Innovation and entrepreneurship are the two vital pillars for building a successful venture. One such leader who is known for his wisdom on entrepreneurship and innovation is Feyzi Fatehi (CEO of Corent Technology). Feyzi is an inventor of the first Real-Time Database and has spent his career help building high-performance, high-tech organizations including multiple business units at HP and multiple other tech startups in Silicon Valley and Southern California, including Corent Technology.
Being an innovator entrepreneur, Feyzi has been interviewed and quoted for his entrepreneurship philosophy of an integrated leadership framework for life and business. In 2017, he was honored for Excellence in Entrepreneurship which is one of Southern California’s most prestigious awards. Currently, Feyzi serves as the CEO of Corent Technology, the provider of a platform that is renowned for its ground-breaking technological inventions in the software industry. In 2019, Feyzi was also honored with the CODiE Lifetime Achievement Award, a recognition bestowed upon Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Jim Clark in previous years for their reputation, leadership, vision, mentorship, career success and philanthropy.
Curiosity: The Cornerstone of Corent Technology
As it is famously quoted, “Curiosity is the mother of inventions,” and it is proved true for the establishment of Corent Technology. The “Intel Inside” business model turned out to be an incredible success, which led to the proliferation of the PC industry. This generated a string of ‘What ifs’ that laid the foundation of the company. The questions like ‘what if we created a pervasive software platform to convert every software application into SaaS (Software as a Service) so every single SaaS provider won’t have to reinvent the wheel and build it themselves?’ and ‘What if we build it in a massively reusable, configurable, and customizable way so that every software vendor could use it in a plug & play way, same as the PC vendors used the Intel processor?’
Over a decade ago, the team of Corent began the journey of delivering the “as-a-service” component of the Software “as a Service” business model. Changes don’t happen overnight especially the technological changes. The company has strived for more than a decade to establish itself. Now it has secured more than 80 patent claims so far, all contributing to what is becoming known today as the “Software Defined SaaS”® platform. Today Corent’s “Software Defined SaaS” Platform branded as SurPaaS® SaaSify™ can convert virtually any software application to a fully instrumented SaaS within hours and without any programming.
Revolutionizing the Software Industry
As it was previously disclosed, Corent’s SaaSify is the only tool in the market that can convert virtually any software application to fully instrumented SaaS. Apart from this, the unique platform is the only platform that supports the end-to-end Cloud Migration, Modernization and Monetization journey. The Intel Inside business model turned out to be a revolution, and the same is believed for SaaSify. The SaaSify™ tool can revolutionize the software industry by democratizing SaaS. This would help software vendors to deliver their software as SaaS without any extra effort. Also, SaaSify can transform the Open Source industry to an Open SaaS industry, by allowing anyone or any organization to seamlessly offer any proven open source software as a robust, fully instrumented SaaS. This would not just revolutionize the software industry, but also help create thousands of new jobs, while providing efficient cost-effective access to millions of users that otherwise would not have access to the software.
The recent partnership of Corent and Mifos Initiative is an example of the global impact the ‘democratization’ of SaaS can have. The partnership resulted in forming a SaaS enabled Mifos X—a software application that could potentially provide on-line banking services to more than three billion unbanked and under banked people in the developing world. Despite years of effort, Mifos – like most other organizations out there could not develop a robust and scalable SaaS. Leveraging Corent’s SaaSify, Mifos has transformed into a rich, featureful and fully instrumented SaaS, rapidly, and without any programming.
Unique Vision and Dedication to Pursue Innovation
Feyzi is a determined leader with a unique vision and dedication to pursue innovation. He is a pioneer in the SaaS and Cloud industry. Being the CEO at Corent makes his role at the company a multidimensional task. As a leader one has to be ready to fulfill the roles and responsibilities beyond the title. Feyzi, however, handles his day to day chores by creating an agenda way ahead of the day.
Feyzi reviews his schedule the night before and again the first thing in the morning to have clear goals and objectives throughout the day. He further adds, “After reviewing the schedule I formally or informally set my energetic tone for the day that includes mindfulness and gratefulness reminders, this could be a part of a 5-10 min meditative exercise, or be blended in a short hike, or a brief stretching/yoga routine.” Through this routine, Feyzi’s goal is to be energized, inspired and aligned to tackle the challenges of the day, ensure priorities are clear, front and center so that he can focus on meeting his most imperative and essential goals and objectives.
Understanding, Connecting and Empathizing Is Important
Being a leader comes with varied responsibilities, keeping the team inspired and focused is one of them. Feyzi’s way of keeping the team motivated is by reviving the vision and mission in the minds of the team members and help keep the same front and center and by remembering and reminding the ‘why’ behind the organization. He adds, “I believe if we keep clear the Why, and the What, we most often find the How.”
Feyzi believes that understanding, empathizing and genuinely connecting with team members is also a key part of leadership. To explain it better Feyzi quotes his friend and the world renowned leadership coach Peter Bregman: “The courage and willingness to see other people and be seen by them, don’t get in the way of our leadership, it is our leadership.”
Culture eats strategy for breakfast!
As Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” thus emphasizing how important the company culture is. At Corent, the culture is fundamental. Hence, the team of Corent continuously strives to maintain the culture of the company. Feyzi believes that organizational culture is like the ‘operating system’ for its team members. At Corent, culture is not a static thing thus there is always room for improvement. Over the years, the company culture has been upgraded but always centered along the lines of its core values.
Corent’s core values are focused on respect, care, candor, honesty, openness, innovation, entrepreneurship, and not only accountability but keeping each other accountable. Each team member equally accepts the ownership and is ready to help, contribute and give credit when credit is due which has increased the bond amongst the team members. The team is always learning from each other and collectively transforming the culture into a stronger, more powerful one, which itself is part of Corent culture. When Corent considers hiring a new team member, they not only look for cultural fits, but also those who can contribute to the company culture and help it grow and improve over time.
False Evidence Appearing Real—FEAR
Feyzi believes that insecurities are fueled by fears. Most leaders in their journeys come across times where they fear making the wrong decision or failing. So, he advises to not submit to the fear and practice exercising courage and make the decision when it needs to be made with the best information they have. Good decision-making skills can help us bravely tackle the challenges and also make us prepared for accepting and dealing with the consequences, no matter positive or disappointing. “As I once read somewhere, fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. So if we are mindful we can remember to deal with them as such,” concludes Feyzi.
Interview Snippets
Q. What are the future plans for Corent Technology?
Corent Technology is at a fork in a road, either grow into a robust operating company or become an independent business unit of a larger company that aspires to further boost their standing and position in the Cloud and Enterprise Software Industry and lead the “democratizing SaaS” revolution.
Q. Have any of your personal experiences helped you become a good leader?
Of course! To me, leadership is the art and science of boosting the efforts of others involved in achieving a common goal. How to set the tone to enable, empower, and inspire them toward attaining the ultimate common objective. For me, my cumulative personal experiences dealing with and managing my internal state towards an increasingly grounded mind and heart, as well as externally dealing with people, and attempting at being a catalyst in bringing the best out of them in line with achieving a common goal have been helping me on my path to become a better leader.
Q. How did you embrace the failures you encountered throughout the journey?
While failures make us humble, they can make us stronger and more confident if we turn them into learning experiences, understanding the root causes and what contributed to them and how to use them as assets moving forward.
Q. Despite your busy schedule, how do you keep yourself healthy?
I believe maintaining a clean, healthy and mindful diet, along with sufficient exercise are key components of both our physical and mental health. These days mine consists of smaller but more nutrient meals, and doing some yoga, golf, and hiking when I can. They are most challenging since they require blocking time to do, but when done, I feel more productive, and inspired afterwards. Yet, the biggest challenge for me is getting enough sleep – at least 6 hours a day.
