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
Financing Expert: Trump’s New Economy, Gold vs Crypto and The New World Order? | Hassan Daher - Ep 39
In this episode of Muslim Money Talk, Dr. Hassan Daher, founder of Qardus, talks about building the UK’s first Sharia-compliant SME lending platform. They dive into the roots of Islamic finance, the fintech startup journey, and navigating the modern economy as a Muslim entrepreneur and investor.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
Find out more about our app here: https://kestrl.io/
And how we help banks here: https://business.kestrl.io/
Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening
02:19 – Reflections on building a fintech startup and the 5-year journey
04:13 – Overview of Qardus and services offered
05:41 – Growing up in Lebanon, education, and family background
8:52 - Founding Qardus: UK's First Sharia-Compliant Lender
18:58 - The Two-Sided Marketplace Problem
31:29 - How Qardus Works Behind the Scenes
44:06 - Managing Startup Life and Avoiding Burnout
55:11 - Islamic Economics in a Trump Era
1:01:10 - Cryptocurrencies and Financial Literacy
I got a PhD in Islamic finance.
Speaker 2:No way, yeah, you're Dr Hassan. Yeah, oh, I didn't know that. Okay, wow incredible.
Speaker 1:I looked at Islamic finance and said what a cool topic, especially that my background's in economics. I really wanted to dig deeper and figure out what's the Islamic solution to economics, what's the Islamic solution to finance that intrigued me so much? Because when it came to Islamic finance in practice, I was quite disappointed. That's when I discovered no one was offering Sharia compliant business financing. We've also had clients who have taken on interest-bearing financing and refinanced using our facility once they discovered the. Sharia compliant facility out there. Incredible.
Speaker 1:I mean, if we read into the Trump administration and what they're doing right, we're looking at a new world order. If you want new world order, if you want a new world order coming into shape that is different to the one that existed for the last 100 years or after Post-World War II, if more Muslims are going to be putting their hard-earned money into pension funds, into different types of products out there, there has to be some level of understanding of the risks they're exposed to.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, I'm joined by Hassan Dahir, the founder and the CEO of Cardoos, a platform helping small businesses to raise money in a Sharia compliant way. We discussed the current state of Islamic finance within the UK, why growing up in Muslim majority countries like Lebanon and working in the likes of the UAE shaped Hassan's view of what Islamic finance could or should turn into, and his experience setting up an Islamic finance company from scratch. We also discussed the current economic state. Has Trump gone mad and is ruining the world? Is crypto-sharia compliant or not? Tune in to find out more.
Speaker 2:As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Tune in to find out more. As always, I'm your host, arif 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, hassan. Assalamu alaikum and welcome to the show pleasure, pleasure being here.
Speaker 2:It's uh. You were one of the first people that we wanted uh to come on, so it's been a long time coming, but thank you so much for for spending the time with us today. It has.
Speaker 1:I'm really happy to be on your show.
Speaker 2:I mean I look forward to the conversation likewise, I feel like we've been doing this for kind of the same amount of time. I think kardus started was it 2020, 2021? Yeah, 2020, yeah, 2020, okay, yeah, so same as us yeah, so five years yeah fifth year, subhanallah. How does that feel?
Speaker 1:hamdulillah. I mean, uh, you know, you know how it is the startup journey, right, it's uh, it's, uh, it's very rocky, but I mean it's good to see that we're both uh still here with everything that's happening, and that's exactly how I felt about it like it's good just to still be here. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean. I mean it just goes to show how many, uh lots of hustlers in the islamic finance space and we just go about doing things, even though uh for sure, yeah yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And do you feel like the five years went just like this, or has it felt like really long?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's very fast, paced, right, like, like even now, we're working on a lot of stuff, even behind the scenes and everything. I wouldn't say necessarily it's gone quickly. It feels like it's gone quickly because, as you would know, as a startup founder, you're, you're, you're always under pressure, you're always, just constantly evolving right. So it's not like you're in a steady job where you're uh, you basically give or take, you know what, what, what you've been brought in for, as well as what you need to do. No, as a startup founder, you're just always.
Speaker 2:The future is so unclear, Like our team were getting me to film a day in the life and that was so hard for me because I'm like there's no day which is the same as each other I don't know exactly what to film. That's going to betray a typical day in the life of a startup founder, ceo, especially in fintech, definitely. But hey, man, let's get into it. So just for our viewers, so they know. Could you sum up cardus in one or two lines?
Speaker 1:so cardus is, uh, the first sharia compliant sme lender in the uk. We offer between 50 to 500 000 poundsaria-compliant financing to businesses that are eligible, and our platform initially was data-driven, but it's getting even more and more data-driven with all the work that we're doing at the moment.
Speaker 2:Incredible. So a platform helping businesses to raise finances in an ethical and Sharia-compliant fashion that's right Anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 pounds, and how many businesses have you helped so far over the last five years?
Speaker 1:So so far we've helped around 50 businesses. Okay, with a very small team. Right now, alhamdulillah, we're hiring. We have recently received terms on an institutional credit line as well. Okay, so we're, we're, we're basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's your institutional funding, but so far you've been raising the capital from retail investors that's correct so we've been raising the capital on the peer-to-peer side, crowdfunding side, uh, so anything from retail investors to high net worth investors and self-certified sophisticated investors incredible so there's so much I want to get into with you about kardus, the inspiration, how you set it up, what the journey has been like along the way. But I want to rewind and go back in your history to how it all started and what your early inspirations were. So I understand you grew up in lebanon, yeah, so what was that like?
Speaker 1:yeah, I've. I've had a typical uh uh le Lebanese upbringing that I was born during the civil war, so I was actually born in Paris, france, and then we moved around a bit. When the situation stabilized, I was around 10 years old, moved back to Lebanon, stayed there until I was 18. I mean Lebanon is a great place. I mean we've got one of the highest education rates in the Middle East. So we never had sort of petrol or anything like that, basically to subsidize our incomes or anything like that. So even though they found gas recently. So I mean very high education levels. Most of us speak three languages.
Speaker 2:English, arabic and French.
Speaker 1:Yeah, English, Arabic and French. Historically, we used to be traders, so, for example, Lebanese used to be the background is Canaanites and Phoenicians, similar to the Palestinians, if you want, and the Jordanians. So we used to have a history of trading, shipbuilding for the pharaohs, Lots of prophets have blessed us in our part of the world as well.
Speaker 1:They call in Arabic Bilad al-Sham. So I mean it's a very rich area in history, but obviously it's also, over the last hundred years, it's the war with Israel that not only defined us historically but still defines us today, to this day, to this very moment, To this very moment.
Speaker 1:To this very moment. So I think it's one of the things where, uh, it is getting worse. It is getting worse, like what we're seeing in gaza and what we saw in lebanon recently. Uh, I spent a lot of time in lebanon and I could tell you it's never been as worse than it is today.
Speaker 2:Basically, really yeah, yeah. I remember just seeing it was only a couple of months ago but a whole apartment block, yes, being taken down. Yeah, yeah, um, and I think that was a real wake-up call to so many other people that, okay, this is extending, yeah, and just you know, growing. To so many people today. They didn't think they would see that in their lifetimes. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So is that kind of what precipitated your move to higher education in the UK, that you wanted to move out of Lebanon Because you studied in Manchester?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I studied in Manchester Not necessarily, to be honest. I mean, the education system in Lebanon is really good and sometimes, looking back, I'd say I should have maybe considered the American University of Be just to, if you want have a different experience, Because Beirut's a very small city. I just felt as a university student I wanted to try a new experience and figure out, go to university in a different environment.
Speaker 2:Different environment, new culture. Were you the first of your siblings to go out internationally to study? Yeah, you were okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm the first of my siblings, uh, in terms of, uh, it's also because I'm the eldest, but uh, for example, my um, my father, studied in france. Again, it's, uh, it's. It's the war that defined uh, yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah okay, so your father don't say it wasn't like new or anything, it was, yeah, almost like an expectation, I suppose yeah, that you would go out and study. So you studied there and then, if I'm Okay, so, your father. So it wasn't like new or anything, it was almost like an expectation, I suppose, yeah, that you would go out and study. So you studied there and then, if I'm remembering correctly, you found yourself in the UAE, in Dubai, and I think you and I had a similar journey that we both started at Deloitte.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that right? That's right. Wow, what was it like at Deloitte in Dubai? So at the time, dubai was growing.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's still growing, isn't it? But when was this? Mid 2000s? So I went to Dubai in 2006. 2006. Yeah, 2006, all the way to 2012. Okay. Yeah, so I spent six years. Initially I was in the audit and then I moved into corporate finance. So they had set up the global advisory practice for M&A in Dubai. It was like a 50-50 JV between the UK and the Middle East practices, really Wow.
Speaker 2:So you started off, you did your chartered accountancy three years in UAE and then, I think like many people, they then move into M&A corporate finance after that. Okay, that sounds really exciting. Yeah, what were your clients like?
Speaker 1:Was it beyond just the GCC, the Abu Dhabi investment that took us all the way, for example, to South Korea to work on an aerospace project they were doing with the Korean Aerospace Unit, for example? So primarily GCC and the Middle East. So did some work in Jordan, did some work in North Africa, so allowed me to discover the Middle East region as well, but we did every now and then have projects that took us outside the Middle East Incredible.
Speaker 2:So you were doing that and did you come across Islamic finance during this time, because obviously you're living, you grew up in a Muslim country? Yeah. What was your idea of Islamic finance, growing up in and around these environments?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean it's a very good question Every now and then. I mean, obviously I knew about Islamic finance, being a Muslim, but every now and then we would have projects that needed to be structured in a Sharia-compliant way. Yeah. So I've done, for example, financial modeling assignments where we had to start researching about murabaha and musharaka and all that kind of stuff. So that's where I first gained exposure. Then, upon becoming a CFA charter holder, I wanted to learn more. I saw that the area oh, you did CFA.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, okay. So for people who don't know, cfa Chartered Financial Analyst is one of the harder qualifications that you can do in this space and a lot of investment bankers analysts end up doing that. I think the only thing harder in terms of pass rates is the actuarial exams, which has like a crazy low pass rate of like 13%.
Speaker 1:I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Which I think the only person I know who's completed is Raza Raza Ullah, who's?
Speaker 1:the founder of Fyther.
Speaker 2:He was one of the earlier episodes, so you can check that out.
Speaker 1:But you did the cfa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, yeah, I did the cfa, finished it in 2012. Uh, with deloitte, yeah, yeah with deloitte.
Speaker 1:I mean, that burnt me out, basically because, uh, of course, uh, I would, I would work to like six, seven in the evening and then study till 12 midnight wow and then weekends just studying, just trying to carve out time in, in, in in your schedule, uh, to, to study for it, which was uh, uh, yeah, which was very, very, uh, yeah, which was very tough yeah, it can be soul destroying, right.
Speaker 2:Were you married at the time?
Speaker 1:no, uh okay, I'm pretty sure if I was married I'd be watching that, that episode we did with imam shahbaz. Why most of marriages? Um no, it is hot, it's crazy hard, especially for married people.
Speaker 2:So I always that episode we did with Imam Shabir why Muslim marriages are funny. No, it is hard, it's crazy hard, especially for married people. So I always say, like, if people are doing any kind of qualification, try and get that done whilst you're single. Yeah, because you're just not going to have the time, realistically, I think.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. It's just no way to make the time. For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:So you did that. You saw this idea of Islamic finance growing up in Muslim countries. You had experience with some deals. What was your impression of Islamic finance at the time?
Speaker 1:My impression of Islamic finance, to be honest, was behind the curve when it came to digitization. Lots of liquidity, because all the oil money is going into the Islamic banks, so very liquid, very rich. But nothing excited me when it came to digitization, to seeing something, and I never looked at Islamic finance. I looked at Islamic finance and said what a cool topic, especially that my background's in economics. I really wanted to dig deeper and figure out what's the Islamic solution to economics, what's the Islamic solution to economics, what's the Islamic solution to finance? That intrigued me so much because the more I read about it the more I wanted to dig deeper. But when it came to Islamic finance in practice, I was quite disappointed because I never felt that there was a product or even an institution that I felt was really pushing the boundaries. Rather, it was quite I mean quite what you expect, in the sense that online you don't have much of a platform to use and quite slow when it came to offering services as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially back then, especially back then, 2012, the early 2010s it was not a great scene in Islamic finance at the time. So then, what motivated you to move into the space? Because there's a bit of time between Deloitte and then you founding Qardus. Eight years later, what journey did you go?
Speaker 1:on. So what I did then was I took some time off. That took me all the way to Kuala Lumpur, Wow. So what I did then was I took some time off that took me all the way to Kuala Lumpur, Wow. So I wanted to study Islamic finance in more detail. So what happened then is I looked at institutions around the world. I found some degrees that were being offered here masters, et cetera but I felt that, because of the limited track record in Islamic finance or, if you want, Islamic finance, what makes Islamic finance stand out is Islamic commercial law, and Islamic commercial law is based on, to a certain extent, on the Islamic I mean, not to a certain extent. It's based on the Islamic legal system. But you definitely need precedence to have a deep well of case studies to go by right. So I felt that Malaysia was way ahead of the curve when it came to that. Found an institution called NCIF that's part of Bank Negara.
Speaker 2:NCF? Yes, that's right. So they're like a Bank Negara-approved Islamic finance university effectively.
Speaker 1:That's exactly it. So when they got a PhD in phd uh, in islamic finance- no way, yeah, you're dr hassan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know that wow incredible yeah, yeah, so so.
Speaker 1:So I mean published a couple of articles in this space got over 100 citations, in some of them on islamic banking amazing, uh. So I did that quite quickly, finished that in a couple of years. Uh did some consulting work on the side in the meantime for for a couple of insurance companies, uh, financial modeling, all that sort of stuff, and then uh then came back here, uh, to the uk. So then what I did was I wanted to do something in the fintech space, wanted to do something in the islamic finance space.
Speaker 2:Didn't know what uh, so joined entrepreneur first okay, sour First is kind of like an accelerator scheme for entrepreneurs. But I think they differ in that you can go in there, maybe not with a concrete idea per se and then they help you find that idea and maybe even match you up with co-founders as well.
Speaker 1:That's exactly it, so it's an early stage incubator program.
Speaker 1:They give you a stipend, basically to come and just come up with ideas, right? So I came in knowing what I wanted to do. To a certain extent, I'd say the experience was interesting. I wouldn't necessarily advise founders in the deep tech space to go into entrepreneur first. I wouldn't necessarily advise fintech founders to go in there. Really't find it that useful. So it's it's a pressure cooker for sure.
Speaker 1:You have to come in with certain expectations in the sense that, uh, you and your co-founder are 50 50 uh shareholders in the business. Uh, I found it difficult to. So, if you look at the profile of the people in my cohort, I was expecting to go in and find CTOs with a background in fintech, right, I didn't necessarily find that. So you end up coupling with a nuclear physicist, for example, or doing stuff like that, and then the aim of the system is to break you up with your co-founder. If you want to see how, uh, if you want robust your ideas, yes, uh. So you end up doing this and just going around in circles meeting different uh co-founders. Uh, towards the end of it, I was, uh, uh, I was a co-founder with a with, with a guy with a background in data science. Okay, uh x facebook, but that didn't work out. Really. That was around the time I looked to get funding from SFC Capital and that allowed me to go into another accelerator program called Founders Factory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another Founders Factory?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay right that experience I liked, so I ended up getting funding from SFC Capital Founders Factory. They're hands-on, they pull their sleeves up.
Speaker 2:So that was very. That was just you as a solo founder.
Speaker 1:Basically you're going in the you got a bit of seed capital now.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, and was the idea for kind of formed yeah already, whilst you're an entrepreneur first and you're like, okay, I know what I'm going to use this money for, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So it came through entrepreneur first and then it became more consolidated through Founders Factory. So what I did was essentially that I'd cold call people myself Muslim, let's just say Muslim entrepreneurs primarily and I tried to figure out their pain points. That's when I discovered no one was offering Shura-compliant business financing. So the likes of Arayan maybe might have a couple of clients that they offer uh islamic banking to very high I wouldn't say smes, I'd say probably more towards medium-sized enterprises and they might be able to offer them, if you want uh secured finance, uh much larger ticket sizes. But I felt no one was offering uh micro smes.
Speaker 2:So by larger ticket sizes you mean like two million plus exactly that kind of thing no one really going down to. Oh, I just need a hundred thousand to get this done. A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Uh prepare a credit file, put it in a drawer, take it to the credit committee. Uh would take three to six months to come up with a decision. And on top of that it's not really their bread and butter, right, because they're primarily in the property space, for sure whereas what kind of businesses were you talking to?
Speaker 1:yeah, so I was talking primarily. And on top of that, it's not really their bread and butter, right, because they're primarily in the property space, for sure. Whereas, what kind of businesses were you talking to? Yeah, so I was talking primarily to micro SMEs. So by UK standards, I think at the moment it's, let's say, in and around anything up to £2 million less than 10 employees £2 million in annual revenue.
Speaker 2:In annual revenues.
Speaker 1:Anything up to that. So you've got some businesses that do less. You've got some people that run turnovers of half a million, for example, but they've got good margins so they could even take on more financing. And you've got like we're funded businesses that do 12 million pounds with very thin margins. So it's not necessarily turnovers, rather cash flows for us that dictate which businesses are worth.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. So talk me through the exact problem you found people were experiencing. Was it just that I'm a Muslim? I run a business. The kinds of financing that's available to me has to be Sharia compliant and if I went to a non-sharia compliant place, yeah. Was it that they were too small to qualify for the funding? Or was it that they did qualify for the funding but that financing was non-sharia compliant because of the interest that they would have to pay on the loan they were taking?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, so it's. It's rather, these businesses are, uh are, credit worthy, okay, uh, so even sometimes they'd get us term sheets from Funding Circle, from IWOCA, from the traditional lenders. It's rather that they're looking for a financing facility that doesn't compromise their beliefs Okay, so it's the riba that basically motivates them to take Islamic financing. So we've had different clients. We've had clients, for example, who never took on financing. They built the business as the old-fashioned way in the sense that they bootstrapped the business, slowly started generating profits, reinvested the profits to grow even though that takes a long time to do it does yeah.
Speaker 1:We've had clients like that. We've also had clients who have taken on interest-bearing financing and refinanced using our facility once they discovered the sharia compliant facility out there incredible yeah incredible.
Speaker 2:so that was the real problem you discovered for muslim founders finding a sharia compliant facility. How did you create this solution? How did you come up with this one where it was like, okay, we're going to go out to the crowd and we're going to raise funds there and then we're going to use that to invest into these individuals? Because I think, on the face of it, is that not quite difficult to do, because you're running a platform, funding could be uncertain. You have to go out to basically market these opportunities to a crowd of people. Why did you choose this way of doing it?
Speaker 1:I've always wanted to build a track record in this space so we could get to the stage where we're at right now to be able to bring on institutional capital. At the time we were looking at different methods to do it. Given we didn't have a track record, we couldn't just go and get, for example, a funding line and draw down on that funding line.
Speaker 1:Some people can, given if they come from certain backgrounds with track records in the space of your season, like if you were I don't know a director at the likes of Funding Circle or anything like that and you could demonstrate a track record, then possibly you might be able to do that Sure. Or if you've got really solid relations in the private banking or family office space, maybe With us we wanted to do that. We saw that peer to peer at the time crowdfunding was easy and cost efficient way of doing this, but we quickly discovered that there was a second problem here that I didn't notice is that the lack of Sharia compliant fixed income opportunities that generate good returns. Once we discovered that we had a two-sided marketplace uh solving two problems. One is muslim owned small businesses uh cannot find the sharia compliant business financing facility. That's unsecured, which is important to mention what do you mean by?
Speaker 1:unsecured. If you look at unsecured and secured, uh, secured is a type of financing where uh the lender takes a charge, uh on an asset, so ends up being lower risk because if something were to go wrong, they could claim that assets and liquidate the asset itself.
Speaker 1:That's correct so, uh, so they have a first charge, uh often on the asset, or let's say, second charge if the asset has got a lot of value and they could come and sell the asset and recover the financing Unsecured. We take personal guarantees from the directors but we don't take a charge on the asset. So if anything goes wrong, the director is liable for the amount of financing that's still owed Really Okay.
Speaker 1:But it's not like we're taking a charge on any assets, so we are exposed to risk, and that's why our platform is littered with the capital at risk.
Speaker 2:Capital at risk, of course.
Speaker 1:Returns not guaranteed, all that kind of thing Understood understood.
Speaker 2:So you discovered it's a two-sided problem yeah it's not just businesses looking for Sharia compliant financing. It's individuals looking for Sharia compliant returns, but not just returns, good returns.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fixed returns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what kind of returns do you guys do compared to the?
Speaker 1:market at large. So historically, we've been able to offer between 10% to 11% per annum.
Speaker 2:Okay, compared to an Islamic bank savings account right now, which is maybe 4% at the moment.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, exactly 4%, and that's basically in line with what you'd expect from peer-to-peer, because you're moving the intermediary, the financial intermediary, you're moving the bank from the equation right. So you're trying to set them up, even though we do the underwriting in-house. Yeah, so we're not effectively building our own financing book, but we are underwriting and making sure that the businesses, to the best of our abilities, are uh, are good businesses, credit worthy credit in that way with you?
Speaker 2:so that's also what I wanted to ask you. So talk me through the process for my business. Yeah, I'm a business. I make half a million a year. Yeah, there's a really interesting maybe. I run a pharmacy, okay, and what I want to do is I want to set up a new pharmacy yeah, right, two zones away in London and I need to draw down £500,000 from you. Yeah, I would go to your website, I would apply through you guys. What kind of stuff would you ask for me? Yeah, and how would you assume that I was credit worthy?
Speaker 1:Okay, we do some initial checks. Uh, our our current online application form is quite simple. Uh, we have a new application form coming in soon that asks for a lot, a lot more information. But uh, initially what we do is uh could do simple checks, such as go in company's house, use uh the the credit providers.
Speaker 2:Experian, and all of that on the directors themselves.
Speaker 1:On the directors and the businesses as well, just to make sure there aren't any country court judgments, ccjs or anything like that. So that's, if you want, level one, just to make sure that the businesses. There aren't any red flags, right. So we typically look at a business that's been trading for at least three years, cash flow positive, has been profitable in the last two years. Um, no ccjs and obviously the uh sector has to be sure I comply okay yeah, and the directors must be, uh, uk residents.
Speaker 1:So, uh, that's the typical business that we look at, um, so once we do that, then we look at 12 months of bank statements and two years of financial accounts. Uh, currently we have open banking access, so we look at open banking and uh, and then we start the underwriting process. On the back of it, the business receives a term sheet. So we have a risk matrix and a pricing matrix that defines the risk of the small business and then prices it accordingly. And that's when we send the term sheet to the small business. Once the small business accepts the term sheet, that's when we go go into the next phase, which is the fundraising phase, got it?
Speaker 2:got it okay, fine. So then basically, it's like, you're approved, you're on the platform. Yeah, now you open up to the public. Yeah, like, okay, there's 500 000 available to invest into this. Yeah, how are you reaching out to those customers? How are you distributing the deal?
Speaker 1:yeah, right now so so I mean, um, when we uh, when we first started off, uh, we had a partnerships page with uh. Islamic finance guru.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, early on I remember on their marketplace yeah, yeah, yeah so uh, but that that I mean we're not um, we, we haven't seen a lot of leads come through that over the last couple of years, so rather we've been reaching out to people using different methods. So we have an in-house if you want team that reaches out to investors. You'll be amazed how much word of mouth goes, especially in this community, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:With this community, where it's so trust-focused, I feel like word of mouth is the primary way of going there. I have to say something For a good few years years, if you typed in any islamic finance question. Yeah, on google, you know where I'm going with this. It was a card, this article that would always come up you guys were rising to the top for the longest time. I still.
Speaker 2:I think you guys are still on the, the google number one page yeah, um and I remember thinking this was back in like 21, 22, yeah I was like how are these guys doing it?
Speaker 1:and I was reading articles. They were fantastic articles, yeah was it you who was doing them. Oh, did you have a team? I was writing a couple, uh, but but but yeah, we have a team. Okay, that works in it. Uh, we should, we should spend more time doing that stuff to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because your search engine optimization yeah was fantastic and I don't know whether you were doing it on purpose or you were just putting out content and it was just rising to the top. Was it a proper plan?
Speaker 1:Yeah it was a proper plan to rank high for lots of different search terms in the Islamic finance space. Some of the guys in SEO call it back of the funnel work. The Islamic finance words are not necessarily the most sought after words, but there are ways to be able to uh, yeah, to use them. I mean, uh, some of the stuff were not intentional. So when we wrote an article on cryptocurrency, then cryptocurrency got really hot, yeah, and went viral like crazy every like muslim tech bro was yeah, it is crypto halal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and that's when our article just shot up, but I mean we've been very careful. I know some other players in the fintech space constantly buying Bitcoin. No, I mean, they're constantly buying links. Oh, buying links.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, huge amounts of links just being bought there was a time where, if you just typed in, our kestrel yeah on google. Yeah, one of our competitors.
Speaker 1:Names would be like right there at the top, and then the second competitor and then we'd be third.
Speaker 2:I was like how is this allowed? How can people buy?
Speaker 3:your own name, yeah, right, so yeah, it's crazy, yeah very interesting, very interesting, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:so two sides of that Was that ever really daunting, that you have to manage both sides of this process and you're quite a small team, especially maybe seven, eight people. Was that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how were you doing that? It's still daunting, to be honest, because it's a chicken and egg thing where you either have too much liquidity or not enough deals.
Speaker 1:You're constantly doing that much liquidity or not enough deals. You're constantly doing that uh. So, um, I, I could tell you I was spread out to thin, working on a lot of different things, always, uh. So that's one of the ways we're doing that. It's that, uh, when you have a small team, uh, the founder ends up uh, doing a lot of stuff, yeah, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:He shouldn't necessarily be spending his time as we started, but now we're trying to just clearly uh define uh the roles more so yeah, so how big is your team now? So currently we're, uh, eight people, uh, but we're expecting to be um over the next couple of weeks. Uh, we're adding two more, uh, two more people, and we're just going to grow accordingly.
Speaker 2:Yeah 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 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 pot and then, crucially, linked 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 how did you ever find that you were approaching burnout during the past five years just doing so much like I'm asking? From personal experience, I definitely hit that, yeah, at some point, and it was when I started this journey.
Speaker 2:I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, and then, during the process, I got married, now have two babies, and it's just like, yeah, alhamdulillah, it was amazing and there's definitely. You see barakah in your work and you see your risk increase, but at the same time, you can't have that same mentality where I'm going to be doing this and checking in on the tech team and then doing the marketing and the sales and distribution, talking to the shareholders and like a whole 10 other things that that I'm sure you were doing as well at the same time. Yeah, so did you start approaching burnout and how did you deal with that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's actually a very good question and I think only another founder would like understand the level of pressure you're under, whether it's fundraising, whether it's even the operational stuff building traction. Any way you look at it, there's a certain kind of pressure and I would say, in the early stages definitely, I would approach burnout many times, several times I won't say many times, but several times on several occasions. It's primarily because of two things. One is you're more likely to build expectations in the early stages, I would say, where, let's say, you're having a good conversation with an investor and you're like, okay, this one is in the bag, right, and you're doing that, and then you get really you get.
Speaker 1:You get your expectations set a certain way and then if it doesn't fall through that, or if it falls through, it doesn't uh actually happen, then yeah, you, you drop quickly uh. But having said that, uh, I did get to stage over the last year, year and a half. I say my, my, my, my personality got accustomed to the type of pressure I'm under, if you want. And, uh, I've set my expectations, uh, or I set my expectations, uh, clearly more realistically, more realistically definitely, uh. But one point that you mentioned that's really important is I set my expectations clearly More realistically, I guess, more realistically definitely. But one point that you mentioned that's really important is when it's just you, it's fine.
Speaker 1:Any founder who's honest with himself must understand the probability of failure in the startup space, which is very high, and it only starts coming down over time. And it only starts coming down over time. But once you have, for example, once you're married, once you have children, once everything, you definitely become more risk-averse and you try to find if you're already in the startup space it's something you need to deal with and you need to manage accordingly, and you need to try to de-risk as quickly as possible to be able to get to that next stage For sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:And how did you start doing that, Cordus? How did you start de-risking?
Speaker 1:So we started primarily de-risking by improving our unit economics. Okay, so how much does it cost us to acquire a small business? How much does it cost us to acquire a small business? How much does it cost us to acquire an investor? How can we spend money on the acquisition channels that work and not spend any money on the acquisition channels that don't work? So it's about being honest with ourselves as well, understanding the data and then making decisions and funneling the funds the limited amount of funds that you have in the acquisition channels that work with us. It's about having very clean data sets. So, just to give you an example, I receive a flyer from Funding Circle, from some of the other SME lenders every single week, and that's even flyers to SPVs that I know are not eligible for funding. So they've got this indiscriminate way of just sending out flyers like actual, just like stuff in the letterbox.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh really yeah okay, whereby, with us it's we clean our data sets, we filter our data sets as much as possible. So when we're targeting businesses, we're targeting businesses, given the publicly available information, that are most likely to meet our eligibility criteria. We either reach out to them by calling them emails, social media flyers as well.
Speaker 2:We reach out to them in different methods and what's the best success rate for you right now when talking to businesses is it? Is it physical? Is it you like turning up and talking to them or holding events and bringing them to you?
Speaker 1:We plan to do more events going forwards. In the past, we didn't spend too much time doing events, but we understand the network effects at play and we want to do more events going forward. So I would say it's a mixed funnel. It's a mix of several things, but ultimately, what it comes down to is approaching the right kind of business. So if I want to send 5,000ers, for example, or 5 000 emails, and I'm targeting uh let's say uh companies founded last year, or, let's say startups as well, I'm not going to fund these businesses based on our current eligibility criteria. So how much can we filter the data sets, how much can we enrich the data sets and how much can we reach out to businesses that meet our criteria?
Speaker 2:Cause. It's all those factors. Okay, how many businesses have been running for three years? How many of them are actually profitable for those three years? How many of them are? Should then, sharia compliant Cause it's not like you're going to fund someone who's running a brewery or a weapons manufacturer or something of that nature.
Speaker 1:Right, okay.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting. And then from a customer, from a investor perspective what's the future of that? Do you want to stick with peer to peer? Or now you have this institutional line, mashallah. Is that really what you want to be doing more and more of?
Speaker 1:institutional. We want to have a good diversified funding base. So we're bringing in that institutional credit line inshallah very soon. But we don't want to close the peer-to-peer side. Rather, what we're doing is, uh, inshallah very soon we'll be coming, uh, hopefully, with uh an ifisa okay, for for incredible that's what I want to tell us you'll have your own actual savings product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that people would just invest to, yeah, invest into and then you will determine where the money's being invested. Yeah, on your own, okay, because? That must be product. Yeah, that people would just invest to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but invest into, and then you will determine where the money's being invested yeah, on your own okay, because that must be way less of a headache for liquidity management on your side, right percent okay, incredible, and and then uh, gradually going to fund management amazing as as that, that would be the, the objective. Fantastic, and and and and. Yeah, that's that's the plan, if you want. On the uh, on the investor side, yeah, let alone the institutional funding line and incredible different uh dynamics I'm looking forward to that and have you given any thoughts into venturing into maybe venture capital changing?
Speaker 2:you know it will be completely different criteria yeah you'll be looking at businesses which are much younger, probably haven't hit profitability, much riskier profiles, but is that something you've given some thought to?
Speaker 1:So we haven't given it much thought to, but I'd say it's more on the line of product development. So if we were to, for example, go into that space, I don't think our current product would make sense for that. Rather, uh, we need to go profit and loss sharing product and then it's pricing it like that's going to be really expensive. I think it's why. It's why I think maybe equity is the best form of uh, of financing for uh, uh for startups yeah, for sure, for sure, absolutely so the Sharia.
Speaker 2:Talk me through the contracts that you use at the moment. Are you using a commodity?
Speaker 1:Marabaha contract yeah, so for the working capital financing we're using a commodity Marabaha. We're working on other contracts for we're working on new products that take into consideration other products, but for working capital, yeah, it's commodity marabaha. We've really tried to look at other methods. Very difficult, very difficult in the UK.
Speaker 2:Because commodity marabaha has been set up to kind of conform as much as possible with UK legals. Yes, could you talk our customers through a little bit about how that would work with a business?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So ultimately the objective is to offer the business liquidity because we're offering unsecured business finance for working capital purposes primarily. The way it works is all that stuff happens in the back end of our system in terms of the. So once the business signs the master commodity murabaha arrangement and before drawdown, we execute the trade of metals readily available metals on the same day of drawdown to basically to to effectively sell the metals to the business and then act as the agent of the business, sell the metal and give them the money. So what these small businesses left with is, let's say, a hundred thousand pounds, let's say at the profit rate of, let's say, 15% per annum, that they need to repay over the 36 months of the facility on a deferred payment for this metal that has been exchanged as part of this contract yeah okay yeah interesting I wouldn't say it's necessarily uh, uh, the most practical, uh, or it is the most practical.
Speaker 1:I'd say it's not the most efficient way of doing business, uh, but it's what's available when you look at islamic finance at the moment yeah uh, it would be great if uh sharia scholars can try to figure out a way of uh of designing uh new products.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean we're seeing new products enter as well. I don't know if you're familiar with cordoba capital, but we had haris rafan on the podcast, yeah, a few months ago, and he's coming up with an interesting promissory note yeah, a ppn product which is doing some trade financing when it's it's not using commodity marabou. I'm going to do it in injustice, so if you want to check it out, we'll put the link to the episode below. But yeah, so people are experimenting with, with different things, but I absolutely, absolutely sympathize with the idea that this is the thing which is most largely accepted.
Speaker 1:There has to be a focus on scaling as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's the thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you're running maybe one transaction of 10 million pounds, you might be able to use a product that is not necessarily scalable because you're running a corporate finance boutique right. But if you're running something that you need to execute quickly, get the financing on to someone who might not necessarily be literate when it comes to finance, so you need to hold his hand and explain to him why he's taking on and how he's taking it on. I think, uh, yeah, that should also be taken into account when it comes to products that's amazing, carlos, I think.
Speaker 2:The other thing I wanted to talk to you about, hassan as well, is as an economist. Yeah, this is quite an interesting time to be alive. So, with everything that's going on trump introducing tariffs that has basically, um seriously negatively impacted stock prices around the world, specifically in the us, but we're seeing a lot of people who have invested or have their pensions in sharia compliant funds, which were primarily created and built upon us stocks. A lot of them are seeing their prices plummet. Yeah, um is, how do you, how do you feel about this? Do you think this is a problem and you think this is more of a reason why we need to have more of our own muslim-owned businesses? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I mean, uh, the sharia stock screening uh methodology that's used. I mean, is is interesting and a lot of people have questioned it at different points in time, but I think, ultimately, muslim investors should be channeling their liquidity, should be adding a layer when they're looking at businesses to fund, and one of these layers, for example, is what does the business ultimately do Away from screening as well, in the sense that is this a business that's benefiting the Ummah?
Speaker 2:And I would say, if you look at most of the businesses that are, uh, at least on the us stock exchange, I would say highly unlikely, absolutely yeah yeah I mean, even if you look at google, tesla, all of these companies, leaving aside what they might be doing in Israel, in the Middle East and all of that I think the problem with a lot of these businesses is the idea of maximizing shareholder value and that concept of, oh you know, all we're trying to do is just get more and more dividends paid out to our shareholders, whether that means cutting jobs or cutting quality, cutting corners on the final product, final deal. It's just all about that, pushing for that. But what I love about what guys like you are doing, focusing on the small businesses, is that it's not really about that. Like, these are real businesses employing real people, helping out their own communities. Was that a big part of, if you want to call them?
Speaker 1:movements, to a certain extent, were really going down to funding businesses that form the backbone of the economy and helping level the playing field, because you've got lots of entrepreneurs within the Muslim community, lots of entrepreneurs within the Muslim community, very innovative and very real entrepreneurs like can build something from scratch into a very profitable business, but yet, when it came to financing options, would not necessarily have the let's call it, the non-dilutive funding options to be able to grow. So that's one aspect of it. I mean. What's very interesting, arif, is that when you mention as well stocks right, a lot of investors definitely more sophisticated investors as compared to standard retail investors can use lots of different strategies to hedge the risk. So you could, for example, buy 100 shares of Tesla stocks and then purchase put options right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if the value of Tesla goes below a certain level, you minimize the downside risk. Now we're already at a disadvantage. You're gaining exposure, for example, to tech stocks that most of them are Sharia compliant but yet very volatile. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're holding on to that stock portfolio as a Muslim investor with no downside protection. Imagine that like you're in for a ride. I mean it's. Yeah. I mean, if more Muslims are going to be putting their hard-earned money into pension funds, into different types of products out there, there has to be some level of understanding of the risks they're exposed to, because I would say the market we're in today and even going forwards might be a complete different economic regime to where we were before, just because of a hundred years worth of, uh. I mean, if you read into the trump administration and what they're doing, right, uh, we're looking at a new world order. If you want a new world order coming into shape, uh, that is different to the one that existed for the last uh hundred years or after post-world war two, post-world war two, exactly. So if that's different, then even even money flows are going to be different. So if he's looking, for example, to fix trade deficits with a lot of different countries, in theory at least, less financial flows are going to be going his way.
Speaker 1:Just in terms of the US. So what this means is that the cost of financing is going to be going his way, just uh or or in terms of the us. So what this means is that the cost of uh financing is going to go up, which means that stocks are going to go down, which means that their markets are going to be more liquid so you don't think the stock market could recover from this over time, or it just might take a lot longer uh, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a good question. I mean, you're always going to have like recoveries over time, yeah, but if we're looking at a new regime, change, a new economic regime, a new state of play, I don't know in the long run, in the long run, what's going to happen, because you have a lot of different factors. Then you have the. So finance is based on? If you look at finance in general or finance textbooks, it's based on the interest-free rate, right? Not the interest-free rate? The interest rate or the risk-free rate, yeah, sorry. So the risk-free rate is the base of any cost of capital calculation, right? What's risk-free at the moment? Is it the US Treasury bills, with that massive budget deficit? No, what's risk-free, I mean, is it? The US Treasury bills with that massive budget deficit.
Speaker 1:No, what's risk-free? I mean it doesn't really exist anymore. It doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, I mean a lot of different things are happening. I mean it's just.
Speaker 2:I'm just thinking back to my economics lessons and, yeah, we would call that risk-free T-bills the assumption that the government was always going to be able to pay that out? Yeah, but could that happen? Because yeah, I mean absolutely yeah. And how do you feel about crypto? Because, interestingly, stocks are crashing. Bitcoin prices are also crashing.
Speaker 2:I think crypto across the board and I get that. It's sentiment as well that a lot of people are was really really bullish on it, especially with elon coming into the government in some way. Yeah, um, and him really being bullish on crypto in general. Do you think it's all just sentiment and it's going to recover? How do you feel about it? You wrote an article as well. You guys put it out about crypto. What was your take on whether it's Sharia compliant or not?
Speaker 1:So I mean, when you look at the meme coins, I mean, yeah, I put a big question mark on those. I mean there's lots of debate right now in this space about whether it's Sharia compliant or it isn't. Bitcoin is interesting. Where is it heading? There is a high correlation between Bitcoin and the MAC7 stocks, for example. As you mentioned. It doesn't seem to offer that. It doesn't offer good diversifying characteristics in a portfolio because it swings. It's very volatile. So does it meet the criteria of a reserve asset? Not at the moment, not right now, not right now.
Speaker 1:If a lot of institutional funding came into play and the levels of volatility were brought down and the US started to purchase. I think they want to own a million dollars worth of Bitcoin in a budget neutral way, possibly, but I would say I'd much rather own gold, just because of its track record historically. Yeah. Its importance even in Islam. And I mean anyone who's got a problem with gold will tell you okay, but you need to store it safely. Why is that a problem?
Speaker 2:That's what ascribes value to it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So if you were to purchase it, for example, from the Royal Mint, and they're storing it there, if you press a button, they could send it home in the worst case scenario. So I think that's one situation. Then the other situation is all that stuff around. Can quantum computers decipher Bitcoin properly?
Speaker 2:I have not heard this problem, so is it that the idea of a finite supply of bitcoin may be in question?
Speaker 1:that's that's what I've been reading, okay, uh, jp morgan put a put up an article on that as well. And then the other one is encryption whether they're truly encrypted or whether a quantum computer can decipher them, okay, okay, so it's these two things whereby gold is gold, it's physical. I mean, one interesting thing maybe is tokenizing gold, for example. Maybe that's interesting, but the one thing I would say personally that I don't like at all is the stablecoins. That's just my opinion.
Speaker 2:What's your take on that, On the stablecoins and for people who don't know what are?
Speaker 1:stablecoins. That's just my opinion. What's your take on that?
Speaker 2:On the stablecoins and for people who don't know what are stablecoins.
Speaker 1:So stablecoins are right now privately issued cryptocurrencies that are pegged to US government debt. The question here is going back to what we were mentioning around the risk-free rate. Essentially, you don't think that a treasury bill is risk-free because if you looked at the United States as a company, it doesn't seem to be very you don't know where they're going to generate revenues from.
Speaker 2:Right, if you looked at the United States, if you looked at this country, as a company. I mean you would shoot it in the head, right.
Speaker 3:You would tell people just to give up with the amount of debt that it is in, especially post-COVID right.
Speaker 2:It's shocking.
Speaker 1:And then, basically, you're saying that if you're issuing a cryptocurrency off the back of that debt, that just seems really, really risky to me it seems that they've created a buyer of us government debt because, uh, other countries are not willing to purchase them anymore uh, so it's just another way of screwing over the consumer I would think so, because right now uh, I don't know what I was reading last time Tether and stable coin issuers are the seventh largest buyer of USD bills. Really. So if this is the future of money, it's one risky….
Speaker 2:It's just like different layers of obfuscation upon obfuscation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you've got some level of herd behavior going on. So people don't want to question what's happening and maybe we question too much, maybe I question too much, I mean, but it's just just looking at it financially from a, from a finance standpoint, just doesn't, doesn't make sense to me. I mean, and and how does it make give it so, uh, it's not really limited in supply, it's not really so.
Speaker 2:Whatever bitcoin is, it isn't the the more I read about it, the more I feel like there are very few people who actually understand what's going on in the financial markets as a whole, and it takes me back to like just being an intern when I was at deloitte and I also spent some time on a couple of trading floors as well just on like work experience and that. And when someone's explaining something to you and you're like an 18 year old kid and you're just sitting there and you're nodding and you're like yeah, yeah, I know I know what's going on, but in reality you have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 2:And then you realize how many people in the real world much, much, much older and more experienced and wiser have been doing the same thing, yeah right for the longest time and they they don't actually understand how just basic financial markets are working, let alone how cryptocurrency is working. So what hope does the general public have?
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. So, if you're coming in without questioning the mindset, so, let's say, in Islamic finance, right. If you're coming in and saying, okay, cryptocurrencies are halal, let's say they are halal, okay. And you're rushing to put your money into them, right. And then you get a massive crash and and. And let's say I'm someone who's not very financially literate, right, and I basically said, okay, I'd love to educate my kid. So you came in with the right intent. I'd like to send my, my kid, to the best schools and I can't really afford it, so I'm going to put all my savings into cryptocurrencies. Why? Because meme coins are going up or whichever thing happens. To be sure, I comply structurally or from a product design standpoint, if you want.
Speaker 1:There is another kind of risk as well. Right, it's the risk of these. I mean, I come from evaluation background, even when I was with deloitte, and I could tell you I still can't figure out like. I've seen different methods of how they value these things, but they all seem to be based on on trying to find the trying to make something up, right. So, okay, if you're looking at one of the methods of bitcoin, right, it would follow a similar method to gold, where? Here's the cost of mining gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And here's where it's priced. And here's the standpoint where it makes sense to produce gold. And here it isn't. The crypto mining equivalent uh, yes, is interesting. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's really. It looks nice and everything, and you've got a couple of other methods as well, and you just wonder what is the intrinsic value of these currencies and what is the price of these currencies? And these are two different things. Intrinsic value is how much it's it's worth. It's really worth, it should really be worth. And price is uh, how much is supply and demand driven right? How much people are willing?
Speaker 2:to buy it for today, a hundred percent. That's the thing Okay, so you're worried. There's a huge mismatch between those two things right now.
Speaker 1:I would say so. So gold is priced at around $3,000 at the moment. Right, why is Bitcoin priced at?
Speaker 2:I think it was $58,000 this morning for a single bitcoin yeah yeah, so so what?
Speaker 1:not that I purchased any bitcoin yeah, but you know what I mean. Right, like, like. Why is this one? Like what? What's going on there?
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, there's got to be some speculation which is boosting that price for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's very interesting.
Speaker 2:So where do you think this is all heading? What do you think as Muslims, as a community, we should be putting our time and our efforts into to creating much more of a Sharia-compliant economy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a very good question. I mean, I've seen that you talk a lot about the circular economy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Muslim pound and us investing into our own businesses and creating our own businesses, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean that's what I'd like to see more of, to be honest. I mean, if finance is the grease that powers the circular economy and you look at the Muslim Ummah right and you look at all these Muslim countries that have so much to offer and we're able to let's say, we have an excess of liquidity in the UK but not necessarily an excess of projects to fund right If we funnel them elsewhere and if you have a standardized system where you've got, for example, faith in the rule of law in another country, in a Muslim country, then you start having these cross border inflows of FDI from countries where you might necessarily have a large amount of projects but not necessarily capital, to I mean to areas where you've got a lot of capital and not necessarily a lot of projects. So then we start to see money that's being used to improve the ummah right. That's one aspect. Another aspect is how can we develop more products to meet people's needs?
Speaker 2:And really I mean yeah, I would say that and, most importantly as well, the need for innovation, like which I'm super optimistic about as well because, alhamdulillah, like, part of the reason we started this series was to really shine a light on how many muslim entrepreneurs there are, how many people have been doing this not just recently, but for a few years now, and it feels like we're at this inflection point, like there's suddenly a hockey stick of growth. We're seeing of a number of Muslims not just innovating and starting their own things, but working in pretty big senior positions within massive institutions, from not just financial services but across tech and the like.
Speaker 2:So I think the next 50 years, in the short of the world that our kids grow up in, will be really interesting from a Muslim innovation type perspective in the UK, and God knows what it will be like in the US, because they're already just like a couple of generations ahead of us in terms of what they're doing, especially on the West Coast. Okay, fantastic, we're starting to run a bit out of time but, any final words of advice, for they may be students, they may be people in jobs or thinking about starting their own businesses. Is there anything you'd like to impart?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean, uh, it's, it's, uh, and I know, uh, different people have got different risk tolerances. Uh, if you've got a really good idea, uh, and you're uh, um, and I mean, let's say you're a university student or you just graduated and you can afford to take a risk and go out there and really push your idea and see where it leads you, that's going to foster a lot of innovation, I think. Rather, if you don't do that, you'll never really know. I mean, there's no one way of going about doing things. For example, we took the corporate route initially and then we decided to come up with an idea. That's one way of doing it. Another way is but you do have some younger generations who are really really quite, I mean, they're very smart and they might be able to go about doing things without having a corporate background, possibly, possibly, um, then the next thing would be uh, if you're averse to risk, I wouldn't recommend this space because, uh, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's. It's a scary prospect to be like okay, not only am I in charge of you're not even in charge, right? You're just kind of sitting there thinking I've now got to chart out and and forecast how I'm going to survive, not just for myself, but to pay all these other people, yeah, and their livelihoods are going to depend on you a hundred percent. There's a lot of stress that comes with that, yeah, so if you're fearful, the fear will cripple you yeah and you won't be able to act right.
Speaker 1:Uh, so that's really important. Uh, that's, I think, maybe one of the most important characteristics of a founder, as resilience is, uh, not being I I mean freeing, fearing a lot, not fearing the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and having that intention set right from the beginning, like, ultimately, why you wanted to do this is you wanted to benefit d in some way, and like, alhamdulillah, you're still here, I'm still here, and I pray that Allah keeps using us and not replacing us, and as long as we keep our intentions there, that will keep happening.
Speaker 1:Inshallah.
Speaker 2:Inshallah Hassan, it's been a pleasure. How do people?
Speaker 1:if people want to reach out to you, how would they do that, so you could reach out to us on wwwcarduscom and if you want to reach out to me personally as well, linkedin is a good method as well. So look me up, and thanks for inviting me, areeb. I really enjoyed the conversation, likewise, man likewise.
Speaker 2:Hassan. Assalamualaikum, waalaikumussalam. Thanks for inviting me, Areeb. Yeah, no worries at all. I really enjoyed the conversation. Likewise man, likewise Hassan. As-salamu alaykum, wa-alaykum as-salam, 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