Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
Brought to you by Kestrl: The Muslim Money App, software to help Muslims grow their wealth without compromise. Find out more here: https://kestrl.io/
Muslim Money Talk
How I Grew My Prayer App Business to +1 Million Users | Abdul Rahman Abbas - Muslim Money Talk Ep 19
In this episode, Abdul Rahman Abbas, founder and CEO of the Pillars app, discusses building a privacy-focused Muslim prayer app and the entrepreneurial challenges and cultural dynamics Muslims face in the UK. He shares insights on bootstrapping vs. VC funding, the importance of community-oriented solutions, and his mission to foster an “abundance mindset” among Muslim entrepreneurs.
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Timestamp Breakdown:
00:00 - Intro
02:32 – The inspiration for Pillars
05:31 – Building in Public on X (Twitter)
07:03 – Do people care about data privacy?
08:45 – How Pillars hit 1m+ users
13:18 – Balancing Medicine with Entrepreneurship
18:55 – Building infrastructure for Muslims (Prayer, Fiqh, Finance)
23:57 – Why did Abdul-Rahman become a doctor?
26:59 – The Bay Area vs. London mindsets
32:49 –Abundance vs. Scarcity mindsets in US/UK Muslims
37:42 – Female representation in Muslim Tech
39:27 – The Biggest Mistakes founders make
44:01 – Finding a co-founder
49:44 – Debate: VC funding vs. bootstrapping
55:21 – Impact of VC funding on growth and business focus
58:57 – Final thoughts on organic growth vs. VC-backed expansion
1:07:58 – Announcement: New premium features on Pillars app
If you think about it very carefully when you act or think that there's a limited amount of resources available to you, you're actually suggesting that Allah only has a limited amount to give.
Speaker 2:So today Pillars has, I think, half a million.
Speaker 1:No, we're over a million now. Over a million, wow. Okay, because I think generally people weren't very happy with the experience, with most prayer apps that existed at the time Ads, six months and something that affects so many millions of Muslims, and I was surprised that no one had really gone into the market and thought let's do something about this.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, I'm joined by Abdur Rahman Abbas, the founder and the CEO of the Pillars app, a privacy-focused prayer app used by over a million Muslims around the world. Today, he shared with us their runaway success, how they were inspired by the data leak of another massive Muslim prayer app and they actually launched this startup alongside their day jobs as a full-time doctor. He talks about the problems that plague Muslims and entrepreneurs in general in the UK. Doctor. He talks about the problems that plague Muslims and entrepreneurs in general in the UK and a scarcity mindset that doesn't exist out in the Bay Area in San Francisco and what can be done to counter that. And finally, we discussed whether or not you should accept venture capital funding.
Speaker 2:As always, I'm your host, Areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Before we begin, we actually noticed only about 10% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us and see more things Muslim and money related, then please consider subscribing and, of course, leaving this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really, really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you. Now back to the show, Bro. Assalamu alaikum, Welcome to the podcast. It's been genuinely a very long time coming. You were one of the when we made a list of all of the people we wanted on. You were there right there at the top, followed by Ali Abdaal. We'd love to. Yeah, there's a lot I think we can talk about.
Speaker 1:So thank you. Follow Ali Abdaal. Pretty surprising.
Speaker 2:Well, I might be being generous for you. There you go, but yeah, thank you. So I think there's so much we can talk about. Bro, I think you are somewhat of a community leader, I think, in the UK tech bros, muslim sphere. I think, marshall, I've loved your journey, followed what you've done since after COVID. I just wanted to come on and just ask you ultimately how you did it. But starting with the initial question of what was the inspiration behind Pillars, so Pillars came out of a necessity.
Speaker 1:So I mean it's worth saying that I I I've been doing startups, or at least very small niche startups, before that, um, and, and some of them did okay, some didn't do so well, so pillars wasn't my first thing Cause, oh, really, yeah. Yeah, I think people often generally in the start world, you hear about people's the thing that they got successful, yeah Right, so you don't hear about that pre-journey. So I like to start out by saying that, because I feel like a lot of people are scared about making the first step. They think they've got to make it from, of course, um, but yeah, pillars came out of a necessity. It was during, I think it was fifth year of my medical school, um, so, uh, three years ago now. Um, essentially, we'd heard about muslim pro I think there are 140 million users and this app had done, essentially done the rounds on social media because Vice News had released an article saying that they'd sold their data to a third party and that data had ended up with people who may not have our best interests at heart.
Speaker 2:Let's just say I think it was the US military right yeah.
Speaker 1:They'd sold the data to this data broker. It ended up in the hands of the US military, I think the equivalent of the us military, I think ministry, uh, the equivalent mystery of defense, the pentagon in the us and uh uh, people were really upset. You had people like amr suleiman from your institute go on social media and and it was basicallya really topic that day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and probably for the the few weeks after, and it was covered by a different news outlet so that happened and I mean that's kind of more, I would say the, the, the feather that broke the camel's back, because I think generally people weren't very happy with the experience with most prayer apps that existed at the time. Ads often inappropriate ads, like gambling or even like games with an element of nudity. The privacy stuff obviously tipped things over the edge, but there was also just the janky user experience, yeah, and you know what? It was funny because when that happened, group chats were obviously talking about this and I was talking to friends about at the time. They were like we need to do something about it, but actually for about six months, nothing happened. So this was 2021, this is november 2021, I think's when it first broke out. Yeah, okay, if I remember that date correctly, six months or so, or maybe a bit less than six months, there was nothing really that was done.
Speaker 1:I spoke to a friend at the time, dada. He was a mathematical computational student at ucl. I was a medical student and we'd always intended to work together on something and he popped up. We'd already said let's do something about this, but we both got quite busy and then he popped up to me, I think around march, april time the year after and he said to me that let's do it, I've got some time, let's build a solution. And nothing. I emphasize that nothing had happened at that point, because six months and something that affects so many millions of muslims, and I was surprised that no one had really gone into the market and thought let's do something about this, considering how much of a pain point it had become. And, yeah, we decided let's do it and we honestly did it from a community project perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're famous for building public, building in public.
Speaker 1:I'm famous for it because of that, and the funny thing is is that I never used to like. I used to be one of those people who was like stealth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stealth mode. Don't tell anyone, someone might copy this but it's really silly in hindsight like now that.
Speaker 1:I've been in the startup journey for this long, it's something that is very even when you go to the bay area, people kind of laugh at that, at the idea of you keeping your ideas to yourself, because everyone knows it's all about execution, it's not about what idea you have ideas are a dime a dozen.
Speaker 2:It's all about how you actually make it come to life.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and so I was one of those people, and the only reason why I broke that rule of being stealth, being quiet, is because I thought of it as a community project, that the end goal of it was to be open sourced. So what are you going to keep stealth if it's an open? You're going to open source this project, right? Open source obviously meaning that you're going to put it up on the internet for anyone else to use or build upon it. So, uh, that was the only reason why I did it and and it was off the back of doing that, of sharing the progress in public, of the process of it was just my sketch designs that I was putting up on social media, on twitter, of like what would the prayer page look like, what would the widget look like, and that got people really interested.
Speaker 1:People really liked the designs. People started weighing in on it. Um, I think at the time, I really took advantage of, like twitter's interactive tools, like votes and polls, and got people to kind of almost be part of the decision making process. They were part of the decision making process and people felt bought in. I felt into the project, especially given what happened. It felt like a community effort.
Speaker 2:I'd like to think anyway so people really cared about the privacy angle, like, oh my god, this app that we trust with something so sacred to us our prayers.
Speaker 1:They've been selling our location data to people who might be using it for all kinds of purposes, so they really cared about I think I think that is like a trigger because I think at the time it's on people's memories and everyone's feeling on edge. I'll be honest, as on people forget, so unfortunately, that becomes less and less of an angle. I think what we said is like there's like three or four main things that we think people like pillars for and based on what people tell us, and privacy is definitely one of them. I think the other aspects that were Muslim made not all the prayer apps or even the Quran apps that people download. People may not know this, but a lot of them are not made by muslims. There's the other aspect of the design. People really like the design. They thought it was very clean, very minimalistic. I'm trying to say what people said about me rather than complimenting myself.
Speaker 1:The ad free aspects right from the get-go. You're not paying for premium to get rid of ads. We don't have ads. That's a promise we make. That's something we're going to keep. Those were the kind of main like kind of reason. The privacy focus no ads, muslim made, beautiful design that I think thing. And if I were to categorize them, I'd say the no ads and the design were kind of the top things. Yes, but I think privacy at the time was something that at least created a shift of people to reconsider, but I wouldn't say today that's one of the. Unfortunately, it's not one of those. Unfortunately, selling data is the sort of thing that people only really think about it when it happens to them and and when it doesn't, they're not really thinking about it.
Speaker 2:There's obviously a core tenant, I guess, when it becomes like a massive news story and you've got like sheikha musulman talking about it and everyone's like oh my god, let's think about this, because 140 million users globally is nothing to sneeze at, but it must have impacted a certain, certain core market of them for them to go to you guys. So today, pillars has, I think, half a million no, it's.
Speaker 1:Uh, we're over a million now, over a million yeah, wow okay, yeah, alhamdulillah we've. We've really grown. I mean it's a function of time, right yeah if you, if you exist for long enough, you'll keep racking up the thing, the users, and that will keep growing.
Speaker 2:Uh it's not just a function of time, it's a function of quality and hard work and really really pushing that yeah, I think it's a testament to you guys and the team. So there's plenty of people who've been out there for a long time and they won't see users. It's coming to them organically yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:I think once you get the core thing right of like, but really I mean it builds something that people want. If you tick that box, then the rest of it sends to snowball. Sure, you can obviously augment it with marketing, whether it's paid or organic marketing, yeah, but but the core concept is that people I mean that's something I hear a lot is and it makes me really happy is that people who who, when I meet them, tell you to me things like I've told my whole family and friends to get into pillars.
Speaker 1:So that idea that they love the product so much and they're willing to go out of their way and tell people to download them and almost wear it as a badge of honor makes me obviously feel like like that's, that's how I feel about using. I mean, I don't want to mention so, but when I feel like I love a product, that's what I end up doing. I end up going and preaching it to all my friends around me because I love it so much, and so if the people feeling that way about me, it makes me feel happy that we, a built something good and, b that it means that there's some sort of organic growth element that people are just talking we're not, we don't actually do that much marketing. Actually I would say.
Speaker 2:What's crazy to me is the first time I I felt like, okay, these guys are really doing something, because I went to the bay area, I think in 2022, okay, um, and I've got family there and I was there for work and I was just staying with them and it came the time for salah and then I saw the notifications pop up on people's phones and it was pillars okay, I was like oh my god, that was your first time no, I knew about pillars from the uk.
Speaker 2:I didn't know. People in america were using it, right. Yeah, I asked them how did they hear about it? And they just said so. My cousin who was in, uh, new york, in New York, were using it. So that's how I found out about it and, independently, my other cousin who's studying in LA, she had it as well. So then, these communities, I guess for you am I right in saying Twitter has been a great distribution channel.
Speaker 1:I think it was definitely the catalyst, at least at the start, that things going. I mean, when we first launched, we launched by sharing, building in public and from that and those tweets going somewhat viral, semi-viral, that got us. I think in the first weekend we had 10 to 15 000 downloads wow, just in the first weekend of launching and and that was all twitter, um, so that was from viral. I think what the first tweet that went viral was the widget, uh, screenshot of our widget design and um and yeah, so that I that is definitely and I I'm a big fan of building in public. I really encourage it and and having seen what it's done, for me it's kind of feels stupid not to do it with regards to any project.
Speaker 1:I'm a very anti-stealth. Very few startups where stealth mode is that key. Yeah, um, usually I think that if you build in public, you a get potential feedback asap. I mean the whole idea of that. You people always say in the start world right, talk to your customers, talk to your customers. If you don't want to talk to your customers one by one, at least put it on social media and get them to tweets, reply to you on tweets or dm you about it.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's a great way to get some initial early feedback without having to even build a product right. People are often saying to me how can I build out this app idea? I've got a website idea. It's like just just do it on figma. Most people can can get figma and work out how to how to use it or sketch which is what I use, and they can go and share it and get feedback. And and then, if you're lucky and people like it, maybe you only get feedback to say that this doesn't quite do much. Yeah for sure. But eventually you might get feedback that says this is really good, and you see that in the function of retweets and likes.
Speaker 2:So, for people who don't know, figma and Sketch are basically design apps where you can build an application, basically screens that look and feel like an app application. Yeah, basically screens that look and feel like an app but people can click through it so they get basically some semblance of the user experience, and they're getting more and more powerful in the sense you can prototype and they can almost feel like the actual app.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we know then they're not going to function, but you can get them so that if you, if someone presses something, it goes to this page absolutely, and and if you can get that up and running and that is a weekend of work, yeah, then you can get a very quick idea of whether something's we use it all the time at kestrel.
Speaker 2:For everyone who came to mtf it was a big figma on the big touch screen, not not the real app that people were using. Oh really yeah, I know, but it can. It can really do the job and get some really really good feedback from it so I'm a big advocate for it. Um, let's rewind a little bit, because you always struck me as sort of a doctor by day, founder by night type person. Are you still a practicing doctor or have you gone full-time?
Speaker 1:I was practicing for up until two months ago okay now I'm full-time on tech. Uh wow, pillars and another thing that working on which we'll come on to that um, and so, yeah, that's, that's uh, yeah, you're right, I was. I was that up until about two months ago.
Speaker 2:So how were you balancing that life? Because you started off? I think you were fifth year, were you when? Fifth year, yeah, so two years.
Speaker 1:I did pillars two years in medical school not really two years, it was a few months in fifth year and then um as a doctor for two years, so I've been practicing.
Speaker 2:How are you balancing both of those? Because so many people come and ask me. They're like oh, when do I, when should I leave my job? And like I think the truth is you can build a successful startup or this, the beginnings of it whilst you're doing your full-time job. So how did you balance that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I I would agree with that. I don't think you should jump out of your job straight away, um, unless you've got a huge vc backing or investments, and even then there's a debate about whether that's the best thing to do. But, um, as a medical student, it was a lot easier. I think people who go to university don't realize how much time they really have on their hands. Obviously, exam periods can be busy, but generally speaking, you have a lot of time. Um, so it was much easier when I was in med medical school and honestly, it was evenings and weekends is really the main time. Um, even you could like I wasn't, probably I often left a lot of my studying until um nearest exam time.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we all did yeah, I think that was another aspect, if I'm brutally honest about it. And then, obviously, when exams come back, almost everything kind of has to stop and you kind of work on it, uh, but managed to make that work, um. And then as a doctor, that was when it was really tough, I won't lie, because, um, at least when I was a medical student, I had some sort of routine Like I would do work, uh, like between federal and going like lectures or during the day, because my, your timetable is so flexible, everything's recorded. Now you can almost decide to work during the day and then do your lectures at night. You can kind of move things around, um.
Speaker 1:And then when I was a doctor, that wasn't an option. My shift patterns was changing constantly. I was day, then sometimes twilight, which is like evening work, then night and then back today. So you're constantly trying to figure things out. You're often catching up on sleep when you're on days off. So it was a lot, lot harder, to be honest, to get that same progress. But main, honestly, it's just about like you use the small pockets of time you have.
Speaker 1:So yeah when you're on the tube or commuting, you're on your phone answering slack messages. When you're like, you're just using every single.
Speaker 2:If you're waiting for something, you're on your like a lot of that sort of work it's a real trial by fire, because I feel like if you didn't care about it so much, yeah, you just wouldn't find the time yeah is the thing.
Speaker 2:But if it really really mattered to you, you can make it work Like you're saying. You're doing it, you're using your commuting time, you're staying up after Fudger and working there and moving things around. But it got to a point where you felt like, okay, now I can go full time. What was that trigger point for you?
Speaker 1:Two things. Yeah, I would say partially of where I am in my medical career. So people might not know, but when you leave medical school in the uk you do two years of foundational training and that's like your basis and you get registration during that time and then after that you do your special specializing. So I'd done that, so I'm fully registered. I'd done two years and then then now I had essentially an option Do I want to? It's what they call an F3, which isn't a formal term, but it's a year where you decide to basically do.
Speaker 1:You can do a lot of different things. You can go work in Australia, new Zealand. You can decide to do what they call locuming, which is where you work as a kind of filling up gaps in in a hospital's rota. You can do fellowship jobs. You can do reset, whatever like. It's kind of a almost like a gap year for medics, right? So this is like a perfect opportunity. I know some people did management consultancy for a year or two, yeah, and then go back into medicine or stay there, depending on someone who went to work in a hedge fund and he never went back yeah, you get all sorts right.
Speaker 1:The more typical stuff's locuming and, like new zealand, australia but you do get the magic consult. I know a few guys who did that for a year or two and then came back so it was a natural time to where it doesn't disrupt my kind of. If you want to call the flow and that's why I decided to do it now. Um, and yeah, I I would say I'm a lot of people do f3s, but not a lot of people do it doing startups, that's not a lot of people do it doing startups.
Speaker 2:That's not very common, especially outside of the medtech space. Oh yeah, for sure, unrelated to medicine. That's true, that's actually very true, I haven't thought about it in that way. Yeah, because we went through the Techstars Accelerator in our group and also the cohort beneath and subsequently after that. Without fail.
Speaker 1:there's always a couple of doctors doing something in the med tech or or pharma tech or whatever you call it type sphere, but very rarely do you find a doctor who's doing something outside, outside of that I'll be honest, I've like thought about it, um, if I didn't have something that alhamdulillah had has done well, like allah's put this in my hands, like I'm kind of in allah's service of doing something with pillars. You don't just like get given something like that and just throw it away to do something else. But if I hadn't, then I would probably work on a tech related idea. I think longterm I'd love to do it because if I've got my interest in like product and tech, product design, tech and I've got my skills there, the other obviously big skill that I have is I've gone through medical school. I practiced as a doctor for a few years, so I've got the ability to bring those two skills and use them in one place. So I would love to do down the line. I think I would love to once I've. I feel like the things that I'm really interested in working on right now are like what I'd like to consider infrastructural, like key things that muslims have to have built, like if it's not me, someone else needs to do it, kind of things, and I've got like two or three of those ideas, um, and once I've done those, I want to be able to hone the medical, go back and do something medical tech related down the line.
Speaker 1:Can you share those ideas? So one of them is jubilee. I can share that, um so. So pillars is one. So I've got like three ideas. I once tweeted I was like three like three like squares and one's pillars. The other one was is now Jibril, which I've announced, and the third one is unannounced, but Jibril I'm happy to talk about completely. The other one's like unformed, so I don't really have much to talk about. To be fair, it is in the financial space, but I'm actually keen on seeing. I think you yourself and there's a few other people who are in this space that I think are doing uh interesting stuff, and I don't know where everyone's going to end up being, but I think actually there's a good chance that by the time I get there, someone's done it and what and worked out uh, works out um uh. But essentially it's like building wealth for the muslim community and helping make money work well for muslims.
Speaker 1:I think it's a general idea oh really yeah, but Jabril, I think, is kind of my next focus. I don't think I can work on three things at the same time. Jabril is essentially the duolingo for Fikr. It's kind of how I'm giving the one-liner that we get told to say in the startup world. So the idea is that every, every muslim should be knowing their fardain. There's no exceptions, it's it's something you have to do. You have to be able to know how to pray, you have to know how to do a door, you have to know how to do how you fast, etc. Etc. And unfortunately, there's loads of courses around mosques deliver these sessions. There's online courses that you can do, but unfortunately, most people don't have time for it. You could argue that people should make time for it, but the reality is people don't make time for it, and part of that is because, unlike things like languages, where we've got really interesting tools now, like rosetta stone was a really early innovator in the space duolingo, there's a few other. I think babble is another one that people, people like a lot. They've all kind of decided okay, there's, there's obviously, classrooms that you can learn languages in, but people like to do like bite-sized learning, make it flexible work around them five to ten minutes a day sort of thing, fun, really interactive. Um. But the islamic education space hasn't done that. It's just stayed in it and, and I think, for partially good reason. Partially, you don't want to commoditize islamic knowledge because it can get quite dangerous very quickly.
Speaker 1:But what we thought is you know what there is, a is a basic level of Islam that every Muslim should have easy access to. You can't become a Spanish whiz through Duolingo. You can learn the basics. You can maybe speak it at a basic level. You're not going to become a professor at university through Duolingo. You're going to have to go through some very advanced linguistics. Same thing with Fiqh. If you want to learn the basics, then maybe you can learn that through a duolingo for approach. But if you want to become advanced, you need to go to a scholar, you need to go through an islamic institution. So what we want to do is five, ten minutes a day you go on to. I'm actually building this with my brother abdullah, who's also a doctor, and we're just trying to basically make it so that five, ten, ten minutes a day you learn a little chunk of your Fardain and over a 90, 100-day period short period of time you should be able to basically know all of it and your basics. Just to be clear. There's obviously a lot more to do.
Speaker 2:It sounds very similar to we had Shahnaz Shahnaz Nawaz.
Speaker 1:Oh, gaida, yeah, yeah, from Gaida.
Speaker 2:Near the Nia app now shahnaz, oh, gaida, yeah, from gaida, yeah, near the near now, where he was super inspired by duolingo. His whole thing was helping muslims increase their relationship with the quran. Yeah, most of us can read. A lot of us can't understand the actual arabic and don't really have that real relationship with what is meant to be the criterion and the actual guidance for our life. So he's building that kind of like 10 minute sessions and quizzes. Yeah, so is it kind of like that, but for the fiki element?
Speaker 1:yeah, so we're both in the islamic ed tech space. I think that that's clear. But I think, um, yeah, they're really focusing on that connection aspect and really taking the I mean I don't speak on behalf of him, but essentially taking on and like deriving lessons and and kind of making creating a relationship, yes, between you and the quran, very creative ways and where, yeah, we're focusing on a I think you would argue they're doing more of a task, kind of you could say, like more of a islamic quran reflection yes uh, approach much more about the spiritual connection, whereas I think which is extremely key we're focused on the kind of outer effect which is more the, the, the, the, I guess, the the more ritualistic aspects of this lab, but both are super key yeah, you can't have one without the other.
Speaker 1:Actually, I remember one of my teachers saying, like if you have one without the other, it's basically one of those things you have to balance very carefully, for sure you need the spiritual with the outer aspect, so I see both of these tools as being extremely vital, really interesting I'm really looking forward to this
Speaker 2:people think we're competitors but I don't think, I don't think, so I don't see it. I see you as kind of working in the same kind of space.
Speaker 1:Absolutely the same thing, definitely and I do a notion as I get on with him.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, absolutely I want to again wind back a little, because everything that you're saying to me screams serial entrepreneur and that you've kind of had this entrepreneurship bug in. Charlotte, I think we're a bit off, no, no, but what I mean is as as a kid, you're a doctor, your brother's a doctor. Yeah, did you want to be a doctor growing up or did you always, I don't know. Was there something in your childhood or did you see a parent who was very entrepreneurial that pushed you to doing what you're doing now quite young?
Speaker 1:I am is a very passionate topic of mine. Um so, so no I. The short answer is I didn't know what I wanted to do. Okay, I think a lot of people actually are in that bucket. A lot of people go to university kind of just to buy time. Yeah, um, I was talking to a friend today who actually said that to me about their brother. Um, that that they're just kind of doing whatever just to buy time. The reality is is is that my parents, specifically my dad, was really keen on me becoming a doctor.
Speaker 1:And that was more, I would say, a cultural aspect, in the sense that back home, I mean, I'm half Palestinian, half Iraqi, but oh, you're half Iraqi, no way, yeah, half Palestinian, half Iraqi, yeah, so by law my family are in Jordan Palestinian side of my family and in and in places like Jordan. But across the Middle East, the way they rank people is basically on their percentage, their GCSEs. It's like a percentage number they get given and the ones who score the highest, all of them, just get picked up and put into medical school. It's literally like that and it's like the top ones are doing medicine and engineering. That's it. It's like a blanket rule. It's not that, oh, we're going to need some like very smart bankers and very smart engineers and very smart medics and very smart lawyers, etc. No, it's just literally we'll take whatever the smartest kids are and put the medical school so, and that comes from an aspect of like in in society, at least in my parents day, the people who are driving the nicest cars, nicest houses, um, the most well off, are usually the doctors in society. I think that's changed quite a lot now, at least in the uk it has, um, and so, yeah, I essentially had this kind of pathway where I was, alhamdulillah, doing well academically.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of I'm I, I can get into medical school if I try and work hard towards it, if I get the grades I'm doing well enough, and I kind of at that point literally just was like I don't know what else I'm going to do. I don't have a specific passion for anything else. My, my parents, my dad's very keen on me going down this direction, so I'm just kind of going to go with it, like I don't have a reason to say no, like it's not, like I'm super passionate about something else and I can go do that. The only thing I'd say to that is I did.
Speaker 1:When I was younger I did, or just generally I've always had like an interest in tech, it and stuff like that. That's always been an interest. But I never saw computer sites. Like I don't even remember conceiving the idea of being a engineer, like that wasn't a passionate thing, and I don't know if that's an element of all my family and friends being doctors. Every time we went over to people. I guess the only thing you always don't know that you're like well, I don't want to say brainwashed, because that's an unfair statement but you almost don't realize you're.
Speaker 2:You're surrounded by what's perceived as comfortable or safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just people like kids, like when you see what kids want to do they often want to do what their dad starts like right, like when they're really young.
Speaker 2:It's just, you're a product of your social environment, and this is this is what really gets me, because I I really feel like most people if you grow up in and around London, everyone kind of gravitates towards financial services, because that's how traditionally people have made money in this part of the world. My family, my father, everyone around me was in financial services.
Speaker 1:Oh, really.
Speaker 2:So I just assumed I was going to end up in that kind of space. So I went to university. I went to UCL as well. For my undergrad I did physics. The only reason I did physics is that I really wanted to do zoology, but my parents were like there's no way you have to go into something in financial services, working in a bank or yeah, so something like that. So it's like there's like a normal track record from people who do either econ or physics or a certain other thing, and they could see me doing that and applying to somewhere like Deloitte, which is where I ended up. But when I look at my family in the Bay Area, this is coming onto what just happened recently with MTF.
Speaker 2:They are entirely about okay, how do I get into something in big tech and or entrepreneurship? I feel like every single Muslim there has some sort of side hustle or is thinking about it, and it's just such a difference between the Muslims there versus the Muslims here. What I think here, I think is partly a consequence of, I think, financial backgrounds as well, whereas the Muslims here are kind of first or second, sometimes third, generation. A lot of them didn't come from very wealthy backgrounds either, so their parents would just sort of do something which is financially quite safe and secure don't rock the boat, don't do something entrepreneurial whereas over there, I think, the muslims sometimes are like first or second gen, but they were a lot more educated when they went to america, um, their parents had more money and, as a consequence, they feel they can take more risks. I don't know, that's that's been my take on it yeah, I've.
Speaker 1:I've had discussions and like, like watched or listened to discussions about this. I mean, when you say over there, do you mean the us, or specifically the bay area? I mean bay area. Okay, because bay area is a bubble, right for sure. I can't, I don't think you can, extrapolate that across the us, although there is an element of difference between us and uk.
Speaker 1:Um, bay area is it's not just the, the muslim thing, it's like a everyone in the area is like is what we it's cracked basically is the word right, everyone there is like everyone you meet is working at a big tech company and building something on the side, or they're building something um in in, like they're building something that's already been funded. It's kind of like you're either on one pot or the other yeah everyone's doing very crazy, interesting things.
Speaker 1:Everyone's got this. Even if you're working at a big company, everyone's goal is, eventually, most people's goal, I would like to say, is to eventually go build their own startup. Sure, and and and. Why is that? It's? It's kind of the same as actually what I was saying with the doctor like being surrounded with doctors and in family and friends, like spheres is that everyone around there is doing that. Like you go out every single dinner or lunch, you go out to everyone's doing something. So what are you going to do? Just carry on on your pathway, you can't. You just feel uneasy doing that and and and and. That's where I think I've related to something that we really it sounds really simple and a conclusion, but we are really very much social creatures, social like humans and we, we creatures not a good word to use, actually, but um, essentially we want to do, we want to feel comfortable, we want to be surrounded or be.
Speaker 1:You want to be accepted by the people around yeah, you want to fit in yeah, and I I notice even in in the bay area, a lot of people they um, they're not even doing things for money, they're doing things for clout, for prestige, and it's to get acceptance from the community around them. It's actually very interesting, like I used to think it was all a money thing. I think it passed obviously partially, and bit uh is a big type. But also people want to earn respect from the people, the community that's around them. If they consider them all very prestigious, they want to be able to say I built something very, very impressive and that everyone around me, like is, is impressed by it yeah um, so.
Speaker 1:So I think that's the same and it's the same in the medical world, like, why do a lot of parents want their kids to be doctors? Because at least they consider, at least from the parents perspective, they consider their children being doctors is a very prestigious thing. Yes, right, when they want to go to family gatherings or go to eat events or milan events, to be able to say, oh, my kids are both in medical school, doctors, it's very obviously a very prestigious thing. So I think that's it's interesting and that's what I think I've been trying to expose, because you're right, in the UK, I think we're very much in the kind of either the financial space or the medical space, like pharmacy, medicine, dentistry, and and I we don't have a representation, a a strong representation, but it's changing of tech, of muslims in tech, and I think that's something that if we want to be able to, uh, have people in six, for kids in sixth form, think I want to be a engineer at a big tech company or I want to build my own startup, then you have to. The first thing you have to do is have examples of those successes and surround them by it. I think that's the absolute first priority.
Speaker 1:And so I guess, to get to that point, the most important thing you have to do is start bringing Muslims together and you have to start to kind of almost radicalize them in the sense of take them to the Bay Area, get them to understand what it's like to be in the Bay Area, realize that everyone's doing something very interesting, everyone's building very interesting startups, and then bring them back to the uk and then they start to look around and going why is the uk or why is the scene here so so, so slow? Yeah, um, why is no like building? And they almost start to get. It's an infectious feeling and it sounds very cringe.
Speaker 1:I can tell like, just like talking about it, like it's some. They've obviously got their their problems there, but I think I think, generally speaking, it's uh, something, there's a very and we can talk about this cause. I think abundance mindset. All of that is some of the big takeaways that a lot of like when I cause we did the trip there recently, and a lot of the things that people who are in the house with with me and on the trip with me said to me is this idea of like abundance mindset that there is, that everyone can have so so I think so.
Speaker 2:Let's just just for people who don't know, muslimic makers ran something called muslim tech fest. It's a place in here in london back in june, but they also went to san francisco last month, just in september at the time of filming um and a few people of the rahman and a few other people who we know. All went out there together. They stayed in in houses together. They went and visited some of the biggest companies from Apple, google, youtube, and also met a lot of founders out in the Bay Area all who were Muslim or Muslim aligned in some way. So that's kind of the comparison we're making here. But yeah, just coming back to that, you mentioned abundance mindset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry, I kind of jumped in, yeah that's all right.
Speaker 1:This is great um, right, so one of the big takeaways, yeah, that people had going to the bay area. I'd been last year, so I kind of got this realization last year, but for a lot of people this was the first time, um, that they have an abundance mindset. Now that's what you use for, like kind of the non-muslim or non-semitic term, but I guess for us, abundance mindset mindset is rizq, that there's unlimited rizq, that Allah has unlimited rizq and can give everyone everything if he wanted to. Right, in the US, or at least in the Bay Area, they have this mindset that if you're successful, I can also be successful. And it's not that the pie is limited and everyone's taking a bit of a very of a limited pie. It's that there's unlimited, there's loads of pies, like, if you've discovered this pie, great, I'm going to go discover another pie over there. It's not, we're not talking about slices, we're talking about everyone owning their own pie.
Speaker 1:And in the uk and I think we can talk about the reasons why this might exist there's a scarcity mindset and I think, by the way, I don't think we're actually, I think that's generally the uk mindset and I think muslims exacerbate it even more is the way that I would put it yeah, I, I don't think, I don't think. I think one of the things that people in the uk generally don't really go outside the box. Everyone's kind of quite structured, I would say, and I think that's one of the reasons why europe and uk has lagged behind a little bit by the bay area, even though the startups that people work on are probably not as progressive in terms of what they the kind of scales they want to achieve.
Speaker 2:So what you're saying is that muslims in in uk and europe don't want to help each other.
Speaker 1:They feel like if someone else is doing better, then I'm going to be doing worse yeah, yeah, it's like and if I, if I climb the ladder, I'm going to put it up behind me because I'd that there's, there's something at the top that I don't want anyone else to have, because if they get it, then I'm I'm going to get less of it. This idea, this mindset, is exists in the uk general, but muslims in particular, and I think that's partially because of a lot of us, or our parents were immigrants.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of scarcity mindset in the sense that, um, if, yeah, if there's a limited amount to go around, and one thing that the bay area definitely showed is that actually, no, there's enough for everyone. If you're doing really well, then please teach me, because I want to do really well. And and what you find is, people are willing to teach, they don't hold back, they don't gatekeep, they're really willing to teach. And I think the biggest irony of all of this is that we Muslims are the ones with the scarcity mindset, whereas there's so many non-Muslims who have this abundance mindset. And that's why I made that link between abundance and rizqah, because if you think about it very carefully, when you act or think that there's a limited amount of resources available to you, you're actually suggesting that Allah only has a limited amount to give. And so if you think about it in that way I don't want to say it's kufr, but you can almost start to go into dangerous territory, where you start to think that Allah can't give everyone anything, and we know as Muslims that there's no limit on what Allah can give to someone. Allah can make everyone very wealthy, allah can make everyone very poor, but there isn't a limit on it.
Speaker 1:So the idea that if someone takes that detracts from you taking is very much a non-Islamic mindset, and it's very unfortunate that us Muslims have the scarcity mindset and those others, non-muslims, have the abundance mindset, which is the more Islamic mindset. So I think that's something I'd really love for the Muslim community to take away, and I think this trip was really great in the sense that we had people from, like, all these different institutions, from Wahid, from Islamic Finance Guru, from these different startups, engineers at leading companies, some that had been building startups, some that had already exited their startups, like a couple of them who'd gone through Y Combinator building startups. Some that had already exited their startups, like a couple of them who'd gone through y combinator, very, very mashallah, very rain, big range, uh, very, uh, kind of very smart muslim, very accomplished, who could hopefully kind of almost be like a delegation where they can come back to the uk and kind of kind of like reset this mindset of like actually we all can lift each other up.
Speaker 2:I'm so hopeful for it because we're seeing the amazing work being done by ibrahim over at dean developers and you know, zahid and arfa with muslim makers and what they're doing with muslim tech fest.
Speaker 2:It feels like there's more cohesion than I've ever, at least, at least in my lifetime than I've seen before within the kind of I don't know how you describe it muslim tech, entrepreneurial type space. Um, do you think as well one of the questions that came in from someone at Kestrel do you think there's a difference between the brothers versus the sisters within the space right now? Do you think I don't know one is doing better than the other? I don't know, from what you've seen.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of sisters feel a little bit isolated from some of the progress. I want to say we made a huge amount of progress, but there's obviously progress. And you mentioned MTF. I think MTF has been a game-changer in the space. I was with Zahid earlier today. Mashallah, msm Tech Fest Just in its function of bringing people together, let alone what the actual event provides, is a huge value-add um like. I'll give you an example that comes to my head is that when we did the house, the the bay area house, when we went to sf we obviously it was brothers only um and I had people saying what about the sister's house? I think it's. It's a difficult one, but it's not something. I'd love for there to be a sister's house, but it's difficult for it's not something that you can oh organized but, but there was actually one like home club did they?
Speaker 2:yeah, they did that, it was obviously.
Speaker 1:But yes, exactly okay, um, and it was a smaller number of people, but it existed, but I I don't know, I I can't, I can't tell you exactly what might be causing this issue. I think that there are leaders in this space like arthur from his like makers she'll be coming on, yeah who are who are doing a lot of, uh good.
Speaker 1:So it's not like we're lacking muslim female leaders in the tech space, um, but yeah, and I think tech's actually potentially a great space for a lot of our sisters. I would say, very interesting for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay. So if you were to summarize, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes Muslim founders make?
Speaker 1:So I would say, not talking to their users sooner is a big one, spending ages on their first version. I don't think it's just one thing, unfortunately. I think people just get really caught up in the idea that their first version has to be a super polished finished product, idea that their first version has to be a super polished finished product, and they don't just think like I take it back to the pillars launch example is that literally almost like create an artificial limit for yourself, say that I have to have a v1, a minimal, viable product of the product that I want to build within this weekend, like these two days, that's it. I don't have more of the time than that. And that will force you to basically start to think much simpler. Because if you, the issue is that you can, what people end up doing is they come and they say I'm non-technical, but I've got this idea and I I want to find a co-founder for this idea, and they spend ages trying to find a co-founder. Or what unfortunately also happens is they spend loads of money paying developers to build that product. They haven't spoken to users. It's just a concept in their head that they're building out. They haven't shared that on social media to get feedback from that which is also talking to users, if you really just boil it down. So there's none of this um, there's none of this validation process, whereas what you find in the again.
Speaker 1:Go back to the us thing about like, again, I was one of those people where I would try and keep ideas to myself, um, and then not realize and I, by the way, I was one of those people who did these things like I went through, I learned it the hard way, right of like I'd build something out, then realized that this wasn't something that people really wanted. So what I really what you realize in the bay area is that people almost, like, tell people their idea and then, like, almost ask them, tell me, like, what's wrong with it? Like, like, tell me, am I working on something stupid or not? Like, almost like, in a very frank way, and um, and and people will give the feedback back in a very honest and brutal way, whereas here, I think I I would say people are much more um, they want to be polite, they might say or they.
Speaker 1:I think often it's the conversations not even being had like, let alone what the feedback is.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Muslim Money Talk. If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed, how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that.
Speaker 2:If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create an auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, link you towards Sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download kestrel today and try it out for yourself. Now back to the podcast. So basically, there's a scarcity mindset which is stopping people from sharing their ideas openly because they're afraid of it someone taking it and stealing it there's also, I think, maybe an element of pride mixed with embarrassment.
Speaker 2:That, okay, I don't want to tell anyone this too early, because if it's crap, then people are gonna, you know, come after me and make fun of me and I can see that yeah so I I, you know, I've been there myself as well.
Speaker 2:Right, with the early days, we were too afraid to to tell people because we were like, oh, what if someone's gonna gonna steal this? Which is crazy within fintech and financial services, because the the amount of barriers to entry, with all the licenses that you need, and the costs of developments, you know ideas are literally a dime a dozen. There's very few people who are executing, um, so yeah, it's probably a mix of of those two things. And then, like you said, coming back to the point about having leaders within the space, we don't have too many well-known muslim tech leaders. You know that we can look to and look to look at.
Speaker 1:I think that's a big one. Yeah, I, I didn't usually. Yeah, I think I think you boiled it down really well. It's like not enough people are building true mvps, not enough people are building in public or talking to users. Not enough people are um, unfortunately, as you say, um thinking like do I want? Like they're worried about sharing it. They're worried about people essentially like failure, like worry of failure. I think all of these things are extremely valid, sure, yeah, sure, sure sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, we've talked about a lot. I want to come back to pillars and when, because we mentioned okay, some people are afraid of finding a co-founder, but it's tarik, isn't it, who you co-founded yeah, so I started with tarik yeah I mean tarik, were working on it um for about a year and you were friends were you already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I I wouldn't even say we were like, like we weren't best friends, but we were friends.
Speaker 1:We knew each other across campus okay, you're like the isaac, or yeah, I think I I struggled to remember when I first met tarik. It might have been an isaac or an arab society event. Okay, the two one. It was quite early in first year because we were, we were I think we were in the same years, if I'm not mistaken like we were same age, um, just different courses. He was doing mathematical computation, I was doing medicine and um, yeah, we, we kind of aligned in the way that we think we said to each other let's work on something one day.
Speaker 2:We were both somewhat entrepreneurial in that in that you were having those conversations anyway yeah, but very yeah like very loose.
Speaker 1:I think it was when the muslim pro uh scandal had happened. Then that was the point where we said this is now an excuse to work together and this is a great idea to work on together and he was doing software engineering mathematical computation.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he was very clearly the tech founder he was, but even the stuff that he did for Pillars was self-taught because in their course, from what he told me, was very much corporate-based and the languages you're learning, the frameworks you're learning are all for corporate world, as opposed to how to build a B2C consumer app.
Speaker 2:What do you say to people who advise not to work with your friends or to found a company with your friends?
Speaker 1:well, I'll take it further. I'm working on jubilee with my brothers you could look, I I think, I think there's absolute valid truths to this. Yeah, like you've got to, I should say, by the way, that me and tarik um tarik ended up going a different way is he not a pillar?
Speaker 1:he's not a pillar anymore not not any like issues or anything. We're still on very good terms. We talk regularly, um, so so now my co-founders, omar, um, uh, who, finally, enough, like twitter, has actually done wonders for me. A lot of the team that currently work on pillars, uh, a lot of the my co-founder, now our co-founder, cto of pillars. Both of us, um, we met on twitter, like through dms, no way. So he's you, based in the us, and now it's me and him, but just to clarify that, that, that point, um, but yeah, you asked me whether it's a good idea to work with friends and or, and, uh, family as well. I think all the concerns are absolutely valid. I think basically so. So, um, going into the working with my brother, I basically said to him look, you're obviously my brother at the end of the day, um, we're going to treat each other as siblings, but we can't use that as our fallback, like we can't say, oh, if we have issues, we'll work it out like, because then it turns into I'm big brother, your little brother.
Speaker 1:Not even just that, it just it just becomes really messy, like, let's say like things often get messy when things start to go well yeah so let's say, things go really, really well.
Speaker 1:Then you start, you start to say, oh, like, this is the equity, like if you just put everything as verbal agreement and you don't mention things, you just work on it. So I said to him look, let's just deal with it as if we weren't brothers. Like what would you do? You would have a co-founder agreement, you would set out the terms. You'd have the vesting period and the amount of equity, without getting technical. There aren't amount of equity without getting technical. There are no xp that everyone's getting um, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:The roles, like the titles, all of that let's, let's work it out as if I'm working with someone, a stranger, and then we get on with it. And then, obviously, let's say there is a. Let's say down the line, god forbid, there is a conflict, and that occurs. You have, first of all, you have those things that can hopefully help deal with things, and on top of that you have the benefit of being siblings, of course. But what a lot of people do is they unfortunately, um, don't have those agreements in place. They'll work on something as, as friends or siblings, and that it will. It will get to a point it does really well, and then everyone now wants a piece of their pie and one person's arguing that I've done more work, etc. Etc. And it comes basically why? Because you don't have anything written in black and white that agrees it, so it's awkward. It's definitely an awkward conversation to have with friends and family, but it avoids so much headache down the yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean look, we went through it as well. I founded kestrel with my friend from from. I did an mba um, so dying.
Speaker 1:We met whilst we were studying there at Cambridge and the third co-founder was actually my dad which introduced like a really kind of weird dynamic, because it's like you know, and you're kind of two versus one, right you say there's three.
Speaker 2:No, it's often yeah, there's three co-founders, but often what happens is that it's me and dying trying to push something and my dad is at the wall at the top because he's the CFO, so he controls all the money. So what often happens is I have a big idea, I'm trying to get money for it and my dad's like absolutely not, I need to see the ROI.
Speaker 2:What's the customer acquisition cost? What's the LTV? I need to see this financial model. Okay, tweak it again, let's do this and then dying almost ends up. Sort of mediating. So, that's the kind of work, the dynamic that's worked out, but similar to you. We said early on, we're just going to do this the YC recommended way, which is everyone has an equal share of equity.
Speaker 2:We invest this over a certain period. We have bad lever clauses, so if someone tries to do something and they try and leave, there's a way of clawing back their equity, and if they, if they, go against certain things. So yeah I think. I think I'm in a similar position to you. I think it's a good thing if you set up the basics well yeah, I think I think you've mentioned yc.
Speaker 1:There's also exceed legals. They have like a compound agreement. So there's like draft documents that you can just very cheaply get and sign yeah, you don't need to pay a lawyer. Yeah, thousands of pounds for this you really don't, and I think those are extremely important things to have, and people don't don't tend to do that, I think to avoid the stress and headache, um, but it's so easy to just do it and it will avoid a lot of headache for sure?
Speaker 2:yeah, for sure. So in terms of pillars, jabril, I've always wanted to ask there was a big debate that raged in the London Muslim Tech Bros group, maybe a few weeks ago, about should you be VC-backed versus, should you bootstrap or something in between. At Kestrel we've so far gone away with angel investing and some angel syndicates who came on board. We had Wahid Ventures and we went through an accelerator Techstars as well, but we haven't gone down the full VC route route. I was very much leaning towards the, the bootstrapping versus. You know, angels as opposed to vc. We had shanaz on episode 12 of the podcast and shanaz is full blown. I think the the clip, um, the viral clip of what he said was if you want to make an impact with your startup, you have to be vc backed I believe that vc is the best route if, ultimately, you want to build the biggest company possible, at the greatest scale, with the greatest level of your take on that yeah, so this is where me and shanaz have had healthy debates, both on that group chat, but also in person, actually at mtf actually we went
Speaker 1:into a room and we just hashed it out for like an hour and I think demi, from my head, has just sat there, being a vc himself just looking from left to right as we kind of whacked it back and forth. I think the honest answer is that there's probably no single right answer like this is the boring answer that no one, everyone's so, but there's probably no single answer.
Speaker 1:That's correct sure if you're a very uh, building a health tech or fintech company, um, assuming that you've done basic stuff to validate the idea and eventually to actually make that idea work, you need licenses and regulatory approval etc. Everyone knows that stuff takes time. Everyone knows that stuff takes a lot of money. There's no chance you can do those things bootstrapped at a certain point. Right For sure you can. Maybe you will know this better than me, but if you're in the fintech space, rather than getting your own banking license, like I think Revolut's an example they only recently got their banking license. As far as I know, they were using someone else's banking license. So you can get as big as someone like revolut going through just not hijacking, but like on top of someone else's banking license so there are ways of trying to reduce costs and get to market quickly to to avoid that.
Speaker 1:I think monzo is another one. They were mondo, I think at the time they did prepaid cards rather than current accounts all the big digital banks today.
Speaker 2:They all went through that. They borrowed an electronic money license from a third party. Yeah, that just meant they could get cards out there hugely unprofitable. It's very hard to turn a profit on that and they use that as a way of acquiring their own banking license. But of course each of those were vc backed because there was no other way I think they were.
Speaker 1:They were validated.
Speaker 2:Uh sorry, they were doing it to validate the idea as well yes, to validate the idea for sure, to get that, I think it's. It's easier when you're someone like tom tom blomfeld, who um you know, off the back of Starling and he'd done GoCardless and all that. He went out to the market with an idea for Monzo Mondo as it was and, I think, raised 10 million in a weekend just on the back of an idea and a quick pitch deck.
Speaker 1:That's the power of being a second founder. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And having the network absolutely. So I think for a fintech. I can see the appeal Shenaz think for a fintech. I can see the appeal shanaz has kind of swayed me a little bit towards the vc and that, okay, if you want to make a bigger impact as quickly as possible, vc could be the way your personal take, would you?
Speaker 1:would you ever accept vc funding? Yeah, so I think there are some spaces where, if I was to build a tech space, maybe I would, because it would be necessary to be even able to validate the idea, assuming that I can't validate it without money.
Speaker 1:If I'm in a space where, like a lot of people ask me, like did you get funding to build pillars? I was like why? Because I had the design skills, the marketing skills and now I would have the coding skills. We kind of can do it all in-house. So what's other than like the human capital and plus the marketing maybe?
Speaker 2:but, marketing.
Speaker 1:As I said, we don't spend much on marketing, if anything, so it's like quite limited. It's just mainly social media management, um, and videos, but no paid marketing like at that scale. Okay, so, bearing that caveat in mind that there are startups, I accept that vc is kind of critical for them to even be functional. I think there is a lot of startups, um, a lot of them that could have been done with. I think there's an aspect of they could have done with just one round of funding, like they could have just got early funding, seed, pre-seed stage, got that funding and then just focused on the product, because that gives you the, the core team, time to basically figure out the mvp, validate it, get the product, uh, in front of customers, um, and then they don't necessarily need to go through further rounds. But they kind of almost go into a snowball situation where the investors want them to do a next round because it means that they're progressing.
Speaker 1:And you're playing the valuation games there's valuation and like every 18 months you're kind of expected to kind of show that there's progress in it.
Speaker 1:Sure, so there's that element of it. I personally think that in a space like ours, vc is not necessarily in our best interest, partially because it's islamic space and I don't think there's that many established vcs not too many that are good, really good vcs that allow that will help a open doors up in the first place, because there's not that many muslim vcs out there and b be able to actually support us in the way that we'd need them to. Sure, there's also the element of like, why do we need the money if we can turn a profit really early on, like I? I just don't get the idea of like I. I find a lot of honestly when I see some vcs back startups it's almost laughable, to be honest, like the valuations they're getting are really ridiculous I know, um, and I, I personally think that a lot of them it almost feels like a huge bubble and I don't know if I like that approach.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love that, all right. So I think the way that me and when I spoke to shanaz, this is what we kind of got it down you're being very diplomatic about saying basically no but basically there's two ways to think about it. Yeah, shanaz and vc world say growth, growth, growth.
Speaker 1:Yes, I don't want this to bite me in the back, in case I do I'm not raising vc down the line, because because I do think there's a place for it. I just don't know if it's necessary for a lot of startups to end up doing it, sure, but, um, there's, there's growth, growth, growth. And the way that it works is vc money comes in, it allows us to pump money into the growth, growth, growth bit and then, after we've kind of got validation, growing, the product got loads of users. Then then we start to worry about profitability. Good example is uber. Right, yeah, unprofitable for a very long time and was basically trying to just get more and more users own the market because they knew it was going to be a monopoly situation at the end. And then, once they got that, then they decided, okay, now how do we figure out?
Speaker 1:the other side of it is and I think this is the more I would like to say, more traditional way, and I think the safer way of doing it is to just grow within your means. Basically figure out profitability, get a product that people like people pay for, and then use the money from the business and pump it into the startup and just get it essentially to grow. So you do profitability first, then growth, whereas vc world is growth and then profitability.
Speaker 1:Now, the reason I say that there's a a kind of element, there's a middle where you can maybe raise money in the early, very early stages and then not raise again is because, um, I've described that the money is needed for growth. But actually there's a slightly earlier phase where it's just figuring out what you're doing like. What is the problem? You're working on building out the solution for validating that solution.
Speaker 1:So there's like a kind of earlier product validation stage and you need money for the team to actually be able to work on that full-time. But I would argue someone like me has done that in their free time exactly.
Speaker 2:I I think it's we can using Kestrel versus pillars as case studies for it. At Kestrel we could do all the figmas, we could do all of that. But if we're to actually validate the idea and actually take on deposits and things, um, we needed some money.
Speaker 2:So we raised a small pre-seed round from three angels around 150 K what we raised and that enabled us to actually build our prototype, put it out there, get in a thousand real users and start testing. But there wasn't really another way of testing unless we had that money to pay for the license and pay, so that makes sense early stage. But with you guys at pillars you know you could build stuff basically in your free time and the beauty of it is that you're not restricted by a license yeah, we don't have regular it's not regulated space.
Speaker 1:We don't have issues with, like, the only time that you might want to pay someone is for skills that you didn't have in-house, but we had all the skills in-house. We need external developers to get the mvp out um on and now, like, I mean even just two, three years on since we launched now you can use ai tools etc to help you build things much, much more quickly, even if you're quite a basic developer or even non-code for certain ideas. So, like, the excuse for being able to raise money is actually getting lower because the, but the, even people are saying the idea of the concept of an mvp is dead because you could argue that you can build pretty polished products now within you know that time frame that I said one weekend, maybe two, three years ago, one weekend could only get you a certain like a janky website with not very nice ui does a very basic functionality. Now you can get really polished. You've got tailwind. You can get very polished ui. Yeah, you can get very nice functionality in in the same weekend in that same time frame.
Speaker 1:That's why I like the, the time frame um concept, because I think that's better than saying, oh, it's got to be a google sheets. No, no, just time frame it. Put it into a box. I'm interested. What did Shanaz persuade you by? What did he say that made you think?
Speaker 2:His whole thing was about did you want to start a business, to basically be a lifestyle business? A lifestyle business being okay, it's going to make decent money, maybe half a million a year, maybe it'll hit a million a year. You'll be able to draw a decent salary, your team will be able to, and it will just run and run and run, but it may not necessarily make kind of global impact and cap out at that, it will cap out right at some point, because you'll hit a plateau where without additional, an additional injection of capital, you won't be able to reach new markets, new geographies maybe a license will restrict you, something like that.
Speaker 2:And his take on it personally was that Allah had given him this opportunity to make as big an impact as possible, as global an impact as possible, and he had reached a realization where he wasn't going to be able to get there by bootstrapping. And if he wanted to get there as quickly as possible, execute as timely as possible and as effectively as possible, he needed millions to come in, and the quickest way to do that was through vc. Added to that is, of course, the provisor is that he was from vc yeah, I'd say I know okay, okay, so he's from vc.
Speaker 2:He worked in an edtech vc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when he went out to raise he was funding startups like his own exactly, and that network that he'd built made it very, very easy I'd say comparatively for him to raise, as opposed to someone who didn't have that network maybe, was straight out of uni, had never spoken or been in the vicinity of a VC before some sort of investor. So I think there's a little bit of that at play. From my perspective. At Kestrel it kind of swayed me a little bit because I just thought there will be a point where we're hitting a plateau. So at Kestrel for people who don't know, we launched a consumer app. First we did that, we had a few tens of thousands of customers, but we never figured out monetization within the app. As we were thinking of ideas for that, an Islamic bank from Malaysia, Bank Islam, reached out to us and said we like what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Can you white label this tech and give it to us? And suddenly that took us into a whole different business model, which was business to business, b2b, software as a service, where we went from being on our knees and having like two and a half months of runway left and I wasn't taking a salary for like months, and all of that just to pay the developers to suddenly being profitable, month to month profitable. And I think for the last two years we focused on pitching to banks who want to better serve muslim communities. So we now work with many banks in malaysia, uae we were just out in saudi pakistan as well. But what I've been thinking about recently is that it's not why I started kestrel.
Speaker 2:What I started kestrel was so I could help out people in my community in the western world, people who do not have financial services tailored to their faiths, but people who feel like they have to compromise just to live and to exist in this world, whether it's building a credit score with a credit card or living in a house that you don't own, so you've had to take out conventional mortgage. That's why I started it. And then, talking to Shanaz, I thought, okay, the real reason to the real way. We can do this and look at every other FinTech that's been there, with the exception of, maybe, pensionbee, but we can talk about that. Every other fintech has raised venture capital in order to make a huge impact within their geography and then expand out globally. So that's kind of what swayed me.
Speaker 1:I disagree with a lot of it. The only thing I could maybe slightly agree with is the fact that it helps do it faster, but this idea that there's a cap doesn't make sense to me at all, and I I'll tell you why. I mean you said, um, the money is needed. What's the function of the money? How's that money being?
Speaker 1:spent to get to like what? Like global markets. Why can't you do if you build a product, um, that people really want? With the rise of social media, it's very easy to get global access. It's not like you're having to physically move into those markets to do at least for things like apps, like we're building, it's not difficult for you to do that. Why? The only thing I would argue is that you can do it faster potentially, but I actually I I'm actually of the philosophy that even paid marketing is actually probably not a great thing no, I agree products that talk speak for themselves.
Speaker 2:Organic growth all of that is much, much better approach to growth but if you wanted to say kestrel wanted to launch in the us, we'd have to go through various mechanisms to get a license on the ground before people could actually as a fintech?
Speaker 1:you, yeah, but take guider on here. What's the regulatory? Sure?
Speaker 2:okay, let's use them as an example, since that's, he did that as a vc I know you're watching this, so we'll have to get you back on to defend yourself so.
Speaker 1:So I'm trying to understand. What is it that they can't do through like your normal organic means, like building profitability early, with the caveat that they might have needed that to be able to like to build the initial products, you might need some capital, but beyond that, I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position, but I'm trying to think what would you do for a startup that's not fintech, that's not medtech? Those are the two ones that I always Human capital.
Speaker 2:What about human capital? What if you don't have the people who are experts within?
Speaker 1:I don't know not everyone's amazing at Twitter or X not amazing at tiktok or instagram, right? So bringing someone in, maybe you don't need to raise millions to do that. I think if you're an entrepreneur, you've got to be scrappy and you've got to be good, and or if you're not good, learn to become uncomfortable with doing those things. Like, no one's really good at twitter until they try to do a twitter, you know like you've been trying for four years, so please follow me, you just got to like, you just got to put yourself in those positions.
Speaker 1:Like you, you know this. Like entrepreneurs, like you do things that you just don't expect to do. You have to be uncomfortable standing in front of I don't know mosque or whatever, giving out leaflets and talking to people and fairs are a really good example of this, where you have to stop people and get their attention. So, so like. The idea that you just want to throw money to someone else to do the job is not, I don't think, cuts it. I I think, fundamentally, it's, um, it's it's just speed, like that's honestly the only thing that I can think of that actually makes sense. It gives you some flexibility in the sense that you may be able to offer your products for free or for a low cost, where you can make a loss for a longer period of time to dominate a market, um, so so there are some scenarios where, for example, like uber, where you might argue, actually getting first mover advantage is actually more relevant.
Speaker 2:So what if shanaz was here and he said well, listen, we heard about this new app that's coming out called chabril and we're a little bit worried that they might be a competitor in this but the irony is that we want to hit.
Speaker 1:You know all of the us, yeah, and france the irony, the okay, well, assuming we're not competitors, which I'd like to think, especially in this space. To be honest, even if we were building the exact same thing, I wouldn't consider him a competitor.
Speaker 1:Um uh, because, at the end of the day, you're doing something that that helps the community right, yeah so, so, if, if, if you put it in that way, you still like okay, I mean, I'm building jabril, he's building uh nia and nia is vc backed. Yes, has started years before at least two years, I'd like, I think.
Speaker 1:I think roughly a year or two 2022 yeah, so roughly two years and they, uh, are vc backed. So they're already two years ahead in terms of the, the start date and vc backed, and we're starting jubilee and we're not vc backed with beach trapping. So I think that's just a. I don't think the bigger threat at least in this market again might not be able to talk about Uber and stuff in this market is actually getting the products right and people liking the product.
Speaker 2:I think that's the no. No, I agree. I mean, look at at Castrol. We didn't raise VC money. There were who did. They raised crazy sums of money Sometimes when I think, okay, if someone had given us that we could have taken over the world, but those people, they failed, I think, to execute that well.
Speaker 1:I think VC money does that sometimes to you as well.
Speaker 2:You think so?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I think I've seen people get VC money and just get so distracted because the money ends up coming into the bank First of all. They have so much money that they can essentially execute any idea that they they, they come up with. There's no, there's a real chance of losing focus of what they want to do. I think there's a huge element of you lose your creativity and you become comfortable.
Speaker 2:I think that's the thing comfortable.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that and then I thought actually you could argue you see money because you're uncomfortable, like at least from my perspective, as long as you're fearful that you're doing because you as a muslim, obviously, and generally a good person you want to make sure that you're. You're trying to build something in good faith with your investors, right? You're not using?
Speaker 1:them very recklessly, of course, so. So I would argue that having the money in the bank could make you uncomfortable, in the sense that you need to then show investors in 18 months time there's not a deadline that you need to show progress.
Speaker 2:It can make you uncomfortable in that way, but you can become uncomfortable not having the money and that you don't know how you're going to provide for your family. Sometimes that's what yeah, I have to make this work. Yeah, the hunger, it's like I don't know if you watch like ufc or something right. But people say that conor mcgregor was never the same as he is now compared to where he was in his early days, because the hunger's gone right. He's a multi-millionaire. What is he has?
Speaker 1:what does he have to fight?
Speaker 2:for anymore. So maybe that's the comparison. There's so much more we can talk about, but we are completely out of time so we need to do a part two yeah, or maybe we're getting chanaz as well. Yeah, we get you guys to debate. I think that would be really good before. Before we close, I know you have a special announcement that you'd like to make regarding the Pillars app, so, please, the mic is yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so no, I appreciate that, alhamdulillah. So Pillars obviously, we've been running for a few years now building the prayer app that people know and hopefully love. What we realize is that there's a lot of things that people want from Pillars beyond what we offer already. There are things that loads of different problems that people face in the day-to-day life that we think that we can solve. So, alhamdulillah, what we're doing is we're now building out a suite of features and we're going to be packaging that up into the Pillars premium subscription and, inshallah, what that will do is allow people to hopefully support us, because what we want to do is, um, as much as we'd love to offer things for free for everyone, what we really need is a world-class team that can build a product that is excellent and work on it full-time so that they can find problems in the muslim community and build for them. And it's very difficult to do that when people are doing other full-time jobs, and we want to build a full-time team that can work on these things and be able to essentially build uh world-class solutions for important problems in our community, and so we're going to do the subscription that will hopefully allow people to support us and benefit from those uh solutions.
Speaker 1:So we've got loads of things coming, like apple watch support, we've got alexa device support, things like widgets, in-app additional times, prayer notifications, reminders, like calendar sync with Google Calendar. There's so many things. People don't realize this, but we've been listening to them a lot over the last few years. We have feature requests every single day and we basically look at them, organize the top 20 things that people want, and we're building it out. So I'm really excited for that because I think everyone's going to love it and just purely by by the fact that they've been asking for it for so long, and I think that, inshallah, that will allow us to make pillars into a, a, a company that can serve our needs, uh, a lot better and do that long term. Because something I notice is that when people build these startups on the side as opposed to full-time, is that they often die out because everyone gets busy with life for family. So it has to be our full-time focus and that's why we're doing it.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, we'll be launching that soon, really looking forward to. Hopefully it will be out by the time that this is released. So if it is, go check it out, all right. Um, on the roman.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much thank you for listening to the muslim money talk podcast, if you like what you heard so much. As-salamu alaykum.
Speaker 2:Wa-alaykum, as-salamu alaykum, thank you for listening to the Muslim Money Talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really, really helps us out. Thank you, as-salamu alaykum, and see you next time.