#235 Feeding the Future: Raju Malhotra's Insight into FoodTech

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me from the Bay Area, Raju Raju. The way I love to introduce my guests is I give it to them because I believe no one can introduce someone better than themselves. 

0:00:14 - Raju
So the floor is yours. Sounds good, nice to be on the show and thanks for having me, mehmet. My name is Raju Malhotra. I am Chief Product and Technology Officer at PAR. You may not have heard of PAR Technology. We're a publicly listed company on New York Stock Exchange and we provide hardware and software solutions for multi-unit restaurants and convenience stores. And just to give you a little bit more perspective, you know, in US, for example, if you ever walked into a Five Guys, sweet Greens, tropical Smoothie, taco Bell, papa John's Pizza, you've probably seen our products in action. 

0:00:58 - Mehmet
Nice, nice, Raju, I know you have a very long experience with different tech companies, and one of the things that I always get curious about is what brought you first to tech, and you know how was the journey, and I know you've worked with some big names also as well. 

0:01:17 - Raju
So if you can tell us a little bit about that, yeah, so excuse me, I have always been interested in, you know, problem solving, analytical skills and just also the. I'm the youngest in my family so I have a history of being other kind of engineers in my family ahead of me, so I think that clearly influenced. I have had an opportunity to work with a number of startups as well as some large companies. You know I worked at Microsoft for 12 years and I worked in different product roles, engineering roles and really kind of you know learned how to develop product development. You know, really think about product development in a more disciplined way. 

I worked at Salesforce and I worked at some smaller companies, vc and Private Activity Funded and after Salesforce, where I was running the marketing cloud business as SVP and GM for one of the growing areas of Salesforce team, I joined a CDC company based in Bay Area called Punch, and Punch is a B2B SaaS company really focused on the industry vertical of restaurants and convenience stores to provide them loyalty software as a way to help them develop their loyalty software as a service solution and very innovative one of the kind of you know, highly traction you know companies and I joined them, really had a lot of fun and I ended up at PAR, because PAR acquired us a couple of years ago. 

0:02:54 - Mehmet
Nice, nice. So one of the things that always I'm curious about, because you've worked with startups and you work for like, big babes like Microsoft and Salesforce. So how is the transition, you know, from being with a giant like Microsoft or Salesforce versus, you know, working in a smaller company that, of course, at the end we know it might become also something big. So how is this transition? 

0:03:23 - Raju
I'll share with you my experience and, obviously, the disclaimer. You know everyone's mileage varies. Right, it was painful. It was painful for me, and I'll tell you some of the very basic things. 

You take it for granted when you're working for a large company and all the bets are off when you are in the much smaller startup company. Just as an example, you know, when you're at Microsoft and you're a product person, engineering person, and you make a call to somebody for partnership, you get access to their APIs or documentation, you get a lot of love. You say, oh my God, you know this is so and so Now the really. When you are the same person, you have the same capacity, educational skills and you know you really want to be successful and make other people successful. But you pick up the phone and call somebody as a startup person, obviously you get in a long queue right at the back and you don't get as much love. So I think that takes getting used to in the beginning, but it's also, I think in my case, foster that sense of sort of independence and also sense of clarifying, clarification of what really is in it for the other person or the party and really kind of explain that as a big company, you can get by without explaining the value prop for the other party because they assume it, they know it. 

I would say, you know, in my case it was very exciting, rewarding, huge learning experience, but I would say it's not for the faint of heart, I think, expecting a hockey stick type of learning experience. Anyone trying to make a switch between a large company to small company is good and I would say it's the same thing. You know, when we got acquired in prior companies and became part of a large company, from a startup going to a back back to a big company. It's a lot of adjustment there too, because there's a level of autonomy that you have in a smaller company, as you imagine, and you sort of you know, have to get adjusted. To quote unquote collaboration part of it, which requires working with a lot of people with better scale. There's a lot of advantage, but it requires a lot more process. 

0:05:39 - Mehmet
Yeah, and I think this is something common, Raju, and you might also agree with me to your point, because you know majority of the I'm very passionate about reading, you know, about startups in the early stage and then seeing them. And we see, like, when these small startups tries to go and talk to big companies, you know they get neglected Sometimes, even for example, when, when even they they say, okay, guys like you might want to acquire our, our technology or you might make a merger with us, and then no, like you are the small guys will not look at you and all of a sudden things change and you know like so. So I believe this is something To be honest with you. I worked as a consultant for also number of companies and you're right, like it's very different when you're a sales rep from Microsoft called the customer, versus you know someone from a startup, who are you and what do you do? Like I never heard about you before. 

So, yeah, like I lived this also as well and exactly I know what you mean. So now coming to part a bit, you know and you came from that question of punch. But what I'm interested to know, because every technology is trying to solve a problem and the problems are like kind of collection of challenges. So what are, you know, the most pressing technological challenges? For you know the sector that you serve, which is mainly restaurants today. 

0:07:07 - Raju
Yeah and Mehmet, if I may just step back a little bit, I think, before even I talk about the technology challenges we're solving, I spend a lot of time with the CTO CIOs, with some of the largest brands within the restaurant industry and they have, you know, hundreds or thousands and tens of thousands of locations all over the world and they're really thinking about how do I match my technology investment with my business strategy, what my CEO and CFO and COO president they care about, my board cares about, and how do I kind of get accelerated on the value I get from large investment they already have in technology. So I would say there are three big challenges that our customers are trying to solve on a business level and in fact they translate map exactly to the technology challenges too, and those seem very high level. But I would say this is sort of very much a distillation of what I learned from the senior level discussions. Number one they want to make sure they have the best guest experience, and guest experience, even though someone walks into a restaurant in person, orders on the website through their app, even through third party delivery services. So guest experience is number one. Number two they want to make sure employees get the tools and processes that are very important to deliver that guest experience. Let's not forget, restaurant industry in the US is the largest private employer. Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics from US government, there are 12 and a half million employees that this industry employees and there are 850,000 locations that we're talking about. So the employee. It's really, I think, important to make sure the brands are taking care of their employees and actually supporting their employees, provide the tools so they can deliver the guest experience. So those are the two things and the third one is really kitchen operations. 

Every restaurant by the way if I don't know how many folks realize this every restaurant is a mini factory. 

You know you walk into and you think about ordering a taco, burrito, pizza, etc. There is so much going on in the back in the restaurant and there's so much going on in the back office, above store, in their headquarters or regional offices, etc. So really thinking about operations in a way that simplifies the life of for their employees that are standing in front or taking orders and delivering orders to the guests. At the end of the day, they're the customers they're paying, coming back and not just coming back for food, of course you know you come in for food anytime you go in, but also the overall guest experience, like the ordering and the loyalty, and everything else was actually as the guests expect. So the three problems I think they are trying to address on a business level and technology level are about how do I engage with my guests, how do I engage with my employees and how do I scale my kitchen operations so I can keep delivering the type of experience my guests expect me to do and how you help in this. 

0:10:27 - Mehmet
Yeah, oh yeah, great great. 

0:10:28 - Raju
So PAR has been around for a while, so we have a benefit of that sort of understanding of our customer needs. But we also have built a lot of organic and inorganic capabilities, so really five software capabilities, and we provide, as I mentioned, hardware and software solutions. So we really think about it as a solution. We provide the multi-unit restaurants, a point of sale system, payment system, digital ordering system, loyalty system and a back office ERP system. But the way we think about this is not just you know we're providing you these five things and you buy the hardware and you kind of checkbox, check, check, check whatever you like. We really think about it as a platform approach. We have a unified commerce approach where you can actually buy the point of sale system from us. That would work very well if you have a different loyalty system, different ordering system, different payment system. 

We really sort of work within the fabric of the restaurants we are serving and these are enterprise restaurants. So our software, so we are a B2B enterprise SaaS company. So those are the software solutions we provide. Think of this as a you know, industry specific, restaurant specific or convenience store specific, cloud based solution that actually helps restaurants scale as they add more locations. They go into different geographies, so we're really a SaaS company that provides what our restaurant customers need. 

0:12:05 - Mehmet
Okay, and just out of curiosity, how that Raju would complement or integrate with. You know what we call it cloud kitchen and you know like the overeats and you know the other providers, so is there something that integrate with that? 

0:12:21 - Raju
It does. 

It definitely does so. Think of those as delivery service providers that really deliver the restaurant, the brand, the food that they prepare all the way to the guests. So the guests could start in a couple of ways. They could actually start with the Uber Eats or Dodash or Grubhub as a third party delivery service and order from the restaurant and we integrate with them and we actually help the restaurants deliver through them. They could also start with the restaurant's own website or their app and sometimes you can pick that the delivery is, you know, to your home or to your office and someone like Uber Eats maybe delivering it, or Dodash maybe delivering it, but you also you know this is the engagement you have is with the brand and we support that too. We also have integrations, in fact, with different types of restaurants ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens. In fact, we have 500 plus integrations as a company. You know that's really a prerequisite as an API-first enterprise company to support really as many partners as we can, because our customers really, at the end of the day, they want all that experience. 

0:13:38 - Mehmet
So what are? Like some, I know maybe AI would come to the first to the mind, but I mean, what are the trends happening in this industry? And the reason I'm asking because it's one of the I know in the US it is like very hard, but here, for example, in Dubai and the rest of the Middle East, you know, people love food, you know, and their food tech, I would say, is something on the rise. So what are some of the trends and what are some of the emerging technologies that are getting integrated with, like the offerings that you provide, or as restaurant, or like food tech in general? 

0:14:14 - Raju
How much time do you have, mehmet? Because that could be, you know, at least three or four episodes of the podcast, but I think it's so. First of all, I think you know everybody, obviously we have to eat food multiple times a day. Everybody, you know, has their own expectations about the food. But I think your point about food tech actually is on a roll right, it's on fire because there's so much investment, so much innovation going on. So I wouldn't even limit it to AI, generally speaking. You know, just to keep it simple, the three things I mentioned our business customers, our customers actually care about right, they care about guests, they care about employees, they care about kitchen, and there is innovation happening in all three of those things. 

So, for example, on the kitchen, many of the brands we work with are experimenting with automation robotics because, you know, getting the friars and kind of moving the friars in the back, doing that like multiple times an hour, is really not ideal for any human being to be continuing to do that. It's not necessarily aspirational job for anyone. So there is a lot of investment in how do we actually support the employees to keep them safe, to actually, you know, use robotics wherever we can on the kitchen automation and the operational side of it. On the employee side, you know there is a really pretty much a playbook of automating the workflows that, as an employee, you come in, you check in, you you know do your shift and how do you use your systems and technology like point of sale and payment etc. To really kind of you know do the most important thing why you are as part of that restaurant, which is to engage with the guest and deliver them the best experience, not only the best food to them. So I think there's a lot of tech improvements on the AI side. 

On the workflow automation for employees, I personally am very excited about the you know behind the scene sometimes innovations that are happening on guest engagement and that has been going on, by the way, for a while, not just the generative AI, predictive AI and in that area, really how do you personalize offers based on you know your, your kind of tastes and your flavors? And and you know it's so interesting we talk about AI and predictions and generative AI. There is so much power of zero party data and zero party data is. 

When I become a part of loyalty program for a brand, oftentimes they ask me my preferences. I might be vegetarian, I might have shellfish allergy, I might have so and so. So it really is a very simple you know point. You would expect that I'm not getting any offers for shrimp cocktails because if I tell you I have shellfish allergy, I hope you know. As a loyal customer, you're not trying to kill me off. And I think there's a lot of preferences. There's a lot of AI that comes to improve the guest engagement. So I think this is a very exciting topic. I think, all the way from kitchen operations, guest engagement, employee, the, the food tech, the technology is playing a huge part in improving all the facets and really doing it at exponential level. 

0:17:31 - Mehmet
That's great insights, I would say, and you know we need to watch this space because it's very rapid. 

Also, like from, I like to follow you know different trends and I think you know this is a lot of innovations are happening Now like shifting gear a little bit. 

So in your current you know position and you know from the career you had, so always you were on the product you know side, product management side, like product officer side, and CTO at the same time. Now I know that a lot of time these two roles you know can be merged, like in your case now. But the product, you know, the product people, they are very special people and you know I was curious a lot because when I was interacting, when I was a consultant, with the product team, I was enjoying, you know, the conversation because it's very different from speaking to the engineering team, like, although like. But what I want to understand from you and maybe this is also can be a hit to, to, to the audience who are now thinking, okay, should I take the product route, should I take the, you know, the pure engineering route and become maybe later a CTO? So if you can highlight, you know where these two roles intersect and where they are different. 

0:18:53 - Raju
Yeah, by the way, first of all, I think you're right, these are different roles, especially if you're starting out in your career. There are different skill sets that are needed for product roles really thinking about why should we build something, what is it that we should build in a greater level of detail. And then the engineering is really how should I build it? When should I release it? There's a lot about the skill set is also different. Mindset is different. To be honest with you, I've gone through both of those roles in my career. I started out as a software engineer. I graduated with engineering, computer engineering duty. I enjoyed the idea of writing software, but I also found myself in some discussions where I thought the decisions that were being made at the product level were affecting my job and my role as a software engineer quite significantly, especially as you progress in your career and then you start contributing to the product discussions. Then I got my toes dipped in that water and I really started enjoying that job of being at least a contributor to the product discussions about what is the product strategy? Why are we even doing this? Of course I can write some software to implement the strategy you have, and that's where I think I realized this point that you just mentioned, and it's a very important point that these are different roles. You cannot bring a same mindset of, oh, I can do it over a weekend. This is a very classic engineering response oh, yeah, yeah, I can do it in a weekend. We shouldn't really maybe think about it. And that's good in some ways because you have a level of scrappiness. But the important inflection point in my career came when I started asking the question it's not that I can build it, should this be built? Why are we actually even investing in building something? Going down Doesn't matter. It takes one weekend or one month or six months. What are the problems we are solving from a customer perspective and is this the best way to solve it? Oh, by the way, are we solving a problem of today or yesterday, or are we solving a problem of future? Because you don't want to necessarily solve the problems that customers told you yesterday, because by the time you deploy it you're already behind the curve. So I think that mindset difference is very important to realize when you are in that product role. Frankly, it's important when you become senior engineering role too. 

I think there is a school of thought that good engineers probably don't make good product people. I don't agree with that. I actually think the core skills if you really go to the very basic of both product and engineering skills are really about analytical problem solving and it's about being curious. And I think all the good engineers I know are very curious. They ask questions and they don't prejudge things. They don't think about this as I know, this is the solution, et cetera. They're very curious and humble about let's figure it out, let's experiment, let's see. And if you flip the switch and if you go the other side, that's how great product managers are. They're very curious. They're thinking about can I actually solve a real customer problem? Would there be a product market fit? Would I be able to scale it? And let's not kind of think about five-year roadmap. Let's think about what we can do in next three months and six months and experiment and have the customer feedback actually drive our requirements. 

So I think, to answer your question, these are different roles. They do require different mindsets, but I think it's very learnable, especially as you progress, and I would say I believe, in organic sort of way, to take this process. It's a long marathon that we have in our careers. I don't think of this as a one-year, two-year, three-year. I think it's really a 20-year, 30-year, 40-year sort of mindset that we should think about. And so what? If somebody is thinking about, should I become an engineer or should I become a product person? I mean I would say it's the Nike saying just do it, just pick something that actually you feel you have an opportunity and start kind of going down that path and then over time you can try something else, contribute as a product person and then go back and forth. So let your career sort of be almost product managed in the way you would launch a new product through experimentation and real-time data and feedback from the market. So I don't know if that helps. 

0:23:42 - Mehmet
Yeah, definitely, and I think also Raju correct me if I'm wrong the product people. They have also to have the skills of communication, because the stakeholders they talk to is more wide than what the engineering team would be talking to, because the engineering team would be talking actually to product managers and maybe the design team as well, whereas the product manager is talking actually to everyone in the company from sales, marketing. And this is like very important and, honestly, because I had the chance to interact with some product managers and the ones that I really found that really were successful in what they are doing, in my opinion, are the ones who were able actually to talk more to customers. Because, ok, you can talk to sales, you can talk to marketing, but if you don't talk much to customers, unfortunately you are risking to have, as you said, your point maybe you are building something that no one wants at the end of the day. So that's true. 

0:24:48 - Raju
Yeah, I think you're spot on. I think the communication skills are important and it's important to talk to customers, but it's also not to lead the witness, because talking is one thing, but being curious and asking questions, open-ended questions, and then learning what the customers really care about and then coming back, I would say there is a notion that engineers somehow are not good communicators. There is an assumption that is, you have this quintessential genius engineer who's sitting in their desk or cranking out code and really has very poor communication skills when it comes down to talking to customers, internal stakeholders, et cetera, and I would personally challenge that because it's very different for each folks. I've seen engineers who are excellent communicators, who are excellent action-oriented, but they still actually are not as successful because they haven't made that mindset shift to the role that product manager plays in the process management, in communication, in really kind of building the set of requirements and then come back Because sometimes, even if they can develop or they have communication skills, they think they know what the solution already is because they can build it, quote, unquote, in one weekend. 

I think it's more important to have that mindset shift, in addition to having the communication skills that someone would have to develop hone. But I do believe there is an assumption that I would sort of be very explicit about people who have great communication skills oftentimes have great analytical skills because they can actually synthesize the argument in very you know, here are the three things that drive. Four things that drive, and their communication is very clear and concise because they have strong problem solving and analytical skills. And guess what? People who are writing great software traditionally have great problem solving and analytical skills. So you can argue that they could develop into great communicators if they invest in it and, more importantly, they think about what the role as a product manager requires them to be 100%, I agree with you. 

0:27:06 - Mehmet
And I think, slowly, slowly, you know this, I would say stereotype of the engineer that you just mentioned, that he's an introvert person, sitting in the cubicle or his or her home, you know, and just in front of the laptop all the time, it started to get broken slowly, slowly, and I'm happy and honestly I had this before. Like myself, I'm a technical guy, you know, I'm a developer by origin and I thought, like everyone is like me, like you know, they are introverts, you know, like they cannot become, you know, more good communicators. And I started to think the opposite the moment that I started to be a better communicator, because all of a sudden I said, okay, I can do it, I can do it. And I had very good conversations with software engineers who actually understand, for my surprise, although they don't interact with the customers directly, but they understand actually what the customer pain is. And I said, oh, wow, these guys, they know what they are doing. It's not like just writing code and making beautiful integration. They really do know the I would say even from business perspective, which is very important how this feature, for example, is solving a problem for the customer, not technically, but business perspective. So, to your point, 100%, I experienced this myself. 

Now, you mentioned something, Raju, when we were talking at the beginning about the challenges and about the APIs and all this. So how is the landscape of APIs actually changing? Like, how are you seeing this? Like, are we seeing more? I mean, the API became kind of a standard, but sometimes I'm seeing some big companies. They are closing their APIs, they are being more cautious in letting other companies, or even individuals, to build on top, and while we see some other companies they say, hey, be our guest, use our API, pay the fee and use it all what you are seeing because you are in the heart of the Bay Area and doing all the tech companies around you. So what you can tell us about that? 

0:29:22 - Raju
So I think the first and foremost I think it comes back to if you're a software company, what is your strategy? Are you actually? Oftentimes and I don't wanna say in every single case, this is a solution I can speak from our perspective. Our strategy is very much to scale the ecosystem that our customers require our solutions to work in, and by default, that means we have to have an open API approach and I, by the way, completely agree with you. It's not a common approach in practice for many companies. 

I don't know if most companies or many companies they do like to keep the closed. They don't think about it, and it may not even be by design, it's just their legacy, right, they've kind of operated for so long that they got by with a close solution. We don't think about it that way. We think about it as a very developer-friendly ecosystem where it really starts out with a well-documented, accessible, open APIs that are available publicly on DevPortal. So in our case, by the way, you can just search for the Power DevPortal, punch DevPortal. There's one page. You don't need to even authenticate yourself to read about our platform, read out about documentation, read anything that you want about endpoints, their features, et cetera, even kind of request, anything that you would like as a roadmap feature. 

Now, that being said, open API is a starting point. I think there is so much more that needs to be done to enable the developers to build a solution using those APIs and, in our case, oftentimes, as I mentioned, our customers are the ones that are driving that innovation and integrations, and we have 500 plus integrations and we expect to have, say, 5,000 integrations someday. So our goal is to really be as open and accessible and enable our partners to use those APIs to actually scale much more further. So the overall short answer is I think in our case, it's very critical. It's, in fact, a differentiation as a platform approach. That's why we are able to attract and retain and grow some of the largest brands, because it's not even an option for us not to do this. They actually wanna work with us because of the open API approach. 

0:31:51 - Mehmet
Now, when we say APIs and integration, so it's deferred to your point integrating with other solutions to make things easy, and there are the APIs that allows other companies to build on top of that a platform. Right Now, out of curiosity and this question I like to ask and I like to hear different opinions. So in your case it's pretty much different. Like your vertical is set, like it's like the restaurant business and to my understanding it's one platform that sort the main three problems you talked about. But in some situations we see companies that they have the APIs and then you see people building on top of these APIs products and even SaaS products and then they become under the mercy of the API provider. Like how risky it is in your opinion, from both a product person and CTO perspective, if someone today is thinking to build on top of such platform, so what are the caution measures they have to take when they build products on top of other product APIs? 

0:33:09 - Raju
Yeah, so I think it's definitely something that anyone who's investing in writing an app on top of a platform has to grapple with. This is the same thing that someone writing on a Microsoft platform on Azure versus even iOS app, because you make a bet that should, I do it only on iOS, or I do it on Android, or I do it web apps, or I do something. So be very clear, I'm very clear about it. I think there's an ROI argument that the developer has to really take into consideration. In our case, it's actually provides a lot more flexibility because we're using the open standards, and it really gives you more optionality to not just be locked into one platform but potentially have that open communication with the platform through the endpoints using common standards, and you can potentially change those over time. There is a lot of disruption when you're talking about a large chain which has thousands of locations and thousands of employees, so the upgrade cycle or change cycle is not very frequent, but you want that optionality if you're a CIO. But I will give you an example even though you mentioned, I think, it's a one platform or industry platform there are so many innovative things that we want to enable and we know our partners are enabling. I'll give you a quick example. You would think how the whole idea of paying and going to an ordering system and point of sale, that sounds very basic. Right, you don't think about it as a guess too much, but I will share with you some really very exciting and magical almost a magical experience. That is, software well-built software with the API approach can deliver from a guest experience perspective. 

One of our brands is Salcerita, I'd say, mexican cuisine chain based in US. They're using our point of sale system, they have a payment system and they also have loyalty system. Using our internal APIs, they've been able to really release and we help them with releasing a one tap loyalty experience. Now, what that basically means is if you are someone who wants to buy a burrito or a taco from Salcerita, all you have to do first time you just go in, you actually use your Apple Watch or your phone to pay for it using Apple Pay and assuming this is your first time going into this, you haven't downloaded their app, they have a great app, et cetera. You basically get a Apple wallet type of notification that basically say hey, you know what? Do you wanna just sign up for our loyalty program and you don't have to do that right now. You can pick up your food and you just pay for it and you go. Then you just click on it very easily. It's an Apple experience. It's a native Apple experience, where you just say, look at the terms and conditions, and that loyalty card becomes part of your wallet. It's a loyalty wallet. Now. Just think about it Next time you go in, all you do is just swipe your Apple Pay. You are earning, you're paying and if you have any points, you're redeeming those points all at once in one tap. 

From that experience point of view, just think about it. 

It took me longer to describe it to you than to take someone to do this, but it's a very magical experience. 

I think that type of experience is possible because we have that open approach where all these systems work so well that the guest, effectively, is getting what they came in to get in the first place. I want that taco because I love the Salcedita taco and I don't have to think twice about it because I came in, I got that and I'm out. And, by the way, I am getting rewarded for what my purchase was, because that's where it's an important from a guest perspective. But think about it from Salcedita's CEO perspective. They are able to sign up into a loyalty program without forcing someone to download an app, without having a friction in that process. So it's a win-win-win situation from everybody and it's possible because of the open API approach that we have. So at the end of the day, I think someone who's serious about it, they would invest in making those experiences because that's important for them to drive value for their guests and really create that flexibility in their tech stack. 

0:37:59 - Mehmet
That's fantastic. I'm a big fan of automation, honestly, and you cannot do automation without APIs because if you want to automate multiple systems together, you need the APIs. And my I would say argument because people ask me sometimes why you talk automation too much and why you are obsessed Because I say, if you are a business, your number one goal, of course, is to increase revenue and the number two is to get your customers to come back again, and this is B2C and B2B, by the way, not only B2C. Number three you don't want the friction. So if I want to pay, I don't want to get my phone. Look at it and then do another. People need convenience, they need speed, especially now. So if you can do this, look at your process today, how it is designed and see where there is a friction and try to automate it. Do it and how you automate. We need APIs. 

So myself, I get too excited when I hear such stories and thank you for sharing this. Sometime I have myself to go explain to people basics and the basics, for example, to your point. It's not loyalty, maybe, but, for example, customer feedback, because I get angry every time I go to a restaurant and see them still using the paper and pencil and say guys, you can just have a Google Form and then automate it and do some automation, send emails, and this is possible with many tools today. So think big, but you have to start from somewhere and I love these stories, Raju, as we are coming to a little bit to the end. This is something maybe I ask all the time, especially from someone who is very experienced and with long. 

You work with different companies yourself and you work also with different tech platforms and different companies small start-ups, scale-ups and full-fledged big companies. So if you want to give an advice to someone who is on the verge to become an entrepreneur and want to start today, what are the main lessons that you have learned you would share? Of course, I know you have a lot of lessons, but I mean the most important thing they should care about when starting, especially if we talk about the CTO show, so assuming they are technical founders, or even if it's a founder, and looking for his counterpart with him. So what they should be looking for, what should be taking care about? 

0:40:32 - Raju
On a very high level. I think the basic is about the team chemistry, so important in any of that situation where someone is jumping in. So having the co-founders that are maybe they're all technical co-founders I think that's great, but as long as I think their chemistry is very good, you can just spend 24 hours a day for 7 days a week for months in advance. I think that type of requires camaraderie. I think the second thing is about product market fit. Everybody realizes, I think, anyone jumping into this, but what I've seen is if you have the right product market fit, if you're really tapping into a need that customers deeply care about and you've proven that through some type of evidence gathering and some type of real, not just feedback that someone says but really you know they would pay for it, that product market fit forgives all the sins. All the sins in UI, all the sins in even automation, all the sins in lack of reporting, lack of data. There's so many, because anytime you're going, there are 100 reasons why it is going to fail. You have to find the one reason why it actually will succeed and people will say, okay, I'm going to bet on you because of that thing, because that is a problem that you're solving. I need that problem to be solved and I'm hoping if not the other 99 problems, but maybe most of those 99 problems you will solve over time. I think that product market fit is very important and I think, finally, the whole idea of constant iteration and the customer feedback and just every single day learning. I think that's the critical thing. 

Obviously, part of this is to have the right skills. I think the picking in this sort of modern age having the right AI platform, the right cloud hosting and utilizing the AI assistance, et cetera I think that is key part of it. But that's really the how to build and how to test and how to scale methodology. There's a lot that goes into it, but I think when you have the right team, when you have the product market fit and when you have the mentality of medium to long-term investment of your time, that is not an overnight success. Nothing in life is overnight success. You basically have to have that perspective of I'm going to fail maybe 40, 50, 60 iterations and maybe the 61st iteration is where I know the product market fit. I think that long-term marathon, not a sprint perspective, is key to that entrepreneurship spirit. 

0:43:22 - Mehmet
Yeah, great advice, Raju, as now I consult some founders. I tell them guys, don't expect to have the perfect product in version one, and actually you would not have ever a perfect product because you're going to keep it at eight. It's not like something you develop once and they come to me and they say, hey, we've got this offer because sometimes they don't have a technical co-founder, so we're going to hire a company that they're going to build the MVP for us and they are charging us this amount of money. I'm saying you don't have to do this, you don't have to spend that money. Just solve the problem and see, actually, if the customers will accept this. And, to your point, this is where they need to figure out who are the early adopters, who are the customers who would accept. You don't have to have the perfect product in version one, but at least it's working. They need something that works and then you can start to iterate. 

As you said, you get the feedback. Okay, we need to add this to the UI here. We need to add this button. The sign up form should be in a different way. Maybe we can enhance the colors a little bit. We can add the dark mode later. It's nothing. You need to ship it in version one, Raju. Where can people find more about you and your company? 

0:44:45 - Raju
I think LinkedIn would be a good source. I would just say I think maybe search on the LinkedIn. Obviously we have a website, we have different channels of communication, but really I would say LinkedIn and the website, those would be. The partechcom is our website and the LinkedIn you can search for it. I think that in this day and age, I think those are usually the top two areas where someone has to, someone struggles with that. Definitely reach out to me. I'm happy to help. 

0:45:17 - Mehmet
Don't worry, I'm going to put the links in the show notes, so let's assure everyone you will find that. Raju, I have a final and it's not a tricky question by any mean, by the way, but is there anything that you wish we had discussed, or maybe a question that you wished I had asked you? And feel free to answer it also. 

0:45:38 - Raju
You said it's not a tricky question, but that's a very big question. I think this is a great conversation To be. I think it's the conversation relevant to the CTO audience that you have. I think we covered what I was hoping to cover, so I really don't have a tricky answer to your non-tricky question. I think you covered you did a good job of covering, I think, all the key things that I had. I didn't come in with a specific agenda. To be honest with you, I think this was a good conversation and I don't think there is anything that I thought was missing. 

0:46:14 - Mehmet
Thank you very much, Raju, and the audience knows that also. I make it as much as possible a casual conversation but, of course, meaningful one, where we try together, like you and me, to enlighten as much as we can, fellow entrepreneurs, tech people, even tech executives, cios, ctos on the latest strands and what's happening and sharing experience. So thank you very much for sharing your insights today, Raju. I really appreciate the time you took for having this conversation with me and this is how I end my episodes. So the guys know by now keep the feedback coming. I love to read feedbacks, I love to hear what you like, what you didn't like. Also, I'm not seeing a lot of didn't like, but I wish to because I believe in constructive feedback and if there's something you think I can enhance, I would love to hear that. And thank you for being loyal and the audience is growing day by day. I really appreciate that. Thank you very much and, as usual, this is a daily show, so we're going to meet up very soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

0:47:25 - Raju
Thank you, thank you very much. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page