Dani El-Zein - Supy's Founder on Pivoting, Fundraising & Building

What happens when your restaurant flops, your first software product misses the mark, and a competitor gets you banned from Google Ads?

You pivot. You get creative. And apparently, you rank for 2,000+ keywords globally.

Dani El-Zein, Co-founder of Supy, joins the CEO of MoneyHash, Nader on the Emerge Podcast for one of the most honest founder conversations we've had. From investment banking to running a restaurant that "never paid a dividend," to building one of the fastest-growing inventory management systems in the region - this is what graduating through the hard stages actually looks like.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Good Danny Habiv Yahbarak, how's everything? Hello, hello, all good, all good. How are you? Very good, very good. I'm very happy to have you here in EmergeBotcast. Let me tell you a little bit more about the theme of this season, which we talked about. It's called the Graduated. We're mainly focusing on uh highlighting founders from emerging market, particularly ones that went through different stages that felt like the stage before and the stage after. It's completely different in nature. And I want to highlight that. It's very the founders' stories are very complex, and we share a journey together, giving we are the same portfolio of a very dear investor. So I'm very, very excited to talk to you about it and also the hear your opinion about everything. Amazing. So that's for the sake of the podcast. Like just uh do from your own mouth, tell us an introduction about yourself and about uh company. I don't like to do the introductions myself, you know, if you like we'll not do you a favor, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

For sure, for sure. Daniel Zain, um founder of SUPI and co-founder of SUPI. Uh, we are basically uh software uh for restaurants. We do everything that has to do with inventory management, procurement, and intelligence for restaurants. We operate mostly with uh multi-branch restaurant operators. So typically anyone who has more than 10 outlets all the way up to 300 is kind of the ideal fit for our product. We started off in Dubai, um, being today our strongest market, and we expanded into four core markets, I would say. APAC, um we have an office in Australia, which is now our fastest growing market, followed by the UK, second fastest growing market, and then Dubai being the stronghold holding the fourth, um, and uh Saudi in Riyadh. We are present in 42 countries, obviously, thanks to SEO, GEO, everything that you can do with AI today. I mean, meaning a few clients in different countries, but this really shows the power of the internet, the power of AI, the power of uh go-to-market. Yeah, and yeah, that's a quick overview of of us um as a company and me. I mean, I can talk till for a long time, but I think that's that's enough. That sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

I will let you talk a lot, don't worry about it. And I mean, for um when I look at your profile, I'm trying to stitch it together, right? Like from merging acquisition investment banking all the way to restaurant tech, right? Uh draw draw for us this line, like how how you moved from this to that, what what got you graduated to the founder world, like what got you there?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Um look, I always wanted to be, I mean, I always wanted to have my own. It was it was always hard for me to work for someone. Um even in college and university. I was in Boston, I went to university in the States. Um I did a lot there. That was entrepreneurship. I mean, promoting at nightclubs, making money left, I mean, here and there, um, renting apartments for students. So I I did a lot, uh concierge service for international students coming to Boston. So so that was I would say the start of entrepreneurship for me, really when I was in college. Um, but then obviously, you know, coming from from being Lebanese and um, you know, having grown up in a in a culture where you know you want to be, you either have to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a banker. Um, that was also embedded in my in my DNA from a very young age. So um so yeah, I opted um for banking and finance. I applied to many jobs. Uh it wasn't a passion. Um I thought it was back then one of the best paying jobs, so I went for it. And I was an engineer, and they were saying that engineers are liked in finance. It's easy to get a job if you have an engineering degree. It's true, it worked back in the days. Today, maybe not the case, maybe not the sexiest job anymore. Um, but uh that's how I ended up in banking, mergers and acquisition wasn't by choice either. Um, it was just what was available, what I got accepted in. Yeah, and yeah, it was a great job. It was a great start because it teaches you a lot of discipline, it teaches you. I mean, until today I don't have a CFO. Financial modeling is something that we did over and over and over again for like six years, and you're doing it for someone else. So obviously, when it comes to your turn where you need to do it for yourself, you're not gonna let anyone else do it. You've done it for hundreds of companies. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, um, but that that kind of this is why I moved into banking, and then I made the switch when um actually before SAPI, I left banking and I joined uh a company from the UK who expanded here. I helped them in um launching the market. It's called Quick Up, Plasma Logistics Company. So I was employed by them initially, and um in parallel I had a restaurant called La Carnita. So all of this together, like being in a you know, working for a startup here, having a restaurant. Um and then yeah, I saw an opportunity and I decided to uh build my own software for my restaurant, and that's how really I graduated into becoming a founder or you know, the owner of my own business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to tell us more about the restaurant, like what what was it? What uh so it was a complete flop. Um that's uh that's one. That's a start, you know. We're just breaking even for seven years. Um, so yeah, it can look all uh nice on the outside. We won a lot of time out towards you know, on the outside it looked good, yeah. But at the end of the day, we never I mean, we almost never paid the dividends, which is sad. So um, so yeah, I mean that I would say kind of traumatized me. Yeah, um it was a lot of money, and um and uh we decided I decided to dig deep into why our costs are high, and obviously the highest cost was food cost, followed by entertainment, followed by labor costs. So everything, nothing was working from all the different, you know, in a PL of a restaurant, what should be the what's the what's the norm for food costs, what's the norm for labor cost, what's the norm for rent? What's the norm for entertainment? We were just above everything. So even though we were making healthy top line, bottom line was non-existent, let's put it that way. Yeah, and yeah, I decided to dig deep into food cost. Yeah, and that's what we are today. Like people do call us a food cost system, but yeah, we're way more than that. But we do we do food cost.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

I'm I'm fascinated by anything restaurant-related. You know, I watch cooking shows, I I uh any um any like my favorite one of my favorite shows is the bear. I even like in one of Money Hash off sites about culture, I was like showing them the difference between like execution and mission star versus non-mission star. Because for me, a restaurant that figured out their operations, probably best business run ever. Like it's it's just too complex and too hard to do. So even like operating it for seven years, that's that's a journey, man. That's that's fantastic. That's uh that's crazy. Like breaking even for seven years is still a huge.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

We didn't lose.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a huge achievement. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Thanks. And then uh what about the psychology of taking the decision itself? So like you try to figure out the but but the step of I'm gonna lose a company, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Look, I'll tell you, I mean, my perspective, I think there's there's two types of people in this world, right? Like for me from day one in my career, from the age of 21 when I joined banking, I was never satisfied with the work. Like I got promoted young, I got promoted early, I made good money, but I was never, never, never satisfied. Like, you know, having you know, working for I don't know, having a manager or working for my boss, and it's something I found very difficult. Um and nothing made me content. All right. Um the work was very uh robotic, it was um the same thing every day. You learn a lot, definitely. I appreciate all my days working for for other people and every job that I did. But um, like deep down you go back, I went back home and I wouldn't look forward to the next day. And I knew that you know, the people who are there's a lot of people like that today that are you know working for in other companies that are it's not their own companies.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And and nothing was changing. It was like, you know, I left banking, even in the startup gig that I did that I joined, um, I was never content. And you know, I wasn't stimulated enough to to like you know, innovate, think, create. And uh eventually, uh, you know, I thought, you know what, I've tried everything.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And the second I launched my own, everything changed. Like every day, I'm so excited for the next day. Like, you know, sometimes I even I don't get bored if I don't have you know anything to think about, to do more, to um and everything we do in SAPI, pre-pivot, post-pivot, everything we do is satisfying. You know, a small compliment from a restaurant is satisfying. Even a restaurant complaining is not satisfying, but at the same time, it's it's something that will you know motivate motivate us to do better. So I guess it's just what gets you excited. You know, some people they will get excited about their job the next day. Some people are, you know, they don't mind, some people just can't. And I was one of those who just couldn't get excited for my job um pre-Sapi.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like finding this drive, right? Like you you kind of found the drive and it took you there. That's awesome. That's awesome. But uh you mentioned the Bivot, so that's a really good especially for the theme, right? Like, because practically you started on something, then you graduated to something completely different. That too. Uh fantastic expansion of the product, congrats. Thank you. And then going from regional to global. That's that's a hell of a graduation, right? So tell us more about it. Tell us, tell us like how it started, where it's heading now. It's it's very it's very exciting to hear about.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, we're still very young. I mean, we're we're still not um I mean, yes, we are global, but at the very early days of our global expansion. Um look, when we launched today, SAPI, I would say, is a is a platform um that has a bunch of features, a bunch meaning over a thousand features in our system, in our software. When I launched the software, I launched with one feature. And my initial plan wasn't really to tackle food costs in the way that we've tackled it now, uh, which is you know, building an um AI-powered imagery management system. My way of tackling food cost was initially thinking that you know supplier prices is what impacts the food cost in a restaurant mostly, and wastage is done because of the way that people put orders to their vendors in restaurants. So although I did have a restaurant, I mean obviously we we flopped, so I didn't know that much. But but the second I got deep into the operation and uh we worked in the restaurant and we launched you know our first feature pre-pivot, um, we learned. So the journey pre-pivot was very different, and then I realized that what I was doing, although we had a lot of traction, um didn't have real value for clients. We had a lot of clients, people who are using it, but they weren't gonna be sticky clients, and I could see that you know, what's the lifetime value of these customers? Do I need to keep acquiring customers that are gonna keep um churning? Yeah, or is my product not good enough? So we were in a cycle of very aggressive acquisition, not enough retention and you know, high churn in the early days. I'm talking 2021. We launched in 2021, but we had very quick traction in the in 2021, 2022. And then we had to be true to ourselves as founders, me and my co-founder. Um, we had to be true to ourselves and understand that you know what? What we're doing, even though you know the the the charts and the graphs look good and investors are happy, and we just raised a seed round that was you know quite good. We raised $8 million in seed funding. Two, three months after that raise, we had to be true to ourselves by acknowledging that long term this is not gonna work. What we're doing doesn't have a real market to it. And you know, having operated for two years in that space or a year and a half with restaurants, we understood the market way more than we thought pre-launch. And that's when one day one of my customers told me, Hey Danny, I'm gonna use one of who today is one of my competitors, I'm gonna implement this software. Um, and we had already started development on something similar pre-pivot. And I told them, Wait, I'm gonna have what you I want in three months' time. So that day was the start of our official pivot. Even though we were building, we stopped everything we did. Yeah, we were I wouldn't say wasted, but yeah, we probably wasted a good two years, year and a half, building a completely different business. And um, Anya, I'm so glad that we took that decision. Um, and I'm so glad that our investors supported us, um, even though you know I had sold them a completely different story, yeah, a pre-pivot. And um today, yeah, we are I would say one of the faster growing, fastest growing inventory management system um in the region.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. And I mean um on the part related to wasting years, right? Like because after all, you gotta walk in a road to find what you found. Would you would you replace these two years if you can?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

I wouldn't replace them, but if I were to like build you know, build a business again, yeah, I would really know more my market before I before I go after it. And I would really have a product market fit, you know, uh PMF, but like not early signs of PMF, like real PMF before raising funds. I raised funds, I didn't have real PMF. I thought I did. I had early signs of PMF, I had traction, but I don't think the game is to raise funds because we shouldn't have raised those funds. So if I am to do something again, I I need you know, much more um to be much more conscious and aware of the market that I'm going after. Um so yeah, uh wasted no, definitely not, because thanks to everything, the team that we built is the same team, so so it wasn't really wasted. The pivot was was more of what we built initially, we kept in product because it was procurement. We just built on top of it and took a new direction versus keep building in a different direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

No, 100%, 100%. I mean, for me, uh for me it's uh it's a little bit different. I feel like if I I don't know if I would start again or not, I feel like the journey is too exhausting. But if I would start a different uh a different business or or do it again, I I am in total agreement with you. I feel like many founders, including us as first-time founder, you don't know if the signals you have are product market fit or not. True. You know, that's a that that's a common theme or as first-time founders kind of situation. But tell us about the the global move as well. So, like when when we talk about drive, for me what drove me to start a business is is seal ceiling breaking. Like for me, I feel like growing in the Middle East and um and looking for jobs, you always need to find like an international company or or leave the region to work on a global scale and find like exciting opportunities, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

And for me to build a software company from within the region and go global was like a dream for me. Like sometimes and every time I see we're hiring people around the region and doing that, that's what drives me. That's like the fact that this wasn't available for myself and it's now available, and like I'm enabling it, so the taking these steps. So looking at your company and seeing that you went to global, I'm I'm in full admiration. Like for me, not a lot of companies from the region can take this bold step of taking software globally. Like, uh, it's it's not something that we hear about a lot. How did you take the decision? What uh what went into it?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Honestly, it was um yeah, it was uh it was a bold move. Um our first international expansion was um was in Australia in Melbourne, uh actually in Brisbane. Um was our first client outside the region, so outside the GCC. Um we started so we got banned on Google Ads um in 2022, okay. Up until a couple of months ago. So we've been living without Google Ads for all this time. Wow. And uh constraint creates creativity, right? So we had to be, and I'm not gonna get through why we got banned. Um competitor raised something that's extremely unethical from founders. Um yeah, no need to get into the details of that because we've solved it now, thank God. And um constraint creates creativity. Yeah, so we couldn't advertise on Google, so we focused a lot on back then SEO, today GEO. Uh, we focused a lot on SEO. So we invested so much in everything that had to do with organic search. Um, and today we rank for over 2,000 keywords on Google across all my all big markets globally. And um that helped us get inbound leads from different markets in the world. So when I say we're present in 42 countries today, it's not because we actively sell in these markets. We actively sell today in four markets, yeah, but we get inbound leads. Like as I said, we just signed a client in Hawaii, an extremely reputable brand, um, a psi brand in Hawaii that has over a thousand locations globally, but we signed that franchise in Hawaii. Yeah they're super happy clients. Um, not that we're focusing on Hawaii, that that wouldn't, I mean, we should also stay core to the markets we're we're in. Yeah, but um we had this inquiry from a client in Australia. I happened to have taken uh the meeting back then because it was really early in the morning, 4 a.m. our time, I think, here in Dubai. And uh we had a beautiful call with the owner. The owner turns out to be the ex-founder of a very well-established brand in Australia that he had sold and he was starting a new brand, and um he was looking for software, so he was very well versed on what we do. He knew exactly what he wanted, he had seen all the global competitors, and when he landed on our software, and when we ran the demo with him, when I ran the demo with him, he sent me a very nice message after saying that actually the the message was nice for me, but not nice to others. But it was it was just complimenting everything we did. He said that he had never seen a software that would solve a lot of the pain points that they have as a large operator, and he ended up signing with us, and he started referring us to other people in the business the country over there. I ended up making a trip, spent six weeks in Australia, um hired our general manager there. Wow, and um we realized, yeah, so it wasn't really planned, and my investors were quite shocked. And what are you doing in Australia? Yeah nobody complained, they all believed trusted, and and you know, like there wasn't any objections, but it was um, yeah, that was our first move, and that's when really I got the confidence that you know what, halfway across the world, the same software is selling. And what's preventing me from doing more? Obviously, capital, right? Like we pivoted, so we were we were we were kind of I'm not gonna say survival mode, but we had to really, you know, build build good revenue before we could fundraise. And um, yeah, that was the start of our international expansion. Yes. Uh from you, yeah, from Australia. We did UK after. Um, again, the same investor who who pushed me told me, look, you have a br you have a British passport, why don't you spend the summer in London? I told him, Yeah, why not? I like London, I'll go spend the summer there. Yeah. So um that was summer of 2024. Same thing. We eventually launched you know in Jan 2025 in London. And um yeah, that was the start of international expansion. Then Hong Kong happened, and um, I think these are the markets we're we're now focusing on. That's awesome. Uh with people on the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

That's great. That's thank you. And it kind of checks that you spend summer outside of Dubai. So don't know that, but yeah, I was like, definitely. Definitely London, London works. But I mean, I think something fascinating you're you're talking about is like because you needed to almost rebuild a company with whatever capital you have. Exactly. Uh To the revenue level, to the BMF level, because you ex before you expand, and everyone trusted you before, had to kind of trust you again and empower you through uh the new phase, which is which is fantastic. And I mean, um, let's talk about all founders are obsessed with fundraising and investment and investment and fundraising, and there is good things and bad things about about it. And feel free to get as controversial as you uh as you can get, because after all, like as a founder, I didn't hear from other founders a lot, except like that fundraising and investment is like terrible and uh annoying and this and this and that, and um, and then eventually you build fantastic relationships through it, and you will also go through horror shows as well. Yeah, absolutely. How how was the journey of dealing with capital and investors through this uh this binball machine, you know?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Look, I mean um, you know, when you when you start a business, I think fundraising initially yeah, is an obsession. And you know, you're I started having this belief that you know raising money is a success. And to me, it's today it's the complete opposite. I don't think that raising money is a success. I'm prolonging my fundraiser as much as I can. It's been a while we didn't go to market. Um and I think that you need to try and do things, uh, prove, you know, prove the engine, prove the unit economics, um, understand exactly every single growth lever that you have in the business, um, whether it's on growth, like the growth levers for growing the business, or whether it's the growth levers for building product, like you know, everything. You know, really understanding the business, unit economics need to make sense and then go out and fundraise. And that's what I've that's what I'm doing now. You know, it's been a while, we don't go to market for fresh funds from new investors, and I didn't want to do it before I knew that if I spend X dollars, I'm gonna get Y dollars back. If I spend X in marketing, I get Y back. If I get spend X in sales, I get Z back. If I spend so these things are very important, and when you have data, then you can project your business a bit more. Obviously, coming from banking and MA, this is what I did, right? Projecting, forecasting, yeah, and and yeah, people shouldn't just think that fundraising is a success because how many articles do you see today in all of these press releases? Yeah, from you know, seed stage funding, even Series A funding, yeah, series B, and then you see a complete um yeah shutdown of the company, you never hear from them again. So I think people need to humble down a bit and uh and um you know appreciate every dollar that's given to them to do more. Um yeah, I always say do more with less. That's something that I would say internally in the company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um yeah, so that's that's my view on fundraising. And I don't think that the mentality of raise as much as you can is right. Yeah, that's kind of the mindset that I was taught. Raise as much as you can, but then it's a long journey, so you don't want to get diluted because you raise as much as you can, you get diluted as much as you can. True. So we need to be incentivized as founders. Or else, what's the incentive of you know going through this journey? It's a lonely journey to be a founder. Yeah. So what's the incentive if you're not uh if you don't own a big chunk of your business? Yeah. So yeah, that's my view on like fundraising. I don't think you should raise as much as you can. Fair. I don't like that uh sentence.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

I mean, I I will switch gears because you you mentioned something. I want to like jump into it and then get back to the investment piece, which is the lonely journey of out. This word I remember like almost an hour on a monthly basis. Especially like it is an extremely lonely journey, like it and it gets lonely with time. You kind of get um get alienated with time because you you end up in different layers of the company and you play uh and everything has some uh flavor of conflict of interest, kind of thing. What how do you how are you managing this? How you you deal with the lonely job of of founders? Good question. How do I deal with it?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

If you're dealing with it as well. Look, obviously, I deal with it in so many different ways, but being like like when I mentioned lonely journey, it means nobody really ever understands what's going on in your mind every day because you're constantly um you know trying to be ahead of yourself, you're constantly trying to push for more, innovate for more, you're hiring on one front, you're evaluating people's performance on another front, you're dealing with clients, you're acquiring, you're retaining clients, you're firefighting with clients, you're firefighting on tech, on bugs, on a crash that can happen. We had a massive crash. Uh, so and you have no one to really talk to about this because your friends won't get it. Um, you know, your your circle around you, your family, maybe some people with, but in general, unless it's a founder, um they won't understand what's going on and they won't understand why sometimes you're not focused as a person. Sometimes I don't know, I'd be having a conversation with someone, and I just don't even know what they said because my mind is just somewhere else. And same thing with you know, you know, with on group chats, on on like social, like when I'm out. So it's ups and downs. Um even sometimes when you're on in your best days and you've had you know the best closures, or you know, you've achieved something big, whatever it is in the business, yeah, you want more. How can you do more? It's like, and then people don't understand, like you know, sometimes my team internally doesn't understand why is Danny not happy. I am happy, but you know what we did is good. But if we want to shine and be an outlier, good is not good enough. I see. Great is what we want to strive for. Yeah, and yeah, it's the same thing. Like uh that's why we're constantly you know thinking and you know about what can we do better, what can we do more, um how can we improve.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Oh hundred percent, hundred percent. I mean for for dealing with with the lonely journey, I feel I was surprised. I asked about it a lot when among my friends, like when I meet any founder and stuff, especially like in stages in which like mental health wasn't great and you kind of wanna understand how people deal with it. And there was a funny um moment in it because uh I asked multiple people about like burnout, founder burnout. Uh in a stage I was I was personally burned out, and there is this famous video for Sam Altman uh in one of the sessions for YC, in which he's saying, like, well, it is what it is, and kind of like push through it, you know, there is uh there isn't much to do in that case, but I feel like there was the there is uh every founder kind of grab energy from a different source, yeah and it's so good that you you're aware of what works for you, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Look, I mean it it I agree, it is what it is, and if you're not made for it, then don't do it because like you yeah, it sucks. It sucks, but I love it, you know? Like I'm not I would do it over and over and over and over again. I love it, yeah. But like yeah, it's it's lonely and it sucks. And but you can love something that sucks. Why like why not? It's controversial and it's it's not for everyone, like yeah, you know, sometimes people don't that people don't understand that. Like, what do you mean it sucks, but you love it? Yeah, I love what I do, and like I want to like I want to build Sapi not for the next three years, five years. I want to build Sapi to become a global leader in restaurant software, and we have massive ambitions and we want to do it forever. And um, I mean not forever, obviously. You know, there's uh hopefully we you need to give returns to your investors someday, but we are really looking long term, and uh yeah, it's not uh you need to be okay with this. So, what you said about Sam Altman, I agree with him. Yeah, it is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't, but um yeah, no 100%.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I get uh I get your point, and I mean you don't need like I agree with you on the part, like you don't need to to to do things for enjoyment, like sometimes there is things that will be tormenting and difficult and stuff, and you still kind of love it and you're still kind of uh figuring out to the healthy level, of course, like yes where you where you don't break.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

We don't want you to break. No, right? No, I do ice bath every day before work, like that's also maybe some kind of uh I heard the great things.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

It's a it's uh I I I never thought I I can do it. Do you recommend it?

SPEAKER_00 31:35

100%. Like um it's funny, like I do quite high temperature, like I do 10 to 12 degrees, so it's not really the the ones that people go in for one minute, and and to me it's like the only 15 minutes I spend every morning where your brain shuts down. Why? Because you need to focus on your breathing to survive in that ice bath for 15 minutes. So you're meditating, and it's hard to meditate as a founder because again, you're you never stop thinking. Yeah, but when when you're in this ice bath, I found that because I'm working so hard on my breath and on my breath work and and breathing, that I'm actually like not thinking about anything but breathing. Like I listen to my breath, inhale, exhale. I time them sometimes, it's like two minutes, I hold my breath, and this is to me the best kind of you know meditation, I guess. And I leave in the morning pumped for work. Yes, um, and then people ask me, How do you not get cold? That's a very basic question. Yeah, it's hard to explain. I think I'm like obsessed with ice fast, yeah. But yeah, it's like you need this uh dopamine to to meditate, which is weird, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

I I can't imagine doing it, man. Like kudos. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Kudos to the discipline, but uh, but I feel like it will take me a while to maybe try it, but uh to you should come with me on the weekend. Weekend is uh nice and chilled. Okay, okay. We'll uh we'll work on that. I will like grow the courage for it and and call you, which will be cool. Um let's get back to the investment piece. Um, you know, like I don't know what's your school about investor giving advice. Yeah, um I'm in I'm in the school of I don't like investor giving advice unless they were operators or very seasoned investors. That's my point of view. Because I feel like it's an industry of judgment and quick judgments while you we have data and we have complexity and stuff like the founder usually can reach to a much uh nuanced judgment unless they are dealing with a very seasoned investor or kind of an um an operator in that case, then there is um a philosophy to play. What's your take? What's uh like what are what advice that helped you, what didn't what do you see from like the whole investment advice?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Look, I agree with you. Like I agree with you, like but um investors don't know better than a founder in certain areas, however, I I do brainstorm a lot with my investors, you know, and I like their advice when I ask for their advice, and I ask for their advice when we catch up every quarter over performance. And I ask them, what do you think about this? What do you like to mean my invad I mean the investors that I deal with, I love every person from every every VC fund that I work with, and they're like all co-founders to me. And um I bounce off ideas of them, and they're not judgmental. That's the thing. If you if you're able to have and I've I've heard what you said from a lot of other founders, like my investors just give me too much advice, they tell me what to do all the time. I didn't live that, so to me, the kind of a so but if I was in that shoes, in your shoes, you know, in any founder's shoes, you know, being bombarded with advice, I'd agree. But but for me, I've built this relationship with my investors where you know I tell I tell them clearly, hey guys, this is what I'm struggling with, this is what we want to do more of. These are the products we're like building over the next year. Can we have a brainstorm? Can we think together? Yeah, um, shall what shall we do more? So, like last, you know, last week, one of my investors told me, told them, look, uh, told me, yeah, doubling the business this year is not enough. You need to think of tripling the business. And then another one of my investors, I was at the street, told me the rule of thumb is triple, triple, double, double.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

So like one investor is telling me you need to triple investors telling me triple, triple, double, double. And I'm like telling my team double. So I'm like, okay, I'm I'm down. I love this challenge. Yeah. What do we do? This is how much runaway we have. This is when we want to fundraise. These are the markets we operate in. You know, my investor said, All right, we're in the we're in the business of risk. Not me. I mean, of course we are. Yeah. But I mean, my investor said, we're in the business of risk. This is called venture. So if you're not gonna venture, if you're not gonna take more risk, obviously we're already taking a lot of risk, but we decided to shave off a few months of our run of our runway, yeah, increase marketing budgets by significantly, yeah. Participate in five times more trade shows than we were supposed to this year. By significantly increasing marketing budgets, I mean 50%, hiring in all the markets that we're present in. And yes, we do have a certain number of months of runway, which is I mean, it's quite healthy, and we're uh our burn is quite low in general. But you know, this was advice, and and I took it and I did it. And again, like uh three years ago when we pivoted, I told the same thing to one of our investors. Hey, we're about to pivot. Like, what do we do? We have this many employees, and he told me, Danny, you're pivoting. You need to get rid, you need to, you know, you need to make certain people redundant. It's not your fault. Like, you're I took a tough decision, and that was probably the toughest decision I had to take, but that was advice again. Yeah, you know, SVB. Our money got stuck in SVB the second we fundraised. Yep, and uh all all 100% of our funds. And who do I go to? Of course, I wanted advice on what to do. So um, I wanted advice on what to do on the SVB, and I took advice from investors. I even took advice from my dad on on like you know what are the outcomes, um him being a seasoned investment banker as well. So um, so yeah, that was uh I mean I I am all for advice, but but uh less so when someone enforces advice, there's a difference, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get you, I get you. And it's like we have our our mutual friend Amir who like did me a huge favor of always reminding me that it's my journey. Yes. Which which is a very simple two words, but someone needs to remind you with them. You know, you will be in the middle of like listening to noise here, noise there. And my cap table is big, so like I have like a lot of investors. Uh some are uh some are like hands-off, some are hands-on, some are uh some experience in sectors that is relevant, some are experience in sectors that is not relevant. So like when I when I go for the sounding board, the experience I get a lot of input and it can be extremely overwhelming. And uh he helped me grounding myself on the idea of like just remembering the fact that it's my journey and stuff. And I love that you're doing the sounding board a lot between your father and uh and the investors and probably your team as well. It's like good collective effort in uh in that uh regard. Um let's maybe switch gears a little bit and talk about uh superpowers. This is something I really I really believe in. And you mentioned something about the modeling and stuff, which is like relying on something that you're really good at. I feel like every investor, every founder, every employee have like two, three things that are they are really good at, and they start with you, they come like they ground them and stuff. For me, I come from an academic background, so I'm like super analytical sorrow in my research. Like, so I always like research heavily data data data kind of like obsession there. What's what's yours? What is the one that's like driving all of this?

SPEAKER_00 39:35

I don't know, I'm just so competitive. Yeah, I've always been really competitive in sports and school and grades and and everything. I think that's my superpower. I always want to be doing better than the person next to me. I always want to win. Yeah, I think that's that's probably like my superpower. Financial modeling, you know, I wouldn't say superpower, but yeah, yeah, uh being competitive more of a skill, but um I think like the drive I have comes from being competitive, maybe because I'm the younger brother also in the family. Um like I always look, I'm the youngest of my cousins, so I always look as a kid, I always wanted to compete and you know be like them, yeah, or be better than them. Yeah, and um yeah, that was that's my that's my superpower.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

That's very interesting because I'm I'm I'm the youngest and I'm the least competitive in my you know, but I understand, I understand you you you when you grow up with kids, especially in a in a high um high caliber family, like ex with parents' expectation you want to compete. But I think like uh it was very funny, like I heard that and then you said competitive, and I was like, Oh, I didn't feel that when I yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Even in school, I mean I'm born in November, so I was always a year younger than everyone. I see. So the same thing, like so there was always this pressure kind of yeah. I mean, when you're 10 years old, if someone's 11, that's a big age gap. Yeah, it's not like when you're 30 and someone's 31, or when you're you know 28 and someone's 29. I see. I see. When you're 10 and someone's 11, that's huge. Yeah, when you're 14 and someone's 15, that's huge. Yeah, the same thing in varsity and football. Like I was always the youngest one, you know, to make the team. I had to really overprove myself. I was the only one, like you know, I used to I used to compete in ski, you know, I was in the Lebanese national team. So like even there, like I was always the youngest and the youngest. And yeah, so yeah, actually, I'm just thinking about this now. It kind of makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Uh, and what about hiring? Because that's kind of the bread and butter of our job, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Oh man, that's like uh doesn't there's not one day that goes without talking or thinking or interviewing or or hiring.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

We pitch to to talent more than we pitch to investors, and that's uh that's a secret of the job, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

It's funny, yesterday someone on LinkedIn messaged me. Um, you know, uh someone Lebanese who works for a competitor and you know said, Hey, I'm very proud to see that there's a software that's Lebanese that has grown um to this level. Yes, and then I just straight away told him, Hey man, if you're uh if you know anyone who wants to join from your company, let me know. And um, he's like, who should they reach out to? Do you have an HR inbox? I told him no, let them reach out to me. This is my email, Danny at sapi.io. So if anyone's watching and wants it to talk about exactly, we always want to sell. Yeah, um, so yeah, hiring is just the hardest thing. Like uh until now we didn't perfect it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

I don't know if if it if it can be perfected, really, right? Because you're figuring out your journey uh along the way, so like navigating uncertainty and pitching also risk. Like for investors, you can calculate a little bit of the risk, but calculating the risk for an employee is a bit uh that's the hardest part on me, at least. It's like the part in which you you actually communicate some of your passion and belief to the person, but you're kind of taking them with you on like a very uncertain journey, you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

So uh as long as you're like very honest with I mean, yeah, exactly. I'm always so transparent with the team, maybe too transparent, but they know everything. Yeah, that's good. And tell them this is where we are, this is where we need to be. If we don't reach this, this is what happens. We're all in this together.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah. Well, speaking of uh employees, there is a new employee in town, the AI one. Oh, yeah. That we all have to manage all of a sudden and get. Scared of but but like it in the same time kind of thing and and we we spoke before before this interview and you you mentioned these fantastic things you managed to do with with AI, especially in go to market and going global and facilitating stuff. Let's let's get into that. Like tell us what look um did you do.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Yeah, I mean it's a bit of a secret weapon. Maybe uh what did you call it before? A superpower. Yeah, I'm not gonna say it's our superpower, but we've done so much on the AI side, and um yeah, we've done I'm not gonna say everything that that we did, but basically, um we leverage AI, we've built something called a context operating system, which is a living source of data intelligence, which absorbs basically. Why why do I call it a living source of data intelligence? Is because today, if you prompt ChatGPT to write an email for you, it's gonna write an email. And that information that ChatGPT has is static. You're feeding it with certain information. Hey, my company is this and that, and this is what we do, and I want an email sent to the CEO of this company, blah blah blah blah. It's gonna draft an email. This is static, it's not living. Meaning the data, the data, the intelligence, it's not how can you augment that? So to augment that and to and to think of you know having a living source of data intelligence, you need to basically um have a prompt that's able to send an email or to anyone with um context that is live to yesterday. If I started winning deals today because there's a new regulation in the UAE about e-invoicing, and all of a sudden my sales team, someone has spoken about it during a sales call that's recorded, everyone needs to know about it in the company. Yeah, every single content that gets produced on ads needs to have e-invoicing in it. So, what does this context OS do? This Context OS will now generate an ad. Because the likelihood of closing a deal now is higher if this is mentioned, it's gonna send automatic coaching to every single salesperson in the company. This is what we're launching now in the next like week. Based on every day, it is different. Yeah, you don't have static sales coaching, you don't have static best practices. This moves and evolves as your company evolves and as the market evolves. So, yeah, what we're trying to build is a living source of data intelligence that can empower and augment all the AI being used in all the different teams product, tech, marketing, sales. We're testing. Yes, I'm not gonna say we're there yet, but yeah, yeah, it's my to this has become my passion. And what do I do on the weekends now when I have free time is is play around with a lot of this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Nice. Yeah, well, first we want to steal it. Yeah, for sure. We gotta borrow it at least, that's for sure. And now you have a a bivot if you need another one. No, but Danny, I really appreciated our conversation. Anything we didn't talk about, you wanna uh look.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

You mentioned hiring. Yes, yes, I did, and uh I want to ask you a question. Yeah, so I you know, before I started, I heard a lot about you know, VCs. I know I heard. Yeah, actually, VCs did tell me Danny, you need to hire senior people, you need C level, you need and and um you need to pay these big salaries for these for these very senior people to join your company. You need people who know better than you. I never agreed with that, and I never did that. I'm a strong believer of you know hire um and grow people from within the company. What's your take on that? There's no right and wrong. Yeah. What's your take on that? I've seen startups succeed like this and like that.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

That's a very fair that's a very fair question. I think uh we're we're probably opposites with that. So I I come from the background that when I did my research, I felt like startups don't hire enough seniors in the beginning. They get encouraged to be like uh the hustle culture of like do it with a couple of developers in a garage, right? Yeah, uh so they don't hire managers, they don't hire things. So like first the founder gets burned out because he's doing so many things in the beginning. Uh they centralize too much information, so now like it's very hard for anyone to grow within the company because like there is one head managing everything, right? Sounds like me. That is fair, and I mean, like, let me let me not deny centralization is less powerful, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like bird's eye view and stuff. Uh, but uh I I felt like uh I'm a person that admire complexity, but also it can drive me crazy. So I I I really believe in distributed systems kind of situation. So I hired a lot of uh seniors and middle management early enough. Uh, but I will be honest that like our product is a product that is not um not MVP safe, like we we work in payment and infrastructure, so like it has to be production ready from day one. So you kind of need the expertise in the room because it can't break. So you need like many people to yell at you when you're about to put companies at risk and and stuff. You want someone to tell you like no, we should not do this and we should not do that, and have it collectively. Um, but I also admire flat structures and and uh and young talent as well. So I kind of like really like what you're doing, but I went a little bit opposite about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. So that's uh and I and I I do I personally enjoy hiring a lot. It's one of the things that I uh take take a lot of uh pride in in doing it. Uh we headhunt exclusively, we we we rarely opened positions, and and and I do exactly like you, like it's it's usually managed by me, and it's uh it's a lot of fun, but it's uh it has the spark in which like you're feeling slightly bad as well, but but yeah, what can you do? Yeah, cool. No, thank you for asking me that.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

That was uh Yeah, I'm always curious. Uh yeah, yeah about uh you know I I've accepted that there's no right and wrong, and yeah, you can't nobody can tell you to do something in the right way. And all depends on the person, and uh like you said, like you're in an industry that requires, you know, you can't launch an MVP, which is true in payments. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Um no, and in and DNA-wise as well. I mean, if you are that competitive, I mean I I I love sports. Anyone that is that competitive in sports, like players, other players that like follow them easily, right? Like because they they drive you out of the game into a winning thing, you know, versus like I'm I'm not that competitive, so I'm more about like coordination and consensus and things like that. So like also with the difference in DNA, like things will work for us differently. Like, but while I I watched it like um there is a documentary about Michael Jordan and like his level of unforgiveness in like I've watched it, like yeah, yeah, it's uh because once you talked about your competitiveness, I kind of remembered immediately him, his for me this kind of like un unforgiving level of discipline and and and focus, and I like admire this about you as well. So that's that's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

I think this chat has just given me like a huge amount of excitement to just go back to the office right now and and do more of just being able to talk about this. Is uh yeah, yeah, it was it was really nice.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

That's the goal. Like, we really wanted a channel for emerging market founders to kind of like show what's going on because there is a lot going on and there is really exciting people like yourself like that. The ecosystem gonna hear about more from them. Let's uh let's put it this way. So I'm um congrats on graduating and more graduations coming in inshallah and uh and thanks a lot for for being with us, Danny. Thanks for having me.