Sure, I am an Engineer by training, I went to school and studied I am a Computer and Electrical engineer. I founded this company way back in 2007.
I was working for an enterprise storage company at that time writing firmware. And So, I had a vision, It was the beginning of Cloud Computing and mobile computing. Both were in their infancy and as an Engineer, I saw that that was going to change how businesses work all over the world.
I didn’t really know much more than that but I sat down to create an enterprise workflow management system kind of a document flow or process flow management that I thought would be great for lots of businesses. I didn’t really have a market at that time which was a mistake that’s young Engineer thinking. But I got introduced to some animal healthcare companies and we got into some regulatory compliance kind of work that’s very tedious and difficult and so, we developed a whole bunch of applications around those lines in the Animal healthcare space and one of those opportunities had to do about tracking equine or horses.
Everything about breeding ownership, Pedigree, DNA, performance things like that and we actually saw an opportunity there to create far more scalable products that we could commercialize. So since 2018 we’ve been really focused just on that one vertical. Now we still have legacy businesses that we support in the animal health space. We even take on the occasional projects but our focus here in Innately is to certainly grow and commercialize that global equine registry and performance tracking software that we have.
My approach had been to kind of hire contract labor over in India. In my previous career I worked a lot in India. We actually built a very large dedicated team in Bangalore India.
And so, I was comfortable with working with the India team. And I had traditionally done contract work and what I found was, contractors come and go and when they do that, you lose a lot of what you invested in them which is knowledge of domain , knowledge of your tech stack, relationship everything and we constantly starting over as contractors came and went .
So, When I approached SynGrow, I really had 2 or 3 projects in mind that we have here at innate.ly . what I wanted to do instead of just hire contract labor was really hire more of a dedicated team. Where I could be involved in all the hiring process and there was transparency around their experience, their compensation things like that were important for me to understand because I wanted to hire people who would be there with us for a long time and so that shift in strategy is what helped me develop that very early relationship with SynGrow. And we’ve been doing that ever since. we have hired a lot of teams now and they have been with us ever since SynGrow was created and they’d be with us for the foreseeable future and it’s a much better model than just a contract labor.
Yaa I find that the teams that we resembled to be very good. I think there’s a lot of time spent in interview process. I appreciate that . you know, just because you find a good candidate doesn’t necessarily mean that they have realistic expectations around compensation or they have a real vision to be with us in long term so , there’s just a lot of effort put in to find the right kind of people. Not just technical skillsets but mentality, entrepreneurial minded , wanting to be part of project or company for a long period of time, so that takes a lot of effort, and certainly we put a lot of work into forming those teams , and that’s what I think I appreciate more than anything. Is after we’ve put in all of that work, We’ve assembled those teams and those teams perform well because we’ve put in a lot to find in right people.
I tend to talk to a lot of other entrepreneurs of smaller or startup companies. Those are the companies , these I think there are the best kind of fit at least from the States for SynGrow. Large organizations, typically have a lot to do. Typically they have contractors of their choice and traditionally they don’t think about building maintainable teams. But for young companies I think the tendency is always you have a limited cash, you just want to develop MVPs as quickly as you can and then you think everything is great. But I think what I have learnt is it’s not so much about your product, its more about your team and then the product is reflection of your team. And so I tell young companies this all the time – I know that you feel young and you don’t have a lot of money and you just want to get a product but I would invest in a team so – I would recommend SynGrow because they are good solution available engineering talent there, Um it is a good cost superior approach to the united States right now which is extremely expensive and not just that but now you can begin with forming team people that understand your space and are able to become independent thinkers and innovators rather than just doing contract work that you hand them.
So I think that’s very important for young companies, otherwise you know you develop your product , you get a few customers , now what?
You don’t still have a team, you still don’t have what you need to build and scale upon and I think that’s a unique approach by SynGrow that I recommend
Yaa, I’m excited. I see real opportunities to scale our business with SynGrow. Um we have the right kinds of structures, leadership, Industrial talent, processes everything in place. If I have to double or triple the size of my teams, I feel like it’s something I can achieve, and I don’t know if I ever felt that before. So, I knew I could go higher contractors but I didn’t really feel confident especially given the situation in the States right now that I could really scale the necessary in Engineering talent If I needed to and I know I can so I feel good about that I feel good that I can take on new businesses, new projects and feel confident about executing all those. All in a way that it is economically sustainable for me and this is really going to produce good long-term sustainable results and relationships