SaaS Founder Interview with Haseeb Awan, Founder and CEO of Efani

Tony Zayas 0:04
Hey everybody, it’s Tony Zayas back for another episode of the tech founders show. Thank you for tuning in. This show is the one where we go deep and talk to founders of businesses that are on the cutting edge, really disrupting industries. And we always have great conversations and you get to hear some about some really cool things. Before I introduce this week’s founder, I just want to remind everyone that tomorrow at 11 o’clock Eastern, we will be kicking off our tech throwdown 2021. We’re going to be talking to the three finalists that will be pitching in the evening for our pitch competition. And so if you want to check out that event, and register to to watch, I would be great to have you. So check out insivia.com forward slash tech throwdown 2021. And we’ll see you there tomorrow. So with that, let me tell you a little bit about today’s guest. So we are talking to Hasseb Awan. He is the founder and CEO in EFANI, and EFANI has built a bulletproof mobile plan for important people such as executives, investors, celebrities, etc, to protect them against sim swaps, eavesdropping, or location tracking. So it’s security. And it’s all about keeping people secure on mobile. So with that, let me bring his seat. Hey Hasseb how you doing?

Haseeb Awan 1:38
Hey hello Tony. How are you going?

Tony Zayas 1:38
Very good. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. So your at SaaStr this week.

Haseeb Awan 1:46
That’s right. I’m at SaaStr to grab a spot on the corner to get on this interview.

Tony Zayas 1:52
Very cool. I appreciate you taking time out, be there at the conference. And joining to talk with us. So I would love to hear just to get started Hasseb, how did the idea the concept for EFANI? Where did that start? What is the origin story?

Haseeb Awan 2:12
So audience 20 stake, you know, like a lot of startup I know. It’s like kind of a cliche to say I remember, this was my own problem. But actually it was, I was insult four times. So someone broke into my phone four times. And the reason for that was because I was in crypto for a long time. So people wanted to get into the phone so that they can access crypto to another time they were they were able to pass my phone. But though it was a lot of inconvenience, I had to do a telecom provider. They didn’t know what’s what’s going on. And so all those things and by chatting a telecom engineer, so I realized, like how difficult this problem could be affected? So So I realize is there a market for two security barn people, people who don’t want to go to like regular stores and don’t want to talk to regular people in terms of because of privacy and security reasons. So so that’s why we said that it up. Initially, it wasn’t like, I wasn’t building like a startup startup. It was just more like, okay, you know, I want to protect myself or protect like a side project. And what I realized was that people are looking for privacy and security. So they started reaching out to us connected to myself, can I do this? Can I do this? And now we are very strong team. And then like we are, we have like 1000s of customers right now. And we are you know, like, our churn is massively massively low. Like I think we have like less than 1% churn rate, and our customers are all inbound. So we don’t have any marketing campaign, everything. So we said, we think we found a partner market market, we were able to get like the product market fit, I believe, and we kept growing. So fast forward two years. And now we are dealing with major basketball leagues major, you know, like, celebrity agencies, a lot of like, if you’re important people in the industry, you probably did a very fair chance you may be using a product right now.

Tony Zayas 4:14
Super interesting. And there’s a couple things I want to come back to that you just mentioned, which is great. But I guess before we go, dive in a little bit deeper. What what did the landscape look like when you decided to start EFANI? What as far as you know, mobile security? What did that look like? Because, you know, researching and prepping for today’s discussion, you know, it sounds like there is an issue out there. Mobile is not as secure as most people probably think you have this to provide a solution but what did that look like prior to you launching the business?

Haseeb Awan 4:55
So, so companies did some actions right? Today, we will put a lock on your phone, we will do like. So for consumers who don’t know, our telephone numbers can be swapped, right. Like you can literally go to the store like you know, without taking a name, you can walk into a store and they say, Oh, I’m Haseeb Awan, can you stop my phone, I lost my phone, right? And the person will probably do very less, less verification. Sometimes they’re bribed, sometimes their social engineered, and they will just transfer the number over not just that you can actually do it on the phone to, oh, this is XYZ I lost my phone, can I transfer the number to this, and they happen a lot. So there was research, I think, last year by Princeton University, and they tried hacking into their own phones, and 80% chance of successful. So 80% of time, they tried to get into someone phone, they were able to get into someone phone, by all and they went to all the major carrier. And so that was a massive issue for that I’ve realized this is a massive issue. So long story short, then if you, when we came to this space, we realized that, regardless of whatever you do, there’s always a risk of a human in the process. And the problem that it’s impossible to control that human, because sometimes they are like, you know, not only they are very poorly trained, they are very less paid. And they have no incentive to protect people. They’re only go they make money by time or plant. So like if you walk into a store right now, they’ll say, Oh, we offer you the cheapest cellphone plan. Oh, you talk about security, even Netflix. Oh, I want to talk about oh, we could do a Hulu. Okay. Or I’m talking about security. Oh, can you have a new phone now? Oh, okay. Can you find out this thing today only and then device to secure more people, right? And so we said, okay, you know that that’s not what we want to do, we want to basically focus on a specific niche, which is super important people, right? Who don’t care about Netflix, don’t care about family planets who are able to afford their own cell phone then. So we said, why don’t we not put them in a gimmick come with one plan. So we don’t have to talk to them in terms of changing the plan. Because that causing confusion. That’s where whenever the more more interaction you do your Telecom, to your plan, the more problems that occur, you have to every time you make some changes, you have to go for verifications. So. So there wasn’t like specific thing around that. And the second part was that, how do you ensure the privacy if you look at your current contract, it will stay that we sell your information. That’s part of the contract. So that’s the business model. So I said, if the person who don’t want to be sold, and want to pay for the services, companies have two models to make money. Number one model is by selling selling you. Right, the second model is like, you know, okay, sell to you. So right now the model was okay, I’ll sell Hasseb. We change it or sell it to a Hasseb, which means that he will pay for because ultimately there was something. So there’s two people who are customer for that. Number one, either you pay and security. In other words, telecom provider will sell it to people how to hire better, who will sell it to other people. So we sell it there are people who will not, who would prefer not to be sold. You know. And so we found that niche, and that’s how we keep growing, we are term services say that this is what we do. We secure, not insecure you, you also don’t sell your data. And the third part is hypothetical if something goes wrong, right. So what happened in your current query? Oh, I’m so sorry. This happened. We apologize for the inconvenience, right? But in our case, no, we actually have I’m launching this policy and by Laws of London. So something goes wrong and you have got a lot to cover your locket

Tony Zayas 8:41
Starting out who was the audience that you targeted with with with this approach, because it makes a lot of sense there that is a missing segment right there with the focus being on security and other providers don’t even like you said they’ll say we’ll give you Netflix free will give me this will give you that, but there isn’t a focus on that security side of things. So and I can see that appealing to a lot of people who was the initial you know, audience that when those first customers

Haseeb Awan 9:13
So initially, it was like a lot of people who were who were crypto that’s what started off it. Because sim swap is a very common problem in crypto like you cannot talk to anyone who doesn’t know what sim swapping. If someone is absolutely I’m talking about the majority right the people who are who are the who’s and so that was a major concern right they had covered and not on everything except this one thing which was actually a weakest link. And and then we start and then we realized that a lot of people who are customers but they don’t they don’t use crypto but they are not like influencers who have YouTube channels taken over by himself that he must take a lawyer to the account get take over him that everything is going to telephone number. Social media personality with accounts at everything In telephone, we had diverse lawyers who reached out to us because their, their clients phone were compromised. And there are Uber apps are compromised, you know, so famous taken away from their accounts. So we had like, variety. So I would say like, still 70% People are crypto people, but 30% are like Royals, CEOs of major, you know, fortune 500 companies. I think we have now fortune 500 companies as well. 1400 companies as well. And then celebrities. That’s about it.

Tony Zayas 10:33
That’s very cool. What is the it this was an area that I want to talk a little bit deeper about, what are what’s the underlying technology and process that you guys to really offer that secure environment, as opposed to what other providers do right now, I know you guys, you know, tell most secure mobile service guaranteed? So what is, what unpack some of that for us? I’d love to hear.

Haseeb Awan 10:58
So we have two offerings, right? One it like a basic offering that a lot of people see on the left side, we protect you against sim swapping, we guarantee you for five minute all then we make sure we don’t sell you data. That’s the thing, the one that it’s mostly about. Like the concept is a cold storage. And then we don’t access a lot of data. So we because we have only one plan, the customer only calls for cancellation of a plan. That’s all. So because we don’t give you anything else. So they come to us and Oh, can you offer? No, we don’t. Right. So our interaction with the with the customer is very minimal in that case. And the reason for that is because the moment you have to interact, we have to do a lot of verifications. And that sounds very costly. Like you can walk into a store right now. And you can tell how much bill they have, you know, or you want to upgrade your device, they will do it for you because they have access. That our good. The thing is that it’s very complicated to change anything on your phone. And like what could be oh, I want to update my credit card, which is not like risky item. But if you want to make any changes to our account on our side, you have to go to a lot of hoops, which means that you may have to go to not just you also have to go to you know you’re not right, right. And so we will tell you to maybe lawyer to verify stoning, right, we may modify your video video environment that you are right now, we can just check all your stress, like no one is holding a gun to your head, right. So we make sure that’s happening, we may ask you to give you a call to your someone that you have all put on the thing. Some people have given lawyer numbers, we have to talk to the lawyer. Some people have to like their teams were taking a security, you have to verify through them to make any changes. So that’s what it is about our customers that don’t leave that few customer will off because they move out of country or they were not the right fit. So we said you’re not the right fit, like you know, I think we will move you to a better service study that fits your needs. Because they were mostly price conscious or not a security conference they thought they were but that our interaction with the customer is very low. So that’s basically help us in making sure that we verify them to anything possible that we can so we go through a lower layer of step probability verification process, if you have to go through for every consumer, you will have a choke, that company will choke down, because they can’t do it. Because they have their systems are very complicated all they care to everyone, we give it to two very important people. That’s the difference. And that’s one thing for second thing is we have a superior superior offering, which is our Blacksil protection. And what did it like a thing about like the firewall. And so rather than having an app on the phone, you can do a lot of setting on the on the firewall. So we have we provided much more data than any average consumer I telecom provider will provide it to you. And the problem with that is even if you provide it to every consumer. Number one, he doesn’t care. Number two, he doesn’t do what what to do with it. So what we have done is we kind of offer white glove service, we take care of all the information we asked him, Tony, do you want to block your spam calls and you say I want to check my spam call look at the three that spam call, which one were blocked? You want to block all the spoof calls, which are potentially could be a spam call, or you want to block an unknown number or you want to block you know, wipe numbers. So these are the common types of are we so you can have multiple options. We can go through the process with you and we can tell you number part is you say Tony, I live in like monopolist Right? Or you live in San Jose, or San Francisco. Do you want us to do anything if you leave this area? Right? And you say oh, yes, you know what, I’m never going to leave this area and like, if I leave, I need to inform someone that’s for high securities people. So they will say oh, if this person left Beverly Hills inform this person, right? So we can do that. We can do this by like, you know, doing some something interesting on the phone. And it’s the you don’t have to install any app on the phone. That’s the most beautiful part. So imagine you’re in a room. And someone, this is mostly for fighters and hospitals, where someone just walked into the office and did a DDoS attack, like, I mean, the signal jumped everyone. And now the person does not know who to call. So we can inform external security in that, hey, this person had been compromised right now. Or we can tell you someone and listen to your call. So we can tell you this person right now is being compromised in this specific country. So we can take the all there and we give it give it to build. Now, as I said, it doesn’t apply to majority the people. That’s why we don’t offer publicly. So and, and very specific people you need it. So based on everyone requirement, we set it up in that way. So on top of technology, we are able to process signals, and you’re able to do anything. So it’s not something that carriers cannot do is just about markets I didn’t want to talk about like you, like not every doctor has come with a bulletproof prediction. But what we do is we basically take the existing bullet points right at telecom network, and we focus on making bulletproof, we give it a bulletproof solution.

Tony Zayas 16:21
That’s really interesting. You know, obviously, you have a very careful verification process. It’s manual, it’s hands on. And like you said, you make people have to jump through hoops to go through some of this stuff, which is interesting, because it sounds like you know, when you think about a typical business model, it’s always about making things as easy and as simple and as frictionless for the user. Right? But in your case, you’re kind of doing the opposite, but for a very good reason. So that’s just as interesting to me. And I would like to hear a little bit about that. You said a less than 1% churn rate, which is pretty amazing. What do you attribute to that? Do you guys do some things? Obviously, the service lives up to you know what you’re selling it on. But in addition to that, what else would you attribute to the churn rate being so incredibly low?

Haseeb Awan 17:20
I think I think the best part that we have guys, I think the one thing we have, number one is product market fit, right? We don’t onboard everyone, we don’t promise you, green and give you blue, we offer you only one thing security, that’s all. Now the problem with that security is that it’s underappreciated, because everything is working fine. You don’t know if security we’re working better, or you never been attacked. Right? So that’s like, it’s like anything. But what we do is we communicate with the customer very, very clean, like you know, very transparent. And the second part, what we did is we have a very good customer service, if you call right now 85555 EFANI, you will be greeted by someone locally. And who will basically listen to your concern rather than Oh, press one for this, press two for this press for this. And then after one a half an hour, you basically get to know you call right now you connect to someone right now based in the US who will be able to fix your problem for right now within minutes with the people like it. People can text, they can literally text or they use like messaging apps to do it. And so response time is less than five minutes. Right? If you cause less than 30 seconds, so that’s why people like using through people prefer it. So for churn rate the people who churn we had multiple reasons right? And it said like a lot of people because of COVID They went abroad and they never came back. And they were not coming back to us obviously. It doesn’t make sense to to have our services that’s one thing we what they did. The other thing that they liked is in that refer you don’t confuse you. We literally send I think probably zero emails to our customers. After they signed up. You don’t bother them. Hey, upsell this a buy this. We have new offer. No. And we don’t give like discounts to people. Okay, we have uh oh, it’s a 24 hour left for this discount. No, we don’t give that. We said this is a price man. Don’t bother us with the price. Let’s focus on just on security. And other part that I think customers like is transparent pricing. We have one price include taxes and everything. $91 per month, boom, you don’t have to pay anything on top. And oh, it’s not like oh, my plan and we’re gonna have to do this month. No, we just have one price regardless of wherever you are in the US. And so people like that a lot. And frankly, when the phone people do need customer service, or sometimes will cause Oh, hi this question about this thing and we’re happy to help them out. So, so churn rate is I think purely about mainly in customer service and a simple product rather than over complex people don’t have to think about right? Secure the most secure cellphone service and that’s what you pay for it.

Tony Zayas 20:06
Yeah. And that’s just on ticket to notes here. And when I wrote down its simplicity, right you guys offer, basically, you offer a very secure experience, you offer one price, and that top notch support. How many iterations? Like, how how long did it take you to figure out that offering that that was the fit for this market? And given what you’re what you’re offering? Did it take some trial and error to offer different service plans and were you following up with multiple touches at one point? Or how did how did you get to this simple model? Or did you get it right early on?

Haseeb Awan 20:48
I was lucky, we got it earlier on, because we started to try to add pricing. And I figured out this is not like $100 per month with after $100 Psychology changes, you know, so it’s less than $100 $99. And that’s one thing thing thing I like to simplicity, but I don’t like it, when you walk into a store, or you walk into and you will buy like I’m in hotel, right? So I’ll block into a little the $100 for this and it all and then $2 For this, like what the hell is this man? Like, just put put him in, right? Like, why do you frustrate people? Like, I don’t know, if you walked into like us? Like, if you seen like, the expensive hotel, like, you know, five star and it was like all the $10 Like, internet chart, like what do you mean men? Like, you know, this is stability, right? Like, I’m paying this much for this much. And now you’re telling me this money? It’s just frustrating. It’s either customers want one thing they don’t have to think about the more you ask people to think the less years and the chances of conversions are. So we just make customers two decisions. Number one, do you need security? And can you pin it and all of that to decisions? And now that Oh, okay. You know, how much minutes do I need? Oh, no one knows how much money they need? How much data they need? So you don’t know, do you need this much? Oh, so why don’t we muddle everything in one thing, and let’s make money on big. Earlier on, we had thoughts about like, offering multiple plan as in, oh, can you have a family plan, and can we have this? I think we could have done that. Like, you know, the only thing that basically stopped us from doing that is the illusion of rent. Because if some people it just confusion right now you have to think about someone else will distract you from the core mission security. Can you make money by offering Netflix right? Oh, yes, you can. But why would you? Why would people not buy from Netflix directly? Like what’s your value proposition here. So I think it’s about diluting brand. And making things simple. There has been thoughts about like, you know, changing business model around for enterprises, mostly not for consumer where you can just pay them per line, and then they pay a bucket. But what we have seen in the company is like, you know, the more simple you make it for the buyer, the better it is. And I’m not a fan of like, multiple pricing, especially for individuals. Because it just maybe later down the road, but we said okay, we are comfortable with this. And frankly, if no one if someone cannot in any order, we believe that he may search for a better service or cheaper service in the better way and and later on. So why retain that customer to begin with?

Tony Zayas 23:38
So it’s interesting, you know, you guys are a technology solution and business but that that one on one, customer support is so important, right? Delivering a top notch experience. How did you go about growing the business on that side with with the support? Because you’ve mentioned a couple of times how, you know, you can text people there? You have local contacts, representatives, how did you grow out that part of the business? And what were the some of the challenges involved there?

Haseeb Awan 24:14
I think the one thing is what what happened with our case was that in in our case, mostly word that having Tony bought us subscribe to the cell phone provider. And you were so excited about it. Right? Like oh my god, I bought like XYZ company plan today. No, no one read about it. And I think the the inspiration came from a movie called Forbes a Ferrari. I don’t know if you’ve watched the movie, but they said open people buy Ford. They don’t, so the competition was Ford versus Ferrari. Right. One of the Ford statement said that oh, we should be have a Mustang right. We should watch a Mustang. or something like that, but like a really nice car, and I think they will lock Mustang and they wanted for something like that. But anyways, the one the word that resonates to me when people buy Mustangs right? They show off, right? Oh, I bought a Mustang. But when you buy like a regular Ford car you don’t go out and post on Facebook Oh, I got Ford, right the regular Ford but when you buy a Ferrari, you do talk to people. So we said that our customers I think some people, the customers have referred other people something like crazy number of people. So they spoke to the people and they did tell me person people did refer other so we have massively NPS massive good NPS. So when people talk about product, they tweet about us. Right when they are in a region because our so one thing we have in the call it like cell phone plans are different. They have different priority support, we work on one of the highest priority support, they get like a first round experience on on on a plane, right? You don’t know it because every consumer does not have an does not know how first class is. But in cellphone you don’t know how first classes right because it’s difficult. But when you’re in a concert, and your phone’s not working the second person Oh, okay. Okay. Why is your phone working? Because I’m on EFANI, right? But oh, Tony, like your phone? Okay. Oh, you are on family plan. Okay, so final plans are deprioritize. Right? So they let first class people go first, and then they go with like 2 billion cheaper plant. So that’s the first thing that happened. Secondly, whenever the sim swap attack or the attack on someone’s phone, and the people who tweet about it, oh, oh, sorry, you didn’t had EFANI? So that’s what people talk about. The cell phone is something that if you have to run with one thing right now, one thing that will be a cell phone, before you will put on the shoes is the chatter fire. So that’s how personal cell phones are right now. If you have one chance to leave, you will definitely the only thing you will pick up. So it’s a very dear. And I think that’s very, very critical to our success that how can you keep everyone open? Like, I think I was involved in the first four or 500 activations. I used to talk to every customer onboard them myself. And that helped me understand the customer psyche, they were surprised Oh, how was he was coming to the to the number one, we didn’t have a bigger team. And the second thing was I wanted to learn about why they switch. And what’s the reasoning behind the product. So they want to think about the product, they gave me a lot of feedback about the product, how we can improve and everything. So I personally have believed is that if you customer service itself is a big product. Like if you build a product in any niche, you literally copy the product and just provide better customer service. Right? You know, you will basically have a have a nice, nice, nice return on that product, like this internet service, right? Like how miserable our internet businesses are when things go down. But if no one wants to talk to a bot for half an hour and one hour. But if you have a better customer service, internet, there are a lot of market fire.

Tony Zayas 28:22
Yeah, that’s great. So you said you mentioned the referral business? So So is that how you generate most of your new new customers is through referrals. And what other marketing are you guys doing? Because it’s a very focused audience that you guys are targeting. So I’d be curious to hear what you’re doing there.

Haseeb Awan 28:41
Correct. Correct. Correct. So I basically have on the referral business, we actually don’t have like a formal referral program. I think we just launched one like last week. We have like Eclipse or like, you know, give them the incentive to our customer to refer other customers. But before that, we had literally no referral programs. So like it’s not like we had but customer referring us like even if you want to right now or Facebook right now and you say what’s the most secure secretaries? I need a better secure cellphone service, you will be referred to finally the 99% chance to be referred to EFANI. Ask anyone in social media and who the customer the people who are doing it. So when you go to like, oh, I want a better cell phone service, there’ll be three options. Like okay, well chipsets went through the roof 20 often but if you go for secure cell phone service, there are only one option that does and that’s the niche that you want to claim. So we only focus very specific on on, on marketing and we actually focus on how to help a customer without them using our service and that actually helps us out a lot. So if Tony comes to us even say I want to be a customer, we say why you want to be a customer, you’re not the right fit and then Tony had to qualify why he the right fit. So it does two things. Number one, maybe we are able to disqualify Tony and help them better. You know, maybe the are not the right fit for them, they’re the last chance and like 99% cases are not the right fit for a customer, so we just refer them to the right places. This is, oh, I’m having spam calls, we can maybe tell you a better solution for a fine for spam called, oh, I don’t want to know who I am. Like, I’m just example. Right? We are not the right fit. And we are not in the business of hiring people, we are in a business of protecting people identity. So so we just try to genuinely help out a person as we are, as they find even other solutions. So our teams do not have like a quota you have to meet or something. So we have zero quotas in our company. And our customer service people or anyone who picks up the call, they’re specifically told that don’t sell them anything that they don’t need. And if you find a customer in our in our thing that talking, oh, you got onward, but he’s not the right fit. We just tell him that. Hey, Tony, you’re not the right fit for us. If you’re trying to achieve this, you can do this by doing this thing. And a really simple example, we have the best roaming services in the world. If you have a finding your best roaming experience in the world, period. And people come to us Oh, I like this from experience. I can have it I said Yeah, absolutely. But the problem is roaming experience is the byproduct. Our first article security, the security concerns, you are not. just coming for, like for this one pool. And I’ll give you a simple example. If you go into a hotel because they pull it good. And but your room is not the right fit for them. You should not get them into your hotel, because they may not say again. So just focus on what you’re calling the kid and other products and by product.

Tony Zayas 31:46
Yeah, that’s really interesting. It almost kind of reminds me of like the American Express black card, right? There’s a certain level of exclusivity to it, you have to meet the requirements and all of that. And by having it there’s something that, Haseeb still there?

Haseeb Awan 32:04
Yes, I’m here. Yes. Or did you okay. So yeah.

Tony Zayas 32:11
But there’s that level of exclusivity. And it’s not, you know, you’re disqualifying people before bringing them out if they’re not a right fit. So you’re really focused on getting that right user, that right customer on board. And then I would imagine that’s part of why your churn rate is so low.

Haseeb Awan 32:31
Yesterday, I think my camera did shut down. Okay, I just, that’s correct. We actually work on on like, even if you’re going to website, you cannot buy the product, our second product, you cannot buy it, you have to get qualified for it. And a lot of us, oh, I want to buy it online, I say no, because that’s not for you, right? Like how would like a black card that you mentioned, right, that gives you access to a lot of lounges and everything, you have to pre qualify now they’re pre called 16 core as gifts, and you have to have a credit score and everything. And that’s different. But in our case, we made it in white only just for our own sanity. Because you don’t want to onboard like people who are not the right fit, and they cause problems for you in the future. So we may have compromised on growth a bit. But it’s okay that if we can serve the people that we have, right now, the better. So I personally am a fan of third letter litter people like third level number of people, but serve them really, really well. And just be the best for whatever you want to do. Regardless of the bigger market or not like incentives to start the company wasn’t to make a lot of money. It incentive was to help people and to make sure that whatever your core audience is that you are the better option for them.

Tony Zayas 33:44
That’s awesome. So let’s see, what is the team look like? Obviously, you guys, you know, are here for a really unique business. One that there’s such a wide utilization for I mean, everyone’s got a mobile device, right? And you have this really targeted audience and serving them you know, really delivering on that those promises that simple promises of the brand, super important. So what is what does the team look like? And how do you attract people who are a good fit for EFANI?

Haseeb Awan 34:16
So I think all the onboarding happened, it was mostly inbound people who came from referrals. Now we are lucky and we have a lot of customers. So they are for us more people. Right? So we actually our our history was we started with our with our customer funded around two so when we want to raise money we went by then customers were 80% of our field of warranty personal round. So and then we said okay, we need 20% outside capital so we can get them outside. Some outside, you know, intellectual and intellectual and similar for hiring to we ask our customers and I think in the next five years, I believe 80% of the higher would be our customers.

Tony Zayas 35:02
Oh, wow. Very cool. Um, what what is on the roadmap here for EFANI? For the next 12 months? What are you guys looking to do any new product offerings or enhancements?

Haseeb Awan 35:18
So I think our blacks in production is it’s a product, new product that we have, again, invite only, which is very popular among us to enterprise it right now. So that will be our focus for the next solid month. People like visualization like even though you’re protected, a lot of people will say, Oh, how will I know that unprotected, right? So you have to have some kind of reminders. That’s one thing that we want to do, we want to build a credit score around telephone numbers, and you put telephone number, you get a credit score of how secure your number is, based on multiple factors, right, like, you know, which phones are using? How often have you changed? How old is the number, can every company selling information, there’s no so your information publicly available regardless. So if we can find the information and create like, a social score for you, where you can put any telephone number, and if we’re telling you how secure the number is, and I think therefore would be used by major like, you know, like for two FA OTP. So if let’s similar to a credit score, if it’s too low, you will not call it our credit card, similar to a bank, and you put your telephone number and the telephone numbers and security may say, Oh, this number, we cannot use that number because it’s an unsecure number. Right, there’s a high chance of risk of hacking. So I think if we turn that into and we give people your score for free, I think that can turn into a kind of a good growth hack for us, where people will just check the score for free other option we are thinking about it. Talking about blockchain like you know, we can we come from crypto backgrounds, a lot of block and play that we do. So we are establishing an EFANI Lab, which which future should be officially announcing in a week or so about like, you know, how can we incorporate blockchain and you the solution that we can? Because like the problem with the blockchain, is that not a problem, but it’s like a black and white, right? Either you are in the system or your older sister can declare them hybrid solution for that. And I think the other part would be, can we set up like a service, which a couple of services exist for your social security number, but can we set up a service directory, monitor your telephone number on the dark web, and inform you whenever your data breach has been found with your number, and if you get a text message, it’s only today, you had this account this way, and they got this today. So maybe you want to change your password there. So just purely context, on specifically on that, to give you a couple of offerings, or other than that, like building a better dashboard, where we can tell you Hey, Tony, you had 20 attack this month, we predicted ours, 20 of them, right? 20 of your people have unsecured line, this event to have a standard Awatere. Someone’s trying to track this friend of yours, trying to find your location. And to all those kinds of statistics, we can provide it to you.

Tony Zayas 38:07
That’s that’s exciting stuff. So is that when when you see that, you know that equivalent of a credit score, when do you see that being said, you can watch

Haseeb Awan 38:20
our frankly, we have been that incompetent on my personal site that I was unable to liquidate so far. Because number one, like you know, brands were going like we grew to on time last year. So it was like difficult for us to cope up with something that’s growing, and then you have something. But now that we are thinking about like know what the next one must do? I think we’ll start with a simple service data breach. We have all right, we have made all the ingredients that we haven’t launched it for professionally, because I wasn’t sure about the score. And I don’t want to give people random scores. Do you want to be sure about what is called mechanism? Can we want to make it very transparent. That’s how we determine the score. And I think in the first few months, it will be absolutely incorrect, it will be like not, it will be like in a lot of false positive a lot of false negatives. So what we’ll do, we’ll keep on improving your customers right now and see how it performs. So we can tell you if your credit scores drop, like I’ll give you a simple example. Our telephone number is identity identity. Right? If this is one thing that if you sign up for a mobile app, you give your telephone number, you sign it for Vimeo like any Venmo sorry, Venmo or any APR or any telephone number. So if your telephone number get compromised, you’re basically screwed up. So can we just take this one problem? And that’s what we are doing. So we have other ideas that how the products I think within next three months, we should have something out there for people to see and test out their scores.

Tony Zayas 39:45
That’s exciting. That’s very cool. So how can I how can people who are tuned in interested, learn more about EFANI as well as follow you in your journey? You know, we’re sure they check out social media left side

Haseeb Awan 40:04
Sure, sure, sure. so my username on, I’m pretty open on Facebook and Twitter. So my username on Twitter as Haseeb H A S double E B. Our social media handles that are refining. So wherever you ask EFANI, it will come if you type secure cell phone service, we will we will come up. If you ask anyone on if you forget our name, for some reason, just go on Google and or type word some more secure cell phone service or ask on social media what most signals and you will be referred back to us. So that’s the easy ask to do. But Haseeb H A S double E B, that’s my username on Twitter, you can follow same on Facebook. Other than that, for a company, we do have EFANI username that you can use. And you can basically follow us. For someone who’s interested, First of all, they should learn it actually because if they have a specific question, I’m pretty active on core to this question, they can reach out to us and we can tell them if how can you solve this problem? So come up with the problem and tell them this is this is problem solving, because there’s a chance you may not be able to solve the problem. Like it’s not possible for us to work with Facebook app like you know, if you’re sharing all the information, okay? Facebook, take that, obviously, if you’re giving information to them, they will publish it. We can’t help you with that. But what we can help you we tell you, this is what we can do this what we cannot do. EFANI.com. There’s a contact us form. There’s a chat on the website, too. And you can call 855555 EFANI anytime, and we’ll take care of you.

Tony Zayas 41:29
It’s awesome. Last question to wrap things up is, you know, this being our tech show, what is the tech and I know you have a background and you talked a little bit about crypto and some other things. But I would love to hear from you, especially given what you do and your background. What what is the one technology that you’re most excited about as it emerges over the next three years? Let’s say

Haseeb Awan 41:58
One technology one technology is tough, right? Because of your bias right? I think if you’re asking one thing I’ll be biased or not mine and it’s going to be cybersecurity. And the reason why I’m saying it because if you think about it we have spent like as an American that like any country we expend a lot of money on or our on our like buying Arsenal like tanks and planes and everything right? While our core systems are compromised for very little cost so it’s not just the bullets are not flying around. It doesn’t mean that there’s no war. So if you want to destroy a country you can literally go into the system and destroy and cyber attack them. And it’s super easy right? You may not be able to talk like a bigger thing but you can attack supply chains you can attract like you know miss abilities you can you can destroy someone communication system, which is by hacking into that. So why do you need to spend like plans or like these expensive plans and everything because while you can do that, so I think it will be like right now we hear about attack and you don’t even know who it is. Right? And you don’t know who you’re paying so you may be having paying a ransom to the person who’s actually you’re making a strong strengthening them. So think about it like you know you have one of the corporation in US got attacked and all the all the pyro went down, power went down. Right? So how do you take care of that? And cognition who did it? First of all, they jam your system but now they’re asking for money when you put a new give them a million dollars. And now so you funded their next mission. Right so cybersecurity become only because there are no physical damage doesn’t mean that there no appetite in cybersecurity become massive. Right now, no country is taking seriously. But why don’t I believe that there’ll be a cybersecurity army of us in the next 5 10 years, where you have a stiff division of your army that okay, Navy, Air Force Base, and then you know, like ground force and then you have affection for cybersecurity, where us have to destroy anyone, they will not tender fruit, we will not send our men there, we’ll just attack them from the from sitting in us in our house and having very little collateral damage.

Tony Zayas 44:19
Yeah, super interesting stuff. In great insight. And, yeah, as you said, you know, obviously you’re biased, perhaps because this is the field you’re in, but I do think that’s a big wake up call. I think you see more and more headlines every day about you know, things that are happening in the cybersecurity space breaches, big organizations, governments, etc, that you never would have imagined this would happen. So, yeah, that’s a interesting thought. I think there’s a lot we’re gonna see. But really appreciate you having you on today. So Haseeb Awan, from EFANI thank you so much, again for joining today. Really appreciate your time. Time and insights and keep keep doing great work for those. Yeah, you’re very welcome. For everyone joining. Thank you for tuning again. We will see you again next week. And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow if you’re interested in watching our tech throwdown. Thanks again to see everyone have a great day and take care. We’ll see you guys next time.

Haseeb Awan 45:23
Thank you. Bye bye