[00:00] Layne Fawns: What if your next big idea could revolutionize an industry? Today’s guest, Jason Furman Suhr, is making that happen every day. As the founder and CEO of Technology Rivers, he helps startups and businesses turn ideas into powerful AI driven software solutions, especially in health tech and SaaS. With over 15 years of experience in software architecture, product innovation and digital transformation, he’s here to share some game changing insights on entrepreneurship, AI, and building scalable tech.

[00:31] Layne Fawns: Today, he’ll talk about his book Beyond the Download how to build mobile Apps that people love, use and share every day, and we’ll look at actionable advice to guide you toward success.

[00:46] Layne Fawns: Ghazenfer, thank you so much for joining us here on the Innovators Inside Podcast.

[00:50] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me on your podcast. I’m really excited.

[00:53] Ian Bergman: Yeah, I’m excited to. And I get to I get to capture you right at the end of the week. We’re leading into a weekend. So no other stress after this interview, right? We get to we get to talk tech entrepreneurship and then go to some downtime.

[01:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Absolutely.

[01:07] Layne Fawns: So I want to start off our conversation by playing a game. We like to call this our rapid fire section. So I’ve passed out a few questions here, that I want to ask. I’m going to start with Ian, and I’ll probably alternate between the two of you, but you have to answer sort of the first thing that pops into your head.

[01:28] Layne Fawns: We absolutely welcome conversation to follow.

[01:31] Ian Bergman: Let’s do. Yeah, man.

[01:32] Layne Fawns: Okay. Let’s see. Ian, what’s one industry you think is ripe for disruption in the next five years?

[01:44] Ian Bergman: I mean, all of them, but can we. I mean, like, genuinely, but. No, like. But I’m tracking food, like, I don’t know if disruption is right, but there’s so much incredible innovation happening in food from, health to, transportation to productivity and disease management to, substitutes to distribution. Yeah, I yeah, I’ll stop there. Just food.

[02:16] Layne Fawns: That’s interesting because then for what’s your what’s your favorite thing happening in food right now. And we’ll go off of Ian’s.

[02:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And are many many. So seed-based diet I make my own almond milk.

[02:31] Layne Fawns: Oh love that.

[02:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So yeah, I’m a big fan of non processed food. Not that I still don’t like when having three kids at home. So you do still eat sometime, but try to avoid.

[02:44] Ian Bergman: I got to tell you you know I know I mean this has been a conversation for decades, right. Like how do we move away from sort of the processed, packaged supply chain, particularly in North America? But I have seen such incredible start ups working in spaces that are some of them are controversial, right? Lab grown meats that are, you know, fully identical to live counterparts, things like that.

[03:15] Ian Bergman: Some of them, are completely new ways to avoid processing and to get, like, ultra local, whether it’s ingredients, production. I just it does feel like the business models are starting to be able to catch up with what we’ve known for a very long time about, you know, an actual healthy diet. And so I don’t know, I’m I’m pretty excited about that.

[03:43] Ian Bergman: I don’t make my own seed milks, though. I would. That’s fine.

[03:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But on on the same, I think we do see a lot of, innovation in live, activities on the longevity side, people. I mean, it’s again, it’s and that’s the focus. Like, everybody wants to be healthy, live longer. So a lot of innovation happening in that space.

[04:06] Ian Bergman: Yeah. You got Brian Johnson right out there. And one of many out there publishing every single health metric, including every single thing that he eats. I think he counts food pretty high. Yeah. Longevity. Wouldn’t we all like it? And and healthy longevity.

[04:24] Layne Fawns: That’s a fun. But, I mean, he also dedicates a ridiculous amount of hours a day towards that longevity. That’s true. Like. Yeah. So I think there’s that aspect too, is do any of us, you know, do innovators have the time to. Yeah.

[04:40] Ian Bergman: Well just a and I know we really dove in on this, but you know, when you talk about sort of the business model and things that are changing, right. The reason that I’m really excited about food innovation, it’s not new brands and new distribution mechanisms. It’s that that ultimate tension between convenience and health. You know maybe with that can get disrupted.

[05:04] Ian Bergman: I’m seeing things that that promise to, help people avoid having to make that choice as often. And that is exciting.

[05:17] Layne Fawns: Ooh. See now I love that. That’s an interesting idea.

[05:21] Ian Bergman: Robot salad makers. Next question.

[05:24] Layne Fawns: Yes. Okay. Okay. This one is for Jay-Z. For what is your favorite book?

[05:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: There are many. If you look behind me. I’m like, I buy a book. More on that faster than I can read. Their Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and influence. Others. I think that’s still one of the top books, and I share that as a graduation gift to many people.

[05:51] Layne Fawns: Oh, why is that?

[05:53] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Because I think as those kids are graduating and they go into the real world, I want them to understand, really how to make friends, how to influence others as whether you’re a worker, whether whether you are engineer, whether you are a, salesperson, or entrepreneur. This book is for everybody.

[06:15] Ian Bergman: Well, those are I mean, those are just absolute critical skill sets. I haven’t read that book. I feel like I should. I’ve heard of it a thousand times, and I think it’s it’s it’s famous and I, I haven’t, I haven’t read it. Are there any lessons that stand out to you?

[06:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: There are many. One of them, there was a story about, like remembering people. Name and how to respond to. Obviously, every chapter has a one lesson and it’s all amazing.

[06:46] Ian Bergman: Well, I got to tell you that, that’s one I’m working on with my kids, and, I’m terrible at it. So I’m going to go read this book.

[06:55] Layne Fawns: Yeah, that’s one for the show. Notes for sure. All right, Ian, next question for you. Are you a morning person or a night owl like one of your best ideas? Yeah.

[07:05] Ian Bergman: That’s it.

[07:06] Layne Fawns: Yep. Okay. Actually, I am too, but it’s more like I’ll be asleep, and then I kind of jolt awake and I’m like, oh, I have to write this down right now. And so I have, like a little journal that I keep on my nightstand for those weird, like 1:00 Am or like 3 a.m. jolt awake moments, but totally.

[07:29] Ian Bergman: Well, and that’s it. Like, by the way, that’s like such an interesting area for creepy AI, right? So because it happens to me too. And in fact, I think I might just be making all this up, but I’m pretty sure that there have been a number of studies that connect, you know, writing down and documenting what’s happening in your dream state to everything from creativity to lucid dreaming to, like, a whole bunch of really interesting stuff.

[07:59] Ian Bergman: But you have to actually remember to do it. And like, how often do you jolt upright and, want to document something, but then just put your head back on the pillow? I do that all the time. Hey, we have I a little pin sleeping next to us, one of many sensors listening to everything that happens and boom, it, helps you remember in the morning and jog your creativity.

[08:22] Ian Bergman: There’s a free startup idea for somebody that wants to put a microphone in people’s beds.

[08:27] Layne Fawns: That is creepy, but that is cool. It’s very Black Mirror that like, yeah.

[08:33] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s a great idea there.

[08:36] Ian Bergman: It’s, I mean, genuinely, it feels inevitable. And the really interesting thing is going to be what is the innovation experimental tension, you know, to get there in a way that fits in the expectations of society and all that. And, you know, there’s good experimentation or sorry or innovation is up for failure. I think there’s going to be a lot of failures on the way to something that I would actually want to use.

[09:00] Layne Fawns: Yeah, absolutely.

[09:02] Ian Bergman: But I’m willing to invest in those failures. So, you know, come to me with a proposal.

[09:06] Layne Fawns: Well, I mean, that’s the thing though, right? Like those even investing in those failures, like, leads to success down the road in some other fashion.

[09:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I wouldn’t call it a failure. I would say it’s a learning. Another learning having failed project is a learning.

[09:22] Ian Bergman: Like okay, so like fundamentally, I love this. I just, you know, I want to give you a high five to the screen because I agree with you. Right? Like any failure you learn from leads towards something better. But but you jumped out really quickly with that. And what how how did you learn the importance of learning from failure?

[09:46] Ghazenfer Mansoor: If you don’t fail, obviously, then you don’t grow because you feel like you’re always right. So the only way we try hard is because we didn’t achieve what we want, want to do. I grew up in poverty, so that means the life was not easy. So you have to be, persistent. You have to have a thick skin because you’ll get many no’s.

[10:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Many, push backs. So obviously, when the road is not smooth and strong, if you will fail many times. So, But there is no choice. So you have an option of just go back, sit or keep try. So one failure in a business or exam or anywhere doesn’t mean we sit back. So, in my case, again, I can go more deeper into any of those.

[10:41] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Like, for example, in my case, I had, a fast startup before, so that experience is the reason behind this business because looking back, I can see that had I not gone through that experience, probably even this business was not as successful because the lessons learned from that previous fast startup were applied to, all the different projects that were working with the founders.

[11:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It helped us got there.

[11:12] Ian Bergman: Totally. Let’s, you know, I actually want to hear more about that. That’s, you know, let’s use this to jump into a little bit of your story. Like, you’re you’re sitting on the other side of a screen talking to us about innovation. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you got there? You came from humble roots.

[11:30] Ian Bergman: You faced a bunch of challenges that I think help you learned a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset. But tell us a bit about your background and yeah, tell us about the, you know, the formation story of your company.

[11:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So, I grew up in Pakistan. That’s where my education is. Again, as I said, growing up in poverty during my school time, college time, I was tutoring or doing some side gigs to make some money, I didn’t realize, I thought, I’m just doing the regular. By looking back, you can see how that was the entrepreneurial things.

[12:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But for me, those are all just side hustling, doing certain things along the way to get to the next, stage. Like next semester, do the work part time, pay for another one. So those things were happening. So obviously those opportunities make you more stronger. I feel like if you are coming from those background, that will make you more hungry because you want success, you don’t want to be settle.

[12:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And I’m one of those people just don’t want to be sitting and giving up. So, I am persistent. That’s what I, I try. So, coming to us in 99, what we’re again, different, startups. So I work with one startup that also had a very interesting, story because we filled the product. We were at some good money, and this was pre iPhone and Android time, and it didn’t make it, make it to, I mean, we had to close it to, I was not the founder.

[13:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I was one of the only engineer of that. But that’s what also brought me to the mobile space because that was in the mobile space. And but the phones were not ready. So you can like. Yeah, we had a powerful platform very similar to like as you built like the BlackBerry enterprise. There were App Store features like you build app.

[13:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Security features. MDM all those things were there and we were deploying on Sharp Dance and some of those. So now you realize the carrier, the the device manufactured that all different. So this is not easy. Now I think when Apple and Android came, and Google came, they solved this problem because not unless you have a deal with the carrier because Apple was first, iPhone was first launched with AT&T.

[13:58] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So without the carrier support and at the OS level, you don’t have, much power. So, so those were the lessons learned. Obviously that was more up on our innovation side. But for me, that was my background on the mobile that we can talk later. Coming from those experiments, as an engineer, you always want to build things.

[14:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I when I was working with, once that startup finished, I, I started doing consulting and then I said, well, no, I want to build the product. So I started this, recruitment software, SAS. And that’s where we learn a lot about building product. Yeah. Now, coming from, engineer who have built things in a traditional way versus now suddenly you’re writing your own check.

[14:53] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So all those things are different, how you build. So, as engineer, we always think about building a strong foundation. Oh, need to have a scalable architecture and all of those. And now I talk about those in, like, why software projects fail. Because some of those things we did we build a strong product. Really good one. But then we realized nobody’s coming to use it.

[15:19] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And that’s when we went back to the whiteboard. We did that. We spent a lot of money rebuild that product. Once we have a better user experience, product management and everything. Suddenly now we started getting the customers. So that was a lesson to learn from that startup.

[15:38] Ian Bergman: And that’s an important lesson, right? I want to kind of pass that apart because, you know, so often, I don’t know, we have a vision. We have an idea. We’re like, if we build it, they will come. But it turns out that you there’s a lot that goes into actually getting an audience. And it’s not really innovation if nobody’s using what you’re doing.

[16:01] Ian Bergman: Right. So it sounds like you had to go back and figure out how to connect your vision of the world to some kind of customer pain, customer problem, etc. that’s going to get them to change behavior. How how have you how have you sort of institutionalized that practice based on those lessons?

[16:20] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So lesson learned from there. Now we applied those in our business as we started working with the startup. So when we started we had this model that we will build once the right way, which is a little bit, counter argument as well in the startup world where they say, oh, it’s a lean building, you want to build.

[16:45] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then it trained and learned. Sure. So, so, again, so it’s counter argument, but at the same time, that is the right way to do it, because startups do not have a whole lot of money. If you only have a 50 K or 100 K to build your product, you need to get to a certain state where you can raise more money, get customers, or you’re going to be out.

[17:07] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And we have seen those stories so many time. Many customers come to us. We fix a lot of those broken projects. Many times you’re out of money, so that process of building right the first time is really critical. Well, that means you have to come up with, more like a hybrid approach of agile as well as a lean approach so that you are not building something, people that.

[17:33] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, that could also mean that whatever is your initial discovery, your MVP, maybe two weeks long or your MVP could be a month long, but even that one has to be very clear. What you are building, because in our world, we, we push for building the MVP that’s usable. If you can’t bring a customer on that MVP, that’s yeah, people can call it people.

[17:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You can experiment certain things. But in reality that MVP has to be usable. And I always give an example of how, you have a, your vision of mention that you want to build that could be millions of dollars, but you starting with the studio, not with the room, because if you build a room that has no bathroom or kitchen, you can’t live it.

[18:21] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So it’s not about building a wall and using it, but it’s a studio that has it’s small enough, but one person can live, but it has a water, electricity, kitchen and everything. So and then expanding it to what you really want, but having the right foundation from day one.

[18:41] Ian Bergman: I actually I love that, I love that metaphor and I want to explore it a bit in a second. But I have a question for you. So when you talk about getting the foundations right, it reminds me of a book that I love, called How Big Things Get Done. And it’s for those who haven’t read it, it’s wonderful.

[19:02] Ian Bergman: Or I listen to it on the audiobook, equally wonderful, but it talks about the, the, the challenges that lead to large project failure. And complications, as well as some of the patterns that lead to success. And it covers everything from the Sydney Opera House to, skyscrapers to home renovations and things like that. But it is really interesting, because it goes on for like you’re saying, it’s core thesis.

[19:30] Ian Bergman: And I promise this doesn’t spoil it for people that want to read or listen. But the core thesis is basically you have to spend sufficient time planning before you build. Now, to me, there’s always been a tension between that and the lean model, the experimental model, the iterative model where you sort of refine your plan as you build.

[19:52] Ian Bergman: I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that, because it sounds like you are trying to bridge the gap in, in in your software projects, you are trying to both plan sufficiently to get an MVP out there, but allow room for experimental iteration. How how do you do that?

[20:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a process called we call it a blueprint process. So again I’ll go back to the house example. You sit down to the builder. You say I want to build this house. They may give you a high level, idea of what is going to take. They show you some ideas. Right. But then as you define what you really want based on whatever are your parameters, whether it’s in budget, timing and all of those.

[20:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So you agree on something. And then once we agree on that, in our case, we said, okay, this is a smaller version of like you already did your customer discovery. And let’s say that customer with that customer you got a commitment that if you build these one feature, 1 or 2 features, they would use it. And those are the most critical features that they want wanted.

[20:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You just build that. And so let’s say if you and that’s your core MVP in this case, if you’re talking about the house, it’s a similar way you create a blueprint. Blueprint is where you know exactly how the house would look, what direction, what size of garage, what size of rooms, how many women you layer.

[21:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You want to have those things upfront because it’s going to be difficult later on to build the basement. Once you build the house right, you cannot list you can. There are ways, but the the cost effective ways that you’d know that all of those things. Then you start with the the pieces that, you can always finish that later on.

[21:36] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But you can you can still have the right foundation and then you build one piece. So in our case, that blueprint is the one where you really draw everything, your flows, your, your up scheme, like how the application would navigate even with one feature. Because one of the challenges we have seen the customers come in, they said, oh, we want to build this.

[22:00] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But if I, for example, say many time, okay, how what is the outcome look like for you? Many times it’s generic. So you want to define I said let’s imagine visualize that you build this product today. It’s done. I give it to you. And how would you verify it? How would you say this is good for me?

[22:23] Ghazenfer Mansoor: What would be what? What is the outcome look like for you? And if you can elaborate that upfront, then that would help us build the right product for you. So that process of that blueprinting, mapping. Because even in in the AI world, for example, you you have the inputs. He says, I want it, I want to have it.

[22:48] Ghazenfer Mansoor: My eye. Give me this thing. Okay. Give me the queries that you will be running in on your ChatGPT or whatever that you’re imagining. And this is the final output. This is how you’re expecting. And then it’s much easier to map those once you define that clear flow. So yeah. So coming back to the blueprint is the process that, that we, suggested without the blueprint, you going to be experimenting and not necessarily be getting what you really intend to do.

[23:18] Layne Fawns: That’s fascinating. So then if we look at sort of the thesis of your book, is that a leg? Is that a piece of the foundation of your book? Because I know that we’ve heard many times, like if you can think it, there’s probably an app for it or, you know, there’s an app for anything or something like that.

[23:37] Layne Fawns: So I think the two pieces are how do you build something, and be confident that people want it, and then afterwards how do you promote it or make it known amongst the noise of all the other apps that are out there in the in the world?

[23:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So the app solves a little bit of a how it is. It’s broader. It’s for early as well as late, people. So it’s it talks a lot about how to build the app that people use sharing love every day. So the challenge in the app world, I can’t even count the apps on my downloaded on my phone.

[24:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I keep scrolling, it’s hard to find and, unless I know I have to search for sure. So. And it and you scroll many pages that are important apps. It’s not that those many of those are unimportant, but people keep forgetting those app. How do you, fail something that people remember. So the book talk about those because people do forget quickly.

[24:40] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So and.

[24:41] Ian Bergman: And how can they not write. It’s so noisy out there and we’ve got vibe coding tools that let people throw something up. Theoretically. Right. We’ve got a million and a half apps, you know, being marketed and promoted to, on our social feeds and TikTok’s recommendations. You know, we have single use apps that are wonderful at what they do, but then you don’t even think about them until the next time you need that.

[25:07] Ian Bergman: And maybe you need to completely re remember that you even have the app. So I get this problem because they’re everywhere. So you know, how how do we think about dealing with this noise.

[25:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So there are many strategies for the book. Talk about from a building perspective, from a marketing perspective. How do you build that. Because it’s different than the web. Because in the web you build in nature and your marketing is is outside or most of the time, I mean, yes, there is a person date, but in mobile, a lot of time you need to embed the marketing inside your app to for example, for reminders, you get usually emails, let’s say.

[25:48] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And now people have those different tools as built to your news folder, and you don’t even get to see somebody sending you an email about the new feature. In mobile. You have a push notification. You can’t skip that because the push notification is coming to your phone. Whether, I mean once you enable it. So and it auto updates.

[26:08] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So there are strategies you could do. Obviously there are standard strategies that you can apply on your web application as well. And but there are many that are only specific to mobile. And those are the ones that you can try and that can remind people. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that getting a notification or many of those different strategies would lead you because you still have to be, really good app.

[26:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I think the one of the early chapters is build a remarkable app, because now it is you do user experience and design is key. So since the iPhone that part change in the past people would just build any application. I’m sure you remember the Craigslist time. How valuable was it? Everybody was on it almost every day. How traditional the look and feel of that one.

[27:08] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But that was.

[27:09] Ian Bergman: Just a nice way to put it.

[27:11] Layne Fawns: Yeah.

[27:12] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So that was a necessity. People needed it so people would come. Now, it’s not always the case. Now. People do expect even the enterprises, they expect a better design. It’s no longer oh, it needs to just get the work done. So once you have the nice design, you have the right experience. People have to be fit. The app has to be easy to use.

[27:34] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And so that’s one of the, I guess, one of the 30 different strategies that I shared. So, the you have to and I would say majority of those are applicable to many businesses. And so you you don’t have to implement all because you cannot. But even if you do half of those, it will make a huge difference in building an app that you could really get people to download and using.

[28:06] Layne Fawns: As a marketing nerd, I just I’m sorry, I just want to keep diving in on this. Just just one more question. How do you know that you’ve built a remarkable app? Because the same argument could be made that you could have an underwhelming app, but you marketed it really well, you told a really good story, or it’s just really pretty, but it’s not that exciting.

[28:28] Layne Fawns: So how do you know that you have something truly remarkable?

[28:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, I’ll give you a different knowledge. So let’s say you find somebody is profile on Facebook or somebody person looks really great. The profile is amazing that amazing connection can get the initial connection. But are you going to do multiple meeting with that person after the initial one. So yeah, just having a nice UI will get you the first, meeting or first download.

[29:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But the key part is where we talk. Even the name is beyond the download. Getting the download. It’s easy. You can do and you can have many different ways you promote it. Let’s say you go to whatever you may get featured on some news because you knew somebody, but you even you don’t get that easily featured. But assuming you are able to you got on the news like TechCrunch or somewhere.

[29:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But if the app is not solving the problem, you’re not going to keep using, using the app.

[29:34] Layne Fawns: I kind of love this idea of looking at apps like a dating profile, you know what I mean? Like, that’s I think that’s a really very unique way to look at technology is is what I go on a second date with this with this software.

[29:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. What do you think? For example, I’ll mention that both Apple and Google, have different recommendations for the apps and they would feature your app. So if your app is not really remarkable, even Apple won’t feature it or Google won’t feature. So if you can get to the Apple feature list, then, that’s that’s a big step.

[30:13] Ghazenfer Mansoor: When you go to Apple Store, you see a lot of those apps are preloaded on the iPad. So if you make an effort and your app is so good that Apple put one of those apps as an app, that downloaded on the retail stores, how iPads that mean anybody visiting that would get to see that. So again, you have to be really good, in order to get that.

[30:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And we talk about what if the app in our book, which is a felt app, and they they have done it and they have achieved that. So, so they got so many different.

[30:55] Ian Bergman: They, they got preload distribution through Apple. I mean, that’s the holy grail.

[30:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yes. Because once Apple would feature. So then there are others will also feature because though this is a great app and then app that are so good that Apple put that on their retail store worldwide, incidentally, that get a lot more visibility. That gives you their trust as well. But that’s a little okay.

[31:19] Ian Bergman: So hang on a second because like, I think you’re totally right. And this is what people aspire to. But how do you like you can’t just wave a magic wand and be like, oh, I know what I need. I need Apple to distribute my app for me. And you can’t just wave a magic wand and say, oh, I’m going to make my app so good that Apple is going to distribute it for me.

[31:40] Ian Bergman: There are some steps to get there. What are those steps?

[31:44] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, and it is one of those it’s not easy like to getting into the major publications. Even so, the app has to be good. So if you follow the guidelines that are shared in the book, there are higher chances. That still doesn’t mean because they’re guidelines of do you follow the guideline, but they also have some restriction like it cannot be.

[32:11] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Let’s say they cannot be sharing multiple same apps like there are times and it may be featured only for a certain time. Let’s say one week Apple has a topic, so it could be a rotation as well. Like there’ll be apps from different categories the productivity, the gaming. And depending on your app, you may not even get picked up for a specific reason depending on the type of app.

[32:37] Ian Bergman: So what are your partners? What are your partners have to do to optimize their chances of of success? Right. Because you’ve got, you know, you’ve got people you’re working with. They’ve got a vision. How how how do they maximize the chance of their vision coming to life?

[32:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So,

[32:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: To in order to maximize, the chances there is no. Yeah, I would say there’s no magic or there’s no one. There’s there’s no checklist that only if you do ten thing, you will get your guaranteed. It’s one of those your chances are increase. If you follow the tips shared there are higher chances. Remember Apple is not about just creating remarkable.

[33:23] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And they look at the downloads. I mean they have the one that has all the data. In fact, more than what you have, they know how many time people are returning. It’s not about new users returning user how many time, what activities are happening on the app that keep bringing, new users back there and keeping it engaged?

[33:44] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So all of those activities will make it. Let’s say if you build an app and you don’t even have to mention, they may reach out to you because they will see so much activity happening from around the world. On on that one app. So it will get picked out by somebody for good way, a bad way. But totally.

[34:07] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Once the app has activity, everybody will look at like, what’s going on? Why is this app so popular?

[34:12] Ian Bergman: Well, there is there is certainly, I think, a truth that success breeds success. And the trick is always getting over that first roadblock. I want to talk about what’s been changing in the world over the last few years, right? I mean, we have we have to talk about AI because everything’s AI these days. How has your world changed with, I would say, you know, the last three or so years of, AI coming into common parlance in a new way and with some new assumptions about what should be possible in technology.

[34:48] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. AI is opening a lot of doors now. What we are seeing is a lot more innovation happening. So it is like that late 90s when there was a lot of talk about the web and a lot of new sites and apps like the the innovation was more on that side. This is way bigger than that, because now it’s not really just AI.

[35:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s opening up a lot of those opportunities. People are getting a lot of different ideas. So whether it’s on the prediction side, we get a lot on the healthcare prediction side. But there are others as well. So I mean, we’re having conversation through a legal with financial as people have this first that a lot of that data that you could analyze and predict a lot of that and do things based off of that through related.

[35:42] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So there is so much happening now, obviously, as people are coming up with these ideas, that’s opening up doors for us as well, because as a software development company, people do need to build those software. And what we have done in our company, we, we have made, I would say we have a mandate of productivity in our company.

[36:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We we have those, we have a money allocated for every single person. They can buy the tools, but they need to show the productivity. So the, you know, like, change is difficult. So when it initially came, obviously there are certain people who are doing AI project, building traditional models, training them. So we were doing that. Then we did the generative AI and then all these different tools coming, the rapid coding.

[36:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We, we started making effort, but then but the change is difficult. So we had to push this change into the company, toward the company that everybody needs to be. So we gave them access to, the money. We gave them access to the tools so that they could try and, you know, way on those. So now we use AI pretty much in every department in our company, whether it’s sales, marketing, content side development, all of our produce AI, whether it’s using cursor cloud code in our sales department, even we create POCs directly.

[37:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Like, if you if somebody reach out to us many times, we create a posse, using why putting in two hours before our meeting with that client. So a lot of those opportunities.

[37:31] Ian Bergman: Okay, wait. Hang on. That’s interesting. Hang on. You just said that, like, when you’ve got an inbound prospect, you can show up with, a POC or, you know, some kind of conceptual thing in code to that first meeting. Is that right?

[37:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We have done that multiple times. The first one was we got the, the lead on Friday. I sent a message to my guy over the weekend. My meeting was at 1215 eastern time on Monday. And, before that time, I got a video of the POC that was created using that requirement in four hours time. I mean.

[38:14] Ian Bergman: And is this is is this as simple as your team, like getting really good at prompting Replit or vercel or like or is there something deeper going on?

[38:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s it’s a combination with time, obviously. The first iteration obviously everybody, but just using even myself using I just like a search but then gradually got better. So we use different like for example, it could be, let’s say using a combination of those. You get those requirements and maybe use a different tool to create the initial setup mockups.

[38:51] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then another tool to to generate the code so it doesn’t have to be just one. Let’s set up later. Love it. But because each of these tools have limitations. So, whatever are the tools that are good in. So we use the combination of those. But yes, prompting is definitely, really critical. Now it’s changing how people are articulate.

[39:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I feel like it’s also a good problem to have, because the more per used to be more of developers are the one who mostly follow instruction, or somebody else is doing the product management and giving them guidance. Hey, this is what we need to build and they would build it. Yeah. Now they will have to think differently. Now they have to do in order to create from you have to be able to articulate the problem really well.

[39:40] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You have to give a background of what needs to be done.

[39:43] Ian Bergman: I want to I want to, I want to jump in on this actually for a second, because I’ve been struggling with this and within our own in-house engineering team have been struggling with this question of, you know, what is changing in the different roles that different people play in product definition. So you said developers have to think differently in your mind.

[40:05] Ian Bergman: Does that mean that all developers have to think more like, you know, sort of a product engineer? It’s not about implementation to spec, it’s about what are we trying to accomplish? Or is there like is there something deeper going on there?

[40:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, yeah. So developers have to think like a product engineer, like a solution architect because, the traditional ways are not can even if you are building what you’re like. So if you are using, let’s say, even cursor in your idea, you still have to give the right instruction if your instructions are not right. So for example, if you’re generating a code and you ask Claude or the Cursor or whatever to build their AI or whatever the tool you’re using and says, I want to build, give me a code that’s clean for example.

[40:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s very broad. By default, somebody may write it, but you have to be very specific in terms of what you want. So then it will like for example, you specify your clear rules. This is how you write variable. This is how we write cluster and this is how this is the structure of my libraries. So you want to give the existing code so that it learns from your code and generate the code that you get.

[41:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The code generators were already there. So now if you get another one that’s building a code that your team is not familiar with, or suddenly there will be more challenges. In fact, that’s a bigger thing, bigger challenges now and is happening. Because if you hear 90% of the AI projects are failing, it’s many of those reasons because people started building, started doing the rapid coding.

[41:41] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But now you can’t use it. It can’t go beyond certain because now you build a code that’s even deployed, but now you are stuck. How do you make it scalable? And now you suddenly start using AI to optimize, or even just when you start, let’s say you refactor the code. Suddenly you change something that developer didn’t know and start to see the different behavior.

[42:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Now suddenly people say, oh no, this is bad. Just go back to the traditional. But no, that’s not the solution either. Now that’s where how do you take that? Why put it initial POC into something? That is more production ready? Because in some tools will just give you a code all in, let’s say 2000 line just in one file.

[42:27] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You have to take it next, optimize it. So there is a work that needs to be done. So rapid coding is great. White coding would get you somewhere for proof of concept in the traditional way. You were using just Figma or hand sketches to to clarify the concept. Now you can get to a next step. Build even the POC using the AI to get to the next step.

[42:56] Layne Fawns: Okay. That’s interesting. So you also mentioned so you’ve implemented sort of AI. The use of AI autonomously for anyone across your organization. Is that correct? You said most of the folks on your team are using some form of AI tool.

[43:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s right.

[43:17] Layne Fawns: How does the team feel about that? Like are you met with resistance? Are they excited about it? Are they bringing you tools that you’ve never heard of that are new and fresh? Like, how’s the sort of culture around this?

[43:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s, uphill battle? It’s challenge. Change is not easy. We have seen the the resignations as well because somebody said, oh, I have to start learning again. But there are people I mean, like, I keep learning all the time. Everybody should be learning. And this is a time you’re not learning. You are behind. So the story of blockbuster is babies.

[44:02] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Babies are, toys R us all. Those are not that foreign to everybody. I mean, it’s it’s, it’s a recent past. So we all know what happened. So the chance for us is to be, Do we compete? Do we get on that, race and compete and beat others or just wait for the innovation to kill us?

[44:29] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And we decided to compete to be ahead of others rather than waiting for the innovation to kill us. So along the way, some people, it may not be right. For some people they may not for some day. But there will be a lot more coming in as well. So yes, there is a pushback. There is resistance, but not from everybody.

[44:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I think it takes time for people to realize what is given to them. It’s good. So I still remember that Steve Jobs code that your customers don’t know what they want. You have to show them. I think that is also very true for your employees. Many times you have to show them what is right for them if they are, I mean, if they are very clear and their parts are different, that’s understandable.

[45:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But company has a vision company of the goals, and as long as those parts align, then that’s perfectly all right. So, would the resistance and time again, not, not seeing the long term benefit but long term as people start working now, we are getting also a good feedback because whatever was not possible few months ago now started becoming possible.

[45:51] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Now they can see, oh, a lot more interesting thing. Can happen. Some of those outcomes are mind blowing. So as you are, as you are seeing the outcome of it the way you are, adapting it. And again, we look at it, AI is not AI replacement or not. Something complicated. So foreign AI is there to increase the productivity.

[46:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s a multiplier. It’s helping you do more. And as a lot of people start really seeing that, it’s actually there’s a small learning, but then it’s helping them do more. That’s when they get excited.

[46:33] Ian Bergman: Yeah. So I want to ask you something. I think you, you just hit on a couple of really key components, that drive a truly innovative organization. Right. Because it’s really easy to see changes in the world around us, but not actually take any action and then just walk eyes wide open off the cliff. But you hit on two things.

[46:52] Ian Bergman: One of them is curiosity. And I completely agree with you. If we’re not curious, if we’re not learning in the in today’s world, we’re behind. And the and the second thing is not just painting a vision, but kind of modeling for your employees being directive to employees. This is where we’re going. And I’m curious how you do that effectively and how you and how you help your clients and partners do that.

[47:18] Ian Bergman: How do you model the behaviors that you want to see in terms of the adoption of new ideas, new technologies, the experimentation that is going to keep you ahead of the curve? It’s not an easy thing to do.

[47:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And it’s not an easy thing to answer as well. So I don’t know how old. But yeah. So as I mentioned, so we have these, you can once a week exercise the whole company. We get on a zoom call, we talk about, that’s a I goals call. So we have a quarterly goals, and then people will have a certain task to achieve in us.

[47:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And those, every month.

[47:59] Ian Bergman: And the quarterly AI goals call.

[48:01] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, yeah. So we have a quarterly eight goals, but the weekly call where we see the progress as well. And sometime just as people are learning. So for example, somebody learn for example, a new job cutting tool they’ll be sharing. We won one meeting. We did, let’s say how do you create GPT another one? Claude and ChatGPT project and another one, AI agent, another one use v0.dev and another meeting.

[48:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Somebody shared how to do like and it and agent like automation too. So every time we are doing so it’s like a lunch and lunch. But those are also then the the quarterly growth. And then we made it mandatory that everybody has to do, for example, prompt engineering context prompt engineering as well. Because if you don’t know the basics, you’re going to be missing a lot of people by default.

[48:54] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Assume we know the stuff because, oh, how difficult this is. Prompting. But you underestimate it. Honestly, until you really get into this, we said no, it’s a mandatory so that everybody has to do the training and share that training. So and then we will do Q&A. We did the same exercise for our health because we do health care like HIPAA.

[49:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So everybody in our company is familiar with how the health development shaped perspective from project management, from a development. You need to build that training kind of. So we build the interactive one and now we’re adding quizzes into it. So as people are doing that and if this is where I mentioned earlier, there was a push back.

[49:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But then people started seeing that because once people start to learn and they really get excited. So, it it is it is a change. It’s difficult. But that’s one way we are doing there are and again, we’re learning as well. We will continue to, to learn and improve. And the second thing I mentioned earlier was allocating the money.

[50:05] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, so that because there’s so many different tools coming, when we started initially people experiment ended all limitation. So then we started investing in those so that people are able to use different tools. And that creates a differentiator as well because not everybody is is giving that much. So then that’s a big benefit. Now when it comes to customer, it’s a bit challenging obviously, because in our business one of the things we do is, we we don’t always just listen to customer and just do what they tell us.

[50:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We always push back. That is all because.

[50:46] Ian Bergman: That way lies madness.

[50:48] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Right? Exactly. And so because we always, and sometimes it gets into a, a complicated conversation as well, like, oh, we’re challenging our business model. Well, we are not challenging the business model. We are just challenging, challenging the approach to that just to see if the alternates have been thought through. Or at least we will get the answer by pushing back on a certain thing.

[51:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Right. So most dogman to this a lot of interactive work. So you have to get clarity on many of those things. We have to show what we don’t see so or what they don’t see. So a lot of those things we need to do. So working with the customer, also guiding them how, how the whole process work, this blueprint process that I talked, not everybody is familiar because by default.

[51:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: What do you hear? Oh, we’re looking for a developer. Why do you need a developer? How do you build this thing? I tell it’s like hiring a handyman or one of the workers that were building your house. Well, the house began. It’s not really just building the house is the foundation. It’s the whole direction that goes into it.

[52:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So software is like that. So what needs to be build is more important. And then, and then how once you know these two, then you can have anybody build it. So same goes into as you’re building whether AI or non AI projects is even more complicated because now a lot of people have a misunderstanding of what the AI is.

[52:29] Ghazenfer Mansoor: How. Yeah, because people are using ChatGPT and feel like ChatGPT like, oh, we’ll just given the prompts and it should give us an answer. There is so much more into it than if you don’t know that. Then it’s going to probably fail your project. And that’s one of the reason you hear, like majority of the help in the AI projects are a failure because they are not ready for it.

[52:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: They didn’t think through. They just assume that if we just plug in AI, it’s going to solve the problem. Like, yeah, I can say, oh, we just want to put open AI API integration and we will have AI integrated in first.

[53:10] Ian Bergman: I’m not I’m not gonna lie, I think I think I’ve given my engineering team guidance like that occasionally. Hey, like, why don’t you just infuse some AI and then our problems will be solved. So I get where that comes from.

[53:22] Layne Fawns: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of actionable insights, I think, from what you just said. It’s time for us to start wrapping up soon. But I do have one last question. This kind of just in a in a bit of a different direction before, we start signing off, and that is you’ve you’ve touched on health tech a couple of times and health care.

[53:46] Layne Fawns: I’m very, very curious, what are some of the most disruptive trends that you’re seeing on the horizon right now?

[53:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The most important one that we are seeing is the predictability part. Everybody wants to predict the diseases, the, the symptoms, the personal health prediction that’s the most demanding for us. People are looking to get more insights into the personal health data. So and that’s not really just the personal health, obviously in overall health care. But this is where we are seeing but there are a lot of more other areas as well.

[54:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But on oncology side on the cancer on the other diseases side. So now that you have a data so you can have a lot more insights into the data. So and it’s much easier compared to before. No no. Yes. No. Filling is just because people are not familiar with it how they do it. But once you know how to do it, then it’s much easier.

[54:50] Layne Fawns: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. If folks from the audience want to get in touch with you, how could they do so? LinkedIn or where abouts are you? Are you hanging out these days?

[55:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So my LinkedIn easy to find with my name. You won’t find anybody else with this name spelling my first name ghazenfer.com. That’s my personal website, where you can find more about my book as well as my own podcast, which is Lessons From The Leap. And then, my business website is TechnologyRivers.com. So if anybody is interested in working with us on any of the project, whether it’s AI, I enablement, any app development or any, any conversation about the mobile app growth strategies.

[55:42] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Happy to chat.

[55:43] Ian Bergman: Because it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on Innovators Inside. This has been a lot of fun.

[55:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thank you. It was, pleasure having on this podcast. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks.