01:38 Hey, welcome back to the show. And today I'm so excited to have with us. Asim, who is going to share: with us some amazing stuff about his journey and growth. Asim, tell us who you are and what do you do? 

01:50  Yeah, I'm Asim Razzaq. I'm the co founder CEO of a company called Yotascale. And what our company focuses on is, uh, high level in the FinOps space, right? So financial operations, uh, especially with the rise of cloud computing and now AI and generative AI and a lot of other infrastructure software like Snowflake, Datadog, and others that your audience might be familiar with if they know something about software. So as you know that a lot of the stuff moved from CapEx to OpEx, right? So now people rent the software. It is subscription based, uh, and it's sort of user based. So our company helps, uh, companies at a certain scale, like Okta. Uh, Jeffries and others, uh, really help make those, uh, those, uh, investments more efficient for them, right? Cause they can, uh, they can be very expensive and there's a lot of complexity and there's a lot of moving parts. So we help them reduce those bills. We help them invest back into the business. We help them secretly also as you reduce that footprint, help the environment, right? Cause there's a lot of resource wastage. 

02:57 There is a lot of resource wastage out there. No doubt about it. Um, and as you talk about the problem that you're solving, you know, for those that didn't understand all the references to the software, uh, backend solutions you're talking about, what, what he's talking about, if I were to sum this up, is you're taking people who are building in particular financial software solutions and helping them, uh, streamline, make more efficient their path to building that solution and, or. Providing a solution that already exists to people in a much easier way so that they don't have to recreate stuff that's already been been done. Is that fair? 

03:36 Yeah. I mean, it's not necessarily financial software solutions. It's anything that you would have in the cloud. So any. Product they can think of. So I think we were talking about earlier about Zoom and some other pieces of software, right? So at the end of the day, a lot of data infrastructure is running in the cloud, right? And it's costing them money, uh, because they're having to pay for all of this backend infrastructure and this cloud computing and storage and increasingly AI. And so it costs them a ton of money and a company like Yotascale can come in and help them be more efficient in terms of delivering their software to the end consumer, in which case, if it's too expensive for them there, it becomes increasingly expensive for the end user, right? 

04:15 No doubt about it. No doubt about it. Yeah. And so give us the backstory. I mean, how did you get into solving that problem? Because this is a, this is a very complex problem, but you've worked with some very complicated organizations. Give us a little backstory into how, how did you recognize this problem as something you wanted to solve first of all, and, and who are you trying to help with it today?

04:34 Yeah. So it's a problem that I had experienced myself. So a lot of my role has been, uh, a VP of engineering or a head of platform engineering. Uh, I have played that role at Companies like PayPal and eBay, but also at a number of startups and the advent of cloud computing like circa 2007 2008 Uh, it was great, right? Like Amazon came out, AWS came out with S3, there's storage and, and whatnot, uh, and people had the option not to build a data center. But as a consumer of some of that technology, as a head of platform engineering, what I realized was that the monkey was on my back, right? Because we were building the software for the application teams at the edges, services teams, right? All the building blocks. Uh, and we would be asked the question, like, why are you spending so much money? Right and our answer was that we're not spending the money like these teams at the edges are spending the money, and it was increasingly a problem where we didn't know where the money was going. Right? So in one company where I was, uh, VP of engineering, you know, our software was in the data center and the company was spending a ton of money in the data center, right? With a tune of 60 percent of their total. Cash burn was going in the data center. So the board basically looked to me as a new guy, you know, coming in who had a cloud background and experience and SAS to say, Hey, you know, we need to take it into the cloud and fast, right? Because we need the efficiencies. So the quick version is that I kind of looked at the cloud providers and very quickly realized that, uh, it would not be very easy to do because the manageability was not easy. Even though we're in the data center, we had our own financial model, which we had to rebuild in the cloud. The talent wasn't there because the people that we had had more of an experience with the data center, not cloud services. And, uh, believe it or not, we realized that it will be more expensive. Because it was not about storing data. As soon as you move data, it becomes extremely expensive. And our, our, our software required moving of the data, right? Because it was a cloud disaster recovery. 

06:42 Yeah, and the cost was really all in the data transfer. Is that right? 

06:43 Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. Data transfer would kill us effectively. So all those variables, uh, it was quite disappointing for me because here you have a mid stage, late stage startup that could be saved by. The cloud, but it wasn't quite the case. And so, uh, we solved the problem differently by using commodity Um storage, you know in house and solve it within those six months But that stuck with me right that promise of the cloud and the actual fulfillment of the promise There was a huge gap and I think that is what was kind of the key seed that was sown for me to go do something about it one had the opportunity Uh, to go build a company in this space, after we spoke to a number of different customers at scale, like, Hey, are you really running into this problem? Is this really a black hole? Are you always struggling with your bill? Do your teams, are your teams empowered to do something about it? And increasingly the feedback was no. Yeah, we do struggle. And, uh, yeah, and the world was turning more multi cloud also, right? It wasn't just AWS. It was Google and Azure and a lot of the other ones. And so that that was making it very complex.  

07:54 It was very complex. And for those of you who don't understand what he's talking about here, I will tell you that for me, it was a huge problem as well. I, you know, I was running an offshore call center, and we had to build our own data center with our own servers with our own You know, storage with our own connectivity issues with the internet and all those things during that timeframe of 2008 to really 2012. It was like, I've heard about this cloud thing. How do I implement? How do I execute what I need to on the cloud? And it wasn't until 2011 ish that we were able to successfully deploy a dialer in the cloud, which was. A godsend because I hated having big boxes of servers in our call center floor. It was crazy. So this is a huge problem that you went out to solve and you're talking on a much larger scale than what I was talking about for small businesses. This is a big issue as well. So, so as you solve that problem for PayPal. And eBay and some of those other companies, what, what, how has it evolved to now? And, and Yodascale is kind of helping that journey for people, but walk us through that journey. 

09:03 Yeah, the journey really, the framework that I use explain that journey, right? Is, uh, any company, especially a software startup, it goes through the following phases, right? You are in pre product market fit. Right. Then you have product market fit, then you have post product market fit, then what I call go to market fit. Right. And we were already talking about some of your audiences that are trying to scale the business. Right. So the ultimate, uh, the, the ultimate is to get to go to market fit, right. Which is a repeatable sales cycle, which is all about scale. So you're a pre scale, post scale. So I think in that journey, the first thing was we had to kind of figure out our, our niche, right? Like what, what is, what is the specific problem that we are well equipped to solve that is differentiated, right?  And I think that journey takes time. That journey takes a lot of customer discovery. That journey takes, um, a lot of patience and that journey takes curiosity. Right? Because a lot of times founders can unfortunately come in with a very set view of things and um, the market when, when their views meet the market and if they're not, if they don't adapt or change or are flexible, then there's a lot of heartbreak in the making. Right? So for us, uh, I think the, the big opportunity we saw was first of all, selling it to people like my former self, which was the head of platform engineering, right? Right. Right. Right. Because they increasingly. Were the ones that had the keys to the kingdom, right? Because they were the ones building these platforms and helping teams at the edges That's number one  number two was the size of the company that we went after right? So initially we did go after some of the smaller uh businesses and players and certainly by no means i'm not saying it's not a problem for those businesses, but  For us to go build a moat and a company That could be differentiated in the market Uh, we had to focus on some of the larger players because the complexity is a lot more there.They tend to be multi-cloud. Right. And you'd ask like, how does the problem change, right? So the problem has changed quite a bit from, Hey, I'm just in one cloud provider to, Hey, I'm in multiple cloud providers. And a lot of the backend stuff is costing me a ton of money, like Snowflake and Databricks and Datadog and monitoring software and all of that. And this thing called generative I'm kind of doing R& D, but I'm really concerned because when I deploy these workloads in production, it's going to cost me a ton more.  So I think, um, that's, that's certainly the complexity trend. The other trend is how it hits the top line and bottom line. Right? So now, increasingly. A company's cloud bill. Uh, and you can add the AI bill to, that will be the second biggest line item after payroll. Right. . So that wasn't the case in 2007, 2008. Right?

11:49 right, right, right. But now it is all of a sudden . Yeah. 

11:52 It's like, it's, it's a huge deal and it can affect your profitability, it can affect your margins, it can affect the cost of goods sold. And it is a board level discussion for any company that is. You know, CDC, post CDC, like pre IPO, post IPO, they're all talking about, you know, how do we, how do we reel this in? Because otherwise, you know, the market is not going to, uh, cut us any slack, right? Cause we were like, well, you're spending a lot of money. So I think that's how we've seen the problem change is that it's only become more crucial, more critical, uh, for a lot of different companies. There's more awareness, but increasingly, as you know, in software, there's more complexity, right? There's new trends like containers and Kubernetes and microservices. And as I said, Jenny, I, and now multicloud and a lot of this infrastructure software,  people's heads are spinning. A lot of times trying to work through a lot of these things.  Not only are their heads spinning, but the people that pay those people have no idea what their heads are spinning about. Right. It's a complex issue. Is that right? It's a, absolutely. It's a complex issue. And, uh, you really need to treat it as, uh, what I call the fourth KPI. Right. So like in software, you have performance, reliability, you have security, right? Right. And everybody worries about not cost is an absolutely critical piece of that. So you can achieve performance, reliability, security, but if you're doing it at a massive cost,  right. Uh, spending a ton of money in cloud, then that's not going to apply.  Yep. So you have to learn to make these trade offs, uh, really well.

13:29 captainscouncil.com

15:08 Totally.  Now, now that we understand more clearly what your company does and who you do it for, um, I want to, I want to take a step back and just kind of look at the way that you have been able to take YotaScale and turn it into something that it is today. And, and, and if you can do for me a favor of just kind of looking back and saying, you know, What were two or three key decisions that you made in that growth journey to get you to where you're at today? And I, I'm guessing that one of those things that you've already mentioned. Is you scratched your own itch, you know what the problem was for, for people in that particular role in a, in a tech company; give us your perspective on, on maybe one or two key decisions you made. 

15:51 Yeah. So I think the double clicking on that piece is that it wasn't, it's not just about scratching your own itch. It's, it was also. Because that was the persona that was left behind. So there were some other solutions in the market, but they weren't, they were catering more to finance. They weren't catering more to engineering and the head of platform engineering. And that's the feedback we got. I still remember this day, there was a VP of engineering at, you know, a decent sized company. And he was showing us an existing solution that was very finance-oriented. And he's like, I need, I need the answer to the following question. Like, why did I build, why did I build double from last month, right? And he was, he actually was swearing. He's like when I asked the product people whose product he was using, which was finance-centric, he's like, we had a platform. You can run any report you want. And he basically said, I don't fricking need a platform. I need a solution. Right. Yeah. And give me, give me that solution. Right. So I think, uh, those were some aha moments for us to say, whoa, okay. You know, this is the problem that's not being solved. And the other thing we noticed was that people were really looking for a needle in the haystack, right? So they were looking for root cause, like why are the costs trending in the direction they are and who's responsible and  why is it happening? And I remember in one of those discovery conversations, we introduced the concept of anomaly detection, which was, we were talking to somebody who was just clicking, clicking, clicking, and we're saying. Hey, what if we gave you the needle?  You're looking at it in the haystack, but if he, if he just gave you the root cause and the reason why there's an aberration, would that be useful? And it was literally for 30 seconds; the guy was kind of quiet. It's like, but I need, it was like, no, yeah, I guess that was all my problem. So it's sometimes. Again, that curiosity of, Hey, you know, you don't have to solve the problem in a complicated way, right? You don't have to keep clicking on reports and you might be addicted to those reports and that's how you think the problem is solved, but there are other ways to do that. And I think, uh, the third one I will say is that some of the trends helped us tremendously like containers and Kubernetes. Was a key trend that we capitalized on and we were able to sign up some pretty major customers because they were struggling, right? so for your audience very simply like Kubernetes containers is a way of abstracting out a lot of the underlying infrastructure, right? It makes it things high-level. It makes it easy to deploy, right? So these are like building blocks that you can just use to deploy software, but it makes it a financial black hole Because now you don't know  who's spending the money, right? So we call it microwastage. There's a lot of stuff being wasted at a micro level, but. in aggregate, you know, it, it ends up being a ton of money. So I think it's recognizing that opportunity and recognizing that you have to make a bet. That's the other thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because when it was in its early phases, they were naysayers saying, well, Kubernetes is not going to take over. Right. And there might be some other trend down the road, but you as a founder. You as a person who's running the startup has to have that insight to say no I believe this is going to go all the way and this is going to be becoming a de facto standard. It's gonna become the operating system of right the internet, right? And so I think that recognition is important. And then the final thing I'll say saying no Because we were getting bombarded by a lot of different things, right? So people were like well you can do there was this thing called cloud economics where you can do arbitrage, right? So here I have a volume based savings you can get and it was more like hey Can you figure this all out for us? But our recognition was that that's not our focus and also It is something that puts us in a, on a collision path with the cloud provider because the cloud providers were constantly changing these savings based and, you know, volume based saving types of mechanisms. And we kept saying, no, that's not our focus. And we're not going to focus on that because we don't believe, I think that's a feature, but on a product-type thing. And it was hard because customers were willing to throw a lot of money at us. But literally there was a time where, for example, Amazon came up and completely revamped that whole scheme and overnight companies had to change their website from, you know, RI savings type companies to like now with cloud cost management companies, right. Just because you weren't in that path and you should have known that. Right. I think those are some three or four basic things that were important in the journey, uh, for us. And for sure. And candidly, I'll say like, you know, people can sit and have a revisionist version of history and say, well, I did this amazing thing and did this amazing, but look at the end of the day, there's a bunch of luck. Yeah, you have to put in the hard work, but you can't time everything. You can't time the market necessarily, you know, trends can change. Uh, they can go against you. So also recognize that there is an element of that, right. Uh, and, uh, and, and luck only. really serves people who have their, uh, net in the water, right? You're not going to catch the fish if there's a net in the water. 

21:04 For sure. For sure. And that leads me to the other point of, uh, the other side of that coin is that luck comes in two flavors. There's good luck and bad luck, right? I mean, sometimes it's the timing. Sometimes it's, uh, having the net in the water. Sometimes it's all those things, but you know, a lot of people feel like. I got my net in the water, but oh, crap, a shark just came and they pull their net out. How do you advise people who pull out too early or, or maybe they try to hang in too long and, and they're really just not fishing in the right pond? You know, they're looking for shark, they're looking for salmon in a, in a lake and they're not in the ocean. You know what I mean? Like, how do you help people recognize that sometimes  having that good luck happen and being in the right places is more important? You've just got to make decisions and commit. But when do you pull out and recognize, Hey, maybe I'm fishing in the wrong spot.

21:58  Yeah. I mean, the short answer is it's not easy, right? It's not easy. If it was, then a lot of people would be having a tremendous amount of success. And I think. Hats off to entrepreneurs because uh, they're not on an easy journey and it's very very hard like personally professionally on many many different fronts I think the way to look at it is again is having that curiosity mind Which is you have to get out of the building. I feel a lot of times people are inside the building what I mean by that is Uh, they're thinking about ideas. They're searching the internet. They have some thoughts right, but they're not going out and really scientifically doing customer discovery, right. And what I mean, scientifically, meaning that don't lead, don't lead your, uh, the person you're interviewing, don't lead, don't have leading questions. Don't say, wouldn't it be great if you had cloud cost management, uh, software to solve the problem. Right. So like, okay. They're like, yeah, okay. That'd be nice. And then you're like, yay. And then you go build something. You have to start, you have to learn the art of that. And if you really don't know that, you know, have some mentors, and there's a lot of written on this. It's like, how do I go do market research? How do I go to, uh, really, uh, objective customer discovery? And I think you asked the right question. How do you ask the right question and how do you shut up? That's the hardest part, right? Because your job in a lot of these conversations is to listen, right? And if you're not listening and if you're talking, I mean, you should not be talking more than 10%. Right. And the talk should simply be. Those questions. So I think it comes down to that because otherwise you'll be misled. I mean, you will, you will, you will convince yourself of a lot of different things. I still remember, so there's, uh, you know, budding entrepreneurs who want to start a company. Sometimes, you know, they come for advice and especially for technical founders. This is my piece of advice, right?  So I had somebody who, uh, wanted to. He was at a large company, you know, had a, had a very good idea and was technical. And he was kind of talking to me about the idea. And I said, look, listen, I understand the idea, but you need to go out and have a bunch of conversations, a bunch of customers and talk to them. See if somebody is willing to pay for a POC or your initial version of your software. Because I think that's real. That is something that is real evidence of somebody right?

24:22  I say as soon as money exchanges, it's like a whole new world Yeah, that's right 

24:23 Even if the money is not huge because at least it's going to the system,You have to go to procurement and you have to have a budget approval You have to do all that and so it's guys like, ah, okay. Well, how do I do it? And it's like you got linkedin. I mean you got  So six months later he came and met me again and I'm like, yeah, so what did you do? So he said like, well, you know, I quit my job. And I had years of saving worth of savings and, and he started showing me the software he had built. He's like, look at the APIs and look at how I build the software and look, it can do. And I said, well, how many customer interviews have you done? Like, have you had somebody who's willing to pay for the POC? And he's like, no, no, but like, like it's  been amazing. The six months have been amazing. Me building stuff.  And I was like, semi angry, honestly, the situation, because like, you know, you took a year's worth of savings. Six months you've. You've spent building nothing because software can be built by a lot of people. You can outsources, you can hire somebody. The value you're trying to bring to the table is that customer discovery, that is that sort of those interviews, that insight. And I think that's the advice I would give is like, do the hard work, do the work that is uncomfortable, right? If you need to, you need to secure those interviews and you think you need to make a hundred calls a day, Right. And if you made zero, how many calls are you behind? A hundred. 

25:54 Totally. Right. Such good advice. Such good advice. Yeah. 

25:55 And so sitting there and making sure your inbox is zero and your LinkedIn profile really looks good and your website is awesome is not going to move you forward. It's not. 

26:10 Nope. And it truly is those first customers that drive the, the, should I do this or should I not decisions? Because they're telling you. It would be so cool if it did this, it would be, I think this is a waste of time. I never use that feature, you know, and those types of feedback are the only way that you learn a, what to develop and B, who do you want to develop for, right? Because if you've got three or four different clients who you, or 10 or 20 different clients that you're beta testing with, you're going to discover that, Hey, you know what? This problem is actually, this solution is way better for people in this part of my beta pool. Then these ones. I don't know that I want to worry about those guys. I just want to hone in on these guys cause there's a lot more of them and they have more budget than these guys. Right? So it comes down to client avatar discovery as well. 

27:04 Yeah. And it's, uh, it's about the age old, uh, painkiller versus the vitamin, right. Which is, uh, You guys have maybe heard that analogy, which is like, you know, a vitamin is something you will take daily. Maybe sometimes you skip it. It's not a big deal, right? But a painkiller, like if you have a splitting headache, then you need that, uh,  really strong ibuprofen, right? And I think their job as a, as a founder is to go find that painkiller to see, okay, which set of my beta customers, this is a painkiller for, they can't live without it, right?

27:33 Totally. Totally. 

27:34 They're, they're, they're pounding on the table and they're saying, I need this yesterday. And they're going to put up, they're going to put up with a solution that is still, that's not perfect. That still has issues. Yep. But the problem is so acute that they will do anything.  

27:46 Totally. Totally. And if you're not, if you're not solving a low hanging fruit problem in the beginning, and you've got this very complicated solutions that you're trying to build,  start solving. Low hanging fruit problems first. And as you solve low hanging fruit problems, you'll see which high level problem you want to solve to differentiate. Is that fair enough? 

28:07 Yeah, that's fair. And I think the, uh, a lot of times, at least technical founders, they start off by saying we're building a platform. And I think that's just like a code word for me to say, like, you don't know what you're doing. Right. Because winning the platform game is very, very hard to stay in age.

It's extremely hard. Right. None of the platform companies started as a platform company. So you have to find that niche.  Yeah. You have to find that niche. You have to kind of solve it in a very differentiated way. You have to make sure you can monetize. You have to make sure there's enough customers in there. Right. Yeah. And I think that is the important part. So don't just parrot and mimic what everybody else ends up saying and doing, right. 

28:52 Agreed. Agreed. And a lot of really smart companies, intelligent companies who are looking to distract their competition. They're talking about something different than what they're solving sometimes, which is, which is a good code as you go start to grow and build and try to distract your competition a little bit. You can play those games, but when you're starting. Be clear, be very clear on what problem you're solving. Make sure the right people know that you're solving the problem and that will bring you, it'll, it'll get you down that path to seeing where your growth strategy should be headed.  

29:26  Absolutely. And I think honestly, distracting competition is just a complete waste of time because you should just be focused on your customers, the problem executing, right? So at the end of the day, I would execute. Then you don't have to worry about like who else is doing what right because a lot of times, you know, there's marketing websites and people are claiming XYZ. You have no idea what's real what's not totally right? So if your strategy starts becoming like what their marketing websites are saying and you're just following that then it's it's just not gonna to pan out well for you.

29:59 It's not, it's not. Wow. Well, I gotta tell you, this has been a really, really fun interview. I, I think that your experience and deployment of, of these types of solutions is, is fascinating. If this is something along the lines that, that you are interested in hearing more about, I know that, uh, you've got a lot of resources on your website on Yodascale.com. And, uh, we're going to put links to all of your, uh, information down below in this, in the show notes here, but I assume one of the things it does in closing, would you like to suggest, uh, lessons learned or, or things to move forward on for people out there trying to, trying to figure out the path to scaling? 

30:38 Yeah. I mean, I think it's, uh, first of all, I recognize it's not easy. I think the second part we were talking about earlier, like people are putting in a lot of hours, doing a lot of hard work, but it's not yielding the results that they want or expect. I think the people equation is very important. So if you want to get some people in your company, make sure that the right people for the right stage and your context, because I think a lot of times I see people making a mistake where they're bringing somebody who is maybe a scale person, right? Yeah. That knows revenue from 25 million to a hundred million, but you're still trying to go from like a million to 10 million, right? Yes. So just know that that person would not necessarily be the right fit for you because it's a, it's still, you're still in the mode of playing chess. It's not checkers, right? It's not repeatable. So I think that's the important part. And I think the other piece is be. focus on the right metrics,  right? And don't focus on vanity metrics. As an example, a lot of people focus on how many visitors to the website, right? Yeah. You know, those numbers can, can be changed many different ways, but focus on who's your core customer. What is the right profile? Right. Where can you go find them? And, uh,  you have to orient your strategy with respect to that.  I think that's the important part of it. Right. And, and I think finally have a lot of mentors have, have some mentors who've done it. Some advisors have done it. There is no shame in going and asking people who've been down that path and ask them how they failed. What they will do differently and maybe talk to them about your specific particular problem, because to be honest, it's sometimes hard to give generic advice, right? There's a lot of books and a lot of material, but a lot of times the advice has to be catered to your particular situation, right? 

32:39 And it's surprising, right? And it's surprising how many of those people are willing to sit down to lunch to you and give you free advice because they, they've been down the journey. They've been on the path and they like to help people.

32:52 Yeah. There's a lot of good people. That's how I was able to get a lot of, uh, traction is like I had mentors and advisors, right? Who are willing to sit with me and talk to me and spend the time. And at the end of the day, the best thing a good mentor will do is force you to ask the right question. Yeah, because a lot of times one is not asking the right question. You're asking the wrong question, right? 

33:15 I love it.

33:16 And I think that my best mentors have been the ones that forced me to think about the questions I'm not asking. Yep. When I come to them with a question, which is like, hey, I'm not able to scale like What can I do and blah blah blah and it's like well the question is not It was scale. The question is something else, right? Which is, yeah, you know, maybe, maybe there is some, 

33:38 Solve this problem first before you try and solve that one over there.

33:39 Yeah. And maybe it could be that, you know, your, uh,  your renewals are not where they need to be. You know, your existing customers are not coming back and, but you're trying to sell it to a ton more customers. But there is something fundamentally that's not working.  that you need to take stock and focus on it. So I think, uh, be honest with yourself, um, and, uh, you know, have the right people in place.

34:10 Thank you, Sam. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this with me today. Uh, our, our audience is very well fed today from, from what you delivered to us. And I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And for those listening, please, please, please find the good mentors. Make sure you're going down a path that customers want to pay you to, to solve for them. And, and do those, do that outreach, make those customer conversations happen. Make sure you're not just in your own little eco echo chamber. Solving a problem that you think everyone wants when nobody may want that solution been there done that. And I think too many of you are doing that right now. So get out, talk to people, talk to mentors, make this stuff happen, really, really deeply appreciate you taking the time to share this, these thoughts with us today. 

34:52 My pleasure, Todd. Thank you for having me.