Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

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Natalie Nathanson: I am super excited to introduce today's guest. He is a lifelong technologist who started building tech at age 12, running music servers from his home. He built his career at E-M-C-P-T-C and Wayfair gaining deep expertise in network engineering and distributed systems.

In 2019, he founded his current venture. A services firm that helps enterprises [00:01:00] modernize their Datadog and ServiceNow environments with speed, automation, and best in class implementations. And the firm has been named Datadog's Partner of the Year four times. He is the founder and CEO of RapDev Tameem Hourani, welcome to the show.

Tameem Hourani: Thanks for having me, Natalie. Great intro.

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you. It is, uh, great to have you. And you know, I know you come from a deeply technical kinda engineering mindset and also that your firm, uh, grew pretty quickly, uh, when it was still pretty young. And I know one of those pivotal moments for you as a founder was, uh, rethinking your approach to the go to market.

So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what prompted that shift and you know, how it shaped your thinking as you, uh, built and kind of scaled your sales function?

Tameem Hourani: Yeah,

totally. Um, so, uh, I, I think a big part, I mean, starting a business, you can't really comment on how hard it is. I think one of the, the benefits I had was the experience of being in all these two different places. But the, the stuff I'd never [00:02:00] worked on day-to-day is the stuff I had no clue how to build.

And, uh, as an engineer, we're, we're very much programmed to always automate use technology. Humans are bad and expensive. And so that's kind of what I brought into RapDev and what I started RapDev with. Um, on all fronts, engineering, marketing, uh, sales, et cetera. Um, but at some point I realized you can't automate sales, and I was very against that for a long time.

Uh, HubSpot has a bunch of automation and you can fire off emails and you can auto respond. But the reality is sales as an organization needs to be scaled with humans. Um, and that took a little while to learn. Um, but, uh, the, the automate everything, um, mindset I learned was not gonna be applicable across the board.

Uh, so at, at, at some point, um, it was probably maybe year two, uh, I had to. Had to come to terms with the, we need to, we need to start hiring more salespeople. And it actually had a massive impact on the business. Um, but the ability to measure that and to [00:03:00] understand that there was a ceiling we were hitting took me a little bit of time to figure out

Natalie Nathanson: Yep. Yep. And I think that's, uh, often the case as we, we learn these things as we go, and that's why we've got the, the battle scars to show for them. I'm curious, you know, how did you learn it?

Was it kind of a. A light bulb moment. Was it

Tameem Hourani: Yeah. as, as, as actually someone who came into the business leader. So Ayan, uh, I consider a late, late co-founder. Essentially, he is.

He's,

a partner. Um, and he comes from a non-engineering background, which was super helpful. Uh, but he started running some data against, uh, a bunch of different, um, metrics we had, and we noticed that we were bumping up against the number of deals per quarter.

We were, we were, we never broke past 18 deals a quarter. And you back into the math and you realize we had one rep who did 42 deals in one year in our world. Getting a deal done is is not as simple as getting a customer. To click a button, you have to write a salary, you have to run calls, you gotta do pre-sales, you gotta understand the problem, you gotta put it in writing.

You review [00:04:00] that with a customer, and then you get to a point where you sign the deal and start the work. And, uh, doing that 42 times a year is a ton. And that's when it's like, okay, you can automate a certain amount, but you're not gonna get past scoping and pre-sales and writing sales. And that's why we kept bumping up against that 18 deals per quarter number.

Um, and when you see it's so clearly it's obvious.

But

when you don't see it, and my personal bias of coming from engineering background, it's not obvious. And so, uh, IANA was a huge part of, like, that was the first like, oh shit, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff we gotta change. I just haven't done it in my life, in, uh, in my career.

Um, but that was one of the first ones that, that became very obvious. And I think last quarter we did, I think we're bumping against 18 last quarter. We just broke f uh, 60, 70 deals a quarter. Um, and that's people, you just, you need people.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was talking to, uh, someone recently, a serial entrepreneur, and he is kinda more in the kinda VC funded tech startup world, but he was talking about the, uh, [00:05:00] the, the founder selling and just, you know, how critical and beneficial that is to an organization, but like, how do you bottle that up and then

train your,

your sales team and, and support them In way. Um, and I'm curious if there are any things that you found worked best for you as your. Uh, right. As a services firm, it is highly consultative and different implementation. Look different.

Tameem Hourani: But you gotta be there, right? It it is, it is. It is different than software, but you gotta be on the front lines with your people at the end of the day. Um, my job is to help everyone understand the value RapDev brings. Um, my job is not to write code. My job, I, I don't write code anymore. It's probably good for RapDev and for the customers.

Um,

but my job is not to, uh, uh, do marketing. My job is not to do finance and send invoices. My job is to be at the front with the sellers helping customers. Uh, understand what we do. Um, and frankly, it's, it's what I did for, for a career, right? So I'm trying to help customers do what I did, and, um, [00:06:00] for them to know that I was on their side at one point for them to know that I was in their shoes.

And that's why we're trying to solve this problem. That that's really, that's frankly what I enjoy the most as well. Uh, but you have to be on the front lines. You can't, uh, you can't hide behind HubSpot in a bunch of automated workflows.

Natalie Nathanson: Right. Those are the, uh, additive to the, the

Tameem Hourani: Right. Sales is not engineering.

I've come to come to terms with that. So sorry to all the sales guys out there who I told I could automate with hubs. It's not gonna happen.

Natalie Nathanson: Um, I have a question for you around this. I know automate everything mindset. Um, because I do feel like the world, you know, there's been, obviously automation is not new. Um, But the world that we're entering with kind of AI and kind of. The, the newer things that are being enabled, uh, will require many more firms to automate more than You maybe have in years past. How do you work with organizations that are maybe kind of newer to this where it's not really kinda in their ethos and really help them think about kinda that automation mindset and kinda build that muscle?

Tameem Hourani: I, [00:07:00] I would be shocked if there are organizations out there that are not doing any automation at all. Um, I think there's, we. We might all be doing it in indirect ways that might not be labeled as automation, but it could be like very simple things like autoresponders. It could be things like, I mean, it doesn't have to be heavy integrations between systems or using tools dedicated to automation.

Um, I think what's more interesting is how is AI gonna layer on top of automation And, um, I think we're learning that AI can be very confidently wrong. And when do you, when when to know if it's wrong. And what and what to use it for. I think it's natural. And, uh, uh, uh, most of us are using AI as a search engine or started using it as a search engine.

But the reality is you could use it for a lot more and you should be using it for a lot more, probably more so than a search engine. Um, and we use it for things like, Hey, running analysis, give it some data or structure a certain way, compare sources of, uh, data from different tools. Um, but, uh, I think AI makes it infinitely simpler by form of, uh, chat [00:08:00] prompts.

All you gotta do is ask it

a question.

You no longer have to be a developer. Or you don't have to be an expert in HubSpot or an expert in ServiceNow, or an expert in any tool. You simply need to know how to ask a question and that, and provide the data and know that, that these prompts, uh, chat, GPT and others can respond in a human-like manner.

Um, I think that that makes it a lot easier for cust for companies to adopt and really start doing more automation. Right. Even if it's just automation, but you're doing it through the proxy of ai.

Natalie Nathanson: I was, I was talking to, to someone recently, also kinda in the automation space. And they were, uh, kinda very impressed with a law firm that had been maybe not so leading edge with that. they were really like leapfrogging like a lot of their peer organizations by really looking differently and fundamentally differently at their business. Um, and I'm curious with the types of customers that you work with, are they generally kinda coming to you with kind of here.

the Kinda AI projects, uh, and initiatives we want to pursue? Or are you finding yourself, like needing to advise them, kinda lead them there [00:09:00] more than you would have in years past?

Tameem Hourani: Um, nobody's really coming for AI projects. What we, I think is the way of thinking, right?

Like, you have to think AI first, so whatever the, whatever the problem you're trying to solve for a customer. Can it be solved? Or how much of the problem can I, or how much more efficient can I be using AI to solve the problem?

Um, there are obviously firms out there that are doing AI specific work, but, um, I think it's a, it is a big mistake to say. It's almost like picking the tool before you figure out what the problem is, uh, or what they're probably trying to solve. You don't just want to go out there and. Pick an AI tool before you understand what you're, what you're what, what is the challenge or what's the outcome you're looking for?

And can I then leverage, uh, a subset of tools to achieve that outcome? One of them might be AI or Layer AI on top of

ServiceNow and Datadog.

That's a lot of what we're doing. Even internally, we're using it a ton. And, um, there's a, there's like this big wave of using AI to co-develop, but we've actually gone out of that and tried to stitch it across [00:10:00] the whole life cycle of what we do.

So within sales, within Slack, within HubSpot, within development a little bit, uh, project management, we're using it across the board. So it's more, it's more thinking and I think everybody, or I think generally we should be thinking about how to use ai. To become more efficient versus going out and selling an AI project.

Um, that's a lot, that's a much, uh, harder problem to solve. I frankly, it's just, it's just using AI because you want to, not because you need to. It's always, it is better to understand what the, what you're solving and then figure out if you could use AI to make it

better.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, right. Um, and you mentioned, um, you know, the.

Talking across the team or using it across the team for different components of the business. Has there been kinda a change management component that you've had to navigate internally? Or would you say given what you do, like has this come fairly naturally across

Tameem Hourani: Yeah, it is very, it is a very engineering culture at RapDev, uh, and we're pretty small. We're not huge. We're 130, [00:11:00] 140 people. Um, so we, we have a need to, like, here's your training and here's your, like, starting Monday we're gonna do X, Y, Z. And I, I think that's a big part of what's gotten us here, is to stay nimble.

Um, we haven't needed like formal OCM or change management, like workflows or, or trainings or calls or. Flyers, right. Put a flyer in the kitchen. We're just not that big. Um, which has been good because it allows us to stay nimble and kind of change things as we need to. Uh, but it's, it's very natural. I think a, a part of what we do is, uh, a big part of what we do is we, we really lean on Slack for everything, um, within the organization.

So regardless of what tools you're using, they feed into Slack. All communication happens to Slack. All, uh, interaction with. Third party tools goes through Slack. So all we had to do is weave it into Slack and we call it clippy at rap Dev, uh, as kind of a spin on the, the old school Microsoft Clippy. But, um, Clippy is part of Slack.

So you talk to Clippy, interact with Clippy. Um, but no, there hasn't been, uh, much of [00:12:00] an, an adoption curve or a learning curve, if you

will.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to, um, you know, hear maybe a bit more about you as, as the leader and your leadership style. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how you describe your leadership style and what's, what's shaped that for you over the years?

Tameem Hourani: Um, I think the most important thing for me that I value the most is transparency as a leader. Um, I've never been fond of closed doors, never been fond of. Um, there's very little that should not be, or cannot be shared, in my opinion, with, with with the team. Um, and I learned a lot of that at Wayfair.

Um, along with velocity speed. Um, a lot of times I worked at different companies before. As you mentioned, E-M-C-P-T-C, I think it, it is very common to fall into that loop of. Um, being careful, being bureaucratic, requiring approvals, um, seeking sign off. And that really slows down momentum. And I think one of the best things I learned at Wayfair is momentum.

Momentum is what [00:13:00] drives everything. And you, you won't never want to give up or reduce momentum at any cost. And, uh, a lot of the fuck ShipIt mentality came from that. A lot of the. Move fast and break things. I remember talking to the founder once, uh, the co-founder, I should say, uh, Steve Kine about, uh, migrating a data center and we put a plan in front of him and said, Hey, this

is

gonna be six months.

We're gonna be out of the data center. We're gonna be in GCP. He turned around and said, why isn't it gonna take us a month? Why is it gonna take six months? And so I was like, well, it's just risk. And the white website might go down and customers might be unhappy. And he says, fine, if the website goes down for 10 minutes, they'll come back and buy their couches anyway.

So I'm okay with that. And to hear that from a founder who is responsible for a public company, um, was very eye-opening, right? It's like, wow, like the risk tolerance here. It's not anything I've ever seen before. But the reality is what's the impact? Who cares if we break something? Who cares if we trip over?

Who cares? Um, we're not a hospital, right? We're not a bank. So we have that. We have the ability to take that risk tolerance, and that's really been a [00:14:00] huge part of what we do at, at, at, at RapDev. So a combination of moving fast, fuck it, ship it, and transparency. Um, for me are extremely, extremely important.

And I think those two things will be two that I take with me anywhere I go. Um, but, uh, transparency is, transparency is also a huge part of it.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's such an interesting point about the risk tolerance and as you were, uh, sharing that, the way, the Wayfair example, I thought of uh, a webinar that I had put on in, uh, you know, first few years of my career.

as at Forrester Research and I think, you know, sent an email to the wrong person or something. Um, and I was just horrified and mortified. And my boss, I'll never forget it, she was like, you know, nobody lives or dies on our watch. You know, we're, we're an advisory firm. This is a marketing function. Um, and it is really nice to have leadership that uh, can support you in that.

And it does foster that culture where you're, you're more willing to, to put yourself out there, to come up with the crazy ideas, to try new things because it's okay if sometimes that

Tameem Hourani: [00:15:00] Yeah. And,

and, and we're all owners, right? It's a big part of what we do is like every single person around has equity interns all the way up to me, and that should drive ownership. That should drive accountability. That should drive everyone wanting to do better for rap dev because ultimately. Um, we all win and, and that's what we're here to do, right?

It's all about winning. And um, and it's interesting because it creates a sense of accountability across the org. And if people aren't doing well, they tend to self, self select. They don't

really.

there's very, very few times we have to let people go. People that just don't feel like they belong in a culture of accountability and, and velocity and speed.

Um, just don't end up making it here. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? As a small startup, you're looking for, uh, the grit and the tenacity. You're not looking for people that just want to kind of mail it in for the next five years and retire. Um, so it does create a really good culture of, of accountability, but ownership and ownership both as a mindset and financial ownership and the business is super important.

And that's [00:16:00] also something I'll bring with me any, with any other company. I would start.

Natalie Nathanson: Mm-hmm.

Uh, can you talk about your structure? I know you do have kind of some employee ownership, at least in part, you know, what's that structure and was that in place from the, from the start or is that something you Brought in?

Tameem Hourani: Place from the beginning. Uh, it's been part of, uh, day zero, day one. Everybody's got percentages. We don't have like a formal stock program. What we do is a transaction bonus. So, uh, essentially it is super simple. There's no kind of legal craziness or like RSUs or 10 B threes, I think they're called. Um, everybody's got a percentage of the cash at, uh, point of sale.

So whenever we end up selling or uh, selling a portion of rap dev, everybody shares a percentage of whatever proceeds are or make their way over. And, um, it's worked out pretty well. I would say there has been, I mean, the timing of this podcast is very interesting. We're going through a round of, uh, raising from investors right now and, um, it's been a lot of chat around the office.

But one of the important things for me in the safe transparency is none [00:17:00] of those, none of those meetings and none of those calls have happened behind closed doors. Uh, they've been at my desk, they've been. Uh, investors in our office, uh, meeting openly. Uh, we've been talking to lawyers openly and I think that that's what builds the trust within, within RapDev is, Hey, there's nothing to hide.

Uh, when the time is right, we'll share the decisions we make, but, um, nobody will ever be surprised by a decision at wrap

Dev.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that.

I'm curious

to hear if there have been any changes that you were either fearful of making or right, like required a lot of courage to, to kind of push through and, and pull the trigger.

Tameem Hourani: Sure.

Uh, there is a constant flow of those decisions and I think anybody who starts a company will have to go through these. Um, but one that. Comes to mind, and I always use it as a reference 'cause it's kind of funny, is, uh, one, it is the first time we hired a sales engineer. His name is Josh and he's still with us.

Um, fantastic human and we've become very good friends over the years. [00:18:00] Um, but when we first started RapDev, it was a bunch of us that were pretty early on in our careers, so we weren't that expensive, quote unquote. Our salaries weren't too high. And then we got to a point where I needed a sales engineer that was really good and we found Josh.

And Josh's salary at the time was higher than the total amount of cash we had in the bank. I think he was like employee number seven or eight. Um, and it was like this huge decision I had to make. And I was really nervous because I knew we couldn't afford him, but I knew he'd be great.

Um, so that was memorably the largest or the hardest decision I've had to make.

Uh, and I remember being very nervous about it. But, um, with the time we did hire Josh and he did join us, we literally had less than his full year salary in the bank account. And I, I'll always, uh, remember that story and we, I, I say it all the time and we laugh about it, but that's been one of the best decisions, um, we've made at rap up.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, it's, you know, hindsight's always 2020. Um, you know, how did you convince [00:19:00] yourself at the time to do it? Do you remember? What was that thought process?

Tameem Hourani: It was scale. It was, um, I, I, I've heard of Josh. I, uh, we had, we really hit it off. I knew he, uh, I knew he was really good at what he did. Just given this, the, like the community, the ServiceNow space, we all know each other. Um, and a lot of it is, I think a lot of building a company. Um. The success of building a company comes from not having a safety net and pushing your comfort zone and, um, never getting comfortable.

Um, and I, I think that's always been something that has driven us to go faster and to do more. Uh, and that was exactly, that decision fits right into that box. Um, if you, if you stay comfortable and you're staying, uh, conservative, you're never gonna grow. You're never gonna push the boundaries. You're never gonna.

Get to, in my opinion, get to these places and, uh, that decision fell in that bucket. This decision is gonna make me uncomfortable, therefore I have to work harder to, to make sure it's the right decision. And, um, I think that thinking has [00:20:00] always carried me through some of the harder decisions we've had to make.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I was talking to someone recently and they said, um, you know, one of their big ahas in growing their own business was realizing that their, their company will only grow so fast as their, uh, kind of them as the leader. They were the ones like holding back any growth. And I thought that was a really nice way of thinking about.

Kind of why you need to push yourself to kinda go outta your comfort zone and make those bigger investments and, and all of that.

Tameem Hourani: You're

only as good as your people and you gotta hire. I always say, uh, hire people that will like, you gotta challenge each other. You gotta challenge me. I don't know all the answers. I haven't done most of the roles here. I've done an engineering role, uh, and I've done an engineering leader role.

but

I've never done anything else. I've done marketing. I've never done sales, I've never done accounting. I've never

done. So if we're doing, if we can do something better, do it. That's why you're all owners and that's why you all gotta get better at what you do and, uh, challenge each other and be comfortable with challenging each other.

Nobody's ever, nobody's ever going to, uh, be upset or penalize you for challenging a [00:21:00] decision. And, um, that's been a, another big part of what, what's gotten us here, in my opinion.

Natalie Nathanson: Um, to me, I'd love to, uh, hear a bit more about the company. We've kind of touched on different facets, um, but a lot of the conversation on this podcast is around Around transformation.

So can you talk about from your client's perspective, like what kinds of transformations are they going through these days and how are you helping them?

Tameem Hourani: These days being like the last 12 months, it's ai, ai, ai. Um, they, uh, unfortunately, um, a lot of customers come to us and say, Hey, what can you do with ai? Which I think, like I said earlier, is not the right way to think about it. But, um, there's themes of challenges that we've kind of come across over the past six years that we've started to leverage AI to solve.

And, um, a lot of that is turning into larger transformative type, uh, engagements or projects or, um. That, that kind of trickle down to cost cutting, becoming more efficient, et cetera, which at the [00:22:00] end of the day are, are always gonna be the reason challenges exist or projects exist. You're either helping a customer make more money or you're helping a customer save money right at that.

And if you're doing one of those two things, you're always gonna be in business. If you're. Building cool stuff

to

build cool stuff that doesn't really have a material impact on your customer. You're not, not really gonna make it. So if, if you're doing one of those two things, great. So how we accomplish these, there's been a lot of, a lot of, uh, work in the way of ai.

We've actually recently, uh, launched an agent called Arlo. Who, uh, I shouldn't say who, uh, that, uh, Arlo's not a human, um, lives inside ServiceNow instances or inside customers instances, and all Arlo's doing is try to clean up and try to support the way customers use ServiceNow. And, um, sure it is using ai, but it's actually solving business problems.

It's solving challenges that we know most of our customers have that have been historically solved with humans. Um, what's important is it's not doing things like summarizing an email or summarizing a block of text. I think that's a [00:23:00] very overused, uh, case for ai. I don't think that's really transforming anything.

Um, and I don't like everybody's doing that. What you, what we're really trying to do is how do we troubleshoot faster? How do we identify major incidents faster using Datadog? How do we maintain a clean, healthy ServiceNow instance? Uh, those are the kinds of things that will help customers reduce cost and optimize, um, or generate more revenue on the, on the Datadog side.

But, um, there's a lot we're doing in the way of Arlo with ServiceNow that that has been a very interesting theme, I'd say in the last 12 months.

Natalie Nathanson: And who's

bringing those conversations forth? We talked earlier about sales, like is it kind of sales, sales engineering, or is it more on, kind of o in, in other parts of the business?

Tameem Hourani: we're having these conversations with, with, so it's, it's actually kind of interesting what's happening. 'cause ServiceNow is really pushing. Analysis and their AI framework, which in turn proxies to us to help customers understand how to use their AI framework. So I'd say a lot of, a lot of the conversations are coming from [00:24:00] ServiceNow into RapDev.

And then within RapDev, we're all having these conversations. It's, it's sometimes it's transforming customers sometimes. How do we transform internally? Like RPMs are using ai, our sellers are using ai, our engineers are using ai. Um, and then that sometimes translates to our customers, Hey, this is how we're doing it.

Do you want us to do it for you as well? Right? So it's really stuff we're, we're, we're using day to day and we're helping customers kind of adopt it on their side using ServiceNow and Datadog. But, um, I wouldn't say there's one particular. Person. Like we don't have like a Chief AI officer, right? There's no such thing everyone.

AI is just gonna be the way we work going forward. I, I really

think,

uh, like some of the conversations I've been part of, I saw someone the other day, is, um, when AI replaces, or when AI starts to supplement a lot of the kind of level one, level two type roles in companies, the legal firm is a great

example.

How do you then build a cohort of lawyers that, that are historically have learned as [00:25:00] associates? Um, and I think what's gonna happen is we're just gonna, like, AI is gonna go further down into kind of the learning curve. It's gonna become part of high school,

it's gonna become part of college,

it's gonna become part of the curriculum of how we operate, just like Google is, right?

Just like search. And the internet became part of that. What's also scary is I heard, I heard a story day about somebody that made a compsci, uh, final, uh, class take their class on a piece of paper.

they didn't

want them to cheat using ai. And it's like mind blowing. That's the opposite of what we should be doing.

Um, so I think, like we don't have, AI is not a role at wrap. Dev. AI is a way of working. It's like email. It's like chat AI will exist and it'll be a tool that everybody's gonna learn to use. And those are, that's why I say there's not one person selling AI to customers or talking to customers about ai.

It's all of us. Um, just kind of brainstorming and, and think of ways to use it.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think that example around kinda AI and, and education is gonna be a very interesting one. And I think all of us is. [00:26:00] as parents, right? We're navigating it in our own, uh, kinda work and careers, but like very much with an eye towards that future use.

And it's very interesting to see, uh, kinda the, the teachers that are kind of embracing it and and it, yeah, you,

you have to, but uh, there's, you know, there's, there's still a good amount of pushback and I think that change management just permeates, like everywhere in

Tameem Hourani: Yep.

Yep. It's gonna be, I think it's gonna be very interesting three years from now.

Natalie Nathanson: Agreed. Agreed.

[00:27:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Um, I'd love to switch gears a bit and hear a little bit more about you, uh, in your background. So, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? Uh, you know, who were you as a child and how did that help shape, uh, who you became?

Tameem Hourani: Yeah, happy to. Um, how far back do you wanna go? We can go family history. My family, um, I grew up in the Middle East. I grew up on a small island, uh, named Bahrain. Uh, most people haven't heard of it. It's about a million people, total population. That's where I was born, that's where I grew up. My family immigrated there from Palestine, um, in the late forties and fifties.

Um, I was born, um, in the late eighties. And then, uh, in, in 2006, moved, I've always, actually, always had an interest in technology. Uh, when I was young, I remember, uh, we used to pick apart Xboxes and hardwire them to, uh, not have to buy games. We could download [00:28:00] games. And that was, I had started a website doing that.

Uh, had a website, like you said earlier, hosting music. Uh, there's a whole Napster wave and everyone was, you could download all the, all the English music, all the Shaggy and 50 set, but you couldn't download Arabic music 'cause it hadn't caught on yet. So I was kind of trying to push that stuff out there.

Um, now it's obviously readily available. Um, started a company and. Probably like 14, 15, downloading, uh, bootleg movies. I dunno if I should be openly saying this. Probably no one cares now with Netflix, but, uh, you could download, download movies and then burn them on CDs and then share them with your friends.

So there's a lot of kind of tech, I've always been very interested in technology and, um, that's carried through, right? So when I went to college, uh, in Boston. Uh, 2006 I went to school for computer engineering, uh, at Wentworth, which is a very small school. And I've also learned when you tell people you went to school in Boston, uh, that means you're fishing for them to ask you where you went.

So you could say Harvard or MIT. Uh, but I did not go to Harvard or MIT. [00:29:00] Um, but uh, moving to Boston for school I think was a very big, um. Advantage for me personally is I think, uh, the us There's no country in the world that presents you the opportunity that America does as a founder. And I say that all the time and I, I always tell people that have come here from all over the world.

Um, if you work hard and you, you will be presented with an opportunity in America, and that is an extremely important, uh, advantage founders have, and that's why a lot of us come here from all over the world. Um, it's for that opportunity. So, uh, when I did come to the US that kind of hit me in the face. I was supposed to come here for college for four years and go home.

But having seen that and, and, and living it, it was very clear to me that, um, I wanted to stay here and I did. And, um, I ended up getting a job. When you graduate as a student, as an international student, you have 90 days to get a job. Otherwise, your visa expires and you gotta go home. So I had to find a job.

I [00:30:00] ended up getting my job at EMC and spending five years there, uh, till I got my green card. Um, but it was a hard conversation with my father at the time, uh, because he wanted me to move home and I wanted to stay here. And, uh, I think that's kind of a natural progression of, of, uh, anyone leaving their home.

Uh, but I think moving to the us, uh, and, and my parents helping me move to the US is, is one of the most fortunate opportunities I've had in my life. And there the RapDev would definitely not exist if that hadn't happened. Uh, but that's, that's the, the TLDR, the three minute version of how I ended up here.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Yeah. I love hearing, uh, kind of people's stories. Um, everyone has such a unique background. Um, and it does sound like you've really had that, uh, kinda entrepreneurial, uh, drive from a young age, but then worked for big companies for a while.

How did you make the decision to start your own firm, uh, when you started rap Dev?

Tameem Hourani: Yeah, I, I, I, I don't, I think I would be, I would be at a huge miss, a huge [00:31:00] disadvantage if I had not worked at the bigger companies prior.

And I

was lucky to, my first job was at the largest company. It was like 150,000 people. My second job was at a smaller company. It was like 5,000 people. And then my third job when I joined Wayfair, I think were like 1500 people.

And I really think that all of those three jobs played very unique, uh, roles in my ability to, uh, or in my. Sure. Ability to make them relevant to, to wrap, dev. Um, when did I decide to start RapDev or why? I was at Wayfair? We were solving problems, um, using ServiceNow and Datadog, and then when I'd go to conferences and talk about them, there was a lot of interest from customers.

Hey, how'd you do it? We'd, we'd, we were really curious. We'd love to do the same. And after three or four times, it became clear that the larger, slower, more bureaucratic companies were very interested in doing what we were doing at Wayfair. Um, and that's when I went to my wife and said, Hey, if we're gonna do this, now's the time [00:32:00] she had a Mac daddy job at, uh, Congress.

She was kicking ass, uh, making enough money to support both of us, uh, which then allowed me to take that risk. And I think if I tried to do it while I had a job, I would never have taken it seriously. You have to lose the background. You have to lose the safety net. You have to know that there's no other options.

And that's really what forced me to, to. Keep running at it until it worked. But when we decided to make that decision, um, again, I was very lucky that Wayfair was supportive. And, um, I've said this multiple times on, on, on other podcasts as well. Um, transparency, right? I went to my boss at the time and I said, listen, I want to leave.

I wanna start a company. Uh, I'm in no way competing with what you guys are doing, and I'm not in a rush. Uh, so let me know what you wanna do. You wanna, I can leave today or I can leave in six months. And I think the transparency around that was extremely, uh, um, it was just such a huge, pivotal moment in the way I think about these relationships and work [00:33:00] relationships.

And it is, it is very different from how you're kind of taught, right? You're always taught to be secretive and to not share anything with your employers. And to not be transparent because your employers don't care about you. But the reality is we're all humans. And at the end of the day, if, if you, if you do what you believe is right, the human on the other side will very likely react.

The same way. Um, so they actually asked me to stay on for six months, uh, find a replacement. And during that six months, they were, they had no problems with me trying to get RapDev off the ground, which I cannot imagine ever having that opportunity working somewhere else again. But that really speaks to the culture at Wayfair and a lot of kind of how I'm trying to build the culture here at iv.

Um, so I stayed on for six months, uh, hired my replacement. Great guy. Um. Left Wayfair. And Wayfair was our second customer at Rap Dev, which isn't another super cool thing, right? Not just were they, uh, flexible, but they were supportive. Uh, today, I think there's like probably 10 or 15 people at RAP up that, that were from Wayfair, um, that work with me at Wayfair that moved [00:34:00] here.

But, um, it's.

To transparency is, is just such a game changer. And, um, I know there's some hesitation sometimes and there's some like, uh, ambiguity, but it will never, ever fail you. Um, as long as you're transparent on both sides, there will always be a solution to everything you're trying to solve. And I, I really, really encourage that.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

I think like in your examples, you can see it, right? Like it works better, right? Because you're treating humans, uh, kind of, it's like the relationships are between two people at the end of the day. Um, it also just feels better, right? So going around and feeling like you're being secretive and that doesn't feel good to, to anyone.

Tameem Hourani: it. The only, the only two things that I say, and we're a big Slack culture, and I say Get outta dms. Get outta dms, keep it transparent. People can learn, people can search. But um, the only two things are,

um.

personal matters and comp everything else. And even comp, all our compounds are public knowledge.

They're on notion, they're on our, on our listings. People know what the ranges [00:35:00] are for the roles they're applying for. That's even like, we don't hide that either.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Curious to ask you, uh, a more introspective question as we, near the end of our time, and that is knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self in your first ever leadership role?

Tameem Hourani: Good question. I would say I, as a younger. A human as a younger engineer, as a younger employee, as a younger whatever, professional. Um, probably less professional now than I was back then, but, um, I was very blunt and very direct, and it was, there's a lot of, uh, it was, it was a lot of ego about winning and about being right, and I know I ruffled a lot of feathers doing that.

Um, ironically, a lot of the people I did upset are now customers of ours at riv, uh, while I was at EMC. It was very much my way or the highway. Um, I did whatever I had to, to get my job done versus kind of following the channels and look to a certain extent that helped, like that. That is the reason [00:36:00] I have.

Been

able to kind of push through a lot of what I do today, but I, I was definitely rough around the edges and it was unnecessary. Um, and it was very egotistic. Um, and I think reflecting on that

today.

uh, it's good that I can openly talk and laugh about it with some of the people. I, I upset that our customers now, but we look back at those moments and like the, like, um, Paul DeRio is, uh, at BCG and he's, uh, one of our customers at, uh, rap dev and, um. Paul Rio was also my boss's boss at EMC, and I remember a time where we had to run Zabbix, this open source monitoring platform, and uh, they wouldn't give us the right servers in the data center or something.

I don't know what it was. So I went to my boss and I said, Hey, gimme your company card. I need to buy two servers and put them under the desk. And he said, sure, go for it. We gotta solve a problem. I can't remember, I think it was something like users couldn't connect to VPN or something silly like that. Um, [00:37:00] so I did that, put it under my desk, and then a couple weeks later found out, they found out, Paul found out and said, you can't do that.

The, the server needs to live in the data center. It can't live under your desk. And uh, my response was actually, well, you don't know what you're doing. You wouldn't gimme what I needed. I gotta do my job. Get outta my way. Um, and, and we ultimately ended up putting 'em in the data center. But now reflecting back, that was pretty stupid.

Um, I didn't need to do that, and it didn't need to be so contentious. Um, but I learned a lot, right? And, uh, and I think, uh, being able to think back to that and reflect on it, and, uh, Paul being the nice, humble, um, non-confrontational person he is, uh, was able to kind of laugh at me and move on. Now we go back and, and laugh about that moment, but, um, there's a lot of times, uh, when I was younger, there's a similar event with Steve Christensen who was running security.

Um, for I was very hard or very hardheaded about something we're trying to do and [00:38:00] ended up doing it behind his back, which was stupid and unnecessary. Um, but I think I could have been a little softer, um, while I

was

younger and I think it would've done me, uh, a lot of good. Yeah.

Natalie Nathanson: That's funny. I've almost gone in the opposite direction.

I think I have, I'm more blunt now. I want make to make sure people know where they stand and, and speak my mind in ways that maybe it held back too much uh, earlier in my career.

Yeah.

Tameem Hourani: We all grow, right? We're

always,

growing. We grow. until we die.

Natalie Nathanson: Uh, well that's a great place to wrap up our discussion.

Tameem, thank you so much, uh, for everything that you shared. And if people want to, uh, reach out to you, what's the best way to get in touch?

Tameem Hourani: Hit me up. Uh, always happy to chat LinkedIn, email my email to me@rapdev.io. Um, I mean, I'm not gonna share my phone number, but, uh, please feel free to, uh, reach out on anything. Uh, I'm always, always, uh, excited to network and learn what people are doing. So, uh, and thanks a ton for having me. Uh, it's been awesome and it's [00:39:00] good to kind of.

Go back down these memories. The questions were great. It's, it's nice to think about this stuff sometimes,

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you.

Thank you. It was great to have you on the show. Um, so thank you for, for your time and insights and thank you too to everyone that's listening. I know I loved hearing about so much of what Tameem shared, uh, from, you know, how he invested in sales in the right way to support his growth, loved the unrelenting focus on transparency and the benefit and impact that that's had on his organization.

So if today gave you any valuable insights, and I'm sure that it did, please share this with someone we know. The sharing these kind of, uh, knowledge and, uh, experiences helps us all grow as leaders

and

helps us all drive successful, uh, transformation in our organizations. So thank you again, Tameem, and this has been another wonderful conversation on Shift and Thrive.

See you all next time.

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