Mohammed Alzubi is the Managing Partner at Nama Ventures, a pre-seed/seed-stage fund driving tech innovation in MENA, especially Saudi. Previously, he led Tharwa Capital’s tech investments and headed VC at Global Investment House in Kuwait.He has held leadership roles at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA) and founded Sulaf Solutions in Silicon Valley. A seasoned angel investor, he is a Sand Hill Angels member and serves on multiple advisory boards, including LinkSV and Techwadi.Mohammed mentors regional startups and advises In5 (Dubai) and Oasis 500 (Jordan). He holds an MBA from London Business School and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University.
Contact Links
Mohammed’s LinkedIn account: @Mohammed Alzubi
Nama Ventures’ Website: https://www.namaventures.com/
Transcript:
Ali Zewail: Welcome to the startups Arabia podcast. My guest today, it's my pleasure to host Mohammed Alzubi founder and managing partner at Nama Ventures. I'm very excited for this discussion because Mohammed has huge experience, whether in the Bay area or in the region, in the startup field. And so I'm going to be digging in to this experience and trying to learn from him through our conversation. Welcome Mohammed.
Mohammed Alzubi: Uh,first of all, thanks so much for hosting me. I'm a big fan of the show. Andyou're always sharing tremendous knowledge and helping both founders, investorsin the region. Also exposing them exposing international, your internationalaudience to our part of the world. This exciting place that is really thrivingnow in the entrepreneurial space.Thanks Ali Zewail: Thank youvery much, Mohammed. Um, without further ado, maybe I thought I'd start, uh,discussing your career and, and the entry point I thought about, uh, is theyear 2009, you had studied engineering in the us. You'd lived in the US for along time. You had a company set up in the Bay Area, you've been engineinvesting, and then you decided in 2009 to move back to the region and to joinDubai Silicon Oasis.Can you tell me about that time and what informed thatdecision?Mohammed Alzubi: Imean, your 1st question is, is a deep question. So you're starting with a bang.Uh, look, I left to the U. S. when I was 17. And came back when I was 36 and,uh, at that time, I, you know, I started building a, a name for myself as avalue add angel investor, uh, first as and then part of a great network calledsaddle angels, which I'm still a member of one of the, you know, most prolificangel, uh, investment groups in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley.And, uh, you reach a point where are you Mohammed? Are youMohammed? And maybe that was truly influenced by let me step back by myexperience with tech quality. So I'm one of the co founders of tech quality andone of the earliest meeting of equity happened. In in in our in my office, uh,and we really asked ourselves, you know, the we were called the magnificent.You know, seven was a great group of diverse. Uh, people thathave an affinity to the region from the region, uh, Arab and Arab Americansliving in the Bay Area. And we said, our community just doesn't have a placewhere you can really come to the Bay Area and feel you're part of, uh, youknow, a community, you know, people to reflect on.Um, and when we looked under the hood of this community, wewere beyond impressed. Uh, you know, it's just hidden under layers of layers.So when you look under the hood, the first engineer in Google, you know, uh,is, is, uh, is an Arab American, uh, the guy who invented SSL or the algorithm,ALGAMAL algorithm, which is, you know, at the basis of was one, you know, al,Ali Zewail: Right.Mohammed Alzubi:which is a great, you know, advisor still to the fund up to today.A slew of executives, a slew of VPs, of VCs, um, and youstarted asking yourself, Hamed, I'm from this part of the world. You go to theBay Area, you do extremely well. And the , the, the actual raw material is fromthe region. Why do we excel, uh, when we as a community, when we go to the BayArea and, you know, for, for like yourself, when you're going to pay yourvisit?Our community is extremely strong, and it's actually a thousandtimes stronger than when I was in the Bay Area. And I started thinking, okay,there's a whole lot of Muhammads in the Bay Area. But what if I come back andcreate impact? And that was really the genesis, is taking this continuation ofvalue add to the community and saying, what if we, you know, what if we, We'veseen the effect of diaspora with other community, and we've seen the effect ofgoing back and adding value.And it was driven just really by a personal choice to go andsay, let me see if I can replicate the spirit of Silicon Valley and in our partof the world. And at that time, you know, in 2009, 2010, Dubai was theepicenter of the space. I mean, there was not much activity. So it was theclosest place to be able to People just think capital venture, not venturecapital back then, uh, right?It was that early on. Uh, so as we, with a, with a wonderfulgroup of people, and we were witnessing the evolution of this ecosystem, uh,because like I said, when you were in the Bay area at that time, looking at theregion looked like a black hole. But when you looked at the individuals, theindividual level of effect in the Bay Area, you were extremely impressed.Uh, so, uh, like they say, uh, in Arabic, I decided to kind ofgo back and create impact. And, um, it was, it was one of the best decisionsI've ever made.Ali Zewail: yeah, itwas a great timing as well because it was like the inflection point in thestartup ecosystem in the region. That's when it really started to, to get take off. Wonderful. So, uh, also like on your LinkedInbio, you mentioned that you were several times an entrepreneur, uh, had somefailures and then you landed on a winner.And since then you've become an investor. You've invested inover 120 companies. Some of them very successful, several unicorns. How hasyour time as an entrepreneur informed or, helped you as an investor? How doesit affect your decision making as an investor?Mohammed Alzubi:Excellent question. Look, you can get into the investment world top down orbottoms up. Right? So, and especially in the region, you see a lot of playersin the VC space that are ex PE, ex bankers, and it's, a valid path, right?It's, an asset class that a lot of people in finance wanna get to and haveexposure to. But I think you are much better equipped as an investor if youhave the pedigree and the scars of war to showcase, because if I look at theconversations I have with entrepreneurs. The most interesting conversations areabout the story, the journey, the failures, right? And I joke and I say, if youhaven't had one of those sleepless nights looking at the, ceiling thinkingabout payroll, you have not had an entrepreneurial journey.It's like a rite of passage. So it gives you a layer ofempathy. You know, you've been there, you've done that. You've had the darkest,of days. You've been through the psychological warfare, the ups, the downs, thedays you don't want to get out of bed. The days where you can't wait to get outof bed.So it, gives you a, reference. They, understand you and youunderstand them. You've been there, you've done that plus really. Insights comefrom the failing because you can, you know, all, you know, tide rides, allships, sort of the same goes, uh, you can succeed by timing a market whereeverybody's succeeding.Um, but to succeed when everybody's failing or to do at themicro level. Wonders where the macro level is, is tough, is, is where you, youknow, we're talking before the, uh, you know, before the podcast about alpha,this is how alpha and entrepreneurship is achieved is, and, and these insightsyou get from, from the failures, you know, you can, uh, um, they're the mostmemorable, by the way, when you look back at your entrepreneurial journey.You remember it now that the memory is less painful, you know,you're smiling at it. You're appreciating that when you were dealing with it.You're, you know, you were hating yours. I mean, it was just a horrible feelingto be in. But when you look back at it, it's the most interesting, the mostmemorable, the most enjoyable.Really, it's a, you know, uh, the tough love, the pain thatthat feels good afterwards is, and, and, and entrepreneurs want to hear that.They want to know that. Wait a second. Um. You know, pivot is a natural thingas a matter of fact, we have a saying and or we, you know, at NEMA, if you'restill at the original business model after 18 months, we get nervous, we freakout because we think it's in the journey, you gain insight, you can't be thatgood that you got it all right, um, that far in the game, because we all know,especially in early stage, half the assumptions are wrong anyways, so it's, uh,if you're doing early stage, I think you are a much more interesting investorif you've had an entrepreneurial, uh, experience.Also, believe it or not, the path from angel to, to fundmanager also adds a lot of value, um, because angel investment, you're, you'reinvesting with your own money. You've developed that level of gut and from it,you understand the element of risk, the risk reward, right? Because, but thenwhen you imagine other people's money, How do you institutionalize thisthinking?How do you start running? I'm at the angel is much moreaggressive than how much the fund manager. And you have to be, you have to comefrom that mentality because the governance is different, that responsibility isdifferent, uh, and it's more impactful on the ecosystem. If fund one doesn't dowell, we can't do fund two LPs won't invest in this asset class and it affectsthe cycle.Ali Zewail: Yeah.And, and, I mean, tell me more about that difference between angel investingand, uh, venture investing. It seems to me that you're saying that you can takemore risks when you're an angel because it's your own money. But then again,I'm, uh, someone might say, uh, but in venture, if you're not taking, Enoughrisk.You're probably not getting that alpha. You're not actuallygetting into the best companies, the ones that, because they're usually themost contrarian. What are your thoughts about that?Mohammed Alzubi:Look, there's no right or wrong answer, right? I'm experience. I'm answeringyou from my own personal experience. By definition, if you've allocated as anangel, a subset of the high value risk. Capital within your portfolio as, as,as an individual, uh, you might make decisions on pure gut that are riskier.Right? And you can afford to, right? You don't have to answerto anybody, but that pathway taught you that is reward model. Right? Uh, wealready know. That, um, if you're not going to take enough risk, you're justnot gonna. Um, hit the winners and I'll tell you this for somebody who'sinvested in companies that became unicorns. If anybody tells you a pre seed,this one is going to make it. This one is not, I don't know if they've, they'vehad extensive experience, um, in, in this asset class, because. Believe it ornot, the ones I thought was a sure slam dunk failed and the ones I thoughtwere, you know, at the time, at the time, the ones that I thought were okay,you know, it's an acquisition play.It's a nice lifestyle play. It's a 50 million company, etc. Um,you know, took off became became phenomenal. So we just don't know at thatlevel. Plus the value add right. Uh, I'd be kidding to you if some of ourportfolio seller, right. It's on a path to a unicorn, uh, the, the level andthe support that they need is no longer within the realm of an early stagefund.So you also understand where you can add value and where youdon't, where you have to pass the baton to the late stage players, uh, sounderstanding your lifespan engagement with a startup is just as important,just like how angels need to understand Uh, that life sense, and that's why wespent a lot of time as VCs making sure that the previous angels understand thatas a class, all you need is one bad apple to screw up the whole, you know,basket, uh, per se.But there is a difference. There is a difference ininstitutionalization, plus the decision making, right? I mean, you have an IC,you have a sounding boards, you want to make sure you democratize the thoughtprocess. And. Again, there's no right or wrong answers, just a different way ofapproaching, but the angel path helped me understand this as, because at theheart, I mean, I was an electrical engineer, right?An engineer that turned in engineering manager that turnedentrepreneur, you know, uh, one of the entrepreneurs did well, put a few bucksin my pocket and as geeks, we don't know to do our money. So we start investingin other geeks and you learn so much. I mean, I'm so thankful. For the firstangel investment I did because it was literally, you know, classic what not toinvest in. It was a solo founder. It was from academia that was so rigid andset in stone. I don't need any support, zero coachability. I know what I needto do and not thinking about the market commercial. I mean, it was what not toinvest in check, check, check, check, check. And I'm so thankful for that 25k,the best 25k I've ever spent in my life because it taught me.You know, in some lessons, you got to pay for it. It's just,you got to go through the school of hard knocks to pay for those what not toinvest in. So, today in them, I would invest in teams with complimentary skillsets that have role clarity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, of course,angel investment experience.Um, makes you a better venture capitalist plus, you know, youget to walk the walk, right? I mean, I, I'm, I'm one of, uh, you know, I'm abig investor. And numbers fund, so, you know, I'm a, you know, that meme ofspider looking at spider man. So I'm the GP and I have an LP stake in the fund.So, right. So, and that's kind of the game.I just want to see that skin in the game. Uh, and your own fundthat you're managing.Ali Zewail: Yeah,that's a good segue to go actually to start talking a bit about NEMA, which youfounded in 2019. You know, what's the founding story and the thesis for the,for NEMA Ventures?Mohammed Alzubi: Uh,very interesting question. So. Again, at the time I was, uh, living in Dubai atthe time and I start seeing, um, significant activities, nuances happening inSaudi Arabia, um, and most notably my participation in, uh, JITECs at the time.And I remember that in previous JITECs, um, events and JITECs like CS Las Vegasfor your international audience.You know, the participation in the region in terms of on theentrepreneurial side, remember we used to, at, at, um, you mentioned, uh, my,my first experience in, in, in Dubai with Silicon Oasis, we used to be bigsponsors of, of giant techs, and I'd see that, that a presentation ofinnovation in giant techs and the startups was minimalistic, right?Uh, you know, you'd see VARs and people sending racks and fastforward to 20, uh, sorry, 2018.And, you know, there was a massive section for entrepreneurshipand 60 percent of that was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And, you know, there'sa saying that say, if you want to be a rancher, you go to Montana. And I, youknow, internalize and said, if you want to catch the.The next entrepreneurial revolution need to head to Riyadh. Andit was an assumption. It was a thesis that there's enough deal flow to justifyinstitutionalizing them, my night job at the time. I never stopped angelinvesting, by the way, is to make the night job of angel investing the day jobof venture capital.And I thought there's not enough deal flow to be, you know,vertically focused. So let's be sector agnostic. In terms of the tech. Withthat being said, let's avoid content gaming, et cetera, and focus more ontransactional stuff. Show me a product or a service for a or a or a or a, um,and, and look at early state investing that, right?And we had a, a tagline, we precede, we Precede, you Proceed.Um, which we made t-shirts on and it was the tagline, et cetera. And honestly,back then, if you ask me, is there enough deal flow, I tell you, I don't know.I mean, today in 2024, I'll tell you probably the region needs 13 of us becausewe're overwhelmed with deal flow.Uh, Alhamdulillah, we're at a point where we're getting almosteight, nine submissions a day. And we've built significant filters just toscale and automate some of that filtration just to scale. So, it was under thepremise, does the region or can the region justify a dedicated and focusedearly stage fund, um, and, and in Silicon Valley, you'd see something, uh,which, which I fully support is you see players playing in specific lanes andthey build big funds.But they stay early stage or late stage or mezzanine or, butthey play within that, you know, if there is a bigger fund, they have morepartners. They try to get bigger geographics within, within, within SiliconValley within the U. S. And I thought, let's stay within that lane of earlystage. Um, and let's be disciplined around the asset class in terms of theband, but be sector agnostic and let the deal flow kind of take us to placeswhere we build that expertise.Uh, per se.Ali Zewail:Wonderful. And, uh, one of the things I noticed on your website is your, uh,Emphasis on team. So it's like, forget it. If you're a solo founder, don't evenreach out to set number of ventures. I mean, that's not literally what'swritten there, but that's theethos. So, I mean, no matter how great of solo founder, uh, youwould never invest in.I mean, why, why thatMohammed Alzubi: Imean, look, there's always exceptions to the rule and to the pedigree of thefounders themselves. And by the way, this applies not just to them. I mean, Iwant you to look at when Y. C. invests in a solo founder, right? You know whatthe level of experience and usually they have significant track record.Repeat founders already have relationships. X Y. C. Um, it'sit's a beyond impressive. Very great to make a bet on, but again, I want toalso emphasize the problem, not an ecosystem problem. There is no right orwrong answer, but we believe in the school of that entrepreneurship. Is a teamsport and and we have the school of thought that a good seller is not a goodoperator is not a good, you know, so we want to see who's the seller.Who's the door? Who's the operator? And we'd love to see ifthis is the tech startup. There's somebody responsible for supply and demandthat out of the building, they're engaging with customers, engaging withsuppliers, getting the word of mouth, doing the sales, doing the marketing. Andat the same time, they have a counterpart.That is doing that is coding that, you know, vision, puttingthat vision and to code and tech. Um, now in Silicon Valley. You don't havethat problem. As a matter of fact, you have the reverse problem. You havetechnical founders and co founders coming together, and then we have to tellone who's going to step up and become the seller, right?In MENA, you see the other way around. You see phenomenalbusiness people, but not enough technical co founders. And we tell them it'slike going to play, you know, football with your leg broken. How can you be atechnology startup? Without having the native technologist, right? And again, Iwant to re emphasize there are great success stories of solo founders.As a matter of fact, there's a book, you know, the, the superfounder that tells you, depending on the analytics. But even statistically, ateam will always outperform a solo founder because just, you know, and from myentrepreneurial days, you don't have enough time. Right. And, and, and I think there is a power of, uh,building on the learning.So if you're one day selling the other day, you're worryingabout DevOps, the third day you're handling. Operational elements, the fourthday you're selling, you're not building on that knowledge. So if you're Sunday,Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, selling, or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,doing or operating that the aha moments, the insights would come quicker,sooner, uh, and that's what you want, right?You, you're going with these MVPs to collect the data, to comeback and really build the product that the market wants with a team. It'seasier. But remember, we say with a team and role clarity because just asdangerous is a team that doesn't have role clarity. And, you know, we have ananalogy of planets.So there's planet sales planet, uh, doing coding DevOps frontend back end. And then it's operations. The champions of these planets meet inthis moon strategize and then each one goes. Back to their planet, and theybuild cities within that planet, right? Sales, marketing, you know, and opscustomers, et cetera, et cetera.But there's defined lines overall clarity because it's just asdangerous of being a solo father that to have real clarity. RightAli Zewail:absolutely.Mohammed Alzubi:again, it's, you know, as the sexy image of the Lone Ranger, you know, on thesunset being that champion is great, but I don't think it's as effective. And,uh, in the entrepreneurial context, because you want to divide the effort andhave that clarity.ItAli Zewail: Yeah. Uh,you know what they say, like, uh, if you want to go quick, go alone. If youwant to go far. Uh, go with people. So I mean, teams, uh,make that difference. Mohammed Alzubi:Yeah.Ali Zewail: And howdo you guys make decisions at Nema Ventures? What's theMohammed Alzubi:Okay. So there are multiple layers. So, you know, like I told you, we don'thave a problem of of deal flow, but you get a full diversified list of dealflow. Some from the region from some outside of the region. In regions that wedon't want to make a bet on because we don't have any relationships and we'regoing to have syndication relationships, et cetera.So there's the 1st layer, you know, a high broad layer into,um, the default that it filters down into more specifics. And this is where wetypically, once we see something that is interesting, the team will meet withthem, whether it's myself or the investment team, and we have a very specificset of questions.That help us define does this fit within the ethos of NEMA? Isthis a true team? Does the cap table reflect the true team? Or you havesomebody that says, yeah, we're a team, but I own 99 percent and my CTO owns,you know, 1 percent from the ESOP. That to us is a solo founder, right? Uh, thecap table is, is Is there enough incentive for the founders at CDC to staywithin, you know, motivated within the game?And that's important to us, right? Because we know that thelate stage players. Pay attention to that, and I know from, you know, spendingtime in Silicon Valley, the top tier funds are asking, do the team still have50 percent at CDC, right? The team as a collective. So, I want to make surethat, you know, the early stage investors.don't win, you know, the battle and lose the war. And in theregion versus Silicon Valley, you see that sometimes these these mistakes,sometimes it's not malicious. People don't know what they don't know. So yousee an entrepreneur that has a rich friend that gave him a million real andtook half the company.Now, both don't think there's something wrong with that, right?It's not like, um, and we've had these conversations. We've had very toughconversations. And sometimes very friendly conversation. They go and say,nobody will invest in this cap table. Right? So can do you want to win thebattle or and lose the war?Let's say no. So we help them claw back that equity to a captable. That is manageable. Spending time with the founders themselves, becauseyou cannot be, um, inconsistent. You can't have cognitive dissonance. You can'tsay I want value investing, and I want to engage and roll their sleeves andbecome part of our an extension of our, uh, you know, thought process and siton our boards and, you know, what we call the tough love and say it, but don'twant to do it.Don't want to believe it. So it will show within our firstengagement and will tell you. We're hands off. Our job is to make sure that weinstill that institutionalization that when the RKPI is, are you going to get alate stage check? And we know what the late stage players look for. So I wantto make sure by the time you're at the tail end of our engagement that you'vecheckmarked this.And we've built tools, actually, we've actually built tools atMema to help you with that. Not run an app, but run a company. Okay? Becauseyou want to make sure can this team run an actual company, not an application,right? Uh, and some of these lessons you learn the hard way. Really?Ali Zewail: Right.Mohammed Alzubi: justhave to do it.Ali Zewail: Okay. Andthat's in the first meeting. And then, um,Mohammed Alzubi: No,no, no. I'm just giving you you know, this,uh, So, you know, again, there's a 1st layer, a 2nd layer andthen then you have the kind of the meeting where we dig deep. And by that time,we've spent a lot of time internally. So when we have that, you know, zoom withwith myself, or, you know. We're going to go to the nitty gritty.We're going to go to, uh, the heart of the matter. It's notdesigned to be at the heart of the matter. And then, you know, from that itgets to the DD, you know, process and negotiation. And one thing we learnedalso is that, uh, because of this, you know, level of governance. As a fund,different than an angel investor, for example, fund need usually have sideletters, want information rights, want to sit on your board, et cetera.So we get a lot of that, um, you know, negotiation early on,because the last thing you want to do is waste the entrepreneur's time of allthis due diligence and then come to the point where they're not willing toinvest. To accommodate, you know, these terms that differ from an angelinvestor to a fund.For example, I'm at the angel can invest in six competingbusinesses. It's, it's, it's, you're right. None of the fund would never dothat. Once we're in your camp, even later on, uh, we see other opportunitieswithin the same space. We've made that, that we're sitting in your bunker.We're shooting at the competition.Uh, and we take this role seriously and helping you businessdevelopment. One of the biggest roles we have is business development and notjust us. Through our LPs, we've got 63 LPs and we always ask in ourselvesbefore we invest, can we affect the top line? Do we have enough relationshipsand know how in the market and extension of our investors?Because we have such a diverse and large investors. People tellus how do you manage 63 LPs? You know, it's more than your portfolio companies.And we tell them, uh, it's a joy because it's an extension of the value add.And they've outsourced to us early stage. So they can co invest with us andlater stage, um, or, or, you know, take it to the next level, later stageopportunities, uh, in a sense that even then when they come directly on the captable.We just don't allow anybody. We want to allow people thatreally can have an affinity to that space, can add value, have therelationships, can consume that product, right? So we want to make sure thatour LPs are consuming that specific product that we're making a bet on.Ali Zewail: That'sreally cool. And, uh, maybe from there, I'd love to dive into a couple of yourinvestments. You've made over 120 by now. Uh, at least maybe, Mohammed Alzubi: Thisis as an angel and as a GP, by the way, it's not, it's Ali Zewail: Yeah. Mohammed Alzubi: Yes.Ali Zewail: Yes. And,um, I want to go into a couple of them in detail from start to finish how theywent and what you saw, maybe starting with one.That was acquired recently by Nvidia, uh, only the biggestcompany in the world these days. And, um, uh, you know, so if you tell me thedetails, uh, what you saw on brev. dev and, you know, how things, uh, happened,because I think you invested in, in 2021 and just two months ago, they wereacquired. It was pretty quick.Mohammed Alzubi: Yes.Well, I mean, this is another thing I told you earlier. So you would have toldme I'd launch a fund and that fund would be investing in a startup and thatstartup would go through a journey and eventually be acquired by this smallcompany called Nvidia, only a third, you know, third market, uh, uh, third, thebiggest market cap in the world.I tell you out of your mind. So it's in the journey again,insight just as interesting. As the exit of, um, you know, NVIDIA is thejourney of this startup and how you engage and you build, you know, therelationship with the founders and understand and build friendship, right? Imet, uh, and again, I told you back to the tech YD days.I have an affinity to Arab and Arab Americans, uh, you know,doing tech solutions and, and, and Silicon Valley in the US. So we're always.We'll handle that. The brand is bringing them to us. So, you know, a lot of itis a pull, not a portion that, you know, uh, you create one success story interms of being a valued investor and it dissipates through through the founder.So a lot of these leads come from, you know, from the communitycoming back to us. And, you know, the original startup was actually an out ofhome startup for the Uber's and the Lyft's in San Francisco. And I thought thatinnovation was very interesting. So imagine you're booking a ride to a Mexicanrestaurant A.And what if I tell you, why don't you go to this Mexicanrestaurant B and I'll pay for your Uber, pay for the lift. So there's a lot ofinnovation, right? Um, and by the way, this company taught us many lessons. Oneof them is the power of the team and power of having a technical co founder.And I'm going to segue a little bit because I want to, I want to emphasize onthis because I hope a lot of your, uh, you know, listeners are entrepreneurs tosee firsthand, how do we develop this insight. So COVID hits, you've gotcompany A. That has a team with complimentary skill sets company, be a solofounder. They both get the same insight, which is how do I do something thatcan help local businesses while everybody's shut down to, to still engage withtheir customers and allow their customers to help them out.One of the best ways to do it is what if my customers buy aservice today, For, you know, the service to be redeemed tomorrow, or, youknow, for example, I'll buy from, uh, you know, burger joint, a coupon thatcould be redeemed in 6 months. Wonderful. Right? Because all these businesseshave been shut down. Brev.dev, while they're doing OH, right out of home, you know, it'sa marketing play. Obviously, obviously, all the Uber's are left of, you know,it's COVID, shut down. Nobody's riding anything. They can sit there, donothing, or they can go and say, Wait a second. What if we develop this quickproduct, basically couponing for the local businesses?Uh, the guys hide in a cave within a weekend, build thisproduct that local media love it. They get, you know, uh, coverage within themedia about, you know, the saviors of local business. The solo founder, awonderful founder, by the way, Wasted three months negotiating with a deaf shopoutside of the region to build this feature and it was not built and they askedhim for like 30, 000 to build, which probably could cost two. So here's thedifference between. It two insights, sorry, the same insight and one canexecute because natively they have the complimentary co founding team with theskill sets, the complimentary skill sets, and one don't one was able to, uh,create a side project. It's a hustle, right? It's a hustle from the mainproduct, but it got so much media and attention. Going back to breath from thatjourney. They realize they're solving the wrong problem. So one of the things alot of developers, and if you spent writing code, you faced it. The code worksbeautiful in your dev environment and things are great and you know, you'reseeing it and it's working and the minute you push the QA or the minute youpush the production, nothing works.So they said, this is such a pain. What if. You know, we're notthe only ones facing it. I'm sure it's everybody thinks it and I, we think it'seven a bigger problem than what we're solving. Uh, you know, our previousstartup, which was the, the was cool. So they said, you know, what we're goingto go ahead and do it.We're going to, you know, not do this anymore. And by the way,where they were, you know, what was so impressive when you have conviction isyou're almost anti trend at the time, everybody was bailing out of the BayArea. Um, and, you know, so they said, we're going to do this new startup.We're not going to apply to YC this time.We're not going to be a YC company. And we're not leaving SanFrancisco and we're going to be fully local. So we're going to all live in thesame. So, you know, the exact opposite of the trend at the time. Right.Ali Zewail:Absolutely.Mohammed Alzubi: Isaid, if you have that conviction, you know, uh, let's, let's do it. Let'sride. And the idea was, let's go for it.The idea was, what if we, this is the best analogy is what ifwe make your dev environment from being your pet to think of it more likecattle, right? So, you know, it's repeatable. So. It's I'm giving you a devenvironment on the cloud. If John or Steve or Jessica or Hamad are, you know,coding from me and pulling from me and pulling to production, it's going to beseamless.Um, and that was the startup and they started, you know, um,hacking along and building that product. And they knew they're not reachingthat product market fit with that product, but they knew that eventuallythat's, that's the beauty of the confidence of a team that knows today, thingsare not clicking.But I can see it eventually click. Let me stay at it. Let me,let me keep at it. And they were just obsessed with, with the product. Now, atthat time, you know, the buzzword was AI and everybody was training their LLMsand nobody had access to the GPUs, you know, these, you know, NVIDIA, highlydesired GPUs. So again, the journey again, insight going back to, you know,it's the journey.They stumbled on and said, wait a second. We've seen a lot ofutilization of our product, not for the dev environment piece, but for theaccess to the GPU. So, if, if Nadir, uh, you know, and the co founding team satback and spend. 100 years in a conference room, they don't know had thatinsight. As a matter of fact, in that journey, the market changed, you know, AIbecame, you know, the thing, the, the, so everybody was jumping on brev to gain that access to, to theGPU.And of course, you know, I would say be so good that you can'tbe ignored and video at the time also was looking at how do I build. You know,a more robust software division, you know, uh, development friendly divisionand, and the team and birth that they've started building a community communityaround the usage and create, you know, even content and engage in thatcommunity.So, you know, and video, so a phenomenal team that is, they'reable to, you know, build, uh, a development community around. That's crap. Soagain, it's in the journey, again, insight, confidence that, you know, you justfocus and hunker down and do that good job, focus on the product. The good newswill follow. Uh, and it's, it's again, the, the, the power of having a teamwith complimentary skill sets that pivots along the way, uh, because the teamwith complimentary skill sets can give you the agility to react.You can literally build a feature. To, you know, address acompetitive, uh, move in a weekend, you lock your CTO and say, don't leavetill, till, till, till you push the code. Uh, a solo funder can't do that, orif they do that, it's not the same speed. That's it's, it's, it's expensive.Ali Zewail: Yeah. No,it's, it's incredible, you know, and it's really about getting all thoselearning cycles, uh, So making the best of your, uh, uh, timeline and the timeyou have before you run out of money and, uh, being able to respond to your ownvision quickly, you find the problem that you're, uh, meeting and you solve it.Uh, and that's, I guess that gives you more confidence thatyou're on the right track, even if things don't click 100 percent fromday one. And of course, investors that believe in you.Mohammed Alzubi:well, let me step back and go to something you asked me early on, which is aninvestor that used to be a founder. SoAli Zewail: Uh,Mohammed Alzubi: Iwent through this realization. I went through a pivot and probably I wentthrough an extreme pivot. We had a, a startup that was basically trying to sellyou, I mean, I'm A-C-C-I-E and I'm a network infrastructure person, and Icoupled myself with back then, I'm gonna date myself.There was not significant cloud efforts and ex, you know,email, exchange email. And we said, what if we go to the SMEs and we give 'em aFerrari solution for the price of, uh, you know, I don't wanna get in troublewith brands, a lower brand, uh, you know, a car. Okay. Uh, and in, inentertainer fashion, right? So.You know, we come into these SMEs and we give you a retainer,you have a CCIE network security and you have an expert in domain, an expert inemail, and we're going to come three, four hours and we thought, by the way,the VCs would love it because now when they invest in startups, we'll tell themdon't let that money go get burned on the IT infrastructure, let it go toGoogle.You know, the business logic, the code for the product they'rebuilding. Fast forward nine months, nine months. Our customers were the biggestlaw firm, which is one of the biggest operators of West Coast ports, Ciscosystems. We realized, you know, we were in the enterprise business. We wanted,they needed specific projects to be done.They need to do that done from consulting budgets because ofwhatever reason and we were that solution for them. So, living through a pivotand this is as 180 degrees, right? You're doing selling it. I mean, you ended up having a Cisco total different segment ordifferent size. I lived it. I can relate. I, you know, I am a product of in thejourney again inside.That is not something you can teach. That is something you haveto experience. The good and the bad of it, and that's why we can always reflectback as, as investors in tech to personal experiences. Um, and there's a lot ofthem, which segues me into something I was telling you, which is the, the, thepodcast we're launching.I'm launching a podcast called, Oh, well, shake first checkthat Inshallah would be addressing. We're going to take theoretical topics andtranslate it into, you know, the actual experience that I personally wentthrough and then bring in, you know, a senior entrepreneur to address that,that experience. So, inshallah, we'll, you know, we'll launch it soon.Maybe this communicating will put some pressure to, to get going with it.Ali Zewail: Put Mohammed Alzubi:Yeah, but we see the need. Yeah.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Looking forward to it. So, okay. Um, congratulations on the exit. Um, and, um,maybe you could tell me on something that's, Not yet exited, but pre IPO, Sellajust raised 130 million round. Uh, that's incredibly significant. And, uh, canyou tell me the story of Sella? How it started? Um, when you invested andwhy? Mohammed Alzubi: uh,we, we were not the first check and started. We, we came at the second fundingcycle and it's really, uh, we got into that opportunity by building, you know,a brand that I would be in value add investors and get to build a relationship.A great relationship that's still a very strong relationship, and it's alwaysan honor when, you know, one of your portfolio companies and I become aninvestor in your fund, right?That's the ultimate, uh, um, you know, um, testament that yourvalue and investors. Uh, look at MEMA, we, we, we, we're taking early stagerisk by taking execution risk, but we're not going to take business model risk.So we're always looking for the X of MENA. So sometimes the Shopify of MENA, itdoesn't take a genius to know that all these traditional businesses eventuallywill have to have online presence and for, you know, to date myself to be, youknow, a five, nine, a 99.99. Uptime e commerce solution, and I'll step back in my, youknow, the first job I had, which is, you know, IIS integrated informationsystems, we built e commerce solutions. In the dot com era, and this used tocost you almost half a million to 2 million just on the infrastructure. And oneof our biggest clients was American Express and we went public.Uh, you know, and we enjoyed that experience. So I, my firstjob, I literally got to experience early employee, not a founder, very earlyemployee to an IPO. Um, is. It used to be extremely expensive. The barrier ofentry to do e commerce was the tech, was the infrastructure, you know, I'd sellyou these big routers and switches that looked like half fridges, uh, you know,with high availability and redundancy and, and it was extremely expensive.Today you can have an Amazon like. You know, uh, window, butthere's a lot on the back end that happens in the e commerce, but at leastyou're you're shopping window for, you know, 110 bucks a month free sometimes,depending on what plan that barrier of entry. Went away from being in the techspace to customer acquisition.It's didn't disappear. It just went to a different area, whichis customer acquisition, getting those eyeballs. So whether it's Salla whether it's Tamara youknow, the buy now, pay later, the affirm of MENA whether it's Calo the hungry of MENA we'realways looking for business models that have succeeded, you know, we have aNorth star to follow, for the founders to follow, it's just the right smart execution.Of these ideas in ourpart of the world. And trust me, if you think they're copycats, you haven'tdone the homework. There's somuch innovation. That you have to do, to, localize and succeed, naturalize.that's, a whole different topic that we can talk about, but I'll just give yousome nuances, Ali Zewail: Mm hmm. Mohammed Alzubi: Tamara you know, buy now, pay later.First of all, they hadto take this product and make it Sharia compliant. they had to do a whole lotof the back end. We don't have credit bureaus like we have in the US You know, Experian Equifax. And so you have to make a lot ofthat decision on credit worthiness by building your own IP Your own models you know, and the speed of how you want to react.you know, Careem versus Uber Careem did cash. Right Careem did scheduling, you know, Uber was of the school of thought that my productis ubiquitous. I could step out on thestreet and order an Uber in any second Careem said, no, no,I want to do scheduling. Passcodes for picking up, you know, for your kids.So, there's a lot thatgoes into Localizing a product, taking a business model that succeeds out westor out far east and make it MENA compatibleAli Zewail: Exactly. It's not, it's not just a copy.It's something much deeper, but you have the benefit of knowing that thisbusiness model is going to work because it's worked elsewhere.Mohammed Alzubi: plusit adds another layer, which is very important to us, which is a path to exit.Right? Because all these, I remember, um, you know, when I was in SiliconValley and through the day job of trying to sell and through the tech quality.Uh, you know, everybody's looking at this region, even if you're sitting inSilicon Valley, uh, again, sometimes we think we're bigger than we are, youknow, but, uh, because when you're in the Bay area, you're going to go throughthe US and then you got Canada, Mexico, and you're going to get, you know,first speech heads in Europe, you know, the UK, which is great for Aminafounders, because it gives you a runway, right?They're not going to come knocking on your door tomorrow oncethey scale beyond their first geography. So it gives you time, but eventuallythey're going to come. And we're just trying to make it much harder to answerthe question, Shall I build it versus buy it? Because by definition, Um, justbecause of the culture of these organizations, they're going to try to build itbefore they buy it. And, and the examples are, you know, most prevalent is, uh,you know, Amazon with the, uh, right. By the way, people don't know this, butAmazon had a secretive project in Dubai for like nine months before they said,yeah, you know what, let's just, let's just grab, they had some experiments.Uh, let's just grab, but let's just acquire it.So there's always a culture of let's build it. They don't wantto come and acquire immediately. And it's smart for them because they're tryingto build it. They'll fail, but they get a lot of data, right? They get a lot ofdata that they can use and justify that and insights into the region, et cetera.So we wantto see this, you know, um, a negotiated leverage.Yes, absolutely. So we don't invest in, you know, if you wantto lose us at them, I say this is the most unique business model. We've neverseen anything like it. Nobody in the space. We've never seen who's yourcompetition. Nobody. And we say, listen, if you have a a great idea. Fivepeople have already thought about it.So you have a phenomenal idea. 15 people have already thoughtof it. So the fact that nobody has thought about it scares us. Um, and this iswhere going back to the team, there are these sellers within the team. Thathave so much insight to their market that they don't just even know theunicorn. They know the startups that are in stealth that are about to launch intheir space.So they'll say, Oh, you know, Jim or Mohammed or Erica or Selwais, is working on the same idea, but we think we're better because da da da dada. And, you know, and sometimes I walk in a meeting, third meeting with, witha startup and I'm like, where's your competition? And just from simple, youknow, research before the meeting, sometimes the first three, you know, threelists in Google, it says, well, you have to say, no, no, we don't have anycompetition and I'm like, that's what we're, that's what we're investing in.We're investing. Do we believe this team has enough insight andexperience and understanding of the market and the market dynamics and thecompetitive landscape to navigate themselves and pivot and morph to win for theamount of cash that's, that's what we're investing in.Ali Zewail:Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, and it's, it's amazing how many times one hears this, youknow, we don't have competition or. Uh, Oh, that's the first time I hear aboutthis competitor, even though they're the first uh, result on Google and thingslike that. It's really amazing.Mohammed Alzubi: Itis. It is. Well, they're not going to get a check from us. It's amazing, butwe're going to pass.Ali Zewail: Allright. So Mohammed, you, you have so much experience across like the Bay Area.You worked in Dubai, in Kuwait, and now in Saudi, uh, of course, like startupsare startups everywhere, but there must be like specific things that aredifferent in the Saudi ecosystem and Saudi culture. So what's different aboutdoing business in, in Saudi?Mohammed Alzubi:Well, let me step back. Startups are not startups everywhere, right? So that'sa mistake I made when I first came to the region. And I think you and I alludedto it before the podcast. Being in the Bay Area is a privilege. If you can sitin a cafe and just listen, you're listening to the next generation.Google when it's a good, the next, you know, uh, Twitter whenit's, uh, or X when it's a, well, X is one letter, uh, you know, the nextFacebook when it's an F, it's just, you can have a conversation with a table inthe pay area and get some insights. It's just the environment is, is rich. It'sa concentration of super smart people that it develops its own culture and itsown common sense.There are things that, you know. What startups do foundersshould do, uh, how they operate when you come to this part of the world oranywhere outside of Silicon Valley, by the way, this is, you know, I was inLondon and it's not common sense is not as common as you think. Right. Um, andit's not that people are, um, less intelligent.It's just, they don't know what they don't know. They haven'thad the exposure. So for somebody who spent. Almost 11 years in the Bay Area tocome back and make the assumption that they know what's a typical behavior.What's expected or the knowledge set of, you know, a typical startup founder isactually unfair, right?They have not had the exposure or the privilege really, youknow, of of of being in that environment because. I remember, and let me tellyou how I dealt with it personally. So when I was living in the Bay Area, I wassingle and, um, you know, you would say, I wish I can go and learn this, uh,this law firm of a new way of structuring a deal.And one of the fans was doing, you know, a conference aroundthis new technology. And like, I wish I could send my, you know, my arm thereand my leg there. You're constantly learning and I don't care how senior youare. You're constantly learning. Uh, you're lucky enough to where you becomesenior enough, where you're learning and teaching, right?And I started doing some of that with the founders, but thelearning never stopped. When I went to Dubai from straight from San Francisco,I noticed that I'm doing a lot of the teaching and less of the learning. And Ifelt that gap. That's why I launched, uh, you know, uh, the, uh, the Dubai technights, which was a gathering of techies, tech enthusiasts, geeks that wantedto come back and, and over pizza over something casual, uh, learn something newbecause I felt I was, You know, being starved of that privilege of, of, ofcontinuing the learning.And then I said, you know what? Let me, uh, us geeks, we alwayshave this, um, this problem, or we feel like we're missing that rubber stamp ofan MBA, right? And, you know, that, that, uh, you look at these buyers and theysay, you know, engineer, engineer, engineer with an MBA from a top 10 school.So I went and I said, you know, I'm still single.Let me get stuff. Last stamp, and I chose specifically acollege in Europe, LBS, London Business School, because I was oversaturated ofthe U. S. experience, and I've already had exposure in the MENA experience, andEurope was a black hole, and a lot of Middle Eastern money managed out ofEurope, right, out of, out of London, I wanted to get close to, you know, tothe allocators, um, and it was, it was a wonderful experience. Just to tellyou, going back to what I was telling you, the difference is that, by the way,I'm not talking technically, I'm not talking, you know, a front end developer,knowing React or Angular or, or Viewer. Technically, you might find them atPar. I'm just talking kind of about The general knowledge of what a typicalstartup and a typical founder role and what's assumed as common knowledge andwhat's assumed as, you know, uh, the way to operate the way you conductyourself, the value of the investor.You know, you don't have to sell them in Silicon Valley becausethe entrepreneurs know what the value of a value add VC isin this part of the world. You have to communicate that, youknow, they'll tell you why bother why give me the money and I'll run with it.And I know what I need to do. And, uh, et cetera.I'm not saying all of them just saying. It's a function of theydon't know what they don't know and that's that's important for you torecognize and respect, right? Because, um, you know, you cannot come with thisattitude that what do you mean? You don't know what do you mean? That this isnot how it is.Now, luckily, we live in an age where. All the information isout there, right? The content is all out there. So the hustlers will hustle,you know, the, the, the, the great entrepreneurs will seek the knowledge will,will come and, you know, and consume a lot of the tools that are going to helpyou become a better, um, founder, regardless of, regardless of you engaging,you know, that's, that's, that's when, you know, passion, does somebody havepassion?Right. Uh, for the job or not the job for the path. And by theway, we see it here at never. I mean, I always tell our investment team ifyou're coming to number for a job, this is not the place for if you're comingto number for a career, you know, this is a perfect place for you and venturecapital because.You have to have the drive to go and, and go to the, you know,uh, the demo days and the pitch, uh, night competition and the hackathons and,uh, the, the night job element should be. Can I be on this panel on yourbehalf, or can I go to this, uh, you know, if you don't have it, it's you'regoing to struggle because, um, it will show it will show to your counterpart,the founders, the entrepreneurs that you don't have that calling.Thank you.Ali Zewail: Mm hmm.Yeah. So it's, I guess what you're saying is it's just, uh, an ecosystem at adifferent stage than the Bay Area. So it's an earlier stage, which is natural.And that's maybe the key difference. So, Mohamed, I'd like to kind of have youwear another hat. I see that you've been an LP in some funds, uh, that are, Ithink, U.S. based mostly. Um, what, how do you invest in, in funds? Howdo you choose funds? How do You evaluate them? Mm hmm. MmMohammed Alzubi: So,there are funds that I'm going to be in because I know the, I remember I was anactive angel investor and some of these investors were, you know, peers and,and, and fellow angels, especially it's an angels. And they've taken a naturalpath like myself of making the night job of angel investing the day job ofventure capital.So there's a natural affinity. The other part is again, onceyou develop a brand of being a value add investor. it's easier to get theallocation because they also want insight into your part of the world, right?So I don't invest unless they have some sort of affinity. Uh, do I think thateventually we can have a cross on the path?And the third thing is that, you know, again, I'm quiteselective of, of the funds and it's, it's, uh, actually just had a. Two and ahalf hour conversation. The problem with the Bay Area is that the timing ishorrible. So it's, you know, I'm usually the one doing these calls at night,um, with, you know, with, uh, great funds in, in, in the Bay Area also for meto gain insight.Right now, I never want to be conflicted and never want to, um,you know, and, uh, and again, as a GP, um, of a funding mean, uh, you have toalways put the fund ahead of the person, right? So. The first thing I did at NEMA is I gave all my angelinvestments when I decided to do NEMA to NEMA at par. So, and some of them werephenomenal and they were 5x, 6x from what I, as a matter of fact, Sella was oneof them, Tamara was oneAli Zewail: Oh,Mohammed Alzubi:never want to be conflicted. And that also adds confidence to the LPs when yougo and say, I'm giving my, you know, top duels to the fund that car, uh, itshows that skin in the game that so, uh, the last thing I want to tell you isto gain insight because, you know, this is the world is specialized, right?Um, the center of gravity of the next entrepreneurial endeavorand cycle is going to come probably out of the Bay Area. Um, but we're seeingit now. I mean, if you, you know, got engaged in that. The YC demo day, itseems like 99% were, you know, AI and have them were, you know, medical ai,right? Um, and, and just that's, that's the strategy.So you want to get some insights, right? You wanna get some,some insights in that space. Um, and, and ways of making decisions. And, youknow, some of those funds by the way, are, you know, pure analytical. They'remaking the, the US has enough breadth and data points that you can. Agro decision, a lot of the stuff.Um, so it's, it's, it's to gain really insights and to backfriends, right? Just like, uh, they're back at me to back friends and thecamaraderie of, of the, you know, the GP ship.Ali Zewail: Yeah.And, um, yeah, exactly. I mean, and it's really about trust that then you'retrusting this person with your money to invest on your behalf. So, I mean,they're a friend, but they're also someone you've seen, uh, operate. Mohammed Alzubi: ofcourse. And, and, and Angel invest together, you know, remember these are, you know, I've seen it Ali Zewail: exactly.Mohammed Alzubi:about trust. At saddle angels. We were two groups. There were the tech peopleand the medical devices people or that, you know, and the medical devicespeople in the medical space, they tended to be older because a lot of them wereex doctors and, you know, when the pitches was in their world, it was a foreignlanguage.We're speaking clean off. Right? But you develop relationshipsacross the aisle. And I remember I had a, you know, a buddy of mine and I wasgay and I go. You know, if they gives me the thumbs up, you know, I'll put it'sa little amount, but, you know, I'm going to follow their diligence becausethere's a subject matter expert and they did the exact same thing on the techside, right?They'd say, you know, if I give half or they know how much toallocate. So there is that level of, of, um, you know, of syndication thathappens. And this is what we do. And never today. Any deal that is outside of,you know, Because, you know, in Saudi, we can look under the hood. First thingwe're going to ask you is, do you have a Nama in your country, in yourgeography that we can rely on, on a lot of the Heavy lifting on the diligenceand the value add, right?I mean, early stage. A lot of it is about local know howaffecting the top line when your Trojan horse to to access the Saudi market orthe GCC market. But if you're in Egypt or Nigeria or Pakistan, we've made thesebets and they've done, you know, wonderful bets. We're about to announce, bythe way, an Egyptian deal. So you'll hear about it soon. Uh, but this wasColette with a wonderful. Egyptian VZ, right? Uh, so this camaraderie is builtin and you develop even Saudi develop an affinity to co invest with certainfunds because you share the same ethos and culture and values and,Ali Zewail: Yeah.Mohammed Alzubi:know, impact, et cetera.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Back to trust again.Mohammed Alzubi: Yes,Ali Zewail: maybeI'll ask one last like deep question, which is, uh, boards, you, uh, serve on alot of boards and you're also an observer on a lot of boards, uh, pretty handson. What do you think are the, um, the characteristics of the best boards?What do founders do to build the best boards?Mohammed Alzubi: soI'll 1st say, you know, we live in a time where there's a lot of content.Around this and Bradfeld has a wonderful book, uh, about startup boards thatthat I think before you engage boards, whether it's board or advisory boards,go get the content. These are simple YouTube and Google searches that will tellyou what is an ideal board, et cetera.So, I'll let that answer that from a VCS perspective. And thisis what I tell you as a founder, you have to be consistent. And, and honest andengaging. Value add venture capitalists, because are you willing to put anenvironment where you're listening and learning and we're listening andlearning. And the place where that communication happens is at the board level.Uh, now, of course, they tell you never surprise your board. So you'resocializing a lot of the decisions, you know, the governance or that communicationor the tough decisions happen at the board level. And whether you like it ornot, as a rite of passage for the successful entrepreneurs, because I've seenthe one who've made it and I've seen the ones who didn't, we, again, we're thetraining wheels. For you to be able to practice on us because one day you'regoing to lose control of the board. One day, the board is going to driveAli Zewail: Exactly.Mohammed Alzubi:making, depending on when you go public, etc. And the stakes are higher. So wewant you to get there. Plus, We know for a fact the late stage players aregonna ask, has this entrepreneurial team had experience being governed at theboard level?Are they able to come to a board, identified the key challengesof that quarter that month, drove an agenda to discuss it. Create anenvironment where decision, make critical decision, make, you know, decisionsare are being made. Pass on the auxiliary things that come with the boards,interviewing talent, ESOP allocation, uh, business development activities, etcetera.There has to be that dedicated time slot that come in. There'sconstant communication happening, right? There's groups flying in and out, etcetera. But look, I'll summarize by saying the ones I've seen. Make it made itbecause they learned the art of keeping their stakeholders informed.Ali Zewail:Absolutely.Mohammed Alzubi:build the right process of bringing to the table key decisions and acting onthem, executing on them, getting buy in and moving on and go and execute andthen coming back, breathing, collecting the data, informing their stakeholders.And that's why we have boards, right? And advisory boards, bythe way, I tell founders, don't just stop at boards, advisory boards.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Letme give you the contrarian view, the contrary view, which I heard from an earlystage investor a couple of weeks back. He says, I've decided to never joinboards. Because for me as a VC, it's, I just get all the governance. I don'tneed it for the information and I get responsibility and headache and thingslike that.And at the end I can't control anything. I'm, I'm a minorityanyway. What do you think of his, uh,Mohammed Alzubi:Well, there's no right or wrong answer. Again, there's the, the, the technicalelements of this trade, which is as an investor, especially if you have asophisticated investment, uh, instrument, right? There are certain decisions.That require approval. Some decisions require anonymous or approve. So it alldepends on the level of decision making and how you've what's the shareholderagreement and the articles of incorporation and what writes your class ofshared.Have the have you affiliate or associated with in terms of thecontrol. We are we, we, we like to lead. We like to lead rounds and put in theright governance. And a lot of that governancehappens at the board, but, you know, very hands on. So. Butagain, I want to end by saying there's no right or wrong answer.They're right because that's their approach. You know, handsoff. I'm going to have a casual call with the founders. They're going to giveme the high level and and, you know, our approach is just as valid, right?That's why typically, you know, uh, you know, try to tell the top tier VCs. I'mnot going to give you a board seat.They usually want to. They want, you know, more thantheir, you know, product allocation. And that's a condition. Some some will actually Youdon't want to control the board so that they'll only invest because theybelieve if we think you, the CEO, you are the founder are not managing ourmoney, right? Will remove you because this is the best outcome to that.Now, we're not, we're not extreme and we never want to controlthe board. And usually we like board, especially at the early stage. We're inwhat it's founder controlled. So it's typically it's two founders and us orthree founders or two investors. But I think again, if you'reapproaching it by knowing that my role is the training wheels for the founders.So when they go to the, to the big leagues, they've had thepractice, right? They've, they've played the test games. Uh, they know how toconduct themselves in a board. They know how to come to a board with an agenda.They know that we give them a tool. We call it portfolio at NEMA, which is aninternal tool that helps identify.The monthly KPIs, the, you know, global KPIs of the startup,the insights, right? The good and the bad. So they learn the, the, how do you,how do you agree to disagree in a, in a constructive manner? Right? Becausewe've seen first time founders. You know, blow up and we tell them you got, youknow, you got to, you got to learn this skill managing your stakeholders againas a rite of passage to make it to the next level beyondAli Zewail: To thebig leagues. Yeah.Uh, yeah. Uh, yeah, that's a great insight and, um, a greattouch off point to kind of be respectful of your time and start to close upjust with two final, you know, quick fire questions. The first is what book doyou like to recommend to others?Mohammed Alzubi: sowe actually tell every founder to read the lean startup by Eric Reese. Weshould start, you know, reaching out to that organization and getting like a, a, a referral fee becausewe're the big, we're the biggest fans of the school of thought that it's in thejourney gain insight. The first product is really meant for you to know whatyou should actually build.Versus nail it. The first time we lived it, you know, I livedit as an entrepreneur and I understand the power of, uh, you know, insight fromthe journey and the pivots. Uh, you know, you mentioned Brev Dev. I gave youtwo pivots. I haven't given you the full, the full story. Within those twopivots, there were 10 others.Um, you know, and, and, and so that's a book that I think is,is paramount in terms of thinking about. You know, how do I go to market withthe, with the right subset?Ali Zewail: Okay. We,I like to close, uh, on a note of gratitude. So what is a gift somebody hasgiven you that has made a big impact on your life? Mohammed Alzubi:Look, I mean, I asked myself this question a lot and we are a product of thelittle thing along the journey that made us. So you can't single one thing, butthere were people that are pivotal in my. Journey as an engineer, and I'm sothankful for, you know, making me the engineer that, that I became right at thetop tier of, of the network infrastructure side.And then transitioning to, you know, engineering management andthen entrepreneurship. I mean, I was thrown into it. I didn't know what it is.And maybe that's for another episode, how I started, you know, solutions, forexample. And y you look, I'll, I'll tell you this, sometimes. You're and thiswas me. I lived five blocks from Sand Hill Road.Okay. I was an engineer in the Bay Area in Palo Alto, the fiveor six bucks and I got to know about VCs by having a dinner with a dear friend,one of the co founders of tech widely over a falafel sandwich. Walking aroundPalo Alto, where he told me, Oh, I had this call with this PE fund and they'retrying to, he was a senior executive in a top team.And I'm like, PE, what is that? You know, and I go back to mywhite keyboard with the white computer. Remember those where it makes the sound and, and three days I couldn't sleep. So youcan literally be in the epicenter of an industry. And not so that oneconversation literally change the trajectory of my life, right?So just an example. And by the way, this brings me to the bigarea. They think that there are hundreds of thousands of engineers that don'twant to take an entrepreneur route that happy being engineers that are, youknow, and they're not they're right there. They're happy and with their path.And it's just as legitimate.And there are people building wonderful careers in an executivepath, etc. So. I'm thankful for them all, to answer your question, becausedifferent stages, you needed that different mentorship. Speaking of books! I,uh, at the time I was a senior, uh, engineer at home and, you know, excitedhome blows up and you do what, you know, and that's what I got to let you goupdate your resume.And I happened to be sitting in a cafe, looking at a book wherethey had these back then, you know, people didn't have, you know, physicalbooks, right? Oh, as you know, those rotating circular bookshelves. And, and itwas a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad. And, you know, by,and I was reading it and it was so powerful.Basically it felt like Robert, Robert Kiyosaki, I think hisname was sitting there saying Muhammad, you know, yeah, he's across theAli Zewail: You needto Mohammed Alzubi: fromme. You gotta do this, but because by the way, I read it again, and it wasn'tas impactful because there are certain messages you have to hear at a specifictime for a specific purpose.And that book just chained fundamentally that I should not havethe next job. I should make my job. And it was the first, you know, segue into.interpret, which was, you know, not common sense. I didn't know what I didn'tknow, going back to, you know, the, the, the, the MENA founder versus theSilicon Valley founder.Um, so I hope that that answered your question, um,Ali Zewail: Yeah. Uh,Mohammed Alzubi: a, Ali Zewail: the giftof learning along the way, uh, the right lesson at the right time, uh, alwaysimportant and kind of part of our role as VCs as well with, with the founderswhere we can, uh, thank you very much for your time, Mohammed. I really enjoyedthe conversation.Mohammed Alzubi:Thank you so much for hosting me and, uh, can't wait. Hopefully, inshallah totell you more stories on, on, on, on more podcasts. Thanks a Ali Zewail:absolutely. Thank you, Mohammed. Thank you for listening to this episode of StartupsArabia podcast. If there was something you really liked about what the guestsaid today, reach out to them on social media and tell them what you liked. Andof course, if you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? You don'twant to miss any of our great 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.
