Leading through change: A year-end interview with Modsen CEO

Another 12 months of hard work are coming to an end. How has Modsen been holding up during 2023? What challenges did we face and where are we going to in 2024? We asked our esteemed founder and CEO Gleb Terentev to share his answers, insights, and strategic plans. Dive in and enjoy the read!

Interviewer: Hello, Gleb! I’m so glad our meetings in December to recap the outgoing year are becoming a tradition. Thank you for carving out some time from your tightly planned schedule to join me for the interview both our team members and partners have been waiting for.

CEO: Hi, Darina! Thank you for having me, always a pleasure!

Interviewer: The clock’s ticking, so let’s get right into it! To begin with, tell us, what your December 2023 is about. What fills the pre-holiday days of Modsen CEO?

CEO: Primarily, these days I’m busy wrapping up the expiring year and planning out the upcoming one. My team and I are engaged in continuous discussions about the company’s expansion and development, enhancement of the existing processes, broadening of the tech stack, and extending the range of services we deliver. And, of course, it wouldn’t be December without sending out greetings and gifts for our dear colleagues and partners all over the globe.

Interviewer: Well-well! Curious to see what amazing holiday presents our company has prepared this time! Moving on to the most important questions of our meeting: what 2023 was like for Modsen? In last year’s interview, you shared a few ambitious plans of yours among which was the deepening of in-house cross-industry expertise, active integration of Big Data, ML, and AI technologies into the projects we build, and replenishment of our team with even more top-class professionals. Did we manage to achieve all the points of your last New Year’s resolution?

CEO: Yes, we actually did achieve the goals you’ve mentioned to varying degrees. If to go over each of them briefly: we launched several AI and ML projects, one of which was a technological startup designed to help identify deep fakes generated by neural networks that have been on the buzz this year. As for Big Data, our team has also strengthened its expertise in the domain by taking part in projects that involved the integration of Big Data approaches into enterprise-scale companies resulting in significant client budget reduction for the support of internal databases, especially the hardware capacities. Speaking of the domain expertise amplification, I can proudly say that we secured a major foothold in Finance and Healthcare. In 2023 our partners were actively seeking the support of Modsen to integrate AI into their existing software projects within these domains. Last but not least, team expansion. In fact, our team size has almost doubled at the cost of welcoming highly experienced, knowledgeable, and resourceful professionals. Namely, .NET, Java, and JS departments added quite a number of Senior- and Architect-level experts to their ranks. The DevOps team also grew qualitatively, as well as the QA department, which we were working on all year round to assemble a strong pool of AQA engineers. Long story short, 2023 was beyond productive for us.

Interviewer: Being familiar with your unwavering desire for results and responsible leadership approach I didn’t have the slightest shadow of a doubt that your goals would become reality this year. Your enthusiasm when answering the previous question tells me there are more achievements to share. Any other remarkable successes in 2023?

CEO: In fact, there are some more accomplishments to be thankful for this year. Apart from the above-said, we also embarked on a challenge to set up our own infrastructure that is responsible for our cybersecurity and for that of our partners. Modsen team has also built a company management and data storing platform. On top of that, we’ve improved our approaches to client data management and storage even further. As for cybersecurity which has always been our top priority, this year we continuously worked on it to minimize the potential risks. And the cherry on the cake – Modsen became a Microsoft Partner in 2023.

Interviewer: Now I believe the story about our recent successes is complete. However, there’s no great success story without the main character overcoming challenges on his way. What obstacles did Modsen company encounter this year and what helped us get through?

CEO: If to reminisce about the whole 2023, the IT industry was shaken by the banking crisis in Silicon Valley which created investment difficulties for a lot of our clients and put on pause several projects under development. The second challenge was, of course, the powerful shift of the IT community's attention toward AI. Many project development plans were reconsidered, some were held off, and some underwent urgent changes in the form of AI incorporation. How did Modsen handle it? There have been 2 key factors. First, we have always been client-focused and strived to find solutions together with our partners. Nobody is left one-on-one with challenges, as our team tries its best to delve into difficulties and find a way out whatever unconventional that way might be. Second, we are highly adaptive to changes. If a new technology comes out on the market today – somebody at Modsen has already started studying it and launched it locally.

Interviewer: Well, they say for a reason that any complexities on the way are just an opportunity to uncover your potential. Moving on to a more fundamental subject – our mission and philosophy. Have any changes happened on this front? What values do we stand by as of December 2023?

CEO: Whether we are talking about 2023 or 2050 – our team is quite conservative on this point and the 5 values we uphold, which are Professionalism, Culture, Development, Creativity, and Improvement, are not liable to change. Our values are not just a set of words we repeat over and over again. They are coordinates according to which Modsen company moves on. These core values help us overcome world economic predicaments and that’s why we follow them to this day and will keep doing so. As for the mission, it’s unwavering – to help our partners grow their businesses by leveraging leading-edge technologies. How can we ever give up such a noble goal?

Interviewer: I guess our value-focused approach resonates with the absolute majority of businesses in search of a trusted technology provider. Let’s dwell a bit on the subject of successful long-term partnerships. During the year, you communicate with our clients all over the world, so could you tell us, what exact qualities of software development providers will business owners look for in 2024?

CEO: I’m sure that these qualities are fundamentally unchanging. Professionalism, reliability, honesty, transparency, and, for sure, top-level expertise in the industry relevant for a particular business owner. The absence of a single one of these elements will be unequivocally regarded as a red flag. Is it harsh? Absolutely, but this is what the industry requires now. There are millions of coders but a handful of engineers able to solve a problem, provide consultation, and offer an optimal way out. And during the crisis, the role of such people only increases.

Interviewer: I bet our partners would agree that the world of custom software development would be better if more companies stuck to Modsen’s cooperation approach. Before I ask you to share a sneak peek into your 2024 plans and goals, let me test your expert-extrasensory abilities: what is your IT industry forecast for the year to come? Which trends will shape the future of custom software development? What perspectives do you see?

CEO: Perspectives? Bitcoin halving… Just joking! However, the crypto community will in fact see the end of the crypto winter in 2024. That’s why we are also waiting for promising projects on this vector. As concerns other hypotheses – the IT world will dive deeper into AI utilization and the legislative framework will be strengthened, which, from my perspective, will contribute to erasing the remaining doubts concerning AI incorporation into projects of all sizes and industry backgrounds. And let’s not forget about the classic web development – custom infrastructure and process automation are not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

Interviewer: Your answer is documented! We’ll check if you were right in a year. And finally to my favourite part of the interview – New Year plans and resolutions. Owing to your ambition, determination, and skilled leadership, our team is confidently moving forward, enhancing the world of IT and helping our partners uncover the full potential of their businesses through the incorporation of innovative tech. What goals have you set for the company in 2024? Which heights will we conquer this time?

CEO: In 2024 we are bound to keep growing both quantitatively and qualitatively by welcoming industry-specific experts into the team. Apart from that, we’ll deepen our tech expertise through closer cooperation with IT infrastructure developers and further certification of our in-house specialists. In sum, in the upcoming year, our company is set to enter a new operational level at the cost of systematic, continuous work on the mentioned directions. And the result we’ll see in 2024 will not only reflect the next 12 months of work but all the years since the inception of Modsen.

Interviewer: I have no doubt that with such in-house ambiance, expertise level, and motivation we are bringing into 2024, your plans will be successfully fulfilled.

CEO: I am absolutely sure of that. Modsen team has no boundaries whatsoever.

Interviewer: You know I’m not letting you go without giving you a chance to send greetings to our team on the nearing Holidays.

CEO: I was looking forward to it! Dear colleagues, from the bottom of my heart, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May each Modsen engineer turn into reality our common dream of making the world we live in a tiny bit better. As Ray Dalio, whom I deeply respect, notices in his book, “Resourcefulness has always helped humanity overcome the worst crises”. And we especially rely on it nowadays.

Interviewer: Gleb, thank you very much for the honest and open dialogue. Listening to your thoughts about the past, present, and future of Modsen was an absolute pleasure. See you in a year and Happy Holidays to you!

CEO: Thank you, Darina, Happy Holidays!