With an early start in programming at the age of 14, Samuel began his journey by building webpages. His passion for code and product development extends beyond a profession, evident in his Engineering Degree in Media and Information Technology, which equipped him with expertise in both development and design.

At Expanly, we believe technology should be more than just code; it should be a point of view. It should be an elegant solution to a painful problem. To understand the philosophy built into every line of our platform, we sat down with our co-founder and CTO, Samuel Backman, to discuss what it means to build technology that is powerful, clean, and designed to last.

What was the first thing you ever built or 'hacked' as a kid that made you realize you loved making things work?

I was one of those kids who would always break all their toys. I wanted to understand how everything worked, and that required looking inside the toys.

In a world of digital everything, what's your favorite 'analog' tool or activity?

Going off the grid; camping, fly fishing and hiking.

Every great product starts by solving a painful problem. What was the 'moment of frustration' or the specific observation that made you realize Expanly wasn't just a good idea, but a necessary one?

I have known Jaani, who is one of the co-founders, for a long time. He told me maybe 5 years ago now that he built this algorithm in Google Sheets, which was used to prioritise products to use their client ad spend on. Already then, when hearing the idea for the first time, my dopamine deprived brain started ticking, and I told him that this sounds like something that should be built into a product.

Many SaaS products become slow, bloated, and cluttered over time. As an architect, what's your core principle for building technology that is powerful yet clean, and avoids that fate?

This is one of the hardest things to avoid when building a product, so called “feature creep”. This is something that you have to be mindful of all the time, always questioning and reviewing new features. Is it a “nice to have” or is it actually solving a real problem. You have to focus on the core idea, and keep improving on that.

In software development, there's often a trade-off between shipping features fast and building them perfectly. How do you approach that balance at Expanly, and how does that choice ultimately serve our clients?

I always approach features and their development through this single question: "What delivers the most meaningful value to our clients right now?". Most of the time, this is a small part of the whole feature. So by first focusing on that part, we can ship it faster, and then start to refine it. So I don’t actually view the trade-off between speed and perfection as a compromise, but as a strategic tool. We wield it deliberately and transparently to ensure that we are always building the right thing, at the right time for our clients.

Our platform processes incredibly sensitive business data. What's your non-negotiable principle when it comes to security and earning our clients' trust?

My principle for this is: Security is a prerequisite, not a feature. We operate with the belief that we are temporary custodians of our clients' most valuable assets. This principle isn't just a line in a manual; it has been part of our culture, our architecture, and our processes from day one.

What's a common 'best practice' or a current hype trend in the software world that you believe is completely overrated?

The rise of “wibe coding” and the "citizen developer" movement is has created. Treating a product built like this in the same as a professionally engineered one is like confusing a beautifully decorated garden shed with a house built on a proper foundation. They might look similar on a sunny day, but you only discover the difference when the storm hits. They are great for simple proof of concepts, but should definitely not be used for production, as the risk of something breaking, or someone's personal data getting leaked is too great, and there is no one with the proper knowledge to fix it.

Looking beyond our current roadmap, what is the next fundamental problem that technology needs to solve for e-commerce leaders in the next 3-5 years?

As AI and specifically personal agents will become more popular. There will be a profound architectural shift, moving from a destination-based web to a more decentralized, agent-driven ecosystem. The companies that start building the technological foundations for this—mastering their API strategy, ensuring data quality, and understanding how AI can both power their own systems and interact with customer agents—are the ones who will lead the next generation of commerce.

What's a piece of technology that you admire because it solves a very complex problem in a way that feels incredibly simple to the user?

The internet. The youth today have no idea what the world looked like before the internet. How slow it was in the beginning, how unstable, how it took a couple of minutes to connect to the internet and there would be this weird robotic screeching noise, how it would disconnect when someone called your house etc.

And finally, what's a topic you can get completely lost in for hours on YouTube, Wikipedia, or a podcast?

Startups and their founder stories, I have been reading and listening to these for I think about 20 years.