#561 Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Product: Ghazenfer Mansoor on Why Startups Fail

[00:00:00] 

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to the opposite of the CT O Show with maad today. I'm very pleased joining me from. From Washington dc Ghazenfer, Mansoor, he's the founder and CEO of Technology River. And, um, you know, I'm very pleased to, to have you [00:01:00] today, GAFA. We're gonna talk, you know, a lot about, you know, technology, how it affects businesses and you know, of course the latest trend in technology.

But before, you know, diving into all this, uh. As I do with all my guests, I keep the intros and the lengthy intros for them. So tell us a little bit more about you, your background, your journey, and you know, why you started the company, and then we can start the conversation from there. 

Ghazenfer: Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for having me Mammoth. Uh, so my name is Ghazenfer Mansoor. I'm based in Virginia. I'm just outside dc. I'm originally from Pakistan. Uh, I got my computer science degree from there. And then I moved to United States in 1999. Uh, worked with two startups as the early engineer. I got into mobile very early, around 2000 when I, um, built the wireless communities for one of the European companies.

And then, uh, creating a home controller. Um, through the palm [00:02:00] device controlling your home appliances. That's how I got into the mobile and that gave me more opportunities down the road in terms of working with other, um, mobile, uh, stuff, and that helped me build. The foundation of writing a book, which is, uh, coming in the next couple of weeks.

It's called Beyond the Download, how to Build mobile Apps that people love, use, and Share every day. Um, so after, uh, working for a few companies, I started consulting. Then I started a recruitment software startup, uh, uh, called Hire Works was a SaaS product, targeted recruiters. And in 2015, I started. Uh, technology Rivers, a custom software development company, started as a mobile app development company, uh, based on my expertise, uh, with a one focus that building software the right way the first time.

Because we have seen working with different companies, I've seen that it's very [00:03:00] common that in the tech space people are building products that never ending. So that's one of the common challenges. And startups do not have a lot of money to experiment. Uh, through that. So we came up with this focus, and then we are, we build many applications in the last 11 years with this focus delivered lead, um, building projects quickly and goal with the goal of, uh, launching, uh, those businesses, uh, as we move, as we grew, changed our focus to more healthcare.

So. Now we are, mm-hmm. Primarily more into, uh, healthcare software development because of our second customers with health tech. Then we started working with the startups from Johns Hopkins Innovation Center. This is where we learned hipaa and then move into this. So now we have over 50 applications that we have built that are healthcare.

Half of them are HIPAA compliant. So that's becoming, and then even within the healthcare, the two focuses. One is. [00:04:00] Um, building healthcare products for health tech companies. And second, helping services businesses improve their operations, uh, through AI and technology. And this is where, for example, the home care assisted living, uh, autism care, those kind of companies.

As these companies are going, especially in the regulator space, the people dealing with, uh, the Medicaid and other, there are so many regulations, so many complications. So out of the box tools are usually not that great. So building those internal. Tools, building workflows to improve their operations, get them scale faster, bring more efficiency, uh, profitability for, for these businesses.

So now focus is more on system power growth rather than people power growth. 

Mehmet: Great. And thank you again, Ghazenfer, for being here with me today. You know, the, the, the, your introduction sparked, you know, I would say a couple of questions that I want to ask you. Now, you, you've seen, I'm sure you know a lot of. You know, big ideas turning [00:05:00] into reality and production grade software and at the same time, maybe, you know, the, the unlucky ones.

So in your opinion, actually what makes, you know the greatest ideas ship and scale versus the one that quietly die and, you know, go, go into the, the, the, the grave as grave as they say of, of startups that, that, uh, fail. 

Ghazenfer: I think, uh, in my experience, the bigger one is really solving a real problem. Many time, uh, we start building products just because we love building product or just because we feel like this problem exists and then once you build it, people will come.

And that's one of the common scenarios that we've seen. So no matter how good the product is, if your customers are not using it. It's, it's of no use. So you can build, uh, [00:06:00] really solid. Um, foundation and, and we learned the same way. I mean, my first startup I built mm-hmm. The first backend engine, everything.

I knew the space. I, I did staffing, so I, I knew the space. I saw the gap as well. But once we build it, and then we realized we're not able to get the customer, we changed everything. Went back to the whiteboard. Then started talking with the customers, and then we started giving one feature at a time. So once you, so it's more about how you build and what you build.

So if you ask me, uh, if I have to do it again, I would say I would find the customer first before we even start building. 

Mehmet: Yeah. Now also, yeah, I know I, I was doing my research and I saw like you speak a lot about usually why software projects fail, and there are a couple of things here, so. Of course, like the need, right?

So that, that's for [00:07:00] sure. But what about also the vision, the execution, or maybe leadership alignment? Uh, what, what's, you know, your experience in this, especially, you know, like you help customers in, in, in building software. So where do you feel like sometimes you have to intervene to align everyone, um, you know, you, you're trying to, to help them build their, their software?

Whether it's like a SaaS mobile product or whatever. 

Ghazenfer: Yeah. These things obviously doesn't matter whether it's the mobile or SaaS, these are just the interfaces, or it could be a plugin or anything. I think, uh, the main o one of the challenges we have seen is, um, the feature race. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Ghazenfer: Like you wanna build everything, uh, with this concept that, okay, if we don't have those features, we will not.

Um, be able to succeed, right? Or we're doing it because it's, we're, we can do it [00:08:00] cheaper. Cheaper is not always great. So, um, uh, so it's, I think, um, it, it, it's really what you are trying to build. You need to have a clear understanding, uh, of what you build. And then, so yeah, the feature is, is one of the main, main ones.

And one of the things I tell people, like, okay, how do you even prioritize those? For example, so let's say you wanna build another CRM, and if you try to sell it as a CRM, uh, obviously Salesforce and all those big players are there, you'll less likely to have a success. But how about you pick one feature?

That they don't have. And you are solving, and even if you don't, don't position it as a CRM, but just build that one feature and bring the customers there. Once you have a customer for that, and it may be initially just integrating with all of those and then gradually add, I mean if you look at like say how HubSpot started the CRM, it was like just giving the free [00:09:00] version.

To their marketing customers initially, and then gradually it became, and there are many examples where you're building something and then it became a different tool because now your tool will have all those others, but that's not what, how you're positioning. So it comes back to your positioning, your marketing, how you are putting it out in front of the customers.

Mehmet: Right. And this is, I think what the, usually they call it you should f fall in love with the problem, not with the solution. And we see like sometimes, um, people like doing this mistake staffing, uh, you know, features as you said. Like, yeah, if we just add this one more feature, like. You know, we are gonna kill the market and actually, uh, it backfire.

But you know, also cafa, maybe you can enlighten people. I think this topic I discussed before, but I think it's a good reminder about, I don't want to go into the technicalities, but as an expert, adding features also sometime calls what we call or what is known to be, um, [00:10:00] technical depth, right? Because sometimes you add a lot of features, so can you enlighten us a little bit also, what are the.

Negative impact other than that. Okay. You are not selling or you are not growing, like can you just highlight this, uh, technical depth issue also as well? On a high level? Of course. 

Ghazenfer: Yeah. So I think this is, uh, and we have noticed that a big issue with, uh, I would say it's, it's a issue on both sides when it comes to, let's say a non-technical, working with a non-technical team.

As well as working with the tech groups. Mm-hmm. So they have a different approach of those. So anytime you have, like, as you're building those features, your technical debt keep increasing. Now you have to find a way. How do we keep, uh, clearing that up? So it's like anything like in your house, if you just keep all the work, and this is okay, we'll do this cleanup project after six months, it'll be a mess mass, there'll be a big, [00:11:00] but if you keep cleaning it up on an everyday basis, then probably you could solve a lot of those.

So the bigger challenge is many of time you're focusing on feature. Customers or, or stakeholders are pushing for a certain features to say, okay, I only want this thing, I only want this thing for them. There's no importance of, uh, let's say upgrading, uh, that plugin or, uh, like maybe using a different tool for that.

They are only one, okay, give me this thing. I wanna sell this. The problem is it gradually keep increasing and then things get out of control. So. It's really providing that direction. Somebody needs to, um, drive that and prioritize how your technical debt versus the feature race, um, goes. Uh, and, and in our, uh, business, one of the things I push for it to clear that up on a really, [00:12:00] on a, uh, on a short term basis.

Like as you're touching a new fe, let's say, as you're working on a new feature. If that requires some changes, maybe add some time into the same feature, but just get it, uh, resolve that re if you need to, refactor, if you re need to readjust, because if you keep doing, that's how you're getting it better.

But if you just wait for it, you're just waiting for disaster to happen. 

Mehmet: Yeah, it's like just, uh, you never know. You are sitting on, on, on a, um, you know, un, un uh, unfixed territory, as they say, like unstable territory now. 

Ghazenfer: Yeah, I would say at this time, just only one comment I wanna like, sure. I think this is the time where your product management and your technical leadership, the CTO VP of Engineering, like that's where some prioritization need.

Mehmet: To 

Ghazenfer: happen at that time because this is the time if you, just because those are the groups that have a lot more understanding of [00:13:00] each other's work, and that prioritization is much more easier compared to if you just leave it to total high level or total tech team. 

Mehmet: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, of course, AI is top of mind of every business owner.

Now, gaan and uh, people want to. To, to leverage this technology. Right. Uh, but we read, hear, watch reports about like how businesses are struggling to turn AI into ROI and like it's another, like any other technology actually, but maybe AI because you know, it kind coming very fast now. So. Where have you seen actually, you know, uh, AI actually transform operations versus just, you know, sounding impressive in pitch stacks?

Ghazenfer: I think in reality, AI is making a difference everywhere. It depends on how you're [00:14:00] leveraging it. Like even at the basic level, let's say most people are using it, let's say from a carton perspective. Even then some would just use it as a search, but not really getting deeper into how you can do the prompt engineering.

Do it more efficiently. So, so it, it, it's changing everywhere, like in our world, uh, leveraging AI during all the development, whether there's cloud code, whether there's cursor, um, uh, code coverage, documentation, a lot of those things. So I think, so we have to see from, and when it comes to businesses, uh, I would say focus on the workflow.

Rather than a tool that's important part in per, because I mean, even in the development part, at the end, the goal is to code coverage. The good goal is to have a good code goal is to, uh, have the efficient code. So the goal [00:15:00] is not really that, oh, just using ai. So same thing, uh, the whether in healthcare.

Business workflows need to be automated. So those, that's where you can take a big benefit out of the, the ai. So, uh, e even going back to the pro, the, the content part, uh, if we look at it, there are many different ways you could optimize getting things done, um, uh, much faster than, uh, a traditional way.

Whether it's using, for example, cps, whether it's using, um, the GPT or the projects in Claude and, um, and Chad, GPT, we use heavily Claude in, in our, uh, in, in our businesses. So all these do make a difference. So it's really knowing how to use it. This is one of the areas most people still struggling with how to best use it.

[00:16:00] Because if there are so many things going on, people are overwhelmed. 

Mehmet: Right. How is it affecting like. Uh, I would say service-based businesses, like, um, any, anything that you, you've seen like maybe I, I'm reading also like articles book, and I see usually majority of the time where people get stuck is they try to implement the technology before reviewing, for example, their, uh, processes.

Right? So, um, they, they, they don't do a kind of auditing before actually putting the technology. Which is AI now automation. So, um, what, what are like some best practices usually when, when you talk to customers, you try to let them, you know, I would say adopt before, you know, starting actually the project, like kind of prerequisites I would call it before, you know, jumping right into the technology.[00:17:00] 

Ghazenfer: Yeah, so this is one of the, the challenges. You, you are right, like people pick tools first, and their tools are many, like even within ai, like now you see Claude, GPT, Gemini, all of those, and there are different models, so they will continue to change. So the tool are not, and that's a bigger mistake. People do.

They pick the tools, so, but you have to look at your processes and you, you, you raise the point of the processes. So it's, the AI is gonna do what you give the input, so it's gonna. Uh, I would say it's, it's gonna give you, it, it's gonna optimize what you have. So if your processes are not right, you're not gonna get a good outcome from ai.

That's not gonna magic happen. Your data has to be cleaned. So the bigger part is cleaning up your data, mapping your workflows. Then, uh, defining your processes if they're not well, and then AI would auto automate those. So it's [00:18:00] important that, um, uh, we, we, we, we look at from that angle rather than just putting, uh, putting the tools out.

I don't know if I answered, I think I missed the second part of it. What was the second part of the question? 

Mehmet: Yeah, we, I mean, yeah, exactly. Did we, what, what you mentioned is about the, the, the processes and, you know, doing this, uh, availability of the data. So yeah, you, you answered my question. Now I want to go to the healthcare because you said like this is the area you're focusing on now, Gaza.

Talked about HIPAA and for people who are outside of the us. So this is, you know, the, um, you know, the standards and, uh, framework for securing the data in healthcare. Um, now and elsewhere in Europe, they have something similar in different countries. They have something similar. And healthcare is, is highly regulated.

Now when it comes to technology, whether it's AI or not. Ai again, like I'm, I'm talking in general. [00:19:00] Um, so have you seen. Like these regulations are kind of a blockers for innovation. And if so, how have you seen, you know, people in this domain are able to kind of work their ways around so they can still innovate without breaking the rules.

Ghazenfer: I think we're, uh, most of the time we start mixing up, uh, compliance with innovation. Um, I would say if, if, if you separate those part. So, uh, and then having, let's say you can still innovate. You can have the right foundation, but you just keep in mind the compliance part. So it's like anything, let's say even without the healthcare, like you alway, you already, you always had security in, in your system.

You, so that doesn't stop the innovation. [00:20:00] So, uh, the HIPAAs. GDPR, those there are rules defined, uh, there's some criteria. PCI is there in a financial system for a long time, right? That doesn't stop the innovation. So, um, uh, yeah, I would not mix them. I would say it, it just, you need to, uh, have more governance part define.

Compliance cannot be added at the later stage. It can, but it would add more complication. So you want to have a compliance from day one. So your architecture, for example, if you know hipaa, so your architecture will need to have all of those, um, items in your, for example, it requires encryption at rest and encryption at transit.

It requires audit, logging of every action. It requires audit log of every activity done by your users at the. At the database level, at the application level. So there, there are, and it, you need to track [00:21:00] who did what. So all these are not still going to stop you. And now with ai, one of the other things I wanna add, because that's where one of the bigger misconception in terms of, oh, we have a PHI data, uh, uh, personal health information data, which need to be HIPAA compliant.

But now with ai, obviously you have, um. LMS that are training on all the data that you put in, but there are rules and regulation that you follow, then it won't, for example, um, you can build an architecture in such a way. That, uh, your private data stays, uh, within an AI or not, uh, and LMS are not training on it.

You can have a BA in the us you can, you have to, uh, you are required to have a business associate agreement that basically tells that. You will follow certain. So like many of our customers, when we are working with Google or with Gemini or [00:22:00] OpenAI, so both OpenAI and Gemini, uh, and Google, they're signing the BA where they are promising that your data, there's no data retention.

Like there's uh, there's no data that's gonna be used to train the AI to and zero retention policy. So these are the ones. Once you follow those regulations, then um. Uh, then you can implement so again, and then the data anonymization. So a lot of those things do come in, uh, place. I can talk more on this if you want.

Mehmet: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would, I would love to hear more insights from you. 

Ghazenfer: Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, while we are on it, so because this is again, uh, um, uh, more of a CTO show, so I think on this one I can go a little bit deeper on this one. So there's a concept in AI called rag retrieval augmented Generation.

This is where, so if you have your internal data, sensitive data that you don't want [00:23:00] ai. To, um, to train on. So you can keep all of your internal data into a rag system and which is, we also, uh, in a vector database. So you tokenize the data and then as you're doing the searches, you ex retrieve that data, filter it, and then AI is doing a search limited on, on unlimited data.

So, and again, this is also your reducing the hallucination 'cause by default. One. One of the funny thing with AI is like any question you ask. And you'll always get answer, even if AI doesn't know it will guess it. Yeah. And that's the part most people don't realize We are getting the wrong information. Um, so, uh, to, and let's say your, whether it's you're querying your knowledge base, your healthcare information database, any of those, you can get hallucination because the amount of data that is processed by AI [00:24:00] is also limited.

We load, let's say 50 files, doesn't mean. T or Gem, all of those are gonna ruin is because there's a limitation on the context, limitations on the token, right? So not all the files will be read and users assuming I'm getting the right data, but that's where this architecture comes in. Like how do you make sure that right data is picked up and then AI is giving you recommendation, uh, or optimizing the results based off of this data.

And, uh, we, uh, obviously this is a very common architecture or imp or important architecture that we need to be careful when it's come to building, um, uh, any, uh, any healthcare. Related any, uh, any information, uh, any application where it's more of internal data. Could be knowledge base, could be your legal data, could be your financial data.

Uh, any sensitive data, right? You have to follow that architecture. Uh, [00:25:00] 

Mehmet: uh, you know, I'm happy you, you mentioned this gafa because, you know, people sometimes, you know, they think it's like, it's, it's like, uh, magic, which is not right. So the, the alms are programmed to throw at you tokens, which, you know, you see them as text, right.

Uh, because this is how it, they, they try to, uh, guess the text, right? Because this is, this is the concept and people, you know, this is why I tell people like, we should not call it intelligence. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's, it's. It's very useful, but it's not intelligence in the sense that it goes, although they call it reasoning sometimes.

It's just try to find the best answer that the algorithm thinks it's fit for your query or question and you know, it's good. You mentioned the rag also as well, and this is why, you know, the hallucinations and all the things that we, we, we talked about in previous episodes also happen. So I'm happy like you, you, you get this back, uh, uh, GAFA and thank you for sharing this.

Now I want to go back, you know, regarding the [00:26:00] book. I know it's coming in, in, you know, couple of weeks you said. Um, what was the main motive for you to write the book? And the book title is Free Up. Promotion Playbook. Why do some app, uh, you know, uh, still fail? Like, I mean, tell, tell me more about the book.

Ghazenfer: Yeah, so, so I think, uh, maybe, uh, something changed, uh, when we started talking a while ago. So the title a little bit changed. So the title is Beyond the Download. Oh, okay. How to Build mobile apps, how to Build mobile Apps that people love, use, and Share every day. But the concept is still, uh, the, the same.

So, um, yeah, it started with based off of my experiences working with. Different mobile projects. So we built close to 60 different mobile apps in the last 11 years. So, uh, learned a lot. And plus my own experience even before, um, as I mentioned earlier, like I started involved [00:27:00] getting involved in. Mobile in 2000, building web-based systems, so Wow.

Uh, or building for Palm Pilot. So, um, now it's a different, uh, time. So all those experiences, so the book shares, uh, 30 plus different strategies. The goal is to have a retention because you build the app, 

Mehmet: right? 

Ghazenfer: And it will be another app on somebody's phone that people, uh, will not be. So how do you build the app that people keep coming back again and again?

What are the strategies you can, uh, use to, uh, to get that retention so that it's not just a download, that's why it's, the name is called Beyond the Download. Getting a download is a first step. It's about making people use every single day. Uh, motivation obviously was, um, uh, the first was really, it was in my bucket list.

I wanted to write it. Uh, so it took me a long time, three years to write this book. 

Mehmet: Wow. 

Ghazenfer: We started as like small ebook first and then [00:28:00] started expanding it, uh, wrote few blogs on this topic. So as so gradually we started getting those contents and then realized, okay, now we can write this as a full book.

Mehmet: That's, that's absolutely, uh, you know, something good. And, and sorry for the title 'cause it's been a while. And just for those, I'm very transparent. It takes a time between the booking and the actual thing. But, uh, we are fixing this, uh, hopefully this year. Um. Like you mentioned something, which, uh, we, we call it, we call them sometimes vanity metrics, right?

So number of downloads, and you talk about getting people back again. Do you think back to our maybe the first, the first part of our, uh, interview today, is this related to the problem they're trying to solve or is it something else, you know, that makes people, uh, want to come back? Sorry. 

Ghazenfer: It, it, [00:29:00] it could, it, it, it is problem.

But at the same time, uh, in today's world, when you have so much, you keep forgetting. So there are different ways of, uh, doing something. How valued is it? Valuable It is. Um, uh, for you, so like on a daily basis we're using Facebook, TikTok, and many of those, those are the ones, why do we go back? Uh, could be entertainment, could be business reasons, could be whatever, our email.

So what is that need? So yes, when it comes to that need, yes, it's the problem you are solving. But many time the TikTok did solve some problem, but was this really a problem? Or it added another entertainment for it, but people got addicted to it. So sometime. It doesn't mean that you solve a specific problem, but you create something so people feel like they're coming back.

So, uh, I still, uh, love one of the Steve Jobs [00:30:00] code where he says, your customers don't know what they want. You have to tell them. And that is very true that we have seen over and over again. You need to build something, you show your customers and. You warn them, love it. If you ask them, they may not be thinking that this is the problem they have.

Uh, and many time the problem may be indirectly solved. Doesn't mean what you build is the core. It could be an indirect, uh, problem because your core problem would be totally different. But this other thing is helping you stay on top of other. 

Mehmet: Right. And, and, um, to the point you just mentioned Gafa, regarding, you know, why people come back to the app, um, as, as you mentioned, like it might be reward and the reward might be entertainment, right?

So you give the example of TikTok, which is basically, it's, it's, it's a, an entertainment app and you know, like it [00:31:00] just shows you the videos that. Probably you're gonna like and watch like the short videos. So, um, and, and I think the, you, you, you know, better than me, like the, uh, I would say the, I would call it, you know, the, the differentiation between I.

App and another one would be the ability of getting people to open this app again and feel that there's a need for them, whether it's an actual problem, as you said, or it's something that they will feel them like happy. And this is, you know. Discussion. You know, always people come to me and say, Hey, ask.

Okay, you always talk about problem. And you know, there's this famous, uh, vitamins versus painkillers. And I tell people there's nothing wrong of building vitamin products. If, if you can manage to, to get people to come back again, um, and use them. You, you nailed it. And as you said, like the Steve Jobs quote, again, like you, we, we need to guide the customers.

Like they don't know what they [00:32:00] want. We need to guide them of what, what they need. So this is Absolutely, yeah. So I'll give you, 

Ghazenfer: I mean, I can give you a couple of examples. So like, for example, if you're building a greeting card app, right? Yeah. So you can say, uh, you can use this app to write. Thank you messages or birthday or so.

Obviously you'll have a birthdays and know some of those, uh, events coming not every day. But how do you create the strategy for them? They feel like, oh, I should be thanking somebody every single day. Right? So now you are like, it's not about just right, it's a greeting, but how do you make it easy? For the people to, uh, give compliment, for example.

Right? Right. So suddenly there were certain things that these coaches teaches us we should be doing it, making our lives better. So now suddenly it's no longer a greeting ca card app. It's about. Making you a better human, making a better connections for [00:33:00] with your loved ones, with your friends, with your family, with your, uh, professional, uh, group, right?

So you may want to come back again and again because every day certain thing happen, like, okay, get up in the morning. Um, you want to, uh, uh, appreciate something so. And the same thing with the vitamins. It's not really just about knowing about vitamins. So vitamin could be just one day, but how do you make it so that.

You start seeing the benefit of this is sharing with others. So something interesting that brings you more frequently to this app. And obviously that doesn't mean like every single app, you'll be need to, you need to be using every day. 'cause obviously ev for every type you, but the goal is to bring, come back more frequently and not forgetting that app depending on the specific usage.

Mehmet: Right. Yeah. And we spend money 

Ghazenfer: on Amazon all [00:34:00] the, like every other day we are coming to Amazon, right? Yeah. So, but 

Mehmet: yeah, I just say, yeah, I just a hint. Uh, I'm not sure where I saw this. They were giving the examples of how even now, the, uh, developers of all these AI tools like chat, GPT and others, so they are trying to see, other than you go and.

Query something to get, uh, some information, you know, the way they are trying to get people hooked inside their, let's call it the ecosystem, is. How you, they get you involved in social interactions, like sharing the picture that you generate? I read it somewhere today, I can't remember where, but I've seen it in an article, I'm sure earlier this morning where they're saying like, the reason why.

And the time of the recording today is 17th December, but we are airing this in 2026. So the reason why a Gemini, for example, nano Banana was able to grab this because they played [00:35:00] on the fact that you can share the video directly, you know, from a button while you know. The others, they didn't have this.

You need to copy, paste and, and all this. So, you know, this is kind of things, this is for people who are listening to us or watching us and thinking, okay, how can I make this rewarding in a sense, similar to what you mentioned Gaza first. So this is maybe a, an eyeopener I would say. Now I want to shift gears a bit and talk again about the business.

So you talk a lot about moving from one X to 10 x and having this mindset. Prepping the service business for a profitable exit. Now, from your perspective, at what point should founders start thinking like acquirers, not builders anymore?

Ghazenfer: I think that should be from day one. Mm-hmm. You should be thinking how, because. Like in business, we say like, your strategy is the key. [00:36:00] So if you know your path, like um, uh, let's say, okay, this, these are my five year goals, 10 year goals, so this is where I want to be building a company with that specific goal, with that direction, definitely.

Put you, set you apart and then also give you a faster path so your team will know what actions to take. Uh, and obviously every service business is different. You're going through the different struggles initially. Obviously, once you are at that stable moment, you will do it. But having those tools do help you.

So when we talk about one x to 10 x, it's about. Uh, automating your processes. So, um, and that doesn't mean you just build a full custom, uh, software on day one. So what, what, what we look at it like, okay, any software that you are using, if that's available [00:37:00] to your co, then there's no. Advantage. Yes, it's still good, but you want to build something that is unique for your business.

That's your value proposition, right? So let's say you start, um, a cleaning business or lawn mowing business, any of those. So you, you will have likely have. Obviously you start with your monday.com type of project management. Your something for your people. You'll have a CRM that is common in that industry and which is a good starting point.

You want to do that because your competition is, you want to get up and running with these, all these tools along the way. You look at it, what are your processes happening? What are my pain points? What are the things that are taking time? So you wanna look at all your manual processes, uh, all the bottlenecks in a businesses or anything that if automated could bring more efficiency.

So as you start doing that, then gradually your things [00:38:00] start moving faster. So maybe, uh, a lead coming in from your website to. Somebody making a call, giving a quote, or to onboard a customer or even getting a better communication. Any of those, uh, any of those would bring some efficiency. I don't know exactly what it is because every business has its own unique DNA, so we, you have to look at that specific, but the goal is to build something that is unique for your business and how you do it.

You start really simple, you start with just one thing. It could be adding maybe a texting in your business, like I'm just saying, like again, yes. Mm-hmm. But this to the tools are available, so, and it may be just. Integrating with the existing tool, you may be using 15 different tools in your business. And, and you know, like all of these [00:39:00] tools usually have some overlap.

At least there'll be one or two features overlap with each other. So you, you're, you're, let's say, spending a lot of money on these things. Maybe starting consult could be building one agent that do one thing that simplifies your processes, right? So it's. You have to identify what those, so writing one agent or customizing one is not expensive.

It's cheap. So you can start with one. The goal is that your team needs to be on that same, gradually build that momentum, the mindset change, because change is difficult. The moment you say, we wanna build software, everybody's start thinking, or we are becoming a tech company. The goal is not become a tech company to start with.

However, I've seen that again and again. Once you build these, after two years, the founders are saying, oh, now I wanna run a tech company, because now they start seeing the benefit of [00:40:00] it. Because anytime you start thinking, oh, I wanna build this software for everybody, then you are derailing your focus.

Remember, we're talking about earlier features, right? But when you are building something internally just for you, you are not thinking of anybody else. So you are solving one specific problem. So with that in mind, after. While you'll see, oh, now I build these, uh, 50 different agent to solve my problem, and all these are integrated, oh, this is really becoming an asset because now what I'm doing.

In an hour my competition is doing in 10 hours and they're not gonna be able to copy your workflows. They're not gonna be able to copy your processes. They may have access to the same tools that you are buying, but not what you have internally. And that's what that creates a differentiation in your business.

And that differentiation mean you have more efficiency in your processes. [00:41:00] Your. Profitability increases. That means your valuation increases. So if your business is whatever, let's say three times, four times ebitda, this could get into 15 times, 20 times because now your business is tech enabled. It has more efficiency, that has less errors.

So the more you move towards a system, power growth versus people power growth, the, the better your business is. The prop, the prep, the better valuation you have. 

Mehmet: Right. And, and you know, what about also, you know, maintaining when, when you grow the business, you know, keeping this culture the, the, the, the, the mindset of uh, like transparent communication, ownership, you know, what, what you can tell, you know, fellow founders about this also.

'cause I'm fair from your experience. 

Ghazenfer: Uh, so are you asking, uh, from the same context on a service business, or are you asking from in general? In general, yeah. In 

Mehmet: general. [00:42:00] Yeah. In general. Yeah. 

Ghazenfer: Okay. So, uh, obviously, uh, transparency is the main thing that will build trust. Without that, um, you, you won't have a trust, so by default, you may go with the notion that, oh.

Um, if you're not transparent, obviously, uh, there are issues, but the bigger part you're right, is, uh, what you're asked, like the ownership. That's the key part in getting things done. And we struggle that a lot, even in our business. It took a while, um, even to like, as we're doing certain things, like sometime you can say it's a task that is getting n how do you convert the people from reactive to proactive mode?

So yes, there's a, there's a request from a client. There's a demand for internally, externally, you get things done. But you want to create a culture where people are react, not reactive, but they're [00:43:00] proactive. They're looking ahead of, uh, uh, ahead of, uh, time and looking at what could be the potential problem.

It's for the dev people. Uh, it's for architect, for project, for everybody. Like say for developers as they're making those changes. We're talking with the technical debt, that's the ownership part. Oh, I got this new feature to build. Do I just build that feature and go home? Or it may take 10% more time, but now I need to refactor my existing code as well to make sure that oh, the next type, uh, next time anybody touches.

They don't have to do that. Or am I looking at my data in the same way that, okay, I'm creating this. Yeah. There was no requirement, for example, in your application to, I'm just saying as example, let's say, uh, to track login history, for example. Right. But you know, some of those things as your application goes live, you will need to have some kind of analytics.

You [00:44:00] need to have some kind like, so there are some implicit requirement. I always tell people like, you still need to build it. Right. So that's a coaching we need for our team as well. So whether it's a salespeople, marketing developers, architects, everybody. So the ownership does make a huge difference in terms of how things are.

The quality automatically increases once you have the ownership, 

Mehmet: right? Uh, this is very. You know, I would call it, um, it's a treasure. Like, I hope, I hope, you know, a lot of people will listen to this because I think, you know, like, uh, uh, people miss these things. Uh, especially, you know, when, when they are on still early on, on the journey and they miss part of this now as we are almost, uh, coming, uh, to the, to the end, and this is usually I ask ev all my guests, um.

You know, maybe final words you want to share with the audience and where they can find out more about you and of course about technology [00:45:00] Reverse. 

Ghazenfer: Absolutely. Uh. Thanks for having me on this podcast. So, uh, you can, people can reach out my personal website, gazen for.com, uh, G-H-A-Z-E-N-F-E r.com. Um, and then also technology rivers.com.

From both of these, you can find. Uh, the link to my book, my podcast. So I have a podcast as well, lessons from Oh, nice. So, um, um, so where I talk with other entrepreneurial leaders, talk about the, the leaps that they have taken. So, um, yeah, so, uh, these are the two places, uh, people can, um, can find me. And in terms of final word, uh, I think it's a word which is moving so fast.

Uh, AI is definitely. Um, making, uh, a, a lot of headways. I think it's faster than I ever imagined. This is a, an interesting time. [00:46:00] At the same time, it's a scary time. So one of the things we took as a, so a as as you know, like the development companies. Seem to be at some stage, oh, a lot of this white coating and all these things are coming, would it be impacting my business?

So you have a opportunity. Do you want to be, um, uh, the next, um, what do you call it? Uh. The blockbuster babies are ties us, or do you want to be the next Amazon or Netflix? Um, be innovative. Like can, do you wanna compete or do you wanna stay behind? So we decided that we will compete. We will go ahead on ai, we will make sure we are innovating, we're ahead of the game and doing leveraging ai.

Taking advantage of it rather than just be on the side and looking at it. Things are changing. So I think, um, get on that [00:47:00] bandwagon. Learn ai. Otherwise you will be crashed. Your jobs will be impacted no matter what. So it's, you have a choice to make. Do I just want to be waiting for that to crush me or, and this, because this is the resistance that I've seen.

Like some places there's a pushback. Oh, ai, you're not ready for this. It has risk and all of the whatever are those, it will be sooner, it will be implemented sooner than later. It's one of those like where companies didn't want. Um, or offshore or outsource. But once, once the uh, uh, the nasdaq, um, and New York stock chain numbers came, with all these companies doing all of this, everybody was quiet because they have to look at it, what works for them.

So AI is gonna bring more efficiency. So, and again, to me, the AI is not a replacement. It's about empowering people. So, 

Mehmet: right. 

Ghazenfer: If you look at it more positively, and this is gonna empower like your, if you can do. [00:48:00] 10 things that you were supposed to do anyways because previously you were only able to achieve three, four of the things based on a time you had.

Now you can achieve 10, so why not be more productive? 

Mehmet: Right. You know, these are like pretty much words of wisdom. Thank you very much Gaza for this. Um, you know, it was very informative for me also as well. Thank you for your time. I know how busy it can be for, uh, a founder and entrepreneur like yourself, uh, Gaza.

So thank you again. All the links you mentioned. People can find them in the show notes, so you don't need to go and look for them. So I'm gonna put every, uh, all the links in the show notes if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app. If you're watching on YouTube, you can find them in description.

And as usual, this is how I end my podcast episodes. So this is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed If you did, so, give me a favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are [00:49:00] one of the loyal fans, keep coming again and again.

Thank you very, very much. For your support, encouragement for the past. We finished three years. We are in the fourth year now. Um, 2025 was amazing from results perspective, although, like for me, as I say, always for the Pathways, I was always saying if I manage to help one person with this podcast, I feel I fulfilled my duty.

But you know, the numbers were fantastic. Lawsuit. Uh, we were like trending in the top 200 Apple Podcast charts across multiple countries, and hopefully we're gonna continue to do that in 2026. So thank you very much for your support and as I say, always thank you and stay tuned for a new episode very soon.

Thank you. Bye-bye. I.