Aeolian Sands
Aeolian Sands
In Conversation with Ramy Assaf | Aeolian Sands - Ep08
Want to bring an ambitious idea to life? Ramy Assaf, founder of successful technology platform Zbooni, chats with Jon about entrepreneurship.
From growing up in California to revolutionising commerce and payments in the Middle East, Ramy shares his unmissable insights on building a start-up, seeking funding and the most important traits for tech leaders and teams.
Today we are going treasure hunting, and it's not necessarily for gold. No, we're looking for nuggets of information and knowledge. And joining me is a friend and mentor, Ramy Assaf. Welcome along.
Ramy Assaf:Thank you for having me, Jon.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Ramy, you know, obviously you're the head and founder of Zbooni, which, if people haven't come across it, it's a technology company based here in the Middle East, and we'll talk about that a little bit further in the program. But to start with, how would you actually describe yourself? Because we always tend to introduce ourselves and say, you know, I would say Hi, I'm Jon from duke+mir. But when you're at a party or a networking event, how do you describe yourself?
Ramy Assaf:Yeah, good question. The way I would describe myself is I work in tech and you know I've been living in Dubai for X amount of years and then, if they have follow on questions after that, I talk about my background and how I grew up in the States, and that explains why I speak perfect American English, even though I look like I should have an accent. And you know I do see myself sort of as a third world kid, right. So I was born in the States, my parents weren't? They immigrated to the states. I immigrated here, uh, so I'm just a blend, you could say, of, uh, of the modern world and you know obviously you mentioned there that you've kind of lived in different places.
Jon Ivan-Duke:You grew up in California, but obviously your family have lived in different parts. You've been here for quite some time now. What was it like, you know, in those early days when you were growing up as a kid in California? I often think, you know, I've been to California a few times myself and I often compare it a little bit to Australia. You know there's good looking people, there's good weather and everybody eats too many avocados. But what was it like for for you in California growing up?
Ramy Assaf:growing up it was, it was amazing. It was fantastic. Um, I didn't realize how awesome it was. I didn't know what it was like to that was, we only had perfect weather year round and that wasn't a normal thing for the whole world. Um, peaceful, uh, quiet, safe, beautiful, good access to health, education. You know, I think I was part of sort of like one of the last generations of you know the American dream that still existed and is diminishing now.
Jon Ivan-Duke:But why do you say that? Why do you think it's diminishing?
Ramy Assaf:I mean, just watch the news, it's falling apart. I mean, the Americans have really misstepped in many foreign policy decisions and the perception of the US from the outside has changed dramatically. It's not the place where everyone's dying to go anymore, and in fact the reverse is true. A lot of Americans I know and friends I have are trying to get out and move to parts of the world like Dubai, and so it's lost its shine. Interesting.
Jon Ivan-Duke:I mean there's a lot of things which would suggest that the US is still very much booming. You know, a lot of the investment is still there and, obviously, working in technology, there's probably still no better place to be than the US.
Ramy Assaf:Fine, yes, I would agree. Like look, if you have a population of 350 million people and you can offer a product or service or you can offer it, you know you can build a company. Yes, you can make a lot of money and you can build big businesses in the US, probably still bigger than other parts of the world, but it's become prohibitive to do that, more so than ever. It's harder and you know, I think there's business is one aspect only and you can make money in all parts of the world now and globalization is real and you don't need to be in any specific place to have access to the Internet and build an Internet-based business, for example. So dynamics have shifted and build an internet-based business, for example.
Jon Ivan-Duke:So dynamics have shifted. Obviously, you know a lot of kids. When they're growing up, they have dreams and aspirations, and some of those are based on money, some of them based on career, and there might be other things as well. When you were in high school, were you the gawky kids you know? Everyone sort of has this image of tech founders being the ones who are just in the in the science lab or in the computer lab. Or were you the popular kid who was off playing basketball?
Jon Ivan-Duke:probably the popular kid is how I would remember. If I asked your friends from school, right, would they say the same?
Ramy Assaf:but the the truth is, um, you know, I think I was fortunate going back to living in california because it was a place, place where Silicon Valley sort of created this new genre of entrepreneurship, okay, and it was at the advent of the internet, mobile age, et cetera, and it became commonplace for us to think about you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? We I was part of that shift from analog to digital and for me, the people I looked up to were creating digital businesses and internet-based businesses and that was surrounding me. So that was always, for me, the obvious go-to right. That was the destination. Yeah, it wasn't something that I worked a whole career and then realized I should shift. For me it was like at the high school level, I was thinking about internet businesses and what you can do with the internet, and so maybe I was just fortunate in timing um, probably too early if anything, but I had a lot of experience and that was my natural thought process was how do I uh get involved?
Jon Ivan-Duke:that so growing up in California, being surrounded by businesses that were innovating and doing things a little bit differently in the digital space, that shaped your future career path.
Ramy Assaf:Yeah, and it was synonymous with making money too. Right, there would be. We'd be at a cafe. A Lamborghini pulls up and it's like, oh, what does he do? He's like, oh, he does affiliate marketing. It's like he does affiliate marketing. You know what is that and you realize that there's these spaces online where people are making real money and people are making living for themselves and they're doing better than doctors and lawyers in many cases, because they're just a little bit more switched on to this digital thing and they're doing better than doctors and lawyers in many cases because they're just a little bit more switched on to this digital thing and they know where the money is and where the pockets are.
Jon Ivan-Duke:So when you first set out, you know you're sort of 18 years old or so and you're finishing high school. What propelled you in the direction that you took then? Because you've mentioned money a couple of times and you know being surrounded by tech companies, so you know you wanted to follow the money, you wanted to follow technology. Perhaps. How did you decide what it was that you wanted to do and how you're going to get to the, to the place you wanted to be?
Ramy Assaf:Let me correct this for a second. Because you want to follow the money, because you want to know there's a career in that and you can sustain it, but it really isn't. Wasn't for me. It wasn't about the money per se Okay, Okay, and if it was, then I've failed to achieve that. What it's really about is thinking about interesting businesses that you can create quickly, that you have control over your own destiny, that you can shape, and the internet presents an opportunity for you to do that. I think that's pretty much internationally recognized now. Now, when I was growing up, my parents were very cool about you. Know you can follow your dreams. You know it wasn't the typical immigrant parents saying you need to be a doctor.
Jon Ivan-Duke:You must be a doctor.
Ramy Assaf:I didn't get that, I don't know why I didn't get that, but I didn't get that. I thought I didn't have what it takes to become a doctor. So I had a lot of freedom of choice and I had to think about it and I was, like you know, it would probably be smart for me to go to law school, and so I followed that path and I was doing that, but my heart wasn't in it right and I took the lsats.
Ramy Assaf:I got into law school and on the side I had been tinkering with different internet based ventures and in my heart of hearts I was like you know what? It would be so much cooler if I could just dedicate my life to this, this side of things. I don't want to read contracts all day and go through and deal with people's headaches all the time.
Jon Ivan-Duke:That's, that's a stressful job so you decided to become a startup founder because you're going to be stressed out either way.
Ramy Assaf:You might as well do something you're going to enjoy.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Yeah, fair enough, yeah, and you know, obviously, I think I personally think being a startup founder is is pretty tough, um, potentially even tougher than being a lawyer, where you've got precedent. When you're a startup founder, and particularly in technology, there isn't a precedent. You're having to, you know, sort of shape your own future, which, in many ways, you have to be quite visionary to do what propels you in terms of that vision. How do you decide where you're going to go in a tech business or, in fact, in in your direction, in your career, when there isn't necessarily that that rope to guide you up the mountain?
Ramy Assaf:yeah, look it's. It's tough, it's not an easy job and, um, not everyone can or should do it. It really depends on your disposition, your personality type, your outlook on life. If you're the type to get flustered and you're prone to a lot of anxiety and stuff like that, it's probably not a great idea to go down that path. But if you're a little bit of an optimist and you know how to uh, you know pace yourself and you have discipline plus that positivity, it might be okay for you. But even then it's still hard.
Ramy Assaf:But that's the minimum prerequisite for even thinking about it, because you're going to face so many obstacles. It's like you're just saying sign me up for this never ending problem journey Because I think I'll have what it takes to solve it each and every day. There's no real glory to it and there's no magic wand to it. It's just a series of small, tiny micro decisions, bigger decisions. And the way I look at it now is, you know and I'm going to borrow this from from Jeff Bezos, because when he talks about it, they're not thinking about Amazon this quarter or next quarter, they're thinking about it in a year or five years down the road, and you have to be able to go back and reverse out and look at things on that timeline and horizon. This decision today, what would it do for us in three years from now? What does that look like in Q3 of 2028? Right and horizon. What would this decision today? What would it do for us in three years from now? What does that look like in q3 of 2028?
Jon Ivan-Duke:right, um, and if that makes sense and that's that fits, you can reverse, engineer back and say, okay, that's a good decision for us to take today that's really interesting way of putting it, and you know it's actually there's two ways of looking, because you've obviously saying you know you need to look into the future. You need to have that, to have that path into where you're going. But there's people like Mark Cuban, for example, who've said just make the next best decision't a brag. But we work with a Saudi prince and he has a similar philosophy and mindset. That it's. You know, if you look too far into the future, you can set this sort of path as to where you want to get to.
Jon Ivan-Duke:But you know, in five years your business A may have changed, your team might have changed and the market might have changed. So you know you might end up in a place where that isn't where the market is. So there's different ways of looking at those, the journey that you navigate. So fascinating that you have that long term plan. But how do you make a decision when it comes to running the business? You make a decision when, when it comes to to um, you know, running the business when you're um, when you're deciding how you you're going to sort of shape your team or um the, the products that you're going to develop. When you're making those decisions. Do you have a a view that, um it has to be shaped in a certain way, in terms of um it has to help people? Does it have to make money? What? What do you? What focuses you and what drives you into making those decisions for your business?
Ramy Assaf:Yeah, I mean it's gonna depend. Some decisions you make are for the immediate short term. Some sacrifices you make that which is a sacrifice for a longer term right. If we need to make more revenue, I need to do something today that drives that, although I don't want that to impact what I'm able to do longer term or a longer term strategy around a certain approach. So you have to perform this balancing act at all times with what are good short-term decisions and long-term decisions, and know when to optimize for what, and that changes based on where you are in your journey. So if you have just raised a Series A round, you're going to start thinking about longer-term ambitions and what you want to accomplish, and you may not be thinking about revenue generation immediately, right, you're not going to optimize every decision. You're going to optimize for scale now and I have to outlay money in order to bring it back in later, because I have some buffer now. I have capital which I can work with, so I have time on my side in theory. But if you're a startup who doesn't have that runway, you don't have that luxury. So your decisions are going to be purely based off of what allows me to keep existing surviving to get to that next day or month. And just because you, you know so, it will look different based on where the company is or what what it needs at that time. You know so it will look different based on where where the company is or what what it needs at that time, and it may change, right.
Ramy Assaf:So you may be a company that is not looking to raise money and you're only thinking about short term, but if you are raising money and that's a I'm I'm mentioning this because it's a big um decision to make, right Do you really want to raise money for your business? Do you know what the implications are of that? Do you know what that involves? You know? You know we celebrated a lot as entrepreneurs or as an ecosystem, the raising of money. It just means you're going to have this multimillion dollar chain around your neck that's just hanging. And now there's new expectations and that there's new conditions that need to be met all the time, and you have to satisfy all these new stakeholders. And not everyone is seeing things like you all the time, and so it's. You're talking about pressure. Sometimes raising capital multiplies that pressure as opposed to relieves it. So I think a lot of people don't really understand that side of it. You know it's a blessing to be able to be in a position where your company can raise money, but you have to understand the other side of it.
Jon Ivan-Duke:But maybe you've got a better idea on this because your career trajectory you know you. You didn't go down the law route. You went into technology and you went through a sort of couple of different, different roles but you ended up in venture capital and this perhaps gave you an oversight on the landscape for investment. How has that shaped the way that you think now in the business You've obviously gone into raising capital yourself. How has that experience shaped what you do now?
Ramy Assaf:Um, how has that experience shaped what you do now? It's completely transformed it, because you have to be able to sit on both sides of the table right, and for so long I was just the guy who had ideas and if we could just do this and raise money, we could execute that and do all these things. And we were the ones I was. You know, I was working in a few different startups that that did raise capital, and when I shifted to venture capital, as sitting on the other side of the table, it gives you a completely different perspective, which is, you know all of these businesses that you see they're not going to come complete. You know they, they don't come as a complete pie. There's always something missing.
Ramy Assaf:And when you, when you survey, or you look at 500 pitch decks a year, or 700 or a thousand, whatever, it sharpens you to the point where, oh I, oh, the way they, they approach this is really smart, but they have this missing. Or these guys or these girls did this really well, but not that. And you start to see from the outside what the flaws are, where the gaps are, and when you see that, like, pattern recognition starts to emerge and then you start to build your own awareness. It's like having a, you know, like a master's or PhD in this subject now, and that's not a real thing, but that's an instinctual thing that gives you more confidence, Like, oh okay, I think I understand all the physics behind this now and you know. For my, my example is, you know, leaving venture capital back to the startup side, I could now apply these learnings again, but more refined, which was, which was, a great blessing actually.
Jon Ivan-Duke:You talked about instincts there, and business instincts and personal instincts I think are quite important with decision-making and you know having an internal compass as well that directs it. How do you set your internal compass and how do you know when you need to reset that?
Ramy Assaf:and and how do you know when you need to reset that? You know, like there's this um belief around uh, the customer is the most important thing and we have to have empathy for the customer. And that was sort of a novel approach to approaching everything. When it comes to these building these businesses, customers can come first, which I think is true, and ultimately, you don't have a business if you don't have customers. So, yeah, that definitely is true. And and, ultimately, you don't have a business if you don't have customers. So, yeah, that definitely is true. And then it became no, your employees come first, because if you don't have happy employees, then they can't serve the customer. So what's the point of all this If you don't have happy employees? Ultimately, it's going to be some balance of those things.
Ramy Assaf:Okay, so what we've done with our business today wouldn't be possible if we didn't have a great team and people that did their part in building that. But you definitely need to work with the right people and you need to know how to identify them. And when there is someone who is excelling in their role, how do you put them on steroids? And if there's someone who's struggling in their role, a metaphorical steroid Work faster here's some steroids and if there's someone who's struggling in there actually a metaphorical steroids.
Ramy Assaf:And if someone is struggling, how do you give them some uh leeway to? You know, get it back. You know there's a more cynical view of this, which is most people that are employed in an organization will work on some sort of bell curve where you know it takes them a little time to ramp up and then they become you know their optimal self for a while and then they start to erode again. For some people that bell curve peaks in year two, or for some people it could be in year five. For some people they could be on that plateau for a long time. So you don't know that up front. You don't know where people peak ahead of time or what their potential is and if they can reach it, and so my job is really to ensure that those people aren't being unnaturally restricted from reaching that potential and if they are struggling from staying at their best, understand why and it's probably something to do with me or what the company's policies or how our system is set up, less to do with them.
Jon Ivan-Duke:So if a team is underperforming or an individual and underperforming, how do you decide whether that's the environment you've created, the processes you've put in place, the individual themselves just being lazy or underperforming or, as you say, your mistakes as a leader?
Ramy Assaf:I think they you know it's like parents and children right, they're going to take after the parent and if they see that their leadership is grinding and coming in early and leaving late and inspired and positive, that rubs off on the team and they start to take on those characteristics is that?
Jon Ivan-Duke:is that a characteristic, then that you think is is a real attribute for a leader, then? And I guess there's probably a difference between leadership and management. But, um, as a leader, coming in and showing people how to work, you're kind of leading from the front, is that it's? It's the, the grind mentality of of getting in, as you say, in in early hours and leaving late and and rubbing off, as you say, on the team, what, what's your, but it's all, but the also the opposite is also true, right, you can't inspire people just by working hard.
Ramy Assaf:You, you need to also know, uh, that you need to. You need to teach these people how to be empathetic. But you have to be empathetic. I have to care about you and they have to sense that I care about them. And it has to be authentic. They have to know that if they made a mistake, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to judge them for it, no one's going to that. I care about them. And it has to be authentic. They have to know that if they made a mistake, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to judge them for it, no one's going to judge them for it. So, being able to be transparent, be open, you know, it becomes like a family where we're not judging each other. There's some sense of unconditional, maybe, love or unconditional support that we have for each other and we're all on the same team, and that needs to be a constant feeling.
Jon Ivan-Duke:That is, uh, you know, we're immersed in as a company culture so I mean, I think that's probably deemed to be a sort of paternalistic style of of management. Then you know, you're, you're sort of being the, the fatherly figure and kind of bringing the kids along with you on that journey, um, whilst also perhaps inspiring them on it. There are obviously different leadership styles, different management styles. Certainly, from my perspective, I think I probably would have been more of a kind of manager in the past that would just expect people to get on with things, perhaps not be a micromanager, but I think it also depends on what team that you have. Some people react very well from a bit of distance and being able to just get on with things.
Jon Ivan-Duke:I would be in that boat as an employee in the past. The more that somebody was hanging over me, the more that I would hanging over me, the probably the more that I would push back at it, um, whereas some employees prefer to have a little bit more guidance, a little bit more management, a little bit more like. I'd like you to do this more um, more objective setting, you know, really needing to be handheld, and I think that's one of the difficult things about building a team. There are going to be different people within the team who need different things yeah, 100, and you have to identify those things.
Ramy Assaf:And if it's uniform and everyone needs to be micromanaged, that's not good. And if it the and the opposite is true, if everyone says, just leave me alone, I know what I'm doing, it's also kind of weird um, so that you know, I 100, I I take.
Jon Ivan-Duke:I don't take that as a um, a negative. I I've had that criticism in the past myself. People have said you know, Jon, what are you doing? And I my assumption is in the past, when I was sort of a bit lower down the ranks, was that everyone must know what I'm doing because we're getting the results that are required. But actually, unless you're telling people what you're doing and you're showing them a little bit of you know, you're responsible for demonstrating what you're doing. Actually, I think that's the thing that people you know sort of junior team members don't know. Is that probably management and leaders? They actually don't know what you're doing half of the time yeah, and there's um and a manager.
Ramy Assaf:I don't know if they care. You know they don't want to manage. I don't think that that's someone's dream. Is to manage somebody else for me. I hate it. You know, I don't like giving people too many instructions because then it takes away their freedom of individual thought. Yeah, and I don't know if they develop that way. So I'm more of the uh helicopter, uh parent. You know that I'll be around if you need me, um, but I trust that you're going to be able to hopefully figure this out.
Jon Ivan-Duke:You're the boarding school dad. Yeah exactly Now, obviously, just to take it away a little bit from the business side of things, we all have things that inspire us away from from business and you know when we, when we read things, when we watch movies, when we watch TV programs, we learn different things. What have you kind of picked up and what kind of uh, guides and books and things like this have you read that have been super influential on what on your life and what you do?
Ramy Assaf:yeah, um, you know, for I like to read non-fiction because I think it's oftentimes more interesting than fiction.
Jon Ivan-Duke:And there's a lot of man. Tell that to Lord of the Rings fans.
Ramy Assaf:Well, yeah, I mean, look, there's fantasy and there's all these things that really can get your mind off of the day to day, because not everything's about business and not everything's about corporate or whatever.
Ramy Assaf:So I do enjoy those things, but I find real stories sometimes more interesting because maybe they're applicable in my life, and so, yes, I've been through the management style books and all that stuff. The type of content that rings truest and is most helpful is, at the end of the day, the answers you're looking for are likely within you and you know if you're, if you are, whether you're you're in therapy because you have issues that you want to resolve, or if you're running a business and you get a little confused with what to do next resolve or if you're running a business and you get a little confused with what to do next. I think you know the answer to that. You just need someone to help you bring that to the surface and you need a little bit of confidence given back to you and you need a sounding board that someone can tell you. You know, just let me hear your thoughts so that I can let you follow your own instincts and identify what your instincts are trying to tell you. You know, you know, just let me hear your thoughts so that I can let you follow your own instincts and identify what your instincts are trying to tell you.
Ramy Assaf:I think some people don't know how to, how to isolate that voice and bring it forward and follow it, and I think that's the Delta between some people who look like they know what they're doing and some people who don't. It's just really, are they able to follow that inner voice? How strong is it?
Jon Ivan-Duke:That's interesting because I think you know a lot of the times when we're working with founders, we, we are that sounding board. Um, we work with businesses and they often use us to to kind of, you know, give ideas or what do you think of this? We've done that with yourself as well, rami, and what actually made you work with myself, with Mir, with the team at duke+mir? What? What made you work with us way back in the day, because I think it was well, I mean, it must be more than five years now that I met you, and obviously it was initially with myself at a previous business, then with duke+mir. Why do you think businesses like ours are helpful for founders?
Ramy Assaf:When we're in the daily grind of operating a business, it's hard to get outside perspective. It's hard to get outside perspective One that's neutral, one that is sophisticated, one that is not biased, and so, over time, you start to accumulate trusted voices or professionals or people around you. And that doesn't mean no offense, we're not going to listen to everything you tell us to do but at least we're going to be open to it, because you need a reality check
Ramy Assaf:Our experience working with you and working with Mir was, hey, wait a minute, these guys actually seem to care, because the sad part is we're all hiring different agencies and working with different partners and working with different organizations and that feeling of do they even understand what we're trying to do? That's like 90% of the challenge, right, and I think our experience working with you is, oh, these guys actually care and they actually understand what our objectives really are, what our objectives really are, and they're working with us not as people, not as you know, this is a client that we need to deliver these results for and move on, and so we had a good experience with you guys on that, on that side, and so much of our business today relies on relationships and trust, and that's not easy to build and it's also not easy to destroy, and so you know we appreciate everything you've done for us over the years and I think you've you've helped us in many ways, whether you know you've billed us for it or not.
Jon Ivan-Duke:We try and bill wherever possible, Ramy! You know you've built an exciting technology business, but outside of what you're doing at Zbooni, what's the technology that excites you right now?
Ramy Assaf:I mean, the elephant in the room, of course, is ai and um. It's like super exciting and scary and mysterious. Uh, you know, I think that's what happens every few years. We go through these phases of you know. There's like some new, exciting thing that's happening. A few years ago, let's not forget, it was blockchain and how it was going to change the world.
Ramy Assaf:I think AI is obviously more credible as a real game changer, because over the past 20-25 years, we've all been gathering data, whether it's how organized it is or not. And now what are we going to do with all this data and how does it come back into play? And so this is transformational. This is, uh has huge implications, both for existing businesses and future to be businesses. Uh, I think the dust hasn't really settled yet for everyone. You know how they're going to make use of this. Even for us, we're not a hundred percent sure. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't fully get it. What I can tell you is that you know what we want to do is separate the imaginary from the practical. Today, what are some practical use cases that we could invoke AI that would really help us? What does that imply? Does that mean we're going to? Does AI replace people? Is that the purpose, or is it assisting people? I think we're still it's early innings to determine all that. What we're trying to do is understand how how we can involve it into our business to help us in practical ways today.
Ramy Assaf:Now, if I was a startup founder today and I had nothing, I was starting at zero I would be ultra intimidated in this environment, because I one of the implications of AI is what Is that? You know, software itself is now a commodity more than ever before. It was already becoming commoditized, and now it's even, you know, times 10. And the ability to build something should be a hundred times easier. What does that mean exactly? So I have a million competitors instead of a thousand competitors, and what's my edge again? And if my edge was this big before, it might not exist anymore at all, and so I would be extremely intimidated. But I'm getting. I'm becoming too old for this anyway.
Jon Ivan-Duke:But do you think that the you saw about intimidation? You know it's going to be easier to build software. Does that not put more of a focus on the idea being really rock solid?
Ramy Assaf:Sure, sure, yeah. But I guess my point is you know it's hard to say that in five or 10 years from now, what is? What does the world look like? To me, that is harder to answer than ever before. And that's just nature, because you know Moore's law dictates that. You know these things are going to evolve faster over time and right now we're at like this point of you know where we're looking at. We're going to go into hyper drive and the the, the speed of change will increase and it becomes harder to predict the future. And that's what I mean by it's intimidating is it's?
Ramy Assaf:harder to predict. So what are some constants that we think will be in place in five years or 10 years, you know? Do people still want groceries? Do people still want good products and services? Do people still need these basic needs? So if you build a business around those constants, you should be okay Interesting.
Ramy Assaf:But, if I'm trying to build for an edge case that you know like. I'll give you an example. You know all these companies are building hardware devices, humane or whatever you know these are. You know lapels or pins or whatever devices. The rabbit and you're supposed to ask it questions and it gives you intelligent AI-based answers. Isn't that going to be built into the smartphone any minute?
Jon Ivan-Duke:now? Isn't it going to be built into your microchip? That's going to be in your head.
Ramy Assaf:Right, so it's harder to make bets.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Obviously, there have been a lot of tech businesses which have come and gone, and I think you can learn a lot from the tech businesses which have failed as well. You talk about businesses there that perhaps aren't geared for the future. What's the worst startup you ever came across?
Ramy Assaf:oh, that's a tough question because I've seen a lot of bad ones. The worst one, I guess, is you know and I can I'll make fun of myself here you know, before Zbooni, what we were doing today. You know I had an idea for a different startup and that was called Friendshipper. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that. I was explaining it to my seven-year-old daughter yesterday and even she was looking at me like what are you talking?
Jon Ivan-Duke:about.
Ramy Assaf:Kids are brutal, yeah, so I don't think it's fair to you know, be cruel towards people who have ideas, because there's also some ideas that just because I don't see it doesn't mean it's not a real business or a real thing. So I don't go there. I don't criticize people's ideas Interesting.
Jon Ivan-Duke:I mean, if you listen to any podcast, you constantly hear phrases like it's okay to fail, learn to fail, fail fast. That's never really sat very well with me, because I think it encourages people to think that failure is actually an option and that the end goal can be a failure. I think you can make mistakes. I think you can. You can have processes which don't work, or you know that you make mistakes along that journey, um which you can find ways to solve. But embracing failure doesn't sit right with me. What about? What do you think?
Ramy Assaf:It's abstract, right. What is failure? Failure is just an idea in your head. It's not like there's a real uh uh system out there that's giving you know um medals for winning or failing at any of these things. This is all in your mind, right? So if you've determined that you failed, that's your, you've rated yourself as a failure and you've given up on yourself. You failed doing what you just. If you fail to continue, that's probably when you really failed.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Uh, but otherwise, yeah, it's all part of the process and part of the journey that's obviously, that's that's quite a strong mental state that you've just, uh, say you know, stated there that, um, you have to have that peace of mind in your own head, um, that you're on the right journey and that, you know, as you say, it's just about being present and something that helped me the other day.
Jon Ivan-Duke:I was feeling a little bit stressed out and there was this, this concept of you know, we're human beings, not human doings. It was a great phrase and I was thinking, ok, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because we're always so focused on the doing rather than just being human, focused on the doing rather than just being human. There's a lot of pressure on tech leaders particularly, and tech employees are often very hard working. There's a stat here that the community workplace at Blind said that 60% of tech workers are feeling burnout and stress. In the UAE is particularly is at 89%, and 99% of people have experienced at least one burnout symptom. How do you keep your stress levels down?
Ramy Assaf:Yeah, thankfully, you know, I have a very loving family. My wife and kids bring me a lot of joy and I can always depend on them for that. And kids bring me a lot of joy and I can always depend on them for that. And I also have a great network of friends, advisors, mentors. I need that more than anyone else, just like everyone else needs it. And you know, I think one of the things that I do a lot which I can give myself a little bit of credit for, is a lot of self-reflection.
Ramy Assaf:If I'm feeling frustrated or if I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling, you know, annoyed, it's usually someone's problem, someone else's fault. This person said that, and why did they say that and why did this happen like this? And everyone's against me, and you know the world is conspiring against me. Woe is me. I try not to fall into any of that and I immediately go back into a well, why am I perceiving it that way? Do I really think those people are out to get me? Probably not. I need to empathize with them. What are they thinking? Probably they saw what I did, as you know. So I'm constantly forgiving the um, frustrations that I sense from others that I'm somehow projecting. I think it's mostly projection and again, I have this strong belief in your happiness is your state of mind, and if I'm allowing other people to infringe on that, that's my problem. So it's up to me whether I allow that or not.
Jon Ivan-Duke:You've always come across to me, certainly from the day one of meeting you as a very measured person, that you're quite calm, and, listening to what you're saying about the way that you approach things, having that calm mental well-being, I think it's something that a lot of people can learn from. When you're, when you're hiring team members, um, and you're, you know, looking for those people who are going to be part of your tech founder founder journey, um, do you look for somebody with a similar mindset, somebody who is is very calm and enabled to get on with things?
Ramy Assaf:I mean yes and no. Um, I think there's a certain, a certain type of of mindset that's required, uh, but I get it. You know, some people are in different predicaments and not everyone can just adjust to this magical happy place, and some people have real problems and real issues. And you have to be thoughtful around. Do we want that type of energy in the office? So, if we stop looking at them as just people in TVs and more as energy, what kind of energy does this person bring and what kind of? How does that affect you know the vibe of the office and the environment? Kind of how does that affect you know the vibe of the office and the environment? That's a real consideration. And so I've, uh, I look at people as do they have a sense of self-motivation, and for me that's a prerequisite, right? Because if they're dependent on someone else driving their ability to be motivated, that's going to be very exhausting. So can they bring their own energy to the table? For me that's a huge, huge attribute.
Jon Ivan-Duke:So it comes down more to the energy you bring, the values that you have, potentially being more important to you as somebody who might hire people than necessarily what's on that cv or experience yeah, because you can coach, you can teach new skills, you can show people.
Ramy Assaf:I mean a lot of the stuff that that happens in these businesses is pretty common sense.
Jon Ivan-Duke:It's not rocket science no such thing as common sense. That's one thing I've learned.
Ramy Assaf:So if you, have a good attitude and you're positive good energy and you have some common sense. Yeah, we can work with that.
Jon Ivan-Duke:It's not much more complicated now you talked a little bit about ai before um and potentially replacing jobs, um. Do you think that we have to change our skills to keep up with that increase in pace of technology? Is it one of those things that, with AI, you're just going to mess around with and learn as you go? Or do you think we actually need to have more formal education to study AI?
Ramy Assaf:Yeah, I think Mark Andreessen recently commented on that and I found it interesting about how, you know, technical skills will be less relevant and data and math is not going to be that relevant, but more around soft skills, around the social studies side of things. I don't think the machine has understood that quite yet and I think there's going to be a renaissance, if you will, of the, the creative, the truly creative, artistic side of things.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Interesting. So so, um, you know certainly that's backed up by some of the studies which we've seen in the past is creativity and being able to come up with novel ideas that AI perhaps can't. Would that be near the top of your list of of things you'd be looking for in people you hire?
Ramy Assaf:yes, you know, and that's a hard thing to find, it's really tough, and you know, those people, people are going to be sought after and they have a lot of optionality with where they can go. Today, I believe, and, um, you know, that that's one in one in a one in a million.
Jon Ivan-Duke:As I see it, To kind of round things off, a couple of things. First one if there's a technology that's really popular now that won't be around in 10 years, what is it?
Ramy Assaf:Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, I recently used the Apple Vision Pro I don't know if you've tried that thing and after I took it off and I looked at my television screen I was like what the heck is that?
Jon Ivan-Duke:You know, I couldn't even look at my TV anymore.
Ramy Assaf:It was so weird. So I think AR VR will somehow become more pronounced in our day-to-day lives and flat screen TVs will be more redundant.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Interesting. And to finish, what is one great tip that you've been given in life or you've learned in life that's really stuck with you, that you think could benefit absolutely everybody?
Ramy Assaf:It doesn't really matter. You know, I think people need to remember it's not the end of the world. Life is short. Just try and enjoy what you're doing and don't get so flustered and make yourself unhappy over things that probably aren't going to be a big deal at the end of the day.
Jon Ivan-Duke:Ramy, thank you so much for joining us on Aeolian Sands. If you want to give us a follow, you can on TikTok it's @Aeolian Sands and on Instagram, @duke_mir. Thank you very much for listening and Ramy, thanks so much for joining us.
Ramy Assaf:Thank you so much.