Say hi to Duran! Duran is a Co-Founder and Head of Growth at Syft. Duran likes seeing how excited people get about Syft and its impact on their businesses, and he is passionate about spreading the word.

"When you demo a tool that you believe can unlock value for their business, it becomes less like a sale and more a matter of fact. I genuinely believe that our tool helps accountants and businesses."

Before joining Syft full-time, Duran worked in consulting and advisory roles. As a consultant, you start with a large data set, then figure out how to simplify this information and what insights lie in that data. The key thing is to determine how you simplify complex data so that it's understandable. And this is a crucial part of what Duran brought to Syft.

Duran has been involved in Syft for many years now. He and the other founders go way back. Duran met Syft's CTO, Matt, in school! They and the other founders bonded over their financial services background and desire to help people with the financial mechanics behind their businesses. As Duran says:

"There was a real gap in helping people understand insights and what they're looking at from a business perspective."

This was a gap that Syft sought to fill. Syft automates business pain points and allows you to spend more time analyzing insights and figuring out how to use those insights to help your clients or partners improve.

Aside from the actual product, Duran's favorite part of working at Syft is the energy, ambition, drive, and cohesion of the young team. When considering his experience of working at Syft, Duran says:

"It's awesome that there are different teams, but there's a common connection between all the teams. That ongoing collaboration is encouraging to see. Often in consulting roles, you find that organizations fail because of a lack of collaboration and cohesion between teams."

From customer success and sales to engineering, "it's a full circle where everything is connected." And everyone has the same goal.

When he is not at work, Duran is an avid whisky collector - with a sizeable collection of bottles. He's invested in the history of whisky and its complexity. As Duran says:

"In a sense, it's like the rest of my life. I like figuring out complex things."

Throw in a side of rugby – with enough passion that he'll never miss a World Cup – and some golf, trips to the bush, and birding, and you'll know where to find Duran in his time off. Or else, you can find him with his two adorable dogs!

Something that might surprise you about Duran is that he's done a full Ironman—a triathlon event involving a 3.8 km swim, a 180 km cycle, and then a full marathon at the end! (He trained two hours before and two hours after work for eight months before this, and eight hours a day on weekends!)

What surprised Duran most when joining Syft was the potential that young people – even those with only one or two years of work experience – have. No matter what sphere they're from, the young employees at Syft have to offer a lot of value. Duran has learned that different people with diverse skills and roles are critical to creating value in a company.

Duran has a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science and Honors in Advanced Maths of Finance.