Interview David Zhang - From a Software Engineer at Amazon to the CTO & Co-founder of Stably

Hello, good evening everyone. Welcome to competition conference event news group. This is Muhammad Muhassalom. I'm studying computer science engineering in International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology, and alongside with this, uh, I'm doing my summer internship at Stably, which is a fintech company. So today our topic is From Amazon to Stably, a Startup Fintech, and we have a very special guest with ourselves, that is David Chang. So we are looking for a very good show. Hello, hello, hello, David. Come on, let's start our topic, uh, live show in English, right? So welcome to my show. Uh, let's introduce yourself to the audience.

Yeah, thanks for having me. So I'm David, uh, co-founder and CTO at Stably. As the title of this episode suggests, I was a software engineer at Amazon before deciding to, you know, start the startup. And just a little bit about myself, I studied computer science and math, and I've always had a passion for financial markets. So, you know, when this whole blockchain thing started, it was sort of like a no-brainer for me to get into the space. So that's all I'll say for now. I'll save the good stuff for later.

Uh, thank you, David, for your nice, uh, introduction. Uh, let me start, uh, asking a question that many people want to be an entrepreneur, uh, in future, and they think that they are facing some social problems, they have some ideas. So is just an idea can make him a good entrepreneur? So what your opinion on that, that What are the qualities needed to be a good entrepreneur?

Yeah, so that's a very common sort of question. You know, people often, I think, overvalue how much an idea is worth. Like, everyone has ideas, and, you know, good ideas are harder to find, but, you know, they're not even that rare, right? Really what separates, you know, people that manage to do something from those that don't is really about execution. So actually going out and doing the thing that you set out to do. Now in terms of, you know, what kind of traits or qualities might help you with being an entrepreneur? I mean, there's no sort of, you know, template or one-size-fits-all like entrepreneur, right? You know, you can be any sort of person and still succeed. But that being said, there's, you know, a couple of traits that I think are going to be helpful along the way. The most important one, in my opinion at least, is flexibility. So, you know, being an entrepreneur means that you're going to be picking up a lot of skills, you're going to be operating in a fast-changing market, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of different things, and staying flexible is sort of your advantage, right? Like being able to go where the market goes, being able to change when your ideas, you know, are invalidated. These are all things that increase your probability of success. And, you know, something else that's sort of related to this is risk appetite. So, you know, unlike having a steady job, being an entrepreneur means that you're taking on a lot of uncertainty, right? You don't know if, the product that you're building is gonna be good. You don't know how the market will react to it. You don't know how the market will change in a month, in a year. So these are all things that, you know, you can plan for and prepare for, but at the end, there's always gonna be some risk. And then another quality that I would say is the ability to think for yourself. So, you know, a lot of people sort of just wanna go with what the crowd says. But if the crowd is already saying something, most likely there isn't really much of an opportunity there, right? So being an entrepreneur, you sort of have to learn how to make decisions from first principles, meaning, you know, try to figure out what the truth is, what the data says, and try to make a decision from that rather than, you know, trying to see what's already proven and trying to replicate, you know, what already exists. But like I said, there's no, you know, sort of template. You can be, you know, I mean, if you look at the types of people that have succeeded as entrepreneurs in the past, they're, you know, an extremely wide range of backgrounds, wide range of personalities. So I don't really think there is a magic formula. You just kind of have to give it a try.

Thank you, David, for your nice answer. So you already mentioned the line that crowd will say many things. So I will ask you a question in this regard that if anyone wants to be an entrepreneur, he has to face a lot of feedback from others. And sometimes people say it's not possible for you. It's very hard to maintain our business, to conduct a business. So what's your suggestion on like how to deal with this negative criticism of people?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, it's not just— I think in general, if you want to be an entrepreneur or if you want to do something where there's not a lot of like guidance, you have to be able to take feedback, right? And that's both positive feedback and negative feedback. Because at the end of the day, you know, your goal is to figure out what is the truth, right? The truth is your friend and whether you get data from, you know, people interacting with your product or from, you know, criticism, like criticism can be helpful feedback. But I guess my caveat here is that not all criticism is useful, right? Some people just, you know, have a problem with some way that you're doing something or some way that you're approaching something. And maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. Like at the end of the day, sometimes it just doesn't really matter because most of the time there's more than one way to do things. And, you know, based on people's different backgrounds and experiences, everyone has a different opinion. So you can't make everyone happy. But I guess my sort of, Advice for this is like sort of learn to pick out what is useful criticism and what is not useful criticism, right? Like if someone just tells you, oh, this is bad, but they don't tell you why or how it could be better, like, yeah, maybe you should like file it in the back of your head as like an extra data point. But if you don't see anything obviously wrong, then, you know, you kind of just have to move on with your life, right? Whereas if someone gives you negative criticism, but they also give you like, oh, you know, here are some things that you should consider, you have a lot more data to play with, right? You can sort of think about logically, does it make sense? You can experiment with, you know, taking their point of view and maybe you'll find that they're right. Maybe they're wrong. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you have to make the final decision yourself. So I talk about first principles and trying to figure out the truth. And that's really sort of the key in all of this.

Thank you, David. Very good answer from your side because we also, we face this kind of problem. You can say a constructive comment sometimes, sometimes it make us sad. So yeah, so next, uh, I want to ask a question that, uh, those people who are like, uh, want to start a startup or want to start a business, so, oh no, what's your, what's your suggestion on that? That, uh, what's your thinking on that? That which, uh, how can they go through, uh, go to conduct our business?

Yeah, so that's a— there can be a really long answer for this, but let me see what the, what the biggest talking points are here. Um, I mean, I think the most important one is, you know, being honest with yourself and figuring out exactly why you want to go and do this. Because I mean, the thing is, like, it's not for everyone, right? Like everyone has different things that they want to get out of life or different things that they enjoy doing or find fulfillment in. And, you know, doing a startup is not what's going to be fulfilling for everyone. So I guess I can give some examples and some counterexamples. So, you know, I guess at least for me personally, you know, these past, you know, few years running Stably, I've learned so much. And I think that's a common pattern that you'll see. If you go and decide to do a startup, you'll learn a lot regardless of whether it succeeds or fails. So, you know, if you're into that sort of learning experience, if you really like to, you know, drink from the fire hose, as they say. So, you know, there's so much going on, you have to pick things up quickly. It's also a chance for you to grow as a person. You know, you push, you have to push yourself. 'cause there's always gonna be so much that needs to get done and not enough people to do it. And, you know, if you're lucky, that will keep happening and it will be a long, long grind, right? So there's a saying that says overnight successes are built years in advance, right? So, you know, if you want that overnight success, most likely you're gonna have to work years ahead of time to build up to that. So what kind of things can you not expect, or at least shouldn't expect? So a lot of people go into doing startups expecting to make money. And, you know, of course, if you get successful and, you know, you have a nice exit or something, that is something that you can experience. But on average, I would say the startup or entrepreneurship experience is pretty negative expected value, meaning that if you account for the opportunity cost and everything else, you probably would've made more just working at like a regular job, right? And the reason for this is there's extreme survivorship bias in the space. You only really see the people that have succeeded. You really only see the people that have, you know, actually survived the gauntlet of startup life. What you don't see is, you know, the hundreds, the thousands of companies that never really made it. People spent years of their life doing something that hopefully they're passionate about. So at least, you know, they had that. But, you know, if you're hoping to, you know, sort of do this as like a get-rich-quick thing, that's most likely not gonna be what you actually get out of it. So actually, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Y Combinator, but Michael Siebel, one of the partners at YC. He wrote a great piece called, well, this is very specific for tech. So, you know, people that are programmers or, you know, in sort of that sort of area, but the piece is called Three Paths in the Tech Industry. If you have a chance, I would recommend looking it up. It runs through basically, you know, what are the three top considerations for whether you want to, you know, do your own startup, work for another startup, or just go for a stable job. And a lot of it relies on you doing some self-reflection, being honest with yourself, and knowing really what you want. Now, with that being said, it doesn't really hurt to try, especially if you're young, you don't have a lot of responsibilities. There's really not a better time than when you're young to sort of take a risk, especially if it's something that you're interested in.

Yeah, got it, David. So before going to the next question, I will take a comment. The comment is like, uh, written by Ashadullah Ghalib. He's our senior brother in our city. So his, uh, his question is, do you think a tech entrepreneur should have writing ability, or is this a plus point to have writing habit?

So yeah, so that's a great question. Um, actually, I would say this is almost two questions. So personally, I'm a big writer. I really enjoy writing. You know, I keep my own journal. I write documents just for myself, even if I don't publish them a lot of the time. And really, the value in writing is communication. Well, communication if it's consumed by someone else, and sort of clearing or crystallizing your thoughts if you're just writing for yourself. 'Cause a lot of the time you think you have a great idea, but until you try to work out all the little details, you know, maybe you don't see the sort of small things that really break the idea or something like that. So a lot of the time, just putting something on paper lets you see flaws or holes that you wouldn't see if you just kept the idea in your head. And similarly, you know, writing as a form of communication is definitely very important. Especially as we're moving towards like a more, you know, remote distributed kind of working environment. Communication, I would say, is actually one of the most important skills as an entrepreneur. In the beginning, you don't really need it. It's just you or maybe one other person. But as you grow, really what determines how fast you can grow and how fast you can sort of scale up your product or your idea is going to be your ability to communicate that idea to others. And of course there's formats like video, there's formats like voice, talking to people, that sort of stuff. But writing is such a common form of communication, whether it's writing press releases, technical documentation, or even just sending messages to people. There is an art to communication and I think being good at it is definitely going to give you an advantage. Now whether it's writing specifically versus other types of communication or, you know, putting things down on paper, like for example, some people are extremely visual. So for those people, maybe they would be better off like drawing some diagrams or, you know, doing something like that. I think the important part basically is getting something out of your head and into a different medium. I think that is very valuable and being able to use that to communicate, I think will give you sort of a leg up over the people that won't. You know, with all of these things, you know, nothing really is mandatory or, you know, a golden ticket to success. They're all things that increase or decrease your chance of getting something out of it.

Yeah, that is very good question and also very good answer from David. So let's go for the next question to David. There are a lot of problems in everyone's life, like why you are interested to work on the financial service or solution? And I want to add something that You left Amazon and you were trying to do something, a financial solution. That's why you were to create it as Stably. And for Bangladeshi, I want to say that for Bangladeshi, working on Amazon or Google is just like a dream job for us. So I think, I think if I got the job of, uh, in Amazon or Google, I will not think to do anything else. So it's when I came to know that David left Amazon and CEO Cody, uh, left Peachbook, so I was shocked. Why did they do this? So, uh, just say about something about that, that why you are thinking of creating Stably, like, uh, history of, uh, Stably.

Yeah, so I definitely can't say Yeah, so I definitely can't say that it was an easy decision. Actually, I would say it probably ranks up there as one of the hardest decisions of my life. Not only was I deciding whether to leave Amazon to start Stably, but actually it's funny that you mentioned Google because I also had an offer from Google at the time to go work over there. So I was sort of deciding, do I want to stay at Amazon? Do I want to go to Google or do I want to start this new sort of adventure, right? And really what pushed me over the line and what made me decide to do Stably at all is that, you know, first of all, I've always been passionate about financial markets, game theory, you know, behavioral economics, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I even took some courses in college. In my free time, I would write trading algorithms, which Funny enough, it's actually how I met my co-founder. But, you know, I would do all of these things and it's always been a passion, but it's never really had a chance to take center stage in my life. So when I learned about blockchain, when I discovered cryptocurrency, you know, I discovered this fusion of technology, finance, math, you know, all of these things coming together. And it really felt like a once-in-a-decade or maybe even once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity it was so early in the space, there weren't really that many people that knew about it. And it was something that I was very positive would become a permanent fixture in our lives in the future. So thinking about it that way, and actually, funny enough, one of the inspirational sort of people that gave me the push that I needed was There was an old interview with Jeff Bezos, who is the founder of Amazon. He actually said something that really made me think about leaving Amazon. Basically, he said when he decided to start Amazon, he also left, you know, a really well-paying job, a really comfortable lifestyle, that sort of stuff. But the question he asked himself was, you know, on my deathbed, am I going to regret staying at this comfortable job Or am I going to regret not taking this opportunity to go and do something great? So after he thought about it that way, it was easy for him. And after I thought about it that way, it was also easy for me. So thank you, Jeff, for convincing me to leave your company. But yeah, so that aside, I mean, specifically why Stably? I mean, there were other startup ideas, of course. I've always thought about entrepreneurship. But Stably, really, like I said, it's just the fusion of all of my interests, right? Like, in order to effectively work in the blockchain space, you need to have some understanding of game theory and economics. You need to have at least some basic math. You need to at least have some basic level of programming and software. And it's really this fusion of all of these different interests that made it an irresistible opportunity for me. So I don't want to ramble too, too long about this, but that's sort of the, the gist of how I got here.

Uh, that is, uh, interesting, along— and also you can say, uh, inspiring, right? So let's go for our next question from to you, that is, there is also, there are also many financial services. So why is, uh, you think that Stably is different from others? And what is the mission and vision of Stably? Uh, can you please, uh, state of that?

Yeah, so on one hand, you know, so to answer the question of, you know, how is Stably different from other like fintech or financial companies. And at some level, Stably is not that different, right? Like everyone in the space is trying to make money easier to use, trying to make the way that we interact and deal with value more seamless, lower cost, all that sort of stuff. But sort of, I mean, the, the big differentiator and sort of why the company got started in the first place is for the first time in human history, we've been able to bring the idea of money and value into a purely digital substrate. So what I mean by that is, you know, beforehand when people think about, you know, like computers, electronics, software, all that sort of stuff, really the thing that it enabled was the free flow of information, right? For the first time, you could write something once and have a million different people run it or read it or whatever, which is great for things that are free. And if you look at all the things that the internet and computers, mobile phones, all this sort of stuff has done for our lives, I mean, to say that it's been game-changing would be like an understatement, right? It's changed so much about the way that we live, the way that we interact with not just the world, but also each other. And for the first time ever, we've been able to do a similar transformation for money. So the invention of Bitcoin, and, you know, that was sort of the proof of concept that showed the world, hey, a natively digital currency can actually work. And, you know, there were— to sort of see why this is so revolutionary, you kind of have to, you know, I actually, a great starting point for this if you're interested is you can go and read the Bitcoin white paper. So, you know, it's not a scary white paper. It's actually extremely non-technical. Well, I wouldn't say extremely non-technical, but if you don't have a background, you can still understand it. It's written in a way that's very consumable for the general public. But basically Bitcoin combined all of these different ideas that were floating around into a system that would enable no one to own the system, but for participants in the system to still be able to agree on, you know, what people's balances are and all that sort of stuff. And that really opens the gates for a digital distributed money, right? Because if you want to be able to count something as money, you can't have anyone being able to just, you know, copy-paste, uh, you know, money, right? Creating money out of thin air would just make it worthless. So really, you know, Bitcoin inventing a way for this money to not be owned by any single entity but still be able to be digital, like, that was such a game changer that, you know, for us it made so much sense to build a company around this technology. And I believe going forward, most financial services are going to migrate to use some aspect of blockchain. Now I don't necessarily think that blockchain or cryptocurrency needs to replace everything we already use or the way that financial institutions work. But like anything, it's a tool, right? When the internet first came out, not everyone jumped on to make a website or set up their own domain or all that sort of stuff. It's an evolutionary process. And whether blockchain and cryptocurrency reaches that level someday, Or, you know, stop somewhere short of that. I don't really know. The future is really hard to predict, but I do know that this is a technology that is here to stay because it enables something that we've never been able to do before. So yeah, that's the high level.

Yeah, thank you so much, David, for the answer. Uh, now, uh, going for the next question, I will take a comment from the audience. Uh, like, the question is, when you were on verge of leaving Amazon and starting a new adventure like Stably, did you had a fear if Stably fails, then what's your, what's your next you will do? That's very, very good question and very, uh, like critical question, I think. So David, Please go on.

Yeah, I mean, of course, right? Like, you know, when I said one of the most useful traits for an entrepreneur is the ability to take risk, this is sort of part of that, right? Like, of course it's not a sure thing. In fact, in the beginning, most likely you are going to fail. The failure rate for startups is extremely high. And there were really sort of two things that I did to, I wouldn't say make the fear go away, but you know, you have to decide whether it's worth moving on or not. And for me, I did, basically what I did was I listed out, okay, what are the worst things that would happen, you know, if I failed? And then, you know, what are the worst things that would happen? You know, like basically I looked at all of these scenarios and I listed out the worst cases and I looked at them. And I'm like, it's really not that bad, right? Like, if you really think about it, like, what's the worst that'll happen? Maybe you'll be out of a job for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Maybe, you know, you'll have wasted some time. I mean, hopefully not because it's a great learning experience. But, you know, basically, like, the worst case wasn't that bad. And actually, I think Elon Musk said something. I don't mean to be quoting all of these, you know, sort of tech CEOs, but I think Elon Musk said, you know, when he was considering, you know, how much risk he should take when he was starting, I forget which of his companies he was starting, but basically he was like, you know, in this day and age, there's really not that much can go wrong, right? You're not going to starve to death. You're not going to freeze to death, right? Like there's not, there's not, we're not living in an environment where having a job is a life or death situation, right? Not like a hunter-gatherer back in the day when, you know, being part of the tribe and doing your part was so critical for your literal survival. Nowadays, it's really more of like a pride or personal fear kind of thing. And if you can, you know, sort of wrestle with that and get over it, really there's not that much, right? Especially if you're in tech. So, you know, us or, you know, whoever is in tech is, it's a little bit of a privileged situation to be in because there's so much demand for, you know, good developers that, you know, even if everything goes south, you can still just go get a job as a developer at some company and either try again or decide that it's not for you, right? So that's how I went about it.

Yeah, that's, uh, I got it. And maybe the audience who comment on this, I think he understand all the things. So, uh, next, go for the next question, David. Uh, the next question is for you, that, uh, for Stably, uh, there are some solution of Stably like Stably Prime, Stably Enterprise. Uh, give an overview, overview of thought that solutions that what does, uh, uh, what is Stable Prime and what is Stable Interface?

Sure, so currently there's sort of 3 main initiatives that we're working on, and you know, like any startup, these sorts of things can change from month to month as well. Um, but the things that we've sort of found that really add value are Number 1, what we call tokenization, right? So taking real-world assets and bringing them onto the blockchain. So we first did this with our own product, which is USDS, but we found that we learned so much in the process, and there's all of these other companies that want to leverage this technology and create their own solutions. So we created what we call Stably Enterprise. Which is basically our sort of enterprise solutions arm. So we leverage all the technology that we built, all of our experience dealing with, you know, the regulatory hurdles. We've also, you know, built up a very close network of partners that we work with. And, you know, we're able to offer these types of solutions at a fraction of the cost of, you know, what they would do if they tried to do it all internally. Because we know how much it costs us initially. Right. We made all those mistakes already. You know, we built all the infrastructure already. So, you know, now we're able to bring value to other businesses that want to do the same. Another product that we're focusing on, which you mentioned, is Stably Prime. So Stably Prime is a platform that we're launching that aims to be like a global all-in-one account. So what I mean by that is it's a place where you can store your money,. It's a place where you can get into or out of cryptocurrency. It's a place where you can, you know, put some savings to generate some interest. You know, it's sort of like a modern account for the modern day, right? For the people that want to learn about blockchain and cryptocurrency, they want to take advantage of the technology, but maybe, you know, they're not like math, you know, maybe they're not that, you know, proficient with the cryptography that's involved. Maybe they don't want to learn how to manage their own private keys, all that sort of stuff. So Stably Prime aims to be an easy way for people to get into that. And, you know, by leveraging blockchain and cryptocurrency, we also solve a lot of issues that you wouldn't be able to solve with a traditional financial service. And if you would like to learn more, you can visit the website, which is stably.io, and there we list, you know, both of these main products. And the third area of the business that I'll briefly mention is our capital markets division. So here we do everything from, you know, helping clients, you know, create markets for their new tokens that we help them tokenize to, you know, other sorts of bespoke, like, capital markets kinds of services. So for example, you know, let's say you're someone that wants to list your token on an exchange. That you just tokenized. So, you know, let's say you just tokenize silver, right? And you think the world is super excited to be able to trade silver, so you want to put it onto an exchange. But the issue that you have is you don't have any— you don't have a large trading team, you don't have, you know, your own experience for how to create a market. That's something that we help, you know, enterprise customers and other types of customers with as well. So at a super high level, that's the 3 main areas that we're focusing on. But again, like I said, you know, being a startup, these sorts of things change with the market. So, you know, if you ask me again in 6 months, I'll probably have a slightly different answer for you.

Uh, thank you, David. Uh, so that is so informative because so many people don't know about Stably Prime and the services of Stably. So, uh, my next question is for you, that Stable is improving day by day. Uh, recently Stable has partnered or got partnership with, uh, many companies like, uh, a Bangladeshi company, uh, like a Vietnam company, and many others. So what do you think that what are the key things impact on Stable so that Stable has come so far? Because you are the co-founder, you and Cody both thinking to create a financial services institution that is Stably. So what are the key things impact on Stably so that you guys, this Stably come so far?

Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, it's impossible to know the true reason, but I can sort of take a guess. And of course, the number one reason I would say is really just luck. You know, with all of these sorts of opportunities, you need a little bit of luck. Now, luck doesn't have to be something that you sit around and you wait for. A lot of the times you have to make your own luck. There's certain things that you can do to increase your probability of getting lucky. And, you know, some of those include staying flexible. If you keep an open mind, oftentimes you'll see opportunities and be able to grab onto them that you normally wouldn't see. So for example, let's say you're doing something, but you know, a better opportunity comes up. If you do your research and you see that it makes sense and you're able to grab onto this new opportunity, sometimes it'll basically help you get lucky, right? Like from the outside, you know, that's what it looks like, right? It looks like, oh, you know, those guys were so lucky to be in that space. But it could be that, you know, there was a lot of planning, there was a lot of thinking, and there was a lot of, staying flexible that was involved in that. Another thing that I would say is very important is learning from your mistakes, because if you're gonna go and do your own thing, like no matter what it is, actually even just living life, right? You're gonna make so many mistakes. It's impossible to go through life not making mistakes. And the best thing that you can really do is learn from your mistakes, right? If you keep making the same mistake, I mean, you're not gonna be improving, right? But if you can learn from each of your mistakes, then you'll get better over time. You'll start making less mistakes over time. And you know, that sort of compounds on itself and that'll really help you sort of build up this snowball to help you succeed. And really another thing I would say that's very crucial for I mean, any sort of enterprise really is building a great team. So, you know, you can only be— well, so some businesses, of course, you know, you can run by yourself and, you know, those kinds of businesses are great as well. But if you want to build a business that requires people in order to scale, then you need to find the right people, right? If you can find people that share your mission, if you find people that are passionate about your product or your users, then they're gonna help you also improve the company day by day. So it's not just yourself sort of pushing the wheel anymore. Now you have a team that's also helping you move in the right direction, find opportunities, you know, catch mistakes, all that sort of stuff. So I would say, you know, these 3 things are probably what I would say are the most important for keeping in mind. So, you know, staying flexible, being able to create that luck for yourself, learning from your mistakes, and of course building a great team.

Thank you, David, for your answer. So now we came to know that what is the key factor impact on Stably so that it, uh, Stably has come so far. So now, uh, now I will, uh, I want to know about the future of Stabley, that how you want to see Stabley has gone so far, uh, Stabley will go so far. What's your plan of Stabley?

Yeah, so obviously the easy answer is, you know, I hope Stabley succeeds and becomes, you know, a large company that can serve a lot of customers. But that's not a very exciting answer, right? So I think at a high level, you know, I hope that Stabley can provide people with access to financial tools and services that they normally wouldn't be able to access. Like for example, as someone that has spent most of their lives in the US, I can say that people in the US are very spoiled when it comes to financial services, right? There's not really any kind of financial service that you can't get. But if you look outside of the US, you look outside of the UK, Singapore, like these financial hubs. If you look at basically like 90% of the rest of the world, you see that there's a lot of improvement and there's a lot of things that most of the world doesn't have access to. And we hope that by leveraging blockchain and cryptocurrency, we can bring a lot of these services to people in a way that's accessible, in a way that's seamless, and in a way that lets people improve their lives. Right. Like, for example, there's a lot of people living in countries where, you know, they can't even trust their own money, they can't even trust their own banks. And these are problems that we believe, you know, cryptocurrency is well equipped to solve. So, you know, whether we solve this at a huge scale or, you know, a medium scale, I think the important thing at the end of the day is to, you know, make an impact on the world and be able to help some people, you know, live easier lives.

So yeah, thank you, David. Uh, next, uh, for— I want to say something for the audience. So yeah, David, uh, let's go for the next question. That, uh, still, uh, in, in the world, uh, people are not that much familiar with fintech. Or, uh, I, I can say for the Bangladeshi people, we still are not that much familiar. And that is the unknown things— cryptocurrency, fintech, and these things, digital money. What is that something? So And what's your thoughts on the future of the fintech? Like how fintech will go so far? I think, is there any possibility that one day we will not go for the traditional bank and we will depend on this kind of fintech company or something?

Yeah, I mean fintech is— I would say fintech is an interesting space to be in because on one hand fintech is just like any other industry, right? People are trying to improve, you know, services and products that serve people, except sort of the unique position that fintech companies are in is that it's dealing with people's money, right? When it comes to money, usually there's a lot at stake. So there's this delicate balance between innovation and, you know, sort of going slow and steady. And that's really, I think what's unique about the challenge of being a fintech company. Cause on one hand, you know, like you want to innovate, you want to do all of these new cool things, but on the other hand, you have a responsibility to be responsible with dealing with other people's money, introducing new technologies and all that sort of stuff. I think as time goes on, fintech will only grow as more of the world comes into like the global economy, as more people gain, you know, like convenient high-speed internet access, as more people, you know, move beyond like, like sustenance, you know, like working to feed yourself, feed your family, provide and start having savings. And then once people start having savings, they'll think about, you know, how do I invest? How do I make my money work for me instead of just me working for my money? And these sort of things are only going to increase because people are only going to get wealthier, countries are only going to get wealthier, and technology will keep improving. The internet's not going away anytime soon. So fintech, I think, is going to grow and grow and grow because everyone needs a way to deal with their money, right? Whether you're, you know, like a food merchant that's just trying to, you know, sell to their customers, or whether you're, you know, a business owner and you need to manage, you know, payments to other companies, all this sort of stuff. You know, the traditional way of moving money where you just take cash or some sort of physical asset and you give it to someone else, that's becoming rarer and rarer, right? Especially since business is done at bigger distances at bigger scales. It's not practical. So you have to rely on technology in order to, you know, move and facilitate value transfer. And that's really where fintech companies have a chance to shine, not just about the movement of money, but also, you know, making it more efficient, reducing human effort. You know, as I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember, but accounting used to be, done just in people's heads, right? Like if I want to, you know, write down some records and, you know, keep track of all of this inventory, I have to do it in my head or I have to do it on a piece of paper. But then calculators came along, you know, that made it a lot less, you know, straining for people. It was a lot easier to do that sort of work. Spreadsheets came along And now you have all of these specialized fintech companies that are looking to solve the problem even more. So I think fintech is just gonna keep growing. I mean, especially, you know, with the way that the world is moving.

So yeah, thank you, David. So my next question, for going to the next question, I will take another comment, uh, and this is related to my next question, that, uh, what should be the key factor while hiring new employee for tech startup? That is, uh, that commented by Ashadullah Ghalib. He also commented the first, uh, commented before. So what is the key factor while hiring a new employee for a tech startup? So, uh, for going, uh, for answering the next question, I, I will also add that, uh, what are the skills you are looking for, uh, working on this, uh, or again, if anyone's work, want to work up a developer, uh, to Stably, because the thing is that, uh, thank you so much, you guys, because, uh, you have given me the chance to work with you You guys are so, so well and so friendly that I think it's a very cool company, uh, with Stably.

So, uh, yeah, David, go on. Yeah, so I guess I'll answer the general question first, and, uh, you know, I'll start from most general and then I'll go more specific. So whenever you're looking to build a team, uh, you know, you really need to know what you're looking for because what makes a good member for one team does not necessarily make a good member for another team. So you really need to know, you know, what kinds of people you can work well with, what kinds of skills, or what kinds of personalities you want to build this team with, because, you know, we're all human at the end of the day, so we need to be able to work with each other. So if you hire someone with great skills but you don't get along, and you'll always be sort of conflicting with each other and nothing will get done, right? So being able to work with each other is very important. Earlier, I think that there was a question about like writing. So I'm gonna talk about communication again. Being able to communicate clearly is also one of the most important skills, no matter what kind of position you're going into, whether it's developer or marketing, or, you know, business development, like all of these roles, you need communication because if you want to be on the same page, if you want to make sure that what you're doing is what needs to be done at the end of the day, then you need to make sure that you can communicate correctly. Because if you miscommunicate and you end up doing work that, you know, doesn't make sense or isn't what's needed, then you'll just have wasted not just your own time, but also, you know, the company's time, right? Communication, I can't stress how critical communication is. It really is one of the most important skills if you want to advance your career or start your own company or do anything that involves other people, really. Another thing that I would say that's a good general skill to have is the ability to take responsibility. So this is often called ownership. So, you know, being able to take responsibility for something, being able to do things before you're told, being able to, you know, really feel like it's something that you care about, right? That really, you know, is extremely valuable. It's the difference between someone that's passionate about their jobs versus someone that's just doing their jobs for the sake of the job. And of course, some people, they just don't really care about their jobs. They just want a job to make a living, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to work at a startup, that's most likely not what you're looking for, right? Because startups generally are riskier, they're generally more work. So these are things that if you're just looking to make a living, you know, it's not a good fit for you, right? And then I would say the last thing that I will talk about real quick is having like a growth mindset. So this means you're constantly learning. This means, you know, you don't give up when you reach something that you don't know, right? You try to figure out, okay, how can I learn this thing? Or how can I find a solution? All that sort of stuff. Because if you have what's the opposite of a growth mindset, which is a fixed mindset, then you're just gonna end up doing the same thing and you're not gonna grow. And that doesn't really work at a startup because startups are always growing. So the people need to grow with it. Otherwise it'll be very easy to fall behind. With that being said, you know, like I don't wanna make startups sound like an overwhelming or scary place. It just really is something that, you know, you have to be prepared to handle, right? Because not everyone enjoys, you know, things always changing, always having to learn new things. Some people, you know, prefer to sort of just master one thing and keep doing that. And there's a lot of places where you can, you know, find a lot of fulfillment and success doing that. But most likely a small startup is not the place. I guess I'll talk briefly about the developer side as well. And this varies a lot from startup to startup, so I'll just talk about Stably specifically. At Stably, because we're working in a very new space, we can't go like, oh, we're hiring people with, you know, 10 years of blockchain experience. There's probably less than 100 people with that meet that qualifications, right? So what we look for are people that are very strong generalists, meaning that, you know, they know a lot of things and it also means that they're able to pick up and learn new skills very quickly. So instead of relying on people to be familiar with, you know, all of these things that we do, we find people that have the growth mindset that are able to pick up, you know, these new skills and have the potential to grow into what we think is the right goal for them. So yeah, I'm not gonna say like, oh, you know, we look for React developers or we look for people, you know, that know Golang or something like that. Obviously, if you already have familiarity with the tools that we use, that's great. But if you don't, we're really just looking for people that can pick things up quickly because You know, while our tools may change, while our code base may change, the one thing that will stay constant is the need to learn and always improve.

Yeah, thank you, David, for your nice answer. So we are at the end now. Uh, let's, um, uh, before going to end, I want to, uh, take another comment The comment is, uh, name is not shown here. So what should be the first look when a person wants to start a new startup? Yeah, we already— you already mentioned, but can you please repeat?

Uh, yeah, I mean, so I guess there are sort of two ways to look at this question, right? The first one is, how do you know for yourself that this is the right thing to do? And the second one is how do you validate that this is something that's worth doing, right? So I already talked a lot about, you know, figuring out what you want and making sure that this is the right thing for you. But let's say that, you know, you are sure that you want to do a startup and let's say that you have some idea that you want to try out, right? So how can you try out this idea without, you know, building the full product and having a full company that does this? There's a lot of ways, and the easiest one is to talk about it, right? A lot of people are sort of afraid to talk about their ideas because they think, oh, this person will think my idea is stupid, or oh, this person will steal my idea, or, you know, something like that. But really talking to people is the best way to validate your idea, right? Other people will see things and think about things that you won't think about, and this is sort of, the easiest way to get feedback without a product, without customers, without all this sort of stuff, right? Just talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to people in the industry that you're looking to get into, talk to people that you think might be your future customers. Like all of these people have something to teach you. And by talking to them, you can at least get a glimpse of what that is. Now, of course, you can't take everyone's feedback as, you know, the truth. Because, you know, some people will just have inaccurate, you know, inaccurate data or, you know, maybe they're not someone that would even care about your product in the first place. So these are all things to keep in mind, but I think if you're looking to validate your idea, you should do it early and you should do it often. Don't wait until you spent a year building your product to figure out if it's the right thing to do. Do it before you even write the first line of code or talk to the first hire or something like that.

Yeah, thank you, David, for your answer. We are almost at the end. So now I want to ask, like you can say off topic. So if you want to share any interesting moment of working stably. Like, I want to add something, that is, I feel something sad. Why? Because you guys go for hangouts, uh, recently. You maybe, maybe in June you guys go for— all the office members go for Nha Trang, uh, in beach, and you guys enjoyed a lot. And recently you have done the official dinner. So I think that, yeah, uh, staying in Bangladesh, I miss that. If I were in Vietnam, I will also join with you guys. So tell me, tell the audience something about any interesting moments of working in Stanley.

Yeah, I mean, there's been so many interesting moments, I don't really know. You brought up some, you know, exciting team events and activities. So, you know, with the global pandemic and the whole, you know, COVID situation, Unfortunately, it's hard, it's getting harder and harder to sort of do these company-wide types of events and activities. But we're fortunate enough to have an office in Vietnam. And Vietnam has the whole coronavirus situation in a very good state. So we've been fortunate in the Vietnam office to be able to go out and still do a lot of the types of traditional team activities And actually, I feel like one of the major challenges going forward is gonna be how companies with a lot of working from home or a lot of remote and distributed teams, like how you create that same sort of atmosphere and sense of belonging and team without the ability to have everyone meet up in person and do all of these sorts of things. And one of the things that we try to do at Stabley At least one of the things that we've tried a few times is, you know, we do like a digital hangout. So we'll pick some sort of activity or we'll pick some sort of topic and we'll all get together and, you know, do that like distributed remotely all around the world. And, you know, that's been really rewarding for me because, you know, it lets me talk to and interact with a lot of people that I normally don't get to spend that much time with. And even though you're not in person, you know, just being able to, you know, do some small activities with people does really help bring people together, especially during a time when so many of us are isolated. So I think, you know, being able to do these sorts of things despite everything that's going on has been, you know, extremely, I guess, rewarding.

Yeah, yeah, but the thing is that digital hangout is not that much attractive. That much I will not accept it. I will not accept it.

Yeah, I guess we can hope one day that, you know, virtual reality or augmented reality gets good enough so that we can all be in the same place without actually being in the same place. But, uh, until we get there, I mean, it's a challenge. Yeah, I mean, it's unpaved territory. Actually, this is a great startup opportunity, right? Engaging distributed teams, creating some sort of digital team experience. I think there's a big opportunity in this space.

Yeah, yeah, obviously. So no, I will not accept the virtual reality also. If I, yeah, I hope I can get a chance to work with you in Vietnam. And go here and enjoy with you guys.

Yeah, I hope so as well. I hope this whole global pandemic situation gets better soon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I already said that we are almost at the finish now. David, do you want to do something like any extracurricular activities, things like you want to sing a song or recite something for the audience? Because audience are hearing a long, like, technology-related talking, like, almost 1 hour. So did you want to do something like that?

So I do love singing, and actually karaoke—

oh my God, oh my God, David, David, please, okay. You can go only 2 lines or 4 lines, it can be okay, but I want from you.

All right, so there's a very classic song in the US that a lot of people sing when, you know, they're out with friends, they've had, you know, too many drinks, something like that. And it's about a state in the US that I've actually never spent any time in, but, uh, the song is called Country Roads, and I'll sing you guys a few lines, a few lines from it. If this is offensive to your ears, feel free to mute me, but I'll give it a try.

Oh yeah, no problem. Yeah, you can get it on.

All right, so here goes. It starts like this. Actually, I forgot the first lines. Okay, you can take time. No problem. Yeah, here's the chorus. So you guys might have even heard this song. It's very popular, but it goes like— maybe I heard that, but I— take me home to a place I belong, West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads. All right, so that's the chorus. That's all I'm gonna sing. If you guys want to hear more, go look up the song yourselves.

Wow, that's— you, you sing so well, David. I will tell everyone of every member of the family that if any occasion happened of insisting of family members, you will be the singer.

Uh, I don't think so. I think it's just a mic, you know, the mic is doing me some good here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So David, yeah, we are almost, almost at the finish. So is there any— in the conclusion, is there something you want to say for the audience? Then we can— we will finish the live.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if there's any one thing that I want to leave you guys with, it's, you know, this is obviously a very difficult time for everyone, but if you can take advantage of this to explore some of your interests or try to get something meaningful out of it, I think it's also a great opportunity. So just being here and trying to learn some new things, get some new perspectives, that's already, that's great, that's wonderful, right? I hope that more people can be passionate and curious and always learning. I guess that's the message I'll leave you guys with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so important for this kind of pandemic period. So David, at last I want to say thank you so much that you have given a very good time with us. Whenever I just planning to go live session with you or Cody and you accepted the live, and I know that you were so busy, but you have given the time. Thank you so much, David. Once again, uh, stay safe. Hopefully, uh, Stably will go longer and we will do more work.

Yeah, thank you for having me, and, uh, take care, everyone.

Yeah, thank you, David. So, uh, you can leave now, then I will say something, conclusion to the audience, and I will end the session. So, uh, thank you so much. Uh, you can say that I'm blessed working at Stably. I feel blessed. So pray for me, pray for Stably also, so that it will go longer and it will go top. So stay safe and fine. Thank you.