Ghazenfer Mansoor is the CEO of Technology Rivers, a Virginia-based firm that helps startups and healthcare organizations build compliant, AI-powered software through a structured product strategy approach. Under his leadership, the company has developed nearly 60 apps across industries, with a focus on healthcare and AI-driven productivity.
Originally from Pakistan, Ghazenfer’s early adoption of emerging technologies such as Java led to a career in the US, pioneering roles in mobile app development, and eventually founding Technology Rivers. He is also the author of Beyond the Download, where he shares practical strategies for app growth and innovation.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [03:44] How a unique veterans’ program kick-started Ghazenfer Mansoor’s tech career
- [06:10] Why choosing emerging tech like Java can be life-changing
- [08:05] How expertise in new tech opens global opportunities
- [11:33] The early mobile experience that led to Ghazenfer’s startup success
- [15:32] Why focusing on one venture is crucial for entrepreneurs
- [16:54] Insights on building products for others versus launching startups
- [20:01] How AI can make teams ten times more productive
- [24:13] AI tools top developers are using right now
- [27:34] How to stand out in the future job market
In this episode…
Staying ahead in a fast-changing tech world is no easy feat, especially when innovation often outpaces the ability to keep up. What does it take to transition from humble beginnings to making a real impact in the modern tech landscape? And with AI revolutionizing industries at breakneck speed, how do today’s leaders prepare themselves and their teams for the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead?
Ghazenfer Mansoor tackled these challenges head-on by embracing emerging trends before they hit the mainstream. Growing up in poverty in Pakistan, Ghazenfer leveraged unique educational opportunities to build a foundation in computers, then differentiated himself by mastering Java just as it was becoming a market disruptor. This decision not only opened doors to a career in the US during the dot-com boom but also allowed him to pivot successfully into mobile app development before the smartphone era exploded. Through lessons learned from his first startup, he pivoted to founding Technology Rivers, helping startups, especially in healthcare, develop compliant, AI-powered software. Currently, Ghazenfer focuses on leveraging AI tools to increase productivity tenfold, ensuring his team stays ahead by integrating the latest technologies into every layer of their workflow.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Ghazenfer Mansoor, CEO of Technology Rivers, about building a future-proof career in technology. Ghazenfer shares strategies for spotting emerging trends, integrating AI into technical and non-technical roles, and differentiating yourself in a competitive marketplace. He also explores continuous learning, productivity, and creating apps that users truly love and keep.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Ghazenfer Mansoor: LinkedIn | Website
- Technology Rivers
- Lessons From the Leap
- Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day by Ghazenfer Mansoor
Quotable Moments:
- “If you want to stand out, pick something unique where you’re one of the few or only people who have done it.”
- “AI is going to disrupt every industry, so start learning more and more AI, don’t assume your field is immune.”
- “We set a goal for everyone: be 10x more productive by leveraging AI tools in every part of our business.”
- “When you wake up every day and it’s not your focus, you risk losing opportunities. Focus is everything in startups.”
- “You may be the best in your country, but real competition starts when you go to the Olympics, that’s what coming to America felt like.”
Action Steps:
- Stay curious and proactively learn new technologies: Continually explore and experiment with emerging tools to stay relevant and seize new opportunities.
- Specialize and differentiate yourself in your field: Focus on a unique, in-demand skill or technology to stand out and unlock career-defining opportunities.
- Leverage AI tools to boost productivity: Use AI in daily workflows to complete tasks faster and meet rising demands efficiently.
- Share knowledge and collaborate within your network: Host regular knowledge-sharing sessions to accelerate team learning and drive innovation.
- Focus deeply on chosen projects or goals: Prioritize one main objective at a time to maximize progress and impact.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to stay current in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape. My guest today is Ghazenfer Mansoor. He’s a technologist who’s got years of experience in various different areas in technology. He keeps his finger on the pulse of all the changes that are happening.
I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:21
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:38
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, every week we have fascinating smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
And if you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes. Check those out. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses to connect to and give to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that by helping them to run their podcast.
We are the easy button for any company to launch and run a podcast. And in fact, we’ve even invented a platform called Podcast Copilot, which is being called the Wix or Squarespace of B2B podcasting. So go to our website rise25.com and you can learn all about what we do over there. All right.
My guest today is Ghazenfer Mansoor. He’s the founder and CEO of Technology Rivers, a Virginia-based firm that helps startups and healthcare organizations build compliant, AI-powered software using a rigorous product strategy approach. And he was originally born in Pakistan and relocated to the United States in 1999, largely in fact, on his expertise in Java, which was a really emerging technology at the time. And there’s a great lesson behind that about picking an emerging trend, a new technology, not yesterday’s technology, but the next technology. And so if you can use that in your career, it can be extremely valuable for you.
So I’m really excited to have you here today. And so first of all, we’re going to get into talking about AI and sexy topics and stuff like that. But you said you were born to a poor family in in Pakistan. Talk a little bit about what that upbringing was like growing up in a, you know, a poor family in Pakistan.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 02:27
Yeah. So thanks for having me on this show. Really excited. So yeah, growing up in poverty, obviously you go through many challenges, and but that pushes you in terms of doing certain things. So for example, you don’t have the same money for buying lunch or getting that luxury that the people around you may have it.
So what do you do? You find ways to make money. And I started doing that by doing some tutoring. I was teaching other kids math. So I was good in math in my school.
I was teaching math even at the same level. And then in college when I was doing math and statistics, I was teaching others math and statistics. So those were the other opportunities that I found because of being in a poor environment. So and we all hear that like poverty pushes you towards or when you don’t have stuff, you will find ways to innovate.
John Corcoran: 03:33
Yeah. How did you, you know, find your way then to computers? When, you know, a lot of times poor families don’t have the money to get access to computers.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 03:44
So I was lucky. My father was retired Army. So? So there was a program that was launched by. A company that was offered to the kids of the veterans.
So the Veterans Administration in Pakistan. Called Fauji Foundation. They sponsored. The diploma. So the diploma was from a company in UK. It’s MCPs diploma. So I had to go through the process. I gave the. IQ test and I got elected.
So that one year diploma set the foundation for me. So. Learning the basic things about the basics computer, even accounting and everything. So the one-year diploma, I still feel like that was the foundation that helped me. Up until now.
John Corcoran: 04:34
It’s like here in the States, like my grandfather was an Air Force. In the Air Force. And he did the VA program where he paid for his college. After coming back from World War two. So it’s kind of like that, but for the next generation.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 04:49
So, there was somebody, ex-army person who started this institute and his first client was he sold it to the Fauji Foundation. And so that was the deal. So the. The Fauji Foundation was paying, and it was only available to all. All the kids of a certain age.
So luck was it so? And was there at the right time.
John Corcoran: 05:16
And you discovered that you had a knack for technology. You like technology, you know. Playing with computers and things like that. Experimenting, building things on computers.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 05:26
Yeah. I always love new things. So whatever I’m doing, I feel like I want to learn this. Additional part and computer was I saw in my school, but it was only limited to. One like very few people, nobody knew how to.
The school had computers, but only a couple. Of people could use it. There was no training so I looked at it. But then I got this opportunity. That just opened up the door for me.
John Corcoran: 05:54
Yeah. So. And you actually, I don’t know if this was the same program. You ended up getting your master’s degree and you decided to do your final, final program in Java, which was a new programming language at the time. Talk a little bit about that decision.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 06:10
Right. So right after the diploma I got into, I started a job. And that’s from there. I realized that in order to move up, I need to get a degree because a diploma is still like in those countries, a diploma is still like a degree is really important. So I signed up for a master’s program, and at the end of the master’s program that was 98, we had to do the final project.
Me and some of my friends said, we want to do a project in a different language. Like obviously we had the option of cobalt C plus plus C and different, but a lot of people were doing it. We wanted to do something. So Zhao was upcoming. We started reading about it, said, well, this is going to be a market changer.
So we learn Java. We did the final project in Java, and.
John Corcoran: 07:01
Some of the professors didn’t even know Java.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 07:04
The professors didn’t know like they didn’t care. So our class was very motivated. Like they didn’t even know. So we picked up all those different projects that people didn’t know about. Like for example, a friend of mine, he did a browser, I did an email server, I still remember, I still know the email protocols.
I can open up the terminal and send the email right from the terminal now, because I still remember the protocol, the SMTP and Pop3 and iMap protocols. So that was building that software in 98 using Java. So because there was no other opportunity, I wouldn’t have gotten a job or anything to learn Java. So I learned by myself. And that opened up my opportunities for the US.
John Corcoran: 07:50
Because you found there was a recruiter who was looking to recruit people that were Java developers and you came across this recruiter who had a position with a company in Pittsburgh in the United States.
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 08:05
Yeah. So Mastec is an Indian company based in Pittsburgh. Due to talent shortage, they were looking for people everywhere. So they hired a recruiter in Pakistan who was giving them the developers. So I got connected with the recruiter.
He set up an interview for me and I told him, hey, this is only my university project and the POC that I created during my free time when I was on bench at the company I was working at. But because there were not many people available, they were willing to take a chance. So they made an offer. They processed my H1 and three months later they put me on a project with editors on a project for AT&T editors. The project manager interviewed me remotely from Virginia.
After the interview, I was elected and a week later I was here in the US and my first project was in McLean, Virginia.
John Corcoran: 09:06
Was your way you had thought about this for a long time? Had you wanted to come to the United States, or was it just kind of like this opportunity presented itself?
Ghazenfer Mansoor: 09:14
It was just the opportunity presented. I mean, I didn’t want to go out like most people would go to the Middle East and some other part of the world. And I was never fascinated about that. But the US and the West, like the UK, were one of the countries that I had met. Like, if I get an opportunity, I’ll go.
It’s not really just because of the money, but the innovation ahead of technology. So I wanted to come to us to compete and work with people that are doing the next generation of things.
John Corcoran: 09:51
And is that what you found when you got to the States, you got to the states in 99. So we’re talking big. This is this is.com boom era right right.