Contact Links
Mohammad’s LinkedIn account: @Mohammad AlRazaz
‍OTO’s Website: https://tryoto.com/

Transcript:
Ali Zewail: Welcometo the Startups Arabia podcast. I'm happy to have today Moham Razaz,ofounder and CEO of Oto. Oto is a shipping and logistics company that's kind of,well, we're going to talk about it later, of course, in the interview, but youcould say it's a one stop shop for anyone who wants to ship stuff topeople in theegion, hopefully, and currently definitely in Saudiand in other and a few other countries again, we'll talk about it. But thereally cool thing I like about it is the fact that this is kind of a componentthat supports the startup ecosystem overall, and that that's also That you see,for example, in a, in a market like China and having this component in theregion is going to be, I think, a great multiplier for the region.Again, we'll talk about it. I don't want to waste more time inthe intro. Thank you very much for coming on, Mohamed.

Mohammad Alrazaz:Thank you, Ali. Thank you for hosting me. I'm super excited to be on yourpodcast.Ali Zewail: Great. Metoo. All right. So I was thinking about how we're going to start thisconversation. And as I researched this episode, I saw, I noticed that youstarted your career career in a not a very typical way, in the sense that youwere, you had the highest high school score in, uh, in the kingdom, SaudiArabia, and, and you got a full scholarship to a very good university.And when you graduated, instead of, for example, joining amultinational, Or something like that, which maybe your parents would have beenhappier with. I don't know. Uh, you ended up like starting up in this Braziliancompany called easy taxi starting up their operation, uh, in Riyadh, uh, thecapital city of Saudi Arabia.I mean, what made you do that? What, what made you take thatdecision?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. So it's, um, it's, um, it's, it's, it's basically connected events. Um,every time I look back into, into that particular chapter in my life, uh, Ireally smile despite how challenging it was, to be very honest. So as youmentioned, so I was a, I was a kind of like nerd. Uh, I got scholarship tostudy engineering at El Faisal.Um, and I actually opted in to study electrical engineering.So, um, I was in the first batch of the whole university. So the university wasactually quite new. So I, I applied that and I got the full scholarship. And,um, and on the second year of, uh, of the school, uh, someone from the collegeof faculty, um, they, uh, the college faculty, they came to me and he said,listen, Mohammed, you are the only one who's going to study electricalengineering from your group.So we don't have the option of building the whole faculty anddepartment for engineering only for you. So you have the, you have two options.Either you're going to join the second group who wants to study industrialengineering, and there's another option that are like three guys. Imagine likethree guys was actually a kind of like the number to open a new departmentwithin the university and studying aerospace engineering.I wasn't excited for both. Honestly, I felt like I'mindustrial. I don't want to work in a factory or whatever. And airspace thatsounds like not exciting at all for me. So they told me either you you actuallyjoin one of these or you can actually skip a year so you can join us next year.Uh, and, uh, By then there are like five guys who wants to study electricalengineering.So I told them, listen, how about we come up with a kind oflike a middle way. So I suggested if they can basically extend my scholarshipfor one more year. Here and they allow me in that year to kind of like take anyelective course and any course within the university. It requires aprerequisite. Uh, so they actually took it to the, uh, to the, um,the dean's committee and they got for that.And, uh, What I did is that I finished all my electives for thenext four years. So I took all of these courses and I started taking all thebusiness courses, the essential ones. So I took business administration,macroeconomics, microeconomics, marketing, accounting, and surprisingly, I was,I was like the number one in these classes.So I, I didn't know even like the, some of the professors,they, they, they had to exclude me from the curve because like, this is theengineering, you know, and so it was kind of like, uh, uh, breaking the carefor the other students. Uh, and this is what I got introduced to business, uh,honestly. So, um, This is where I started learning about business, about, um,how to build up something.And it was honestly something I really wanted to do since I wasyoung. Um, uh, just like a very side story, I'm just going to come back to whydid I join EasyTax by that time. But when I was a little kid, my father and mymother, they used to take us, um, I have a big family. We're like six siblingsand, uh, The average number of, um, siblings each one of my aunts or uncleshave is around six to eight.So we're like a lot of, we're like a big family. So we go to agarden during the weekend, you know, one of these public, uh, gardens and, uh,or public parks. And everyone would be playing, jumping, blah, blah, blah. AndI would be the kid. Sitting on the table, not doing any of these activities,just staring at the lady who's selling all of these sweets and candies and, uh,you know, uh, chips and all of these stuff.I wonder, like, this, she's, like, super smart. She, she'sselling the right product in the right place, right? Um, and they really wantSo I, I, I told my mom, like, listen, next time I want to buy some stuff andthey want to sell it in the garden and my mom would shout like, no, this is notallowed. The police will take us.I'm like, no, I want to do it. So since I was a little, I waskind of like the awkward kid who doesn't play with kids, but he wants to doother stuff.Ali Zewail: Hmm.Mohammad Alrazaz: ButI didn't have a chance. And my career was kind of like already, uh, preorganized in a way that, okay, you're going to graduate as an electricalengineer.You're going to work for ABB or Schneider or one of these biginternational companies. And, uh, so you're going to get married. You're goingto have kids and your kids will become the future employees. And that's it. So,um, so that, that actually what happened. So I graduated with an honors degreefrom El Faisal. engineering. But an interesting story happened in between. SoIn 2011, I was organizing, uh, the first TEDx event in Riyadh. I really wantedto attend a TED event or a TEDx event. There, there hasn't been any in, in, inthe region. There was only one in Bahrain. I really wanted to have someone inRiyadh or something in Riyadh.So I decided to organize the first one. And, um, someone, Ithink a few days before the event, someone from Germany called me and he said,hello, my name is Anas. They said my fiance she's speaking at the event. Iwould love to come and support her, but I don't have tickets Can you fit me ini'm like sure man?Just come we'll get you and he attended the event And then hegave me a call to thank me for for that They said can I meet you man? I'd loveto meet you. I'd love to get to know you I'm, like sure come to the uh Campuslet's meet in the university and let's let's talk And he started telling meabout a crazy idea and he started throwing Uh terms like e commerce.I mean 2011 e commerce that did not make any sense and he toldme that muhammad me and Germany is not in our region at all. We had a bunch ofguys in germany Where we're doing something called e commerce We're sellingthings online that you can actually buy it.It's such a blah blah blah We would like to expand to theregion. Would you like to? Maybe think about dropping out of school, man. Justgo to Dubai and build up the business for us, blah, blah, blah. And now comingfrom a family, uh, who really appreciate having their kids getting ascholarship, this is like committing a suicide, dropping out of university.It won't be accepted at all. So I said, let's get in touch and,uh, let's see what, what we can do. And literally I was ignoring his emails andeverything. Anas was actually the co founder of Nemshik. That was back in 2012,right? So we, we stayed in touch. He actually came to Dubai andhe built Nemshi with, with, uh, with other guys.And, uh, when I graduated in 2012, He actually connected me toRocket Internet, uh, which by that time it was the company who actually builtNamche in Dubai and they wanted to build a new venture called Easy Taxi. So Imet with the MD, Ayad Al Qassar, uh, who's today the co founder of, uh, Club.And, uh, he told me, man, what do you think about this business?We talked about it. When I, when I went back home, he sent me aWhatsApp message. He said, listen, would you like to jump in and join us inthis? I said, you know what, let's do it. And this is how I ended up buildingEasyTaxi in the region.Ali Zewail: Nice. So,no second thoughts. You didn't think, how am I going to tell my parents, uh,this is totally different from what I had planned. You just went in there.Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. I mean, I mean, what, what, what do I have to lose? Right. Um, I rememberapplying for some of these big international companies when I graduated.Ali Zewail: MmMohammad Alrazaz:And, uh, it wasn't easy to kind of like get to an interview with them becausetheir hiring process takes time. Um, I did an interview with one company andthey really wanted to kind of like hire me, but due to the hiring quota, theycouldn't do that.So I said, you know what? Let me just try out this company.What is the worst thing that could happen? If the company does not do well, Istill live with my parents. Uh, my mom still cooks for everyone in the house.So I'm not going to die yet. It's going to be fine. I'm going to find a placeto sleep on. I'm going to find some food to eat.And, uh, I was, I was a fat guy by that time. So eating for mewas a big thing. So I was like, yeah, That's already available. So let's takethe risk. And, uh, what would be the worst case scenario? And I still, uh, Istill remember because when you build up a company, you don't have an office.Um, I built it from scratch.Like my office was the dining table inside my, my, my house.Um, And and my mom would be like every morning going in and it's like Mohammedfind the job, please, for God's sake, you don't look like you're working. Myfather, he was like sending his friends to talk to me and to convince me tochange my mind.This guy studied electrical engineering. He graduated with anhonor degree and now he's spending. 90 percent of his time talking to taxidrivers over the phone, right? Like this is insane.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Mohammad Alrazaz: Um,And I think he was everyone did not get even the whole model of easy taxi andthe ride hailing and all of this because Also, it was new by the way by thetime we launched easy taxi kareem and uber did not operate in saudi So it wasstill relatively new.So i've seen all the reactions around people Or all thereactions from people around the business model But I think that was a kind oflike a very difficult time until my father started noticing the logos ofEasyTaxi on each and every taxi cab, Riyadh, and this is the part where he'slike, yeah, maybe this guy, he's into something.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Maybe there's something there. So, okay. And after that, you actually, beforeauto, you worked on two other startups, Launder and Jack, uh, before actuallystarting auto, uh, what has, what have you, what, what has carried through fromthese experiences into auto and what you, what have you picked up along the wayto lead to this?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. So, um, I'm going to throw a very interesting fact. I would say that,okay, so that's a, okay. So let me, let me, let me tell you a bit about, uh,what type of family I'm coming from, because that kind of like influenced mydecisions about how I build companies. Um, I don't come from a rich family. Myactually family is a kind of like, middle class, I would say even sometimesbelow middle class.We came from like a very small family because we have a lot ofsiblings. Even my father couldn't afford having his kids in private schools. SoI studied in public schools. Everyone actually, all of my siblings, we study inpublic schools. Universities, you have two options. Either you study uh inSaudi if you get a scholarship or my father would actually, uh, Put you in auniversity in Jordan because there you can actually get an affordable, uh,tuition fees that he can actually pay for, um, So I come from a family wheremoney really it's something that is that wasn't always available, right? Sohaving the idea of going and building a startup and investing your own moneywasn't something that I could have done, right?Ali Zewail: Right.Mohammad Alrazaz:That's why when I jumped into EasyTaxi, for me, I jumped into that opportunitybecause when I really wanted to build something, I really wanted to build abusiness, and I told about that story when I was a little kid.I really wanted to do that, and the beauty about doing thiswith Rocket Internet is that I get to build a business without spending anymoney on it, right? So I'm actually getting paid building that business, whichis a great opportunity. So I've done that. And then I joined a semi governmentcompany called the camel right after because I wanted to try the corporatelife.I wanted to live a life where I can apply for a vacation andhaving a manager to approve it because the life with rocket internet wasextremely intense. Um,It's not easy. Yeah, it's not easy. So I wanted to try theother parts so I don't feel like I've missed out, right? I want to try it out.I want to see how good is it?I worked in an amazing company in terms of culture and perksand advantages. So I've seen, I've seen that side very well. But then duringthat time with Takamil, I actually didn't want to disconnect from the startuplife and the startup ecosystem. So, um. Me and two friends, we decided to builda company called Launder.So Launder was a laundry delivery app, um, with a very simplebusiness model. We actually take your laundry, take it to the, um, uh, to oneof the laundry shops where we have an agreement with, uh, and then deliver itback to you the next day. Um, and after kind of like maybe one year and a half,two years of operations, we decided to shut down the business.Um, and I'll tell you why we had to shut down the business. So.Three main things. Um, one, I think the, the, uh, the, the business modelitself, sometimes you have a great idea and, uh, there is a need and, uh, thereis a need. Like you speak to customers and customers will be like, yes, I wantto use this. And yes, I want to pay for this.Right. Um, but sometimes business models, they don't workbecause they're not worth it. Um, so for example, the whole, the whole processof picking up the laundry and then doing the laundry and then delivering itback, uh, without being part of the laundry process itself, like, becauseyou're only taking a small margin off of the laundry service.It was not worth it. Like, you would do the whole hassling andyou do the whole process and then you would only make. three rials, right? Likeit's not worth it, right? That easy taxi with the gigs economy, you, you makemore than that and you, you make, uh, uh, much more transactions without theneed of running, uh, that, that much of, uh, heavy operations.So one, the business model wasn't feasible. Um, two, uh, noneof us, the founders were actually dedicating our time into the business. So Iwas Uh, at the camel, uh, Ahmed was working for another medical company. Salihwas working for a tech company like none decided to actually Go and uh,dedicate, uh their time to the business Um, so that was the second reason Thirdreason I think it's, it's the founder's maturity, right?So I came from that experience from EasyTaxi, but Ahmed andSaleh did not have a startup before, right? And it's, it's very difficult tokind of like adjust the mindset of someone who did not build a startup and thentell him, Hey, come and build a startup. By that time, we did not have manyaccelerators or incubators, et cetera, et cetera.And the knowledge around entrepreneurship wasn't really muchthere. So we kind of like had to, Uh, we have like a kind of like a lot offights and disagreements Uh, for example, someone would come and say you knowwhat I can instead of raising additional fund Let me just put more money intothe business and I can take more equity and someone would say hey Are youtrying to control the business?I'm like no i'm trying to protect you from external investorsThis should be good for us and and that kind of like maturity did not and thedynamics did not work out So we had to Stop the business, uh, and I learned alot from there. Like these were my, my key three lessons, honestly, when I,when I, when we had to shut down Jack, but then when I was with the camel, uh,a major event happened.So my father, he passed, uh, he passed, uh, he passed. Now Ihave the full responsibility of my whole family. Um, not just, um, uh,emotionally and, and being present central, but even financially. So I was theone. Responsible for taking care of my family. And I'm very proud that, I mean,I was the one who was taking care of this, Alhamdulillah.Um, but during that time at Takamru, I'm like, Takamru is veryslow. I mean, to take a company or to take an idea from an idea to anexecution, this takes sometimes a few years. And just to take the approval ofthe minister would, would take a lot of time. And sometimes because we werelike changing the market, um, some of the, uh, some of the, uh, like you cannotoperate without having some higher level of, uh, of decisions in order to kindof like operate.So you don't have that much of freedom. Taking an idea from anidea to an MVP, to an operating idea. So TKAML was a great company, great pay,great culture, but it was too slow for me to handle. And I was like, you know,since you took the risk of joining EasyTaxi, uh, let's take another risk bygoing back to the startup life before you get married and having the secondfamily.So. Because I'm sure of today, but I don't know what's going tohappen tomorrow. I'm not, I'm not the person who would worry about tomorrow. I,I, I know what's happening today and I can take the risk based on what I havetoday. So, um, so I decided to quit Takawal and to join a company, a startup.And I'm like, again, can you afford building a startup yourself?And the answer was no, I cannot. All my savings, all the moneythat I made in Takamil, I'm spending it on family. Two of my siblings, theywere already studying at, at university, so I had a lot of expenses to kind oflike take care of. So I said, okay, again, go back, join a startup, but thistime have an executive living.Where you can join as a CEO, so you kind of like have a bettercontrol over the the business and Jump to an industry where you really want tocreate disruption. So one of One of the few industries that was like reallyinterested in was actually the logistics industry By that time fitcher waspopping up They were raising a lot of money and they really wanted to kind oflike change how logistics Work and how the last mile delivery work, but I thinkat a certain time You They, they kind of like pivoted and they just became likeanother shipping company in the region.Instead of focusing on tech and business model and disruption.So this is where I was like, there is something there. Let me just join acompany. So I joined a company called Jack's. Jack was a, was a peer to peerdelivery app, where people, they would use Jack to deliver items betweenthemselves٫ So I joined and, uh, we wanted to have someone to run the show. Um,so I joined as the CEO with visiting shares and I started looking deeper at thebusiness model and that the company and the first thing I did, which is Ilearned from rocket internet is that make decisions based on data. So I wentand I started looking at the recurring customers, et cetera, and they noticedthat there is a very strange behavior happening there.There are some people who are shipping or using our app 30times a day. I was like, why would someone deliver 30 things a day to otherpeople? I mean, what kind of behavior is this? So I started calling them myselfand, uh, I, I, I found out that these are small businesses who prefer to useJack for deliveries than actually Aramex or DHL or FedEx.Uh, because these guys, they don't, Same day deliveries and,uh, auto was, uh, kind of like, uh, sorry, um, Jack was a much easier solutionto use for, uh, forthat. Um, and yeah, this is how we kind of like looked atpivoting the business model or peer to peer to make it B2C. So we take an itemfrom a business and deliver it to the, to their end consumers as a deliverycompany.But we say, do you know what? Since, um, ride hailing workedwith the gigs economy, right? And with the tax industry. Why can't we just dothe same? If we want to scale very fast without, um, um, raising a lot offunds, what if we can actually deliver packages With, uh, with individuals,instead of having our own fleet and our own drives, right, we should require alot of investment. And since I came from that background, from Easy Taxi, Isaid, you know what? Let's just do that. So, um, we actually started recruitingthe people that Uber and Karima at Easy, at Easy Taxi would not allow them intotheir platform because they have all their cars or whatever. And in Ali Zewail: Right? Mohammad Alrazaz: thecar is not part of theexperience.Like, you really don't, right?It doesn't matter. So we said, let's tap into these guys. So wegot access to a very good fleet and we started operating them as deliveryagents, uh, to deliver packages. And, uh, it worked, the model worked honestly.Um, we, we used to deliver 1, 500 to 2, 000 packages a day. Um, until yeah,until the, uh, the, um, The, the idea of auto kind of like started to, to popup, uh, from, from there, uh, because for me as a, as a CEO of a deliverycompany, I found it extremely, extremely difficult to get into new accounts tosell our service Knowing that we are a same day delivery company We're fasterand even we were pricing our services at a cheaper rate than the other of theshipping companies because we were a small startup Still businesses wouldn'tuse us Um, and and I would I would see a big resistance for them to kind oflike use us.They used to Give us a wrong feedback that Oh, you guys areonly in Riyadh. We would like to work with someone who's covering the wholekingdom. And that's, and that's where you, you don't need to listen to yourcustomers. So they were giving us the feedback, but when I really dig, digdeep, because we actually went and expanded our services into seven differentcities, but still, we did not see a huge growth and number of clients.And then when I dig deep, I found out that the challenge wasn'tin expansion, wasn't in coverage. It was actually in them. Onboarding ourcompany because that would require a technical integration and also a manualprocess of handling our account financially, paying our invoices, assigning theorders, um, uh, to us compared to the other delivery companies that they'reworking with.So for them, it's an operational hassle. So the operationsmanager would be like, you know what? I'd rather to work with two companiesthan actually working with three or five. So if you're not as the others, Iwould not work with you. Um,In order for me to kind of like grow the business, I said, Uh,we are a same day delivery company So let's try to tap into these businesseswho have physical stores and shops in different cities so we can kind of liketake the The inventory from their nearest shop and deliver it to theircustomers.So I started to sell that model and it was Surprising to methat even businesses with the brick and mortar shops They would, uh, they wouldstill use their centralized warehouse to fulfill their e commerce orders andnot to touch any of their inventory in their physical stores. And the reasonfor that was one, they don't have the tech to assign their online orders totheir physical stores.And two, they don't have the system that it checks theinventory between these different shops and assign it to the nearest one andthe connectivity to the delivery, uh, partners and clients. And this is kind oflike what we endedup, uh, Ali Zewail: So.Mohammad Alrazaz:Singling that resulted in auto because, um, yeah, Yani, Jack and, and, andlaunder was actually me trying to learn, um, uh, new business models, uh, andagain, trying to build a business with the minimum investment possibility.And in launder, I didn't invest much because we were likeputting some pocket money to run the show, but in, in, in Jack, it was tryingto understand the industry. Um, um, kind of like deeper before I, I jump into.Building the next company.Ali Zewail:Interesting. So, so you get this idea for auto and it's a pretty big idea. Soit's pretty complicated to deliver this type of solution. And you just, so youstart, uh, looking for funding to start it, right? Is that how it, uh, is thathow it started? And, and also if you can tell us a bit more about what autodoes so people understand and are oriented about what the product does.Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah, of course. So during that time, I remember 2018. Um, I kind of like gotreally excited about this, this challenge and this problem. So I startedlooking globally at solutions that we can basically use and maybe connect Jackto it as a delivery company. I kind of like sell that to our clients. Uh, andthey only found one company in the in the UK.Okay. company called Metapack, but Metapack was like a verycomplicated kind of like solution. They don't give you, um, a solution out ofthe box or on the shelf. They actually give you a code that you have to kind oflike customize and you have to do like, you have to have an engineer if youwant to use Metapack in order to kind of like connect the system together.It was really complicated, no clear pricing, nothing. So, andthey couldn't find anything in the region. So And subhanAllah, by, by chance,by complete chance, I actually met with Furqan Al Azhar. who used to be myteacher at college. So for Khan, he actually finished his master's degree inhis bachelor's in industrial engineering and then master's degree in logisticsand supply chain.And then he came to Faisal University where I studied college,um, to teach us some courses. So I had a few courses with him. Um, and thenSubhanAllah, uh, he, I left the, I graduated. He actually worked in telecomcompanies. For a while and then he decided to build a software developmenthouse with his brothers So we met by coincidence in 2018 Um, I was like, heyFurkan, what are you doing?What are you up to? And he's like I have my softwaredevelopment house What are you doing? I told him i'm running jack. Listen,since you have this development house How about I share with you an idea? Maybeyou can help me build And I told him about the idea and the gap and he saidgive me three weeks.I can come up with mvps In a, in a month of time, we had an MVPready to be tested with one of our clients and we actually tried out theservice and it was amazing. Like we used to deliver orders in three hours. Itwas, was honestly magical. Um, and then I started to kind of like, look, whatcan we improve?What can we enhance? Et cetera. We started developing thesolution piece by piece. During that time, uh, I got a call from the board. Uh,so Jack was trying to fundraise And the reason for for fundraising wasn'tbecause we were, uh, we did not have funding, but actually Jack was built by ajoint venture. So it was a one marketing agency and one human resourcedevelopment company.They joined forces together and they wanted to build thatparticular product. The, the, uh, the, um, the, uh, the chairman of that humanresource company, um, he was one of the royal family. And he had, and he got asenior role in the government. Um, so part of that process is that he has tokind of like let go of his own personal businesses in order to not have any.So the other company wanted to have an alternative for thatcompany. And it's like, okay, either we sell that 50 percent of the company orwe have to buy it out or we need to figure it out. So after a very kind of likea tough time figuring out what the company should do, this company decided tobuy the technology, um, and, uh, to kind of like acquire the technology that webuilt at Jack and to sell it as a standalone product.And this is where I got a call from the board. They are tellingme, Razzaz listen, we're going to stop the operations of Jack and this chapterwill be ended. We're going to sell it as a company because we cannot keep. Um,the business funding in this way. So for me, I, I, I, I was like, wait, so whatshould I do now?Either I join one of these companies, like, uh, I got a lot ofcompanies who reallyapproached me, wanted me to do a job, or I should basicallypursue this idea. Um, And, um, I remember I got a very good paying. job in, inone of the publicly listed companies in the insurance, um, uh, industry, andthey wanted to me to lead the insurance tech arm within that company.It was a hyping job. I remember when I told my family about it,they were like, did you sign the offer? I'm like, I'm still thinking about it.I'm not sure. It's like, how this is insane. You're making a lot of money. Youshould just go there. Uh, but I actually went back to the Excel sheet and, uh,I mean, God forgive Excel sheets, you know, Excel sheets, they really influenceyou.I put like the salary for the next five years if I stay in thatcompany and I, I literally put like, if I pursue this idea, how much would Imake in five to 10 years of time? And then I started doing the comparison andthe risk analysis. And I said, you know what? Just go with it. I spoke toFurqan. He said, you know what, Mohammed, I'm already taking the risk byrunning this software development company.Let's, let's do it. And that's, uh, that was in, uh, September2019. Uh, so for Khan and I, we decided to do it, but here is something. So Ilearned from Londur that you have to be at the same kind of like knowledge andunderstanding around the startup ecosystem and how things work in startups. Uh,so you minimize the, uh, the failure, uh, uh, rate.So what we did is that I told fka, listen, I cannot fund thebusiness and you cannot fund this business. Right? And we cannot just go nowand fundraise 'cause all what we have is just an idea. And that MVP, we, weeven don't have revenue. So, uh, we decided to apply to 500 global 500startups. Um, they had, uh, an accelerator in Saudi, uh, collaboration withMAs.So we applied for 500 startups and, um. We got accepted. Wewere lucky, honestly, because we were the only pre revenue, um, uh, company,uh, in that, in that cohort. And I remember they told me, listen, Mohammed, youneed to supply it, like provide us with a company name. I'm like, company name,I don't have a name for this.And, uh, we started brainstorming ideas, retail,retail, plus whatever. And, uh, pre name, pre logo, uh, preeverything. Uh, so we decided to name it Oto, uh, OTO. And the name is, is, uh,is, uh. I mean, it means online to offline because we were fulfilling theonline orders from the offline stores. So we say it online to offline and, uh,and also it means automation, which is kind of like the key value of what weare building.So, uh, we named it auto, uh, we need the logo. Okay. What logoshould we do? All the shipping companies. They have colorful logos, right? Andwe don't want to be misled and to be confused by a shipping company becausewe're not a shipping company, we're a shipping platform. Um, so we decided tobe black, square black with OTO in the middle and this became our logo sincedesign, since inception.We applied for 500 startups and this was my initial agreementwith Furqan. Listen, you join the accelerator program and I will work as aconsultant and I will pay for all of your expenses because he was travelingfrom Turkey and he would stay here in Riyadh for like three months. So I said,listen, I'll take care of your expenses and you just.Focus on the program. Um, and that's how we started. So I tooksome consulting work and I used to share that with for Khan to pay his ownexpenses, and we kept doing that for three months until December 2019, where wegraduated from, um, From 500 startups, we actually raised 275, 000, 50, 000from 500 global, 225 from angel investors who were actually friends.They even did not understand SAS logistics, nothing. They justbelieved in us. And, uh, they were actually the, the people who I worked, uh,in a consulting project with, so they were like very excited to put their moneywith us. Um, and in March, 2020, one week before the lockdown. We launchedwhat's called auto.We did not know that this was the perfect timing. And, uh, thisis how the whole story started. Um, and just a short description of auto andwhat, what, what we are building. So auto is simply a shipping gateway. We'rebuilding a shipping management software that helps, um, online businesses andomni channel brands to ship, manage, track and return all of their onlineorders from their physical stores or from their centralized warehouses.Um, and we connect them with more than 300, uh, shippingcouriers, um, from one consolidated dashboard. Businesses and, um, and, uh,brands, they can ship using their own contracts. So if they have contracts withthe shipping companies, they can onboard their contracts to auto, to auto, tokind of like monitor and track and manage all of their shipping operations, orthey can buy shipping labels directly from auto.So we have built a marketplace. Where businesses can go andcompare rates and buy a shipping label without the need of signing anycontracts with any of the shipping companies. And we have built a driver app.If they want to deliver using their own fleet, they can still use auto and theywould be able to kind of like, um, Mix, um, and they design their own strategyon how they would like to ship between their own contracts or buying thirdparty logistics label or basically, uh, using their own fleet.And this is how the whole idea of, uh, of auto kind of like youbought.Ali Zewail: And soit's, uh, is it, how does it make money? Is it a SAS model or do you depend onthe, like a commission from the shipping?Mohammad Alrazaz:It's a hybrid model. So we have, um, the SAS, the subscription fee. And, uh, wehave a transactional fee, uh, per label. So, uh, we make money off, so we have,on the SaaS side, it can come in a form of subscription or contract valueannually. On the, um, transactional side, it's mainly coming from the shippinglabels that we are selling where we are making a margin.On top of, uh, every label that we said,Ali Zewail: And howdid, I mean, this is a very big product, pretty complicated with different, uh,bells and whistles. Uh, but what was the initial version that you started withand how did the change over the, over the years? Did you start with this ideafrom day one or did it kind of pivot?Mohammad Alrazaz: no,not, not, not really. Uh, so we started as an, um, omni channel managementsystem, um, which is the online to offline idea thing, right? So, uh, our goalwas let's, uh, to, uh, connect the sales channels of a brand. Um, and thenconnected to their physical stores and warehouses. So we can basically assignthe orders to the nearest inventory.And then we just connected to the shipping company. Um, we didnot really focus on shipping when we started. We focused on that. Ordermanagement system or the omnichannel management system. So when COVID started,um, Everyone panicked right because now they had to close all of their storesand uh The other thing is that they had to to to switch into selling online Ifthey haven't been selling online already and the biggest shipping couriers Theycould not take any more volumes like listen, we cannot handle your ordersRight.So they were literally in trouble. So what we did is that Istarted using that event and that the whole kind of like corona situation intoconvincing businesses not to shut down their shops and to open them and to haveone guy in each shop and to use their shops as fulfillment centers to use theirown drivers or all employees as the drivers and we have built by that thedriver app.And, um, and we told them, listen, if you are, if you cannotwork with Aramex and, uh, Samsa and these big guys, we have connected alreadywith 15 delivery companies who are from the long tail and the smallerbusinesses and you can use them now, right? It's a single integration. So forthem, this was a lifesaver.Because they just need to do one integration and now they canbasically utilize the inventory available in their shops because they even didnot have the time to move the inventory from their shops to their centralizedwarehouse, right? And they wanted to kind of like utilize that. And we wereclosing clients like every two weeks and we're talking about enterpriseclients.It's great. But I think it was only for Khan and myself who didnot want COVID to end on this planet. We were kind of like, Ali Zewail: thinkthat's Mohammad Alrazaz:enjoying it. Ali Zewail: longer.Exactly. Exactly.Mohammad Alrazaz: Butthen we started seeing the alarming signs when things started to go back tonormal. Sales cycle started to become slower and takes longer. And we said,listen, how can we, how can we, I mean, if we want to build a multi million ormaybe a billion dollar company, you can't grow with the same pace, right? Soyou have to figure out a, a growth, uh, uh, a growth hack or a growth, uh,product that can actually help you to grow very fast. By that time, we, we hada lot of SMBs, small and medium businesses knocking our door coming to use us.Um, for two reasons. They wanted to connectivity with the shipping companies.Uh, they did not have brick and mortar stores or physicalstores. They just wanted the connectivity with the shipping companies, and theywanted to have access. And we did not have rates. The whole marketplace ideawas completely rejected from the shipping companies. I mean, uh, Ali, while Iwas kicked out of shipping offices when I visited them before we launched,suggesting the idea of let's have a contract with you.And then we resell your shipping labels to other people.They're like, why do I need to have a media? Why do I need us not to work withyou? And they would, uh, Ali Zewail: have aquestion actually prepared about that. How the hell did you convince them?Mohammad Alrazaz: Wedid not. Did we? We did Ali Zewail: yeah.Yeah. Mohammad Alrazaz: isthat we focused on. On the, uh, on the value creation that our system provided,which is the whole automation and we sold that to the retailer and the businesswould come to us and it's like, Hey, did you guys connect with Aramex? And wetell them, um, listen, we are in the process of connecting with Aramex.And we would definitely appreciate if you can send Aramix anemail to prioritize that integration and Aramix team They would just receivethat email from that big important client telling them guys You need to connectwith that system that we have called auto as fast as possible and they wouldjust do that, right?So they connected with auto some of them even connected withauto did not know that they are actually connecting with the system called autothey thought this is the retail kind of like internal system and that's howbuilding the integrations of these ybs and We did a smart move. We did notcharge and we did not make any money from the shipping companies intentionally.Like the global model of a company like us, they would actuallymake money from shipping companies on that, at least for maintaining theintegration, not, and we still do not take any money from the shippingcompanies because we wanted to kind of like invest in building relationshipswith them. So we use that as a privilege.And then two years after, when we had a lot of volumes alreadycoming in, um, it wasn't my idea. It wasn't my move or for Khan's move.Actually, the guy who was running the operations, he was an ex Aramex and heactually went and he spoke to, uh, to Aramex team and they told them, guys,listen, we have been working together for a good time.We would like to explore the idea of free selling your shippinglabels. And they were like, yeah, sure. You guys are great. And we love you.And you made our life easy and you're driving clients to us. Why not? Let's doit. And I was shocked when I had the agreement in front of my table and we hadsome very good trades.I was like, that's, that's amazing. So, uh, I signed thatagreement because I wanted to make sure they don't pull it. And I, I asked thisguy to go and speak with the other delivery companies, telling them like,listen, we're doing this idea now and Aramex have opted into this. So that'show we started convincing the other guys to come in because it's like, Oh, ifAramex is.Maybe we should step in and start doing this as well. Uh, andthat's how we crack the market because the model wasn't there. It wasn't inSaudi. I remember there was one company wanted to do that long time ago. And Ithink they did a bad marketing. They actually sent an influencer to Shippingcompany office.I'm not going to mention the name because that company createda buzz and they took legal actions So the guy the ad was as followed like a guywould walk into the shipping company office and he was like, hey I want to shipthis item. How much should you charge me? And they told him oh, it's 150 riyalslike All right.Thank you. Then he's like, see, I opened this app and now it'shere for 20 riyal. Don't come here. Just use this app. And the guy's like, noway we're going to shut this down. And they closed it and everyone, it's kindof like backfired. So it did not work. Something that had the right positionand the right timing.But by the time we did, 100%. 100%. So we wouldn't claim that we were the firstpeople to do it, but I would, I would say that, yeah, we were the ones who, whoactually unlocked this market because, um, that history was there kind of likeinvested in the business model. So, and this is how the whole marketplace ideawas built.And we launched it actually in, uh, uh, end of, uh, end of2021, um, early 2022. And this is where we actually raised our seed round. Uh,we did 3 million in, um, 2021. It was the largest seed round for a Sass companyin the region. We couldn't believe that any Sass wasn't yet public andattractive for investors.So we kind of like also we're happy that we're kind of likemaking that change from the from the VC side. Um, and that's how the wholebusiness model started to evolve. So we say it Shipping labels, what the SMBsthey want, our complicated enterprise systems would not work with these SMBs.So we had to kind of like go and simplify our enterprise solution to a verysimple, easy to use kind of like solution, which is by the way, a learning toshare with everyone listening to this podcast.Don't do that. It's extremely difficult to move from anenterprise product or an SMB product. It's way much easier to start with theSMBs and. like develop and add features as you go and then tap into enterprise.Um, but I mean, this was, it's a learned and we did not know that. And, uh,yeah, that's how we ended up building the model.So we found the core value in shipping and we focused on that.And now the whole omni channel management solution is just an add on into thecore solution. And we have built a warehouse management system also as an addon to our solution. So,Ali Zewail: right.So, so you kind of, to kind of summarize, you, you, you gave the shippers valueintrinsic to the, uh, to the, um, application itself, or, you know, to the SASplatform and they benefited from this and then they would benefit even morefrom the integrations with the, with the shipping people. With the shippingcompanies, and so they pulled it from the shipping companies.You if you had gone directly to the shipping companies atfirst, maybe they wouldn't have been so welcoming. But when their customerstell them I want you to integrate with this platform, so now you're integratedwith them, and then the next step is easier. To start, you know, uh, buildingon that, uh, I guess, uh, traffic.So, um, but, but really, I want to dig down on what you justsaid about it being hard to move from enterprise to SMB but vice versa is notas hard. Why do you say that? Can you tell us more?Mohammad Alrazaz:yeah. so when you start as an enterprise solution, UX and UI doesn't reallymatter. There is a very interesting behavior around enterprise solutions.Usually they don't have great UX/UI right? And that's because usually thepeople who work in these enterprise businesses, they care much more about thereliability of a feature than actually how good the feature looks, right?so we were building a lot of things in a, way that is not, itdoesn't have to be kind of like, UX/UI appealing, even I remember I was liketelling Furkan and the rest of the development team, like Furkan I hate thedesign of our dashboards and we should change thatthat And Furkan is another, data driven person.He's like, all right, sure. I'm going to launch a survey and wegonna see how would our clients rate our, UX/UI And it scored 90%. I'm like,okay, I can't say anything. now Even if I don't like it, our clients like it,right? so what, so it wasn't as ugly as the other enterprise businesses but itwasn't easy enough to move from sales-led growth into product-led growth,right?Because when you build a SaaS solution, you assume, or you putin your, back head that I want people to kind of like find me online and thengo to my website and then sign up and then use me without the need of talkingto anyone. That was impossible to. be done with OTO when we started like wereally had to knock on the door and then take people into demos and then recordthe demo and then do training before they start using the solution because thesystem wasn't straightforward and that simple.So the tricky part Ali was It's easy to add a feature, but it'snot easy to remove one, right? Because you're like, that's a, cool feature,right? That's a great feature. And there's this impact to the business. I mean,what will happen if we remove it for an SMB, right? and also on the backend andon the engineering side, it's way much easier to build on top of a feature orto build on top of, a certain, code than actually removing a code, Ali Zewail: That'strue. Mohammad Alrazaz: So,it was an engineering challenge for us and, we, could have not done that if wedid not even migrate our tech stack completely from version one to version two,kind of like build OTO from scratch, in, a way that is scalable and, clean andmuch more, controllable than actually the old code, because again, the old codewas actually an MVP built on something that was already there and, uh, We, wewant to just to test the market with, um, so yeah, that, that was kind of likethe challenge mainly.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Um,I get it now. And, uh, congratulations. So you recently, of course, raised your8 million Series A. Can you tell us more about that and what you plan to do with the, with the funds?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah, of course. So that was our first, uh, price round at O2. So, um, So as Imentioned, we raised around 3. 3 million. It was all in convertible notes. Um,this was the first price round and you can see from the date of theannouncement that we did not raise in the golden times of valuations. Um, soyet I assume like auto is a, is a really good business.Uh, despite the fact that I am the, uh, the co founder, but Ithink if I'm an investor looking at auto, we have like very healthy economics.We had a very good growth here over the year. We have a bigger problem too, ora big problem with a big tab to chase. Um, but fundraising was tough. Iremember when I was, when I was funded, I think I spoke with around 40, uh,VCs.On the CD, I spoke with around 60. So I've already filteredthem to 40 in the Series A. Uh, and many of them did not have funding. And thatwas the shocking part. Like, I would be the one, imagine, I would be the onejumping into a call with a VC. And then before we start the whole pitching, Iwould be like, I actually tell them, Hey, do you guys have funding?How much did you raise? Do you close or not yet? When do youexpect to close? What's your average ticket? So I was the one doing theinterviews and that was the one asking because it was like a very toughsituation, not only on startups, but also VCs to kind of like close. Right. Um,and, uh, I say it, we really missed on some very good VCs just because they didnot close on time and they did not have the fund.Um, so Ali Zewail: started what at the beginning of 2024? Was that when you startedMohammad Alrazaz: No,no, no, no. We, I still remember I started fundraising in May 2023.Ali Zewail: Oh yeah.So that was really at the bottom of the cycle.Mohammad Alrazaz:Yes. Uh, so we actually started to, yeah, yeah. And I, I still remember like Iwas talking to people and people's like, yeah, we, don't have funds. Even if wehave funds, we're not deploying. We're kind of like still waiting. What's goingto happen. Um, And I think some other smart investors, they found this anopportunity to kind of like jump in.I guess this is why Sanabel Investment, the PI of Hollywoodcompany, they, Sanabel, the sweet spot is, was never seen as A, it's usuallyseen as B and C and beyond, um, and investing. When they started talking to us,it was kind of like their, their, uh, their, their movement towards like, youknow what, if there is no one doing much series A, maybe this is ouropportunity to go there and to capture the market and really invest in thesegood businesses.Um, But Sanabel wasn't an easy VC to handle. Uh, it's, it's,um, it's a, it's an institutional fund. So they really do their due diligence.Um, they do research. They really invest in it. They, they, uh, they're not thetype of people who would be like, yeah, we know logistics. Yeah. We know ecommerce. Let's just put money.Uh, and I, I remember by that time they were looking at, uh,Sella. So they kind of like understood the market from both sides, logisticsand e commerce, but they really invest in, in, uh, in market research in theseindustries. And, uh, it was something very valuable and insightful that theyshared with us later on.Um, so we spoke with, uh, with Sanabel and we spoke with many,with many investors. The, the challenging part wasn't really just, even if youfind an investor who's willing to invest, they wouldn't lead, right? They wouldkind of like co invest. Finding a lead investor was the most challenging partto be very honest.Um, and you kind of like, uh, wait for the right lead investorand to negotiate the terms, because again, this is a price round. It's not likeconvertible notes, sign and go. It's a term sheet that you need to negotiateand et cetera, and you have to meet their lawyers. So the, the process reallytook a lot of time.Um, But, uh, I'm really happy that it turned out that we, welanded on a great pool of investors, uh, who invested in this, uh, this round.And, uh, yeah, I could have notchosen any better one. Ali Zewail: series? Imean, why were you raising? Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. So the whole investment, uh, thesis and investment, uh, idea. The wholeidea around the investment round of series a was one we wanted to expand andreplicate the success story that we did in Saudi into new regions, which isyou, you and Turkey. And the reason for that, when we look at e commerce as amarket overall in the region, it's mainly dominated by these three markets.Uh, so Being, uh, there is very crucial for us. We haven't seena company like us in UAE, so we see a huge opportunity there. Turkey, there area few companies that are not doing it well in terms of product and in terms ofvalue proposition and the relationship with shipping companies, and it has beena market that we have been studying for more than a year.So, We found that this is the right opportunity to go now andto heavily invest in, uh, in Turkey as well. Um, and, um, um, and to basicallymake our product much better. So there is a lot of features and a lot of thingswe wanted to. improve in terms of, uh, the different verticals within thebusiness, like the warehouse management system and the omni channel, uh,management, uh, system and, um, uh, making our, um, value creation on themarketplace much, much bigger.And to do that, you need to have a bigger team. Um, and yeah,today there's like 120 people now. And, uh, by the way, As part of COVID thatinfluence our culture, we are a fully remote company since inception. So wedon't have, we don't have offices, like literally I don't have a rent expense.And our PNL, uh, at the funny story, the investors, they were doing duediligence and then a guy from their side, he sent me a message like, listen,can I meet with your CFO?And we did not have a CFO. I'm like, yeah, sure. What's wrong?He's like, I want to discuss the financials. Uh, you guys have a major issuethere. I'm like, yeah, sure. Let me just look into it. I was the guy whoprepared my answers.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Yeah.Mohammad Alrazaz:There's something, they was on me. So we jumped into the car. It's like, wasthat listen.Where is the rent? Man, this does not make any sense. Blah,blah, blah. You're showing a very healthy anti economist, but that's not thecase. I'm like, yeah, dude, we're a fully remote company and this is how he gotto understand how we operate. Um, so yeah, that kind of also helped us to, to,to be more bold around actually expanding into different regions and to try tobuild a solution that could become one day a global solution.Um, which is what we are aiming for to be the shipping gatewayof the internet. And, uh, to do that, you need to kind of like, one, break thebarrier of being only a local solution, um, in one country into becoming kindof like, already the company is diversified. We have people from 30 citiesworking with us and, uh, for now, the, the, uh, any, we have the guts intomoving just into new regions with a new countries with a new cities withoutwinning much since that's how we currently operate as a company.So yeah, this this how we did it. And by the way, the whole andthe, uh, and the details around the round, we actually published it publiclywith the series A. So anyone who's interested or about how investors decided to invest with us and why theydid it, et cetera, we actually published that to help the whole region to,Ali Zewail: Yeah,actually, I'm going to follow through on that comment. But first, I want to Ijust think that it's really cool that I think your product can work anywherebecause it's not really dependent on local regulations or stuff like that.Everybody who has a similar operation with maybe different omni channellocations and warehouses can actually Benefits from using it.So on a lot of the shipping providers are used to being allover the world and they have the same integrations everywhere and stuff likethat. So that's that's something really cool that it can work in the U. S. Aswell as in Saudi. But are there like Synergies with scale. Are there benefitsof being in different countries or is it more kind of like Uber's operationwhere every city has its own local network effects and local benefits, butthere's no real benefit of scale except for the fixed assets being divided overmore, uh, places or more revenue.Mohammad Alrazaz:yeah. Um, yeah, good question. So actually, uh, you're right in terms of theneed, uh, in more mature markets like the U. S. with the Euro. Um, shippinggateways or shipping aggregators are the way to go if you want to ship, becausethey're cheaper, much user friendly, much easier to, to use and to, um, totrack. Um, the, the, the only localization part that you need is theintegrations with the local shipping companies, right?Like, if you do not have integrations with companies in thecountry where you want to operate, you won't be able to do that because theywon't be able to connect the connectivity part working there. Um. So one thingthat we noticed about our region specifically is that, um, the shippingindustry, uh, is fragmented.We have so many players who are doing last mine, for example,in Saudi alone, there is more than 150 licensed, uh, last minute replicas. Soyou can imagine how can you find them? How can you get rates from them? How canyou contact them? Um, so it becomes very difficult. And also, how can youhandle all the technical side of it?People, they think shipping is easy, but just to give people asense, the city Riyadh, uh, which I assume all of us, we know how to write inEnglish. I think it has more than 70 ways of people writing it in our regionbetween Arabic and English. Uh, Just imagine what would happen if someone typein that city and his address, right?When they check out. So, um, the details because of the, youknow, addressing the, the lack of unification is, is, is really makes theproblem bigger in the region. Another thing is. Um, the technicalinfrastructure. So for example, some of the shipping companies, they have 15sets updates. Some other shipping companies, they have 240 sets updates.So you as a business, how can you map these stats updates?Cause you can't just keep tracking. Uh, you cannot keep track every shippingcompany separately. So with the fragmentation, uh, part, it becomes anightmare. Um, Very complex. 100%. And, uh, something that's really interesting is that theunit economics and, uh, how competitive are the rates.And in Saudi, the shipping rates are quite high. High thatcompared to the other countries and regions But I think we're we're doing quitewell with the slas and with the speed of the delivery And i'll be very honestwhen I was I was in the and I was in the silicon valley Um a few weeks back andI was there for only four days and I could not order anything online Like ordering online would would not be an option because mostlikely they will arrive after you leave.So I didn't do that So I couldn't, uh, find any option where Ican get things kind of like hyper locally delivered from a shop to my door,right? So that's, that, that was something that we, we really kind of like sawthat, but it's nothing in the region here in Saudi, you know, like you ordereda perfume today, uh, from a retailer, um, and you will get it deliveredtomorrow, uh, to your door, right?Uh, we're doing quite well here in the region with consentdelivery, because also the customer expectations are high. Um, So for us waslike, if we build it for the region. That's great because also there is thiscross border exchange. And when we operate in UAE, we can also help businessesto expand and to sell in Saudi.And same thing, Saudi to sell a region, Turkey to sell to Saudiand across different countries. And that would help a lot. So And can we justdo UK and Europe and South Asia and all of that possible? But that would taketime from us, right? Because when we need to build the play around how weexpand globally, we're starting now with Turkey because it's a new language.It's a different ecosystem. Uh, for example, Saudi is dominatedby Zid and Sella as e commerce platforms. It's not Shopify and Magento, right? While in the U. S. it's a differentecosystem. In Europe, it's a different ecosystem. In Turkey, it's a differentecosystem. They don't even have the international players.They have the, uh, the Turkish, uh, players there. So, uh,build it once we build the playbook, once we strengthen our presence in thesemarkets, I think this where we will be ready for the series B and to be able togo beyond the region Ali Zewail: So, in asense, like, the Series A is to build that playbook, not just to expand, butalso to build a playbook for Series B and beyond, hopefully. So, going back tothat, uh, thing about the way you guys announced the Series A was veryinteresting to me. It was Communicated at an excellent level that I don'treally see even in a foreign. Usually it's just a press release, you know,that's sent to tech crunch and everyone else and, uh, and the local, uh,startup ecosystem players.But you guys, you did, uh, you published an investment memo.You did, uh, More than eight minute video of you talking about it and thingslike that. What made you do make this huge investment into how you communicatethe series a and what was like the thought process behind that?Mohammad Alrazaz: Sohonestly, one, it wasn't a huge investment. So we only paid for the localagency who recorded me for the video. And, uh, And the majority of the videowas actually kind of like long shots. Uh, so I had to repeat a lot. I think thelast part of it was around like two minutes. That was a one shot that we didand we published.We, we tried not to do a lot of work there. Um, uh, so we, andeverything was done in house. So we did not, we did not hire a PR agency. We did not pay for any PR, by the way, or any, um, 100 Ali Zewail: I mean,that's the cost in itself. I mean the marketing team and the, you know, therest of the team working on it, Mohammad Alrazaz:100%. And that's that's one of the reasons why actually made us do theannouncement in this way is that because we want to use that, um, to make it aspart of our customer acquisition cost, right? So, uh, think about it. They lovefundraising and use. Okay, except sometimes because it initiates a feeling thatI'm not good enough, right?Um, but people, they love to share fundraising news. They liketo know, like, oh, this company have actually made it. It gives the feelinglike, oh, this company is successful, etcetera. Despite the fact that maybe Iwould disagree with that. And that's what you wanted to deliver in the video inthe video. We said, Okay, we start with the news, and then let's use thatamazing opportunity of capturing the audience attention, educating them aboutwhat's auto.One of the things that we really kind of like struggled with,uh, explaining what we are building. We're building something new. Uh, and weare a startup. We don't have a huge budget to kind of like go and spend moneyinto influencers and billboards and the TV ads, educating people about our newbusiness model.We did not. So we tried to move with whatever budget that wehave. And, um, people, they think that sometimes we are just, um, a deliverymanagement system, uh, some people, they think we are a shipping company. Um,and this video is going to the public. So we say, do you know what, let's justclarify what we are building.So, uh, even we can use this video for potential sales. So we,we spent the next, I think, two to three minutes explaining what, what we aredoing, and what's our business model and, uh, uh, what are our services. Andthen we said, okay, since if someone have already watched that far, I think itwould be great to also deliver other messages.So we actually dedicated a message. Um, to tell people aboutthe round and what we are gonna do with the money and why we have raised theround. Um, and um, also a message to the potential investors who did not investwith us. 'cause most likely they will be watching. They wanna see why thiscompany had partners du proper, uh, uh, Summa Capital investing in them.So we, we, we spoke to these even investors in that video aboutwhat is how we look at spending the money and such. And what's the potential?And then we spoke also with the potential people who would like to join usbecause great fundraising news would attract great talents as well. speaking tothem and inviting them to apply to the company.And also we allocated the message to the fellow foundersbecause we really had a tough time fundraising for this round. Um, and wewanted them to, to know that one, uh, it's not an easy road. Um, we did notbuild this company. Because it was easy and just easy to keep building abusiness and get investors money.It was very tough. Yes. Sometimes even when you are doing well,uh, some external, uh, external things happen and could really put yourbusiness at risk. I remember, for example, with the whole SBB exposure casehappened, we got impacted ourselves because we had our money at the SVB andsuddenly I woke up only have 45 days of runway.And we cannot get access in our local banks, and we cannotaccess funding. We had, like, our series, uh, our seed round funding there,right? We had a lot of money there, actually. So, and we couldn't. And imagine,now you are at the risk of closing.If, and this was, you were doing extremely well. Yeah, I mean,and you're, you're, uh, yeah, you had no internal hiccups, um, that would makethe difference.So, um, sometimes any wins can, uh, can go against you, uh, andyou have to be ready. So it's not an easy road. And we wanted to share this,uh, this message to the fellow entrepreneurs that, um, these news, they don'tcome out of, uh, yeah, any, an easy work that was put and please don't give up,keep doing what you're doing.It's going to work at the end. And, uh, we kind of like try to.Pick up each other because I wish another field of founders would tell me thatwhen I read the news, especially with the crazy valuations and crazy numberslike someone would come and say this, Mohammed, I struggled to do this or to dothat.But at the end, we managed to do it. That would give me hopeand actually making me feel like, Oh, I wasn't good enough to raise that muchof moneyor much evaluation. Um, so honestly, it was for us anopportunity to educate the market and maybe to set an example for otherbusinesses on how to do fundraising, because I think we lack transparency, Ali.I don't know if you agree with me on this. And we don't have Ali Zewail: have thispodcast.Mohammad Alrazaz: 100percent where we can share more about how we've done things, what happened, whythey invested with us. Um, I mean, I'll be very transparent. I spoke to some ofour investors. I told them, guys, we're writing this investment memo. Would youlike to share with me your investment memo?And some people did, some people did. So again, that's part ofthe market, right? And the people who did not, I told them, if you findanything strange there that you think was not true, let me know because we haveto, to do this public and they, they loved it, right? So at the end, we createdsomething that at least will let people understand why VCs invest in startupsat certain valuations uh, what they look for, what's the opportunity, what'sthat.And I hope the community and the ecosystem found that, uh,helpful.Ali Zewail: Yeah, Iloved it personally. And, um, I was going to ask you about the part at the endwith where you were talking to other founders, why you put it. So now Iunderstand more because it seemed like not, not really rated to the rounditself or to telling people about auto. Um, yeah, so really cool.Mohammad Alrazaz: Um,it's, it's amazing how people are connected as entrepreneurs, uh, elsewhere, atleast I would say the Silicon Valley. And I know that that's a 10 times, maturekind of like ecosystem, but here we really need more of that.We really need more of founders Ali Zewail:absolutely. Mohammad Alrazaz: um,supporting each other. SoAli Zewail: I agreeso much. Okay, so you, you, Hamad and building on again what you were justsaying, you have kind of a history of being open. And sharing. Uh, I saw atsome point you had, uh, a podcast called Besaraha, which roughly translatedmeans honestly speaking.And, um, you shared, you know, things about your journey,losing weight and, uh, the dark side of entrepreneurship and, um, uh, do, canyou really have hardworking people in Saudi and things like that, that, that,that, that trope that people share and things like that? Um, what, what makesyou. What made you, uh, do that podcast and, uh, and share these things withpeople?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. Um, I remember the podcast was, uh, a result of a very casualconversation with Mazen Mazen, the, uh, the, uh, co-founder of. Mazen is a, isa dear friend. We were talking, I remember I was, uh, sitting with them andchatting and I was like, podcasts is kind of like well organized, well thoughtof. So when you listen to podcasts, like the person is well prepared for it.He wants to deliver a certain message. Even if he is a randomperson, most likely the, the, the host is kind of like organizing the flow.And, uh, I found it an overthought kind of like, uh, content that's availabletoday. And it was like, if I would have a podcast, I would speak about things,frankly, like, uh, I just want to express my thoughts and tell people, what doI think about entrepreneurship?What's the dark side of it? How to, um, Um, or maybe interviewpeople who shut down their business and what they learned out of, uh, of thatexperience and, uh, et cetera. Um, and he's like, you know what, let's do it.And literally he put me with a guy who records podcasts. And we did the firstepisode. I think we did the first a few episodes.It was me and Mazen co hosting, uh, uh, co hosting and beingthe guest. It was a kind of like casual chat. And we just talk about things onthe, uh, Mazen is a very honest and, uh, Uh, Frank Guy as well, so. We reallyhad a lot of fun doing that. And again, podcasts, in order to make it work, youreally need to have a commitment to it.So the second season and the third season, I kind of like, uh,had to do it myself. So yeah, then I kind of like tweaked it. Second season wasabout different topics. Again, random topics, not just to make it boring. AndI, I wanted to make it very short. I actually did something. I calculated whatis the average ride time in Riyadh.And I tried to make sure that the episode does not exceed that Soyou can actually finish the episode in one ride like you don't have to reallydisconnect and listen back Uh, that's why it's short episodes actually longepisodes. Um And the last one was more focused around entrepreneurship becauseI felt like I needed help um And every time I I pick the phone and call afounder.I would close, uh, the, the, the, the call feeling extremelyhappy. And, uh, um, and, and, and like, man, this guy helped me a lot. Right.And he was telling me things that most likely will never tell anyone. I waslike, let's just do it. Try to do that at a bigger scale. I don't know how manyfounders they actually talk to each other.I, for example, I do this when I, when I met the VCs, I wouldask them whom they have invested in and, uh, I would call the founder and I'mlike, what do you think of this VC? They told me in the call that they havedone one, two, three, four. To you, is that true or not? What's your feedbackon them, et cetera?And people they think like doing that is not acceptable ormaybe they should not do that because they need their money Not the VC thatthey need you as a startup, but I think it's a mutual benefit Actually, theyneed you as much you need so go and do your due diligence and you would besurprised how much Founders are willing to help and willing to give youfeedback.So Uh, that was what I tried to do with had maybe take it to aplatform that can help everyone But I'm, I'm, I'm becoming me lately and too busy with auto and it's been a while, so I hope one day we bring it back tolife. Ali Zewail:Hopefully. Um, and, um, and I, and I, and I want to underline what you saidabout doing due diligence on the investors as well. There's nothing wrong withit. Investors don't, uh, mind and actually the best founders always do it. Um,because it's, and there's, you know, investment is kind of, it's a relationshipsimilar to marriage in the sense that it's a, it's a long term relationshipthat will have ups and downs and stressful times and good times and all that.So, uh, you need to be, um, compatible with, with the investor,just like you need to be compatible with your. Spouse and, uh, and that's theway to find out if you are. So it's not just about where they good to you orbad to you as an investor, but what are they like as a person? You know, dothey feel comfortable with them?Can you be open with them? Because people, there's differentchemistry between people, uh, and each other. So. I like to underline that and,uh, encourage everyone to do what you did. Um, all right. So one of ourlisteners, uh, who works in the, in the e commerce space, uh, Mohammed, theSui, I'm a shout out to him.Wanted me to ask you about your product plans. He seems to wantto know, you know, what you're going to be building for him in the near future.Can you tell me more about that, Mohammad Alrazaz: wedo. We do have a lot of stuff. Actually. Um, we actually, we're, we'recurrently cooking a product. Uh, I don't think I, I, I spoke about that inpublic. Um, And I hope it does not kill me, but I'll try to be as conservativeas possible because we think that the products could be, could be disruptive.Um, we're, we're currently working on a very interesting product where we wantto kind of like make shipping accessible to everyone.Um, because currently we think like, if you want to ship, youhave to be at a certain stage. Of business or tech business in order to shipand we don't think that necessarily, uh is needed So we're building a productfor that um Which we hope it will see it will see the light very soon. Uh autoapp is coming.So, um, Interesting fact we don't have an app. We don't have amobile app. So, uh auto is operating on a web app um now we are I think nowit's at the QA stage, uh, the, the mobile app, inshallah, will be released verysoon. Um, the, the customer experience on that app should be like 10x betterthan the web app event.Um, and it should be something that people would enjoy checkingout from time. So we're super excited for the mobile app. Um, knowing that, sowhy the mobile app is very interesting for us, because, more than 80 percent ofthe people who actually use auto, they actually use auto from the mobile. Um,and still our web is not compatible for kind of like, it's, it's good formobile view, but it's not, wasn't designed for mobile users.Um, so we're kind of like excited to see how it would impactus, uh, and impact our numbers and our activation and acquisition. Um, we havea few products and services we want to launch, uh, within the marketplace. Um,so for example, we're, we're, we're looking at insurance, for example, how canwe enhance the insurance of your package?Currently, when you buy a shipping label, it comes with aninsurance kind of like service. Uh, but maybe that's not enough for you. You,you are shipping a very expensive, uh, product. Um, and you would like to havean extra insurance to that. Shipping companies, they don't provide this. Uh, orthey provide it at a very low rate.So we're looking after how we can provide this at a lower rate.at a very competitive rate. Um, so there are kind of like these kind of likefew, few ideas just to Ali Zewail: Excitingstuff happening. Yeah. I hope for fun doesn't, uh, kill me or something. Um, so, um, there's another thing I noticed when Iwas reading the investment memo you guys published, uh, you have a seniorexecutive with the title director of customers, which was kind of interestingand new to, to call someone the director of customers.So what is that role and why did you decide to call it that?Mohammad Alrazaz:yeah. So, um, Wafa, who's leading the, um, the, uh, the customers department.Um, so I, I, I still remember when we, when we wanted to To work on thatposition. So Wafaa was leading customer success and customer support. Um, andyou have also the quality, uh, uh, assurance or reporting and working under,under Wafaa.Um, so we had like a lot of ideas. Should we call it customerexperience department, like many people do, or should we just call it customersupport, customer success, and just include support to it, and then we decidedto call it customers, uh, because we think When we have someone focusing 100percent on our customers, either their satisfaction, their onboarding, uh, thequality that we are providing, the overall experience, uh, that would be morecomprehensive.Um, And Wafaa is doing that. Um, honestly, we're, we're, we're,we're very lucky to have Wafaa. I mean, I haven't seen someone who's reallypassionate about customer success and customer support as much as Wafaa. Imean, that's her life. She's like, my life is this. Um, she's not the type ofpeople who would be like, yeah, I want to do this.And then maybe I can pivot into operations or doing somethingelse. No, no. She's like, I was born to do this job. I love when I see the MPSscore kind of like, uh, hitting, uh, new highs. Um, yeah, just to give you asense in that today, our, uh, MPS score is above 70. Um, for some peoplebenchmark, the global average MPS score is 40.So we're kind of like almost winning. It's like double of that, and that's anextremely high MPS score. And, uh, I think this goes, uh, to Wafa and heramazing team who have been working, uh, uh, days and nights on this, Saraha.Ali Zewail: Nice. Uh,so I'd like to move to more of a kind of the subject of the, of the, of thehour these days, which is, uh, AI and data. So I saw in your memo as well, howyou, you have a flywheel for your business. You visualize the flywheel for yourbusiness, which is something really cool, which I also recommend other people,uh, do.Um, and, uh, one of the aspects is leveraging data. To, to growand to improve. So how are you guys integrating that part and how are you usingall that data you're collecting from across to grow the business and to servethe customers better?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. So being, uh, being a shipping gateway, we actually sit on a, on a pileof data, right? So we have a lot of information. Um, Even I can claim that wehave more data than what an e commerce platform would have. Um, because we arehaving the sender information, we have the package information, and, uh, theitems information.We have the receiver information, um, and we have the courier,uh, updates and information, et cetera. And, um, that's, uh, That amount ofdata, we believe that we can actually, when we process it in the right way, wecan actually come up with better services to our clients. Um, so we don't sellour data. Uh, we're not an ads company.Uh, we don't sell our data to reporting companies or whatever.Um, but we actually tried to use this data to unlock the new services. So forexample, when you know that the fulfillment rate is Um, uh, or the delivery,the speed of delivery or the speed of, uh, or the delivery time, uh, of certaintype of packages in a certain city is low.You can actually go and work with the market to either come upwith a new service to serve that particular, um, um, or to solve thatparticular problem. Will it matter then to work with a new investor who wantsto invest in the industry instead of just building another shipping company,you can tell them, listen, there is a gap in the market there.Go and invest your money, et cetera. So we kind of like help.One, the service providers to uplift and to improve their services and to beable to provide better services to our clients overall and to give them morevisibility. Um, just to give you an exam, a very simple example, that's evenbefore AI and anything else that you want to really implement.Um, Before auto people, they used to give perceptions aboutshipping companies and you would tell him, how is the shipping company thatyou're working with? He's like, yeah, it's not really good. I'm like, definethat. It's like, yeah, there's no, I'm like, define that. Um, so they don'treally have. They don't have metrics.They don't have numbers. All that they have is intuitions andfeelings. It's like, oh, that's how I feel about this company, uh, uh, but inreality, this company is doing well, but they had like a few cases that madethat guy upset. So, um, same thing goes from the shipping company. Shippingcompanies will go and tell the client, listen, we are better than this company.I'm like better in what sense pick up rate delivery ratecoverage price And people they used to compare shipping companies based onprice only and that's how people would flip or switch from one shipping companySo what we did at auto is that when we built the dashboard and we startedshowing all the metrics live In front of the client they became educated andthey became very picky about selecting the shipping company so now When theysit with the shipping company and the shipping, uh, and the sales guy from theshipping company tells them like, Hey, this is our price.It's like, all right, that's a good price, but what's your SLA?What's your average delivery time? What's your fulfillment rate? So thesequestions, they were not asked before, right? Now, they are being put on thetable and now you are making the comparison Apple to Apple. So it's not abouthaving a better rate, it's about having a better service because the cost oflosing a customer for a bad shipping experience is way much higher than yoursavings that you are doing there.So um, That part kind of like helped also uplift, uh, and, uh,Increase the maturity of the the shipping market in the in the region Um, andwe still believe like we did not do Well yet when it comes into data, webelieve like there is still more to do. Um with data, honestly Um and more withdata for us and more to do with data for others.Uh, just going to give you an example Uh, we take data privacylike very seriously like even internally if you ask any Um Any person in autolike this brand who works with you. Do you know how many shipments they do theyask with me? I don't know right like we don't even share that data. But forexample, we have built engine that That helps businesses because for example inthe perfumery industry We I think we acquired more than 70 percent of themarket share there.So We have competitors using auto as their shipping company Butone of the things that we did, because everyone's kind of like skeptical orafraid, like, Hey, would other people know about my performance or whatever?But one of the smart things that the team did is that When you want to, so wehave at auto what's called feasibility rules and priority rules.And these are rules that you can configure in order for theengine to help you decide which shipping company you should ship thisparticular shipment with. So one of the, um, one of the priority rules is theperformance of the shipping company and the performance of the shippingcompany. We now do it on two levels.We have the local level, which is the performance of theshipping company with your own account and the performance of the company withthe global accounts, which means all the accounts within auto, how this companyis doing, which means that if this company failing another client in anothercity, right, you get to know that before you create your ship.Right. And that gives you the ability to Reduce the risk ofshipping an item into a certain city with the wrong shipping carrier, right?That's the kind of power that we want to enable our businesses with when itcomes into the amount of data that we're currently processing and then thatdata is valid for a certain time after that that data will just become historyand that's why We enable all of our businesses to remove and to archive theirdata That they have actually processed with auto after a certain time so theycan basically You With that, auto is not, uh, using or overprocessing, uh, this data.Ali Zewail: Right.Yeah. Interesting. Um, no, I can imagine as a shipper, someone who's shippingitems, how, how I can benefit from all these things. So, um, how would yougoing kind of to the people side of things, uh, how, how would you adviseaspiring co founders, uh, about the co founder relationship and, uh, and aboutwhat to look for in a co founding relationship?Yep. Yep.Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. Um, you gave value that example of marriage and, uh, and, uh, and, uh,the relationship between the, the founders and the investors. I, I think it, itgets much, much closer when you talk about your co-founder, um, because, uh, aninvestor, maybe you would sign a deal with them, right? And, and do you knowfor a fact that that investor, he wants to put their money with you, but theywant to divorce at the end of the road, right?They want an exit. They, they don't want to stay. Whatever,right? But, uh, your co founder is someone to stay with, right? So it becomeseven more tricky when you choose your co founder. Um, I'm not gonna, I'm notgonna mention the, uh, the normal textbook stuff of, Oh, you need to find a cofounder who compliment your skills and all of that.I think we all understand that, but it's very important. That'sone of the things that I really, really learned. Which is you really need towork with someone whom you align with on the value side. Like you have a lot ofvalues, uh, or set of values that you agree on, um, because even if you havewhat you call synergy, maybe you like to sip a cup of coffee with him or workwith him.But if he cannot be your best buddy, despite the fights thatyou can have and the disagreements, uh, it's really going to be difficult. Um,I honestly, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky to have Furqan as my co founder for tworeasons. He was my teacher, so I always kind of like admired him as someonethat I learned from.And I still have this relationship now, despite the fact that Iam the CEO and he's the CTO, right? So, uh, he, he comes to me for kind oflike, uh, approvals and decisions and all of that. Um, um, like I, I really, Ireally learn a lot from him. So on the, on the value side, like the way how we,for example, when we design the values of the company, we didn't take a lot oftime. Our values were already there. We just wanted to kind of like selectwhich values the company has to be compatible to. Um, so finding someone whoyou actually can, um, have or share a set of values with is something veryimportant on the investor side, by the way, I would say, get an investor thatyou like talking to.And listen, if you don't like talking to that guy, don't taketheir money. Believe me, like, life is short. Life is literally short. I heardthis from the experience losing my, my father and my uncle, his brother, thenext day. So, life is short and you cannot predict the future. How long you canlive, so don't waste it taking conversation with people you do not enjoy, frankly.So simplify it, I mean, put that part of your criteria, liketicket size and funding availability. Do I like them or I don't like them?Okay, so have that, it's fine because it makes sense. Another thing that youwant to have in your co founders is resilience as well. Um, you're going tofail, uh, as a founder, uh, physically, are you going to fail mentally? You'regoing to fail emotionally, and, uh, you want to make sure that when, when youdo that, uh, your co founder is picking you up and you are able to do that. to be picked up. That's a veryimportant thing because you might fail and your founder tried to pick you upand then you're not picking up and You're not gonna stand ready. Um, so people with resilience will be able to do that.If it is a self resilience, that's even better because you can catch like cryalone and get back to work the next day. Or you can cry on the shoulder of yourco founder and he would basically make you feel better.So that's a It's not an easy road.Well, it's not an easy road at all. It's, uh, it's, it's verytough. And, um, yeah, every time I see a founder, I see all of these people,you know, they criticize founders and entrepreneurs kind of like promotingthemselves and trying to use every opportunity to promote their business andpromote that and they think like, oh, these guys are just acting as rich andthey have ego.Believe me, there is a deeper, deeper driver for that, which ishow tough this work is. Uh, being an entrepreneur is a very tough lifestyle,very tough lifestyle. I wouldn't say that some people, they, they really misuseit and they just Kind of like, uh, uh, like being an entrepreneur, but it's notit's not easy.It's tough and people They do it because they try to get everychance to make their next day better because it's a very tough journey Um, so Iunderstand people they do that whether I agree with them or not Um, so that'sthe second thing I would look in a founder is resilience um I think um Um, athird thing I would say is someone Like I mentioned, you agree on the set ofvalues, but also someone who wouldn't hesitate.Uh, he or she wouldn't hesitate to disagree with you becauseagreeing with your co founder is safe, right? Ali Zewail: Yep.Mohammad Alrazaz:It's safe, like, uh, especially if you think like your co founder.Or better than you, so it's easy to agree with, with him orher, but, uh, having someone who can really challenge you and disagree with youis, uh, is a blessing.Um, so I, I, I remember Hatham, uh, Hatham Camley. He gave anexample one day. He said, your co founder is someone who would who you wouldfight with in the office and then Have a dinner with him in the evening. Youwould fight with him in the morning and have a dinner with him in the eveningSo that's the kind of like relationship you want to have with your co founderis someone who would Agree, because not he wants to just disagree withyou.He wants to kind of like, um, shape your idea challenge you Hewants the best for the business Ali Zewail: The best.Mohammad Alrazaz: toWhat was that good intention behind it? But at the end, he really respect youand he likes you and he's willing to share that right with you.Ali Zewail: Nice. Soyou, you mentioned marriage and, um, I think, uh, you became a dad recently.Congratulations. Uh, how does fatherhood affect, you know, how you, youpractice being a founder and maybe how does being a founder affect you as afather, uh, and how you, you act as a father?Mohammad Alrazaz:Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, being a father is, is, is a greatfeeling, uh, by the way. And, um, it's, uh, I remember when I used to askpeople when they became fathers for the first time, how does it feel? Andusually people would say. Tara doesn't feel anything different than, like,normal life. Um, and they would tell me, just wait until he or she starts toplay with you and engage with you.This is where you would start feeling fatherhood. Um, buthonestly, I, I felt fatherhood on the, uh, on the first day when he was born.Um, so Hussam was born on the 8th of March, sorry, 8th of August, uh, at eighto'clock. What an amazing time and date.Um, And then I went to, uh, so I actually went to see him and thedoctor kind of like came to me and he wanted to talk to me privately before Isee the baby.He wanted to kind of like to explain what I'm going to see. Andhe told me, listen. The baby's in a good health, but, um, uh, you know, he wassitting in his mother's womb in a, in a way where his leg was uplifted. So whenyou see him, you might see something that might look weird, but it's okay.We're going to double check, but I'm also, I'm a doctor.I have to tell you that there might be some stuff happening inthe future. We don't know until we, and he was like telling me all of this, andI was listening to him. And I'm like, I'm feeling something different becauseif this conversation was happening about my nephew, for example, what I wouldbe feeling is empathy, right?I'd be like, Oh, I'm very sorry to hear this. What can I tellmy sister now? I'm very sorry to hear this news, whatever. But when he wastelling me about my little kid, I was like, Okay, where's my baby? I want tosee him. I'm accepting whatever this baby is. If he's, uh, if he's white, ifhe's black, if he's tall, if he's short, if he's, uh, whatever, I want to takehim as is.That feeling of acceptance was the first feeling I experiencedas, as a father, to be very honest. Uh, Alhamdulillah, baby Hussam is in, Verygood health is is a healthy baby under a lie and nothing to worry about, butany that feeling was the beginning of feeling fatherhood, to be honest, acceptance. Very, very interesting.How accepting the parents are. And I hope kids they don'tmisuse that. But, uh, yeah, it'sa great feeling Ali Zewail: Yeah. Mohammad Alrazaz: asa as a founder. I think, um yeah. Uh, I mean, what really reflected to me, wewere two people in 2023. Now we are three people in 2024. So I believe that's a50 percent growth year over year, which is awesome.Uh, but what's really interesting is, uh, this is what I alwayscompare, uh, entrepreneurship to marriage is that I always say most of themarriages that fail, they fail because you did not select the right partner oryou did not have a project. That you want. When you build a business, when youbuild a startup, you don't go and say, Hey, I want to partner with Ali.I want Ali to be my co founder. I'm like, okay, what are wegoing to build? It's like, I don't know. I just want to build something. Maybewe will not build anything, but we will be co founders. That wouldn't work.Right? Um, and I think many marriages were actually built around that. Sopeople would get married, assuming that the project, uh, you know what I wantto, I don't know.I want to live with someone. I want to have. love to someone. Iwant to have feelings to people. It's like the same thing when you say, I wantto have a co founder. I want to enjoy time with a co founder. I want to, uh,drink coffee with a co founder. Well, but that, that would be nothing if youdon't have a project.Right. And that's the kind of same I gave to my wife when Iwas, uh, getting to know her. And I told her like, uh, I have, I have aproject. I want to build a family. Um, I want to have kids. So would you optinto this? Um, And she was like, yes, and I told her, like, this could comewith, uh, with, um, with a change in how we operate as humans, right?Like my wife, she was working and, uh, I told her, would you beokay with not working as I am capable of taking care of you and of the familyso you can take care of the project? So you're going to contribute much moreinto having this. family because I can't like she's the one who's going tocarry the baby and deliver the baby and take care of the baby.So I think when, when that happened and when I see how therelationship between me and my wife having the kids, uh, is, is a great exampleof what you have in real life. Like you really need to one select the rightpartner, have a clear objective about what project you want to, you want tohave, and you want to deliver because that will put you both on track intodoing whatever you, you can.To make that project a success, right? So now our project wasto deliver this baby. Alhamdulillah the baby is here now We want to grow thisbaby and then maybe we want to have a second baby and then third baby you wenever know and the challenges are gonna come around that but Uh again when youhave dedication when you have alignment with your partner um, inshallah, wenever need to fundraise, um, uh, or to have external money Since that would be it, right?Alhamdulillah, everything will be fine Ali Zewail: you cansell equity.Mohammad Alrazaz: Ican't. Could you trade my baby? Ali Zewail: would bedifficult.Mohammad Alrazaz:That would be impossible. Um, but on the other hand, being an entrepreneurworking remotely has helped a lot withthis. I work from, I work from home. Uh, that's my office, whatyou guys see behind me. Um, and that's literally, uh, a converted guest room.So, um, during the pregnancy of my wife, I was very close toher. I, I didn't, you know, Leave her a second. Uh, now I don't miss out onseeing my baby growing unless I travel outside for business, whatever. So, um,but other than that, I'm very close. I'm, I'm always offering that helping handthat makes, uh, your, your partner life much, much easier and,Ali Zewail: Got it. Mohammad Alrazaz: um,easy to handle.Uh, and I don't feel out like I'm missing out, which is a greatfeeling as well.Ali Zewail: Cool. Allright, so If you can go back 11 years or so to your younger self and giveyourself advice You About what to do and what not to do. Um, as you startbusinesses as you go, what would you tell yourself?Mohammad Alrazaz: Oh,um, about starting businesses. Ali Zewail: Well,about actually your professional career in general.Mohammad Alrazaz:well, surprisingly, I, uh, I don't know what kind of, uh, lessons I'll, I'llgive myself. And I think if time goes back other than maybe investing instocks, I wouldn't do anything else. Um, honestly, I think Like I don't, Idon't regret any steps. I actually think like every step in my career was kindof like connected.Um, and you can see like the community happening in terms ofindustry, business model, relationships, network. It was kind of like connectedall the time. Um, so I try again. I did not try to move from. let's saybuilding a technology company into kind of like going for real estate andconstruction where it's completely different network, completely different orwhatever, kind of like keep that connected.But, um, I think, uh, knowing what I know today, uh, I could bemore bold and risk taking. But again, because I know what I'm knowing today, soI don't blame my old self. I am not someone who would worry about future. But,uh, well, I think compared to normal people, I think I'm taking kind of like alot of risks with the circumstances happening.Ali Zewail: And tothe responsibilities you had as well as a young person with the death of your father and Mohammad Alrazaz: Ithink Ali Zewail: that.Mohammad Alrazaz:100%. 100%. I think there is a lot of lessons learned. Yeah. For example, maybewhen, when I see the things that did not work well, uh, methane at at EasyTaxi. I would be like, yeah, I hope I, I pushed more for working with privatecars than just taxis. 'cause like I pushed for that. But, 'cause they had astrategy not to do this, I kind of like took it as is.I wish I, I pushed more, um, working with the friends. I wishedI understood that they would be at risk of losing friends as well. When youwork on, um, with them and things do not work, I think if I if I would haveassisted the risk and the opportunity knowing what I was knowing, um, I wouldhave not done it, for example.Um, I, I, uh. I think, um, yeah, I think, I think, you know,in, in, in, in, in, in auto, particularly when I tried to think about thingsthat we, we did or we did not do, um, yeah, I think, yeah, what I just sharedwith people, like I would, I would really reconsider building an enterprisebusiness and then moving into SMBs than actually doing an SMBs and try to gointo the bigger fish.Um, I would have made our life easier. Um, Yeah, don't bankwith SVB alone. Uh, make sure you have different banks and your money is, uh, distributed between banks. Uh, yeah. Ali Zewail: expect.Mohammad Alrazaz: Nowevery time we go into a market, we open three banks. It's like no more one bank only. So policy we learned enough timewith family I mean, I think one of the things that I reallyregretted I spent a lot of time at easy taxi building the company. So I wasaway from family. Um, and I sometimes to sleep in the office. Uh, that thatmuch how I was trying to kind of like because I spent eight hours doing the joband then eight hours learning what I'm going to do tomorrow.Right? I was a fresh grad. I did not know what marketing plan.My manager is asking me for a market plan. I'm not going to tell him. I don'tknow. And find someone I would just go and at myself and deliver it the yearsthe next day. So uh, I spent a lot of time building businesses and the facthere is No matter what you are building, no matter where you are in a business,I'm sorry to say that.I know it's going to be harsh, but you are replaceable, even ifyou are a founder. I know, um, if I die today, everyone's going to cry. Peoplewill post about it on social media. Some people, they might write articles orblogs, sharing their feelings. Um, But I would be replaced. Someone else has tocome and be the CEO of this company and continue the journey.Right? So, um, and that's a that's what I, I saw when myfather, uh, died. He worked for his company for around 30 years and people whenI used to visit my father's office. Uh, to collect his stuff people. They usedto cry when they see me because they would remember my father I I I I kind oflike looked like him and and they they would really really cry because I stillremember the first day Like I went to his office one week after and they saw aguy sitting on my father's desk and he was doing his job right and When I wanted to take his end of service Uh, like the stuffthat they calculated I saw that they deducted You few bucks, like hundreds ofriyals, and they told him why.He said, oh, we processed some governmental documents for yourfather, but again, he wasn't serving us in the company, so we have to deduct itfrom his end of service. I was like, businesses are businesses. At the end,they're gonna move on, and life will move on without you. So, but life is gonnastop and maybe sometimes does not move on for the people who loves you and whocare about you.Make sure you spend enough time. So that's, uh, what reallyresonates to me. And that's why I'm very happy to be working remotely because Ifeel like I'm with my family. I'm close, Ali Zewail: Yeah. Mohammad Alrazaz:despite the fact I'm working. That's a, that's a privilege, um, to be workingand close to family, uh, because I don't want to miss Ali Zewail:Absolutely. Mohammad Alrazaz:with my wife, with my baby, with my mom and with.with the people that I love.Ali Zewail: Nice.Cool. So going to a more business sideof things, you know, the thing about venture capital and startups and stuff isthat you need, at the end of the day, you need exits. As you said, you know,investors, they want that divorce at the end. how do you see the opportunitiesfor exits for startups from the Arab region?Mohammad Alrazaz: Um, you mean the opportunity of exits,right?Ali Zewail: Yeah,Mohammad Alrazaz: Um, see, I think, uh, the challenging partis we haven't seen enough exits in the region. Um, I think I read somewherethat we only had, I think, 110 exits in the whole region, uh, historically. I'mnot sure if that number is correct, um, because it's also very difficult tokind of, like, keep track.But, uh, From thestartups and the companies that we know, we know that the number is much, uh,lower than that. so we don't see enough exits. And I think, the reason for thisis mainly driven. Okay. I'm gonna be harsh. and I hope I'm wrong'cause I'm gonna tellyou what I think. Ithink. VCs, their model is built onexit and they are the one who's causing the, the, current market situation, Istill remember when investors, theywould go and tell the founder who wants to build a global company to chill andto calm down and just to focuson their primary markets,especially SaaS companies. Like I understand that if you are building atrucking company, but if you are building a SaaS company, why do you need that,right?why do I need build abusiness on the country level? Ican build it on a global level. And that's the idea of SaaS. But investorswould be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just focus on your market, get the market share. and be bigenough so someone else could come and buy you so they are thinking about theexit strategy They're not thinking about one the stickiness strategy for the founder.Why would he stick? Whywould he keep doing what he's doing and the scalability of it? Why that wasbecause IPO wasn't anoption. So the only way to do it is just to exit through acquisition well, Ithink that impacted the mindset of the entrepreneurs in the region I don't knowali how many companies you know outof this region.They're building globalproducts That you can nameAli Zewail: Yeah, exactly. I agree with you. There's alowered ambition almost at many founders from the region. And that's why youlove it when you see a founder who's different, who's looking globally, who'sactually.100 Percent Mohammad Alrazaz: Especially come on in markets outside ofSaudi with the UAE or maybe even Turkey where it's not sizable enough. Yanni,it really hurts me every time I see a business coming from Egypt to Saudi.Well, I found it like moving his whole family from Egypt to Saudi, whether fromJordan to Saudi, uh, whether from, um, uh, Qatar to Saudi.And why? Because theinvestor would not put any penny with him unless he expands to Saudi as abigger market. And you would find him a SaaS company. Yet we have seen examplesof, uh, of, of, uh, companies, uh, under the, uh, uh, the Israeli occupation. Andthese, and these companies, they're building global companies, right?Any companies like Wixand Monday, et cetera, even some people, they use them by mistake. They don'tknow even that they, they are actually Israeli companies. And these companies,they were built in that small geography. Right with what with a lot of funding,which is something that we understand is right funding, from Ali Zewail: ambition. Yup.Mohammad Alrazaz: a lot of funding and a lot of ambition.Uh, And I think that isthe thing and we feel like okay, we're big enough for us just focus on On onthe market, but I think many founders specifically the ones who are in smallermarkets Should one rethink about their business model? Yes, don't go into aheavy asset business model, go into a technology, SaaS, invest more in that.Simply, if someone says,what's SaaS? Um, all the ideas are already gone. Go and replace whatever hasbeen built outside. We need to have Aslan, um, uh, technology independency inour region. Okay. So take the best to thebest one that you, you love Slack, go and build Slack for the region, build itin Arabic.Slack does not supportArabic by the way. So go build a Slack for the region, build a better communitymanagement, better communication management, and sell that as a SaaS solutionat a cheaper rate. Because again, we are paying for the salaries of the engineersin the Silicon Valley, right? Which are extremely expensive.You can build that andwe have seen great examples of this like zoho and the in india where they havebuilt a head to head competitor google products at a way much uh cheaper rates,right so I think we need that for two reasons Want to create more opportunitiesfor founders to build products and to build solutions and, uh, to, uh, to havethis, uh, technical independency because you don't want tomorrow, uh, forwhatever geopolitical situation to be shut down.And I think we have thisbig risk. The simplest risk that we have today is on hosting. We don'thave local hosting providers, and I'm sure if you take the top 50 startups, notcompanies, not corporates. The top 50 startups in the region and you actuallysum their bills, it can build today a more than 50 million housing company.Yeah. I mean, that's now the Ali Zewail: Minimum.Uh Mohammad Alrazaz:minimum, you know, why, why we don't have a local hosting, uh, company, uh,why, uh, why we all depend on Google or AWS. So I think there is that risk.And, and this risk has to be pushed by, I hope it gets pushed by thegovernment. No, this is not something on the startup level. I think that's onthe national level.But also I hope to see, uh, VC companies investing in that typeof businesses. And if someone comes today and says, Oh, I have an A. R. P.System that competes with Oracle instead of laughing at him and telling him howcan you build an A. R. P. Better than Oracle actually going and investing inhim because he should be the replacement of Oracle in the region, right?And you can simply calculate stand by the By the total accountvalue that oracle has in the region. So I hope to see this one day And thenwith this we can have the exits now the ipo Market is opening up for startups.But again, it's not Working as we expect many startups. They actually list gopublic and then the stock will go down Still the market needs to see more ofthese startups.No one Has the guts to list a company that's not profitable YouRight. And no one would advise you to do that while in the U. S. You see a lotof companies and startups who got listed, uh, not making money. Uh, so, uh,still we need time for that. But I think, yeah, I mean, founders, they lovethese ideas because they feel it.It connects to them, right? It relates to them. Uh, maybegovernment entities. It might relate to them from the geopolitical, from theum, Big national, you know, trade jobs and et cetera. I think I would love tosee that coming from VCs, from the money, money makers and the money holdersand the investors who want to kind of like have that replacement.I would love to see a VC saying we only focus on building, uh,uh, local technologies, uh, local replacement, whatever is there, because it'smuch easier to calculate the time, uh, to calculate the market. It's a provenbusiness model. It's a proven Just go on a local alternative for it and make iteven better and then scale it globally.So, I wish that is there. And I think when we have more ofthis, I think more exits would come. Would be applicable. Uh, because again, ifpeople would just any even now the big companies, they are too busy figuringout what's happening in their markets than actually coming to the region andacquiring companies with the current situation. situation. So I don't think that is the rightstrategy necessarily to do that. Yes, we've seen over with Kareem. But again,if Kareem did not Scale and grow and create that to fit into Uber, uh, by thebusiness model and by the branding not worked. And I know for, and I think maybe, youknow, or maybe I should not talk about that, maybe if the acquisition did not happen, I don't think, uh, uh,Kareem would have, uh, made it to its size today.Right. It was tough. And it was a very critical situation inKareem's, uh, story. Right. Ali Zewail: exactly.Mohammad Alrazaz:again, and Amazon and.Ali Zewail: and, and,yeah, I mean, building on the cream example, there were other, sorry, therewere other regional, uh, similar to, to Kareem in, in Southeast Asia thatactually got huge amounts of funding. And so actually they won against Uber.They, they kicked Uber out of their market, uh, like DD and things like that.So, so maybe if there was more ambition on the Capital side ofthe of of the equation. Uh, Kareem would still be, uh, would actually be ahuge, uh, would be, you know, much bigger than it is now.Mohammad Alrazaz: 100percent Ali Zewail: Yeah. So,yeah, on that note on, uh, you know, of ambition for the region, um, maybe I'llgo into the quick, uh, fire questions to, uh, because I know we've, we've goneover schedule.So first question, what book do you like to recommend toothers?Mohammad Alrazaz: Um,oh I have a lot of books that I would actually recommend to people Um, in whichin which side I have a book inevery Ali Zewail: you know,whatever you like, if you want to,Mohammad Alrazaz: so the basic book Ali Zewail: business.Mohammad Alrazaz:from from good to great. I think that's one of the books that I really enjoyedreading. Uh, blitzscaling. I, uh, Chris here. The Hoffman is one of the, uh,great books to read. I think it was one of the books that people did not read,but they just took the idea of blitzscaling and they overused it.Um, and So it's, it's a, I mean, everyone should read thatbook. Um, I've actually, uh, if you are into, uh, remote working, there is alot of books that, uh, there are actually a few books that were created by thebase camp founders that I would strongly recommend, uh, reading Ali Zewail: Freed.Mohammad Alrazaz:exactly. Uh, and they shake some of the basics that you have around how youshould run the, the business as well.Um, so yeah, I think, uh, um, insightful, insightful, uh, books.Um. Yeah, these are like few books that I have, uh, read. I, I, um,yeah, Ali Zewail: Okay. Um,and how do you unwind? How do you stay energized?Mohammad Alrazaz: uh,talking to people, uh, that I literally I'm doing this podcast. Uh, in fact,the only thing I consume since morning is, uh, water and black coffee. So, um,Um, and it's already four p. m. Um, so, uh, I think talking to people reallymakes me energized. Um, I am someone who would brainstorm while talking topeople.So when, when I amin a, in a, I think with people. So that, um, keeps me energy. Um,having enough sleep definitely is needed. And, uh, I am not a guy who sleepseight hours. Um, I sleep five hours a day. Uh, but that's enough for me basedon the sleep cycle. If I sleep six hours, it would be the worst day in my life.So, uh, based on this, on the sleep cycle, I kind of like.Where is the sweet spot? So five hours is more than enough. Um, that's great. Itry, I learn nap, napping. So I'm trying to learn how to take a nap. I thinkthat's also a good, a good thing to do. Um, um, and yeah, I think just, yeah,I, I, I am an activator and an ideator by, by, by nature.So I, I like to think I like to problem solve. These thingsreally keeps me, uh, alive and, and energetic. Um, Yeah, I thinkAli Zewail: on thatnote, I like to close the podcast with a note of gratitude. So what is a giftsomebody has given you that has made a positive, um, effect on your life?Mohammad Alrazaz:like a very recent gift,Ali Zewail: Well, itdoesn't have to be recent.Mohammad Alrazaz: I,I want to thank a friend for buying the, uh, the baby monitor that made ourlives slightly better while taking care of it. Um, gratitude. Um, I think, um,um, uh, I'm really grateful for all the challenges I face in my life. Um, Ithink if I was born in a richer family, my life wouldn't be as exciting as itis today.Um, I think if, uh, if, uh, I didn't close startups, I think Iwould have not learned as much as, as I have learned today. Um, I think if Idid not take the decision of, uh, kind of like disagreeing with my parents and,uh, Doing what I thought was, was cool. Not even right. I thought it was coolto be building a startup.Uh, I would have not reached where I reached today. So I'm,I'm, I'm thankful for all of these challenges. I'm thankful for the mistakes.Um, I think I learned from mistakes. I think everyone learns from mistakes morethan, um, things that work, um, because really mistakes tell you when things donot work, right?But we do a lot of things and we don't know if, if they wouldwork elsewhere, but we know when something does not work, it means it doesn'twork usually. Um, Unless you need to find another path, so I'm grateful forthat Uh, definitely before anything. I'm grateful for god. Yeah Despite all thelosses I I I I had in my life Uh, i'm grateful. Yeah Well, I actually had thismoment ali. I know it it might sound very personal there's a few months back Iactually, uh fainted and hurt my back. So, um, yeah, my wife was supposed togive me an injection for multivitamins. And, uh, I guess I couldn't handle thestress and they fainted.Uh, they hurt my back. And when I hurt my back, I was laying onthe bed screaming, and I was waiting for the ambulance to come and pick me up.And literally, for the level of pain, I felt I was about to die. To, to, topass out andto, and my wife wasn't in the room with me when that thoughtcame in. And when I started thinking about that, I did not feel the pain in mybody at all.So I felt like I was mentally disconnected from my, um, from myphysical body. And I asked myself a question, if you die today, are you happy?Okay. And they were satisfied about, I'm like. I would have not asked for a,for a, for a better house. I'm not like, Oh, I'm dying now with this, uh, uh,with this bedroom, with this, uh, amount of money in my bank account with onlya wife, not a baby with whatever, this and that.I wasn't, I was like happy leaving now. Right. Maybe I wasworried a bit about how much I was close from, from God and about the number ofprayers I missed. I was like, if I die today. I think I'm okay now after this.Um, I'm really trying to live a life where When I'm in that situation again Iwouldn't regret anything and I should be just grateful for the life that Ilived and for the opportunity and I hope i'll be leaving Yeah Something on thisworld that people would remember me with but most importantly I want to leaveUh with with my family knowing that this was a good guy and really Enjoy the, uh, enjoy the time, so.Ali Zewail: Yeah. So,I mean, I think it would be helpful for all of us to kind of close every dayfeeling that if we die today, that that would be fine. So that's kind of a goodway to,to keep yourself, um, on the track, so to speak, uh, from dayto the next. So thank you very much for your time, Mohammed. Uh, thank you forsharing this with us.And, uh, hopefully, uh, We'll talk again sometime. Thank you.Mohammad Alrazaz:Insha'Allah. Definitely. Ali Zewail: Thank youfor listening to this episode of Startups Arabia podcast. If there wassomething you really liked about what the guest said today, reach out to themon social media and tell them what you liked. And of course, if you haven'tsubscribed yet, what are you waiting for? You don't want to miss any of ourgreat upcoming episodes.Also, please rate us and give us comments on our social mediaaccounts so that we know how to improve and also tell us what you like. Wedon't mind hearing that either. Until next time, this was your host, Adi'sWhale.

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