2 Rejections. No Office. Global Success – The Kuty Shalev Playbook | Ep 209 with Kuty Shalev Founder of Lumenalta

0:00Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Kuti Shalev, the founder and CEO of Lumen Alta, an innovative digital transformation company that's been fully remote for 25 years. That is amazing. I mean, no one was even talking about that 25 years ago. Now that's all we're talking about. And now it's the norm. And then we are going to dive into EQ, which is maybe the most important thing we'll need for the future. But Kuti, can you tell me what was the spark for you that made you say, this is the company and industry that I want to be in? Yeah, it's a funny story. You know, my beginnings are in accounting.

0:43You know, when I first graduated from college, I ended up at Pricewaterhouse, the accounting company. And they sent me off to Columbia Business School. And at that time, it was the very first time that they had Ethernet jacks in the classroom. So I'm dating myself here, right? We're talking about ancient history. But at the time there, we started to create systems that interacted with the teachers and the students. And the code that I wrote at the time got very popular. I got written up in the school newspapers. And the dean called me into his office and asked me for the code I had written for the school.

1:24I said, that sounds amazing. Go ahead and take it. He made a accounting entry and my tuition disappeared. So at that time, I knew I wasn't going back to accounting and instead created a company that develops software in order to meet the business needs of the clients. And And, you know, my my ex-employer, Pricewaterhouse, became my first client. And that was that was fabulous. You know, we did a million dollars that first year. They needed software developers at the time. And, you know, just to to talk about remote, you know, it wasn't intentional. You know, I needed software developers. It was really hard to find them in New York City, where I was, for my new bright, shiny new client, Pricewaterhouse.

2:22And what I was able to find, and this is back in the day when Skype, no Slack, no Zoom, but we're using Skype. And I'm finding people in North Carolina, in Florida, in other places that were willing and capable of doing the work. They just weren't going to be able to walk into the office. Being an accountant, I'm like, oh, no overhead, no office. This works. You know, let's try it this way. Can I be the person who is going to manage and be the go-between between the client and the software developers? Let's see if we can make it happen. I really don't have any other choice. And it worked, right?

3:04I think at the core is the belief that people, no matter where they are, can have the skills and can collaborate in order to deliver the outcome. I've heard this story a few times where somebody leaves an organization and then maybe they were a consultant, advisor, and that company becomes their first client. Which, I mean, that's amazing, right? Because as we know, sales and getting clients, that's like the lifeblood of most organizations. So looking back when you were remote, and I love that you're using Skype, which no longer even exists, 25 years ago, from both your client's perspective, if they knew that you had remote staff, and then also your staff's perspective of being remote, were there any challenges that you faced?

3:56Oh, we face tons of challenges. I think we did all the things wrong. Right. And you find out it doesn't work. And you say, well, hey, I better create a standard to ensure this type of thing doesn't happen. Right. So the ability to quickly react to the mistakes and figure out what are the right rules and the right checklists to ensure because you're not in the place. Right. They're not sitting right next to you. You can't do something. But if you have, hey, here's the checklist. Make sure you have these types of internet connections. Make sure you're able to have these types of software connections.

4:33These are the times we're expecting you. It sounds basic, but if you don't have an agreement, right, to commit to these basic principles, then you will fall. And I think when you're remote, it highlights those more than if you were in person and can kind of paper them over. That's what everyone keeps talking about is, you know, how is it to lead people when you're remote? Or how are those people performing when you're remote versus when you're in person? And the things that you're seeing, you are all about EQ. So we had a futurist on recently and he was telling us that IQ will make no difference in the future because of AI.

5:16But EQ is incredibly important. Why do you think EQ is incredibly important for the future? So, I mean, I'll give you the perspective of EQ for engineers. And I'll tell you, right before the show, I went on to one of my favorite AIs, and I'm like, what is the hardest part of being a successful software engineer? And I got back, and I'll read this to you, adapting to rapid technical and AI driven changes, navigating a selective job market, maintaining motivation in incremental roles, collaborating in cross-functional teams, and managing work-life balance. And you know what? I think that's pretty accurate, right?

6:04These are the tough challenges for an engineer today in 2025. And notice what's missing from that list. It's not about learning a particular piece of software or mastering a software paradigm, right? All of these challenges are really challenges of human emotions, right? And I found that engineers that have a better EQ, they perform better across all of these factors, right? And I don't like the word EQ. I use the word soft skills, right? Why? Because emotional intelligence, emotional EQ is a skill. It's not something you're either born with or you don't have. It's something you can learn. So that's why I prefer calling it a soft skill.

6:58Right. So we know that if you think of it as a skill, then it's obvious that if you want to gain mastery over that, there's a way to do it. And I like to look at deliberate practice, right? deliberate practice, which was popularized by a Swedish psychologist back in 1993. And he talks about what does it take in order to create deliberate practice. So we can talk a little bit about that. And if a software developer has the soft skills on these projects, then all of these types of things, the fact that things are rapid and changing all the time, you need to have the right kind of resilience to deal with that.

7:46You need to collaborate with others. Well, do you know how to build trust? Do you know how to ask the questions that are truly concerning? Oftentimes we hide the things that are most concerning to us. We are not open with it. We need to build that trust. We need to answer the right kind of questions. We need to discover the right kind of questions to ask in order to uncover those. So all of these things, right? Even maintaining your own internal motivation when the work isn't as exciting, right? When you're a software developer, not everything you're going to do is going to be earth shattering.

8:23Sometimes it's just about enterprise systems and, you know, getting to that 99.999 % uptime. And you need to have a certain amount of, you know, self-motivation, create new games, find new ways to get excited and show up to work with your whole self when you are in those types of roles. And managing work-life balance. I really hate the word balance. I prefer harmony, right? I think there's a way to create harmony in these situations. And by the way, being remote gives you a tremendous advantage simply because of the time savings, Right. That you don't need to do that commute. You don't need to be stuck in the office if you have to be at your kids recital or try to help an aging parent.

9:12You actually can be very close to the things that are most important to you and allows you to create that kind of harmony. I mean, that's a lot of things. I like the emotional intelligence. I know you talk about that in EQ and your definition is like the same conversation I was having with my 25 year old sister yesterday about what the things that Gen Z find most important. And I feel like each one of those things is really important to them versus I was talking to my father, who's 77. And, you know, things that are important to him are very different. Are you finding that when you're leading, you're leading teams, it sounds like could be from all around the world of a high range of different ages and different skill sets, different leadership.

9:58Are you having to adapt and change around based on that person? And are you finding that the engineer of the past, is it the same as the engineer of now? You know, it's interesting you mentioned ages. We do. We are careful about who it is that we bring aboard to Luminolta and age has something to do with it. Right. So, you know, in today's world, lots of people are talking about remote. and you also see companies backtracking from remote and talking about returning to the office. And, you know, we are consistent with our core values, which has been remote from day one, and we don't change that.

10:53And that has certain strengths for us, one of which is when we are recruiting, when we're looking for who it is that will join us, We're looking for people who want the remote and who can take full advantage of remote. So if you're the type of engineer that just graduated, right, first job looking for the mentorship and how to and to kind of grow your career, we're not looking for you and you shouldn't be looking for us. Right. We don't have an office. We don't take those types of people. We're looking for the senior developers, guys who have already proved themselves. And we're looking for more than that.

11:41We're looking for those that have a reason to be remote. Right. So does that mean you're just starting a family? Does that mean you're close to aging parents? Does that mean that you like to travel and want to surf every day? And so you've got a place that's right by the beach, but you're going to work the eight hours first, and then you're right there in order to either before quirk or after work, go out and do catch the wave. So the people that we're looking for are those that are interested in and have a way to take advantage of being remote. Then we find that we're real tight, right? We both want the exact same thing for real reasons that last.

12:24So we've got people who are with us for you know, five, six years, as opposed to the industry trend of less than two. Hey, I like the surfing. I don't surf, but I feel like being remote, if I could be on an island and surf and still work and still do a good job, I'm there for that. I like that. So we have people that are doing exactly that. It's kind of funny to think about that. And I think it's rare. There are some people who do that. I'd say more common are the family obligations, Right. People who are developing in their career and developing in their personal lives or those that have other reasons.

13:00We've got a couple of people who are into rural farming. We have interesting people who want to take advantage of being of being remote. Hey, that makes sense. Obviously, you know, artificial intelligence, this emerging technologies, a lot of things are happening right now. It seems like it's a very interesting time to be in the tech space or the tech sphere. So how are you approaching digital transformation, technology development, obviously, since a lot of this is what you do? And how is this all being either merged or impacted by this fast adoption of emerging technologies? Yeah. And I think when it comes to what's happening, it's going so fast and we're noticing how it is that the whole world is changing what they're paying attention to.

13:56And at Luminolta, one of the biggest ways we stand out is our focus on interoperability and flexibility. Too many firms push clients into rigid, one-size-fits-all platforms that lock them into a single vendor for a decade. We take the opposite approach. We design modular, adaptable architectures that give clients options. So they're not tied to a single cloud provider, SaaS solution, or proprietary tech stack. We also take a pragmatic approach to innovation. Instead of forcing clients into massive, high-risk IT projects that take years and millions of dollars, we build lightweight, cost-effective proofs of concept that can be tested quickly and then scaled into enterprise-grade solutions.

14:49Organizations are moving away from the old, you know, 10 million multi-year transformation mindset. They want solutions that are efficient, cost conscious and built with flexibility in mind. And the cost piece is critical, right, especially in this economy. IT leaders aren't just thinking about what's technically possible. They have to justify every dollar of IT spend to their CFOs. So we help them make smarter investments by ensuring their infrastructure is scalable, cost efficient, and future proof. I want to make another point about speed, right? We're remote first. And our remote first model, which has been in place, like you say, for 25 years, long before it was common.

15:33And for our clients, that really means three key advantages. I mean, first, it gives them access to top engineering talent worldwide. rather than being limited by location. Second, we can staff projects quickly, often in two to three weeks instead of the industry standard four to 12 or more weeks. And finally, because we don't have expensive office overhead, we reinvest in senior engineers rather than passing unnecessary costs onto clients. So it's about flexibility, speed, and efficiency, which are the perfect things that you need when technology is changing so dramatically with AI and the new thing is coming out every week.

16:20And how do you kind of respond to that? So being the type of company that is speedy, that is able to be flexible, is the type of company that can take advantage of that. I like that. Speed, nimble agility. If you can't adapt in the next five minutes, it can be crushing to many companies. Like you said, every week, there's something new. Almost every day, I'm hearing some change, some new software, some addition, some this, some that, and many people I don't think can keep up for this. And it sounds like your organization, you've really set it up to be able to find success no matter what. Obviously, 25 years, there's ups and downs of everything in life.

17:05Was there any time that you were close to wanting to give up or any specific challenge that you faced that you were able to overcome and how were you able to do that? You know, so I talk a lot about soft skills and EQ. And I think the reason I got into that is because I wasn't very good at it when when I first started. You know, we talk about 25 years and people talk about that as such a long period of time and how wonderful it is. I look at it as a big negative. Like, why did it take so long? Right. Why isn't it seven years or 15 years? It's 25. Really? Right. How slow am I that it took this long to get to this point?

17:47And I think a lot of that does have to do with understanding others. Right. If your focus is so inward to yourself, which is what it was for me for a long time, you don't notice what it is that others need in order to work collaborately with them. And I think the biggest thing that you can get done is when you're on a team, when you've got a group of people, when you're able to help others and they in turn help you. And so a lot of our soft skills and the investment we have in soft skills, and when I say that, you know, we don't have human resources at Luminata. We have what we call coaches. And those coaches are there for every software engineer and completely outside of their billable client projects, right?

18:46So they're really there and their goal there is to try to help you improve. Sure, we have retros on our teams, but throughout the process, from onboarding through ongoing classes, we are looking to create deliberate practice to improve how each and every one of us performs in the rough and tumble world of consulting. Now, you know, when you hear classes or courses, you know, it sounds like you're sitting in class and somebody's lecturing at you. What we really do is we play games, games of groups of people that are, you know, they've got a goal, just like work, and you got to work together, just like work.

19:33And you need to collaborate together with the rest of your teammates, right? Just like work. But you know what? It's not like work. You're not going to get fired if you make a mistake, right? So making mistakes becomes the opportunities for learning. So we're able to pay attention to what people are doing in these games, in our right, well-defined, designed, structured games. And through that process, we discover that, hey, this guy never asks questions. Every time we tell him to do something, he says yes without asking questions, right? That's a real problem at work. It's a real problem in the game also.

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21:52Right. So we talked earlier about, oh, you know, I my my my partner would love for me to have better EQ. Well, guess what? It's something you can build. It's something you can practice. this. And by doing that, these types of practices where someone's noticing you in action, right, in a real type situation and can give you those, we call them negative assessments, right? Just feedback. Hey, you did this here and you could have done something better because it's low stakes, right? Those emotions don't get away from you. You're able to see it. You're able to talk about And over time, you learn the skills of building trust, of uncovering concerns, how to give your own negative feedback to others.

22:44And the result is somebody who can really work with you as a teammate, ask those fearless questions, and together achieve goals that you wouldn't have been able to before. I feel like if I come there, I can play these games. I can learn EQ and emotional intelligence. So I really I like the approach of the coach versus the typical HR person. And I could see a lot of benefits and the things that you're mentioning, just thinking back to when I was in a corporate job and how they made me feel taking these trainings, sitting at it. They would just put us at a computer and say, you know, click through just for the sake of doing it for compliance versus teaching us something and giving us something that we can use and take away with in our job.

23:34So I like that approach. There's somebody out there who they want to start their founder story. They were like you in a corporate environment, in a job, and they want to leave and they want to go start their own thing. What is the piece of piece of advice that you would give to them? I would tell you that what you can get done with less friction, right, speed wins is phenomenal. I did not know that when I first started. And the amount you can get done by simply taking yourself seriously, setting your standards, and then quickly attempting. And forgive yourself when you fail. No one's perfect. I've made mistakes.

24:19The question is what you do after the mistakes. Your values show up when it's tough. If you keep at it, you know, success is 80 % just showing up. Keep showing up. I feel like you have a book to come out. I don't know if you're writing a book now, but I feel like you could have a really good book. A lot of amazing quotes in there. I really took away today, speed is almost everything. And I think nowadays, it's even more so. Just things move way too fast. And if your company cannot deliver on speed, then you are going to fail. And we've heard some other incredibly smart people like yourself and Successful say the same thing.

25:01So it must be critical now for anyone starting a company. You have to have speed. So let me respond to that, right? You're saying I have a book in me, right? Why should I have a book? I should just have a website. So if you pay attention, you can search for it. You'll see I do have a website because I don't want to write a book. Wow. Okay. I hope everyone checks out the website then. How can they see it? Just search and find it. My name is not that common and pretty easy to find. Well, Kuti, if they want to check out your website of your company, where can they go? Luminolta. Luminolta.com is our website, whether it's for client work, right?

25:45We have a long track record of helping enterprises reach their goals by providing teams of remote engineers with exceptional hard skills and surprising soft skills that are embedded in the organization to work on challenging problems. and definitely check out our website for that. And if you are the software developer that wants a remote opportunity, definitely check us out. Our careers website is there for you as well. Well, I went to school for software development, but I did drop out because it was not for me. But if I had graduated, I would love to apply for your company. Sounds like an amazing place to work.

26:25But thank you for joining us today. very inspirational so many takeaways gotta check out the website and I have to read through whatever you're writing about I want to read it and I need to work on my EQ so thank you so much for joining us today on Founder Story. Thank you it's a pleasure to be here.