Speed, Scale, and AI: Winning in Amazon’s Ecosystem with Hunain Siraj Barkati

In this episode of Return on Insights, David Lindover sits down with Hunain Siraj Barkati, CEO of Hubaix, for a fast-moving conversation on AI, execution, and what it really takes to win inside Amazon’s ecosystem.

Hunain shares why AI is no longer optional for companies trying to compete at scale — and why speed has become the biggest competitive advantage in business. From building an AI-focused SaaS agency to helping brands navigate Amazon’s increasingly complex marketplace, he explains how the companies moving fastest are the ones rethinking how they build, hire, and execute.

The conversation dives into the hidden risks of relying too heavily on no-code tools, why scalable architecture matters earlier than most founders realize, and how global AI talent is reshaping the economics of growth. Hunain also unpacks how high-performing remote teams are helping businesses in the U.S. and the Middle East accelerate innovation while staying lean.

They close with practical insights for founders raising capital in today’s market — including why fast MVPs, customer validation, and operational clarity matter more than polished pitches.

If you’re building in AI, ecommerce, SaaS, or any high-growth market, this episode is packed with real-world insight on moving faster, scaling smarter, and staying competitive while the market shifts in real time.

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Guest: Hunain Siraj Barkatihttps://www.linkedin.com/in/hunain-siraj-barkati-755072125/

Return On Insights

David Lindover

Erin Abbatangelo

 Return On Insights, a property of Partner Marketing Works Int’l. Inc. is a collaboration between Erin Abbatangelo and David Lindover, operating as a media division of Partner Marketing Works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Return on Insights, the show where candid conversations with bold founders and leaders spark actionable insights for your business. I'm David Lindover.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

And I'm Aaron Abitangelo. Every week, we pull back the curtains with leaders towards scaling teams and shaping the future, sharing the insights that create impact far beyond the bottom line.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Discover how high-performing companies build enduring cultures, inspire teams to think bigger, and turn vision into action. If you see storytelling as your strategic advantage, you're in the right place. Welcome to Return on Insights Podcast, where we unpack actionable tech strategies from innovators shaping tomorrow. After pivoting Hubaics from Amazon e-commerce scaling things to AI-powered SaaS MVPs and launching Convorex for voice-driven appointment booking, I'm thrilled to spotlight CEO Hunain Siraj Barkati on dodging no code traps and staying ahead in rapid AI evolution. I'm David Lingover, your host for today's show. Welcome, Hunain. Nice to have you here. Thanks for inviting me, David.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

It's great talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

So I'm going to shine the spotlight on you, Hunain, and I've got some questions for you and uh looking forward to your answers. First off, what unscalable pitfalls in Amazon's ecosystem forced your company to shift to AI? And how did the chat GPT canalyze that pivot for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Okay, so we were doing Amazon for a couple of years and we scaled a lot of brands over there, but we were facing the same problem again and again. And that was anytime we tried to launch a product that had massive scale or some sort of uh evident scale, Amazon would launch some of its own product category or product in that, and because Amazon has its end-to-end infrastructure, so you can't compete with a platform that is also competing with you on the product level because they own the entire life cycle, right? An entire supply chain. So competing that would become always become a scaly business, scaling that would always become a trap, and we couldn't do that. We tried that with a lot of brands, and then we were trying to pivot and we're trying to uh like experiment different things, and then suddenly there was that one when chat GPT launched, the whole internet was stuffed with like everywhere, you could hear chat GPT, chat GPT. So we were we just opened it and like tried exploring what exactly is chat GPT, and when we started exploring it, this was a game changer, and at the exact moment we knew that okay, this is the thing that will change each and every industry and the way workflows operate throughout industries and globally. So we thought that okay, this is where we have to be and what we have to capitalize on if we want to scale and become a global brand. So this was the main thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

So, how does your company Hubax differentiate by exclusively targeting AI SaaS founders over being a generalist agents?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Okay, so as we as we all already mentioned, that we are also have a Convrex as a company which has a SaaS offering for different brands. So our vision was always to work with SaaS and like SaaS founders, but there was one thing that because we were starting out late, like after 2020, after the chat GPT era, so the biggest problem was that there were a lot of competition in the market, and we understand that we have to do something so good, and we have to specialize in something that what we offer, we should be the best provider, or at least one of the best providers in that niche. So when we were starting out, KI and like AI-based solutions were new for each and every company out there. So we knew that we have to do something with AI. So we specialize, we start okay, we left off all the like uh low-bearing fruits. Like we could easily do mobile apps, web apps, but we know that we won't be specializing in that and we would just become another generic agency. We did not want to become that. We wanted to become this most specialized agency who AI founders could work with, they could come to us with an idea, and we could help them transform that idea into a real product with real users and with like real paying customers that could scale to becoming one of the top companies throughout the world.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

So, what are the top go-to-market bottlenecks for these TAS companies at 100 plus users? And how do you engineer the solutions in full-cycle MVPs?

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Okay, so one thing that most founders don't understand is that when they are starting out, so there are completely different architectures in play when you are just starting out, you have want to build an MVP, and when you are like past through the MVP stage and you already have your first hundred users, so these are two totally different stages. We work with UTE's two stages, and then there is one third stage which we don't cater to right now, which is like dealing with one of the very top-tier companies who are like Fortune 500 companies or like bigger enterprise. We don't deal with those, we deal with those these two categories of founders. One who are like starting out right now, they have an idea and they want to convert an idea into an MVP. And the second is who have already launched into the market, they have got initial users. So the be this pivot is very extremely crucial, and most founders don't understand it. Like at the time of building an MVP, it's pretty simple. Like, you have to like launch your most core features out into the market, get your product into the hands of your customers, and then start like pivot every day, every week. You have to like like calibrate that okay, how will this work, how will this not work? You have to talk to customers. But once you have your initial set of 100 customers, then the challenge is like building an architecture so strong that it could like it can stand and it can handle those incoming customers because at that point you would be investing tons of budgets and tons of bucks into marketing and ad span, and you might be getting press coverage. So, this is your make or break moment. Like, if you don't capitalize at this right moment, you are like totally done for. Like, you will lose your initial hype, you will lose your initial customers. So, right now it's very crucial that founders understand that okay, now we have to invest in better DevOps infrastructures, in better uh cloud infrastructure, and adopt strategies which could then create a bigger mode for the product. You initially could even start with building a wrapper, but as you go on, you have to invest in building your own AI-based architectures, you have to invest in your own model trainings and all those, so that over the longer you are not uh if Chat GPT launches a new update, it's not that your business is done for, right? We heard a lot of companies getting just washed away when ChatGPT launched its GPD 5. Because what happened? Because they were just building as wrappers and they were not ready to scale. And when ChatGPT launched a better version and they hadn't invested in the architecture, so in an infrastructure, so they were just washed out. So this is one thing that founders need to understand very carefully. Very good point.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

From your engineering lens, what's the risk of no-code tools commoditizing simple apps? And how do complex integrations protect the value?

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah, so no-code tools are a very good thing to start right now. Whiteboarding apps like lowable, reply, all these are like doing excellent stuff if you want to build something very fast. But as I mentioned earlier, that as you scale on, as you get more users on board, these no code tools, the solutions that they have built, you cannot rely on these solutions for a longer run. You have to build and like adopt architectures and tech architectures where you become the like core product. You like have to build your product in a way that it's not anything that someone can copy by investing two weeks into white coding project. You have to differentiate every edge case, you have to specialize on it. Every UI, you have to think like in the less or lens of your user. You have to become so obsessed with your users. Only then in this era where why coding and like these tools that may have made uh development so fast, you can survive. If you don't uh build tools that uh let's say if you don't build a product which your customers are seriously obsessed with, you will end up uh making another generic wrapper which will definitely be washed out in very very quickly. Right now, the conversion cycle, like initially, if you like the creation of an app would generally take several months, and once you launched, there were another several months for competitors to copy your thing. But right now, with tools like Cursor, backend has become so fast, backend development, front-end development has become so fast with all these wrap plates and all these tools. So right now, competitors can copy your idea in less than a week if they have good teams. So now speed is of the utmost thing, and you have to be sure that okay, you are also doing building it at good speed, but together with that, you're also uh not sacrificing on the product quality, on the UI, on the features. So it's like we have to do it wholeheartedly. Now sidekicks are totally gone in the SaaS industry.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Man, that's a tough that's a tough task. Um how has building remote AI teams in Pakistan, which is where you're from, uh unlock speed for US and Middle East clients that you have.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Okay, so speed right now, when AI is like transforming everything, every new day, we see tons of new products coming out into the market. Right now, if you are not building at speed, you won't even survive the next quarter. It's very hard to say that as a SAS founder, if you aren't doing things at very good speed, you can't survive. So before that, it was very easy because you could hire an engineering team and build slowly and gradually, and competitors would take months or sometimes years to cope up. But right now, speed is the most crucial factor, and speed to market of new features is something that could like totally change how your company's uh structure would look like around in the next quarter. Like right now, you can't think of 10 years down the lane. You have to think every quarter, you have to survive every quarter and you have to build every quarter. Then you can like only become a company as SaaS-based camp company that totally changes what AI has the potential to change. But you, if whether you would be the one on your SaaS startup would be the one that would revolutionize your niche, that depends on your speed to market.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Not for the faint of heart, you mean um what's one less from helping founders secure funding via MVPs that most founders that you've run into overlook?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Okay, so the most important factor, whenever someone is building an MVP, I try to talk to them, and they are like, Okay, we have these three competitors and we have this idea, and we want these 200 features into our product, and then we will launch. And so they are like founders are generally thinking of too many things at the wrong time. Right now, your core focus has to be before fundraising because now, when initially, you if you just built a product, if you had an idea, you built some POC, you could go to an investor and he would give you a couple of thousands of bucks or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and those hundreds of thousands of dollars would then convert that into your equity and you could scale on that. But right now, investors understand that okay, now anybody could wipe code. So, industry and investors value customers. So, if your SaaS startup does not have your initial customers, you won't be getting investors. And again, back to my initial point of speed. If you don't build it quickly, maybe two weeks down the lane, someone else has built that idea, has secured the early users, and now they are moving on and like talking to the investors that you were targeting for. So, speed is something that we as a company to help. And at you asked initially the question that how we help as Pakistani uh founders. So, this is the thing speed initially how how do you hire if you are at Silicon Valley, you have an idea and you want to implement that idea, so it would take several months to get the right engineering team, and not even the adding engineering team, right? I think even one engineer becomes the task of several months recruiting the right engineer and getting them to stay with you as a startup because good engineers are like sitting in like the Magnificent 7, and they have like all sorts of good uh perks, so there is very less incentive for them to leave those companies, those very highly established companies. So the only best way I believe right now is that you have to capitalize and use the offshore talent which you can get at a fraction of the cost. And companies like Hubex, we also help in this thing, and there are a lot of other companies. But right now, as speed is the most crucial thing, I think founders must understand is that you have you can't sit and like spend the next six months hiring one or two engineering team members, and then you can expect that okay, you will raise funding and all those things. Those are the days of the past. After AI, everything is revolutionizing, and you have to make every decision in a way that capitalizes for speed, leverages speed, and you have to build very fast. Only then you can stand down.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

That's um a good way to end it, Hune. I really appreciate that. Good advice for our audience. I look forward to speaking to you again in the future. Thanks for your time, too.