Chapter 1: What is the background of Prashanth Tondapu?
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Chapter 2: How did Prashanth transition from product development to consulting?
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Chapter 3: What is the creation story of Innostax?
So for us as a services company or the execution engine for founders and other people, right? We don't really have code as the MVP. For us, the MVP is the trust. How fast you can actually build the trust is our MVP. And for us, it's not build once and let go of it. Like every new client, you have to build trust. And how quickly you can build trust is what it comes down to.
So when it comes to MVP, for us, we have built a system which is like the transparency kind of a DMC. Ultimately, we are also people on the other side of the fence. Obviously, we have the skills to build it, but showing the ownership, being in charge of the outcomes rather than, okay, you pay us so much for so much of our time. I am Prashant Tondapu.
I am the founder and CEO of InnoStacks Tech LLC.
This is CodeStory. A podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries. Six months moonlighting.
Chapter 4: How does Innostax define its MVP?
There's nothing on the back end. Who share what it takes to change an industry. I don't exactly know what to do next. It took many guys to get right. Who built the teams that have their back. A company is its people. The teams help each other achieve more. Most proud of our team. Keeping scalability top of mind. All that infrastructure was a pain. Yes, we've been fighting it as we grow.
Total waste of time. The stories you don't read in the headlines. It's not an easy thing to achieve, mind you. Took it off the shelf and dusted it off and tried it again.
Chapter 5: What strategies did Innostax use to build trust with clients?
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Prashanth Tandipu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook nerd, loving technology and information. He reads a lot, primarily Eastern philosophy and stuff on being enlightened, basically pointing him to skills and accepting reality. He's married with two girls, nine and four years old, along with a Labrador and a German Shepherd.
He says that having three girls in the house means he has three supreme leaders. Prashanth has worked for companies in the past focused on products, companies like McAfee and the Advisor Board Company. Outside of that, he started to build product after product, but no one wanted to buy said products. Eventually, he was tasked to advise a company in product delivery, which then changed everything.
Chapter 6: How has Innostax scaled and matured over time?
This is the creation story of Innistax.
InnoStax is a software implementation process engine, which is built around software developers, basically. In plain terms, it's a software consulting company. But how it got built is a very interesting story. I never wanted to do consulting. My first job was with McAfee as part of their antivirus team and all. And I always loved products.
And after that, I worked with a company called Advisory Board Company, which was also into products. And I obviously wanted to build something cool and not knowing. Obviously, as a software developer, you don't really have a domain as such, right? And like I worked in medical, I worked in security and stuff like that. But I was open to doing whatever, but something new.
And that is where I started building some products. And being a software guy with marketing experience and stuff like that, you know how it goes. You sit in your own room, imagine what the world needs, and you build it.
Chapter 7: What hiring lessons did Prashanth learn while building his team?
You spend one month heads down, build it. I did that two or three times and tried whatever marketing I understood. Got like 10,000 flyers printed, stood outside the buildings and trying to give them flyers so that they can use it and stuff like that. Nothing worked. Like almost two or three months, I was trying to do this, building everything, then going over there. Nobody wanted the product.
Then there was one guy who said he mentors SaaS founders. So I thought probably he'll teach me something which I do not know. And I went and met him. Apparently, he was mentoring a couple of other companies. And he said, oh, so you're a tech guy. So one of the companies that I'm mentoring needs some help. Can you help them with that?
So I went there and they told me I'll have to take over as the director of engineering and stuff like that. There were two other guys.
Chapter 8: What future vision does Prashanth have for Innostax?
It's a very small company. The guys were not able to deliver the way I thought they would deliver. So I ended up coding the whole thing. Then that's when I realized, okay, so I get paid for my time. That's how I realized that I could do this as a job. So that is when I started reaching out to all the people that I had worked with before in the US. And that's how consulting journey started.
Like it was a one person team to begin with.
So let's dive into that, maybe that one person team then. So, you know, I asked questions on this show about MVPs. That sounds like an MVP for Enistax, right? So that first version of what you were bringing to life with Enistax, tell me about that and how long it took you to create and bring up and erect and what sort of tools you're using to bring it to life.
So for us, as a services company or the execution engine for founders and other people, right? We don't really have code as the MVP. For us, the MVP is the trust. How fast you can actually build the trust is our MVP. And for us, it's not build once and let go of it. Like every new client, you have to build trust. And how quickly you can build trust is what it comes down to.
So when it comes to MVP for us, we have built a system which is like the transparency kind of a DMC. Ultimately, we are also people on the other side of the fence. Obviously, we have the skills to build it, but showing the ownership, being in charge of the outcomes rather than, okay, you pay us so much for so much of our time. So that is where our MVP is. Building trust as soon as possible.
The tools are being super honest about it. Obviously, like sharpening your skills and be there. Make execution so boring for the founders, right? Or like the people who are in charge that they don't have to think about it. So that is basically our MVP.
Tell me about a decision or a trade-off you had to make with that first MVP and focus on trust, right? Maybe you had to approach the problems that you're delivered in a specific way, right, to make sure that trust was established. Tell me about that and how you coped with those decisions.
So the hard decision was always saying no. In the sense, obviously, everybody wants to scale, but we have always put as a company value, right? We have put trust above the scale. And there were many times where we did not feel confident that we could actually take on stuff and we had to say no.
So that was a big thing because like coming from a tech background and not knowing business as business, you try to think in first principles as much as you can. And even though first principles said, say no, but all the business stuff that you build up in your head wants you to say yes and build a parachute while you figure it out and stuff like that, which I don't believe in.
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