Conversation With Erad Fridman, CEO at Fluxon
Founded in 2017, product development company Fluxon is the brainchild of former Google and other tech companies’ leaders. The San Francisco-based company helps high-growth startups and companies including the likes of Google, Zapier, and Stripe build innovative products by providing advice and strong technical leadership. Additionally, it also builds its own products — Dory, a real-time Q&A application for events. With offices in the US, Ukraine and Canada, Fluxon started operations in India in 2019. In a conversation with Analytics India Magazine, CEO Erad Fridman talks about the technology behind Fluxon and the company’s plans for India. Erad is a product leader with more than 15 years of experience in developing platforms, UX and design. Starting coding at the age of 6 years, Erad had earned both his Computer Science and Mathematics degrees and led a software engineering team in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office by 19. He has a dual Masters Degrees in Finance and Business Administration at Boston College. Before Fluxon, he led a team of product managers, engineers, and designers at Google and was the VP of Product at Planet.com. As CEO at Fluxon, Erad sets and executes the company strategy and vision, ensuring the right decisions are made to support that strategy. He takes care of hiring individuals and pairing them with interesting problems for them to work on. Edited excerpts from the conversation: AIM: What products have you helped build in Fluxon? Erad Fridman: Together with our CPO, Jen Gil, we stay involved in all our product work. I’m especially excited by projects where we are the primary development team – for example, Pluto — an online in-browser spatial 3D experience for meetups and video chats, and Eraser — a virtual meeting canvas built for remote team collaboration. I also stay closely involved in the development of Fluxon-owned products such as Dory – a real-time Q&A app for events. AIM: Explain the tech stack at Fluxon. Erad Fridman: At Fluxon, we make modern, pragmatic technology choices. We build fast, and a big part of what enables that is our technology choices. We favour managed services because they free the developer team from operational concerns to focus more on the product. We rely on Cloud platforms and heavily leverage services such as Google’s Cloud Run and Cloud PubSub to build scalable yet easy to operate applications. AIM: What tech tools do you use at Fluxon? Erad Fridman: We enjoy working with modern frontend frameworks such as React or Angular. For mobile applications, we’re typically working with cross-platform frameworks such as React Native, dropping into the native layer when needed for specific use cases. We work with a variety of database technologies, including Firebase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, ElasticSearch, and others. AIM: What makes Fluxon expand to India? Why do you think this is the right time to expand your footprint in the Indian market? Erad Fridman: We started operations in India in 2019 and were impressed by its strong technical talent, great schools and growing startup culture. AIM: Who is your target audience in the Indian market? Have you acquired any clients in the Indian market yet? Erad Fridman: We work with high-growth startups and enterprise companies all over the world. Many of Fluxon’s current clients are based in Silicon Valley, but there are lots of impactful business opportunities for us to work on in India. We are already working on exciting projects with Indian companies such as iMerit, an AI training startup. AIM: How do you differentiate from your competitors? Erad Fridman: Fluxon’s differentiator is our team. We attract and grow the best talent to deliver products with the highest quality and speed. Amongst startups and VCs, we’re well-known as a top development firm. We take ownership and approach every project with a founder’s mentality. Our clear, open and frequent communication style is paramount to driving success. AIM: What are your strategies to make it big in the Indian market? Erad Fridman: A clear vision is key to our success in India. We select interesting work that keeps our teams challenged and continuously learning new technologies, and our clients leverage our team’s expertise to build inspiring products. AIM: Are you looking to hire tech talent here? What are the key skills that you are betting on? Erad Fridman: We see India as a critical market for taking Fluxon to our next stage of growth. Our goal is to add 1,000 employees to our team in India over the next few years. We’re primarily hiring technical folks in functions across engineering, product and design and seek out highly motivated individuals that have the intellectual flexibility and growth mindset needed to collaborate across domains. AIM: What are the few things that India’s tech talent can learn from their western counterparts and vice-versa? Erad Fridman: We all can learn from each other. We hire humble and curious people who are passionate about their work and support each other. We encourage continuous learning through both our client work and education benefits. We work hard to ensure all projects are well-documented and best practices are shared back with the wider team. AIM: How do you think companies can address the shortage of tech talent in India and globally? Erad Fridman: There are a few strategies we have seen an increase over the past year, including bulk hiring, acqui-hiring, market expansion and improving benefit and perk packages. All of these have benefits and downsides – there is really no magic bullet. At Fluxon, our strategy has always been to hire the best technical talent there is, which we believe attracts more great people and exciting projects for them to work on. AIM: What does the road ahead look like for Fluxon in the Indian market? Erad Fridman: Over the next few years, we will continue expanding our team and client work in India. We’re soon expanding into a new office space in Hyderabad, which will accommodate more than 100 team members. Next year, we plan to add a second location in Bangalore as our team grows further.
San Francisco-based Fluxon provides high-growth companies and startups advice and technical leadership.
San Francisco-based Fluxon provides high-growth companies and startups advice and technical leadership.
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["PostgreSQL", "Elasticsearch", "Go", "AI", "Scala", "RAG", "Aim", "analytics", "SQL", "R"]
["AI", "analytics", "Aim", "RAG", "Elasticsearch", "PostgreSQL", "R", "SQL", "Go", "Scala"]
After diving deep into the Indian startup ecosystem, Debolina is now a Technology Journalist. When not writing, she is found reading or playing with paint brushes and palette knives. She can be reached at debolina.biswas@analyticsindiamag.com