have offices in Reston as well as in Pakistan.

[00:09:08] Todd Merrill: Okay. Yeah, and then so I know companies, like we all saw the AWS announcement this week where they said 100% return to office, five days a week, and then you hear both camps, “Hey, that’s awesome.” And then you hear a bunch of people saying, “Oh man, they just wanna lay people off.” You know, it’s gonna enrage people. It’s really not either/or, right? I think the office is like a tool, right? And it’s a great place to go. At some point in development you need to all be in the same room looking at the same sheet of paper or whiteboard or whatever.

But you really can exist remote first or hybrid. What do you think about that? Or what has your experience been? Is the office a tool or is it mandatory? Would you, if you had your druthers, would you just like to cram everybody into one office if you could do it? Or do you think there’s power in having the ability to effectively work with people in different places, wherever the talent is?

[00:10:13] Ghazenfer Mansoor:  yeah, my take is I think it’s important to have the office, but it should not be mandatory to have to come to the office. I think maybe half the time or sometime, having the critical meetings in the office because you still need to build the bonding. Employees need to be communicating. Remote has its own challenges, so I mean, you can get the work done, there are some benefits, but you still need to have face to face time wherever possible. But in today’s time, that’s not always possible.

[00:10:43] Todd Merrill: Well, post COVID, everybody went home, right? And you had to figure stuff out and previously hardcore office cultures had to change and adapt. But then I think a learning from that was, no matter what, you need to get your team together, especially if they’re usually dispersed. How do you do that? Do you get your team together like once a year, once a quarter, once a month? Do you find that it’s valuable to do that?

[00:11:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: In some cases, and again, the practicality also, for example, Philippines and mostly marketing content, so we have one retreat there.

So we’re combining those people, like in the US people can meet because then traveling is challenging also for everybody. In Pakistan, yes, people do. So I travel a couple times a year, so be with the team or anybody from our team who’s working with the team, they travel. So wherever it’s convenient to… yes, we try to have face to face time.

[00:11:51] Todd Merrill: Yeah, I think that’s super important for the culture of the team. So let’s talk about your primary business is helping companies take on projects, both short and longer term.

How should people think about engaging with a software outsourcer? I know there’s lots of entrepreneurs out there that have an idea rattling around in their head and they just don’t know how to get it built. And then there’s also big companies that are ongoing and they have side projects that really would make a difference, but they don’t wanna staff up, you know, permanently, for this one little burst of energy.

Are there others? Are those projects that you like to work on or what kind of projects come your way when you’re an outsourcer, and what’s the right kind of mindset that you would coach your friend who’s starting a company, to effectively use a company like Technology Rivers?

[00:12:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So I think as outsourcers, we come in as a value, as a benefit, but we don’t sell ourselves as, “Oh, just an outsourcer,” because we’re not competing with low outsourcing services. We provide the value that we want to provide. We want to work with our customers and guide them in the process. The majority of the customers, they’re coming in, like there are companies obviously who really know what they want. They have their own product management team. They just need some help.

But many cases work with non-technical founders. So they have an idea, they don’t know how to do it. So this is where we come in, guide them through the whole process. It… Because it’s not about just hiring a developer to code something, it’s about what needs to be built, how, a lot more involvement on a strategy part.

Because if your strategy is not right, if your growth approach is not right, you build the app, but how would you market it? If you don’t do those discussions and just build something, likely you’re gonna spend money and may or may not have the traction afterward. Guiding is definitely the key part. And that’s the core mission. We wanna help companies and provide quality so that they know what they’re building. So when we started the business, we had one more right to build the first time. Remember when I was talking about learning the product, even though the tech person.

So being a tech person, I can say if it’s just a developer, they are likely to overspend money on that project because it’s like hiring a handyman or a person just to build a house without having any plan. So, we follow the same process, the blueprint process I can talk about in a minute, for even building the product. So it’s not about just hiring the coders and getting the things done. So, I, as I did my own startup and I see all those others, this was the common problem where I see like there are people just hired building on TNM. They keep doing their work, but nothing is being delivered. And I did see those projects many times.

So, and those are some of the messed up projects that came our way as well in terms of, okay, those are not getting done, so help those. So solving that problem, like really you have to define what you’re building, when do you deliver? So the focus on building a product and launching it, delivering. If there’s no delivery, no matter how good you build, nobody’s using it.

[00:15:36] Todd Merrill: So, you know, there’s an art to building a team, right? It’s particularly a software team. You have to get the right mix of people, and then, you know, the front-end people have to talk to the back-end people, and you have to kind of come to terms with, you know, shortcut language of what we are talking about, as a common vision. And I feel like, you know, when we talk to an outsourced company, I- it’s almost a kind of a, not a great word, but, you know, a company, a services company like yours, you’re hiring a team, not a person, right? And it’s not exactly hey, let me go get a plumber down at Home Depot.

Let me, you know, or UI person or designer. You’re hiring the designer who knows exactly who the front-end people are who are gonna write this up and how they think and act when you’re going to code. And then, you know, the back-end people are probably sitting around at, you know, reviewing notes from those early meetings. And it’s gonna go a whole lot smoother when you have that context around, you know, those early discussions. You talked about the blueprint process. You know, what, how do you like to… If, you know… I get approached all the time with people, yeah, I call it the napkin phase of their business.

I heard about a guy, he has a cybersecurity company. You know, he could, you know, make connections and do six-figure deals. He just obviously could sell his idea, but he couldn’t get it implemented. You know, so he needs somebody like you. You know, so what? You get a hold of a person like that who’s got a great idea, thinks he’s got, you know, room in the market to sell this and some, what he, what’s perceived as product market fit.

How do you start on a project like that? If, you know, I can make an introduction, say, “Hey, I got a friend, Ghazenfer. He knows what he’s doing. He’s gonna build you some software.” What’s the first meeting you take, and then kind of how do you proceed from there?

[00:17:42] Ghazenfer Mansoor: He, yeah. So, I think the blueprint is the key that I mentioned. So we took that as if you’re building a house. You have an idea, you wanna build the house, but you have no idea what it takes to build it. So a typical process is you put together a plan, the blueprint of the house. But even before the blueprint, let’s say take an example of the napkin idea. So that most founders do come with either a half-page requirement, one page, or some kind of a hand sketch or napkin sketch. They are thinking… But then it’s our job to extract the information out of that, to take from that napkin sketch to something, getting in a blueprint shape to the visual design to the development.

So what we do, we call it a blueprint process. We’re identifying that maybe more sketches, more deeper, getting more clarity into. Just like if you’re working with a builder and they’re building a house, he’s not gonna just present the blueprint of the house. So there are readings, there are more flows, and defining things like what exactly do you need? Do you need a basement? Do you need like how many rooms? What size? Obviously, there are cost considerations as well. Everybody can have a vision of a mansion, but do you have the money to support that?

[00:19:09] Todd Merrill: Yes.

[00:19:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I do get people that say, “Oh, I want a website like Apple,” but how much money do you have?

[00:19:14] Todd Merrill: Yeah. For $10,000. Right. Yeah.

[00:19:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Exactly. So, obviously, so you have to start showing that. So again, and that process works out really well for us where we said, “Okay, you have a house with a builder grade stuff that still works. Do you want that to still work, or do you want the upgraded one? But if I show you a house with the upgraded stuff, you would love that, but do you wanna pay that additional 200K for all those upgrades. So depending on the startup, there are some who want animation on day one, custom graphics, everything, and there are some who said, “Well, we’re okay with it, even we are just okay with the template. We just want to prove our idea.” So depending on the specifics, depending on the time and money, there are many factors that come in.

But the whole idea is converting that napkin into a blueprint. And when we say blueprint, blueprint means you would know exactly what needs to be built, what level, just like in a house, like how many garages, what size, what room. Same is the case in our. How many, like, let’s say, how many portals, how many interfaces.

If you’re doing payment processing, is it gonna be just a credit card, ACH? Like how many cards? Can you store cards? These are simple things that don’t need a whole lot of time, but you can define those boundaries and come up with, okay, now we have this blueprint of this initial phase of the project. Now get to the actual design so that you can be comfortable with the look and feel. 

And once you have the look and feel, then you actually go towards the building. I mean, one thing I do wanna mention, like I do get this question quite often where some people are coming with this initial mindset oh, that, oh, so this is not Agile. That doesn’t mean you don’t do Agile. You can still do Agile, but your initial blueprinting process or design process, until it’s clear, until you know the scope of it, you can’t really build. So you, like there are some types of, some level of requirements that need to be clarified at the early stage before you really get into the more of really developing and getting the feedback.

[00:21:25] Todd Merrill: So what I like about your process, I think I’ve walked with you a couple times down this road, is, you get into Figma and you produce a couple designs, and it’s not just throw it over the transom to the next pipeline phase, UX development.

You have other people in the room that are watching and considering what that, what the totality of the project’s gonna be no matter what, right? Yes, we wanna get to a design that’s beautiful and fulfills, you know, my vision of what I hope the product could be. But at the same time, you’re really good about saying, “Hey, what are the feature requirements?” And let’s pay attention to the scope of what we’re building, make sure it’s not too big or too small, make sure we’re not omitting certain things that are not necessarily visible on the screen. But, you know, a screen decision, screen design decision could imply, you know, a major back end component like AI.

You know, one little AI button, you know, AI goes here. That could get very expensive if you’re not careful, implementing it on the back end. Or it could be, you know, pretty easy to implement, depending on what we’re talking about. But, you know, if you get those agreements up front on, you know, what to expect, I think it helps quite a bit. And I think that’s a great approach that you guys bring to the table, you know, is walking people through, you know, helping them refine their thinking and what’s possible, what’s not possible. You know, let’s get all the changes out as early as we can, and then carefully, thoughtfully go design this, as we go. Not in a, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three, but a, you know, designs at the table, infrastructures behind them. You know, listening. You know, starting to think about, okay, you know, where are the pitfalls here and that kind of thing.

[00:23:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yep.

[00:23:15] Todd Merrill: So maybe, I don’t know if you got any horror stories.

Like, what are some of the mistakes people can make when they engage an outsourcer? You know, what are some of the common pitfalls to avoid when you’re hiring someone like your firm who’s capable of soup to nuts, getting the project designed, implemented and taken care of on a long-term basis? How do people fall down or what are the common errors that people make that should be avoided when you’re doing a long-term software project from scratch?

[00:24:01] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, one of the common ones that I’ve seen is people many times just come in, “Oh, I need a React developer,” or, “I need a Node developer.” So, I mean, it makes sense for some who are technical. So if I’m working with you, I know Todd is CTO, knows the stuff, so there’s a specific need, so probably okay. But I have heard this comment from, like, even the non-technical. So I was contacted by somebody and she said, “We wanna build in Python.” “Okay, what do you want to build in Python?” “Oh, just because we previously experimented with something, and the guy who did this in Python, that means it’s doable in Python.” So they only start looking at things in Python.

So, and again, as I said, like the developers, you can probably resonate the same as, let’s say, the workers for building the house. You need somebody who’s providing the direction, like what needs to be built. You may build a house that’s beautiful, but if it’s not livable, does not have the standard things, you miss certain things, it’s not gonna be convenient. The same goes with the software as well. So just building, just development is a piece of it. It’s an important part, but it’s a piece of it. Somebody still needs to take care of the other part.

[00:25:27] Todd Merrill: Would you throw that in the product management bucket? You know, paying attention to what the product is and what it could be and what the roadmap-

[00:25:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Absolutely

[00:25:38] Todd Merrill: and then-

[00:25:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, that’s definitely, yeah.

[00:25:40] Todd Merrill: Okay.

[00:25:41] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So on that one, I just wanna have one, sorry, plug. I don’t have things on top of my head, but there are many differences… So we have one e-book on that, eight ways software projects fail and what do, and how do you recover those. So-

[00:25:56] Todd Merrill: Yeah, I can share the link later on. If you can get us a link, we can throw it in the description. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Wow. Yeah, and there’s a lot of ways to fail in software. It’s a very complicated thing. But doing too much too fast is-

[00:26:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So for example, we had somebody come in and they said, “We need somebody to be a UI designer.” Okay. What is the reason? We started looking deeper in that. We had the call then and realized it’s not the visual. They need a user experience person because it’s the visual. So many times it’s the awareness as well. Not everybody’s familiar with the specific. You could get a, maybe a graphic designer and may end up getting another one, another similar problem. So, like in the business we said right people, right seats.

[00:26:49] Todd Merrill: Yes

[00:26:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So you have the right person, but if you’re giving the wrong work, probably it’s not gonna work.

[00:26:57] Todd Merrill: Well, let me kind of change gears a little bit here. Let’s talk about, like, general business conditions around the world. You know, the Fed just cut rates, pretty good, recently, and, you know, we seem to be at an inflection point here. What are you seeing right now, in your business? It’s kind of a confusing time where you definitely hear about big companies laying off, but you also hear about a lot of smaller companies getting started.

So it’s not, you know, we’re not toast, right? So what’s going on? Or, from your seat, what are you seeing? Is it different here in the US versus Europe or Asia? Or, you know, what do you see going on? Where are we in the business cycle right now?

[00:27:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I don’t know about the rest of the world. I can talk about the US, because that’s where all of our customers are US-based. I think the pattern that we have seen where our customers are struggling are the areas when it comes to venture funding. Any of our customers who are dealing with funding are the ones that are struggling. It’s been hard to raise money lately.

[00:28:04] Todd Merrill: Yeah, the venture band. Yeah. You know, the angel seems to be still fundable.

[00:28:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: There are a lot of investments going on, but maybe it’s more challenging for early-stage companies.

[00:28:15] Todd Merrill: Well, you know, hopefully we’ll dig out of this, and nothing’s permanent, right? So, the venture will come back. It’s just a matter of time before we figure it out. Well, you know, we talked about being an entrepreneur, and you strike me as one of these guys, like when I was a kid, you know, for a dollar a day I would water your plants and feed your pets while you were off on vacation, you know, in the summer. Yeah, so I made a ton of money doing that when I was a kid. Do you have little jobs like that? You know, my experience has been that entrepreneurs are kind of in the blood, right? And then you’re just, you’re destined to kind of run your own deal at some point. Did you have young entrepreneurial experiences when you were growing up?

[00:29:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I was saying, as I was saying earlier, like when I was in school even at that time I was tutor trained. Yeah. That was the main thing. I was like, again, belonging to a poorer family, so had to make some money some ways from my own thing. So, that was the one that was probably easier, took less time, and was more flexible. You just go tutor for one, two hours. Yeah. Get some money. That was a good way. And then, even after high school, like some side things here and there that will help make some money. Just doing some data entry for somebody, that’s another one I remember.

[00:29:46] Todd Merrill: So, it’s kind of a loaded question. I know the answer, but, you know, where do you find other entrepreneurs and then you know, being an entrepreneur is kind of lonely sometimes. You know, you’re at the top, you have to wear a lot of hats and deal with everybody’s problems ultimately. It’s what you get paid for. What, you know, where do you go to compare experiences and get some energy from other entrepreneurs out there in the world?

[00:30:11] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So I think that was a big transformation for me. If you ask me, like, what was the lesson learned? This is about finding those communities because most people won’t have their closed network, their friends, unless you belong to that family or… But most of the time, like in my immediate circle, I would say not many or maybe any entrepreneur. So you need to have somebody where you can share ideas, bounce ideas. So I found a coach that was running a CEO peer group.So we would meet eight people. It was an ex Vistage chair. So it was not a Vistage, but it’s a similar pattern to Vistage, where we meet eight people, do our check-in, and discuss the issue.

But those are the issues that people cannot discuss with their family or anybody. Sometime, let’s say your personal problems could impact your business, your business problem could impact your personal. So you need a place where you can talk with people who could understand you and who can share their ideas. So, there are many organizations. So I’m part of this organization called EO, Entrepreneur Organization. 

Yeah. OPEN is another one, an organization of Pakistani entrepreneurs in North America. Vistage is another one. YPO is another one. I’m not part of those, but… And there are many others. Qadr DC, that’s another one that I’m part of. There are many other groups, I would say, mastermind groups where you can find those people who are in a similar situation or similar so they’re all entrepreneurs and you can bounce ideas. So yeah, that’s really the bigger part. I wish I knew this probably 10 years ago or longer. It would have made a huge difference.

[00:32:14] Todd Merrill: So get a peer group and get some mentorship and get some great advice any way you can, from a trusted group of people, it sounds like.

[00:32:26] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yes, and just to be clear, like most of these are not the business group. These are more sharing experiences. We cannot solicit, just learn. So but still big learning about how certain people will do certain things. Some- Whether it’s just… Yeah.

[00:32:43] Todd Merrill: So give me an example of how that works. You know, so somebody comes in and they say, “Hey, you know, I’m working on this problem.” Is that, is that kind of what it is? “Can y’all help me with my problem? I have a director under me that is underperforming, but I love him and-” Yeah, I’ve got the following conditions. You know, what would you-

[00:33:02] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Exactly. So yeah, so let’s say that is one of the common questions that comes. So yes, like, okay, yeah, let’s say whatever, like how to review those, or people would share how we are doing certain things. Or like when it comes to hiring, how people are hiring. We’re using some assessment, some test, right? It could be, okay, we wanna give equity to employees or people are asking for profit sharing. What are the best practices? Phantom shares. So all those different strategies, different things that people are going through. Any challenges. So you have to let go of people. What is the right way? It could backfire. So asking advice to a group of people who have been in a similar situation makes a huge difference.

[00:33:52] Todd Merrill: Yeah. I think that,

[00:33:53] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And they don’t have any business interest, so that’s on top. Like, they are just giving pure advice.

[00:34:00] Todd Merrill: So somebody once said, I think it was a quote, “You are the average of your five closest friends.” Do you feel like that’s a way to level that game up?

[00:34:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:34:11] Todd Merrill: Okay. Get some better advisors in your life. Right , so let’s talk about software, what’s going on now. You’re in a great position where you get to see lots of cool stuff, and you have a really good idea of what’s hot and what’s going on. What kind of projects are people working on now?  What do you see that is hot in the market right now? Is AI kind of leading the charge still? Is that softening a little bit? What other areas,

[00:34:43] Ghazenfer: Yes, AI is still, I would say, top of the list. It’s a buzzword now too , more and more, everybody wants AI. Many times they’re not even ready for AI, because it’s easy to look at ChatGPT or some of the other tools and say, “Building AI is so easy, so quick.” Yes, those are products that are already built. But if you have to really build something new, you have to train the model. It’s a big undertaking. Just another plug , we recently did a webinar on AI in healthcare.

 Even though it’s specific to healthcare, there’s a lot of talk about what it takes for companies to adapt AI into their business, what to look for, like data, and a lot of other stuff. I won’t spend too much time on that, but AI is definitely more about awareness. People need to be clear on what it means , it’s going to cost storage, resources, and everything. Using AI is one thing; the tools available versus building something and enabling AI into your product, where you have your own data and you’re doing something unique, is different.

We’re in the business of building products, and some of them may have AI, so that’s different from just using existing tools. Another part I see is a lot of integration now , with all these tools available, a lot of things are becoming easier. Companies are looking to improve their operations through the use of AI and technology. That way you may not have to build a big custom project , you could do it with smaller integrations, improve your workflows, optimize your processes, and bring more efficiency into your day-to-day life.

[00:36:42] Todd Merill: I gotta ask you this as a software guy. The casual, non-technical business owner would say, “Hey, we have AI now, it’s going to write all the software for us. You’re going to charge me a whole lot less, right?” And you kind of go, “Well, maybe not.” How is AI, particularly new LLM-type stuff, impacting the way people write software? I mean, it’s helping a little bit, but are you guys using that internally at all? How do you think about that as a software development shop? Does Copilot write half the code you put out, or do you have to be a little more careful and deliberate?

[00:37:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, that’s the right question. People do ask that. We’re heavily using AI. Copilot is one , there are many different tools, and I don’t remember every tool our team uses off the top of my head. Some for generating code, some for documentation, some for validating. For example, one thing we’re doing , let’s say we take a design from Figma. Figma also generates code, but that’s not the quality we like. What we do instead is use our own reusable components that we created, and we train an LLM on those. As we generate code relying on those components, we get better and faster code, because that saves us time building it , rather than just using generic output.

[00:38:35] Todd Merill: So not generic , like GPT.

[00:38:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. Generic, you can get in any language, and I think the majority of people use it that way. There are tools available that say, “Give us this, and we’ll generate the code for X thing, Y thing.” The problem is you don’t have control over those. This is where having our own initial component code matters , you’re getting something you gradually train, because the AI needs to train on your specific way of doing things too. That’s important, because it’s the only way we can scale and keep an eye on things. As we grow, different developers come in, and if everyone builds things their own way, it becomes a mess in the long run.

[00:39:17] Todd Merill: It is. ML is only as good as the data you feed it, train it on, and refine. It’s kind of an interesting twist , instead of relying on Stack Overflow, code somebody scraped off the internet that’s probably full of bugs,

[00:39:36] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah.

[00:39:36] Todd Merill: You’re relying on production code that your own people built, and you pull that in, and it gets a lot easier to do over and over again. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier , you’re hiring a team with a culture, a history, a series of shortcuts they’re at ease with each other on. This is just another way that once you get that flywheel going with an established team, it makes everything a lot faster and more efficient, especially for software, which is inherently complicated. 

Ghazenfer, you talked about mobile development, and there’s been a whole lot of change in mobile development over the years. How do you stay abreast of developments in mobile technology, as an example?

[00:40:25] Ghazenfer: Yeah, mobile is changing a lot. When I started in 2000, that was WAP/WML, and then there were a lot of custom frameworks people were building , Java-based, I think Personal Java, tablet-based, a lot of those things. That’s where I got involved with a mobile startup. Later, the iPhone and Android came and changed everything. Even then it didn’t stop , you had an iPhone with Swift and Objective-C, then Java, then Kotlin. Over the years, there’s been a lot more trend toward hybrid apps , they’re becoming as powerful as native apps written in Swift or Kotlin. Now the majority of businesses, especially enterprise, are moving in that direction , React, React Native, Flutter, and other options, but React Native is on top of the list right now. It’s a big change, and I’d say it’s pretty much the same with every technology , nothing stays still. Whatever we started with in Java has changed, JavaScript has changed, everything has changed. Mobile is definitely evolving too, with different types of devices, progressive apps, and it’s becoming more HTML-based in app development. Mobile development is becoming easier and easier, but it’s still challenging. It’s different from web development, because it’s an app you download. You have to maintain different states, pay attention to things differently, especially when we deal with HIPAA.

A lot of those regulations are compliance requirements. If you leave a phone on your table and somebody picks it up, it may already have the data , that’s a big violation. You could be penalized for that, and lose big time just by leaving something out. That’s not the same as your desktop, because you’re obviously not leaving that everywhere. So there’s a lot of change in mobile. On my side, there are many different ways I keep up , you see a lot of books behind me. I read; most of these are entrepreneurial, less on the tech side, but they help me understand trends.

I read different articles, different places. More importantly, it’s experience. Over the last nine and a half years we’ve been working, more than 50% of our work is on the mobile side. Building apps, you come across many challenges , like how Apple used to reject applications, or where they’d have objections. It’s come a long way , now you can use in-app purchases versus credit cards, all these small things that make a difference when it comes to building. Knowing these makes a huge difference. On that note, I want to share one thing. Based on my last 24 years of experience working on mobile, I’m actually working on a book called Free App Promotion Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Supercharge Your Mobile App Reach.

This is based on our experience working on mobile , how to not only build, but how to grow your mobile app. It’s meant for app owners and app developers working on those apps. We added a few case studies, some from our customers and some non-customers as well. It’s coming out in the next few months , we’re pretty close. We’re getting testimonials, then working with a publisher, so I don’t know the exact timeline, but probably three or four months out.

[00:44:34] Todd Merill: Wow.

[00:44:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Very cool

[00:44:36] Todd Merill: The real deal. Yeah, if we can find a link or something, we can pop that in the description too, and if we know the title, we can definitely publish that with a publish date. Wow, that’s very cool , you’re an author. That’s awesome. I know that’s a lot of work, but I feel like at our age, we have a lot of experience, and you start to want to get that out in the world and leave a little something behind for the next generation.

[00:45:01] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Absolutely.

[00:45:02] Todd Merill: Congrats on that , that’s a heck of an accomplishment. What should we be working on next? AI’s kind of a nice little shiny buzzword , it definitely had some impact, though it probably got a little ahead of itself on the hype cycle. As career technology people, we’ve seen this over and over. What are you looking at for the future , any technical trends you’re watching?

[00:45:29] Ghazenfer Mansoorr: Our primary focus is on the healthcare side, so that’s where we’re building and improving things, and where we get the majority of our customers. On the other side, based on AI, I think there’s a lot of transformation happening for service businesses too. It used to be that you had a service business and competed based on the service you provided to your customer. Now everybody’s catching up , AI is taking over a lot of that, so your competitors have the same tools to manage customers and do everything. Where’s the difference?

 How do you increase your value, differentiate, or bring efficiency? This is where you can build something and bring technology in to improve your operations, bring efficiencies, and also improve service for your customer. It’s much cheaper and quicker than it used to be, because with AI and all these tools available and open integration options, you can make something good happen. We see a lot of companies now looking toward that trend because they don’t want to be left behind. They want to build something , obviously starting with the AI angle, but most of them are really asking: how can I bring tech into it to improve my operations and make my life easier?

[00:47:10] Todd Merill: Sounds like there’s a lot of work to be done figuring out exactly what AI is good for. It’s definitely good for a lot of things, and we have to weave it into the fabric of what we already have. It’s not going to wholesale replace a lot of things, but it’s going to make a lot of things a lot better, slowly and incrementally. Okay, well, it’s all about travel and getting out there in the world. I know you’re a world traveler , got any great travel stories to share with us?

[00:47:46] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I go to different places , not a whole lot, I’d say. Most of my visits are to Pakistan, maybe twice a year, sitting down with the team, meeting my family, friends, parents. That’s a good dual benefit. I’ve also visited the Philippines to sit down with the team there , that makes a huge difference. I can’t think of any particularly interesting story off the top of my head, but for me the interesting part is getting to know the people. People remote are different , when you actually sit down with them in person, you really get to know more. For example, I’d do a call in the Philippines and hear the rooster calls in the morning.

[00:48:43] Todd Merill: Yeah.

[00:48:44] Ghazenfer Mansoor: They’d shy away, like, “Oh,” and I’d say, “No, it’s fine.” It reminded me of my childhood, because when we were living in a village, or even in the city, you’d hear the rooster call. I miss that in the US , there’s no rooster morning call.

[00:49:00] Todd Merill: Yeah.

[00:49:01] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I enjoy those things. I think that’s the interesting part of travel, at least in the South Asian region , wherever I hear those things.

[00:49:12] Todd Merill: Nice. Well, if people want to get in touch with you after this, what’s a great way to follow up with you on the internet?

[00:49:21] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Our website is technologyrivers.com , R-I-V-E-R-S , or LinkedIn. I can share the link afterward. It’s very easy to find me by name , I don’t think you’ll find any other Ghazenfer with this spelling, G-H-A-Z-E-N-F-E-R, so I’m easy to find on LinkedIn.

[00:49:43] Todd Merill: Well, awesome.

[00:49:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: LinkedIn is the best way , you can ping me there anytime.

[00:49:46] Todd Merill: Okay, and we’ll link it below in the description for you. Well, it’s been great having you here, and we appreciate having you at Sky Launch.

[00:49:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me. Bye for now.

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