#271 Startup Survival Guide: Balancing Innovation, Development, and Fundraising with Adi Behlulovic

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet Today. I'm very pleased joining me. Adi, thank you very much for being on the show. The way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, so the floor is yours. 

0:00:15 - Adi
Yeah, thanks, mehmet. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I can go briefly. Like my name is Adi, I'm founder and CEO of Scaleup company based in Sarajevo. 

We I have, in general, maybe around 12 years of experience in IT industry. Like in general how that story goes right Started off as a software developer, worked for maybe five to six years building different products, then switched to product management and worked as a product manager for a couple of startups in Sweden, in Germany, in USA. Essentially majority of the apps were in EU countries. Majority of my experience is with startups, building startup products. As a product manager. Then I worked as a proxy most for different tech companies and then I switched or identified sort of gap in the way that that business is being conducted with startups and I tried to exploit that gap. So that that was the goal of Scaleup and why I started my own company. 

There was a lot of kind of the, a lot of misconduct. I would say, in a way, that that majority of the companies that I worked for are trying to replicate the process that they have with enterprise companies and apply that to startups In a way, like you know, like the majority of those companies tell you okay, we are going to sell, sell literally three developers to enterprise companies and that's it. And trying to replicate that process to startups is not working because startups don't have the capacity or knowledge to handle and just integrate the team in developers in the team. So we are trying to exploit that gap and kind of offer the real partnership to startups with being their partner and handling everything tech related. And we have been doing that for last three to four years working with startups from different countries and all over the world, literally. 

0:02:36 - Mehmet
That's great and, you know, I think we're going to have to cover a lot on this space because, you know, something immediately caught my eyes, like overselling to startups the same way you over I mean, you sell to an enterprise, which is great, but before we, you know, go deep dive in that space and also about some of the trends like AI and so on. You know, I always am curious to know what was you know something that attracted you to be in this startup space, because you and me, we know it's not the most funny place to be in but at the same time, it can be rewarding. But for you, what was your like the trigger? You said, okay, you know what I need to be in this startup area. 

0:03:30 - Adi
That's a great question. And before working with startups, I worked with enterprises. So I worked with big enterprise companies and handling big section of their development and QA as a project manager. So I was project manager for maybe 70 to 80 people at the time and it was a lot of work working for enterprise companies. But there are a lot of procedures. There are a lot of like if you want to change something, you need to go to 10 or 15 addresses to get the approval to change some simple thing in the product right. And although there is a lot of work to be done, there is a lot of work in enterprises as well. 

I didn't find that to be as fulfilling as it is working for startups as I was to learn later in my stages of career. 

With startups, you know when you get the feedback from users, you can apply that as soon as possible and see the effect and change that and change some even complex functionalities and if you identify that there is a product market fit for that kind of change or pivoting in terms of the functionality, so that thing excited me right. I started off with finding my two of my own startups. Both of them failed, but it was really kind of interesting experience and great entrance into that startup world and at that point I really decided like this is the way that I'm going to go and this is the path that I want to be in. Like, having that decision-making capability and being close to the founders that are decision makers on the product is what excites me. And knowing that next week the startup can be ultra successful like literally we can onboard thousands of users, but also fearing that next week we can fail potentially, it's kind of exciting, you know, like exciting for it to be real. 

0:05:49 - Mehmet
Yeah, 100%. And this is the same reason why I love also myself to work with startups, maybe not from, you know, too much technology perspective. It's more like about strategy, you know, and sales and these areas. Now there is a myth, adi, and let's discuss it, because you deal with startups on almost daily basis. So majority of the startups, you know, founders, I mean they rush to have a product built as soon as possible before validation and you like, because you have, you know, experience in this, you have your own startup also as well To be. If I'm my first time founder and I come to you today like, and I tell you, hey, like, I have this proposal on the table, they, you know, to build the product I have to pay $100,000, $200,000. So is it something really I should be doing or there should be some three steps that we should take before start actually building something? 

0:06:55 - Adi
Yeah, it's a great question. A way like there is a twofold like. First part of the question is like five years ago I would always tell a founder, like let's go, let's go quickly. Like let's, let's, let's build something as fast as possible, test it out with the audience and get that initial try feedback. Still that is the case, but the trend is a bit shifting towards the quality of the products rather than building fast. You know, like five or 10 years ago there was not nearly this number of products out there, so in order to break on the market, you needed to move quickly, right. So you needed to move quickly, get the traction, get the feedback, start upgrading the product and basically getting the users and everything. That was the motto, like that was the mantra let's go out quickly. 

Slowly we are shifting to the phase where startups are going to be. There's literally a huge amount of products out there right, Solving like huge amounts of products, solving the same problems and trying to fill the needs of the same needs of the customers. So it's slowly shifting to not about so much of the speed, so as more to the quality of the startups, but still the rule, I think, in my opinion, even though there is a small shift to that higher quality there is still. Still the rule should be to go fast, and I'm going to tell you why. It's mostly because of the budget. Like five years ago there was a lot of investments. It was super easy, I would say, to get investment for some cool idea or cool product. Nowadays it's not so. So the founders need to be super careful with that money aspect of the apps as well. So if you come to me with 100 or 200K, I always tell you let's go small for a start. Let's build MVP version of the product that would have the core functionality or trying to solve the core competitive advantage. After we build that, then we can get the initial feedback from the users and then we can start upgrading the app based on the feedback that we get. 

I would say that that is always and that is still the way to go and, in my opinion, like what the new technologies are going to bring us is that we build that MVP even faster to be of a higher quality and even faster, and we can iterate the product more quickly. So that is the benefit that we are going to exploit in the future, but I would say for any product. That comes to me, regardless of the budget, the key thing is that interaction between users and establishing that relationship as soon as possible to get the feedback either on the design or clickable prototype or the actual product. But key is to get that interaction and get that initial feedback of the users and then start building based on that, regardless of the budget. But I always say let's start small and get that feedback as soon as possible. 

There are, as I said, like that shift is happening and there are some kind of products that needs to take more diligent approach, in a way that you need to have a higher investment upfront in order to make it work. But again, even with that kind of product, there is a way to get the feedback before investing like 200K, to get the feedback, to know that you're on the right path, You're getting the feedback on the design or on the clickable prototype that we do in the first couple of weeks of building the product. But there are ways to kind of increase your chances of success even when investing 200K into the initial product. 

0:11:07 - Mehmet
Great insight, adi. I think you just deconstructed it in a very easy way to understand. I hope our audience comes. They are first-time founders and maybe even second-time founders, but reminding with these aspects is very important. Now, if I want to ask you a little bit about the product development itself, what do you think are the crucial factors to consider when I decide on the product? Because you said there are a lot of many things that are solving the same thing, but at the same time, you need to come up with the product at the end of the day. So how to do this balance of being a little bit innovative but, at the same time, get something out and start to get the traction that you mentioned? So how I can balance it, as I found it Great, like for my experience. 

0:12:13 - Adi
Like many of the founders majority of the founders that I work with they want to jump start into the development. Their goal is let's do the development, let's build the product and that is especially because of all of this influence of different started mentors that we have around and a way to build the start of more fast great things, etc. All of them literally, like they're talking to me today, tomorrow, they want to build a product. But I always say like that, and that is still the case the development of the product is the most expensive phase of product development, of building the product. So that is the most expensive phase. Obviously, all of the iterations on the product should be done in the phases before, either the wireframing phase or the ideation phase or the design phase. So everything, all of the iterations obviously we cannot do all of them because we don't have that much of knowledge at the start, but majority of them we can iterate before stepping into the building phase. So, for example, like in scale up, we do this program that's called Head Start. It takes three weeks. So in three weeks we are talking with founders and trying to together with founders on the calls and our tech team and design team. We're trying to iterate on the idea. At the wireframing and design phase we are trying to discover essentially together what is the mission and vision of a product, what we want to build, etc. What kind of problems we want to solve. And in three weeks we are trying to iterate design, iterate the wireframing, have the clickable prototype ready for founders so they can see what kind of product they are going to get. We can together share the product how it's going to supposed to look like, share with potential users of the product. We can get their feedback on that. We can share with potential investors as well, get their feedback on and potentially, investment. So we try to iterate in these, those three weeks, on that wireframing and design phase and once we have that set in stone, we can start with the development in a way that we have the design that is approved by early adopters potential early adopters of the product. We have the prototype that can be shared with investors and we can get the investment, or investing founders can get the potential investors, investments. We have a pretty solid kind of idea validation through those wireframes and designs and then we can start with the development knowing that some we are building something that is worth building right and at that point founders need to invest more money into building product. 

So these three weeks, initial weeks, are kind of more exploration or ideation phase and preparing them. 

And this is why we label that as a headstart, because literally in three weeks we are giving the opportunity to have a headstart in terms of the competitors and potential competitors and everything. 

So after three weeks founders are know what they want to build, know why they want to build, know how much is going to cost them, know how, what, what is the timeline of the product, when the product would be ready, what the first version of the product should be ready, et cetera. 

They know exactly what kind of technological implications it might have, where identify the risks, et cetera. So literally they are starting to build a product at the phase where they have a lot of knowledge on the product. And this is always advisable to kind of get that initial information and then start building the product, rather than jumping in and kind of starting the building the product and then exploring it, that development phase because, as I said, like that phase is super expensive and it will be expensive in the future as well. So I always advise like iterate on the phases before, iterate on the design, iterate on wireframing, and connect with your users and make them see the product in design and wireframing phase and only build it when you know that what you're going to build is something that is super important. 

0:16:43 - Mehmet
That's really great advice, adi. Now AI is on the mind of every single founder. The question is should we really always add AI functionalities to our products, or is it something we do later? The second thing, because back to I'm always going back to the thing you mentioned, which is very valid about the market is crowded and really is AI making this differentiation? For me, as a founder, will it make big difference? 

0:17:18 - Adi
Great question there's always. The AI is a buzzword at the moment, like AI is a buzzword, the same as it was blockchain, as it was crypto. If we had this interview maybe two or three years ago, we would probably be talking about blockchain and crypto Fast forward. Nowadays, I would say, one or two percent of the startups that were involved in blockchain and crypto are saying that they are successful and they are successful. A majority of them failed. The reason was that the hype around blockchain and crypto was really really high and it gave birth to a lot of startups that are really cool startups, but a lot of startups that are trying to get rich fast scheme. It's literally not based on the value, but based on the buzzword that they are blockchain, they are crypto, etc. So the result of that? That majority of them failed and majority of people around and all of the stakeholders are looking at crypto as potential fraud or scam, which, in the essence, it wasn't right. But all of this bad, I would say, products around it that emerged caused this general understanding of crypto and blockchain of something as a scam. Now we have AI. Ai is a trend at the moment. 

The thing with AI is, if you think about blockchain at the core. When it initially emerged, it was super cool technology and it is super cool technology, but when compared to AI, ai is clear to have the future. It is literally something that is going to be tomorrow. Ai is something that can be implemented in nearly all of the industries in the future, so there is clear advantage of AI. So, even though AI is a buzzword and it's trendy at the moment, I'm fully convinced that it is the future and it is going to have a higher impact than the blockchain could have and will have in that doster. Like, I think AI is the future In terms of the products all of the founders at time working with. 

When all of the fuss about AI started with Chachi PT and everything, a lot of founders called me on my cell phone and asked me in which section of product we can implement AI. I think that in general, even though AI is the future, we need to be super selective when I say we founders, investors need to be super selective in identifying the core or real AI products out there. Like a majority of AI products are labeling themselves as AI product, while in the backend side of the thing they are literally just calling the APIs from Chet, gpt or other chats and showing the answers. Literally, that is like typing on Chet, gpt and answering and getting that, but it's in your own app. Honestly, there is for some apps, like content generation apps, for example, that might be competitive advantage, like let's connect AI and generate AI content. But for majority of the apps it's not to leverage, it's not something that is going to establish them and give them competitive advantage. 

So, in my opinion, like and what I say to all of the founders like, okay, let's build AI segment of your product, but let's first think about what and where to build and why to build. So if we are going to build some section of product to have only to say, okay, it has AI component, it might satisfy some audience and some potential investors, but long term, that is not ideal case to go. Like, in my opinion, whenever someone asks me like, should I build AI? You should, but not before you really think about what kind of benefit it will give you If the benefit that it might give your product is not found so there is no product market fit of that functionality I always tell them like, invest in some other areas. Like, invest in some other area that will bring some competitive advantage that will bring some benefit for your users, because, at the end of the day, users don't care if it's AI or not. If it's solving their needs, that is awesome, regardless if it's blockchain technology in the background or AI or anything else. But kind of. 

We need to have a bit more diligent approach in implementation of AI functionalities in the product and potentially even to go back to the previous question, having that time dedicated to understanding AI and then really exploring the ideas with customers, with all of the stakeholders of your product, might be the better case, right? Let's take the time to explore and decide where to build AI and then, once we have the confirmation and once we have the validation that that AI technology that we are going to implement is going to be truly AI technology that would be beneficial for users, then let's build it right. So that would be my answer. Like, let's take a step back and think about the implications of that particular AI technology in your product. If there is a benefit cool, let's invest, because AI is expensive. 

If the benefits are not there or they are minimal, let's think about investing or reinvesting that budget, time and resources in general into other sections of the app that are really solving the needs of the users, because that is the goal of the product, right? The goal of the product is not to have the AI. It's more to resolve the needs or to fulfill the needs of the users and remove their problem. That is our core strategy. Ai is there only to assist us in that, and if it can assist, great. If it cannot, let's not build it at all. 

0:23:58 - Mehmet
It's like going back to the basics of what the product market fit is, and actually it is getting the green light. Let's say from customers that, yes, you are solving my problem using your solution. Now you solve it with AI. You solve it with something else. 

For me as an end user, I don't care right. So 100% and just very quickly, because you mentioned there are some. You build these functionalities on top of the APIs, of different, of course, like open AI chat. Gpts is the most used ones, but I've seen startups that they have built their whole stack around it, so this is what they are calling them the AI wrappers. So how risky is this model, do you think? 

0:24:52 - Adi
I mean, even when you're building your own product that doesn't have AI functionalities in it, it's always risky to rely on third parties, but at some point of your startup you have to rely right. So, especially for startups, when I mentioned like we need to build some things fast, we need to build functionalities fast, we need to iterate fast and get that feedback fast from the users, et cetera. So in order to do that, oftentimes we need to build something pretty fast and not build it internally. Rather than that, we need to exploit and use the third parties providers to build some different functionalities of the product. So, to answer your question, I wouldn't limit that to AI or to the wrappers for chat, gpts and other. It's more of again coming back. It's more like a product question. 

If we are exploring and iterating something, it's cool to use these third party providers, regardless of the functionality, to use them and see if that is going to be beneficial. If that proves to be beneficial, we should always have on our roadmap on building some things internally that is going to replace the services that we are using in the third party providers. So if we have a solid plan for chat, gpt and all of these wrappers of different chats. If that kind of technology is showing to be super useful and super beneficial for users, that is OK, I would say, for the time being, but definitely to add something on the plan to build our own solution. That so we are not relying on third party services. 

If you can see everything that happened with OpenAI, lapn and change in leadership et cetera, all of these things might affect different products that are connecting to their services as well. So it's always risky to rely on third party providers because of multiple reasons. But for exploration phase and checking if some sort of functionality is going to work with users, I would say it's OK. But keeping that to be your core competitive advantage and fully relying on that, even being in production and having a lot of users, it is risky. So definitely on the plan of this kind of product should be replaced the third party providers with some internal segments or internal code for internal checks or internal AI functionality. 

0:27:42 - Mehmet
Cool. Yeah, 100 percent. It's understandable, but it's scary at the same time. I actually, to be fair, it's not only open AI that might be a risk. I'm not saying they are risky in the bad sense, but it's like a single point of failure for developers, because I remember, even before, the leadership problem that they had and they sorted out now, one time their API had some autodist and every single app that I personally use it was out of service. Of course, I cannot yell on the founders, because I know that if I was in their place, I would be doing the same thing. I need something practical, but, yeah, it's something to always keep in mind and think about. Maybe, as you said, not at the beginning, maybe at a later stage, which is 100 percent. Now I want to shift a little bit, because you mentioned a little bit about and actually you have done it before about fundraising. So the traditional question should I bootstrap or should I raise funds? What's your take on this? 

0:28:53 - Adi
Yeah, I'm always saying if you asked me two years ago, two years ago I would always say bootstrap. But there are a couple of points that there is like it's a bit more complex. In general, you should always bootstrap, like definitely, if you have funds to bootstrap, bootstrap as long as you can and onboard the investors at the latest stages of a product, obviously because of the equity and lower equity that you're going to need to give and you're going to get a lot more money for a smaller amount of equity that you give. But so, in general, the rule is always bootstrap, but there are different type of founders out there and different types of products as well. So, although the rule in general is to bootstrap, always it's there are founders that are fully committed to the product, that are working full-time for a product and the product is their mission and vision. They have had an idea for the past few years, etc. And they are building a product. That is kind of the something that they wanted to do for the last couple of years. 

Especially for that kind of startups and that kind of founders, bootstrapping is a must if they can do it, because giving equity early in the product is super risky for them and they're basically all in the product and they would get more. 

Maybe the roadmap is going to be longer since they don't have that much funding and that much of a cash at the start, but long term that they are going to be at a better spot. 

As I said, product roadmap is going to be longer, but the whole decision making and everything is going to be in their head. However, if you have a founder that is serial entrepreneur, that has time commitments on other products and everything, sometimes if they don't have a co-founder, for example, finding investors early on could be ideal in a way that they can get advisors, they can get the potentially even co-founders from the investment side of the thing Investments side so the investment might be a better option for them because of that time commitment. So founders, this kind of founders can get the investment and they can have the help and the manpower to handle that startup. So it's not a simple answer to the question, but there's a general rule. I always say bootstrap as long as you can, because majority of startups that we are working with founders that come to us. They have an awesome idea, that they are fully on board with that and for them it's always like bootstrap, as long as you can. 

0:32:12 - Mehmet
Yeah, great, and I think to your point that I'm seeing it by the way through my experience with founders it looks like when you are first time founder I'm not saying this is the rule, by the way, but majority of the time what I'm seeing now first time founders bootstrapping is the way to go. Once you have one successful exit maybe because the name becomes also a factor that gives investors some trust I would say to go and invest in your startup. So, yeah, this is something. I'm seeing a lot happening now. Yeah, because you're fighting for resources with other founders as well. So it's definitely something. But I believe also, adi, on this point even if it's a serial entrepreneur, there must be some, I would say, best practices to go and look to raise the capital effectively, right? 

0:33:26 - Adi
Yeah, I think you've got that correctly. The focus is definitely an important factor, because what I experienced as well is that founders are because, if you think about that, like on the tech perspective, we have all of that fuss about trendy technologies right At every point we have some technology that is going to be trendy and that is going to be password. On this business side, or let's say like business side of the things, we have a fundraising that is always a fast light. Founders are always thinking, okay, there are these grants that we need to apply, that, there is this potential angel investor that is going to invest in early-stage e-commerce startups, for example. There is this VC fund that invests in early stages as well, etc. 

So founders are often losing a lot of time on thinking about investments and setting the investment to be their goal when, with that, that is okay. I mean the the investment should be goal for them. If you're they are out of budget, if they don't have, if they don't have a lot of in budget to invest in build especially if they don't have budget to invest in build a product but in long term, like they really need to be fully focused on product and unfortunately, with with all of the investments past. They are losing the focus from the actual product and focusing on investment. And I always say, like People are celebrating investments, like founders are celebrating, oh awesome, I have, I got 500k, I succeeded, my startup succeeded, I got 1 million in in precede, etc. So the the reality is that that is not a milestone to be Accessibly celebrated because you just got the money to build a company. The First milestone is when you push the MVP to the production and If you have a good response for the audience, that is super important milestone, you know. So this, this is the milestone that we need to focus on. All of these Other milestones that you're that we are celebrating our cool milestone, but they are only assisting us to getting to this milestone of satisfying the users and building the product that is going to satisfy the needs and resolve the problems of the user. 

So, unfortunately, everything that that around investments are affecting founders in a way that they are shifting the focus from the product to the investment and Thinking about getting the investment as a product success, while that is not the case. Like the investment, the money is just the means to an end. Like this is something that is going to assist you in your path of building successful product and and your users and product is something that you need to focus. Like Similar, like in scale up what we do. We are not. We always tell the founders we are not building product for you, we are building product for your users and that is the the audience that we need to think about that every, every point of Our journey of building startups. 

So, yeah, this is this is that I wanted to say. Like often, I see that founders are losing focus and losing focus from from product to investment and like spending majority, like 80 90 percent of the time. We're focusing on investment, getting the investment and keeping investors happy, keeping them at bay, etc. And they lose focus, unfortunately, from product that can be super, super risky. 

0:37:15 - Mehmet
I have to strongly agree with you here and you know I blame Little bit. You know Come not everyone, but you know these people who exaggerate things. You know when it comes to celebrating, because you hit the nail, you know on the head when you said about. You know we celebrate these stuff. Part of my work, I Assist, as I told you, founders, especially first-time founders, and you know the, the way that we have built the. You know how we perceive the ecosystem. It's all about funding, which is not, which is about like being customer centric, and I always talk about it, I always share about it. So I think, yeah, we need to go back to basics, you know, and go find the product market fit. Go fine, you know, talk to your customers. 

One of my guests On on the podcast he said, like you should go actually and try to fund from your customers who would pay you right. So which is actually? It was amazing, because your investor should be your customers. I'm not saying don't raise money. Of course I can understand you need to scale, you need to grow the business, but yeah, it's not a milestone. I'm not saying also not to celebrate, don't get me wrong guys but but I mean you know you have to celebrate because, yeah, you validated your idea and you know there's someone who believed in you and then you want to grow the business. 

I'm seeing this I'm not sure about you know other geographies, but I'm seeing this a lot happening which is wrong, strongly wrong. You know too much talking about. You know investor, founder. You know these Relations and you know, of course, are important again, don't get me wrong, can you anybody there? But you know, focus on your product, focus on on on your thing and believe me, you know I'm working with a founder and I love the way he thinks. He said you know, if I build good product, actually investors will be after me, not me after the investors. So, yeah, so it's a great advice. Now, adi, as well. Coming to an end, there's one area which I should have asked you and I want to come back to it. Well, because we talked about AI. How are you seeing AI affecting your business? I mean, from software development perspective, do you see it as a risk or do you see it as an opportunity? 

0:39:45 - Adi
Awesome question, like and yeah, to go back like you're fully, fully on board, like that, and then, in a way, you should celebrate. I'm not opposed in celebrating the investment. It's more like, as you said, like it's a good point. Investment, at a way, is some sort of validation of the idea, because if someone invested, that mean that they believe in the idea, so so no one would give money, just just really for giving money when they were investing in startups. So so it's a great point that that is a sort of validation, but at any point, they shouldn't lose the focus on the product, so that that that that was the core on the future, like it's. It's definitely a interesting topic. 

You know, like I'm always preaching about that in the social media and then inside of the company as well, like that there is, there is Stigma out there that that AI is going to take development jobs. You know, like people are generating the code there. People are asking these Different AI systems to Sharing just some sort of input and then the AI is generating the design for them and then they use that design and share that with another AI system and they get the code for that and people are saying, okay, this, this is going to be the future, this is going to replace the development, etc. But my stance on that is that I try these different tools and they are Definitely something cool, but it's not nowhere near the state that it can be used in production like productive, to be used in a way that that you just copied the code, publish the app and that's it. You're always going to need that layer, technical layer, between, like, if I'm not not not technical founder at the moment and I generate the code from from these, from different tools what am I going to do with that code? Okay, I might, after hours and hours of browsing, I would find a way to deploy it somewhere. And how would I support the code? How would I know if there is some kind of error, if we need to upgrade the code? I mean, there are a lot of technical implications in Setting this up without this technical layer and for me, developers are going to be definitely there and this technical layer is always going to be there, but the the thing is that it's going to be Revolutionized in a way that that's going to be a change from the ground In the next few years, or five to ten years, or something like that. 

The thing what is going to happen is, in my opinion, development speed is going to be increased. So if you have a company that has five developers at the moment, those five developers are the have some sort of Some some sort of traction in the way that they are writing the code and the speed of deploying the functionalities and everything. With the use of AI, we are gradually going to increase the speed. So, whatever those five developers are doing now, in a few years maybe Two developers are going to be capable of writing that much of a code and being building that much of functionality. Whether that is going to bring founders to a state that they are going to say, okay, I don't need five developers, I'm only going to need two developers to keep the constant pace of the development. There is that potential direction. Other direction, which I think is going to be the direction that is going to go, is that they're going to say, okay, awesome, I have five developers that can do some things that can bring 70% increase in functionality that they're building, and I think this is the path that they're going to take. So there are people, are there's not going to be a little lost developer jobs, or the thing is that developers are going to need to be adjusted and they need to adjust their working habits, that the way that they're writing code, et cetera, so they can keep themselves to be interesting on the market. 

Singles is a company for scale up. For example, in order for us to be interesting for founders and for startups and enterprises tomorrow, we need to keep up with the pace of AI and gradually increase the productivity, since we have these tools that are going to assist us. So this is the thing that is going to change, like the nature of the work is going to change. It is not going to be replaced. We are always going to need the developers, but the core of their job is going to be changed in the next couple of years. It's always already shifting and internally we have been discussing lately especially like changes that we need to bring into our workflow to exploit these AI changes and the AI tools in a way that they increase productivity that we do for startups. So that is the first point. 

So the second point is that this is more for new developers out there. It's going to be tough because when you're a new developer, you cannot generate the code and then apply it and use these tools effectively, because in order to use these tools, you need to understand the code that they are producing. Like if a chat or whatever tool is writing the hundred lines of the code. This is super cool for a senior engineer or someone who understands and exactly knows what those 100 lines are doing. But if you take someone that has just started with software development and the tool generates 100 lines of the code, the problem is if they don't understand what they do. 

So I'm saying that first couple of years for developers is going to be learning the course and learning the logic and learning the code and what the code actually does, and understanding the language. After they have a solid knowledge of a particular language, these AI tools are going to assist them in a way that they can generate the code that they really understand and they can upgrade easily afterwards. Of course, ai can assist in the learning process as well, and it should, but I'm just saying that AI tools at the moment are more appropriate. They're more useful to the senior engineers, or, let's say, media engineers as well, while for the junior engineers it's more like a learning curve, often understanding AI tools and understanding the core programming concepts and then exploiting the use-use these tools to increase the productivity. So this is basically my thing. I can elaborate more, but I think that we don't have too much time to discuss. 

0:46:39 - Mehmet
No, but actually it's like very useful. And it all comes back to the what AI. What we say about AI, it's like it can augment our capabilities, and I think it's the same. We will always need developers, of course. It might even, as you said, act as a way to accelerate the learning curve for new developers also as well. So 100% on this. Yeah, so, adi, almost we've done. Just a last question. I always love to ask where can we find more about you and about your company? Scale up? 

0:47:18 - Adi
Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I'm always active on LinkedIn, so the best point of contact will be LinkedIn. And, yeah, if anyone has any questions or any things that they would like to discuss or anything, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. And we have our own website, obviously, scalaba. There is more information about Scala, but I would say always point of contact should be LinkedIn. 

0:47:43 - Mehmet
Great, great. I will make sure that I will put your profile and the link to the company also on the episode show notes. And thank you very much, Adi. Really I enjoyed the discussion. We covered multiple topics, from product market fit, from building the product, from finding the product market fit, as we said, and about bootstrapping and then the future of AI and development. So we covered a lot and thank you for all the information that you shared with us today. And this is how I end. Usually this is for my audience. 

If you're a first time listener or viewer, thank you for passing by. I hope that you enjoyed it. So please subscribe if you enjoyed this episode and if you are a loyal follower. Thank you again for all your comments and for feedbacks. Please keep them coming in and if you're interested to be on the show also as well, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Whether you have a new idea, you have a concept, you want to present us something interesting, so don't hesitate to reach out to us and thank you very much. See you again very soon. Thank you, Thanks, Mehmet.