Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining The Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have SyedHamid, founder and CEO at Sofy, a no-code automated mobile app testingplatform. Syed. I'm so excited not only to chat with you as not only anengineer, but engineered leader at at a huge company, Microsoft, if you haven'theard of it for, for decades from what it sounds like in terms of yourexperience and your career at, at building really exceptional, software and I.

Have had a, a, an opportunity to touch differenttypes of, features. And, and I'm always curious in, in your individuals likeyourself and your background, your experience kind of coming from a big companyand then starting a, a startup. Because I think, you come with a little bit ofinsight on what a mature company does, and then some of that translates overinto, the startup that you start building.

And of course no-code platforms and, andeverything around no-code I'm excited about because of the speed and, andefficiency and effectiveness that they're able to offer, founders of, of anysize. Kind of that, that I would say full suite capability, but within onepackage. Before, before we get into sofa Sofy and, and what you're working ontell us a little bit about your experience at Microsoft.

Tell us a little bit about not only whatyou learned there, but, but what are the internal mechanics of a large companylike that? As an engineering leader.  

Syed: Julian, thank you verymuch for having me. It's really a pleasure meeting fellow entrepreneur and alsokind of, people who are passionate about sharing this story because, I'm, I'mpretty sure there are future entrepreneurs who are listening to this podcastand, and can learn as well.

So, little bit about myself. I kind of,started pretty much out of college at Microsoft starting as a software testingengineer, basically testing different areas of the product. and grew throughthe ranks and became part of the leadership team. And that was responsible forall engineer, engineering, productivity which was basically, developer testertester activity and, and how, yeah, how this impacting the overall developmentlife cycle.

And if you remember, In the latenineties and 2000, the, the software cycle was in months and years, not inhours and days that we talk about and take it for granted. So therefore, thecost of releasing the product or finding issues after you have released theproduct is very significant. So I basically primarily worked on on actually alot of technologies.

I started in msn, Microsoft Network wayback then with a narrow band competing with American. Broadband and work oncompilers in languages as part of Dynamics 365 product line. Small businessproduct. So across like, I would say like eight, nine different product lines andand had the opportunity to work in Copenhagen as well for few years whenMicrosoft has acquired few companies.

So over the years I kind of managedteams in pretty much every major. Presence where Microsoft had, like, India,Hmm. Copenhagen, and, and obviously us. So this kind of experience reallyhelped me in, in three distinct ways. One is really managing the largeengineering team and looking at the productivity, because the, the softwarecompanies like, like Microsoft is all about.

Engineering productivity. How fast canyou develop, how fast can you innovate? And all the blocking things that comesinto, in, in the way of releasing high quality products faster. So that's one,one aspect of it, like managing large team and understanding the, the engineeringproductivity. And the third thing is really kind of, how do you releaseproducts at a scale.

As like lot of products are in like ahundred plus different languages, releasing world. And there are nuances andprocesses associated with it. So it's opportunity to kind of work with somereally, really smart people and, and was very fortunate to have some of thegreat managers that I had that really helped me grow and also helped meunderstand what I am passionate about.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Tell us alittle bit about the, for, for those in the audience who don't know, but tellus a little bit about the, the testing process and, and where in line and thedifferent. I guess strategies around testing and, I think a lot of us maybethink about, if were not working with engineering teams about the developmentprocess and roadmap mapping and, and maybe having a product vision, but thetesting component of a lot of that software is so, I think, critical to itssuccess or its, its ability to actually affect, the consumer or the user thatit's, it's working.

tell us about what's involved in thatprocess of testing and, and why it's so important and, and also whatessentially inspired you along that process to then build Sofy.  

Syed: Yeah. Great question.So if you kind of look at the software development life cycle, it's evolvingquite fast.

As I said, like 20 years back, it waskind of, our month or years release. Now it's hour, so if, how I. It's kind ofa progression. So if you talk about in the eighties and or even until midnineties, people were testing primarily as manual testing. It. Yeah, you'll getthe product, you'd install it, you run through the X number of things, and thenyou release it.

Then in nineties, in 2000 with the JavaID integrated development environment like tick. And, and visual Studio thatcomes the notion, where you need to actually automate because you know you needto pass regression tests and you can't perform regression tests all the timemanually. And that's why Mercurys of the world came into the picture.

So people start writing code to run thetest. Yeah. The last five, seven years. Has been about no code because it'sbecoming very difficult to just understand all the elements on how to kind ofeffectively test. As an example, if you are just releasing a an application,your process looks pretty cumbersome, right?

You have to build, you have tounderstand the functional requirement. You need to understand which countriesyou are releasing it. You need to underst. , which locales are supported. Whichlanguages are supported, right. Yeah. And what are the requirements? Becausein, as an example in US, we may consider the 4G and LD as, as default networksetting, but in, in emerging countries or developing countries, is maybe, two Gis still right.

Yeah. So the network implication. Soreally the process is all about not testing itself. It's about releasing highquality product and sometime testing. Comes into the picture towards the letterend of the cycle or sometime it comes very early on depending on the productyou are building it. Yeah. If you are very I A P I centric, then you have tobuild early on very fast.

But if you are kind of changing the UIfrequently, then the approach may be different. So there is no one shoe thatfits all. It's really about, you what makes your product quality and how youdrive it across the software development life cycle from understanding thefunction requirement. Creating the test, executing it, and executing at a scalein hours.

Right. You can't afford to Yeah. Runeverything all the time. And also equally understanding what to run and when torun.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's sofascinating thinking about the, the entire process and how it really helpsdeliver that high quality content or the high quality product. And tell us alittle bit about Sofy.

What is it allowing people to do now?They weren't allowed to before. And I, I think you alluded to, you don't haveto necessarily know every bit component of the product life cycle whilebuilding it. You can kind of, utilize, is it, or I guess question you, is it aframework? Is it, is it a type of code that interacts with other code and, andcommunicates with other languages?

Is it restricted to a certain type ofcode? How does it plug in? How can I use it? Say if I'm, if I'm building andtesting, .  

Syed: Yeah. So if you,before I kind of talk into the specifics, what Sofy does, let's talk about theproblem space, right? Yeah. Let's take as an example, a day in a life of a, ofa test engineer or a developer, whoever is responsible for the quality of theproducts.

I suppose you're building a particularapplication and, and I am testing it, so what a day in my life. . Typically Iget a daily build, either from test flight or any other ci cd platform orthings. Then I install it on my application. That probably takes 15, 20 minutesor half an hour every day. Then I actually go and test it on my own.

I say, okay, how is it working? How isit like, either if I'm doing it manually, but if I'm creating automation, thenI need to use third party tools. Mm-hmm. , like Appm or, for performance anddifferent tools to kind of just understand the functional performance UI orvisual quality of us.

Then I execute it on a, on like on adaily basis. Then I report launch. So if you look at the cycle of a, of adeveloper they spent 60 to 70% of their time doing repetitive tasks every day,every single day. And that's why the cost of testing is pretty high. So whenwe, when we set out to build Sofy as a no-code test automation platform, wedidn't think about building as a yet another, no-code and yet another testingtool.

We looked at the user experience and wesaid, look, we need to. The QA engineers or developers who are testing yourproduct super, super efficient in doing what they do today. Yeah, but do itfaster, do it reliably, and do it at a scale. And that's why we tell peoplethat, Hey, you can come to Sofy and under 10 seconds you can get a physicaldevice or real.

Installed on your application, latestapplication, either through your ci cd pipeline or others, and without knowinganything about your hub product is built. like writing code, because in orderto create automation, you need to understand the coding, which is softwareengineering skills. Yeah.

And you also need to understand what arethe nuances between Android and iOS and how you're using the frameworks andunder the hood elements. We abstract all of those. Yeah. And once you createthose, you can run it at scales within hours. We tell people that if you useSoFi, you should get. 10 x productivity in your time to test your application.

And that's what we, we, we take prideon. Look, if you are, if it's taking you days to test your software, you willget into hours using our platform. Because we are not just creating automation,we are actually transforming. Your experience and, and removing all the, allthe repetitive manual tasks.  

Julian: Yeah. I guess if I'm atester, my, my question is, is this gonna be something that, that replaces my,my job functionality?

Or is it, and, and I guess if I'm adeveloper, it's another tool to kind of maybe not necessarily need that extrastep. Or is it, is it more of a tool for testers to do their job or maybe. Domore testing in a given time period and to test more products and really justto, to hyperscale the amount of features that are being tested from, a certainproduct or a certain version of it, or, or different types of products that arebeing built under the company.

Where, where does it, where does it fallwithin, I guess it's relationship to, to testers and the people it affects themost.  

Syed: Yeah. So, we, webelieve that, we make a tester a super diameter. Yeah. It's not about replacingthem, it's about really. It's significantly enhancing the productivity becauseif you talk to any tester today, or QA engineer or or developer who's doing thetesting again every day, they're frustrated.

They're frustrated to do the same taskevery day. And, and, and our goal is to remove that that frustration and reallyhave a reliable solution that addresses their pain points. Right? And that'swhere we are. We are kind of a hundred percent focused on. And, and in order todo. There, there, there, there there are two key elements to it, right?

One is that today if I have anapplication and I need to create an automation or test it, I need to have a setof physical devices, orators on Android or iOS. I need to have frameworks orAPMs or tools that can go use it. Then I need to also use, if you need to dovisual quality, if you need to do performance, and if you need to do the, thecrash or reliability analysis, you need to use different tools as part ofeither the Android studio or XC unit.

Right? So what we have done is that wehave brought all these things together as one. So instead of. Five, sixdifferent tools to do that. We have aggregated that into a one seamlessexperience, and we take pride on that, that anybody in the world can come toSofy.ai, sign up, and within the 60 minutes they'll be able to create their topscenarios and be able to run it at scale.

Julian: Wow. It's incrediblehow quickly and, and how effectively the, the platform does. And I, I, you I'm,I'm not a, a technical founder myself, so describe, for, for me and othersalike what goes into building a no-code platform. And, and really what I'mtalking about is, is how do you consider helping it communicate with multiplelanguages?

Cause I'm assuming if it's plugging intoa certain system or with a certain developer, it's gotta communi. All differenttypes of languages or different tech stacks. It's gotta be able to be a littlebit agnostic in that sense. And how, how much of you know the time you spentdeveloping, Sofy was spent on just helping it communicate with other languagesand, and translate it into one platform and? What also, what are the challengesthat come with that?  

Syed: Oh, yeah. It's veryinteresting. I, I, this is a very fascinating thing. So in 2017, 18 timeframe,we launched our product called the Sofy Bot, which was basically you can uploadyour application and Sofy can go and traverse it. find issues and give you theresult.

It actually fell on our face. It wasdead on arrival . And the reason it was dead on arrival because underlyingframework like Android in iOS was changing so fast that we were just keeping upto maintain that, right? Mm-hmm. , so, so whatever you are building up onsomething, the problem with abstraction layer result, how is stable is theunderlying framework makes a huge difference on this.

Otherwise, you continue to chase Yeah,the changes underneath. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where our pattern come into thepicture, and that's why we didn't focus on just building an automation tool. Wefocused on the, yeah, engineering productivity as it relates to qualityassurance. And that's very important delineation because, as an example, it,it'll take you half an hour to configure your environment every day.

We do it under 10 seconds. Right. Sohere you go. You have, you have half an hour back. You don't have to worryabout it. Yeah. I need to get devices. I need to configure it. Similarly,developer, when a, when a QA engineer reports an issue to the developer,they're asking, what are the steps to repro? Give me this data, give me thatdata.

We encapsulate right then and there atthe real time so that the interaction between the finding the issues andsolving and fixing the issue is very small and and fast. And that's what. wehave been focused on, on those aspects more so than anything else.  

Julian: Yeah. It's fascinatinghow you, you kind of helped solve a lot of different issues versus, maybe onein particular.

And, and was it during that experiencethat you saw the, the need or, or did you have to go back and kind of.Brainstorming workshop, where was the direction of the go? Or, or was it a lotof it user feedback and, and, and them letting you know, maybe the, thevaluable parts of the, the product and the invaluable parts that they wereusing the most.

How was that process? Yeah. And, and howdo, how can other founders, I guess, best I guess, kind of think about the,their feedback and make that, make that switch in direction? .  

Syed: Yeah. It's a, it's avery interesting thing. So when I left Microsoft, I, I thought I knew theengineering productivity, but pretty good, and you realize how much you don'tknow, right?

And, and even if you, even if you're afounder and your area of expertise is that we are always have biases, right?Some people realize they have biases. Biases, and. So even, even in, even ifyou are a technical founder and you have a area of expertise, it's verycritical to continue to listen to the customer.

Yeah. And that's what I think. We havebeen successful in doing it. I, even though we had some missed steps, what wewere thinking on it, but today, I mean, we have like almost, we have testedalmost 30,000 plus application and we have like companies like Microsoft as ourcustomers and others, we've been.

And, and, and that's where really islike, continue to focus on it and, continue to focus on every sprint betterthan the previous one. Yeah. Well, very few companies kind of get successful ina short time. It's a marathon. You have to be constantly listening andconstantly improving on it.

And I, and once you get to a stage whereyou get to critical mass, now we are at a point where we constantly get thefeedback from our existing customer, I need this, I need this, I need this.Yeah. So, so that really helps.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Tell theaudience a little bit about the traction. How many users are using the platformnow, how many, from, from, conception to now, what are you excited about interms of the growth for Sofy?

Syed: We over 2,500companies, use, use as we were around 30,000 applications that we have testedon our. We grew Fourex last year. We are on track to grow four X this year. Wehad a funding last year which is a kind of supersede round that we did lastAugust.

Since then we have grown almost 35% interms of people we are not laying off. We are hiring people. So if you're agreat engineer and you're passionate about the no good, we'd love to talk. Andwe are hiring across the board. So, and, and this year we, in 2020, We expectto grow again, the four x because you see, it's a big problem, right?

Yeah. It's, it's a problem. People arereleasing faster and, and it's very difficult to hire engineers. And if youwant, and they're very expensive resources. Right. And that's why our no-codeplatform enables anybody in the team to test it faster, effectively, andefficiently and on to scale.

Julian: Yeah. Tell us a littlebit about what are some of the biggest challenges that Sofy faces today?

Syed: Quite a few. One ofthe challenge that we have, we have, we always been focused on. Mobile apps,right? Mm-hmm. . And, and we see that there is a demand where people want tohave the no-code platform across this stack, mobile web, API, all together,right? We are mobile and api, but people ask for more things.

So we are, we are finding is that, ,that, continue to focus on our core thing and yet continue to innovate on theexternal area is, is one thing. Second thing that we find challenging every nowand then is obviously you are aware when you are a no-code platform, underlyingchanges does make a difference, right?

Especially the iOS part, those privacysetting and, and, and things that changes. That impacts the no-code platformsplatforms like, like us, right? So we find that as kind of also the, thechallenging, which is true for any, any no-code platform because you're, you'rean abstraction there on top of.

X number of systems. And, and the, andthe third thing I would say is that, we are scaling, so scale has its ownchallenges, right? We are, we are growing worldwide and our customer base isalso worldwide. So, so that, that entails the, the, that brings a differentsite of issues both on the people process and, and, and infrastructureperspective that we are working on today.

Julian: Yeah. If everythinggoes well, what's the long term vision for Sofy?  

Syed: So we believe thatthat in that engineering productivity is super, super critical. So we believethat, and in order to have, and, and the testing is one of the biggestimpediment for faster efficiency or faster product releases, right?

Any, any engineering manager you ask,right? And as the product matures, your cost of engineering or cost of testingalso. . Yeah. So we believe in the long term, but you know, we've been the kindof the unified no-code test automation platform across DevOps cycle, right?Mobile web api. Right. All combined in a seamless and an easier way.

And, and how I see is that, down theroad, there are a lot of new advancement coming in and in a generative AI andthose elements that can help even engineering productivity when higher. Sothat's where we are kind focused on, and that's where we see the, theopportunity.  

Julian: I love that. I lovethat. I always like this next section I called my founder faq. So I'm gonna askyou some rapid fire questions and we'll see what we get. So, first question isthinking about the Sofy platform and, and no-code platforms in general there,is there gonna be a time where people get certified in so, and, and are ableto.

Use that as a way to, maybe, maybe, getinto another position or know that a company's using a platform like that andalmost specialize in, in using a platform and, and really that increasedcapabilities that come with it. Do, do you see a time where that that's thecase. .  

Syed: My, if you, if you askme, ideally, I prefer not to because the certification, if you look at all thecertification, they came in because the product was so complex, right?

Yeah. If you look at Cisco certificationor Microsoft certification, because the product has so many variable and, andit requires a lot of training and things, we believe in order to take theengineering productivity and a no code, anybody should be able to. Yeah. Right.So, and that's why we, we have spent lot of time on the user experience of it.

Even if somebody has no codingexperience and nothing, they should be able to go do that. Right? Yeah. Sothat's what my desire is. Obviously, just like any other tool, there is a costof advanced man learning and all those things, but, but right now we don't haveany plan for, for Certif certification.

But in future, .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I lovethat. I love that. Thinking about your business model and, and no codes in general,is it as similar to a SaaS model where, where you charge per service? Or, orsorry, per, per, per access and proceed or something like that? Or is thereanother way that, that you are able to kind of, work with the user to monetizeon that experience?

And has it always been the same?  

Syed: Yeah, actually we ,our business model has evolved. I'll answer the second part first. Sure. Weused to be user-based licensing. Then we had the flat licensing, and now todaywe are usage-based licensing. So it's more of a step function. So you like ourstarting is queue is 5 49 and you'll get 2,500 minutes for your your testingneeds.

So how we compute is just like you getmachine. So just like you have. Device and you get a device and you're testingon it. Similarly, it's the compute time. So for us monetization is the numberof minutes that you use on our platform, and we do, we don't care about eitherone user using it or a 10 user using it.

That's like a more usage based.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's brilliant.It's brilliant. What, what's particularly hard about your job?  

Syed: My job as a CEO is tofind the best person for the job. And that person may, may know more than meabout that particular one. So how do I help that person grow knowing the needs?So for example, at Microsoft, I was running the engineering team and I had veryfamiliarity with, all these things, right?

With engineering I can hopefully, I can,can answer the engineering questions, right? But not the same in sales,marketing, bizarres, and finance. Finance for that matter, right? But I think.Constantly learning and constantly saying, okay, I, I, every day I get to know,okay, I don't know this either.

yeah, yeah. Ask, Hey, I need to dothese, these things. And I scratch my head and say, look, I have no idea.Because when you grow as a technical founder, . You have to learn a lot. If Iam, I'm hoping that, we, we are hiring the best people to do the best job sothey can they can help me as well to learn that discipline better.

And I feel that is not only the, thetoughest part of my j my job, but it's also one of the best part of the job.Yeah. Because then you are surrounded by the people who are like, hey youreally working together because as a company we, we, we will not be successfulas individual. We'll be successful as, as team.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. Thinkingabout, talent and, and hiring the right people, where do you go to find theright people and, and what are some, some things you've used or some strategiesyou've used that and, and advice you can give other founders on how to vet theright talent or how to make sure that talent fits within the culture of theteam?

Syed: So, yeah, so I think Ithink it really depends on what type of talent you are le hiring, right?Mm-hmm. we have done is that, for example as, as a as as a company, we decidedthat, our leadership team will continue to be based out of Seattle because theleadership needs to be in. Saying then it's easier to distill the, theinformation.

We have most of our developer resourcedevelopment resources offshore. Most of our sales and marketing is onshore in,in, in us primarily, right. So we have kind of done where we can find the.Right talent. As the last two, three years have been very expensive resourcesto hire and, and right now we are in a mode that, wherever and anywhere we canfind a great resource, we'll hire.

Obviously we are very cost cognizant andcost conscious about. What's the, what's the return on investment on, on thesepeople? And we are seeing is that, that, some type of work, you can do it veryeasily offshore, but some type of work you cannot do offshore and you need tohave the right people.

So we kind of constantly balance thatpart.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What's onething that you know, that that, that you do more as a function of your job thatyou didn't expect to earlier on as a, as a founder.

Syed: I Think it's like whenI started I always see myself as, Focus like 60, 70, or 80% of my time onproduct. Yeah. Right. You're building, building, because that's what you'reingrained as an, if you're a software engineer or an engineer, you, you are inthe mode of building.

You're not in the mode of thinking aboutselling your story, why you are doing it, and the customer, and how do youexplain in a seamless, easy way for people to consume the data. Right. You're.Hardcore about engineering, about explain. So I always get excited when I talkabout the product. Product implementation today, I don't talk about productimplementation.

I talk about the benefit of the user.Yeah. What's the, what's, why we are in the first place and who is benefitingand what the ROI looks like because technology keeps on changing, right. As thelast 20, 30 years. And I even in on my career in the 20 plus years, every fewyears, there's a new thing to worry about, right?

Yeah. So it's not about the technology,it's the, it's the value that you are creating not just for the, the, thecustomers that you have, but for, for, for the ecosystem in general. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. If you have, ifyou had a magic wand, what's one thing that you'd wish your company to haveright now or, or have more of right now?

Rather than wait for it or, or not haveit in, in the near future?  

Syed: Oh yeah. So I think, Ithink it's the, it is the customer base that we want, right? Yeah. I meanthat's, if I had it, we'll have thousands and thousands of customer base. I thinkthat's where. Where uh, where we are shooting for right to, to get to the, the,the future.

And I think we believe the opportunityis there and, and, and we have some great product out there. And, and that'swhat our our goal is. And I, I wish I had that magic, but that's how it works..  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I like toask that question to see, honestly what founder's current priorities arebecause at, at any given time, it's, it's fundraising or Oh yeah, absolutely.

Building product. Retiring people,right. It shifts as the market goes. But yeah.

Syed: Yeah. The, somebody,one of my investor actually gave this example that I really resonated well isthat, the, the early stage companies like us. Like a balloon, right? You, youpress one side and something else pop up, , you close that and something elsepop up.

So you're totally right. If you ask methe same question in next quarter, I may have a different  

Julian: answer.  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I lo always like toask this question because I think founders are, are so amazing and, and where,where they get information about how they extract information. Whether it'searly in your career or now, what books or people have influenced you the most?

Syed: . I think one of thebook that I, I actually recommend people to, to read is actually both Zero toOne by Ben Horowich. And the second one is Hard Thing about heart sales. Hard,hard thing about hard things is by Peter Seal. It's both are really helps youunderstand, especially the letter book, which talks about that, as the companyis growing, everybody needs to look at them.

Are they, are they. Person at the rightplace because you're growing from zero to 1 million is different requirement.One to 10 million is different requirement 10 to 30 is different requirement.Right? Yeah. And that's why this, everybody needs to see that, hey, how we, howwe are kind of fitting into that model and, and scaling.

And as the company scale these, both ofthese books really helps kind of, think through it. I think it's, it's a greatbreed for any, any founder. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah, those two booksalmost become gospel for a lot of founders. And, and like you said, it reallyencapsulates a lot of the experience. And one thing, and it's been, it has beena pleasure that I've been able to witness on the podcast is a lot of founders,whether or they see the same problems but in, in different versions of themhave to go through similar milestones or similar bumps in the road, along,along, the building process.

The more insight you get in into that,and, and how you're able to prepare yourself, I think is, is extremely I guessindicative of the, of the future success that, that you might have. I knowwe're coming through the close of the episode, hearsay, and so I want give youa chance to give us your plugs, essentially.

Let us know where we can find you, wherewe can support Sofy, and we can support you as a founder. Give us yourLinkedIn, your websites. Where can the audience get involved with the, with theproduct?  

Syed: Yep. I think if you'rebuilding any, any mobile apps and go to Sofy ai signup and, and and try out onyour own.

I think that's where the beauty of SaaSis, is that, you get the realtime feedback from the people and, and give usfeedback. My area says, say that Sofy.ai. And, any feedback, anything that youwanted to hear. And also, especially for founders, right? It's a, it's a prettylonely and, and a stressful journey,

So if you're building something and, andyou want to just just talk about it I'm more than a available. LinkedIn or, orjust email. And any, anything that you want to talk about would be I candefinitely look at time to do it, because that's what other people did to me,right? Yeah. A lot of my previous managers and other founders have taken thetime and do it and, and learned from their experience.

So I, I, I told somebody that, Hey, Ishould write a book on the failures because I made so many mistakes. Right? SoI think in the advantage of making so many mistakes is that I can tell people,Hey, this is a mistake I made . And you can learn from it.  

Julian: Amazing. So that's so,so generous of you. And you're right.

You know the, a lot of founders say thatthe founder journey is very, it's very lonely and a lot of times, butconnecting with other founders is honestly why I do this. This show a lot isreally, To create the community around the experience. And and we all kind ofgo through some of the things but different.

And, and even though if we don't starttalking about, founding and, and startups and, and what we're doing right now,typically the conversation goes to there. Say it's been such an incredibletime, not only learning from your background, your experience at Microsoft andhow you kind of view and have experienced the development process, but alsothe, the evolution and, and, and the newness of a lot of the developmentprocess and how Sofy has a, has a really strong place.

Helping, testers become not only supertesters, but you know, the whole production process that much more efficientand effective. So, I really appreciate you being on the show, and I hope youenjoyed yourself. And thank you again for being on Behind, Company  

Syed: Lines. Oh, great.Thank you again for having me. It was pleasure. I really enjoyed it. It'sgreat. And, wish the, all the other founders who have listening or thinkingabout it.