Don't Take Anything For Granted

Asghar Riahi

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

9/2/2020

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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.

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i would advise that be ready for everything don't take anything for granted so sit tight be ready if you enjoy roller coasters this will be a hit for you go along the ride and make best out of it so don't get disappointed if with the first roadblocks etc you will see a lot of roadblocks so be ready motivated and just look forward [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey and i am your host devin miller the uh serial entrepreneur that's uh founded several businesses and grown up to seven and eight figure companies as well as the founder and ceo of miller i p law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and today's episode we have another great guest and i will i'm going to try and pronounce his name as best i can but i can't promise i'll do it justice uh ashgar and i know he told me it was like nascar but with an a with an a so that's my best attempt but he'll probably say it much better but uh he is a um gone through a bit of a he started his um a company a couple years ago and uh prior to that he'd worked for some larger uh companies like seagate and red hat and uh he moved around a bit and did so or worked for larger companies and that every did some things with uc berkeley which he'll tell you a little bit more about uh but now he's on to his own own company and his own idea and doing his startup and uh and and we'll get to dive into that a bit more so with that much of an introduction welcome to the past or the podcast ashkar hi thank you very much for having me um my name is oscar riya you pronounce it very well um so i'm the founder and cto of adam bean technologies we are focusing on using machine learning to train based on data and compacting the data and also making it secure especially specifically in the area of iot devices and 98 of the iot devices are not secured so and as we know that market is growing rapidly and i think let me jump in and see if i can simplify it or dump it down for a lot more people at my level so far to take it you've got ai which is artificial intelligence or using that as a platform to shrink the data making it make it take less room or less storage space and also making it secure and then when you talk about iot that's internet of things which is a lot of the little devices whether it's going into some of your different platforms or some things that make smarter devices that you don't often think of a lot of those things that interconnect everything together so make these data smaller and make it work with a lot of devices is that a a fair enough summary uh yes and add add to that said more security uh sorry it's more secure great yeah no so we take that we got adam beam which is where we're at today now let's take a couple steps backwards to build up to your journey of what legit where you're at today so maybe dive into a bit of that journey or take those couple steps backwards absolutely i would be happy to uh so i studied computer science uh back in austria many years ago and i did my master's degree moved i worked with a german company called siemens everybody probably aware of that for several years then moved to us worked with uh a big data center management company uh then moved to work for hp sorry jumping in there's a little bit so you originally were in austria what made you decide to come to the us was that hey you want to come to the you know the u.s because it's an awesome place or purely for work or you wanted to see different part of the country or you follow a little girlfriend and follow the love you what was the reason for moving i don't just i don't know which it is so i thought i'd ask well that that's interesting uh actually story so i was working and i i was not i had visited us before but i was not planning to come to us immediately but one day i received a call middle of the night somebody in new jersey called me with a thick new jersey accent uh in vienna austria and says hey uh arizona so i had my website that was early i don't know if people remember geocities but i had my website on geocd's back then my own website with my resume and what i'm doing so the guy calls me and says so we found out that he was basically trying to he thought i'm living in vienna which is a district close to washington dc so he thought i'm still in u.s in that particular call so but that was a mistake that was interesting because later on we he ended up hiring me uh bringing back me to usc so he thought you were in the u.s he was just calling somebody else in the u.s you were really in austria yeah in the meantime you convinced them that you were an awesome guy and worth hiring kind of yeah because look at it that way yeah all right jenny wayne you made your move to the us yeah correct so you moved over to the us and started working sorry which company was that again that was uh that was an mci system house later on a company called eds body so we were basically in the business data center managing of other companies like we were managing apple roche vitamin cadence design systems production environments in that data center and was a really great experience for me a few years there and then i switched to hp worked for hp for 13 years after hp i moved to seagate uh worked there about three years red hat two years uc berkeley about two years and then i started my own company so one comment i think interesting or at least interesting to me connection maybe not interesting to anybody else is a small tidbit so probably prior to starting my own firm which is miller ip i worked for another another law firm it was a bigger law firm and one of their clients was actually red hat so i doubt we overlapped in time but at least uh i got to work on you know ip wise i worked with a lot of the red hat patents and a lot of their data systems and how they did their databases and how they moved it and secured it and everything else so that was a small small common connection yeah yeah a small world there a great company actually right there so yeah and um so i started my uh with a friend actually that was also interesting how we got to know each other but uh so he's the ceo now we started the company together um based on my vision that i had you know to address the ever-mounting amount of data never you know there's no basically solution to address this growth of data specifically when it comes to iot generating data some study says like by 2025 that will be more than 50 of the internet traffic will be on the iot now internet of things like the sensors we have in the home or factories or fields measuring temperatures pressure etc the thing about these devices is that the data that they generate original data is very small so the normal compression doesn't work to make them smaller but when you add them up uh they're huge amount of data so and also as i said most of them are not secured so okay so i'm going to jump back here just or maybe i don't know jump back but ask one additional kind of follow-up question which is i mean so you work for someone would have been some large companies right so large company red hates red hats a lot a large company uc berkeley that you did a little bit there for a while and so you work for a lot of big businesses and i think you mentioned hp and a few others and so what you know those are certainly big businesses they have a lot of resources they have a lot of reads can pay great ben you know i don't know what they paid you but can pay great benefits and have a lot of you know perks and those type of things so what was the motivation to say hey i've worked for all these big businesses and now i'm going to jump over and do you know go to my own startup do a small business and try that for a while what made you decide to you know kind of lead big business world a big corporate world and jump over the startup world well great question actually after a while of doing that you know many years in uh working for big enterprises you have seen almost you think you have seen almost everything and then at the same time there is a drive was a driving me wanted to do something by my own and i thought that at the time that i started this was the best time to do that one of the things i always think is maybe i should have started earlier a little bit but you there's never later too soon i would say but the drive to start something that you want to innovate basically when i was at hp for instance their motto was you know innovate so one of the things an invent uh basically if you look at the hp logo back then by saying invent so it was always back on my mind that you need to do something beside your daily job that impacts either other people's life or you know improve some processes or something that is coming from you you are not going to do the job only because you have to do the job daily job but rather think out of the box you know and that is a drive i think in many people that they they want to do something by their own uh start something that they think it will change to the positive no i think that that makes sense and so you take that drive and i think one of the other things you mentioned is the the drive had been there for a while and i think he even said hey when you moved from austria to the us you know talked a little bit before the podcast um before we started it you know was that um that you always wanted to do that startup you always had that desire and while you work for the big big businesses it was really with the motivation sometime i want to do my own thing or do my own startup or take my start my own course is that right exactly that's exactly true yeah so tell me and so now you make the decision and so was it and you know there's always a couple different ways things can play out one and say you have the idea and then you you know they need to you do the startup and the other is hey i'm tired or worn out with you know with the big businesses i want to do my startup i'll get you know i'll make the leap and then kind of develop the idea come up with the idea at the end so how did you kind of come up with the idea for what you guys are now doing with adam beam was that you know wild distiller while still at working with the or one of the businesses afterwards and then how did you kind of you mentioned you kind of had to partner some of the european ideas off of how did you kind of get that all going yeah so we i started with the idea originally as i said working with big companies not the the final idea but rather the question and i was looking for an answer for it for it and the question is at that time how we can address this ever-growing data because there was a study for instance if all the storage manufacturers make storage they cannot address the need for storage the way the rate of data is growing and uh and the techniques and algorithms already in use are about 40 50 years old that you look at the storage way that the hard drives you look at how they are storing the data it's the same as it was 30 40 years ago the only thing is that you know aerial density is growing you have a bigger hard drive space but the algorithms the way the data is handled is basically the same um nothing has improved there and the compression the same all the most of compression algorithms are many decades old so i was always thinking there should be a new way to address this issue and and not only on the storage part also transmission part networking through that you see we will get more and more bandwidth but the data grows as well so now we are 5g so next maybe a few year 60 but but it never ends because the data is growing so fast so there was a need to address this issue how to how can we step back and look at the original place where the data is generated right there we can transform it so that it doesn't need that much space or doesn't need that much bandwidth so that was the main goal and then i worked with my wife i told you i think that she wrote the first prototype she's also was a classmate of mine and in our language and it worked fine so that's where it's okay it does work it's not just an idea then we started to looking for partners and then we started i get to know my new partner and we started the company together here so or what so kind of a side note but so your wife and we talked just a little bit your wife wrote the initial or simple code kind of almost uh proof of concept or to convince yourself would work so to speak so what was did she continue on to work with you and help develop it is she part of the company or she just helps you out initially get going and then she went on her merry way or what was her level of environment involvement going forward she she's kind of advised her to she's advisor to us but she she has her own career in biotech in the industry she has yeah so she continued with her own career but here and there a lot of play times and that's about startup you get help wherever you can it's not like you know formed an enterprise that you have well-defined positions so she has helped us uh a lot during the past two years wherever needed and we thought okay she can help but at the same time she has her own career and the same thing with other people like friends you have to take every resource that you have when you start a startup you know it's not like you can pay everybody to do something sometimes people come and without payment even put time and help you that was the case with her okay well i think that because i always always wondered you know i i take the dynamic of myself and my wife and you know whereas i love startups and loves small businesses and do a lot of a lot with them and everything else she's much more of a nine to five i just you know i want to go into work i want to get things done and now she's a stay-at-home mom but she used to work at cleveland clinic as a nurse and she would always just want to come home with that so i always find it interesting the different dynamics between you know marrying couples of health you know how much they're involved with the business and what that looks like and how that works out so um anyway that's cool it's so decided so you found the business so you finally you come up with the idea your wife helps you kind of create the code and and you know do that um get kind of your simple proof of concept you know find the business partner that's going to help you out with it and you know he's been here come on board so how you know i think that you've now er and remind me because i may be way off but i think it that was a couple years ago when you founded the company and kind of got to go right so how has it gone the last couple years has it taken off and just made you guys rich beyond belief has it been a struggle is it up in ups and downs or how's that going for you well it i can say it's really very exciting uh you know because the way that we have developed the software with the way that we have broad people on board but it's a roller coaster definitely so as any other startup you know you think you're done a a great job by next month and you have achieved what you want there is a customers coming in and then suddenly something happens some box or something that makes it difficult to reach that goal you the only thing is you never give up and then we have really a lot of ups and downs but right now we have a really good place we have big companies looking into our solution we are doing several pocs investors are very interested in investing we had really great angel investor investors actually i should say but one of them very good one so supported us so far and then we are hitting suddenly we were ready to uh poc on all that and the one of a really first customer paying customer go online then how with 19 happens and then you know everything goes down again and you you have to be able to be flexible and manage all these challenges which with a big enterprise you don't i mean it's so big that usually you either have a job you do your job or worst case scenario is that you get laid off or whatever but these ups and downs happens with startups because you do everything we are we are we are making fun of ourselves we say we are you know founders janitors you know we clean everything we do coding we do testing everything that's possible you do so no i don't know that sounds like every good startup story you do everything from the ceo position down in the janitor position you take out the garbage you go pick up the mail you do the coding you do the building you do the sales and marketing and everything in between it has to get done and somebody has to do it and use the resources you have which oftentimes is yourself so right so you're to take now so take you guys have done it for a couple of years you know started to build some got some client you got it landed at kind of the first client with your proof of concept and continue to build it slowed down a bit with covid but where do you see the next six months to a year ago for you so we see we will have a really in the next six months um at least two three uh paying customers and that's where we think the differentiation will be shown up because what we are doing is not a product that people have seen a lot before you know iot for itself is a new field and uh and then we are bringing a new solution to that nobody has thought about it because when you talk about small data for instance they say it's small anyway why you want to make it smaller right so a little bit of change of uh perception is needed here training teaching people why the product does what it does best what what the benefits are for instance saving battery of those small sensors that you place somewhere or saving or extending the distance of those et cetera so it needs a little bit of work it's not a product you know it's not pepsi and coke that people know exactly both of them you have you have seen if new drinks come in it's okay that's in the same category this is a new solution and needs its own runway for people to get to know it trust it and then we hopefully we will see it will pick up uh take off okay and i in and here's one question for you and i think it's one that you know a lot of startups and spit excuse me especially when you get into engineers and technology and product development and that is you know there's kind of this tension between engineers that always wanted to be a perfect product you always wanted to you know work 100 of the time and work exactly how you visualized it and you know have no glitches and it's you know it's almost you're never going to reach that and it's never going to be perfect it's never going to be done you're always going to work on it so you have that as kind of one side and the other side you're saying but we also need to make money we also need to make sales we also have to be able to support the company so how do you know when a product or in your product how do you know when it's good enough to really go out and push in the marketplace or sell or you know how do you make that determination so yeah a great question we have this early on we defined a minimum viable product what is a minimum mvp for us what is if i would be a customer i would like to have that product maybe it doesn't have all the perfection features but and we defined it well i think so we have defined a minimum while viable product as a product that does the job that we mainly claim that it does compacting data securing data now uh ease of use etc so maybe it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that we have on our roadmap which we think we can do but that is what we are advocating right now is okay this product that we right now have does what we really say it does and on the roadmap you will see additional features in the future but that's also what we claim we don't claim all those features are available right now so we i think if you focus on the minimum viable product and present it the way it is without you know too much um you know uh sugar coating or whatever it just said this is what it is this is not what doesn't what it we say it does that's good okay no perfection sometimes as you know as they say enemy of good so yep no and i agree so i think that's a good thing you know the only only caveat or pushback and this is always i always look at minimally viable product and for whatever reason my mind it always seems like let's put out the crappiest product as quick as we can and i always look at it more i always wish it would be more like maximally viable product yeah in the sense that you look at the constraints you have you look at the ability you know what resources you have the runway the amount of money you have left in the company what you need to provide and then you do just some of the off you do the maximally viable product which is the best product you can put out within the resources you have so if you only have a three-month runway and you have to get it out or the company folds up then you figure out what to do in that the best product you can put out within that amount of time if you have a year of investor dollars or two years or you know however long then you put out the best product you can within that time but make sure you so i think you're talking about the same thing in different terms but i like your description better well that's what i always do i don't know for whatever reason then maybe it's just the way it always is breaking my head up like bitterly viable product means it seems like it's the very worst that still works and so that's why i always that's where i always like i always always like to use the or the other analogy better so that's a fair point yep so no so you take that so uh first of all wish you the best of luck on the the you know the next six months to a year so as we're reaching towards the end of the podcast i always hit you on two questions and so maybe we'll jump to those now yeah the first question i always ask is um what was the worst business decision he ever made uh i think the worst business decision i made was why i didn't start earlier i should have started earlier maybe when i think of what we have done and the progress we have done um so i think that was the uh in my career i should have started maybe earlier to to start my own startup okay and what do you think what do you think held you back or what made you decide to wait so long or to wait longer than you think you should have uh i think part of it is because you're not sure if you will be the thought that if you start you can fail and the expectation of yourself that oh i only will start if i if i win if i succeed that that is really a kind of prohibitory stops you from moving forward risking although i'm a person that i have done enough risks in my life moving around continents etc so but still when you get a certain you know family kids a certain security level in your life always you think okay should i risk all of this or partially so that's the balance you have to find and i think it's different for different people but you have to find a way say okay i don't want to risk everything because you have worked hard to get to that point you have kids school you think about college costs all of that and but when is the best time so that's again different for different people i would i would probably dare say i don't know there's ever the best time or ever a great time now that there isn't better times and worse times but you always look at it you know the best time to start a lot is you know kind of the old cliche is now in the sense that if you can always wait till too long right you can always wait till time has run out and then you always have the regrets yeah you know so don't get me wrong i'm not advocating that you quit your everybody go quit their job leave their family destitute and have no way no means of income to just follow your dreams so i think there's a balance there but i think you got a way sometimes you almost you got to take it's always going to be a risky proposition you know give you an example one is if you have kids and you know kids you're saying well we can't do why we have kids and then you get a little bit further and the kids are off to college and say now i'm establishing my career when i make you know retire you know i make retirement or you know when i make it enough we have enough savings and i'll take that risk and then you get towards the end of retirement and say well now i'm retired or i don't want to put my retirement in jeopardy and so now i'm going to now i'm going to i'll wait till there's a second career then he gets in and says i'm just worn out i don't want to do it anymore so there's always a you know i think there's always that balance of you got to look at and say if i really want to do this i got to figure out a way to do it now but i got to do it responsibly so i don't leave anybody or my family destined to exactly yeah so all right now we jump to the second question so if you'd be talking to you know somebody that's just getting into a startup he to yesterday into small business what would the one piece of advice you'd give them i would advise that be ready for everything don't take anything for granted so sit tight be ready if you enjoy roller coasters this will be a hit for you go along the ride and make best out of it so don't get disappointed if with the first roadblocks etc you will see a lot of roadblocks so be ready motivated and just look forward you know and i agree and i i always used to use the analogy that it was like a roller coaster but then i was talking with him somebody else on a different i think it was on a different one of the episodes i always make mix up all where i get all the things but they they doing it more of hey you know it's not really as much of a roller coaster it's more like the whole whole theme park it's more you know you get all excited to go to the theme park you get all you know you get in you you're excited and then you go and you get on the roller coaster and you hit the ups and downs and then you get off and you're a little sick and so you have to take a little bit of a break and then you get excited again and then you go hit on the bumper cars and get banged around a little bit and then you go take a break and have your you know so it's kind of almost the whole theme park is really just the roller coaster that's a good one actually yeah yeah i i totally agree so all right well as we wrap up if people want to get in contact with you they want to use your product they want to invest in your product they want to be your cheerleader they want to find out more information or just ask any questions what's a good way to reach out to you just visit our website adamdeantech that's adambeamtech.com and all the information is there an atom like an atom not like adam the name but adam like you know that what you're made up of or everything's made up of yeah apom yeah beam like a beam for a board and then uh tech for technology so adam beamtech.com perfect exactly i certainly invite everybody to go check you out get in contact with you and uh support you on your journey and wish you the best luck on the remainder of your journey so thank you very much thank you for having me yeah my pleasure and uh for everybody else that uh wants if anybody else is out there and wants to tell their journey of uh the inventive journey they're taking feel free to apply to be a guest just go to inventivejourneyguest.com and you can apply to be on the show if you're a listener make sure to subscribe so you can listen to this episode and all the new episodes coming out and uh certainly if you need help with any patents and trademarks uh feel free to reach out to us we're always here to help and take care of the startups and small businesses so thank you again for coming on it was a pleasure wish you the best the next leg of your journey and we'll have to talk to you again soon i appreciate it thank you very much English (auto-generated) All Recently uploaded