6:00

Express and Node.js. And for

6:03

cloud services, we use whatever

6:05

service gives us the best results.

6:08

For example, we use AWS, Google,

6:10

Microsoft for different occasions, and we

6:13

have microservices that are connected

6:15

to a single server. So

6:17

let's stay on the MVP for a minute. With

6:19

any MVP, you've got to make certain decisions and

6:21

trade-offs around what you're going to

6:23

choose first. And you mentioned one earlier, maybe

6:26

dive into that one or pick one that

6:28

you really had to work through and how

6:30

you cope with the decisions that you made.

6:33

In the MVP, we always wanted

6:36

to be the single source for

6:38

customers to get their transcriptioning done.

6:40

But we always focused on the

6:42

media so far. Maybe we will

6:44

expand in the future, but we

6:46

always want to focus on the

6:49

media side, media or audio or

6:51

video side of things. Right now,

6:53

for Maestro, anyone can come and

6:55

upload their files and get their

6:57

transcription, subtitling, voiceover, translations, or all

7:00

these things together and export their

7:02

files. For example, one of

7:04

the other things that we were discussing was

7:06

having a text translation link

7:08

feature. We were considering expanding as

7:10

much as we could to get

7:12

as much traction as possible. Maybe

7:15

we will do that at some point,

7:17

but we then wanted to focus on

7:19

the media side of things. But also,

7:22

most of our competitors are only focusing

7:24

on certain aspects of what we do.

7:26

For example, some of them focus on

7:29

the voiceover aspect. There are voiceover applications,

7:31

there are subtitle applications, transcription applications separate,

7:33

but we wanted to have a single

7:36

application where you can do all

7:38

of those things without switching platforms.

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12:00

We have things that we want to do, but

12:02

depending on the priority, we can squeeze some other

12:04

things. So I hear you're

12:06

saying, we. Tell me about how you built your team.

12:08

What do you look for in those people that indicate

12:10

that they're the winning horses to join you? In

12:13

the hackathon, one of my current

12:16

CEOs of the company is the

12:18

person who helped me build the

12:20

application in the hackathon. We built

12:22

the application together. While creating the

12:24

company, I knew that he was

12:26

one of the trustworthy people that

12:28

I could work with because I

12:31

already did it in a very intense

12:33

condition in a hackathon. And also, he's

12:35

still one of my best friends from

12:37

college as well. So we knew that

12:39

we could get along because it's a

12:41

very intimate environment as well. We

12:43

lived for three years together in Manhattan.

12:45

And during that time, we were actually

12:47

in pandemic as well. We lived through

12:50

the pandemic as well without being able

12:52

to go back to our country with

12:54

our family or just to go out.

12:57

Our whole life became work and

12:59

it was a very intense period

13:02

of our lives. Being able

13:05

to get along in that condition, if I didn't

13:07

trust them, if I didn't know them, I would

13:09

be able to do that. Also,

13:11

knowing that they're hardworking as well, because

13:14

when we started, we were like three

13:16

developers and one business side. And the

13:18

application wasn't there. So we were trying

13:21

as much as we could to at

13:23

least get the application out and start

13:25

making some progress on the marketing side.

13:29

But you are working so hard that everyone

13:31

else on the same team is working

13:33

as much as you as well. So I

13:36

think knowing that they're hardworking as well is

13:38

definitely a plus. But on the hiring side,

13:40

after we, by the way,

13:42

we started hiring people very recently, like

13:44

a year or two ago. So we

13:47

are still very inexperienced on that aspect

13:49

too. But since we are a small

13:51

team, we want to be able to

13:53

count on people about certain things in

13:55

the application and don't want to think

13:57

about it. If they are

13:59

a developer. They need to be all around

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code story. That's cach e

15:06

fl y comm slash

15:08

code story Hello

15:11

welcome to the data analytics club, do you

15:13

know the password? No, I didn't know there

15:15

was one Do you know how to code?

15:18

No, do you know how to query data

15:20

like ask a question? I guess not Hmm

15:23

I see then you can't be

15:25

in this club. Sorry. Goodbye Don't

15:28

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15:35

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15:44

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15:46

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15:49

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16:12

with ClearQuery. Get started today

16:15

at clearquery.io/code story. Let's

16:21

flip to scalability then. I'm curious to where,

16:24

you know, this came into play for you

16:26

scale. Was this built to scale from

16:29

day one or scale in mind with abstractions and

16:31

things or have there been any interesting areas where

16:33

you've had to fight it as you've grown? We

16:36

were focusing on the scalability day one.

16:39

We started using solutions like Amazon and

16:41

Google Cloud. We started with Google Cloud

16:44

and we always use the stack

16:46

that we knew that wasn't

16:48

going to be hard work to scale for

16:50

the most part. But after that, of course,

16:53

a lot of problems occur while scaling. But

16:55

for example, we use Firebase on the database

16:57

side because we know that it's very easy

16:59

to set up. You can you don't need

17:01

to worry about too much time about the

17:03

security. And there is a framework that you

17:05

need to follow. And if

17:07

you follow the framework, you are mostly good

17:09

to go. They don't want

17:12

to take our chances on the security

17:14

side because we also know that we

17:16

are like recent graduates. There might be

17:18

things that we are going to be

17:20

learning along the way. But

17:22

we also want to release and sell the application.

17:25

Scalability and security was

17:28

a priority on the day one. And

17:30

in terms of the security scalability

17:32

side, we deal with a lot

17:34

of media, video and audio files.

17:37

Making that aspect of the application scalable

17:40

is very harder than saving just data.

17:42

We didn't really consider that getting those

17:44

set up was a hard thing to

17:47

do. Maybe one of the hard

17:49

things that we did. Sometimes

17:52

there are things that are out of

17:54

your controllers. But sometimes you

17:56

are depending on a package. And then,

17:58

for example, Google just bumps up there,

18:01

bumps up something's version on the backend

18:03

and then everything breaks on

18:05

your application without you even knowing it. There

18:08

were like sometimes like

18:10

that we just didn't we don't

18:12

change anything and then the application breaks so

18:16

we are trying to understand what's going on. So

18:20

as you step out on the balcony and you

18:22

look across all that you've built with Maestro, what

18:25

are you most proud of? Personally

18:27

I'm proud of that we actually

18:29

released something and one person used

18:32

it that because I remember our

18:34

first customer coming here using the

18:36

application that's probably the happiest that

18:38

I felt because you put

18:40

so much time in it and then you release it and

18:42

then someone actually puts their car and

18:45

pays for the application that was mind-boggling

18:47

to me at the time because that

18:49

was our first application before that

18:51

I never released an application and someone

18:53

like never really paid for something that

18:56

I did virtually so that was very

18:58

interesting. For me that yeah that's probably

19:00

the thing that I'm most proud of.

19:05

Let's flip the script a little bit. Tell me

19:07

about a mistake you made and how you and

19:09

your team responded to it. There

19:12

were times where we unintentionally break

19:15

the application. When that happens knowing

19:17

that everyone is composed and when

19:19

something breaks in the application our

19:21

support inbox just gets filled so

19:24

that like too many things happen

19:26

at once. Moving to

19:28

work under pressure I think was one of

19:30

the things that I learned for being in

19:32

the company because in a larger team you

19:35

are more relaxed but when you

19:37

have to do the things that you need to do

19:39

and no one else actually knows what you are doing

19:42

like all the pressure is on you. This

19:46

will be fun. Let's dig into the future. What

19:48

does the future look like for the product and for

19:51

your team? Right

19:53

now we are working on releasing our

19:55

mobile application. We already made it mobile

19:57

responsive but releasing it to the

19:59

app store. We are working

20:01

on real-time transcription and real-time voiceover

20:04

as well. Those

20:06

things are completely separate markets that we

20:08

wanted to tackle for a long time.

20:11

In terms of the product development, these are

20:13

the things that I'm most excited about because

20:15

we have been working on those things for

20:18

so long and we want to release it

20:20

as soon as possible. About

20:22

the team, our priorities changed over the

20:24

years since we started the company. On

20:27

the first few years, we focused

20:29

on the product and didn't really

20:32

focus on anything else like

20:34

marketing or SEO, those kinds of

20:36

stuff. That was

20:38

our biggest mistake and we learned from

20:41

it. We started focusing

20:43

on SEO a lot more than we

20:45

used to and we actually saw a

20:47

lot of benefits from it. Then

20:49

we now want to focus on the marketing

20:52

side of the application a lot more

20:54

than before. We, of course,

20:56

are growing our development team as well. As

20:59

a technical background person, I

21:01

didn't really realize how

21:03

important marketing was when

21:06

I first graduated, but right now we

21:08

are definitely going to focus on marketing

21:10

more than the actual development of the

21:12

application because we already have an application

21:14

that is working and when people don't

21:16

know about it, they just settle with

21:19

their first choices. Let's

21:21

switch to you. Who influences the way that you

21:23

work? Am a person or many persons or something

21:25

you look up to and why? I

21:28

definitely look up to my family, my mother

21:31

and my father and my brother. I think

21:33

they are the biggest influences in my life.

21:36

As I actually grow up, I started

21:38

seeing the similarities more as well. I

21:40

didn't really think that I have any

21:43

influence, but I think probably it's my

21:45

family because I look up to all

21:47

of them and I'm the youngest in

21:49

the family. Everyone was

21:51

like an idol when I was growing up. My

21:54

brother is five years older than me, so giving

21:56

him advice was all enough for me to give

21:58

me advice when I was growing up.