I sat down with Allen Taylor, the Managing Partner at Endeavor Catalyst to learn more about their unique approach to investing across the world. Endeavor Catalyst fund is part of the non-profit Endeavor network, the home of 2500+ entrepreneurs across 42 markets. Over the past 11 years, Endeavor Catalyst, chaired by LinkedIn Co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman, has raised $500m and deployed $2m cheques in 300+ companies. We discuss the importance and return potential of investing in emer...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 68
I sat down with Elie Habib, the Co-founder of Anghami , the region’s most loved home grown brand! Anghami is a leading music streaming platform catering for the Arab world. We discuss Anghami’s much hyped listing on the NASDAQ New York on February 4th 2022 and the period that follows including the tumbling of their market cap well below their yearly revenues. We discuss Anghami’s new merger with OSN+ and Elie’s new role as CEO post merger. Elie gave me a carte blanche to ask him anything and I d...
Feb 05, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 67
I chat with Philip Bahoshy, the CEO of Magnitt , about the dynamic tech startup scene in the MENA region after a turbulent 2023. We delve into how recent economic shifts affect venture capital and discuss the current trends and 2024 predictions for venture capital in MENA, including the impact of new funding from Saudi Arabia, the resulting high demand for startups and the rise of startups like Tabby and Tamara to unicorn status. We also speculate on potential 2024 IPOs and ponder if MENA startu...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 66
In this second part of 2023’s wrap up, we take a look at some of the year’s most practical advice. We hear from top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists about company culture, shutting down a startup, selling a startup, re-purchasing a startup after a sale and the importance of founders at various stages of the startup building. We also remember a great episode on communicating with confidence. I wish you a great start for 2024 and looking forward to bring to you insights from the world’s most ...
Jan 07, 2024•41 min•Ep. 65
We’re looking back at 2023’s biggest AHA moments and what a tough year it has been. The common theme across the 19 episodes recorded in 2023 was ‘resilience’ and that is representative of the mood for the year. We saw soaring inflation, increased interest rates which led to a venture capital slow down, we also saw the collapse of several global banks including Silicon Valley Bank. We saw climate get a lot of attention especially as the UAE hosted COP28 and we ended the year with a brutal war on ...
Dec 25, 2023•39 min•Ep. 64
I sat down with Ali Halabi, Founder & CEO of Volt Lines , a Turkish based B2B mobility platform solving for the daily work commute in Istanbul, a city of 15million people that is notorious for its traffic woes. Ali has had a fascinating journey from Lebanon to Turkey and has rubbed shoulders with failure many times. In fact Volt Lines was the re-birth of a previous startup called Volt which he had to shut down. He saw himself celebrate Volt Line’s exit to Swvl, a $1.5B regional startup, only...
Dec 10, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 63
I sat down with Dr. Ryan Lefers, Co-founder & CEO at RedSea a climate tech company founded at King Abdullah University of Science and technology (KAUST) building technologies from the desert of Saudi Arabia to make agriculture more sustainable. With $36m of funding to date, RedSea products are currently selling across the world. We discuss Dr. Ryan’s journey from scientist to entrepreneur and the process of taking big ideas through R&D in a lab, manufacturing and testing as well as fundr...
Nov 26, 2023•52 min•Ep. 63
I sat down with Tomaso Rodriguez, CEO at talabat to learn more about his experience growing the largest food delivery platform across 8 Middle Eastern markets. Talabat was born in Kuwait in 2004 and was sold to global player Delivery Hero in 2015 for $170m. Tomaso shares insights on talabat's complex operations, technology and artificial intelligence, building a culture of innovation, creating new revenue streams as well as his thoughts on potential acquisitions for talabat. Please spend 7min to...
Nov 12, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 61
I sat down with GV Ravishankar the Managing Director at Peak XV (previously Sequoia India) to discus the state of growth stage investing given the current macro environment. The team at Peak XV are managing US$10bn in assets. GV walks us through Peak XV's investment strategy with a focus on MENA, what he looks for in target companies, the importance of founders as the startup matures, advice to founders in his portfolio companies as they weather the global downturn, and parallels between India, ...
Oct 29, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 60
I sat down with Dr Saliha Afridi, Clinical Psychologist and Founder of The Lighthouse Arabia (https://www.lighthousearabia.com), to understand how we can prepare better, react better recover better from rejection. No is a powerful word. Being comfortable saying no in the right situations is essential to setting healthy boundaries at work and in our personal lives. But sometimes in our professional lives hearing a no can be disheartening. Whether you are a salesperson, in negotiations, an entrepr...
Oct 15, 2023•53 min•Ep. 59
I sat down with Dr. Ali Fenwick, Professor of Organizational Behavior & Innovation at Hult International business school, to discuss how culturally specific narratives of AI fuel fear or foster optimism and why he fully believes that AI should look and behave more like a human than a robot. An enlightening discussion about what AI means, how ChatGPT feels sentient, the predictability of algorithms and how Dr. Ali built a ~2 million social media following by creating viral content and lastly ...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 58
I sat down with Philip Bahoshy, the founder and CEO of MAGNiTT, the leading VC data platform, to unpack the most recent H1 report on the venture capital landscape and trends across MENA, Pakistan, Turkey and SEA. We discuss the macro conditions leading to the slowdown, how are investors behaving, and what it means for our nascent ecosystem. We also touch on winning industries, new and emerging industries, artificial intelligence and I get Philip’s views on Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ work ethic as hi...
Sep 17, 2023•56 min•Ep. 57
Marwan Chaar and Hassan Jaffar co-founded Carzaty in 2018 in Oman. Carzaty aims at transforming the customer's used car buying journey from a messy experience to a high trust, digital first journey. Carzaty followed a portfolio management approach to selecting, buying and pricing cars. The founders raised $5.9Mn since inception and exited to Mexico born Kavak in 2021. The founder's approach to building and exiting Carzaty is quite interesting as they were quite methodical and analytical. While o...
Jul 02, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 56
Mudassir Sheikha is the Co-founder & CEO of Careem, the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan's (MENAP) biggest startup success story to date with a $3.1Bn exit to Uber in 2020. After the ride hailing success, In April 2023 Mudassir announced a new entity 'Careem Technologies' that will focus on building the region's super app and provide a wide range of services to meet the needs of MENAP's 500 million+ population. Mudassir and I discuss the learnings from the various stages of Careem as w...
Jun 18, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 55
Zuhair Shamma and Rawan Baddour are the co-founders of Zest equity, a platform that enables startup founders, employees and investors to sell shares they've earned in a secondary transaction, providing much needed liquidity and incentives. But not everyone is bought in, some investors are proponents of such liquidity events, while others remain skeptical as it may incentivize bad actors. A great discussion around syndications, secondary transactions, ESOP and the maturity of the startup ecosyste...
Jun 04, 2023•59 min•Ep. 54
Kareem Elsirafy is the Managing Partner at Modus Capital, a venture builder with offices in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and soon in Riyadh. Kareem emigrated to the US from Egypt as a toddler, grew up in a challenging environment and joined the US Marine Corps to get some discipline. 4 years later he found himself in a homeless shelter trying to integrate back into society. He eventually worked his way out of homelessness into Columbia University and ultimately co-founding Unite Us, a startup that supports ...
May 21, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 53
Presenting confidently is a skill that no entrepreneur or business leader can ignore. The ability to communicate to different stakeholders in a clear, concise and attention grabbing manner is vital to success. I sit down with Bill Connor - veteran White House TV correspondent and anchorman for 15 years - currently the Founder & CEO of Three Media Consultancy to discuss how we can prepare content for presentations and speeches, present the content and then deliver a strong ask. We also discus...
May 07, 2023•58 min•Ep. 52
Startups across the globe are reckoning with a down cycle as a result of the overall macro economic environment and some practices that were long romanticized by Silicon Valley - such as growth at all cost - that have led to bloated startups with a high cash burn and a long path to profitability. I speak to Basil Moftah, General Partner at Nclude, a Venture Capital firm based in Egypt about the impact of the global environment on local startups. We also discuss the challenges that Egyptian start...
Apr 24, 2023•57 min•Ep. 51
The post Covid era has been an eventful one with rising inflation, a war in Europe, choppy markets and a severe correction in the startup world with both private & public valuations plummeting. That precipitated the collapse of 5 banks within a few weeks including the #1 global startup bank; Silicon Valley bank. I invite my friend and finance expert Binod Shankar - an ex-finance director, ex-founder, executive coach and market analyst on Bloomberg & CNBC - to talk to us about inflation, ...
Apr 09, 2023•53 min•Ep. 50
Adam Ridgway, a British expat, moved to the UAE 15 years ago to pursue his career in TV and like most entrepreneurs to be, he realized that he needed autonomy to unleash his creativity. He went on to launch and exit several businesses in branding and publishing until his passion for bikes led him to launch One Moto ( https://one-moto.com/ ), a global electric vehicle startup from the UAE. Adam is the quintessential entrepreneur; visionary, bold, resourceful, resilient and with a strong bias to a...
Mar 26, 2023•54 min•Ep. 49
Happy International women's day! I wanted to address the topic from a mental health perspective and I wanted to hold a conversation that would be beneficial to both men and women. I chat to Carine el Khazen Hadati, a leading clinical psychologist in Dubai about raising girls that become resilient, content and independent women. We discuss the behaviors that we parents should be modeling at home, dealing with eating disorders in kids and adults, and catching ourselves as we repeatedly judge and s...
Mar 12, 2023•55 min•Ep. 48
Hossam is a marine oceanographer turned climate fund manager. We discuss the nature economy, regenerative farming, insect protein, food security and why the Middle East and Africa region is particularly vulnerable vis-a-vis the Global North. A truly educational conversation and a wake up call for all of us to safeguard our planet which is 'teetering on bankruptcy'. For more information visit: www.conversationswithloulou.com
Feb 27, 2023•53 min•Ep. 47
Nima Abu Wardeh, an award winning journalist and the former BBC World reporter, uncovers some of the tools that she teaches in her media trainings to politicians and business leaders. Nima is on a path to democratize the art of communicating effectively to all. This podcast is a communications masterclass and is a must listen if you are looking to become a better communicator and ultimately get what you want. For more information visit: www.conversationswithloulou.com
Feb 13, 2023•48 min•Ep. 46
Philip Bahoshy - the Founder & CEO of Magnitt.com - and I unpack the latest Emerging Venture Markets 2022 report recently published by Magnitt. Magnitt tracks startup and investment data across MENA, Africa, Turkey and Pakistan. We discuss venture capital investment trends, winning industries, 2023 predictions and advice for founders. A great way to set the scene for 2023. For more information visit www.conversationswithloulou.com
Jan 29, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 45
Sufyan Al Issa, Ph.D, is the Head of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the UAE. We discuss the need for more investment in the MENA region particularly to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SGD) such as climate, education, financial inclusion and more. Sufyan highlights some of the programs and channels that the IFC is creating to support local entrepreneurs and SMEs particularly in cross-border growth. We also discuss the gender gap and why we must act now. For more information vi...
Dec 16, 2022•36 min•Ep. 44
Dr. Stephen Druggan is an experienced educator and leader, he is currently the Superintendent at the American School of Dubai. We discuss the role that schools play in the development of our children and the responsibilities that schools have in raising children that are whole, both emotionally, academically and socially. We discuss the need for diversity of thought, how can schools teach resilience and confidence, how are schools dealing with mental health and we wrap with some heartfelt advice...
Dec 01, 2022•50 min•Ep. 43
Dr. Raf Fatani is spearheading Amazon Alexa in Arabic globally. While most firms tend to revert to the Modern Standard Arabic (or Fusha - فصحة) when they speak to over half a billion Arabic speakers globally, Raf decided that Alexa cannot go down the same path and that an investment has to be made once and for all to bring colloquial Arabic to technology. We discuss the challenges of building Alexa in Arabic from the ground up, what is the utility of a virtual assistant today and what does the f...
Nov 10, 2022•48 min•Ep. 42
Dr. Noah Raford is a globally respected futurist and the Director of the Oxford Program on Peace, Policy and the Metaverse. He was previously a founding executive and Futurist-in-Chief at the Dubai Future Foundation and a senior advisor in the UAE Prime Minister's Office. We discuss the evolution of gaming and why we should be paying attention as our lives become increasingly intertwined in these sophisticated spaces where we spend time, socialise, create economic value and culture. Follow Noah ...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 41
Christian Eid is one of the few who played a critical role in Careem's early days launching new markets and then heading marketing for the group. The efforts made in the early days led to its eventual $3.1Bn sale to Uber in 2019. We talk about Careem's secret sauce and how he has taken this knowledge to launch two new ventures, DuckLife and NoBueno. With NoBueno, Christian is taking a non-traditional approach to talent matching, we discuss the biases in the current recruitment process and how he...
Oct 14, 2022•44 min•Ep. 40
I speak to Meta's Regional Director for MENA, Fares Akkad about Meta's $10Bn push into the metaverse and what it would mean for us to have both physical and virtual lives. What is the metaverse exactly and how can we experience it? We also discuss the creator economy from a MENA perspective and the opportunities for creators and for businesses. A very insightful discussion that provides a glimpse of what's coming! For more information visit: www.conversationswithloulou.com or reach out to me on ...
Sep 29, 2022•52 min•Ep. 39
