Bayt’s Rabea Ataya on 26 Years of Building and Why the Old MENA Startup Playbook No Longer Works

I'd love to spend time on the lessons that you've learned over the course of the last 26 years. We also started at a really difficult time. A lot of our peers lost focus very early on and went bankrupt. Our focus allowed us to build a profitable cash-flow positive, successful, sustainable business.

A lot of what I would do was geographic arbitrage. It's thinking, "Hey, something worked in the US, let's bring it out here." It used to be that we'd have a 10-year delay before someone would actually venture to the Middle East. Today, that's probably a year delay.

What I used to do brought me a lot of success. If you try and do it today, it will almost definitely lead you to failure. It's amazing to have you here, so thank you so much for It's, it's an amazing pleasure to be here for taking the time. I think the Bayt story has been told excessively by yourself at this point.

So I don't want to have you rehash it and retell it again for the next hour plus. I think rather than that, what I'd love to do is spend time on the lessons that you've actually learned over the course of the last 26 years, if my math is correct. Math is correct. fantastic.

That's a, that's a good start. But maybe to start somewhere unexpected, I've actually known the first question I wanted to ask you for a while. it was a podcast you did, I think it was a couple of years ago, with Tarek Bayea, from Bayzat. And something that you mentioned then really struck me, was that you were spending a lot of time, reading everything from Gandhi.

letters, everything that you could get your hands on. So I don't want to press you on that for your takeaways from it, but I am curious about what rabbit holes you've gone down recently or what the, what the current, obsession may be. so I read all the time. And, candidly right now, unfortunately, I don't have a particular obsession.

So it's one of those, times where it seems like I'm rifling through four different books on my bedside almost every evening and, I haven't, nothing has really struck a chord in terms of what I, really wanna dive into. But I think just, intellectually, I think w you know, where perhaps, and I'm not reading too much about it, but listening to a lot more podcasts about it, is obviously the world is in a very interesting time. It's a way, it's a way of putting it,. And, you know, I think a lot of the basic structures that we built over decades are no longer making a lot of sense.

They're fraying. They're fraying. And, they're frail and fraying, and it really is, you know, most of us have learned to play, particularly in this entrepreneurial space a particular game. And that game has been about how do you raise capital how do you grow really quickly and then at some point, how do you convert that into profitability.

, And you know, tho those are all sensical, but it seems you're accumulating these digits on a bank app, and you always have to ask yourself what's real and what's not. And increasingly, everything feels more mirage-like. And candidly, at my age, I'm, you know, the rabbit holes I'm going into these days are thinking about do I buy farmland and what can I learn about true- you know, traditional human skills like, you know, what do I know about carpentry or what do I know-. about growing food?

And I feel we've all become so removed from those really basic human skills. And, certainly something that as I get older I'd like to get more in touch with. The third phase could be maybe carpentry. And AI.

Or farming. I mean, that's where my family's, you know, traditionally Really? my grandparents and great-grandparents, et cetera, were landowners. Oh.

And we used to live off the land and when you hear, at least, I mean, I was lucky enough to, live, and hang out with my grandfather and his stories about the pride he would take and the massive farmlands he'd own and the harvesting and the moving of, food around That's right is something that, you know, I think of in a very romantic way. Where does that learning appetite come from? Because It's I always think of when it comes to reading and learning, I always go with Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

They had this, you know, very clear sort of thesis and framework as it pertained to reading and learning, and the fact that, you know, you should go to bed a small bit smarter than when you woke up, or wiser. I'm not entirely. I'm kind of I'm ruining that quote to a certain extent. But, and even this idea, you know, you don't necessarily have to be the smartest or the most diligent, but, you know, a learning machine, I think, was the phrase that Charlie Munger coined.

where does that come from for you? Where was that sort of instilled, would you say? difficult to say where it's instilled, but I think it's I think human beings are naturally truth-seeking beings. We're continually trying to get a better understanding of the world around us.

We're trying to get an understanding of our existence. And, the beauty of what humans do is they are able to, put that into language and transfer it from generation to generation, and they're able to abstract it. And so I just feel that there's continually an infinite amount out there., And, you know, there To speak of quotes, there's that wonderful quote about genius, is knowing that you don't know.

absolutely. And I think the more you dig into something, the more you realize we have such superficial knowledge of things., And what's truly amazing about the world today is how quickly we're uncovering new things too. And I just think about when I learned physics, I started off learning physics when, you know, the nucleus was a proton-.

and a neutron, and there were these electrons that went around in clean circles. And then soon it wasn't that they went around in cl clean circles. It was all a probability game and in orbitals. And now when you look at what an atom is, we have no cl you know We've we've gone into so many sub atomic particles.

And so, you know, even that most basic of things, and so, it's, it's wonderful that there's so much out there to get inspired by. So it's not necessarily So I was thinking, is your sort of interest multidisciplinary nearly by design, or is it just curiosity that you have about everything really? It is curiosity, and sometimes I get mocked for it by close friends, where I will go down a rabbit hole of something that-. I'm the ex I'm the exact same, if we're for reference.

Like, just crazy tangents. And, you know, I admire people who do that, and I admire people more, actually. So I have a great ability to study things. But not necessarily to learn them.

I think the distinction that I'll make there is that you can study something so you understand it conceptually but when you learn it, you practice it. So I can read about the rules of golf or paddle and sort of understand it. But then to learn golf or paddle involves me being on the c court. And I've got some close friends who I admire tremendously because they go down the deep end of not only, You know, they really learn, things after studying them.

So one person I always, He's, he's the most amazing experimenter/tinker. So if he picks up a book on carpentry, you go to his house one week later and suddenly the whole house is a wood shed. The saw the sawdust everywhere. And then, you know, one day he d he decided that ice cream was interesting.

And next thing Oh, no you know, for the next four months he's making the craziest ice creams with everything from liquid nitrogen Right to traditional gelato methods. And, you know, that's, that's a lot of the joy of life, I think, of people who do that, really experience life in a very different way. And were you always like that? have your, I don't know, nearly consumption patterns changed over time?

Like, there's a big thing at the moment which nearly dismays me a small bit, especially I think in entrepreneurship circles, like this hustle culture mentality, like this idea that it's, like from China, 9-9-6, you need to be constantly living, breathing, the no distractions. The only thing that you should be thinking about is work. Any time spent on anything else is entirely superfluous and useless. Is that an attitude that you recognize?

Or where do you stand as far as that's concerned? so that's, so that's, that's the amazingly difficult trade-off to make, right? Because when you're playing the game that's set out for you need to be somewhat focused. And if you're not focused, you die fairly quickly.

And so for example, the person I talked about earlier is an amazing experimenter, but the commercialization never happens. You know? There's a point beyond He's so excited about the learning that it gets a bit difficult to cross over into monetizing and making a liv living out of it. So that's sort of where I draw The trade-off, the line to some degree is I am acutely aware that I enjoy the monetization too.

I enjoy taking that learning and making something of it. And that's why a lot of my journeys of studying end at the study part and never the earning part because I figure- "You know what? This is wonderful to know." You have self-restraint, which is important-.

But at some point skill to have you gotta, you gotta figure you know, I'm, I'm gonna move on to something else right now. but, you know, I think the beauty of life is you get so many people with so many different interests No, true doing so many different things. but, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll just cap off with a quick When people have asked me to visualize what sort of retirement looks like Ah,. To me, what I've been repeating almost for 40 years is I'm sitting on a large farmland.

but where I have, the most amazing people coming by and giving me one tuition, whether it's Right on physics, music whatever the topic is. But that continuous process of learning at the feet of masters is something that I would love to do until the day I am no longer able to. Can I ask, that reminds me, there's this story of I can't remember, and it's, it's, something to the effect of, if you could retire now, what would, what would you do? And the story is, oh, I would So something similar to yourself.

I would retire on a farmland. That's what I'd do. And what's stopping you from doing that? Why couldn't you have done that 20 years ago?

I think, it's, So entrepreneurship to me is a lot about meaning in life. It's, it has It's increasingly had less to do with money every single year. I mean, it's, it's a lot more about I enjoy building things. I enjoy waking up in the morning.

I enjoy the engaging with people. I enjoy feeling I'm contributing to society. I feel that, again, if I was in that farm and just sitting at the feet of people there's a lot of self-indulgence, and it's wonderful-. but there's not a lot of, adding to humanity.

Giving. and I think that would kill me. That's entirely fair. So there's And again, to If we're using quotes and prover proverbs, there was a I'd like this conversation to be exclusively quotes and proverbs from you.

I think every two minutes needs to be punctuated by one. We can throw one in. I love them, so please. There was an older gentleman, very successful, man who, you know, very early on in my career I had met, and, he used the Arabic analogy, and translates to something to the effect of life is like a bicycle.

If you stop, you fall over. And that was how he justified why he's gonna work till the day he dies. Right. That you just, you know, if you decide to retire too early, that might be game over.

And I think candidly, again, and I'm comfortable to say this, how men and women derive meaning is very different. And for us, I think for men a lot more so. women are able to derive a lot more meaning from family. I think we derive a lot more meaning from getting our hands dirty and working and providing for, our families.

, You mentioned money there maybe isn't the same driver now as But was it? Was there a time where it was, do you think? so my first entrepreneurial venture, I knew I was building it to sell it. And I knew that I wanted to make enough money where I could provide for my family.

And luckily enough, you know, it ended up that way. Is this InfoForward? This was InfoForward. So I, you know, I started something with a not necessarily married to the business concept but thinking this is something I could scale quickly and something I could sell.

And so I scaled it quickly and sold it and sold it. But then after that, the mandate became a lot more, can I build something that contributes to society, that gives me meaning that I'd still be excited holding onto and working on for- 20 years decades. And so that became a very different journey. I no longer needed the comfort of that capital.

I needed a lot more the sense of I'm doing something with my life. Does that change how you build a business? It does. It changes also what business you're in.

It changes how you think about capital raising. It changes how you deal with the partners. It changes everything. I think when you're clear about the outcome that you want-.

and I, and I've said this recurringly, I find too many young entrepreneurs Are not very clear when they start off, and it more often than not ends pretty badly. Because, you know, again, if you wanna build a business that you'd like to s you see yourself in 30 years into the future and you start raising from a lot of different shareholders very early on, and you're building this sort of cap table that's built on ever-increasing valuations, more likely than not, you're not gonna be in it, 30 years from now.

Because in order to generate returns for all of those people, you're gonna have to run really hard to get an exit and you know, that's a different ball game than holding onto a business for 30 years. So was that a conscious decision then with Bayt, for example? I think you raised, what, two, $3 million from, I'm trying to remember the name. We raised $3 million.

That was the entire amount we ever raised, and, we raised it So, let me say this. w with Bayt in the beginning, I did a lot of missteps in the beginning, so I was conflicted. but I very quickly learned that I did wanna hold onto this and then the journey changed, and that became a very complex part of the journey. Because if you don't start things the right way, so you spend a lot of time trying to fix that You're working backwards to try and, backwards.

it's, you've got a poor foundation. You're building this wonderful superstructure. You're building this skyrise, but then the foundation is an absolute mess. Some quicksand,.

And then you figure, "Can I actually fix this as I'm going?" it took a lot of time and effort and heartache and all sorts of other things to fix it but it did get fixed eventually, and. How would you characterize what Bayt is today then? so I mean Because it's a misconception, I think, that it's one s they, some people say it's jobs board.

But there's, there's, there's so much so I more than that think the, so we started off as a job board, and With the realization we had picked the name Bayt because we always wanted to be more than a job board. So Bayt means home. Home. And while we had bought domains that were job related, we didn't use them because we really felt we wanted to supplement, um the job area.

But we also started at a really difficult time. and so we focused on the job area while a lot of our peers lost focus very early on and went bankrupt because of it. our focus allowed us to build a profitable cash-flow positive, successful, sustainable business. And then starting around 2008, so that was about eight years into our operations we realized, you know, the world's We had a global financial crisis.

the world had become quite messy. We had a lot of cash on our books. And we could use the experience we had, the capital we had to start building other things. And so we did start building other things.

And it's a bit difficult to describe because it's a bit amorphous. It's a bit opportunistic. So we at some point set up sort of a corporate VC. But the most exciting thing we came up with very early on was group buying was getting very hot at that time.

And we thought we could do this in zero hours. And so we basically built that out and sold it exactly 12 months after starting it. And so that was a foray into sort of venture building. And then from that we started building a whole bunch of additional ventures.

Some we realized early on And could not sit under the umbrella We spun them out Some we continued to keep them under the umbrella and they continued to operate. And so today the businesses that are under Bayt is there is the job site There's a HR tech business called Talenterra which is in the applicant tracking solutions space., There's a event tech business called vFairs. I had no idea that vFairs was underneath Bayt.

There was I was aware of vFairs as an independent but actually before even coming over I was aware of it, so I was, I couldn't believe it. Did the course research, I was like, "Oh." And you know, so much of life is luck. I mean I think I've had as, a lot of these conversations similar to you.

it's very easy for an entrepreneur to pat himself on the back but 99% of it is Timing sometimes does You know? And fortune. It's pure, you know, the gods, whichever god you believe in-. has smiled at you and made it a success.

And then, so, and we have an, a auto portal called YallaMotor and we're continually in the process of building out things. And along the way we've built and sold other things, so. Do you have any example maybe of one of those businesses that didn't quite pan out? Maybe what the lesson from that was?

One example of a business that we built that didn't pan out was a business called Doctoruna, which was a doctor review and appointment booking site. Oh, interesting. Marketplace business where I get this every day and a lot of my WhatsApp chats are about this, where someone messages and says, "Does anyone know a good orthopedic surgeon out there?" Or-.

And then can you get an appointment? And meanwhile doctors are always figuring out, how do I, get in front of more patients Schedule the next patient and make my book is-. Full,. full.

And so there was a US business called Zocdoc that launched-. and became a unicorn pretty quickly, and we figured, again, this But it's not an obvious adjacency really, is it? So it's not an obvious marketplace. There's some We realized the technology's easy.

We sort of knew how to build a marketplace really quickly. We sort of know the dynamics and we said, "Let's, let's, let's put a small amount of money in it" Nice And you know, that flopped. and it flopped for a whole bunch of reasons. And part of it is what you said exactly.

It's not an e it's not an exact adjacency. What's different about doctors and other marketplace businesses is that, on the buyer side, the shoppers, which are essentially your patients, they don't have a continuous demand. So the cost of acquisition, is not offset by a lifetime value. Because you might go to the doctor once a year or once in a, in every 10 years.

, And on the flip side, th there aren't that many doctors out there, and most of their demand generation is consolidated within a few large institutions. So hospitals decide on behalf of the doctor. So it's easy to overestimate that, oh, there are, you know, hundreds of thousands of doctors but there's probably a thousand institutions under which they're all consolidated. How much agency does each individual actually have?

And so once you get that, it's actually a very small market. And so even if you capture a significant part of it, the negotiation power is really in the hands of the hospitals. They squeeze you out. so it was one of those things where we thought it would be cool, and it wasn't.

And that also speaks to when you build things that you're not very passionate about the outcomes are very different than when you build something that you're excited about. So this was sort of like, "Oh, I could do it. I'll do it." And it's sort of like the thing we were talking about earlier, the learning versus, the studying.

It was an interesting study but no one really wanted to dive in No,. No, and really learn it and, uh and we paid the price, of that. Has that led you to update your framework, would you say? When you think about now potential spin-off businesses or ancillary things, you know, what are, what would the criteria be?

What sort of threshold would it have to meet in order for you to invest wholeheartedly in it? You know, I'm, I'm still coming up with that. I think the dynamics have changed in so many different ways. So one of them, for example, is you heard from me a lot of what I would do was geographic arbitrage.

Just thinking- "Hey, something worked in the US, let's bring it out here." I think those, that arbitrage is increasingly diminished., So large successful players now go global a lot more quickly than they ever did. So it used to be that we'd have a 10-year delay before someone would actually venture to the Middle East, and so that would give you a lot of a head start.

today, that's probably a year delay. There's not that much head start. two, it used to be that the model was, you'd scale across the MENA region. That was exciting because the MENA was increasingly opening doors and facilitating trade across borders.

that's going in the opposite direction in many ways. So the fragmentation's becoming ever more pronounced. And so I'm actually not sure and I'm, I'm, I'm actually thinking about that. What does make for an attractive investment in the current environment?

And, I mean, that's, that's why I follow you your podcast and your content because, uh Glad I will get you everywhere because that's one way of actually looking out and trying to get inspired. but I do feel the dynamics have changed tremendously and what I used to do And brought me a lot of success. If you try and do it today, it will almost definitely lead you to failure. so.

But, what did Fadi say? It was copy-paste innovation I think was his, uh was his, was his sort of framework. No, it's interesting, and I suppose especially with the cost of software dwindling so much now as well, and the sort of democratization of just coding and the creation of software development and all these kind of things. I mean, it's nearly where we've gotten to the point now where it's the time from idea to actual working demo or prototype is, you know, c can be days, as opposed to potentially weeks and there's not the same.

Do you think to that end, like frequently something that we've seen regionally is, a lot of back office or software development work would be maybe outsourced. so we'd maybe have somewhere in Egypt, for example, or Jordan or Pakistan, where we'd have these amazing software developers and really under-tapped globally. But frequently, I mean, we're starting to see some job cuts as well, from I think some regional companies to that end, and they're maybe not being explicit about what the rationale behind that, but I think it's, it's no mystery that AI certainly is, there's, there's a pressure and that maybe doesn't make the same sense to have the same level of headcount.

Do you think we'll increasingly see more job cuts to that end regionally? I'm putting you kind of on the spot here, but sh no, so I, there's a few It's difficult to determine whether or not AI is the primary driver, as you said. It's true. I think there's a lot of bloat as well.

I will say that some of this is being, you know There's a lot of bloat and there's economic headwinds and I think a lot m of people are putting, being put under a lot of pressure. I mean, the geopolitical situation For is the m-. You know, I haven't seen this geopolitical situation in my lifetime and I've lived here, most of my life. So I think a lot of companies are realizing I need to, be prepared for rough waters.

And together with that, they're hopeful about where AI can get them. Whether or not AI will get them there we'll find out. I think it's early stages. But I'll, I'll cite a little, personal story just A week ago, I decided I would data dump a tremendous amount of data into Claude We've all done this.

And play a bit. And I called, the financial analyst within the company who I usually work most closely with for my information requests. And I said, "You know, come sit with me. Let's play with this together."

And over the course of an hour and a half conversation, he unwittingly, I mean, it just would sort of splurt out of his mouth at about four different points said, "Oh my God, my job." I mean, there was this sudden realization that what I've spent days, sometimes weeks doing, and took me a lot of effort and was really hard now can be done Just compressed so significantly seconds. And so then the question is, does he adopt it as a superpower? Or does he treat it as an enemy?

And similarly, how do I decide to engage with it versus him, right? Do I decide, "Listen, why explain what I'm looking for to him when I can short circuit it to this?" And I don't know the answer to these questions but I do feel obviously more and more jobs will go that way. And then we have a serious societal question to answer.

What are we all going to do? To your point, maybe we all end up going back to the land and we all become farmers. Start tilling it and, uh-., On the venture building side of things then, is there How important So you've kept a couple of things, I wanted to build out of Bayt.

So you have vFairs and Talent, Talenterra, am I correct,? Talenterra,. How important is the cross-sell? So, you know, Bayt is, the funnel initially where we're coming through and then we have the ability to handle, obviously we've decreased CAC, we can, we can spread out the love here.

Is that something that's So that's how it, they all started off thinking we have one distribution channel. And we'll use that distribution channel to sell other products. And to some degree, even when we did, the group buying, game the GoNabit, we realized even though we weren't gonna use the same salespeople we already had 13 offices and licenses in the region, and we already had a database where, and a, and an ability to hire salespeople really quickly. So for us That's a good, that's a good point, actually.

That's something I haven't touched. So it was sort of like, okay you know, we were able to open up 13 GoNabit in a few months That was that one when it would've taken anyone else years just from licensing to get it done. what's happened over time is these businesses have become more mature and they've really become fully independent. And so vFairs is a good example where 90% of vFairs' revenue is actually North American.

It has I find that staggering. Nothing to do with our region or our markets, which has been wonderful for us because it insulates us with all the crazy stuff that's going on Anything going on in our region, in our region. but It's a fantastic founding story as well actually, by which I came across with vFairs in terms of was it someone who'd gone to Canada, or something to that effect? Would you, could you tell that story?

So the story was basically w we continually go around to our customers and say, "Where are your challenges?" And one of the things we heard from everyone, whether it was recruiters or job seekers, is they'd go to career fairs and hate them. There was a universal failure rate when it came to career fairs. And so they asked us, not they asked us, they said, "This is a part we didn't like."

And so we decided let's figure out how to virtualize this. So even before the word metaverse was coined, we thought we'd create a Already out,. we'd create a metaverse for career fairs. And we started running our own job fairs doing the old event model where we'd sell, stands.

And long story, and in our part of the world, and it went pretty much nowhere. We probably generated $100,000 in revenue a year. and then one of our Amazing team members who was one of the founding tech people building vFairs out, decides he wants to migrate to Canada because, you know, he's Pakistani and having a Pakistani passport, is somewhat challenging. He moves and we say, "Listen, whatever it is, we still want you to be, in the fold."

And so we give him stuff to do that's regional based, but also say, you know, "Figure out what you can do with vFairs." And he starts tinkering and somehow starts signing on all of these amazing institutions, you know, the Harvards and the Stanfords of the world, and, not a really big business but cash-flow positive signing on some of the most recognized brands in the world. Brands,. That was incredible,.

and then COVID hits and, uh the world changes very quickly for us. It changed pretty dramatically,. We've used the word unprecedented a couple of times today-. but that was certainly, unprecedented, needless to say.

And for us, like nothing I've ever seen in my life before. Really? This is sort of, We, I think, 60-folded in revenue in three months. So when you think about a 60-fold in revenue, and I think, you know, for the next few years we started doing 95% net margins and it was And this while turning away tens of thousands of desperate inbound leads where people were It's extraordinary clamoring at our door saying, "Please let us in.

We need to run a virtual event." "Can you help us out?" And so How did you deal with that uptick in So it obviously sounds fantastic. On the surface, you're like, "Amazing."

But that's really difficult to actually accommodate. Like, you probably need to scale quite, really significantly in such a short duration of time. And during COVID too, which was also an interesting factor scale In and of itself, of course. Like, sorry, forgetting the fact that,.

so a few things helped us is, one, actually, um During COVID, jobs plummeted. And so when COVID first hit, I thought that was gonna be a very serious challenge for the overall business. And so as vFairs started picking up, we'd take some of our best resources and throw them at the vFairs business. and so that allowed us to really quickly scale with some amazing talent.

We didn't have to hire people fair, that's interesting from scratch. two, we had this, you know, the founder was Pakistani. A lot of them, we had the tech team, et cetera, was in Pakistan. And Pakistan is a, is an amazing place where you have this abundance of Amazing talent amazing talent Amazing,.

and so we found that we were able to hire people really quickly and very affordably, and service this sort of global demand. And it was hilarious because you'd find these American customers would have such an amazing experience. And I think it's a different culture than the Middle East. In the US, when people, when your customers have a good experience, they really go out of their way to thank you.

So not only did they post on their social media but they were insisting, like they wanted to send flowers and chocolates to the, event managers. And then they realized there was no delivery service in Pakistan during COVID. And they had no clue that they were even being served from Pakistan., And so it worked out.

It was, crazy hours for all of us But in COVID, there was nothing else to do anyway. If you, if you might as well have been, And so it was a, it was a good time. And we had also a lot of inbound, uh investor calls, so, and actually s signed a crazy term sheet, but we never, uh Oh crossed the line on it. So that also added a lot of, lot of pressure on the business because as you know, investors when they do wanna come in, uh-.

Shall I, shall I may I ask? are time-consuming in more ways than one. Why did you elect not to go with that? So we were in a very interesting s situation, and maybe I'll give you a bit of a tale of two cities.

So Please because we became super profitable super quickly and scaled the revenue so quickly, w the venture capitalists who'd call us would quickly realize there's nothing to do here. Right? You know, can I give you X million dollars? We don't need X million dollars.

Really can't spend it,., So as a result, we started getting calls from PE firms because Ah, it's PE guys. Because the size and the scale of the business were so large Makes sense. Meanwhile, actually, um Out of the box later than us was a firm called Hopin, which is where I talk about the tale of two cities.

So Hopin, because it was just coming out of the box, all that VC interest went into them. It bounced straight off of us because we couldn't take their capital. So they did their first valuation, I think was like a million bucks at 10 million. But very quickly, I think in the course of a year, I can't remember how many billions of dollars I think it was, believe it or not, it was actually, I think I was reading about this last night.

It could've been $1.8 billion, I think the valuation-. And they became, like, the most highly valued startup in Oh, it was extraordinary, like the compression of time. In Europe and along the way because they had done so many rounds never turned a profit, so we were generating these crazy profits and we were building a real business.

But they were, I think the founder also managed to cash out in one of the rounds, a secondary of 100 and some million dollars. Wow. So he had, he had this amazing journey. You know, Hopin ceased to exist, so-.

you know, they, but you know, we obviously continue to exist. But what happened with the PE firms was the structure they talked about was a very large, secondary payout to me, and then, you know, while still owning minority, share of the business. And so the question that kept on going on in their mind was, does this last beyond COVID? And so what they tried to do is, and they did successfully, is they signed an exclusivity with us.

, And then kept on dragging out the process for as long as humanly possible. And then on the first flat month we had they basically came back and said I mean, flat, I mean, not flat, but we weren't growing at 100% month on month. Not- We grew at 50 Exponential, like, we grew at 50% that month. And they said, "Huh, considering that we see this-" " we'd like to-" "revalue this."

And, you know, I basically said Do you know what? This isn't This goes back to at some point the money doesn't mean a lot. Matter. I'm, I was 100% owner of a business that's generating a tremendous amount of profit.

Now I was with someone who wasn't playing straight with us, and I had no interest in getting to bed with them irrespective of the dollars that they would pay me. And so I, you know, we, they tried to renegotiate, we refused to, we broke that deal. You know, in hindsight it would've been nice to make though that ridiculous amount All that's nice. I mean,.

I mean of money, but, you know, either way the business has been super successful and, happy to be Do you think having money or being wealthier, does that change how you operate as a founder? It does. It does. It changes a lot of things actually.

I think one of the big challenges, and I ask a lot of people my age and older, a very important question, which is about their hunger. Because hunger drives you. And actually, for me when I look at what drove most of the important decisions of my life, there was a significant amount of discomfort. So I'd be in a certain stage of my life and realize I'm just not happy here.

And that's a great inspiration. It's very different when you've got a, when you're comfortable. and so you get a lot more conservative naturally. your risk tolerance probably, you know, has been weighed and just You should have the ability to take on more risk.

You should, but it's, it's funny but you'll basically say, "You know, what's the marginal utility of this additional risk?" Right? So, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be comfortable as is. Do I wanna make myself un Like really do you wanna force the discomfort on myself?

and so some people do that very well throughout their lives. Some people still wake up every morning and bet it all. and I would also say I've met many people my age who've, who've done that and gone from extreme comfort to extreme discomfort. Where some, in some cases they overextended themselves in such a way That's not all right that they actually did go bankrupt later on in life and in some cases actually ended up in prison, because, you know, this part of the world doesn't look very favorably No on going bankrupt.

so it does change you, and I think the trick is to stay hungry and stay foolish and I wake up every morning and remind myself that the period between, me graduating from university till now is probably the same as the period from now till sort of my productive life expectancy. And so I've got a whole second life in me. And, you know, y what one shouldn't do obviously is less rest on their laurels at any moment in life, so. No, 100%.

I suppose what's so important then maybe is the people you surround yourself with, especially from a business perspective in terms of, you know, if the hunger does start to wane, that you have that support system and that quality talent around you that can galvanize things. Do you have any Equally important is the people at home, right? Because, you know, your wife and kids- Of course you're, you're getting married soon. Can I ask you about that actually?

So I mentioned, I mentioned that I've, obviously I'm getting married soon. I don't know when this will come out, so hopefully I won't be married by that point. But something I did want to ask you is, something I definitely struggle with is being present Do you have any advice as far as that's concerned? Because I think it's often so difficult to leave work at the door.

Do you have any advice, as to how to do that? I mean, it, I think we all struggle with it, not just because of work, but because of the devices that we carry in our lives. and I think a l large part of it for me is about rituals. It's, for example, I still, Most days I will have dinner with my family.

I insist that our phones are not on the table. Sometimes that causes a bit of a battle It really does, particularly with the younger ones who, you know, parting ways with their phones is always, uh The end of the world, it's, it's the end of the world. What could happen in the next half an hour? Anything could happen.

Remember, so. But I think, you know, something as basic as that means you're present for each other, you're speaking to each other, you're interacting and learning from each other. I do the same on the weekends., On vacations, I try For most of my kids' life, we would go to the Maldives for a couple of weeks every summer, and I would literally, put my phone in the safe upon checking in.

and I'd, I'd carry my Kindle around so I could read. But that was sort of, focused. And then the rest of the time was really about being family and being with family, being athletic, you know, doing well by everyone. So I think you just need to make that decision and carve out that time Right and then be disciplined about it.

I hate, f long phone calls. I hate long meetings. So that also helps, is that How do you structure your day? How did meetings work for you then?

I'm, I'm interested in that. So You know, I try and set up, ritual meetings which usually eliminates the out of ritual meetings. So if I basically say, "I'm gonna meet with you once a week-" " 30 minutes," and That's the cadence. We won't do come prepared ad hoc.

come And as long as we have that cadence that eliminates most of the other stuff, and most of the time you can wait till your next meeting. And I, and I find that super, helpful. and I think that's how I spend a lot of my time is about structuring when I do certain things and trying to be quite disciplined about d doing it that way. I think my role should always be, as is your role, you, I mean, you're an entrepreneur your yourself, is to give yourself time And to also think and ideate and be creative because it's so easy to just be doing, and doing without a clear strategy is a surefire way to end up nowhere.

And so Resonates enormously. I can't tell you how many times it's a Sunday before the Monday and I go, " we're carving out time to actually just think." We're carving two hours out where you just blank sheet of paper, you can just have the opportunity space to just take a step back and actually think and not just do. Because to your point, you just get on the hamster wheel, and you end up going in circles quite literally.

or certainly that's, that's been my experience. So. Uh Do you journal? I don't.

You don't. I don't. And I should. So this is, this is one of those things that I also do recommend a lot that helps a lot with being present.

One, you're present with yourself. The very act of spending time just taking account. Um How long have you journaled for? Most of my life, probably.

Really? The ons and offs, but I do feel that it's like your personal psychiatrist, right? The very act of just going out there and Talking it out and talking it out Getting it out on paper and saying, giving yourself a narrative, trying to package what you've learnt and what you wanna learn and where you wanna go. I find that super, uh Amazing material Useful when the journals are released or the memoirs.

I never, I never look back at them but they're, they're immensely therapeutic. I just started another interesting exercise that we talked about, being hungry and maintaining that, and the idea of that I've probably got, you know, at least as many decades or as many decades ahead of me as I've I've, I've already had in my career, is to actually, imagine myself at that age, so in my mid 80s. And I'm creating sort of a fictional narrative backwards to today. Interesting.

, Because I think young people have far clearer visions, and then as you start checking the box off, so there's a lot that society expects of you. You're gonna get married, you're gonna have a certain number of kids. You're gonna achieve a certain amount of financial success, and prior to that it's, you know, you're gonna go to school you're gonna achieve academic success. When you check off a lot of those boxes, there's a real question of What's next?

What keeps you excited and what keeps you To get up and what keeps you going. And I think it's always important to be building out a vision for oneself and to change that as your life changes. Do you think you've gotten more reflective? Have I gotten more reflective?

I'm not. So I do think that I've always given myself time to think and, to take account. I would say perhaps one of the things that you don't get as much as you get older is you get a lot more candid feedback the younger-. you are, and that's an important part of reflection.

even as I look at my peer group You realize that most of us, have massive blind spots that we're not aware of and that people don't tell us about. And so, you know, you will have that one friend who you think is a genius, but somehow hasn't made much of that genius. And y you probably know exactly why that is but that person's not able to see it. And that person doesn't wanna oftentimes doesn't invite that feedback.

And even if they do, oftentimes don't listen. So I, over the years, I've been very proactive about asking people about sort of blind spots, but I find that as you get older, less and less people Are willing to share, to share are willing to share, to share that with you. I'm curious about that, actually. Channels of feedback, even within Bayt, for example.

, How is that structured? Or what does that look like? You know, is your office door open with regard to ideas? Or how is this, how is that conducted?

My office door is open, and I do, I do continually ask for feedback. So even after I conduct a meeting, I might take someone aside who and say, "How did that go? What could we have done better?" "What would you improve?

What would you change?" but again, I think the challenge is at certain age difference or implied power difference, there's many times less candor about it. People tend to, believe they should say what they think You want to hear you want to hear rather. than the truth.

And so trying to find ways to bridge that is tricky is tricky, and it's something that I always strive to do better. I wish I had that skill. I think I have the skill of t telling people what they don't want to hear, which is, Which is great, by the way. It's got me in trouble many times.

And to me, the people around me who do that, actually, I feel are the most valuable people because-. Can't help it. I think unfortunately. I want to ask you about hiring as well.

Obviously, Bayt is, you know, in that space, but particularly maybe about the people that you've hired, the course of your career., Any lessons from that? What's the most important thing? The skill set?

Is it hiring for culture? Is it How do you strike this blend and equalities? I continue to be a big believer that, you need to know the values that are important to your company and you need to hire first and foremost for those values. What are the values for Bayt, do you mind sharing?

So for us, I mean, one of our values from the outset was striving to be the best. We wanted people who really cared about being top of their game because we wanted the business to be top of its game. And so the way we'd interview for that is we'd ask, "When were you the best at things?" Very simple question.

And someone who could not A state, a s single point of excellence in their, in their lives would be problematic. And then the follow-on question to that obviously would be, what did you do to get there? Because oftentimes there might be a oh, I remember when, whenever I got this award. And then did you strive for that or was it just, uh Coincidental talent, sent?

And so that's one of the values. Uh another value is obsessing about empowering others to lead better lives, which is really about we care about people who care about others., And we wanna see that. So if someone, you ask someone, who do you care for, or who have you cared for, or and they say, "I'm, I'm in it for number one."

You know, I'm And there are lots of people like that don't care for anything but and so they might work great for another culture. They might be great as an investment banking broker or something. But that's not The city would appreciate that-. much better perhaps.

Our culture is one of really helping people build better lives, and we want people who care about that. So there, you just have to define what you feel is success and the type of people you wanna work with. And then, and then hire for that And then the, you know, the obvious, trick is, oftentimes you get someone who checks all the boxes in culturally but then fails from a performance perspective and you get vice versa, right? You get the performance guys and I've had no issues letting people who are high performers but bad cultural fits go or to manage them out.

How quickly did you make that decision? we tend to be an overly kind organization. but I would say if it's a values thing that's an ethical infraction we end the relationship instantaneously no matter how good someone is performing. if it's a values thing which is not an ethical infraction we try hard to work with someone.

We try and communicate very openly and then work it out. On the performance, we tend to be a lot more patient, unfortunately. And this is probably not a, not a great thing, but part of it to a large degree has been, for many years we were the victim of our own success. We could afford to get fat.

And so when s we thought of someone as being a really nice person and but they were underperforming, we sort of Held their hand a bit Held their hands and tried to push them along. Kept them there. Bit by bit. But there's worse things you could be, you know, accused of than being nice To people.

I mean, I'm always surprised I couldn't get myself to do it, so when I read all these pieces of news where these super successful companies that have more Trillion-dollar market cap. And more Meta as an example. more cash on their balance sheet than most nations do and then they decide, "Hey, I've had a record profitable year, but I'm gonna fire 30,000 people." It sits strange, doesn't it?

You know, I get it. But I couldn't do it. I mean, that's not the type of leader I've ever been. So it sort of goes against Your the building meaning and why I'm building a business in the first place.

So,. On the AI moment, how have you found navigating that? I'm finding it, I'm, I'm finding it a pleasure to navigate. So I'm actually enjoying it.

Y there's always this sense of anxiety that are you navigating it quickly enough? And then obviously how much, of how much sharing with these tools should you be doing? so there's on one hand the drive to go really fast, and then on the other hand, this knowledge that if you don't have adequate guardrails, you might be getting yourself It's a nightmare, into serious trouble. And I would say the guardrails aren't clear yet.

and then, and I would say the last part that I think about is how to make the rest of the organization does use it as a superpower rather than a threat. So many people are of the mindset, "Oh my God, my job." And choose to turn a blind eye to it, and then you have a challenge with those. And making people change their habits is not easy.

No. It certainly is not. And I suppose it's, it's fundamentally changing the hiring process as well in many respects, in that you now have applicants who are creating their CVs with ChatGPT that's perfectly tailored, cover letter that's perfectly tailored to the job description, which has been created with some form of AI as well. And it's just kind of strange, really disintermediation.

A and like, you know, what's sort of, what's happening there. So do you know, are you guys seeing, I suppose, big changes as it pertains to, like, the recruiting and the applying side of things? Like the CV, which was the most, you know, the most important thing is nearly becoming like a race to a certain extent, or certainly becoming less important. Both the CV as well as the job posting obviously are being increasingly powered by AI.

so as a result, people are trying to get more, signals about what a person can really do. So one of the things that, one of the tools we have is something called Evaluify which I'm addicted to. I can't hire without it, no one in the organization can. Where, again, we send you video interview questions and you get on and you answer these questions, and we tend to ask, culture questions over there, and that gives us a lot of a sense of who you are Who you are, as a person.

And ultimately, unless we're hiring, remotely, eventually we're gonna meet you, so you know, it's very difficult to cheat that system. so, you know, AI is building more tools that let you cheat the system, but also better tools to help you validate who's good. And I find that Evaluify is one of those cases where, again, I can get 1,000 applicants, I'll get 1,000 times by four videos per applicant, 4,000 videos. The AI can say, "Listen, I've done the first assessment."

It'll give me the top 20. I'll start watching their videos and I go, "Ah, Mike here is great." You know, Mohammad is equally great, but John- . It's always John.

I won't, I won't bother with the interview.,. And it'll take me 30 seconds of watching his video, and I'm very grateful for the fact that I hadn't called him in for an interview and then wasted half an hour of my life and his, at something that you know, within the first 30 seconds, you know You can tell, it sh doesn't work. So the KPI is time saved is sort of a, an R ceremony aspect.

So on that side of things very much. Time saved is huge. But also, um-. I think you can do a gentler, kinder process.

I wanted to ask you about, the push for nationalization as it pertains to hiring regionally, because this is something which I think many people that I speak to, not from the region, really struggle to wrap their heads around. and, like, when you read literature put out by the likes of, like, Andreessen or Sequoia, and they're talking about, vertical AI coming for, you know, horizontal sort of like jobs wars, these kind of things. It's just, it's a different playing field. Like, we have, we have just different tailwinds are at play here, and it's, it's difficult to sort of untangle.

, Can you, can you speak to how much of an impact those things are having on the likes of a Bayt? And just maybe to even if you're capable of even explaining a small bit exactly what that means. So one, we've always had the most unique labor market in the world. So if you look at the Gulf in particular, we've had the highest proportion of migrant labor in the world.

and so these countries became very prosperous had very small local populations, and therefore, to serve whatever they needed to serve, they needed huge amounts of people from all around the world. And that sense of welcome came with certain costs., Some of them were, you know, when you look in from an employer perspective, one of the costs was we had the highest applicant per job counts in the world. so on average, app over 1,000 applicants per job compared to, for example, in Switzerland, two applicants per job.

And that's because in Switzerland, only a Swiss person would apply for a job. Apply for a job,. But if you're living If you see a job advertised in Dubai, you realize you can apply from it whether you are in China or The world is your oyster, isn't it? You can apply from anywhere.

And so you had, a huge number of applicants trying to come in with great talents and, in many cases, you were able to strike deals with them at all sorts of different price ranges depending on where they came from because-. so it made the labor market very dynamic, but to a large degree, it kept the locals out of the labor market for too long. So as the population of nationals grew everyone had become so accustomed to hiring the expats that the feeling was, "Hey, if they're local, they should be working with the government," because the few locals were historically, that's where all their jobs were.

So it's totally understandable that as these countries grew, they would need to nationalize. In the beginning, there's a lot of crying and complaining. so I remember the first countries to go through this nationalization process were sort of Oman and Bahrain. Small enough markets where, you know, I would say the shouts of protestation were pretty muted.

but then Saudi decided to adopt nationalization very aggressively and you know, candidly, it's been the best thing that's happened to Saudi. So as I go to that market, and I go very regularly Your relationships now are a lot more long-term with these companies because it is the national who's there. It's not the expat who's there just for a few Fleeting, few years. the level of sophistication has changed tremendously.

So the type of talent in just a couple of decades since we started like, you know, you've got two generations worth of people, essentially. And so they've really built out highly sophisticated people. And so I only see this as accelerating. Change is painful.

It will take some time for everyone to adopt it. And, but it's a necessity and it will happen. And candidly where it is happening, I'm seeing far better levels of service and quality than I did ever before. Interesting.

So in Saudi it used to be, I mean, even in Oman, when you'd go to hotels a few decades back, it wasn't the nicest of experiences. And today you'll be welcomed at the door by a Saudi person. at the check-in, at the reception, you'll have a Saudi person checking you in. the person at room service will be Saudi, and they're It's wonderful to have the flavor of the country right there and then.

So Totally so I think they're adopting that. That's not at the mutual exclusion to obviously the AI. And so these countries are obviously investing. I mean, when you think about what the Gulf has We're at the vanguard of fast-growing experiences.

AI. And in fact, I think all the global AI players are increasingly dependent on capital-. For from our part of the world. So I think both trends are happening.

They're gonna happen in rapid force rapid speed. But then the question becomes, what happens to the expats? And it's a good question. And I'm not if I'm not if it's a zero-sum game or it's an ever-increasing, game.

In Saudi, what it felt like was early on it felt like there was pressure on the expats to leave. But then the market accelerated so quickly And talent that just the opportunity grew for everyone. It grew for the expats, and you had male and female expats who never considered going to Saudi suddenly pouring in. And meanwhile, more and more of the Saudis were being employed.

So it wasn't a zero-sum game. Every everyone benefited from that development. That reckoning may be co hopefully it doesn't come at all, and everything continues to accelerate expand, and everyone is happy, in indefinitely. You mentioned there you spend a lot of time in Saudi.

How do you actually divide your time? 'Cause you have offices all over. So it's also ch it's also changed tremendously. I increasingly don't travel too much.

So they have, you know, the teams have become senior enough where, they handle, their work pretty independently of me. They know what to do. They know what to do. And oftentimes I just fly them in.

But I do still commit to visiting at least every office once a year. and part of it is about being with my team and getting to know them. And A lot of it is just being in the market because no matter where you think you are the market has huh a different perspective. And hearing that directly, not filtered through, your team is Always different is very different.

So what are the ambitions over the next 26 years as it relates to Bay? Are we What's, what's next? What's next for you? What are you excited about?

Well,. So I'm, I'm excited, first and foremost, I find work is a completion of me. So I'm excited. I wanna live a good life.

And I think for me, a good life is a full life. It's not a life that's purely driven by finance, as I said. It's a life driven by, uh By doing good and as a result of doing good, getting good outcomes, right? So I think what I continue to be excited about is how can I leverage technology to help more and more people live better lives, and how do I build a sustainable, business out of that?

And as for as long as I can wake up every morning and engage with really cool new technologies and amazing people Huh who inspire me, to be honest, that's my primary ambition. And I stopped setting the ambition, which may be an error, but I stopped setting the ambition in terms of I wanna build a business of this size or revenue stream or profitability. And part of that is because I don't have shareholders anymore, so I'm not beholden to anyone. Shareholders,.

Someone in your ear. I'm not beholden to anyone's expectations other than my own. And so as long as I feel that it's this, continuation of me that is a self-actualization where I'm doing good and it's doing good, I'm, I'm happy. And as long as I, again, I'm not, compromising any of my values which I think it's very easy to do in the world of entrepreneurship.

What would your advice be as someone who, you know, effectively has bootstrapped to a large extent? Obviously, I know you took the 3 million funding, but I mean, outside of that, and you're the, you are the shareholder, what would your advice be? So I just had a college kid who's on the side building his own business call me up and ask me that same, advice. And, you know, my first bit of advice was there's no right or wrong answer.

It really is very personal and it will vary for you at different times in your life. and so the question is, what are you trying to achieve right now in your life? What's most important for you? And if what you feel is the most important to you right now is, for example, to put away a few dollars to secure your family that's a different mindset-.

and leads to different solutions than, hey, I've got enough money on the side and now I wanna build a lifestyle business or So there's a huge variety of things. So it's very difficult The best advice you can give is by asking a lot of questions this is good. about personal inclinations and saying, "What do you want?" "Where do you wanna go?

What does success look like to you five years from now? So, you know, five years from now, are you still interviewing people for this podcast?" "Do you wanna do that? Do you wanna do more of your time on the publishing?

Do you wanna do more events or-" This is a fantastic hiring recruiting. You know exactly that this is perfect filtering and refinement. Aravind, this is exactly on form. And I think, you know, if you're able to build a highly successful business that checks all the boxes for you without going for external capital, then kudos to you.

You know? It's difficult. and if I would s even say if you're able to do it without a partner even more kudos to you. Partners are wonderful in many ways.

Same. But it is a necessary fact of life that two human beings over time will have different priorities in their lives and different visions. And so there's, built-in conflict even within that. And, you know, you can compromise your way to success, and that's fine.

But if, but if you find you're building this on your own and it's checking off all the boxes, and you don't have a partner, you don't have a, anyone involved that might be it. And it, and the last thing is you also have to determine whether or not your, business can absorb whatever external capital in a way that gives meaningful return to the investors and without collapsing the business. Um Which is why media is not a VC backable business. For any media company who's ever taken external capital has never panned out.

a final question then. I enjoy finishing on this one. So this is the Jensen Huang, I dunno if you saw this. I think it was maybe when he was on Acquired at some point, but I think the question was something to the effect of, if you knew how difficult it was going to be, would you still have done it?

Listen, I repeatedly, as I was in the midst of the most difficult times of starting businesses have said that had I known, I would not have done it. and that's why youth is such a wonderful thing. the younger you are, the less, experience has taught you, and experience is a really bad teacher. Experience, gives you scars that scare you.

But I think You know, all great things and hard things are started by people who don't know any better, and then figure their way through it. And most everyone else is, who knows better stays away, which is why they never even get to succeed at it. So I do look back and say, "Listen, it's been I am so grateful for having had this journey." And, I'm so grateful that my journey was very unique to myself and true to myself, that I didn't play by someone else's, rules.

But has it been easy? Is it easy even today? It's, even today, even though it might sound like it's easy, it's far from easy. Every day there's new problems that get thrown in my way, and they're many times existential.

So even decades in, it's very difficult to stay relevant and profitable and cash-flow positive, whatever, decades into the business. But, I think I embrace and I enjoy, the difficulty. That's part of why I wake up excited every morning, is I have a problem to solve. If it wasn't, uh True if there weren't that many challenges, then I'd be on a beach,.

Getting pretty bored after a day or two. on the farm, um like you mentioned earlier. Well, look, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. It's been a great chat. I've been anxious. Again, s a far better podcaster for those who aren't aware No and haven't listened to the reviews podcast.

I also, that's one of those things that I did without any goal. Not quite why I was doing it. But it's been an interesting journey, and. It's a nice excuse to chat to great people.

It is great. I think. Great to sit with you, and thank you so much. Well done.

Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. That was great. Thank you.

That was awesome, man. Amazing. Thank you so much.