Engineering Founders

Finding your customers’ burning needs, validating ideas, expanding products & navigating new markets w/ Ryo Chikazawa @ Autify

Episode Summary

After two years and eight pivots, Ryo Chikazawa (CEO & Co-founder @ Autify) realized his original product would never reach venture scale. In this episode, Ryo reveals how he scrapped everything to find his customers' "burning need," eventually securing contracts before writing a single line of code for his new idea. Ryo shares his playbook for radical pivots, navigating different market segments by hacking enterprise budgets, how to delegate and scale operations, and why a founder’s job is to constantly pursue the next zero-to-one moment.

Episode Notes

After two years and eight pivots, Ryo Chikazawa (CEO & Co-founder @ Autify) realized his original product would never reach venture scale. In this episode, Ryo reveals how he scrapped everything to find his customers' "burning need," eventually securing contracts before writing a single line of code for his new idea. Ryo shares his playbook for radical pivots, navigating different market segments by hacking enterprise budgets, how to delegate and scale operations, and why a founder’s job is to constantly pursue the next zero-to-one moment.

 

ABOUT RYO CHIKAZAWA

Ryo Chikazawa is the Co-Founder and CEO of Autify. Ryo has worked in software development for over ten years. Having worked as a software engineer in Japan, Singapore, and San Francisco, he helped developed a #1 social game at DeNA, led product development as a product engineer at Viki in Singapore, and moved to San Francisco to participate in a local startup as an initial member. He founded Autify, Inc. in 2016.

 

ABOUT AUTIFY

Autify is a no-code, AI-powered software testing automation platform designed to help businesses accelerate their software release cycles and improve software quality. It allows users, including those without programming knowledge, to create, execute, and automate tests for web and mobile applications. Autify uses features like Generative AI and a natural language recorder to simplify the process of generating and maintaining test scenarios, reducing the cost and technical difficulty traditionally associated with software testing

 

SHOW NOTES:

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/