Interview with Naweed Akram, the CEO of Vocably [2022]

Hi. Thank you for having me. My name is Naweed Akram, and I am based out of Bahrain. I am a Solutions Architect by the day working for a reputable alternative asset management firm, and a hobbyist developer in my spare time. My day job involves exploring innovations and trends in the Fintech space for my employer, and implementing them with help from partners. But deep down, I still feel like a developer [in my heart]. I am very passionate about technology and mobile development in particular. And thats the reason I founded my company XGENO Software 7-8 years ago, and have been using it to evangelize Microsoft platforms. I contribute to open source projects. I build mobile applications and publish to app stores. All of this just as a hobby.

Vocably is inspired by Wordle which is a website built by Jack Wardle; I hope I got his name right. Vocably allows you to guess a 5 letter word in 6 tries, while at the same time learn meanings of the words. I believe that it is a perfect game for kids [especially] to improve their vocabulary. It is based out of concept of Wordle but builds on it in certain ways to assist with the vocabulary part.

Yeah, a long one as well. 22 years. I started off my career as a programmer and then moved through different roles along my career. Currently I am woking as a Solution Architect and Innovations Tech Lead at a leading private equity firm in the region. Yeah, it is a fancy title for a fancy role. Given all the mambo jumbo around digital transformation these days, I feel very lucky to be given this role. In this role, I look for and implement new and innovative solutions that can give a competitive advantage to my firm. I moved away from programming around 10-12 years ago and into the project management and application architecture. But as I said, deep down I felt something missing. I love coding and programming.

My new roles had little to no coding requirements. So, to keep the developer spark alive in me, I resorted to doing side projects in my spare time. I built some web applications for my friends, contributed some open source frameworks and libraries, built mobile and windows apps. I published a few Windows Mobile apps back in the day (2012-ish time). When Windows 8 was launched, I jumped on that bandwagon. I even had my first Windows 8 app in windows store on launch day itself. Then I actively worked and had several Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows Phone published over the years, till 2016-2017 if I recall correctly. I believed Windows 10 and Windows Phone to be game changer platforms. But with very little interest in these platforms by Microsoft itself, I moved on to building mobile apps for Android and iPhones. Btw, Microsoft killed Windows Phone in 2018. 

I use Xamarin to build cross platform apps. Xamarin was later acquired by Microsoft and thanks to an amazing community, it has grown big. Now we are inching towards GA release of .NET MAUI, a successor to Xamarin. Fingers crossed, it will be released this month itself. I am very excited for that and have been actively working on the RC releases of it. I have even started porting Vocably to MAUI and have it ready for MAUI release. I also worked exentisvely with Microsoft in 2017 and ran the 2-days Xamarin Dev Days marathon in 2017 single handedly. It was the first of its kind in the middle east region. I even coached and mentored teams for Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2017.

All this learning, from my jobs to community contributions to side projects have really helped me take Vocably concept to fruition. Of course, time is not on my side as much I want it to be because of my day job, but thankfully, Vocably has come along well.

Vocably is an app which came out of nowhere really. One of my colleagues at work mentioned Wordle to me. Wordle is a website based game which allows you to guess a 5 letter word in 6 tries. I liked it and honestly became addicted to it. I even showed it to my kids, and they loved it too. The problem with Wordle is that you can only guess ONE word in a day. My kids had to wait another day to play for another word. And thats it;  there is nothing else you can do with this game. I saw my kids google the words to learn the meanings, coz we are not native English speakers. They even discussed the word of the day with their friends in school and over chats. Thats where it struck me. This is the part which is missing. This is an amazing way to teach vocabulary to kids, and even non-native English speaking adults. So I built this mobile app which is exactly similar to Wordle in concept, but allows you to learn meaning of every word that you play for.

There are over 2,500 words that you can play for in total. And you can play them without restriction of one word a day. You can play as many words as you want in a day. I had to curate list of 5 letter English words from internet and gather their meanings from dictionaries. It was a painful process, but totally worth it. I even added the sharing part which allows you to share a word and its meaning with family and friends. So you spread knowledge as well and help others also improve their vocabulary. In a latest release, I also added “HINTS” which help you in guessing the words by showing you the meanings of the words. This was requested by many users of my app and its definitely as welcome addition to the game. 

So thats how Vocably was born. It is not my original idea. I would give full credit to Jack Wardle for creating this amazing concept. Vocably just builds on it by adding the learning and sharing part. Unlike the traditional apps where you have to go though the reading sessions to learn english words and their meanings, I believe that this is a better way to learn. Simply put, its a game. And by nature of being a game, it requires you to exercise your brain to guess a word. This way the word that you learn sticks in your head. Again huge credit to Jack for coming up with this wonderful concept.

Honestly I have not thought that far along. I do have a short 1 year roadmap for Vocably. My kids have been showing this game to their friends at school and so far I have gotten some good positive feedback from them. Some of the users of this app have also reached out to me for some enhancements. I have added all these to my to-do list. I plan to keep on enhancing the app based on feedback from users. The current list should keep me busy for next 5-6 months. I also have plans to monetize the app in future. But I will keep it out for now. Will see how this app moves along and decide accordingly.

Gosh, thats a tough one. As I said, I have a regular day job as well, which trust me is very hectic. And I have 4 kids, which is a handful. So among all these, finding time to feed my passion is a challenge. I try to keep myself abreast with latest technologies, contribute to open source projects, build mobile apps, occasional community training and mentoring etc. I try my best to ensure that my day job and family doesn’t get affected by this. I try to keep all my activities @ XGENO early morning before my family wakes up or late night/weekends when they are asleep or during holidays. But this is not to say that I have found a perfect work-life-passion balance. In fact, it is far from perfect, or even a disaster. I still need to manage things a lot better. I must thank my wife for her support in taking some pressure off me and making all XGENO things happen. Well, life is all about learning. May be ask me again in couple of years. May be I will have a better answer then :).

As I said earlier, the traditional way of learning is boring. Vocably takes this wonderful concept of Wordle and adds learning aspect to it. The users don’t even realise that they are learning something. They are just playing an interesting and challenging game for fun. And in the process, they are improving their vocabulary. 

When I started Vocably, I had a challenge to curate a list of useful words, and decent amount of them too, to make them available in my app. It was a challenge to get or create this list. Lot of research involved. Getting the meanings of each word was also a challenge. But thanks to some wonderful resources and APIs available on the internet, I was able to get the base data for my app. You asked about the Vocably roadmap. I forgot to mention, I also have plans to incorporate usage of the word in sample sentences. I believe that this will also add to the learning part.

Marketing is definitely a challenge. Its just been a month or so since I launched the app. I am still figuring out a way to make this app as widely available as possible. I want people and especially kids to benefit from it. Its totally free. I don’t collect any user data. But fingers crossed, I believe that this app will pick up over time and will be useful for many. Honestly speaking, I consider myself a good programmer but a horrible marketer. I am still trying to figure it out. Any idea or pointer to help me on this will be wonderful. And I would request anyone who reads this, to at least give this game a try and show it to their kids. 

Simply speaking and for any entrepreneur really, I would like to say, guys think outside the box, go all in, believe in yourself and don’t give up. Long gone are the days when you could make money or succeed by following standard rules. The game has changed. People are looking for new and innovative solutions. So really think outside the box and come up with something new and innovative to delight your users with your offerings. Don’t be afraid to experiment. I once got a very good advice from a serial entrepreneur. 9 out of 10 endevours you take usually fail, but the one that gets successful takes you to the top. Take every failure as a learning and build on it going forward. Think back 30 years ago.

You could not have imagined the concept of a mobile phone in your pocket. And I am not talking about smart phones. I am talking about simple ability to make or receive calls or text messages. Look at how digital banking has changed the financial landscape. You don’t need to go to a bank to open an account or transact with them. Everything is done through mobile. Even in Vocably, as I said earlier, rather than going though reading or courses to learn vocabulary, this new concept makes it easy and fun for users to brush up on and learn new words. And with them not even realizing that they are improving their vocabulary. They just think that they are playing a game for fun. That’s an interesting fact.