A Million Dollar Lesson with Sze Wong | Ep. 58

Speaker A: As a certified Java trainer. Uh, do you also hate Eclipse?

Speaker B: I absolutely do.

Speaker A: Hey friends, this is podcast written by software Engineering. On this episode, I get to talk to Z Wong, founder and CEO of, uh, Xerion Software. Xerion Software develops technology to help teams perform better field data collection. If you enjoy podcast reviewed by a software engineer, don't forget to hit the follow button on your podcast app so you don't miss out on the new episodes. And you can pick up podcast merch@perry2.com shop. Enjoy the episode. Welcome back to another episode of podcast driven by a software engineer. I'm your host, Perry. Today with me is Z Wong, founder and CEO of, um, Xerion Software. Z, how are you today?

Speaker B: Hello. Hello. Great, thanks for having me.

Speaker A: No, I, I think it's an absolute pleasure because as people will discover, your story is an absolutely great journey. You know, like seeing a company grow for over two decades. Not very many people get to say that, but then all these obviously all the stories within it, but also what you're doing today, I can't wait to uncover all that. But before I go too deep into all that, who is he and what is Zerion Software?

Speaker B: Oh, wow, that's a, um, tough question. Who am I? I mean, usually I just say I'm the tech guy and um, end there. Right? So not, not great for podcasting. Right? So like I am, um, I grew up in Hong Kong and got um, into computing, if you will, uh, when I was um, in fifth grade. So I got my Apple 2 at the time is in the 80s, um, and I got into computing and fell in love. And basically it, um, at the time, like when I went through high school, I was actually determined to be an electrical engineer. I thought, right. So I was like, I'm loving this thing. I'm going to be a chip designer for some odd reason. And, and then, um, and then I, I applied to uh, school universities in the U.S. came over to the U.S. thought I will, um, get into Double E. But then I fell in love with software. I, I learned that actually, uh, very quickly after semester, after the first semester. I've determined that actually I love software more than hardware. So um, and so I, I graduate computer science and that was it. And um, so we founded Zerion. Uh, well actually the story was I found zerion originally in 2003, um, just trying to escape working for other people, just want to do something and there was no goal. Right? So like I, I, I wrote in my book, um, uh, every story, every founding story is, is like Romantic that you, you, you get this big idea. No, it, it wasn't like that. But I, I, I too can tell you one version of that, right? Which is, um, what reporters would say. But the reality is I just didn't want to work for people. So I start doing whatever, right? So that's 2003. Start consulting, doing whatever. And then, um, by 2008, um, you all know what happened. The iPhone came out. And then, um, by fall of 2008, that is when the iOS was announced. So, um, yeah, so we basically jump head first. I told my partner at the time, Chris and I basically say, just get any mobile contracts you could, um, were going to only work on mobile. I had no idea what it was, right. So I still remember that summer my parents was visiting us and um, when we went on a cruise, uh, the weekend prior to we jumped on the cruise, I bought my Mac. The first Mac I had an Apple ii. I never had a Mac. So I bought my Mac at that summer and wrote my first mobile app on the cruise ship and then came back and basically I said, let's jump head first into this mobile thing. And then iPhone builder, which is the product that ended up making, ah, quite a little bit of money, um, was released in April of 2009. So between that fall of 2008 to April of 2009 is when everything changed. So in a nutshell, what is Xerion software is a data collection company, the maker of iPhone builder, um, and we specialized in mobile data collection. Offline mobile data collection.

Speaker A: Yeah, even that term. I can't wait to jump into it. Honestly. We have a bit of time together to jump into all these terms to figure it out. What is data collecting? I feel like it's very aggressive nowadays where people are like, oh, it's like Google's tracking all your kind of stuff. But no, we're talking about like inventory. One of the examples that I definitely know about this is like inventory stuff. Like, I could geek into that in just a little bit. But thanks for sharing a lot of, even just a bit of landscaping. Because I keep on saying that like, we all end up in tech somehow. Um, whether you want it or not, we can look at a team today. Everyone does tech, but our backgrounds are so, so, so different. And that's the beauty of it. The pleasure of having you on the show is, hey, let's learn a couple of lessons. But also like, if we think about ourselves, like growing up kind of thing, maybe from your environment, because I love talking about this is. Thanks for already telling Us. What was your first computer? I asked this, uh, to literally every single guess. But what is kind of interesting to me is that like, that wasn't M in a different environment. You said you grew up in Hong Kong. Some of the viewers know that, uh, my parents are from Hong Kong. I was born and raised in Canada. But I have a very, very fond attachment to, uh, Hong Kong and it. So my question to you in that aspect is I know Hong Kong from the perspective of like, outsiders. Like, it's very like the Wong Kawaii movies. But then, like, from your perspective growing there. I'm gonna ask the first question is like, what did it look like growing up in a sense of technology? What I mean by that is that when I grew up, there was already influences of like, you know, my dad was a geeky person. He would like, pick up scraps of computers and like, build Frankenstein Computer Window 95 was my first version of Windows, but those are kind of like my exposure to like, floppy disk and like, the other kids would come back with like an ipod kind of thing. So maybe from your childhood during that time, do you remember any kind of like, influences, whether it's technology, whether it's a person around you that gave you this, like, tech, like seed in your brain, that kind of thing about it? What did it grow up as a kid in Hong Kong, along with technology, basically.

Speaker B: Right, so focus on Hong Kong. You all have to remember, I'm much older than most of you listening to this podcast. Um, so I was born in, in the 70s. So by, by the turn, by going 80 is when I, when I first, um, uh, get into computing, if you will. So I don't exactly remember when Apple II was released, but somewhere along late 70s, early 80s, right? When, um, um, when Apple 1 and Apple II was, was, was released now. So Hong Kong at the time was a couple years behind the U.S. so I think I got my apple in early 80s, right? So I don't remember exactly, but to answer your question, this was a extremely different era than what you all mostly will be growing up in. There was no computer, right? Um, there was no concept of telecommunication. So our phone lines were dialed up. There was no Internet. Uh, I didn't have Internet until I graduate from college. So it was extremely different. Like I got my Apple, right? So, um, what do we do? We play games. I learned BASIC programming, right, the language called basic, uh, that summer. And I still remember, um, the computer lab that I have downstairs to our apartment, um, they don't have floppy disk. So at the time like uh, my Apple has the big flat five and a quarter inch floppy disk that is very, very advanced. The lab downstairs has cassette tape. So it was just crazy. Like, so I still remember like in that first lesson, uh, first like week of lesson, they will teach you how to load up the OS into the computer. And the way to do that is rewind the tape to the beginning and start playing. And you will see the countdown like you will, you will specifically play until uh, it says 010 and then stop right there. Okay. So you actually hit the pause button because these are two separate devices. You, you're managing what goes into the computer like this. It's crazy. Um, and once you get to 010 and you hit pause, then you turn on the computer and you continue to play. That will start playing the OS into the computer. That's how you load the operating system. Now. Um, now. But going back to answering your question, um, what influenced me is basically, I mean, um, I won neighbor, older neighbor, got an Apple to like. Um, he, I think he's like five years older than me. Um, he got, he got a computer. So at the time, okay. Also, um, most of my classmates gets the uh, Nintendo and me and this neighbor, um, this, this older neighbor was the only person like that get computer. Uh, so most people were playing Nintendo games and we did not. And my mom was like, you're not going to like my mom said she's not going to buy Nintendo for me ever. Um, so I was stuck playing video games on an Apple, on an Apple machine, right on Apple 2. And then now, I mean it actually turned out to be, to be awesome. Like I was like, I, how can this happen? Like everybody was playing Mario Super Mario, like all those like Donkey Kong. And I'm stuck with this green screen and I have to type to get into a game and it doesn't play on, on the tv. But of course in hindsight that was the, that was the push, the nudge that forced me to go through. I go through a lot of trouble in order to play games and many of the trouble was end up being forced, um, me to like. Well I wouldn't say force me. Like allow me to get into programming. And I fell in love, um, um, when I, when I was in high school. Uh, programming and computing is already my identity at that time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Which is obviously much earlier. I mean nowadays it's like you always hear it as like kids are already learning about coding. But like back then as you're saying, it's a different complete beast even for Me like my first actual like coding happened in university. So like for a lot of people think I do so stuff on drinking nowadays like nearly every single day. But like everybody gets at a different point but even you during high school at that time is already an outlier with all that kind of stuff. So that's great. Before I move on from like the childhood in Hong Kong I got some quick fire questions because like I'm absolutely geeking out about this. But the one that I always love hearing is nowadays for the people who know a little bit about Hong Kong is there's this one area that does everything computer near Sumter Po Golden Computer Arcade. That's where all the techie stuff if you're a good Hong Kong, that's where it is. But my quick fire question to you was like was it already like that back then? Was it already that area that like dominated that corner over there?

Speaker B: Oh my God. Like so my, my um. So my parents, like any Asian parents wants their, their kids to learn musical instrument, right? So I, I was learning piano. So my piano lesson was Saturday at 4pm I will tell my mom I'm going on my piano lesson. I'll leave home at 10am and the reason is I go to that computer arcade and I'll just go around circle from 11 o' clock is when most of these shops start to open up and I'll just, just go, go walk around until 4 o' clock in the afternoon every Saturday. And that's basically where I spent a lot of my teenage years um, and learned a lot talk to shop. Um, and, and um. Yeah so that, that place, it's already around at, at in, in late 80s, um. Yeah even early 90s. Um it's, it was. I, I would even say is um is more booming back then than now um because it went through many era. Right. So you, you think about it, there was um, when I was growing up is right. Um PC, um the um 836ish, um Apple era, Mac era. And then when you get to the mobile era that plays turn more into selling laptops, uh, PlayStation games and these new other things right? So it's still great right? So nowadays I still like when I visit I still go there. Um. Yeah but exactly it, it was already like that for, yeah that means for decades it's been um, all of us where we, I mean I, I tell people like if you shop there you, you, you would have met me when I was in, when I was like 12 years old, 13 years old because I'm, I Was always there on every Saturday.

Speaker A: That's incredible. I. I'm so glad I got to ask this question from the point of view of somebody who actually, like, you know, lived this, that experience. Right. I can think of that. It's still available, by the way. Golden, uh, what is it? Golden Computer Arcade center in Hong Kong. Definitely go check it out. It's definitely available. I, um, get. I'm very fortunate. I get to go visit it once in a while as well. So that peace in time obviously influenced you, but maybe many, many other people out there, um, before we jump into the section where. How you got to America, that's always the fun part to all this is maybe the people around you already mentioned that, like, you already had a good influence in your neighbor, for example, somebody who's like, maybe in the same situation and also know how to be curious about a tool. I think that's the important part, is being curious about it. But would you say that was kind of like the uncommon path? What I mean by that is that, like, for example, when I grew up, like, once one person has a computer, then nearly 50%, 60%, 70% of people would have computers and ipods and everything. So it kind of just like I took it for granted that my interest in using a computer kind of is the same as everybody. But your, like, proportions must have been completely different. Out of 100 kids around there, you and your neighbor, probably the 2% of like, everybody who had. Is that correct?

Speaker B: Right, Right. So I, I, uh. Um, I got my first computer when I was in my fifth grade. Um, it's not until, I would say, not until high school era, um, ninth grade, um, that other kids in my grade start to have PCs. Um, so I was the only one, like, even having a PC at home for two, three, four years. So it's actually not the norm. Actually, even at, like, um, when you get to, um, high school, like the equivalent of 11th grade, 12th grade, um, I was among the very, very few who were typing our reports on computer. There were other kids who were typing reports on, um, an electronic typewriter. But very few, very few had computer to do the reports on. Now we didn't have AI Even publishing, what was called publishing was a new thing. Um, so a computer at the time was basically just a glorified typewriter. But I had a computer, had two printers. Yeah. So that was. That was very, very different. I mean, and because of that, I became the computer person. Right. So anybody, um, anybody who needs computer needs. They want to print something. I'm the one I mean, I, um, so that, yeah, so that set up my identity and I love it. Um, yeah, so that's the environment very, very different.

Speaker A: I, I just love picturing all this happening, uh, in that very, very fast paced setting already. Because if people don't know about Hong Kong, it's very fast paced, if anything. So of course on top of that, that's amazing. So thanks for sharing so many of it. Um, I can spend hours and years talking about Hong Kong, the environment over there, but the story kind of brings you to the point where like we, we get a picture of like how you grew up. And I keep it, I keep on saying it's so fascinating. But eventually with your interest, with your passion, with your drive, you kind of get to the point where it's like, hey, America, that's a possibility. That's definitely something that happens. And you eventually do manage to get into University of Maryland, if I got that correctly, which is, is it Go Terps. If I got that correctly.

Speaker B: Go Terps.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Um, but maybe from your point of view, when you got there, that's always what I, uh, I can't imagine. Right. It's from the, I don't know, everybody agrees with this, but it's from the little leagues to the major leagues, right? This is the part where it's like, sure, you were the 2% of whatever it is, but once you get into a university setting for many people, even for myself most of the time high school, like your sixth form, you don't really get this like specialized thing. But when you get to the major league, everybody has had this interest. You're not the only person anymore that had exposure to that. So maybe from your perspective of when you got into university in a foreign land, I don't know if you've ever been to America even before that.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: What did that look like in a sense of did it meet your expectation? Did it not meet your expectation of studying in America? What did that look like?

Speaker B: It's so, so it, it was very, very odd. Right. So I, uh, at the flight that I took, uh, from Hong Kong to the US was actually only the second time that I ever, um, been on an airplane. Right. So the second, first time was, was, was a vacation. And then the second time I'm like away from my family for a long time. Um, so did that, um, what is that? Like, did it match my expectation? Um, um, I can tell you, like they're, they're huge, extreme amount of cultural shock. Um, and I always tell this story I like week two I call mom and say, hey, mom, do you like, do you realize McDonald's here? It's a house. Like, it's a standalone building. Like, isn't that crazy? Like, I call home. And, and that like, encapsulates a lot of the cultural shock, um, because things are just so dramatically different. Things, um, are a lot bigger, a lot more room, a, uh, lot more people. Uh, UMD where I went to was a huge school. Right. I mean, it, it's literally a, A separate town. Right. College park, it's a town on its own. A lot of people. Um, so did it match my. Oh, absolutely. Right. So I learned so much. I mean, step foot into the computer lab with all like, Mac, PC, next computer, sun, um, terminals. I was like in Candyland. Right? So another story I usually tell is like when I went into school, um, is when the punch card machine, um, is retired. So I was like the last, last few kids who got to see how a punch card machine was like, how, how did it operate? Right. So I remember that the people there was like, well, come on. Like, this is like the last time. It will be gone next week. Kind of like so when it was, uh, decommissioned. So, um, yeah, expectation wise. There's another thing I want to point out is the, the education environment, and it's very different from where I grew up in, in Asia versus in the US or in North America. And it is a lot more relaxed. Um, now that could, that could be because of cultural differences or that's just what it, it's like in, um, in universities. Right. Versus high school. And I think even here, if you went to high school here and go to college, there's a, there's a difference in how they, uh, what was expected of you in university. In colleges, you're expected to study on your own. Nobody will push you. If you want to go play video game all day long, go smoke all day long, nobody cares. And, um, amazingly, that fits my personality a lot more. I hate to be pushed and, but like Hong Kong, Asia is all about pushing, right? About forcing, um, you to do things. That was correct. And I'm doing air quotes here, right? Um, and came. Came in here very quickly. I got. I, I felt that, hey, oh my God, like, nobody pushes me. Nobody yells at me. I can. I, uh, Nobody cares if I get A's or B's or C's or even go to class at all. Like, this is crazy. Very, very quickly, within the first month or two, I was like, oh my goodness. And then, and then it clicks to me like I, I work harder, much, much harder. I was like, must be over 10 times harder than I was in, in uh, when I was in Hong Kong. So in Hong Kong, I was like a mediocre. I was not bad, but like not, not the straight eights. Um, but once I was not forced, I end up working much harder. Um, so to answer your question, the environment that I got thrown into now, I didn't go to mit, right? So I don't know what that looks like, but I would imagine this is like kind of um, as MIT as I could get into, um, which is the RAM lab of umd. If there's a umd, uh, uh, alum in the audience, you know, know what I'm talking about. It's in the basement of a garage and it's full of probably hundreds of computers. I literally live there, um, in the RAM lab and there's no sunlight, so it's like a casino where you don't know what time that was. Um, and you wake up sometimes like, oh my God, it's daylight. Like it's like daytime already. I went in there at like 8pm and now is already like 8am so something like that, right? So, um, yeah, blew my mind and it was a lot of fun and I start um, studying a lot more seriously.

Speaker A: This whole time I was just grinning from like ear to ear in terms of like, just hearing all these different like core memories of like, oh, the moment that you land in America, everything's so huge. It's obviously like a culture shock. Some people take it for granted that they've grow, grow up in an environment that had so much space everywhere. But then when you're saying like it's night and day, that's one way to look at it. And the fact that you also made the most out of your experience studying at umd. Of course some people, as you were saying, it's a double edged knife, right where hey, I got all the time in the world, I could do whatever I want. Some people will literally just not do anything. But then as we were seeing, depending on people's how they grew up, their character and everything, like that might influence me. Like, oh, I got so much time to organize myself and do what I could do best moving forward. So I'm so glad to hear that experience of being able to study because you ended up doing your bsc, which is your bachelor's and your graduate degree at University of Maryland as well, uh, computer science and then software engineer, if I got that correctly. Um, maybe for the people that are sort of Interested in this is I did comp sci McGill, um, which is the major was in software general. I only did BSE at the end of the day. Um, but a very quick crash course on computer science in. When did I do that? In the 2010s or something around there is you do you go in Java is always the first language that you do and then you kind of add a little bit of C C so that you learn a little bit about the, the memory allocations and the garbage cleaning and all that. And then eventually the classes kind of builds up into uh, OSS databases. Uh, you throw in a little bit of graduate courses. Computer vision, I remember that I did a lot. And then eventually that's your bsc and that's to graduate with it. Was that similar maybe as a quick crash course of like, was it very similar foundation blocks of like programming languages and they build into some of like more operation structural stuff and then after what did that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's amazingly similar, which is scary. Um, so the first course, right, so like Computer Science 101 and 102 was in C. Java was not there yet. Um, and um, Java was there in like early 90s. So um, when we graduate that is when Java start to became a thing. Um, so yeah, it was very similar. Um, you learn programming languages. So we started in C and then there was Logic, um, there was then compiler, you got to learn. Um, there was one class I love which is called, uh, Computer Languages. You got thrown into. In one semester you got to learn four languages including Lisp. Um, I don't know if your listener understand that. That was like a functional programming language, um, and four of these language languages that you've never heard of. And then in one semester you're expected to learn it and then apply it. And that is the classic learn to learn mentality, right? Now again, nowadays, uh, learning on your own, it's like a normal thing when you're in elementary school. In high school you go learn your own thing, right? Back then learning on your own is not a thing. Like there's no YouTube, remember there was no YouTube, there was no Internet, okay. The only way you gain knowledge is by reading and going to class. So learning to learn wasn't a thing. So that class I remember vividly because it was so hard. Um, and like I think people were saying, like after Computer and Science 101 and 102, half the class dropped. And after logic, like algorithm, right, it's logic, um, another half dropped and then after programming languages another half dropped. Right. So I don't know if it's real or not, but the class are indeed smaller. Um, but I uh, love that class the most. So in general it's still very similar. You learn the languages, you learn the basic algorithm, um, um, um. And then it, yeah like you said you, it went into compiler, uh, how computer works, memory database. So one of my um, graduate, I mean uh, graduation, um, class was, was relational database and the system design. And then in um, grad school is mostly, uh, mostly in systems.

Speaker A: I mean even like there is a bit of contrast. But then you're saying like the core part of it is very, very similar. I. It's been a while on the show, anybody has mentioned Lisp. It's been a while when people, I mean we talk about like maybe OCaml, you know, like Scheme and like Fortran, like those kind of pop up and I'm sure you've definitely got it. Yeah, you know what's funny is even like when I was in university, those do pop up here and there, somebody had to tell us about OCaml and I was like, tell me more, I'll listen about your currying or whatever to tell about us. I'm been totally in for it. But and also as you guys might not tell the people listening is that uh, this show at the moment is currently ruined by two software engineers. This is, this is usually what happens, like completely ruined.

Speaker B: Right, so we can dive into the debate on VI and Emacs.

Speaker A: Exactly. Once you give us a little, little bit of space, like we're not going anywhere. But maybe the last story I could talk about before we jump into like more the entrepreneur part because obviously like there's so much to cover on that one, is when you did mention the punch cards, you were the last in quotation mark generation or like you know, the audience of your ship to it. For the people who think about why bugs are called bugs. I don't know if this is true or not, you might correct me, but like punch cards, why it's relevant is because think about it, you have a punch card and usually how programs work, if I got that correctly, I'm. I obviously didn't do it myself, but it's a card, you make holes in them and then you fit into a machine and then the machine reads like the blank spaces, but then like the filled in spaces are like ones and zeros. So that's why the punch card makes sense. If there are bugs that accidentally end up on the punch card and either creates a mark or something that usually Alters the actual code, which means it alters a program, which means that it might not function because of an actual, actual physical bug. That's the story I've heard. Like, that's basically what the bugs and punch card kind of came together at some point, right?

Speaker B: Well, that's the same story I heard. I don't know if that's true or not, but I can imagine. Right. So, uh, uh, I mean, the reason that story, um, um, is spread is because it makes sense. Um, the punch card, I mean, you can still, like, if you go to, if you go to Computer Science Museum in, in California, um, in, in San, uh, Francisco, uh, you can still see the punch card, um, or, or the tape. Actually, the punch tape. It's called punch card, but it's actually a tape because it, I mean, a card is so small. Um, yeah, but it's just ones and zeros, right? So if you imagine whatever instruction you want to load into computer eventually becomes ones and zeros, and the tape has four holes, right? So like it can record four bits. The card is a little bit wider, bigger. I forgot. Don't quiz me on how big each card is. Um, and, um. But yeah, it's, it's, it's how you load. Right? So from that, from punch card, it then evolved into cassette tape, which I mentioned. That's when I start learning. Um, but the idea is the same like you low ones and zeros. Um, yeah. So, uh, that. The original bugs. That's the same story. I've never seen it. I've never seen, like I, I was imagining a bug will eat a hole.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker B: You have a hole that was created by a bug, right? Um, yeah, but I, I cannot confirm, um, that like, that's, that's real or not. But I heard the same story.

Speaker A: Oh, this is great. I mean, who, who, who said that this show was not educational at the

Speaker B: end of the day, right? If you count that as educational.

Speaker A: Um, well, the, the, the good part is that like, eventually everybody gets into this scenario where it's like o. University ends at some point, right? It's, it's, it's, uh, it's happy. It's sad at the same time. But then now this is kind of where like, not only from high school to university, you get a bit of more control on what you get to do. But then once you're past university, this is like, you got to figure out life now. Uh, a lot of people go through it today. A lot of people go through 10 years ago, 20, 30 years ago, 50 years ago people go through that. So maybe your journey in terms of we're bridging the gap between when you finish your university and how zero on software got started. But like did you immediately jump into a job? Like is it a very traditional thing where you graduate, then you do a full time job and then like you know, everything's happy or what did that look like? That uh, transition from the life of university into the life of real world.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I did work right? So I didn't just, just became who I am today. Right. So like um, actually one year prior to graduation, three of us um, actually start like what's was like well let's, let's, let's go build a company, let's change the world. Let's get, get rich in, in a year, maybe a year and a half. Right? So um, so at year three three of us got a contract. One of my friend um, uh, was very outgoing, um, and his name is Andrew, uh, if you're listening, um, and um, he got a contract. I, I think he was just talking to people and got a contract from a health club and then they want their system um, redone. So we three college kids was like well yeah, of course we can do that. We can program visual uh c. We can make your health club um, update your system. So we did that and that's when I like official story if you will is the first time I started uh, my own company with to other friends. Um now so that eventually became nothing after we delivered that um, and we didn't get another contract after that and then we, we went our separate ways. Everybody graduated and I did work. Um, so this is when I, when I say like people ask about regrets. This is the first um, I'll say regret, um, and I'll call it that. So looking back, um, I graduate pretty well in school and um, so um, I get offered right? So I mean it's just normal. Like you start to go into your third year, fourth year, people come to school. I mean a lot of companies come to school to interview us and I end up getting many offers. Um, and um, looking back I should have ignored all of the offers and just jumped to Silicon Valley. So we have friends who got into Microsoft. I didn't get into Microsoft. So at the time I should have just worried about nothing. I mean this is the concept that I tell young people now that jump to the biggest pond you could, while you can drown while, while, while it's okay to drown. Um, so just jump to the biggest pond and then um, at the time like today, I still would say, well, um, which pond would you jump to? Maybe, maybe still Silicon Valley, maybe Dubai. Um, I've heard Dubai has great opportunity. But while you are like 19, 20, maybe 22, right before 25, just jump, go do crazy things, it doesn't matter, right? So at the time now, of course I didn't know, right? So I was like, well, getting a job is super important and I have jobs. A lot of my friends don't have jobs. So I was so lucky. So I start, I mean, I end, um, up, um, working for the company. Um, the founder who gave me scholarship at the time, so he founded his own company. So I'm like basically love that, love his story, follow his footsteps. Um, he founded a scientific oriented company. Um, he was a scientist, more, more traditional, real scientist, not like us, uh, fake computer scientist.

Speaker A: Um, because he said it, I did it, he said it, right?

Speaker B: Because we never use test tubes, right? So you have to have lab coat and test tube to be a real scientist. So again, so, so, um, this, um, person who gave me scholarship founded a scientific company and I ended up working for them doing some um, scientific programming. Um, and I felt extremely fortunate at the time. Um, and I still should be, right? So like this opportunity was great. I learned a lot. But looking back, I should have just jumped to Silicon Valley and um, maybe I end up bankrupting. Um, uh, but I would learn so much very similar to jumping over to the US for college. Um, because when you change environment a lot of the transferable, you have a better chance of understanding your strength and then applying yourself when you put yourself in an unknown environment. So, um, I encourage anybody if you're, if you're hearing this, if you're young, right? And actually even if you're not young, which maybe we'll get into later, I'm not young anymore, but I still am taking chances, um, take the biggest chance you can stomach. I know it's, it's scary, but, um, yeah, so looking back, I, I would, I would jump, um, to Silicon Valley, but I did start working for the scientific company. So, um, I look back and I think I had, I worked for 10 years, uh, like have a full time job for 10 years. So.

Speaker A: And you also said it very elegantly at that point where it's like jump to the biggest pawn. You know, people use different words of like take the leap of faith and other people, like just jump into a deep end and just figure it out kind of thing. But yeah, I kind of, I kind of agree of this, like Northern Star about this thing where it's like life just keeps on going and responsibilities and dependencies and everything that kind of kind of like matters kind of grows over the years. So like the earlier you kind of jump into these different scenarios, the less dependencies you have on other things then yeah, you can probably explore a little bit on that. But maybe one of the cool thing that um, I was hearing you say about um, and obviously this is all brutal honesty. I feel like since the beginning of this episode everything was just brutal honesty on that is that maybe the acknowledging part of like if somebody offers you this chance to start a project with friends that you know from like a random contract that somebody was talking about your attitude of saying yes and being like why not? A lot of people would not always have that as a default option, but people do get presented this chance to do it. So I think like what I was trying to figure out when you were seeing all that story is that like I look at my day to day nowadays is that like, oh, these opportunities do come up. Am I the person to like be to accepting all that and the encouragement from your story story of saying like it could work out, it could not work out. But the moment you say yes is really what gives you the chance to actually, you know, try to do something. It could be big, it'd be not big. But we're gonna get into uh, the next story of the Xerion software, how you took that chance as well and then how that turned out. But I think even just what you're describing has so many cool parts to it. So that's what I was thinking, a lot of it. But then when we were talking about like working full time and then also trying this like building a project or even a company on the side, a lot of people think about it, uh, especially nowadays. But even back then I'm sure there was a lot of encouragement so for kind of somebody to look at it from your perspective at that time working full time and then this like uh, idea of being like when I was saying brutal honesty but like I just want to work for myself and trust me, I probably say that just as often as I can about ah, eating day to day kind of thing. How did that become a reality is what a lot of people want to hear about.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: So a lot of us, we work full time kind of thing. Sometimes you hear the story where it's like drop everything, give up everything, like we'll fund you maybe like a year at most and like you'll figure that part out. But how did your story come about? Was did somebody reach out to you or was it just your own drive? And then you found a way to partially increase more and more time into Xerion software. So how did that happen? And around when did that start?

Speaker B: Yeah, so um, nobody pushed me. It wasn't like my friend who wants to start a company pull me. It's not that I've always been crazy, right? I've always been um, felt lucky that that was like a Google thing but I always felt I was lucky. Um, so there was another chapter in between um, after I graduate work full time and I think one of the key thing is that um, after this scientific company that I was talking about I start to um, explore what I really want to do. Right? So at the time actually um, in early 2000s that's in the dot com boom, I kind of missed the ad because of um, immigration. So um, like for a side story which we won't go into detail but um, because there was the last couple years that I need to like stay in the same job in order to go through my immigration process. So um, I didn't, I didn't jump. But um, as soon as I was able to uh start it's, it's, it's active peak time. So like um, I, and I hear all my friends like got uh great jobs like like hundreds of thousands of dollars of signing uh bonus join this like dot com this, dot com that. Um but at the, at the tail end of that I started a training school. You mentioned Perry, you, you mentioned um that you learned Java. Ah, uh, in college I was among the first who were, who uh was certified and was um, was able to teach on Java certification. So I started Java training school here in D.C. and then uh start teaching people uh certified Java programming, Java web development, Java architect, um and that was a side job at the time I was working for startup during the day and then at night I would teach. So that was another um chapter in my life where I, I, I love teaching, I love education and then um, I start teaching. So that story was that. Oh yeah. So it reminded me right? So how I got into that it's because I know of, I know Java, uh and people know that I know Java. So m, I got, I got, I got a part time gig for teaching Java at a school right? At some school and I learned that oh my God there's so much money in here. Like people just, people just line up to, to learn Java. Uh and because at the time like remember this is um, this is 992000 time where it was at the peak of dot com boom and you can get a job like you can get a six figure job right after boot camp. I mean I think like the time is almost coming back to that. I mean maybe pre pandemic was kind of like that. Um, so at the time you go through a, like a, like a six week, sometimes eight week boot camp and now you can get a six figure jobs. So a lot of people join. So I was like oh my God, there's so much money. So like why am I working for you? Um, so I start my own um, training school. Just me. Just I rented a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny classroom and then I uh, and then I start there. Right. So to answer your question, right, so like it always is the desire to uh, to work for myself to like I mean maybe that's, that's, that's cynical is like the thought of why am I making money for you? Right Kind of thing. Um, um. So that was the beginning. So that, that training school, um, I started that, it went for a few years. It was actually ah, pretty good until dot com. Um, um, the bubble burst and I didn't know, right. So I was so focused on working during the day and teaching at night. At the peak time I was teaching seven days a week and Monday through Friday I taught three, three hours from 6pm to 9pm and then on Saturday and Sunday I taught nine hours on each weekend. Each weekend, days, morning, afternoon and night. Three hour chunk and it will all be packed. I mean uh, like I was like oh my God, I'm making so much money. But I was working like crazy like full time during the day every night and I wasn't able to catch up in sleep at all. Like anything that would happen like if I, if I get a little bit tired, I, it will be this downward spiral. But so health wise I was, it was bad at that time. Um, but I felt lucky that I was like being able to do this and then the, the bigger environment, right. So like people are uh, starting to not get jobs after boot camp, right. And, and at the time the funny thing is I was thinking wait, how, how come um, enrollment starts to drop? And I, and I wasn't thinking, it's, it's outer bigger inference. I was thinking well I'm, I must be me. I wasn't working hard enough. I didn't advertise enough, I didn't do whatever enough. So I do more, I start spending more on Google Ad, I start taking out full page ad now not, not on, not on Washington Post, but on the local paper, full page ads. Still a lot of money to me, um, on advertising this trending school. Um, and I start putting more and more energy into doing more, um, getting it bigger, hiring more people, like doing more without realizing, hey, it may not be, you see, um, um, until it's too late, right? So I, and then I end up um, packing up and, and closing that chapter, um, almost almost bankrupting. So that, that story was, was that um, I pack up overnight, right? So that at some point I realized oh my God, like money is not matching, right? Although money coming in, but a lot going out and start losing money without realizing how much of a hole I'm digging, keep taking bigger and um, and maybe luckily I woke up and say, oh my God, I have to cut this. Um, so I pack up everything overnight and then move um, all the computers away from, from these, from the school. And the next morning I went back to the, to the location. I talked to the landlord and said hey, I, I, I've already packed up. I, um, please release, um, release my lease because I signed, I think like a three year, maybe a five year lease. Please release me because otherwise I'll have to bankrupt, I'll have to declare bankruptcy, um, and you get nothing either way. So please be nice. Um, so I don't have to go through bankruptcy. Um, and he did release me, um, if he did not, I'll have to file for bankruptcy. I still lost a lot of money, still have to pay back a ton of credit card. But that was that chapter. And um, what I want to make sure I put in, I say this is at that time after that episode, I actually told myself, hey, I may not be cut out for the business world. I'm not good at uh, running finances, doing this. And that's okay, let's just go back to work. That's okay. I told myself that and I accepted that. So like after that I actually went back to work, um, m for one more year. And uh, one year later I was like, hm, let's try again. Let's forget everything that you told yourself a year ago.

Speaker A: You've learned so much from that, just from hearing you talk about it. Like, who cares if you didn't jump to the biggest part of the world, like having that day to day. I mean like you realize that you were running yourself to the ground at that point. And then like your solution was to put even more, more effort on top of all the effort doing it. And then eventually like the keyword here Is like the macro environments, right? Like stuff that are slightly out of your control kind of affects what happened. But there's not a single thing that tells me that you regretted that. Uh, there's not a single thing about whether you're talking about nearly bankrupting and even talking about being brutally honest with your landlord to be like, look, no matter what, it's not going to end up well, like that getting money. That lesson is incredible. So I'm so glad you just shared that because a lot of people think about like, oh no, there's no way out, there's nothing about this. But no, like life just goes on. And then, um, you acknowledged what happened. You gave full time, full time job another shot and then eventually you founded Zerion. So actually before I want to get into that, this is maybe a stupid question, I get the opportunity to ask this, but as a certified Java, uh, uh, trainer for many years during that time and having seen so much of it, do you also hate Eclipse?

Speaker B: I absolutely do. It is so heavyweight. Like there was a period of time that you cannot escape eclipse because like the uh, somehow the gravity just all pointed. I mean in the early days, right? You have many, many ides. And then Eclipse came about. It was, it was, it was the new kid in the block. I have absolutely no idea how it became the giant that it did, but it did, it was the giant and it eventually became the only thing. Um, and this is before the revolution of just. Well, there was a few years that um, after that people would just like, just like heck. I just, I'm just using a text editor. I just didn't care about IDE anymore more. But yeah, to answer your question, I absolutely don't like how heavy, how heavy, how bolded it is.

Speaker A: That's um, that's one of the facts of life. That's one of the truths of life that um, I, I know everybody who's used Eclipse. Nobody has ever liked it. So um, maybe this is. I know it's a conspiracy. I'll take 30 seconds on this because like I've said this a couple times but Java owned by Oracle or did it? Was it owned by Sun's company? Anyways, at some point maybe Sun's microsystem also owned it. But what I do believe is that they're so present in schools is because nobody would admit this, but I'm sure Oracle is paying whether the university directly or whether some third party to like force in quotation marks everybody to learn Java. Uh, and also if I could apply the same logic, I'M sure they were a role in part of making Eclipse like so locked down that everybody had to do Eclipse. Everybody had to Java. And I don't have any proof, like nobody sued me on this or whatever, but over the years this conspiracy thing is that I'm telling you, Oracle had definitely a piece of that maniacal, um, plan of getting everybody to do Java at university, everybody to do Eclipse. I'm sure they have responsibility in there.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, I'll tell you this. I am in Java before Oracle took over and I basically left ecosystem when, when Oracle bought, um, when Oracle bought Sun. Right? So, um, now I would say prior to that, prior to Oracle owning everything like MySQL Java and whatnot, um, they were great.

Speaker A: We could leave it at that. We could definitely leave it at that.

Speaker B: Just stop at that.

Speaker A: Oh my goodness. But I mean, I don't even know where the rest of this conversation is going to go because you've had so much good tips and so many good stories about everything, right? Coming to America, learning, um, the new landscape, but also like giving yourself a chance to start things and to like go through the ringer basically and having like, you know, living the highs and the lows of it. So then after that, um, you told yourself about a year ago that you were not gonna do this to yourself again. You were not gonna go through this whole process of like trying to start something and being like, oh, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship or like business is not for me at the end of the day, it's something that was in the back of your mind but as we know, like, that did not stop you. That, that is not the end game. That was not the truth of all that. So, um, about a year later, after doing the full time role and everything, how did that happen into the, uh, you know, the story of Zerion?

Speaker B: Well, so, so again I, I talked about this in, in the beginning. Uh, it was not romantic, it was not an epiphany, none of those. It was just like one year into this job. The job was great, uh, the boss was great, the company was great. Um, I was managing about 20 developers at the time. Two separate teams. Um, it was good. Life was actually quite good. Good money. I got m married, my first son was born. Like, it was great. I mean I was living the American dream. I bought a house. Everything is like slowly coming into pieces and I was like, oh my God, like, um, I still want to work for myself. Um, so, so I start. Actually the funny thing was it was very similar, um, where I start to look for jobs I thought like this is so boring now. Um, I start to just, just start to listen. I'm, I wasn't planning to leave the company, but I have my ears open and answering calls. Um, and back then, and this is like 2003, four maybe three, four, five, I don't exactly know. But it's during that era where um, as a developer you got job offers all the time. Um, you got offered to jump to contracts. So I start listening to those contracts and then ending up knowing this, um, that hey, if I like how does uh, staffing business work? Um, and these contractors, so what happened is when they place you, you get paid a certain hourly rate, let's say 20 bucks for example, the agency will get 10 bucks sometimes, 20 bucks sometimes. And I learned that uh, after talking to many, many agencies and, and who wants to recruit me and was like, hm, seems like a lot of money here. Maybe I should just become an agency. So, so that's, that's what my thought process was. So I start, I, I, I um, accepting contract, leaving the full time job and then, and then got this contract, got this agency and, and start learning how this thing work. And so the beginning of Zerion Software was a staffing agency. Um, and I told my agent at the time that hey, if you got new requirements like you don't have, you just, just, just send them to me. I can fill those for you. I'll take $2. Um, whatever you pay me, you pay me 20, you pay me the same amount. I'll just take $2 and I'll pay the next guy $2 less. How's that? And then, and then the guy's like okay, well we'll see. And then I end up uh, out recruiting him. Um, um, or, or he was lazy. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. I mean uh, like I was like whatever, whatever requirement you get, just, just, just throw it through me. I know people. I didn't. But I, I know people. And then I can recruit, right? So um, learning that I end up, um, so in the next few years I end up um, we. I say we because it's now a team. We ended up in Fannie Mae and, and there was a period of time that Fannie Mae, um, I think maybe uh, Freddie Mac too in the US they were hiring so many contractors. It's crazy. Like probably uh, 10, 20, 50 contractors on orientation daily. It's just mind boggling amount of contractors they hire. So they need a lot of agencies. And I ended up when I first got into that Fannie Mae Contract, we were maybe three levels down. And what that means is Fannie Mae will pay an agency, that agency will find another agency, that agency will find another agency, and that agency will find the people, right? So like, if Fannie mae is paying 100 bucks, then the worker, us will end up getting whatever, 10 bucks. The uh, $90 was eaten by the agencies, right? Layer by layer, right? So when we first get into that, uh, Fannie Mae contract, we were maybe third layer, fourth layer down. Um, in the next few years, I systematically tear down this thing and we became the prime contractor. Um, and if you want to get into that story, maybe like, like we have to, um. Yeah, I, I don't remember everything, but it was, it was, it was a few years of like a lot of politics, uh, understanding how that works, relationship. And uh, eventually I stopped doing that mainly because I found myself, oh my God, like we're, we're like now prime contractor. We basically took away all the layers. Um, and of course ending up making a lot more money. Um, but then I look at myself. Like my time was, um, at the time I was running a team of maybe 15 people. All of them work for me, right? They make money for me. Um, every hour they work, I make money. I mean, this is crazy. It's, it's not right. It's like is. It should not be ethically correct to do, to have this kind of business. But there it was and I found myself. I was technically a system architect, project manager. So every day, eight hours a day, I'll spend about half an hour doing real software project work. And 7 and a half hour will be. Politics will be like, I need to know which manager will get a promotion, which manager is friend with, which manager who has a hand in it, because you need IT support for running any project. Um, and I need to know who to have lunch with, who to have dinner with, who to friend with. And I hated life. So that is when I say, well, I, I don't want this life, right? So I could. At the time I was already like, um. People was like, oh my God, like, how, how did you, how were you able to do this in, in like two, three years? We were here for like 10 plus year. We're still two layers down. Um, and I was like, but I didn't want this work. I didn't want to, I didn't want that to be my identity. I didn't want that to be the rest of my life. So that is when I said to the team and myself, like, we have to start doing Products we cannot just be in staffing agency. And that's when the next chapter starts.

Speaker A: Yeah, the word you're screaming is pivot. Basically understanding that like, and even like till today people use the word agency and like some people already like have a, have a bad connotation behind it. And you were describing a bit of the inner works where it's like yeah it's like agency fighting other agencies trying to like get to the top of um, like being on the first row and all that. And the fact that you're able to really just see it uh, from the inside out and even just like in quotation marks winning a little bit in there. Um, that is actually so, so, so cool to hear. I'm not saying it's a good system, I'm saying it's a good environment. I was like it's a good like place to be working. But um, I think you sharing so much of how that works is so, so, so informational. At the end of the day when we talk about these pivots then this is where we're like we, you already mentioned about iPhone builder and uh, obviously I'm not going to spend like zero on what is it, 20 plus years now. 21, 20, 23. Like I know you're smiling after all that so um, I'm mostly not going to talk about every single year that's happened over there, there. But even just recapping that for the people who are familiar with Xeron software, it's also available online. Go check it out. Um, they, one of the products that they do is the iPhone builder. Basically if you think about whether it's like a large inventory of people trying to collect data manually with like not only just manually but one of the use case for example you use your mobile, it could be also offline. Those are all the different ways of doing it. But then there's also other cool practical use cases even in school environments and hospital environments that is available to do it. So that's really one of the, one of the core products of Xeron software. And I'm, I definitely know, I don't want to say I definitely know but you had a role to play in all of this to getting it together, to getting, you know, getting, getting from. Hey, you have a bunch of people who can help you out to just turn off it. Let's pump out products to begin with. So maybe the question that I'm trying to ask over here is that we talk about evolution of uh, a company, evolution of a product and evolution of like these Transition phase phases. So maybe from you, like people are scared of transitions. I'm just seeing this as a general platitude. In general, what was your framework or reasoning when you had to do a transition? So for example, going from a staff agency to, to building products, like did you already have a playbook? Did you have a guidebook? Did you do frameworks or anything?

Speaker B: Um, the guidance is like you gotta hate current enough to jump. Right? So I, I knew at the time I don't want to just, I don't want, I, I love to solve problems, right. I want to solve pro. I don't want to do, I want to do software stuff. Right. So I don't want my life to be like learning golf just to play with certain VPs in, in order to get the next contract. I just don't like that. Right, right. So, um, if your question is right, um, how do you pivot? Um, how do you jump to the next big thing? Um, I say open, be open minded, um, and know what you don't want. And I think that's more important. I know the world always talk about, I mean it's easy cliche to say, well, no, trying to figure what you do on what you want is hard. I mean, I don't know, like, I just want like people say I want more money, I want to do less. Right? Well, yeah, but in how, like there's no simple way of telling you what this is. This is going to work. It's not, I tell people like by default it's not going to work. That's why you have to work hard, right. If it's going to work, it would have already worked already. Right. So by default it's not going to work and you have to change it. But the question is, can you say you enjoy current situation if you are, uh, whatever, right. Let's say you're, you're a teacher at a high school. You love that. Well then, then don't complain and be happy. If you complain, do something about it. Right? So I always say if you complain, just do something about anything. Like do something at night on Saturdays. That's okay. I'm all for people taking small risks. You don't have to take big risks. Right. So going back to what I was like doing staffing and I know that we want to do products, um, and we went through many iterations. I still remember we were in Fannie Mae, right? So we did accounting, uh, software for Fannie Mae. And I was like, oh my God, like we're going to change accounting we're so going to change the entire how people account for numbers, right? And I still, I remember I argue with CPAs, um, crazy, crazy arrogant. Um, and I went to. So at the time I created, uh, we created a couple of these products, accounting related products. And I went to the CFO conference full of CFOs and I start asking people like, oh, how do you do this? How do you solve this problem? And everybody look at me like, what are you talking about? And so it turns out the problems that we learn within Fannie Mae only applicable to a giant like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So they're in the world. There are two customers, one is Fannie Mae, one is Fattimac. And I was like, there's no, like no one outside of this little world understand or have these problems. Now. I didn't know, right? Because to my world, my world is that my entire accounting world. So I start realizing, okay, oh my God, like, nobody cares, nobody knows. So there's no market, I should just, just do something else. And um, and of course, right, so, so that's, that's when it turns into the world, turns into 2008. And then, um, and then iOS came about, um, and we start developing for the iOS. Um, and um, and, and, and another story was. So this is 2008. This is uh, in the election year. I remember I talked about doing that fall, right from fall to winter. I told like, uh, Chris at the time, my partner, that at the time, um, and I, and I said well, just, just go get any software, any mobile thing, whatever it is, doesn't matter mobile, anything will do. And then one Sunday afternoon I got an email, um, uh, forwarded from a few people and it says, uh, we need an iOS developer. Uh, that line is midnight. And that's it that night, that line is midnight tonight. And then Chris forwarded to me. I, I remember I was like on my, I forgot out what, what phone was I on? Of course not an iPhone. Um, uh, one of those that has a keyboard is, and it's also not a BlackBerry. It was a Motorola thing. And I, and I read that as, as we just came back from church, pulling into the garage and I, and I, and I saw this email that says, uh, we need the iOS developer deadline tonight. And I, and I, and I just stopped the car in the garage, respond to Chris and say, well, go say yes, right? I say go ahead and say yes, I'll take that. And then I turn around, talk, uh, to my wife and we have a very young baby at the Time and I told my wife well take care of baby, I'm not sleeping tonight. And um, that night I delivered that product or that app at 2am so I missed the deadline. Um, but, but I did deliver an app to them at 2am and that app um, was called Twitter Vote Report. Um, it is crazy because Twitter was so new at the time that um, that app, what they want, what the people uh, of that, of that, of the group wants is an app for people to report uh, the situation on the voting situation. Uh, how long is the line? Did anything interesting or bad happen? Basically a report live report that is a very simple data collection app. Uh, it has one form, three questions. How was the voting uh, uh, situation. It was like it was uh, also designed to be Twitterable. So in the app you will answer these three questions and it will send a tweet up. Um, now Twitter was extremely new at the time 2008. Um, and that app like and ended up getting some award, um, uh, some news channel pick up this vote report thing at the time. Um, um. And that launched into all these things about building forms. And there's a side story where a couple years ago I worked for another company who I built a product for them on Windows Mobile. So the two things merged and I was like well maybe I can do this kind of inspection ish product in this brand new platform. And that's when, when iPhone builder uh, was born.

Speaker A: I, I've got so much to take away from what you just said or what you just like that story even to begin with. And Also back then 2008, 2009 when the first iPhone or like the very beginning stage of it, every single app that comes out, the one that like where you could pretend you're drinking beer or something like those kind of things took off. But the cool thing that I could take away from this is when I talk about I'll throw out the word idea factory. It's not that you're the one generating ideas that you are working in an idea factory environment. Whether you're the one picking up the. Whether you told yourself I'll do it myself at 2:00am um, um, that's always like the what I like what's screaming in my head. That like it's maybe luck, it's maybe skill, but the fact that you had people feeding you ideas and you really take up the challenge to it. Nobody could decide tomorrow I want to, I want to have that environment right. You really just like we're breathing it. So I think that's one of the cool thing that I took away from that, um, and obviously, like, I'm sure that's not one example. As you were saying, you already threw out like two, three, four examples. And as you build more and more to together, I think that kind of gave you that educated guess because I keep on saying that. Like my original question in terms of like, how do you like, are convinced enough to make this transition? How do you convey this message that it's a good idea? How do you lead people and drag other people into like this movement of, hey, we can't do stuffing agency M anymore, we're going to build stuff for other people and it ends up being like that. Your educated guess of like talking to CFOs and talking about to the actual people that need these products really just to help make the decision at the end. So a lot simpler said than done. But I think your, your backing of your stories always help out with that. I can't be a tech podcast if there's not this question about like technology evolution or more like technology tools evolution. Um, I mean it's 2025, we talk about this all the time. All, all, all the time. But through Xerion software, you've seen that more than just the past two, three, four years. You've seen that through decades. So maybe this is a great opportunity to ask like tech evolution, how people build software? That's like if I had a question with tagline is tech evolution, how do people build software? So what was the major differences or the major like, I guess like chapters when you were building so much software for so many different people? You could start wherever you want, but basically it's going to lead us to today in terms of how it's being built today.

Speaker B: But so when we start, um, in 2009, iOS was new. The first thing I wanted to talk about was that we decided to jump onto using iOS at the main platform. Not because I can foresee how big iOS would become, but because I just want to play in an arena that is less competition at the time. I still remember the, uh, next year 2010, iPad came out. So, so the iPad came out. I started doing presentation on iPhone builder with the iPad. And then I had. People laughed at me. Well, not really laugh out loud, but like questioning me and say, hey, if you're building business apps, build it on BlackBerry, build it on Windows. I mean this iOS thing is just for fun like you said, um, like people make beer that, um, in the first Christmas 2008, the number top apps are farting. Apps like People build apps that will fart in different ways. It's all just play and fun and nobody was doing anything major serious in iOS. Now it's very different. Um, so, yeah, number one thing I want to talk about is, uh, we start playing in this arena. Mobile development, what's new? And that, to me, I love it because, um, when I was in school, we went through a lot of trouble learning how to maximize memory, how to build better algorithm, um, that runs faster and whatnot. And then when I get into the real world, nobody cares because the CPU will get so fast the next year. Memory will get so much next year. Who cares? If you have memory leak, it's okay, just let it leak and then next year you have more memory to leak. Who cares? So, like, I was like very unhappy about the industry because, well, that in the back of my mind, that makes, well, yeah, even if you're a lousy developer, you can get by because memory leaks is okay. Bad algorithm is okay. Why would I spend hours and days and months, like tweeting, thinking, like not sleeping over some algorithm that will run like 10 times faster? Who cares? Your CPU will get 10 times faster in 2 years or even 1 year, right? So it didn't matter now, not until mobile. When mobile came about, it all went back to the 80s. Like now you have to worry about memory, CPU power and whatnot. Now that makes us, and I would say us, like good old software engineer, computer scientist is like, oh my God. Like now you young people now you realize you have to worry about memory. You have to, um, clear your memory, you have to release. Right? Um, and so talking about development, it went through that period where, um, the entire world was already so used to nothing. Have not have to worry about these, uh, fundamentals. And then in the mobile world now they have to worry about the fundamentals. Um, and back in, now in 2025, you don't have to worry about again. Uh, anyway, so that's one thing I want to talk about. Another thing is cloud computing. Um, when we start in 2009 and 10, there were people, uh, talked about cloud was still new. When we go sell to the enterprises, they always asked to be on premise. They want their computers. Big companies still had server rooms in their offices, may not be in the same location, maybe they share. But big companies will have people like Infamy, right? Fannie Mae have server rooms. Um, um, and when we were selling iforum, we will go in saying we're cloud based and then everybody wants, um, uh, to put it on their own server. And we have to say no. Um, and so that is another period of time where cloud was not prime. And then of course next few years it become prime. Um, and that led to like, I'm not, I'm not correctly answering your question, but that led to SaaS where subscription wasn't the main thing, how people sell at the time. But we push ahead, right? We were selling subscription and that was new to people. It took actually now it sounds um, crazy, but it took us many years to finally say, okay, we will charge by users. Even I still remember, I mean people who were with us at the time, um, would argue what is a user like? Well, a user is a seed. Is it a seed? Well, nobody seed, right? In the past you will see it, right? So you have a computer that is a user. But how about mobile? How about people have iPhone and iPad? Do you count two licenses? Then people will scream, um, how about an iPhone, an ipod touch, an iPad? Maybe on a browser? How many licenses? And we debate so much now. Uh, right now it, uh, right now it becomes easier. Um, we're selling usernames and each username can be used in five devices. Now I can say it out loud, but there were so many years of argument, um, of what a user means. So I'm talking about from developing to cloud computing to selling, ah, subscription rather than licenses, right? So at the time, um, that was still a lot of our competitors and our friends are selling, um, development plus maintenance. So you will sell into an enterprise where I'll charge you whatever, $100,000 and then uh, 10k per year for maintenance, right? So you have the software, I'll uh, put it into your environment, uh, on premise, but then we go into cloud computing. So Cloud and SaaS kind of changed the industry how you think, how people think about, um, and we were extremely lucky to be in this SaaS trend because that makes it a lot easier for recurring revenue. And then, um, although it's smaller chunks of money in the beginning, but it's recurring and people um, would not have to resell um, every single year. Um, and so that's mobile, that's cloud. The way to develop, um, I think we went through PHP time in the very beginning was PHP and then Node js, okay, and then the dream of front end and back end all in JavaScript. And nowadays it's, it's kind of like that. But then you. The crazy thing, it's, it's, it's, it's all always the time is if I may like, um, uh, zoom back into Java Right. When Java came about it was to dream about uh, right ones run anywhere. Right? That was the slogan. That was never true. Uh, it was kind of true, not quite true. Um, and that drive of ah, cross platform to steward ones that will automatically run everywhere, it is still well alive today. That dream is not being realized. I don't think will ever be realized. I have this debate with people. It will never be realized. And we can debate that if you want. Um, it would never be realized. And that will go around. The industry will go separate ways. You will develop for iOS and Android separately and then something put it back together. React, native, Flutter will put it back together and then we'll go separate ways again. Um, so that is that Java um, was trying to make it common and then when Java goes into the back end, it's called Java Beans for people old enough um, is to drive to one thing, to rule them all. Back end, front end, everything, same language, same platform, same idea. You learn it once and again it's the same thing. It will just never realize. Backend and front end uh, are different, they're done by different people. So the drive to put them all together, even like today we can see it. Everything is JavaScript okay, but it's different JavaScript, you can't like a front end focused developer who can do front end. JavaScript is different. Yes you learn JavaScript but it's still different. So it doesn't quite matter. So don't worry too much about um, these things driving all together. So um, I just want to go through um, the time when we went into Node JS thinking that front end and backend will be the same and then eventually didn't. Um, and of course now we're going more into the Python world where uh, from Xerion's perspective we never fully get into uh, the Python world.

Speaker A: No, I mean the way you were breaking on the segment is so cool because like the answer encapsulated on the technology side even going from on premise service to cloud servers, like sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's really not until you point it out. So there's that aspect that you already touch and then the other aspect of like talking about which platform that you kind of commit a little bit into and then like putting you know, a little bit of trust um, in the platform, that's another way of looking at this. And then of course like you definitely shed some light on the business side. It's impossible to talk about tech without business at the end of the day because or else how would you have something running for over 20 plus years and keeping having all these different like challenges coming up. Like you do have to care about the business. So like really your answer encapsulated all that. But one is that when you were talking about like the problems is cyclical and it comes back at some point you have infinite memory and you have infinite storage. But then like the mobile apps came in and it's like, oh wait, we got to care about our bundle sizes on how we ship it to the app store or. And then at some point you're saying like, oh, but nowadays it's getting more and more fine because like mobile apps are getting like more and more like efficient and all that. I'm gonna lead ourselves into this other new challenge, this new chapter of like, we gotta think about memory and we gotta think about all these efficiency again because of this era of all these LLM models and all these AI models and all that kind of stuff. It's a new challenge. People are fighting for GPUs, we're fighting for compute memory and all that kind of stuff. So I'm assuming that has a affected also your landscape as Xerion software in terms of do you feel like you're going back to that age again to be like, how do we think about memory, how we think about using this in your day to day workflow to build stuff?

Speaker B: Well, not exactly that, but it's very similar. Right. So I Equate um, the ChatGPT as the iPhone moment, right? So I keep talking about the iPhone moment. When the iPhone came about, you can draw a line actually in the history of mobile phones, draw a solid line and everything released after the iPhone released look dramatically different. And you can too draw a line on when ChatGPT was released about two years ago. Now this line may be a little bit thicker, the transition time may be a little bit longer. But everything changed. Every software, everything that was released was influenced by this one moment, is the chatgpt moment. So that I can equate. And that's why I'm spending a lot of energy in thinking about how do we take advantage of the new era. Um, now we could give up and say, okay, well this is it. I mean, um, I'll go fishing, I'll go to the beach, right? Um, or we have to jump in. And to me this is equally exciting. And I talked about at the time, I um, was like, well, let's sell everything and jump into mobile. Well, we should do the same here, right? Um, now we have a business so we cannot Just stop it. But we need to jump in and there's a window of opportunity for whoever is listening. Um, right now if you are, if you even know what vibe coding is, um, it may sound obvious for people of your listener, but just knowing what vibe coding is, you're already on the top, um, single digit number, percentage of all developers in the world. I talk about vibe coding so much in the last couple of months. Um, and 80%, I mean, don't quote me scientifically, but roughly 80% of people I talk to basically dismiss it, right? It's like, and again, think about my circle is a lot of tech people, a lot of high, um, level software developers, entrepreneurs, CTOs, right? 80% of them dismissed the future of vibe coding. Now if you're hearing this and you too are dismissing, I won't debate you. Okay? Um, it is not good today. Just like self driving car is not good. Maybe five years ago, right? It's still not good. You can argue it's not perfect. But right now I think if we take self driving car as an example, you can see the trajectory, right? If I tell you I want me and my son and my grandkid to be drivers, you say that's crazy, right? Why would you spend all your energy learning a craft that is going to be replaced? Right now we can see extremely clearly cars are going to drive themselves, right? No debate there. And I'm going to tell you, code will be written on their own, okay? Vibe coding it now, it may take a long time. Okay, don't get me wrong, like self driving car took, I mean, decades to realize, right? So vibe coding may, I mean uh, agent that write code on their own may take a long time to be perfect. It may never get into perfect, but the percentage will slowly, will slowly go up. If we say like there, there, there, there are people, CEO, anthropic, say 80% by 2025. I think like, because where he is, okay, he probably see 80%. Um, and I think Meta and Microsoft is saying 20%. Maybe Google is saying 20%. What, whatever the percentage is, what I want to tell aud, the audience is that um, I cannot see it, I cannot see that trend turning around. With all the money, all the, everybody go into that, that trend's not going to turn around. So you can, you got to ask yourself, where do you want to be on this trend line? Do you want to be ahead of it? Now? Ahead of it may be risky, um, behind it, also risky. So knowing this trend, you got to think about where do you want to put Yourself on this trend line. And I, I mean, I can tell you where I am. I start to train and hire teams that are not allowed to code. They have to Vibe code now because this is a new skill. Vibe coding turns English into programming language. And this is a brand new programming language that nobody were ever formally trained on. And maybe it could be formally trained, I don't know. Um, but it's a new programming language you all have to learn. It is not simple. It is not like you can't just go to lovable and say, I type in a few sentences. And it will, it will work. It's not right. It will never actually. So my, my prediction is that Vibe coding, um, creates Hume. Well, I mean, I mean I, we speak English, so I would say English as the programming language. And this needs to need. This is a new skill. And if you're listening to this, I recommend you at least learn that and see how fast it is growing. And if you can get on that train, you should be right. This is my recommendation. You should be the one who be called when your friends hear about by coding, right? Be that person. Remember in high school I was that person. I was like, anybody who's like, oh my God, I hear this computer thing, they want to buy a new computer, they call me, right? Be that person. Be that person who in your circle, when your friends, your neighbors, your customers, your boss hear about Vibe coding or AI development, be the person that they will call and then you get the opportunity. So I think in this podcast we talk about, well, how do you obtain opportunity? Uh, and Perry, you talk about, um, the idea of factory, right? So be that person. People have to know that you know stuff, right? Um, um, and right now I will recommend you at least look into that. And I understand it writes spaghetti code. It is this and that and whatnot, but trust me, it will get better. And, um, go learn.

Speaker A: What's crazy is that everything you're seeing right now is so relatable to my scenario. Specifically. I, I talk for myself, but I also talk to other people that work in my kind of spaces. We, we get given a lot of tools. I'll shout out cursor, I'll shout out all these other ones where they are so prominent, they're so present. And like everybody at any tech companies nowadays, like, you got to use it. So the way you're saying that people need to learn English as a programming language, like that's the simplest way for people to understand it, because that's exactly what's happening. I like, I'LL say it, companies are doing this. Companies are telling software engineers to write better English. It sounds crazy, but that's what happens. And I've been in enough meetings nowadays, uh, that like, I'm like, you could have written that differently and it would have done like just so much more efficient. So as you were saying, it's a learning curve at that point. So thanks for sharing so much of that. I think it's absolutely wild. One thing that I keep on picking up every time you talk about these great stories and these new ideas, like you have so many ideas and so many like ways to apply things. My question is how do you apply those things? Or uh, where do you apply those ideas nowadays? I know you still spend a lot of time with Xero Software, but I believe you also have a role to play with the Zenith Venture Studio where when we're talking about all these ideas, I mean sure, a person could have a million ideas, but if you don't, don't do anything with them. How does that work? So maybe to introduce real quickly, uh, from you actually like this venture environment that you got, is that where you brain dump your idea and put into action or what exactly is that space for?

Speaker B: Well, so I mean I can um, talk about why I um, co founded this venture studio and is when I project myself, right? I'm in my 50s, right? So soon I'll get into traditional retireable age, right? So when I think about that, I want to create something that I can work until my 90s. That may sound crazy, but I do still want to work. Now how am I going to work? I'm not going to be able to not sleep. In my 20s I was able to not sleep. Right now I cannot. So this is a projection of if I want to create a platform, something that I could continue to thrive and have excitement, slash, working late in my life. How do I create that? And the answer is something like that. Now it may or may not work. So this venture studio is simple. Simply uh, put, is it, uh, think about it as a factory that we, I mean all of us will start dreaming about what is available, what is cool. Then let's quickly prototype it. Um, let's test it on the market. If it works, then let's launch it. Now we, I may not be the one who's driving it, but I'll, I'll help now do something, some, something crazy, right? So in five years something, something crazy will show up. And if we can make this sustainable, then I have a playground to always play with the coolest Toy. Right. I can stay young, so to speak. Right. So that's the basic idea. There's this very selfish, um, concept of like just projecting, trying to create something that I can, I can continue to do cool things. So that's what it is.

Speaker A: And I absolutely appreciate how you're able to like call it a playground as well, because every playground is like guaranteed that something's going to come out of it. But then sometimes you have the best sandcastle in a playground at the end of the day. So that's really. I like the way your perspective, uh, the perspective you're putting on that, that it's never, it's a never ending, um, I guess like evolution of being able to use your ideas and help other people join that movement as well. Speaking of other people though, like, obviously you're discovering so many like, examples of products you've built and example of like meetings that you attended. There's a lot of people involved and one of the skills that we, we should have probably touched more on. But when we talk about human relationships and even neighbor, like leadership and all that kind of stuff, you would not be able to do everything you've described without that at the end of the day. So one thing that I do know is that you've accumulated all that into a book. You've slightly mentioned it a little bit earlier, but this book kind of came out around two years ago. Uh, it's called Craft yout Create a Life Worth Living Through Entrepreneurship. Is that the theme of it? Is the theme of the book centered around your human relationships with other people in this environment? Or was it more about the space spirit of being able to create stuff but also not just products, but also creating teams and creating companies around it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it is creating life and of course your life. Right. So, um, I describe your world, right? So I say you don't have to change the world, which is a cliche that we startup people like to say. So you don't have to change the world. You change your world. And what's your world? Your world, everybody's world is but 100, 150 people. Your world is people. Yeah, I know physically you live on Earth, but you interact with people around you. And if you shape who you interact with, you shape your world. Did I talk about leadership? Of course, and I subscribe to Servant leadership. Um, um, and we can go down that path. Right? But I mean, basically there's a chapter that um, talks about if you assume everybody is lazy and stupid, they will be. And so don't Assume everybody around you is lazy and stupid. Um, because they will be if you assume that. But if you assume they work hard and they are trustworthy, they will do the best, then they will be too. Right? So now debate, debate on that trajectory. I'm not going to do that here. But coming back to the book, it's about crafting your world. And I think if you think about your world being 150 people around you, the easiest way to shape that is by entrepreneurship. Because, um, working, I mean, consumes so much of our time and our involvement with people. So if you can control who you work with, then you shape a lot of your world. Uh, now I'm not saying it's easy, but if you want to control your world, running your own thing, doing your own business, starting your own gig is the easiest way to create your own world or to shape your own world.

Speaker A: It's so intentional. I think everything you're mentioning is that you didn't explicitly say this, but like life ain't gonna wait for you. As in M. Like it's whether you want to do it, you want to grab it, you want to use everything that you've learned and then build these relationships, build these projects, build these companies. That's such, that's such a theme that I really appreciate when you're putting not just this example of the book that you've written, but also all the other ventures and all the other work projects that you're working on at the moment. So that's so, so, so exciting. Um, I always want to come back to Z at the end of the day. Is that maybe, maybe it's a very simple question, maybe it's not, but what are your favorite apps? As in it sounds dumb but like top three favorite apps or top three any tools that you've recently had appreciation for. Some people will be like, I can't live without Slack. Like forget about teams, I have to have Slack. But maybe in your space, is there any like tools or any kind of like software that you want to give shout outs to?

Speaker B: I mean right now I love claw code, right? Um, I call it cc, right? So claw code, it's amazing. Um, um, now I use AI a lot. I use Claude as my co developer, I use Claud Code as my developer. Um, and I uh, use chatgpt a lot. Um, and I simply just use Apple Note. So way back when, um, I started on BlackBerry Note. And the cool thing is you can jot down your idea anytime. You have your BlackBerry and it syncs with your computer and you can always trust it there. Um, then it became Evernote. So Evernote was once really big and we have Evernote on mobile, on PC and everywhere. Um, I don't know why and I don't know how we don't use Evernote anymore. And now Apple Node, uh, took its place. So I use now Apple Note. Now people use Notion, uh, and whatnot, but I use Apple Note, um, religiously. Um, I want to start creating like a, um, um. So I, I got in a little bit into Obsidian, which is another note taking app, but I, but I didn't go into the um, enough to recommend that. So like, if you talk about things I cannot live without right now, I would say Apple Note and um, clock code, right? So I get more and more into like when I brainstorming. So like, um, I'm starting now, I'm not there yet, but I'm starting to have a routine where I will set up a meeting with ChatGPT. So I did that with in two mornings and I just set up time and I say, okay, well let's start thinking about that. So recently I'm researching what I'm calling software 3.0, which is um, AI first. What would an AI first, uh, development look like? And you kind of uh, ask about that. Ah. And that required thought. And so I was doing research with ChatGPT right on my side would discuss. And I said, well, how about you go, you go find this thing, come back to me. And I was thinking about something else and um, in one of these sessions. So that's um, maybe two weeks ago, maybe last week, um, ChatGPT came up with a few, uh, research paper and then I didn't read them all. I put them into, uh, Noble LM and Noble LM's, uh, summarizing it, making a podcast. So I started listening to it when I was driving. The next day I come back, I then turn to Claude and I say, okay, well, listening to that, um, knowing what, using these research projects, let's start to brainstorm. Assuming this world is true, two, three, four, five years later, what kind of companies should we try? What kind of idea should we try? What kind of business should we try? And then start to just change, just start to brainstorm. Um, so yeah, so that's um, a long, long way of answering your question. I'm trying to put myself into, like now that I have so much help, I want to be able to work faster.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad I asked these questions every time. Like I asked, like, what tools do people appreciate? There's one way of answering, like these three. But then you also gave the synergy, right? Like, how do you use all these tools together? That's always something. I'm like, oh, wow, that's how people use tools. So I'll never stop asking them this question. And the way you answered it gives us exactly why people appreciate that. I'm a big Apple Notes fan. I'm the only idiot who never actually syncs it to the cloud. So if honestly, knock on wood, I lose it. It's all gone. Uh, that's another tangent for another. Yeah, that's a tangent for another day. Or one of my favorite Siri Command is like, hey, Siri, new note. And then you just say it and it appears on. That's always fantastic. So thank you to all the Apple developers who are making notes, uh, better from time to time. Um, I cannot let you leave the show without talking about podcast. Podcast. Podcasts. You appear very, very often on a podcast. Obviously the link's gonna be at the, at the bottom of this description. You'll definitely check it out. But what is that about?

Speaker B: Well, if you, if you speak Cantonese and if you like, if you're in the startup ecosystem, go listen to that. Um, in a nutshell, right, It's. It's called, uh, Hong Kong Startup Dao. In a simple sense. It's just a, uh, a few friends talk about, like, have, have a fun, uh, conversation. So you like. It's a very, very casual podcast. It's not like this where we have question and answer. Usually it's a topic that we just, we just chat. So it's very casual. Among us. We have, we have a vc, we have me like a tech CEO. We have project manager, product manager. We have younger founders, we have UX people. So it's a group of friends share their opinion on the latest trend. So lately, of course, we have been talking about AI Fundamentally, what this, um, podcast was created. M was trying to get more people to join the startup world. I mean, that's my life mission, if you haven't noticed. Um, so, yeah, I want to share more on the startup ecosystem. I want to encourage more people to do more startups, especially now. So if you're into that, go listen to that. Um, I mean, give us, um, um, some feedback on how to do better. In the past, we've also done through this, through this name, uh, some workshops. So there, there are some people who are talking about, well, why don't we do a vibe coding workshop, uh, to the Hong Kong, like larger Hong Kong people, uh, Community. Right. Because, uh, there are many people from Hong Kong all over the world and actually the hosts in this podcast, um, mostly are not in Hong Kong. So we have people in uk, in Canada, I'm in US we have in Hong Kong. So it's fun. So listen to that. Um, and hopefully you will join us and we'll invite you, Perry, to join us. Um, in Cantonese, um, if you can still speak in that gaudi moment.

Speaker A: Um, but no, honestly I keep m on saying where has the time gone? All that kind of fun stuff. Um, Z, where could people find you? I know you do so many things left and right and Xeron software is definitely fully thriving in this new environment. As you keep on saying, it's always changing all the time. But what is the best way to find you Any kind of socials you want to share?

Speaker B: I find me on LinkedIn. Um, you should be able to just search my name. Um, I'm more public than I want to, um, search my name on LinkedIn. Um, you should be able to find me. If not, uh, go to zong.com I'm there too. I don't update that often enough. So more update on LinkedIn. So if you want to find me, um, go to LinkedIn or actually I'm experimenting. Go to ChatGPT and search up a GPT Connect with Z Wong, see if you can find it. I don't know if you can find it, um, in that I'm trying to build this GPT as my secretary, so if you can find it, let me know. It'd be cool. So uh, you can book a meeting to me from this GPT if you can make it work. Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah, just a one stop shop for everything. But of course all the links will be shared in the description notes below. So definitely check out everything about Z about Xerion Software, about the book Craft yout Create a Life Worth Living Through Entrepreneurship about Zenith Ventures Studio. I could go on and on and on, but it's been an absolute pleasure on my end to hear all that. So Z, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker B: You're welcome. Thank you. Love it.

Speaker A: And of course I will definitely catch the rest of y' all on the next one. See you. Bye. And that was Z Wong, Founder and CEO of Xerion Software. All the links are shared in the description notes below. Go check them out. If you would like to be on podcast written by a software engineer, reach out to us just email contactaradzu.com can't wait to have you on the show. Once again, thank you so much for listening to Podcast Ruined by Software Engineer. Don't forget to hit the Follow button on your podcast apply and leave us a review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It's completely free, and if you want to tell your friends about podcasts written by a software engineer, that's totally cool as well. Anyways, I'm parentsu and you've been listening to Podcasts Ruined by a Software Engineer.