Engineering Founders

Finding your customers’ burning needs, validating ideas, expanding products & navigating new markets w/ Ryo Chikazawa @ Autify

15 Jan 2026

Audio

Description

After two years and eight pivots, Ryo Chikazawa (CEO & Co-founder @ Autify) realized his original product would never reach venture scale. In this episode, Ryo reveals how he scrapped everything to find his customers' "burning need," eventually securing contracts before writing a single line of code for his new idea. Ryo shares his playbook for radical pivots, navigating different market segments by hacking enterprise budgets, how to delegate and scale operations, and why a founder’s job is to constantly pursue the next zero-to-one moment. ABOUT RYO CHIKAZAWARyo Chikazawa is the Co-Founder and CEO of Autify. Ryo has worked in software development for over ten years. Having worked as a software engineer in Japan, Singapore, and San Francisco, he helped developed a #1 social game at DeNA, led product development as a product engineer at Viki in Singapore, and moved to San Francisco to participate in a local startup as an initial member. He founded Autify, Inc. in 2016. ABOUT AUTIFYAutify is a no-code, AI-powered software testing automation platform designed to help businesses accelerate their software release cycles and improve software quality. It allows users, including those without programming knowledge, to create, execute, and automate tests for web and mobile applications. Autify uses features like Generative AI and a natural language recorder to simplify the process of generating and maintaining test scenarios, reducing the cost and technical difficulty traditionally associated with software testing SHOW NOTES:The origin story behind Autify & Ryo’s initial vision to solve language barriers (3:00)Navigating 8+ pivots over two and a half years to find traction (5:56)Knowing when to make the decision to shut down an idea & pivot (10:35)Entering Alchemist Accelerator with a blank slate and the advice to find a "burning need" (12:55)From "nice to have" to "how much?": The dramatic shift in customer sentiment that confirmed they found the burning need (17:44)The ultimate validation signal: When customers ask for pricing before the product exists (20:56)Applying the "burning need" framework to product expansion and new features (23:08)US vs. Japan: Navigating the differences between product-led and sales-led markets (25:32)Platform vs. Services: How to position your tool to fit the customer's available budget bucket (28:05)The future of testing: Why AI agents will replace traditional automation (30:25)Scaling operations: When to hire a COO to manage the "1-to-10" journey (34:01)The art of delegation: How to hand off the core business to focus on the next "0-to-1" (36:23)Rapid fire questions (38:01) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Engineering Founders

Finding your customers’ burning needs, validating ideas, expanding products & navigating new markets w/ Ryo Chikazawa @ Autify

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

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