Conversation Timestamps

• [2:04]  Why people call him Mubs
• [3:12]  Mubs shares early life and background
• [4:40] Travis goes to New York story
• [11:41] Mubs on being an engineer
• [14:00] What Travis wants for his son Colin
• [16:23] Mubs and his family aspirations
• [21:00] Mubs current projects
• [22:56] “Will Robots Take My Job?”
• [30:34] Working with Nathan Latka on Founder’s Path
• [42:40] How Mubs stands out in a crowded field
• [48:25] Book Recommendation

Resources Mentioned

• Will Robots Take My Job
• Stripe Capital
• Founder Path
• "Built to Sell" by John Warrillow

Transcript

Travis: You're listening to Phone Calls with Founders', I hop on the phone with software founders all across the world and we talk about their journey, candid insights, actionable tips and ideas, and you can reflect on as you scale your business to the next level.

Travis: Welcome to the show.

Travis: Hello. Hey, how you doing? Hey, man, how is my audio? Yeah, sounds pretty good. Awesome. Then I feel so weird calling you mobs like we've known each other for 20 years. But I notice that's what you go by. And I'm so happy you put that out there because I wasn't going to I knew I'm going to fuck up your first name.

Mubasher Iqbal: I know it's cool. No, I've been called Mubs since I was about six years old. So as you can imagine, having five and six year olds say my full name wasn't going to work either. So everybody started calling me up and it stuck.

Travis: Yeah, yeah. No, I like it, man. It's nice and it's short and sweet. You should try to get like some sort of mobs demain.

Mubasher Iqbal: You know, if you asked me for my email, my email would have been me mobs dot me.

Travis: Yes, I'd have been a great. All right. So you're in the East Coast. You're near New York?

Mubasher Iqbal: Yes, I am. I live in upstate New York now. I used to live out west, but then I moved to New York and we lived in the city for a while. But for the last 16 years or so, we've lived in upstate New York now.

Travis: So I've got to tell you, my New York story, I went to New York for the first time two years ago, and I'm forty three years old now. So it took me a while to get to New York City. But but before I tell that story, I want to hear a little bit about your background. You got a British accent, right? So, yes. When did you move to the States?

Mubasher Iqbal: Well, so I guess the story starts earlier than that in that I was born in a little village in the north of Pakistan, but my dad went to school in England. And so when he finished school, he was like, the family's moved to England. So when I was about four years old, we moved to England and I lived in England for about 18 years. And after I finished school, I got my first job. I have to do with an Australian company which was also moving from Australia to San Francisco. So in nineteen ninety seven, I moved from England to San Francisco. Yeah. So I lived out there for a few years that I got a job offer to move out here in New York City. I worked there for a few years. Then I started doing the whole welcome home thing. So in July of 2000, I got my first job that was in an office. And so ever since then, so since July of two thousand, I've been working out of either an apartment or a house.

Travis: Wow. Yeah, which is great because it's great for what we're going through right now in 2020. But quality of life is just an awesome thing and a lot of people would love to be in your position, so that's awesome. And you're a prolific tinker-maker and so I want to get into that. But let me just tell you this New York story. So it's summer of twenty eighteen, I think it was. And I head up to New York, going to do two weeks there. I'm walking around just being a tourist. Right. First time that I'm in all like my head, just my neck hurts because I'm like it's pointed straight up the entire time. New Yorkers are shoulder me saying, hey asshole, what are you going?

Travis: But so somehow I landed in the East Village. So I'm in the East Village on Third Street, and it's like three o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm super tired. I'm quench. And here's the other thing. A lot of people don't know when you're visiting New York is like you go there because you hear like the restaurants are so great and they are. But you know what? By the time I was done walking around, it was time for me to eat. I was so hungry I never end up going to any like a lot of restaurants. I just ended up like I was so hungry. I'm like, there's a hot dog stand right there. I'm like, but I thought that's all I was. It's crazy. But so I'm super tired. It's sunny out. It's hotter than hell, it's humid as hell. And there's a bench right there on Third Street. And so, you know, it's a real East Village, real eclectic area. And so I sit on the bench. Right. And so I'm like, oh, relax, what about my phone? I start doing these, like, social media posts and like updating pictures. And next thing I know, like a couple of minutes later, I hear this like this knock and this boom boom and the door swings open and this door right next to the bench. And this guy, this big burly guy with the most New York accent, he pops his head out and he's like, hey, get the fuck off our bench. Just like that to. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, I'm like, OK, all right, I'm I'm out of here. I wouldn't come to New York to die or pick a fight. So pick get up. And I, I start moving down the block and then I pause for a second turn around like what the hell was I sitting in front of. I was sitting in front of the Hells Angels chapter of Motorcycle Gang Club in East Village and I had no idea. And there's a reason why nobody else is sitting on that bench like people knew better. The locals knew better.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah, New York's a fantastic place. But if you don't know exactly where you are or what's around you, that sort of old time, you can you can get into some scrapes that you really would expect the kind of lying to yourself. So, yeah, no, I mean the legs. I mean, I live in New York for a few years and it was fantastic. Obviously not the best. Place to start a family to have kids and stuff, so once once we got at that point, that was when we kind of moved kind of out of the city and stuff. So I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you're young and single, any big city, really, it's a fantastic place to be. But once you get a little bit older, you know, being out here in the suburbs, having like a nice house with a yard and two cars and doing no internal white picket fence thing, you know, especially now in the middle of the pandemic, it was fantastic to have like a whole house so that we could all kind of spread out and have our own space. I can't imagine being in like a sort of eight, nine hundred square foot apartment and being squished, like, on top of each other as well. So, yeah.

Travis: And upstate New York, I'm assuming, is more chill and it's just better for the family.

Mubasher Iqbal: And yeah, I mean, to b...