Sanjeev Thapa

What I read last weekend ** 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗔**𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 ** Turns out, good and horrible founders have the same characteristics, but very different characters. How do you tell them apart up front? (It’s super easy after a few days of working together though) --> https://lnkd.in/dsU9wD6J ** 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗿 ** You are Volkswagen, it’s 1949. You want to sell the car Hitler commissioned. To Americans. The car is about half the size of an American car, but gas is still cheap. Ah, the car also looks a bit odd.  Your ad agency has a secret weapon though: humor. These ads have everything I miss from this region: a sense of humor, the clever, self-deprecating kind. Copywriting that sounds like a human had written it. --> https://lnkd.in/dUwv4T3T ** 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 ** Robo-advisors for investments were statistically better than humans. Nevertheless, they did not succeed. Why? We will soon all talk to AI agents (and those are probably way better than the lets-not-even-mention-them-anymore chatbots of yesteryear) but here’s why they still won’t replace many human ones.  --> https://lnkd.in/dHYV7gqx

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What’s next for Langauge Models #OpenAi By Colin Jarvas, the Chief Architect. Super interesting talk by Colin at #TOA Berlin. 😎He talked about : 1. Some good and bad examples where the chatgpt was used. 2. What are places it’s been extensively used and are successful: 👩‍🚒Usecase : - Customer Service - Autonomous Assistant - Content creation 👩‍💼User experience : - Balancing control and automation - Multi-modality - Translations 3. What is coming next ? - Increasing intelligence of text model - Increasing multi-Modality And more. Parting Advice for all the people who are using OpenAI’s platform is there in the video. #ai #openai #whatsnext #chatgpt #AIEngineers

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Building-In-Public makes you feel liberated. Today Thursday at 1600 CET we are showcasing how to talk to an API through natural language. Imagine... Dream of the implications! To speak to an API and invoke its actions via prompts opens the door to everything... Since we launched the G-Play effort, we have learned so much on this space. Being able to do everything a merchandiser can do, putting their intellectual capacity to limitless actions, just through natural language. oi.empathy.co is a crazy space for ideation and rapid execution of this and more incredible adventures. Partnering with Spaceheater AI and Empathy's GenAI working groups is opening a whole new world. Join us on our journey, ping us to be part of Open Innovation, share your ideas. Open Innovation is everyone's space to co-create and deliver the new in line to the old values of trust, ethics and the very essence of commerce: Togetherness.

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When starting Robusta Studio, 2 firms were considered our local 'benchmark'. One of them just got acquired. Recently, Link Development, an Egyptian tech firm got acquired by a GCC company (Beyon Solutions). So far, there have been three recent acquisitions of Egyptian tech by GCC companies. It’s a great sign for the region. Why is this happening? - GCC companies are ramping up digital transformation efforts. - To successfully execute roadmaps, they’ll need control over key resources. - Egyptian tech companies and talent are a big part of that equation. As businesses in the region drive digital strategies, they need the talent and expertise. It’s a good sign that Egyptian tech resources are becoming integral to the broader region's growth. We’re also seeing more interest from the region. To compound this edge, I encourage other tech firms to consider: - Staying ahead by continuously innovating and offering unique solutions. - Forming alliances with other tech companies and stakeholders - Investing more in their talent, upgrading and hiring the best ones - Building propositions in specific up-and-coming niches (e.g. AI) It’s not far-fetched to expect that more GCC companies will likely partner with or acquire Egyptian tech firms to go faster. I’ve seen first hand the talent we have here in Egypt and how they can contribute greatly to the region via our tech recruiting arm - Octopus by RTG. This trend could open up new growth opportunities, both locally and regionally. Big congrats to the Link Development team. P.S. Can you guess which company is the second local benchmark for our business?

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Do you want to build a new #blockchain AI app and don't know where to start? Good news! Starknet #Berlin Meetup is around the corner and you can learn everything you need to know from experts like StarkWare and Gizatech AG .     👉 23 April, 6 PM! Secure your spot! 👇 👇 👇 https://lu.ma/x5w6qfud We will kick things off with StarkWare breaking the ice, exploring the world of Starknet, and sharing the latest updates on what the Exploration team at StarkWare has been up to lately. Gizatech AG will delve into building and scaling ZKML solutions powered by the Starknet Stack. They will particularly discuss their latest development, Giza Agents — a modular and extensible framework for integrating decentralized ML into on-chain strategy and action. After that, we will wrap up the meetup with a Q&A session and networking, followed by food and refreshments. 🍕 🍻 Don't forget to secure your spot! 👇 👇 👇 https://lu.ma/x5w6qfud #Blockchain #ML #AI #Ethereum #Germany

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🚀 𝐀𝐥𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐝: 𝐀𝐈 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐬 🚀 Last week we launched Alfred, Treblle's AI assistant designed to transform how developers interact with your APIs! 🔍 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬: - 𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐩: Integrates with any developer portal in 60 seconds with just 2 lines of code. - 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬: Automate manual tasks and drive 10x faster API integrations. - 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲: Let Alfred handle the heavy lifting and enhance developer experience. Find out how Alfred can help lift your developer portal experience https://lnkd.in/d7ue_R8M. #AI #DeveloperTools #APIs 

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I do think that the discourse talks too much about the 10x engineers and not enough about the 10x teams! 10x engineer is a legend - that mythical creature who can churn out code at will and leap tall product roadmaps in a single sprint. But after having studied a lot about distributed engineering teams, I've come to realize that the true value unlock is in building a well-oiled team. I've seen firsthand how a team of "average" engineers, when given the right tools, processes, and culture, can outperform a squad of isolated 10xers. The analogy that comes to my mind is how ISRO has demonstrated resourcefulness - dont think most of folks at ISRO are IITians but they just know how to get GREAT work done on a budget. If you are thinking about global team, the ISRO mental model is crazy powerful in my opinion. It is a hard problem to solve. Not only do you have to hire RIGHT but also manage RIGHT. That is also the reason we are spending ton of time getting this process right for ourselves - when we partner with businesses, we want to assemble a great team for them that KILLS. Bat-signal for all “average” engineers who want to be part of a great team - would love to see how InCommon can help.

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Scalability is an overused word in startups (often uttered by software engineers). Startups go through big changes. These changes come with code rewrites (refactoring more than 40% codebase is a nightmare you shouldn't wish on anyone). Writing scalable, extensible, high-test coverage code isn't worth the trouble here. You'll start seeing ghosts where none exist. Favoring iteration speed and adaptability is a better bet. Outsource, simplify and hack your way through! Cheers! P.S. In large organisations, the investment in extensible code makes sense. Hence the emphasis on low-level design. If you want to know how scalable systems are built in the real-word, try the system design course at InterviewReady. #Scalability #Startups

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💥Martin Rusnak - Interim CTO joined The $500k CTO Podcast as a VIP guest on Friday. He's worked as an interim or fractional CTO for 15 (!) SaaS companies and shared lots of interesting insights about: 1. The Difference Between Interim and Fractional CTOs: Martin explained how these roles differ in terms of time commitment and responsibilities.💡 2. Importance of Building Trust Quickly: As an interim CTO, gaining trust fast is key. Martin shared how he builds strong relationships within the first few weeks to ensure success. 📝 3. Balancing Technical and Soft Skills: Communication, emotional intelligence, and empathy in leading tech teams is more important than deep technical skills. 4. Continuous Learning: Staying updated with the latest tech trends is vital. Martin talked about how he keeps his knowledge fresh and relevant, even with a packed schedule. 🤓 5. Networking and Getting Clients: If you are looking to enter this field, Martin's tips on networking and finding clients can be useful. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to get notified when it's LIVE. #TechLeadership #CTO #Podcast #TechInsights #Leadership #FractionalCTO #InterimCTO #ContinuousLearning #Networking

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Over the past few months I’ve written an extensive tutorial on how to build software applications with Node.js and React. I’m sorry to tell you that this experience didn’t teach me anything about B2B sales, though. But hopefully, it’s still useful for some people out there. From the introduction: The approach of this tutorial is to teach its readers how to build a fully working software application from zero to production. This means two things: 1. You are not required to have done any kind of software development before getting started with this tutorial. It will introduce and explain everything that is needed to build applications in full detail, assuming no prior knowledge or experience. This is the “from zero” part. 2. Building on the foundational knowledge it teaches in the first half, the tutorial will then, step by step, guide you through the process of building a real, full-fledged, and completely working software application, again explaining every detail along the way, and shows how to “deploy” that application — that is, how to make that application available on the Internet for anyone to use. This is the “to production” part. Speaking of B2B sales: I’m afraid you cannot buy this tutorial. That’s because I’m making it available for free, as a series of posts on my blog. The first three parts are already published: https://lnkd.in/e2XCYm3p https://lnkd.in/eW7wUc_d https://lnkd.in/eAU6kgH9 No, you do not need to sign up to my newsletter to get access to the tutorial. That’s mainly because I don’t have a newsletter. Also, no need to follow me (although admittedly, it might help to get you notified whenever I’m publishing a new chapter). Furthermore, please don’t be disappointed if clicking on the tutorial links won’t present you with a cookie banner. That’s because my blog doesn’t use any cookies. No, not even those from Google Analytics, as I’m not using that either. This means I will have no idea how many people will read the tutorial — which makes sense because let’s face it, who is going to consume this kind of long-form, deep-dive technical content nowadays anyway. And in text-only form, of all things! Should you nevertheless decide to dive into the text, expect to learn how to program using JavaScript and TypeScript, how to use these languages to build rock-stable backend applications with Node.js as well as elegant frontend applications with React and Redux, and finally, how publish a complete and integrated software solution on Amazon AWS. Ok, that’s it. If you want to access the bonus chapters, simply subscribe to… — just kidding. There are no bonus chapters. Everything you need to learn to build useful software products is right in the… normal chapters, I guess? Happy reading!

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Would you ever go from being a manager to an individual contributor again? I had an interesting conversation the other day in one of the many WhatsApp groups, started by this proposition: 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆, 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗜𝗖, 𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿. As a manager, you’ll mostly have indirect information and are not affected by the processes most people are. This will accelerate your career instead of setting it back. I’ve heard a few reasons people give up being a manager for, but this was a new one.  People (engineers, product folks) usually go back to an IC role when they realize being a manager is a completely different job, and it is not "being a better engineer”. They end up hating the work: the constant meetings, administrative stuff, managing people and not getting that dopamine hit from feeling like actually doing something and making a difference. To quote my favorite existential comic: “𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯” Then a few people chimed in, saying they moved from manager to IC (usually from a startup / growth company to big tech), and it worked out well for them. The thing I started thinking about is whether this would work in the Middle East? It surely depends on the company, but in general management works very differently here than in Europe or in the US (understatement of the week I think, and it’s only Monday) My theory is that this would work with only a tiny percentage of companies here. What do you think? One more thing: the podcast that stated the whole question is the Skip podcast by Nikhyl Singhal: https://lnkd.in/dhJkYwCq - it’s mostly about product careers, but I found the advice works well for most tech-adjacent roles too. 

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I've been using Ruby on Rails - The Rails Foundation since version 4 released about 10 years ago. Version 7.1 is brilliant. It takes very complicated, and mundane, coding tasks and wraps them in a library that's super easy to use yet really functional. Normally, things like background jobs, automated emailers, encryption, and file management is difficult to implement. Rails wraps this in logic that makes implementation super easy. One of the hallmarks of Ruby is the idea of 'convention over configuration'. Why waste time trying to come up with unique naming schemes or folder structures? If you stick to the convention, it makes life a lot easier. It's also a lot faster to get a workable solution. Rails has had missteps. Version 5.0 was frustrating to use. Sometimes, you get forced into a pattern you don't like. In version 5.0, when you created relationships between tables (i.e., users have a role and users belong to a department), it forced every row to have a valid relationship. Maybe a user doesn't have a department? Or maybe a user doesn't belong to a role? It created problems. The beauty of Rails is when they recognize a change, albeit with good intentions, isn't exactly what a dev wants. Rails changes their system to match what their customers' want (i.e., dev). Brilliant. I use this concept a lot. How do I eliminate unnecessary variations and use convention over configuration wherever possible? By standardizing the mundane stuff, you get a lot more flexibility and scalability.

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You have a great job, working with smart people, things going really well... But you're unhappy and want to move on? 🙃 Had a lot of fun on the Builders podcast with the lovely folks Proxify! I shared what it is like leaving a great job at Intercom to figure things out. I dive into the story of my first venture, Octopods, and how it paved the way for Rasayel where we are inventing the way to sell on #WhatsApp. So many ups and downs building two tech startups, the lessons I've learned along the way, and the exciting future of WhatsApp as a business platform. 😉 Thank you SO MUCH Lee Haynes, Stefanija and Miodrag 😊🙏 #startups #entrepreneurship #careers #WhatsApp

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Do you eat your own dog food? 🥫 Some​ thoughts on product... With two weeks to go before Fuzzy Labs holds its first #llm hackathon I'd like to share some lessons and reflections on our product journey so far. 🐕​ Eat your own dog food* This is crucial. As developers, we know our code inside and out, so it's easy to forget that a customer experiences things differently. You have to continuously place yourself into the customer's shoes, e.g.... - Forget what you already know, and follow the documentation to the letter: does it make sense? Do all the steps work correctly? - Start with a clean environment, and run everything from scratch: did we forget a critical dependency? - Do something wrong on purpose: does it fail gracefully? To build a good product, you need to use it yourself, and behave just like a customer. But as we've learnt, that's not always easy in practice. We constantly have to fight the temptation to work from memory instead of using the documentation, to work around a bug instead of fixing it, and to take a shortcut to save time. *I have no idea where this saying comes from, but at least it's memorable. 🛣️​ Focus on the critical path With so many competing priorities, it can be difficult to know where to focus. Having a deadline - in our case the hackathon - acts as a forcing function. But it's not always easy, as we all want to work on the shiny things, which don't always align with the critical path. ⚖️​ Validate the thinking Demos and user testing are all essential to product development. You can have the best tech in the world, but does it solve the right problem? You'll never know until you ask somebody else. External feedback can be daunting but without it you're just guessing what the market wants. You have to be ready to iterate, experiment, and change your thinking when necessary. In two weeks, we're opening up our tooling to the world. We've got an amazing cohort joining us at the hackathon, and I very much look forward to welcoming you all on the day!

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The Lies We Tell Ourselves. Senthu Sivasambu embarks on a quest to uncover an objective characterization of monolithic software, revealing the superficial facade of monolithic and microservice architectural styles in this enlightening article. He leverages a unique analogy to present the findings. 💡 "Pagodas will always be pagodas" . No surface-level distinctions here—just a fresh perspective. #microservices #monolithics

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I want to talk about how to the average nontechnical founder who wishes "they could have their billion dollar idea", they are probably overrepresenting consumer apps in their head and undervaluing business applications. It makes sense. As average consumers, our main inflection point with software throughout our non-working hours is mostly with consumer mega-unicorns. We have the apps on our phone. We watch shows on Netflix and order our food with Doordash. We Uber to get places. We get used to that level of refinement and everybody else talks about these same apps. I have had a lot of friends tell me "they wish they could have a billion dollar idea". They think in these terms: everyone in the world uses it, it's the next giant thing. It's Instagram. It replaces Spotify. It is as universal as Whatsapp. These friends despair, because nothing is quite coming. Then they go to their day job as an X-ray technician and curse out their terrible imaging software. "Damn it! I hate this stupid thing so much. Why on earth can't there be something that takes these images and automatically remembers which way the generator was facing and sort them out that way?" Then they go to their day job as a real estate speculator and edit on the same Word document they have used to escrow funds for ten years and curse it out saying "I hate this stupid template, I have to clean it up every time and there is no way to automate it. If there was a simple portal for my escrow and it managed these docs every bank would use it." Then they go to their day job as a sound engineer and curse out the license manager for their plug-ins folder. "I hate how many damn dll VSTs there are and some are twenty years old and still 32-bit. Why on earth has no one created a repository for all known plug-ins where we can all check each other's libraries and make sure they are compatible?" Then they go home, and open up TikTok on their phone, and lament that they still haven't had their TikTok-tier idea yet. I have a pet theory that literally everybody is sitting on a $10M idea at least, in their professional life, that they just don't recognize because it doesn't resemble YouTube, and/or they have so internalized the terribleness of their work tools they forget that better things are possible. What's your hidden 8-figure idea that is flying under the radar? Reach out!

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Scaling in startups is about more than just architecture. How does the product scale to new customers, implementations, or use-cases? Here are some quick tips from my experiences: 1. Solidify Your Vision: Establish early (and refine as necessary) a clear vision for how your technology and product differentiate your business. Align with partners and clients to refine your product for the market. Clarify what is turn-key and configurable enhancements versus professional services work to maintain focus on what actually moves the product forward. 2. Focus on Product Scalability: Always ask, "How does this [request, feature, change] scale our product?" Startups often begin with customized services to achieve quick business wins. Design solutions that can be launched quickly and repeatedly, and differentiate between turn-key solutions and custom services. Recognize that customizations which are architecturally scaleable are not equivalent to building a scaleable product. 3. Prioritize Extensibility: Avoid overly tailored solutions for individual clients. Design systems that are easy to adapt for new use cases to prevent complexity and ensure scalability.

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Are you running your business without timely access to trading performance? Trading numbers lagging by days, weeks or even months? Each day you wake up feeling: → Anxious. → Uncertain → Lacking in confidence. Never knowing what "surprise" might be lurking in the next reporting cycle → Reported revenue was inflated due to reporting errors. You thought you were on track and now you are behind. → A significant shift in trading conditions was discovered weeks later. The opportunity to respond quickly has gone. You missed your monthly target. → Analysts are spending the majority of their time compiling financial performance rather than deep analysis into drivers and how performance can be improved. Missed opportunity. → Lack of awareness of day to day trading performance is distracting. You cannot focus on strategic activities. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘆 Imagine waking up feeling: → Courageous → Informed → Confident You have your trading peformance by 7am. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 You have not sufficiently invested in data and reporting. Manual work means: → Delays → Increased opportunity for error → Information is limited to a select few.  You lack a culture of "know your numbers" and responding rapidly to change. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 A data strategy that seeks to pull together data from a variety of operational systems in a manner that allows business performance to be automated and surfaced with ease. Once these foundations are in place you unlock: → Forecasting → Anomoly Detection → Personalisation → Retention analysis and predictive churn models. → And many more (dare I say Generative AI!) Want to feel courageous, informed and confident? Invest in your data.

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Zenjob, one of the fastest growing startups in Germany has recently become a Secoda customer! 👏 They now leverage Secoda for many crucial data management functionalities that help their team scale. Zenjob is renowned for its innovative approach to connecting part-time job seekers, primarily students, with companies across various industries such as logistics, gastronomy, retail, and events. The platform matches more than 20,000 people with 12,000 part-time jobs each month. Most recently, the company raised has a $50 million growth round of financing financing: https://lnkd.in/g37q46hi Secoda provides a comprehensive, AI-powered platform for data search, cataloging, lineage, monitoring, and governance. Here’s how Zenjob benefits from Secoda: 1. Secoda serves as an all-in-one platform, streamlining Zenjob’s data management processes. 2. Secoda’s automated lineage model helps Zenjob identify impacts on upstream or downstream assets, preventing data outages and ensuring data quality. 3. Secoda enhances collaboration between data and business teams at Zenjob with real-time editing and role-based permissions, simplifying communication and workflow integration. 4. Secoda integrates effortlessly with Zenjob’s workflows, enabling bulk updates, tagging of PII data, managing data debt, and ensuring compliance with sensitive data regulations. By utilizing Secoda, Zenjob has tranformed its data management capabilities to ensure efficient and reliable operations across it's fast growing data landscape

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