Let's Talk Product

17. Jawaker's path to $205M w/ Waleed Tuffaha

January 02, 2022 13:42 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MB

Waleed Tuffaha is one of the founding engineers at Jawaker — Jordan's latest success story. Jawaker, a developer of mobile card games was acquired for 205M USD in Sep 2021. Since day one, the company's leadership team has focused on profitability and long-term sustainability. They have only raised a small seed funding round in 2011. Waleed joined Jawaker in 2009 and helped build and launch the first iteration of the product. Today Waleed leads and manages the product and tech team at the c...

16. Global SaaS out of KSA w/ Iyad Aldalooj, co-founder @ Penny

December 01, 2021 14:38 - 46 minutes - 46.4 MB

Iyad Aldalooj is the co-founder and CEO of Penny software, an end-to-end procurement solution for enterprises. Prior to founding Penny in 2020, Iyad was the General Manager & Marketing Director at Careem in Saudi Arabia. On the episode we learn more about Iyad's journey and delve into the steps they're taking in building a global SaaS product. 01:19 - Iyad's first startup & role at Careem 12:40 - What is penny software? 15:00 - The evolution from a B2B marketplace to procurement software 18...

15. Reinventing insurance w/ Walid Daniel Dib, co-founder @ Hala

September 30, 2021 13:09 - 23 minutes - 21.7 MB

Walid Daniel Dib, co-founder and CEO of Hala (previously Addenda) has taken several turns to get to where he is today. Back in 2018, him and his brother started off by building a blockchain solution to streamline workflows between insurance companies. A year or so later, the brothers had went through several pivots but were still not seeing any significant traction. In essence they were building solutions in search of a problem. Today, Hala is insurtech that is building a subscription-based...

15. Transforming insurance w/ Walid Daniel Dib, co-founder @ Hala

September 30, 2021 13:09 - 23 minutes - 21.7 MB

Walid Daniel Dib, co-founder and CEO of Hala (previously Addenda) has taken several turns to get to where he is today. Back in 2018, him and his brother started off by building a blockchain solution to streamline workflows between insurance companies. A year or so later, the brothers had went through several pivots but were still not seeing any significant traction. In essence they were building solutions in search of a problem. Today, Hala is insurtech that is building a subscription-based...

14. Product design w/ Jonathan, Head of Design @ Property Finder

August 31, 2021 13:09 - 29 minutes - 26.6 MB

Jonathan Steingiesser is Head of Design at Property Finder, where he divides his time between leading the design team, design strategy, customer research and service design improvements. With over 17 years of design experience at startups across various sectors including retail and education, Jonathan has fostered a deep passion for design innovation and continuous improvement. He applies his passion to guide research, design and product processes in order to create innovative experiences a...

13. Building B2B enterprise software w/ Yousef Wadi, founder @ Nestrom

July 31, 2021 14:51 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MB

Yousef Wadi is a Computer Engineer who has been building online products for well over 10 years. He’s worked with global organizations (Microsoft and Yahoo!) and startups (Arabia Weather and Nestrom). Yousef founded Nestrom in 2016 to solve field management issues for the agricultural industry. Today Nestrom is a QHSE management platform serving enterprise customers in manufacturing, construction, agriculture and more. These include Al-Futtaim Group, Nabil and Fine Hygienic Holding. On the ...

12. Product development speed vs. quality w/ Nabil Mohamed, VP of Product @ Instabug

June 30, 2021 18:13 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MB

Nabil Mohamed is the VP of Product at Instabug, one of the MENA region’s fastest growing SaaS companies. He was previously Senior Product Manager at Amazon Seattle for 4 years and worked with Microsoft on their Skype enterprise product prior to that. He is currently managing the Product, UX Design, and Brand Design teams at Instabug, in an exciting attempt to build Egypt's first SaaS unicorn. On the episode, we delve into how he makes decisions around balancing the need for speed vs quality...

11. Fundamentals of product marketing w/ Yasmine Helmy, growth lead @ Trella & ex-Instabug

May 31, 2021 13:51 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MB

Yasmine Helmy is a growth and product marketer with 7+ years of experience in product marketing, growth leadership, demand generation, and SaaS strategies. She has built and scaled Instabug's self-serve growth engine to more than 30,000 mobile teams around the globe and is currently head of global growth at Trella, another fast-growing Egyptian startup. On this episode, Yasmine explains what product marketing is and shares the fundamental frameworks for establishing a product's positionin...

10. User onboarding & engagement w/ Yazan, co-founder @ Userpilot

April 30, 2021 12:47 - 24 minutes - 22.1 MB

Did you know that over 50% of features in software products are never used. How can we help users realize the full value of our products? What can we do to increase product adoption throughout the entire journey? Yazan Sehwail is the co-founder and CEO of Userpilot, a user engagement tool that helps software teams increase user adoption with better product experiences. On this episode, Yazan walks us through the steps of guiding users at each stage of the journey - from the Aha! moment, to a...

9. Self-service SaaS & reducing churn w/ Ahmed, co-founder @ Gameball

March 31, 2021 18:03 - 22 minutes - 21 MB

Ahmed El Assy is the co-founder and CPO at Gameball, a customer engagement SaaS platform that uses gamification and loyalty mechanisms to help brands retain and engage their customers. The young Egyptian startup has secured over 1000 online merchants from 50 countries through their self-service product. We speak to Ahmed about the company's journey to date and what it takes to build a global self-serve B2B product where customers deploy and use the product on their own. We also dive into how...

8. Customer Discovery w/ Tariq Seksek co-founder @ Alma Health

February 25, 2021 11:33 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MB

Customer discovery is all about making sure you build something customers actually want from the very start. The goal of customer discovery is to figure out who your customers are and whether the problem you believe you are solving is important to them. Tariq Seksek, co-founder and Head of Product at Alma Health, a recently launched health-tech startup in the UAE, is responsible for exactly that. Tariq has previously held product management roles at renowned companies like Dubizzle and Starz...

7. How to localize product for new markets & the role of the 1st Product Manager w/ Reham, PM @ Trella

February 10, 2021 07:19 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MB

Reham elHusseiny is a Growth Product Manager at Trella, a YC-backed, Cairo-based tech platform that connects shippers to carriers. Prior to joining Trella, Reham worked as a product manager at Veezeta and at Talabat (Delivery Hero). She joined Trella as their first product manager and was responsible for building and scaling the product function. Since her joining 1 year ago, Trella has expanded their user base into 3 countries and multiple verticals. On this episode, we walk through each st...

6. Towards a 10x better product w/ Talal Bayaa, co-founder @ Bayzat

January 27, 2021 11:35 - 26 minutes - 24.3 MB

Talal Bayaa and his school friend, now co-founder Brian Habibi, started Bayzat after sensing an opportunity in the financial products market back in 2011. Since then the duo led Bayzat to where it is today; a widely known UAE-based technology start-up that empowers businesses with smart insurance & HR solutions. Today Bayzat is a 200+ person company with around $30M in funding. On this episode Talal talks to us about how they build product at Bayzat; sharing insights about their early pivo...

5. Lessons from a decade of entrepreneurship, Fouad Jeryes co-founder @ Maqsam

January 17, 2021 09:52 - 46 minutes - 42.6 MB

Fouad Jeryes, co-founder of Maqsam, the friendliest cloud-telephony solution for SMEs in MENA, walks us through his journey of entrepreneurship. Over the past decade Fouad has built and launched a variety of tech-focused products in the payments, data, e-commerce, logistics and communications spaces, most notably of which are CashBasha and Maqsam. With a number of successes and much more to learn from failures, Fouad shares how he and his co-founder validate, launch and scale products; cover...

Transitioning to a product-led company w/ Tony Fadel, Sr Product Director @ Talabat

December 15, 2020 17:55 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MB

Tony is a product leader with more than 10 years of experience with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Google and Careem. He started his career as a software engineer and then joined Google for 7 years where he helped launch some of the most used products on the planet, including Google Sign in/Sign up. In 2017 he moved back to the Middle East where he led the Careem Marketplace team and is currently Senior Product Director for Consumer and Ads at Talabat. Tony is p...

4. Transitioning to a product-led company w/ Tony Fadel, Sr Product Director @ Talabat

December 15, 2020 17:55 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MB

Tony is a product leader with more than 10 years of experience with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Google and Careem. He started his career as a software engineer and then joined Google for 7 years where he helped launch some of the most used products on the planet, including Google Sign in/Sign up. In 2017 he moved back to the Middle East where he led the Careem Marketplace team and is currently Senior Product Director for Consumer and Ads at Talabat. Tony is p...

3. Building product teams w/ Yazan Masafah, ex-VP Products at Unifonic

November 05, 2020 10:27 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MB

Yazan Masafah has been working in product management for over 15 years now. He starting his career in engineering and then moved into product marketing and product management. He has managed product teams of various sizes, both at enterprises, including Huawei and Orange, and at startups. He served as VP of Products at Unifonic for 5 years before founding his own startup, businesschat.io. Yazan does not settle for mediocre. His high sense of self-awareness and hunger for growth have gotten ...

Building product teams w/ Yazan Masafah, ex-VP Products at Unifonic

November 05, 2020 10:27 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MB

Yazan Masafah has been working in product management for over 15 years now. He starting his career in engineering and then moved into product marketing and product management. He has managed product teams of various sizes, both at enterprises, including Huawei and Orange, and at startups. He served as VP of Products at Unifonic for 5 years before founding his own startup, businesschat.io. Yazan does not settle for mediocre. His high sense of self-awareness and hunger for growth have gotten ...

2. A story of vision and persistence w/ Amjad Masad, co-founder of Repl.it

November 04, 2020 13:31 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MB

Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, an online coding platform that lowers the barriers of entry for building and shipping software. Amjad has been working on programming and creative tools for his entire career. His journey in building Repl.it started in his hometown Amman, back when he was a computer science student at university. Amjad's first-hand experience and frustration with the existing coding environments at that time sparked in him the need to build a cloud-based code...

A story of vision and persistence w/ Amjad Masad, co-founder of Repl.it

November 04, 2020 13:31 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MB

Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, an online coding platform that lowers the barriers of entry for building and shipping software. Amjad has been working on programming and creative tools for his entire career. His journey in building Repl.it started in his hometown Amman, back when he was a computer science student at university. Amjad's first-hand experience and frustration with the existing coding environments at that time sparked in him the need to build a cloud-based code...

Building Middle East's leading music streaming app w/ Elie Habib, co-founder of Anghami

November 04, 2020 13:30 - 52 minutes - 48 MB

On this episode Elie takes us back to the early days of launching Anghami and shares the journey of building, what now is, the leading music streaming app in the Middle East. Today Anghami has over 85 million users, streaming a billion tracks each month. The founders' strong product vision and focus is what got the company to where it is today. Elie comes from a technical background and has founded 4 companies before Anghami. He led engineering and product teams of various sizes and has tr...

1. Building Middle East's leading music streaming app w/ Elie Habib, co-founder of Anghami

November 04, 2020 13:30 - 52 minutes - 48 MB

On this episode Elie takes us back to the early days of launching Anghami and shares the journey of building, what now is, the leading music streaming app in the Middle East. Today Anghami has over 85 million users, streaming a billion tracks each month. The founders' strong product vision and focus is what got the company to where it is today. Elie comes from a technical background and has founded 4 companies before Anghami. He led engineering and product teams of various sizes and has tr...

Let's Talk Product

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