No Cap Podcast Ep 3 | Milkstraw: Cutting Cloud Costs and Building Global Tech from the UAE

In this episode, we sit down with Milkstraw founder and CEO Jawad Shreim to explore how a painful founder experience turned into a fast-growing cloud optimization company helping startups save up to 50% on infrastructure costs in minutes.

From surviving cloud outages and regional uncertainty to fundraising, AI adoption, and building globally from the UAE, Jawad shares what it really takes to scale deep-tech infrastructure products in today’s market.

We discuss:
 • How Jawad’s first startup shut down because of cloud costs
 • Why Milkstraw was built to optimize cloud spending dynamically
 • Helping startups save up to 50% on cloud infrastructure
 • The impact of regional instability and cloud outages on businesses
 • Why operational efficiency matters even during growth
 • Building trust with engineering teams and enterprise infrastructure
 • Lessons from rebuilding the entire product from scratch
 • The reality of fundraising in MENA vs Silicon Valley
 • Why great products create their own momentum with investors
 • How AI is completely changing the way software products are built
 • The ambition to build global infrastructure technology from the UAE

This episode is a deep dive into startup resilience, cloud infrastructure, fundraising realities, and building globally competitive technology companies from the region.

🎧 Watch / Listen to the FULL EPISODE
 👉 https://tr.ee/-cbYWojVgm

📚 Chapters:
 00:00 Cloud Costs Origin Story

00:25 Milkstraw Promise and AI Pace

01:23 Podcast Intro and MENA Cost Crunch

04:26 Outages and Continuity Moves

05:58 First Customers Trust and Rebuilds

23:12 Conflict Proofing Revenue

24:34 Selling Cloud in MENA

25:33 Early Adopters Gap

31:14 Rapid Fire and Milkstraw Explained

35:06 Founder Story and AI Shift

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في هذه الحلقة نستضيف جواد شريم، المؤسس والرئيس التنفيذي لشركة Milkstraw، لنتعرف على كيف تحولت تجربة فشل بسبب تكاليف الـ Cloud إلى شركة تساعد الشركات الناشئة على تقليل مصاريف البنية التحتية السحابية بنسبة تصل إلى 50% خلال دقائق.

يتحدث جواد عن بناء شركة تقنية عالمية من الإمارات، والتعامل مع الانقطاعات السحابية والأزمات الإقليمية، إضافة إلى دروس التمويل، بناء المنتجات التقنية العميقة، وتأثير الذكاء الاصطناعي على مستقبل تطوير البرمجيات.

نناقش:
 • كيف أغلقت أول شركة لجواد بسبب تكاليف الـCloud
 • لماذا تأسست Milkstraw لحل مشكلة الإنفاق السحابي بشكل ديناميكي
 • كيف تساعد الشركات على تقليل تكاليف البنية التحتية بنسبة تصل إلى 50%
 • تأثير الأوضاع الإقليمية وانقطاعات مراكز البيانات على الشركات
 • أهمية الكفاءة التشغيلية حتى خلال فترات النمو
 • بناء الثقة مع فرق الهندسة والبنية التحتية الحساسة
 • الدروس المستفادة من إعادة بناء المنتج بالكامل
 • واقع جمع التمويل في المنطقة مقارنة بوادي السيليكون
 • لماذا المنتجات القوية تخلق زخمها الخاص مع المستثمرين
 • كيف يغيّر الذكاء الاصطناعي طريقة بناء البرمجيات بالكامل
 • طموح بناء شركة تقنية عالمية تنطلق من الإمارات

هذه الحلقة تقدم نظرة عميقة على المرونة التشغيلية، البنية التحتية السحابية، تحديات التمويل، وبناء شركات تقنية تنافس عالمياً من المنطقة.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Fifteen years ago, my first company shut down because of cloud cost. I wanted to take this head on. How can we look at it differently?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

The region is facing unprecedented challenges. In certain sectors, revenues have declined unexpectedly, and the timeline for recovery remains uncertain. While we have strong confidence in the leadership, companies increasingly see big costs in the world.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

We help companies save up to 50% of their shot in 15 minutes. It's almost always guaranteed that we're gonna drop their costs. One of them receiving $4,000 a month. We've not yet seen the company that we're gonna save the money. We've just focused 100% on the product. It's quite fast and accessible for that. It is giving us an example we have to feel like to make sure that we're using the best that is there. And if there is anything that's giving you that we're gonna feel it, we know this is the best thing that we have to do, so we're just gonna trying it out. If it works, it works, it doesn't work today. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So, Jawad, where are the where did the obsession start? What did you see that you saw? This is broken, I need to go fix it.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

Yeah, um a bit of a long story on that, but essentially it starts off about 15 years ago. Uh my first company that I ever started uh shut down because of cloud cost. So there was a bit kind of leftover lingering over the years. And um just as the years flew by, I kept on seeing like how many companies are struggling with managing cloud costs. So I wanted to kind of take this head on, figure out a way a bit unique rather than the standard, which is you know, send your engineers, let them work for a few months on the project, optimize the cost, drop it. So the idea is how can we look at it differently, optimize quite fast, keep on doing it dynamically over time, and then let the engineers kind of work on the more important projects uh that they should put their time on.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, the region is facing unprecedented challenges. In certain sectors, revenues have declined unexpectedly, and the timeline for recovery remains uncertain. While we have strong confidence in the leadership and the region's long-term resilience, startups must remain disciplined towards cost management in the intern as companies increasingly seek big cost savings. So you're talking about sneaking of big savings for the startups. What's the typical situation where um you see the most savings through uh Milkstraw?

SPEAKER_04 3:13

Typically, all companies are dependent on two forms of uh um uh usage in the cloud infrastructure. Definitely crazy times. Um but I'm of the opinion that as startups we need to always have strong operational efficiency because savings are not something that we should look at once we have an issue or something like that. We should always be on uh on top of that. We always need to save money when possible because you know for us it's uh it's a game of time and we need to buy as much time as possible for us to keep playing in the game. Um so definitely these days, you know, this has been brought to the surface and more companies are looking to save money. Um as I mentioned, it's just always important. Just now uh unfortunately, because of the scenario, we need to you know up the game and uh deliver more uh savings uh as companies and uh you know thankfully as as make sure that's kind of you know that's our core, that's what we do. And uh, you know, we've been helping a lot of companies cut on their costs and uh uh manage uh the career turmoil we're going through.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

In recent weeks, we have observed cloud outages and disruptions affecting core services. What measures do you recommend companies incorporate into their business continuity plans to mitigate against such risks?

SPEAKER_04 4:41

So unfortunately, you know what happened was uh very unexpected. Um who would have thought you know data centers are going to be a target? But unfortunately it's reality and uh you know we had to face uh the music. So today what what we recommend to companies and all of our customers, uh our recommendation was uh it's time to move. Uh you need to move your uh servers and databases to other regions, so all of them right now move to you know Europe and India. Um and yeah, they just need to stay there for a while until things kind of become very clear. Uh as companies we cannot risk going down you know for a day or two or three. This is all money for us. So the best thing to do right now is just move your servers outside the region. Uh a lot of the compliance issues are now kind of taken lightly, right? Like nobody's focusing too much on it. Uh the important part is you know, you're operational, you're working, so uh move to Europe, move to uh India, whatever region fits you, and uh keep keep on working, and then in six months' time we see how things are, and uh if we can move back, then we move back.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So building milk straw, how did you get that first customer? Like, how did you convince them that you know what I can help you out?

SPEAKER_04 6:05

Yeah. Um to be honest, it's uh it starts always the same, I think. There's not like a magical recipe there, it was just through the network, you know, people that I know, uh friends that have startups have said, like, you know, give my product a shot. Let me let me see if it actually works. And uh when we tested it out, the first five were all like friends of mine, uh, that they have their own companies and they loved it. And um, I always do the same thing when I whenever I'm building a product. I always say, after three months, all right, guys, like this was a nice project, I'm shutting it down. And I want to see their reaction.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

And if the reaction is like, no, please, like, why would you shut it down?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, that's yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 6:45

Then I know, all right, there's something there.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:47

And uh fortunately, after we did the uh we did this with Milkstraw, uh after the three months, their their reaction was a freak out more because uh one of them had like a ten thousand dollar monthly bill and we dropped it to six thousand, so they were saving four thousand dollars a month.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

It's a big deal for startups, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

Uh basically it's like a salary of like you know, a good engineer.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

So they can hire someone that actually can help them ship faster. Um, so essentially this is the test, and how we got them is just friends, like just referrals. Uh, thankfully, this has been going for a while now with us. Like we are continuously getting referred from our current customer pool. Uh, so on average, every customer brings us another customer. Yeah. So the referral cycle is quite strong.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

What's the the hardest trust barrier for a startup to use you and how do you how do you overcome that?

SPEAKER_04 7:39

Yeah, very good question. Uh so the market we're working in uh is targeting engineers. And engineers are naturally just low trust because we need to give, you know, they we need to get access to their infrastructure, we need to see what they're building on the inside, and that's automatically like you know very sensitive area. Like they don't want to give you access to that. No, uh, don't touch anything in my infrastructure. Tell me exactly what you're gonna do before you do it. So uh a lot of the work that we did in the first year was on how do we ease this process, how do we make it very frictionless for them. So I uh I think our just our onboarding, like leaving the product aside. I think we iterated like rebuilt the whole thing 17 or 18 times from scratch.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Just because every time we get more feedback, we say, okay, this can be better, this can be done better, this can be done better. Um, and providing like a lot of transparency on it.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

So, you know, we work a lot on our documentation that we send out to all our potential customers to read through before you know they get on the call, make sure they understand how everything works. Uh, we remove any form of access that we don't need.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

Um, which is typically, unfortunately, uh, on the other side of the industry, it's more like, no, what more access can I get?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 8:56

Um, so we're always looking to cut down on that. And only if we need the extra access inside the application, we ask for it. So we say, okay, like we have this feature, but if you want this feature to be active, you need to give us this extra access. And if you're okay with it, please give it to us. Uh so we need to to work a lot on building out trust with the engineers, and over time that becomes kind of an engine on its own.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Um, what did so staying with this topic of you building and and pivoting? What what did you try that didn't work? Like what did you have to change at some point that uh that you've now kind of feel is much better?

SPEAKER_04 9:33

Yeah. Uh so this can get a bit technical, but let's do it. Um essentially, when we first started, uh as I mentioned in the beginning, we were offering the uh optimization that we were doing on just the two main categories, which is databases and compute, but just the core services, that's it. But there is like off of those, like a lot, right? We're talking about at least like 15-20 services under every category of those. So we thought, like, okay, it's gonna be sufficient for us to like you know just do those, and you know, that's going to be completely fine, and you know, it's gonna be enough for us to actually grow the company. Uh, very, very quickly, we figured out no, it's not gonna work that way. Uh, most of the people, yes, they are using compute, yes, yeah, they are using data stores, but they're probably using one of the other technologies that exist under it, so not the main core service. Um, so that was a bit of a uh uh you could say it's it was a bit of a slap in the face. Okay. Uh because we had to change our whole model of how we are doing the optimization to support all those other services. Uh so essentially we had to go through a complete rebuild, which took us like three months, just literally rebuilding everything from scratch. We had to pause a month and a half onboarding, no more onboardings. Like we couldn't bring in any new customers. Obviously, that's you know, that takes a hit on uh the growth of the company, uh, but also adds a lot of pressure on us as a team because like we need to rush to get this out. And the logic behind it was if I bring anyone on version one of the platform, uh, I'm not gonna be able to optimize anything for them because on version two, it's going to be a whole different set of optimizations. So anything that I do on V1 is just going to be cancelled. Yeah, it's not gonna work. So we had to pause onboarding, and that was very, very hard on us as a team. Uh also a lot of pressure because we needed to rush everything. And when you rush a lot of things, you know, mistakes happen all the time. Uh so essentially we kind of said, all right, let's get a V0 out, even if it's worse than V1. Yeah, it's fine, but we cannot stop onboarding. We know that the average customer that we have today is gonna increase their savings by at least 20-30% just from this move. And any new customer that comes, you know, will just tell them, like, you know, the new product's gonna be good. It's not gonna be as good in the beginning, but you know, just just wait with us. And thankfully, at the early stages of the company, you have early adopters most likely. So it's not people that are kind of looking for like the issues that you have, like, yeah, your product sucks. Yeah, uh, they're more forgiving, you could say.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_04 12:14

Um, so yeah, I think this was like one of the things that we kind of had a weird assumption about. Turns out to be a huge mistake on our part.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So tell us in your let's go to your fundraising journey.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

You raised a pre-seed of $600,000, and then you raised you announced a $2 million seed round led by VentureSook. Yeah, tell tell us about the the journey of you know raising those those two rounds, uh, how hard it was. What like what can you tell other startups that are going through this journey and how can you help them?

SPEAKER_04 12:48

Yeah, for sure. Uh so it was very tough in the beginning when we raised our pre-seed. I I was in the Bay Area before for like the 13 years. So my my in my head, this is how it works, right? It's just the silicone value way just applies everywhere. Uh, but once you come on the ground here, uh fortune's reality hits you. Um so in our pre-seed, it took us 10 months to close the 600k, which is an absurd amount of time, right? Uh, I spent literally the first year of the product essentially just trying to get the money that we need uh to keep to keep the border flow. Um we were lucky and unlucky at the same time. Lucky because the first check that came in, which was from Flat Six Labs, um, it came on the idea itself. Like we had not not one line of code written, nothing. It was just the idea, the guys like they're believed in us. I have to give it to them. They said, you know, we love the team, we love what you guys are thinking, and you're gonna figure this out. We know you're gonna figure this out. So they they gave us the first check, which gave us like a you know very good runway. And uh over time I thought, okay, like you know, first check-in, probably it will take me like you know a month to get the rest because I had most of the round with the first check. Uh, but no, that didn't work out that way. So we had to jump through a lot of hoops, you know, try to convince investors, like, you know, this is a valid product. Uh, everybody was asking me for something crazy, I have to say. Uh it's okay if we talk about uh the PC industry, but right?

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

All right, cool. So uh there's a weird assumption in the region that pre-seed somehow should be, you know, a full-fledged product with revenue, and you know, you things are working out well, and your growth is like 20% per month. And yeah, but that the pre-seed in reality, like outside of the Mino region, is you're building up.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Pre-revenue, pre-revenue for sure. Like you're still building the product.

SPEAKER_04 14:41

Yeah, you're still building the products, trying to find product markets fit, and it's a complete from a venture side, that's what we know, is it's a complete bet on the team. That's it. Even in the seed stage, there's a lot of it that's betting on the team. Um, but yeah, in the region we were a bit delayed on that side. There was a lot of like hampering on like, yeah, but like your revenue numbers are not that good. Yeah, I'm like, it's good that we even have revenue, you know. That was my my logic, right? And um uh so it was a very tough uh journey, uh, I have to say, and it was very annoying for me because I had to keep on jumping between building, fundraising, building, fundraising. Uh, but thankfully at the end, uh things kind of worked out. Uh so there was a big gap, six months in the middle. Uh there was no checks, nothing else. And then uh in the last uh two months, uh the other 250 came through.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

That happened.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Um, so that was what happened in between the two rounds.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Yeah. So in the between the two rounds, uh, so after we got the money, we're okay, we're good. We have runway now for a year, I think. Uh somewhere around there, nine months to a year. Uh we've just focused 100% on the product, like nothing else, no distractions. We were not thinking about like talking to anyone uh except our customers. That's it. We were like, okay, customer obsession time, nothing else now. Uh so in this time, this is when we you know figured out we need to do an iteration on the product, we need to provide the savings or more services than we originally thought that we would need to, uh, and just make the experience so good, so good all the time. So essentially, results-wise, what happened is our average onboarding was taking around 15 minutes uh for the customer to sign up until uh they're inside the product, so to take a total of 15 minutes. We cut that we cut that down to three minutes. So the onboarding process became so fast. Uh, the second part is uh the savings part, it was already very good for the market. So our average first saving implemented would be like one hour, two hours from sign-up, which is fantastic, exactly extremely fast. And we cut that down to like 30 minutes. Okay, I mean so yeah, essentially in the on the onboarding, by the time they want to you know close the tab, the first savings already implemented, and they can see that's reflected on their bill immediately. So this gives the like our product the wow factor, and that's what we focused on that year between uh the two fundraisers.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Like the proof is in the pudding. You if you build a good product, yeah, you'll get the funding. Like, really, that's the way it works.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

True, true.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Build a good product, have a good head down, put what build that product, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

For sure. And then the customers will talk for you, right? Yeah, uh, I think every single venture uh capitalist I talk to, they want to talk to our customers. Thankfully, that was that part was like very comfortable for us. I was like, just pick whatever who you have, whoever you want. Like, look at our customer list and say I want to talk to this, this, and this. And thankfully, like, you know, just give the the introduction and uh then as you said the proof is in the pudding.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Tell me, tell me about the second round. How is how did that come together?

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Yeah, for sure. Uh so for the second round, I had the experience of freezing before in the region, so I had to prepare a lot for it. And uh thankfully this one was very fast. So I think uh took us in total around 60 days just to close up the the whole two million dollars. And there was a bit of buildup before it, right? So I say 60 days, but like there was four months of preparation before it. So around April of um of the past year, 2025, uh, we said, all right, like we have enough runway for the end till the end of the year, uh, but let's start preparing for a new round. Uh, you know, we can announce the round around August and we start raising, and then in my head, I'm like, all right, it will take like four months in total to get it done. Now we have revenue, we have a good amount of customers, should be uh at least uh easier. So what we did is um we essentially started sending out a newsletter uh bi-weekly almost, so much more frequent before I would send like once a quarter or every you know month, maybe if I remember. We said, no, let's make it a bit more intentional. We're gonna send it out more frequently, uh, send out updates, requests, uh, get the venture uh industry involved in what we're doing. And um, yeah, we kind of just ramped this up and um uh until August. Uh and then I had a very good list, right? Like everybody I wanted to talk to. So by the time I say August hit, I stacked up an insane amount of meetings in like two, three weeks. Funny thing, you guys weren't on the list, by the way. Really? Yeah, Ventures wasn't on the list.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Yeah, VentureSook wasn't on the list. Um uh, but I got an introduction to you guys, I think, in the first week. So after I announced in the first week, I got an introduction to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Um, I guess Roba wowed you to get us on the list, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

Uh yeah, so the intro happened. Uh, I talked to Robot and Tamar.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:45

Uh and then from there, honestly, like things just flew very fast, right? I think I started talking to you guys beginning of August in the first week. On the third week, we're already signed. Uh things moved quite fast. Um, obviously, I learned a lot about you guys. Um, so I thought maybe uh this is like you know, milk straw is like special or something. But then everyone I talked to who you guys invested in, they said, no, like those guys are fast, they move fast, they do the due diligence, they know what they what they're doing, and if they believe in something, they're just gonna go for it. Uh, so this was like amazing to be honest. And then obviously, you know, I I did a lot of research on you guys too, and then I figured, okay, like you guys have a uh massive portfolio too, you've been doing this for a while now. Uh so that kind of like gave me a you know completely different taste for the for the VC industry in the Middle East, at least. And then um honestly, like uh a good name uh with you guys, Ventures. Um the rest just kind of came together very fast. So over the next month, uh I got the rest of the round done. And uh uh definitely there was two elements to this. The first element is the preparation part, we were prepared for it, we had everything set up beforehand. And the second part is having a good lead in the in the industry just helps out tremendously, right? Uh, you go to someone, I have a lead, Venture Stour. Okay, they know you guys, they have a call with you, da-da-da, what's happening. Yeah, and things just move much faster. So we were able to close it very fast, thankfully. And um, yeah, it's it was very good, like even as a team. I I think the the the day that we said, all right, the fundraiser's done. It wasn't like excitement, it was just more as I guess in a way. Like, we were just like, wow, okay, like this was a completely different experience that we went through last year. Uh that was very intense on the team, right? And uh, my two co founders, this is their first company. Uh, so they didn't have an experience in fundraising before. So they thought, like, oh my god, like we have to go through this every two years, like it's just too much. Uh, but thankfully, like, no, we were able to do it, in my opinion, the proper way. Yeah, uh, you know, get things moving, do it very fast. Uh, the the VC. Is not wasting your time. They're out they actually want to get the deal done or not. They just tell you flat out. Yeah. And you move on. They will you need to continue building. That's that's what you're there to do.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

So moving on to the the markets. We've talked a little bit about Mina versus the the other markets.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

With respect to cloud spend particularly, how do you how is Mina different from Europe or the US?

SPEAKER_04 22:23

For sure. Um uh the US is a diff uh is a bit of a behemoth in this. So uh I think the latest stat was like maybe 50% of the world cloud usage is in the US, and then the 50 is distributed on the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Okay, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

Yeah, so not surprising. Yeah, yeah, not surprising. Um but the difference I would say in the Mina compared to the rest, uh, is Mina is the fastest growing out of everyone else. Uh so and we we see it in our customers that we have in the Mina. Their growth is just insane. Uh they're spending more and more on cloud, they're using the latest technologies, uh, you know, they're they're becoming literally cloud native. Uh versus, you know, if you go back just a few years, a lot of companies they had their servers with and their and their offices.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, yeah. How has your focus changed post the conflict?

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Since the conflict started, I mean, we've been working with infrastructure, so obviously we're kind of in the middle of the fire. Um we I wouldn't say we changed our focus, we we just stayed as is. Um our plan is always to help companies uh save uh save money and uh uh make sure that they get to an efficient infrastructure that's healthy. So I wouldn't say anything changed from that sense. Uh obviously, you know, the the the hit uh affected our revenue. We know it's just for a month and then we will be back up uh as things go back to normal. But um it just means that we need to take into account that we need to have a diversified uh global pool of uh companies with us. Right now we're like 50-50 between the Middle East and Europe and the US. Um so it's not um you know crazy uh in terms of uh hit that we got, but uh we still need to take this into account, obviously, and have uh more distribution across the world, uh which is something that we're always working on, and uh you know we think of ourselves as a global company from day one, and um yeah, that's what we are.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Um what did you have to over-explain to people in the region? Like they that you know, that you didn't think you would have to, like you if it wasn't this region, it would be fine, you people would get it.

SPEAKER_04 24:43

Like, is there anything that on which side on the customer side or on the venture side?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Oh uh customer side, customer side, all right.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

Uh so in the in the region, um technical talent is quite strong. Um but again, as I mentioned now, it's just we just adopted cloud recently. So you know, I wouldn't say it's 15 years ago, it's just maybe 10 years the cloud adoption started. So there's a bit of a gap. I wouldn't say like it's a massive gap, but I I had to explain stuff that I thought there would be a given. Uh, but it's not like it was a hurdle or anything, it's just like okay, I have to explain those extra things to make sure that I get the message across. Um and the time to close with a customer here takes a bit longer.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 25:33

And I yeah, I think this is general on the region. I think I always say we have an early adopter crisis. We don't have many early adopters, uh, companies that are willing to take a bet on other startups uh and you know try out their product even if it's still buggy or whatever. Um, I think this is like the main core difference uh versus uh in the US. I'll just I'll tell you a story. Let me just tell you.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yeah, we love stories.

SPEAKER_04 25:58

Yeah. Um, I remember this is probably our seventh or eighth customer, something like that. Uh it was a US-based company. Uh, they reached out, we got on a call with them, and um we were explaining what the product was doing. And while I was explaining the product, I get a notification that they signed up. Like, so I'm talking to them and they're on the computer signing up. By the time we ended the conversation, they already signed up, did the integration, right? They're just trying to make sure, you know, I think they were trying to make sure we're real, right? Or humans on the other side. Yeah, they did the integration, put the credit card, and approved everything. Yeah, and this is just while me explaining on the call what we do. They just wanted the confirmation that really, you know, this is real. That's it. And they went ahead and they actually uh did it. So within the span of 15 minutes, uh, you know, everything was done. Yeah, um, on the other side, um rarely, I I I don't think it happened, maybe once that this happened with a company regionally, it's typically two to three calls uh that they actually just go on board and you know approve whatever we have. Uh another thing that's that was a bit weird that uh also startups would ask me for uh referrals from other companies. They would like, can we talk to your other customers? This is normal, but maybe in like enterprise, right? But if you're another startup seed stage series A, yeah, like you should be able to make decisions much faster and just try out stuff. If you don't like it, just cancel, right? Like, why are you spending so much time on this? Yeah, and this is something we we take you know deeply at the company. Any product that we can find an alternative that's a startup, we will go for it. Yeah, always.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:39

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Milkstraw is a UAE homegrown company where your revenue is diversified from a geography standpoint. Do you feel this protects the company from macro pressures?

SPEAKER_04 27:53

As I mentioned previously, we're a global company from day one, so we do have a diversified uh revenue stream, you know, between Europe, US, and Mina, and then we have some you know small dots here and there in uh Southeast Asia and Australia and uh Lazam. So definitely it is very helpful. So the revenue that we had from the region, obviously, because everything went down, um we basically stopped generating money from the region. So 50% of our revenue source essentially took a hit. Uh the other 50% could kept on going, which is definitely what you know kept us breathing. Now on the other side, we know this is temporary, and we know that the region is gonna come back up and everything is gonna go back uh to the way things were. UmshaAllah. And um this specific point was kind of something that I thought about since we started milkstraw that we're building we're building out of the region, but we're building a global company from day one. We're not just targeting, you know, in the UAE or in Saudi or on a specific country. No, we're going to play the global game, we're gonna have customers all over the world. Um, so definitely this helps us a lot from um you know macroeconomic changes and microeconomic changes. So we we just had this inherently as a DNA in the company, and everything that we build on top of the original product is going to have the same mindset. We're going to be serving the world from the Mina, and uh we're not going to be focused on a specific country.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Uh what what have you found frustrating in the region in the sale process?

SPEAKER_04 29:45

Yeah, I think this is this is it. I think just take more risks on like companies here. Um you know, uh, we can build as good product as any US company. Uh we have the skill set for it, we have the talent for it. Uh don't make it a hurdle for for a company that's like you know, four or five people to go through uh an insane process to to to close the deal. Just try out the product. What are you gonna lose? Yeah, like that's it. Just try it out. Yeah, right. It's not it's not a death sentence. You're not gonna be nobody's gonna hold you. Just go try it on board. You know, if you like it, you keep going. If you don't like it, you cancel the account. That's it. Like you don't need to go through a lot of hurdles to actually uh who doesn't want to save money? Yeah, that's for that's for milk's try, but I I say the same thing for every other uh company, right? Just if it's a startup, just give it a shot. Like, what are you gonna lose? Um and trust me, a startup will try so much harder to please you, right? Than any other company, like any other later stage. At our stage, at our seed stage, I know every single customer that we have. I talk to them. Yeah, you know, I uh any feedback they send, like we immediately put it as a priority. Yeah, like you're only gonna get that with a startup.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:59

Um, so I think this mindset that we need to actually like focus on. Uh so from a sales perspective, guys, try startups.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Believe in them, give them a shot, make their product better with them.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 31:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

So we're gonna do this thing called this rapid fire round. We've got a few questions for you um to to get your quick, uh, fast response. One mistake you hope founders don't repeat.

SPEAKER_04 31:26

Don't overpolish your products, just get it out as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah. Uh it's V1, right? It's okay.

SPEAKER_04 31:34

V0, even right. Just V0, it's fine. Uh make sure the UI looks good, the experience is good. At least regionally, this is important. Uh, if in the back it's messy, it's fine. Just get it out as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

One thing you do again and again that you did you were so happy with what you did.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

I'm not compromising on the talent I want.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Perfect. That's great. That's a good answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

I I uh I spend a lot of time in my interview process, it's a bit maybe too much, but I spend at least a month at least talking to the person I'm gonna hire. Yeah. The first ten people are the foundation of the company.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Absolutely. Absolutely. Startups are so much just the team, and people are taking a risk on you coming in early on. They are. They're that's their career. So like we're like a startup like you are. Like we take it really seriously if someone you know trusts us as this to be a part of their career journey. Of course. So it's uh it's you really have to go have a good fit.

SPEAKER_04 32:35

100%.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

What's the biggest cloud myth?

SPEAKER_04 32:38

It's too complicated. Uh it's made to be complicated, but it's not really complicated.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Yeah. So you can make it easier for them to understand.

SPEAKER_04 32:47

Yeah, and that's our mission statement, right? Uh change the way engineers interact with cloud.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Excellent. Yeah. Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

I think there's a lot to be done there.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah. So very, very simply, please explain what Milkstraw is.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

Yeah, definitely. Um so Milkstraw, uh, in one statement is we help companies save up to 50% on their cloud in 15 minutes. Uh so our mission is uh to change the way people interact with the cloud infrastructure, and part of it is delivering the savings. Uh one of the but best forms of optimizing your cloud cost is through uh financial contracts with the cloud providers, which are inaccessible for uh growth stage companies. It's very hard for them to do them. Essentially, just to break it down very quickly, is uh you have two forms of payment to the cloud provider. You either pay on an hourly basis or you pay on a set amount of hours, 750 per month, times 12 months or times 36 months. Uh, it's very hard for uh a growing company to commit for that long. Uh and the discounts on those commitments are just unbelievable why we're talking 50% plus. Yeah. So the idea is why not bundle those and get those contracts from the cloud provider and then lease them out to these startups and those fast-growing companies. Uh, so it's a very, very effective way for them to save money, and uh it's uh guaranteed. There's no like gimmicky thing about it. This is what you get, this is how much you will save. And um it's quite uh it's quite fast and accessible for them to actually do it through us.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, and what's the most money you've saved?

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Someone um I think the highest one was around sixty-five percent. That was like an unbelievable amount, but it was like sixty-five percent of uh their hundred thousand dollar bill, which was you know quite meaningful. Yeah, it was around a hundred thousand. So, like it was a lot of money for them, yeah, monthly. Yeah, so over the year, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

That's very meaningful.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

It's almost a million million dollars plus, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

So tell me a little bit about uh how you founded Milkstraw. What were you doing before uh you got here?

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Yeah, for sure. Um, so I've been always a founder. Uh I started my first company when I was in university in 2011. Um so this this kind of led to kind of a buildup of uh where how Milkstraw happened. So my first company was based on cloud computing. Cloud computing was very new, it was like three, four years old at the time. So essentially I wanted to put my computer on a USB dongle that I can plug into any screen.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

And uh that was running completely on the cloud. And uh I did that, and then my friends saw it. They they said, Hey, I want one too. And that was basically how I started my first company. Uh, I started building those. And unfortunately, a year in I had to shut it down because I sold it as a one-time thing. It wasn't subscription, and then cloud infrastructure essentially uh if you use it, you keep paying for it.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Right?

SPEAKER_04 36:06

So I had to keep footing the bill until I reached a point I was like, okay, I'm I'm gonna go bankrupt or you know, uh I'm gonna get into debt to keep this going. So I had to shut it down. Uh so first company was shut down by cloud cost. So there's a bit of a trauma there, maybe, right? Uh then after that, maybe a year in, I started my second company, was also in university. Uh that was more in restaurant tech. Um, so we built uh we built an application to you know scan a barcode and pay. That was in 2014, early 2030, late 2013. Uh, I ran that for five years. Uh we had the POS system along with it. Uh we were quite strong and big in uh LATAM. I don't know why, uh, but it got picked up in LATAM. So I spent a lot of time traveling from San Francisco to Mexico uh to uh for the for the product. It was quite substantial, so we had like 600 restaurants or so. Uh and uh then I had an exit. Uh fortunately, uh big chain bought us out. Uh, it was a good time to buy us out. Me and my co-founders had a fallout.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

Yeah. Uh so uh right at the time when things were about to break, this deal comes in and you know, got me out of it. Yeah, blessing in disguise for sure. Uh also a very good lesson on you know how to pick your founder, co-founders, right? Um after that, I had a bit of money and I started kind of investing. I never did investing before, so I started investing in the USA uh stock market, learning about how it works. And then um I said, okay, this is a bit too boring, like I need to make it a bit fun. So I started uh doing it uh on Excel Shield, just like building algorithms to like make decisions on like okay, this is a good stock or not. I was just part of like having fun doing it, and um then yeah, my family started like, Hey, can you like you know invest for me? Invest for me, and my friends then, and so at one point I had like I don't know, like 1.2 or 1.3 million dollars. I was like managing. Okay, and then one of my friends is like, uh, yeah, I don't think that's legal. Uh you should do something about it. Yeah. Um, so I said, uh, okay, well, I don't I don't even know what I need to do. And they're like, oh, we'll start the fund, uh, start the hedge fund. So yeah, we got we got a team hired the uh you know the lawyers and we started the hedge fund, and then uh I just started hiring engineers. Uh we had no analysts, nothing. This was all engineers, and they were just building algorithms and making decisions on the market. And over five years we grew that to like 16 million AUM. Uh, and then um uh that was before I uh decided to leave, uh sold my share to my co-founder there and uh moved back to Dubai. But uh milkstraw was kind of the whole idea of milkstraw was born uh in the hedge fund. Uh essentially the the idea was how can I apply the same logic of a stock market onto compute? That was just kind of the idea. Yeah, and um yeah, and that's that's what what we we applied literally. So how we think about those contracts that I uh that we move across our customer pool for them to get uh the best uh discount possible is uh like an asset. It is an asset class, yeah. So internally for us it is an asset class. Uh we treat it as a portfolio of stocks that we need to buy and sell, uh, except we control it. So we're kind of uh you know mutual fund in that way.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Get it, I totally get it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

Uh the next plan hopefully is offer it as an asset class. Let's see how that works out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

So tell me about how AI is impacting Milkstrong.

SPEAKER_04 39:52

AI is on an insane run now. Um I I don't want to even say like a year ago, I want to say two months ago. Just the difference that we felt from two months until now is unbelievable. Um we moved at least like now 80% plus of our code is written by AI, specifically Claude, uh, which is a model built by you know Anthropic. Um it's uh it's it's really changed even the way we are thinking about building inside the company and how fast do we need to ship? Uh so you know, now a feature we would say, hey, we want to build this feature. Uh, how long will it take? Uh previously, uh maybe it will take us a month. So we need to do the planning and do it. Now, even the planning we're doing with the model, right? Like, this is what this is the idea, like, how would we structure it? And then the whole plan starts coming out, and then okay, is this a good plan? Yes, all right, let's let's let's go for it. And uh, you know, and we leave it running sometimes 24, 7, 4, 3, 4 days, just it's building on its own. Fantastic. Uh so things are changing a lot, and even as uh for the engineers on the on the team, their jobs are getting altered, like changing a bit too. Uh so we're becoming a bit more review focused. We're making sure that the code is very clean, we're making sure that it's actually good for us to push to production, uh, rather than kind of thinking about how would we even structure this whole project? So the things are changing. I don't know how they're even gonna change faster. So, yesterday the new model dropped, the new uh cloud model. We want to see how how big is the change from the previous one. Um, so I think a lot is gonna change this year.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

How are you keeping up with the the changes, the the constant evolution of AI?

SPEAKER_04 41:35

It is giving us anxiety, I have to say. It is giving us anxiety. Uh but thankfully, we have you know our head of AI, uh Abdulhman Zboon. His job is to make sure that we're using the best that is there. And if there's anything that's gimmicky that we're kind of putting aside, uh of course, all of us are kind of aware of what's happening, but we know all right, this is like the best that we have today, so let's just adopt it. Yeah, and uh you know, whatever the cost is, because it doesn't matter now. Like if to get the best plan, the maximum plan on Cloud is $200. Yeah, right? What $200? Nothing. Yeah, right. If I need to get an engineer, a full time engineer, I'm gonna pay them 20, 30 times that. So uh we're we're adopting the latest technology, trying it out. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, we just move on.