Can you tell me about your background? What did you do before founding Dakai?
I have been programming from a very young age. Initially, I held different positions as a mobile, web, and game developer. However, I got a 3-month internship at Google at the age of 17, where I had the opportunity to learn React and Angular in depth. Between Google and founding Dakai, I’ve been working with many tech companies, leading developer teams ranging from 10 to 100+ people.
Why did you found Dakai?
I come from an entrepreneurial family, and I have always wanted to run my own company. While I enjoyed my work at my previous jobs, I always felt like I could use my energy towards building my own company. So when I saw the opportunities in the crypto industry in 2017, I knew this was the right time to take the leap of faith. Back then, the industry was full of scammers and developers who could not deliver projects reliably. In many cases, I felt like I was the only one who could make sure that ICO-s launched on time, which sometimes was a week away from when they contacted us, so it was a crazy sprint. Our initial goal with Dakai was to create a trustable third party in the wild west of what the crypto industry resembled at the time.
What do you think differentiates Dakai from other software companies?
We focus on the end-user experience above all. Although we use the latest technologies and have the highest standards regarding development, in the end, the most important thing is what makes money for the business we work with: happy and engaged customers.
By understanding the business case behind the products we build, we strive to understand the company’s growth scenario: where their users come from and how we can make their journey pleasant. Usually, other agencies focus on technical implementation, but our value proposition is much more than that. We are an active part of the business, and everyone on the project is brainstorming on how we can get our clients to where they want to be. We aim to help them reach their goals, connect them to relevant people, and make sure that they succeed on multiple levels and not just get good code.
When did you know Dakai would succeed?
We started fairly directionless in 2017, focusing on blockchain projects at hand and ensuring they are delivered exceptionally. It’s a shame that many of them dissolved within the next year during the crypto winter of 2018. During that time, we quit crypto and started working in the traditional software world to pay the bills.
I think things turned to our advantage in 2019 when Spotify hired us to deliver a high-impact internal project for them that hundreds of people use. We traveled to their office in Los Angles and were surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the tech industry while working on an exciting project that defined our next years. During that period, I started to believe that we have our own space in the world, then in 2021, we really found our messaging, and we started defining what our company would look like years from now.
Where do you see Dakai going in the future?
Currently, I am focusing on growing our team and streamlining internal processes to ensure that we can work on high-impact projects like we had last year. I am also working on expanding our reach globally. We have an office in New York and Budapest, but I would like to have more presence in Europe, Asia, and South America since I can see exponential growth in the region.
Apart from delivering exceptional value for businesses, I want to drive a part of the company towards developing breakthroughs in the healthcare space in the next five years. I think that’s an area where creativity and upcoming technologies such as AI can be most helpful, especially in providing quick & cheap diagnoses for people who do not have access to proper medical care. I know this is quite a leap from being a software dev shop, but we never thought of ourselves as a team of coders. We like solving challenges not many have before, such as helping build the cryptocurrency application of El Salvador. I want to hire people who can continue these efforts and contribute to our team in many domains – not just write great code.
