Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for being on the behind company Lines podcast. Today, we have Zerzar Bukhari CEO of Zynq. Zynq is the all in one office management platform. ZZA thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really excited to chat with you and, and get to know what you're working on and, and you know what your company's doing now.

Before I get into that, what were you doing before you started. 

Zerzar: Yeah, no, thanks Julian, for having me on the podcast, excited to talk about my company and also my journey, which I think your audience is, is most interested in. So yeah. Yeah. We can start by talking about a little bit, my journey.

So prior, right before working on Zynq, I was actually working at Google as a product manager specifically on the G suite team. Actually they call it Google workspace now. So I should learn to say that. But you know, it's, it's the productivity suite that everybody knows about, like Google docs, Gmail, all that.

Specifically for the enterprise. So I was a product manager there. What I'm doing now is also selling to the enterprise. So there's a relation there, there's a story there, as you probably know. And before that I was at Microsoft also working as a product manager on [00:01:00] Cortana, which is their kind of Alexa competitor.

AI kind of intelligence there. And yeah, before that I was in Toronto student engineering student. I did work on startups prior to this one as well. Mostly when I was a student, none of them succeeded, which is why I'm here. Hoping this one, this is the one that succeeds 

Julian: I love it.

I love it, man. What's what's been the difference. You said you've worked on startups, but now, and then you, yeah, you worked with enterprise companies as well, and that whole there's such a distinct difference. Not only. You know, who runs them, but also the structure of these different types of companies.

What, what are, what are the differences that you see that are extremely obvious 

Zerzar: between startups? Yeah. And enterprise. Oh, it's, it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. There's so many differences. I could talk about like, you know, running a company in Canada versus the us mm-hmm or like a city like Toronto versus, you know, the, the me entrepreneurship, which is SF, which is where I am now.

But yeah, starting maybe with enterprises versus versus startups it's a whole different ballgame and an enterprise. You definitely feel more like a cog in a sense. Yeah, because you're. Thousands and thousands of [00:02:00] people, what you are doing may not even really matter in the long run as it comes to strategic priorities of the companies at the same time, everything you do matters, you know, it's kind of this weird contradiction where you feel like it doesn't matter, but actually it matters a lot because some of the stuff I was working on.

Would be seen by a billion users the day I launched it. Right. So it's like, you get that scale by default. I didn't do anything to get that scale. I just got the job, right? Yeah. I didn't build a product that got to a billion users, but now I have an influence over something that's used by billions. So you feel that like empowerment and that kind of feeling of like, cool.

I can do really impactful things in the world. But at the same time you still feel chained down by the bureaucracy above you because you're like, well, I can't truly do. I still have to kind of align with what everybody else thinks and, and this whole kind of machine of which I am a small part. So I would say that's, that's the biggest difference.

Just mentally, obviously there's a lot of practical differences. You earn a lot more money at an enterprise. You get a lot more perks at a, at a startup you're kind of, you know, eating soup and beans and, and trying to make it so . 

Julian: Yeah. [00:03:00] Yeah. I love it. I love it, man. What, what inspired you to start and.

Zerzar: Yeah, so I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like I said, I, I tried my hand at startups in college. I decided that I actually didn't wanna do a startup in Canada, so I grew up in Toronto. And that's where I tried my hand. And I just didn't like the environment there for startups. This was a while ago.

I it's gotten a lot better since, since I used to do it. But I decided, Hey, I'm gonna go to the us. When I got to the us, I was like, okay. I can't just like. Come here and start a company. I need to legally be here and have some money to pay for my rent. You know, I was, I just graduated. So I figured, Hey, what's the best use of my time is to expose myself to things that I'm interested in and then eventually get to a place where I can start my own company in, in.

Some area of expertise that I've developed. So what inspired me to start Zynq essentially when I was at Google was there's a lot of focus on in Google workspace on individual productivity, right? So we're obsessed with figuring out, like, how do we make our employ the employees, more productive, everything from like, we'll type your email for you, [00:04:00] or, you know, we're gonna.

We're gonna figure out exactly what you want and put it right in front of you. So we save those extra seconds when you like start your day. And that's a lot of the stuff that I worked on and also just like cultural transformation of companies. But the one thing that I found was, Hey, if we just take a step back and we think about the world, we think about, let's not even think about the world.

Let's just think about corporate America. You walk up to a random person on the street and you say, Hey, do you like going to. Chances are they're gonna say, no, I feel miserable going to work. It's like, okay, well, what are we really doing to solve that? Right. I'm sure, you know, typing an email for somebody's helpful, but it's not gonna make them like work all of a sudden.

So I started to think about that. I started to be like, well, what can we do to actually help these people? Why do they hate work? What, what is the thing that's really bothering them? And. That's kind of the was a seed that was planted in my head is how do we make people happier at work? And from that we started thinking about, okay, what are the things that are frustrating about work?

The fact that you have to commute, maybe like the fact that it's not flexible, you're kind of pigeonholed into being this, you know, nine to [00:05:00] five factory worker. People hate that feeling. How do we give people options? And, and I know working at Google, I had. Flexibility, right. Google is famous for like spoiling its employees with massages and, and all sorts of different things.

Obviously not every company in the world can provide that, but there's certain things that they can do. Right. The flexibility for example, is something that doesn't cost much money for anyone to provide. It's possible for a lot of different companies. So we looked at that problem and we said, okay, How do we make it easier for companies to create a better culture for their employees?

And, and that's where this concept of flexibility came in. Like, let's not think of the office as this fixed space. Let's think of it as a flexible space. And then we create software to help, you know, manage the, the complexities of that. So that. It doesn't feel like a very daunting task for the company.

And this was all pre pandemic by the way, the pandemic hadn't happened yet. So we started with kind of meeting rooms and our whole shtick was, Hey, we'll optimize your meeting rooms for you based on, you know, the allocation that we see, the patterns that we see that are happening. Right. As we were doing that right as we were doing.

So we went through Y Combinator and this [00:06:00] is like March, 2020. We have our demo day where we're talking to investors. We have these great logos, like Amazon Instacart. Everybody's interested, we're signing these deals and then boom, the pandemic hits. And I remember very clearly in the pandemic talking to investors, we're trying to raise it around and people are like, well, offices don't exist anymore.

And it would, it would just be this like awkward silence and I'd be like, I don't think that's true. you know, like it's a trillion dollar industry. I don't think it's disappearing overnight. So, so we kind of made a bet saying, rather than saying like, oh my God, virtual is everything. Now let's throw our hands up in the air change ideas.

We actually doubled down on offices. We said, Hey, you know what? People are, people want an office, you know, it's not. They hate going to work it's that they hate going to work in this specific way. So we expanded our, our product really and doubled down on offices saying, Hey, the flexible is the future. And it seems very obvious now it was not obvious in March, 2020.

So we were kind of the, one of the first out of the gate making this bet. We still didn't know if it would work, but, you know, in [00:07:00] hindsight, that was a great bet. And we managed to, to convince a lot of people. That was a good idea. Before we knew it, the world was saying what we were trying to say. So yeah.

You know, the rest is history, as they say, , 

Julian: you know, that's, that's amazing that you doubled down on that product. I think it'd be so easy to try to shift and make something virtual. But as we know now, so many people are feeling so restless and, and are really having hunger for community and, and having that relationship.

We don't want to work where we sleep all the time. It's not, yeah. It's not such a, it's a relationship that needs to be segmented between work and your home life for just like, you know, efficient states of rest and, and productivity. What, how, what are you seeing now in, in are companies fully transitioning?

Are they half transitioning? What's what's the, the at work at home you know, yeah. Scenario, I, I guess. How's that transitioning what a company is doing now? What are you seeing? Them move. . 

Zerzar: Yeah, I, I think one thing people forget to appreciate is, you know, when you think of [00:08:00] the office worker, you are almost assuming it's like this 24 year old who just graduated college.

No responsibilities wants to live in Bali for five year for like two years and then moved to Singapore. Right? That's not the average worker, right? The average worker has a house and kids and parental responsibilities and, and all sorts of. They can't really work from home for, in, in a lot of cases. Right.

So, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's not just the people that are loan leads. The people that literally can't work at home, they need space. Yeah. And that's, that's driving a lot of the, the push for, Hey, we need an office, we need a space. So what we're seeing is there are a minority of companies that are very lucky that are able to go remote first, you know, companies like Dropbox, for example startups Generally tech companies, it's not really possible for other companies.

Like, you know, take an example of like a fashion brand. We work with some fashion brands. They have garments that get shipped that need to be tested. Touched, felt people that come in and like, you know, inspect them. You can't do that at home. You just can't. Right. So [00:09:00] those companies have no option, but. Not to go remote.

So yes, remote has definitely been accelerated through the pandemic, but it's not the majority of companies. Most people are not really considering going fully remote. Yeah. Apart from, you know, a minority of companies, then you have the other side of the spectrum, which is, Hey, everybody, go back to work nine to five, five days a week, just like it was before the pandemic.

I would say that's also the minority. I think a lot of people have realized that, Hey, people can be productive at home. Maybe we don't need to be that strict. There are some industries I'm thinking. Banking legal industries that have been around forever. And, you know, they're the leaders of those organizations are a hundred years old.

They are kind of set in their ways they're they really want the office to feel like it did before. So in those cases, there's some small segment that's that's also doing that, but the majority of companies are rethinking what the office means and the path they. Is very, very varied, right? For some people it's like completely flexible.

It's like, Hey, we have a space. You come in whenever you. No requirements, no [00:10:00] restrictions, nothing. It's there for you. Just show up whenever you want. And then you have others that are like, Hey, we actually have a lot of rules around it. You have to come in minimum two days a week. You have to tell your manager, if you can't, you have to come in at least.

70% during the month, like all these rules, but it's not a hundred percent. It's still like, you wanted to work from home Fridays cuz your kids are home. Like, go ahead. You know, so, and, and everything in the middle there's, there's so many different equations and, and policies that we've seen. And a lot of it also depends on industry.

So we're seeing, you know, we're not seeing one single silver bullet. That's like everyone is doing this now. Mm-hmm , it's more about. Different industries trying things out and then doubling down on whatever seems to be working. So, you know, if you're in fashion, for example, you know, early on, earlier on when you're coming outta the pandemic, people are trying all different things, but then they're saying, Hey, this X company is actually doing really well.

This is their policy. Let's all copy that, right? Yeah. Or like construction, oh, this is working for caterpillar. Like let's all, you know, follow that. Yeah. So we're seeing these patterns within industries, but not [00:11:00] necessarily a broad kind of trend for, for every. 

Julian: Yeah. You know, you, you said that you initially focused on meeting rooms.

Where does Zynq's technology and, and I guess where does it where does it work with these companies in terms of like their, their structure? Is it, is it something that allows employees to have specific spaces or that allows them to have access? You know, how, how does, how does Zynq work within a certain.

Zerzar: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot that we do. We're, we're an all in one platform, but the core of it really is that we promise that we will most efficiently use the resources you have. So we take a look at your office. We, and you make everything in your office, reservable everything from desks to meeting rooms, to parking spots, to social areas.

And. People can book those spaces. And what we promise is because of our software, it's really easy to book and it's very efficient because we will do the calculation to figure out, okay, this person's here at this time. Here's where we book it. You know, that way you get the most outta your office, you don't have these like two person meetings happening in [00:12:00] 12 person meeting rooms.

And everyone's like knocking, be like, what the heck? I need this 12 person room and it's taken over by this one-on-one. So, so that's kind of where we come in. That's, that's kind of our, our, the core technology that we're that we are proud of that we built. Of course there's a lot of other ways we help companies.

We have this reservation system where you can be like sitting on your couch and be like, Hmm, I want to come in next week, but I don't know what day. And we will figure out like, oh, you work very closely with these three people. Jill and Bob are coming in on Tuesday. 4:00 PM to five, you have three meetings.

We think this today is the best you click a button, we book it for you, you know, find a place next to your buddies, all of that kind of happening in the background. We have a full meeting room management solution that, that we talked about a little bit earlier. We do like visitor management as well.

So if you have like people that are not from your company, you want them to have a great experience at when they come visit. We take care of that. And yeah, just a lot of safety features as well to like, make sure people are safe. There's a lot of like COVID stuff that happened during the pandemic.

Like, Hey, are you vaccinated? Are you sick? You fill out this checklist. We used to do that too. That's less common nowadays. But yeah, just a lot of [00:13:00] things around making your office efficient, making it like approachable for people. Instead of just. My sending an email saying, Hey, we have this office, here's the code, come in whenever you want.

You know, . 

Julian: Yeah, no, I, I love, I, I worked out of a WeWork for a few years and the ability to not only book a space, but have certain areas allocated for your, you know, yourself is like that productivity was just unmatched because you felt as though you can really kind of settle in and go at each task that you have.

And the, and the frustrating parts were. When you couldn't book a certain room and some people were in it, you were fighting for it. I love the piece you mentioned about knowing when your other coworkers are gonna be in the office, because I think. I, I mean, I think that's completely underrated aspect of, you know, working with a team is making sure your team members are there because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. You know? Exactly. Yeah, no, that, that's incredible. What, what are some of the difficulties that come with building technology in a, that, that [00:14:00] works on a physical space. . 

Zerzar: Yeah. I mean, the biggest issue we faced was COVID right. When everyone was saying that there is no physical space anymore, why are you selling this?

You know, so we had to deal with that for a couple of months. It was quite hard. I would say we managed to raise around, which is great, which, you know, I'm very thankful for us. People believed in us. Yeah. But, but it was very difficult to, to talk to investors, but also companies that are like, we don't know if we'll have a space it's like.

Well, I hope you do so there's this very uncertain earlier on COVID now I would say it's a little bit of a different challenge in some ways it's similar in some ways it's different. It's similar in the sense that the exact plans are still unclear. People are still a little bit on edge, right?

COVID is kind of over cross my fingers when I say that, but yeah. You know, people are still. Are we gonna renew our five year lease or 10 year lease? How big are our space gonna be? There's all these questions that were very easy to answer pre pandemic, but are no longer easy to answer. And. Affects us a little bit, because people are a little bit more reluctant to make long-term commitments because [00:15:00] they don't, they just don't know, like they don't know what's gonna happen.

They're very kind of risk averse. And their policies are changing. They don't know what it means. Long-term they don't have like a data to look at and project. Yeah. So, so that really kind of gets in the way for us. The second is that it's, it's a little bit harder to just deal with anything in the physical world.

You know, I, when, if I were to like, look at startups, software is. A gift sent from heaven. Hardware is like the depths of hell, right? If you wanna ship a hardware product, if your, if your startup is like, I'm gonna build this product and I'm gonna sell it. And it's physical, good luck to you, man. I would never do that myself.

That's just, oh my God. It's it's it's so painful. Yeah. So we're kind of in the middle where we do sell software, we don't sell any hardware, so we don't have to do with factories or shipping or anything like that. But at the same time, we are trying to represent a physical space, which means we gotta look at the floor plan, which means there might be mistakes of the virtual versus the physical, if there's changes that has to be synced up, you know?

So, so there's some unique challenges with working with the physical space, but I also think that's where the opportunity is, right? Yeah. There's if, if, you know, I don't know if you're a [00:16:00] follow of Paul Graham, but he calls this the schlep, right? The schlep blindness that people have, they just wanna do.

What's easy. In some cases, the opportunity lies where things are a little bit messy and hard, and I consider the physical. Part of that. 

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What, what do you imagine the, you know, the majority, or I guess from what you said, it sounds like a mixture of companies, you know, cha having the work environment really be customized to how pro productive that industry or that, you know employee group of people will work.

But I mean, overall, I guess, how would you. Imagine the workplace evolving into, you know, we had everyone at, at home and then now we have people kind of hybrid. Some people are back a hundred percent. Do you see kind of a common shift towards one idea? Yeah. 

Zerzar: I won't claim to be a fortune teller, but I'll tell you where I think it should go.

I'll tell you what I tell all of the people I talk to every day, whether it's our customers, prospects, or anyone else, I think hybrid is the future. Yeah, for pretty much every company unless you somehow figured out how to go fully remote. Great, good job. You are [00:17:00] the minority people can't copy you.

But for the vast majority of companies hybrid is the future. Now what hybrid means exactly is gonna depend. Like I said, I don't think there's a silver bullet. If you're a fashion company dealing with garments, you have a different solution than the construction company that has factories, then a software company that has, that sells bits and, and bites.

So I don't think there's ACI bullet. The key here is give your employees flexibility. I think that's the part that I would really push for is, you know, if you want your employees to be happy, if you want higher retention, you want more productivity. You wanna maximize even things like collaboration, give your employees the power to choose because they are the best judges of what makes them do better at work.

Right? You set up the right incentives. You say, Hey, do a good job at work. This. That means for you. You're a salesperson. You need to hit this quota. You're a engineer. You need to do X you're this guy you need to do Y set, set them up for success and then tell them, you decide, like, how do you wanna accomplish those objectives?

Don't tell them, like, be at this chair at this time, in this place. Right? No, let them figure it out. [00:18:00] And people generally know, right. They know that, Hey, I'm willing to work an extra hour on Monday so that I can get an extra hour with my kids on Friday. Like they're able to make these decisions that their manager.

We'll never be able to make, so don't come up with this top down ideology, try to go more bottom up. So I think we we're, we're seeing a lot more power being given to employees. Not as much as I would like personally I'm advocating for even more. I'm actually, you know, I talk with some of our customers and they have these policies and I'm like, Simplify it like, make it easier, give your employees even more freedom to choose and that's ultimately gonna help you.

And that's kind of the bet we've made with our software too. So in a way I'm, I'm a little bit biased because that's what we design our software for is, is like we are the most employee friendly software. And for us it's all about, you know, helping the employee choose not so much about the company coming down and enforcing those rules.

So, so when I look at the future, I I'm actually optimistic. I almost feel like we may be able to. The a hundred year old problem of corporate America feeling like they're drones, you know? Yeah. I feel like we may be able to solve that if you just give people the [00:19:00] freedom to figure out how they wanna work.

And I've talked to some of those people, right. I've talked to people that used to work used to live in Chicago, which is very expensive. Well, not as expensive as SFN New York, which is where I'm. At now, but it's still a very expensive city. And they had to make a lot of hard decisions. You know, they had three, four kids.

They had to go to work every day. And the pandemic happened. They moved out to like Phoenix. They have a big house, they feel great, but they still want a workspace. And now they're able to do that. And, and you just like, just talking to them. I had, I had. Like one-on-ones with these people over time and that there's a bigger smile on their face.

They seem to be happier with their employer. Like, I'm sure they're, I don't know their performance reviews, but I'm sure they're doing a better job, you know? So I'm actually seeing the human impact of some of these changes and, and it makes me optimistic. It makes me feel like we're heading in the right direction as a society.

Julian: Amazing man. Amazing. I, I, I love the, the sentiment behind, you know, people having just like more productivity, more happiness in an environment that they feel. You know set up for their success because, you know, it's so expensive to [00:20:00] hire an employee and then to fire and then hire another one. If you can just enable your employees for what you hire them for.

Right. You're gonna get X more returns than, you know, going through this efficiency problem that you're trying to fit them into your specific, you know, policy. Exactly. Or. There's just so much more effort. The company I run, we, we do everything fully remote, so we're kind of the minority, but it's because of the nature business is service related.

Right, right. But you know, the companies that we work with, you know, they are really focused on that challenge of retention. And a lot of them are moving towards customizing you know, their environment for their employees and, and giving that, you know, going for that bottom up approach, which I agree.

I think society's moving that direction and I'm extremely excited about it. I think that's the direction it should go. And there's just so much more more success we can have better outcomes. Tell us a little bit more about the traction that, that you're seeing now. You know, you, you have this story.

I love, I love, you know, March you're ready to present to Y Combinator. All of a sudden the pandemic hit you double down on the bet. You're able to still raise around which congrats on that. That's amazing. [00:21:00] And then now you are working with companies trying to find an environment and, and kind of a workflow that works for their employees.

Tell me a little bit more about the traction. Who are you working with? What's exciting about it. What's the growth look like? You know, numbers, all 

Zerzar: that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So we've been very fortunate, you know, there's been plenty of times in this company and in every entrepreneur will tell you this, where you've just been staring at the mirror being.

I have to find a new idea. I have to do something. I have to get a job. Like it's not gonna work. Right. And I've had my fair share of those, but looking back, it's been, it's been a great ride. So we've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of companies interested in us. Our, our revenue is growing every month.

You know, we're getting better, bigger, and bigger growing our team every month as well. And we're also very fortunate that a lot of. Really well known brands have trusted us. I can't mention all of their names just because of NDA, but I'll mention some of them, for example, Albert and Safeway, which is third largest grocery chain in the world.

Yeah. Like they're globally third largest. So, so they're one of our customers. We operate all of their corporate locations in, in multiple cities. We're we work with like fashion brands, like H and [00:22:00] M. We work with. Construction companies like Sunbelt. We work a tech company. We kind of have our hands in every industry, which is a great sign actually, because one of the things that is a little bit scary for tech startups in general, but also specifically in Silicon valley is they mostly sell to other tech companies.

And investors are very scared about that because they're like, well, Is there more there, right? Yeah. We've been very lucky. We've gotten yet fashion brands, construction brands, retail, grocery, and, and tech as well. So lots of different companies and well known brands that we're very proud of. And we're live in 70 plus cities six continents.

We have kind of a global. Deployment. And it's really nice to see is we have these maps where we show, like all the cities that we're live in, it just looks, it looks great. amazing, man. So we've been, we've been very, very fortunate and we're a highly efficient team. I love everybody on the team is very, very effective at what they do.

And I'm definitely the kind of person that appreciates. Small efficient teams. That's, that's where I operate the best personally. And I really feel like we have that and it's just, it's so exciting to, to work with them [00:23:00] and, and see the company grow and be like, wow, it's it's us guys like, yeah, we, we did all this.

Julian: no, that that's incredibly. And, and definitely like, you know, a lot of you know, you should feel happy about a lot of that success and I'm, and I'm sure you. I'm always curious to ask this question because I think it, it speaks a lot in terms of the, the landscape that you're dealing with. And, and very unique to your business.

But what are some of the biggest risks that your company faces today? 

Zerzar: Yeah. Yeah. I would say the biggest risk is almost always macro. Yeah. And that is where is this policy thing gonna go? Like it's still early, right? Like is hybrid a fad. I don't know, maybe sometimes fads take a long time to go away too.

Right. For example, if you bet on like open offices right. Like that lasted for like 10, 15 years. So you felt great during that time, but then when people stop caring, you know, then you're just outta business. So it's always hard to predict, like, is this really like a material change? That's going to be around forever, like the internet?

Or is it just a passing thing? That's gonna come and [00:24:00] go and then your business goes along with it. So that's a question that a. People ask me, I don't frankly, ask myself that just because, like I told you, this is the world I wanna live in, right. This, this is what I want. Like, I think this is good for society.

And so for me, I'm very optimistic that, yes, this is the right bet and it's gonna last but. To be objective and fair. Yes. That's a, that's a bet that we're making that yes. Hybrid is a future. It's not just something people are trying. They're gonna try, it's gonna work. And data's gonna show that this is the bright model to operate.

And, and if it is, then our company will do great. If it's not, if people decide, you know, what it was simpler in the old days, we want to go back to that or we want to go fully remote. Then you know, our business is gonna suffer. So I would say that's probably the biggest macro risk that we're 

Julian: facing. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it, the, the open. Fat is, is hilarious. Cuz I hated it so much because I was on calls all the time and it was just like, I don't want someone else. I don't wanna see other people I'm gonna, you know, chase whatever distractions in front of me. 

Zerzar: Yeah. You just go to go to some meeting [00:25:00] room or something.

Yeah, exactly. Some meeting book obviously. Cuz nobody wants. Yeah. Nobody wants to be in the 

Julian: open office unless they have Zynq. No that that's yeah, yeah, 

Zerzar: yeah. That's I like that plug. Yeah. 

Julian: There you go. What's a long term vision for, for Zynq. Where do you, where. If everything goes right, what do you see?

Zynq 

Zerzar: being? Yeah. I want Zynq to be a. Fundamental part of every company's tool belt. If they have any sort of physical space, kind of like, you know, if you start a company, you gotta have a Google workspace or Microsoft office, like you can't operate a company without that. That's kind of how I want Zynq to be that if you have any physical space, you need Zynq.

Like if you don't have Zynq, like what are you doing? So that's kind of where we want to go. And the way we we do that is we're. Taking bites out of different parts of what office management is all about. There's a lot of reasons people have physical space. One of them is yeah. To collaborate. One of them is to just have a quiet space to work.

Another one is checking garments. I don't know, building things, factories visitors, you know, there's, there's a ton of different things that go into managing a physical space, like an endless amount of things. And each of those things, there's [00:26:00] a hundred million industries. And we want to kind of.

Each of those and eventually come up with a all in one turnkey solution where you can do anything you want with your offices, whether it's visitors, whether it's physical security, whether it's keeping your assets safe anything to do with your, your physical space you go to sync and, and that would, it's a great pitch to a company that's managing, you know, 10 different services paying 10 different providers that don't talk to each other.

Like here's one thing that. You can do that that'll, you know, help with all of that. And, and then also just a great experience for our employees because now they don't, you don't have to go to ServiceNow to make a ticket and this other place to X and it gives us the opportunity to do everything more efficiently because everything is in one place.

We're able to look at all of that data together. We're able to make much better decisions and just give you a much better experience overall. There's a joke in, in technology where everything is either bundling or UNB. There's where the opportunity is. The opportunity is either in bundling or unbundling and it always like goes in cycles.

Sure. So we're betting on the bundling asking again in 30 years, maybe we're in the unbundling cycle. 

Julian: I [00:27:00] love that, man. I love that. Well, I love to always ask this question because it gives me some research and some homework, but also helps our audience kind of you know, look at other pieces of information that can inspire them.

But what are some books or some people that have influenced. . 

Zerzar: Yeah. That's a good question. So I tend not to read too many books on entrepreneurship and technology and that's because that is all I do all day long. So I wanna, when I'm reading a book, I want a little bit of a break, but that doesn't mean I can't give good recommendations, but first I'll talk more on the entrepreneurship side.

So I went through YC and I think out of, but I've been exposed to, I've been through other entrepreneurship programs. I've looked up content online. I've. Books why C's philosophy is the best? I can say that. And as far as I know, I don't get anything from this because I don't have any investment in YC.

But but I do think the, what they preach is really the thing that matters. And us going through YC was like trajectory changing in terms of what they were able to help us focus on. [00:28:00] So if you're an entrepreneur, Go to YC, like go read their stuff. They have a ton of stuff. It's all free. Like, you don't even need to go through YC.

All of their stuff they tell you in YC is already out there. So yeah, like go read that stuff, read stuff by Paul Graham. But also just do like startup school. It's free. There's no, it's. Acceptance, you just can, anyone can do it, go through that. I went through that. I think it was super helpful. So yeah, just like absorb all those resources and take them to heart, take them seriously because they really, really help.

So highly recommend any entrepreneur out there to do that. And no matter what stage you're in actually. But especially if you're kind of in the early stage. But yeah, in terms of books there's a book I read. So I, I also tend to read books. That are, I have a bunch of different interests, but one thing that I think is gonna be relevant is like how you process information, how you make decisions.

There's a, there's a lot of books I can recommend, like thinking fast and slow, et cetera. Yeah. But I'm sure a lot of your audience has read, but one particular one that they may not have read is called the righteous mind. By Jonathan hate, I think very interesting book it's about morality and how moral systems develop.

[00:29:00] And I found it very fascinating one just because of the geopolitical climate we're in today or just the American political climate we're in today about like, why are people so on opposite side, it, it helps kind of. Untangle that. But also because it helps me understand my brain more, right? Like what assumptions am I coming in with?

I feel like those types of books, they're not like directly related to like, how are you gonna land your next customer? But they do help you figure out like, okay, day to day. How can I think differently? How can I like change the way I approach situations and how do I, you know, look at the world differently, which is ultimately what.

Wanna do as an entrepreneur. What you're trying to do is look at the world a little bit differently so that you can find opportunity. So I would highly recommend everybody in the world read that book, whether you're an entrepreneur or not highly highly recommend it. amazing. 

Julian: Thank you so much. I've, I've learned so much about not only your journey, but your company's journey and, and how you view the workplace and the environment.

I'm excited to see where you all go. And, and last little plug is where can we support you? What's your LinkedIns, your Twitters, give us all your information so we can. You know, be a fan of, of Zynq as it grows, but [00:30:00] also yeah, be a supporter of, of your company. 

Zerzar: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that since this is a podcast.

Zynq is spelled in a very strange way. So you gotta follow me on the spelling here. Z Y N Q Z Y N Q. So if you type that into Google hopefully we're the first result. If not there's a problem, but type that into Google type it into Twitter. We have a Twitter or Twitter's not very active, but certainly LinkedIn, if you type into LinkedIn, there's a lot of content we post about just.

The industry we're in and like where work is going and, and how you as an employee can help how you, as like a company manager can help. So I, I would really love it. If you guys went on, LinkedIn saw some of those posts, if you like them, share them, please. That would go a long way towards helping us.

Julian: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really excited to launch this and have our audience listen to it and until next day, man, but thank you so much. 

Zerzar: Yeah. Thanks for having me on I enjoyed it. Yeah.

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