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If enterprises already have massive SaaS platforms, why would they build custom tools instead?
In this episode of Futureproof, Prakash Chandran sits down with Yvonne Lau, CEO of HR Verticals Inc., to explore the real tradeoffs of build vs. buy in technology—and what changes when AI and low-code tools enter the picture. Yvonne shares her journey from corporate HR practitioner to founder, tracing a career spent implementing global HR systems at scale before deciding to build her own. Together, they unpack why enterprise SaaS feels bloated for many organizations, how rapid prototyping with no-code and AI wins over skeptical buyers, and what it takes to sell custom-built software into compliance-heavy environments. They also discuss the shifting identity of non-technical founders, the importance of staying hands-on, and why the next generation of HR professionals may simply build the tools they wish they had.
Topics covered include:
Episode ID: 18799836-build-vs-buy-in-an-ai-first-world-with-yvonne-lau-hr-verticals-inc
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this is like one of the things that I still keep this very close to my chest.
I receive an email from one of the end users, and the end user said,
this is the worst application I have ever used.
Hey everyone, welcome to Future Proof. I'm Prakash Chunder and the CEO of Xanom.
Today I'm joined by Yvonne Lau, the CEO of HR Verticals Incorporated.
Yvonne has spent her career at the intersection of HR, technology, and operations
from scaling HR systems inside major enterprises to founding multiple companies
focused on modern talent workflows. What makes Yvonne's story especially interesting
is that she's lived the full evolution around how software gets built
from a fully coded product on AWS to using no code products like Bubble
to then a decoupled architecture using Xanom as the backend and now building with weweb and Xanom
to actively explore how AI fits without chasing shiny objects.
So like so many of us, Yvonne is a real builder who's navigating how to build software in the age
of AI and all the tools we have at our disposal. In this conversation we'll talk about the real
trade-offs behind build versus buy, especially in HR tech, why SaaS feels incredibly bloated for
enterprises and how AI changes who can build, how teams deliver, and what it means to be a modern
founder who refuses to be held hostage by opaque and traditional development cycles. Yvonne,
great to have you. Thank you so much for being here today.
Well, thank you for having me, Perkash.
Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation. I mentioned a little bit of your background
at the top, but would love for you to take the listeners on a journey around your career,
how you kind of got started, certainly in HR, and then became a builder yourself.
Yeah, no, absolutely. So definitely that was not my career trajectory. I wanted to be a teacher
when I was younger, but then I realized playing with kids and teaching them are two completely
different things to home then. Somehow I just kind of stumbled into HR and I have to say,
I had a pretty pretty interesting fascinating career in HR because most of my corporate
experience were with pretty large organizations and it's really important for anybody who's starting
the careers in HR to work for bigger organizations because you have a bigger budget, right?
So a budget for software, for example, I've had the opportunity to work on projects stem from
hundreds of thousands of dollars to the millions, right? And also implementing software globally
and for different continent around the world. My mining experience have taught me to places that
I would have never otherwise go very remote places and implementing software technologies
a challenge because of internet connection issues and so on. So definitely I had an exciting
career in HR. I was exposed to HR tech when I started working for Starbucks. We would
sign with a vendors and then eventually it get bought out by Oracle SAP and so on, right?
So I think that was probably the beginning of my obsessions when it comes to HR software and
technology. We're in addition to using Word document or Excel for me to track employee data and
do analysis and whatnot is to be able to truly automate processes and get data all that fun stuff.
So after my Starbucks then I went into that engineering company and that's where I got, you know,
a full experience exposure into HR tech but the suite of HR products and software, right?
They set me to training, became the global administrator for, you know, their internal
applicant tracking systems and from which he eventually got acquired by Tlao. So
the web training got acquired by Tlao. So it's just never stopped. It just keeps happening throughout
my entire career. And then my role kind of grew in addition to being my super administrator or doing
integration is, you know, learning how to write SQL query to build custom reports and not
that fun stuff, right? I got headhunted into working for healthcare tech organizations and I remember
the first day I really thought I made the biggest mistake because going into tech and then I was at,
you know, my cubicle and I was given like, it was kind of a funny story, a laptop that was like
six, seven years old and I'm like, okay, this can be possible because I'm working in tech and I'm
given the, he's the buys that is really old, right? And then I came to realize is that, you know,
the business just didn't have a proper onboarding processes for employees and that's what I was
hired to do is to implement the whole HR strategy or implement the first like HR systems, tools,
talent management software, all that fun stuff, you know, to be directed to the file cabinets
for all of the employee data and try to digitize it, right? That was definitely a different
reality for me going from a big organizations where you have all the resources. It got really
exciting for me because we were able to scale the organization by the time I left. I went from
six century to 14 hundred employees. I've already implemented all the strategy software system processes
and tools and then I felt like, okay, where do I want to go next? And I think that's where
I decided to go back to school. So I went to grad school and then I don't know what came over me.
I think it was a conversation I had with my parents. So they, because my parents, my, my uncle,
my dad, they're all entrepreneurs, right? So they said they always say like, okay, you know,
you're still young, you have no kids. You should try entrepreneurship once every once you try
entrepreneurship once in their lifetime, right? He's like, you have no obligation if you fail
you're fine, right? Or if you go bankrupt, you're fine, right? So then I was like, okay, at that moment,
I think the stars were aligned because I went to school that focused on entrepreneurship. I was
working on a school project and somehow that school project became a reality when I started pitching
my presentation by setting cold LinkedIn messages and I was able to sign like three customers who
said, if you, if you were able to build this thing that you have shared with us in your Google
slides in six months, then we will sign to become, you know, your first, like, you know, customer
subscribe, right? So I went back and then I guess I got, you know, so excited. I just kind of
handed my resignation letter. I cashed out in the tech company and I just took the money to build
my first startup. And then ever since then, I've never looked back. Yeah.
Before we get into that, it sounds like a really fascinating career that was really centered
centered around people and technology. So even though you weren't an HR tech itself,
I think that one thing people don't realize is the whole, the amount of systems that it takes
to manage people from the inception of like the interview, the applicant tracking system,
to payroll, to all of the processes. And oftentimes they're tailored very much so to an individual
organization. And the tool set that they have is pretty limited, right? Like, and as the organization
grows, so does the complexity in the people and the systems that you have to manage. So I find it
interesting that at all of these different touch points like you had, you just got to see the
evolution of HR tech, the evolution of recruiting, even leveraging tools like Friendster to like
source candidates, etc. And then in this journey that you were on and what you were presenting,
I'm assuming this was the start of what would then become HR verticals. Talk a little bit about
the problem that you set out to solve, the slides that you would send around. And then the
timeline, why organizations got excited about you solving problems in the short timeframe that
was customized to them in people tech. That was around the time where there's a lot of conversations
around big data, right? So I think if we just set some context around like HR, we are reminded of
this too when we work in the business is that, okay, we are a cost where we don't generate revenue,
so I think there, because of that, we have to adopt new processes, practices, or tools in order
for us to do things faster. So when you hire one HR person, it's almost like we say it's one HR
person to 75 to 100 employees. It was very challenging, especially when we were recruiting in Canada,
where we have Amazon is coming in, Google coming in, and they were basically head hunting
employees from the Canadian tech companies, they were paying double the salary, and so on, right?
So because of that, like in addition to, for example, the extrinsic rewards, which is, you know,
your pay, your total package, and so on, there's also that intrinsic reward where you want to,
if we can't pay the way, you know, AWS or Google pay, right? We can provide other things that will
create additional values where employees would want to stay with us instead of going to Google and
all the big shops, right? So I think what we need it was, you know, to collect data on employees,
so for example, things that engage in surveys, right? Getting a sentiment of how they feel,
so for example, being able to send what we call an employee lifecycle surveys to measure,
you know, at what point do their engagement drop, right? Is it at the six month smart, one year,
seven year, five years, and so on, right? So I think that was the thing where HR just didn't
traditionally have a lot of data that helps them prioritize the stuff that they should focus on,
and that's what's the problem that I came into salt is to give them that help them collect the data,
turn that data into, you know, usable metrics in order for them to better prioritize what they
need to focus on. Yeah, that, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I think like, yeah, you touched upon
something that's very real. For a lot of organizations, the people function in HR is generally,
like it is a cost center. It's not as to revenue generating function, and it's hard to really
kind of see what the ROI is going to be. Even though talent acquisition arguably is one of the most
important things, yeah, collecting data around what drives people and motivates people, especially
in a really competitive market, yeah, it's just, it's hard to kind of navigate. So tell me a little
bit about what that looked like for you in terms of what you expressed, like you kind of went into,
like, I guess HR tech as a service, and what was the first manifestation of a product that,
or a problem that you were trying to solve, and how that manifested as a product?
So, and I think that was one of the things where I tried to, you know, educate my clients is that,
so in order for us to solve your problems, we need to understand, we need to know what your
pain points are, and what is your current processes? What are you doing today? What are you not doing?
So I think it's educating our clients is that we have this tool that it's highly customizable,
even in the way we were collecting data from employees and so on. But at the same time,
do they understand how do they marry the internal processes to the actual technology and being able
to utilize to the technology to as high as potential? So I think that was the number one
one of the most challenging things for us to go in and kind of educate our clients in understanding,
we're not one of those software where, hey, you know, subscribe to us and then just go in and put
in information and so on and then let it run on its own course, where we did offer what we call
like HR consulting first and then technology second, meaning, you know, we're not going to,
I mean, I'm sure, you know, it's like when you're baking a cake, right? If you know all the ingredients,
you can probably bake the cake, but if you don't have the recipe, you bake something,
but it doesn't taste like a cake. So that's kind of the analogy I was using to help them understand,
tell me your problem, tell me your processes, help them realize, you know, how they can
utilize technology to the full potential and the level of customizations that they can do
instead of being stuck in a very rigid process because the system tells you to do things this way,
right? So now it's like, I'm giving you the flexibility instead of you following
whatever system that you have previously subscribed to to collect your data for your employees and
whichever however way you want to do it, right? So I think that was one of the, I guess like biggest
challenge that we have to solve like kind of going into this business, the poll building process
for us, it because we already have an idea and we spent six months talking to our clients,
understanding the requirements, right? So, you know, the building part for me was, or I should say,
the requirement gathering, you know, from my product owner perspective for me,
was in the most challenging part. I think it's when you have to relate that and
turn that into a natural product, a SaaS product, a scalable product, something that is agile enough
and that can be updated at any time at one. I think that was the most challenging part for me,
or someone like me who never went to, you know, didn't do a degree in computer science,
I didn't know how to go. I mean, I learned how to use and built SQL queries for custom reporting,
but by no means is that really coding and building software, right? So there's kind of two
things that I want to get from this conversation. So the first is like, I think just how SaaS,
especially like SaaS within HR, something that like obviously has larger companies, like larger
companies will leverage tools like NetSuite and there's rippling out there. There's so many
pieces of software that serve the people function, but I think that one of the things like in
prep for this conversation you and I had discussed is that, you know, even though their processes might
change, they still have to sometimes buy this massive piece of software that comes with all these
bells and whistles that the company may not even need. And in the age of AI, in the age of bespoke
building, I'm really curious how you kind of look at organizations now, especially in HR tech,
to see how they're approaching this problem, right? The sales force kind of mentality of like
a SaaS with everything. It's like a mega application versus building custom and how accessible
that is today, especially in the world of AI. Maybe talk a little bit about that first.
Yeah, I'll point that back to like consumerism, right? Because we're all used to buying things and
get the biggest and the best deals, even if we are not or we're not ready to adopt the full suite
of products, right? Because when, you know, and I've been on both sides of the coin, right? So
I have worked, you know, as an employee and I'm the one who's throwing out RFPs and basically
getting vendors to bid, you know, on the business and so on, right? So I've on that side. And I've
been on the other side where I was a consultant and I was selling and basically for SAP, right? So I
kind of, I can see on both sides, right? And I think, you know, to our conversation where I said,
I just feel like, you know, you buy a new phone, a new laptop or a new car, right? And you're
really only using 20% of the function, but then we're paying for features that we don't need to
use or we don't even know that it exists that we can use. So I think like in the era of AI and
like all this, all the really cool stuff that's happening in this and even in the HR tech space,
right? Is that we're able to build highly customized mini modules that connect to the single
source of truth, which is the HR system, like HR will always have to think about compliance.
Compliance is never going away for us in this function, right? So compliance is basically one of
the things most HR people worry about when they have got the new software's technology,
because we have a lot of confidential data relating to employees information or the performance
review, all that succession planning, all that great stuff, right? So compliance is here to say,
so we will always need a database that helps the single source of truth, but anything else
thereafter and with the speed of how quickly you can build application with the help of AI,
you really don't need to get the bang for the bucks and just subscribe to the host wheel
product just to say like 10, 20%, right? You're paying a subscription on an annual basis
where areas that money could be spent on building highly customizable tools to your internal processes
and that the tool is completely scalable and can perform at the same level of any other SaaS
product that you see in the HR text case. Yeah, I wrote, I recently wrote an article around
like this build versus buy and how it's changing in today's era. And you know, it's not that like
SaaS is necessarily dead, but the kind of this monolithic SaaS with everyone trying to serve every
or every feature trying to serve everyone, I think that is dying. Like you said,
there are some fundamental things that don't give the business leverage that they should invest,
they should like have SaaS do that. But for everything else, especially with AI, you're able to
customize, you're able to build it. So that's the second piece of the thing I wanted to talk to you
about is how do you help those customers build on top of that baseline? You know, especially in a
world with AI, you have made a very concerted effort to take that institutional laws that you
have and help, you know, sometimes very big organizations. Like how do you number one get them
comfortable with that mentality around like the build versus buy that in between state? And then
also talk about your philosophy just around building because I know you're uniquely also in
your very hands-on in the build process as well. So talk about that.
Yes, no, absolutely. So I think with now, I'm just focused in the HR domain right now, right?
With the within the HR space, what would help my clients is to help them realize the vision,
right? And to visualize what something could look like, you know, what you have today or whatever
tools you're using today and what you can do in the future. So I think the whole using,
for example, we use wewap to build a front end. I use wewap right now to basically build
my blueprints or an MVP for my clients to help them see what the vision can become. And I think
that is what's been getting us that traction where my client is now becoming more comfortable
or just, you know, today we had another meeting with our clients to talk about something else
that the CEO wants to build, right? To help him visualize something, right? So they're getting
comfortable because now they're exposed. Beef, I think where we get stuck sometimes is because
we're so used to the, you know, the the subscription economy, right? They don't see other solution
other than that. So the whole local no code platform where you can build software application
in a fraction of like cost and time. It's not something they're eat they have even been introduced,
right? So I think that introduction and being able to send them a visualization where they can
actually click through and see, okay, no way about did you just built this in like two days?
I'm like, yes, I just built this in two days. And I think that's where the lightbulb
goes off and that is this even possible? Like, what does that cost you? And honestly, it doesn't
cost me anything because I'm just dragging and dropping the front end have some connection to
the background to make sure we're able to, you know, create data and so on, right? To build that
MVP in a matter of like eight hours once you've sent me the requirements, right? So I think that
one of the superpowers of, you know, low code no code and especially in the world of AI is
that speed being able to get that prototype out there showing people the art of the possible,
especially larger organizations that might be slower to adopt. But still within larger organizations,
there's also more risk, more compliance. And they might say, this is great, but how,
how what's the likelihood that I can actually use this? How long will it take to actually fit into
my ecosystem and pass the security requirements within my organization? How do you think about that
and then overcome that as a builder for these larger organizations here? From that angle,
I never have a conversation award directly with the HR department without IT being involved
in the business side, right? So if you try to do something, and even if you get something built,
right? But as soon as like IT comes knocking on the door, right? That's where, you know, I'll help
break loose, right? So I think the most important part is when as a founder, when you're going in,
anticipate and expect that, you know, there's always going to be an IT department who's going to be
really concerned and rightly so about, you know, data privacy, the security, like what are you doing
in your system? Like, be prepared to collaborate and bring them into the conversation early.
So that's something I never shy away right from the get go. And then as a founder, be educated,
you know, around the space, right? And make sure your application is set up for success, right?
Like, even with AI, it is, it can be dangerous even in the, you know, aerial HR tech, right?
Like, you know, for example, there is currently a class action lawsuits against workday, right?
At the federal level because of how allegedly, you know, how workday uses AI to do recruitment
and that the way their screening candidates is discriminating, you know, a certain race, you know,
demographic of employees, right? So there is now an active, you know, class action lawsuit against
these big giants, right? So I do think it is important that as a founder, you keep yourself up to
speed educated in this particular domain that you're working in and making sure you're also
educating your client when they ask for something. So even just sometimes, okay, Vaughn, I want,
you know, an AI agent to do all these things. I say, well, it's better to divide the tasks into,
you know, different AI agent to get the, you know, certain benefits from what you're trying to do or,
okay, if you're trying to use AF for this and this and this, have you, you know, consider the potential
risk when it comes to your local labor law and so on, right? So there is a lot of light educating
off your clients and you have to constantly keep yourself up to date with, you know, the latest trends
and things that you need to know about this, you know, the domain that you're working in.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess talking a little further, so that's kind of the
compliance and security side, making sure IT is involved, making sure you are clear on the regulations
as you're starting to build more with AI and train with AI. The second piece is the modality of
how you build. Like you mentioned, like, kind of building in this modular fashion in the future is
like much more like not these, again, monolithic applications, but different modules. How do you think
about that in terms of how you architect your application that services these, these larger companies?
If you look at vibe coding right now, that helps you build something super fast and super quick,
but if you're someone who, if you don't know how to recode, there's still that element of risk.
You wouldn't be selling something where you don't fully understand or you don't know how to
troubleshoot if something goes wrong, right? So I think when you look at building something and
picking the right tools and surrounding yourself with the right people, so earlier on when I was
starting with bubble and then when you have to build something really scalable, that's when you
realize bubble is not what I need right now. It's a great tool for other things, but definitely not
when I have to build an enterprise level applications, right? This is like one of the things that I
still keep this very close to my chest because when we went live with bubble, I received an email from
one of the end users and the end user said, this is the worst application I have ever used.
Not because of the front end issue, not because of anything related to the features,
it was because performance, it was really slow, it was lagging, and because of that, it doesn't
matter how great your UI UX or the features that you have in place in the application, but if
there is a performance issue, your end user isn't going to even get there, right? So I think that's
where I come to realize, okay, in my earlier stages, I was surrounding myself with people that
were building MVPs, they weren't building enterprise applications, right? I think the best combination
you can get is for people who've got a software development background and then they are in
this local, local space and they know how to use AI. So I think you benefit from working with people
who's got a software development background and that I'm able to use the best coach to help
me grow in this space, right? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, it's kind of whenever you're building
something that is meant for production or meant for enterprise, I think there is the infrastructure
dynamics as you're talking about, making sure that it's scale and the performance is there,
but I think it's also a recognition that the team, it's not, it's very rarely a solo builder,
like maybe a solo builder to express the prototype, but what you bring, for example,
is that institutional specialized knowledge around the business need and the value. You work
closely with a developer, right? Like a software engineer that can help you architect things
properly and in a compliant way and you're probably also going to expand that team over time,
like depending on the build out and we see this over and over and I think working in a surface area
where everyone can collaborate is actually why I think like as the no-code, low-code space evolved,
in a world where AI will do the building, you need that surface area for everyone to collaborate,
to validate and it sounds like that that's what you're saying. Yes, absolutely, and I see like
software engineers for me, they are enabler, right? So they enable, you know, if I lack a better
words, let's just say regular people like myself, we don't have a, you know, coding, development
background, to be able to do something that we never thought we could have, you know,
founded like a decade ago, right? It was impossible for me to think I can build, I can replicate
a module from SAP with the support of AI and using platforms to do that, right? Like it's
incredible to see how, you know, we have progressed, right? I was afraid before, right? But now,
I'm not afraid. Like it's, it's just, it's an incredible feeling because I feel like,
you know, at some point I'm going to call myself a developer because like, now I'm getting
into the code, now I'm understanding these things, right? Okay, before I didn't know what's a
lambda function and now I know what's a lambda function, right? And then your, you know, Zeno 2.0
is phenomenal. Like there's so many things that I can play with and I can see, you know, Zeno
was kind of like my mentor in like leading me and getting me comfortable in the software development
space and now getting into something even more technical. Yeah, I think that's another thing I
wanted to expand on a little bit with you, which is literacy in this age of AI where AI can build
so much because I do still think that as a builder, as a developer, you have to understand
what is happening. And I've said this a couple times, if you don't understand it, then you don't
own it. And I think being a part of a team where in an environment, leveraging tools that help
you actually want to dive deeper into what the code is doing and the business logic is doing is
very important and AI is kind of best use for that. So I think just expanding on that, I'd love to
understand how you use AI today, like whether it be to like increase your understanding, whether it
be to build, what are the ways that you use AI that might be interesting for our audience to learn
from? So I use AI for a lot of things. As a founder, so if I think about, okay, so I'm going to
separate that, you know, there's the operation side and that there's the software development side,
right? So from an operations side, if you are a founder and you're wearing multiple hats up on
the time, there's so many things you can automate. For example, I'm able to hire internationally
where English is not the first language, but when they have to correspond with clients, they can
use a lot of the AI to help them, you know, polish their emails or, you know, creating the job
description where, for example, local local developer, let's just, you know, look at that job itself,
right? A lot of fresh grads graduating, you know, from a computer science program, some of them
haven't even heard of the local local platforms, right? So asking them to create job districts is
and then bookkeeping, right? Like making everything super easy for me. So from the operations side,
it really takes away all of the administrative stuff that I have to work on. Now, on the software
development side, that's where my knowledge with AI becomes exponential because I'm able to
learn so much faster than back in a day. I always tell my team because they're a lot younger than me
and I say, okay, back in the day, you know, I didn't even have, I had IE, like internet explorer,
okay? I had encyclopedia. You guys have, like, you know, chat GPD, Gemini, you know,
co-pilot. I have all of the, you know, these tools for you guys to use, right? There is no
reasons why you cannot be resourceful. So by the time you reach out to me, I need to know, okay,
if you, for example, we were working on an integration recently with one of our clients,
and in order for us to pick up this file from SAP, we do have to do some integration work,
which requires coding, right? And if we don't understand, it's so easy for us to just basically
ask for help through AI or copy and paste existing code that we have. Help us understand every
section of it, every line of it, right? And make whatever modification or even like, for example,
we web, I use a lot of the, their internal AI tool to build, you know, workflows on the front-end
side. It allows me to build my front end instead of spending six hours to build something. I can
shorten it to two hours, and this is how I can get MVP super fast for my clients for the visualizations,
right? With AI, it's just, it's the limitless right now for us. I think it's just the only
thing I caution my team is use your judgment when you are using AI, right? For example, be careful,
you do not copy any of our clients as data in there, whatever analysis you're doing, you don't
put clients as information. So you do need to coach your team and train your team to be, you know,
to make really good judgment calls on how you use AI for your work, right? Yeah, I think that
makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think, I guess my question for you, so you talked a little bit about
build, you talked about how you leverage AI. As you start to grow as a developer, founder, entrepreneur,
and you engage more and more customers with HR verticals, do you feel like you're always going to
be in the code and in the build process, or do you feel like you'll remove yourself at some point?
I don't think I can completely remove myself because when you start doing that, I fear that I might
not be learning fast enough. So I don't mean I have to get super hands on with everything,
eventually, but I don't think a founder should be completely removed because you still need to be
in touch with what's going on while we were building in the healthcare space because we have to
look into, you know, hit by compliance, there's a lot of regulations around, you know, using software
in the healthcare space, right? So when I was in the dark because I didn't know how to code, it gave
me a lot of anxiety because I don't know if my platform is compliant or not. So for me to be
completely removed from being, I will be less hands on, but I would not, I don't think I want to
remove myself completely. Yeah, you kind of need to be able to trust what your software is doing.
So it may not be like in the intricacies of the code, but you need some sort of way to make sure
it's compliant with all the regulations that you are beholden to.
You know, I have another question just around, you know, building community, building a community
of other developers that are starting to create in this AI world today. You know, we, I have a
just a few Xano customers that are female founders, women in tech, and I wondered what your
experience was like with just finding co-founders, finding fellow engineers, fellow builders that are
women that are building meaningful things like you. So I mean, when I first started, I, you know,
partner with a co-founder because I, I think there's like this, you know, there's an opinion from
the general public where if you are a female co-founder, you should always have a male technical
co-founder, right? That's kind of like what's I've experienced, and when you are doing sales calls,
right, then people will be like, okay, where's your co-founder? Where's your technical co-founder?
Right? So I get that a lot. I'm pretty competitive myself, and I think like when I hear that, I'm like,
okay, I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn how to do all these things, right? Because I don't want
be in that position where someone talks to me and they feel like, okay, I don't think you know,
so I'm going to have to talk to your co-founder, which is, you know, someone who's technical
and generally speaking, a male in that sense, right? But I think we, it's a different era right now
where you see more and more of the female co-founders, right? And I have participated in communities
where I see female co-founders in the space, but generally speaking, they're still partner with
a male technical co-founder, right? But in the space of like building smaller applications or
starting with bubbles and so on, I'm seeing more and more female founders pop up in the space,
right? So I think if I were to give advice to myself, like to my younger self, it's almost like,
you know, don't be afraid, right? And be unapologetic in a sense where you might not have this
community today, but reach out to any founders, whether they're male or female, learn as much as
you can and then build your own community by sharing the great things you can do as a female co-founder
and that you can be a technical founder without having to have, you know, to hire a technical
CTO to work with. Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice and I think like especially with AI,
AI is really a democratizing force and so many more people to participate in the build
where I feel like the gap or the barrier to entry was just so much greater, it's definitely
lower at that. So I'm very, very much looking forward to just more women in tech and female founders
in the space. Well, this has been a really fascinating conversation and just hearing kind of like
your journey through like traditional HR tech custom code to where we exist today,
what do you think is going to happen to these larger players like SAP, Netsuite, these big
like monolithic tools? What do you think, like how do they survive in this world?
So I think now in the context of HR, just like, you know, in healthcare tech for seniors,
it's hard. I mean, they're kind of winning in the space right now because it's really hard for
HR to transition off their platform and to move into new ones, right? So that transition usually
takes some time, right? And also HR is known to be one of the departments that are slower when it
comes to adopting technology and we are just too comfortable with, you know, what we're used to
seeing is so on and change is very uncomfortable for most, you know. So I think that they're going
to continue to dominate for a little while, but once, you know, people realize the values of AI
and also I think the younger generations, right? I have seen younger HR, you know,
employees or, you know, people in the HR space, they are already in vibe coding, right? They're
building things in the system. They are doing, they're tired of doing administrative work because
the younger generation isn't going to want to sit in front of a computer and entering data into
the system or working with the Excel spreadsheet. So what they're doing now is, you know what,
I'm going to automate this. I'm going to just like, vibe code, I'm just going to build my own
platform with my manager, I'm going to automate this process and so on. So I think we're going to
get there where SAS isn't going away, right? But for them to continue to acquire other companies
and keep growing from that, I don't know what that's going to, you know, I don't think some of the
smaller tools are going to survive because it is replaceable, right? And it is already replaceable
today, right? Yeah. Well, thank you again. This has been an awesome conversation. Where can people go
to learn more about what you're doing? Yeah. So we are launching a new portfolio in March. So I
guess like going into our website, www.iservarticlesin.com or just connected with me on LinkedIn and that's
where you can find the most up to date information about our business. Awesome. We'll really appreciate
your time today. This has been a great conversation. Thanks so much, Yvonne. Thank you. Thanks for
cash. Thanks for having me here.

Futureproof by Xano

Futureproof by Xano

Futureproof by Xano