Idea to MVP in 4 Weeks (Furqan Aziz)

Full transcript

Welcome back to the podcast guys. Today we are joined by Furkan Aziz, a CEO and the founder at Invosone. Furan, welcome to the podcast. >> Thank you so very much for having me today. >> To start, can you give us a quick rundown on what you guys do? >> Absolutely. The Inmosone is one of the tech firm that I established approximately 10 years back based out of San Francisco. But we have five global resource centers running with 500 talented resources around the world. And what do we offer? We offer founders and mid to large scale companies expanding their tech capabilities to deliver the software kind of deliverables or milestones on a faster pace. Most of the time you really need a very niche and unique skills required for the short term in in your team that you don't want to hire full-time people or sometime you want to double up the pace because you got a client or investor that you need to fulfill the timelines. That's where we jump in and we help such situations calm down by adding x number of resources in 24 to 48 hours a ramp up and ramp down period.

That's our specialtity. >> So you've scaled in zone to a large team. What was I guess the first moment where the so-called old way of running the company stopped working and what did you change to actually get through that phase? >> Absolutely. There were several stages. This is not one time. It happens so many like I would say at least half a dozen times. I would say four people things stop working the way it was working for four people. And then after 20 people like I believe four, 20, 50 and then 100. These are the four places where I had to change the management methodology, leadership style and the way and tools I've been utilizing to manage my teams because I been working remotely from very start. We were a remote first company having different people from around the world, different places, different time zones, different countries, different cultures, different languages. So that's why it was very much kind of a chaos if we were not to switch the leadership style and management style at four places.

I had to make a kind of switch or pivot I would say. >> You also talk about the idea to MVP in four weeks. What has to be true for that to actually work? idea to MVP I used to talk about it in early 2024 and 2025 people were thinking like it's it's a lie but now people can see it happening with lovable with rape with other AI tools like cursor and copilots and that's what we we adopted at very very early age very early stage we took the advantage of first mover advantage in in this market specifically adopting the AI tools to increase or enhance the deliverability productivity and pace of the development That's why we've been claiming the first week of the MVP is where we are actually negotiating about the requirements elicitation documenting out them them out and then kind of negotiating what to include what not to include. Next two weeks are actually the development keeping the co-pilots along with us. Then last fourth week is technically the UAT user acceptance testing quality assurance going into the production deploying onto the servers or cloud whatnot. So these are the four weeks.

First week requirements, second, third week develop and last week is UAD. >> Are there any mistakes that usually occur that blow up the timelines? >> They happen. There are situations when the requirements are misunderstood by the development team or sometime the client actually favor the kind of direction of the the startup all together or or the tech application whatever they're trying to develop altogether to some other direction. These are the two situations where uh one is our mistake when we are misunderstood something and the deadlines are not met and we have to technically buy or borrow some more time to meet them and another situation is on the client end because now they are responsible for changing the requirements. >> Well I can assume that founders bring you a lot of ideas. What's the best signal or approach that you spot to actually see that it's worth building right now? >> Technically, I believe uh there are two things or three things that I I usually look at.

Number one, if the person who is trying to build has a prior experience of building a startup, if that's there, then it's mean the chances of of mistakes are relatively lower because he already learned that failure loop and failure cycle. Now he probably would be much mature in that space. Secondly, if the funding is there or an investor is interested in this idea that means it this product or this venture would be backed by an investor eventually if not now eventually there would be an investor an angel investor friends and family or something like that. So that's the second signal. The third signal is if this person is going to take the first mover advantage or trying to build something which is not there already in the market or if there is it is not fulfilling the need or there is a space available. For example, there are so many one example that I can give.

I was trying to find a flower shop online that I can use to send flowers to my girlfriend on recurring basis like every month. not find that you know this is super simple thing that someone can build and push it live and this is a need of almost every second person on Valentine's Day on on birthdays on anniversaries so this is a common thing in San Francisco and California that I could not find these are three signals that I usually look >> so really spotting the gaps and then seeing if the founder has previous experience in building a startup >> yeah absolutely >> so you've been also pushing AI agents as a service. Where do you think these agents deliver real business value today and where are they still too unreliable? >> Agents are still immature I would say on all spaces including the co-pilots that we use on day-to-day basis the chargi they sometime hallucinate and give us the answer that we really not expecting or is not accurate or correct. So that is why agents are still kind of immature and we would take a couple of more years to 100% rely on them.

On the other side if I talk about Gemini nanobana if I talk about for example uh midjourney or if I talk about chart GPT cla codeex these tools they have changed the world a lot they have changed the way the software engineering been happening. They has changed the world. We've been googling we've been searching about any topic and we are not searching anymore. We are actually going and trying to find the exact only answer that we need to have. A agents has changed the world around the globe. Technically all the departments marketing, sales, customer support finance HR recruitment all these areas. Inosmosone built and created some agents for our customers that we tried to replace number of people still keeping human in the loop because we cannot 100% rely on them as we speak. So we need to keep but reducing from 10 people to two people probably is is the space we have seen with the agents right now. >> Have you seen any changes in client expectations compared to 12 months?

Now everyone is expecting the super fast delivery like they know that and it can be developed and delivered within hours not weeks not months not days even they want it to be delivered and then everyone wants to automate their manual processes and people knows that humans can be replaced specifically the things that are done over a computer or a machine can be replaced by someone an AI agent or something like that maybe blue collar job maybe that's the space we still need need people or human touch otherwise clients are expecting way more way more than they used to before >> okay and what's your current playbook when it comes to using AI inside your company >> this is very simple formula try to identify every space that is taking more money or more time either of these if it is sucking more energy in terms of money and or it is sucking more time frame we can find out a replacement of that specific process if not the whole engine but a specific process with the help of an AI tool.

For example, I had a video editor who was editing our company shots and videos. I identified uh some AI tools who were able to do that much much faster. So, we just simply hired that person and had this handed over to my social media guy and he's now creating all those videos without the editor. >> Is it Rev Motion? >> Yeah, Rev Motion is the one. >> Yes, I heard about it. It's also a thing that I'm looking into right now. That's good to know that someone is already using it. >> Yeah. >> So, where do you want to go in terms of the business in the next 12 months? >> Being a business owner, I want to double up, if not triple the revenue in 2026. That's the revenue goals. On the other side, I want to decrease the manpower I have right now on my disposal specifically on the operational areas and replace those areas with agents and automations. We are already in progress with we are slowly replacing people with automations third party tools. We don't want to build everything.

We want to buy and subscribe the tools that are already built by someone else. The results are promising. Why to build everything from scratch? So that's where we are heading towards to reducing the cost, automating things to get the more productivity out of it and increasing the revenue. >> Looking ahead maybe in the next year, what do you think will change most in software services as AI gets embedded everywhere? >> As I mentioned earlier, AI is not that stable yet or uh accuracy level is not there yet. So I personally believe people would put more energy and more focus on automations as well as increasing the accuracy, increasing the reliability on these agents and automations. So next year would be primarily a focus of increasing reliability, trust because automations are already somewhat there and the rest of the stuff would be done within 2026 but in 2027 it's a year of maturing things down. Okay, last one.

I always like to ask my guests if they have a piece of advice that they would like to share. What's yours? >> I believe it's time to adopt as many as AI tools you can at least give them try. For example, I had to create kind of PowerPoint slides for some client demo demonstration. I was running short on time. went to charge asked him if there is an AI tool who can create the content infographics and everything for me and charge gave me three tools gamma.app app worked for me and it created super professional amazing with animations and infographics and client loved that those slides. This is this is a way that I believe everyone should take things forward moving forward. >> So really leveraging AI in the basic operations that everyone does. Okay. So for people listening who want to follow you, where should they go? >> Uh they can find me on LinkedIn as well as Instagram. My handle on LinkedIn as well as Instagram is is it S F U R Q A N A Z I Z.

>> Great. I will add links so people can check you out. And thank you guys for watching and we'll see you in the next one. Team