Adam Torres and Yasir Drabu discuss building teams.
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Show Notes:
Building productive teams is important for businesses to thrive. In this episode, Adam Torres and Yasir Drabu, Co-Founder, CEO at Taazaa, explore the Taazaa story and how it is building happy, highly productive teams.
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About Yasir Drabu
As the Founder and CEO of Taazaa Inc, he lead a team of passionate engineers who build amazing software solutions for various industries, from mobile and web to sensor applications enabling the Internet of Things. With over 16 years of experience in software development, design, and architecture, he has a deep expertise in multiple technology stacks, such as .Net, NodeJS, and Java.
His mission is to transform complex challenges into opportunities and competitive advantages for my clients, using cutting-edge technologies like cloud-native SaaS platforms, AI/ML, and distributed systems. He enjoy working with thought leaders and learning their processes and needs, and then creating software products that make a meaningful impact on humanity. He is also the Co-founder and CTO of Innago, a cloud-based property management software that simplifies the rental process for landlords and tenants.
About Taazaa Inc
Taazaa, a product engineering and software development company, helps mission-minded organizations stay relevant in a world of relentless change by leveraging custom software solutions and emerging technology while ensuring that people who use our software, and make it, are free to flourish.
They follow agile, high-empathy, low-friction, design-based development practices that promote rapid delivery and a fast fit for your business
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So did I have Yasir Drabu on the line and he’s co founder and CEO over at Taza.
And we’re going to talk about building high performing engineering teams. So Yasir, first off, welcome to the show. All right, so we got a whole lot to talk about today. I want to talk about the growth of Taza. How you built the company. I want to get into like some of the things that made you successful along that way.
Also talk about, you know, what, what are some of the plans going forward for Taza and any, and what type of projects do You typically find are the best fit for for people looking for developers. But before we get into all that, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So yes, sir, we have mission matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Yes, sir. What mission matters to you? I think the impact of software on humans, right? So we, the reason I started the company itself was really around when I saw terrible software being built that had horrible experiences in terms of people.
So our mission is really focused on building software for people who use them, making their life delightful. Now it can be in the mid market segment, which is where we focus, you know, companies that have been around have found a good product market fit, but. Have all these different sign out system that they try to put together, either for their employees or for their customers, and we come in with innovative mindset with, you know, with a consumer brand approach like Uber and others that people are used to and try to bring that.
into the enterprise as well as the customers who end up using. So at the end of the day, it’s, you know, how do we make the life of every human that we are, who touch our software better, that they, when they use it, there’s a little bit of a smile. There’s a little bit of joy, essentially that drives us actually.
And when we see people use it, do that, that’s, that’s really our mission is how to build that, that category leading. Product innovation in the space that we focus on, which is in the mid market. Love it. Love, love bringing mission based individuals on the line to share why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and really what we can all learn from that so that we can all grow together.
So, so interested to hear more of your story. Like where, where’d the entrepreneur side come from? Like, did you always have it in you? Like, where, where’d that come up from? Let’s start at the beginning. So I think it was always there. I mean, I, I remember having a little bit of a small Commerce activity during high school that I would, I would sell unique items that were very rare back in India.
I’d find them at the, you know foreign markets and sell them, whether it was pens or unique stickers from Japan and things like that. I think it was always there, but hold on, hold on. I gotta go a little bit further in that one. We got some commonality here. So my original, my, my first maybe business endeavor, I think it was baseball cards for me.
It was baseball cards. I’d go shop and find like the cards that I felt were rare. Then I take them to school and then sell them. And I think that more comic books. So hold on. So you were going and you were hunting for rare items or stickers of things like that. And then bringing them to school and kids love them.
I mean, there was a good margin because they were so rare to find. I actually had to find them in various places. Eventually they would become common and kids would come back and say, now they’re not as unique, but it just came out from an opportunity standpoint. I think there was a little bit of a hustle in high school, I think, but then I evolved into more, got into technology and things changed from there.
And I got more into computers and programming and then when did, when did the tech part? When specifically, when did that make its way? Do you remember when that made its way into your life? That was way early, like in eighth grade. I, you know, back in, back in the day, I don’t want to date myself. Commodore 64 was very rare in India.
And I had a very good friend whose dad bought a Commodore 64 on his trip back from the U S. I cycle, like, Five, six kilometers or a few miles to his place. And then we would sit and program games just for fun. And we used to use a tape drives to load. That’s amazing. It’s okay to date yourself. We’re, we’re, we’re given history here.
Now this is an important part of history, man. So, so that’s when it started. And you know, that curiosity kept building. I mean, how did you know, did you know at that time, or was it just like being a kid and you did like, just started, like, it was just, it was just your toy. It was a fun thing to do.
Like, or did you just have this? Yeah, there was no grand plan, really. I just enjoyed doing it. I love doing it. And I just kept getting better at it. And then you know, I focused my career on engineering, came here to do my master’s and eventually PhD, thinking I would become a professor. But that bug carried in towards the later part of my grad school is when I was like helping people, advising them and It kind of became like an accidental venture to start with.
Hold on. So how was the support? How was, okay. So I got to stay in the accident, those venture part of it, because how was the support system around that? You don’t have to call out any specific parent or anybody else, but I know sometimes like you’re going to school to be one thing and then you’re like, wait a minute, you’re going to be an entrepreneur.
I thought you were going to be a professor or this or that. Like, how, how was, how was your experience? I think my mom always would say. She was the one that was pushing me. And my dad is like, why are you doing this? I mean, you’re supposed to be doing something else. You can’t get both parents. Like there has to be opposites there because that’s what makes the marriage work.
That’s what makes the kid sane and successful. Like you have both of them were like, go for it. Then probably you get, then you get out again and then you kind of forget you have, you lose the humility of, you know, you have to prove somebody, but that, that you know, not as much of a. You know, risk he’s risk averse.
He taught me a lot of good things about humility and other things. But when it comes to risk, why do you want to take on it? Start an entrepreneur venture, but you don’t know whether you’re going to get paid the next month. So, especially when you’re highly educated. So that’s a thing like, and that’s where I feel like maybe sometimes many entrepreneurs would be entrepreneurs.
Don’t go for it. You know, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I was like worst case it fails. I can go back and find a job. But what, what I really enjoyed was the helping aspect. And when you make a difference and that’s, I used to help much smaller businesses back then. You know, you would see that, Oh my God, I saw their problem.
I saved him several hours of doing manual thing, which was so painful. Now it’s a simple automated windows, windows app or something like that. So things like that really kind of helped me. Build into that direction. Amazing. So let, let’s fast forward a bit and thank you for sharing that. And, and a shout out to mom out there who who supported it.
And thank you dad for being the other side of the coin. They’re like, what are you doing, man? We need, we need both of those voices in our ear. And I’m always grateful to have parents and, you know, support systems around that, that provide guidance. So I love, I love your story. Let’s fast forward a bit here.
I want to get into Taza. How did the idea for Taza come about? Like take us there. For this, I was doing another venture with somebody and it kind of grew well, but, you know, like many partnerships, hard to you know, diverging interest. And I had to go back to school and I, and at the end of it, I was like, okay, let me have a fresh start.
And it doesn’t really came from like, I want to help people with a fresh approach with a fresh start. And the domain was available, so, so, and it it started and I wanted to go back and I, that feeling of helping others and creating an impact where you could make a meaningful difference. I mean, I always say, if I knew how to make better cars, I would do that, but this is, this is what I knew.
And I just, how I could contribute and give back to society. So that’s kind of where it started very little, some way it was like, how do I make a little bit of money, but also It was a combination of those two factors. So how was getting those first initial customers? Like, how did that, that acquisition, so now you have this idea, you launched the company and now we got to make some money.
Like, like how’d you pull it off? So I think I had built Goodwill by doing a lot of helping people. And they were like, Hey, if you want to. If you want to, you know, there’s somebody who needs more help there and I had a lot of goodwill built up that way. So I reached out and in fact, one of the reasons that triggered me starting the company was I was already helping somebody and they were like, I need more.
I was like, okay, then you need to pay me. I can’t keep doing this for free. That’s when I had to set up the company and other things to kind of help them further. So that led to, You know, one raffle raffle to the other group by, you know, just word of mouth where I did some good work for somebody, you know, help them launch their website and then build a little app.
And then it kind of started there. And then I had Because of the previous mentor, I also had some relationships where I’d help people who are really enjoyed working with me as I was going through that. So some of those came back. I think all is in no good deed goes unpunished or whatever. But yeah, but I think helping people along the way, just without any expectation.
Has a magnate amplifying reward structure built in, which personally makes you feel good that you help somebody. But in the long run, I think if you, if you take a very long view on things and relationships and helping others, it comes back in ways that you least expect. So that’s what really helped me get off the ground and then continue building, you know, building.
Yeah. Was your, was your, so now you have the company, you’re, you’re starting it, you’re doing work. Was your initially, were you having this vision of building a large team and building a large engineering team and all this? Or did that kind of build brick by brick? Or was it a combination? Like, give us, give us a feeling for kind of how the evolution took place.
It’s very quickly. I realized no matter how good I am, you know, you’re only so good. The team is so much better. And I’m sure there’s a hundred books on this and all the amazing leaders have always said, you know, together we can do a lot more. Yeah. I always believed in that instinctively. And as work started expanding I started leaning into people who I thought would work with me.
Some people were crazy enough to take a risk with a one person shop and eventually my you know, co founder, who’s my partner in India. He, he’s like, we can only expand so much here. Let’s, let’s try to do this in a way that scales. So we together. John Hanson created our first garage team of four people.
Wow. Then, then we kind of, that’s when we realized all very different. And the fun part is after 14 years, they’re still in the company at various senior levels. Still, we enjoy working together. So it’s, it’s been a really fun journey in the sense that we were all involved as the company as well. So that, that says a lot that the original team is still together that, that long ago.
What, what do you think some of the, the secret sauce is there? Like, what do you think are some of the reasons for that particular success? I think the number one thing is you know, respecting each other and letting everyone grow in the way and really looking at them as as human beings that have their own needs and pathways to grow is very important.
So and then, then having Now, if the company wasn’t doing well and grew as their ambition grew, I’m sure it would be very difficult to retain that team. But as long as the company was keeping pace with their growth and aspiration, I think it found a healthy balance there on. We also had a lot of trust in each other to you know, take it to that next step, right?
And which is one of the core things of a good, high performing team foundation, right? So I think, I think as long as you treat them with respect and wish for them what you wish for yourself, then I think that it goes a long way. And I think that’s what we want for most of our team. And we find ways to make every member, even if they’re junior, We find ways to give them stock options, other ways to grow.
We’re always looking for beyond a job. What, what, how do you become a missionary from that mercenary people join? Hey, I got a great pay package, but then they stay for love for the work the possibility of what can, what, what can be, and and the ability to be part of a much larger. Story. So, mm.
What, so now you’re the, the leadership, the initial leadership team is there, right? And you’re, and now you’re thinking about scaling and bringing on more people. Like, like, talk to me about that part of the buildup. Like how does that take place? So as, as we grew, you know there was, you know, other people who joined the team, they all bring their point of views.
We, we are lucky to have a good executive leadership team in place now, which they, they’re basically bringing their point of views and the key. For us as a company, core foundation culture is that you lead with empathy that that leads to curiosity and other things when you’re curious enough to learn from others.
And it’s not that you have all the answers and you know that you can see answers from others. I think they really Help solidify. How do you go from A to B? Right? I think one of my team members basically said things break in three sides, you know, three people. When you’re two people, it’s a different dynamic.
When you’re three, it’s different. When you’re nine or 10, it’s different. When you’re at 90 plus, you’re different. You know, now that we are closing to 400 people it is different. So at each level, we have to be thinking about what, what assumptions we had. Yeah. At a previous state that no longer are valid at the next state of the business and how you structurally creating that investment in the company so that we can grow in that way.
So it’s, it’s been a lot of learning, I think, from others, again, as I said, started as a computer geek with a little bit of a hustle, but then you, then you kind of evolve and learn from others. And you read a lot and to learn a lot and a lot from experience, a lot from others. Continue with that core mission in mind.
How do you, how do you keep, I know one of the things that as we’ve, as we’ve talked about, we get one of the things that you you’ve mentioned to me is happy developers produce better code. How do you keep your team happy, man? Like that’s, it’s a phenomenal story approaching or heading over 400 individuals and like, that’s a huge accomplishment.
There’s a lot and nothing against any small shops out there, anybody else, but their vision, right? Other entrepreneurs. But it’s a huge accomplishment. It’s like, like, how do you keep people happy? Oh, I think everybody’s different. So I, I think you need to kind of align them along the vision and the mission that they’re on.
Right. So obviously within our company, we have multiple product teams that are focused on various innovations. So some are in the healthcare space, some are in, you know, some are in traditional manufacturing and some are in logistics, field logistics. This is very diverse and each one has very.
requirements, people align with with a mission, right? If, if we really want them to share in the success, we show them what, you know, what does it mean to do what you’re doing? I’ll give you a very simple example. So I can tell a person, Hey, we need to have the vehicle show up on the GPS map at a certain location.
A programmer can do that any day, but. When you tell them, Hey, when you do that, we can present a text message to a person who’s going for his dialysis saying that the car will be there in seven minutes, dig, please come down comfortably and stop having to wait down, wait on the heat or on the sidewalk for 20 minutes for the car to come.
You can still sit in your home and then come down more comfortably and make it more easy for them to get in. That’s what your code is doing. They then align with that mission of really making the life of a patient that’s being picked up easier. Mm-Hmm. . And that, that’s when I think they can see the greater purpose.
Because if you’re all doing code, it’s a very abstract thing. Very hard to see, very complicated to build. But if, if they can see the impact of that on how, how it makes a difference in somebody’s life, because then I think that, that, that I think is the, one of the most important things. Mm-Hmm. But long that there’s a lot of these things about that high performing team that we were talking about, whether it is a good leadership that creates psychological safety, provides trust and transparency on why we are doing so that we’re not misleading anybody.
It just, we are what we are, and here’s what we’re really trying to do. And we are here to support them and enabling them to get the right mix of the team, you know, you know, it can’t have all superstars, the egos get glassed up. So you need the right balance of senior, junior. I mean, I the right kind of roles.
I don’t watch much basketball, but if you were to think of point guard versus shooting guard, which is the same way in a software team, it’s very nuanced. Back in the day, you could have one IT engineer, like in Jurassic Park, controlling the whole park. That’s really not true. The software is so complex.
It’s cloud native. It’s distributed and you have a team that’s spread across the globe. That’s trying to collaborate to bring this vision together. There’s so much complexity. So that starting with that trust, the leadership, the clarity of vision, what they’re trying to do, what the impact is, those are important things, obviously.
And then the secondary aspect is. There is a portion. Hey, how does this make me money? What is the upside, right? Hey, if this company becomes successful, I can share in some of that success and maybe pay off my kid’s college fee or pay off my mortgage or something that’s impactful, that that can be transformational that the balance of all these incentives.
In the right cultural setup, I think is very important and keeps them happy. I, we don’t have a hundred percent fit rate by humans, but we do our best to make that varied employee center. Speaking of culture and pulling off projects across many different cultures, time zones, countries, like any insight into what that takes, especially with working with like literally other cultures.
I mean, not just company culture, like any insight into how you make things work. That happened and make that work. Cause I feel like after post pandemic, there’s many more people that are, that are open to hiring abroad and otherwise in many different businesses that maybe in the past weren’t. And these are some new challenges that entrepreneurs, I believe are facing.
I think it is challenging. You know, it is time zone differences, cultural differences, language barriers. The key, I think the start with is really see them as human beings. I mean, you really don’t know when you’re speaking. I was one of our engineers were missing for a very critical release. I’m like, for a second, I was stressed because the client was very anxious about that new version of the software.
I was like, what happened here? I was a little. Out of character happens from time to time. I’m trying to be good, but sometimes it happens. And they said, well, he is, you know, he had he had to go to the hospital. He’s, he had a premature delivery for it and none of nobody. So if you don’t see that for the person, he is, he did phenomenal work, but he hadn’t suddenly disappeared for family reasons, we need to make sure we went to the extra effort to make sure that he, you know, he got the space to take care of all of that.
Yeah. So I think the most important thing is to see people for who they are, and then once you meet them there, then it’s a matter of appreciating each other’s culture. It’s hard, you know, it’s very easy to get xenophobic and say, you know, Chinese bad. So, you know, Indian bad. Americans are this way, Mexicans are that way.
To be honest. In general at the core, if you work with people from different cultures, you really appreciate the nuance that they bring in from their point of view. It is amazing when you learn about, you know each other’s cultures, the different habits and you certainly start building that.
Again, I never say that. This is a family. It’s more like a sports team, but we love each other because we enjoy working and, you know, getting the basket to the pocket or getting the ball to the finish line. So seeing them for who they are, empathy, you know, creating that really taking the effort to know each other as a human being across cultures.
It’s not just, you know if it’s in the same room, we do some work sometimes in Mexico or South and sometimes in India. Yeah. You need to kind of see them for who they are. So long winded answer, but no, I I get it. And I like to say we’re, we’re all human. And if you’re working with that prefrontal cortex, like I am, then we’re all battling and something’s going to come up.
It’s messy, business, human, messy, narrow it down. I want to jump around a bit here. Yeah, sir. Go a little bit further. You mentioned what you’re doing at TASA, but I do want to spend a little bit more time, like what, what type of projects do you typically work on? Like, I know it’s a big company. I know there’s a lot of bandwidth to do different things, but just, did you mention any healthcare and some other niches, like for those that are at the end of this, I’m going to give the opportunity to leave, you know, websites and stuff like that.
We’re going to put that in the show notes. So for people that want to follow up, maybe tell us a little bit more about TASA. Sure. So I think we focus on multiple verticals. To be honest, we love a good challenging problem to start with. So typically we focus on the mid market aware. Yeah, he’s been around for 10 plus years.
The leaders have grown it to a certain size, and they’ve put together various technology pieces, whether they have hacked together Excel, Google Sheets, or they’re using some CRM, but they’re all siloed systems, or they’re trying to bring a new product to market, which they know will make a huge difference.
And we, and they’re mission minded, very important for us to have that longer term vision. We’re not mercenaries. We don’t go in with it. We never say hire a person from us. We like, we build a team for you, which will be embedded in your mission and be part of them to help you get to the front. So we, for example, we helped a healthcare screening company in Florida.
We they were all manual. Excel and some Microsoft tools, they were put together to do their business. We build a beast for platform for them. They’re, you know, their revenue jumped from 25 to like 50 or 60 million. And then this, then they eventually sold the founders and who was 60, 70 retired very well, they, but in the process, we built an amazing system.
That actually saved so many lives. They did screening pre, you know, preventive screening. Mm. And we actually built a system where it would take them 21 days to do all that process manually down to 12 hours. Right. They would, somebody would be what screen? They would do screening and we would screen that data, create the charts electronically, send it to the doctor.
And they, they caught so many cases of, you know, high carotid arteries who had like a high 99 percent blockage. They would immediately call them and send them to the hospital and testimonial after testimonial saying, you saved our life. You, you, you, you know, you did this. I mean, that is impact. And that’s huge.
Like, so using your example, you said, you know, from over 20 days, To 12 hours to get that result back. And that, that can literally, and then that 20 days or so you know, unfortunately with the clogged arteries, like that could meet, that could, you’re talking about literally that can save people’s lives.
Yes. That’s where we saw the impact software can have, again, in some cases, it might be simply an annoyance in the office that sure that was to do something. Now it’s taking two or one and you can use the remaining time to do more productive things that, yeah. The business and thinking more from, from a person’s standpoint versus trying to do arbitrary TPS reports.
So, so I think if we find the right leader who leaders within the company, sometimes it’s a VP of engineer you know, VP of a product or operations who has a challenge and he wants to solve it, we go and help them streamline that through through a software solution or a technology plus. Plus process solution.
Maybe nowadays we are doing some new things with the I to help simplify. I’m not as worried about taking over yet. I’ve played with the tragedy. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t really. It may get there someday, but for now, I think it can take some additional nuanced tasks and speed up for now. And if we can create unique models, proprietary models for enterprises, that would make a huge difference for them you know where, where they can move faster.
So that’s what we do. So some of the projects are. You know logistics, fleet, logistics, IOT devices, where we are collecting a lot of sensory data, analyzing it, it can be in thousands and thousands of signals coming in every second. We do remote patient monitoring. We’ve done you know medical transportation and pickup, and we’ve done we build platforms for those, which are end to end products.
And then we’ve done real estate tech. A financial tech money movement. We have a platform that do from, you know, a little over a few hundred dollars in process processing to a billion dollars a year at the scale scale from, and at each level of scaling things that we’ve built broke, but then you know, we found ways to scale it better and engineer it better.
So it iteratively went, you know, Man, what, what an amazing story. And to think of, you know, it all started with just that idea and moving up, moving up, building, creating a team. Like this is the, this is the dream of entrepreneurship right here. I love it. Yes, sir. First off, this has been great having you on the show today.
I just, I just have to ask what’s next. I mean, what’s next for you. What’s next for Taza. What’s next? So we our goal is to continue in enlarging our impact, right? We were where we are right now, touching hundreds of thousands of lives. Fun, fun story. I was in New York on a taxi cab and I’m looking at the app and like, this looks familiar.
He’s like, Oh, it’s so easy to get my trips on this. This is early Uber days, by the way. Yeah, familiar. And then I realized, Oh, my God, that’s our app. That was that was one of the really fun moment for me. It was like it was such a joy to see some you’re making a difference in your life, too. I love it. So, so our hope is we continue to increase impact.
We’re obviously looking at growing in terms of the size of impact, the kind of projects we can take on, you know, we’ve been able to we started small, you know, when you’re starting, you, you do what you can, but now we are in a position where we can be selective and thoughtful about who we really want to help.
We, we, we align with a lot of you know, mid market companies that have missions to make life better, but it’s in healthcare and manufacturing. Logistics. These are the areas that we focus on because there’s a lot of things that they do, which actually impact their end customers significantly, but it’s by making their operations better, whether they want to improve their CSAP score, operational efficiency, or innovate into new product categories.
If somebody’s listening or watching this Yasser and they want to follow up and they want to connect with your team, how do they do that? Obviously, the simple way is to go to Taza. com at T A Z A. com and contact us, or they can just email me at Yasir at Taza. com. Amazing. And for everybody listening or watching this we’ll put all those links in the show notes so you can just click on them and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, and you haven’t done it yet, you Hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show. Hit that subscribe or follow button. It’s a daily show, bringing you new episodes each and every day. New entrepreneurs, new insights, hopefully new inspiration.
That’s going to help you along the way and your journey as well. So we don’t want you to miss any of those episodes. And Yasser again. Thank you so much and man, wishing you much more continued success from stickers in grade school to come on now. A company of 400 people growing and doing great work and, and providing, and literally saving lives and the example that you gave for the medical niche where you’re helping where you’re helping to decrease the time in testing for the results to come back.
So it is just an amazing story, one that I’m happy to bring my audience. Again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. And thank you for having me on the show. Pleasure talking to you. It’s been fun.