How Innostax Builds Software 1.5x Faster While Reducing Development Costs by 35%

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So for us, as a services company or the execution engine for 4,000 other people, right, we don't really have code as the MVP. For us, the MVP is the trust. How fast we can actually build that trust is our MVP. And for us, it's not build once and get go of it. It's 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 a transparency kind of a thing. 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, give me so much for so much of our time. I'm Prashanth Tondapu, I'm the founder and CEO of Imostax Tech LLC.

This is the Kill Story, the podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share what it takes to change an industry, to get many goes together, who build the teams that have their company in. And keep scalability top of mind. All that infrastructure was a beast. The stories you don't read in the headlines. It's not an easy thing to achieve, my friend. To ride the ups and downs of the startup life, you can really do it. It's not just about technology. On Code Story, I'm your host, Noah Labhart. And today, how Prashanth Tondapu helping you build your software one and a half times faster. Helping you save 35% on your project budget.

Prashanth Tondapu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook learner, loving technology and information. He reads a lot, primarily Eastern philosophy and stuff on being enlightened, basically pointing into the 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 products delivery, which then changed everything. This is the creation story of Innostax.

Innostax is A software implementation processing engine which is built around software developers basically. It really comes into 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 average, right? And like I forget medical, I worked in security and stuff like that. But I was open to do 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. You spend one month heads down with it. I did that two or three times and tried whatever marketing I understood, got like 10,000 flyers printed, stood outside the building and tried 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, pitching everything, 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. I went at my team. Apparently he was mentoring a couple of other companies and he said, Oh, so you are 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 I, like, they told me I have to take over as the director of engineering and stuff like that. There were two other guys, it was 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 when 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 U.S. and that's how the consulting journey started. Like it was a one-person team to begin with.

So let's dive into that. Maybe a one-person team then. So, you know, I ask questions on this show about MVP. That sounds like an MVP for InnoStack, right? So that first version of what you were bringing to life with InnoStack. 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, you 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 a trust is what it comes down to. So when it comes to MVPfor us, we have built a system which is like a transparency kind of a thing. 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, give me 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 people who are in charge that they don't have to think about it. That is basically our MVP.

Tell me about the decision or the 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 delivering in a specific way, right, to make sure that trust was established. Tell me about that. How you cope with those decisions.

So the hardest decisions obviously, you know, 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 are many times where we did not feel confident that we could actually take on stuff, we had to say no. So that was a big thing, you know, because like coming from a tech background and not knowing business as business, we try to take the first principles as much as we 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. So that's the hardest thing what I had to say is no, that obviously we are people. We have screwed up more than once and every time we screwed up, we said sorry, obviously, and compensated in whatever way we can and brought up a new process so that it never happens again. Like making mistake once is okay, but second time is not acceptable, kind of a thing what we have built. One toughest point that comes in this is as a founder, you tend to take everything personally. Every mistake is your mistake. And like detach from that also helped me in a big thing, okay, as a company, we are going to make mistakes. That's okay. And stepping back, that was also one of the toughest thing that personally I had to do.

Today's episode is brought to you by .tech domains. And this one hits close to home. Back in 2016, when I was building my own tech startup, I went on the hunt for that elusive .com. Looks high, looks low, and guess what I found? Nothing. What I did find cost me an arm and a leg. So I did what every founder does under pressure, threw an extra letter, settled for the less than optimal name. And here's what I wish someone had said to me back then. Noah, if you're building a tech startup, just get a .tech domain. Techstartup.tech domain. It could not be more obvious. It tells investors, customers, anyone who looks at your website really, that tech is at the core of your build. And I'm kicking myself plenty since, especially when I see the clean and sharp names tech companies have landed on .tech. Nothing.tech, 1x.tech, Aurora.tech, CES.tech, Ultra.tech, Alice.tech, Neon.tech, Blade.tech, Hi.tech. You get the idea. So take it from someone who learned it the hard way. If you're building a tech startup, don't overthink it. Secure your .tech domain today from any registrar of your choice.

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Okay, let's move forward then. So you've got that version, right, of Innostax launched, and you're running, and you're getting trust, you're getting that trust and execution. Well, you're making execution boring for the founders, right? You're achieving that. How did you progress and mature Innostax? And I think what I kind of like in that question too is like a roadmap for your company, right? How did you build that? How did you decide that, okay, this is the next most important thing to do for Innostax?

So that's the organic know. What I have seen, basically, I always assumed and imagined that you have to plan on how you're supposed to grow, and okay, this is my five-year milestone, 20-year milestone, and stuff like that. So vision, that part is right, but when it comes to scaling, right, what I've realized is it is mostly adjusting to the demand. So for us, scale has always been around like adjusting to the demand and not really planning for it, per se. So one of the things is like deliberately, like we are not really heavily marketed kind of company, whatever we have grown, we are 80 plus developers right now, and we have grown completely organically. We do not have a marketing, like recently we have started doing some activities which are CMO things we should be doing. And CMO is also pretty new to the company, by the way. Whatever we have scaled organically, in the sense like through reference, clients referring somebody else, and they referring somebody else, that's how we have grown.

How did you build your team, right? And I understand there's organic, or there's an organic nature about expansion, right, and those things, but what did you look for in those people to indicate that they were the winning horses to join you?

So I had not found the horses, only the ones that pulled our carriages back also, to be honest. In the beginning, I did not know why I started the company when I was 27. So I did not know much, like even in the company that I was working with, I never hired people. So I never really knew. Initially, all the seven first hires of Innostax, they're fired probably in 15 days. I realized It's not working. Then I found a couple of guys who were like me. Like earlier, I used to try to hire for skill based on what I thought was required. Then I started looking for people who had similar traits like me. Then somewhere a very wise line I've heard which said that founders basically, the company is basically an extension of the founder. It has the traits of the founder. So the people that came on board later and like really progressed were people who were similar to me in a way. My entire exec team, they joined here as people fresh out of college, like my CTO, my COO, and all those main guys are all from there. And like we built it together. Like even I was figuring out how to be a CEO. They also figured out how to be the CTO. And that's how the team was organically built. Then once we found out what the process was, then the process evolved. Actually it emerged out of the fog and that's how we were in the hiring mode. So we tried hiring for IQ. We have an IQ test for people. Then we look for alignment more than skill. Like they align with our values. That is a huge priority. So when we hire right now, it is more around like up to three or four interviews, the people who interviewed, even one guy says no, it's a no. That's our very strict hiring criteria.

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With Innostack, as you step out on the balcony, you look across all that you've built and created with this company and how you're delivering software, you're executing so well. What are you most proud of?

So again, I'm a big follower of Agile, right? Like things fall into place. Earlier, in the beginning, like, the ego went high. I felt like I am the guy in such a amazing guy who thought of so many things and built it. But now I'm mature enough to understand that it was all incidental in a way. It's a series of events that caused that to happen. Every moment in front of you took like billions of years to form is my kind of approach. So I have top feel extremely proud of what it is doing. It's a living organism in a way. Company builds itself based on the people that it brings in and all that. But the biggest thing that I feel really good about is how I have grown as an individual. And it is like you have gone into so many things which are uncertain. You do not know. And the feeling of control that you actually feel in the beginning because you got some small amount of success and all that. But slowly as you progress, you end up actually believing that you had nothing to do with that. Everybody was doing their part and stuff like that. So I feel pretty calm in my head, much more than what I used to feel before. Much less confident in myself than what I used to feel before. But that's a good thing you know. That has made me a lifelong learner in a sense. And being more open to ideas, more listening than speaking and stuff like that.

Okay, so let's flip the script a little bit. Tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.

So we have made a ton of mistakes. Like a lot of hiring mistakes we have made. And like hiring mistakes we, I'll just, I'll talk about one or two. So one first is the hiring mistake. Basically, the services company are only as good as the people that you have. So the mistakes that you make will affect the client in some way or the other. And we have to fix it and stuff. We like fire pretty quickly. Like once we know that we have to let go of that person, we make it right by that person in terms of monetary compensation or giving them time to figure out what their next piece of life is. But we will not let our clients suffer because of our hiring mistakes. So we will let the client know that see, anyway, it's a mistake. So you don't have to pay over here and we'll deal with that separately and stuff. And a couple of times what has happened is again, like human errors have occurred and stuff like that. And we have owned up to it and been compensated for that in some way or the other. So there was one client interview that I got done through a third party agency so that we can understand what actually our client feels about us. There one client made a statement saying that two guys who actively put off for the time which they thought they did not meet their own standards, which I felt was really cool and that made my day basically. So that actually is how we are trying to build the company.

Let's move forward then. This will be fun. What does the future look like for Innostax? For you know what you offer as a company for how you go about executing on that software and for the team.

My goal is only one thing, software development should be as boring as possible. Like somebody hires us, they should not even turn back to see what is going on. It's such a boring thing, they so predictable, so boring, that people do not have to think twice once they hire us. That is the ultimate goal for the company. So if we have to compromise scale for it, that is fine, but that is what we want to be as a brand, like going into the future.

Who influences the way that you work? Name a person or many persons or something you look up to. Why?

So I have always favoured execution over idea because the people that I really look up to do not show up too much because they are not in the limelight. Like I'm a boring person myself and I want to keep things predictable and stuff like that. So whenever I meet people who are investing in their processes and looking everything objectively and stuff like that, they are my heroes basically. And there are many of them behind the scenes who do not appear like big media figures and stuff like that. So here I got our interior done through a guy over here. He has a company and stuff. Like building custom software is like building a custom home. And everything is unpredictable, like you don't know when it is coming, what is going to happen and stuff like that. So for us, we are trying to build everything very predictable. So if A happens, then B happens, then C happens. So that like what approach. So this guy is from one of the best universities over here in India and he built his company and he was a mechanical engineer or something, but he was so much into furniture and how comfortable you can make it and all that. That guy actually did the interiors for my home. I think he's a hero. Like he's extremely boring. He has a process. You ask him, okay, I want more of this, then there is a very good process. You know, creativity, he has a creative process. I thought that's like new, but he's a hero, in a way, for me.

Last question, Prashanth. So you're getting on a plane and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing. They're jazzed about it. They can't wait to show it off to the world. They can't wait to show it off to you right there on the plane. What advice do you give them? having gone down this road a bit and starting Innostax?

I will not give too much advice because he's already living his journey, in a way. And ultimately, for founders, it is a journey. Like, obviously, when you go through it, like, even something that I tell him what will happen five years later will not make any sense to him. You have to be ready to get that sort of advice. I would just say, be enthusiastic about it. There will be bad days, but know that the better days are coming. Just I'll tell him to be resilient you know, and just do not lose trust because everybody goes through the same thing. And just keep doing what he's doing with whatever clear objectives or goals why he is doing it, and not to forget why he started the company to begin with. Don't run after KPIs and numbers and things like that. Just stick to your core on what you wanted to deliver and just delivering that.

I think that's fantastic advice. Well, Prashanth, thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for telling the creation story of Innostax. Thanks, Noah. Thank you very much for having me here. It was a great chatting with you. And this concludes another chapter of Code Story.

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