Adapting to New Lifestyles and Business World

We talked to Burc Pekmezoglu of Xpoda about designing and building business applications without code.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: I am doing well, and my family too. Life is always having challenges, and we are nowadays facing one of them. This will pass, and it will be a pleasant memory for all people to understand how life can put challenges in our lives.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Xpoda? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: I started to work for Xerox as an operation guy and jump to sales after 2 years. After having some sales records and achievements, I find myself managing sales. After 9 years with Xerox, I started working as a Sales and Marketing Manager for Canon, responsible for Turkey and Israel. After 2 years, I had a Sales and Marketing Head role covering 26 countries in Canon CEE, which I need to locate to Vienna, Austria. Having many successful years with multinational companies, I decided to found my own company and work for myself. First was a bit of a disaster and I learned managing your own company is different from working for a company. But, I met with my business partner these days and founded Octopod with him, then Xpoda, with all the experience of Octopod and theirs, after all.

How does Xpoda innovate? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: Our innovation secret is the strong chain between Sales / Marketing and R&D. I count on the agility as we are in the No Code Software Development sector. Also, to change the business software world, we are sure that Low Code is just a terminology because of the gaps in No Code, and we are pushing No Code Development Platforms to be able to go for complex apps.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: As it affects all the World and economies, we are also affected. First, in the short term, we are affected in an incredibly bad way; sales dropped dramatically. But in these first months, we take many actions for the next coming months, and after some months, I can say the effect of the pandemic was good for us – of course, only as a business and economy.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: In this pandemic, the biggest lesson for all the business life was to be able to work with e-World.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and Xpoda in the future? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: I am not a stressed person, and anxiety is not with me at all, for any time. I do not get stress with the things that I cannot change. For the rest, I can change, and I do my best to change. Anxiety is something that should be really away from business life. There is no place for that. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game? 

Burc Pekmezoglu: Any Rapid Development Platform is our competitor, and on top, any business software development platform is our competitor. But, anyway, the world is too big to compete, and we need to focus on what and how we can deliver the best for our customers.

Your final thoughts?

Burc Pekmezoglu: The world is changing very quickly, and adaptation is the most important.

Your website?

www.xpoda.com