#308 Beyond Bits and Bytes: A Tech Tale of QR Codes and Customer Centricity with Ravi Pratap

Mehmet: CTO show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased welcoming from New York, Ravi, the CTO of Uniqode. Ravi, the way I love to introduce my guests is I keep it to them to tell us a little bit about their journey, what they are currently doing, and then we can take the [00:01:00] conversation from there. So the floor is yours.

Ravi: Thank you, Mehmet. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Um, I'm essentially, uh, I think of myself as an entrepreneur who's been at it for, for a long time now. I've been an entrepreneur for about 14 years. Uniqode is Uh, is a company that that I'm CTO and co founder off. Uh, I've essentially been interested in startups from the beginning of my career.

I've essentially, uh, you know, first started working at the tech startups in Washington, D. C. And and other parts and then decided to start my own thing many years ago. But of course, it took many iterations to and pivots to get to the point where we are today. As far as what we do at Uniqode is concerned, we are in the business of QR codes.

I'm sure that everyone who's listening to the show has seen or interacted with the QR code in the last, I would say, [00:02:00] at least in the last 48 hours. Most people are interacting with QR codes everywhere in the physical world. And, um, I'm, I'm here to, uh, To build the product, the lead, the engineering, and essentially take the Uniqode solution to as many businesses and, uh, and as many, uh, people around the world, we really believe in the power of QR codes.

We believe in, in how they connect the physical and digital worlds. And that that's essentially what we're doing at a company. That's our mission. We want to connect the physical and digital worlds with, with, with QR codes. 

Mehmet: Absolutely fantastic. Now, one question, Ravi, which, you know, when I was preparing and reading, like, and you did a fantastic job because, you know, I know that Uniqode was recognized as the highest ranked QR code platform on G2, but like, I'm sure, despite [00:03:00] this space to be kind of a little bit, uh, Uh kind of crowded maybe a little bit.

So what were the key innovation and you know, What is the opportunity because I asked this to co founders and founders So what what was you know, the the key innovation areas that you saw That first, you know, you you believe that you should be part of building Uniqode and second Um, you know, what was also the, the, the, you know, the moment you said, okay, we need to build this because there is this gap in the market.

Ravi: Right. Um, let me take you a little, uh, a little back, uh, you know, actually from the standpoint of, you know, our history, we've been, Trying to solve this problem, uh, with, you know, how you connect physical and digital worlds for a few years now. In fact, we, we originally started working with some other technologies.

I'm sure you've heard of Bluetooth beacons. [00:04:00] Uh, you know, that was a technology that was really quite big, uh, you know, five, six years ago. And that's actually how we got our start into this space. Connecting the physical and digital worlds. We did a lot of work with Bluetooth beacons and over the course of you know working with customers and doing the work that we did and with beacons we realized that actually If you if you if you if you look at the smartphone today, right the phone that you know So many people carry around every day.

That's actually got a few different technologies on it that all are Are relevant to this problem that we're trying to solve. Uh, so we actually asked ourselves saying, what is present on every smartphone on the planet? And we realized that there are actually four technologies. One is Bluetooth. Every.

Every phone has it. There's also the camera and essentially through the camera, you can connect with QR code technology. Then there's [00:05:00] NFC. Um, and then there's also GPS, right? These are the four technologies that we identified as being present on every Smartphone on the planet and also being very relevant to this problem that we're trying to solve, which is how do you connect the physical and digital worlds and how do you make it more relevant, right?

This phone that you carry around with you. How can I become more aware of your immediate physical world? So we actually were working on this problem and coming at it from a smartphone. Bluetooth beacons in an angle. And then we actually realized this thing that, Hey, there's actually QR codes and NFC, and actually some of these insights came because we were very closely listening to the market.

What our customers were saying also, you know, our own, uh, Our own internal like research on, okay, how, how, how does this tech work? How does NFC work, for example, is NFC very similar to Bluetooth beacons in terms of some things that it works and then even, [00:06:00] even QR codes. And so we, we saw this opportunity with QR codes because we were like, if you, if you look at the technologies, right, Bluetooth beacons require hardware, NFC.

Also needs hardware. Like, of course the hardware is much cheaper with NFC and it's essentially, it could be a sticker also. And then we're like QR codes don't need any hardware. They can be printed on anything that can be printed or shown on a screen. Essentially the cost of production is zero in that sense, almost zero.

And so we're like QR codes are essentially going to be everywhere. And this is also, we realized that there was this. A shift that happened because in 2018 around 17 18, um, Apple took this decision to integrate qr code You know reader technology into the camera itself So when that happened it kind of took away this whole need to install your own app Install an app from the app store, [00:07:00] you know use that app every time you come across a qr code and then what I Essentially, what ended up happening is it became as easy as just taking your phone out and taking a picture, right?

I mean, everybody's familiar with that even even toddlers these days know how to take pictures. And so because the QR code Tech got integrated into the camera. It started getting Organic adoption, like people started becoming familiar with how to use QR codes or how to scan them with your camera and so on.

So that kind of slowly started picking up in 2018. Uh, and then we, we saw the strength that QR codes were becoming slightly more prevalent, but again, not so mainstream, certainly not in the U S I know that QR codes have been around in China forever. And they, they, they actually play a very central role to everyday life there.

And even in India, QR codes more recently are used for payments all over. You don't even need any cash. You can go around just doing, uh, [00:08:00] Just making payments using QR codes. So, so we kind of saw this opportunity and of course, as you very rightly pointed out, man, like you said, there were, there were all these other players that were like offering QR code solutions.

But the, the key realization for us was the, many of the applications that you could find online. They're actually, they were just built for developers or, or, or close to the developer persona, right? The target audience was closer to a developer, a tech, a techie essentially, or someone who understood tech.

And then we also realized that. There was not yet adoption at the business level. Like, you know, really companies doing this at scale or trying to do something with QR codes, of course we were keeping an eye out, uh, and keeping our ears open, listening to the market, but then the key event [00:09:00] that kind of really propelled QR codes into the mainstream.

In the U S for sure, uh, that has been COVID. So what happened as a result of COVID is that QR codes became so mainstream. You, you essentially, you could, you, you went to a restaurant, there was a QR code there. You took you, you had to sign up for something at a doctor's office. There's a QR code there everywhere.

QR code started becoming more. Visible. And so that essentially led to this acceleration of awareness. I would say, I wouldn't say acceleration of adoption necessarily. Um, QR codes during COVID had a certain set of use cases and some of those are not relevant anymore because of course COVID's not, not, not really a pandemic anymore.

So from that standpoint, QR codes became. Mainstream from an awareness standpoint around that time, and then businesses started seeing all all the things that you could do with a QR code. Like, Hey, can [00:10:00] I put a QR code on packaging? If I'm a retailer, can I use QR codes in my in my stores? Or can I use QR codes in hospitality?

Uh, you know, can I use them to deliver in in room, uh collateral Why do I need to print thousands and thousands of booklets for let's say resort activities or you know coupons and so on and so forth So the businesses started finding value So that's that was the key trend that we observed now the way we attacked the problem is we essentially said We have to take the view that businesses may want to use QR codes at scale And you have to simplify the technology you have to make it work reliably At scale and then you have to do it in such a way that a company may be generating hundreds and thousands of QR codes And there may be many people in a company All having to generate QR codes and manage them centrally track them because this becomes a real problem and you have four or five QR codes You know, someone will just generate them on some free [00:11:00] generator online You You use them, you forget about them.

But then, then the company starts adopting them at scale, right? They're now generating 10, 20, 30, 50 codes. You can't just leave it to let every employee just figure out some random tool to use. You kind of have to keep track of them. You want to see the analytics, the data, you want all of this to come together.

And that was the key insight for us. You were like, Uniqode can essentially become, That solution, that end to end solution, which allows businesses to not only generate QR codes, but also manage them centrally collaboration and control over how QR codes are used at a company level and then track all the analytics and the data and have it all reside in that solution.

In a centralized platform with security and data protection, all of that. So that was the, the differentiation that we kind of brought to the market. And that is, that has been our approach from day one. 

Mehmet: [00:12:00] Absolutely fantastic. And yeah, I can say. The pandemic, maybe, you know, there's this joke that accelerated a lot of things, digital transformation and all that.

And personally, uh, I don't carry, you know, business cards anymore. So I have my, you know, my information on a QR code. So just to, and even there are these NFCs cards, if you know, so, yeah, so absolutely. It was a great, uh, uh, move, I would say for your site. Now I know, uh, Ravi, like. When I was preparing and I've said, I've read, you know, some, some, some information.

So I know like you give importance, uh, about, you know, being focused on the customer and, you know, having this always feedback about. So when you started, when you launched, how was, you know, this, importance of including the customer feedback into, you know, feeding that back to, to the, you know, developing the product more.

And I'm asking you this Ravi, also [00:13:00] from both perspective, from perspective of how you did it on Uniqode and why this is important for fellow CTOs and maybe co founders later, why they need to do this, having this feedback loop from, from their customers, especially the early ones, probably. 

Ravi: Yeah, yeah. Happy to share.

I think it's going to be a long story, but hopefully that's fine. So I'll start with the first, uh, you know, question you asked me around how, how we did it in the early days. Um, I, it goes back to, to the time when we actually first, so we decided, of course, Hey, we've got to put out a QR code solution. Let's build an MVP.

One of the benefits that we had Mehmet is that we had already built a platform which was, Servicing, you know, Bluetooth beacons or Bluetooth beacon business, uh, was being serviced by that platform. And actually many of those platform elements and architecture [00:14:00] were relevant to what we were trying to do with QR codes.

And so we leveraged that, uh, we were really, really small team. I had, uh, at that time, uh, there were, there were actually, Less than five, five engineers, like five developers who worked on the, on the entire platform that, that we're talking about and everything that we did. So we had a really small lean team.

I was in charge of them directly, of course. Uh, and essentially what would, what we would do is we, or, You know, I respect out obviously did the product management side of it, right? So how what we want to put out What is the MVP look like? What is that feature set, you know pricing packaging all of those things, but you know the You know to your question.

How do you how do you handle customers? It's one thing we believe firmly in from day one is we all we've We felt that we always have to be listening to customers and be responsive to them. We have to be, we have to be [00:15:00] there to help them out, not, not hide behind, uh, like a support email address or, or not just be someone who, uh, essentially just puts out an FAQ or puts out a, you know, some kind of help center article.

And then, you know, basically say, all right, go help yourself. We really believe and have believed from the beginning that you've got to be there. You've got to talk to customers. So what I used to do personally is, so, you know, our, our support line, our support, so we had. We had a phone line so you could call our phone number on the website and we had a line for you to talk to our support team.

The support team was me basically. If you, if you, if you dialed and pressed whatever one for support, it would come, it would ring mine, my phone. Uh, and then we also had a support, uh, email address. So you could write, send an email to support at you know, Uniqode. com and then there was also live chat. So you, you, if [00:16:00] you came to our website and you, you know, we have this thing which pops up, it starts, you can talk, you can talk with us essentially.

And you can chat online. That was the third mechanism. So we had these three mechanisms, they're all powered by intercom. Um, and, and we basically would, Have all of this come into intercom in the in a single inbox and I would be the one Manning all those tickets like whatever chats came in whatever emails came in And, you know, if someone called the phone, that would also ring my phone.

And, you know, there's a joke that my, uh, my daughters, they always make fun of, they used to make fun of me when they were much younger. And you know, I would answer this, I would answer the phone wherever I was, even if I was in the house, like I was doing something, if the phone rang, I would always answer it.

What I mean is a support line. And, you know, I had this thing where I would always answer the phone and say, thank you for calling. By the way, we used to be called beacon stack at that time. [00:17:00] So I would say, thanks for calling beacon stack. This is Ravi. How can I help you? And I made it a point to answer every call that came in.

And if I missed a call, I would return every single call. It's actually one of the things that I've found to be counterintuitive, right? As a, as a techie, as a CTO, you tend to think, you know, I should be focusing entirely on architecture and technology and how to build scalable systems. One of the things that, uh, that I've believed in and I've applied over the years is something that, you know, the Airbnb guys have shared with the world.

It's something that comes from them. I think also Y Combinator talks about this a lot. It's about doing things that don't scale. And I believed in that from day one. I said it doesn't matter Even if I get 50 phone calls in a day That's not much if you add up the number of calls and how they're spread out over an 8 10 hour period That's not a whole number.

That's not a whole lot of calls I can still [00:18:00] get my work done But it's important to talk to customers if they reach out if they're motivated enough to dial mine You know, support line and actually make the effort to reach out to someone. We must be there for them. And I felt I have to personally be there for them because we were a small company at that time.

And I thought that I should be doing support as well. It's also. There's also this philosophy that, you know, plays into this, which again, one of my core philosophies, which is to not delegate these things early in one's evolution. So you could argue, Hey, why didn't you just hire a support rep? Why didn't you just have someone do this job?

And I think that You know, there's this Japanese phrase, uh, which is referenced, I mean, it comes from lean philosophy and it's also referenced in a book that I really, uh, you know, look up to, it's called Lean Startup. There's a philosophy that is referenced, it's called Ginichi Gimbutsu. Which [00:19:00] in Japanese means go and see for yourself, right?

Loosely translates to that. And, and that's something which has really stuck with me because I find that when you directly talk to customers, like someone calls you up and you hear the question or you hear what they're trying to accomplish, there's no, there's no filters between. What that person's saying and how it's making it to your brain, essentially, right?

It's directly going into you, whether you read, read an email that someone's written to you on the support ticket or a support line or whatever, the inbox. Um, or if someone's called you and is talking to you on the phone, in all of these cases, there are no filters. So whatever someone's saying is directly becoming input for you because now you're the You know as you're the as you're the product leader, you're the one deciding every single day What it is that we got to prioritize what are we going to build features wise?

What bugs are we going to fix [00:20:00] all of these things are prioritization decisions that you're taking right in your in in in this position and The reason I felt that that feedback loop, direct feedback from customers has been, I think, game changing for us is because there are never any filters. You can't discount that.

You can't, you can't just say, Oh, sorry, that person has, has no clue because there is nobody else in between who's translating what's on support ticket. is saying or whatever. And you can feel the frustration in someone's voice if they're trying to do something and your product doesn't let them do it, or they're trying to make a payment and your system's blowing up and whatever, doing something it isn't supposed to, or they're trying to accomplish something with your product.

Like they want a QR code to do X and Y and your product's supposed to do that, but it's buggy. It doesn't work as intended. When you hear that yourself from, you know, either on a phone call or when you get those support tickets flying in, like you have one, two, three, four tickets within an hour, and they're all about [00:21:00] the same thing, you can't run away from that.

It's very difficult to hide. I mean, unless you're fooling yourself, right? You, 

you, 

Ravi: Actually can really benefit in the early days. We we made everybody Really look at this like I would share my screen show and and engineers also had support Inbox access they could they could see the conversations And what this would do is every week when we were prioritizing items, we would factor this in like, hey Why are these customers struggling?

Why does this customer want this? Is there a reason here and and some of our biggest customers have come in You Because we've paid attention to those details. I still remember the day that I got a call from the Hilton, uh, you know, the Hilton corporate and, and they were like, Hey, you know, we want to talk to you.

And they wanted to speak with our sales team. And there was a reason for that conversation, but that came because one of the Hilton hotels. In a part of Washington DC happened to be using us that [00:22:00] and that person who signed up there was I think the Executive chef at that Hilton and he signed up and he had apparently called You know us on the support line and emailed us back and forth a few times.

I was the one who had you know Helped him out at that point and he was and that connection that was built and and the and what he saw in terms of how responsive we were and how Quickly we Adapted to the needs or, you know, pushed out the necessity fixes that the person or the user was, you know, having problems with that really impressed them.

And they were like, Oh, you know, we should get Hilton corporate to talk to these guys because this is a company that's really, you know, responsive and has a good product and so on. I guess I'm telling you the story because I think it's really important as, as leaders to really roll your sleeves up and not let anything be.[00:23:00] 

Beneath you in the sense that you don't want to be too senior for anything. Like there's no such thing as i'm too senior to answer the support lines, you know If the phone rings or i'm not too senior to respond to support tickets myself It's something which I think even you know at amazon and jeff bezos, right?

I think there's a story around around how There's this whole, everybody in every Amazon employee is required to be on customer support for their first two, two weeks or within the first month of onboarding, they're supposed to spend two weeks answering customer support calls and so on. And so I, I think all of these things.

They're all essentially about the same thing, about the same core idea. The core idea is you have to listen to customers directly and learn from that without filters, right? Without all these translations happening. 

Mehmet: Yeah. Ravi, I love this. And I always tell founders, you know, like now I [00:24:00] have mixed background of, uh, technology plus, uh, business development and so on.

And of course I was a client at some, uh, stage in my life. So I tell them, you know, the hard, okay. You know, Positioning your product, selling your product, marketing your product. Yes, it's hard, but your actual journey starts. And I think I read this in the same book, the lean startup, your journey starts after you onboard the customer, because this is where you want to avoid the churn.

You want to avoid, you know, uh, negative feedbacks. So actually the journey always start. As we call it in the sales world after you close the deal So this is where your actual work starts because you need to keep this customer happy Uh, you know and and interacting with you. So I love this approach I want to ask you one more question, which you know I I get to know that also you give very big importance to it when you onboard your customers I think you talk about perfecting the welcome email [00:25:00] Right.

So why do you think this is key for also like letting the customer feel comfortable and to your point? You know, like you just give the example about, you know, like he or she, they would start to tell their company and maybe they would tell their friends in other places, but you know, this welcoming strategy in the email, why it's very important.

And in general, you know, this direct communication, you just said it, uh, does it also like start from that moment? So you continue the same way you were explaining. So can you give me some hints about this? We'll come email strategy. I love this. 

Ravi: Sure, sure. Happy to share. Um, so Mehmet, I, I, I think the, if I were, so, you know, our business is TLG business, right?

So product led growth. We get a lot of users, you know, a lot of people coming to our website. [00:26:00] Trying out our service or hitting a button and signing up for a trial. That's a very significant and actually central part of the way our business is run. It's, it's primarily inbound. It's, it's completely online and there is no need to talk to anyone.

You can, Talk to or you're welcome to call us or you know schedule some time with our sales team if you'd like to But there is no requirement. You're not forced to go through a human being right? So that's at the core of our Uh product and how it's designed and how it's actually geared towards growth, right?

It's product like growth um Now on when you have a model like that, right? So the question is Going back to how you do things that scale and how you first do things that don't scale and then you figure out how to Solve the scale problem later at some point. You're getting 40 trials a day 50 trials a day And that [00:27:00] number starts climbing you get 100 and 300.

So the welcome email is one of those things which You know, I developed over many years and there's this one thing that I learned. I think it's attributed to, uh, I think something around Obama. I don't remember the exact context, but essentially there's this principle of when you're, when everyone's online, okay, all of us are online, we're not seeing each other, we're not doing a zoom call or, or, or something like this, where there's audio and video, we're having a conversation in the business world, if I'm signing up on a website.

I'm plugging in my email address, starting a trial. What touch points does a business have with that, with that user? I mean, honestly, there isn't much there's the UI, the dashboard itself, or the product experience, which they log into as soon as they, you know, finish their sign up or when they take the decision to start the trial, [00:28:00] there's obviously that user interface, which is, uh, which is the.

Everything the product has to offer that's super critical, of course, like it matters tremendously. So that's one element, which is the product. The second element is if you're not in the physical world and you're not received something, you're not met someone, how do we build a connection? That's, that's a question, right?

So very often your business will send you an email. It will say, Hey, Thanks for signing up, or it'll say your account's been created, you know, and it'll send you some generic email, maybe with some graphics on it. But that is literally the first touch point that a customer has when they decide to engage with you as a business or with your website.

And so the welcome email for me is the literally the very first impression that you make outside of what has already happened on the website. It's the very first person to person interaction that [00:29:00] that that essentially is happening with your company. Assuming that they haven't spoken to a salesperson or they haven't had any other human contact.

So this is the first person to person direct contact thing that's happening. The welcome email is going out now. A lot of companies will say, let's just make it an automated email. And you know, they'll say no reply at, you know, whatever. com. Cause they don't want human contact. They'll, they'll be like, this is an automated email.

It's just saying, welcome. And here's your account, uh, you know, confirmation and so on. I believe that that should actually be a person to person contact because that's when the person at the other end feels that there is a human at the other side on the other side of this product and that it's not just this automated system which sends an email saying you know hey your account's been created so essentially our decision was let's use the welcome email to build that connection which is Hey, I'm a real person.

My name is Ravi. I'm the co [00:30:00] founder of this company and I really want to know why you signed up like that's what my welcome email says The reason for that also is that I I I think there are one is it's it's my feedback You know firehose as I call it essentially every single day People will reply to that email and and that's how I'm kept honest.

I actually think of it as there's no running away from those trial replies because every single day I get these emails or replies and they tell me what the customer is actually thinking or doing. But why the welcome email? Why the person to person, like, Contact. Why do I believe in it? Because I think that there's no other way to humanize your company, especially if you're doing this at scale and you have hundreds of trials or users coming on board and they're all over the world.

How do you assure them that there is a human at the other end? And actually a lot of products these days kind of forget to do this. It almost [00:31:00] feels very impersonal. So, so the welcome email for, for us is a, it's a welcome email, but second is It sends a signal that that you have a direct line And if you want to give us feedback if you need anything You have a direct line to a person and the person happens to be co founder of this company And so what and and also I have this, you know promise that I make Uh, not not not not literally in the email, but it's it's a promise that i've made in my head Which is every single person who writes back to me Actually here's for me directly.

So I also engage with them and I reply. So it's not like you just tell me something and then I forget about it or I just, you know, move on. I'll reply to your email. I'll actually engage with you. And you might say, Hey, I'm trying to do this. And I'll reply and say, have you tried this? Or have you seen our help center article?

And, you know, have you, have you like maybe reached out to our support team if you're having problems with A or B. So the welcome email is a way for me to connect, but [00:32:00] more importantly, it's a way for users to connect with. With with a person, and it also is a way to build trust. This is the last point I want to make, which is that when someone sends an email and anywhere in the world, they have no idea.

Is someone writing back? Is this going into a black hole? Is it going into an automated system? But when you reply and you reply at a certain speed or, you know, you're essentially you do it like within an hour, within three hours or within a day, right? That builds trust because this is something that I read, which is that the speed of response is what builds trust over a long distance.

When, when there is no human contact, like no video and so on and so forth, like it's all happening over email. So, so speed of response also matters. So when you send a ticket in or you send an email saying, Hey, yeah, Ravi, this is why I signed up. And they replied to it. When I replied, that's, I'm actually building trust [00:33:00] saying, You know, I've read your response and I am a human and this, this, this email that I typed back to you, it's obviously not automated because you can't automate that because I'm obviously reading what that person is doing.

Of course, maybe with AI you can, but I don't want to, because the whole point is that the feedback from the, from customers or users is so valuable. I call it the canary in the coal mine, right? So there's, there's no way that you, you, you'll ever miss anything if you pay attention to those, those emails coming in.

Uh, lastly, I think as a, as a leader and as an executive, and I'm sure many of the people listening to the show, all of, all of us, we have this problem of as we get bigger, you know, in our companies or as we go up or further and further, I think away from like the day to day. Uh, there's always this question of how do we keep ourselves honest?

How do we really know what's going on in the ground, which is, you know, [00:34:00] back to that guinea chicken boots, the thing I was talking about. So I think as a leader, no matter how big your company gets, you have to figure out a way to stay really close to customers. And one way is to make sure that when that customer writes like to that welcome email, it comes directly to you.

I don't delegate that to anyone in my company. We have a lot of people who work at Uniqode, but that's not delegated to anyone. No one else can reply on my behalf. And And that's how I stay close to the customer. Just as an example, uh, this doesn't mean that I still handle all the support tickets that we get.

I don't, we have a support team that all handling support, you know, chats and emails and so on, but this core philosophy of listening to customer feedback, looking at support tickets and so on, that still exists in our company at scale. So one of the things we do, for example, is every engineer in the company is required.

On a rotation like we have this whole system where we call [00:35:00] it on call rotation. So no matter where you work in the company, even if you're an engineer who writes really obscure backend code, right, you have to spend that and you're, you'll get a tone like at a certain frequency, but essentially you have to do customer support, it's called on call support for us and you have to deal with customer tickets, resolving them.

Tracking down bugs. So that's core to our philosophy. We feel like everybody in the team should do this Whether you're in product management, whether you're in engineering and so on even design 

Mehmet: Absolutely fantastic. And I loved you know, um, you know this concept of Before actually the customers sign up with you show the speed.

I know this matters because You know again i'm talking even when when you're just for example answering a uh, a inquiry Maybe maybe the customer will not buy from you, but they will [00:36:00] appreciate if you come back to them Um, because they know okay if we do a business with this company We will not struggle to find who's the right person to talk to when there's a problem and so on So absolutely now I won't have it, you know, you you touch base a little bit, but this i'm asking for the audience You Um, you know, about the role of the CTO and I can see you have built kind of a business acumen also as well.

So it's not like only about the bits and bytes and the digits and zeros and ones. So I've seen you've built this business acumen. I want to ask you, Ravi, how much this is important for technical co founders, CTOs, probably they would become CTOs. Maybe they would become, uh, CPOs, you know, chief product officer, why, why this business acumen is important in the role of the CTO and how it helps you actually.

Ravi: Yeah. Uh, uh, my, [00:37:00] my experience has been that if you look at the CTO role and as a co founder, and even if you're not a co founder as a CTO, you're actually making. You're in charge of most of the time you're in charge of engineering product, how some, how's, how your, how your company's product is, is, is developed and delivered and made available to customers and so on.

I think that as a CTO, you're not responsible for just engineering, which that's the reason why I differentiate between being. A CTO versus being, let's see, a vice president of engineering, a vice president of engineering is really responsible for the technical aspects of engineering the product and architecting it and actually delivering it, right?

Uh, which we're all familiar with, but I think in the CTO role, because [00:38:00] you are actually at a, at a, at a, in a position where you're, 

you're 

Ravi: You are responsible not just for building the product or making it available. You're actually kind of responsible for its success in the hands of the customer as well.

You, you are not really just stopping with, you know what? I gave you access to your account here. There it is. Go have fun with it. It doesn't stop there. I think in the CTO role, you have to ask the question, which you have to ask a series of questions, which are around, uh, elements of customer experience, elements of, uh, even design user experience, like, okay, we built this product, we made it available, uh, but did the customer, uh, end up spending 20 hours trying to figure something out, which will really taken them, you know, five minutes if the user experience was right and the product was designed correctly.

These are [00:39:00] all things that I believe really fall on the CTO because the technology there is not just the tech, but tech that you, that you use to build a product. It's also the technology being utilized by your customer for their business. I think, I think that's really what one ought to be looking at that as so.

As a CTO, you're also trying to figure out whether the product that you, your, your, your team built and gave to the customer, whether that's actually solving any problem for them and whether it's solving the problem that they bought the product solution for, and it's not so much about, Hey, what are the requirements, what are the specifications and here the product meets those specifications.

I would argue that's the job of someone who reports into you. They're like saying, Hey, this is what I was asked to build. And this is what the product. Delivers and it's it's exactly what I was asked to build but at the level that you know We [00:40:00] are at the cto co founder and so on you're actually asking the next level You're like, okay the product got built according to spec and it's been delivered to the customer But did it really make a difference to their business?

Did it solve a problem for them? Did the tech that we Enable for them through our product did that actually make a difference? because those are those are the questions which Actually tie into Whether you are going to succeed as a business, right? Because if the customer found no value, they're most likely going to churn.

They're most likely not going to recommend you to anyone because there was hype and then it didn't live up to the hype, or maybe it was not relevant or they found it extremely excruciating to get it to work. And so all of these elements, I think, in my view, they, they fall, they fall on the CTO. They also fall on the CEO to some extent, but the CEO has many other fish to fry.

And I think if you just put yourself in the shoes of the product got delivered to the customer. Now, [00:41:00] what is the product doing? How is it solving their, their, their business use case or The actual job that they, you know, signed up for that is something which I believe falls squarely on the CTO shoulders.

And you have to, you have to be responsible for that, that responsibility is on you. It's not customer success. It's not just because customer success, for example, is still relying on, on the organization that rolls up into you. They need you to have that mindset. If you don't have that mindset, Customer success will struggle because they're trying to help you see the point of view of the business or the company that's bought your solution is having problems with it, or, you know, is finding something lacking.

So from all those angles, I think the CTO needs to become much more business aware and And outward facing. It's not so important to know, I think, uh, on your side, maybe it's not crucial for you to know exactly what's [00:42:00] going on on how we're acquiring customers, what is marketing up to, and what is sales up to in within your own company, you can do it.

If you have the interest, absolutely. You know, it's, it's good to know those things, but I'm actually talking about it from the customer standpoint, which is when they signed you up their business. And, and, and the, and the interaction between your product and their business, that's critical for you to know, because that's how you'll drive innovation.

Like you're also responsible for not just prioritization and product roadmaps. You also are responsible for innovating. How are you going to come up with the next product line? Uh, how are you going to come up with a bunch of, uh, you know, new. Features, which may be revenue generating, which may be a new opportunity for your, for your company, maybe a new product line.

Also, how do you do these things? These don't happen in a vacuum. And they don't happen because somebody on your team came up with a smart idea. They, they, they happen because you're able to [00:43:00] process the signals coming from your customers, because you're, you're, you're, you're aware of their challenges, their, their needs.

And you're also aware of what your team is building and what, uh, What the thinking is or what experiments are running in the lab and so on, and you can kind of put these two together and say, Yeah, there's an opportunity here. Maybe there's the scope for us to go build this other product line or or launch this new feature, which we can charge a bunch of money for because it's valuable to the customer.

And that's the reason why we would make say more revenue and so on and so forth. So I think when you look at it from these angles, that's, that's why I think the CTO apps in my view ought to be aware and really oriented. 

Mehmet: Um, actually, you know, I think there's a lot of synergy even in the way we think, because at the end of the day, majority of my guests who, who, you know, are like you co founders and, you know, with the, [00:44:00] with this background.

So the ones that I see that are successful, and I know that you are successful is because, you know, they don't think about. the things from only technology perspective. Oh, it's cool or not. And to your point, what value am I adding today to my customer who is actually trusting me, paying me money, uh, sometimes, you know, giving some critical business to you.

Uh, and they rely on your technology that you are offering. But again, you know, this, maybe I'm repeating what you said just to highlight to the audience, how important is customer centricity? I'm a big, um, fan. I'm actually an advocate of customer centricity. And by the way, it's not only in startups and in tech companies like this is across the board, because to your point, like this is what made Amazon successful.

Um, this is what made, you know, like a lot of other companies, but because you mentioned Amazon and you know, the, the way they, they deal with customer support. So it's, yeah, of course they [00:45:00] are an example out there. Uh, Ravi, as we almost come to an end, just, you know, I want to take from you. like some final thoughts, uh, about, you know, what's coming up, you know, maybe if you can share also, uh, what's next for QR codes, you know, what, what the future you see and where we can find more about you.

Ravi: Sure. Um, I think from the standpoint of what we're up to with, you know, QR codes and, and what's, what's coming up, you know, it's funny, you mentioned, Digital business cards. You mentioned like using a QR code for, uh, for, for your contact information in place of a paper business card. That's one thing that, you know, we certainly are seeing a lot of growth in, uh, many more applications for QR codes in the real world.

Uh, and, and the reason we think that is, you know, at our, at our, at our. core [00:46:00] mission level, right? As a company, we think every, every object, every physical object on the planet should have its own unique connected digital code. That's, that's kind of the overarching mission that we have. That's our vision and every physical object on the planet.

And for now we'll restrict ourselves to planet earth. Like every physical object is going to have this unique code. We think that unique code is going to be a QR code that essentially maps to that. Physical objects, digital identity. And so we see that, you know, the world today has billions and billions of such physical objects.

And so we want to see QR codes and all of them QR codes are natural evolution, right barcodes game before, and, and they've been very successful and very relevant for many different applications and use cases. And I think the same thing can be expected of QR codes. [00:47:00] Digital business cards are just an example of how every person can have like a unique digital business card, a unique digital connected code.

But then also there are applications in asset tracking, uh, inventory management. just many different applications inside companies and external ones facing customers, uh, inside of warehouses, inside of, uh, all kinds of workflows. So we see many applications. I, I, I just highlighted a few that I think could end up becoming quite significant.

Um, and so. We see a future where QR codes are everywhere on this planet, and that's the future we're building towards. Um, In terms of where you can learn more about, uh, you know, us, you know, our website, of course, www. [00:48:00] unico. com. Uh, and of course you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, as, as well as, uh, on Twitter.

Happy to continue to share. I, I share a lot more on LinkedIn these days. So you can find me on LinkedIn as Ravipatrop Madan Sethi. Uh, and yeah, we'll continue to, uh, share what we're doing with the world in terms of QR codes and where we're taking them. 

Mehmet: Absolutely fantastic. I will make sure that I will put the links in the show notes so people they don't have to Search for that.

It'll be easy like they can find it Ravi I really enjoyed the conversation with you today because You touched on something which as I was telling you just moments ago. It's close to my heart customer centricity building technology for purpose, uh It's not like building technology because it's cool. Of course, by the way, it's cool.

Like your QR code, I remember to your point when the first time I saw it, I said, wow, like, you know, I can just take a photo and then it takes me to a [00:49:00] website or, you know, later you, you go to a restaurant here in Dubai, the same happened during the pandemic. So they removed all the physical menus. And now, you know, you, you, you choose your food from there.

Later on, they introduced the payment by QR code, which is another like amazing thing. So, so, so this is this technology, but you know, your way of building this. And I think this is the reason for, for the success you had because you put the customer. Uh first in in mind, which something personally I was telling you I am very excited about it Uh, so thank you again for sharing your story Thank you again for sharing all these insights because especially when you touch base on Not only how to build the trust building the trust building the relation Keep, keep getting the feedback loop.

I'm just trying to wrap up what we discussed, having the business acumen, um, that you talked about understanding a piece of everything. Of course, you cannot be everything at the same time and you know, about how to scale things. So thank you very much for, for being on the show with me today. [00:50:00] And this is usually how I end my episodes.

for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed what you have listened to today. If you like it, please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues and for the loyal audience. Thank you very much for your encouragement and for your loyalty.

I really appreciate that. Don't forget also to keep sending your comments. Keep your support coming. I really appreciate that and we will be again very soon in a new episode So thank you very much. See you soon. Bye. Bye. 

Ravi: Thank you so much Mehmet for having me. It was a real pleasure. My pleasure