[Top Resources Series] Building Apps People Love With Ghazenfer Mansoor

Ghazenfer Mansoor is the Founder and CEO of Technology Rivers, a software company developing HIPAA-compliant web, mobile, and cloud-based healthcare software applications. As a seasoned advisor and investor in technology and healthcare, he has fulfilled roles as an architect, programmer, software engineer, user experience specialist, product developer, growth hacker, and chief technology officer.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor shares how Technology Rivers builds HIPAA-compliant healthcare software 
• [6:39] Common app development mistakes and how to avoid them
• [10:31] Smart ways to gather meaningful user feedback before launch
• [12:56] The core tech stack behind a high-performing software team
• [14:24] Productivity and health apps Ghazenfer uses daily
• [16:14] How AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT streamline proposals and workflows
• [23:16] Ghazenfer’s must-read books for business growth and productivity

In this episode…

Ever wondered why some apps become part of your daily routine while others disappear after a single use? Creating technology people truly love requires mastering retention, trust, and thoughtful AI integration. So what separates indispensable apps from the rest?

According to Ghazenfer Mansoor, a seasoned healthcare SaaS builder and author, the apps that endure are those designed around a single, essential user need and built with security and trust at their core. He highlights the importance of protecting sensitive data through privacy-first AI approaches such as retrieval-augmented generation and zero-retention language models. The impact is clear: when users feel safe and understood, they stay. He also stresses avoiding feature bloat, embedding feedback loops early, and iterating continuously based on real user behavior. 

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Ghazenfer Mansoor, Founder and CEO of Technology Rivers, to discuss building secure, user-loved apps in healthcare and SaaS. They dive into designing for retention, avoiding common product pitfalls, and selecting the right tech stack to scale effectively. Ghazenfer also shares how AI tools and book recommendations shape his productivity and decision-making.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ghazenfer Mansoor on LinkedIn | Website
• Technology Rivers
• Craiglist
• Slack
• ChatGPT
• Descript
• JIRA
• GitHub
• WordPress
• Canva
• Zoom
• Adobe
• Cursor
• Apple Health
• Notion
• Spotify
• Blinklist
• Audible
• Claude
• Quickbooks
• Anthropic
• Zapier
• Monday
• ClickUp
• Asana
• Entrepreneurs’ Organization
• Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day by Ghazenfer Mansoor
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith, and Mark Reiter
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, and James Fallows
• The Great Game of Business, Expanded and Updated: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company by Jack Stack, and Bo Burlingham
• A Stake in the Outcome: Building a Culture of Ownership for the Long-Term Success of Your Business by Jack Stack, and Bo Burlingham
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller, and Jay Papasan
• They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan, and Krista Kotrla
• $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers To Want To Buy Your Stuff (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• $100M Money Models: How To Make Money (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• Brand Chemistry: How to Attract the Right Clients and Keep Them by Laura Beauparlant
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It―A Guide to Starting a Business in a Productive and Successful Way by Michael E. Gerber
• Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell

Related episodes:

• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity with David Allen of Getting Things Done” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Author Series] Master Your Craft With Jay Papasan of The 1 Thing” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Many times you can pick one feature, one use case that solves the problem, and that’s the only one that would get you the traction.”
• “It’s not about what we want — it’s about building something that customers want to use.”
• “If it gives you 80%, that’s still a big achievement. You can always improve, but getting started is key.”
• “You want to build something that people use, so you have to follow those retention strategies.”
• “The experience is the one that keeps users on the app.”

Action steps:

1. Focus on real user needs: Start by deeply understanding your users and the specific problems they want solved, rather than building impressive-but-unused features.
2. Keep products simple and focused: Launch with one clear, high-impact use case to make your app easy to adopt and retain users before expanding.
3. Embed feedback early: Build in-app feedback loops from the start to capture actionable insights and iterate quickly based on real user behavior.
4. Leverage automation and integrations: Use AI assistants, workflow connectors, and project management tools to reduce manual work and boost team efficiency.
5. Commit to continuous learning: Stay current by consuming book summaries, exploring new tools, and keeping up with emerging tech to adapt in a fast-changing landscape.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Thanks for tuning in to this special best-of episode, where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite moments from previous conversations. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production number two. We are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, and prospects. Simple, seamless, and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff, from a culture perspective. All you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up with and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there, from gift selection to the card to your branding on the box. 

We call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress-free as possible for companies, so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade than having them on my podcast, featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25.com to learn more. 

Now let’s look back at some of our favorite moments from past conversations. I’m excited. This is part of our Top Resources series, and we’re going to geek out. Today I have Ghazenfer Mansoor of Technology Rivers. I’m going to formally introduce you because I’m here in a second. But when we talk technology, we’re going to talk tools, software, apps, possibly books, and some of his favorites of all time. Before we get into that, I just want to introduce Ghazenfer Mansoor, who is the CEO of Technology Rivers and Technology Rivers is a software development firm specializing in AI-powered solutions. So think SaaS, product development, healthcare technology, and they help startups and service-based businesses streamline operations, automate processes, and scale through smart, efficient software. Okay. And he’s also the author of Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day. And he shares insights on innovation, growth strategy, building technology because. Ghazenfer, thanks for joining me.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 03:12

Thanks for having me, Jeremy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:14

Before we get into the app, software tools, I know you have a lot. Let’s just just share with people what Technology Rivers does. And I’ll pull up the website.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 03:24

Thanks. So you pretty much explained most of it. So I’ll dig in a little bit more in a healthcare part, because that’s where majority of our focus is for healthcare software development company helping health tech companies, physician entrepreneurs, people in the health tech space, building HIPAA compliant software products, workflow automation, healthcare space is very important and creating AI agents for the healthcare space.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:51

So why healthcare? How did you get into healthcare?

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 03:55

So I started this business in 2015. Our second customer was the health tech company of Baltimore, and that’s how we got into healthcare. So, you know, like from one project to another one, you get a referral. So along the way, we started one project with a startup, which was Hopkins Funded, and that’s where we learned HIPAA. And then we started building HIPAA compliant software. So now more and more referrals come for HIPAA. So now we have done more than 50 different applications web and mobile, and about half of them are HIPAA compliant. And that’s one of the main things people look for. And it’s a big deal in healthcare.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:38

You need that security of people’s data.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 04:42

Oh, absolutely. And that’s a very important point that you raise the security of data a lot for personal health information and a lot of sensitive data that people are not willing to share with AI. And the worry is that if you upload it, obviously LLMs can use that for training. So there are strategies that you could use. And that’s where we specialize in working on a private sensitive data. And how do you use those strategies like RAG architectures and retrieval, augmented generation, where you store all of your internal data into a vector database, tokenize it and use that to filter. And then AI is just helping more of a summarizing that. So those are the strategies that we use. And along with obviously having the LLM sidebar so that they commit from zero data retention and not using the data for training. So you have to know those strategies in order to build the application for healthcare. Otherwise if you build it and you’re liable for a huge. Huge compliance risk.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:51

Yeah. And we’re going to get into your tech stack recommendations since we are on the apps and software. You know, kind of topic. You know, I’m going to go to your work page. This is one, you know, we had a couple that stuck out, which was a therapy app. There’s a lot more. But I’m just curious generally because which is okay, I mentioned about your your book. Right. What are some mistakes people make with because you said apps that people love and use. What are some mistakes companies make that hinder using it and loving it? Some of the things that you build into your applications.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 06:39

So loving with the technology and thinking from what you want versus what the customers want. So I could build something amazing that I think is great, but are my customers going to use it? I think both of us probably remember what was the the Craigslist. Do you remember that?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:02

Oh of course. Yeah.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 07:04

Okay. So what was the UI for that? Probably terrible. But what was the most.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:09

I mean. It’s just simple. Right?

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 07:12

But was that was the most usable software at that time when it was so many times it’s not about what we want. It’s like there were a lot of people who built good looking tools that didn’t solve the problem. So solving what the customer wanted, building something that customers want to use.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:31

Let’s pull it up. We all like now, right? Yeah. So it’s just so super simple.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 07:37

It’s still the same. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:38

Yeah.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 07:39

So so we have so many apps downloaded on our app on our phone. How many do we use every day. So there are a few that you keep coming back every single day because those are necessity your email your text messaging your WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, all of those. But then there are a few that you may use occasionally for a work reason, but then you forget those. Like there are so many apps that I can’t even count how many apps I have that I downloaded for one time, or one reason or another. And then I never went back. So you want to build something that people use, so you have to follow those retention strategies.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:21

I’m curious, you know, build something that customers will use and like, are you when you come out with a technology or before, what’s your process look like? Are you having actual users test it? You know, before? Are you getting feedback from them? What’s the process look like to ensure that it’s it’s customer or client friendly?

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 08:45

Yeah. So there are a combination of things. So in the book I shared about 32 different strategies that could be used. And each has its own weightage. Every application is different.

Every type of customers are users are different. If you’re building something for senior citizens versus kids versus women only versus working professional, they all have different habits of using these different gadgets. So you have to look at all those considerations. Who are you building for. And that’s where that discovery part comes in first. Who are you building for and what are you building for? Another big mistake people make is building a lot of features. So you make applications so much complicated. Oh, there’s another app you want to do better than that with a lower cost. 

That’s a common theme I hear from that. And those apps rarely get traction because people are not looking for another app with 50 different features. Many times you can pick one feature, one use case that solves the problem, and that’s the only one that would get you the traction. You can always add up more later on, but you want to start with one core use case that is a unique need that those customers need. You acquire them based off of that and then start getting the feedback. So there are ways of getting the feedback before you build the app, and there are ways of getting the feedback once you build the app. Because once you have then the there are chapters on tracking, like how do you really track and measure? And then based on that, do the learning and improve your app based off of that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:31

So what are ways people get should get feedback before. How would they get feedback before? What are your recommendations?

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 10:39

Well, a lot of those I would say a lot of those.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:43

By the way, I’m going to pull this up to as you’re talking because here’s the book. So you can check it out right beyond technology com. And then, you know, here’s the URL. But beyond the download here. So yeah.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 10:59

So and it’s also on my personal website. It’s also on my personal website Ghazenfer.com you can also get that on there. Yeah yeah. So yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:08

Yeah.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: 11:09

Yeah just a lot of those strategies were there for some time. It says are you building those. Are you implementing some of those. And they were all over. The difference in the mobile versus the web is you could embed a lot of those strategies afterwards. So, you know, let’s say this is the website. And today you want to add some feedback widget. You just drop a JavaScript on your website. You don’t have to rebuild and mobile. A lot of times you have to build inside the app so that you have it’s part of the experience. It’s not that you are just dropping, it’s not another web. You can build those apps as well, but they may not have a better experience. So there are certain things you can do. You can send a push notification later on, but there are certain things you still need to embed inside that. So that’s a key part, key differentiator in the mobile apps that whatever your strategies are, if they are inherent in the app, they’ll give you a better experience again. And that experience is the one that keeps user on the app.

[Continue to Page 2]