Contact Links
Saoud’s LinkedIn account: @Saoud Khalifah
‍Fakespot’s Website: https://www.fakespot.com/
‍Mozilla’s Website: https://www.mozilla.org/

Transcript:
Ali Zewail: Welcometo the Startups Arabia podcast. My guest today is Saoud Khalifah, founder of Fakespot,and currently a director at Mozilla, which acquired Fakespot. Aziz who introducedus, told me that he is the best technical person he's ever met in his life. So I'm looking forward to picking his brains on some things in that area, but healso has a very interesting founding story that I know you guys are gonna like to listen to. Welcome Saoud.

Saoud Khalifah: Thankyou for having me, Andy, and thank you for the kind words from you and uh, fromElise.Ali Zewail: worries.So, um, okay. Uh, I was wondering like, uh where to start and As usual I dosome research on you know, the linkedin profile to figure things out and I hadthis Wait, what moment? Uh, while, while reading your profile, which is, oh,okay. He worked as a security engineer from 2008 to 2015. Uh, that's fine.Okay. And then I see your academic record and then you, Irealized you started university or you started. Studying software engineeringofficially 2011. So you must have been, you know, in school or something whenyou started, uh, as a security engineer. Can you tell me more about that?Especially that I know that I fuzzer was, I mean, you guys, you found bugs inthings like Microsoft to, you know, Microsoft and Adobe and other softwares.So tell me more about that. What happened there?Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,that's uh, really interesting. You, you saw that, uh, you know, overlap. Well,you know, I've been coding for a very long time. I've been in computers a verylong time. I actually started in Kuwait when I was age 11. And, uh, it startedwith, uh, basically a Dragon Ball Z game for me and my brother. It was a cardgame and visual basics 6.0. And if you remember in the nineties and two thousands, thiswas like the biggest thing for, uh, boys, uh, especially in our region andother regions. Um, but then, you know, a couple of years later, as I wasbecoming a teenager, I got really. Uh, focused on security, uh, hacking andbreaking software, reverse engineering.I was really interested in assembly. So I was looking at like,you know, the little machine code and you know, a lot of people like mybrother, when he would see me over my shoulder, he'd be like, dude, what areyou reading? Like, what is this? It looks like an alien. And I just, I don'tknow. I just loved breaking, uh, uh, software down to its core elements.And this was the machine code essentially. And you could findholes within that software. So, uh, some of the biggest categories are bufferoverflows. They still are very prevalent. They're basically vulnerabilitieswhere you, uh, you can send some kind of payload, like a file or whatever, andyou can. Hack someone's computer.This is what a lot of the, you know, secret agencies and threeletter agencies use around the world, um, to infiltrate, uh, theircounterparts, uh, across the regions. So, um, when I was, uh, you know, beforegoing to college, so, you know, I grew up in Kuwait, uh, up to the age of 18, Ispent every summer or like most of my summers in Europe, in Poland.Um, My, my part of my family is from Poland and from Kuwait.And, uh, it was a really interesting upbringing. Uh, my grandfather in Polandwas a programmer also. He gave me a lot of his books and he actually got us acomputer. I played doom one on MS DOS and stuff on his computer. So that's howlike this thing like kind of snowballed for me. And, um, you know, thissecurity stuff was something that was just evolving over the years and inKuwait. We didn't really have an industry for, uh, programmers and security andhacking and stuff like this. Now there is one, I actually get a lot of emailsfrom Kuwaiti security. Yeah, there's a, there's a, actually a lot of known guysnow that go to Black Hat and other expos that are very well known in thisindustry. And they reach out to me. They're like, Hey, I heard you were hereback in 2008, 2009, 2010. You, you found these vulnerabilities. So it's reallycool to see that actually some folks from Kuwait university created a securitygroup. And I was. Here at 18 and they emailed me they're like, hey, would youlike to join our group?Are you still in kuwait? And that's when I actually moved tothe us at the age of 18. And as you saw Uh, I was still doing it while going tocollege. Uh, it's, it's, you know, my passion to this day. I just love findinga different vulnerabilities and, um, it actually gave me a good amount ofpocket money. Um, I bought my first car with, with one of the vulnerabilities,which was, uh, Microsoft PowerPoint vulnerability at this time, it was prettybig because it's, uh, you know, like a PowerPoint file. I share it with you andit can exploit this buffer overflow and take over your computer. And that's, Igot paid, um, through a zero day initiative. It was one of the first bug bountyPrograms in the world, they worked with like Microsoft and everyone like this.A funny, funny story is I actually applied to an internship, uh, with Microsoftat this time. And, uh, they, they rejected me. They're like, Hey, are you like,they're like kind of insinuating. Are youthis guy that found vulnerability here?And this was back in the ball market. Yeah, well, now theirattitude has changed, honestly,I was kind of surprised and shocked, but back then, you know,with Balmer at the helm, they had a different culture.It was like, if you kind of damage our reputation, we do notwant to work with you.Um, I thought they would want, they would want me there to helplike fix things and stuff, butit was a different attitude. Yeah. So, so that was like my, uh,kind of my formative years. Um, I was still coding a lot, still launching sideprojects.Anything I could automate in my life, I would try to programit.Ali Zewail: So, Imean, it's interesting that you mentioned also that you moved when you were 18to the US And, you know, Ilya Strebulaev I hope I'm pronouncing his nameremotely, right he's a professor at Stanford, who studies entrepreneurship, hewas saying that there was a very high correlation between. People who traveledto different countries when they were young and entrepreneurship and being agood startup founder.Do you think, why do you think that would be based on yourexperience? Saoud Khalifah: Um,iIt's It is a sign that you like to take risk. so people that don't like totake risks, will remain in their environment, probably their whole life andfind comfort and solace in their own environment that they're very acquaintedwith. folks who like to take risk will try to venture outside and, you know,honestly, Ali, in our genetics, if you look at Arabs specifically, most of uswere nomads for a very, very long time that takes a lot of risk for you to movebetween regions, in the Middle East and whatever, you don't know if this regionis going to be safe or not, you're trying to find maybe new trade or, you know,Something to support the family. so it's in our genes, believe it or not. And,I think, you know, there's a correlation with that. I mean, I can get intothis. I've, researched this a little bit. You know, America actually has ahigher, ratio of folks because everyone kind of immigrated to America and theyhad to leave their comfort zones back wherever they're from.This was Europe, Middle East, Asia. And when you do those typesof moves. it actually shows a higher inclination of brain chemicals for certainindividuals. So it's a really interestingtopic. Ali Zewail: So you'rekind of genetically predisposed to take more risk Saoud Khalifah: I,would say so, I mean, you could, you know, you could be taking risk becauseyour family supports you and like, they're like pushing you in that direction.So it kind of buffers over, your comfort zone, but if you like to take riskand, you know, if you look at all the startup founders and this includes you.we like to take risk. I mean, we, like to assess risk and then take gambles andbets and stuff like this. And that's where I think it comes down to thegreatest, people that are in this industry. You know, they, looked at a futurethat was their own version of a future and they put everything into it.Ali Zewail: is goingto take me off script a bit, but you know, I was just thinking about whetherthis is risk or uncertainty. So I would say that almost entrepreneurs, theylike to mitigate risk, but they're just but they are able to handle uncertaintythere. They're willing to go into uncertain areas and But with the mindset ofI'm going to wear my risks and I'm going to handle them as they go.So they're, they're able to, to deal with that versus someone.And I guess that's, that comes with also with traveling, where you go to theunknown and you don't know what's going to happen, but you're willing to, tohandle that and you'll manage the risks as you move, so to speak.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,100%. Uh, I think, you know, it's an arsenal, arsenal attributes of, uh. Inyour character that you, you can build actually, you don't need to have like,uh, you know, be born with it. Although some people say there are someattributes that you just have to be born with and you just like hone them asyou, as you mature. Uh, but, uh, I will tell you my startup journey. Um, youknow, if you, if you looked at my career, I went to Goldman Sachs. It was alittle bit too comfortable for me, believe it or not. Uh, Iwas the onlyequity, uh, It was, you know, it was like you were a cog in abig established machine that is over 100 years old. Um, to me, it was just, youknow, everything, there was a pattern to everything there. Uh, everything, howyou would move up the ladder, how you talk to people, the culture, there was apatternand everything was how you dress.At that time, I still had to, you know, iron my suit every dayand all this stuff. Uh, uh, it was something, you know, that was reallyinteresting to me.And that was the only Kuwaiti, um, dude at this, uh, in the, inwall street at this time and Goldman.And it was, it was, it was interesting for me. It was reallyinteresting. You know, they have a office in Riyadh. Um, we had, you know, acouple of teams that would work with between, uh, you know, our New York Cityoffice and the Riyadh office.And I was always wondering, how was it there? Was the culture alittle bit different over there due to the regional differences? Uh, but, but,you know, that's why I wanted to, I wanted to leave and start my own thing. Andthat's how the, you know, the fake spot journey started. I will tell youthough, the character. Develops, uh, like a rocket ship when you're put into ahot seat like that, where you're in a startup, uh, you have to look at so manydifferent angles as you're building this company and you're building thisculture, you're building your team, you're building the product, you'rebuilding your business. Um, there's different tracks that you're doing, but youdevelop a certain amount of traits that I think are really critical for.Ali Zewail: I mean,that's a, that's a good segue to, to start maybe talking about FakeSpot, whichI think you started in 2016. Uh, tell us more about FakeSpot, you know, what itdid and, and why you decided to found it.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,well, so, uh, fake spot was one of those side projects too, um, that I wouldlaunch, automate some part of a problem I encountered in my, in my daily life.Um, I was a big believer in online shopping always, uh, believe it or not inKuwait. I used to order through, uh, uh, PO box in New York city. They wouldforward it to Kuwait. For Amazon, I bought books and stuff like this back in2007, 2008. I was still a teenager, but that's how much I believed in thisfuture. And Kuwait, you know, at that time, I remember no one knew what waslike, what that wasnow. It's obviously very different. Uh, so I did thatforwarding and I was a huge believer and I would do the continuous shoppingwhen I was in college and in the United States. Um, then I started getting intothe gym. I was in New Jersey at this time at Monmouth University. There'sprivate college that, uh, where you mentioned the software engineering. A lotof the professors were ex AT& T Bell Labs. Uh, they joined before thebreakup of the monopoly, which isinteresting because now we're having this happen with Googleand other companies. The anti Yeah, potentially, uh, time will tell, uh, butthey, they got broken up and then when they, uh, left their lab, like BellLabs, they came and joined Monmouth University. So it was a really interestinggroup of professors that each one worked at different segments. Like neuralnetworks, UI, um, next generation user experiences.So it was a really good experience for me. I kind of lucked outto be honest with you. I didn't know about the background of all these folks atthis time.And Bell Labs had a huge, um, lab, uh, right there in NewJersey, in thecentral part of New Jersey. Yeah. So, um, Fakespot startedafter I bought a supplement on Amazon, uh, I was in my last year in collegeand, you know, I wanted something that, uh, increased your endurance or staminaor something like this.So I went to Amazon, looked up, researched a little bit, sawthis one supplement, hundreds of five star reviews, the yellow stars wereGlowing in my face. I'm like, okay, I always trusted this rating. Let's buythis product. Um, one click checkout, got the product in two days and it lookedlike someone made it in a garage.Um, like the tape was falling off. Uh, the pills themselveshad, uh, sawdust, like, likewood particles in them. I didn't even dare to ingest it becauseI was like, there's no way that this is going to work. Like there's somethingoff here that smelled off, you know, all this stuff. So, um, you know, I wentback and I looked at the ratings and I realized that, um, a lot of them werebots and a lot of them were people that were like talking the best things aboutthe company and not about the product.So to me.They looked suspicious and I just realized this is like mymoment where I realized I can't trust reviews anymore on the internet.So that's where I was spending a couple hours. I wasresearching every reviewer, every profile. I was, you know, opening new tabsfor each profile. And then I said to myself, wait a second, what I'm doingright now, I can automate.Uh, With, with AI, like emulate some parts of my brain withina, with a couple of AI models. One that willlook at language, another one that will look at the purchasingbehaviors, another one that will look at the company. And that's how Fakespotstarted. Um, at this time I was, you know, I like to have a name before aproject starts.Uh, it's just very similar to naming your child. Uh, you know,actually they have found the correlation. If you give your child a very strongname, uh, they're more predisposed to success in life.Uh, it's just. It's just a psychological thing. Um, so I wantto name my project a very strong name and that's a fake spot was one of thefirst things that appeared in my head. And I actually looked it up. Of courseit's taken, this was around 2015, 2016. And I'm like, okay, let me, let me tryto buy it though. Uh, reached out, uh, through one of the brokers and I offereda hundred dollars or something, I looked up who owned it. It was a kid in theMidwest of the United States that had a counter strike plan called fake spot,they had like a whole page and everything. And he's like, yo, dude, this isawesome. I'm going to accept it. And I'm like, okay, cool. Let's let's do it.So.Ali Zewail: Thankyou.Saoud Khalifah: And Ipaid them, it was a hundred something dollars. And, uh, I launched the website.It was very, very simple. It was a text box, a button, paste in the productpage that you're looking at. And then the models will all retrieve, uh, thereviews, information about the product, the company. And then it will give youa grade if you can trust the reviews or not within 30 seconds.Ali Zewail: Nice. Andhow did that go from, from this side hustle or side project that you wereworking on to actually becoming a company? When did you feel there was enoughtraction there or potential?Saoud Khalifah: So,that's a really interesting question, Ali. I never thought, so when I launchedFakeSpot, it was just for myself first. I wanted something to help me when I'mshopping online. And then, you know, as I was building it, I had a lot ofpassion for it. I didn't really care about building a company or anything likethis.My story was a little bit different then. You look at peoplelike Elon Musk and whatever. Elon Musk is very Uh, strategic in his, uh,growth, like every company he did, he'd compounded his wealth to put it intohis next company. Um, I was more interested in building stuff that was usefulto many people. That was my, I kind of now realize that that's my meaning whenI'm doing this type of, uh, software. And I started sharing it, you know, Iposted it on like a couple of forums, Hacker News and whatever. But the onething that was really common for me was I started, I would work on it everyday, every night till the late morning. And even when I got a job at GoldmanSachs, so you know, uh, when you're a Kuwaiti, uh, in the U.S. Usually you go back to the region. Uh, you know, usually.Ali Zewail: Usually.Saoud Khalifah: Mostof the Kuwaitis I know, or most of the Saudis, or most of the Qataris, actuallyallof them, all my group, and Emiratis in Oregon and in NewJersey, I, you know, I spent a couple years in Oregon and then in New Jersey.All of them went back, not one state,um, uh, maybe because they, uh, they wanted to go back to theirfamily.They didn't want to take that risk and they wanted to, youknow, go back to the comfort of the region. To me, I was more, I was in my 20sand I'm like, hey, there's, I have nothing to lose. Let's go all in. So Iapplied for a job at Goldman Sachs. And I was like, let's, let's do it. I had acouple applications out there, but Goldman, uh, was really interesting to me.Um, and you know, I was, I was working there for about a year and every night Iwould come back and this, the commute was pretty bad. We had really roughwinters at this time. That's something I had to get used to also from, youknow, desert to snow.Ali Zewail: Yep.Saoud Khalifah: Uh,so, uh, yes.Ali Zewail: Polishblood might have helped there.Saoud Khalifah: Youwould think so, but it's, I'm more, you know, I, I think I'm more on theArabian side, uh, on my genetic, even if you look at the facial hair andeverything, um, But, uh, you know, I would come back from the commute and thecommute was very long. It was two hours each way from New Jersey to wallstreet. It was, it was pretty rough.I would take the boat ferry from New Jersey to wall street,actually the best way to commute, uh, if you do it between those two States andI would come back and 8 30 PM, I would reach my apartment and I would work onfixed until 3 AM. Um, that's, that was my life. And, you know, I had nothingelse going on.Ali Zewail:Obsession.Saoud Khalifah:That's an Obsession. with this and with this. Um, and then, you know, uh, youasked me where, when was the moment when I started thinking something's goingto happen? So. I remember in the first year of the launch, someone posted it onReddit and I didn't know I was not really good at DevOps at this time. I, youknow, I didn't really have a lot of experience.I was more of a C C assembly guy. I was like really. Um, I alsodon't know how to scale a services. I have no clue how to do it. So, um,someone posted it on Reddit and we received the infamous, you know, um, Reddithug of death, which is basically a lot of people accessing the website and thentaking it down at the same time, And I just did not know how toscale this. And then I started researching and I rebuilt the wholeinfrastructure for it to scale better. And then, you know, every time I didthese big improvements, it started getting better. And I remember this, uh, ithad a couple thousand upvotes on Reddit. So it was really, reallyAli Zewail: Wow.Saoud Khalifah: Itwas on the front page of reddit.com I remember so like you're asking me when did I feel likesomething something bigger is at play here that's actually when I startedfeeling it and then a journalist reached out to me from money magazine and shewas like Hey I'm starting to see fake reviews are becoming a big problem rightnow on Amazon and other places Can I have an interview with you?It seems like you're the only expert here because you know fakespot was actually the first type of Website where you paste something in, itanalyzes it and spits out a grade with AI. There was nothing like that before.Um, I didn't even look around to see if there was anything like that. Honestly,I didn't care.I just wanted tobuild something for myself. And I had that interview. I had totake a lunch break at, uh, on Wall Street. Went across to a cafe and did theinterview. One month later, the magazine comes out and I go to the mall, uh,and I buy it. And they talk about fake spa and I'm like, okay, uh, this isgoing to be bigger than I, I think it'sgoing to be, I have to start the next, next chapter now. Andthat's when I actually started realizing that there's something huge at play.And also very interestingly, Ali, um, there was an enlightenment moment in thepopulation here. Uh, when Trump got elected in that, uh, in that year, uh, hestarted talking about fake news.And people started realizing, wait, fake news, what about fakereviews, what about fake, uh, tweets,what about fake fake everything. It started, you know, youstarted questioning the internet. Up to that point, the internet was always agood source. Of information,but then you start realizing, Hey, wait, what happened on thatWikipedia page? Someone put it in a prank or like something like I remember Iwas reading something, uh, Mohammed Salah, uh, you know, Liverpool is my team.And, uh, someone, someone, from another team put a, put a, like an ugly notesin his bio and I was like, you can't even trust Wikipedia now. Um,Ali Zewail: yeah, Saoud Khalifah: so,you know, fake spot was, I think also at the right trend inthe population. It's like guys, and you know, like if you're anarmchair sociologist or a psychologist and you look at population trends,actually, this is really, really important for startups.Ali Zewail: Exactly.Saoud Khalifah: Youneed, you need to look at the trends in the long term, uh, long road. And, um,Elon Musk is a master at this. How look at electric cars, uh, look at, uh, youknow, spaceships, rockets. Look at his neural implants. He's he's a little bitlate with the with the AI stuff I would say he did investin Ali Zewail: well, he,he, I mean, he founded OpenAI. I mean, he was one of the founders, so you can'treallySaoud Khalifah: Yeah,he was he was kind of ousted which was interesting He was buthe did the opposite Tesla Heinvested and took it over and, and, but he, he sees thosetrends 10 years ahead. And Steve jobs was really good at that. Um, uh, youknow, these, these founders, they're really good at looking at these trends,these psychological trends, these, uh, Um, like what's going to happen insociety. Um, I actually lucked out, I think with Fakespot because I was like,okay, I'm hitting on something here, especially in e commerce. E commerce isalso a very rapidly growing market. This is when it started taking off likeexponentially, uh, all around the world, not just in America, all around theworld. And the most important part of online commerce. Is reviews. Uh, why?Because you can't test the product. You can't, you know, look at it in physicalform. You have to rely on the opinions of other folks. And if they are fake,that kind of breaks the model.Ali Zewail: Exactly.Yeah. I mean, when Amazon brought on reviews, it was a huge, Uh, innovation.Wasn't it? It made a huge difference to people's willingness to buy online. AndI think Jeff Bezos, uh, your arch enemy, uh, got, uh, angry calls frompublishers. Uh, uh, when he first introduced reviews, because, you know, whyare you letting, uh, just the average people on the streets give bad reviewsfor my books and stuff like that, where we won't.Put our stuff on your website, et cetera. But he was like, thisis going to increase trust and it's going to increase your own, your sales as apublisher. And I think he was right. But then the fake reviews came to thescene, right? Which is where you come in. So, yeah, I mean, I think I wouldunderline this importance of like a startup writing a trend and the beststartups are writing the intersection of two trends, the technological trend.Like AI, for example, and, uh, a social or, uh, you know,cultural trends, uh, where that combination is incredibly powerful, uh, like,you know, if he's being ready for prime time at the same time that, uh,environmental awareness was also there and, and, you know, uh, politicalsituation was also there to, to, to help.Push that in the example of Tesla, I guess. So, I mean, that'sgreat. Uh, there is a lot of traction. There's a need. You made something youwant and it turned out that many other people want, but where's the businessmodel. Did you start thinking about that or was your first thought how to getfunding so you can sustain yourself?Why, why do you figure out the business model?Saoud Khalifah: Um,no, I did not have the idea of funding at the beginning, uh, more, it was more,uh, how do we increase traffic to fake spot. com and bring in more shoppers tohave this as part of their journey and then to start figuring out themonetization, you know, fake spot was, is a very interesting business. It'sbuilt on trust, um, and with trust, you can't monetize it like other companiesdo in certain ways.Like, let's say, you know, something like a buzzfeed. BuzzFeed,it's all affiliate and all trendy and catchy stuff. Sometimes those productsare really bad and cheap. So Fakespot was taking a different angle. We'relooking at high quality recommendations and trustworthy recommendations fromtrustworthy brands. It actually took us a bit of a time, a bit of a researchand time to figure out what would be the best business model. And for us, thebest business model is. Um, building a positive sum game, uh, essentially wherewe can advertise brands that don't buy fake reviews, that don't engage in darkhat tactics. Um, promoting, promoting those types of brands builds a positivesum game. If you look at other advertising models and different platforms, uh,like let's say meta or whatever. They allow everyone to come in, whether it'sa, you know, scam coin or scam websites, they will catch it at one pointbecausepeople report it eventually. But they don't have that they mayhave an initial wall where you have to put in your ID and whatever, but peopleknow how to bypass that with fake spot. We only allow brands that areestablished. We have them. We've been analyzing it for a long time, and theyhave good grades, reliable, good grades over a long period stretch of time.Now, something made. May happen, but that's really rare where managementchanges or someone buys the company and now they're becoming deceptive. Wemonitor that as well. So our business model is essentially that recommendingthe best products to our consumers So we save them time and money And researchso that you can look at the best products.So let's say you're searching for An office desk or a chair,uh, we have in our database brands that we've been analyzing for a long time.They get a grades all the time, a grade, and this is how we grade and fix spot.We use a to F like a school letter.Ali Zewail: reportcard.Saoud Khalifah:Exactly. And, uh, and a grade means you, you have a high predisposition totrustworthy reviews on your listings.And that's basically the business model for us.Ali Zewail: So youkind of, it's kind of like affiliate links to, to these, to their e commercewebsites, right? Saoud Khalifah: Um,in certain, in certain cases. It's more, I would say advertising, we'readvertising the honest and trustworthy companies thathonestly Ali Zewail:advertising, but you're filtering the advert so you don't get accept anyadvertiser basically.Saoud Khalifah: wedon't, yeah, only we accept the trustworthy brands. And we, you know, as we've,we're developing this business model, the monetization behind Fakespot, uh, wehad a couple pilot, pilot, um, clients and believe it or not, they were allFakespot power users. They were all using Fakespot and they were using Fakespotto look at their competitors.And they were reporting, reporting them to Amazon or otherplatforms. So that's how it started, like CEOs of large companies that weremaking, you know, tens of millions of dollars in revenue. They were usingFakespot every day for, uh, looking at their competitors, their own products togauge quality. Fakespot also gives you more information, like we tell you whatis good and bad about a product based on the reviews.And a lot of these, uh, sellers find that really usefulinformation.Um, we've been developing, like, NLP technology for, uh, for along time. And, you know, Fakespot, like, 0. 1 when I launched it out of mybedroom in college. To now it's evolved significantly. We actually usetransformer based models, uh, one of the first companies to use transformerbased models, especially in the New Yorkcity area Ali Zewail: Yeah.Saoud Khalifah: afterthe paper. Yes. Um, I. We used, you know, like recurrent neural networks atthat time, RNNs, and, uh, more about processing sentiment and looking at thepositives and negatives about a product. But then I, um, you know, I built amodel and I put in an attention layer and I was like, I was waiting for thetraining. And then I looked at the results and they. Increased itsignificantly, the accuracy, the extraction of information from a text corpus.Uh, so it was, it was really good by the way. The other thing I really likedabout fake spot was, and you know, this is embedded in, uh, I think even inArabian culture, um, to learn as much as we can, uh, with whatever we're doing,that's, that was my big passion also. I wanted to learn about DevOps. I wantedto learn about AI. I wanted to learn about model building. I wanted to learnhow to scale. A service that was something that I was just really interestedin. It waslike at, at other places like Goldman and these places, like ifyou want to learn how to scale one year transfer to move to another team thatis dealing with that.I was just not interested in that. And you know, time is of theessence. You have no, you, you know, you have to utilize it efficiently.Ali Zewail: Yeah.Nothing, nothing like startups to teach you everything across the board at thesame time. Right.But I want to take you back to the, to the beginning. You saidyou, you didn't focus on fundraising. You didn't focus on business model andyou were just trying to get more and more traction. But actually when you getmore traction, you get more cost as well.Uh, so I mean, how are you handling that or, or when did youthink we need to take this to the second, to a, to a next phase?Saoud Khalifah: Uh,so, you know, we, we, we were actually one of the first consumer applicationsthat released the browser extension. Um, you may have heard of honey and theseother, uh, you know, extensions. And when we, when I released that Chromeextension, it was just me at this time. It was just me with a fake spot. Um, Imade it really, really seamless as part of your shopping experience.So instead of copying and pasting a link, it would show thegrades inside, uh, like Amazon or Walmart and whatever. Um, And then we startedgetting, uh, a lot more users installing the extension. And, you know, Irealized that, okay, uh, you're right. Cost is very important as part of astartup. I did build it to be very, very efficient on the DevOps side.So we actually saved a lot of money on the DevOps side. Um, Ioptimize every single algorithm. I optimize every single service. So thatactually delayed the fundraise, uh, by, by quite a good amount of time. And Ilike to wear many hats. So that also helped us save, uh, like from hiring aDevOp person or some other ML person, uh, I was actually doing, um, our DevOpand ML up to like the fourth year of the company. Uh, I just love it whiledoing everything else. I just love doing it. Um, I would sit till 5 AM andupdate our database. Uh, so it was, we saved a lot of money by doing this thatway, but it's. It's there are a cost associated on your personal health aswell, obviouslyum Ali Zewail: maybe onthe growth of the company as wellSaoud Khalifah: Yes,absolutely.So to answer to answer a question.I realized that at one point We needed to move to that nextlevel. And the only way to do that is with extra capital. And with thatcapital, we would now be able to invest in, um, more marketing. We, I never didmarketing for fake spot. Like it was just me posting on forums and stuff. Andyou know, with that, we could now add some jet fuel into the engine and, uh,build a flywheel effect around this, a niche, which is fake reviews. And that'show we started. Um, I met my, uh, co founder, uh, Rob. Um, On that ferry that Imentioned from New Jersey to New York, it was a really funny story. Like, uh,we were going on the ferry. It was winter. It was really cold. I got on theferry like one minute before it started to leave. You know, they have this hugehorn that they do before they're going to leave. And I see like in thedistance, I see this guy, he's wearing, he's in crutches and he's like tryingto run with crutches. And I'm, and I tell the crew at the ferry, Hey guys,there's someone there. Wait a second. And, uh, you know, usually they neverwait, but for this time, they were like, they had this guy's on crutches.Let's wait for him. He came on, he was short of breath and he'slike, Oh man, thank you so much. Like I had a really important meeting today.And, uh, you know, then, uh, then he asked me, what's your name? You know, we,we, we exchanged that and he asked me, what were you working on? I was told himabout fake spot and then he, he got really interested in it.We went to inside the ferry and we started talking for a longtime. Um, he was also working on a startup at this time that was unfortunatelyreaching its end. Uh,and he was kind of looking at something else, his next chapter.I could tell from talking with him, he's older than me. He's about 10 yearsolder than me. I could tell that he, uh, he had all traditional values, um,even from my first meeting with him. Um, you know, like, kind of like thethings we value in our, in, in, in an Arab, Arabian society, like respect forelders, uh, loyalty. Really, really hard to find people with these traditionalvalues. It turns out he was raised traditionally by his mom. He's also partPolish, um. And you know, like he was, uh, he had these traditional values andI could just tell from talking with him then, um, in the ferry at the end ofthe meeting, he's like, Hey, um, I'm going to use fake spot tonight. I actuallybought this baby camera. He, he had a baby at this timeand he's like something wrong with it.I don't like it. So he went that night. He told me the story.He. Analyze this. Uh, it was a very known brand baby camp and it startedfraying and smoking. Uh, it wouldcause a fire, fire in the house. It got a D gradeon fixed spot next to a baby. Yes. Right in front of the baby.And. It was a very well known brand.When he told me the brand, I was like, Whoa, like that's crazy.And they got a D grade on fake spot.He told us, he told his wife about this whole thing, fake spot,the grade. And then she kind of nudged him and said, maybe you should, youknow, think about maybe joining this guy. He's talking about fundraising andall this other stuff.You have experience with that. So Rob was really interestingbecause he's a lawyer accountant. Um, he's very good at marketing. He also hasproduct sense. So he's also kind of like a Swiss knife.And he has those traditional values. So, um, you know, wetalked, we started talking for a couple of months on this ferry.He was still kind of closing that business down, uh, the, thecurrent job he was working. And I was trying to expand a fake spot. And thenhe's like, Hey, dude, I cannot, what would you, uh, be open to me joining you?And then he was the first like guy with me, a co founder. I was really into itand that's the story of it was very spontaneous Um, I think it was six monthsof us talking on the ferry up to the point where he joined me officially and uhAt this time, you know, he had to actually take a very very small salary I hadto take a very small salary And we went all in and that's when we were on thejourney now to do our first pre seed roundAli Zewail: Hmm.Interesting. Uh, and, and the rest is kind of history in terms of just growthfrom then on. Right. Um,Saoud Khalifah:struggles and challenges upsand downs The first challenge was the first fundraise. That wasa big, big, big challenge. It was seven months, um,uh, to get, to, to get it closed, to get that first, uh, leadinvestor close. So, you know, we found, uh, me actually not being, uh, youknow, like American, I didn't go to an Ivy league school and all this otherstuff in the New York city area. In the Northeast, that worked against me. Uh,I could tell you that fact. If you told someone you're from this school orwhatever there, they value that really highly, uh, for some reason. So, it wasreally interesting for me to see that. They didn't care about if you weresmart. They didn't care if you were like wearing many hats.They didn't care if you were building something that was usefulfor people. They cared about that. So, at the first, you know, for me, theywere filtering me, but I was also filtering them. Because if you're an investorthat are looking at these things, then you're not going to be a good partnerfor the future. So it took us, it took us some time to find, uh, the bestinvestors for our situation. And then we had a pitch. I would say this was in.May 2018. Um, we met, uh, with Sashi Reddy from SRI Capital. He was animmigrant from India, built a business in the nineties, sold it to Oracle, andthen had a couple more successes.And then his last success, he sold it to a big public listedcompany. Um, you know, that was a good chunk of money. And then that's when helaunched his VC and, you know, we went to this pitch. This was maybe our, Iwould say. Somewhere in between 50 and 75, uh, pitch number. And we meet themin person. We pitch them.And by the way, the pitch stories were insane. We went toBoston for one pitch. We met some mob associated investor. It was, it wasjust Ali Zewail: Yeah.Saoud Khalifah: crazystories,but this. Ali Zewail: must bethe Irish mob.Saoud Khalifah: No,this was actually a European. Uh, itwas, it was really, it was really interesting for us. The wholething was interesting. We did the road trip from New Jersey to Boston. It tookus like six hours each way. I drove back, Rob drove there. And the investorscame in late, those investors, and they were apparently doing a motorcycle triparound the country and that Boston was on their trip on their stop. It was, itwas super weird. Um, they were very interested, but then they rejected us inthe last second.Many startup founders know thatfeeling. We knew that was not going to go anywhere. Um, weshould have known something when they, when we found out they were based inSwitzerland, but they were not from Switzerland,uh, not enough set, but anyway, uh, then, you know, this final,uh, pitch, um, with Sashi, it was one of our last pitches.Um, it was really difficult, uh, at that time, to be honestwith you, like. Rob and I looked at each other every day and we're like, we'renot getting an investor. What is going on? Um, we know about these things aboutour backgrounds and whatever. We're not the stereotype, you know? And Iremember we even pitched one investor, a very well known investor, and we toldthem our story of how we met. And they're like, change your story to meeting ina college dorm. Uh, like dothe stereotypical can, you know, a savvy thing. And I'm like,no, like, that's not honest. That's, that'sdishonest. Ali Zewail: That's afake review.Saoud Khalifah: It'sa fake. Yeah, it's a fake story. And you know, that's by the way, that's a veryprevalent thing in Silicon Valley.Unfortunately,people make make up, right? To be part of the stereotypicaljourney. Um, I don't like that. Rob doesn't like that. We both don't like this.We like to be honest. We like to be truthful in the way we do it. And we werebuilding a business based on truth. Based on honesty, uh, so it took us longerthan going down this path of lying and fabricating stories. So that, that finalpicture was really difficult because, uh, Rob was like, with his family, he'slike, uh, dude, you need to get a job. If you, if you, like, it's now seventh,the seventh month, you have to get a job. You have two kids and I was, youknow, I was like, should I go back to Kuwait? Maybe start building fake spotfrom there. I'm, I have no salary right now. Very low, very low amount ofmoney. And, um, this final pitch, I, I, you know, did my best. I talked aboutfake spot from my heart and my brain and showed the whole program showed wherewe can go with the future. And then three days later, um, SRI Capital calls meand they're like, Hey, um.1, 000, 000 term sheet, find other co investors if you want,and the other co investors was Aziz, um, who introduced us. He was part of thatpre seed round, and, um, Faith Capital from Kuwait, one of the first VCs fromKuwait,the Talabat, Talabat story that,Ali Zewail: Yeah. Saoud Khalifah: I'msure you're familiar with.They Ali Zewail: It justIPO for a huge amount, by the way.Saoud Khalifah: Oh,really?Ali Zewail: Yeah.Over 10 billion.Saoud Khalifah: Wow,that's insane. that's that's, that's really, really, Ali Zewail: a bigregional outcome.Saoud Khalifah: yeah,that's a amazing regional outcome. So having them as partners was really,really important for us. Uh, so I still maintain my link with Kuwait, uh, evenfrom the US,uh, through. Our Kuwaiti investors and um, that was our firstround and then Ithought okay The hard part is done. And then i'm like, wait asecond. I have to now interview people and start pitching themAli Zewail: Right. Saoud Khalifah: I Iwas like this is never ending pitching like you have to pitch everyone Whoeveryou talk to you're just pitching pitching pitching and it made me kind of likea good salesperson to be honest with you um like that I had to pitch employeesand stuff like this, so That was the beginning part.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Soat that time it, it seemed like your, uh, your troubles were over, right. Butthen I know that down the path there, there were like huge challenges from,from giants that were really. out to get you. So maybe you can tell me moreabout that story and share it.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah.So, um, in 2020, uh, we had, so we were actually building, believe it or not,one of our other business models was a B2B product. It was, uh, a SaaS basedproduct for massive brands to put in their products, put in their competitorproducts and get like. Sentiment analysis, fake review analysis, and everythingelse with the products.We even could detect counterfeit sellers selling their ownproductbecause third party is a big thing in e commerce, uh, forbusinesses to scale, they have to introduce other sellers into the business.And, uh, uh, this, this product, it was called a Sentinel. We had, uh, ourfirst pilot customer, uh, it was a couple of hundred K, uh, ARR.And this was just one customer. They were a fortune 10 company.Um, they were big pod users. They emailed us. They're like,Hey, do you guys have a B2B solution to this problem we're doing? It turns outthey had, uh, an army of humans analyzing reviews manually. Uh, and so we wentto their headquarters and Midtown and we're like. We demoed the product. Webuilt it in maybe three days, we repurposed theconsumer engine and put it on, Ali Zewail: productcoming right up.Saoud Khalifah: itwas, it was a, it was a crazy pro and you know, we had to kind of do magic witha couple of things to make it lookreally, really fast and whatever, but it worked and, um, theirC suites were part of, in the pitch. In the, in the economy and they're like,let's do a contract. Let's do it. We called our investors. We were like, Hey,we figured out a different business model. Now we can,we can do B2B. Um, honestly, but I will be honest with you thatthat type of business at that time did not really interest me personally, but Iknew we could build a sustainable business model around it.I was more on the B2C side. I loved helping millions ofshoppers. That was my. Uh, like my, my interest. Yeah. And, um, and then wewere started building it. This is the end of 2019. Um, we started pitching andwe're about to close our, uh, another round right after the pre seed round.I'll call that round seed round.And, um, we closed it based on that B2B SaaS model. We closedit in January, 2020, and then the pandemic happens. And when that, when thathappened, all our customers that were using the B2B products said, Hey guys,we're freezing our SAS budgets. We can'trenew. So, you know, I looked at the team, I looked at Rob andwe're like, what do we do now?Um, so then I started looking at Honey and I started looking atthe other extensions and I'm like, our extension is still growing without usdoing anything with it. We were so focused on this B2B. Let's go all in intothat. Let's use the stuff we built for the B2B, like the counterfeit detection,which now is called guard and put it for consumers.Let's see ifconsumers like, like ItNow, this is really interesting talking about social trendsand, um, trends in the industry, uh, at that time in the pandemic, I don't knowif you know this alley, but in America, there was a lot of counterfeit.Sanitizers, fake plastic gloves, anything associated with the pandemic wasbeing faked. And fake spots starteD being used more and more by people. And weadded all these new features into the Chrome extension. And it just went likeBallistic, the growth with ballisticand honey just got acquired by PayPal for 4 billion. Um, so noweveryone's like, wait a second, browser extensions. are, Ali Zewail: Yeah.Saoud Khalifah: yeah,they're crazy because browser extensions were very hard to pitch in the past,uh, in 2017, 2018, for some reason. Investors just were not interested in it.They thought it was like a little plugin on a browser. There's too manydependencies. It's not interesting. But after the honey acquisition, peoplestarted realizing there could be a lot of money made in this industry. Uh, sowe went all in into that and we went that summer, 2020, we were workingremotely because, uh, you know, that tri state area was all closed down, lockeddown, and we achieved our biggest growth. Uh, ever like it was justskyrocketing and we got introduced to, uh, bullpen capital, uh, very wellknown, um, investor in Silicon Valley and they led our series a route. And sothis was a tail end of 2020. We closed the, uh, series a, and we're now off tothe races. It was, we have the kind of stereotypical playbook. Um, for SiliconValley startups in New Jersey, New York city, which was kind of interesting.Um, in 2021, we released a mobile app that did what the extension did. It wouldshow you grades and everything. And then one big company, a trillion dollarcompany said, Hey, we don't like what you're doing and that, you know, um, youknow, I don't need to mention words here and the names, but if you look thisup, you'll see who it was. Um, It was the first time that a large company likethat went after a smaller startup, uh, like in a takedown kind of way,they, uh, complained to Apple. We were at this point, we weregetting a lot of like growth through that appwithout any marketing, started installing it and using it overthe e commerce platforms app, which was a terrible signal. So, um, They, theycomplained to this, uh, platform to Apple and, uh, Apple basically sided withthem, took down our iOS app at that time. And this was really interesting. Idid not sleep, uh, for a couple of days at thistime because everyone was panicking, our investors, my team.Um, and I had to maintain like a semblance of calm and peace and, you know,have this strongface.But at the same time, I was like, I was like, wow, this isreally hard. Um, so I wrote a public letter to, that what youmentioned at the beginning of it. Ali Zewail: Huh?Saoud Khalifah: Yes.And, uh,Ali Zewail: Are youlike, for legal reasons, you don't want to mention it or,Saoud Khalifah: well,youknow, uh, Ali Zewail: I mean, Saoud Khalifah: well,yeah, Ali Zewail: that.Saoud Khalifah: yeah.Well, I mean, I do have to also now give credit to Amazon. I think they build aplatform. Yes, there are problems, but nothing is perfect. Um, but theybuilt one Of the best in the world for e commerce and they werejust protecting their interest. Uh, why allow a startup mentioning that there'sa fake review problem?If you can. You know, do something about it. So I understandwhere they're coming from. And, uh, you know, it took me some time ofprocessing to understand their perspective as well, and our perspective and thebest outcome would have been for us to kind of work together, um, withsynergistic. And I think we evolved that relationship over theyears, um, where we started doing it, that, that period of time was difficult.Yes. 100%. All my investors were looking at me for answers.They were like, this is, this is a big hammer that you just got hit with. AndI'm like, I know, but we got hit with other hammers too in the past. We couldget through this. Um, the letter itself was just a stance that, you know, uh,that was like, Hey, we're here, we're protecting consumers.We're interested in the same things. Uh, let's work together,uh, work with the shoppers, let's work with the platforms, let's work with thebrands. And that's kind of like the narrative we wanted to take. Um, we, thatapp didn't come back on the, on the app store. We built a different app thattook down certain elements that was a little bit more lightweight.And that was then releasedand nothing happened. It was, it was accepted, it was okay. Weactually worked with Apple diligently and they were they were really cool. Uh,we talked with the very high up the chain there and, you know, I think theydidn't want to have a battle with someone that was protecting consumers.Like there, there's no point in doing that. Um, at that timethey also had the, they still have it with Epic games.And I had a couple, I had a couple emails at this time with acouple well known billionaires at this time. And I started seeing behind thescenes. Wow. Some people don't like Apple. Some people don't like Amazon.Some people like them. And everyone is now trying to likebuild, you know, like this chess game, uh, and i'm part of it and I don't I don't want to be And I was like, let's get out of this andlet's get back to building what we're building and caring about what we careabout. And that's where we doubled down on everything that we were doing.We built that new mobile app. We released it on Android. It wasa browser, which turns into a longer story, how a browser company bought uslater on, uh, and the browser extension. Uh, but, uh, the, the new mobile appswere okay.Ali Zewail: right? Soit was kind of an app that had a browser in it and that browser browsed, uh,the e commerce sites. Right.Saoud Khalifah: Yep.It was aweb view. Yeah, it was a web view, like a windowinto a browser and wewould put the fake spot rate at the bottom of the browser. Wewould build our own like toolbar within the browser itself. And it wasbasically our own browser. Um, other companies started cloning our app, believeit or not.A multi billion dollar company. Um, these privacy orientedcompanies started looking at it. And then that's when I think Mozilla startedlooking at us. They were also like, Oh, interesting. They're building a browserthat is protecting consumers. Protecting people from reading fake reviews. Um,we have a very similar mission.Uh, trust and transparency. Building a better internet. We werebuilding a better e commerce internet. They were building a better, like,general internet. And that's when we started talking. Uh, over the yearsthough, we did have Many other suitors, I will tell you, uh, the biggest, thevalley too, and I rejected them, um, because we were just too early in thejourney.When I was alone at Figspot, one of the big, you know, like,the fan guys came and said, Hey, would you come join us? It was like a small,like, aqua hire or whatever.I still, I was not interested because we were just starting tobuild this. Um, but it was, it was also a good signal. You asked me earlier,what was another signal for you to scale?That was a signal to, uh, and that was a really good leveragein my pitches, uh, toAli Zewail: Yeah. Toinvestors, of course.Saoud Khalifah: Yes.Ali Zewail: So, Imean, that was one of the challenges you, you passed by. Okay. I think. Maybe,uh, I wanted to ask you maybe before the other challenge that I wanted toraise, um, about the technicality. So, I mean, you're using data, uh, you'retraining your algorithm, your, uh, your machine learning algorithm on data fromall over the web, and you actually proactively detect counterfeits and thingslike that.And, and have them in your database so people can browse themand things like that. Uh, how did you set this up and, and were there dataownership issues, uh, that you had to face or handle? Saoud Khalifah: So,um. This is an evolving, I would say, legal matter in the United States. Itwent all the way up to the Supreme Court. If you remember, there was a big casebetween LinkedIn, aka Microsoft, and HIQ Labs. I believe that was thecounterparty. They scraped LinkedIn profiles and, uh, build a SaaS productaround or something like this.I don't remember exactly the details. Um, it was about, itturns, uh, the, they went all the way up to the highest court in California,and they basically said, scraping publicly available information is okay. Uh,there's actually one of the biggest trillion dollar companies does that aseveryday business, Google. Ali Zewail: Exactly.Saoud Khalifah: Indextheir whole business is based around indexing publicly available information,not things behind a paywall or nothing that are like you have to sign up andlog in and whatever. Now that's a different story.If you are so fake spot is built around the same, uh, model,anything publicly facing, we can utilize and, uh, build this infrastructurewhere we can connect the dots that you wouldn't be able to as a human,honestly, because. We're not connecting so many different dots between sellersand reviewers and review groups. Review groups are these places where sellerscome to give out product for free and they get reviews in return. Um, so we'rebuilding these massive networks of pattern correlation of clusters and humanslike it would take you maybe. For one of these clusters, it would take you acouple of days just to realize, like, there's a connection between thesereviewers and these sellers and whatever. So,Ali Zewail: Right. Saoud Khalifah:automates that. Uh, so it's kind of like the Google, but for fake reviews and ecommerce.Ali Zewail: And whatabout the, uh, were there like added challenges after gen AI came on the scenewhere it's become so easy to create fake reviews that are very, very realisticand hard to distinguish from Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,so that's, Ali Zewail: humans.Saoud Khalifah: um,if you're, you know, earlier on, I mentioned we use attention mechanisms veryearlier on, uh, when we were building our models. It was just me building themodels. Uh, I actually That first round, first thing I did, I bought a lot ofGPUs for our office. Uh, I didn't want to spend any money on cloud compute.I knew how expensive and, you know, sometimes it, they havemassive margins. And immediately I bought a data rack, put it in, we startedbuilding models. Our first models, actually, we started generating fake reviewsto see how good those models are. And we started training our counter models todetect those. reviews. So it's built into the DNA of our engines to look atthose reviews and try to determine now, can you ever detected with 100 percentaccuracy? No, uh, nothing, nothing can do that. You can, uh, launder the text,so to speak,through different generators, then spin the words and it willbecome really difficult, but it also reduces then the, uh, comprehension ofthose. Of those reviews. So there are other signals that then appear thatanother module in our fake spot engine will detect. So we look, you know, we'veevolved over the years from fake to reliability. Uh, how reliable is thisreview? Is it reliable for you to make purchasing decision on this review? Andthat's kind of the stance we've taken given the generative craze and everythinglike this.But I'm, I'm very proud to say that. Uh, uh, our team has beenactually, we had a generative model before Chad JPT was launched. Um, a coupleof generative models, uh, the pros and cons V1 and stuff like this. You can seeit on my blog. Um, uh, that was actually before, uh, Chad JPT and that's agenerative text model.Ali Zewail: Cool. So,I mean, uh, so maybe we could Go, uh, talk about the Mozilla acquisition. Howdid that, I mean, you were obviously in conversations with them because you'realigned in many ways, but how did it come to a full acquisition and you movingthere?Saoud Khalifah: Youknow, it's, it's, uh, this is really interesting too, because just likeeverything else in the startup journey, uh, you can't take a class on it. Soyou can ask for other people, like if your investors went through that, you canask them for advice. So I was fortunate enough to have investors that wentthrough that.Sashi, I mentioned, he went through multiple times of this and,uh, Paul at Bullpen also went through this. So. I had good advice throughoutthe whole process. It's, it's a little bit like, you know, um, you have to, youhave to negotiate, obviously you have to do a lot of that. Um, sometimes this,this stuff can take a long time. Uh, but once you are both at the same place,both, like, I mean, the buyer and the seller, you both want each other, you nowhave to proceed, uh, with the process. And the process is basically. Thingsthat I learned myself like the due diligence phase and the legal stuff and thefinancial stuff So the whole process was really interesting At that time wewere also about to raise another round like essentially our I would call it ourA plus right before a B round. And, uh, we had a lot of interest. Uh, a lot of,uh, the companies were seeing that we were using generative models. Uh, we hada lot of, you know, AI models that were built and this craziness starthappening again with the AI field. And we were totally on track. I wascommitted to that. And then Mozilla started talking to me. Now, Mozilla is veryinteresting. I was using Firefox as a kid in Kuwait. Um, I hated InternetExplorer at that time. I actually got the Blaster worm. If you're, if youremember,Ali Zewail: Yeah.Saoud Khalifah: yeah,the, um, the worm that would infect a lot of Windows computers through, uh, theservice, uh, svchost on. Uh, on windows computers, and it's hacked our computerand I couldn't use a computer and I was like, kind of irritated because I wascoding a lot of time. Uh, so, uh, Internet Explorer was another window wait fora lot of malware. So Firefox started appearing on the scene and Mozilla is acompany that has always been. Uh, I don't know why, but I've always had anemotion with them, like this emotional warmth and a lot of love for theirproduct. So when they came, it was a little bit different. It was a little bitdifferent than other companies where they're just on strategic acquisition.Now, I'm not saying that we are not a strategic acquisition to Mozilla. Mozillahas other things attached to it. It's, uh, it's a company that stands for a lotmore than just. Uh,so to me, I was reallyinteresting because to be honest with you with fake spot, I was not doing itjust to make money. I was doing it to build a product that would be used bymany people to bring some kind of benefit to their everyday life. And that'show I approached it. Money was in the list, but it was. Maybe in the top five,but at the bottom end, um, so when they came by, it was interesting. I startedseeing that we have very similar missions.Um, I have this love for the company, for their reputation.They're very privacy oriented. They're very trust oriented. They built some ofthe best protocols standards in the game. So to me as a, as a geek and, uh,with computers, it was like, this is awesome that I'm talking. Um, and. I was,you know, throughout the talks, I was like, is this, is this going to getserious?And it started getting serious. And then I'm like, okay, Iaccept it. Uh, I think this is time for fake spot, uh, to be integrated intothe, one of the most used browsers in the world natively. And we are today onFirefox. And it just made a lot of sense is across the board. Um. At thispoint,Ali Zewail: Yeah. Butyou also, I mean, have other stakeholders, you have investors, employees, uh,et cetera. So I mean, there are like financial aspects to the, that you had totake into consideration as well. Saoud Khalifah: ofcourse, uh, Ali Zewail: for yoursake.Saoud Khalifah: yeah,of course, you have to, you have to take in everything and you have to monitorand evaluate the whole picture. But for me, it looked like this just makessense. Now, I talked to our investors, I talked to our, uh, to our team andstuff like this, and it just made. It just made sense at this time, uh, we wereabout, I was mentioning, it was, we're about seven years old and, you know,that's a bit of a long time for a company, um, and being acquired somethinglike this, it, with a browser company, it just made a lot of sense with all thetechnology we've built. It being natively integrated into a browser, it justmade a lot of sense. And we were talking with other browser companies too inthe past, but nothing really sparked the fire, um, on my end and on the otherstakeholders ends. But, uh, you know, the pitching never ends too here. Like Ihad to pitch it to investors.I had to pitch it to people because we had this other road withraising the next round,maybe scaling it more. My, my dream was to go to an IPO,believe it or not, and, um, and fake spot to other things than just e commerce,everything, um, allowing you to get the best information, whether it's news,whether it's comments, whether it's anything, but obviously you would need toraise a good amount of, uh, capital.Ali Zewail: Yep. Saoud Khalifah:after. Yeah.Ali Zewail:Especially with GPUs costing what they do these days.Saoud Khalifah: Yes.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Sotell me a bit about Mozilla. I mean, there are, you have the MozillaFoundation. It's not, it's non profit, it's a non profit. So how does it makemoney? I mean, what, where, where does this become sustainable?Saoud Khalifah: uh, Imean, Mozilla is a sustainable company. Um, the nonprofit, uh, owns thecorporation, which is, uh, where that acquired fake spot. Um, it's a differentstructure than you see in Silicon Valley companies. And I think this structure.Allows us to be building products that are for the societal good and forbuilding a better internet, um, because we have this for profit, um, mantraaffecting our decisions and affecting everything we do. So, I think that'sreally good. I think that's really interesting and it's really, reallydifferent. You, I mean, you can count on your hands how many companies are likethat. Um, the primary revenue source, uh, for, for us is through our, uh,search deals that we have in the browser. So if you search something on the newtab or whatever, uh, that's where we get, um, uh, basically, you know, somekind of share of, of the money that is generated through advertising. Andthat's how Mozilla built a revenue stream over the years. This is preacquisition of our, and that's how basically they've done it. We were thesecond acquisition by Mozilla. So Mozilla is also not. Um, a company that goesaround and acquires other companies. Um, they do it very diligently and they doit when it, when there's a meaning behind it.So the first acquisition was Pocket. They also had a Chromeextension and browser extension and they were, uh, basically the bookmarkingplatform ofthe internet. So you may be,Ali Zewail: I thinkit's integrated into the browser as well.Saoud Khalifah: uh,correct. Yes,it's integrated. Ali Zewail: So Saoud Khalifah: alittle shield icon that you see at the top.Ali Zewail: I'm goingto go down a different path and I have no idea where it's going to take us orif it's going to take us anywhere, but I'm going to go down anyway. But uh, onthe LinkedIn post for your episode, uh, Brandon S who I think worked forMozilla at some point said, I have to ask you about catching big fish off thecoast of Florida.So what is that about?Saoud Khalifah: Uh,so I moved to Florida. I was in, uh, you know, the New Jersey, New York Cityarea, and, uh, it's been about a year here now for me,and, uh, Ali Zewail: moved towarmer climates. Uh Saoud Khalifah: Uhother benefits here too, uh, that we take for granted in the Middle Eastregion. Um, so, uh, you know, it's, uh, I picked up fishing here. And, uh, I'dhave, I've not gone offshore yet, uh, like you mentioned, uh, off the coast,more, doing more inshore stuff. And yeah, there's a lot of interesting fishhere. I mean, there's, I think in our lagoon here, which is an estuary, itconnects to the ocean and then it connects to the river.We have about 600 species of, uh, fish here. Uh, so this islike the fish capital of the world. Uh, a lot of people come from all over theworld, from Japan, from other States. Just to fish here, and I, you know,before move, before moving here, I didn't even I didn't really care. Honestly,I was not fishing at all. I started, I did a little bit in New Jersey, but NewJersey, you know, the weather gets really cold sometimes and I was like, I'mgoing to do something else. But here it's warm and you can go out and now withmy son, um, we've been doing a lot of fishing together.It's a good bonding experience.He actually really, he's six now. He appreciates, uh, theoutdoors and I'm not giving him a phone or a tablet or anything like this. I'mnot going to be parenting him that way. I want him to be in the physical worldas much as possible before the digital world takes over his, uh, life like itdid for me.Ali Zewail: Makesperfect sense. Uh, okay. So, uh, that's fishing for you. And, um, maybe, uh,I'll go from fishing before I go to, actually, no, I'll, I'll stick to thearticle. You wrote an article a couple of months ago, uh, about the journalistparadigm. And you ended it by saying that, uh, anti generalist looks to gainthe most.So could you please explain what you mean by the generalistparadigm and why you ended it with this statement?Saoud Khalifah: Uh,okay. I mean, it's a, it's a really interesting topic. It's another, I wouldsay one of those social trends that you're trying to gauge when you're lookingat. What's happening with technology, what's happening on the hardware andsoftware layers. Um, you've, you've heard from people in the field, and I thinkthe most known, uh, quote was from Altman. There will be a trillion dollarcompany managed by a couple people because AI is going to automate a lot of thestuff. So that's kind of where the generalist paradigm comes into play. You'rebecoming a generalist with these different technologies and stuff like that.However, I think there's an asymmetric opportunity. For the other side of thecoin. Yes, it's going to be 80 percent generalist, but the 20 percent is wherethe biggest growth is going to appear just like everything else we've seen in,uh, in the industry here. Um, it's very similar to the Pareto principle.Obviously, that's why I'm mentioning the 80 20. Uh, rule here that 20% rightnow is not 20%.It's, I would say you have to have specialized, uh, people likedoing DevOps front end backend. But if you're looking at the trend behindcursor and, uh, these different models that specialize in coding,a lot of the very menial tasks are getting automated. Andthat's really interesting. I mean, uh, you know, FORTRAN and cobol, the, uh,languages that no one supports today, but the banks, the biggest institutionsin the world still use them.I mean, generators can learn that and start implementing, youknow, updates into those code bases. So, um, being a generalist is going tobecome the most apparent thing. Uh, and you're seeing it already. All thesestartups that are getting funding, it's all about the generalist. I think therewill become an opportunity where the anti generalist. We'll also have anasymmetric kind of chance, uh, for growth. Uh, so I think for you as aninvestor, for me as well, um, me, I would say I also invest, but for more fromthe, you know, looking at ideas and things like this, I think that's wherethere'll, there's going to be a lot of growth. Uh, and there are some thingsthat generalism will just not apply. Uh, generalism, the word itself is. Imean, it means like you're basically a master of none,right? You are an expert in many different things, but you'renot a master of anything. Uh, so I think that's where it's going to be reallyinteresting. The other reason why I mentioned that article is because we'reworking with. A very well known professor from NYU, uh, Professor Tujilin, andhe's one of the pioneers in neural networks. He built first the recommendationsystems. Um, he's a young Lacuna's peer, um, and he works closely with a bigspot team. And one of the research we're doing is. How can we build specializedon anti generalist models?So I'm talking now about models, not humansthat lies in specific, uh, domains and actually build on top ofthat. And you're seeing that with medical, you're seeing that with, but again,they're doing the generalist kind of approach, which is, I think, dangerousbecause of hallucinations and all these other aspects.Um, so this is kind of my take on the trend that's going tohappen on the scene. And we're already seeing, if you go on X, everyone is likegeneralists. No one isreally a specialist, and I think the specialist will become therare breed that will become the asymmetric opportunity.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Oh.Especially if it's tapping a huge market, like where there are already likehuman beings doing the specialist work, I guess.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,I mean, ifwe're going to colonize, if we're going to colonize Mars and gointo space, um, having specialists to do certain attributes of that is going tobe really important and critical.Ali Zewail: makessense. So, uh, you're a coder, you're, you're an entrepreneur, but you're alsoa musician. So you play, uh, guitar, you do vocals. If you, like If you wentback in time and you had to choose, you know, would you prefer that you hadbeen, like, been more successful as a vocalist, for example, than you wouldhave, uh, as an entrepreneur?And how do you think, like, music plays, you know, supportswhat you're already doing?Saoud Khalifah: Uh, Istarted making music when I started coding, which is Uh, it's a veryinteresting tangent that you're taking me on Uh, but if you look at music andcreating music and composing music, which is what I was very interested inThere are a lot of similarities between music making and programming. There arepatterns, um, Fibonacci sequences, the golden ratio and stuff like this. Theyappear all over the place mathematically. Um, and then if you're codingspecific algorithms, uh, you can make algorithms that make music. And there's alot of similarities between those two worlds. Um, also logic, mathematicalintertwined with logic. It's, it's really interesting. Now, your question aboutDo I not regret going into a musical career? Honestly, I had a junction point,um, in New Jersey, where I was making this progressive house music, veryenergetic music. I was producing it, and, um, this one song, uh, was going tobe released by Spinnin Records in Netherlands, one of the biggest electroniclabels in the world. Um, they, you know, they had Martin Garrix and all thesedifferent guys, and I was, 21 at that time. And I remember they sent me acontract and I started talking to my parents in Kuwait and I'm like, Hey, um, Imay quit college and go to another lens now. Uh, and this is one, one a weekbefore finals, uh, like final examinations.Ali Zewail: timing.Saoud Khalifah:Great, great timing. And, uh, you know, I told my parents and they were like.Yo, like, don't be crazy.Like, uh, go back to your studies and do all this stuff andmaybe, you know, do more with coding instead of music. Um, you know, at thispoint I was like, I'm very passionate about music as well, but I could do it inparallel with, uh, coding. Um, you know, when I was coding in Kuwait, uh, as a,as a kid and as a teenager, I never, I never had in my head that it would be myprofessional life. Um, I was doing it because I loved it. So I think thepassionate side of me, the Arabian passion side, uh, you know what I'm talkingabout,uh, very latched onto that and I allowed it to kind of blossomand I think today in our age, we don't allow those things to blossom. We'revery, like our attention is. All over the place. And I think the best startupfounders are very able to focus on one thing and do it very well and let itblossom. And for, you know, there's the fruit, your labor essentially appear.Uh, so with music, I still play music. It's much less than I used to do. I'mmuch less obsessed. I'm, I would say I'm very obsessive over things I love. Um,but I had that junction point and I chose, I chose, uh, computers.Ali Zewail: Yeah, andit's interesting that you did. I think music does support. The type of thinkingthat, you know, the coders need and enhance that, you know, a lot of Nobelprize winners in science, by the way, played musical instruments. There was a,there's a, there's a very strong correlation there, by the way, and there'screativity in coding.So, uh, just like music. So there is. a lot of intersection, Ithink.Saoud Khalifah: 100%.Ali Zewail: cool thatyou still play.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,I still play. I still love it. My son is actually now very, very into music.He's playing a lot. He loves building too. So, um, it's To me as a dad as afather i'm seeing this Um, like your questions that you're asking me i'm notquestioning him. Um, What are you gonna like doing? Are you gonna like doingthis?Are you gonna like building? Are you logical? Are you morecreative? So it's really interesting to see that on a child level Ali Zewail: And it's,it's really rare to see, uh, kids these days getting the chance to go deep.You, you, you called it going, uh, uh, like being very, like going. beingobsessed about something or going very deep into something, usually everythingis generalist. Everything is, uh, I'll see this quickly and that, and, and, andcheck out this thing over there.And this is the, this is a trend these days. And this hashtagis trending, but, uh, it's from the parts where we can, we go deep that wereally find excellence or satisfaction in life. Saoud Khalifah: I Ali Zewail: veryphilosophical kind of like, uh, and I know you like, uh, uh, a bit of MarcusAurelius and, uh, you know, and, uh, stoic, uh, philosophy as well.But, uh, Aziz has told me to, uh, some of your secrets. Sogoing back, um, You also wrote about Web3 and machine generated content,blockchain, what all that entails, you know, can you tell me about why youthink a huge amount of machine generated content and how you think it mightplay out? Because this is an area I'm also very interested in these days.Saoud Khalifah: well,so machine generated content was my bet, my, I tried to bet what the term wouldbe before generative AI started appearing. Uh, so I, I called it myself machinegenerated content. To me, it made sense. That term made sense. Uh, but I guessit's not, it's too technical and it's not trendy, uh, in the, in the,um, It's too long. and it's too. Yeah, Gen AI sounds, I guess,better. And there's obviously AI in the world. I missedthat. Ali Zewail: Which iseven better.Saoud Khalifah: So,uh, but it's to me, it's still all machine generated content. I mean, themachine is generating the content for you, I think the biggest, the biggestproblem. And this is something we're working on and very fortunate to work oninside Mozilla because this is very aligned with what Mozilla does is we'relooking at deep fakes.Um, and we're also looking at security. Yeah. problems withingenerative, uh, AI models. So, um, along with what we were doing at fake spot,we launched a gen AI bug bounty program inside Mozilla. It's called Odin. Uh,it stands for zero day investigative network. And it's basically what I used todo as a teenager and with a group of people that did the same exact thing.We were all hackers are now building this bug bounty program.Just for gen AI. Uh, why do we need this? Because there are a lot of newvulnerability classes that have not been even honed out, like we don't knowwhat they are. Uh, are.you able to leak a model? And are you able to leak itsknowledge base? Are you able to leak its training data?Are you able to leak its model weights? If you are. You've nowtapped into like billions of dollars worth of resources, and now you canextract it. So those types of vulnerabilities are really novel and very, verynew, and we want to pioneer our way through this. And folks that are listening,they can check this out at 0din.ai, that's our platform. And Marco, Pedram, Ron, and ourremaining team. We are actually building this out, um, along with the Fakespotteam, and we're trying to look at, um, the most used models in the world andwhat are the problems with them. So this is our, our bet on making AI moresecure with Mozilla. And then, um, Fakespot is expanding its efforts intodetecting deepfake content.You, you mentioned what will be the biggest things with machinegenerated content? Well, I think there will come a point, a convergence eventwhere we won't know what is coming out of a human or out of a AI, and it'salready happening right now.Um, Innocuous way of it was in the past was we had a fakeLinkedIn person reach out to us with a fake image that was AI generated andsaid, Hey, I have this new product, uh, SAS product to sell you.Come sign up.Um, that was the way of doing it. Now it's actually more, um,malicious. It's going to be very deleterious. It can happen on a many differentangles and we have to be really careful. There's actually Um, you know,everything is now based on voice authentication when you go to a bank orwhatever, but you can clone someone's voice with a gen AI model. What do you doin that case? How do you detect that that's a gen AI model talking instead of ahuman? And how do you now validate the biometrics? So these types of problemsare really difficult to solve. Uh, you will see Google release the watermark.Um, You know, signatures within out from Gemini and stuff like this, but marksare only going to take us so far. There will always be artifacts related inthe, like, for example, audio file. So we're building a deep fake, um,detection platform as well for fake spot right now. And that's, uh, I would saya very critical bet for our futures, uh, for society,uh, because. We will not know what we can trust anymore. And it'skind of like what fake spot does, what used to do with the e commerce nowexpanded and bubbledup. Ali Zewail: No, Ithink it's really cool and it's a cutting edge and it's really important forthe future of humanity. I would say. I mean, I, uh, and now I understand youhad, uh, Like at the end of your post about the future of AI, you said, youknow, uh, what did you say? If you're interested in working on revolutionary AIin the future, reach out.So I guess that's, that's what you guys are working on rightnow, if somebody does reach out.Saoud Khalifah:Exactly. That's what we were working on one aspect of it. So obviously thereare many different aspects, but you see, this is the anti generalist approach.Uh, we're looking at a different segment in the market and trying to find theasymmetric opportunity to help. Uh, people to help folks across and make theinternet better. And you can do that through technologyAli Zewail: So one ofthe problems with AI is like, you need huge Resources for training and, youknow, inference and, and all that. Do you think there's a way any part of thiscan be open sourced or decentralized? Or is that not, um, realistic in any way?Saoud Khalifah: withthe current, uh, the current way, everything stands with hardware requirementsand everything like that. And nuclear power reactor being necessary. I mean,you won't see people, your neighbor, having a nuclear core reactor and traininga model. That's with the current energy requirements, it's, it's impossible.And if you look at like, for example, XAI, the whole pitch isto buy 100, 000 GPUs. I mean, that's the whole pitch to the investors.Obviously they believe in, you know, Musk and everything he's done,but the whole pitch is just to get this whole plethora of GPUfleet and start training models. Now, the problem I'm seeing with this, becauseI've been building models for a long time, since 2015, uh, transformers are notefficient. They're not effective and we require a new infrastructure that ismore scalable and more efficient and more intelligent. Honestly, at the end ofthe day. You won't hear this from the founders pitching their companies, butthese models are just statistical matching machines. They attach a number to aword and then to a sentence and then to a paragraph and then to a document, um,that is closely correlated. In a very, you know, like a Euclidean kind ofspace, and that's how it works, works on higher dimensions where it finds correlationswhere we're like, whoa, like, that's, that looks awesome. It just generatedthis interesting prank. Yes, but it's a statistical matching machine. It's not,it's not true intelligence.It can mimic intelligence. Um, and by the way, going back tothe generalist, this is kind of what I was hinting at here, that these are notreal intelligence machines, they were, they will mimic a lot of stuff. And ifyou look at, um, Um, he, he, he had a professor in college named Rene Girardand you can check outhis work. He, he, yes, hedid a lot of work, memetic theory.To me, what's most interesting, these, these LLMs and theselarge models are memetic, uh,capital. That's all they are. Um, it may look novel, but if youexamine closely, I mean, if you look at a picturewith hands and whatever, It's not original, you know, there'ssomething off and they're just basing it off an understanding now.There will come a point I think But it requires quantumcomputers. We're seeing a lot of new research happening in quantum computers.That will also require new hardware, by the way. I think the current generationof hardware you see with GPUs, they're going to be great for the next twoyears. But then the next one is going to be really interesting. There's a lotof research with graphite, for example, and having quantum properties attachedto graphite. So myself, I've been looking at companies that are working onthis. How are they Evolving these chips and stuff like this, we will requirenew paradigms that are using utilizing quantum properties, um, and and to beable to train things that are much more efficient and effective scale. I'vealso, if you look at the brain, the brain is. In a, in a superposition, um, andthat's that's actually a concept from, uh, you know, quantum physics, quantummechanics. Um, like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know what's going on into thecat until you observe it. And that's the whole premise to that experiment.And I think for true intelligence, you need to emulate that oryou need to make it happen, not emulate it. If you emulate it, it's going to bestill a fake intelligence.Ali Zewail: Yeah,make it happen. But then when you make it happen, you don't know what, whatcomes out of the box, right? You're Saoud Khalifah: Well,Ali Zewail: risk.Saoud Khalifah:that's intelligence, isn't it? Uh,instead of right now with large language models, I can, I canchange a parameter like, uh, let's say temperature. This is the most usedparameter. And youcan make it hallucinate to kingdom come, like it will, it willhallucinate so bad, like you will be like, what is this talking about, it will,it will put in symbols and stuff like that. But what you just mentioned is thekey thing. That's true intelligence.Ali Zewail: times.Uh,Saoud Khalifah: It isscary times,but I think, uh, you know, I, I do admire what Saudi Arabia istrying to do with technology, trying to be at the forefront of this. And Ithink in the region, in the Middle East. Uh, we need to, we need to have abigger awakening. Honestly, um, oil and gas is only going to take us so far.And I, I think the leadership understands that, uh, but we need to build thenext chapter of our societies.Um, now, whether that requires a cultural change or whatever,it's going to be really interesting.Ali Zewail: so I wasgonna allude to that later, but since you mentioned it, I mean, what do youthink we need needs to change in the regional ecosystem, especially, you know,when it comes to technology and thinking about it.Saoud Khalifah: Uh,we need to get out of our comfort zones. If you, if you look at our society,they're built on comfort zones and they're kind of built on Dutch disease. Uh,if you know Dutch disease, it's a phenomenon, uh, from the Netherlands whereNetherlands became a really rich country and started being in their comfortzone and stopped innovating as a society and stopped all this stuff.Um, we, we have that. I mean, when I look at our region fromhere, from the U. S. I see it. And I also, by the way, I see it even in stateslike Florida, like you see people here coming retirement or like they were verysuccessful and now the hunger has is done. Um, I see it around me and I domiss, by the way, that part of the tri state.I miss the hustleand bustle and the, uh, so you have to kind of like be mentallymeditating on the, on that and kind of moving in that direction. But that'swhat I mean, like that region, we need that and we need more people like you.And other folks, um, doing very important work to advance our societies and ourcommunities. I think doing ambitious bets like Neom and, uh, uh, like citieslike that is very interesting because you're now building an environment basedoff, uh, greater thinking, um, innovative thinking. Maybe, uh, I think theleadership in, for example, Saudi, they realize, like, we need a newenvironment. Maybe, maybe these established cities, they're not workingconducively well. They're not conducing like that kind of innovative thinkingand stuff like this. That doesn't mean that innovative thinking is not comingfrom there, but you just mentioned Talabat. I mean, Talabat is also, it's kindof based on models from different market, markets. And I'm seeing in theregion, um, and I'm not trying to be offensive, but most of the most successfulcompanies in the region and, uh, in the Middle East, the MENA region are kindof clones of models that you see in othermarkets. I'm not seeing something truly new, innovative, like,let's say, an open AI.Ali Zewail: Yeah, Ithink what you were talking about is two things, like a cultural shift and anew way of a new hunger. And the second is really ambition, you know, that youhave to be very like much more ambitious than we have been. Uh, I'm not, I am,I guess by nature optimistic, but, uh, you know, um, like in China, that's howthey started.They started with clones. And then the clones became betterthan the original, so to speak, eventually, and they were able to get, youknow, I mean, the tick tock algorithm is, is incredible when you, when you,when you think about it, uh, superior to the U S, uh, companies that maybe wereearlier to this type of, uh, algorithm as an example, but, uh, but there aremany other examples.So, I mean, it's not by necessity that if you start withclones, you. You stay at clones, but, but it does need a new shift in ambition,uh, in the region. Definitely.Saoud Khalifah: Chinais very competitive.Ali Zewail: yeah.Saoud Khalifah: wantto compete withAmerica. They want to win. Uh, do you see that? Ali Zewail: thestreet there.Saoud Khalifah: Yeah,you feel it in their cities. You feel it in their culture. You feel it in theiracademic, right? Like, I mean, very, very clear, uh, what'shappening there. By the way, TikTok is also based on anAmerican company though, right?Obviously,Ali Zewail: Yeah.Musically. Yeah. Yeah.Saoud Khalifah:bought an American company and then put, um, You know, the Ali Zewail: Well, Saoud Khalifah:seeing,Ali Zewail: Musical.ly was the, like, there was like Musical. ly and then there was the, God, Iforgot the name now of the, of the other by dance company that was in the, inChina, that was the news algorithm, uh, aggregator. And then they took thealgorithm from the aggregator and the music, you know, video generation stufffrom Musical.ly and they. Put that together and, uh, it was an explosive,uh, mixture that was much stronger than the beginning. Absolutely.Saoud Khalifah: it'sreally interesting.Yeah, music was not obviously not, not viral, uh,in that sense, kind of infect your brain and you're justsitting on the app, like a robot and using it for likea couple of hours past, like what happened to time, um, thatalgorithm is definitely very, very strong and they're usinggenerative AI technologies now to even enhance thatAli Zewail: Exactly.And everyone is, I guess, not, not just them. So, so as not to, you know, it'snot about trying to scare, uh, so much as, you know, that there's a lot ofstuff happening in the world these days. So, uh, yeah, I mean, and, and I thinkthey're also like. They're building off of a history of being an empire. Imean, China was always a huge, usually the number one GDP country in the world,by the way.I mean, for most of history, with the exception of the 18thcentury, so maybe we should also kind of go back to our history of greatness,so to speak, and and change the level of our ambition.Saoud Khalifah: Yes.Uh, but I, I think, I mean, if you look at our, our history.Uh, Ottoman Empire was very ambitious, um, if you, if you look at, but OttomanEmpire then started getting very comfortable.And that's when, you know, the other powers started, you know,finding the cracks and breaking it. So I don't know if that, that is theanswer, but I think, I fear that. If the oil price drops, that's when therewill be an awakening and you're like, okay, panic, we needto start changing force awakening. And, you know, it's not justthe gulf countries, the oil price would affect all the other countries aroundthe gulf country because the gulfAli Zewail: Oh, Saoud Khalifah: toall these different countries and it's going to spread like a virus when thathappens.So, but it's not happening right now. But I think a lot of thebets that are happening in the region are. To alleviate those problems.Ali Zewail:hopefully. Uh, all right. So, I mean, going back to you as a, like, you're, Iguess you still code, right? Um,Saoud Khalifah: Yes. Ali Zewail: uh, howhas coding changed for you? What are the best practices for you? I mean, after,I mean, the last couple of years have been incredible when it comes to toolsand stuff like that. What are, what are your best practices now?How do you usually approach coding versus how you used to? Whatare the main tools for you? Saoud Khalifah: Yeah.So I'm, I'm, Ali Zewail: hands onquestion. Mm hmm.Saoud Khalifah: I'mnot, I'm not coding as much as I was back then when I was wearing many hats.Uh, I'm more now, I would say, uh, managing, uh, folk and managing, you know,the operations and the business and the product and stuff like this. Ipersonally am not a fan of that. Uh, that's something that I have to get betterat myself. But there's a lot of, there's a big human element attached to it andfinding the most effective approaches for developing a product and so on.Obviously, it all starts with building a great team. Uh, in that case, but inregards to coding, I still code, uh, whenever I have free time outside of work,and I'm trying to see what these generative models can apply into it. Now, I'mseeing every time there's a new update with a lot of these models. They breakeverything, uh, the model becomes stupider or better or whatever. Thestatistical correlations are becoming worse. That's, that's how I'm going tosay it. It's not intelligence. Um, and you have to kind of work around that andyou can make yourself really effective, but now you're moving towards thatgeneralist approach. Um, I personally dislike JavaScript. I also dislikeTypeScript. Um, so the front end side was never my, I just neverliked it. Um, It just never interested me. I never liked it.Um, not to say that you can't build great projects with it. It just, I never,never really appreciated it. Um, and believe it or not, JavaScript has itsroots to Mozilla, um, and Netscape. So it, you know, I can use it for thatpurpose. So I use it for things that are like, kind of like. Menial and, uh,like, okay, you just have to spend some time writing code. And it's likefollowing a recipe. If you have that type of, um, problem in front of you,these technologies will work really well for you. But if you have a very novelproblem, the problem, these these models will not work well, they will workwell, maybe for some parts or components, but they won't work, uh, for thewhole picture.Ali Zewail: So forkind of the repetitive, pretty standard kind of straightforward parts, which Saoud Khalifah: Butthe problem, the problem is Ali, if, uh, if you're doing that and everyone elseis doing that. I mean, you're justcompeting with everyone else. And what are you I heard, uh, so,uh, one of my close friends, uh, who's intertwined with the AI, um, one of thestartups, one of the biggest startups in NYC, they mentioned to me, they raiseda huge round, they used generative AI to code a lot of the code base, but therewas one bug that led to a hundred other bugs. And they didn't understand whatthe model producedfor them now to bug the problems. So they're now rewriting thewhole code manually. Soall the time, things that that model did for this big projectis now, uh, eliminated.So because of these types of bugs that it can produce and thewhole foundation is cracked.If you build a building where the cement is inferior to thestuff on top of it. You have to go back to the foundation and rebuild it.So that's, that's the hardest thing. But the smartest peopleusing these technologies that understand these problems can augment and enhancetheir processes for sure.Ali Zewail: Exactly.Yeah. You have to handle with care. I mean, if you're not an expert, don'tdepend at least for. Like don't build your foundations on it. Definitely.That's good advice. So, I mean, you mentioned that you do some investing, etcetera. I mean, what makes an investment stand out for you?Saoud Khalifah: The,the team. I'm, I'm kind of biased in the fact that I look for people that kindof have some elements of attributes that I've seen in myself. I look for peoplethat are very technical, know their stuff. I'm very good at smelling BS a mileaway. And. A lot of founders I've talked to are actually BS ing. This is, thisis the biggest problem I'm seeing because startups are so, like, sexy and, uh,like you can, you can grow a lot in it and you can raise money and you canappear on the media. If you're that type of founder, I'm not gonna invest. Uh,I'm investing in the people that are more, uh, that can debug the code hardcorelevel, but also have general curiosity to build their other skills.If you are able to do that, then You're, you're going to figureit out in one way or another. And by the way, uh, the, the lead investors infake spot, I asked them, why'd you invest in us after the whole thing, thewhole story. And they basically answered it that way, which I was like, huh,interesting. Ali Zewail: I have toget to them because that's almost our thesis word for word. So that's alsointeresting. Anyway. Don't want to talk about that. So what are thecharacteristics of the best investors in your opinion?Saoud Khalifah: Uh,they are part founder mentality and part investor mentality. Meaning they'renot, I feel like the people that are 100 percent investors that don't have.That don't code still a little bit that don't like, like build products orsomething like this, even on the side or experiment here and there, they'rejust basing now their investments on, on numbers and trajectories and, youknow, market information. I don't think that's the best thing you need to seethe trend 5 years ahead, 10 years ahead, and those are the best investors in mybook. Um, there are a couple of investors that I really like in, in SiliconValley and in New York City. That I've kind of, uh, followed that mantrawhenever they're doing their things. Um, some investors, uh, do invest inscammy stuff, which I think you need to be avoiding. And they fell in the trapof hype, which, or maybe they know what they're doing and they're like, Okay,we can make a lot of money in three years and let's, let's bounce. Um, is thatethical? I don't know. That's not my question.Uh, to me, I'm more interested in the people that are buildingsubstantial, meaningful things. Ali Zewail: So youkind of also answered my question that I was going to ask you about what, whatare the worst investors like?So, okay. If you could like maybe zoom me out to the regionbefore we wrap up, uh, wave of magic wand about the region and I don't know howconnected you are with Kuwait, how often you come, et cetera, and changesomething about the regional ecosystem that will drive, uh, the startup world.Um, you know, get it at a better place.What would you do?Saoud Khalifah: um,kind of look at, look at what the other markets that are innovating, uh, thatare doing. I think, uh, there are a lot of case studies for us to learn from.So one example is Japan. Japan used to be the cloner of the world in the 70sand 80s, right? If you look at the cars and stuff like this. But then theystarted integrating their, uh, like their Bushido code, essentially. Um, youknow, optimizing the heck out of the processes and making it super cheap andthen competitive. I'm not seeing that competitive edge in our region. I'm not,I'm just not seeing that attribute. Where can we be competitive? I know we havea lot of resources in the energy sense. So, and I remember in the crypto craze,there were miners starting to be built out in Kuwait.Um, as he's mentioned. To me, and a couple other people, andKoith mentioned this to me. And I was like, that's really interesting. I mean,we have a lot of energy there. We have oil, we have gas, so let's compete withother people in the world. Nothing came out of it. I'm not sure why. We need tolook at what we have, what is our competitive edge.It's, it's capital, wealth in the Gulf, uh, countries. And thenit's gas, and gas, and oil,and these things, and energy. So, I mean, these are two bigthings. But IAli Zewail: Yeah. Saoud Khalifah:we've, we've been underperforming in exploiting them and utilizing them. We'remore interested in selling them to the world than using it for our ownadvantage. Now that, that's something I think we need to examine closely.Ali Zewail: Yeah. Youmade me think about also this and extending what you just said, you know,competitive advantages also almost cultural because your Japan example, youwere talking about, they took something from their culture and they. Kind ofuse that as a competitive advantage in industry. So, I mean, in addition tohaving capital and energy, what is it about our culture that maybe, I mean,that's something that we need to think about that, that is different or uniqueor distinctive, uh, relatively speaking and, and drill down on that.I think that would be. Also something that would be, uh, worththinking about.Saoud Khalifah: I, Ithink so. I agree with you. I mean, the, the reason why I didn't stay in Kuwaitis because I love, I love competition. I love being competitive. I lovelearning as much as possible. In Kuwait, uh, I did not see that. Uh, it's, it'sgreat if you want to sit there, build a, build a family and, you know, take asummer vacation somewhere in Europe and stuff like this.I'm not interested in that. Uh, that doesn't interest me atall. I'm, I'm more interested in building things and, and stuff like that. The,you know, I still maintain touch with people from my Uh, we met, you know,before the podcast, we talked about which schools, uh, you were born in Kuwait,like this, but I still maintain touch with a lot of the folks. It was a schoolwhere you're from KG to year 12. Uh, that's the school. So the guysthat were with me in class. Same people. Uh, some of them arebuilding their own startups now,uh, which is really, really cool to see. And I'm seeingambition there. Uh, I'm seeing, you know, unfortunately there is a highunemployment rate. The u the Youth and uh, other re other countries, they don'thave employment opportunities because the only sector is, guess what?Ali Zewail: Uh,oiling ass. Government.Saoud Khalifah: Thegovernment and oil and gas, but that can only take you so far. Um, so you havea lot of people that are unemployed and they're just, you know, they're waitingfor their opportunity. We need to kind of look at that and make the avenue ofbuilding startups the promising avenue.Ali Zewail: Uh,couldn't agree more. So with that, uh, maybe we can go into the quick firequestions. And, uh, the first one is, What book do you like to recommend toothers? Or books.Saoud Khalifah: Uh,So I would recommend to me the most transformative book, uh was uh, Meditationsby Marcus Aurelius. I also have recently finished, uh, Tusculine Disputationsby Cicero, uh, who was a senator in Rome. He was really interestingbecause Ali Zewail:interesting character. Saoud Khalifah: Veryinteresting character. And he also, uh, you know, like Rome was very antiphilosophy. And then he came, like, yo, we can learn from Greek philosophy andapply it to our Roman daily lives instead of being just this gung ho warriorculture that Rome was.Ali Zewail: hmm. Saoud Khalifah: twobooks right now I would recommend. I also, I always recommend ancient booksbecause they've been filtered over thousands of years.Ali Zewail: Yep.Saoud Khalifah:they're still here for a reason. Why? Because they have some kind of value andthe human condition hasn't changed.Ali Zewail: Yep. Iagree. And that was something, uh, I, yeah, I mean, I, uh, I don't know why I'mtalking about myself so much today, but anyway, yeah, I like four or five yearsago, I decided to read the classics and I haven't regretted it. It's for this,for the, for the exact same reason you're saying, you know, reading Hugo whenyou're, you know, from France or, uh, from Germany or, uh, et cetera.There's a lot of wisdom there. It's been filtered through theages. That's why it's lasted so long.Saoud Khalifah: 100%.Ali Zewail: Um, allright. So how do you unwind and how do you stay energized?Saoud Khalifah: Uh, Iwork out a lot. I run. Now I'm fishing, uh, also, um, and I love to fish withmy son because he's learning a new skill. So, that's how that's how I wouldunwind. The music stuff still appears sometimes. Uh, but not as much as I'dlike.Ali Zewail: Okay.Well, what question should I have asked you that I didn't,Saoud Khalifah: Uh,How can we integrate philosophy more into startup culture?Ali Zewail: I wouldnever have thought of that question.Saoud Khalifah: Oh, Imean, it kind of branches off what we justtalked about. Ali Zewail: can we,Saoud Khalifah: Uh, Ithink, I think, uh, I think they, so a big part of me being able to face allthe challenges with, Startups that you face in that journey is, uh, throughstoicism. Um, like that's kind of like the school I adhere to. And, uh, youknow, you mentioned as he's mentioned this to you about me because whenever heface challenges, I would recommend him some parts from that school of thought.And I do that with everyone in my life. I think we can always learn from that.And Persevere through challenges that way.Ali Zewail: Cool. So,uh, with that, I'd, uh, I like to close on a note of gratitude. So what is agift you have received from someone that has made a positive impact on yourlife?Saoud Khalifah: Ithink, uh, the gift of family and love is, is one of the most important giftsthat you can have in your life. And, uh, being able to spontaneously, uh, buildthings like when I mentioned Odin and, uh, the deepfake detection framework,that's something that I'm very thankful for at work and in the personal life.So, um, that is something I'm very grateful for.Ali Zewail: Coversfamily and work. Um, um, and when your wife listens to this podcast, make sureshe. Goes to the very end because this is very important for her to hear aswell. So seriously speaking, though, thank you very much for your time. So Iwould spend so much, uh, more than we had scheduled. So I appreciate yourgenerosity with your time and great speaking to you.Saoud Khalifah:Likewise, I appreciate you having me. This is awesome. Thank you.Ali Zewail: Thank youso much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Startups Arabia podcast. Ifthere was something you really liked about what the guest said today, reach outto them on social media and tell them what you liked. And of course, if youhaven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? You don't want to miss any ofour 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.

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