#322 The Tech Entrepreneur's Guide to AI and Startup Resilience with Abdul Rahman Janoo

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me, Abdul Rahman. Abdul Rahman, thank you very much for joining me today. The way I love to do it usually is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. So tell us a little bit [00:01:00] about you, uh, what you're currently doing and a little bit more of course of on your journey and then we can kick it off from there.

Abdul Rahman: Thanks Mehmet for inviting me to this podcast. So I, my name is Abdur Rahman Janoo. Uh, I'm a co founder at TericSoft. So we are basically a tech partnership company, which basically means we provide a CTO as a service for budding entrepreneurs. So we have a portfolio of companies from. Accel back companies or private equity back companies or venture capitalists back companies.

Abdul Rahman: So we come there, we help them in the technology transformation, restructuring architecture to the deployment and a lot of stuff. We help in the AI integration, AI adaptation or sometime building in AI solutions for that. And I come from startup background. This is my fifth startup. So happy to give you any more insights.

Mehmet: Great. Thank you very much for being with me [00:02:00] today here, Abdul Rahman. Now, uh, one thing I know, and I think we, we, uh, we discussed this with you before is you came from a background where like you were a product manager, uh, at, uh, at Waste Ventures. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, you, you, you co founded, uh, you know, your current, uh, uh, studio.

Mehmet: So, uh, what drove you from, from, you know, being into the product management side to, to little bit being in the entrepreneurship side? 

Abdul Rahman: So basically entrepreneurship journey started basically from my family. And, uh, in India, we, there's a geography called Gujarat, uh, which means all of them who come from that families or that zone are end up going to be on entrepreneur or business people.

Abdul Rahman: And in the, what [00:03:00] usually. Happened with that people is like when kids are there on the dinner table discussion. There will always be a discussion of finance and something like that. So even in my engineering time, I was in my graduation time, I was kind of clear that I want to do something in future to do with some business or some entrepreneurship journey and started my first venture in my college time, which flung and started post immediately another venture with my few colleagues, which again, when flung, It was in healthcare space, then we did it, uh, a platform called Zoikit, which was more like a meetup platform.

Abdul Rahman: So there we got selected by Microsoft, uh, to travel to Russia to present ourselves and we got first prize globally. In that competition and what a rewarding prize money and all that and then We started into that venture a few months later. We couldn't raise funding from venture capitalists. So we have to shut down then After that [00:04:00] another startup in different video Uh, gaming industry as such.

Abdul Rahman: Uh, we tried out, but couldn't crack the business model. So which went again flung and then tried in healthcare supply chain, which went really well, we raised good amount of money, end up having a different round of round of exit. And then Waste Ventures India came in where I realized that, uh, my failure history was very bad.

Abdul Rahman: Kind of flunking every year. So it's been more than five, six years that time. And all of my startups were failing. And I realized that I need to work with a mature startup where they have already funded and wanted to learn from them. So Hodgeward graduate. People are Boston girls and in BCG group people, this funded the company, which is called Waste Ventures India.

Abdul Rahman: So I joined there as a product manager. So they want to build a whole technology framework and, and it's more like an Uber [00:05:00] for waste. So where each, each individual household will put a request saying, then we have waste and our team will go and do the cleaning. waste collection. So we used to work with corporates like Google, Infosys, Uber, all of these corporates will tell us whenever they have the recyclable waste, we will go and collect the waste.

Abdul Rahman: And we pay the money for their waste. And we bring those waste recyclable, do pre processing and send it to the waste collection. Authorized recyclers. And in this journey, uh, what I realized was I wanted to do something of sorting and segregation to waste. When it comes, it's very difficult to do sorting and segregation.

Abdul Rahman: So we had a staff of a hundred people that time, and they were just doing plastic separately, paper separately, metal separately. It was a very tedious process. And then we tried to put a CCTV camera or industrial camera on conveyor belt. And then we realized that at that moment, I realized like AI is coming [00:06:00] up and we are trying to do image processing, computer vision, AI stuff that, and we were able to crack the first POC.

Abdul Rahman: And that's where I realized like, it was a kind of calling along with my few engineers is that like, we should start a company called Derricksoft and we should do something in AI and we should build a product together there. And since I had a failure experience in past, I was kind of very clear that we have to start a company which is sustainable in place.

Abdul Rahman: So we should have a revenue model from day one. And we decided to take some services, uh, building a product. So we're good at building a product for startups. So is there like, we should build a product for our customers and we should charge them. And with savings, we will. Build an AI solution in AI products.

Abdul Rahman: And that's where we are. We have few AI solutions and IPs right now, which we try to monetize. And parallelly, we have this services business model. It's kind of remarkable. [00:07:00] We have been sustainable so far for seven years. 

Mehmet: That's great. Great to hear, uh, Abdul Rahman. Um, you know, the, the question that came to my mind where you, you were mentioning this, so, and especially talking about failures and then trying again.

Mehmet: So in your opinion, you know, especially when you are in a startup phase, how much do you think, because you gave some examples, but how much do you think, you know, getting strategic partnerships and you have done this before, I know, Uh, is important for startups and you know, what are like kind of the tips and you know, the, the advice you give to fellow entrepreneurs to secure and not only secure to maintain also these relationships with these, uh, giants like that you can rely to, to grow your business.

Abdul Rahman: Yeah, absolutely. I think, [00:08:00] um, in previous startup, which I failed and even the current startup or in between whatever the startup I've worked with, what one thing was kind of very clear that sustainability is very important. And if sustainability is there, you can achieve your dreams. So as an entrepreneur, when you start, you will have a.

Abdul Rahman: A dream to change the world and things may not work as you plan or sometime what you think, like it will take six months or one year. It may end up taking two years, three years, and the timeline is not there for you to sustain it. And I've seen a lot of my fellow friends and entrepreneurs who feel to define the sustainability plan.

Abdul Rahman: And it's, and I think strategic. Partnership or collaboration with any of the entrepreneurs, helping them. And in this journey view becomes sustainable. And once you are sustainable, you have your team. So today we have team of 50 plus member team [00:09:00] now making sure we are able to pay the salary on time. We need some ground base to be ready and finally the product and R& D team and the AI team and all those keep happening.

Abdul Rahman: We keep building those, but we don't reach on time. Sometimes we are ahead of our time. Sometime customer doesn't want what we build. So in this journey, We need a sustainability strategic partnership, and that's where we started with some of our friends and colleagues and helping them building their products, and they, in fact, got successful as well in that journey, in fact.

Abdul Rahman: The word TERICS of it means, uh, it's TERIC means is basically a bunch of individual whose success come by making other people successful. So we're kind of very clear that we need to make our customers successful, then we'll be successful. And that's where the partners and some kind of strategy game plan plays a very important role for sustainability.

Abdul Rahman: And that's make. [00:10:00] Startup journey, fuel running and take us where we want to go. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Abdul Rahman, you know, also from, from, you know, what you mentioned and what we talked about before, I know that you like to, you know, to build As you call them impactful solutions and innovations. And today, you know, while, uh, you're running your, uh, your, uh, services that situ as a service, how, how do you, I mean, how do you decide, like, okay, this project is really worth investing in.

Mehmet: You know, building for this particular startup or founder. Um, like, is there any, anything that excites you, uh, when, when building, uh, these solutions? Is there something that you, you feel? Yeah. Like, you know, this really would, would, would change, you know, the, uh, the whole, the whole market or the whole story, how things are happening.[00:11:00] 

Abdul Rahman: Yeah. Yeah. So basically the foundationally doing something with respect to impact is very important, at least to me, and early days impact was the first and then financial was always a second. Then in between, we realized that it's actually important to have. And in during my waste management startup journey, it was a social enterprise.

Abdul Rahman: So I used to work with 20, 30 different impact. Right. Investors impact, uh, entrepreneurs. And what I learned from there is there's something called triple bottom line, which means you just not look for bottom line. Top line means your revenue bottom line, which means your profit and loss. And there's something on triple bottom line.

Abdul Rahman: So it's. In social enterprise, you have those impact variable as well. So we will talk about not just the financial bottom line. We'll talk about social bottom line. We'll talk about environmental bottom line. And that's very key to [00:12:00] me. And when, although TelixOp is a commercial. But still, we try to analyze how many jobs we are creating in this journey.

Abdul Rahman: How many, uh, kind of whatever the project which you are doing, it's kind of helping them and the philosophy at which when we select any project, we try to see, is this entrepreneur genuinely care about humanity? And if that is that, then we go with it and is in return, even if you make a little bit less profit, It is our solution is going to create that kind of impact.

Abdul Rahman: For example, we have waste management partner, which is a different waste management company, which I work for. Uh, it's a different founders and all that. And what I, there almost 1 million pickups has been done. And now they are working with other partners and it's expanded globally with few other countries.

Abdul Rahman: So it's feels very good that what we are building, it's just not for India. It's all across the globe. And second customer is [00:13:00] basically in EV industry, which is a whole idea is they have four to 5, 000 fleets. Which cars are moving with electrical vehicle and all all are sustainable vehicles and all that and 1 billion apis are getting computed.

Abdul Rahman: So it's feel like very challenging and very responsible work as a tech. Person for like us, make sure we deliver because it's millions of pickups are happening. Millions of people are experiencing our technology and by some reason it doesn't work, it's going to be a big mess. The third very close to us and 60 percent of our revenue come from healthcare industry, at least till last year.

Abdul Rahman: And in, in general healthcare where diagnosing space or staffing, Platform and we see few lakhs, which is technically 100, 000 to 1 million people are getting or patients are getting benefited with the technology. And it plays a very important role and keep us [00:14:00] exciting and that's keep me motivating every day when I come to office, like, okay, whatever we're doing, it's going to help 

Mehmet: someone.

Mehmet: That's really, you know, nice to hear Abdulman out of curiosity. So usually when, when. These founders reach out to you. Do they come with, you know, like the whole vision in mind? Uh, or like they need just to have an MVP or they come, you know, like they're just have, you know, pretty much like half an idea and then you help them.

Mehmet: Like, like what would be the ultimate scenario also for you? Like, do you prefer to, to just first. Release an MVP and then, you know, let them go see how, how it will work out in the market and then build the full thing. Um, and also maybe I'm asking you because you've tried to do this yourself a couple of times, so it will be beneficial to, to share that also with, uh, with the audience.[00:15:00] 

Abdul Rahman: Yeah, so when we were doing our design thinking exercise for our personas, who are our targeted audience, and we arrive at three personas, Julie, Sam, Peter. So Julie is the one, she is an entrepreneur, she wanted to She has no clue what she wanted to do, but she might have seen a show like Shark Tank or something.

Abdul Rahman: And she decided she wanted to do something in entrepreneurship, wanted to start her own startup. And then she come to us there. We have to do a discovery phase. We need to help her with business goals. Canvas model and helper saying that this will not work. This will work. Competitor analysis, understand Fonda's strength and weakness.

Abdul Rahman: Because sometimes we only talk about product market fit, but it's about Fonda market fit. So we help there and there. And in this journey, we craft them with MVP and then help to navigate to product market fit. So there's an iterative. In those exercise, which goes through this in each step. And it [00:16:00] takes a few months to a few years to discover a product market fit.

Abdul Rahman: Then comes second persona, which is Sam persona, which is a Sam is basically, uh, he has found a product market fit. But he don't have massive funding. Uh, he would have done it with very traditional technology stack, which is one is here, one is that they don't know what to do and struggling to scale. And when he goes to investor, investors are questioning on the scale.

Abdul Rahman: He has a product market for it, but it's still not ready as such. So we come as a technology transformation support and all that. And it's quite friendly and majority of our. Engineering effort goes with a lot of the SAM personas. There he has the clarity what he wants to do. He has validated with his customer.

Abdul Rahman: Now the third persona comes to Peter. So Peter is a very demanding persona. He has been, uh, he knows what he's doing. He's scaling the venture right now. He is backed by series A, series B venture capital is funding now. And some of our [00:17:00] case of portfolios, which we are working as a private equity back funders.

Abdul Rahman: So basically it means that the founder might have lost the control also. And this market, which is demanding, they need to acquire market share. Those personas are very demanding. They will already have a tech side, but we have to go more with value proposition. We need to say that, okay, we need to launch this features or solution.

Abdul Rahman: This will increase your revenue by 10 percent or market share by 15 percent or 5 percent or 2%. So it becomes very demanding there. We have to directly, tightly work with their investors, their stakeholders. For some time in some ventures, we 20 different stakeholders in that particular empire. So it's a very demanding, challenging execution operations.

Abdul Rahman: but it's very thrilled to work with the three of them. So early stage, they don't know what they want. So we help them in that middle stages where they already have a clarity what they're doing. So we help them with transformation of, let's say, it's microservices [00:18:00] architecture and stuff like that. The third one is will come with a demand of outcome.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, like, uh, it's the first time I, I, uh, I've seen, you know, like, on the show, this, you know, dissecting this into these three, uh, I would say like, uh, personas the same way that you did, which is fantastic. Now, before I go to the topic, which I think a lot, uh, they will be curious about, which is the AI, just on the part of, you know, the, the, the startup phase, I mean, like the initial phases, um, and I Probably because you you've worked on on on that side as well You tried to do it also and you work with with venture capitalists now from your experience Usually I ask this question.

Mehmet: It's kind of of why of the questions are that became fixed in my show in your experience Abdul Rahman like What [00:19:00] are the pros and cons of bootstrapping a startup versus seeking external funding? And for you, do you have any preferred approach? 

Abdul Rahman: So I'm kind of a fan of early stage, uh, at least after a lot of cycles where we, uh, we have seen the funding cycle, we have seen non funding cycle.

Abdul Rahman: And if I need to start an Tomorrow, I will still choose a bootstrap approach or low funding approach with seed or friends and family thing until I have a product market. The whole reason is like when you get an external funding. Uh, many times what happened is then the vision, which you have the idea, which you have, it's get corrupted or it's get destroyed.

Abdul Rahman: And you will not achieve what as an entrepreneur, as a vision, which you have, and every entrepreneur have a dream to change the world and funding. is a blessing. [00:20:00] Sometime, sometime it becomes a curse. And I think when you have enough product market fit or enough customer base and you have clarity that, okay, I want to take this and scale it up.

Abdul Rahman: That's when you should definitely go for funding because when you have a opportunity and you're self sustainable and you're not taking the external funding, means you're letting go some of the opportunities. You're letting go the market share. It's also wrong because that's what your whole dream was.

Abdul Rahman: You want to change the world. So you will definitely need an external funding, but I believe that first idea of validation should happen. Uh, and as a validation is not just the sustainability angle. It's a market validation. Is it a scale validation is Are you on the right market with the right product with right customers?

Abdul Rahman: And then if it is working Well, is the customer demanding you and calling you and asking you so many features that you don't have enough resources to fulfill it That's a product market fit and that's moment You should go to the investors And [00:21:00] you can crack a different kind of business model or funding routes and there are different ways to raise funding this is uh, but Funding is important, uh, but post product market fit, and then it will come to a different thing.

Abdul Rahman: Then you can't innovate that much. Your idea will be to serve the customer, scale the customers, get, scale the market, and just acquire as much as you can. That's where this funding and blessing will help you to achieve that. So it's a quick sort. It's not a direct answer. 

Mehmet: 100%. It depends. Like, you know, usually I can say 95 percent of the guests here, they said it depends.

Mehmet: Um, I was reading an article the other day and especially in these days, Of course, we know that there are two types of, of, uh, investors. So you have, you know, the venture capitalists and you have the angel investors. So maybe with angel investors, you might reach out to them in your early stages, even if [00:22:00] you don't have some traction yet, but you still need to do your homework of doing market research, market analysis.

Mehmet: You know, so so to see their appetite also for that one But of course indeed when you go to venture capitalists, you need you know, and just to clarify or demystify the word product market fit I know like everyone talks about it. So product market fit It means very simply that the product that you came up with It has demand in the market and not only demand, it has like potential to become huge demand.

Mehmet: So this is what we call product market fit. And, and thank you Abdul Rahman also because previously in the previous answer, you mentioned the founder, uh, market fit, because you know, um, if you go to any, you know, art, I mean, website that talks about raising funds from venture capitalists or any book they talk about, they look at three things.

Mehmet: So they look at, Of course the product itself they look at the market size and they look at the founder So you need to have [00:23:00] this mix of product founder market fit Um that that it's there and also as you mentioned as well Um You know, and this is why we start to see more and more founders who bootstrap the business.

Mehmet: So they put their own money, uh, at least to get some small traction or, you know, uh, build some kind of demand and then they can take it forward. So absolutely a spot on Abdurahman. Now let's move to the AI because, you know, if people are watching this, if you are listening, you know, There you be, of course, like you're not seeing, but in the background off of a Brahman in in the virtual wallpaper that he has, there's a I services and a I abdomen, you know, you know, it's on everyone's top of mind and a lot of things.

Mehmet: And I'm happy that also in your introduction, when you started, you talked about, uh, you know, computer vision and, you know, other aspects off a I that people nowadays, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know. They think only about generative, uh, and, you know, automatic. [00:24:00] Content creation. Now tell me exactly, you know, what kind of AI services you offer and what you are seeing in this space, which is, you know, really is exciting you and you think that it will have also great impact on the product that you'd be part of, uh, getting them out to the market.

Abdul Rahman: Yeah, so I'll answer to your question first. Like what we do in AI services and what I think about it . So AI services as such. Basically it's in, for us, it's folded into three categories. One is POC cracking. Sometime founder comes like few days back. One follow came and said that I want to do a 3D or realistic author.

Abdul Rahman: Who will be more like a psychologist or more like a therapist who will help you in the journey. Now he just not need a 3d or realistic based character, but also emotion [00:25:00] intelligence aspect of it. But the first stage usually is not about building a product out of it. It's always about seeing a POC. Is it feasible with the current technology or not?

Abdul Rahman: So those are the scenarios. So whether we take a. Another use case where we were working was in healthcare to identify a disease before it's actually detected with the diagnosing center. So before the chemicals and lab team process it. We were analyzing it with almost 80 90 percent accuracy that this particular patient is COVID positive or not.

Abdul Rahman: So these are the examples of it and where when you do something like that, you need a POC of it. So it's, is it feasible? Is it working? What kind of data set you needed? What kind of AI models available out there? All of this thing. So that's called, uh, Prototyping or POC stage. So that's one service offering, which we do when founders comes to us.

Abdul Rahman: Second is where MVP. So we already might have done the POC. We see that as we are confident or in past, we have already done something like that. So we need to do an MVP. So we need to build [00:26:00] with existing product or some kind of shape of product where they can interact, they can experience and stuff like that.

Abdul Rahman: And the third one comes a scale of AI. So once the AI prototyping and MVP is done, everything working as desired, then we take it to the production and deploy it in a very orchestration way of microservices and scale aspect of it and feasibility aspect of it. So it's whether it's on premises or on cloud and all of these things come with respect to the requirement.

Abdul Rahman: That's the kind of offering which comes, uh, in layman terms, on our website is a button. You just schedule it. I'll come on the call and I'll. Understand where do you stand there because sometimes the founder doesn't know what they need. Yes, this and then in that journey, but coming to AI as such, what I foresee, what is happening in general.

Abdul Rahman: So we started AI R& D lab almost seven, eight years back, and I come from a student of computer vision and all that's been robotics, so it's almost 12 years I've been [00:27:00] into this industry and different shape and form we have been doing it and, uh, last six, seven years. Thank you. exhaustively with proper full time resources people used to work in our AI labs and all.

Abdul Rahman: And what I've seen is AI was or is growing in these three categories. Basically, it's about a passive AI, which the job is to just detect object detection, like specs, earphones and all that. These are the passive AI. You need the data annotation training and get that. Second comes a generative and now world is talking about it, which is basically means image generation, text generation, stuff like that.

Abdul Rahman: And third one is the intuitive where the segment of AGI, ASI, and all those conversations, world is trying for that. We are still yet to see, we have seen a lot of good, great progress there, but I think still that it will take a few years from now to get that materialized. Um, but in, in general, in broad spectrum, these are the three [00:28:00] AI category, which I put into, and when someone comes into me with a request, I try to see, is this a passive AI requirement?

Abdul Rahman: If someone wants to just do OCR, uh, read the documents. So we don't need a very sophisticated tech. Okay. Because it will increase your cloud cost when you go on scale. Sometimes you will compromise on accuracy and stuff like that. So it depends on what framework is in. I'm kind of extremely excited about AIS.

Abdul Rahman: I come from the optimistic person, but I also bothered about job. Transformation. I don't think we'll lose the jobs, but in this transformation, this era is different, this world, this time, uh, compared to industrial revolution to invest, uh, agriculture thing, which was transformed to industry revolution to IT or technology revolution, not this AI revolution will change.

Abdul Rahman: Definitely a difference with car and jobs, but this time [00:29:00] it's going very fast. Earlier we used to have 20 years, 30 years cycle, which means generation, new generation will cope up, old generation still manageable and all that. But this is moving very fast. Uh, transformation is really. Uh, crazy. So, uh, one side I'm extremely excited and the other side, I feel like it should be regulated in some way.

Mehmet: Absolutely. You know, and there is no more exciting times, uh, than now, uh, I've been in, I've been, you know, like, uh, Long enough, I would say in, in, in this domain, um, like I've seen, of course I was much younger. I've seen when the internet first came out and I've seen, you know, the smartphone and I've seen, you know, like, uh, 3g, 4g and all these technologies that everyone was exciting about, but I've never seen a moment where, you know, like even tech giants in just like, You know, like this, [00:30:00] like in a speed of light, they, they drop everything and they follow this trend.

Mehmet: And of course, we start to see a lot of startups coming up from, from, from this domain. And there's a lot there to do, of course, in generative AI and other fields of AI, because to your point, Abdul Rahman it's like the computer vision. It's like the deep learning. It's, it's like, there's a lot of, of things that, uh, and I believe we're going to see any other, uh, I would say, uh, Any other technologies that you are seeing also on the rise in addition to the, that can be coupled with the AI, actually, do you think like these two, that there will be like, again, doing fantastic things at a much faster pace, even of what we're seeing today, any expectations you have there?

Abdul Rahman: Yeah, I think I am. I can bet on two industries. One is financial industry and the second one is healthcare industry. The reason is main two things. So one in healthcare, [00:31:00] we as a body is, is a kind of a pattern and it's a complex pattern. So if you increase your weight, you will increase your some kind of other vitals and it's everything around that.

Abdul Rahman: So healthcare as an industry really works well with AI because AI is nothing but the, Automation or data patterns on steroids. So technically it's going to be rooted really well with healthcare and the biological space. And the second industry, which I think is the financial industry, because a lot of, uh, Patents and regulation and stuff like that has a lot of complexity in the instruments.

Abdul Rahman: But in terms of investments, things are going, has been very complex in that space. And with AI, it will make it very simplistic to explain it, assistive decision making, risk profile. Uh, loans, uh, leasing, stuff like that. I see this too, uh, uh, industry, [00:32:00] which is, uh, for me is like always, uh, HHW, which is happiness, health, and wealth.

Abdul Rahman: And I think health and wealth category. Is really going to adapt, but yeah, 

Mehmet: I love this. I love this, Abdul Rahman, uh, really. Uh, and I think one, one thing I will add to you health and wealth, I would add knowledge. And this is why also I've started to see, um, education, you know, and I've been very, uh, lucky to meet on this podcast with people who are doing fantastic things with, uh, education.

Mehmet: EdTech using AI, by the way, um, yeah, it's, it's just mind blowing. Um, you know, a couple of things before we, we, we close up Rahman. So as you know, we were discussing technology, fast things, you know, and especially for you, you have to keep yourself up to date with the latest. So what was or what is your strategy to keep yourself updated with [00:33:00] with everything that is coming at this fast pace?

Mehmet: Like how you keep yourself and the team, you know, uh, I would say, uh, updated on all these innovations that happens. 

Abdul Rahman: No, absolutely. I think for me, It's, it's basically, uh, when I have to see myself, I always question myself with capital and what it means is like knowledge, capital, financial capital, and social capital.

Abdul Rahman: These are the three. And now I've added fourth one is an emotional capital, which is what you give away back to your community and people are on and spreading. So it's like, I try to see if someone is smiling and all, and when it comes to the knowledge, capital comes the first for me, because I feel like other things can be a source to reach that.

Abdul Rahman: So in terms of knowledge capital, the one way I do is like every day I go for a morning walk, one hour walk or running there and I put a podcast and there'll be always be a [00:34:00] someone who is talking about AI or some other industries or how the entrepreneurship is changing for them and all of this thing.

Abdul Rahman: So it's upscaling myself every day, one hour is my kind of daily norm. And with respect to the team, we have a. Dedicated 10, 20 percent of time budgeted. The processes are push the structure of the, uh, some kind of monthly goals. Are they, if they don't finish that particular task of reading book or watching the videos or something like that, you'll your salary is hooked with that.

Abdul Rahman: So we made a salary structure where 90 percent will get fixed without no question asked, but 10 percent is on monthly goals. And one of the goals are always towards upscaling. Well, getting work done on time and stuff like that. 

Mehmet: That's amazing. Uh, Abdul Rahman, you know, the final thing I always ask my guests to actually say two questions in one, um, final words of wisdom from someone who tried to do it.

Mehmet: And, [00:35:00] you know, I always love to hear these stories and I love people who showed their vulnerabilities same as you did. So you, you said like you fail and then you start again. Try it again. So final words of wisdom to fellow entrepreneurs, because on this show, you know, this is one of the things that I try to do is of course, to encourage anyone who's sitting now, hesitating, should I go do it?

Mehmet: Should I try, you know, to go and do it actually. And also people who are already in tech. Also to inspire them. And this is why you see here insights, ideas, and innovation, you know, in, in, in the frame here, because that, you know, the whole thing is we need to give insights. So people get ideas and then go out and innovate.

Mehmet: So the whole thing. So from you after a man, uh, final words, you know, as advice to fellow entrepreneurs and where people can find more about you and your company. 

Abdul Rahman: So I think I like the kind of two, cool. Uh, equals, [00:36:00] right? One is what it made me think and. After so many failures, I get up every day and just do it.

Abdul Rahman: And when I was reflecting myself, it's one important thing for me was creating jobs and that's making me feel good about it. And I feel entrepreneurship is about creating jobs, helping more people out there, and that was a purpose to me. And I think everyone will get to some kind of purpose and purpose or meaning of life, their life to think about something.

Abdul Rahman: colliding with that, whether it's health care or education or anything like that, because the passion is very important. If every day you get up, really the day will be dry. Things will be tough, rejected by investors, rejected by clients, something like that. So the core is very important, the purpose and the eco around what you make you feel.

Abdul Rahman: The second is like, don't look at the Or if you're playing a football, don't look at the goals. You just look at your game. So enjoy your process because when you are on the game and when you [00:37:00] are doing it, you don't know what will happen next. So it's about that. So when you are in the entrepreneurship journey, think about like, okay, what.

Abdul Rahman: The task, I can do it. Okay. I don't have funding. What can I do it now? What is that option? Do I have it now? Sometimes we overthink and we just question about it. And I've seen a lot of my friends and people who told me five years back, they want to start this startup. They are still not doing it because they, they, they're just questioning overthinking.

Abdul Rahman: And my question is like. You have this option, just do it, uh, you will learn it. You enjoy the process. Don't look at the billboard. What will, or when will I get CDZA funding? What I needed. That's are the outcomes. Enjoy the process and you'll get that. Yeah, I think echoing your purpose or passion is very important.

Abdul Rahman: Because, uh, persistence is the only way to succeed in the entrepreneurship. And that can only come from core of purpose or passion. [00:38:00] 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And where do we find more about you, Abner Rahman? 

Abdul Rahman: I think I'm always easily available on LinkedIn. Uh, it's just typing in Abdul Rahman Janoo on LinkedIn is easily available.

Abdul Rahman: And in fact, my calendars are always there. So if someone can block me on LinkedIn. And the website is www. teriksof. com and they can know more about my company as well. 

Mehmet: Sure, I will, uh, I will put these links in the show notes. And just, you know, uh, as a, uh, you know, small, my two cents, as they say, on what you mentioned at the end.

Mehmet: Yeah. Uh, consistency, perseverance, Believe in the purpose, why you're doing, you know, the thing that you are doing. Uh, and then, you know, the rest will come. I've seen it, you know, it happened to me. I've seen it happening to a lot of people. So, um, you know, don't hesitate for one moment. If you think you are up to something, you will succeed.

Mehmet: Whatever [00:39:00] your condition might be today. So a hundred percent. I'm really, I enjoyed the discussion with you today. I always. Love to hear stories and inspiring stories and inspiring Advices also from someone who tried to do things because you know The best way to to give back is to share our mistakes I believe one of the ways of course, not not the only way and thank you for sharing You know your story with us.

Mehmet: And of course what you are doing today is also very very I would say Uh Important because you're helping fellow entrepreneurs to, to build, you know, something which has purpose as I was, you know, I be a big believer in the purpose, whether you are building a health tech, FinTech, whatever it even, it even might be, you know, as simple as a small tool that might be, you know, helping a small business.

Mehmet: I still appreciate this because you're trying to move someone from point A to point B and point B is supposedly. [00:40:00] Better place. So thank you very much, Abdulrahman. And this is the way usually how I will add my podcast episodes. So this is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast, by luck, thank you for passing by.

Mehmet: I hope you enjoyed the discussion today. If you did so, please subscribe. And share also this podcast with your friends and colleagues. I really appreciate that. We need your support. And for the loyal followers who keep coming back and send me their questions, their suggestions, their complaints, anything you can do, please keep them coming.

Mehmet: I love to hear feedback. I love to go over them. I love always to get this podcast in a better shape. It's a long journey. We are still maybe into the 0 to 0. 01 percent of this journey. And this is why we need all your support. We need all your suggestions and feedback. So thank you very much for doing that already.

Mehmet: And thank you very much for tuning in. We will have a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye [00:41:00] bye.