 to hashtag entrepreneurship Tuesday right here on why in the morning at Y2P for channel is where you can find us across all our social media platform at Michelle Lashira is where you can reach out to me and so in this particular session we look at information technology this is an interview that we are about to just jump into it so we are looking at information technology in business and the bigger picture we all know that technology is essential part of every business today so every business needs to invest in technology as to just have a better opportunity when it comes to do more in business so instead we have a team from a company known as other side joining us right now is the founder and lead engineer lead software engineer Ian and none other than Nixon who is the head of marketing thank you very much for that for you guys creating time to be here thank you thank you how you doing how you doing this morning fine thank you all right okay you look good thank you very much and you guys gentlemen are looking very much that you thank you no no much crazy idea casual kiasi yeah I like it this way I'm more comfortable alright Nixon so maybe we could just start it off in by just telling us a little bit of a background story over who Ian Mungai is before he became a software developer but did you grow up what's the story yeah in guys a small town boy from Eldorette who grew up the computers his own life so my whole life I've always wanted to know what can I do with technology and from there I grew and grew and I'm here now building software for my clients yeah what about you Nixon I grew up in Eldorette you went to the same primary but I wasn't that much of a computer guy I could go watch Ian play games and I was comfortable just sitting and watching okay I loved being outdoors and all that yeah more of a social person I say so for you Ian growing up did you did you have an influence probably from your parents or just your environment where it made me like propelled you to think about studying your own business in the future which the future is right now I remember my my late grandfather he bought a computer for me and I was baby in class one and I was so interested in how it worked the bad part about those days there was no internet but I learned a lot from that simple computer and as we progressed I learned how to build software small programs whereby I can use them in our day-to-day processes and from there my my uncle is the first person who actually gave me a job he told me he was selling bumper TV set boxes yeah so when I was selling them he needed a way to manage how he was selling the business and that's how I built my first problem yeah okay so next one for me okay the school I went to we had computer classes that's high school no primary okay so for me I was the guy in the computer lab the teacher is teaching exam I'm playing I see Charles Mario the people thought I wasn't serious with computer but I will see another thing I didn't know later in life connect with computer where you smart in high school very smart so and for someone anyone approaches you and ask you what is software development yeah using simple time ever simplest yes software development is a process of creating processes of the process of creating a software whereby users can use things to simplify their business and how they work and interact with applications what was the journey like for you guys starting the company other side considering that Nixon and you were neighbors back in the day so what was the journey like starting at the side yeah so back in university your brook country now we need money to do things so using my knowledge of building software I started building small websites pro bono for for people around and the problem was I didn't know how to talk to people and clients that's that's where Nixon comes in in interacting with clients okay so Nixon knows how to talk to people and me I do the technical stuff yeah Nixon yes our marketer I would like to find out what did you see in this particular company or even the idea that Ian had and he felt so much confident in it and you just felt like I'm just gonna jump into it and we're going to be a team in other side and initial stages of the company what role did you play when it comes to marketing so for me Ian when Ian approached me he was like Nixon I'm starting a company so like people were like why nicks and all that but for me I know yeah we've grown up together I can trust it you know in business when you contrast someone then you can dedicate your effort time and money so Ian approached me and since he's a person I can trust I was like why not and at that time I was still at school I was doing water engineering so water engineering and so far two different things so Ian comes with the idea and I'm a diverse person and I'm this guy will jump to any background and I'd be like let's try it let's let's try the roller coaster and see why it checks us and that's how it started okay so another important question that has just come up for what Nixon say looking at his background as studying water engineering yeah and now he's into a tech company what sort of background does one require to be to be a software developer yeah to be a software developer you require a computer science degree or maybe you go to a coding bootcamp or just learning through the internet because a lot of what the knowledge I have today I learnt by going online YouTube is your best friend those blogs are your best friend make sure you interact with them make sure every day you're learning new things because software development grows each and every day whatever you did last year is not as relevant as it will be this year and that's why you need to grow and grow and continue to learn because in the process also being part of the society by solving problems through software development yes like if you have the interest then you can have the urge to look for the skills so for me at first I was just limited to being customer care and marketing but with time I've grown my interest in also trying to understand what is the young doing you know yeah so for me I'll say interest is what is pushing me and giving me the urge to push on and try harder each and every morning when okay still a new reason so you've told you've told us that you've grown interest in software development and I would like to find out Ian has taught you how to code did you learn in did you learn in the job or are you just tack you decided like marketing is my thing no no no at the moment you have to be diverse whatever you like is not whatever will feed you so for me I might be in love with the March and everything but Ian has given me a new interest he's shown me like if you can understand the numbers can also understand the algebra those logarithms they're using and stuff so he's teaching me but at a pace that even a small baby can understand you know for you Ian the school done justice when it comes to teaching you how to code or did you learn in the job yeah I can see University teaches you like 5% of what you actually come to do in the job because in software development coding is not everything you need you need to understand processes you need to understand how to engage with your clients because a lot of mean challenges we face as our software company is the requirement face understanding what the client wants because we you may go someone tells you once this then you go and build something totally different because of that misunderstanding and how do you cope with that make sure you have vigorous meetings with our clients before we start engaging any processes of development so during early stages of other side the company how did you guys get your first clients first client was through a referral so one of our friends saw posting on our whatsapp service and they're like a baby what did you do you're like we build websites and softwares then she was like I have a job can we meet and I was I told Ian Ian was like who I told him the name and we went and from there things started it does not be any easy journey but at least things took off okay so when you guys started customer to Missouri they started off from a place where back in campus you guys are broke right they were all broke once upon a time back in campus so I would like to find out how did you raise your initial capital and how much is it and what the tools that were required when he said when setting the company yeah okay when starting software development company think the first thing you need is a laptop absolutely need a laptop and if you're maybe developing applications for mobile phones you need also mobile phone and those are what you need first in terms of developing the software in terms of the legal processes need to have your company registered to make sure that you take care of the big man in terms of taxes and stuff like that so that's not that is what we didn't know that was a process we didn't know how to how to tax what you've been doing how to price software that is a very key thing in terms of engaging the class because you might go and over price or under price the software that you want to develop for the person so for me for me today's capital I decided to check on my spending and my income so in order to save I needed to know how much I'm using how much I'm making I wasn't making much like so I used to make sure I know how much I'm making so for me to save I started like taking like I started checking my expenses and my income so through that I'm the extra that I made that's what I put towards the company and that's how we got our first and because we already had our laptop 70 we didn't need much we only needed a small amount of money for marketing okay and young people watching right now and most definitely you they would like to be here or other people were interested in software development right so right now like has to look at other side your company be very much comfortable to tell us the services that other side offers yes other side offers web site development you also offer application development both iOS and Android we also offer data analytics and normalization for clients and lastly we offer branding and small graphic design which we may also outsource to clients Nixon yes I know you're so much stuck not start you know using the word stuck because you said it's important to be versatile and we are much into marketing right but I would like to find out because you you're still into software development right I like to find out what is the difference between web developer and software developer because these are terms that most of the time they just where basically what development is websites the normal websites that we see online okay but software development you as Michelle you can come to me Nixon have a shop how can you create for me up your system and a management system you know where you can control your stock and all that so that's where software software is more customized applications that simplify your work then websites are a place where you display your your products you can also display which are on the big one right and that's what now we have the web designer who holds the creative part over decorate on display and everything else okay what does the life over software developer look like yes most of us out here we see you guys probably in a corner in a hoodie you know be like all day stuck on your laptop your computer or even your phone so what does a day look like for a software developer I can see that the movies right strength because you have to make sure that you develop processes that encompasses the plants needs so you have to make sure that when you're coding during the day you are by yourself making sure that you go through the processes that are required to develop software yeah so I'm going to talk to no no it's just a normal it's normal because most of the day you are planning what to do once you've planned what to do maybe for clients who wants a website to start by brainstorming ideas that he needs so you start by designing his website simply maybe using Adobe XD or other tools such as FigMountline then you start the actual implementation and design that is why by you start by coding the website yeah so it just requires you to be maybe on your own take some time off and start working so you guys are just being on your own element yes actually the only one because maybe you have some interactions during the new making sure that you are not building something that is not what the client needs or is up to work up to par to the requirements that you are giving yeah so that's where you have interactions with other people so this the next question is best going to you next time so let's look at the funding perspective right so how do you guys evolve the business like your company is source of revenue okay so for us for company the good thing with us is everything we need like we only need a computer and a phone to test absolutely and that's what our parents while we were joining campus they told us take this and they didn't tell us to take this but they gave us their laptops so once we had a laptop and phones that's one step and that's the bigger expense then the rest you have to invest in your in your intellectual capacity that's they paid for us the school fees so with the computer and the laptop and the dedication we had we didn't need much funding then the first job we did we didn't do much market it was just our substaters then we were paid well and it pushed us yeah because we had learned how to book like through our campus life we had known spending money without knowing where the next one come is not a good idea so we decided before we go on with this company we have to know how we are ranging our books how we are balancing our books so once we understood how to balance our books it wasn't it wasn't because we had our first like we were lucky enough to get our first client without much marketing or much expenses on marketing then from the first client we did a good job referrals referrals yeah okay we'll go back to financial aspect of it and we will see other aspects we'll go back to that but to you and during this time of the pandemic right it has become so clear that business owners need to have presence online right and the continue use the continued ranking increased use of mobile phones a lot friend or do you guys do like apps that come up with apps for different companies and if so yes maybe a combination a couple but not the naming but maybe their function yes we have a client who is a media company yeah and needed to make sure he engaged more with their users during this time of the pandemic so during that phase he needed enough to make sure that his users can watch videos like the videos comment on the videos without actually going to the social media and everywhere make sure they had the content on that simple up that we built for them yeah oh would you like me to sit if you want to give us further information I would be nice yeah the client is Indian TV from Somali yeah and he needed to engage most of the users back at home on the content about their nation going back to finances now we're studying every business right as a business owner you always have interact with some of business owners and they always like when they started off they were looking at their you know their income finances how the business is doing every single month and they ended up finding out it's better to look at the maybe quote any of it what are some of the financial lessons that you've learned when studying at the side of the business that you got to learn on the job first my first lesson I learned invest where they are returns the returns on investments are key you know they are times Ian and I sat down and we were making ambitious plans we want to make a million dollar company we want to make an app that costs this and then we've made the plan and everything then I'm telling you we are making this plan is Kenya ready for this you know but we dropped it because it wasn't making sense but then we said at the moment we can work for people then with the money they pay us we can do our own project so it turns on investments is key then another thing balancing your books then other thing is taking the challenge you know like me as a person me as Nixon I know what I can do and what I can't do but sometimes you're stuck between a rock and a hard place and you're like can I do it or can I not do it and it's 50-50 that's when you take the challenge and when you're taking the challenge you involve is this process as the returns on my investment good is the money I'm putting it gonna make more money so then another thing when taking debts take from reliable sources there are some people you can take debts from them but the intentions are malicious like I'll give you a debt so that I can mess your company tomorrow so it's good when you're taking debts or and when you're making investments and when you are balancing your books when you do for me those three things have worked sometimes I will not have the money I'll need to borrow a friend or someone have reliable partners who can support you without any malice then when you make the investments make sure there's a return on the investment then make sure you balance your books make sure every month you know I'm making this and I'm using this so if you have those three for me they work and I'm still learning more all right okay Nixon after you in there was some of the financial lessons that you've learned when it comes to controlling your finances and yeah during this when you're studying other side until now so sure find a couple of lessons yeah as Nixon has said put your money where your mouth is because make sure it feeds you first of all was my major course when I was starting was maybe hosting and hosting websites apps and other likes because when you start you don't know where you're going to get this two thousand three thousand a month to make sure that all your clients websites are online and on the website that's where you have to make sure you have maybe a maintenance contract with your clients and yeah because when you have maintenance maintenance contracts with your clients they ensure that you keep their software up to date and make sure everything's working in case they have a problem you're there to fix it because without this maintenance contracts softwares usually fail yeah large number of softwares fail because you as a developer didn't put out the maintenance contracts for certain applications for your users yeah all right another question that has been bugging me do you guys offer consultation on how a client can build you know like their own search engine optimized website just by themselves you know yeah we do and we do offer that like but we outsource we have a partner who's well uh is very very equipped and like he understands the field we brought him on board because most of our customers like once you made someone website that's not the end of it you know the good thing with our our job like our contract with our clients it's continuous we make you the website we do the maintenance we also teach you the how to do so through that like because of the relationship with our customer clients we decided to outsource someone who was good in that field and yeah we can offer consultation in search engine optimization and other likes that you need for your website to grow is it a consistent on a time frame how long does it take uh it depends the length depth of your pocket and also with our partner and also how willing you know some people can come to you then when you give them your charge fee you give them your feeling they're like no they're not serious so you're serious it's also okay so you have to sit down with the client yeah we sit down we discuss you know and also know your product and how it interacts with your your users yeah so mostly depends on what type of business you have how you want to sell it to your clients and how they'll interact with it yeah because if it's when you're doing search engine optimization like for a client of us who likes to sell tours and travels we'll make sure that he targets certain aspects of the users using back links and others to make sure that when someone searches for your not necessarily your website but something related to your website it pops up among the top on the page yeah so it requires you to understand your business understand what exactly you're selling and to make sure that you pinpoint the exact things that are going to be searched later What are some of the challenges that you faced when starting out with this particular company you know as the CEO I'm so sure like everything is just weird on you because you're the one holding the vision so what are some of the challenges that you faced and you get to learn along from the job but now you can pinpoint and say these are the particular challenges and maybe for someone who's watching and wants to get into software development probably you can avoid this and this and that yeah when starting I can see it was a learning curve of understanding certain programming languages and processes of building software for people because when someone approaches you with an idea you have to visualize it and bring his idea to life so you have to realize that this guy needs a website this guy needs an app this guy needs a point of sale system you have to understand all those systems and make sure that you understand how to build software for them the second part was how to manage my my funds as nixon was saying it was a major challenge because once you get paid and maybe you want to invest in other projects that we need as a company to build you have to know how much money are we going to put in this particular project how much will he return the the money to us or the investment to us or how much time will it take for us to build these particular projects and how will we interact with them those are the major challenges that we had when starting speaking about products you have my major challenge for me was getting the check on Wednesday nixon uh you know speaking about products and everything else i would find out what is the next product that other side is watching should i say it or should i say ask your boss so the next project we are doing involves the youth okay we are the future of the nation you know and at the moment there are so many youths who are talented so at the moment we are trying to bring a platform that's free where all the youth can log in like let's say like we are trying to bring together people with different creative creativity with different talents under one platform you know under one umbrella so like we are tried with okay i shouldn't say it like we have an app that's we're developing at the moment okay i shouldn't say it before we should speak the means yet you don't want you to lose your job so let's keep it chandelier but we are working on something we want to involve more people you want to like uh like as you can see like other side is a newcomer to many people we want it to be a regular household name so to do that we need to involve more people so our next product will involve a lot more people not just ian and i all right that would be nice i'm looking forward to have a sit down for conversation talk about that let's look at some of the achievements that other side has gotten to be part of and just the achievements of the company yeah currently we have over 30 websites since you run since you started which is yeah we started in 2017 okay yeah we have had over 30 websites which are actually not just simple website but interactive websites whereby users can interact with the the clients and make sure that everything works well we also have over we have built over 10 applications five in ios and uh 10 in 100 together okay okay what is the companies uh uh this is so often the question uh what do you see the company at five 10 years down the road um so okay i'll do this me i'm a person with short term goals i'm not a patient person so i love short term goals so maybe in a year or so we'll like like this company to be a whole household name you know whereby soft all software solutions around will be like i want my phone to be buzzing all the time and i'm consulting this and this ian is making this website i'm in a meeting in in Nairobi and is in a meeting in Eldoret like we want maybe we want our maybe we want to be uh billion dollar company in the next three years the next year this is a goal that you're aiming to you know yeah pay high yeah yeah and it's we have to put in a lot of effort all right do you want to add up add something to that yeah uh the next maybe five or so years uh based on the projects that we have right now i believe as Nixon said we're going to be a household name but i believe we'll have employed a lot of people because currently in the company we are around five uh me Nixon uh data analyst an application developer and uh graphic design but we hope to grow and create more jobs beyond just technology even manual even uh as you say more like you would make sure that we create as many jobs for the k and youth which is a very major problem in our society right now and i hope that from then maybe you have been through maybe up to a thousand people in the next five to ten years that is my greatest goal yeah someone is watching and uh they would love to get into software development in this day what would be your advice giving us an insight of what's uh the real situation on ground looks like yeah for software development as uh i can see it requires a lot of interest it requires you to take things to heart because software development isn't easy trust me it is not easy people what you see in the movies people clicking computers and stuff it's not easy it takes time it takes a lot of mental strength and it requires you to make sure that you interact with the clients and other people on a daily basis on a weekly basis make sure that when you're developing software you interact with the clients a lot yeah so for me for someone watching i'm not the best person to give advice but this is what i would say this is what i would say if you want to come into software engineering or software development because it's making people money don't i've been on the ground i've seen i've tried but and i've seen it it requires you to like if it's not your passion and it's if it's not something that you're interested in and you're just you just want to do it because for the money don't try follow what follow your dream you know for me i'm with Ian but i wouldn't tell you i would i would want to do software development like i wouldn't want to cut the way it does i would want to sleep at odd hours you know i want to have my sleep from age to age you know be honest with yourself you know don't just go into something because it's making someone money and don't do something because someone else's will think this or that do something because it's good for you yourself first sit down reflect on yourself have that deep touch you know you whatever you're doing at the moment might be good so try to think about it first before venturing into software because it's stressful yeah what i'm getting is be true to yourself yeah be true to yourself okay guys reach out to you social media just to interact ask more questions or even be part of other side yeah our social media on twitter it's at other side ld for limited and uh instagram too it's at the side ke you can find us on those two pages if you need to contact us go to info at other side dot c o dot ke or visit our website other side dot c o dot ke so to add on that today like we are not good on our social media pages so for any okay can i which camera is mine okay so for the youth watching as at other side we need a person for social media for a short term contract so you can reach us through the emails that ian has given and we we need the applications by end of today so yeah the job is there and we need someone competent enough to help us with our social media pages but why why you didn't tell me that i'm seated here i think i'm very qualified for that job but why nixon why let's give someone else a chance absolutely so guys make sure you follow up with nixon and uh if you have all the qualification reach out to nixon for that short contract uh it's all about uh social media like our pages we need to grow our facebook okay and instagram those are the two i'll handle okay so guys make sure how can they reach out to you again uh okay first at the moment they can either go to our pages at other side on in on facebook and instagram they just dms or they can reach us through info at other side dot co dot ke or i can't okay yeah those two emails or our website all right and also they can actually follow us at y254 channel at michelle asheera and we can give you further details uh if you are still not on the same lane with what they're saying uh we got you here so at uh y254 channel at michelle asheera and uh the hashtag is his hashtag entrepreneurship please remember you have a question for you and the question was what makes you buy goods or services from the same person or company every time at y254 channel on our facebook page i would like to i would like you to interact with me and have that conversation and tell me the reason why what makes you buy goods or services from the same person or company every single time so don't touch that doubt be coming up with another interview right now you're going to enjoy good music