Berkay Atatop
Appearances
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
In the MVP, we always wanted to be the single source for customers to get their transcriptioning done. But we always want to focus on the media side, media or audio or video side of things. Right now, for Maestro, anyone can come and upload their files and get their transcription, subtitling, voiceover, translations, or all these things together and export their files.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
But for example, we use Firebase on the database side because we know that it's very easy to set up. You don't need to worry about too much time about the security and There is a framework that you need to follow. And if you follow the framework, you are mostly good to go. Didn't want to take our chances on the security side because we also know that we are like recent graduates.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
There might be things that we are going to be learning along the way, but we also want to release and sell the application. Scalability and security was important. a priority on the day one. And in terms of the security scalability side, we deal with a lot of media, video and audio files. Making that aspect of the application scalable is way harder than saving just data.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
We didn't really consider that. Getting those set up was a hard thing to do. Maybe one of the hard things that we did. Sometimes there are things that are out of your control as well. Sometimes you are depending on a package and then, for example, Google just bumps up something's version on the backend and then everything breaks on your application without you even knowing it.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
There were like sometimes like that. We just didn't, we don't change anything and then the application breaks. So we are trying to understand what's going on.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Personally, I'm proud of that we actually released something and one person used it. Because I remember our first customer coming and using the application. That's probably the happiest that I felt. Because you put so much time in it and then you release it. And then someone actually puts their card and pays for the application. That was mind-boggling to me at the time.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Because that was our first application. Before that, I never released an application and someone... like never really paid for something that I did virtually. So that was very interesting for me. Yeah, that's probably the thing that I'm most proud of so far.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
There were times when we unintentionally break the applications. When that happens, knowing that everyone is composed and when something breaks in the application, our support inbox just gets filled. So that like too many things happen at once. Knowing to work under pressure, I think was one of the things that I learned for being in the company. Because in a larger team, you are more relaxed.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
When you have to do the things that you need to do and no one else actually knows what you're doing, all the pressure is on you.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Right now we are working on releasing our mobile application. We already made it mobile responsive, but releasing it to the app stores. We are working on real-time transcription and real-time voiceover as well. Those things are completely separate markets that we wanted to tackle for a long time.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
In terms of the product development, these are the things that I'm most excited about because we have been working on those things for so long and we want to release it as soon as possible. About the team, our priorities changed over the years since we started the company.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
On the first few years, we focused on the product and didn't really focus on anything else, like marketing or SEO, those kind of stuff. And that was our biggest mistake. And we learned from it. We started focusing on SEO a lot more than we used to, and we actually saw a lot of benefits from it. And then we now want to focus on the marketing side of the application a lot more than before.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
We, of course, are growing our development team as well. As a technical background person, I didn't really realize how important marketing was when I first graduated. But right now, we are definitely going to focus on marketing more than the actual development of the application because we already have an application that is working.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
And when people don't know about it, they just settle with their first choices.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
I definitely look up to my family, my mother and my father and my brother. I think they are the biggest influences in my life. As I actually grow up, I started seeing the similarities more as well. I didn't really think that I have an influence, but I think probably it's my family because I look up to all of them and I'm the youngest in the family.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
So everyone was like an idol when I was growing up. My brother is five years older than me, so even him is old enough for me to
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
I think probably it's a cliche answer, but everyone thinks that it's easier than it is. And you don't really know how much it's going to take from your life until you start it. Because when I started it, for example, I didn't know that I was going to be there for five years. It's definitely nice. But when you are getting in, you should know that you might have to stay there for the long run.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
And you should always do it only if you want it, because it's going to take so much time.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
from your life you won't have working hours for the most part at least like when you're beginning they should know that it can take a lot from them okay the experience is nice the feeling is nice when people are using is using your product but also all the other time you are supposed to work on this product and you it should be something that you like working on that's fantastic advice i couldn't agree more well berkey thank you for being on the show today thank you for telling the creation story of maestra
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Maestro was a hackathon project in college. I started building it with one of my classmates. Before we graduated, I met with another from my class, and he also wanted to start a startup. So he said that you guys can do the coding side, I can do the business side, so we can just start a startup.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
We created the company right after graduating, and we moved to New York for three years in the same apartment. And we just built the product. And after three years, we decided to move to somewhere else. So I went to Turkey for a year and then I came to Germany afterwards. The product started as a transcription, automatic transcription application.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
For example, one of the other things that we were discussing was having a text translation feature. We were considering expanding as much as we could to get as much traction as possible. Maybe we will do that at some point, but we wanted to focus on the media side of things. My name is Berkay Atatok, and I'm the CTO of Maestro.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
In the hackathon, it was always a voiceover product, but it was always going to be a voiceover product. But when we graduated and decided to make it an actual product, we saw that The transcription and subtitling services were more mature, and because of that, we wanted to start with those solutions and then do VoiceOver.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
So we did the transcription editor, and then the subtitle editor, and then the VoiceOver editor around 2019, I think, beginning of 2019 maybe. After we graduated, we didn't start with this idea. We actually had another idea about an anonymous college messaging, something like that.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
And then we built that as a starter project because we also wanted to learn that we wanted to be able to work with each other in the team. And after that, we decided to give up on that idea and focus on the Maestro idea 100%.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
So the MVP version, I considered the transcription application because that's when we released the application and actually started getting customers. The hackathon project was a 36-hour hackathon and we did it and most of the things were broken and then we actually focused on our college studies until we graduated and then came back to the idea and rebuilt it from scratch.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
And while building this web application, we use React on the front end. On the back end, we use Express and Node.js. And for cloud services, we use whatever service gives us the best results. For example, we use AWS, Google, Microsoft for different occasions. And we have microservices that are connected to a single server.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
In the MVP, we always wanted to be the single source for customers to get their transcriptioning done. But we always focused on the media so far. Maybe we will expand in the future, but we always want to focus on the media side, media or audio or video side of things.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Right now, for my strike, anyone can come and upload their files and get their transcription, subtitling, voiceover, translations, or all these things together and export their files. For example, one of the other things that we were discussing was having a text translation feature. We were considering expanding as much as we could to get as much traction as possible.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Maybe we will do that at some point, but we then wanted to focus on the media side of things. But also most of our competitors are only focusing on certain aspects of what we do. For example, some of them focuses on the voiceover aspect. There are like voiceover applications. There are subtitle applications, transcription applications separate.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
But we wanted to have a single application where you can do all of those things without switching platforms.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
First of all, when we first graduated, we were very inexperienced and we were like three at first college graduates and then four, we included another friends of ours. And we were initially like four co-founders that were all fresh college graduates and didn't really know anything.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
At first, we were honestly following our gut or mainly the user feedback was guiding us a lot, maybe more than it's supposed to. But since we were not used to the idea of people using our product, we were trying to listen to everything, anything that the customers say, which was helpful to verify that we are doing the right thing, at least for some people. So we follow the trends as well.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
For example, recently the voice cloning feature is very mainstream on the media. We wanted to get this feature out as soon as we could, so we released it a week or two ago. The thing that our roadmap, we decided at the beginning of the year, or we have yearly meetings with the board, we decide what we want to do as an overview.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
But as the year continues, if a breakthrough happens that we can integrate to the app, we also focus on that as well because When something like that happens, the market for our application, the demographic might shift. For example, we were mostly focusing on the subtitle application. We are still doing that, but because most of our customers were coming from the subtitling application.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
But for example, after those voiceover improvements that happened this year, A lot more people started searching for voiceover as well. So we wanted to focus on giving the thing that people are searching for at that moment. Usually we have a timeline. We have things that we want to do, but depending on the priority, we can squeeze some other things in.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
In the hackathon, one of my current CEO of the company is the person who helped me build the application in the hackathon. We built the application together. While creating the company, I knew that he was one of the trustworthy people that I could work with because I already did it in a very intense condition in a hackathon. And also he's still one of my best friends from college as well.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
So we knew that we could get along because it's a very intimate environment as well. We lived for three years together in Manhattan and during that time we were actually in pandemic as well. We lived through the pandemic as well without being able to go back to our country, visit our family or just to go out. Our whole life became work and it was a very intense period of our lives.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
Being able to get along in that condition, if I didn't trust them, if I didn't know them, I wouldn't be able to do that. Also knowing that they are hardworking as well, because when we started, we were like three developers and one business side and the application wasn't there. So we were trying as much as we could to
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
at least get the application out and start making some progress on the marketing side. When you are working so hard that everyone else on the same team is working as much as you as well. So I think knowing that they are hardworking as well is definitely a plus. But on the hiring side, after we, by the way, we started hiring people very recently, like a year or two ago.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
So we are still very inexperienced on that aspect too. But since we are a small team, we want to be able to count on people about certain things in the application and don't want to think about it If they are a developer, they need to be all around, understand many things on the coding side. They can get the jobs, most of the job done.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
You need to really want it. It's not just about technology.
Code Story
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
We were focusing on the scalability day one. We started using solutions like Amazon and Google Cloud. We started with Google Cloud and we always used the stack that we knew that wasn't going to be hard work to scale for the most part. But after that, of course, a lot of problems occurred while scaling.