Georgie

Hello and welcome to In the Blink of AI, your weekly front row seat to the AI revolution. I'm Georgie Healy, and this week I am speaking to Shams and Harini. They're co-founders of the AI startup Buildship. On the show, we talk about vibe coding with the best AI tools, tech product hits and misses, and mistakes in early hiring. If you thought that might be spicy, you'll have to stay till the end for the rapid-fire spicy questions. Shout out for next week where we speak to the fastest growing startup in recent Australian history. You won't wanna miss it. So subscribe now. So it's waiting for you next Friday. Let's dive in.

Shams Mosowi

You're listening to a DayOne.FM show.

Georgie

Hi guys. It's the Buildship founding team. We've got both Harini and Shams here. Two people I really genuinely admire. And we'll talk about what you're building, but you know, I'm just genuinely so excited to have you on In the Blink of AI, a topic that you guys definitely can help us dive through. Harini, tell listeners who might not be familiar, what is Buildship?

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah, so Buildship allows businesses to automate any complex backend workflows and AI workflows. So think of it like a platform on which you can create lead qualification, where you can actually go and enrich your data. So any kind of workflows that you are thinking about automating in your business, you can get started with Buildship and continue to expand and scale on it.

Georgie

I wanna say the elephant in the room, which is, you know, Shams is the CTO, Harini is the CEO, I believe you guys have those titles, but I feel like Harini, you can go technical and Shams, you can also go sales when you need to. You guys are quite the powerhouse. Shams, how did you guys meet?

Shams Mosowi

Harini recruited me, actually, so yeah, we met at Antler, the VC program.

Georgie

You started as a hire and you worked your way up. Now you're a co-founder.

Shams Mosowi

Yeah.

Georgie

I've gotta note what makes a great partnership because you guys, to me, seem very simpatico. What about the partnership do you think works really well?

Harini Janakiraman

I think, I mean, I can tell from my point of view, I think we worked really well together as a team in our previous job and kind of that translates. So it started as a working kind of relationship and then we continued to communicate and ideate and start building things together. So that kind of a spark of someone who can actually communicate well with and quickly experiment and do things with , that's kinda what he did here.

Georgie

And Shams, what's special about Harini that made you wanna dive into this long-term relationship, which is a startup?

Shams Mosowi

I think it's similar with every other relationship. Foundationally, it's about trust and respect and at the end of the day you're on the same boat and you're both trying really hard to make things work out.

Georgie

Great answer. What about friends? Can friends be co-founders? Or like hot takes only, guys , do you think that would work or not work? And have you seen it work or not work in tech? I want you both to answer this.

Shams Mosowi

So I've tried, I think it could work. I don't see it as a problem. I think you still have to be picky with who you are , like what the complementary skill sets are. So if there is complementing, then it would work, but if not, it doesn't actually work. But either way, I think there's no such thing as failure. There's always learning and growth, so there's no "oh, don't try."

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah, I think it's really hard. As long as the friendship kind of doesn't get in the way of handling the business side of things or having those hard conversations sometimes. You want to balance both relationships and it might get tricky or murky. So if you are able to have those difficult conversations and not think about it just like a friendship but from the mindset of what's best for the business, then it could work out. But I feel it might be hard.

Georgie

Yeah. I love your honesty. There's a very famous program in Australia , it's an accelerator where it’s all people who want to start a business. But it's 90 days and you find your co-founder in that time. And I think it's very rare that within 90 days you can find a co-founder that you can see it through the tumultuous time of a startup. But I also am not sure I’d wanna do it with my best friend either , I’d prefer to stick to having wines with them. This is a recurring segment of the show. It's one of my favourite parts. It's called AI Hack of the Week. So we are gonna go around and share an AI hack or tool that we like, so listeners can try something new every single week. And this week they get three for the price of one.

Harini Janakiraman

I literally built one today where I just want to get into my house and open the door and, like, when I get out of the house, I want to order a cab. So essentially, like a workflow that allows me to do that with just voice command. That’s something that saved my own life , a quality improvement. But, okay, stop , obviously using Buildship, so I’m gonna plug that here. On Buildship we can have workflows that start off either with an iPhone shortcut or a WhatsApp message. I used to use Uber, but I have a kid, so I have to use 13cabs , like a cab service, the old-school style where you have to call and book a cab. On Buildship, we can just use a voice agent to make that booking, set the address and have a conversation-style flow. It’s an AI assistant workflow on Buildship.

Georgie

How does it open the front door? I’m so confused.

Harini Janakiraman

Oh, that’s another separate workflow. So you can have multiple workflows where it kind of detects proximity and you can use a sensor near your front door and it knows that it’s you and not a stranger on the street.

Shams Mosowi

Will there be a tutorial?

Harini Janakiraman

I’m planning to make a tutorial on this. We published all March.

Georgie

Can you do this within the next few days? We’ll add it in the show notes. That would be amazing. Thank you so much.

Shams Mosowi

Sorry, that’s gonna be hard to beat, but you’re next.

Harini Janakiraman

I’m gonna preface something by the way for Shams. Once he moved to Buildship, he has literally won all the hackathons there. So he’s actually the , oh ,

Georgie

You’ve won hackathons? Tell me your most recent hackathon that you won, then follow up with your hack of the week, Shams.

Shams Mosowi

I did one where I gave the pitch deck to AI and then it did background research , analysing the pitch deck, checking who the team members are, then summarising that and scoring based on founder fit and product fit, and then assessing it.

Georgie

I wonder why investors liked that. I can’t even imagine. That’s amazing because they go through thousands of pitch decks a year. So, okay, I can see why you want that. What’s your hack of the week?

Shams Mosowi

It’s all about finding the right solution for the audience. This week I’ve been trying out Claude Code and that’s a way to vibe code a lot faster. It’s been fun.

Georgie

I’ve heard this Claude and Cursor relationship is really popular even with non-technical founders. What’s your favourite thing to do in there? I’m a bit overwhelmed , not sure where I’d start if I had those both in a split screen. What can a novice do with Claude and what would they put in there?

Shams Mosowi

I think it’s about creating tools that you need as part of your process. For example, if you want to do something with photo editing, instead of learning Photoshop, you can ask AI to generate a tool that gives you that specific feature and then it makes the task a lot easier. Whenever you have a task you want to partially automate or make more productive, or help you create something, I feel like creating new tools is really useful and handy.

Georgie

I wanna be a vibe coder. I vibe coded once using Lovable and got it about 80 per cent of where I needed it using ChatGPT in the side window. But everyone who actually knows what they’re doing says it’s gotta be Claude and Copilot together. Clearly, I’ve missed a trick.

Shams Mosowi

I use Lovable too. It depends on the level of complexity you want. If you want something quick, you just talk to Lovable and build it. If you want something more complex, then you need Claude. If you want something production-ready for many users, you should use Buildship. There are different levels. You don’t want to use just one tool for everything. You need the right tool for the task.

Georgie

So Basecamp, Lovable , we’re halfway up the mountain. Then we use Claude and Copilot. When we play with a few tools and we’re good vibe coders, we’re ready for the next step , Buildship. Correct?

Shams Mosowi

When you want to create more of a system that can be used at enterprise scale and see what’s inside. With Claude Code, you just say what you want and it builds the thing and you see the result, but you don’t know what’s inside. If you’re just playing around and it works for you, that’s fine. But if you’re handling sensitive user data, you want to be sure the code is trusted and data is secure. Then you need something else. It varies.

Georgie

Beautifully articulated. I don’t need to pop under the hood , but maybe one day I will. Great distinction. Look, my hack of the week, I recently came back from Europe. I know, I know it’s really mean to say, but it’s made me realise how much I do need two or more LLMs on my home screen at all times. My husband had Gemini on his home screen. I had ChatGPT. Believe me, the fact that I work at Google is not lost on me. The fact that we were switched up that way, but we’d keep asking the same prompt and sharing the like, what did you get? What did I get? There was no clear winner. They both were good at different tasks. One example I’ll give is we were in Monaco and there’s a beautiful car museum all the way from Ford Model Ts to Max Stephan’s F1 car that he’s raced in. My husband stood in front of four amazing, beautiful classic cars, and we put the same prompt and the same photo into Gemini and ChatGPT. Gemini got two out of four. ChatGPT got all four, correct , perfect model year, perfect everything. But then when we were in Rome and I wanted to see a car in certain churches, it could, because it’s integrated with Google Maps, it would say, based on your location, six-minute walk that way. ChatGPT can’t do that. So I don’t know. Do you guys use multiple LLMs on your phone home screen or am I wrong and I’ve missed something?

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think different use cases, different LLMs are good at it. I use Perplexity for search-based stuff or ChatGPT. We have a bunch of task-based folder structures on ChatGPT where you can specify what task it is good for and dump data there to get some kind of structured output. So it depends on what you’re using for. Obviously Claude is good for coding or depending on the use case effectively. Eventually, I’m guessing all the LLMs kind of merge to single. I hope so. That would make it easier, wouldn’t it? And then you’re only paying $30 a month and not multiple.

Georgie

Okay. Let’s get to headline news, guys. Oh, yeah, sorry, Shams. Tell us.

Shams Mosowi

I mean, I like your Google Maps integration. That’s something companies can add value on top of the LLM inference. As LLMs keep improving, you still need that differentiator , how does your LLM provide a better solution by integrating into the ecosystem that you’ve built out?

Georgie

Yeah, it’s great for adding this to my Gmail calendar and things like that. Admittedly, Google has some extra little perks and integrations that are clever, but yeah, I’m not loyal to anyone.

Okay. Let’s dive into headline news because I really love having experts in the AI and tech space to unpack things for those of us reading headlines and thinking: Is this worth worrying about? Is this important? So the first one , we’re gonna play a little game of the biggest tech products for tech people, and you’re gonna tell us if they’re a hit or a miss. Everyone has heard of the product Midjourney. Shams, what is Midjourney and is it a hit or a miss?

Shams Mosowi

I would say it’s a hit. Midjourney led the way in terms of the quality of images I was able to generate. Now they’re generating videos as well. I think they focus more on creatives, so they don’t share their API compared to other models. They focus more on creative people using their product directly versus other image or video generation companies monetising their API as well. So I think it’s interesting they’re not exposing the API compared to everyone else.

Georgie

Okay, so we’ll take it as a hit, but they have room to grow perhaps. What about Replit? Harini, what is Replit and is it a hit or a miss, do you think?

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah, I think it’s a platform where we can create apps and websites. It’s more geared towards people learning to code. I think they are a hit in terms of integrations. They have good integrations with Google Cloud. They also launched a mobile app. So yeah, I think it’s a great platform to learn coding , a combination of web coding and frontend app building.

Georgie

Well, I’ve got you Cursor.

Harini Janakiraman

Is it a hit or a miss? I think everybody in our team uses it or we’re trying to get everybody to use it. I tried to create a quick feature the other day without creating a linear item or a ticket for the devs. It seems to be doing well, but maybe Shams can answer better. He uses it everywhere. Shams, do you agree that it’s a hit?

Shams Mosowi

Maybe it’s a temporary hit. It’s such a competitive space. You have Windsurf, Cloud Code, and they’re all competing in the general “will code anything for reuse” space. So it’s a competitive space we’re all in. Every day someone is a hit, then it’s gone.

Georgie

Such a great point you make. Some of these might be hits as products , they’re easy to use, the UI/UX is brilliant, they solve a problem. But are they hits from an investor standpoint? Maybe not, which is why I’m not an investor. I just get to play with products and say whether I like them or not.

We’ve got one last one , this might be a Shams question, but Harini, feel free to give your take as well because it’s quite technical , GitHub Copilot. Is it a hit or a missed chance?

Shams Mosowi

I’m not sure. It started as the OG of vibe coding , where you ask AI to do something and it does it. But as development becomes more agent-based, it might have lagged behind. They’ve updated some stuff, but I feel Cursor did it earlier and attracted more attention. So I haven’t used Copilot much.

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah, it could have been a hit, but it’s like a Mercedes. It should have been what Cursor and others are. A lot of smaller tools have come up that are more successful , specific tools geared towards PR reviews, for example. I think GitHub missed the boat.

Georgie

So you think going after certain verticals and nailing that might be a better approach? Maybe our first miss on the list. It’s good to have a miss, guys. We’re talking about tech products for tech people, for the most part.

Those last four , Midjourney, Replit, Cursor, GitHub, Buildship , are tech products for tech-literate people. You might think you don’t have to be that tech-literate, but you need to be more tech-literate than me. Okay, when it comes to creating a product and business for developers or this kind of community that’s already tech-literate, what do people get wrong and what’s important to have a hit and not a miss?

Harini Janakiraman

At the end of the day, even if you’re building a tech product, you need to understand the users , who it is for. I think what people get wrong is getting carried away with building cool features and amazing things. Especially, as technical founders ourselves, we kind of got into that loophole as well. But what’s more important is actually solving real problems for real people and businesses. That’s what people should focus on.

Georgie

Great answer. What do you think, Shams? Would you add anything?

Shams Mosowi

Unless you’re a giant organisation trying to take over everything, be focused on a specific problem you want to solve and try to narrow it down. Even for us, it’s really hard because as founders you try to be ambitious and say, “I’m going to build this amazing platform that solves everyone’s problems.” If you do that, you end up struggling to balance everyone’s needs. So it’s easier to focus on your initial point and then go from there.

Georgie

Nailing which problem to solve. It’s funny you mention tech people just build cool stuff, which is great, but we also need to make money at the end of the day. So I think you guys have nailed the community aspect, and we’ll talk about that soon. But I want to dive into building a successful AI business , which you guys can talk to. Where do you prioritise capital? Is it in talent, in the platform, or something else in the early days? Maybe you haven’t quite got product-market fit yet. Harini, what do you think?

Harini Janakiraman

I think validating the idea , if you’re pre-product-market fit and trying to validate, the MVP just hypothetically doesn’t cut it anymore. You can actually build a functional product with AI. So either get to the point where you can give something into the hands of users and move quickly. Building a team is the area you should be spending on first , a team that is agile and moves fast. Not in the traditional sense of building a feature over weeks or months, but something quick, adaptive and responsive with the user, building out a product until you get product-market fit. After that, invest more in sales and that side of things.

Georgie

Shams, we’ve got a product and Harini is saying, help me find great team members. Who are you looking for and how many members in those early days?

Shams Mosowi

So I guess it depends on the product, right? Um, but you need someone that can build it and then someone that can sell it. Um, and then it depends on, yeah, then it depends on what you're building.

Harini Janakiraman

As long as you're not hiring like Soham parks kind of folks, but I don't know if you heard about that. As long as you're not,

Georgie

Hiring who, sorry?

Harini Janakiraman

There's a guy called Hum Par, who's been the talk of the town. He is, uh, a guy who is working with nine YC companies, I believe. So he has somehow managed to do that. So that's a,

Georgie

Oh my gosh. Red flags, guys. Yeah. And how do you find out about this? Is it in all the tech chats? Like, you know this guy, he's bad news. He's coming for a startup near you.

Harini Janakiraman

Someone exposed on Twitter, uh, saying they tried to hire, then they realised, and then it slowly is like a ripple effect by every company out there that's, uh, you know, kind of coming out and saying, oh, they're actually working with that person.

Georgie

Oh my gosh, this is why I love this show. One minute you think we're talking really dry technical concepts, and then it's like spicy Y Combinator dramas that are going on. Love it. Look, we we're often talking about losing our best startup talent, um, and, and most mature, incredible AI companies to San Fran.

Happened to have Buildship two guys. As soon as you guys got beat, Shams ran away. Um, how do you feel about making the move? Was it the right thing to do, Shams?

Shams Mosowi

I think it's not like, it's not permanent, right? It's not like lost forever. Um.

Georgie

Good.

Shams Mosowi

So, so one thing I realise now, it's like, it's July and it says called, uh, Sydney. So I'm like confused. It's supposed to be summer here, so that's definitely like a, not gonna stick around for too long, potentially. But I would say it's a, like, it's a more competitive space so it kind of like helps you grow faster as well. I think like Australia is very. It's great for like helping you get started because of such a wide open space and there's so many opportunities.

Um, versus I feel like San Francisco's like super dense and there's so many people competing for, even though there's a lot of resources, it's still very competitive, right? So you kind of feel like you look around and you're like, oh, if I don't do better, I'm gonna miss out. Ah, so it's like, it's very, it's a lot more intense.

Harini Janakiraman

It's also good for building the branding, right? Like, um, STRs is doing like a hackathon with, uh, Replicate and 11 Labs. So a lot of collaborations like that are feasible, much, much easier, uh, in SF. So,

Georgie

Uh, yeah, I, I am desperate to go. I am gonna come visit, I'm gonna come to the hackathon. I'm gonna win it.

It's gonna be great. I hear that the talent density is much larger. There's a lot more people that have, you know, years of experience as a startup operator to choose from in San Fran. But to your point, they also have a lot of other startups to, to, to work for in San Fran. Is it better or is it worse for hiring, do you think?

Shams Mosowi

Yeah, it's still, we still haven't hired anyone here yet, so we still haven't figured that part out because it is, it is a lot more expensive. Right. So because of how competitive it is and how the, like the cost of living is. Um, but there, there is a lot of talent. And then, but the problem is like, yeah, how do you, how do you incentivise them to come work with you and how do you maintain them. Yeah. Seems potentially more, a lot more competitive as a startup versus, so I think for us, we've been a remote first company from the start because we started during COVID and. So that has been like very advantageous to be able to just look at talent without a geolocation, um, and be able to see like, okay, this person is great, and then we just like work remotely.

I think. Yeah, we haven't met a lot of the people we work with in person.

Georgie

Yeah. I feel privileged to have met you both. What do you think Harini, have you, have you got a, a star hire that you are desperate for? Um. Maybe we could find them through the show.

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah. I mean, we are looking for hiring a star, um, marketing, uh, person, but maybe that's a place we can hire from.

Uh, but yeah, I think overall hiring remotely, we have definitely done some mistakes. We have done some great hires as well, so there's like a lot of really great folks across the world, uh, tapping and finding them. Uh, if you do find the right talent and fit for your company, it's good. Um, and especially if in the early days of a startup we wanna operate leanly, uh, maybe hiring from SF is not a great idea.

So that's kind of what, how we started and began building the team. Uh, I think we have figured out what works and doesn't work at this point through some mistakes and good things.

Georgie

Without naming names, what was your worst hiring mistake that startups just need to know across the board? Don't, don't do what we did in this one instance.

Harini Janakiraman

I mean, I think, I'm glad we didn't do like some type of hard mistakes. But one of the things we did learn through the process is like, if you're especially hiring remotely, uh, try to work together in a project. Try to actually get a feel for, uh, how the person is in working day to day. Because sometimes people are really good in interviews, but not in actual work collaboration or, uh, it really becomes very apparent what, uh, is working or not working when you work together on a project.

Um, so yeah,

Georgie

I actually wanted to talk to you a little bit more about brand. When you mentioned that you're looking for a marketing hire. I would like to push back. You guys are so incredible at brand that genuinely your, your, uh, posts on social media and elsewhere. You're incredibly beautiful merch. You guys are one of the startups.

I think that. Just maybe you know what you're looking for in a marketing person, but yeah, you guys have a natural affinity and talent for it. Did you de, did you actively decide this was important or are you just kind of the, the, the, have you just got the taste, which is apparently the biggest moat when it comes to building an AI company?

Shams. What do you think? You're an actual in this space too.

Shams Mosowi

So as you can see with like all the five coding. Making products is becoming a lot easier. And then, but the problem is like, how do you tell people that my product is the best product to use versus like, okay, this, this is the feature that it has.

And then now you can, you can just ask like, whatever, LLM to be like, look at this app. See the features, write a documentation of the features and then give it to another LLM to generate that app. Right? Um, so then it becomes more of like, brands are, it's like a trust thing, right? So it's like, do you wanna communicate quality?

Do you wanna communicate excitement? Right? So I think that's why it's important. I would say like, if you think about. Coca-Cola, it's, it's more branding than how the secret recipe, there is a little bit of a secret recipe, but it's a lot more branding. So I think potentially like software could end up being the same.

So.

Georgie

Yeah, like why do I wear Lululemon activewear? I don't wanna go to the gym. I don't wanna work out. So I will wear something that I like the brand of, even if it's like triple the price, probably the quality of the material is okay, but not that much better than the competitors. It's the brand loyalty.

It's the vibe that you get when using it. It's the fact I know what I'm gonna get. When I go there, I know what size I am. I know I'm talking about fashion, not tech, but Harini. When you, when you decided this was important for Buildship, like I've seen you wheel in when your knee was, or your leg was affected, and you are wheeling in with a, you know, I don't even know what it's called because you've got a big launch, and it just generated so much attention and virality online.

Are you doing it because you, you see a direct impact in your customers or is it kind of like table stakes now? Everyone has to do it.

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah. I mean, it is table stakes. I would say. Like it's becoming more and more like what is actually memorable there? There are like X number of similar products. What is actually.

Uh, that you are connecting with or like you're figuring out something in your feed in that one second, what are you actually, uh, going to stick around and continue watching it? I think that's what we are trying to figure out, uh, as well where, um, a brand is kind of associated with memorable. Uh, you think about that product when you wanna start building something.

Um, and I think with Shams has great, done a great job with the merch where we are trying to actually do these events and hackathons, and this will be part of it. Maybe Shams if they have it, you can show it to the folks here. Um,

Georgie

Oh yeah. This, this is, uh, you know, video on Spotify now. It's a new thing that we're doing, so, so anyone watching?

Um. We'll give chance a chance to show off something incredible. Merch on the show. I,

Shams Mosowi

Can, I can bring it. I have, yeah,

Harini Janakiraman

Go bring it. Yeah. The point was like, I think would, distribution is the key, almost, uh, product and everybody, everybody can build products these days. Uh, high quality product combined with a great distribution that becomes a part of your, uh, story of your company.

That's what it is. Yeah. Oh my

Georgie

Goodness. Don't have a new cut back. Okay, so everyone listening needs to be looking right now. There's no excuse. We've got it everywhere. We've got a Campbells soup, uh, in the style of Buildship. It's absolutely gorgeous quality merch too. Like this is something you guys don't skimp on.

It's not just great brand, it's beautiful quality.

Shams Mosowi

It's Synthetic Leather. This is like, um, oh.

Georgie

But, but to your point earlier too, Shams, you said, you know, what do we need to be known for? Brand in and of itself as a word, doesn't mean anything. Is it quality? Is it humour? I, I'm thinking of those two, just personally as, as a customer is what comes through.

How did you realise those two things are really important for our product and how they need to be integrated across everything we do and every communication that we publish? How did you decide what was important for Buildship?

Shams Mosowi

I mean, as a founder, you spend a lot of time working on your, your company and your product, and you wanna communicate that and then so it's like.

I don't want people to like get a very low quality T-shirt with low quality print. And that's like, they look at that as like, I'm not gonna wear that. So, so, but then it's, yeah. Yeah. And then sometimes people would see it as like a checklist. Oh, like, we need t-shirts, we need hats. Um, so that's kind of like misses the point of communicating something.

Georgie

Yeah, such a great point. It's like we need a hoodie, we need a cap, we need a key ring. And it's like you, one, you're taking all the joy out of beautiful merch, which like, what a shame when it can be so beautiful. The amount of delight that it inspired a whole room of Googlers, myself included. When you guys showed the merch, it affiliates that sense of delight with Buildship.

Right. Have you noticed that? Which

Shams Mosowi

We try. I guess it's, yeah, I think it's, it's the same. It's like you wanna put in effort the same way.

Harini Janakiraman

Yeah. That's the kind of feeling we wanna invoke in kind of the users who try the product as well. But it's also like the sense of like when you try some other product or some other companies' merch.

What it's kind of like subconscious, but you kind of start associating, uh, the quality with the product, potentially with the company. And they kind of translate, it's not kind of verbally told, Hey, this is what we are going after, but it's the feeling of, uh, excitement.

Georgie

This, this is a brand that doesn't skimp out on their merch.

Uh, they have an eye for detail, they have a sense of humour. They've got a uniqueness. Stuff is kind of seeping into our bones without us realising, and I'm obsessed with it. One last question on that before we get on the spicy rapid fire, uh, Shams. How do people earn merch? How do they need to interact with you?

Like what, what's happening with that?

Shams Mosowi

So, so we're, we're launching a couple of hackathons. We, we have one in next Saturday, so the, the 12th of July, um, in SF I think here is organising one in, in Australia in Sydney. Some like later in the month as well potentially. And so, so now it's. You can wear, like you can try it, try the product, play around and you'll win some merch.

And we have other merch as well. Yeah,

Harini Janakiraman

You can also like build something and tweet about it. If someone does, you know, we'll DM you with some merch.

Georgie

All right, developers listening, you've heard, you've heard what you need to do next. I didn't turn on my battery. One second. For the rapid fire. Oops, 35 episodes and I still have fun little tech lectures.

Okay, to finish this amazing interview, we've got some spicy rapid fire questions. This is the stuff that's gonna, you know, get you all hot under the collar. 'Cause you know, I'm trying to really test you guys. So, um, Harini without naming names. Worst hire and why?

Harini Janakiraman

Oh, someone we had to let go on literally the next day after we hired because of certain and, uh, kind of issues with the way they worked together.

Yeah.

Georgie

Great answer. Shams, what is your worst, oh, I was gonna ask the exact same question. What kind of new customer would you say no to? Who's not allowed to use Buildship?

Shams Mosowi

Someone that just like starts by like trying to just ask for features without even trying the product. Um, or like ask for something that doesn't exist and then it's in the product.

It's just like we have a lot of value already. If you, if you haven't built, has something and then just, yeah. So it's like,

Georgie

They're just gonna be impossible to please. Right.

Shams Mosowi

The less people pay, the more demanding they are.

Georgie

Hot take. Isn't that funny? Who's your favourite kind of customer then? Like they just, they just a willing participant happy with it.

They already love it. Right? I think it's,

Shams Mosowi

Not, doesn't have to be actually like, they can, they can be disappointed in some aspects and will help improve it, but I think it's when someone has a real problem that they're like tackling and they're clear rather than, I have an idea and I want you. I want, I need your, I need you to help me build it.

But versus like, I have an existing business that's like operating and then it needs a technical implementation or a technical solution that's usually more interesting and more exciting to be like, okay, this, this is gonna be eventually gonna create value in the world. Because like Buildship itself, it's a, it's just a solution, right?

Where do you apply that creates impact in the world. Um, so I think those kind of customers are exciting.

Georgie

Mate, what don't you miss about Australia? Be honest.

Shams Mosowi

Probably two things.

Georgie

Oh gosh. Okay. Ouch.

Shams Mosowi

NBN and, and Sydney trains. So those two triggered.

Georgie

Please discuss.

Shams Mosowi

Who's, every time I'm back I'm like, oh, the weather is so nice.

And it's, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. Right? And then Sydney trains decides to like, go on strike or NBN cuts off because of rain or flooding? I dunno.

Georgie

May. Okay. We're removing the third wall. This episode is recorded four days after it was scheduled because my NBN is still not working. I had to go to an Optus store and get a dongle and it's only 4G and so mad about it.

This is after two weeks of no NBN. Oh my God. Sorry. I just had to let that out. Everyone needed to know my NBN story, but it's true. It's true. Don't come back for the NBN Shams. Just come back for the weather. Harry, me. Tell me as our last spicy question then you're off the hook. Tell me a story about a social media fail or just something that did not turn out as you expected it to for Buildship.

Harini Janakiraman

Uh, I think it was probably our, uh, April Fool's Day, uh, campaign. Basically we put together something really quick. The day before, uh, it didn't really land. Uh, I think that was probably a bit of a fail. Uh, you didn't get cancelled, it just didn't land in the way you wanted. It was not that bad. So if we didn't get cancelled when nobody kind of, uh, you know, it was not a big engagement that we thought it would be.

That's all. So I think that's still a positive.

Georgie

Yeah, that could be a lot worse. We're not gonna cancel fellowship Buildship's. Not, yeah. You guys are nice. Don't cancel them. Sorry. Shams. Yes.

Shams Mosowi

Another one was that we, we had sent like a themed email, like, like, and then it was like, Hey, captain, and then someone replied.

It was like, I'm not a captain.

Harini Janakiraman

Who's, someone didn't like the captain, and they thought it's like we misunderstood their name.

Georgie

Oh, so in the body of the email, you, you, as a greeting, you said, Hey, captain, because the whole theme was nautical, um, sailing all of that stuff, and they were mad about that.

Shams Mosowi

They didn't get it so.

Georgie

Like guys, this is a great marketing campaign. Guys, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for coming on In the Blink of AI. Before I let you go, um, each of you, what would you like to shout out to the listeners? Harini,

Harini Janakiraman

You start us off. I would like to shout out that, you know, everybody in any kind of company should be like thinking about hiring like an AI automation engineer.

Someone who kind of goes around, figures out what they can optimise in their existing company or unlock new opportunities. And if that's something you are interested in doing, uh, we have like actually a demo of what can be built with Buildship in 15 minutes. So we'd love for you to check it out and try it.

And Shams, what's your shout out?

Shams Mosowi

So we, we released a few weeks ago the Buildship tools and that basically helps you vibe, code your backend. So you can, you can try that out to like help you get started. Um, so it does make it a lot easier.

Georgie

We will put links of those in the show notes. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much, guys. NBN couldn't keep us down. I hope you have the best rest of your day. Thanks guys.

Shams Mosowi

Thank You, Georgie

Georgie

Thank you Bye.