AiThority Interview with Ashkan Rajaee, CEO at TopDevz

Hi, Ashkan. Tell us about your journey in technology and how you started at Topdevz.

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart, even from a young age so I never actually had many jobs. I started my first business right after college and although it failed, I learned a lot and was able to have a lot of fun throughout the process. From that experience, I got involved with various ventures in the software and technology space which eventually led me to be a partner in a software company. As a partner, I helped grow the company from $6 million in annual revenue to $60 million. After successfully selling the company, I had a very clear vision of how I could improve the business model and went on to start TopDevz.

You come from a diverse background in software building. How does experience in your previous roles help to manage operations at  Topdevz?

I’ve always had a natural ability to truly understanding the client’s vision and how to recruit the right developers to execute on that vision.

Having worked in the industry, it was clear that the two major areas needing improvement were offering onshore software developers and only senior-level developers.

Insights and Operations

What drives the current demand for complex software development resources?

As our world continues to evolve, technology is taking more and more of a bigger role in our everyday lives from the way we work to the devices we use, such as smartphones.

That is not going to stop, in fact, it is actually going to continue to explode into our world and at a very fast pace. Thus, software developers will continue to be in high demand and as the demand grows the supply will continue to shrink.

Almost every industry is heavily disrupted by Big Data, AI, Blockchain, and Predictive Intelligence technologies. What kind of future are you building with your AI and ML products?

We are building out the future of recruiting through our proprietary software, for example, our recent release of the AI-powered virtual video interviewing platform that removes bias from the hiring process while making the recruitment process more efficient.

This is just the beginning of the innovation that we are bringing to the table to improve the recruiting process and this platform allows us to recruit the most elite senior developers much more quickly for our clients. We will continue to innovate and develop products to fill the voids that exist now.

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Marketing and Customer Success

As the CEO of a tech company, do you discuss IT challenges with your CIO and CTO? How do these discussions help to make TopDevz better?

Our team is very open and collaborative so we discuss the IT challenges we face among our team regularly. By these discussions being open to the team at every level, we have open communication and can combine our brainpower to tackle these issues and find solutions.

Apart from the ones in the US, which industries and geographies are you currently targeting?

We are currently focusing on the US market, but we service all industries across the board. Every single company and industry needs software, and we are here to provide the best developers to bring those projects to fruition, if you have a software need, TopDevz can absolutely help you.

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AI Predictions

What are your predictions on the future of AI-based Cloud and On-premise Security Platforms in 2020-2024? Where do you see the IT security platforms in the next 2-3 years?

There is currently a shortage of experienced security operations resources and we are experiencing an increase in organizations that need to protect their data so we are likely to see AI and ML being used to automate the security operations, it won’t only be sought after but it will be necessary to keep up with the amount of data produced every single day.

People are becoming less and less willing to share information or use certain apps or technologies with fear that their data is going to be breached, with all the data breaches that affect both large and small companies daily, so security platforms will continue to be a significant focus for companies and end-users. This will force the industry to use AI and ML just to keep up with the demand to protect data.

What is your opinion on “Weaponization of AI and Machine Learning”? How do you promote your ideas in the modern Digital economy?

I see AI being used in many ways in the weaponization, for example automating the deployment of missiles, drones, and other systems. I think we will see that surveillance will broadly use AI and ML not only in the ability to surveil someone but in learning that person’s habits and predicting their movements and possible locations.

I think that the digital economy is huge both locally and globally and so you have to focus on what you are really good at what differentiates you from your competitors, for TopDevz, that is, our onshore business model and recruiting on elite, senior developers.

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Thank you, Ashkan! That was fun and hope to see you back on AiThority soon.