Mihri Minaz is originally from Turkey, and has 4 siblings in different industries. Being good at math and problem solving, he was drawn go study computer engineering, and eventually was in the industry for a while before starting her current venture. Upon reflection, she feels it was supernatural for her to live in Turkey, be a woman, and end up in software. Eventually, she moved to Berlin and continued to be a unique case in the industry. Outside of tech, she enjoys watching art movies and shows, like Turin Horse or Fargo. She is learning piano, but travels so much for work, she has picked up DJ'ing, cause she can't bring a piano with her.In the past, Mihri's experienced problems with her team, as far as measuring and optimizing productivity. This was related to the different number of tools used, along with the lack of a unified view of these tools. She and her co-founder clicked on this problem, and decided to build a solution.This is the creation story of Beams.SponsorsRapyd CloudSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://usebeams.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihriminaz/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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We always want to ship code where we can experiment something and we can understand if this worked or not. We did not need any backend because we could use local event calendar from Apple's system. We needed that if people really used it daily or not. So our versioning was very important for us because when we wanted people to update, we did not want them to keep using an older version.
So from the first release, you need to have some fundamentals and that's how we went about it. My name is Miri Minas and I'm the co-founder of Beams.
This is Code Story, a podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share what it takes to change an industry, who built the teams that have their back, keeping scalability top of mind. All that infrastructure was a pain. Yes, we've been fighting it as a group. Total waste of time. The stories you don't read in the headlines. It's not an easy thing to achieve, my dear.
Took it off the shelf and dusted it off and tried it again. To ride the ups and downs of the startup life. You need to really want it. It's not just about technology. All this and more on CodeStory. I'm your host, Noah Labhart. And today, Halviri Minnaz is building the next-gen work platform with intelligent insights and productivity gains. This episode is sponsored by Speakeasy.
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Being good at math and problem solving, she was drawn to go study computer engineering and eventually was in the industry for a while before starting her current venture. Upon reflection, she feels it was supernatural for her to live in Turkey, be a woman, and end up in software. Eventually, she moved to Berlin and continued to be a unique case in the industry.
Outside of tech, she enjoys watching art movies and shows like Turin Horse or Fargo. She's learning piano, but travels so much for work she has picked up DJing because she can't bring a piano with her. In the past, Miri has experienced problems with her team as far as measuring and optimizing productivity.
This was related to the different number of tools used, along with the lack of a unified view for these tools. She and her co-founder clicked on this problem and decided to build a solution. This is the creation story of Beams.
Beams is a work intelligence platform. We help companies to be more efficient by generating insights, especially about anything related to work, but focused on work tools. So we integrate with your calendars, Slack, email, G Suite, When you go to the dashboard, you can see how your team is spending their time. Currently, we also are really focused on this tool usage insights.
So you can see which team member is using which tool. In the end, this helps companies to reduce their sales costs because they can see like underutilized tools or if there are overlapping tools that they were using for the same purpose. In my last role, I was head of engineering.
This was the time that productivity was not only my issue, but my team was having issues with unutilized workflows or focus issues because there would be so many meetings. And my co-founder is a product manager. So when we came together, we were like, We knew from the beginning we would like to work on a problem that we've been experiencing ourselves. And we started talking to everyone around us.
And the fact that we use more and more tools than at the end of the day, we couldn't accomplish any of them. That showed us that this problem is something to put our energy on. We started first with a Mac app. It was targeted as developers, designers, and product managers as a product team. So it was a simple app. We released it like in a couple of weeks.
The idea was like, how can we help individual to be more on time for their meetings, but also managing their time better with simple improvements. And then we later added a calendar integration, a focus Pomodoro timer, Slack integration so that everyone in your company can see that you are working on this specific task now and when you will be available next.
All these little features made people have less communication issues with their team. And then they loved it and they started using it. They gave feedback. Then from there, the next step for us was building the insights, the dashboard, something we call Fitbit for your calendar. We launched it on Product Hunt and we became the product of the day. And there, people loved it.
It's so crazy that people don't take this time to critically think about their meetings or they cannot protect their time for focus as well. So as a developer myself, I have seen so many people struggling with it. And the idea of this like insights was like so powerful that people could bring it to their retrospective meetings and show, okay, we have this much of meetings. How can we work on this?
the new feature. So that kind of helped people already address the problem with more data. And then, yeah, like the last feature we have is this work tool in size. And then people can also see what other team members are using. And for managers and team leads, that also gives lots of information around tool adaptions.
So let's dive into the MVP then, that first version, right, that first piece of the product you built. How long did it take you to build and what sort of tools were you using to bring it to life?
So we used the native app building like we build it with Swift. And the first version didn't even have any backend, just had the version check endpoint. So everything was local, except the tracking. So we were tracking people's activities to understand if this feature is used, how it should be used, and for iteration. We just released it in a couple of weeks, actually.
It was just a DMG file on a Google Drive folder, and we were sending the link of the drive and we didn't even have decent version system. And then of course, everything else followed later.
So let's stay on that MVP for a minute. With any MVP, you got to make certain decisions and trade-offs and I can hear a big one, right? Of not building a backend or not having that update system and, you know, sort of trade-offs that you have to make in the early days.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's another one, but I'm curious about some of those you had to work through and how you cope with those decisions.
Not having a backend, but having a tracking system that shows a lot of our methodology, right? We always want to ship code where we can experiment something and we can understand if this worked or not. We did not need any backend because we could use local event calendar from Apple's system.
be needed that if people really used it daily or not so our versioning was very important for us because when we wanted people to update we did not want them to keep using an older version so from the first release you need to have some fundamentals and that's how we went about it and then
In every feature, how we kept this mindset is, okay, just release the fundamental with tracking whatever you need to track to make further decisions on it. And then you should always make it better. So it should never look crappy. Like our app looks amazing now. And we get this like comment a lot that, oh, it looks really beautiful. Is it too beautiful?
But it was not beautiful when we released it first. We focused on the right thing. But there is no excuse of keeping it ugly as well. Of course, first you do the experiment, you learn very early. But then when you iterate on it, you can do the nice looking or more solid version of it. So this is how we kept it always.
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Visit speakeasy.com slash codestory to get started and generate your first SDK for free. Let's move forward then. So you've got the MVP done and you're moving forward. You're getting some traction. And you mentioned some of this progression, I think, in the overview of the company. I'm curious about how you progressed it and matured it.
And to wrap that in a box a little bit, what I'm curious about is how you build your roadmap, how you went about deciding that, okay, this is the next most important thing to build or to address with Beams.
It's a combination of multiple things. As I said, like we have tracking, we have a informed data there that like people are, how are they using the application? So that tells us a lot. And we could still think about, okay, people don't use this feature, but is it because we build it in not the best way, let's say, or is it because it's not needed?
So then the first data you have is this usage data. But then, of course, we talk to users all the time. That was crazy, by the way. We onboarded 300 people with video calls. So during onboarding, we also asked questions. We observed how they are using it. Maybe like we have a button there, they should click it, but they don't click it.
We try to understand what is missing in this flow or how people are perceiving things that we thought would be perceived in a different way. So these are like combinations, like you really have lots of qualitative and quantitative data for the existing product. And then you can iterate from that. We have a public web page. On our landing page, we have something called feature request.
And then anyone can request a new iteration or like an integration or a feature. And then people can also upload. So that's a great way to also collect further requests that does not even exist in your application. There, the best thing is that, for instance, we only have a Mac app now. We don't have a Windows app or iOS app, but we already have a couple of hundred users.
They are not even users because they don't use it. But if we were to release a Windows app and we can inform them and they can today start using it. So that's how you keep having this like request in your system. And then, of course, then we have this big vision, right? vision is to be the meta layer of the work tools.
When we evaluate what to work on next, we need to evaluate is this integration bringing us new users or is it making users use this tool even more? Is this solving a workflow that is very fundamental and in the core of the user's work? So based on that, like then you can evaluate the next step. So we on purpose don't develop for
windows and microsoft currently because our target group or market entry is for gcd environment where people use lots of different tools and it's easier for us to have a bottom-up approach so that's how we decide so i'm curious about team how did you go about building your team what do you look for in those people to indicate that they are the winning horses to join you
Both me and my co-founder, we worked at several companies and also I'm the third time founder and my co-founder as well. So that gave us like a good network of talent. And so, for instance, the designers that we work together, I know them like for 11 years. We started working together on Beams very early beginning. And we knew how to work together.
So this was like a chance plus something that you build in time, that you learn how to work with people and then you keep this connection and you continue working on different projects together. But then when it comes to scaling up, for us currently, we are like a small team. What I noticed is that you need to find people that are autonomous. They can take an initiative.
So you don't give a task, give them a concept. So you just tell, okay, we need to... It's not like we need to integrate with Google Calendar. You just tell, okay, we want to show people how people spend their time or you want to understand people's work life or something. And then they don't only...
focused on the calendar, they can also tell us like, okay, maybe there is also an event which is not on your calendar. So that critical thinking only comes when the person is thinking in a conceptual way.
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For a limited time, get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash codestory. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash codestory. I'm curious about scalability and I'm sure there's interesting stories given where you started and where you are now, but I'm curious how you approach scalability in the beginning. And also I'm curious if there've been interesting areas where you've had to fight it as you've grown.
So like our team is very experienced and like 16 years experience. Our backend engineer is like 17 and worked at like banking applications. So when you think about it, for us, the scalability issue is not that we would overlook on something, but we could over-engineer. So that's why we were always talking about from the beginning, are we over-engineering this?
Should we implement the feature flag for this or should we keep it easy to submit and then we can later remove this part of the code or something? I do think like at the beginning, this mindset moving really fast and then like maybe building something that like you will completely put in trash. That mindset was not easy for the team.
And so we had this, even I remember this conversation that like we should build it in a way that this code lasts for five years. And I'm like, no, this code shouldn't last five years. Yeah. And that mindset made us move very fast. But then, of course, at one point, there were times that, okay, we need to change our cloud provider.
And then, okay, now we take the time and then we try to make us independent from cloud provider. But that is something, I think, understandable from an early stage. So then you make the decision based on that.
I'm curious, Miri, as you step out on the balcony and you look across all that you've built, what are you most proud of?
People, when they change their job or when they have a new computer and when they try to join their next meeting and they use the shortcut and then all of a sudden they notice that the app is not there.
To be able to be infused in their day this much, that they take it granted almost, that it's a part of their behavior almost, that is making me proud because then they write this to me or in our community Slack that they were surprised that it's not there. And then they were like, oh, okay, I have a new computer. They changed their job.
So because our vision from the beginning was there is no such work tool that continuously changes
with you when you change your job when you change your computer but our regionals like this tool can be this like individual first tool and plug you into different work environments when you change your job then you start using a new project management tool or you start using a new design tool but then because the company wants to use that tool but there could be like an interface that
already knows you and plugs you into this work environment and can also be beneficial for companies and teams as well. So to see this, that this is working now, that this tool follows you for your new job, that shows already that like our vision was validated. So that's very good.
Let's flip the script a little bit. Tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.
For me, I think the struggle is the communication piece of it. Sometimes like I feel I'm running and then I need to align and inform the team. Of course, there are so many misunderstandings or sometimes we are not on the same page.
Maybe I forget something or I make a mistake and the team is pretty constructive on that, that they would be like understanding because it's a very fast moving environment, but also maybe not even just this mistake or alignment, but understanding. Especially the developer team, we do have lots of incidents. There is a bug that we generated, I generated.
And then when we write post-mortem, we never make it a personal thing. And I think this is something that I'm proud of. from them as well. And as a team, I think we are proud is that like we come together and write this post-mortem and it's never about what did this person do wrong? It's always about, okay, what happened there? And then how could we systematically do this better?
Is it because we did not get an alert or is it because we did not have a good test that made us publish this code and could be prevented with a unit test or any sort of way of preventing this? I did work at companies that we pushed local code to production or the payment page is not working or the database got, it's not lost completely, but let's say like a whole day's data is lost.
So you try to work on this together. And then at that moment, the goal is to solve this problem all together. So it's never who did what or pointing each other. It's more about Okay, we are in this and how do we go about it and how do we ensure that this doesn't happen again?
Miri, this is going to be fun to hear your excitement in your voice. What does the future look like for Beams, for the product and for your team?
Yeah, so this new feature is very exciting for us because, as you can imagine, lately the market is a tough market. Although we started with this calendar insights and individuals using it for working in a more efficient way, what we soon realized when we went to the company owners, managers, what we noticed is this is very hard to monetize in this market.
There is no clear owner of such a problem. Like having too many meetings does not have an owner in the company. Who is responsible for that? That's why we started having these conversations with managers and they were telling us their biggest problem currently is this AI hype, first of all, because they all want to be on board with this.
They want to use the latest, best tool for AI so that they could also have a more efficient team. But also second biggest focus is also reducing costs. The new feature that we have now is like helpful or useful for both of these things because what we do now is basically we track people's tool usage. So a pilot that we have
work together, wants everyone to use ChatGPT or Copilot in their company, and they are happy to pay for the licenses and everything, but they also want to understand if people really use it. And that's what we can do. We do have a browser extension tracking lately we are working on, and also the Mac app.
Then with this, we can understand people's daily usage of these tools, if this tool really infused into their workflows and for which they are using it. Because it feels like, especially from the data we gather now, all companies are trying lots of different tools and some of them does not. Maybe people need better onboarding or training.
So this is something we are excited that we can help companies to figure this out.
Okay, let's switch to you, Miri. Who influences the way that you work? Name a person or many persons or something you look up to and why.
Here, I'm a little bit pessimistic because I do feel we are living in this era. Most of the leaders are very autocratic or it's for me like a negative leader, a leadership. So I feel like mostly they are leading, boosting the fear. And that also results in lots of trust issues. And it's not even about companies, what I'm talking about now. So I do feel that it's not so easy to see
so many good examples for me, especially like with my background. So I don't look and then I see, oh, someone like me is managing a company and I do love reading about leaders. It's more about this philosophical or ethical discussions.
So for me, like it's not about who influences my work, but it's more I should really take the responsibility of people that I'm managing or of any change that I bring to the world or the life of people. It is important for me to understand the responsibility coming with this. And that's why I always read about ethical discussions around AI or I do follow other leaders as good or bad examples.
And I try to also understand what I could take from it. But I don't like this tech guts, like it's full of tech guts. And then they do make decisions affecting all of our lives, right? For me, I would be more up for inspiring people, but also taking the responsibility of the actions that we do or the changes we bring to life
For instance, for us now, our tool could be also considered as like a monitoring or observation tool or on the hands of wrong people, like ensuring that only the data which is useful for cost cutting is going to the management. But if we don't take this serious and what if this data is used for performance evaluations for people? So that's very important.
You should know that what you build can be misused. That's your responsibility to prevent that as well. And I'm not afraid of it. I want to embrace this. I'm out there, I'm building, and I would like to be a part of this discussion. I'm not one of these people also thinking like, oh, AI, it's negative or going to harm people. I do think that like we should adapt and always embrace like,
what tech brings, but also I have always a responsibility in mind.
Miri, last question. So you're getting on a plane and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing. They're jazzed about it. They can't wait to show it off to the world and can't wait to show it off to you right there on the plane. What advice do you give that person having gone down this road a bit?
I should ask advice and get advice from them because they built the next big thing. But if I were to give an advice to this person, I think like there are 100 different ways of being an entrepreneur or building a company. And there are different people who would follow you as well. You don't need to have one recipe. But a good advice that I got from someone and inspired me a lot.
If you are a leader, you will be always on the spotlight and there is no way that like your shadow won't be seen. So everybody will see your weaknesses. It's better that you know it before everybody else. And then you can either work on it or you can just accept it and be transparent around it, what you are not good at, because it's not possible that it's not going to be seen.
So I think it's very deep, but it's very practical at the same time.
Absolutely. I love that advice. Well, Mary, thank you for being on the show today. And thank you for telling the creation story of Beams.
Thank you so much for having me.
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