Tech It From The Top

Welcome to Tech It From the Top, the founder's tech blueprint. Today, we have got a founder who is shaking up the way organizations communicate using AI. He's building tech that actually solves real world problems, making communication faster, smarter, and more human like at scale. Meet Monty Alexander, founder of Yokeru.io

Yokeru is all about AI powered voice technology that helps businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits connect with people more efficiently. But Monty's journey wasn't all smooth and sailing. From early tech struggles to scaling an AI first platform, he had to figure out what works and what doesn't and the hardware. In this episode, we will dive into what inspired him to build Yokeru.io, the biggest tech hurdles he faced along the way, his lessons on offshoring and scaling a global tech team, the future of AI in communication.

Get ready for some real unfiltered chat about ups and downs and tech decisions that shaped his journey. Monte Alexander, welcome to the podcast.

Prashanth, what an intro.

I appreciate you.

So first question.

What was the defining moment that made you realize this was the path that you had to take?

Well, in terms of founding a business, a software business?

Yes.

So I studied mechanical engineering at university and had always been doing side hustles like building bicycles and selling them on in the local villages or picking plums and selling them on the streets in the village. And when I got to university, I realized that the business model of a software as a service business is so good compared to almost every other business model.

And so I it was from a position of wanting to improve the efficiencies of organizations and understand how we can generate a valuable entity. So that was where we came from the idea of the software as a service business model. But then my grandmother fell over and was left lying stranded in the garden for about eight hours in her care home, which is super super super intense for her. And this happened because people who were supposed to be caring for her were too busy dealing with this background tasks, and they weren't spending the time on checking in on her well-being.

So me and my brother, my older brother thought, what can we do to help care agencies, to help carers, to help people who are supporting vulnerable people, to free up a lot of their balls that they're juggling. They stand there juggling ball all day to say, hey, you can put this ball down so you can actually go and open this person's door and check they're okay. So we thought, how can we use technology to free up resource, gain back time for care stuff. So we had the business model idea, and then we had the mission.

And then we created a platform to improve communication using automated AI powered voice bots.

That's amazing. That's such a powerful story, and there's a mission behind it. And it's not just, you know, build SaaS and make money and stuff like that. That's really, yeah, inspiring.

Sure

So What's the single toughest decision you have had to make as a founder, and what did it teach you?

In the early days, we had a cofounder.

Well, I wouldn't even say cofounder. In the early days, there was more than just me and my brother working the business, and we had a bit of a wider team. This is five years ago. And we got ahead of ourselves thinking that we had a much bigger opportunity in that time. We didn't really know what we were doing than we actually had. And so we had once brought people into the team office vision, which hadn't actualised. And I was still at university, still very much a kid.

And so we brought people onto our ship and said, hey, this shift is going to go far and fast.

And then we realized that actually the ship was still grounded on rocks. So I had to say to some of this crew, sorry, guys.

I know we promised you impact in the millions and profits in the millions, but we are still so young and still getting started on a journey, so this isn't gonna work out. So we had to dismantle our crew and send service to keep people worked with home. And that was really painful because a lot of emotions get invested when people think that they have something that they can create freedom for themselves with, and then you say, sorry. It's not gonna work. That can create that can sever the ties of friendships, And that was by far the most painful thing in the business.

Okay. Then at what moment did you realize technology wasn't just useful and it was absolutely essential to your success?

When we moved from being a managed service when we first started, we were a managed service. So we were using white labeled products and then almost implementing it on behalf of our customers.

And then we realized that this is useful, but this isn't very scalable. If we have ten more customers or a hundred more customers, I don't have a hundred more hours in the day. So that went from being useful to being a necessity, which is how can we have something that is reliant or reliable and resilient, and that we can allow our customers to use and spend time activating themselves rather than me being a managed service to try and activate our customers. So it was that idea of how do we scale what we're doing, which made it a necessity.

Okay. What's something you had to sacrifice that most people don't see?

Being depressed in a nine to five.

Okay. Are you not working more hours now?

A lot more hours?

I love more hours. I work way more hours, but I love it. And it's yeah, the growth as a human being you get when you found something and you gross it yourself of your own of your own gut compared to someone saying, please do this at this time in this way. Completely different. And so even if I worked and I've already worked two or three times as much as I used to work, I just feel much more self actualized as a human.

Actually, I have a hard time visualizing you in a nine to five job for some reason. Like, that confusing.

Me too, bro.

So did you ever feel like giving up, and what stopped you from giving up?

No.

Because the alternative to giving up is going to work for someone else.

And what stopped me or I I guess what enabled me to continue is the fact that I'm super blessed to have family. My parents have a house. So then I know that there were and there's a room if if I want it for me. And it's in the countryside, and it's it's a it's a nice place.

So if things get terrible and I have to stop this all over again, my worst case scenario is I go home and visit my parents. And I don't mind about that at all. I I like my parents. They're pretty nice.

And though it's almost I feel obliged to do this because I have such a blessing, and it is really a blessing of a safety net for me to be able to take risks.

That's so amazing. That's so amazing. And that's really good perspective. Like, you balance your risk out. Like, what they have to lose. There's nothing, obviously.

That's amazing.

So this might be a little redundant question, but, again, like, it could give more insight. So have you ever hired someone and regretted it? What did that mistake teach you about leadership? This is specific to the tech piece of it.

Yes. I hired someone who just wasn't proficient to the level that I needed them to be, and it meant it took I was paying them, and it took me more time to keep an eye on them. And it cost me reputation with our customers because they pushed stuff which was buggy and it didn't really work. And it is still tech debt. So there's still issues on our platform that someone who worked with has done. And so, yeah, the the depth of working with someone who isn't skilled, you can't trust a hundred percent goes so much further than I initially imagined.

Understood. So what do you think, made, you made that mistake? Like, what were you looking at that point of time from that tech guy, and what did you what you've had, and what you later realized that it was a wrong thing to do?

I didn't have very much cash flow or time. So I was like so I think clear answers are I didn't scope out what their role would be. I didn't scope out the packages of the role that I wanted them to do. So they were a little bit like, hey.

I was like, hey. Can you do this? And then they half do it. So if I didn't set clear expectations, I didn't scope up actions, and I didn't clearly do a task to understand their proficiency.

And then I didn't make the decision fast enough to get rid of them. My last we we had a tech person not too long ago, and after one week, I realized that she's not gonna be up to standard. So I said, thanks very much. I've been enjoying work together, but it's not gonna work.

And then I didn't make the decision fast enough to get rid of them. My last we we had a tech person not too long ago, and after one week, I realized that she's not gonna be up to standard. So I said, thanks very much. I've been enjoying work together, but it's not gonna work.

And that was the time frame that it should have been, whereas previously, it was six months.

That's that's a long time for a long hair. You might have lost a ton of money, ton of time, ton of reputation, and so on.

I did, bro.

What's the belief about start ups or tech that most people would disagree with you on?

I think most people outside of the SaaS space think that it's technologically difficult.

I would say to them that ninety nine percent of the difficulty is your own mind and how you relate to your own mind. And I know in the actual SaaS space, there's a lot of coaching and a lot of understanding that it's really important to cultivate your mindset. But I'd say the reason it's hard to grow a software business isn't because it's physically difficult to pick up a phone and call someone and say, hey. I've got a product.

That's not physically difficult at all. It's because you have these emotional barriers that get in the way of, well, what does it mean if I Google up the phone and they say, yes. I wanna buy a product and I'm gonna be successful. Then if I'm gonna be successful, how does my is my dad gonna still love me?

Or so, like so I'd say that, working on your mindset is as important as working on your business. I think people don't realize that until they hit a plateau for a long time or they've just been going in circles, which is same as plateau, and realize that, well, something has to change. It's none of this stuff.

So maybe it's business.

And what's the most common advice founders get that you think is total BS?

You need cofounder.

I think that's bullshit.

Sorry to swear. But it's because so I have a brother who I cofounded the business with, which is really important. He left to go on a sabbatical for a year and a half. We're still not working together.

And I thought that would be game changing in terms of what do I do? I'm gonna cope. Because I was just on tech, and now I'm running the thing. I oversee everything.

I mainly in sales now, which is a jump from tech to sales. And it was fine. It was a it was a couple of tears, couple of stressful nights, but I realized that it's absolutely achievable to run set up your own things, find it, and it and assemble a team around you. You don't have to rely on finding someone else to almost advocate your responsibility.

I think people look for cofounders to do the hard stuff. I'll do the this part. You do the stuff I don't wanna do.

You kinda have to learn how to do it yourself so you can build a team. Yeah.

That will be inspiring for a lot of people who are looking for cofounders to start a business and kind of giving excuses that they can't start a business because they don't have a cofounder. That's amazing.

So the next question

Just to jump in because the cofounder who's also looking for you is looking for you to do the hard work. So you get two

That's actually amazing.

That's amazing. That's true, actually. And that is an amazing perspective, which you need to that got me thinking right now. That is how it works.

Yeah.

Awesome. So this one is a little on the InnoStax front, and I wanted to ask, not a salesy question, but kind of an introspection for us as well. So before working with InnoStax, what were your honest thoughts about offshoring software development? Did you have any doubts, concerns, or even bad experiences that shape your perception? And what was the moment you realized Innostax was different and what changed that perception for you?

So my hesitations around working with offshore teams is that I've worked with offshore individuals, and communication has just been a bit of a nightmare. And so I thought more people would be more communication, which would be more different community.

But my realization has been that Innostax are super responsive.

They are super clear.

It's I have a fifteen minute check-in every day, and it has allowed me to think in terms of I can delegate more from a because I'm a technical founder.

I can delegate more of my technical mashed potatoes and steak on my plate elsewhere more than I ever thought because I have the trust that it's a highly skilled team who have my best interests at heart and feel like I'm not gonna get screwed over, which is yeah. For real. I think sometimes as a as a tech when you have the if you don't have a tech background and you work with offshore people, you're always thinking, wow. I have no idea how much this costs. Maybe this is really cheap. And then you have a turnaround.

You work with offshore people being like, wow, this is really expensive because I'm pretty sure I can drive it to myself.

And Right. Right. Right.

But with me with this with DinespX, it's been really nice because I I have trust that the work which is built is being put towards productive time. I have clear lines of communication, and I have clear understandings and expectations about what's going to be done and when. And that's all you can ask for.

Thanks, Monty. That is bringing tears in my eyes because, yeah, that's what we're still important. All of that. Thank you very much for that. And, so next question I wanted to ask is, like, how did you build your MVP and how did you get it to market? And what were the challenges that you faced and unknowns that you faced?

Our first our first product that we sold, which we sold this, was a picture of a table that we'd built on Google Slides.

Okay.

With a big piece of text underneath that said, this is not our platform. It will look much better than this when it's built.

Only Monty can do that.

Only Monty

sold it to UK local government during COVID.

We said, hey, it doesn't exist yet, but it's gonna look like this. You can trust us. We're from Imperial. We know our engineering.

We said, hey, it doesn't exist yet, but it's gonna look like this. You can trust us. We're from Imperial. We know our engineering.

And they said, sounds great. So we sold the first the first thing we sold was a picture. The second thing we then did is we found someone who was kind of doing the same. So we white labeled their solution and then we said, hey, we'll manage it for you.

Don't worry about using our platform. We'll do heavy stuff. Just send us the stuff. And then we built the product using a no code platform called Bubble.

And me and my brother learned how to use it and build the whole app ourselves. And so that allowed us to scale quite significantly. And so, yeah, we basically managed to do as little development at every single stage of our product.

Yeah.

That's actually smart. Until you find a product market fit and if Bubble or some local platform is helping you, that's actually the smart way to go. Until you have enough volume and you are facing issues with scaling and, obviously, you can get eighty percent done, but the rest you get started twenty percent with, local platforms.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

How did you decide between building in house versus outsourcing development? What worked and what didn't does that?

I guess k.

So how did you decide between building in house versus outsourcing development?

What worked and what did it?

So we actually have in house developers and we have outsourced developers. And it's really important to have in house developers who can help with consistent customer contact and integrations and keeping an eye on the main platform.

But we decided to go with some outer house because of the expertise.

Because of the it's more it's a better value to be really transparent.

We have a couple of developers. One went to university with me, and, he's based between London and Japan. And we have another developer.

Well, he was in Bath. And these guys are when you're UK based, you then have, like, UK really, like, nine dollar beers and eighteen dollar loaves of bread, and then everything is just more higher prices. And so I was in the every stage of business, at least the stages I've come so far, cash flow is such an important thing. It's the oxygen of the business.

So I was thinking about how can I ensure my business is able to take lots of deep breaths and be as healthy as possible? And that means me going elsewhere where maybe it's slightly cheaper to get oxygen and still get the quality or even better quality. And that's one of the reasons why we started working with some outsourced support.

And what part of your tech stack or infrastructure would you change if you could start over?

Yeah. The first iteration of our product was this is long time ago. So if this goes on don't put this on LinkedIn. But if if you do, include the whole context so it doesn't seem like I'm talking from this.

So when we first started, we were working with a business who was providing some of our subprocesses who had they were registered in the US.

They had customer support in Russia

Okay.

Which is fine unless you're health care in the UK. And then you're like, why are these Russian people looking at our data? And we're like, no, they're not looking at our data. It's a US company that's kept customers supportive.

So I think I would have just that gave us so many headaches. So just understanding where your sources are based and getting your clarity and making sure that they're all legit would have saved us so much time, and that was yeah. We didn't even need to go for them. We we just got locked in with their tech stack early days, and then we're no longer using that in the way that we were.

So but that's that's one of the other change.

That's that's actually a funny one. Like, I know you faced problems, but it's a funny one now. But, yeah.

Yeah. Maybe.

Like, all of the customer support people who email our customers were like, Katrina in a vala cannon was. And I was like, look, it's fine. It's no no just no issues. Just if you're healthcare in the UK, it's a bit of an nightmare sometimes.

Now people have their own prejudices and stuff. Right? They don't really understand the value. They'll go for, like, okay, this guy, that day and stuff like that because of whatever the global scenario is.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So next I want to know, like, how do you balance shipping fast with keeping technical debt under?

Only pushing features that is going to make a actual difference to your customers. I think I learned something where I read something or heard something saying that. I think it was on a SaaS academy from Etienne.

Pick up Etienne at Etienne.

Right. Right. Right.

So again, he said every single feature you push costs your business money and in, and is already at a disadvantage in terms of your customer's experience of your platform because they have to learn something, they have to change. Every single thing you push, I might think it's the best thing, it's gonna change their lives. No matter what it is, they're like, oh, this is now unfamiliar.

Is this really worth it? And realising that and realising that's actually once you get the core product right, there's not much I need to be pushing on a particularly regular basis to improving. It's it's now just marginal returns unless I have a good unless I have a feature that I've I know will make a big difference because it's helping improve customer workflow, which is currently done manually. And I've gone to a bunch of customers, six, seven customers and said, hey, we're thinking of developing this.

And they said, yes, that'd be really helpful. And then I've created an MVP that only I can see on the page. And then I jump on a call with our customers and say, hey, what do you think about this? Can you give some feedback?

And they say, oh, we want this, this and this and this and this. Once you've done all that, then at that point, I can say to tech people, yo, build this, please. And then they build it and then I push it and then we're reducing the back and forth about me guessing and the customer being at a disadvantage because of my poor judgment.

That's that's actually an awesome process. It seems so simple, but it's not very intuitive to lot of people until they have burned their hand a couple of times. And for people who do not know who Etienne is, Etienne is like, the grand master of CTOE. He's the founder of seven CTOs, and, he has all the wisdom in the world on how to actually be a CTO.

I mean, just shout out for Etienne on this. Yeah

Big Elvis

And yeah.

And what's been the biggest moment for you when it comes to scaling your software?

I made a spreadsheet recently, and it's a combination of SAS Academy.

So it's a mentorship program, learnings, and then my just general thoughts. And this spreadsheet is basically saying how many customers, how many prospects do I need to talk to to get X so many customers, which gets me X amount revenue. So it's a look at my funnel, but then mapping that to the resources required in terms of customer success, sales, and tech. So I can play with the numbers, figure out and figure out how much resource I'll need.

And as soon as I did that, I realized that this is building a business is just like moving numbers around on a and pieces around on a board and be like, oh, if I do this and get someone to do that and then they do this, then this means we need this much here. And as soon as I realized that and got a little more distance from it, it. It made me see how much more fun and achievable all this process is. So I think getting some macro numbers to understand the flow of business made a bit of a difference.

And knowing that I have a tech tech support that allows me to actually deliver on that promise.

That's awesome. I'm hoping you're talking about Innostax, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely.

Definitely. You guys have been amazing and, really, really excited to see the work that we continue to build on together.

Oh, so just to wrap this up, it has been really insightful for me and really amazing talking to, you, Monty. And we'll be meeting again at SAS Academy conference and looking forward to seeing you in person. Thank you for all the great insights. I'm sure apart from me, there are a lot of other people who will benefit from this.

Amazing.

Thanks so much for your time. Look after yourself. Peace.