How We Built A Product Used By Millions Of Developers To Create Apps Faster

Ashok Balasubramanian

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Published: January 2nd, 2023

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About
Business

Ashok Balasubramanian

Founder, Open Weaver Inc.

Founders

Employees

Open Weaver Inc.

openweaver.com

from New York, NY, USA

started March 2020

Founders

Employees

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Hello Readers! My name is Ashok Balasubramanian. Along with my co-founders Karthikeyan KrishnaswamyRaja and John Hansel, we founded Open Weaver.

Open Weaver focuses on helping developers build digital applications faster and easier. Our main product is kandi, which helps developers build scalable applications faster using reusable open-source libraries and code snippets. kandi also helps young developers learn digital skills by building complex projects in minutes across all hot technologies.

We created the name kandi from K AND I, signifying knowledge of the open-source libraries and the artificial intelligence technologies we use to help the developers adopt the libraries.

We support over a quarter million developers monthly and are growing rapidly in user base and capabilities.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I had worked with multiple global enterprise customers over the past couple of decades. The predominant focus was on making technology more efficient such as moving legacy technology to the cloud or automating inefficient processes with AI.

The whole world is becoming digital. Every aspect of life and business is being reimagined as a digital engagement. Billions of people across the globe are connected through smart devices, fueling this irreversible trend.

Even in this new paradigm, my teams were still writing millions of lines of code over months to create digital experiences. This was also evident in the growth of the IT services industry and the deep shortage of talent. This needed to change. The need for digital is enormous, and the way digital experiences are being developed is still decades old. What powered the technology of the Management Information Services (MIS) era cannot power the digital age.

We founded Open Weaver with the mission to make application development easier and faster and help the world scale into the digital era. Innovation is a core value that we cherish at Open Weaver. To be at the leading edge of transformation, we must be innovative at every step. Innovation coupled with a strong customer focus and agility helps us deliver value.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

While we were confident of the idea and the value it delivers, we spent time with young developers whom the product is targeting. We spent time understanding their workflows, current processes, and perception of value across steps to fine-tune the idea.

Then came the big question of what the MVP should be. Here we took multiple views across the capabilities we need to build and the unique value that the users would perceive as well as the change management required from the users. With all this in mind, we designed and developed the kandi roadmap.

Our unique value proposition for the developer to build scalable digital applications faster differentiates us. Our platform’s breadth of capabilities, simplicity, and ease of use makes our audience connect strongly with us.

For example, our platform helps developers find reusable code and libraries from over half a billion items. As users, they search in natural language and provide inputs on their needs, while our platform uses Artificial Intelligence to offer the best solution. We also put the user first and help them navigate complex decisions for code reuse, such as license, security, quality, installation, and other critical needs, in a straightforward manner.

As we worked with our user base, we realized that the highest demand and white space was the ability to find libraries while the user would explain their requirements in natural language. So the kandi MVP was a simple natural language search engine for finding open-source libraries for specific functions. We are proud that we have come a long way from there in the past year!

Describe the process of launching the business.

Launching the business and launching kandi was a 2 step process. We set up the Open Weaver business with investor funding from the US tech industry after multiple pitches, and ideation sessions on the vision and potential markets. So launching the company was the first step. While we had a broad mission of changing application development, we had a lot of work ahead on creating a roadmap for the product.

Since we were from the application development industry, we were able to set up the operations across US and India and onboard engineers and designers to get started on delivering the vision. Our IT services industry helped both in setting international operations to support the market and talent needs, as well as attract the best talent while the product was still at a mission stage.

We were born during the peak COVID waves in 2020 and had many exciting months operating in stealth mode when we created kandi.

Post alpha and beta testing, we launched kandi in March 2021. The initial few months were focused on the core features and user orientation. As digital marketing scaled, we were able to engage higher volumes of users with the value proposition.

Over months we were able to generate organic traffic with our unique content and achieve a vast scale of users. For example, people generally don’t associate open source with digital applications. For most, open source reminds them of Linux and other middleware. On kandi we focus on the application aspects that open source brings in. Topics like open source applications for Fintech, Python Telegram automation, building VR face filters, creating virtual assistants, and others position our unique value and drive users.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Firstly I would urge all startup founders to invest personal time and effort in understanding digital marketing. While you can understand most of it, the final 20% is an exponential curve to master. Ensure you have a team or a consultant with expertise in digital marketing. This has been a critical step for us to reach customers.

While digital marketing will give you scale, it is back to grassroots for you to understand your specific customer segments, their workflows, and what value messages they react to. Once you are clear on this, you can scale this with digital marketing.

As an example, we could reach millions of impressions to say kandi will speed up application development. But unless we say for a junior developer you can find function level code snippets, for a learner you can leverage our template kits or senior developers can leverage our libraries in their applications, the message will be lost. So it is very important to find the right value proposition for the user segment or persona and communicate that.

The second part of my learning is the importance of user orientation. We initially believed the product is intuitive on its own and that users would have no trouble figuring it out. We were proven wrong, as users were not taking the core paths we had planned for.

Given the volume of digital noise that exists, competing for user attention and the limited attention span and bandwidth of users, it is crucial to get the user to understand the best experiences on their first visit so they can connect with the value proposition.

We solved this using 15 sec YouTube orientation messages as well as specific landing pages for users to understand the value of the features. We also ensured that the orientation messages were built based on the customer segment proposition that I mentioned earlier.

Last but not least is building a community platform. This helps in the orientation of users at a large scale in an informal environment and allows users to hear from their peers. We were also able to demonstrate many Tech for Good opportunities with technologies powered by our kandi platform and partners. We have built an online forum for all our users so they can collaborate, and learn from our mentors as well as each other. We also provide boot camps on developing applications that would be very useful to the community.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

The trend of digital adoption will only grow exponentially worldwide. All innovative platforms like Open Weaver will play a key role in building the digital future. We want to be the platform of choice for global developers imagining tomorrow’s digital future.

Innovation is vital as we are developing a next-generation platform and creating a new way of developing applications faster and better. The user and their value journey are our true north and the core of our innovation. Thinking developer first has helped us continuously differentiate our platform.

We are also blessed to have an amazing team of engineers who are developers themselves and can understand and anticipate the needs of users. These, combined with our R&D team focusing on artificial intelligence, next-generation software development, and generative technologies, help us innovate rapidly. We have been applying for over a dozen patents yearly for our innovations. Such innovations make us a platform of choice for developers.

Today, kandi is trusted by millions of developers to jumpstart their application development with open-source libraries, code snippets, and kits. We are planning for 100x growth. And the exponential digital opportunity, combined with our investments into an innovative product roadmap and developer-focused approach, we are confident of achieving the same.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

My biggest learning has been that in the digital era, the world is truly flat, and if you have a clear value proposition, you can impress upon that value proposition with millions of potential users. While this has removed barriers to entry, it has also removed barriers to competition. So, every minute is competitive, and we need to stay focused on our mission or risk being overrun by someone else.

We created a community platform that brings together our users and developer relations team to create porous boundaries of innovation. Working closely with our ambassadors or key users gives us key insights into our value proposition and evolving users' needs. We are also fortunate to work with leading partners such as the Open Source Initiative, NASSCOM, FutureSkills Prime, ICT Academy, Metaverse Standards Forum, many notable universities, and others. They help us engage deeply with our customer segments.

Lastly, on a personal side, I learned a lot about international operations, finance, HR, legal, compliance, and many other functions that I did not have a complete understanding of in my earlier corporate roles.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

As a digital-first company and significantly remote, we are fully invested in digital tools and platforms. Interestingly a week after we were founded, COVID lockdowns struck, making us a fully remote company. From collaboration and HR systems to digital marketing and analytics to pure cloud-based engineering, we use over three dozen digital tools to run our business.

As tech founders, most of us would gravitate to cloud technology platforms or digital marketing platforms. But one platform choice that I truly appreciate is using a SaaS bookkeeping platform that supported international operations. As tech founders, we are comfortable with technology and users, but the ability to see the funding status, runway and optimization opportunity was priceless. So I would recommend all startups get the fundamental tools right so they can scale without bottlenecks in operations.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

I truly believe everything is a learning experience. On the scale of others, I probably read less. I complete about a dozen books a year, across business and philosophy; fiction light reading not counted. However, I reflect a lot on what I read and a lot more on each experience I go through – for instance, a meeting with a user group that has a unique point of view, or discussing with a potential partner on their go-to-market strategy, a peer or a competitor’s approach to the market situation, or a potential hire describing their views on what we should be doing. Life is a learning pursuit, and I would recommend all continue to be curious, bold, and not afraid to fail.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

I would recommend 2 areas based on my learning. Being an entrepreneur is tough on multiple fronts. You will be captain of a small sailboat in rough seas. Be sure you are ready for it so you can lead the company and your team to the destination.

A simpler piece of advice is to understand digital marketing. Don’t get carried away by it. I have met many people who throw jargon around SEO, social, and others while they don’t have clarity on the core customer value proposition. You may get impressions and reactions but focus on deeper product usage and the value you can deliver. Once you are clear on that, use digital marketing as a tool to reach millions of users.