Co-founder of Xtra, an open-source engine that makes complex SaaS UIs queryable via natural language for enterprise organizations.

Uh. Go on. That was good. So thank you very much for your patience. Um, the-- So we were just talking, um, about HiRey, about HiRey AI, and how we're doing this interview series featuring different solo devs or small team devs, and creators and founders, uh, that are creating stuff in tech. And you guys shared with me that you guys are both software engineers at the moment. Um, so why don't we talk a little bit about what major project or projects you guys have been working on recently, and we'll start there, and then we'll talk about, um, what gave you the idea for that project and where you see it going in the future and, and this type of thing. Yeah. All right. So the project is called Xtra, and for now it's an open source project. Um, the main idea of the project is to make, uh, to make, uh, the current product queryable. Um, our, uh, main, uh, idea and, uh, the way we're seeing, uh, the future of the SaaS product, um, is that we believe that's the time that you navigate inside the, the UI, uh, the complex UI. It's going to be shrinking because of the AI. Uh, we believe that now the users are more preference to, to just give a simple query and let the, uh, AI, um, do the heavy workflow, um, for them. Um, and for that reason we build, uh, the Xtra. And this project, we give an infrastructure that in simple way and, and also given a widget that you can inject inside your UI and, and, and based on our-- based on our widget and, uh, infrastructure, you can make your, uh, make your UI and all the-- all your product queryable in a easy way. Um, and that's our main, uh, goal. That's really interesting. And as somebody-- I have a lot of experience working with CRM systems, for example, um, it's-- it can be- Yeah ... I spent a lot of my life, uh, looking for a certain button, you know, or something like that. Yeah. Exactly. That's the point, yeah. It, it, it's part, it's part of the scenario, yeah. There's a lot of scenario. You know, there's all the AWS, uh, UIs that it's so complex- Ah ... and you need a deep, uh, you need a, a really domain expertise how to navigate and all the functionality and all the options. So we believe that if there is a, you know, a bodyguard that sit, uh, uh, next to you and you can ask him whatever you want, and he can guide you exactly how to create thing that related to your organization, um, um, I think it, it, it will be awesome, and we believe that this is w-what the SaaS platform are going to provide. Um- Yeah ... and, and for, and, and that-- for that reason we build it from first day to focus on SaaS company and on, on, on big organ-organization. It's not just a personal assistant like the other product, like the OpenClou or a Mass or something like that. Uh, all the famous that you know that's, uh, that's like a personal assistant and chatbot that you can interact with them, and they can do for you a task. And we believe that these platforms are not, um, relevant for big organization with identity and multi-tenant, um, and, and, and that's why from the first, uh, step we focused to build it, uh, the architecture and all the, and all the platform to, to focus on, uh, on, uh, organization, and that's it. Yeah. And that-- So this works across all different systems. This is really interesting. So this, this works- Yeah ... this could work with a CRM platform or with- Yeah ... something as complicated as AWS. Yeah. It's required- Yeah ... uh, ten or five minute to define exactly what the agent and what is the MCPs and all the background thing that you need, uh, that you want to expose to the agent. But the engine and the architecture we build, uh, it generate automatically. So it mean that you need to declare about what you want, which agent, why the hierarchy, what the domain expertise of, of each want, but you declare it in a simple way currently in the YAML file, and it's automatically generated and make all the, all the harnessing, uh, for you. Mm-hmm. Wow. And how long have you guys been working on this project? Um, we work, uh, on it, uh, three months, but- Yeah ... um, it take time for us to, to build it because, uh, um, you know, in AI world- Actually, the, the idea, the idea come, come last, uh, uh, half a year. But until we, uh, until we start to, uh, develop, we think a lot of the architecture and how we're gonna do it on the right way. Yeah. So now we are developing three months, but we thought, we thought about the solution, like half a year. Half a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you plan, uh, what's your kind of forward-looking view of it? What do you guys plan to do, uh, going forward with the project? Or what-- Would you like to add other features or, or monetize it or market it in some way? What's the, the forward-looking view for you guys? Yeah. Um, currently, um, we do some marketing to- To, to, to do, to do a validation, we would like to integrate to existing systems and validate our, uh, engine. Um, and in the future we are going to offer, uh, specialized features that will be dedicated to the organization itself. If there is some edge cases that's unique for a specific organization or something like that, we would like to implement it. Um, now our main goal is, um, is to extend it, um, to offer more, uh, specialized features and, and to make it more simple to integrate. Um, to build a new UI that will be easy for them to integrate, and also to ship it more quickly and give the full, uh, the full, you know, the, the full environment that helps you to, to, to, to, to deploy to your organization. That include inside observability tools, and it cl- include inside, uh, the infrastructure, the connected to d- to database to manage the identity, to- Mm-hmm ... to, to do quickly the authorization and the authentication to the existing, uh, systems. So this is what we focus now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So making it more, making it more, uh, uh- Robust, I think. Yeah. Robust and, and giving it different features within the organization. Yeah, exactly. And then what, what types of organiz- what types of organizations or customers do you think, or both people, would get the most value out of, out of this? Who you think are your ideal user? Um, I, I think- We, I, I think ... Mm-hmm. Okay, go. Go on. Go on then. [laughs] No, may- maybe it's contradict from my w- from what I think, so yeah, go ahead. [laughs] Okay. Okay. Uh, okay. So I believe, I believe, uh, for, uh, a lot of companies now, big company are, um, uh, have a lot of domains. Like, if you are in the cybersecurity, they have domain for, uh, you know, cloud security and, um, for, uh, uh, on-prem security and all, all, all the domains. So they have unified UI for all the, all their domains, and maybe sometimes it's gonna be complex, um, to, uh, for a regular user to use a huge, uh, UI with a lot of, um, capabilities for, um, each domain. Um, so we, we really, we really think that the, the, the, the new S- the, the SaaS until now builds, uh, huge, uh, user interfaces. Uh, and feature on top of feature on top of feature. Um, so, uh, now, uh, they want to, uh, make it accessibility more for the, for, for their customer. So it, the, the, the, the big, the, the, the big, the enterprises are, are more ... I think they more need it. Mm-hmm. The bigger enterprises with more complex cloud structures would, uh, would be the, would typically get the most value out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And do you agree with that, Asaf? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think because they offer a lot of features, applications that solve different domains, um, you know, they, they also run, uh, for a long time, so they build layers on top of layers on top of layers. So I think the main idea of the UI, it's to unified, and now the option to inject inside in a widget, it's help also to make it more simple to na- instead of navigate, you can make the ... Uh, we, we don't, we don't believe that it will replace the UI, because still if there is a simple, uh, op- operation that you would like to see, like to review a specific, uh, page, or just to ... You know, sometimes it- it's simple to click instead, instead of just to make a query. But we believe that the heavy thing that's need, or the big process that can offer by the UI, we can replace it now w- with a, with a simple language. Yeah. And this is mo- this is solely through, uh, through simple language? Or you just give it commands? Or you also, you-

You have like a UI layer for your- No, sim-simple la-simple language like you interact with the LLMs, like, uh, OpenAI or- Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. And, um, uh, what kind of ... So HiRey is a, is a social networking platform. What kind of, uh, connections do you think at this stage of your product development or your growth would be most useful to you? Is there ... Yeah. I think the, for now, it's find a, a, a small company, I think maybe a startup that's l- that's, as part of its roadmap is to build a product like that. Um, and, and it can, it can, uh, you know, bet on us that, uh, to take our, to take our, uh, platform and let us, give us the option to prove that, uh, it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So looking to partner with other startups that, that are- Yeah ... that also have a relatively complex cloud infrastructure Yeah. Yeah. We, we think- Design, design partners. Yeah Yeah. We think a lot of startup are building now is product, um, by, uh, f- AI first driven. So, um, they, they ... most of their feature are gonna rely on, uh, uh, AI features. So I, we think, uh, uh ... And, and we know, uh, things like what we're solving are part of the roadmap. Uh, but we need a first connection, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, that's the hardest part for a lot of people, making the right connection at the right time. Yeah. It can make all the difference. Yeah. And, um, where did you guys get your first few users for the, uh, for your product or testers or something like that? Um, we just, uh ... First of all, we have several friend in the industry that they, we ask for them to try it, and also in the Reddit, uh, community. Ah. We ask, uh, some feedback and there is some, uh, uh, some, uh, engineers that are interesting, so they also run the platform integrated to a different mock, uh, UIs. Yeah. Yeah. We currently have a couple contributors that are, um, using the product day by day. They're, they're also helping with the development. So, uh, we got, we, we're getting feedback, uh, from, from the community, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they're like, I'm assuming they're like ... I mean, it's kind of an easy sell to a dev or somebody managing these cloud systems. It's like, "Hey, my product could potentially save you a ton of time," right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Because I think the, the easy way that the, that the product already decide that you want, uh, uh, a, a, a widget inside this platform, and now when the, when the developer teams start to implement it, uh, for them it's the easy way to take it from the, the, the GitHub and start to work on top of it. Because, you know, the, the, the great code, uh, that you got, it's the code that's not written by you, you know? [laughs] [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Or, uh, or at least that are, you know, fully debugged, fully, fully analyzed. Uh, first draft is never perfect. Yeah. And also all the maintenance, you know? Because now we have a compu- a community and contributors, so we can solve quickly bugs and give a, a, a great baseline, uh, to work on top of us. Yeah. Yeah. You need other people to help debug. You're never, you're not really gonna find all of them on your own. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, guys. Well, awesome. Well, yeah, they ... So yeah, that's, that's really all I had for, uh, for us to talk about today. So thank you for taking the time to talk about Xtra and, uh, share a little bit about, you know, your vision for it and where you guys are gonna go and, and connections you'd like to make. Um, are either of you guys on, on X or, or LinkedIn? Yeah. On any social media? Yeah. Only LinkedIn. Oh, LinkedIn? Yeah. Do you want to drop your LinkedIn in the chat, uh, if you got it, or you can put it on Reddit too and I'll, uh, I'll add you guys on there, and then I'll take this interview. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Um- Um, just a moment. I share my LinkedIn account. Yeah. Maybe, maybe you can share with us and, uh, we will send you a connect now. Good idea. Yeah. One sec. I, I have mine up. So I'll, I'll take, uh, a couple clips of this interview and then we'll, uh, we'll, we'll post it, we'll feature it on our HiRey AI, and we'll feature it on our website. So if you guys, uh, could just make a profile on our website, I'll link the, the interview clip, uh, to your profile, and then as new people come into our network, uh, maybe some startup founders that are looking for a product similar to yours, um, we'll try to make that introduction for you. So we're really hoping to help people make useful types of connections. Yeah. Thank you very much. I just want to make sure that I understand it correctly. You, you, you're going to publish it inside the LinkedIn or inside your internal, uh, platform? We'll take, I'll take a clip of it, and I'll post it on X and LinkedIn and on our website. All right. Okay. Yeah. So maybe I will send you a message and you can also, uh, share with me what you, what you publish when it will be- Yeah ... ready. For sure, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'll, I can tag you as well. I can tag you, uh ... I think, I think LinkedIn allows tagging. If you guys have X- Yeah ... I can definitely tag your X handle. Um, and I'll definitely share it with you. I'll share the whole, the whole, uh, video file with you, and I, I can share the clips that I'm gonna share as well. I'll send you a message and share with you there. All right. Okay. Cool. Okay. All right, guys. Cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thank you guys for your time. It was great meeting you guys. I, I love what you guys are doing, and I'm excited to, to try it out and use it and hopefully help you guys, uh, make more connections. All right. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Welcome. Take care, guys. Bye. Bye-bye.

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