The Future of APIs: A Deep Dive with Intesar Mohammed

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Intesar Mohammed, the CTO and founder of PerfAI, a pre-money startup using AI to automate performance and tuning of APIs without the need of engineers. Why is this important? There are 200 million published APIs globally. If they pull this off, will help reduce the 40% churn of customers due to low performing software applications worldwide. Intesar, welcome to the show.  

Shannan Mohammed: Awesome, thank you so much Jake for having me on this show. Appreciate [it].

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, we're happy to have you. And it's a unique interview because you are a little different than most of our other companies which typically are funded, they have you know 10, 20, 50, hundreds of employees and they are uh in market. You're pre-revenue, which is great. Fantastic for a lot of entrepreneurs that are out there that are thinking about doing something, building a company. But you've already launched and built startups and you've got great experience in [the] enterprise space already.

So let me just give you a little background to the audience and then we'll uh kind of dive in here. So Intesar is a serial entrepreneur, accomplished speaker, and has deep experience with APIs, performance, and security. He has founded three successful startups in the API space and holds numerous patents. He played key roles at VMware, Palm, and Cisco before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey. So before we dive in here, I want to kind of set the stage a little bit, and you can correct me along the way as we go, and then we're going to dive into your, your background. So you're in the space around APIs and how they interact and help essentially companies communicate. Just for those that might not be technical, APIs are Application Programming Interfaces that allow different software applications to communicate with each other. They are fundamental in the modern software development world and are used for various purposes such as accessing third party services, social media APIs, payment gateways. In terms of the space APIs uh, there's 200 million that have been developed and are in the market today and growing to a billion in the next few years.

Now, we're in a world where as we know when it comes to applications, we're pretty impatient. We want to make sure that what we're using works and it works well. If you look at Amazon or Google or Apple, those are all applications whether it's mobile or web that work well, and we use them because they do. But when they don't work well, we tend to leave them pretty quickly. So a lot of that has to do with not just how the applications perform but also the API performance. And now, for those that don't know and those that are building applications, um you don't always know when customers leave your applications, when they churn. And so there [is] a real business opportunity here that I want you to listen to. Because sometimes it's about the performance of the application but sometimes it's about the API too. So we're going to get into um PerfAI and exactly what they do in solving a problem that I think is important for everyone to listen to.

So I guess before we dive in here Intesar, kind of walk us through: you've got a storied career in startups. What kind of brought you to the API space?

Shannan Mohammed: So I started, you know, again you know classic example of me, I'm an engineer actually from my you know, you know my education, my Bachelor's and Master's, you know I was in computer science. Then I started working for large enterprises. Like I worked for you know VMware, which was, VMware was one of the best company back in 20 you know 12, 11 and 13. So I worked for VMware and I was lucky enough to be part of the VMware's cloud initiative. So Amazon came and VMware was also looking at building a cloud initiative. So I was lucky enough to be part of that you know founding team who, which were unpacked on the cloud product for VM. And it took off actually, in no time from zero it became a billion dollar you know revenue, multiple revs happen. Small 13 employees team, we were like, I was part of the small team, and eventually grew to like 700 employees in next two, two, three years. So that actually gave me a lot of you know exposure especially in the infrastructure and you know application space. And that's where I was mostly focusing on apps and APIs. So that's what my experience you know dates back to.

So I left VMware and then I started you know building applications around apps and APIs. So if you see API, API is a very technical term for the audience, but what API means is: all the applications we are seeing today, whether mobile or web application, the back end, the brain of the application is called an API. That's how the... API is just a protocol for exposing the back end of the application. So you need infrastructure, you need lot of services to support that back end. So that's my expertise was, to you know focus on the back end. Especially at VMware, I was mostly focusing on application deployments, you know all those sort of things. So that actually, so my experience date back to almost 13 years in APIs, very early on into APIs and applications. So initially started focusing on deployment, then eventually I built [a] security company, now focusing on API performance actually. So that's my journey into APIs. So it's, it started there.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Now as you look at um the problem that you're looking to solve in the API space, walk us through that a little bit. Because there's a lot of areas uh you can go with you know what you, what you're creating. But what's the core areas that's important for founders to know that you're doing?

Shannan Mohammed: Absolutely. So it's interesting, you know, when it comes to APIs and performance uh there is a you know, lot of founders know how important is user experience for retaining users and delighting users. So we tend to spend lot of hours and times actually trying to figure out the best user experience possible. But there is a, there is a you know, there is a bright side to it. Half of the user experience can be done through delivering an amazing high performance application. Example: games. One of the reasons people get hooked onto the games is they're very responsive. You love it actually. And another example of uh high performed application is amazon.com. So even though people might ar- argue it's not a great uh you know from a user experience, people might have some other reservations about it. But when it comes to performance, it's very high performance, and that's what makes a common user love the product. They feel like very accomplished on amazon.com, and that's what leads to more activity and more usage of the product. So the good news for the founders is, who are looking to you know improve the user experience, reduce the churn and increase the upsell. Yes, the uh the user experience can be done two ways: half of it is to build amazing you know engaging UI, the other half is to deliver the performance. So that's where we, we come in. And we help these startups delivering enterprise grade and high performance, so they fix you know the performance issues early and instantly, and you know that helps them actually grow the business.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So it's a really business-driven solution that you're bringing to the market. Um, we talked a little bit about, you're kind of pre-money today. What was the thesis around and how did you test the market, knowing that there was an opportunity to really build out a company? Because if you go through an accelerator like a Y Combinator, oftentimes they have you create what you're wanting to bring to market, and then before you, before you actually build it, you're actually presenting it to see if you can sell the idea. Once you get the buy-in, then you build it. What was it that made you believe that this is a problem you can solve with a market that's really built ready for it?

Shannan Mohammed: Yeah, see the performance, I have experienced this experience issue firsthand. I build applications and I am the culprit actually, I least focused on performance as a CTO. I didn't focus on performance. And when it comes to user experience, retaining customers and delighting customers, we were always looking at the other side of the UX to build more you know clean, lean UX. But that really didn't you know pay this off. So then I started taking it you know, I took a step back and started looking into performance, meaning how this user experience can be solved. So what the... my quest for knowing what can I do to fix the you know user experience led me to one of the white paper actually, a very, very old white paper dating back to 2007 and 8. So there were two white papers during the same time frame interestingly. One paper talked about the user, user experience is critical to grow the business. The other talked about how performance enables user experience. But it seems the industry embarked on the, the, the other white paper, which is to build the amazing UIs, but they completely lost track of the performance-centric solution.

So then I stumbled upon it, then again I was into APIs. I knew API, so I've suffered myself. So I was delivering an exceptionally poor performing application, you know according to the standards you know, if you set your standards you know on par with the you know the games and other stuff. So that led me to you know go back and you know take a look at this problem more deep enough. And then you know that research then I spent lot of time, actually several months, and getting deep into it. And of course you know that's what led me to you know come to the solution actually.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: And have you done any test marketing? Have you launched a soft launch or gotten any feedback, any traction?

Shannan Mohammed: We did actually, yes. Two, two launches I think uh we, we can define our launch in two phases. First phase we did a launch after two, two months, just after, right after two months. And what we built in that two months was a small CLI-based engine, a small piece of software which was doing a very basic stuff. And we, we launched a website, we offered that product as a free utility on the website. You can just go and try on the website kind of a thing. And we launched, we made a big announcement, not just a regular blog post you know, asking founders to come and try and see how it's going to change their you know application. So luckily that got you know well received by the you know some of the you know Y Combinator you know founders, and we received like 7,000 sessions total. 3,000 you know founders came and people came tried [the] product and they also left hundreds of messages actually. And we learned a lot out of those messages.

The first launch you know at least validated a thesis that yes, there is a you know acute problem when it comes to retaining users and experience stuff. They need an automation solution that we also learned. They also need a solution which is simple enough to consume. And that validated our thesis that there is a demand, there is a need for the industry. Because when it comes to user experience, the solution is not technical, meaning when you say you want to improve user experience it's all philosophical. But when you do performance testing and measure and fix, it's very scientific. It's more mathematical actually. And this is what CTOs and technical people like more than being philosophical. So we really realized there is a huge market, we realized there is a huge demand. So that was a first launch.

Then after getting that feedback we also realized we need to give a very simple UI for the people to come and try [the] product, and be able to sell it from the UI. So then we built a dashboard actually. And we launched the dashboard back in September, a month ago. And during this time frame we again reached out with the people, so we booked like 30 meetings. And out of 30 meetings almost 80, 90% of the meetings went to pilot actually. People, once people are thrilled, people are excited, and the most of the time CTOs actually they want to try the product now. They want to see how it's going to change their application, how it's going to change their users' you know experience and how they're going to retain more users and do upsell. So that's very exciting! And I have launched couple of startups before, it really doesn't happen that fast, especially a B2B product uh you know, enterprise product. People are thrilled to try the product because they have their own priorities to be honest. So that, that's definitely a very positive signal. We are super excited the way it's going so far and that's definitely keeping us very much focused and very much excited as we you know as we wake up every morning. So we are super excited because we getting so many people to talk to, and they, some you know, most of the time they like [our] product, they want to try [our] product. So that's, that's the the boost actually. The you know, the confidence booster and the, that creates the more energy in our team.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's... business is 80% psychological. So any wins, little wins or big wins, it's good to take that in and, and you know, put some wind in the sail as you continue to build your company. Uh the company itself, PerfAI, has got AI obviously integrated into the name. Where does AI play in your platform today?

Shannan Mohammed: Yeah. So AI is, I, I feel again you know, I, I had to come into AI. I had to use AI very recently, but AI is super critical actually in the, especially in the B2B and enterprise tooling space. Uh the reason is uh if you see uh, most of the enterprise tooling you know prior to AI was all about automation: how much can you automate? That was the fundamental thesis of the tooling. And if you also look at the way most of the enterprise products were built, there was a small automation, meaning you would build a tool based on some automation you know concept. And the 90% of the product was built around connectivities and you know just making the product more accessible. The automation was the 5% around which the entire product was scaled later on.

But what AI is doing is now it's changing the way the products are being architected now. So it's no longer you can build a small tiny automation and then you build integrations or connectivity around it, like 100, 200 integrations and connectivity, and then go to enterprises and say, "Hey, we have this great tool. It works great with your existing tool chain, it connects with your Salesforce, it connects with your Dev you know you know your pipeline, and all you have to do is just plug it in." Because yeah, it creates a convenience of integration, but at the core you still need to drive the tool. Some engineers have to still work on it and you know continue to you know refine it.

So what AI is doing now is, AI is saying "Look, we can always build that you know, you know the integrations and connectivity later. But can we build a platform or a tool which is intelligent enough, and it dramatically reduces the engineering involvement?" So you consume the tool rather than you drive the tool. You improve the productivity. So from productivity-centric tooling, now we are heading towards fully autonomous tooling actually. So that's where I see AI is going to play a role. And it's not just sprinkling AI inside the tools and saying "hey we do AI," and just doing a little bit of NLP or you know data generation and saying "we do AI." That's not the fundamental architecture I see for the future application. The way I see future application, the AI is going to do, they're going to play the key pivotal role and they're going to replace and do more than what the previous automation did, and then you build around the AI rather than you sprinkle the AI. So that's how I look at it.

So that's, that's the reason if you look at our tool, our thesis is: using our AI you write zero code for testing. It's impossible! You have to write code in some language or you at least need to do some minimal coding actually. So AI is eliminating the need to write code. It's eliminating the need to write any configuration and maintenance. So that's the interesting part. So since we are building on AI, it's possible. So that's how I look at AI actually.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. Um where are you as a company now, how, how big are you and where are you located and what's kind of the, the direction you're heading as you kind of really get into the market and real deployments?

Shannan Mohammed: Yeah, so right now as I said you know, we, we started you know reaching out to you know uh corporations, businesses you know starting September. So we spoke to close to 30 uh we had like 30 meetings perfectly very early on to be honest, and there is nothing... so I'm just openly sharing everything. Out of those 30, 90% went to pilot actually. So our vision for this Q4 is not to make money because see, we can't have two priorities. Meaning as a leadership we can't say "let's make money and let's build the product." We can't. So we just wanted... because it's a small team we can't be divided. So our priority until December is, to, for the next three months, is to do 50 pilots. Which means we will be onboarding and you know 500 to 1000 APIs. Which means our technology is going to look really good. It's, we're going to improve the technology, and not having to deal with the financial part meaning you know billing the customers now. It sets the expectation a little low, which means we can take more time and do things which we feel is right rather than being driven by the customer saying, "hey guys do this connectivity, do this other stuff" which means early on then we'll be dragged into that scale part, meaning things which are not essential for the core AI product to you know work.

Because as, as you rightly said, there are 200 million APIs and it's going to be 1.2 billion very soon. You can't have a piece of technology that requires human-driven effort. It has to be completely autonomous. So the focus is to do pilots, a thousand you know APIs and 50 pilots which usually leads to [revenue] and improve the AI. And then hopefully, and hopefully the customer sees there is a tremendous value they're getting out of it, they'll start paying us. And hopefully later, plus when we onboard new customers they'll be always happy and delighted working with us. So that's our mission actually. So that's the reason we're not too much uh focusing on trying to get that revenue. Because you know sometimes it happens, investors want to see validation. Yes, the best validation is definitely paying customers. But at the same time when you're building some very innovative and you know challenging technology, you sometime have to sacrifice those validation for [the] bigger good, if you believe that's going to dramatically change the industry. So that's where we are.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Thanks for sharing that. And for a lot of investors out there, it sounds like a great product to think about in the future. And also for entrepreneurs that are in this same position where you know, there's a lot of AI companies (we're working right now in collaboration with 500 AI companies) and everyone has their own little niche they're going after, or in some cases competing. But at the end of the day, um you know you've got to understand what you're building and be able to present in a way. But if you do have paying customers, there's a lot of valid, valid, validity behind that when you ask for funding.

Um for, for founders out there that have gone to market and they're trying to figure out how to do it... I mean going to market and getting the volume of responses that you got, what's, what kind of insights can you share that will be helpful for others that are also looking to bring products into the market?

Shannan Mohammed: Absolutely. I think the one thing which worked with us was luckily I had some you know LinkedIn connections, over 10,000, so we started there. But again that led to some conversations because you need to start talking to people and you need to figure out, you need... we as a founders need to be very, very good with interpreting what the customers are you know feeling and experiencing, and what they're saying, what's their you know friction points. So the more we talk to people... it's very you know, it's a very common thing... the more we talk and the more you bring those you know feedback back into your pitch, back into your product and your innovation, then your future conversation will be much easier.

So the first thing is to find your people who are willing to talk on your you know your product. Yes, uh it helped me having a LinkedIn connection that gave a ton of connections. Then most of the other part is all cold outreach. Meaning you need to write some content and engage people who are willing to engage with you and discuss what you're talking. And you know, maybe they'll trash you initially, that's fine. You should be willing to put up a face and take those on, your, those punches. But the idea is to go to market, engage people, write content, and be open to all kinds of you know inputs and criticism. The more you listen, the more you understand the friction points, and the more you can synthesize and channel those into innovation and you know reducing friction. I think that's, that's I believe that's the initial...

Because I have always you know, luckily I, I did this twice from zero to something, meaning zero to first quarter million or 200k. So that is definitely the most learning and exciting phase. The moment you take money that changes, because now you have so many people you can you know start managing and you can start delegating, right? But, but if you don't take that money, you have to do [it] all by yourself, which means you're going to expose yourself, which means you're going to learn fast, which means you're going to have those hard experiences. So I, I truly believe the founders uh need to do this. Yeah, I mean if they can delay funding and if they can delay delegation, and they go to market, engage people and the prospects, and learn more faster and innovate and come in impressed, I think that's the cycle. You know, I, it worked for me actually in the past, and so far it looks it's you know, it's giving me something to feel good about.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. Prior to starting PerfAI, where did you come from? Did you wind down a startup, did you get acquired, did you come out of a big company? Some people just quit their jobs and say "we've got something let's go." What was that transition for you?

Shannan Mohammed: Yeah, my previous startup was in API security space. Uh it's a you, it's doing fantastic, really fantastically well. It's called AppSec. Uh one of... when I started you know back in 2018, we were one of the pioneer in API security. Nobody talked about API security, nobody thought about API security. We were the one. We also did couple of new innovative stuff there, so it's doing fantastically well. The only challenge I had after 5 and a half years at the company was the way we built the technology. Because the the same thesis I was saying: the automation will take you a little bit, it still requires engineering effort. It does automate something, but it doesn't replace the engineering brain. So I realized that technology was you know, I need to build a new technology, meaning an AI-driven technology which completely gets rid of you know effort by engineering, and that will scale in an enterprise level. So that led me to actually you know embark on the this journey because I had to do it from scratch, there was no other way.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. You touched on a little bit about culture, but talk to me a little bit about the people that you like to hire. We know you want innovators, we know you want people that probably think through and solve problems, but as an engineer when you're out there, you're talking to a lot of companies, oftentimes you're looking for new, new companies and new roles. What are the two or three things maybe outside of what you already mentioned that are non-starters for you, or that are absolute requirements for you to make sure they're the right fit for you? And to be clear you already have a foundation team of, of five and you have some other contractors or consultants that help, are helping you. What are the things that you kind of feel in your gut make them the right fit for you?

Shannan Mohammed: I think it's a great question actually. So I think we always start with you know, especially for the engineering we, we'll always start with smart people or good engineers we used to call it actually. Because it's very, especially most of these technical as well as you know very creative works requires you know exceptionally you know good quality people to deliver it. So it's not going to be that easy. So the foundation is definitely when it comes to engineering or marketing and sales, we definitely need that great guys actually to begin with. So I think that's, otherwise you know you, you might have a person, you might like it actually, but if they can't do the work actually, then it's, it's very hard actually to you know, to achieve something out of it. So that's the foundation, that's the core stuff, we definitely look for great, great people, good guys.

And yeah, sometimes you know people come with different cultures, you know the way... sometimes large enterprises have hierarchies, so they used to hierarchies. But for a startup, you know because in a startup everything is open, and you want to keep everything open because you want multiple brains chipping in right? So sometimes yeah it becomes harder for you know, to make people realize you know, the reason there is a different culture because this company can only succeed with a certain culture. It can't be acting like a large company. So the cultural challenge is definitely the second thing which comes. Sometimes people get it, sometime people appreciate and you know they, they do it. But you have to take that risk, there is no other easy way. Yeah, sometimes you see people with a lot of different cultures, they sometimes they adapt, it's a soft skills end of the day. They can quickly change and adopt to a new environment. Sometime it doesn't work out, so then definitely it's the harder part. But I think the core is the good you know the skills actually, that's the foundation of any team member. So meritocracy is the most important stuff. We need the right people in the right places, and yes if they, if they then have the same culture, it makes life lot easier actually, so then great things can be achieved.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm going to ask a question I, I haven't really asked before, but what is that you really want of this journey that you're on and this company that you're building? At the end of the day, what is it you really want it to be?

Shannan Mohammed: Yeah, see I'm, I'm an engineer. I love building things. So I build a lot of technology and products and that's what you know keeps me going actually. So that's my you know my life meaning in terms of building technology products. And I feel really really you know good when you know these technologies are really embraced well and are part of you know large enterprises and even startups actually right. So I think that's definitely brings every morning when I wake up, so I have something which excites me is this work, the line of work. So if I was in a different line of work I, I, I would have been a [different] person. But, but this is what I've been trained for my entire life to be, and build things. So I think this is, this keeps me more energetic and excited. And what I'm doing is the only thing I have from a single focus point: I want to build this thing, I want to really solve this well. So this works with the, the challenge we have from an industry, 200 million APIs, and we can't sell a technology which requires a lot of human effort. So if we can deliver this fully autonomous AI-driven product [as] a platform and it really goes and you know scales well with the, the rest of the you know 200 million opportunity. So I think that's a fantastic achievement at the end. So which means as an architect, as an engineer myself, I'll feel very, very accomplished actually. I would rather talk about it more [than] other [things].

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That sounds like you're coming from a good place of what you're looking to build and create and sounds like the market is just really prime for something like this. Um we talked a little about the company and yourself and where you're at in terms of the development. Uh I like to ask where do you go from here, but it sounds like you've kind of defined where you're going from here. You're getting products into the hands of people, you're going through some of the pilots, you're getting uh the model tested out and bringing it to market. Um if someone wants to find you or they want to learn more about your product, where do they go?

Shannan Mohammed: So I think the easier way, since as I said I love to talk to people actually, so if anyone CEO, CTO, any technical leader actually wants to just set up a 15, 20 minutes call, that's the most uh I love to spend time. So usually I keep my calendar all day open starting from 8 till right 11:00 in the night. So that way I accommodate you know all kinds of time zones. Yes, so the first thing, if they, they want to reach out, definitely they can email me which is Intesar, my first name, intesar@perfai.ai. Or they can go to our website which is perfai.ai, and then they will see a request a demo button. Or they can even sign up directly and they can just log into the product themselves, and they, it's free right now, so they can even plug in their API and get started. So there are multiple options to reach me and use our technology, but we love to talk.

And as I said you know we are early piloting, so hopefully that reduces some friction for all the people who can't do budgeting in Q4. So they don't have to worry about the budgeting. They can continue to talk and learn. And we also have a fantastic pitch deck by the way. We love to show and give some insights why how performance can actually you know improve their user experience and give them so much in return. So I think they'll love to see that pitch deck. They're going to learn something out of it. Plus the technology is also going to give them some hands-on you know exposure. So I think we're always welcoming actually for all kinds of incoming you know requests. So definitely personal email, request a demo, and the third thing: just try the technology all by yourselves. The best thing is website. They start with our website, perfai.ai.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: We'll put it in the links below. I want to thank you for joining. I also want to share with the, with the listeners that... awesome. Uh the stage that um PerfAI is in is I think in a great position with a lot of other companies in a similar stage. Where you have an idea, you have the courage, you're going to market, you're going to learn from your users what you need to do to pivot, to make changes, to make it really a good target market fit. And in today's market what we're seeing with a lot of companies that are more than funded and growing, but also struggling, is sometimes it's not about adding more people to a company, it's about maximizing the people that you have.

And through the use of AI we've also been able to implement this type of technology that can literally take a team of 10 and we can model exactly who they are that are doing really well (the A players let's say) and understand what they're doing differently than the B or the C players, and then be able to train up the other ones. So it's maximizing the current people you have. The other thing that we're hearing a lot of needs for is how do you actually turn your marketing into revenue? And so there's different approaches to doing it, but there's a, a better way now outside of just digital. Which is really to augment a team where people are, if you're in the B2B space for example, they're actually making those calls and presenting what it is that you do and the value proposition and getting the people that you want on the phone, but more importantly actually closing the deal. So there's different services out there that we've embedded into what we offer, which has been really helpful to help other companies grow and build in this interesting time that we have.

Um having said all that Intesar, I want to thank you so much for joining. A big shout out to you for having the courage to come in and publish what you do and how you do it, as well as to our listeners for joining. Uh really appreciate you spending your time with us today. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal, I'm your host, and look forward to having you on the next episode. Look forward to also hearing from you Intesar as things go forward and we see your progress. Until then sayonara.

Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.  

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.  

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