Don't Hesitate To Ask Questions

Maxim Silaev

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

1/11/2021

Sponsored by findcourses.com and findcourses.co.uk

Also sponsored by Cereal Entrepreneur

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

is start as soon as possible and don't waste your time define your priorities and each day study something new and don't hesitate to ask people are open when they uh when they asked so if you have questions you may ask someone and he will respond [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that has built uh several businesses or startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as a founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and uh if you ever need help with your patent or trademarks feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast the next maxim and i'm not even going to attempt to pronunciate or pronounce his last name i'm going to call him maxum s or maximus but max is um he has been in calling himself or certainly would call himself an entrepreneur he's been in the software architecture and security space as well as the ai or artificial intelligence space for quite a while um prelude to that he's been in the software engineer for about 15 years so he got his software engineering degree out of school he worked for some smaller businesses doing uh security research and software development jumped around a bit and did some higher level tasks work for a small our big business for a short or a short stint and then moved back into smaller businesses before uh then kind of going off and doing his own thing which is what he's doing today with um ai or ai and software security so with that much is an introduction welcome on to the podcast max hi david hi guys so uh yeah so i gave a short introduction on you but maybe uh let's take your journey back to when you got your software engineering degree and kind of tell us how you got or how that started with you yeah i will come this long introduction so what i do is two things data analysis and data transmission i'm keen for both the first one is mathematical modeling and i do markets uh events modeling text analysis some predictions data predictions and so on so forth the second one is software security software security architecture and i built a number of products during my life and uh which are related which is strongly related to software security and what i do now is mostly data transmission security so data trusts [Music] cryptography network protocols all together is it comes to a big security complex i know what i do in the good space so no and i think that's a good introduction it's kind of now what you do so and as i as you can guess and the inventive journey is all about the journey right so part of where it's at is how did you get to where you at today and how did you get into ai and doing the business and building things around that you've done over your career so now let's take that journey back in time a bit time to where you know so you're in college and you're getting a software engineering degree you're coming out of college trying to decide what you do so as you're coming out of college how did you start out how did you start out your career or where did you start your career i was sad a bit early when i was eight i wrote my first computer program i don't remember exactly what it did but it was uh it was my first uh software written in c plain c language so that uh that was a game as far as i remember but since then i evolved as developer i develop i developed from small utilities to complex solutions but the understanding that i want to be a software engineer came a bit later i developed my first program but in several years i decided to dedicate my life to software so but um i started from low level development so that means assembly language uh processor instructions uh some where very uh time uh time optimizations so when you are lacking your lack of resources and you need to uh your application your program need to uh make as fast as possible that that is what i did for about 10 years and so that's a long time to dive in so first of all that's cool you're very cool that you wrote your first software program at the age of eight i wasn't even i didn't even know what it could probably maybe i knew what a computer was but that's about all i knew at the age of eight and so kudos to you to be able to dive into that so you did that now you go off to colleges so you kind of get started down the career or go down that path at eight did you so did you carry that interest into high school did you keep programming keep coding or how did you you know what did that kind of once you once you did coding you were hooked or how did that work out for you yeah of course of course i keep kept coding and i involved as a codex i started learning new skills in languages new platforms it was these times these years there wasn't too many options for a developer now now we have a lot of frameworks but these days there wasn't wasn't too many and the other things were to go to low-level development which i went to so that's that was uh that you you know that's uh professionals of some levels uh talking to each other that i'm too professional you're not so i thought that low-level developer is more professional than the high-level developer so see so you continue on that passion in that drive so you did it throughout high school you went and got your software engineering degree so now you're coming out of college and so let's say you're looking for the first job right you want to actually make some money start to pay off loans or start to be able to cash flow your life so did you start going out and working for big business small business or where did you start out your career once you had that software engineering degree i started as uh i said private company in the uh in the uh like right after i graduated from the university i started as private software developers like uh author of consultancies to various various people but this this occupation won't last a long time so i found first my first job since half a year i graduated from university this job was related to software engineering that was software engineering and that was that wasn't a big company don't understand too like big companies i prefer small because the employees there are universal they can do this and this and it's it gives the smaller companies give more opportunity more opportunity for employees to grow so no and so you so you graduate you go and work out for go work for the small company and i think you mentioned when we talked a little bit before the podcast you were doing kind of security research and you were a software developer and then you kind of moved up a little bit of the chain of command so to speak and went more to software architecture and started working on higher level tasks now if i remember right you did mention that you you know you did go work for a big business or a bigger company for about six months and decide you didn't like that is that right absolutely so that was uh this was second step second step in my journey first i built built my uh experience working on smaller companies and then i decided yeah i need to go to try myself and companies like uh like poor giants i need to try uh try to uh to look at everything by their eyes how do they how do they choose the word i understand that i i'm losing many things when i go from small company when i upgrade from a small company to a big one i'm losing my flexibility but at the same time i become more stable i gain more stability and i after i worked half a year i realized that this stability not for me i would better go to do things we used to do so you said okay i'm gonna go try and work for the big company it'll give me this ability and you know a good paycheck each you know that i can count on and those things and then after six months you're basically saying yes this ability is great but i can't or i'm not cut out for the big business type of thing i like the small culture i like to have more of an impact and those type of things so you decide okay had enough of the big business i'm going back to small businesses so where did you go from there so you had your small stand in a big company did you go back to another small company or where did you go from there uh correct i decided to uh answer your first question i decided to go back because i realized that a big company is used just go straight forward where company go you go there you have no chance to say to bring some improvement to the company yes the big company is a big machine you cannot just invent something in that the reason why i think so is uh i see an example when [Music] my colleague uh he he just he just invented some uh he invented something some software and try to sell the software to the company he worked on and he's bossed all of him okay i know that you invented you you approach something during night time and you want us to buy it okay we can do it but if you fail that means you'll be fired immediately if your software fails it will be your personal failure but if you if you just sit sit on their chair and don't do nothing they will be all uh all other success no no i think that makes sense and so i mean i and i'm personally a small company guy i like to be able to do my own thing run my own thing have that impact and actually say okay when i do something it actually you can see the results as opposed to when you're working for a big company oftentimes you know you're much smaller cog in a much bigger wheel type of a thing so so you did that you moved back to the small company because you know saying hey big companies they lack personality you can't necessarily be your own person you can't have that impact and all those scenes and you know that wasn't that good fit so now you know so you work for the the small company for a continued period of time and then how did you you know so now you're doing and then where along that path did you get to where you're at today of how did you continue to navigate are you still with a small company did you decide to go out and do your consulting or where did you go from there after i moved out from the big company i got i decided to extend my my passion to uh software security and dedicate myself to software security and so i i found a company which was relatively small those 20 people only 20 20 members and so i i went there as a software developer just just a simple software development after a couple years i led the whole department the whole department which is was dedicated to social security because uh social security development because no one in the company nobody in this company known what to do with that so my i brought my experience with me i brought everything and so started founded a new department new department within the company so i'll go ahead yeah after after that in several years i of course i was aware of modern trends i've definitely follow follow the trends of artificial intelligence which happens which surround me they read newspaper articles say news with books every day for several hours so i i tried myself in modeling what i do now and i found a mix there's a blend of security and and ai [Music] and soon after i moved out to another company i tried every my switch every my company changed is that i brought something to the new company new new workplace but at the same time i get something from there so and now after this this journey in security and ai i say that i work in conjunction the conjunction of modeling security and behavioral psychology so so now you do that so now remind me what you now you work for a small company you kind of found your for lack better word niche of hey this is where i can fit in where i can do security where i can do ai where i can kind of utilize my skills now are you doing consulting did you stay with a small company how did you kind of make bringing it up till to where you're at today you know what are you doing today is it kind of a mix of working for small businesses doing your own thing or how did that play out for you i uh yes absolutely right i nowadays i work as a independent consultant i offer consultant services security and security architecture and ui and at the same time i have a couple of clients who are uh who are more than just clients they are companies where i employ it so and what made you decide so you worked for small business works for a big business went back to small business and now you're doing consulting what made you go from you know working for the small businesses saying hey i'm going to go for doing consulting what made you kind of make that switch or that transition i try i try myself in any particular area so i i need to uh i need to descend with the better and now i think that for me independency is the best one so of course i run of course i run some side projects on my own and that's uh i i'm more about playing and experiencing what was going on so how to implement my skills my knowledge to products which which will be helpful for people okay no makes perfect sense and now you know and again it kind of goes back to you it's always you know for me and personality i think for a lot of entrepreneurs or people you like to have the ability to control your own path control your own direction and it makes sense that you know you kind of go out on your own so that you can say hey this is where i can specialize provide the most value and then i can work with clients that i can help the most so so that kind of brings you up to where you're at today so now it's weird to say you know looking at the next six months to a year where do you see yourself headed does it continue to be consulting continuing to grow your client base or you see it going off in a new direction or how do you see it working out for the next six to 12 months for you uh for the next year i'm going to extend my consultative services i am going to continue and make it more solid and strong get the client base and extend my client base and then at this point after a year i will decide where to go further okay so continue to grow the client base continue to make it bigger and better and continue to work in areas that you love do that for the next year and then continue to re-evaluate and see as as things continue unfold where you're going or past them so perfect well now we've reached a point in the podcast i always ask two questions towards the end of the podcast we're going to jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was your worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh the word thing i have is that i haven't started that before i should started my consulting consulting services as as long as i uh to create from a university so we're almost 20 years ago that would be a good chance for me to [Music] make a big consistent market you know and i think that that you know certainly is a bit of a common thread that you hear amongst you know different people is you know my biggest mistake is i should have started earlier i this is fun i enjoy it it's i'm passionate about it and if only it started earlier how much farther ahead would i have been and how much more would i have enjoyed it so i think that you know that one's certainly a commonality of wanting to you know once you get that bug once you try it out and you're successful and you can you know start to do what you want to do always wanting to do it or wishing you'd done it earlier making that dive earlier so i think that's a one that we hear repeatedly and i think it makes our complete sense so now the second question i always ask is so if you're now talking to someone that's just getting into startups or small businesses what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them uh hell yeah several first is start as soon as possible and don't waste your time uh define your priorities and each day study something new and don't hesitate to ask people are open when they uh when they asked so if you have questions you may ask someone and he will respond definitely no no i like that and i think it makes sense you know and i haven't liked the end of that you know if you have questions ask you know ask people and i think that that's oftentimes us as you know people as entrepreneurs you're too often times you're too worried about asking questions or you want to know or show that you know everything or you're doing the making the right decisions but i like the idea of even asking people because that's a great place for knowledge that you can oftentimes get farther ahead more understanding and great and every and a great understanding and so to take that leap of asking people questions learning from other people is a great thing that i think certainly reinforces well as people want to reach out to you they want to hire you as a consultant they want to know more about what you're doing they want to pick your brain about cyber security they want to ask you about ai any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you or get to find out more about you uh through the website i have a website which is uh linkmaxlive.com there's a possibility to book a consultancy and if first consultant is always free and then i understand the client requirements and i understand what the task is and then take time to prepare and then we kind of can discuss in more detail all right and that's just your first name max and then your last name and how do you pronounce your last name one more time c live yeah ev all right so max so max and then s-i-l-a-e-v-e dot com is your website and they can certainly find out a bit more about you schedule the free consultation kind of get a get a scope of what they might need and what your services you might be able to provide so perfect well i certainly enrich or invite everybody to check check you out more on the website reach out to you max and to uh certainly use your services now for all of you that are listeners if you want to come on to the inventive journey and you have your own journey to tell feel free to apply to be on the podcast by going to inventivejourneyguest.com if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you get notifications as all the new awesome episodes come out and last but not least if you ever need help with your help with your patents and trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller iplaw by going to strategymeeting.com and grab some time and we're happy to help thank you again max it's been a pleasure it's been fun to hear your journey and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last think you're doing