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Crucial Conversations
Dive into Crucial Conversations, your portal to insights from the trailblazers shaping our world. With Llewellan guiding the discourse, explore not only groundbreaking tech innovations like AI, web 3, and quantum computing but also inspiring life stories and transformative thought leadership. Engage with industry pioneers, visionary thinkers, and unsung heroes as they share both their cutting-edge inventions and the journeys that molded them.
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Crucial Conversations
The Sweet Spot of Tech and Tradition in Tony's Entrepreneurial Journey
Meet Tony, a tech solutions consultant based in SEA with three decades of experience. Discover how he safeguards his colonies and ensures product purity using cutting-edge technologies.
Tony inspires teenagers through his 'Teenagers In Free Enterprise' initiative, offering practical business experiences to the next generation.
Next, dive into the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and its transformative impact on project management and corporate strategy. Tony shares insights on implementing TOC, from startups to unlocking success with the Gold Tree method. Learn to identify and strengthen the weakest link for optimal performance.
Wrapping up with a tech twist, explore the power of observability tools to drive efficiency and innovation.
Plus, delve into augmented reality (AR) and the importance of lifelong learning in entrepreneurship.
Join us for a journey through tradition and tech, where Tony's tales offer rich lessons and inspiration.
다� theaters Alright Alright, alright, alright.
Speaker 2:Alright Alright In the famous words of what's his name, what's that accent? That does all the rom-coms. That's a good looking fella, oh yeah, oh, he used to do all the rom-coms. Then he reinvented himself. He was like no more rom-coms. You know, the story right? Yeah, and then he didn't have any gigs for like two years. He refused. They were giving him funny money, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he just said I'm not doing another rom-com. You guys are boxing me in, have you read his book. No.
Speaker 1:It's a very interesting book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure he's an interesting human.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he is, and he has an interesting family. Really yes, Like wild.
Speaker 2:Like wild, really Like crazy wild. Did he come from? Like a hippie background or?
Speaker 1:what? No, not really, but his parents were divorcing either five or seven times. Same parents Same parents, so they were divorcing and getting back and divorcing and getting back.
Speaker 2:I've had a relationship like that so I can't judge.
Speaker 1:I mean, he explains the reasons behind that and he has actually like siblings as well.
Speaker 2:So it's just no, he's an amazing human. Yeah, he's also become all of a sudden like a motivational speaker. Yeah, so many clips of him just sharing polls of wisdom. Old Matthew, what a legend. There's another legend on his name's Tony.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Welcome, tony.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:So glad that we we're getting to sit down and we've walked a short journey together, but you've grown on me like I don't know what a good metaphor for that is but you've grown on me in a good way. I think, you're a very nice guy and you're very friendly and forthcoming, and I think you won me over when you gave me some of your homegrown honey.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm happy to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you do give off that vibe. It's from your parents' honey form, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right. We, when I was born, we started beekeeping business. Yeah, basically, it's a small beekeeping farm far away from here. Yeah, and in 30 years.
Speaker 2:Where is it? Far away from you.
Speaker 1:In Kyrgyzstan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I don't know where that is on a map.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's above China and below Kazakhstan, so somewhere there in like the middle of Central Asia, nice, yeah, and in 30 years we didn't have a single complaint from any customers. Yeah, I have never seen such a you know business or such a venture that didn't really have a single complaint. But I know that for a fact and that gave me a lot of motivation to do my own business, to leave my own life like this. There is no single complaint, yeah, has your family always been into?
Speaker 2:I think it's called, is it? Apiary Beeforming? What's the technical name?
Speaker 1:Technical name yeah. Beekeeping api yeah. Yeah, because it has this latent. I came across that when we were doing an internet of things project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to try and measure the yield of the hype. It wasn't just the yield. It was to pick up colony death, the onset of colony death, and prevent it. Also so by measuring temperature in the half.
Speaker 1:Nice, and then vibration. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And also to prevent acid theft.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because beekeeping and honey is a passive business. I didn't realize until I went down that that's projects, just how much money is in the industry, especially when you start dealing with, like manuka honey or you know the healing properties of honey, that's right, it goes for quite a premium, so the project was worth Vodafone and Aeon that we were looking to help them create a insurance product for the bee farmers that would have this product subsidized in mitigate the loss of bee colonies which resulted in claims.
Speaker 1:Okay, makes sense.
Speaker 2:Always interesting how technology can reinvent how you deliver products right. Yeah. And then we were going to also introduce blockchain to trace from farm to fork, because there's so much fraud in the honey business which I also didn't realize until I got involved with this project where they dilute the honey with other corn starch or other things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, fraud is another story. And yeah, how many generations has?
Speaker 2:your family been farming.
Speaker 1:Oh, just my parents started.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We are not really into like this ancient multi-generational business, don't speak too soon.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're going to be carrying a baton, who knows Nice, okay, well, I think to baseline the audience on who's, tony, maybe you can just give us a bit of background on where you come from, the work that you currently do, and then we can take the discussion forward from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So I started as a motivational speaker to children back in Kyrgyzstan. So my background is in business administration. I was always interested in how to run startups, how to launch ventures, you know how to grow the business. So from the very early ages I read Guy Kawasaki's book, robert Kiyosaki's book and all this Rich, that poor dad Literatures Right Now. When I was at my university, I started with my team. We started a project called Teenagers Infra-Enterprise and from there we saw how kids like school kids that are about to well, 15, 16, 17, 18, they can actually start their own ventures, their own small businesses.
Speaker 1:And a very interesting outcome of that was that we started with writing business plans. So children were writing business plans like they were really putting, like this 40, 50 pages long business plans, you know, in front of the judges. And then we shifted that to business models.
Speaker 1:You know the notion of business model canvas. So I was the one who forced that into the project, and then it all shifted from very theoretical projects to very practical. They literally went outside on the streets and start selling stuff. This is where we really it was. It just blew my mind away and from there, when I graduated my university, I became interested in tech, so I became a programmer and in the company that I am currently a managing partner, I was the one who was doing internship, you know, for no money, just to pick up the coding skills. And then I was, like four years I think, a professional backend developer, but then my management background still called me, so I started shifting my role to like a delivery manager, so the one who was responsible for the full delivery of the services that we provided, and then later I became a management manager partner.
Speaker 2:In the same business that you started as an intern, as yes, so basically, the business is around software development.
Speaker 1:It is around custom software development and it's about all the services that are around it, right Infrastructure wise, cybersecurity wise. And then, within the company, I started a different project that we are right now taking off the ground.
Speaker 2:Got it, got it. I think that's quite a remarkable story. Not many people come into a company as an intern and then end up as a managing partner. That's definitely testament to your personality and work ethic, and you must have shown some amazing outputs and belief that must have been built around you from those that were above you. What do you think was the secret to that success? How did you go from intern to managing partner? I mean through your lens, which is obviously biased, but it's your journey, right.
Speaker 1:Well, I think mainly it is based around the trust that I can establish with the people whom I deal with. So eventually the top management they knew me even when I was at my previous role, when I was managing a program in the university, so this is how I actually met them. So I organized the hackathon and they were participating there. So eventually they knew me and they knew I was a legit guy. But I was really passionate about building stuff, I was really passionate about coding. So they were like okay, so come do an internship with us. Because I had to switch my role right the high paid job to basically nothing, to start from scratch.
Speaker 1:When I was an intern, I was not the regular intern, right, because I had all this previous experience under my belt. So I was mostly intern for tech, but for the business standpoint I was very, I would say, well developed professional already. So when I got into a lot of projects, I basically was a product engineer. What they call a product engineer, right, it's not the guy who basically executes tasks, but it's the guy who asks questions why are we building that anyway? So this is the most important question that the developer has to ask why are we building it anyway. What's poor right? Who would use that? And eventually I was the guy who asked that, and then customers were really in favor of me dealing with them, and so I kind of transitioned to that role Plus. At the same time, I am really into learning and sharing, so this is what I am really good at. I love philosophy, I love ideas that are worth spreading and I love spreading them.
Speaker 1:So, eventually, I got passionate about the theory of constraints that I mentioned to you, developed by Eliyahu Goldrath, and then I started massively promoting this management philosophy within the company, and so I think from there our founders actually realized that.
Speaker 2:I see, not a normal human being we're dealing with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they told me about it from the very beginning when I introduced myself and said that I got my Ironman done. So they were like okay, so you are not normal human being.
Speaker 2:I'm like okay, yeah maybe yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm that crazy.
Speaker 2:Ironman. So you've done a full Ironman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done half, and that was at a time when I was a really good shape, in good condition, so I was thinking that my full Ironman is just a breath right. Because I've done my half under five hours. So eventually I was like really in a good shape.
Speaker 3:But then I didn't pursue till the full one Because I felt that you know, not needed, yeah, nothing to prove already.
Speaker 2:Excuse me, yeah, yeah, that's a crazy. I mean, if you just try and do one of those disciplines by themselves, that's quite a lot. So when you combine the swimming, the cycling and the running for full, it's just stuck insane.
Speaker 1:It's really just next level. Well, it also depends highly on where you do that, but eventually, yeah, so many people perceive it as something unrealistic, but in fact, and that what I proved to myself, is that you can actually be prepared for everything.
Speaker 2:I have a question out of curiosity Kazakhstan, dosekri, kyrgyzstan, kyrgyzstan. Yeah, just educate us a bit about the country, because I don't know too much about it. What can you share that you're comfortable sharing and enlightening everyone about your country? Because I'm quite patriotic about South Africa, I'm keen to hear a bit more about your country. Maybe you can just give us some insights.
Speaker 1:Sure, in general, kyrgyzstan is a very, I would say, authentic country, so basically, you will find a lot of pure nature there. So you think about a place where you can go and ride a horse when it's not comfortable at all, when the conditions are harsh, because the landscape there is almost like in Tibet.
Speaker 1:It's like a lot of mountains On. Some portion of them are small valleys where things are growing right, but mountains are generally very high. There are a lot of alpine fields as well, so it's just gorgeous. So if you want to have a place where you go and you don't have internet access except for the cities and villages, you don't have a lot of resorts being built around and people are just crowding around, you should go Kyrgyzstan, because they say it's Switzerland for the Central Asia.
Speaker 1:Interesting Okay, and this is the perspective, general perspective about the country right. Many people go there to do a lot of hiking, to do a lot of trips, mountain trips. There are lots of high mountain peaks. So, for example, being in Malaysia, I was always laughing about people climbing up to I guess it's called Mount Kinabaru, right, and it's just 4,000 meters and I'm like, oh, 4,000 meters, it's fine. I did it quite a lot of times in Kyrgyzstan, right, because mountains there are as high as 7,000 something.
Speaker 1:So, 7,500, I believe. So the place is beautiful. At the same time, the place has a lot of potential because it's remote. So it's in the middle of Central Asia. I don't even know the more remote place in the world I would say I'm not counting New Zealand or whatever but when you're in the center of Central Asia you're so landlocked that people really don't notice you right.
Speaker 1:So that creates a lot of potential. So people there are passionate. They say if you can do business in Kyrgyzstan, you can do business everywhere. So it has as many countries do. It has a lot of potential for education, right. It has a lot of potential for investments, for business and the potential means there is a lot of improvement, right?
Speaker 1:There is a lot of things that still are people doing to kind of bring this all to a higher level. So what I am dreaming about is to basically execute on that potential. So even in my university years, I was really passionate about teaching children how to do business even a simple one right, because I had a firm belief that people should not rely on government to increase and sustain their well-being to sustain their wealth.
Speaker 1:In fact, they should rely on themselves and on their peers right and do the business so that they can. You know, everyone can bet that off.
Speaker 2:It always freaks me out if I look at a country where the people are completely beholden to the government. It's just a recipe for disaster that never ends well. It's one of the things that worries me most about my country is that there's this mentality of just the government must come fix or government grants becoming dependents on government grants. It completely eliminates the sovereign individual from thinking, doing and creating and shaping their reality. So I'm with you on that one it diminishes the potential right. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So for me, this is the most important component where people still have a lot of room for improvement. Right Even the skies are not the limit, as Goldritz has.
Speaker 2:And do a lot of people from your country travel overseas to go work in other countries. Are you an exception?
Speaker 1:I think people like me who travel far away from the country are generally exceptions, although Google has some Kyrgyzstan employees, as well as some other big companies and corporations. Yet still we are, I think, exceptions. The majority of the population would travel to the nearby countries that are more developed, like Russia to work there and send money home. What is your first language? My first language is Russian, russian.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you are outside of Russia, but your first language, russian interesting.
Speaker 1:So eventually, because of the Soviet Union right, we were all mixed and so my roots are half Russian, half Ukrainian. And then I was raised in a family of Russian Ukrainian ancestors you call that, and my second language was English and my third one was the native language of the Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyz Got it.
Speaker 2:Is it difficult? You don't have to answer if you're not comfortable. Is it difficult seeing the Russian Ukraine debacle unfold? Because it's almost like the same people.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is difficult, it is just difficult. Yeah, there is no straightforward answer that I can give. There is no straightforward explanation. Right, I'm not really taking sides or whatever, but it's just so painful to see people come and kill each other.
Speaker 2:Agreed. Okay, thanks for sharing that. I think it's always interesting. One of the things I love most about Singapore it reminds me a lot of South Africa in that respect is it's so multicultural in South Africa and Singapore, I find, is a melting pot of cultures and best of breed kind of thinkers and innovators from around the world in such a condensed space. It's one of the privileges of being here, so hence I like to just understand and share. Let's just rope it back to the work that you're currently doing. So you work a lot with startups. That passion is still there. I think you wear multiple hats at the moment. So what work are you currently doing with startups? And then I'm going to loop back to your theory of constraints and the product that you're building off to that.
Speaker 1:Yes, so what I do most of the time is I'm trying to first educate the startup founders on how to do the next best step that they can do.
Speaker 2:Because within the reality, at that point in, time wherever they are on their journey.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I've been to many projects within startups right, and within enterprise as well that I just failed completely because there was some knowledge or some managerial decisions that were either not done or done like completely off right and the very basic stuff that I really admired about TOC and I'm so thankful for to Goldrod for that.
Speaker 2:When you say TOC, you're talking about theory of constraints.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that's right Is that he managed to bring the scientific method into management. Many people think that management is about psychology, right? Yes, there are some components of psychology, but mainly managerial decisions can be viewed as a simple like you know, empirical, logic-based things, and so, for me, when I see a project, a startup, right, that people are asking whether we can do a software for them or not, I'm not the one who's like yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, we will do that. Yeah, that's a very easy road to help.
Speaker 2:And to make money, and to make money just to make money, to make money. To build the thing even if it's not the right thing.
Speaker 1:To make money short term that's the point. Correct, correct, yeah to make money short term, because in the theory of constraints, there is also a good point. A company must make money now and in the future, because if you're only making money now, there is no point You'll be. It's like, as I just heard yesterday, the unicorns right the unicorns Instead of a unicorn. You would become a unicorn right, which eventually means that okay, you'd be burning out of cash.
Speaker 2:Do you become a unicorn after you become a unicorn, or is it you fail so hard and so badly you become a negative unicorn?
Speaker 1:It's both, it's both right. You can become a unicorn, but then it's just you're not doing any valuable stuff right. People don't need your product or service, right? And so what I question founders, or any managers who approach us, is what's really their value, preposition, right? What is their product market fit? How are they doing it? How are they testing it? And so what are they building? Why are they building that? Because, based on their answers, I can basically identify whether they are doing something that has the potential or it has not.
Speaker 2:These are startups that are approaching your software business to help them to outsource to you, to actually build yeah. And I mean, there was something you said earlier that freaked me out, which is, you know, when the developer asks you why you're building it, if the developer's asking you that question, you're already in trouble, right?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you don't have a backup, right? So there is no way you would say, oh, just build it right, Because this is not what we are doing. Right as an IT consultancy. We are actually acting as your technical partners, and maybe it might sound counterintuitive for some people, but we are really interested in the success of those who approach us, because otherwise we are wasting time. They are wasting time. They are also wasting money. We're also wasting money because if we employ, let's say, and organize a team of, let's say, 10 people right, If the project fails, where will these 10 people go? On the bench?
Speaker 2:And you want them to find success, because their longevity is your longevity.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, that's right. That's a bit picky when selecting startups or selecting enterprises who want to do some projects. Now I think I found a very good way, a very logical way of how you can detect whether a startup has something interesting to offer to the market or not, and it's based on pure logic. So, in theory of constraints, there is a notion of the notion of sufficiency and necessity. So if you can build a matrix in your mind, in your imagination, right when the x-axis is sufficiency and y-axis is a necessity, you will have four quadrants. Something is not sufficient nor necessary. Something is either or or. Something is both. You understand what I'm talking about. I'm visualizing. So, for example, let's take grab right. Are they a necessity right now for some people?
Speaker 2:For me though, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You cannot really imagine going anywhere without basically even thinking about grab, let's say right. Of course they are not a necessity for some people. Some people would still prefer going, let's say, metro, right, but grab is sufficient, sufficient to get from a point A to point B. Now, sometimes they are necessary because you have time constraints, right. So they are both necessary and sufficient and therefore people actually use them. So imagine a founder who builds the stuff that is neither sufficiently nor necessary. It's crazy. Why would people even want to use them? And, even worse, when something they build is necessary but not sufficient, right, because then you would have a tool that you are paying for but it doesn't solve your problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think it's going to solve your problem, but it's not delivering any results.
Speaker 1:It's not necessary to achieve your goal right. So I would advise really, if there are founders who are listening right now, to take this matrix and lay down all the features that they have in their minds and just see is it necessary or sufficient, or both, or neither, for their clients to achieve their goals.
Speaker 2:And making me think, yeah, because I mean we work of desirability, feasibility, viability, but that's biased through your lens. The necessary or sufficient logic is pretty simple, simplistic but effective.
Speaker 1:It's a very simple logic. You will have the answer in like minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's basic. The dimensions that you can Q&A yourself against. Okay, so take me through the process. When you've got a start up coming to your business, how do you go back to the basics with them? Where do you start? Is it at the problem statement? Or maybe kind of talk me through what you unpack to determine, like what you need to determine before you even start working for them to justify your involvement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So, right, it all starts with the problem statement. I'm trying to figure out what they are building and why they are building. For that I'm usually using a tool called the gold tree. Basically, it's a simple tree, it's a diagram that you built where you, on the top, have a goal and then the second layer would be critical success factors. So, in order to achieve this goal, you need to have A, b and C right. So without any of those, you will fail. So you lay down all that, and then on the third layer, you have, like, a necessary condition, so the necessary condition for achieving those critical success factors, right.
Speaker 1:When I lay down this tree with the potential customers, I already know why they are building what they are building right. And then it makes sense to me why even they would go into this startup idea or certain product, right. And then, based on this goal tree, I can understand what would it take for us to build that, because all of the necessary conditions are there, as a, again, necessary right and sufficient functionality so that the platform operates well, or the product operates well or the service operates well. We have nothing else there. We just build the core right, because the startups always have the budget constraints, right the time constraints, and very often founders are so in love with their ideas that they put a lot of things over there. Functionality A, b, c, d that's how it is it's not against the methodology.
Speaker 2:It's based mostly of intuition or bad advice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. They are just passionate about it, they are so in love. They fountain with ideas, right, I mean.
Speaker 2:I've been that person so I'm not even judging.
Speaker 1:Sure sure, I'm not judging them as well.
Speaker 2:It's just so funny I'm laughing inside because I think back to some of my early days as a founder and you actually become like blinded by your. You're obsessed with your idea that your blinkers are on. You don't really take input or advice.
Speaker 1:So that is why I'm so insisting on the usage of logic, right, because logic is actually, it's neutral right. So you can look at your business like neutral right. You're just simple answering some questions and then you understand oh, it doesn't, it's not sufficient and it's not necessary. Why would I build that anyway? Right then.
Speaker 2:So you do it at a feature level.
Speaker 1:At a feature level, at the main feature level, right. And then I'm trying to understand okay, if there is a process, a value delivery process, right behind this startup, because if there is no value delivery and they skip the component of people paying, yeah, eventually there is no funnel.
Speaker 2:So when you talk about value delivery, you're talking about earmarking the stakeholders linked to your problem statement and then prioritizing those and understanding the pain linked to each of those and then whether or not you're solving that pain for the value exchange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got it. And then what I would do is, even before proceeding, I would ask them to do a mom's test. If you've heard about this book, it's called mom's test, where the guy eventually explains it all how you should do the customer development.
Speaker 2:Explain the acronym.
Speaker 1:Mom's test is when you just go to your mom and say hey, mom, I have this idea, Is it great or not? And your mom says of course.
Speaker 2:That's terrible right.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's terrible.
Speaker 2:It's like the same people is like going to your mom and asking if you should join the voice or pop out or something. Sure sure, yes, you're the best singer, you're the best.
Speaker 1:Now you never do that as a startup founder. You never go to your mom and says, hey, this is what I got, is it good or not? You take a different approach. So you basically study. You study your mom's past, you study your mom's current state. You never tell your idea unless you start understanding some of the things that you relate to your mom's experience, and so what I advise almost every founder that I deal with is just read this book, because this book is a thick manual of how you go about finding your customers and also proving that you have a product market fit.
Speaker 2:What's the mom's?
Speaker 1:book the mom's test.
Speaker 2:The mom's test. The name of the book, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's check it out. Quite valuable and many people will talk about that. Key takeaways. Key takeaways always do your homework before you actually are building something. So, essentially, as a startup, as a first time startup founders or just startup founders, you may test your hypothesis, because everything you have is just a hypothesis. You test your hypothesis before you invest crazy amount of money into the software. You speak to people and this is where a majority of startup founders fail. They don't want to look at the reality. They are so much afraid of being just laughed at. What's a stupid idea do you have?
Speaker 2:It's so painful. Could, be that Could also be building in a dark room waiting to unleash onto the world your amazing invention. That's right you need to find out that it's not unique. It's not amazing that you don't understand who you're building for.
Speaker 1:So the key takeaway is basically talk to people, but talk to them in a smart way, not in a dumb way where you would just approach them and say, hey, would you use this? What's the smart way? The smart way is not directly asking them, but observing them and basically making conclusions from their real actions rather than just blindly believing in your idea. And there is a whole methodology If you've heard about these philosophical methods called Socrates dialogues, where he eventually finds out the answer to the initial question of a person who doesn't know the answer.
Speaker 1:So it's something that reminds you of a Socrates dialogue. Basically, you might speak to a person, talk to a person who has, or you think they have, a problem, worse, your attention, the problem that you are solving, and then, through all these sets of questions, you never propose, you never tell oh, I have an idea, I have a solution, right? No, you first ask them whether they actually have a problem and then, when they actually tell you that they have a problem, okay, ask them what did they do about this problem? If they have done nothing, most likely they don't have a problem.
Speaker 1:Or they would never pay attention to your solution as well, because it doesn't bother them.
Speaker 2:So that's a bigger problem. Yes, so, solving the right problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, solving the right problem that they are also desperate in solving. Well, they're willing to pay for yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was once in a startup. We were building a very sophisticated tool for them and they were in a very high belief that this tool actually is needed. Because they were from the field, they were like, oh, we know it all in and out. And then after half a year of the development, they were able to solve the problem. They started pushing this tool to the market. Not a single user, can you imagine? Like not a single user, except some fraud guys, because the tool was related to moving money around, securing money, basically securing money upfront.
Speaker 2:Was it something that they built that they thought they needed because of their background.
Speaker 1:So they were like oh, we experienced this problem like a lot, so we need that. And then at the end of the day, all of their friends, all of their previous colleagues, the market in general, just didn't accept that Again. Right, because if you ask the question, was it sufficient? Not really, was it necessary? Not really. And at that time I was really at the beginning of my journey, so I didn't have a chance to actually ask a lot of these questions. But then I saw how all then we started just diminishing and diminishing and diminishing and eventually the project was over.
Speaker 2:Yeah was over. I mean, I've made that mistake. I think only on my latest product would I say I've followed the right approach and I'm still nervous even though I've done that right.
Speaker 2:So normally it's like from idea run straight out the starting blocks to a web developer done that a few times. If you're lucky, you've got a good web developer that can do the UI, ux and make sense of it all. I've also done the random innovation where you just building things that you think are going to, you know, solve a problem, but sort of compelling pain points. You know, which is a difference between, I like to say, a problem and a compelling pain points are two fundamentally different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:On this iteration for the latest product I'm building. It's an AR product which is actually designed to remove this learning curve that founders go through Even now, having gone from idea, mvp, one hybrid consulting tool, ar, tested for a year, spec it with a BA, build out the UI UX, do the market. Focus groups changes the product immediately, which is the point, and that's been the big benefit of following that methodology, because when we've done those focus groups, we've seen and again you've got to be vulnerable because now you're sharing, sure, and there's two problems with that. One is, if you're as paranoid as me, you think everyone's going to steal your idea, oh yeah. And the other one is you might not want to face criticism of the idea, but actually what you need to be is open, and this is the most open I've ever been.
Speaker 2:Luckily, I have a business partner that quells my paranoia and has created a long line of people to come through and provide focus group feedback and it's fundamentally reshaped the product. And the nice thing is it's reshaping it's at a UI UX design stage. It's given it depth and breadth and functionality that we hadn't attributed to the target market. Yet I'm still nervous because now we're going into dev, that we come out the other side and getting as people to pay for the product even though they say they will. So, yeah, it's such a daunting journey, the founder journey.
Speaker 2:And the best you can do is try and be patient, methodical. There's enough resources out there to read and learn from Quell, your founder desire to just rush from zero to.
Speaker 2:MVP that you try and sell. So yeah, I think it's good that there's people such as yourself out there that at least have the foresight and good faith to be a sounding board to get people to relook at their product market fit. I think most ISVs will be short-sighted and just take your money and develop until you run out of steam and then say sorry, it didn't work. They get paid right.
Speaker 1:We were just only doing what you say to us. We are not to blame right. No you guys have to blame. You are not acting as professionals.
Speaker 2:Well, technically they're not, but if they're good if they're a partner if they come with a partner mentality, then yes, and I think that sets you apart from the rest and that will help you build a very loyal customer base.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were always having a mindset of dentists as a person who has a pain and comes to the dentist, the dentist would never even argue with you that you need to have a painkiller.
Speaker 2:But I think I've got a bit of a traumatic story about a dentist. I'm convinced that there was one dentist that had a number. He had to do a certain amount of re-canals in a month. My mom sent me there without supervision as a young lad and I remember holding onto that chair, sweating, getting a re-canal. I'm convinced I didn't need but I have no way of proving it. But to this day I'm convinced that guy was like let's give him a re-canal today. I didn't think I needed one, but anyway, I agree with you. Dentalist is not going to argue with you that you got pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so meaning that dentist basically takes his actions because he's a professional, he knows what he's doing and at some point, if you would wish, avoid painkiller, maybe the pain would kill you eventually. You would be damaged like a lot. So essentially it's a shared responsibility, always as between each partner. So if you have your partner also questioning you, you believe that your partner is genuinely interested in this business to continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the older version of me would be very dogmatic and defensive. I try and be really open and I was having this discussion, funny enough, last night to someone we bring it into our ecosystem and he was asking how does the other partner feel about the new business? I said she's still not convinced. And he was like oh no, is that bad? Like no, it's really good, it's good feedback. It's telling us that you need to do something more to convince her and that you need to make sure that we're building the right thing. And I said you know you've got to be open in this process. As soon as you obstinate or ego testicle, you are guaranteed to get humbled by the founder journey. You know, because you're just going to miss the soft or hard signals needed to make sure that you don't have a learning that ends up in your demise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fully agree on that, and this is why I got so happy when I moved into the field of TOC, which is purely based on reasoning, logic, scientific method.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a bit about that theory of constraints. I love the name Theory of constraints. Like I said to you earlier, it sounds like my bank account.
Speaker 1:Well, the founder of the theory of constraints, eliyahu Goldred where is he from?
Speaker 1:He's from Israel, okay, and he once was questioned if he can condense the essence of his managerial philosophy into one sentence. What would it be? And his answer was even more interesting than that. He said I can condense it to one word. Can you guess the word? I would not force you to do that. So the word was focus.
Speaker 1:So he literally took this notion of focus and he exploded in so many ways and right now TOC is just a huge body of knowledge that has impacts on sales, on how you would manage the change management or how you would manage the daily operations and how you would eventually improve your throughput of your business.
Speaker 1:Because the end goal and he has the founder of theory of constraints, he has a famous book, business novel written and this name is the goal. It's very simple, but it explains how any business literally can grow unlimited, like he said that even skies are not the limits. Because and what excites me about the theory of constraints is that he managed to well put the analogy between the, let's say, any business right or startup, whatever enterprise, sme, and chain, a simple chain right. He said that a chain is as weak as a weakest link. Right, the chain is also like it is allegory of the process, right, because every single business has a value delivery process which is also like a chain, a sequence of steps, right, a sequence of events. And now this, the name theory of constraints. Right, it tells you about something constraints the throughput right Of the organization.
Speaker 1:So what is the weakest link of your chain when you start searching? It's funny that many people actually know the notion of bottlenecks. Have you heard about them? Of course Right, but for some reason the theory of constraints is not called the theory of bottlenecks. Why? Because he says well, if Titanic is thinking, thinking right, there is no point of rearranging the chairs in the restaurant. The chairs are no longer your bottle, like it's not your constraint that Titanic is thinking. So you should really fix what is most important right now, what really constrains the whole business.
Speaker 2:Two pallets, one for Leo and one for the lady that let him fall in the water.
Speaker 1:So eventually everything comes down to focus.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Where management attention and especially the founders right, the founders of the business, where is, where should be their attention?
Speaker 2:Such a good point, and you know anyone that's ever started a business. I think the first thing you realize very quickly it's just a list of daily tasks and you can do it. Yeah, you can do it. You can do it haphazardly you can. You can do it at your pace, you can do it. The one that's going to win is the one that does the right task at the right time at the right place right.
Speaker 2:And how do you prioritize those tasks? How do you delegate those tasks? How do you have focus? I couldn't agree more. It's, to this day, my biggest challenge, because there's so many things that I touch and I hate being the bottleneck. There's no worse feeling than being the bottleneck. And then, you know, what I keep finding is I have to go into discussions, which is how do we and this is probably tying into the theory of constraints how do we unblock?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do we need to do how?
Speaker 2:do we remodel? How do we make the neck of the bottle wider? How do you empower more Automate? So yeah, I mean, even with the product that we're building now, it's a key thing that we're focusing on, which is understanding the DNA of a company, understanding the market readiness of that company. Then it's about based on that and how ready is the company to scale? And then, based on those data sets, what should you be focusing on, but in a dynamic way. Now, the first time I started doing this for my startups, I would give them 300, 200 page reports and I'd loop back to them a month later and be like, I mean, because it's so dense and so rich that information, I'd be like how those reports and I could see, even when I'm presenting the reports to them, they're like excited.
Speaker 1:And then it glays over, and then it's like you know, and it comes back to me a month later.
Speaker 2:I'm like how those reports say like you know they, we really love the reports, so have you looked at them? No, I'm like, okay, there's something there. Right, they don't have enough time. Yeah, a founder wakes up every day and he's got to deal with what's in front of him. If he's a good or experienced founder, he knows how to delegate these tasks. You know which people have different models. You can use Eisenhower's matrix or you can use whatever works for you. If you don't have a model, then you're probably doing it wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay, but we realized early on that we need to. We need to enable people to have a methodology, to know what they need to focus on in a dynamic fashion. So what we do now is we take the reports, take the dates and rebuild a custom AR for them which is their co-founder and that allows them to engage with that and say what is it that I need to focus on today through the lens of a CMO? What do I need to focus on and why? Boom, there's the tasks. Can't get away from the tasks. Unfortunately, the tasks are still going to be there. We then realized we need to kind of enrich our SAS with the ability to turn those tasks into action and we're going from large language model capability to large action model implementation, and that sounds like it has beautifully into your logic and it's something I want to research more and understand better is the theory of constraints is then to kind of identify where are you blocking right? Which area of the business is constrained?
Speaker 2:And what is the impact of that upstream or downstream?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the most important stuff. There are two things actually. One is that there is only one single constraint at a given moment in any business. Really. Yes, only as a chain, I told you, is it the weakest link?
Speaker 2:So the weak? So you're only as strong as your weakest link? Yeah, you're saying you just need to find the one. At that point in time in the business that's the weakest link. Yeah, fix that.
Speaker 1:And then they move to the next one.
Speaker 2:Interesting. How do you identify that?
Speaker 1:Oh, there is a whole process. You have five steps to do that.
Speaker 2:Come tell us Before I'm going to, but don't send me an invoice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before I'm going to tell about that, I would like to mention my second point, which is basically the theory of constraints pivots to what you should be doing and what you should not be doing. Okay, that's a very you need to also know that, right, because a lot of people, they know what they should be doing, but they are doing other things as well.
Speaker 2:They gravitate to what they should not be doing. Yes, what they should not be doing. The management should make it. I think I'd make a mistake sometimes.
Speaker 1:Make it Like should understand it so clear. I should not be doing that. I should be doing that.
Speaker 2:How do you know the difference?
Speaker 1:The bottlenecks versus the constraints.
Speaker 2:Because so it's a logical deduction Like this is going to take me left, which is where we should be going. This is going to take me right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because imagine a manager that, let's say, maximizes the throughput of his own division. Does it take the company any better? He really pushes his workers hard, right? They are almost about to burn out, right. Does it improve the business as a whole overall? Maybe not, Because it's not a constraint. There is no point, right, because other people are just not being able to cope with those guys. And it's like a road, right? Have you been to Malaysia?
Speaker 2:My roads are famous for the traffic jams, the traffic jams got you yeah.
Speaker 1:So if the road is fully utilized, it's almost equal to the road is not utilized at all Because the throughput is not there, right? So what is not needed to be done, right?
Speaker 2:Should also be there.
Speaker 1:It's more cause. Yeah, should also be there. So if there is no point of you making extra effort, you should not make an extra effort. How do you? Yeah, so then the process yes.
Speaker 2:Because you've got all these divisions, you've got all of these silos in your business. So how do you figure out the weak spots, the most pressing weak spots?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so first of all you have to identify the constraint and you do that by Well. In Gold Rush books they were mostly around production. They were factory based books. He told a very interesting point where you have the most unfinished goods, where the piles are just stacked. This is the most constrained spot, right, where all these unfinished goods are accumulating, right. So therefore, for example, he claimed that there is no need to build a lot of warehouses Because eventually warehouses are, you know, it's just they are sinking your ship. So basically, goods should be sold, not being stacked, right Now, when you identified your constraint either way, right. So you can just see that, okay, the throughput of our business just blocks here. Right, we eventually see that, because the capacity before and after that is actually enough. But here is the constrained one that just prevents the business from growing. When you do what you subordinate everything to the constraint and that's very important step just because you would stop wasting the resources.
Speaker 2:Just repeat that last part again, because you created such good visuals for me.
Speaker 1:So imagine, let's say, a three step process and you identified that the middle step is the constraint. Now those two side ones. They have a capacity of, let's say, 100 units, but the middle one has the capacity only for 60 units. When you understood that this is the constraint, what you should do, you should not improve the constraint, you should not elevate the constraint, right. What you should do is instead subordinate everything to the constraint, because then you would stop wasting your resources. Maybe you have extra people that are there. Just you know.
Speaker 2:So instead of the 60 go into 100, the 100s on either side drop to 60?
Speaker 1:Yeah, drops to 60. But you still have that capacity right. So I'm not talking about reducing or removing the workforce or whatever. You should not really force your people to work.
Speaker 2:Why wouldn't you make the 60 go to 100?
Speaker 1:It's the next step. So, eventually, when you subordinate everything to a constraint and you still see that there is a constraint, you exploit the constraint. What?
Speaker 2:does that?
Speaker 1:mean, it means you improve its throughput.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Right, so you improve its like the throughput is basically there. Yeah, the speed at which you generate something like, let's say, units of business value or something else. Okay. Right, and then you have everything ready to basically improve the throughput everywhere else.
Speaker 2:Interesting. My knee jerk reaction would have been to immediately focus to get the 60 to 100. Not to drop the hundreds down to a 60. So you go in like 180 versus 300 as a throughput, which isn't making sense to me.
Speaker 1:I build this as a very simple one, Sure sure.
Speaker 2:But there's the logic that I'm trying to understand, which is help me understand the philosophy or the logic to do that approach, because I want to land that.
Speaker 1:So essentially, you don't really know where the next constraint is going to be.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Right? So in a business usually business the pipeline is quite a long journey. It has multiple components to it. Usually they are going in parallel, some of them are separated and so on. So imagine this like a serious pipeline, right? So when you look at this and you see the constraint immediately, what you would want to do is first understand where are you doing unnecessary amount of effort? Because you want to keep it lean, startup right, or, like any business, it still has a lot of constraints to it. Right, there are a lot of constraints, or there are lots of budgets that you need to overspend, and so on. And then you would say, okay, so if I explore this constraint, if I get rid of it right, where my next constraint is going to be? Because if you would not subordinate everything to the constraint, you have a risk of getting a constraint elsewhere which would still block the whole thing, Okay.
Speaker 1:And since it takes time because, well, in this world we have inertia, right, it might take you several months or maybe half a year to get the improvement, but still you would waste a lot of resources along the way Well, you can just understand the whole situation and I'm not saying, okay, just look at it right. I'm saying, you know, manage it. And so eventually you would arrive at a point where you basically move from constraint to constraint.
Speaker 2:So if you solve that initial constraint immediately, you look for the next constraint?
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically, it's how you're doing the continuous improvement process. It's basically something like kaitzen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Japanese yeah and it never ends because you always have a constraint and they take it even further. Can you imagine they take it even further? They say, okay, there is one thing that you can actually do is that you can manage your business by managing a constraint, by not just blindly improving right and seeing where the next constraint is going to be and searching for it right, but by taking care of one single constraint and managing your whole organization through that constraint.
Speaker 2:Help me understand better.
Speaker 1:Let's say, do you think endless sales are good for any business or not? Endless sales, so sales that are just constantly generating, you know, demands for your.
Speaker 2:Converted sales. Yeah, it depends what you're selling. It depends, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but many people are convinced that the more sales, the better.
Speaker 2:Well, if your production line can't meet the sales quantum, then it's a mess.
Speaker 1:You can have brand reputation.
Speaker 2:If the rest of your business hasn't scaled to support what's coming down the pub, you can have brand reputation issues.
Speaker 1:So this is how you can manage a constraint right. If, for example, sales are your constraint and you still have to adjust your business otherwise, then you manage your business through sales, and sales are quite unpredictable. You still can forecast, but you know, there is always. There needs to be a bit of a pipeline cleansing yeah. Yeah, there is always something. Then pick another constraint, for example your R&D department or like an engineering department, right?
Speaker 2:How would you? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think I want to really land this. So is this like a executive meeting as an exercise to find the constraint? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how does that discussion materialize? Which is like, guys, today we're having a theory of constraints discussion and I'm here to find out what's keeping you awake at night in your respective division, and then quantifying which of those is the biggest constraint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, eventually it all starts with gathering all the divisions right and not paying attention to a single division separately.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So this is what we have talked about previously, right? Yeah. So getting the inter-divisioner meeting right. Collaboration right. This is first thing. Second thing is it all comes down to also formulating the undesirable effects that you have, meaning problems, basically in theory of constraints. They are called UDE's undesirable effects. Okay. And, in simple words, problems that the company is facing right.
Speaker 2:And so you have to quantify the impact of those UDE's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, this usually is quantifiable. So we are, for example, we are missing, we are constantly missing the sales target or the growth target or whatever targets right. And then a problem well stated is a problem half solved.
Speaker 1:We already know that, right? So when you have a well stated problem, then you are identifying the solution, right? So, basically, when you state the problem, you already see much of the constraint. If you don't see that, you can lay down the business value delivery pipeline and this is what I often do as well for my clients right, I just lay down the value delivery pipeline. Where does these all clients come from? How do they get through? How do they pay? How do they? You know?
Speaker 2:the cycle right.
Speaker 1:And then you want to ask yourself okay, so here's the data about all these steps. Here's we have the most constrained step, right? So okay, have a look, right, how would you go about that? And then you unite the team against that.
Speaker 2:Got it Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in the process of figuring out undesirable effects, you would be amazed how good it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think people fully understand. I find often the critical thinking is not always there. So it'll be up to a certain point, but it's not really considering how far down the problem travels or the knock on consequences and indirect, direct and indirect impact of the problem.
Speaker 1:Fully agree with you.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting. Okay, definitely learning something from this and making me rethink about how we, through the product we building, try and better pinpoint TOCs. Yeah, so if people want to engage with you, who's your target market and how can people engage and what value would you bring them when they engage with your firm? And tell us a bit about the product you're developing, which has been built for you to solve this very challenge?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So I would start with the engagement component, I guess and who we are targeting. There are several layers to that. The first layer anyone who has a startup or who wants to run a startup, who has some ideas and fundraise for them. They can just simply contact me via LinkedIn or whatever and bounce ideas off my head. I don't charge for that.
Speaker 2:What is your LinkedIn handle?
Speaker 1:Tony Fedorenko. Yeah, I think it's simple Tony. Tony Fedorenko.
Speaker 2:How do you spell Fedorenko so that?
Speaker 1:they D-O-R-N-K-O. Yeah. So they can contact me directly explaining their thing, and being afraid of people stealing your idea at this stage doesn't make sense to me at least.
Speaker 1:Right, because most of the startups, they start really humble, I would say. And then the next layer is that when people already have something so like a POSC or even MVP developed right, so they have already tried something get some traction and they need to build something really serious, something really robust, something that really should be working at scale. Right, because we are focusing on platforms that are built to have a high load secure platforms, high loaded platforms, scalable platforms. So when they have that and they found risk for that and they have a promise to be delivered on time, then they probably need us. Otherwise, I would highly advise to go to any fast delivery team that is out there that are quite.
Speaker 1:Maybe they are not really into processes, but they are just building something for you.
Speaker 2:Well, Hackers, quick and dirty for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, quick and dirty, right. So we are mostly not around that area, but still there are some things to talk about when you share your ideas and what we can do about that right. And then, because many people are actually getting the first product out there like this, like hacked way right, getting this very dirty way, we face a lot of clients that are coming to us saying, hey, can you please move this forward, can you please fix it, can you please make it scalable, and so on and so for that we actually have developed our own product right now it's called ngai, which is basically helping us to be transparent at the same time, to educate customers on how the robust software delivery works, how they should manage their own teams, because you know, if you are not Google, you probably are not skillful at managing developers.
Speaker 2:Do you think they are? Google, I think they are pretty good at it. Yeah, yes, it's funny that they've been disrupted. The way they are. Well, I mean, everything can be. I'm being facetious to just ignore me, but I think I also think, I honestly think, that when companies get to a certain size, they lose that special essence and Sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I definitely agree on that. However, I mean, the basic principle is still there, right? So they have pipelines.
Speaker 2:They have some standards. No sure, 100%.
Speaker 1:So all of that combined makes a good development culture, which then produces a good products that are somehow being used.
Speaker 2:They're producing good products. I'm joking, just having a go at Google today. No, they obviously are, so it's controversial at the moment.
Speaker 1:Okay, well meaning that if you are not really, you have never done that before. I mean managing the developers. Probably it's a black box for you, right? The development team. What the heck are they doing? Yeah, exactly, it's like we were discussing it, it's like having a car mechanic telling you you just have to trust. You gotta just trust. No visibility, you just need to rely right. But at the same time for a car mechanic. You at least pay not that much amount of money to fix your stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah depends Sure. Okay, so you're building a product that gives you the data and the insights across development teams.
Speaker 1:Across development teams, across projects, across financial components to those projects. So how much money are you spending? What are you spending on? How much money, for example, goes to feature A, b, c, communication, bug fixing, whatever right there, and you've baked all of this into one SaaS. Into one product basically. I would not call it SaaS essentially right now, but we can install it to your own servers just because of the privacy methods right so it's on-prem. Yeah, I would say it's a cloud-based, but we can install it on your clouds.
Speaker 1:Got it Because a lot of the companies that really care about their data being only within their own systems, right Within their own perimeters.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's your most sensitive data as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, because what is the most sensitive data? Right, jura issues code commits, whatever workloads and all of this stuff. And also we have a chatbot that people hate, but they cannot truly hate the chatbot just because.
Speaker 2:What's the chatbot's?
Speaker 1:name. Yeah, the chatbot's name is NG. Basically it's the team lead that never sleeps, so it basically drills you on the stuff that you should be taking care of.
Speaker 2:So NG is upsetting everyone because it's driving the engine. Yeah exactly Nice.
Speaker 1:And so with this product, we are offering our services, and a lot of clients are actually willing for us to leave this product for them as well, so that they can take care of their further development teams that are mostly built in-house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the same time, doesn't combine your data from your internal and external dev teams, because sometimes it's a bit of a blend, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is so we then figure out how we set up the things. Ok, but eventually all of our projects that are built for the other clients, that are built on the client's infrastructures and the client's basically dev environment, right, we don't really own anything.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So what are you integrated into at the moment from a product perspective?
Speaker 1:Well, most of the dev stack like JIRA ClickUp Slack, where all the communication happens.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:The code repositories such as GitHub, gitlab, bitbucket the teams, Microsoft teams.
Speaker 2:You integrated with all of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so eventually, if there is a request right for us, because we are building integrations mostly based on requests.
Speaker 2:And does it take all the communication or you can select what it filters from each of those solutions and it presents it in an orchestrated fashion on one platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you can definitely select what you want to look at, but at the same time, yes, so currently it doesn't take all the communication because there is no point of taking all yet, because we are not yet building a huge ML engine to predict everything that is going on there.
Speaker 1:However, for example, in terms of the asynchronous communication like stand-ups that we write, it takes all the stand-ups and you don't have to as a stakeholder, for example, in a project maybe a manager who is somewhere there remote, right, you can just look at the ng and understand the whole context of the project based on what you see in ng, including stand-ups, including commits, including why does everyone hate ng?
Speaker 2:Why does everyone hate ng the chatbot?
Speaker 1:Well, because it's enforcing. You know, it just forces people to do their things.
Speaker 2:What does management like ng?
Speaker 1:They don't have to spend all their time and they are not the ones who are being hated.
Speaker 2:Nice because someone has to do the dirty work. Yes, Someone has to police the task.
Speaker 1:It's a monkey job that we are trying to automate. It's actually in our mission. Our mission states that we need to automate everything so that human beings can focus on other things, become better. On human nature right which is creative which is play which is like innovations, right. So the monkey job of constantly reminding people of hey do that, hey do this, where is your that, where is your this? It's just a monkey job, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, what you should think of is if, later on, if you could understand the persona of each of the team members and then ng adapts how it deals with each of them according to their persona type.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah yeah, so pushing someone harder right, but pushing the other software.
Speaker 2:But triggering the persona kind of.
Speaker 1:Inner drive. So it's a motivational part, right.
Speaker 2:That would be pretty cool. I'm quite excited to take a look at this product. You know we starting our product development cycle now and we've got Gira, we've got ClickUp, I'm sure we're going to have GitHub. So you know we my biggest concern is not having visibility and not being able to do a due diligence. There's so much trust, especially if you are sourcing your dev yeah, so it would be good to see what you got, that you just explained, and see how it could potentially help us. Sure.
Speaker 2:So if someone wants to find out more about the product, where did they go?
Speaker 1:Simple ngai Nice.
Speaker 2:Engi.
Speaker 1:Enji.
Speaker 2:J-I ng.
Speaker 1:Yeah, OK, ng is your friend ng is definitely your friend, if in management.
Speaker 2:If you service delivery, ng will be your policeman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Observability tools are just tools at the end of the day. A knife can be, you know, a killer, or can be a saver right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, true, true, true. Good, well, I think you know. Thank you so much for sharing so much. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2:I definitely going to take the theory of constraints concept and unpack that a bit more. It's an interesting time to be alive because we've got all of the tools and the frameworks and, with AR kind of emerging how it's going to help us become better humans, how we can remove the mundane, repetitive stuff, how we can innovate faster, remove the learning curves, higher degree of success. I'm quite excited to see, because I come across more and more people like yourself we just had Sean as well you know that are out there trying to remove the not necessarily remove the learning curve, but provide the learning in a way that is sustainable or educate you so that you don't have the learning curve, because there has to be learning right. You don't just become a brilliant founder, it's like a baptism of fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah agree.
Speaker 2:No well, tony, thank you. I really appreciate you the work you do. I look forward to the next honeypot that comes my way and I'm only wishing you the utmost success in your business and looking forward to collaborating further.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you everyone.
Speaker 2:Thanks, have a good day, thank you, thank you.