Omar Kassim
@okassim
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Stories of the startups and businesses shaping the future of MENA
London | Dubai
Joined September 2010
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1. Be genuinely interested in what you’re building
2. Get to a place where there’s nothing else that you’d rather be doing
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At every setback, you have the opportunity to show who you really are:
Do you turn vindictive, and use the opportunity to inflict as much pain as possible?
or
Do you dig deep and act with fairness, compassion and generosity?
True character is forged in the furnace of hardship
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Optimise for generosity: Give up your time, your wealth, and your knowledge to enable others, without want for anything in return
Whilst counter-intuitive, the payback is usually by means unexpected and largely in spades
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“Do not make the love of people your worry, people’s minds change often. They might love you today, and hate you tomorrow. And let your worry be how the Lord of the people will love you..”
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Spend the time and energy connecting others to like minded people. It’ll pay off in ways unexpected and untold
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⚡️One man and a bunch of mostly PHP out-earning your well funded startup.
It's incredible where determination, drive and a keep-on-executing-attitude can get you 🚀
@levelsio
Many congratulations 👏🏼
📈 I just passed 🏅 $52,843 in monthly revenue
🎒 Nomad List: $30,416/mo
👩💻 Remote OK: $20,467/mo
📖 MAKE: $1,960/mo
🗺 Hoodmaps: $0/mo
📊 Extrapolated ARR $634,116/year
More details 👉
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One of the unexpected winners of
@Rivian
’s IPO is JIMCO, the investment subsidiary of
@ALJCorporate
, a 76 year old family business based out of KSA
If rumour be true, what started as a seed cheque of $100k, eventually became a $303m investment, that..
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If you've ever wondered what a bad term sheet looks like, this is up there:
Received recently by a friend, this "investor" will pay you a whole dollar for 15% of your business, lend you $400k in tranches, which you'll need to pay back in 36 months, and pay 12% for your troubles
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I've spent the last six months working with an engineering contracting firm. Never again ❌
Skillset aside, myopic mercenaries will likely do more damage than good with their forever focus on billable hours
If you've got the option to build a team, hands down build one ✅
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🗣
@mohamed_alabbar
: "..Do it tonight. Drop it and let’s compete on 15 percent, let’s serve the restaurants beautifully .. You have been making money for so many years .. You got rich all these years .. Let’s not embarrass ourselves.”
🥊
@Careem
: We're going to zero
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
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💸 Two days ago I was scammed trying to buy tickets to
@trevornoah
’s 👋 sold out show in Abu Dhabi, off the back of a
@dubizzle
listing
Today, I unscammed myself and got my money back 💪
Hit ❤️ if you’d like to hear the story
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My new startup
@Nomod
is LIVE on
@ProductHunt
: Accept card payments on your phone 💳📲, anytime, anywhere, no hardware required!
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.
@EmiratesNBD
's future of banking = breaking every password manager out there + no copy paste + limiting passwords to 14 characters
🙄
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👋 I’m super excited to officially announce
@Nomod
, an idea that we’ve been quietly working on since late 2019
Nomod is a beautifully easy way for merchants around the world to accept card payments on their phone with no extra hardware 💳📲
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When your told that 75% of your parking must remain closed, build a drive-in cinema 🎥
This is so clever. Much props to
@voxcinemas
+
@MallofEmirates
🎩
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⚡️This exact bag,
@peakdesignltd
’s Everyday Backpack Charcoal 20L has been my daily driver for coming on two years,
💙 Absolutely love it. Highly recommended.
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📦 In early January, we're kicking off an e-commerce fulfilment play for small lovable businesses looking to sell online in the region.
We're calling it Farfill 💙
Drop us a line, give us feedback, please tell your friends 🙏
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On Saturday 17th October 2009, my youngest brother Muhammad, was killed in a rear-end collision by a drunk driver. He was 17.
It’s been ten years.
Muhammad was bright, cheerful, and could light up any room in an instant. We were going to build an empire and take on the world
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Dubai and by extension, the MENA region is the food delivery capital of the world
Why?
When you have a first world economy with third world costs, delivery works
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We're doing ourselves a great disservice by looking at selective "research" and quickly trumpeting ourselves number one. The reality is far from it.
Are we making progress? Absolutely
Are we incredibly ambitious? Undeniably so
Are we the best out there? Ring me over WhatsApp
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Dubai is a city-state startup, whilst the UAE is a multi-family office hedge fund, which is why we can get a probe to Mars, but can't ring anyone over WhatsApp to talk about it
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It looks like the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh is fully booked for the next 25 days 🤔
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Banking and telco is broken in the UAE. So much so that it is hurting our economy.
A thread
1/17
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Stop fearing failure, instead embrace it
Get used to to people saying no, use it as motivation to push on
Be patient, be tenacious
Work hard, play later
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Bank’s entire online operation is hijacked from DNS downwards. Replica sites, authentic certs, the works. .
@troyhunt
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I used to think that compromising on quality on anything wasn’t worth it.
I was wrong.
It’s far more efficient to embrace good enough (but, never terrible) and learn what truly demands excellence.
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In case you wondered what $30 billion in sales looks like the day after
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⚡️ Yesterday
@emaardubai
announced Ease by Emaar, an
@Airbnb
competitor, which lists a bunch of rentals in Downtown Dubai, and today promptly sent out a notice to all homeowners in Downtown Dubai to kill off any potential competition
Yay monopolies 🏳
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🧙♂️ In true
@careem
spirit, a public list of xCareemers + startups and tech firms who are currently hiring has been compiled and is making the rounds,
If you're looking for great regional Product, Engineering, and Ops talent, definitely worth checking out
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No, No, No, No
No, No, No, No, No
No, No, No,
No, No
No, No
No, No, No, No
No, No
No, Yes
All it takes is one. Stay tenacious until you break through the wall
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🙏 At an incredibly difficult time for
@careem
,
@MudassirSheikha
finds a way to remain humble, whilst renewing the organisation's focus.
Following an all-hands earlier today, this note went out to the team
As the saying goes, real leaders are forged in crisis
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🌯 Not only is this a brutal assessment of the incredible difficulty of being a restaurant operator in a city like Dubai, but also nails why great product experiences win, even when they're not the biggest nor available in every market
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🇵🇸 Incredibly privileged to be in Palestine and Jerusalem this week, kicking off a no comment, images only thread
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“You don’t need money to progress, you need effort to progress”
- My ten year old
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⚡️ My 4 year old has set “iPad disabled” as his background “to trick people”
🤯
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Last week my nine year old and I built our first project of the summer:
A Raspberry Pi powered ADS-B receiver feeding into
@flightaware
that we took out to
@DXB
for a spin this morning ✈️
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“Dubai Tax” = an unexpected fine, fee, request, expense, commission, slice, or demand for payment. Usually inexplicable, rarely contested, and celebrated with cake if reversed
Also used colloquially to explain away arbitrary cost of living items, in lieu of paying taxes
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Keep putting one foot in front of the other. When you next look up, you've made more progress than you thought possible when you first set out
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When you can’t quite figure out why your e-commerce operation is haemorrhaging money
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⚡️ My little brother had this posted on a notice board above his desk.
Nine years ago today, he was killed by a drunk driver who hit him in a rear-end collision.
The short life that he lead continues to keep me believing.
Never settle.
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⚡️ An open letter from
@MudassirSheikha
, co-founder and CEO of
@careem
, to governments, financial institutions, businesses, and the wider community across the region, to support our captains 🚀
We need so much more of this!
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🚀 Inspired by
@ZinaBon
's xCareemers list, I decided to kick off xMENA, a list for everyone else.
The aim remains to connect laid off tech and startup talent with opportunities. And as with the original, it's open for anyone to edit:
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⚡️In the UAE, we have all the right ideas and all the wrong gatekeepers.
💡 What could be the world’s greatest sandbox is being undermined by a fundamental misunderstanding of needs.
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Good manners and impeccable politeness will take you a long way in life
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Instead of comparing up, look down. See the millions that have less than you. Be grateful, be humble.
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💸 Insistent profiteering at its worst
No parent in their right mind is going to pay you for a service that you can’t provide. Cut your margins, trim your costs and inject some equity from the decades of highly profitable growth
@DinoVarkey
GEMS Education has said it will offer some parents discounts on school fees, subject to them submitting details of their financial situation
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⚡️ First new bit of writing after combining the
@EsanjoHQ
blog + my personal blog into a new thing called Varhunt,
🤦🏻♂️ Incidents from
@fetchr
,
@bitoasis
&
@DubaiEye1038FM
, and why we should speak up about the challenges that our businesses face
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⚡️ This is crazy impressive. Going back to something I said in early 2018:
One man and a bunch of mostly PHP continuing to out-earn your well funded startup.
@levelsio
Many more congratulations 🚀
It took 4 years to get here, but we did it:
$83,333+/mo revenue
💳 11,996 customers
💸 740 payments/mo
🤖 208 cron jobs
🧧 $115 avg payment
💎 2 apps: +
📦 1 VPS
🎫 0 ad budget
💰 0 funding
($83k is ✨special because * 12 is $1M)
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"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel"
- Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum
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⚡️
@careem
raises $400m from
@etisalatAnd
, spins out from under
@Uber
, and splits business to Rides and Technologies, with the latter being run by
@MudassirSheikha
and Co
⚡️
@etisalatAnd
+
@careem
has been in the works for a number of months. Incredibly long DD and likely the ecosystem’s worst kept secret 😅
Great to see
@MudassirSheikha
& Co getting out from under
@Uber
and accessing the firepower to kick on with v2
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When did entrepreneurship get this complicated?
😳 Accelerators, incubators, bootcamps, smart cities, mentors, industry experts
🙏 Just do
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My better half created “Mummy’s Deal” as a birthday present for our 9 year old 😂
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At every setback, write down how long it takes you to both mentally and emotionally return to your baseline
Over time, consciously attempt to bounce back faster and therefore build a more resilience self
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👏 Launch
🤬 Attempt to ban competition
🤯 Unlaunch
🥳 Get schooled that you're not a regulator
🙄 Relaunch
Day in the life of a corporate startup
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“I view innovation as just intellectual immigration,” he says. “When you leave the comforts of what you know, expose yourself to criticism, go to something that people don’t believe is possible, persist, persist, persist ... That is what an immigrant does”
Noubar Afeyan, Moderna
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⚡️ A little over a year on, it unfortunately looks like
@AWOKcom
quietly slipped into liquidation earlier this summer
Dubai-based ecommerce platform raises $30 million in one of the largest Series A rounds of region
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Answer the first 1000 support tickets yourself
It'll do wonders for your product, for how you understand your customer's problems, and will set the bar on delivering exceptional customer support
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📣 Unfortunately, I’ve decided to terminate
@jadpadbot
project to give myself more headspace for a new startup.
But rather than *kill* it, we’ve decided to give away whatever we’ve got so far, for free, to an interested someone. That includes:
📲 In a few weeks, we're heading back into e-commerce with a new play in refurbished tech (my one true love, kids and family aside) 💙
👋 Sign up at , follow over
@jadpadbot
Feedback, comments and the usual is always appreciated 🙏
🚀
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🎙Join
@farazkhalid
, CEO of
@noon
,
@hosamarab
, Co-Founder & CEO of
@paywithtabby
, and myself tomorrow night on ♣️
@joinClubhouse
at 2130 Dubai, as we talk about the future of e-commerce, BNPL, grocery, food, and fintech in the Middle East
🎁🍏🍣💸🕤
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Forget $8 blue, in Dubai we pay $1000 for gold and turn regular people into official orgs
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And this little cheeky bit of paper that he carefully folded up, made me sign, and then triumphantly revealed 😄
انا لله وانا اليه راجعون
May Allah grant him Jannah
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🖐 Too many of us don't pay attention to our cost structures until we're at the precipice.
Even if you're crushing it and its raining VC dollars, cost discipline will always serve you well, ensuring survival when the game changes as it invariably does.
Always be trimming.
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Whilst many of us have Bachelors, Masters, PhDs, and letters that we carefully place after our names, when it comes to the Quran, we remain in preschool
This year, Ramadan has exposed our weakness, as we’re unable to recite to lead our families in salah when called upon
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After much fretting,
@NamshiDotCom
has been snapped up by
@noon
for $335.2m - in cash - netting
@emaardubai
a gross gain of $54.7m or 19.5%. On est. sales of $400m, that works out to a multiple of 0.8x, which is in line with comps but is light relative to historic performance
“..Emaar is weighing options to sell fashion e-commerce business
@NamshiDotCom
that may include a listing abroad via a SPAC, three sources familiar with the matter said. An outright sale of Namshi may generate $600 million to $700 million in proceeds..”
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🐪 We've been playing with a new idea in the jobs discovery space for the region,
It feels like there's a gap between the products that we use every day and where we go to look for new work opportunities.
Super early, feedback appreciated! 💙
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