Wahid Choudhury is the founder and CEO of Kaz Software, a leading software outsourcing company based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, serving clients from around the world as well as in Bangladesh. Mr. Wahid has not only built one of the most fascinating technology companies in its vertical but also built a distinct organization that gets credited for consistently producing leaders for Bangladesh’s tech industry. This is one of the best conversations I have had in a long time on life and venture building. I have found the conversation so fascinating that we are bringing back an ambitious old series called Life’s Work, where we feature conversations with people who are doing their life’s work.
We discuss Mr. Wahid’s personal history and how it has shaped him as a person and entrepreneur, and how Kaz Software came into being and has become the company it is today.
By Mr. Wahid’s account, one’s childhood and early education could have a profound impact on how we turn out in life. An early upbringing that mixes play, freedom, and opportunities for creative cultivation can help us grow into unique individuals who can take on the world and work with courage, openness, and relentless out-of-the-box thinking.
Like his personal journey—dropping out of a PhD program in physics at King’s College London to pursue a career in software because he felt like it—Kaz Software also provides a model for this courage, openness to exploration, and out-of-the-box thinking. A lucrative job offer that turned into a six months outsourcing project became one of the early successes in Bangladesh’s software outsourcing industry.
Mr. Wahid's approach to company building has a meditative ting to it. It reminds me of the Chinese concept of “wu wei,” which literally means “try not trying” or "effortless action". Flow with the flow of life, as he puts it. Take it when you find an opportunity to do the work you enjoy. Gather the like-minded, high quality, crazy people you would enjoy working with. Empower them with freedom and an environment to do their best work and grow. The rest should take care of itself.
There's a growing interest in entrepreneurship and venture building in Bangladesh. But most of these discussions miss the point that building consequential enterprises has a cultural component to it. On the one hand, this culture is about the kind of founders a society produces, which depends on the family and the education system we have. On the other hand, it is about a deep and intuitive understanding of the culture of building ventures.
In this conversation, Mr. Wahid and I try to demystify this phenomenon of what produces consequential founders and organizations through the fascinating personal journey of Mr. Wahid and the remarkable story of Kaz Software.
This was a much longer conversation and we had to divide it into two parts. This is part one. Please come back later next week for the equally fascinating final installment.
Mohammad Ruhul Kader: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I can't appreciate it enough. I want to start by asking you about your upbringing and childhood, your education, and early formative experiences as a child—what molded you as an individual, how you see the world, and from there your path to the work you're doing today.
Wahid Choudhury: That's a very loaded question. Let me try to answer. I was born in Chittagong, where my father was a doctor at Chittagong Medical College. But we moved to Dhaka when I was just four years old, so I pretty much grew up in Dhaka. My school life, mainly from Class 1 to Class 10, was actually in one school: University Laboratory School, which is located beside the Arts Faculty of Dhaka University.
I have just one black mark in my school career. In nursery, my aunt was a teacher at Agrani Balika Bidyalay, so I was admitted there. It was very embarrassing for me when someone would ask, "Which school do you study in?" I had to say Agrani Balika Bidyalay. At that time, even though it was a girls' school, they used to take boys up to Class 4. It was very embarrassing. At one point, I rebelled at home—no matter what, I would not study in a girls' school anymore. So my father and mother were quite concerned: "Okay, something has to be done." They started having me take admission tests at various schools. My situation was that I didn't pass any tests. Wherever I went, I failed the test. My father and mother became desperate.
At first, they were hopeful—everyone is hopeful about their children: "Okay, we've given birth to the next genius, maybe the next Einstein." So they first tried for government schools. I failed very badly there. Then they slowly started dropping the quality and trying different schools. Later, they became desperate: "At least one school has to take him." I even took the test at a Viqarunnisa Noon school, which is a Girls' school, and failed there too. God knows how many records of failing I set—I took tests in about 10-12 schools like this and failed in each one.
So then my father, using the Dhaka Medical College quota system, got me into University Laboratory School. Dhaka University teachers have a quota—if their children apply, they can get a seat. So as a failed student admitted through a quota system, I started at this school. What can I say—a very bad start. I think my father and mother gave up hope on me, thinking this one is a lost cause.
We are two brothers and one sister. My brother and sister are much older than me and very good at studies. My fate was kind of like that: "Okay, one can be bad; there's nothing to do about it." I started my life with such a stigma at University Laboratory School. But I had a very good time there. It was a very good school for me.
The school system in Bangladesh, in my opinion, has a defect—it puts a lot of stress on students. There was no such stress at the University Laboratory School. The teachers put little pressure on us. They seldom gave homework, even if they did, it was very little, and I rarely did them. It's not like I got into a lot of trouble because I didn't do homework. Since my father and mother had already given up hope on me, they didn't pressure me to study much because I was a lost cause.
I had a very beautiful childhood. I almost didn't have to study at all. I didn't fail any class in school, but you could say I was the absolute last person in my class. I had fun. My school life was very beautiful. I had a very nice time. I think this is very important.
I have some qualities that helped me later in life, which I think is partly an impact of our school. One of them is that I can think outside the box about any problem. This sounds like blowing my own horn—I'm not special, but it's true. You can understand that I was just a regular, below-average student. But I think the source of this quality is that in my school life, in my formative years, I was able to grow up in such a relaxed, pressure-free environment that it allowed me to develop a way of thinking. I think the way I think is different. And I see this not just in myself, but also in many of my friends from my school too. It's a big factor in them as well. Wherever they have gone, they have become thought leaders. Maybe our school has something to do with this.
I took my Matriculation exam [SSC] from Laboratory School. I have an interesting story about the Matriculation exam: I came first in our school that year, the best result among all the students in our school. That was the only time in my entire life when I came first. I was stunned—I was not expecting it and our teachers were also very stunned.
When I first went to get the tentative score—our system was that they gave a tentative result first, then the real score was published later—the teachers looked at it and said, "Wahid, I think there's a mistake in your result. Please don't expect to do so well. These things come with errors sometimes... wait for the real result you'll get later." I also thought something was wrong. My friends were very surprised; they were making fun of me. But then it turned out the result was really correct. It was an interesting moment. How it happened, I really don't know. Somewhere something must have worked out.
After that, I studied at Notre Dame College. It was the worst possible combination. After the freedom of my school, Notre Dame College was very hard for me. I don't know whether you know, Notre Dame is quite strict. They have a test every week. Classes have to be attended on time. If you don't attend enough classes, you get in trouble. You have to meet with the Director of Guidance. Notre Dame had a rule—probably still does—that the worse your class attendance is, the further back you're assigned a seat. All the seats are assigned by roll number from top to bottom. I used to sit at the back because I missed a lot of classes, what you call a classic backbencher.
The backbenchers had a problem. Our Director of Guidance was a very strict person. He passed away a few years back. May he rest in peace. His job was to basically act like a policeman. Whenever something happened, his duty was to grab the culprit or suspected criminal from the classroom. His very easy filtration method: backbenchers are always criminals. So I was regularly caught in this roundup. I was often grabbed and taken from class and asked various questions: "There was noise in class—what was the reason? Were you involved?" Usually, I actually was involved. But there, you have to say something good: "No sir, I was studying very seriously."
Notre Dame was diametrically opposite to University Laboratory School. University Laboratory School had no study pressure. Notre Dame had immense study pressure, immense strictness, and an immense homework-driven environment. They give you lessons; you have to study them and come prepared. Those two years were quite tough for me. I kind of survived and managed. I passed as well. Of course, I didn't come first, Notre Dame had too many good students. I was never a model student at Notre Dame.
After passing from Notre Dame, I went to Dhaka University in the Physics Department. The main reason for joining Physics was that I really liked Physics while at Notre Dame. In my intermediate—then called Intermediate—my scores in physics were very good. I felt it was the right decision to go for Physics. That was a very good decision in fact. I really loved Physics; I still love Physics. It's one of those subjects that I spend time reading about. My wife often jokes about me that to relax, I sometimes read about Physics, which is not normal. Quantum Mechanics is one of my favorite subjects, which I never understood and am still trying to understand. It was a really good subject. Subjects with fundamental questions about this world that people are trying to answer, trying to model the physical world. That's something that I always liked. I really enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of the subject.
There is a funny story from my time at Dhaka University on the theme of being a failtoosh (failed) student. In my first year, I was first-class-first, which has some value in Dhaka University. As a new student, everyone was very impressed with me, and I was impressed with myself—again, I came first and this was not supposed to happen. But there is a catch. Our system back then (it has changed now) was that you had your major subject, which we call Honours subjects, and then you had to take two subsidiary subjects. You had to pass the subsidiary subjects but not every year. You had to pass all of them to get your degree, but if you failed one year, you could take improvement exams the next year. I knew this and absolutely didn't study my subsidiary subjects: Chemistry and Math. Although I loved Math, I didn't study for the exam. As a consequence, while I was first in the department, I failed both my subsidiary subjects: Chemistry and Math. My teachers were humiliated by this—how can the department's first boy fail Chemistry and Math? Anyway, those were moments that filled my academic career. I eventually managed to solve that problem in my third year.
After passing from Physics, I was lucky enough to get into King's College, University of London, for my PhD. Back then, you usually needed a Master's before universities in London or the UK would accept you for a PhD. However, I convinced my supervisor to get into a program without a master's. That was quite something. I went to London on a trip, I went up to Kings, met up with this professor and she got convinced.
Ruhul: Tell us more about this story.
Wahid: I knew about King's. One of my favorite scientists, Maxwell, was at King's for a while. I knew he was at King's and I was in London. My favorite physicist was Newton but I was not going to Cambridge. When I went to London, I thought at least I would go and see the lab of Maxwell. That's how I turned up at King's. I emailed her before coming, so she knew I was coming. The conversation originally started with seeing the lab. Then we talked about what my plans were and she said why don't you think about coming here? For me, it was a big chance. If there was a chance, so why not? I boasted a little bit. Her field was Solid State Physics. Solid State Physics is about solid materials—what the electronic structure is like inside a solid material, why a material is hard or soft, why it will fracture easily, that kind of stuff.
I was bad at Solid State Physics, by the way. I had Solid State Physics in my third year and was really bad. But at that moment, there was no other way for me—I had this chance, so I couldn't say something bad about Solid State Physics. I boasted a little based on what I could remember. What could I do? I don't know what convinced her, she said I think you are good. If you apply, I would ask the board to make an exception. That was a lucky break for me.
I was lucky to get into what is called a Master's leading on to a PhD program. It was basically a PhD program. It was a very special program because it was guaranteed that you would get a PhD. To get into the program, you don't necessarily have to have a very good Master's result; you just have to do it. I got into that program.
Again, I was very impressed with myself. And again my contemporaries were very surprised that this was not supposed to happen. Anyway, I did many things using chapachupa (boasting a bit) in life and this was one of them. So I got in. I actually liked it very much. Although it was solid-state physics, it was computational solid-state physics. It was more programming. Like you have a mathematical model for a material and you usually use computers to get results.
The only thing I did well in life was computational programming. In computational programming, you create mathematical models using a computer and get results. My topic was with the group that worked on diamonds. Diamond is made out of carbons. If carbon atoms inside diamonds are displaced and replaced by another atom—say iron or cobalt (cobalt is very common in diamonds)—then what change occurs in the electronic structure? It's basically doping, like how silicon is doped to make transistors—semiconductor material.
Since diamond belongs to the same group as silicon, diamond could be the next big semiconductor. The big advantage is that it can sustain very high temperatures. First, it's a strong material—the hardest material in the world. Plus, it can sustain very high temperatures. It has many applications where silicon would break down. If it's a semiconductor like that, then say you're sending a device to Venus, a spaceship—there will be high temperatures there, and materials made of diamond would be very good. That was a goal.
Although it's a big subject, I worked on one narrow specific topic for my PhD: what happens electronically, computationally, when carbon atoms are shifted, what stable state they return to, and what changes occur in the electronic structure. It was a good subject. It required a lot of programming. That's where I started programming actually. While doing Physics, we had a little Fortran programming to do, but I didn't do real programming. When I entered this PhD course, I had to do a lot of programming. That's how I got into the fun of programming. Before that, I didn't have much programming experience.
After a while in the program, I realized that mediocre physicists who operate at the bottom rung actually don't have much prospect in this world. You just have to scrape by. But mediocre developers have many opportunities and if you're a good developer, then there's no question. So after some thought, I decided to drop out of my PhD. So I didn't finish my PhD. Instead, I got out with an MPhil. I could have gotten the PhD if I had taken one or two more years and worked a bit harder. But because of this realization, it helped me decide that it would be better to go towards the software world. There's a lot of future there. Because as a physicist I didn't see a lot of future for myself. If you are a good physicist, obviously the opportunity is huge but I was not that good. So it helped me make that decision.
There was a bit of an argument at home. As you can see, my family is more academic-oriented. My father was in the teaching profession all his life, so he didn't like it at all. But I didn't tell him in advance, that's the beauty of it. I just did it first, and then told them that I was not doing PhD any longer and instead, was doing MPhil. My father was not happy. In fact, they had doubts whether I actually studied anything, or whether I got a certificate. They wanted to see my certificate if I got anything, or if I was just boasting. It's embarrassing, but a fact of life, I guess.
While doing my PhD research, I was working part-time at a software company in London. Now I think my decision to quit PhD was interconnected with my working at this company. Because they offered me the job, and on this side, the trouble of writing the thesis—PhD thesis writing is very difficult, so to escape the trouble of writing the thesis, thinking of an easy and beautiful life, I decided to come to the world of software. So I joined that company. It was a startup. I started my part-time job in 1998 and became full-time the next in that company. That's a long time back—thinking about 25 years back, it's surprising to think.
That's the long-winded answer to your question: my early life, my studies, and how I got into software.
Ruhul: This is fascinating and there are so many different ways we can go from here. You made this interesting comment about your school that your school was rather relaxed and allowed you to explore other interests and opportunities for some mischief. As a result, many of you, including your friends, did unconventional things in life and became thought leaders in their fields. Do you see any correlation here?
Wahid: The correlation with the fact that a relaxed childhood gets you a better future, something like that.
Ruhul: Something like that. You commented passingly that our education system is somewhat regimented; it doesn't give children much opportunity to move around. We can theorize and ask questions about why our schools don't produce highly successful people and so on. Why don't we have many geniuses or why don't we have more people who could think outside the box? Is there anything that we are missing in terms of how our education system and schooling are designed? Can we draw any insights from your school experience as you described it in this regard?
Wahid Choudhury: I don't have any scientific data, I’m talking off the top of my head. It's based on my own life and the lives of my friends. But I’m convinced about the impact of our school on our lives. This is not the first time I am saying this. Whenever I get a chance, I say this. I have two sons. When I had to make decisions about their studies, I almost fought with my wife for a school with less pressure. We need to enjoy childhood and we need to have the flexibility so that we have opportunities to expand our minds. I wanted a school where the mind is allowed to expand. You had a couple of points, so let me explain it in a couple of points.
It could be a very interesting study—the data needs to be collected by taking students from different schools and tracking their success rates later in life. From there, maybe one could see what type of school produces what type of person. Such a study is missing. It could be a very interesting study.
However, from my school experience, I can say that for me it played a crucial role in my life. Since I know about my own life, I'm very confident about it. Since I wasn't in a regimented system and there was a lot of flexibility, we had a lot of opportunities to explore our curiosities. I had a lot of free time, and I really liked to read books, so I read countless books.
I was lucky from a very young age—my siblings, my father, my mother, everyone reads books. We had a lot of books at home. Plus, the British Council was just five minutes from our school and I was a member of the British Council. I got a lot of opportunities to read books. I probably wouldn't have gotten that in a regimented school. Since I read a lot of books, maybe my outlook on life changed a lot. I learned about many realities that many schoolchildren probably don't get to know. This was definitely a positive.
Second, I would say that since the school environment was relaxed, maybe I even had some opportunity to study in my own way for school studies. Comparatively less rote memorization was required. For example, rarely did we see our friends memorizing essays. We mainly wrote essays on the fly, which was common for us. In other schools, I saw everyone writing formatted and memorized essays. That helped because we were young kids with growing brains. And—I'm hypothesizing—if you provide a growing brain with a lot of input, it can probably think in many different ways. Similarly, freedom also helped us to grow and develop a sense of independence.
As you can see, I’ve been through many different things. I think my school experience played a role here. I became capable of making my own decisions. That decision—whether to study Physics or not, or Consulting, or Software—big decisions in life... the confidence to make these kinds of decisions, I think, came from my school experience. We had opportunities to decide many things ourselves. No one told us to do this or that.
When I look at my friends, I also see that they have done well in life. Of course, everyone is different, their environment varies, and their own skill set varies. But more or less, I see everyone doing quite well.
For example, at the Science Faculty at Curzon Hall, Dhaka University, we were in different classes and different departments. In every department, I saw my friend from school excelling. Not necessarily they became first or second person in studies, but in networking, making friends, organizing something, leadership in a picnic, and extracurricular activities, they did pretty well. They stood out. Anywhere they went, they did well.
We have a joke among many of us. In Dhaka University, the building just behind the Physics department is the Geology department. In general, there's a lack of beautiful girls in Science. A matter of disparity. At that age, it was like that. Our friends in the Arts Faculty were hanging out with incredibly beautiful girlfriends, and our condition was very pathetic.
Anyway, the department behind us was Geology. There was a very beautiful girl there. I can't remember her name, but we knew her. In the meantime, one of our school friends changed departments and entered Geology. Within a few days of entering Geology, he fell in love with that girl. My friends next to me said, "What's the matter with people from your school?"
Within our very building was the Microbiology department. At that time, Microbiology didn't have its own place—it was a new department. They started with two rooms from the old Physics department in the main Curzon Hall, that big building. There was also a beautiful girl. Naturally, there too, another of my school friends came and fell in love with that beautiful girl.
This skill set, I think, only comes from studying in such a school. I don't know; it was just a trend. It's interesting, I think.
Here's another piece of information: The current Army Chief, General Waker, is from our school. The school has been able to produce many leaders like this. Shafin Ahmed of Miles is from our school. If I were to get some data, if you look closely, every year, you see one or two people who became quite good leaders in their fields—academically or otherwise.
Ruhul: I agree with you. In interviews and discussions about childhood and upbringing, I've met many people from two schools. One is yours, and another is Saint Joseph's. I would also like to make a similar claim about Kaz, where you have built an organization that has produced a lot of entrepreneurs and industry leaders. Many people who worked at Kaz at some point, came out and started their own companies and others became leaders in the industry. These organizations are rare. Another such organization is ANZ Grindlays Bank. I interviewed Mr. Rumee Ali, who was the CEO of the bank, which later merged with Standard Chartered. A large number of private bank CEOs in Bangladesh came from that bank. These are rare organizations where you produce leaders at scale. Why do you think this is the case where some organizations are better at producing leaders than others? Do you think there are secrets to designing an institution in a manner where this happens? If so, how do you design an institution where people can grow like this?
Wahid: This is true—from Kaz, definitely, our alumni have done very well. There can be two reasons for this. I will come to the reasons later. Let me try to address your question first.
One major component of our culture at Kaz is that it is a relaxed environment. We always say that happiness first. We spend a significant time of our life at work and give the most valuable period of our life to work when we are most active. It is not like we have several lives and we give one from those to work. We have only one life and we give the most important time of that life to work and the workplace. So it better be happy. That is something that we have always said and let us create an environment where we are happy to come, where we would enjoy coming. You can say it is one of our principles. We stuck on to that from day one and thankfully, people who joined us believed in that messaging.
Going back to your question, I now feel that it could be that my school life and experience of my formative years might have carried over and influenced me to make the decision that we need an environment where people are relaxed.
I mentioned two things. Maybe one is hiring. In our hiring process, we are always looking for people who match this principle. The reason our alumni so far have done so well could be because of the combination of these two: our hiring and our environment.
Let me elaborate on it a bit.
What I feel is that because of such an environment of Kaz, people get that opportunity to think outside the box and explore their curiosities, as we had in school. People can grow in their own way.
For example, small things: we never let anyone see our screen. If you walk into any room in Kaz, you will never be able to see an employee's screen. If you look at mine now, you'll understand—there's a wall behind me and you can only come to me from the front. This is part of the policy. I'm sitting in this spot, someone can come only from the front; no one can come from behind. This is our seating policy. From day one, we had it.
The reason behind this was we wanted to communicate that we don't care what you are doing on your screen at this moment—you are on Facebook, watching videos, or coding. Because in the end, we have a trusting relationship, and we have trust that you will deliver the task. We have built this trust into our culture from day one.
Everyone knows that no one will micromanage. Everyone knows that no one will monitor what I'm doing right now or if I'm relaxing. None of these matters. All we are looking for is your commitment that you will put in your best effort. Luckily in the software world, it's easy to measure best efforts. You can see the deliveries. You are given a task to write code within a certain time, can you do it or not? While this varies from person to person with different skill sets, our experience tells us that whenever we can give this trust, we get much better work output and the relationships are much better. This is just a small example.
So we are much more relaxed.
Beyond that, we have cultivated other relatively unorthodox values. Obviously, saying 'Sir' is out of the question. No software company says 'Sir.' But even showing extra respect to senior 'Bhais' (brothers) is strongly discouraged. We jokingly say that the older a person is, the more his brain starts dying. So seniors don't have that much value in our field. We joke quite a bit with seniors, intentionally. Seniors themselves have adopted that culture; they joke among themselves: "Oh, in 1970, I used to code like this... That's why I still code like this. I don't understand your AI and stuff." This is one of our running jokes. Seniors make self-deprecating jokes to lighten the environment for juniors. I think this helps overall to maintain this distinctiveness of our culture.
Maybe because of that, we can attract the right kind of people. Having a reputation in our industry has an advantage—hiring becomes comparatively easier. Although it is never easy, it gets relatively easier. So you end up with better people, and better-skilled resources to begin with. When you give them such an environment, probably it helps them to grow better, and their career growth is good. Maybe that's one of the reasons that our alumni do this well in general. I'm just guessing. That's my feeling.
Ruhul: I'll ask two questions here. One question is about hiring, which is such a complex task. How do you find the right person, how do you ensure that that right person joins the company, and then also stays with the organization once hired—these things are not easy. The question I am trying to get at is that if someone wants to replicate these models of organizations where you produce high-quality people, what should they do? If I try to glean some insights from your answers then one is they need to replicate the hiring process—the way you hire, they need to understand the science of it, and number two, they have to replicate the culture so that when someone goes into that culture, they grow. If that is the case, I think it is only right to learn more about your hiring process, can you tell us more about your hiring process? How do you ensure you hire right? How do you evaluate a person? If you want to produce quality people in an organization, then what happens in the process? Number two is the culture of the organization—how do you create a culture where people thrive?
Wahid: In hiring, our process is informal at Kaz. That's always been intentional. We joke that we don't ask someone, "What are the types of computers? and questions like that", questions that one can memorize or you can just ask Google. That's not a difficult question. You can't do well in our field just by knowing information or facts.
During hiring, we mainly want to understand two things. One is, do they have problem-solving skills? The second is, do they have collaboration skills? You can be a very good developer but you can't work in a team. We've seen very good developers who struggle to work on a team. They're single-person players. They have a role in the world, but the kind of software projects we do need team and team collaboration. If you don't work well in a team, things can get complicated.
We basically look at these two parameters. To look at these two parameters, you soon realize that structured interviews are not that useful for understanding these skills. What we usually try to do is a standard technical interview where we discuss some problems. I haven't been in recruitment interviews for many years, maybe 5-10 years, so I'm talking about the past. I think we still follow something similar.
In the interviews, our goal is to understand the person. So we try to bring out the authentic self—who the person is when he doesn’t need to prove anything. We try to ask questions within the comfort zone of the person being interviewed. We don't ask about something that they haven't worked on. Rather we ask questions on a project they did on their own sitting at home. We ask about that project, and how they did it. Whenever you’re talking about a project, you’re talking about problems: "How did you do that?" Questions like that allow us to see how a person deals with problems. We try to understand the thought process of a person, how they think, and how they solve problems.
Obviously, there are some standard questions, like, what would you do if something like this happens? Say, if your database becomes slow, what would you do? Standard questions like this, not "What are the types of computers?"—that type of question. We try to make these questions such that they have to think to answer them, not like stock questions where you just regurgitate something memorized. With these, we mainly look at problem-solving skills.
Then you need to look at the hard skills a bit. You can't bring in someone who can only solve problems but hasn't learned the technology yet. In such cases, it becomes a bit difficult for us because as an outsourcing organization, a new hire might have to solve a problem on a project on the first day; there's less time to learn. To that end, we ask some standard questions to understand the skills, which is what everyone does.
And then what we insist on is to write code in front of us. Even if it is something simple, we ask them to write some code in front of us and show us. In that, you can actually understand how comfortable a candidate is about thinking out loud and performing in the real world. You can use Google. We are not worried about syntax. They can search for syntax, but we want to see how deeply they can think when writing the code. We want to see that. That's the technical side of things.
To understand collaboration, we try to create a debate. In the technical world, some things are obvious about which there is general consensus. We would try to create a quite obvious debate about one of these things. One of us who is taking the interview would say, "No, this cannot happen," about one such thing. Anyone would object to such a claim. Here, we try to see how a candidate objects—if they do it nicely, whether they can present their argument well, or whether they just accept it. When someone accepts such a claim without putting forward an argument, that's scary. It means they will never debate; they will accept whatever a senior or someone with power says, and the solution won't be good. That's also something we look for. It's more about how they interact with people in terms of collaboration. We look at these things.
If I know right, two interviews are taken. One is over the phone for early pre-selection, and another is face-to-face. We used to do two face-to-face, traveling in Dhaka is so complicated that now it's one face-to-face where we sit down with a candidate for an hour or two. That's how it works.
There is always a bit of hit-and-miss. But overall, more hits than misses.
Ruhul: That's very interesting. I want to go deeper into collaboration as a skill. Collaboration is an incredibly important skill for individuals and organizations. Many people want to assert that without our ability to collaborate with others, civilization wouldn't have happened. If we couldn't work with each other, we would go extinct. However, it is increasingly a challenging skill to develop. More so in our time when we are more involved and engaged in the digital world and with devices like phones and all. How do you encourage collaboration at Kaz? How do you think people can get good at collaboration and working with others?
Wahid: The first thing is you have to collaborate. There's no other way. As you mentioned, it has always been there, in all generations. Tech people are a bit introverted, generally. I shouldn't be generalizing—there are many different types of people too, but a large percentage are a bit introverted; they spend more time in front of computers, and relatively less human interaction. So this is actually a negative to that collaboration skill.
To counter that, we try to solve it organizationally. For example, we have lots of parties. Party is a generic word. It could be just getting together, eating pizza together, chatting together, etc. Sometimes we also do it in a bigger format. We do an annual trip every year, since our second year of existence—we have been doing it for 19 years now. We try to fund the whole thing, which we always can't but we try to do as much as we can. We could fund more in the early days. Now we can't fund that much, but we try to fund a good amount.
If possible, we try to take the entire company. Historically, we have done it outside the country. This year, we've done it in the country. There's a lot more participation and foreign visas have become so complicated with Bangladeshi passports, it is just painful. Last year, we went to Thailand and our experience was not good. This year, we went to Saint Martin's during the Christmas break.
These offsite events are a very good icebreaker. We call it an anniversary party. Besides the anniversary party, which happens annually for the entire company, our teams also try to do a lot of these parties themselves separately. We try to fund from the office, at least partially, to go offsite on a team level—offsite, outside the office environment, outside the room, ideally spending at least one night—if not, at least a whole day. However, often, teams spend two or three days offsite.
The biggest advantage of doing offsites is that work is no longer a blocker. The relationships there turn into friendships. When I'm in the office environment, my team leader, my team 'Bhaiya' says this and that... that kind of feeling comes. As soon as I go outside of work, that feeling greatly reduces because of the environment. The new environment allows new relationship dynamics.
Since the environment is new, tech people who are introverted, usually collaborate, otherwise, they feel unsafe and uncomfortable. If I'm with the team, work with the team together, and hang out together, then it's much better. And by doing that, a lot of ice is broken. Friendships are created among people. We get a very good result from these events when they come back. After returning, that relationship turns into a strong bond.
Human relationships and person-to-person relationships are always good. People who work in the software world usually come from a similar mindset. Stronger friendships often form among like-minded people of the same age group. We hugely benefit from this, which has resulted in many lifelong friendships among Kaz people. Because of this even people who were at Kaz 20 years back are now connected with each other. They are connected with me.
Two years back, one of them hosted a party in the USA. Since I live in Canada—it was easier for me—I also went to that. This is a regular occurrence: ex-Kaz-employees talking to one another, meeting one another, continuing relationships beyond work.
What's even more interesting, and I'm very amazed by it, is the intergenerational relationship. It is understandable to have a relationship with someone with whom I worked in the past. We are good friends. We might have moved abroad or gone to work at different companies, but our friendship can continue because it was no longer tied to the company.
What is even more interesting is intergenerational relationships. I see that someone who worked at Kaz in 2005/2006, who now works in a senior technical position in the USA, has a connection with a Kaz employee from 2019 who went to America for higher studies. This second person is way junior but they find each other out just because they worked at Kaz, although years apart and they have similar stories to share. I'm sure that I’m in one of those stories—my balding headspace may be one of the stories. They have other stories I am sure. We are all very proud of this.
This is a side effect of our culture. You just don’t work at Kaz, you also build lifelong relationships. I think that helps for sure.
I digressed a bit from the original collaboration question. What I wanted to explain is that this relationship beyond work always helps to build good collaboration in work situations. It is easy to work with someone whom you trust and with whom you have a good relationship.
We have tried to cultivate this as part of our culture.
Ruhul: I think we can expand it to all kinds of relationships. When you take a relationship out of its regimented context then it can relax. When you are within the purpose or the defined context, it has rules and boundaries where you can only do certain things. But when you take that relationship outside of its purpose and relax those boundaries, it becomes open and you can experiment. Very useful insights. The question we are dealing with is how we can create organizations that can produce capable people. One question is what Malcolm Gladwell calls the Ivy League factor—admission criteria determine the outcomes rather than the education you receive in an organization. Ivy League schools don’t teach anything special, instead, their advantage is that they can recruit the best students from all over the world who naturally do well. Similarly, hiring the right people is more about how admission criteria impact the outcome. You can't credit an organization for recruiting geniuses and then producing genius results. If an organization hires decent people and then turns them into geniuses, that's something worth paying attention to. This is the next part of my question. You have an excellent hiring process that allows you to hire the right people. My next question is what can an institution actually do to help these people grow and thrive? This is where culture comes in, which you talked about. Kaz has a two-pronged system to produce excellent people—one you hire the right people, and second, you then provide them an environment that helps them to flourish. My next question is how do you create such a culture, such an environment? How to replicate the culture where you nurture these people, helping them improve and grow through organizational experience? What can other organizations learn from your culture experiment at Kaz as well as what you have seen at your school?
Wahid Choudhury: My short answer would be that in the software world if you give people trust and freedom, they will always deliver. This is my basic belief. The complaint I hear a lot from my colleagues outside of Kaz is that, "Yes, the team is performing well, but you have to monitor the team closely, otherwise there will be problems.”
I think it is the other way around. I think if you can give trust and flexibility, the team will make sure to meet deadlines and deliver better products. This requires management to accept it—that okay, this is a matter of trust, and a bit of courage too. You are letting your team be—you aren't keeping them in a structure, monitoring what they are doing day to day, how many lines of code they checked in, etc.
Letting the control go might feel a bit scary, that maybe they are not doing anything. But if you can give them the right culture and trust, my 20 years of experience is that they always deliver. It's human nature. If you get trust from somebody, if you are happy with somebody, you will give your best to return that happiness. When we are trusted with responsibility, we try to grow to honor that trust. When you trust people, people tend to work harder to keep it. I think a lot of companies can just use this principle.
I have a favorite book—I can't remember the name right now. I've written about it many times on my blog. If someone wants to listen to my advice, reading this book has value. It is about experiments done at IBM, Microsoft, and places like that. They studied team culture at IBM, Microsoft, etc, and tried to see what makes a great team culture. A lot of what I have talked about and I have implemented at Kaz comes from that book.
I don't want to take a lot of credit because I merely played the role of instigator. I just instigated. I think this is also important. If it comes from just one person, the management, or the owner, then it won't be that impactful. It has to be something everyone believes in, then it will work. The way to implement it is you kind of instigate it, you kind of create policies that make this possible, and then you let people adopt it. It might not happen exactly the way you want it, but it will be something close. It then becomes about everyone. Everyone owns it.
Here, everything isn't my idea—it wouldn't be right to take credit. I germinated the idea, but a huge contribution comes from the generations of resources who have come and gone.
At this moment, in Kaz's culture, my contribution, I'd say, is 10%. 90% is actually from our previous team leads, wing leads and the current wing leads—their personal flavors, which is something we want.
At Kaz, we group into teams and several teams make a wing.
Something we say is that each of our teams and wings should have a flavor of their own. All of them shouldn’t become the same. There are actually quite differences among teams and wings. Kaz actually, within one company, is several smaller companies, each running with its own policy, each has its own flavor, slightly different from others. However, they have core values that connect to the company's values.
Ruhul: A very decentralized approach to operation. I want to expand on one point. In the early days, you operated as an evangelist of your culture as head of the organization. But you needed the buy-in from your other team members. As you mentioned, if everyone does not take part, it won't become a culture, it won't bear any fruit. So you need to get buy-in. But one-off buy-in alone wouldn't do it, you need consistent buy-in so that people practice it daily and embody it and it becomes a habit for the entire organization. How could you do that?
Wahid: That's a difficult question you're asking. I can tell you some techniques that we use at Kaz. Usually, when management says something, it's always suspect. That's human nature. In an ideal world, if you have an idea and it comes from the people, that's the best approach. If the idea pops up organically.
At Kaz, we have created a mechanism to achieve this goal which we call the underground, the "Mafia" concept. We have always kept this concept that there is an underground leadership structure—a Godfather if you will. The Mafia boss has a say in culture and everything, almost like a yin-yang leadership structure in relation to the management, you could say. The culture and everything flows from there. While this somewhat happens with the tacit approval of the office, the office cannot fully select it. I can't just decide and say, "Make this person the Godfather"—it won't happen. We are joking about the mafia but that person represents leadership from the non-management side.
The person takes leadership from the non-management side of the office. Management tries to optimize costs, find ways to do something with less cost, focusing on business priorities. That's very important. The godfather, on the other hand, always focuses on what's best for the employees.
What we have always done is that we have valued both these perspectives. Management perspective is of course valuable because money, budget and business priorities are very important. But it doesn’t mean we discount the Godfather or the Mafia's perspective. By "we," I don't mean management only—I mean even senior leadership and team leaders. When implementing a new policy, we usually try to validate it with the Mafia group. We have lunch together, which is a good place to bring up new ideas and test them out. Often in Kaz's history, many things have happened where the office or management planned something, suggested it, and it got shot down at the lunch table by the Mafia, and we retracted. We have to have that thing where everyone can offer their positions.
Management shouldn't have an ego—this feeling that "We are management, we will do whatever we want." If you operate from that feeling, you break down the trust. It has to feel like a cooperation. That's one of the strategies we use. You can call it democratization. Pure democracy is tough. It's not like voting; it's informal. We do things informally, asking: will everyone like it? We try to assess whether the majority would like a certain policy.
Having that Mafia also helps because sometimes management is forced to make certain decisions due to business priorities or restrictions. To ease that in, we take help from the Mafia. We, the management, talk with the Mafia Godfather like a secret pact. We explain to the Godfather the problem: "We want something like this; see if you can explain it to everyone." In many cases, these secret pacts have been exposed, and many Godfathers have gotten into trouble—accused of not really working for the Mafia but being management's lackeys. Problems like this have happened too.
But jokes apart, I think it helps. This is important. Instead of giving new policies randomly, if they go through some kind of assessment and then get adopted through buy-in, the acceptance is much better. Because people are expecting it, they have already voted for it. That's one of the strategies we use.
We're lucky that we operate with very few rules. The number of our policies is very low. It's funny: when someone joins us, they don't get a handbook. People complain about it. "There should be one. In every company I go to, I get a rulebook." We can't give rule books because we don't have rules. Everything is unwritten; some understanding exists, yes. "It's good to enter the office by 12"—words like this. But still, we say, "You can come a little later." Many unwritten rules like this don't require much buy-in.
However, I'm guessing there's a scalability issue here. As we've grown, we're also seeing that things that used to work before don't work anymore. If we grow even bigger, I'm sure this flexible process wouldn't work in a larger company. Even if we have to put together some structure out of necessity, it will be a compromise game. If you come from the principle that I would not implement a policy randomly, I will take some buy-in before using some ways such as town hall meetings, then it feels less autocratic and buy-in is usually better in these instances.
Ruhul: This is fascinating. And as you mentioned, as you scale you need to implement some structure, at least some flexible structures. What do you think about that?
Wahid: I might as well tell you this, our plan, when we scale, when our size becomes a bit bigger, our preference is a divided structure. We are very much against a centralized structure. I don't want a centralized structure.
If we grow much bigger—I don't know whether we will be, then we will actually be the sum of many small companies, each with a lot of independence.
I don't think a massive company can be very happy. A massive company can't be very happy with very structured rules because there would be so many rules. It's better to have small parts, each running with its policy. That's probably a better strategy.
Ruhul: A decentralized structure. Let me go back to your journey now, your upbringing. Talking to you, I feel you're an independent thinker. You like reasoning. You are courageous. Although you unsuccessfully tried to establish a facade about yourself in school that you are a failtoosh student so that people take you lightly you don't take yourself lightly. I would say it was sort of a deception. The courage you showed to make big decisions in those early years is quite uncommon. People like you are rare. The question I want to ask is about your family, your parents. You mentioned everyone in your family was a reader and you grew up as a reader. When children fail at school, many parents attack kids badly, destroying their self-esteem. I think that was not the case with you. I would love to learn more about the environment you grew up in at home, the lessons you learned from your parents, and how that influenced you in later life. The courage to drop out of the PhD program and telling your father a month later, I wouldn't say these are common things. Tell us more about your parents.
Wahid: My father was a doctor--an eye specialist. He passed away in 2016. He was always an academician—taught at Chittagong Medical College, then Dhaka Medical College. He retired from Dhaka Medical College as Principal and then was the founding Principal of Bangladesh Medical College, finally retiring from there as Principal.
He was a very, very strict person, as you can imagine. He spent his whole life straightening out students. Plus he was in the army in his early life, I am sure that helped in the process as well. But he retired from the army very early. After retiring from the Army, he went abroad to study.
Although it is hard to pin it down, I would definitely say that my father had an outsized influence on me and my siblings. I want to highlight two aspects. One is that my father very much wanted us to lead a structured life. We rebelled—all three siblings led very unstructured lives. This was a rebel move, might be. That was/is the common thing that children try to rebel against what parents usually want. This could be it. Negative or positive whatever you want to say.
On the other side, what we got from my father was the principles and believing in yourself. My father was an independent-minded person. He thought what he thought, and he did it. I learned that from my father—an independent mindset. Not depending on anyone. I will decide my own destiny. This definitely came from my father and it helped.
From my mother's side—teaching and raising my children—I got that entirely from my mother. She was a schoolteacher. She is still alive. My father was very strict, immensely strict. Since doctors' lives are very tough, none of our siblings became doctors. In Bangladesh, it's usually the case that in a doctor's family, there are doctors. None of us became doctors. Because we found my father's life was very tough—continuously at the medical college during the day, and in the evening, seeing patients at the clinic. My father actually had less time to give us. That gap was filled by my mother.
My mother was completely complementary to my father's strictness. In the areas where my father was strict, my mother was very soft. We never felt completely helpless because if we were in trouble with one parent, we could go to the other. However, now that we have grown up, we realize that this was a good cop, bad cop routine. In the end, we would do what both wanted us to do. Something that both didn't want us to do, one would say, "No, your father won't like this," so we knew if we went to mother, we might not get it because the father wouldn't approve. My father also played this role. They were a team of good cops and bad cops. And we were victims of the good cop, bad cop routine.
Thankfully, both of them felt that we needed independence, which has helped us throughout our lives.
As you mentioned, when I wasn't doing well in my studies, it wasn't a big concern at home. There was no feeling of "You have to study hard, get ten teachers, we'll make you study." I didn't have a private tutor until Class 8. In Class 8, I had one teacher for Math because I was doing so badly that my father saw there was no other way. That definitely helped. My family environment was a breeding ground for independence.
Well, we were regimented in some aspects. My father had strict rules—you had to go to sleep by 9 o'clock. That was hard on me because, on Wednesdays, there were TV shows at 9 pm. Later, I used various tricks to put those shows in an exception block so I could watch them. I had some very good tricks.
My siblings were much older than me, so they were allowed until 11 pm. There was a show at night from 10 to 11. Back then, there were only one or two TV channels. Since I couldn’t watch them, I would create problems: "No, I want to watch that." Then my father would announce, "Nobody will be allowed to watch it." As soon as he said that, my job was done. I would go to sleep, and my siblings would beat me up properly the next day.
I had a very very happy childhood.
Ruhul: This is very fascinating. I think our society has changed over the years. Do you think our society was different back in those days when you were growing up—more relaxed?
Wahid: I have never thought of it that way but it is probably true. Because I didn't see anyone under much pressure. Now, perhaps society has become much more competitive. People are forced to be competitive; it's quite tough without being competitive these days. It wasn't that competitive back then. There was acceptance: if he's not doing well, so what? He'll do well in something else, or life will be a disaster—it doesn't matter either way.
Now, as a parent myself, I have the feeling that my son has to be good, has to be a genius. This feeling works in parents today. But maybe it's me, maybe the time was different.
Ruhul: Moving forward, you went to London, started and then dropped out of your PhD program, finished your MPhil, and started a career in software programming as an escape route. Why did you choose programming? You are an intellectually curious person. I would rather have you as a teacher. Tell us more about that part of the story up to how you started Kaz.
Wahid: I have a very good answer to that. Because I actually thought about it at that time. This was a sure shot for me. Because I was doing computational physics, there was a lot of programming in computational physics. I used to see that there was closure in programming. I'm given a problem, I think about the problem, I program, I solve the problem, and I get a result. I feel happy with the closure, I go home. I have a good night's sleep. Whereas in physics, closure doesn't come that easily. There are so many unknown things.
Maybe you think you understand a paper and then realize that 20 years back, people were thinking about the same question, and the answer hasn't been found yet. It doesn’t take long to realize you are nothing in this game. You are a little speck in the story. Problems in this field don't have easy closure. The funny thing is the topic I was working on, they still haven't solved that problem after 20 years. These are complex problems, you can't find easy closure to these problems. What you try to do is to find small closers, small wins.
Whereas in programming, you are talking about big wins. You do it, you deliver, and it is done. I liked that part of the software very much. It is done and I feel very good about that. That made my decision easy. This is where I want to get in. I have closure in what I do. My work produces results and I feel good about it. Moreover, I have always enjoyed programming.
I always say I came into programming from the side; because I didn't study Computer Science. Most things I actually learned by reading books. I didn't take any programming courses—I learned by reading books. In London, there was the Tube, the underground metro, which I used to take to the office. It was a 45-minute ride, and I would learn programming during those 45 minutes. I was able to adopt programming very easily.
My realization is that people who like programming usually aren't bad at programming; they're good. I wouldn't say I am a top programmer, I was never a top programmer. But I did quite well. So it was a relatively easy decision.
Ruhul: I don't know anything about physics. I know Einstein and that's all about it. But I think physics is a very fascinating and rigorous field. A highly demanding field. You are always doing something interesting but you don't know whether that interesting thing will produce any meaningful outcome. However, it has the thrill of solving difficult problems.
Wahid: I haven't done real physics for a long time. I read layman's physics; I find it interesting. But yes, the level of discovery in physics is of course not comparable with software. It is like you are discovering the secrets of nature. It is of a different level.
Ruhul: I’m trying to draw a parallel here. Coming from a physics background, building a tech organization, how has that influenced your thinking about building a company, entrepreneurship, and so on?
Wahid: I don't know if physics helped much. Maybe a little here and there. For example, I have this weird way of doing accounting reviews and financial reviews that always surprise people in our finance department. Very physics view of things.
I never studied accounting or commerce. The way I do it: I have numbers in a spreadsheet, how much is spent in various categories, and then what I make them do is draw graphs using months and months of data and then I try to see the curvature of the graph to see whether it is going in a good direction or bad direction. And then I have these formulas that help me to further understand these numbers. That was probably influenced by physics.
In physics, we usually think about problems that way. We try to visualize them into graphs.
Maybe there are one or two small things where physics influenced my work in setting up this organization.
However, I think what helped the most was the experience I had at the startup in London, which I joined after dropping out of my PhD. I worked at that startup for about four years.
I actually saw the company evolve—raising Series A funding, then Series B funding, and becoming large. I joined at an inflection point where they were hiring 12 people in one day. When I joined, it was still small—just four to six people. From there, I saw the company grow to 100 people within a span of three months. I saw these things and the culture influenced me a lot.
Our CTO was a very interesting guy. He had no formal education—passed A-levels, and that was it. He used to write books on computers just out of curiosity. One of those eccentric British people. Then he became so good at programming and computing that he held very important positions in some very large organizations. He was the head of e-commerce at a bank with no formal education. He was top-notch but without any formal education.
He joined the company around the same time I joined the company. His visions of how teams should work, how companies should work, and how a software team should be different from other teams—are some of the things that strongly influenced me. There are a lot of things that I copied from his style of doing things that I later applied at Kaz. It really helped.
Ruhul: You started working part-time at this company in 1998 and became full-time in 1999. You briefly touched upon how your experience working there influenced you in your later entrepreneurial life when you started your company. Can we track your journey from there to starting Kaz? When did you first think about starting your own company? What were you exactly thinking? What was the thesis and ambition? What did you want to do? In 2004, when you started Kaz, software engineering was not a mainstream thing in Bangladesh yet. These were very early days of the software industry. I would say you played a pioneering role in the industry, building the market. You had to take the risk of building a new market. Tell us more about your thought process and the story of starting Kaz but start from your time at that London company.
Wahid: Before answering your question, let me give you a warning. You are used to speaking with very driven startup founders. They want to be the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos of the world. People who know me, if you ask around, the biggest complaint about me is that "bhai, you have no ambition." Life to me kind of flows and I just flow with it. You wouldn't find that spark in me if you want to compare me with typical founders. For most people who worked with me, their biggest regret is—" Wahid Bhai, you could have done much better if you just had a little more ambition in life." You've heard this about me. It is a stigma about me.
I think the admission test that I failed in my childhood and thus couldn't get into school, permanently affected me (laughs). I realized that I wouldn't go anywhere in life, rather it would take me somewhere. It's actually a problem with my drive.
I’m driven actually but not for the obvious things. Money should be a good driver. But it never drives me. I always feel that it comes in the process. I’m driven by creative ambition.
For example, recently we decided to make what we call a cafe, but basically a lunch space in the office. After talking to an architect, I saw that the quality I want will not be within my budget. And what the architect within my budget will build, I don't want it. So I studied a bit myself—mainly Googled—and designed it myself. It turned out beautiful, in my opinion. But the energy I put into that, many people said, "Bhai, if you put this energy into business development, it would be good." Everyone has issues—this is mine. I'm giving you a warning beforehand.
Anyway, since we have limited time, I would try to do a quick recap of how I came to Kaz: In 2002, I left that company in London and came back to the country.
There was a strong reason—my father and mother were alone and they were quite old, and my siblings live abroad. I felt that at least one of us should be with my parents. That was one of the big reasons. Another reason was I like Bangladesh. I have always liked Bangladesh. I enjoyed my time in the country. That was also another big reason. I wasn't thinking too much about the career, I just decided to jump.
There were arguments again, similar to jumping from the PhD. My wife didn't like this at all. I got married in 2002, by the way, while I was at that company. I had to fight a bit with her about the decision to return. Those who are with me kind of tolerate this madness that I would make these sudden jerky motions in life. My wife, being with me and knowing me for a long time—we dated for a long time—kind of knew what she was getting into.
That’s how I came back to Bangladesh. After coming back, I had to get a job, obviously. One of our senior brothers from physics has a company, BdCom, which is an ISP. They're the third oldest ISP in Bangladesh. Sumon Bhai—Sumon Ahmed Sabbir—is a bit senior to us from our department, and he had employed a few others from our department. I don't know whether you know him but he is very famous. They were forming a software wing, I was hired as a Senior Software Engineer in that wing. I was a C++ programmer. It was very interesting work—interfacing hardware with VoIP switches. Usually, a software developer doesn't get such an opportunity, but I had that chance. It was an interesting opportunity for me to solve some very interesting problems.
That was in 2002. I was unemployed for a while in between. Then in 2003, since I lived abroad, a foreign colleague connected me with another company. They needed consulting help, so I went abroad for that project. That's how I got the idea of consulting. The pay in the software industry wasn't that good then, so I thought to augment my salary through consulting. Since BdCom was like my older brother's company, I would tell them I needed unpaid leave to do consulting.
After doing a couple of consulting projects, I got a good opportunity in Belgium where I stayed for three months. After doing some more consulting projects like this, I got a consulting project with a Silicon Valley-based company that lasted quite long and went from consulting to a job offer. They would give me a H1 visa and I would move to the USA. But I said I had come back from England to stay in the country for these reasons. The story has not changed and I want to stay in the country. I suggested to them that why don't I form a company, hire a team around me, and do their work from Bangladesh.
That's how Kaz started in June 2004. It was a quite safe entry into this because we had a project. It was not like I was risking a lot of things, we had a project which was for six months. There was a chance that after six months I wouldn't have work but I knew that in the software world, you could always find work. So that's how Kaz started.
Then luckily enough we managed to do good work and that company grew and we continued to have more work. From there, their data partner became our client. They are still our client and have been since 2005. They are now our oldest client. Then their CTO left and formed another company and he started sending us work. This is how we have grown.
Ruhul: I think this is a good place to end today's conversation. This has been a fascinating conversation. I look forward to the next part.
Wahid: Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope this was meaningful.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
