Sameera Gunasinghe, Co-Founder and CEO of Corzent has a journey deeply rooted in his passion for building software products. Driven to make a significant impact using his expertise, he recognized his ability to form high-performing teams—a skill he honed from his school days through university and into his professional career. His comprehensive exposure to the software engineering business, a rare privilege for many engineers at the beginning of their careers, solidified his entrepreneurial aspirations. This unique combination of self-awareness and industry experience inspired him to establish Corzent.
A background in product engineering significantly shaped his approach to building SaaS products. Guided by the principle of “be brilliant in basics,” he emphasizes mastering the fundamental aspects of every project. At Corzent, this approach means thoroughly understanding and executing the core requirements of any SaaS product they develop. By consistently applying this strategy, the company minimizes errors, accelerates results, and continuously improves through accumulated experience. This methodology, grounded in his engineering roots, ensures that Corzent delivers high-quality, reliable software solutions.
Sameera emphasizes the company’s strategic focus on partnering with startups and SMEs by leveraging their strengths. With years of experience working in this segment, he and his team are acutely aware of the unique challenges and opportunities it presents. A critical aspect of their strategy is the discipline to decline opportunities that do not align with their core competencies, even when they appear lucrative. This focus ensures that Corzent remains true to its mission and continues to deliver exceptional value to its target clients.
Understanding the nature of their segment is another key insight he shares. Startups often operate with limited resources and need the highest investment return. Corzent’s approach involves being empathetic to these needs and tailoring their services to maximize the value delivered. This customer-centric mindset is essential in building successful collaborations, as it ensures that the solutions provided are not only effective but also aligned with the client’s objectives and constraints.
He believes that Corzent’s success is intrinsically linked to the success of its customers. In the service business, ensuring customer success is paramount. By prioritizing their clients’ achievements in the market, Corzent naturally attains its own success. This philosophy drives the company to go above and beyond in supporting their clients, ultimately fostering a mutually beneficial relationship that propels both parties forward.
As a Lean Startup enthusiast, he masterfully balances agility and innovation with the stability and scalability required for SaaS products. He approaches this challenge by separating innovation from other essential traits. At Corzent, innovation is a three-step process that begins with creating a safe environment where employees feel encouraged to try new things. This culture of experimentation is followed by an effective mechanism to capture fresh ideas and a robust filtering process to identify the best ones for investment. By fostering a bottom-up approach to innovation, Corzent ensures that creativity flourishes at all levels, benefiting every aspect of SaaS product development.
On the other hand, agility, stability, and scalability are indispensable qualities for any SaaS product. The Lean Startup model offers a clear framework to achieve these goals with minimal overhead. Corzent excels in product delivery, leveraging its expertise in Scrum and Kanban processes to adapt seamlessly to customer requirements. Additionally, their proficiency in DevOps equips them with the necessary tools to implement the Lean Startup model effectively. By integrating these methodologies, Corzent ensures that its SaaS products remain agile, stable, and scalable, meeting the high standards expected in the industry. Sameera’s strategic application of the Lean Startup principles ensures that Corzent can innovate rapidly while maintaining the reliability and growth potential of its products.
He highlights a notable project where lean methodologies were pivotal in overcoming challenges and achieving significant growth. A client required a web application to complement their main application but faced substantial constraints, including a lack of capacity to build the application themselves and a limited product management team. Corzent stepped in to independently manage the project from design through implementation to delivery. The stakes were high, as the application needed to integrate seamlessly with the main application, and the client’s large end customers were eagerly awaiting its release. The financial implications for the client were considerable, and Corzent was given just three months to complete the project—a daunting task given the initial lack of familiarity with the main application.
In this challenging scenario, Corzent applied its lean startup knowledge to significant effect. Utilizing their superior Kanban expertise, they effectively managed bottlenecks and limitations, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality application within the tight deadline. The successful deployment of the application enabled the client to onboard larger, high-net-worth end-customers, significantly boosting their business. Today, over 80% of the client’s customer base uses the application developed and maintained exclusively by Corzent.
The success of this project not only impressed the client but also led to further business opportunities for Corzent. They were invited to consult other companies within the client’s group, sharing their lean startup and Kanban methodologies to drive similar results. This project stands as a testament to Corzent’s ability to leverage lean methodologies to deliver exceptional results under challenging conditions.
Sameera is deeply committed to ensuring the company remains at the forefront of innovation in product engineering amidst a rapidly evolving tech landscape. He emphasizes the importance of defining innovation in a broad sense, encompassing both tech and non-tech innovations, as well as innovations that directly relate to customer work and those that are independent experiments. Corzent’s current focus is on fostering innovations that directly enhance their work with customers, thereby solidifying their position as a trusted partner in the innovation process.
Corzent is also in the process of establishing an innovation lab, a dedicated space where the team can develop their own innovations. Although this lab is still under development and will take a few more months to become fully operational, it represents a significant step towards institutionalizing innovation within the company. The lab will enable Corzent to systematically explore new ideas and approaches, ensuring they continually push the boundaries of what is possible in product engineering.
In terms of innovation scale, he distinguishes between large-scale, industry-disrupting innovations and smaller, more frequent innovations that provide a competitive edge. While recognizing the transformative impact of major developments like generative AI, Corzent’s strategy focuses on incremental innovations that can be implemented regularly. These smaller innovations, both technical and non-technical, are designed to consistently enhance their offerings and maintain a competitive advantage in the market. This approach allows Corzent to stay agile and responsive to the latest trends and technologies, ensuring it remains a leader in product engineering innovation.
Sameera articulates a compelling “why” for the company that goes beyond offering IT solutions. For their customers, Corzent is a software services company renowned for providing world-class staff augmentation and dedicated team solutions. Clients choose Corzent because of their ability to hire top-notch talent capable of building exceptional software. The complexity of software development is something Corzent excels at, delivering outstanding results consistently. For employees, Corzent offers unparalleled software engineering opportunities, enabling them to leverage their skills and gain invaluable experiences while building robust careers.
The impact of Corzent extends beyond the technical aspects of software engineering. They provide immense value to both customers and employees by fostering long-term relationships and ensuring high employee retention, which is unmatched in the industry. Corzent excels in all fundamental non-technical aspects, such as communication, presentation, and software development processes. Their employees are seamlessly integrated into customers’ cultures, thanks to a rigorous hiring process focused on cultural alignment and continuous coaching to enhance this fit. This deep integration has led customers to regard Corzent as the best outsourcing partner, especially non-technical founders who value the peace of mind Corzent provides.
For employees, Corzent promises an exceptional work environment rooted in the belief that taking care of employees leads to overall success. Inspired by Sir Richard Branson’s philosophy, “Take care of your employees, and they will take care of the rest,” Corzent has made innovative, employee-first decisions to support this commitment. Unlike the industry norm of overworking without a proper work-life balance, Corzent ensures its employees enjoy a significantly better balance. Sameera personally interviews all candidates who pass the technical interview, assuring them, “You get your life back with this job,” emphasizing Corzent’s dedication to employee well-being and creating a thriving, supportive workplace.
He emphasizes the integral role of company culture in reflecting their mission to empower significant ideas. He firmly believes in the adage, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” highlighting the importance of a robust, supportive culture over mere strategic planning. At Corzent, this culture is not only protected and invested in but also continuously improved to ensure a work environment where everyone can thrive. This commitment to a strong company culture is seen as the foundation for their success and the reason why employees genuinely enjoy working there.
Corzent’s culture is characterized by open communication and the empowerment of employees to speak their minds without fear of retribution. The company actively encourages employees to execute their ideas and supports them fully in delivering results. This environment ensures that anyone at Corzent can effect change, regardless of their position. A notable example illustrating this cultural value is when a newly joined employee voiced concerns about the probationary leave restriction, which allowed only 0.5 days of leave per month as per the law. Recognizing the impracticality of this policy, Corzent responded by introducing a new policy that removed all probationary leave restrictions.
This example underscores Corzent’s dedication to empowering its employees to challenge and improve established policies. It demonstrates the company’s openness to change and its commitment to creating a workplace where even new employees feel confident enough to propose significant changes. Sameera takes pride in having built a company where management listens and responds to employee feedback, fostering an environment where innovative ideas and meaningful changes can flourish.
In summary, his dedication to empowering significant ideas and ensuring an open, communicative work environment has positioned Corzent as a trusted partner in the tech industry and a desirable workplace for top talent. Under Sameera’s guidance, Corzent continues to thrive by embracing both technical and non-technical innovations, ultimately driving significant impact for clients and employees alike.