Jeffery: Welcome to the supporters fund ask an investor I’m your host jeffrey potvin or jp and let’s please welcome Ahmed hazem as our investor for today from phallic startups welcome ahmed or what we’re going to be using today which is your real name pasm how are you sir thank you for joining us.

Hazem: Hey jeff how are you pleasure to be here thank you for having me and actually it’s the other way around my name is Ahmad hazem and yeah i usually go by hazem

Jeffery: I love it has a good name and I’m sure that’s a little bit easier for uh for myself to repeat and auto repeat so I’ll keep saying has them but uh we’re off to the races already so i love it and has them you’re calling it today from egypt

Hazem: correct yes from cairo

Jeffery: From cairo i love it i love cairo

Hazem: where it’s almost time to sleep

Jeffery: that’s true i think it’s probably six hours so you’re almost that quarter after ten right now is that right

Hazem: yeah

Jeffery: Uh brilliant well I’m a big fan of cairo i was there about a month ago so um well i guess I’m letting the audience know too because as i was doing podcasts i probably should have talked a little bit more about every country that i was touching down on but i really enjoyed and love the ecosystem that’s going on right now and you know across africa but mostly in what’s going on in egypt and cairo it’s very exciting uh so maybe what we’ll do is the way we like to start the show off is we want to dive right into everything so maybe have some you can give us a bit of a background on yourself you know where you started all the way from your financial analyst days to the startup you were part of and then of course where you’ve landed today and all the great things that you’re up to and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Hazem: All right amazing i think that that’s where I’m going to struggle with but uh yeah let’s start and figure it out on the way um all right so early days back in uh university i went to the german university in cairo studied entrepreneurship and strategic management nobody actually knew what entrepreneurship was when i was studying it i was the first class to graduate that and yeah while i was there i started a little bit of an entrepreneurial experience with uh with my friend and we started one of the one of the first e-commerce businesses in in egypt actually and that didn’t go so well so everyone went ahead and tried tried something else i went ahead and learned about finance and economics and became a financial analyst in a couple of uh a couple of companies one of which is uh worked one of which worked in uh in the energy sector and then the building materials sector and then i shifted to real estate worked in a couple of companies real estate all into the the financial and investment and strategic planning uh functions of these of these companies learned a lot of things learned a lot of of models to to like extend this and and help founders think the way the way big corporates think and utilize these these frameworks and these models into their into their businesses and that’s what I’m doing today like i get a chance now at falux startups to to pretend like I’m a founder in all these companies that we work with so i got this satisfaction as well and uh try to help them with all the uh the knowledge i have accumulated across the different sectors on the different functions that I’ve worked in those in those past years. yeah you’re now you’re still waiting for something that nobody knows right yeah i had hoped you you’d forgot about that um i don’t know i uh i really hate bell peppers maybe that’s not something not.

Jeffery: Say uh again you you’re just like what’s the word.

Hazem: yeah about peppers

Jeffery: Bell peppers is that because they’re too hot i thought egyptians love hot

Hazem: No i like the hot i like the hot ones like like the red hot chili peppers both the real peppers and the band

Jeffery: Yeah

Hazem: But um yeah i don’t like the normal ones

Jeffery: Oh okay that’s all right so can you tell if it’s blended in with a good hot sauce can you pick those out and be like now I’m out of this no good

Hazem: Yeah

Jeffery: Wow that’s impressive yeah that’s all right man that’s impressive well you can say on my side I’m a huge hot sauce fan uh at any given moment i have hot sauce probably six to ten jars of it somewhere if not a stockpile of it all but i love hot sauce and everything i think hot sauce just is amazing no matter what i gotta try it i I’ve had the the one that’s probably the craziest and you’ll have to try this it’s something called the bomb and um oh my god it was on the hot shot hot sauce tv show it was the third hottest one ever and i literally had to keep trying this little dabs in like a bowl one dab bowl two dabs bowl three dabs and that’s how i had to grow on this stuff because it was so hot i would start crying my mouth was on fire and i just had to work my way into it i finished half a jar and i felt like a superhero and this took me like probably three months so you can imagine what it takes to do this all the time with hot sauce you gotta really get inclined in the market and really enjoy it and try it on everything until you get used to that uh real spicy uh picante sauce that uh builds up on it so i won’t beat that up any longer but man is hot sauce that’s all right maybe.

Hazem: Um i think you should come to uh to egypt back in november there’s a there’s a huge conference that happens every year there that’s called techni and it happens in alexandria not in cairo I’m not sure if you heard of it so um hopefully when you come in november I’ll take you somewhere and yeah i know you like it all because they they serve everything that’s hot as like as hell.

Jeffery: So i love it I’m sure yeah that’s great it sounds like it’s gonna happen because I’ll be going from web summit directly to egypt for the fourth so my goal is to try and make this all happen and coordinate this all so fingers crossed we can make it work.

Hazem: Amazing

Jeffery: So we’re going to kind of take a step back because i think there’s a lot of great things that you kind of shared there and there’s a few other things that I’ve learned and read and podcasts and all this great stuff about what you’ve done but the one thing that really kind of stands out of course well two things is the finance and then the second one is the fact that you’ve been a founder and that you’ve actually worked through and built a company and he spent a few years doing that so maybe the first thing we can talk about is diving into what your experience was in building a company especially back in the early onset of the internet and the in the world of uh in egypt as well because every country would have been a little bit different when the internet started to kind of take off so maybe share a little bit of what that experience was like and you said people came in and tried different things but you kind of looked at this as not being a success and i personally would look at this as being a huge success because i meant i manage success a little bit differently when it comes to working with founders and with with uh investors is that you’ve got a lot of valuable information that you’ve built up regardless of the payout but you did a lot of great things so maybe we can start with maybe describe a bit more about what the business was about and what you learned in that early onset of building this company.

Hazem: Well the business was a simple e-commerce business where we sold a bunch of uh electronics uh online it was uh it was really challenging because that um like we started really really early so that’s that’s the key takeaway of the thing because sometimes you’d have you’d have the good uh you’d have a good team you have a good product you have a good product market fit you’ll have everything that you need but you but you’re too early to the market like people wouldn’t at back in the day buying something online was was not something that common and in egypt at least and yeah to me that was the key uh key takeaway the other key takeaway also was to to know and to understand when when to give up because that’s that’s a question that really really pops up a lot of the time people sometimes take it as a challenge or they wouldn’t want to quit but i think it’s um it’s a key lesson to know when it’s not working or if it’s if it’s that early and you can’t keep pushing until it becomes the thing or until you you can teach the market and do this whole learning uh learning process like if you have the resources then well sure yeah go for it but uh you need to gauge that you need to manage your resources really really well and um like no if if it’s too early then we give it another shot maybe uh maybe a couple years later when the infrastructure is there when the culture is really going to accept it so as they say culture would eat a strategy for for breakfast lunch and dinner right so that’s that’s something that you wouldn’t want to uh to go head-to-head with.

Jeffery: when you’re not only early to market but gauging when it’s time to move away from a product fail a company or pivot i think there’s always this fear or stigma behind that and can you say that learning this or knowing when you did this how much of that was built off the principles that you learned in the financial sector because you’ve been a financial analyst a business analyst do those things really help you better understand the numbers how the business works so that kind of helped you better understand where your forward projections are going and to kind of say look this this isn’t working we gotta pivot or change or do something because we’re really falling under the gun here can you share a little bit about that because i do think that this carries a lot of weight and maybe this is what founders don’t have and this is something that again another piece to your tool belt that you’re bringing to the game here.

Hazem: It was the other way around like having this experience teach me how to become a better financial analyst on the business analyst because it was it was the other way around i did this while i was in the university like last last year in in university so yeah it was it was the other year around so we had i had to figure out this this toolkit and how to to gauge the business and how to to understand when to stop and how how to really identify if it’s working or not and um like do this stress analysis and everything and i had to do it before beforehand and it’s yeah yeah to your question it’s uh even even having that it’s it is the other way around but yeah that this this experience teach me that so uh i became uh a little bit of a different breed of financial of a financial analyst or a business and it’s because i had this this experience so i took everything from the perspective of an entrepreneur even when i was working in corporates so that was that gave me a different flavor if you will when it came to the way of thinking i wasn’t just thinking by the book and the way that is dictated by um in the playbooks of uh of corporate uh analysis so yeah that to my luck of course that was i think i got lucky by having this experience before that and that’s how how it played out anyway.

Jeffery: well I’m going to say that’s brilliant because then if you take the reverse side of that then you’re probably sitting in once you failed the business realized that it just was too advanced too quick people weren’t ready for it decided to fail it went back into the corporate world to get some more learnings you were probably in there still trying to figure out how did i fail this why did i fail this and then as you started to learn more on the finance side you started to put models together then you probably had that aha moment two or three years later and we’re like man if i would have just done this maybe i could have pivoted at this time now you solve that problem and now you kind of keep moving forward in looking at that next business or how you analyze another business because you did you lived through it but at the same time you probably didn’t have the same tool belt as you did today so you start to reanalyze where you could have done better or where you went wrong.

Hazem: Yes and that’s that’s basically what i do with the startups that we work with right now so they they are the ones that are getting the benefit out of this and as i said i got to pretend to be one of the one of their founding teams which is a great pleasure.

Jeffery: That’s awesome so throughout this kind of journey over the last 10 years of working in and out of these financial platforms working with early stage to late stage companies is there a couple of things that really stood out in your mind and that you really kind of embraced and said you know what here’s a process here’s what you need to do if you’re a founder follow these five steps when it comes to finance side or business side or is it just is that too broad stroke and you kind of have to get way more granular but is there a couple of things that you would share that you learned being on the other side which was analyzing companies instead of at the time making investments because today it’s obviously different you’re investing versus analyzing what were some of the tricks that you kind of came up with that really supported uh today’s methodologies of how you’re investing.

Hazem: Well how how you’re investing is is where it gets tricky but the way the way the these things or the frameworks if you wear all those models that that you use for to help out those founders get get more business or grow grow exponentially that’s that’s a little less tricky if you will but when it comes to investment yeah the way the way i always say it although I’m um i wouldn’t be that politically correct to say but i personally would never know um and the way i look at it is is it’s it’s a it’s a numbers game right so you you try to weed out anything that you know for sure that is not going to work like you’ve seen this before and you’ve seen you’ve seen people try at it or you see certain patterns with certain uh team team mixes or certain products or certain mindsets so you know that this is not going anywhere you know for a fact that there’s no big market for it or you know there’s a cultured barrier to it so you just try to read out what you know it will not work other than that you just and i think you do that yourself as an as an investor you just try to back to back up teams that you mostly believe in and know know that they have good harmony and you just get behind them and you’re mostly investing in their second or third iteration of their product you’re not you’re not really investing in what they have today you you just know that they had identified a good problem and you bet that even if this problem changed slightly or maybe they have a better understanding of this problem one or two years from now you still believe in them to solve and to to come up with something that they can grow with right the other part which is which is the less tricky part but it’s uh it’s yet a more challenging brain exercise is to is to not get stuck on uh on on models or frameworks or five steps to do so or ten steps to do that uh or five things to watch out and uh in doing so and so is to to actually keep a very flexible uh mindset and keep learning as you go and you try to potentially keep if you if you can whenever you come across a certain model or come across a certain idea or a certain concept that you you have to keep that in mind just like someone that has a real holistic view and they you keep adding sort of lenses to to the way you see things and whenever you come across a company or a problem that you’re trying to solve your company that you’re trying to grow you try to see whichever lens of these of those lenses would apply to this kind of situation and then you apply the best one of them and then there you go you you have you have this thing and this is what i meant by I’ve accumulated certain lenses in this analogy throughout this career and throughout working with so many uh founders and startups so i just whenever i learned something from one of these guys i tried to propagate that across different different problems different companies different situations and that’s the beauty of it and the the knowledge that you accumulate or the knowledge that you come across luckily you can recycle that and make make it have more value and create more value out of it if you want.

Jeffery: Now that’s awesome so if i look at what you just shared being able to create this more value and I’m a big fan of the more value that you can create not just from an investor but from a startup anything you’re exchanging has to be done in value what am i going to get out of this interaction what is the value for me what’s the value for you so as you’re kind of working through this with founders from your early onset working as a business analyst to today has there been a change in that because you’re you mentioned different models so your first model that you built 10 years ago and you learned and you learned you reworked it you learned and now you’re investing so has that model changed now when you’ve experienced it for less on the corporate umbrella side where you’re doing it as a as a financial analyst to now here’s my money here’s me investing did you change anything and you become more reserved and say no i need everything to be in this little refined box because this is the only space i have or to your point were you very open-minded and said you know what founder first this is how I’m going to invest i built up all of these um number theories and projections on how i look at business and now I’m going to implement it here this is my time to do that is that kind of how you process it or can you give us a little bit understanding of how you guys are 100.

Hazem: 100 about your job this is this is what I’ve known if I’ve learned anything is to um from my experience in the in the corporate world is to master the skill of unlearning things and this is this has been amazing because when once you’ve once you’ve by once you buy into the notion of uh accepting that whatever you’ve learned somewhere it does not apply in all aspects of life or aspects of business at least you start accepting new things you start accepting that you’re wrong you start accepting that there are more things to learn so that that is in itself beautiful so you just throw away all of that and just know that you’re the the and you have the mental flexibility that to accept new ideas and to accept the limitations of what you actually know or what you actually have learned and just accept those new things and accept the fact that you just could learn new things or maybe those those founders would add a lot to your to your library of knowledge and information and then you can make better decisions later on and assess things differently and don’t get stuck up on your on your existing learnings and models this is this is what we’ve been saying to uh to founders all the time we they they come in for us to uh to us to help them and to like teach them stuff and teach them about the models that you’re talking about and the matter the fact of the matter is that we are the ones that are being taught how to how to think and how to learn about new technologies and new models and new things from from their live experiences because these are the ones those are the guys that are on the ground front facing customers front facing clients and we are the one with the theories that luckily we are ready to just give up on and learn new things from from the from their feedback.

Jeffery: The reason why i really like what you just shared is because at the end of the day we spend as investors all of our time trying to fit everybody into this stream of how we see life in businesses so that we can invest yet the founders are on the other side trying to get out of this stream and create a business that is more open-minded defy whatever it might be blockchain which isn’t the way that most people have thought and as an investor you’re not going to just say I’m going to invest only in blockchain because i want to be at this forefront of tech even if i don’t understand it i guess you can do that but maybe it’s easier to say I’m going to invest in companies that work in manufacturing have a potential of using strong innovation which includes d5 blockchain token based so that you can learn but at the end of the day the investors learning just as much of this new crazy world of tech and innovation as the founder is trying to implement it.

Hazem: Yeah if not more

Jeffery: So you kind of have to have this open-minded mindset because you could end up getting yourself into trouble if you’re trying to stick to these old formats and not looking at ways to open up the way you think about a problem or a solution and the last thing as an investor you want to be doing is being a cookie cutter as i would say in the past uh an old cop show which was you don’t want to be the stars and shipowitz because you’re always the same character same shirt same tie same badge same time great hour that kind of thing because you have to really expand yourself learn from your founders and keep opening up to bigger and better opportunities by diving deeper into these companies that are your funding and that are just trying to change the world so i want to touch on this one point you said which is unlearning you got to define that again for the audience because i love that i know we’ve seen this in the past through different types of pages and speakers and online content where people are saying I’m unlearning something what does that mean and what does that mean to you.

Hazem: Well it means like you have to put the the the factor of or the element of time into this equation like you you learn things you you accumulate knowledge and you must start these these learning learnings on uh on like libraries as i said and these things applied for a certain time these things especially in business right these are best practices and those best practices are by default uh obsolete by the time you’re you’re trying to learn them and at the pace that we are we are learning right now and we are developing right now even with the uh all the um the enablement of information sharing but you’re still by the time you are going to learn something it’s already it’s it’s back there like it has already been done and analyzed to the point that it’s written whether in a book or an article or a webinar or anything but it’s there it’s been it’s old news all right so the ability for you to learn to to get certain key takeaways from from these from these from this information is is a certain talent you just need to be very selective in what you take and then when presented with new information you can’t just take whatever you have learned as something that’s for granted like this is something that was right at certain point in time and now there’s new information that is presented you just need to accept and not get stuck up on like the what the fact that you have you have experience and you have you have seen this before somewhere or anything that this could this this is in itself and any very arrogant i would be very arrogant of you just to think for just for you to have witnessed something or learn something that is it’s the absolute truth i don’t think you can you can make room in your mind to accept new ideas if you’re just going to hold up on new facts sorry old facts that are that you think are just absolute facts or truths this is uh this is the ability to unlearn just to make room for certain things to reoccupy the way you think and just accept new ideas and uh sometimes um yeah i will you need to to to give you an example of something like that how challenging it is like sometimes at a point in time we we were hiring and i actually we were presented with uh with two uh candidates and i chose the one with less experience because and my words back then was um no i want i want the one with the empty cup because i don’t want to spend that much time and have that much time to make them unlearn this thing so that’s how that’s how bad it is like people with certain learnings or beliefs or fake knowledge or fake experience or obsolete experience if you want sometimes sometimes it’s harder for them to just make room for it for these new ideas and concepts and um and yeah it’s it’s not it’s not something it has to be something that is continuously happening it’s it’s not it’s not the fact that you can do it once if you can do it once then you can you will you will survive a cycle you will just survive a cycle of just unlearning certain things learn new things and then you’re going to freeze that back and you’re going to continue with this new information that is going to be obsolete in a couple of days but it has to be a trained skill that that’s always evolving you always have to be to have the ability of learning and unlearning and not just them keeping the things that are that would be timeless or maybe just the way or alter the way you think in a bit or maybe just like and like an ai models just would would would add something to the way you take in this information but not not the information itself.

Jeffery: Brilliant i love it so I’m going to reiterate on this side too because i think one piece that you add in there is you’re always stating that you have to make room so there’s a lot of focus that has to go into this but i think from take it from the startup side because i think this is very valuable to startups is to what you’re saying is that as much as the investor is being open to new ideas on how you’re building your company or or other elements of the product the idea the solution there’s also the same mundane things on how you build a business and how you do other things that are associated with the business but it’s the idea sharing process that the investor and the founders are going through how do you how would you approach a startup that you’re working with in trying to enable that startup founder first time founder it’s never really worked with an investor who’s throwing out different ideas different concepts to grow their business to market to operations whatever that might be how do you get them to feel more open about taking in all of these new or different ideas on how they can operate their business without having to do them all and by you know buy the book and following everything the investor says well the investors told me to do this so i better do this it’s not exactly working that way you have to think for yourself and you have to come up with a solid plan that supports all of these elements but how do you get the founder to be more engaged and more open to all of these ideas that they’re going to get thrown out every minute second of the day when they’re building their company how do you educate them on how to balance through this because it’s a wild west out there and everybody’s got ideas and everybody’s got ways to tell you how to do something but how do you get your founder to stay focused but to believe in the fact that there are options and they have to explore things how do you get them to do this or at least understand it better so they don’t feel overwhelmed and they can continue to build and move their company forward.

Hazem: Yeah that’s a that’s a very tough question to answer i think short answer would be just make it seem like it’s their idea like make it seem like it’s it’s something that they come they came up with so just try to to um to ask the right questions like the like the amazing question that you have just popped at me but um yeah just ask the right questions just let them come up with this conclusion just ask them about their their customer preference ask them about um maybe someone that built a similar product or built to a similar client profile or customer profile ask them what ask them to research how how those customers liked such product or such such service so let them come up with the conclusion let them come up with what you’re trying to maybe you don’t know the answer to let them just figure out how to rethink this whole thing let them unlearn what they had uh they had built for from the beginning so they they mostly they set out to or the founders that you want to invest in had set up to solve a certain problem so just let them figure out give them the right questions to figure out the right angles of this problem and get a clear understanding of their their their ideal customer preferences and that would lead them to the way you don’t have to you don’t have to actually give them and i and i actually challenge anyone any investor that they know the answers that they know the right answers to these questions that it’s it’s a discovery uh practice like this is something that we are all we are all learning this and many of the things and I’m sure you have seen this before many of the things that you would advise certain startups to do or certain families to do you would see someone else doing the exact opposite of what you of what you had said or what you had advice and you see them breaking it big right so and then you you’d say no it’s it’s it’s a different situation it’s different case it’s uh it will apply in canada or you want to apply in uh somewhere else but yeah you just have to admit that you’re wrong this is this is the fact of life.

Jeffery: I think we both must agree then that founders may have a stickiness to wanting to be the expert in their space and sometimes become very tough-lipped on allowing somebody else to amplify or push their business forward without them coming up with the idea or coming up with that strategy so i do agree there has to be a way to coach them into that direction or to find the answers or to find the solution to the problem themselves so that they feel they’re supporting it because that is ultimately the best way for them to own it and not feel like they’re being driven by somebody else but they’re driving it so i think that’s beautiful well said and then the other side was the discovery which is it takes time to come up with these solutions to your point and it’s not going to happen right away it’s not something that you can just uh wave a magic wand and all of a sudden you have a solution for so i think that coaching part again goes back to the investor coaching and being able to guide them in that direction because every founder even every investor comes up with roadblocks comes up with issues where they’re unable to unlearn a process or unlearn something that’s in their mind away a word is described or where business functions or way a problem that they’re being faced with and i think that that’s where that discovery standpoint is and it’s not telling you something i think most people I’ll say at a high percentage 99 of people don’t like being told but a hundred percent of people like being guided and if you can guide them in the right direction by opening up all of these doors then maybe that opportunity becomes a lot easier for them to discover and i think there’s a lot of problems out there that would get better innovation if they didn’t feel that they were being um directed into one way and that they could open up and solve it the way they feel is best by diving into the problem is that a fair uh statement.

Hazem: Very much so yeah really yeah really uh made it a lot more clear than what I’ve said but yeah hitting the right spots.

Jeffery: Well we learn from each other that’s the best part of this so as these founders are doing this this is exciting because they think they start to really trust them that one they’re smarter and they are equipped with the right tools but they also have the right guidance from the investors so do you think this is a great way to create a tie-in with your investor and startup relations so that there becomes more trust and more dependability on each other moving forward in that relationship as you invest and as you mentioned you keep investing over time.

Hazem: I’m sorry i didn’t quite get your question

Jeffery: As you’re both working together because you’re working on this discovery you as an investor are kind of opening the doors up to get them to understand that there’s different ways to solve problems different options different scenarios that this actually once the founder comes up with an answer it kind of builds a trust between the investor and the startup so now the two you’re becoming more compatible in that relationship which is being able to be leaned on because i think there’s also then this context of things that we talked about around focus and helping them understand it’s their idea there’s also this uh roadblock is that I’m the investor on the startup there are two different levels of operations and i think there’s a disconnect there and somehow you got to bond and create a relationship when you come in at a series a and you invest in a company it’s very hard to make this connection and just all of a sudden your best friends hanging out solving problems working on a company you’re very separated so there’s got to be a way that connects and bonds those two groups together so some of this leading driving can obviously help but allowing them to come up with the solutions and the answers in this discovery phase and being able to create that value must start to create a good bond so I’m assuming based on the conversation is this something that you see as a way to help your founders tie better into what you’re doing so that you can become part of that strength bench that’s moving them forward in the right direction.

Hazem: Yeah well we are lucky to have this uh this relationship with you could say all all our founders and i think that has to do with the fact that we actually don’t invest that late late into into their life cycle so all the investments that we had made was precede up to pre-series a and that’s when the founders are actually much more susceptible to feedback to receiving more uh like guidance and advice from from you and this is where falak is actually positioned also not as
uh not as a as an investor or just as an investor but rather more than a hand holder into this ecosystem and just trying to avail certain resources for them and give them the right support I’m actually trying to not not just me but the whole team acts like part of the founders own team and that’s that’s something that you would uh you would actually hear from from most of our founders that we are they they consider us part of their their team as well so whenever they want someone to work with them on something that has to do with the go to market business development even even investment whether investment readiness or or access to certain investors we we have their back all the time and to your point yes you need to create this trust and you create this trust by working with them trying it their way and trying to think uh with them just give what they’re saying and you need to also have this belief that those guys know what they’re doing otherwise just maybe you shouldn’t invest with them from the from the beginning so just believe in them and this this would be reciprocated when you give them this trust and and belief they will also buy into the fact that you had they have your your buy-in into into their ideas and you would be coming from from from a place where you want to see this thing grow so they they trust your intentions and their insights there’s nothing there’s there’s only vested interest into the into their venture it’s not it’s nothing that would ever be a a win-lose situation so that’s um that’s the whole thing yeah i think um yeah i think that’s the point just uh just create this uh this sort of bond as you said and everything happens naturally they’re their own.

Jeffery: You’re working with these teams they kind of treat you like you’re part of the team which is huge and then you guys are able to build that bond through ideation and build out and discovery and i think it all comes down to everybody’s unlearning what they’ve had in their back pocket and now they’re kind of moving forward everybody’s on the same path you believe in them they start to feed back the problems and solutions they’re trying to solve you guys work collectively as a team to solve them and move forward i think that’s a great dynamic for any successful startup to have so it’s awesome what you guys are doing i love it we’re now going to kind of transition into um a more broader question which is that you guys have invested with and invested i think over 70 plus companies to date which is huge it’s awesome so taking that amazing feat and all the things that you’ve been part of in this community over the years uh love if you could share this briefly a case study of a founder where she or he really just really defined what it takes to be an entrepreneur we’re always looking for that great heartfelt story that just blows your mind of what it takes to be an entrepreneur and perhaps you can share a story with us that um kind of really encapsulates what that energy is that an entrepreneur brings to the table.

Hazem: Right my go my go-to case for this kind of situation would be uh would be andrew and andre saad androsat is the founder of a company called the bypass uh it’s a bit it’s a bit confusing because their their company is called bypass their product is called health tag and andrew is trying to democratize and elevate the the whole quality of the the health care services that the the common egyptian would would receive because um i don’t know i gotta give you a bit of context like we don’t have uh like medical insurance penetration is uh is in the single digit uh when it comes to uh on a population level and um yeah I’m I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the whole uh the whole medical ecosystem in egypt but that’s yeah that’s it’s pretty uh it’s a pretty tough tough environment so what andrew set up to uh uh set out to uh to achieve is to give access to everyone through uh giving access giving them access back to their information their health information through this health tag a very very simple solution to to have all this all the their medical records available on this discord and while while having their their health tags with all their information they get access to uh discounted uh healthcare services throughout the the country and to do that they also have a face of their product that is tailored to uh to the medical or health service providers as well and andrew andrew is from comes from a suburban city or somewhere that is not it is not cairo or alexandria or the big cities it’s called the golovaya and uh with very with little to no money andrew had uh had managed to to survive for a couple of years and then attract regional investors to to come into their his company and just after a couple of years as i said with with little to no to no money at all to rise like a phoenix and just become one of the one of the big players in the electronic health records uh business in egypt someone that most uh big brands now rely on for for their medical records and i think yeah he just inspires me with andrew that the the thing that i was talking about really really happened the way the way you put this trust in someone and put this belief in someone and just work with them hear them out listen to what they have to say even if you if even if you don’t agree but just trust that they know this business more than you do you’re just you have to have this acceptance you’re just an investor maybe you have certain domain expertise but you don’t you wouldn’t understand everything that’s happening within their business they’re the one the ones that building it so um yeah what happened with andrew is amazing yeah you just give them this trust it resupplicates you build more you trust each other more and just you you keep feeling into this upward uh loop.

Jeffery: I love it so moral of the story is not only as a founder you got to believe in yourself put some hard work it doesn’t matter which city town or small place that you’re from just keep driving forward and eventually you’ll find the right people that get behind you that that enjoy what you’re doing and how you’re building it and give them the trust give them the ears and a lot of great things can come out of this but perseverance sounds like it’s uh key to all of this uh success that andrew and and you guys have had with andrew.

Hazem: Yep

Jeffery: I love it perseverance is a big word and it’s uh it’s certainly a strong strong need in all founders. Well thank you for sharing that we’re gonna dive now into our rapid fire questions you ready.

Hazem: Yep

Jeffery: All right you’re coming in as the investor we’ll start with the investor side first pick one or the other here we go from an investor would you rather invest in a founder or co-founder

Hazem: what do you mean

Jeffery: Would you invest in a founder or a co-founder what’s your per preference you want two you want founders or co-founders.

Hazem: Co-founders

Jeffery: Okay unicorn or four-year 10x exit

Hazem: Four years 10x

Jeffery: Tech or cpg

Hazem: That’s that’s tough, all right Tech

Jeffery: U love it all right nfts or web 3.0

Hazem: Web 3.0

Jeffery: Ai or blockchain

Hazem: Ai

Jeffery: First time founder or second third time founder

Hazem: First time

Jeffery: First money in or series a

Hazem: first money in

Jeffery: Angel or vc

Hazem: Vc

Jeffery: Board seat observer

Hazem: Observer

Jeffery: Save or convertible note

Hazem: Save

Jeffery: Leader follow well

Hazem: Yeah i i don’t lead for the in this fund but yeah i would love to lead

Jeffery: Okay equity or interest payments

Hazem: Equity

Jeffery: Favorite part of investing

Hazem: Learning

Jeffery: Number of companies invested per year

Hazem: Ideally or what

Jeffery: Well yeah i guess in general if you invest in five companies per year but you’re shooting for 10 next year like that kind of thing

Hazem: Yeah ideally 10

Jeffery: Okay preferred terms any preferred terms outside of what we just shared

Hazem: No nothing

Jeffery: Okay vertical’s of focus

Hazem: um agriculture

Jeffery: Okay two qualities a startup needs in order to stand out to you

Hazem: All right team for sure solid team

Jeffery: Okay

Hazem: Um i know that uh if that qualifies as a as a quality but timing

Jeffery: Of course because uh you can invest in great things but if they’re uh 10 years ahead of their time then they’re not going to have a very good success story if they can’t find enough capital to run 10 years

Hazem: Yeah learn that the hard way exactly

Jeffery: Perfect all right we’re going to move to the uh personal questions

Hazem: Amazing

Jeffery: All right book or movie

Hazem: Sorry

Jeffery: Book or movie

Hazem: Book or movie movie superman to the movie than the book

Jeffery: All right fair enough uh superman or batman

Hazem: Um batman

Jeffery: Restaurant or picnic

Hazem: Restaurant

Jeffery: Five minutes with bezos or oprah

Hazem: Bezos

Jeffery: Mountain or beach

Hazem: Beach

Jeffery: bike or run

Hazem: Bike i hate running

Jeffery: I’m actually going to go for a run after this so they both i like bikes too i do both I’m a big bike fan big bike fan

Jeffery: Big mac or chicken mcnuggets

Hazem: No big mac

Jeffery: Trophy or money

Hazem: Oh money

Jeffery: Beer or wine

Hazem: Well it depends all right um beer

Jeffery: Okay camera or mobile phone

Hazem: Phone it has a camera anyway

Jeffery: There you go uh king or rich

Hazem: King

Jeffery: Concert or amusement park

Hazem: Concert

Jeffery: Fortune cookie or birthday cake

Hazem: Fortune cookie

Jeffery: Ted talk or book reading

Hazem: Ted Talk

Jeffery: Tic tock or instagram

Hazem: Tic tolk

Jeffery: Facebook or linkedin

Hazem: Linkedin

Jeffery: Most famous person that pops in your mind

Hazem: Musk

Jeffery: Favorite sports team

Hazem: Um yeah uh any sport right any sport barcelona

Jeffery: Oh nice i was not i was there not too long ago uh favorite brand that pops in your mind

Hazem: Favorite brand

Jeffery: Apple I’m going to say that right now about seventy percent uh sixty percent of all
people pick apple

Hazem: Uh favorites with the fact that I’m sitting in front of one so

Jeffery: I could be it could be yeah they’ve done a great job on branding they’re very good at branding i will say that
um Your favorite book

Hazem: Oh favorite book 48 laws of power

Jeffery: 48 laws of power done this is where i get all my insights on uh books to read next

Jeffery: All right favorite movie and what character would you play in the movie

Hazem: Top gun maverick

Jeffery: Nice i haven’t seen the movie yet but i hear it’s good

Hazem: Oh but that that since the first one

Jeffery: Oh okay i heard the second one was really good

Hazem: The second one is phenomenal

Jeffery: Oh I’m gonna have to watch it um all right favorite app you’re using on your phone

Hazem: Favorite app uh notion notion I’m gonna look that one up now it will change your life

Jeffery: Is it a meditation app

Hazem: No it’s not it’s a it’s actually a productivity app or a collaboration uh tool or tool for for work you can use it also for like for personal stuff if you want to like achieve certain things so you just list it down and yeah they have a bunch of cool tools and cool setups you can uh you can work with

Jeffery: Okay cool I’ll look into that one all right we’re almost there what is the meaning of success

Hazem: I am enjoying this do you have more

Jeffery: What is the meaning of success to you

Hazem: Um well for me i think to have to have built a certain um a certain way that the that you can put your name on like something that someone for someone to to say how would uh how do you do things and start to think like you and that would be perceived as the right thing to do to do it

Jeffery: So taking the taking the way that you’ve done things and that people can mimic that is obviously a form of flattery or form of being able to accomplish something so based on what you build hopefully other people will see that they like it and they’re going to want to replicate it because it’s working and you’re doing a great job.

Hazem: Yes

Jeffery: I love it no that’s perfect all right last question what is your superpower

Hazem: My superpower i um i don’t give up even if i do

Jeffery: Never give up i love it never give up that’s good even when you think you do you’re you’ve got one more kick

Hazem: Yeah or maybe you just try something else but you don’t just give up

Jeffery: Well i love that quote because i think that that does obviously represents a lot of how you work with founders how you’ve built where you’ve come from and all the great things that you’ve done they’re obviously great with people as well and I’m going to say hassam it’s been a pleasure to get to learn more about yourself and to dive into all the great things that you’ve done and where you’re going and where you’re going to get to it was awesome i appreciate everything you shared lots of notes and the way we like to kind of end our show is we like to give you the last word so anything that you want to share to the investor community or to the startups uh i turn it over to you but again thank you very much for all your time today super appreciated.

Hazem: Jeff I’ve uh enjoyed every bit of it I’ll have to give you that like this this has been the best like sort of this sort of experience that I’ve ever had so yeah really enjoyed it very much thank you for that um what i would like to say to everyone is to again do not do not give up even even if it seems like every door is shut in your face this is not the end i know this these are tough times and uh everyone is telling you and every memo is telling you not to uh not to be very optimistic about things and just be very careful but what i want to tell you and leave you with that is that every other success story that is out there um just defied all kinds of sense and the fight all kinds of um of yeah sensible uh situations like then any nothing nothing just happened because it makes sense or nothing happened or nothing succeeded because it was set out in the right conditions or the right uh or the right factors around it like everything happened in complete defiance of all things possible so just keep pushing and keep keep at it guys do not give up

Jeffery: Awesome i totally agree with you that’s brilliant well said and thank you again for all your time today thank you

Hazem: Thank you all right good night

Jeffery: Okay hazem was awesome that was great just diving in and unpacking all that and a couple of uh points that I’ll bring up which were um really focused on this unlearning part you know I’m learning the way we all think the way we built things the way we think everything works and he brought up a good point when you’re a startup you got to kind of unlearn the way you think of market works or where product works you’re going to be educating but you’re also going to be learning new things from your investors in the communities around you and the same thing for investors they have to really unlearn what they think is the best way to market or how something works so uh that was great and then his last point which really kind of summed everything up too is never give up you know that fifth gear uh that founders got to have in order to drive this business when he thought he’s given up he had another gear the next day or the next moment or maybe took a week off whatever it is but always make sure you understand your space and take the time to really dive into it and you know when the pressure gets really tough and you got to take a moment just know what value you bring to the game and uh when you’ve got a lot of that you know there’s there’s ways to give up to but there’s also ways to persevere and go around and really crush it so i think the takeaway today is unlearn persevere crush it and make room focus thank you for the insights really uh really a great uh great chat so thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel it feel free to share with your friends or subscribe to our youtube channel follow us on spotify apple podcast and or stitcher your supports or comments are truly appreciated you can also check us out at supportersfun.com or for startup events visit openpeoplenetwork.com thank you and have a fantastic day