#419 Ed Osckar’s Journey: Thriving in Entrepreneurship, and Excelling in the Competitive Cloud Market

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from the US, Ed Osckar. Ed, thank you very much for joining me on the show today. The way I love to do it, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves [00:01:00] to us. So a little bit about your background, your journey, and what you're currently up to, and then we can take the discussion from there.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours.

Ed: Well, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Mehmet. It's a pleasure for me to be here in your podcast. So thank you for having me. So, my name is Ed Oscar. I am a CEO of Wowrack. com. We are a cloud service provider company incorporated in 2000 21 two 2001 in the United States.

Ed: And what Wal right does today is we provide infrastructure as a service solutions data center platform for cloud hosting solutions and manage services to provide systems engineering, network engineering, and cloud engineering for those solutions. I myself originally came from Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia, so I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Ed: I lived in Jakarta for about 12 years, and I went to Singapore for high school, so I lived in Singapore for about 5 years. And and right [00:02:00] after that I came to Seattle Washington in the United States. When I was probably about 17 years old. So went to college here. And I also did my post graduate my master's degree in information systems here in the Seattle.

Ed: And never left. So I've, I've lived most of my life here in the United States for gosh, coming 29 years this year.

Mehmet: Oh wow. Oh wow. What, what a journey I would say, ed. And, you know, again, thank you for being with me here on the show today. You know, the story of WowRack, it's really fantastic, you know, starting it from, you know, a very humble beginning, I would say to the place where, you know, it, it, it became today.

Mehmet: So. What were the main or like the biggest challenges you face scaling the business from such humble beginnings?

Ed: Well, tons [00:03:00] of challenges, right? As an entrepreneur. Well, I would say Let's just start with the beginning itself. I mean, when, when I started the business in 2001 me and my partner, Jimmy we were just really fresh college graduate.

Ed: We have no business background. We have no, we really have no business being in business, but we were just two really passionate young kids you know, back in the day. I love everything about anything and everything about the computer and the internet, you know, back in the day. And Jimmy is very similar.

Ed: And I remember it took us about, you know, five minutes, literally five minutes to session. To just start the business, right? So the story was there's one evening where I, I, I went to Jimmy's house just to kind of hang out and he's like, hey, you know, you love this internet stuff, right? You have you have some knowledge about you know, web servers and And servers and internet and all of this [00:04:00] stuff and I said Yeah, I do.

Ed: And he's like, Hey, let's do a business. Let's start a business. And then I'm like, well, that sounds intriguing, right? I would, I just graduated from school. I have no job. I have nothing. And Jimmy asked me, so how much do you have? Like money wise with you? I said, well, I have 5, 000. And Jimmy said, Oh, I have 5, 000 too.

Ed: I mean, we didn't really have 5, 000. What I mean is I have 5, 000 to swipe for my credit card. So, so we bought, like, like, like I said, literally we decided in about five minutes, Hey, let's start this out. We don't really know what it means. Let's start buying domain, making websites. And I didn't even know how to make a website.

Ed: So I, I went to my local bookstore bought a book on, you know, one of those HTML for dummies book learn how to make a website in two weeks and launch the website about a month later. So, so obviously, you know, that was very [00:05:00] challenging, right? We were, like I said before, we were just young kids.

Ed: We didn't know anything about business. There's, there's no plan, there's no business plan, there's no departments. I mean, so, we started setting up servers, setting up the website, started selling online, and after we sell online, we're like, well, I guess now we have to bill for the services. So we have to figure out how to bill it.

Ed: And then, and then that story kind of continues on, really, for a long time. You know, five, seven, 10 years we were just figuring things out as entrepreneur, as, as kids. And what also makes it hard is that our business is very capital intensive. It's extremely capital intensive, right? So we have to, we have to pay power.

Ed: We have to pay for internet services and really fast, like fast internet services line, not, not like your cable modem for home. We have to buy servers. We have to buy [00:06:00] software and we have to buy all of those stuff in order to rent it for our customers. So money is always tough. For us has always been tough.

Ed: It's still tough for us today. Because all of our money, all of the profit, you know, it all goes back to the business of buying equipment, getting the business larger, you know, and larger and larger. And now we, we own our own data center facilities. It's a three megawatt facility with about 450 racks of of server racks.

Ed: We we are in nine different locations in the world. And we probably run about 7, 000 hardwares, meaning there's a server storage switches and things like that. And you know, diesel generator, UPS, and all of those money really comes from just the profit. Going back directly to the business, right?

Ed: And for many years there's also a lot of questions about, Hey should we take investment money? Should we take, you know, should we sell our equity for investment money for private equity [00:07:00] and things like that. And 23 years in business, we have decided to still do it ourself, like puffing it up.

Ed: We never took any private equity and things like that. And so as you can tell You know, it's really tough, right? And we are in a extremely crowded space, right? And I always tell people, like, we feel like we are a small, you know, mom and pop shop. Like a grocery shop. And next door, there's like, Like Walmart, right?

Ed: And then next door, there's like, Carrefour, right? And then on the, on top of us, there's like Amazon, there's like Microsoft and Google and everybody, and everybody's like, you know, kind of in the same similar space. So we have to be really creative. And I think how we not only stay in business, but how we thrive is, you know, just operating the business with the right mindset.

Ed: Yeah. Right. So we are very frugal still. I mean, we're not a startup, we're about 200 people employees today. But we still operate like a [00:08:00] startup our mindset that we you know, kind of pass to our employees are still those frugal startup mindset. We we are smart in spending our, you know, In, in spending where we need to spend and not spending, where we don't need to spend.

Ed: Right. And and, and also we also use a lot of open source technologies. And nowadays with, you know, advanced hardware and storage technologies, we're also able to kind of combine everything together and create a multi-tenant infrastructure and just really be resourceful and be, um, be, be smart enough in order to stay ahead in the business. Wow.

Mehmet: You know, really it's like, kind of like, it's like a movie in front of me, you know, like it's an amazing story. And, and yeah, like coming from the same background and I can relate to a lot of the things you just mentioned and yeah, it's, it's a crowded place and this is, you know, one of the things I want to ask you.

Mehmet: So. The [00:09:00] industry changed a lot since, you know, when you started it and, you know, co location and people, you know, getting, you know, hosting services was, you know, the new thing. And then came the concept of the cloud, right? So, but thanks goodness, I would say. So the concept of hybrid cloud now, you know, came at the forefront, I would say.

Mehmet: So how have you seen, you know, the demand for hybrid cloud? You know what you offer evolved during the time and you know, where are we heading because you know honestly, like I stopped putting my remarks on this because every now and then New things comes and things change very fast. So what's like your holistic view on, on, on the cloud computing and the hybrid model?

Ed: A very good question. So I would probably start answering the question with this concept. So, back in 2001, right? We started the company, I see [00:10:00] that as a web hosting company, so selling web hosting accounts. So very similar to like your, You know, one on one or go daddy type of weapons to make out right and fast forward today 2024.

Ed: I'm probably, you know, gonna say that we are at the maybe six or seven iteration of what we are offering to our customers. You know, because we couldn't stay in business by just selling web hosting anymore, right? And I always tell our guys that you know, remember the dial up business, you know, back in the early 90s?

Ed: It was, you know, the AOLs of the world. It's, it's it's, it's conquering the world, right? But you know, all of those businesses are no longer here with us because they don't innovate. They are, you know, they get big and they got really slow. They got to be very slow, right, in making decisions and, you know, they don't prioritize right.

Ed: So, I always share this story with the guys with our guys and say, We cannot be those type of company. We [00:11:00] need to continue to evolve whatever it's, you know, the industry is headed to and especially in the infrastructure world, because that's, that's what we are really good at. We are really just good in infrastructure, right?

Ed: Back in the day, it's called IT infrastructure. And now it's called cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructure. And what I also tell people, it's like, it's really, If you look at it just like wines, right? Wines have been around for a long, long time, hundreds of years, and it still exists in a very similar form today, right?

Ed: I mean, and, and people enjoy wines every day you know, with their friends and families. Really, it's what we're offering. Infrastructures like wine, but it has different packaging. Right. Maybe you know, 10 years ago it came in a in a green bottle, you know, nowadays it came in a clear bottle, you know, the wine had different colors and, you know, sometimes we even have box wine.

Ed: So, so we, we have to continue to evolve to, to, to [00:12:00] survive in the business. So what I can say is for you know, you mentioned, like, colocation and web hosting and dedicated servers and things like that, right? So that's exactly it. When we started the business in 2001 we start offering web hosting solutions to our customers.

Ed: Then very quickly, we start offering dedicated server solutions to our customers. And very, very quickly again, we started to offer managed dedicated server solution to our customers. And this is all pretty cloud based. There's no VMware, there's no virtualization. There's nothing, you know, there's no Amazon, there's no cloud, right?

Ed: This is all pre cloud. But the goal of our services is to really provide a technology platform for our customers to host their application, right? So, back in the day, You know, we, we have some really fun customers. For instance, we hosted the Madonna website back in the day. We hosted the gut milk website.

Ed: I'm not sure if people outside the U S [00:13:00] are familiar with the gut milk, but it was a really, really famous milk campaign with, you know, with milk all over the list here in the U S so we hosted that website. And these are, like I said, you know, early days. And our customers need us to provide solutions so that they can scale.

Ed: You know, those websites get, you know, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of hits per day. And and I think later in like 2008 or things like that, we hosted sites. Like cheeseburger and cheeseburger is a site where the cat meme, right? It was the very earliest cat meme Site on the internet and I think it went up to like 25 million hits a day or something like that and we with our customers to provide a scalable infrastructure solutions to host those kind of websites.

Ed: So, so, so then the cloud came, right? Well, I mean, before the cloud came, virtualization came, right? VMware came, VMware version one. And there's also a lot of open [00:14:00] source type of virtualization platforms. Which we adopt really, really quickly and offer virtualization to our customers. And then the cloud came, the AWS you know, late, you know, 2009, 2010.

Ed: And they really take off in 2012 ish. Then Azure came, GCP came, and everybody came. And it became a really, really crowded space, right? So, so our, our take is, You know, we, we kind of gave up competing with them. I mean, it's even laughable to think that, you know, we, or even anybody can compete with AWS nowadays.

Ed: Right. So, we I think this was back in like 2014 or something like that. Early days as well. We actually also adopted AWS into our offerings. So for customers that needs they are hosting platform or they are, you know, cloud platforms in the public cloud or the hyperscalers will put it in the hyperscalers for them that needs to have it in a Back in the day, we call it the dedicated solution, right?

Ed: The dedicated [00:15:00] infrastructure as a service solutions. We put it in our data center, right? And nowadays it's called the private cloud. And we also have some customers that still needs to have everything on premise, right? These are like the medical folks you know, some financial folks or even some manufacturing folks that, that still needs to have some servers, you know, in their manufacturing plants and things like that.

Ed: And we say, Hey, I mean, this this makes more sense to put it on premise. So why don't you put it on premise and we'll help you manage it. Right. So, so, and along the way that kind of become a and, and this was all before the concept of hybrid cloud even came in, so, so that became the habit cloud today, right?

Ed: So basically it's really simple. You put your infrastructure where it You know, it makes sense to you the most and what makes sense to you the most yesterday? Doesn't necessarily make sense to you the most today and certainly may not make [00:16:00] sense to you the most in the future, right? Even you are the same organization selling the same thing.

Ed: So this is what I also tell my customers. So we, we help our customers evolve, right? And the, there are a lot of benefit to put your stuff in the hyperscalers, especially if you need to scale, especially if you need to go international. But if you can plan things out and if you can, you know, understand the capacity and and plan it out, there's also a lot of benefit in putting those in the private cloud because you can save tons of money, right?

Ed: But I, I, I liken it to like going to the airport, right? Hey Mehmet, if you want to fly to Paris, like, Tomorrow, just go to the airport. I'm pretty sure you can find a ticket, right? But you paid through the roof through the roof but if you kind of plan things out, you know, maybe four months, six months, and you, you buy like the cheapest seat that's still available, you can save tons of money.

Ed: And it's very similar with, with the cloud concept. If you plan, if you [00:17:00] know what you're going to use and spend it on you can you can save a great deal of money with sometimes. better performance and and better scalability to have it in a private cloud platform.

Mehmet: Got you. Got you. You know, a lot of insights you just mentioned, Ed, and yeah, to your point, you know, you just also like reminded me of the days when VMware came and how we were excited about it and how it changed, you know, the way we You know, we design data centers and, you know, we, we, we do sizing.

Mehmet: And to your point, which this is what exactly you mentioned. So there's always the need for having the data on premise sometimes. And now, surprisingly, the AI just wrote these things again. Like, okay, we need the compute power to be on premise or to be under our control. And here I want to ask you something, Ed.

Mehmet: What you have, you know, because I want to see if the, What I hear in the [00:18:00] market from from people I know So when people were sold the cloud the full cloud on the hyperscalers, right? so the I think there was a trick is that It's cheaper than running your own data center, which is actually wasn't after all the case it was more on to I would say agility and you know, maybe being able to scale faster than the the You would do it.

Mehmet: Are you seeing a lot of people doing this comeback from from the cloud to to the on premise? Like what are you seeing in the market?

Ed: Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's even a term for it. It's called cloud repatriation, right? And I think, I believe 2023 is probably well, now, now 2024 number has yet to come up, but 2023 and 2024 is probably one of the biggest cloud repatriation effort ever, right?

Ed: And I think it's it's supported by a few factors. I mean, rising interest rates. Money is tight, you [00:19:00] know, money is definitely super tight for a lot of startup, for a lot of technology company that is still, you know, on the that is still not strong enough to make their, their, their, their, their profits.

Ed: And for a lot of large enterprises, you know, even mid, mid sized organization. People are trying to find ways to cut money to cut spending, right? So, so there's this a lot of you know, then if this is what I hear a lot from, from our customers or from, from other people that that I, that I talk to the finance department or the accounting department, the first bill that they see that's always on top is like, what is this?

Ed: Bill that nobody understands in the finance department, right? What is this tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of dollars. And then they go back to the it department. We need to cut it. And then everybody says, no, you can't cut it. Right. So, so, so then you know, typically.

Ed: The [00:20:00] conversation is forced to go into. Okay, we cannot cut it. So what is another solution that we can come up with to reduce costs in I. T. Spending in hyperscaler spending, especially and and a lot of organization, especially organization that. You know, well, I see it both. Actually I was going to say organizing that have the capability to move workload back from hyperscalers to on premise.

Ed: It's definitely going to look into it, right? Typically, people people look into. Well, I mean, there's two options. They are, they look into third party cloud providers like wow, right? Or they look into, you know, just buying their own gears and getting a colo and and then probably spending more on the IT department in terms of headcounts and and figuring out how to bring it all back in the house, right.

Ed: Or to the co location facility, which is what Cloud3Patriotion is about. So, so we have seen quite a lot, a lot of that, [00:21:00] right. And I think I think I mean, if there is one advice that I can tell people who have not been in the club already or in the hyperscaler is I think hyperscalers great mammoth, like you said for agility, speed and scalability.

Ed: And if you start really small, right, it costs nothing. But once you get to production, and especially if you are an incumbent company with an existing IT infrastructure, and you want to go to the cloud because, oh, it's more stable, it's going to solve everything, right, because of this concept of, you know, it's more secure, everything is backed up, everything is redundant.

Ed: I mean, yes, in a sense it is, but you have to configure it In such a way, right? Or you have to pay in such a way and if you literally just forklift Your virtual machines or your servers from on premise to AWS, I mean, I don't want to name names, right? To the hyperscalers, [00:22:00] whatever, whatever it is then, you know, it's not the most efficient way to spend your money.

Ed: And the hyperscaler is really created for, you know, the next gen application. Right? The cloud native application that uses infrastructure as code. Everything is scalable. Everything can be deployed as code, and everything can also be scaled down using code. And, and having a really solid, you know, development team or development resources that understand how to operate the cloud as such, then will yield.

Ed: You know, all of all of all of the benefits of the cloud. But if you really just want to get there because, oh, you know, your hardware cycle is coming up and you don't want to buy new hardware and you just really want to move it there. And, you know, along the way, maybe even cut your headcount in I. T.

Ed: because you don't need, you know, Joe to patch the servers or to go to the, you know, I. T. closet or data center to, you know, to maintain the servers. At the end of the day those type of [00:23:00] migration is probably not the most cost effective.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And thank you for mentioning, you know, the, the forklift, which is, I believe was one of the main reason now, you know, like because on the show, we discuss also a lot about, from differences between startups enterprises, you know, I see, I see the hyperscalers more fit for startup kind of of operations because first you're not sure yet if your product gonna succeed or not.

Mehmet: So you, you don't need to, you don't need to spend money on buying servers and network geese and, you know, bringing, probably, especially if you don't have, you know, the expertise. So maybe you are a software developer yourself, but you never done infrastructure. So this is where it becomes hard. So yeah, like the cloud is perfect for you.

Mehmet: I've seen, you know, this happened a lot across the board where again, I did sales also as well. So [00:24:00] I can't blame the sales people. But I mean, the motion was, you know, the way of positioning in front of the CIOs. Yeah, it's like cutting costs, which actually it's not cutting costs and you know The whole thing was rushed up and this is why we ended up funny enough and maybe you know now There's a family of products.

Mehmet: It's called cloud optimization or cloud cost optimization

Mehmet (2): Or

Mehmet: fin or cloud fin ops, right? So so they just try to see how they can reduce your bill, which is funny enough but You know, one of the things which, you know, while you're speaking, it triggered also me is so, and how have you seen like people really trying to streamline or like optimize the technology department?

Mehmet: I don't like to call it it anymore. I like to call it the technology department to become more into a I would say revenue generating center rather than a, just [00:25:00] a department that keeps spending the money because I wrote about it maybe two months or three months ago. I'm still, you know, feeling sad sometimes because when you talk to any executive, not in the technology sector, He tells you, yeah, these IT guys are the ones that they buy, you know, all the new toys and they spend the money, which is actually, if we think about it, it's not the case.

Mehmet: Like, because the technology is actually the, the, the, the, the mean for us to generate more revenue to, to, to get the company from, you know, point A to point B, which is probably much better place. So Ed, why is this still? happening. We are seeing the technology department or IT department, as people like to call it, as the cost center rather than the revenue generating center,

Ed: right?

Ed: Well, I see it all the time too, right? I speak with, I mean, the customer base that we normally speak to are typical or answer to. Are typically the IT departments or the [00:26:00] technology folks. So, what I typically tell people, and this is typically my kind of prospecting conversation with customers and kind of drawing, you know, the the dream, right.

Ed: For the customers is that, you know, what I, what I, what I noticed nowadays is IT department. Today or technology department is very different compared to what it was 20 years ago, right? 20 years ago, it department means like, you know, this department by some servers, you know, put it up online and you know, put some applications in them and operate it, patch it, back it up.

Ed: And and I'm not even talking about the desktop, right? And because that alone is still still still is going on and it's still still needed. But the core I. T. department, you know, basically managing servers and I. T. the network infrastructure you know, has become large and in some companies you know, large headcounts, large spend.

Ed: Lots of operating [00:27:00] expenses and it became, you know, like a real cost center because you know, everybody is treating it such, right? So as, as, as the modern tools and technology is available today. Virtualization with third party infrastructure and network solutions provider with the hyperscaler today.

Ed: And as you are moving all of your I. T. Resources. From in house or spend to a hosted provider or to the hyperscaler then there's really not much stuff for your it guys to do anymore, right? so I would still say that they are still largely needed So for us the IT guys are our, well, number one, they are our main point of contacts and they are our champion for a writer like us. And we typically tell them like typically my main contacts are like IT departments or CTOs [00:28:00] or sometimes system admin to kind of, you know, have this concept of.

Ed: Not running IT department as if like to babysit servers, but how to make your organization, the IT department into a technology service department. Right. So, and make the, make it make it make the technology service department to be more friendlier to be more customer centric and to provide technology solutions for your customers, which is the employees of the company, and it can be as simple as, Hey, we are subscribed.

Ed: Let's just say, Hey, we're subscribed to office 365. And how can we use Teams more efficiently, for instance? Or how can we use Power BI more efficiently and help, you know, different departments figure things out, you know, get those data, pull it into Power BI, and use your IT knowledge and IT background to kind of help people [00:29:00] and guide them towards that journey.

Ed: Right. And at the end of the day, and this is only a very simple example of teams and Power BI but at the end of the day, the IT technology department now becomes a essential to the operations of say, finance, accounting, marketing, you know, manufacturing warehousing and everything, because now, you know, it's not like the finance people trying to figure out like how to use technology in the full sense to make their department, you know, productive or useful, but now with the technology department help, you know, things can, can do, right?

Ed: So, so that is a very small and doable method for any organization to get there, right? And as you grow, you know, You no longer manage servers and what I even see from some of our customers is that the position of, say, IT manager has been eliminated and now it became like technology vendor [00:30:00] manager, for instance, because now they're managing different vendors, whether it's the hyperscalers, whether it's, you know, third party providers, third party developers and whatnot.

Ed: They are kind of working with third party solutions. to manage their, to solve the IT problems for their company. And when you do that, now you start, you are starting to create, you know, value. Right. And probably one of my so I have, I have a good story, good example, right? So this was a customer of ours, 12 years ago, we moved them from their on prem to our cloud.

Ed: I mean, it took maybe about five to six years for them to get situated. Not even worry about servers and everything and the IT department have now become like that technology You know solutions department for the entire company. Now, they become heroes. They become champions And for instance, you know, this company have logistic Needs to ship out items, you know [00:31:00] between their warehouse different warehouses to their distribution centers customers.

Ed: And in order to do that, they have to deploy technology solutions such as network, wifi and scanners and barcodes and everything so that they can put it in their product. So at every moment they know where their product is. And that is put together and led by the IT department instead of your typical, you know, operations or, you know, maybe even finance department.

Ed: And now the IT department is becoming champion because the company is not only able to be competitive in the market, but now they know what their product is and they can actually save money based on those data.

Mehmet: Absolutely right. Just quickly, Ed, do you think also the skills didn't evolve with time also as well?

Ed: The skills?

Mehmet: Yeah, so the skills of the people who work in the IT department. Oh, the skills, the skills.

Ed: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yes. I mean, this is the [00:32:00] most important. This is the number one thing, right, in order to make all of this work. You know, people will need to be willing to be retrained or to, to train themselves up to wherever that's needed for the company, right?

Ed: I think that's number one. And number two I think being customer service centric, you know, the IT business, the IT department, the technology department, it is a service business, it's not, you know, handling servers and linking lights or, you know, managing all of those. No, it's service business. So, I think once you get there by retraining or re skilling your people and then providing better services to your, you know, to your customers, to your, to the employees of your companies, you will become relevant in the business.

Ed: And now you're no longer a number. You are a essential part of the team.

Mehmet: Right. So, so this is what I always talk about. Also, you know, yes, we spend a lot of time, effort, money to train our people on the technology, which is good. I'm not, [00:33:00] I'm not against it, of course, but we should also have spent some time to teach them business, right?

Mehmet: So when I say teach them business, at least, you know, the basics on how, you know, an organization would look at numbers, right. And what an executive want to hear when, you know, You ask them to invest into something so they want to hear the return on investment They want to hear like how it's gonna take them further, right?

Mehmet: So I think these things were missing now I want to kind of move to something.

Ed: Yeah, i'm sorry. I have one more thing important to add In terms of you know executive type of thinking right if you are running the it department or the technology department for your business You know I think it is very easy for you to be on, you know, on auto mode, you know, auto drive mode and just trying to focus on the problem that you're trying to fix, right?

Ed: Or service that you're trying to deliver. And oftentimes, and I apologize for saying this because [00:34:00] I'm one of them, the IT type of folks are not typically the most. Financial savvy or financial frugal type of people, right? So I would say, uh, in your organization, especially if you want to optimize costs, right?

Ed: Have an open mind and definitely try to work with someone in typically the finance department or, you know, the accounting department. That have more of those frugal mindset, right? That have more of those like bottom line type of numbers in their head. So work with those guys and and welcome them to the IT organization and have them question like, Hey, is this really necessary to spend this much money here?

Ed: Right. And have someone to kind of help you out. You know, dial out your costs. And I think over the time, the finance and the accounting department, you know, they will also learn like what does, what does all this means? [00:35:00] Well, why do we need to spend here? And you know, why do we need to spend, you know, X amount of course, and X amount of memory.

Ed: Show me the data. Do we really use that? I mean, typically I see that more from the finance people. So, so I think by by definitely by working with accounting and finance and having an open arm and welcoming them to have an input on how the organization is run is going to be a win. For your organization as a whole.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Like you, you just mentioned what it was on my head. 100%. Thank you for mentioning this, Ed. Now, just I want to cover a little bit, you know, as we're almost coming to an end, the entrepreneurship journey, Ed, right? So it's not easy. You mentioned some of the challenges, but I'm sure like also you have built this kind of, I would say, Yeah, absolutely.

Mehmet: What it takes to become a successful entrepreneur, especially in our sector, which [00:36:00] is not an easy sector. Anything in technology is not easy because the technology itself allows other people, and you mentioned before, to, to, to, you know, imitate what you're doing, copy what you're doing. So in a nutshell, what are like some of the You know, traits or characteristics that you advise people who want to start their, you know, venture in technology to have to be prepared for before going on and, you know, start this business.

Ed: Well, I think this is a very fast moving industry. You know what matters today may not matter three years from now or maybe completely different three years from now. So I think the skill set that for someone who's successful in this. It's definitely like what you're talking about. Reskilling or retraining yourself and being able to learn and learn and learn.

Ed: So that's definitely number one. Number two again, just like, like I mentioned a lot of time, [00:37:00] this is a customer service centric business. All right. So for us we're, we're, we're fortunate enough where we don't have a lot of churns. In our customers, a lot of our customers are long term, a lot of customers starts from small and they buy more services and become bigger and bigger.

Ed: And I attribute it to service, right? So number one is definitely service. Because if you don't service them, I'm very sure there's five other, ten other providers that will court your customers and they will try to service them better than you are. So, So in my industry, and I'm not talking about the tech industry, right?

Ed: But in my industry, in terms of infrastructure, we put emphasize a lot of emphasize on defense, right? So it's like soccer game or football game. There's attacking, there's defense. So, so if we are able to win a customer and if we are able to defend them, we will finally score a goal next, right? Because if we [00:38:00] defend them and they don't leave.

Ed: I mean, that's already a big win for us. So, so work on your customers, you know, when you win a customers, don't make them just like a number and move on to the next guy and move on to the next guy. Once you win a customers, actually try to cultivate them and, you know, make good relationships try to upsell your product.

Ed: If you have multiple products and services.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. Finally, Ed, how people can get in touch and, you know, find out more about you and your services?

Ed: Oh, how? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we are primarily based in the U. S. That's what our headquarter is. So the company name is wowrack. com. W-O-W-R-A-C k.com.

Ed: And we are we have presence in nine different markets and we also have a really strong market presence in Asia as well, and also some in Europe. So, find to find out more about us. Definitely hit [00:39:00] us up on our website. Do do war.com and I, myself are. You know, still are very involved in the business.

Ed: I can talk both on the business sites and also on the tech sites. And you're more than welcome to hit me directly. My email is very easy. It's just at, it's ed at wiret. com.

Mehmet: Perfect. Fantastic. Well Ed, really I enjoyed the discussion with you today. Like a lot of insights, a lot of experience you shared with us today.

Mehmet: So thank you for doing so. And you know, the audience, they don't have to worry. The links will be in the show notes so they can easily get in touch and, you know, get to know more about you and also about WORAC also as well. And, you know, again, like I, I like the way you covered, you know, the things, you know, you, you, you, We covered both the technical aspect of the technology aspect and service aspect, customer centricity, understanding the business.

Mehmet: So all [00:40:00] these together, it's like really came all together in a good shape. Thank you for sharing that, Ed. And this is for the audience. This is how I usually end my episodes. If you just find. Out about this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it If you did, so please give us a thumb up Leave us a review and share it with your friends and colleagues And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you for doing so I really appreciate all the feedback you sent to me or your questions inquiries and suggestions.

Mehmet: Keep them coming Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again very soon. Thank you. Bye. Bye