Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to have Neeraj Vir with me, a managing partner of Amalgam. Neeraj, how you doing, buddy?
I'm doing well, and you,
I'm great. I was just telling you, you're a number three podcast of the day. So you get, I should be locked in either that or I'll just be all over the place. So we'll see. We'll see what you get.
you should have had enough caffeine in your system by now. I'm
I got even more right here, man. I'm locked and loaded. You got me on a recharge, so we're good to go. Cheers to you. so let's take it back to where it started. I think I saw on your profile you maybe weren't from America originally, or you were overseas at some point. walk me through where you started your journey at.
yeah, I was born and I was raised in New Delhi, in India, which is Northern part of India. did my schooling. Went to another city, not very far, but, did my engineering, worked, a little bit. in a few companies, also worked in a subsidiary of IBM, worked for a couple of years and, did the whole Y2K, journey from, from where I was up to the source, which was where the work was, And that's how I started. I got delayed in coming here.
So by the time I reached the States, which was the middle of 2000, the Y2K problem had been fully resolved and it was a quite, quite a not problem. so that's how I landed here.
Yeah, it's almost it's like, people, it's just like 9 11. if you didn't go through it, you just look back and you think it was like nothing. But I remember... Everybody thinking the world was gonna end and the big count the big, New Year's Eve countdown had a special feel to it that, that year. everybody thought we may explode or the world, planes were gonna come crashing down, but, basically nothing happened, I think,
Which is good. Which
Yeah, it's good. We're all, we're all more prepared than we thought. tell me about America. I think I saw Villanova. did you go to Nova at some point?
So yeah, so I came here, I started working, I did a few consulting gigs, ended up being in a startup called Sanchez Computers at that time, was part of it, then we got acquired by FIS, Fidelity Information Services, during that time I had, grown from a developer to more of implementation, customization lead, ended up, doing, an executive, kind of project management, ISIT management it was called. so it was a master's in, information technology in, from Villanova.
Okay. Wow. So very tech focused. When did you start to get your, get the itch to found something for yourself?
I think that it's been there, many decades now. there, there was this whole process, as being an immigrant. myself, and you might not know the whole story, but my journey through, through the American legal system was a long and drawn out affair, where even if I wanted to start a business, I couldn't. And, for me, it was, it was an entrepreneurial spirit more than anything else. I think you can have that spirit irrespective of what you do.
for me, when I was in front of the client, even as a representative of a. Of a company that was, 000 people. I would always consider that this was my business. This was my interaction with the client. This was. me representing the entity. So I think that spirit was always there.
I just had to wait a few years And the story was that I actually quit the very evening I heard from my lawyer which I still remember was like for a little fast after four and A little after five, I was at my boss's cube office and telling him that I was putting in my resonation. So it was, it was, I was itching for a while. and at that time, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew that I was in.
I wasn't growing as an individual and I was burnt out, as they say, from the whole environment.
got it. and what was the first business you went to found after you stepped out of the nine to five?
So it was actually Amalgam, but then I used Amalgam as a way to do consulting. and during the consulting period, I went back to a bank that was, a client of mine before, and help them integrate their brokerage business with their banking business. And during that time, I also started developing a product. It was called Transliterate. It was a. It was a product that was, helping, another product that was being developed, by a company called RDC in King of Prussia. So it was like dual things.
I tell you, I was working about easily about 60, 80 hours on a weekly basis. While trying to do both things, but it was fun. I don't think I've ever had more fun than at that time
Now would you want to go back to working 60 to 80 hours now? ha. It wasn't that fun. It wasn't fun enough that you'd want to do it again. not now at least, yeah.
Fun changes depending on your age and situation and what phase of life you're in. So no, it's not fun
That's true. tell me a little bit about, how you started to acquire customers for your consulting. were they clients that you had previously? Were they part of your network? Did you go out and bang down doors? what was your process for getting consulting clients?
Yeah, the first one was pretty easy actually like I said because I had the background on banking and software I was, hired as a consultant, to, a bank that I had worked with before. the product idea or the product, scenario was slightly different that I actually was, at a friend's, son's christening, and I met, somebody who had just joined a startup and they were talking about doing some real cool stuff in the anti money laundering, OFAC, KYC, side of business.
And they were struggling with a certain problem. the way they were doing about was they were collecting all this data, which was usually available without payment. Like it was. data published by, for example, Interpol, the government of the US, the FBI list, the, so they were basically collecting all these data and putting into a database and doing a service out of it. And there was, they were struggling for a particular language set.
And, and that was just me discussing, I'm telling them what I do. They're telling me what I did. and I thought, I think these are some NLP projects that we could, we could help you with, not knowing exactly how we would help them. I threw the gauntlet and I got invited to, to do a POC, after a few initial meetings, obviously, and we did the POC and, the product that we built actually became part of a white label solution that they started selling. So that was my true first customer.
It was me meeting somebody at a friend's christening.
Wow. Yeah. See, it's always, I would say 80% of the time is like the friends and family plan. it's like always somebody somewhere that, and it's not this, there's no. I say it all the time, like there's no. Playbook really it's just like you figure it out.
You find an angle you find somebody interested you and it's just it's I think it's Identifying those opportunities and then really following up on them because people hear it all the time you hear people say stuff And you just let it roll off your back, but it's really Taking the next step, and working with those people and making McClellan years. that's pretty cool.
Tell me a little bit more about how amalgam grew and how you know you transition from that white label product into more of what you guys do today.
So I think that was one of the offerings. So I could say that was really a little outside of amalgam because we were, we built it, but we were really, once you build a product, it was so doing these things and also going back, looking back on my experiences with the startup that I was. Sanchez Computers, I learned a lot from that experience. we ended up in that 10 year that I was there. I did close to 10 startups in the sense that they were all startup banks.
They were banks that were being launched. they were zero branching banks and so on. So I learned a lot of things about what not to do apart from what to do. And I think I took that and I started looking for clients who could use us and we. we've been a bunch of people working for many years now, the same set of people that I take along with them.
A few of them are, full time employees working Amalgam, but there's a lot of people that are in my, I call it this sphere of influence, where I bring them in as consultants or as partners and so on. So Amalgam is In the true sense, it's a collective of people who want to do great things. And that's, my, my vision of what I want it to be eventually, not that we've reached that stage, but we still do great things.
with, like a, with the set of people that I have full time consultants and in a few partners that we bring external to help us win. so we've been doing that for many years now. I think, it is, it's just playing on that experience and taking that and saying, Hey, why couldn't we replicate it with. another set of people, for example, we've just launched, a company, their software, whole platform was built by us and their energy company out of California. and we've been building the whole platform.
Like we, we were not energy people. We didn't know anything about energy, but we know how to build platforms. and that's what excites me. the ability to work with. People who want to, create new things, whether it's an entrepreneurial, venture or whether it's a person within a big organization or a midsize organization trying to change the way, they've been doing things before.
right What were some things that kind of held you back? You would say initially like you sounds like you started to hit your stride and figure out that sphere influence like what? What were some things that kind of pushed that off to further down the line?
I, I think a lot of people thinking that I don't know how to categorize it at the moment. I think it's got to do with what people say the imposter syndrome. I think it's. It's like you are attached with a persona, right? You create a persona around your own self to say, hey, this is what I am. So for me, for the longest time, I was a technologist. I was, into technology. I was building things. I was, hands on that kind of person.
And for me to, had to change that outlook, for not saying that I had to understand things completely. For me, it was, okay, I will get people who understand this completely while I'm stretched in across multiple clients and other things, because I couldn't be an expert and be a sales and be managing at the same time. So for me, it was like letting go of that persona that was stuck in my head that I had to know deeply about the technology I was building.
So I think I started to give away some of that stuff. I realized that I was more effective and then I could concentrate more on growth and, acquiring customers and creating a satisfaction syndrome around it, right? you want to be present, you want to be there so that, when things are looking to go south, you catch it even before it starts doing
delegation. That's what I tell all my, my my friends who are in the same... Scenario you just described over, stretched, but I think you hit it on the head It's the imposter syndrome And I think some of it's like a trust factor and being able to let go and there's a bunch of these different things But that's an interesting way to put it. So follow up to that if you know fast forward to tomorrow if you had to start amalgam over again With all the lessons learned what would be?
Step 1. What would you go out and do tomorrow if you didn't have any clients, you didn't have any employees, what would be step 1 to figuring out what Amalgam was going to be?
I think I would actually do intentional strategy. So a lot of the strategy was on the go strategy again, leaving it, leaving my workplace and starting something, not knowing and not knowing what it would eventually turn out to be. if I was to rewind back, I would do some more intentional planning and strategy and moving in directions that I would. intentional, not opportunistic and not on the spur of the moment that we grew, with, and also largely around the product strategy.
I think we had a great product. I think if I was more, if I was smarter and understood the whole, equity financing world, and I understood how to, to get traction on things and was more of a risk taker, I think we would have it. We would have done a lot of things, in that sense. yeah, those are a few of the things I can think of. I'm sure, if I look back, there'll be a hundred different things I could have done.
Yes, hindsight's more than 20 20 I think.
yeah,
everything looks easy when you look back on the decision you made.
yeah.
let's switch gears a little bit. What are What are three things, health wise, personal health wise, that you're doing to increase your longevity? what are some of your health habits either you're doing or you're trying to stick with?
I think definitely I've stuck to my daily walk routine. I walk at least half an hour, once I drop my, younger son to school. That is, when. When that is already on the way, the area that I walk is on the way, so it goes on auto. I will have to work a little harder when there is no school, in a couple of weeks. I, again, it would have to be intentional. So that is like on auto.
I try to eat healthy, though it depends, what was in India, during the Christmas break and after, and there were a couple of, weddings, and as Indian weddings are, three days affair or even longer and my eating, healthy was, got derailed over there. So it took me a few weeks and months to get back. But generally I think I'm a good heater. I meditate, not to the extent that I used to, but I also feel that a lot of the things that I do with intention, give me the same meditative response.
So if I'm concentrating and. And writing or concentrating and listening to music and contemplating and being focused, it gives, it gives me the same, feeling after. I think those are the three things that I stick to, but, I have fun too, there's a, happy hour, then I'm the first one to reach and last one to leave. That's not going to change.
My, my flight instructor also goes back to India, and he says the same thing. Every time he goes back, he's man, he's I just get so far off the wagon, he's I'm, eating crazy, drinking, he's it's just like a party over there. He's and then I come back and I feel it for the next few weeks. I've heard that story about India before. all mystery question time. what is something you would do, if you knew you couldn't fail?
I think I'm trying to actually I'm in the process of creating a non for profit that has been in my head for many years. and I, the way I look at it is that, I'm going to do it anyway. and, so I think I'm on the bandwagon already in terms of not worrying about the consequence of what that would be. apart from that, I would say there's so many things that I should have like personally learned, things which I never did when I was younger, like I'd love to be scuba diving, right?
I'd love to be, bungee jumping or some of those things, which might not be a great idea at my age anymore, but if I knew that I would survive it and not fail at it, I'll do it.
Alright, all fair answers. alright, so we'll leave it there. where can people find Amalgam? Where can they find you? What's the best way to get in touch?
yeah, amalgam inc. com. that's where our website is. I'm on LinkedIn, Neeraj Vir. I, I. I usually, I'm very responsive there and, would never say no to a meeting or, to a call out, to a reach out. So yeah, that's the best place. other than that, I think, my, my office space is in, in Chesterbrook. that's where I am three times a week. I work from home, two to three times a week, either way,
Cool. Or maybe they'll find you in your daily walk. We'll see, maybe somebody will see you walking down the street, and say. I heard you like to walk every day. it was great, man. It was really nice to meet you. I'll put all the stuff down in the show notes. People will reach out to you. great guy, great story. and I wish you the best of luck and have a good rest of your week. And we'll talk to you soon, alright?
Thank you for having me.
Thanks, Neeraj. Talk to you, buddy. See you, man.
Yeah. Bye. Bye.