1531 – Myths About Business Ideas with Tekrevol’s Abeer Raza

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0:58with us right now it's abir raza abir you are the cmo and co-founder of tech revel you are found on the web i'm going to spell this tech revel.com it's t-e-k-r-e-v-o-l uh one of ink 5000 ink 5000's fastest growing companies in fact number 95 in software number 63 in texas You guys are going through phenomenal growth. Abir, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh, for having me. I should also point out, you're also recording this at 1130 at night, your time. So thank you so much for that. But yeah, give us an overview of what TechRevel is. So we're a technology consulting firm that started about six years ago with the focus of bringing value to our clients and sort of, you know, building products that clients would generally love.

1:54and yeah I think you know we've grown as you mentioned tremendously we have about 300 people based throughout the world like Ukraine, Dubai to name a few, Miami, Houston so I think our focus right now is to kind of create the best in class in terms of service in technology and to build products for both startups and enterprise and succeeded so far. Yeah. And so you're the co-founder. So how did TechReval get put together? How did, okay. So I guess it started with the concept of, you know, sort of building something that could, you know, sort of be bigger than anything that I've worked for. Initially, I used to work for a lot of tech companies before.

2:44So I built an ethos while I was working in these tech companies in terms of like what I like to do differently and how to sort of approach the whole process of, you know, if this was my company, how would I run it? So I had these ideas of the ones, you know, we started the company, like, you know, it was just brand at that time like just a domain name uh i put together like an sdp like a whole five-year plan of what i would want to see the company becoming i think 5000 was actually one of the things on that plan um which was supposed to be like um and this is the first time that we could actually apply for in 5000 we kind of see um tech will be the seventh fastest growing company in houston a place where i used to work in and i used to kind of like uh you know be part of a company that is shooting 5 ,000 in like its 12 years of existence.

3:37And I was like, well, it'd be cool to see how, if we had it, like what that would be like. So I think, yeah, I mean, it just grew from this idea of what a tech company could do. And just, you know, I didn't know it was going to get here, but now that it's here, we've got a lot of plans. Yeah, yeah. And so in the world, so TechReval, well, let me ask you this. So what has TechReval done to experience that kind of growth? I mean, obviously, I think you're doing some pretty good, well, you'd have to be doing some good client acquisition work. How do you compete in a very noisy world in this space?

4:18Yeah, I think I was just having a discussion with our product team yesterday because apart from TechReval, we have a lot of different things happening. We have, I think now about five or six different service lines that we've created while we've started TechRevel. So one quick thing before I jump into the other stuff, like we started TechRevel with a thousand dollars of investment and that's all we invested initially and we sort of kept growing from there. So we've had a lot of growing pains of sort of finding sustenance and then feeding ourselves and then trying to grow from that sort of small sustenance.

4:56like a sort of you know a newborn that doesn't have a mom or dad just like kind of you know gets by by himself and it keeps growing um so this scrappy mindset that we had allowed us to be even more scrappy we're like okay we already have less so how do we distribute even less amongst other people as well and try to build their dreams as well so so like i mean some of was from necessity like um so essentially let me explain uh so we started tech rebel from pakistan um right like uh our local sort of office in garaji so um we had to get exposure so we started partnering with our clients that did not have enough funding to pursue their products um and we'd be like hey we'll partner with you uh and we can market it offline but you do the online marketing you help us kind of brand ourselves as your tech partners and allow us to position ourselves in a better sort of way.

5:52The idea was to build a community, build that sort of PR for TechRebel. And that really worked well for us because we started getting noticed. I got an interview at NBC and then a couple of other places, Entrepreneur, Forbes, to name a few. And that sort of started snowballing. And again, the idea was how can we exchange value for value where we would see ourselves as not just a tech company, but essentially a partner for clients in whatever capacity we can help them, whether it's marketing, whether it's PR, whether it's digital, whether it's offline. So we basically just jump in and be like, okay, we can do this.

6:32And that's just the kind of mindset that we have at TechRevel. So for example, we just started building our own product with the mindset that we can build products now. We're a service company. We're not supposed to build products, right? We're a project-based company. We built that product and now it's accepted at Newship Accelerator, which is like$3 billion worth in valuation. So we're scaling that as well. And then so many other things that we're sort of doing. So yeah, I guess that's the answer. Yeah. I love, Abir, your social media content. By the way, I would probably put a shout out here to follow you on LinkedIn.

7:12You have some pretty great stuff here. I want to share one post that you had posted, the top four myths about business ideas. Let me just read these four real quick here and you can comment on any of these that you want because I would agree. These are myths. Number one, you have to come up with a completely original idea. Number two, you need a lot of money to start a business. Number three, your idea needs to be perfect before you launch. Number four, you need to have a lot of experience to start a business. I can say one, two, three, four, my two companies that have done well, I violated all four of them and still managed to do okay.

7:57I think it's actually better to keep violating them, you know, consistently and to keep that as your yardstick. Because at the end of the day, I think, you know, the whole, I mean, the biggest killer of progress is, I think, perfectionism and sort of this mindset of getting everything right. And I've seen that happen so many times. And I think, I mean, far and wide, we're kind of seeing this happen where with AI in the mix now, things are becoming faster and faster from ideation to actual creation, you can get a website up and running like minutes, you know, if not seconds yet. So it's just that concept of, you know, sort of the way that the way we used to like do things before where everything had to take months or years or you had to plan it out.

8:51You had to have your white picket fence and your, you know, kids and your car and your house and stuff. I mean, those aren't even core beliefs now right so I think it's just a matter of you know who can pivot the fastest and you know how you can sort of get up whenever you're knocked in like I was having this conversation earlier with a friend of mine like I think the biggest gift that anybody can have this day and age is it's just this thick skin from whatever you know you're knocked down from a mistake that you made or from not thinking things through or from whatever those formats are like you know not having enough money on your own having that sort of over confidence that you could do it um the faster you can get back up whenever you're knocked on because you're going to get knocked down that's the biggest sort of gift that you can keep with yourself and the rest is pretty easy yeah and abir what uh trends have you seen in um kind of app development but just you know kind of mobile, you know, mobile oriented business or certainly clients you get to work with, maybe trends today that weren't as big a deal a few years ago?

10:07Hmm, that's an interesting question. I think, and do you mind sort of giving me some context? Well, yeah, right. Just overall trends in, you know, applications that, you know, how we engaged. So if I'm a, so maybe, and it could be just like clients that are coming to you today. Is it the same ideas that clients were coming to an app developer five years ago, or what, what seems to be increasing in popularity, or maybe there's a feature set that is just the, it's like, you have to adapt. Like, so I'm just, I'm curious from your perspective, I'm sure you, you have a vantage point that's pretty valuable.

10:48And I'm hoping to learn from. Gotcha. So I think, you know, there's, I think like in the last few years, we've seen sort of a shift from the sort of copycat ideas that used to get like the Uber of this or that, to more like novel solutions that are specific to certain niches and have community engagement in a certain, you know, area. And I think that's far and wide the most successful products that you've seen so far that we've built, where they're ultra specific to the target market that the person wants to tap into. And the person not only has knowledge in that space, but also has some sort of clout or some level of partnership or engagement in that particular sector.

11:40So like, and I think more and more, we're starting to see this happen where, you know, a lot of the Web3 stuff that's happening is all community based, right? Like you launch an NFT or you launch an ICO, you have an ICO. If you have a big enough community, you can make that work. The tech piece doesn't matter. The marketing piece doesn't matter. As long as you have followers, as long as you have people that are interested in what you have to say, and it could be like, you know, 10 ,000 people or not. your Instagram following, which is obviously like not a lot these days, but like, even with that, you can still do a lot, right?

12:17Like, as long as you have, and I think more and more, we're starting to feel, we're trying to see that things are, things are sort of like spreading out, right? Like, you know, there's this concept of everybody having like a similar mindset is, it's kind of shifting where everybody wants to stand out and be differentiated to a certain degree. So, So like, for example, I started getting into ice bathing, like to kind of control my impulses with ADHD and stuff. So like, there are huge communities of ice bathing now, right? And I'm starting to feel like, you know, this concept is very ill developed where, you know, like, when I travel, like, you know, go to the Bayou, there's like three or four ice bathing places.

13:03I go to Houston, there's like one or two. I go to Miami, there's like three or four. So I feel like there's a lot more demand than supply. So just picking up that piece of business and be like, okay, I'm going to be a supplier for this, or I'm going to build so-and-so in this. There's huge demand. If you can tap into this particular niche, right? So I think that is something that's happening more and more. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the website, techrevol.com, T-E-K-R-E-V-O-L.com to our friend that's listening to our conversation right now. Just click around in your podcast app and find where we've got the show notes there and we've got a direct link there.

13:41But again, who should be reaching out and engaged? Like who's an ideal client for you? So Vivka, as I mentioned, like we've done a lot since we started. We have a video production brand. we have a design production brand we have a marketing and pr brand we have a venture side of the thing as well so basically like the idea was that if we like to me and my co-founder be two people that had zero experience in business or like you know all the other sort of four things that you listed as myths we didn't have those so then anybody could do it right so instead of us waiting around and having one or four employees leave and start their own venture why don't we help them build theirs.

14:25Right. So we started investing in our employees, essentially. And we just had recently had a hackathon, right, like, two weeks ago, where we had 10 teams come up with their products and solutions. And we selected two to invest in, I mean, two to give a prize money to and then I think about six to invest in to kind of build their products out. So if you're an entrepreneur that has an idea that has that sort of fire to build something then come to us so like we have rebel ventures where we're we've pulled in investment from different um our own sort of pocket as well as other ventures that we've done as well as other partners and investors and influencers um we can build that for you with you and sort of scale it as a different company um or if you're an entrepreneur that's looking to build a product idea and have the funds for it then yeah tech rebel uh if you're an enterprise client that wants to kind of come in and you know are looking to kind of scale using our fractional services or using our development team then then for sure come to us and we'll help you so I mean we've tried to kind of be you know sort of be everything in the tech space so I think whatever is in the tech space you've just started salesforce practice as well so we're getting into the ERP side as So yeah, I think we've kind of done a lot, but the core value that we provide underlying everything else is the fact that we have great reviews.

15:59Like we have zero negative reviews online anywhere. We have like the highest reviews on Clutch and like social media and Google and places like that in terms of like giving solid services. And it's not just like local to Houston or Miami. We're spread out. So we've got reviews everywhere that we work. So our ethos stays the same. So whatever you are, whatever kind of capacity that you're in, if you want a tech product built for yourself or, you know, as a partner, come to us and we'll help you. Yeah. Again, techreval.com and Abir Raza, you are again, the CMO co-founder. Congratulations on your growth.

16:44But, you know, just kind of hearing how your model works. It's pretty exciting, particularly for someone that's listening to our conversation, and they might be in the startup phase, and maybe you're not sitting on all the money you need in order to build out a development team so you can get your product market. Potentially, there's a partnership model here. And so it's kind of interesting how it changes the dynamic. Now, it's like they're coming in and almost like pitching themselves like they're on Shark Tank as opposed to, you know, the other way around where the developers are chasing down clients.

17:20Very, very cool. I think for us, I just want to add this here. We want to be the next unicorn, the next billion dollar company. We understand that we're not going to get there by following a 100-year Accenture path or data consulting part. The way we want to get there is by building the next big idea. So we're also looking for the idea. So if that idea is yours, then for sure, let's be billionaires together. I love it. Not a bad gig. Awesome. Amir Raza, again, CMO and co-founder of TechReval, found on the web at techreval.com. Amir, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

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