Problem Solving Software with Asaf Darash

george grombacher 0:15
Hello, this is Georgina. Time is right. welcome today’s guest strong and powerful a softer Asha soft. Are you ready to do this? Yeah, let’s go. Let’s go. Soft. He’s a PhD. He is the founder and CEO of reg pack. They’re an online registration software that automates the onboarding process. Soft, I’m excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life. So more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:41
Okay, so, my personal life, I have two wonderful boys that I love very much and have a lot of fun with. They’re always talking to me about to my wife, I did my PhD at Berkeley focused on on how you can create computer systems that have no constant syndrome, which RegTech is basically an implementation of my dissertation. I, I love to do sports. I meditate a lot. My passion is basically programming, even though as a CEO, as a company, I don’t get a lot of time to do that. But like, do you make sure that at least one or two days a week I do the code. There’s something magical about coding, you create something by the very fact that you think it. And I think that’s really amazing. And it’s just, it’s just really, really fun, I guess, regarding our Ridgeback Ridgeback was founded about nine years ago. And it was restructured about six years ago, what we do is we, we enable, the best way to describe Ridgeback for people to understand is Spotify for services. Okay, so it’s like it allows in most businesses today, our services, so it allows various camps, forces, lawyers, healthcare, staff, companies, software, basically anybody to do the onboarding process and bring their clients on board, and then enable them to charge them and make sure that they’re allowed access to the services because they think the onboarding, the onboarding concept is something that exists very strongly as being the service business. Think of it like the only place where you don’t go through an onboarding process in order to become a client is maybe retail, you go you buy a shirt, you’re done, right. But anything else that you do, you need to go through a process, you need to give some some information, you need to sign a contract, you need to you need to do something, it’s not just like you buying, but also you need to later be able to, to use the service. So so there’s a process there. So what reg pack does is it takes care of all of that aspect from from becoming a client to getting the information and to signing the contracts, and then billing them in the correct way according to what they selected or what the business allowed them to do.

george grombacher 3:26
I like it. So you had the opportunity. Obviously, as you’re as you’re going through your your your master’s program and getting your PhD to select anything, what was it about about the onboarding process that you saw an opportunity or passion? Both?

Unknown Speaker 3:45
It was both. Okay, well, it is technical. So so what I didn’t initially, I wanted to see if you can create something that has no constants, that everything’s a verb, or that everything is can change, okay. In computer and computer, and computer software and databases and languages, it was never done. Okay, so I thought technically, it wasn’t even possible. Eventually, after many years of research and work and so forth, yes, it’s possible and that that would that is what reg Beck is. So you create a system that is extremely flexible. You can can do anything, okay, you can create any type of mode that you want, based on what you select without creating any constraint, any constraints for your creation. Think of it like Lego that you can, that you can change the structure of each block. Okay. So I created that fine. You know how it works in academia, you create something and you’re like, okay, great, throw it out the window, right or your other article about it and you don’t ever use it. back. Then I said, Wait a second, why hasn’t this ever been done? Like, why didn’t anybody try to do something like this? Isn’t there like a need for? And because it wasn’t University, I talked to my friends, which were working at administration and stuff like that. And suddenly, I understood that every administration, onboarding, or registration or acceptance process is different. And I said, Wait a second, this is like a great place to try this out to see if this works. Because they were all telling me we have applications that either we, we took a company to build for us, when we built ourselves. Nobody uses uses the software to do this. And then I started looking at the market. And I noticed that every single registration or onboarding process is, is unique. And it’s self made. So I said, You know what, let’s see if this can hold up. He was basically a stress test. And after about a year of working with people, I saw that it was working, because he could do what people all that he could do all the crazy stuff people were doing. And if until then people will tell me like, I will find software that can be 60% of what I want. I would find a software that could find 70% of what I want somebody who was like 100% period, always. So it’s like, okay, this is cool. Then life, life interview, right. And I wanted to basically be a professor, right. But I wanted to be a professor in the US. My wife wanted to be a professor in Israel. And she got she got a job with Universal Media diversity before I got a job in the US. So we decided to move. And I said, Okay, we’re moving, then I’m not staying in the agreement. I’m going to build a company. Now it took about two years until we actually three years from the move to Berkeley back to zero. And at that time, I built reg back. So it was sort of like, a combination of life happens. And intellectual interest, I guess.

george grombacher 7:13
I love it. So you wanted to create something that has no constants? Was Was there a legitimate moment? Where were you did it everything clicked? Or what was that like?

Unknown Speaker 7:28
It was I had an amazing mentor, who was from MIT, Roger Holmes. And, and I remember, I was telling you about the idea. And he was the he told me, like, go for it, but you should know. And like, also not being able to find something that’s finding something like not being able to do something that’s also doing something. And I was like, you know, like a good software was like, No, this is, there’s no, there’s no try. There’s do right. So so I went out, and I tried to do it. And I remember one sentence that he told me that that made everything click, he said, he told me, in computers, the only thing that is important is that the world that you create, is consistent to its own rules. So as long as you’re creating a consistent system, you can work even though like, you know, the consistent system can be that. I don’t know, every time you eat a great duck, right? But that’s fine, as long as it’s consistent. And that changed everything that that that enabled me to actually understand how to build it.

george grombacher 8:47
It’s fascinating, right? You just hear something a little bit different. And that makes all the difference. So you said something earlier talking about how coding is just you’re essentially creating something, and I’ve never thought about it like that. But that’s, that’s, that’s pretty cool. And if you have that skill, which you obviously do, and you’re able to say, okay, I get it, there’s value in pursuing something and then figuring out that it’s not doable. So I’ve still done something but you say no, I am not interested in just doing that. I want to make this thing work. And you did. And then you start this company, which is a whole nother skill set, and then you turn your product your software out into the world. How is it how has it been received? Tell us about some of the use cases.

Unknown Speaker 9:35
Okay, so I have no other way to say it except a mix that okay. We started out by trying to tell people, this can do anything. As long as you can think it, it can do it. And that was a total failure. Like that was so bad. Like, I don’t know what to do. Just like giving people a blank piece of paper and telling them, Hey, go ahead and do this, right? Like, write anything, right? Write whatever you want, right? So one piece paper, and people just like the sentence below the blank piece of paper and like, Oh my God, I don’t know what to do, right? But if you tell, if you give them something to edit, or you give them like a structure, suddenly they’re like, Whoa, I can do this really easily. So the first, the first few months, we I came in first I came to like my, my development friends, and he loved him like this, like programming without programming. Right now, don’t do this a pot, but then you want to go out to business, right? So you got two businesses, and they asked me Okay, so what can I do this? And your answer is anything you’re going to like? Yeah, sure. Whatever. Right. So we understood, we need to put people in a box. So we started to segment we segmented to how the application works resources and how it will work for travel and how it will work for cans and how on earth events and how will work for SaaS companies and how it will work for for doctors offices, and healthcare and so forth. So we actually started segmenting to verbose. And then, we found out that we need to talk the specific language of every every vertical. Because if you talking in general language, people are like, Okay, this doesn’t work. And this connects very much to how people think about software today. Think of yourself when you’re looking for something in the App Store, or Google Play, you’re looking for, like, a huge clock that can be on all the screen. Like you’re not looking for a clock, you’re looking for something super specific, right? So that’s what people do today with business software. So once we start breaking it down to segments, even though it’s the same thing, it’s exactly the same thing, right? It’s the same software. And we even sometimes call it different things. But it’s the same software. But then people are like, oh, yeah, so this is, this was not my, my name my business. Like you were thinking of me when you feel like Yeah, sure. Suddenly, it really, really, really quickly.

george grombacher 12:25
That’s wild, right? When it makes sense. you hand me something, you say, Oh, this can do anything? I’d be like, oh, yeah, can I do my laundry? Or like, oh, maybe not that. But then segmenting it and then using the actual language for each vertical? And incorporating the jargon, whatever it might be. That that makes a ton of sense. Is, is there a certain size company that it works for? I’m confident since it does everything it probably serve justify any organization, but what what, what is there an industry or a size, that’s really been the most successful or

Unknown Speaker 13:01
I think normally do needs to be a business that’s processing around a million, the minimum a million or $2 million less than that, it’s because it is a software that is very flexible, and there is a learning curve. If you’re like, you know, whatever, you have clients that you’re manually making 100,000 or 200,000, even 500,000, it’s not worth the effort that you need to go through in order to make it happen. But once once you reach that, that pain point of a million dollars, right? It becomes worth the effort because it becomes painful, the onboarding becomes painful. And we we we sometimes see companies that come to us that process, you know, 2025 $30 million, and you’re asking them, okay, so how did you learn more courses? And they’re like, with email? Seriously, if you onboard 1000s of clients to email, and they’re like, yeah, that’s how we do it, we go back and forth with email, because they have, they don’t have anything else, or they build something that is unique for them. And then what happens a lot of times is management wants to change something, and they go to person to build it, or the company that built it. And suddenly they understand that any change that they make, is costing them 10s of 1000s of dollars, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and also the response time is weeks or months. So suddenly, they become they become a very inflexible company, but not because they don’t they can’t think in a different way that because of the constraints that the software has created for them.

george grombacher 14:38
That makes a lot of sense. I mean, for an organization like that, what a breath of fresh air, they must send you holiday cards every year.

Unknown Speaker 14:49
We have that and yet the biggest thing is that that suddenly the administrative staff can do things on their own and they don’t need to go to it or develop Minute. And then what we’ve seen a lot of times is very interesting, where the administrative staff becomes very, very powerful in the organization. Because suddenly anything that management wants, and especially the the CFO and CEO, anything they want the administrative staff, their answer is yes. No problem. Yes, no problem. Yes, we’ll do it tomorrow. Yes, we’ll be ready tomorrow. And then they suddenly become a very, very important part of the company. Whereas before, they would be like, you know, just crunch the numbers or just crunch the data or just Just bring him in.

george grombacher 15:40
Makes sense. So how is how is your onboarding process for taking on new clients?

Unknown Speaker 15:47
Obviously, when he was read back, we, we have either a free trial, you can try it out. Which, which is good if you’re a little technical, because you do need to, like understand the concepts and what you’re doing and all that. Or are we actually again, connected to the, you know, the blank page and all that what we do for most clients is they have a product manager, that, that understands the business and understands the concepts that they need, understands their needs. And then they build a rough draft for them. And after that, they go through the concepts with them on something that is very understandable to them, because it’s their processes. So that way, they’re able to pick it up faster. Again, going back to the blank page concept, instead of a blank page. We’re giving them something to edit. Then when you give some someone something to edit, though, that is theirs. They really enjoy doing that.

george grombacher 16:53
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know. My experience that people do support what they helped to create. So to give them a hand in that process, I think that makes a ton of sense. I love it. Well, it’s off. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you and REG pack.

Unknown Speaker 17:11
So obviously on our website, this reg pacs.com We also my social media presence. I personally also write in Forbes and outlets. But I think that made me rich pets.com and our blog and just a follow us.

george grombacher 17:35
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show us off your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Reg pack.com It’s our eg pack.com and find out if it is the solution that you are looking for or didn’t even know that you were looking forward to alleviate a lot of the burden of brain on your new clients, customers events, everything. So check it out. Thanks again. It’s off. Thank you. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best