#488 The Inside-Out Entrepreneur: Mohamed Ahmed on Startup Mindset and Emotional Readiness

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to any episode of the CT O Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me from the US from Seattle, Mohamed Ahmed. Mohamed. I'm very pleased you are with me here today. As I was telling you before, we. Start the recording. Usually I like people [00:01:00] to introduce themselves because I have a theory, like no one can introduce someone else better than themselves.

So the floor is used, but just as teaser for the audience. Mohamed is, you know, an engineer turned entrepreneur. He have large experience with the, with technology, especially ai. So, Hamed, I don't want to take much from you. The floor is yours. 

Mohamed: Ahmed, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Uh, today. Uh, yeah, as, uh, as you mentioned, I, most of my, uh, career and my education, um, was in, in, in, in engineering. Uh, I started in computer science. I studied, uh, both my undergraduate and graduate studies were in distributed systems. Um, and that's actually what brought me, uh, here to the us. I'm originally from Egypt and um, I studied supercomputers.

Um, and for everyone to think what is a supercomputer? It's a, think of a full stadium, uh, that has maybe a hundred thousand, 150,000 persons in it. They all have a laptop, [00:02:00] uh, and all of them are working together to solve the same problem. That's a supercomputer. And, um, after that, I worked, I worked a bit in academia, and then I worked at Microsoft at AWS building their cloud infrastructure around 10, 15 years ago.

Um, and I, uh, worked in a couple of startups here in Seattle area and also in the Bay Area, and I got the entrepreneurial bug and maybe we can talk about that, uh, later on. It's, uh, an interesting story 'cause I got into that by chance. Um, and I co-founded my company. I pivoted multiple times. I learned a lot.

Um, I thought that I had it all when I jumped, um, from being an engineer or product, uh, person to become an entrepreneur. But I realized that I almost hit a reset button on my career. I learned a lot. It was, uh, five years, uh, journey. That, um, that a lot and lot of lessons that I got, uh, throughout the, that journey.

And that's [00:03:00] why I decided then to, uh, write a book. It's called The Inside Out Entrepreneur. And, and hopefully we'll talk a bit about it today. And now I'm a mission to help entrepreneurs who started the career similarly, um, like me, and they want to become, uh, or engineers who want to become entrepreneurs and to learn, you know, um, what are the tips and tricks to do that and show them around the corner and hopefully build their next $1 billion startup.

Mehmet: Yeah, usually I don't use this term a lot, but this is music to my ears, Mohamed. Because you know, the experience that you have accumulated is exactly in my opinion, what we need to share more with, you know, fellow engineers. I, I come also from an engineering background and like many people we were thinking that maybe some people will not like this, but this is what we were taught.

Oh, like you are the engineer business people. Like, oh, forget about them now. Why do you think we have this [00:04:00] misconception? Mohammed, why do you think, and I'm gonna start from here actually. Mm-hmm. Why we need to teach the next generation for, for me, it's done. I learned by myself. 

Mohamed: You still, you still have a lot of time, Ahed.

That's what, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Mehmet: But no, no, but really, you know what we, how we can change this really conception because. I speak to still till now, I speak to a lot of, uh, people with technology backgrounds, computer science, computer engineering. When you tell them about business, you know, like they do this, no.

You know, like, I'm not a business guy. Why we need to change this misconception? Why do you think there's a need for this? 

Mohamed: Yeah, absolutely. There is a big difference between building a business and building, uh, a product. People like, uh, like me before getting into entrepreneurship. We thought that success is building a product and most of the time you get abstracted away or isolated [00:05:00] from the business decision, uh, making process or business results.

So when I worked at AWS, for example, I was part of their infrastructure. I. And it was successful anyways. And when I joined them, it was not version oh 0.1, it was something that is a bit more advanced, already tested many times, and pivoted multiple times, and now it's successful. And yes, I made some good decisions about the product to make it even more successful.

And I thought at the beginning, okay, I, I think I know how to, uh, to run, uh, a company or I think I know how to get a product idea from just an idea into a multimillion dollar, uh, business. But it turns out that the beginnings, uh, are much, much more messier than I thought. And they're not as structured. Uh, you know, the, the famous drawing where they, uh, show you success, how people see it.

They usually show a straight line from zero, and you're growing. But the reality is that you're going in different directions and, [00:06:00] uh, and a semi-random until you hopefully figure it out. And then, uh, you make it at the end. This is, this is true. And the problem is a lot of entrepreneurs, uh, engineer entrepreneurs, uh, they get lost in between.

Every time they work on an idea, they think, okay, if this idea does not work right away, then we are, you know, we're, we're done, we're screwed. And actually, maybe I'll share an idea with, uh, with the audience here. Everyone listening to us is a friend who is an entrepreneur or engineer, used to be an engineer, and he decided to build his own startup.

And, um, and he came to me, um, you know, complaining that it's not working. And I told him, look, you're, you're not building a product. You're building a business. And he, and I told him, you need to go and work closely with your customers, uh, and make sure that you are generating any sort of sort of income, um, any [00:07:00] revenue.

Just convince them that you are good enough to, uh, for them to put their hands in their pockets and pay you something, even if it's just simple professional services. And he told me, well, I don't wanna do that. I want to just build a product that changes the world. That's a big misconception. It doesn't happen this way.

And there's this mantra in the, in the Silicon Valley, they say at the beginning, you need to do the non-scalable stuff. 

Mehmet: Right? And 

Mohamed: non-scalable stuff means that you go and work with your customers manually and take it step by step with them. So back to the original point, there's a big difference between building a product.

I'm building a business just to make it in very simple terms. Business is set as simple as it's a machine. You feed it with one or $2. Let's say you feed it with $2 and it gives you $3 from the other site. As simple as that, uh, a product, uh, is something different. Yes, you [00:08:00] provide the value. You might automate a few things.

You might make the user's life easier, but are they willing to put their hands in their pocket and give you enough money so that you have that machine that would, you know, generate more money than what you spend on it? That's a, that's a big, um, I would say misconception that a lot of. You know, engineering background entrepreneurs, uh, come from, especially, you know, when they work long enough with big companies, like, like what I did, and then they just forget about it.

They think of a product, I just need to build a product. I, and if I build a good enough product, like whatever the iPhone, they think of something elegant and beautiful, then everyone will come. That that's not, uh, that's not the case. And again, it's coming from our own. Um, you know, again, as engineers, we feel that we have control.

We know that we are building a software, we can make it beautiful and people are gonna come. It's just completely different mindset. 

Mehmet: Right. Mohamed? [00:09:00] The, the title of the book is The Inside Out Entrepreneur. So I think, you know, to me it's like a journey of how you see the thing inside out. Correct me if I'm wrong, right.

But during this journey, you know, shifting from engineer. To entrepreneur and for you also to an author also as well. There must be some of, of course, like we talk about, and you know, I write, you know, snippets about a lot. Like, yeah, you need to take the first step, you need to do this, you need to do that.

Yeah. But there is like, of course the emotions here, right? So for you as someone who experienced this, and I think you talk about that in, in the book as well. Yeah. So emotion readiness, let's call it. What kind of emotion readiness I need to have as, you know, a technical person, an engineer before becoming an entrepreneur.

Mohamed: Yes, absolutely. Emotions definitely is part of it. [00:10:00] But if you allow me, I, I will take just one step back. Sure. And let's think about the entrepreneurship, uh, as a journey that starts a bit differently. Entrepreneurship, um, is like mountain climbing. If you go and talk to any mountaineer, no matter how much experience they have under their belt, they would have to do what's so called conditioning.

And conditioning means that they need to be ready for, you know, physically for the journey. They need to be also mentally ready, emotionally, and even the other aspects of their life. So that's the conditioning part. Now use that analogy for entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is pretty much like you, you wanna go and, uh, and climb a big, you know, a really big and high mountain and you do not know exactly what's what you're gonna face.

You know, it's an unforgiving journey. You know, it's gonna be difficult. So the the best thing that you need to do. Is to, to go through that conditioning and this is what I talk about. That's the whole [00:11:00] idea behind the book, is to condition yourself, you know, emotionally, mentally, uh, even physically. And also, uh, building a support system as part of the conditioning.

Um, and um, and I think I mentioned spiritually as well, so there, there are a few factors that need to work together, together. And the first one of them. Is the mental and emotional resilience that you mentioned. And, uh, you know, since we're engineers here and everyone or most of, uh, whoever listening to us are coming from engineering, uh, background, what's the definition of resiliency and robustness?

Because these are the two, FA two, uh, I would say, um, terms that go hand in hand together when you talk about mental resiliency and mental robustness. Um, so resiliency in engineering is when you build a structure and you add some pressure to it, uh, and it gets, let's say deformed a bit. It goes back, it, it's the tendency of a structure to go back to its [00:12:00] original form.

So that's resiliency in engineering. And robustness is in engineering is all about how do I make sure that according to the design, no matter how much pressure do I add, that's structure does not get deformed permanently. Okay, so let's map this down through emotions and mental conditioning. So, uh, any one of us would have a tendency towards life.

Some of us could be optimistic, some of them are positive, some of us are, you know, they have the growth mindset. That's how your mind is designed, or at least this is where you want your mind to be as. Now, um, if you are faced with some calamities or faced with some challenges in your startup, does that change your mindset permanently or maybe temporarily?

And then you go back to your good original mindset. This is robustness. The same thing for emotional resilience and robustness. Let's say [00:13:00] something happened that's not expected. You have a, you have a big, um, I would say event that took place. Definitely that would make you frustrated. Do you go or come back to their, to the normal state?

Normally motion states so that you act or not? And actually let me share a story, a couple of stories from my own experience. So when I first started, I raised around five, $500,000 just as a pre-seed to get started building the product. We spent around six months building the product. We hired engineers.

We spent $350,000 and we were ready to go and demonstrate our product in one big conference. And we were using AWS. They gave us a hundred thousand dollars credit. Everything was good. Then as I was entering the venue, I got an email from AWS telling us, instead of us having around $50,000 credit with them when I lost time, checked with them, we owe them $65,000 [00:14:00] and we had less than a thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars in the bank and zero customers.

So that's a big event. That means that my company is going to shut down because they're telling us you need to pay us within 15 days, otherwise we're gonna shut down the infrastructure, as you know, and, and now there's no way to escape. So it took me around two to four weeks mamed to recover from that.

And what I mean by this is it just, I kept thinking about it and I was saying, why the hell is this? Did that happen and why we're in that position? And here's also the ironic thing about it. My startup back then was all about optimizing cloud infrastructure. My product is to help customers not to spend too much as I did.

And I'm saying we're gonna be a joke in the market. So it took me four weeks to recover. This is, this is a mindset and a and a person that did not have enough resiliency and robustness. This is, this is something, this is not good, right? This is just an example of how not to act. [00:15:00] And the reason is because I did not get the right conditioning.

Now, this is one story. This is just snapshot. This is me at the beginning of the journey, without having mentors, without having anyone to support me. Now, moving forward, four years or five years after that, uh, I got mentors. I learned a lot. I went through a lot of situations. We were approached by a company that wanted to acquire us.

I. And mm-hmm. They were interested. I was interested. We did the due diligence. We, they looked at our bank accounts, they interviewed all our engineers, and then just two hours before signing the agreement, they backed off. 

Mehmet: Hmm. 

Mohamed: The reason is they got an offer from another company and they had to accept it before they signed us, and they cannot buy us anymore.

'cause that, as they call it in the business terms, this is a material change to the company, so they cannot buy us. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Mohamed: So, in a situation like this, again, we were faced, we, we had the same thing. We had, uh, very little money in the bank. We stopped [00:16:00] fundraising because we were ready to be acquired. Now I have more than 50 engineers working on the company.

The burn rate is much higher. If I were the same person who started the journey, I would also take, it would take me a while. But what happened is took me two, three hours, I brought myself, uh, together again, and I talked to five CEOs. From my connections and by the end of the, the same week, so that happened Monday.

By the end of uh, Friday, same week I was having five meetings with CEOs who are interested in buying the company. That's a situation, that's a good example of when you develop the robustness and resiliency. Yes, you're going to face calamities, you're going to face problems, but how fast you're going to recover and how fast you're going to convert that into an opportunity and then move forward.

By the way, the second one is way more extreme and the first one, we had one or two engineers. You know, the losses are not gonna be big, but here we have [00:17:00] 50 engineers, businesses running, customers, depending on us. So many things. But that's the difference between someone who did not have the right robustness and resiliency and their emotions and mindset versus they have some of it and they were able to move fast.

And that's what would make a difference between an entrepreneur who would be able to. Go at one from one failure after the other and then make it at the end versus the 90% of people, others who give up, you know, after one year. I'm not saying that, okay, I, I got it all. It's at the beginning, I was about to shut down and I got, I got the mix of being lucky and, you know, trying to be persistent, but I'm not, I'm not the genius, the guy that anyone would think.

It's just a matter of how do you hold yourself together, 

Mehmet: right? So it's about preparing the mindset because these things will happen. Ed, you know, you are not telling I like this. You are not telling them. [00:18:00] You will not pass by this. You are telling them, actually you're gonna pass by this, but prepare yourself time ahead.

So it's like, you know, taking kind of a vaccine, you're still gonna get the the sickness, but you will manage to pass it somehow. Exactly. And I think this is, this is, this is, you know, resonates a lot because I think a lot of people thinks, and again this is why people like yourself are so super helpful, I would say Mohamed, because you pass by thing and later you become yourself the mentor, you become the author, you share these stories where people can learn.

They say, okay, fine. I'm gonna choose to be in this entrepreneurship journey and this is what I'm gonna, you know, now talking about this and the mindset. Any other things that they need to empower themselves before into this journey? Like maybe from any tools, any, I don't know, any training that they need to, to, to do, like what do your advice usually.

Yeah, absolutely. Entrepreneurs. Yeah, 

Mohamed: [00:19:00] absolutely. Uh, look, the, when it comes to the fundamentals of building a business, like doing sales, marketing, et cetera, there, you know, there's abundance of that. You're gonna find so many, um, sources for this. Either books or, you know, online communities. I'm building an online community called Boundless Founder, but the main difference is.

How do you navigate the psychology of each one of those, uh, activities or, um, I would say, um, initiatives that you're going to have in your company. I'll give you an example. Just the simple things of the first few things that you would do as an entrepreneur, which is fundraising. You wanna go and talk to VCs, of course.

And everyone knows that if you want to talk to a vc, you need to talk to 20 VCs before someone would tell you, yes, I'm going to fund you, or I'm interested. Sure. I mean, that's, that's a known, almost a known fact. But the question here is how do you navigate the psychology of [00:20:00] that? You're gonna get rejected and it's easy, by the way, to get rejected the first time, second time, third time, you know, what's the most difficult one is the 18th or 19th rejection?

Before you get the last Yes, the last one that you talk with. And they will tell you, yes, I'm interested, or I'm going to fund you. So navigating that is really important. Now, how do you do that? I mean, there, there are definitely tools. I would love to, anyone listening, please connect with me and I would love to, to bring everyone up to speed to that.

But again, from the, from the Books framework, one of the really important things is the support system. You need to build a support system around you, and that support system is the one that will keep you going. And I'll, I'll talk about what I mean by that. So, um, your support system comes from your friends, family, and also from your mentors and advisors.

It's not, um, it's not, as you may think, um, as they talk [00:21:00] about it in the media, let's, let's take them one by one, your family. I, I believe that the entrepreneur's family is as special as the entrepreneur, him or herself. They go through the same challenges that, um, the, uh, the entrepreneur themselves go through, if not sometimes bigger.

Uh, and I had countless of, uh, I would say stories with my wife, you know, feeling the pain, feeling the frustration with me. So that's, uh, so, so that's, this is something important for everyone to have in mind. Now, what does it mean for your family? Number one, you need to educate them. What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

And also you need to educate them. Why, uh, the. What to expect in each turn. I give you this funny story. So one entrepreneur, he uh, he was building the company. He raised money and he got $5 million, uh, off a $20 million valuation of his company. The first thing that his wife thought [00:22:00] of, okay, we became millionaires.

You own now 70% of your company, you raise it to worth $20 million. We're millionaires. And in reality, no, it's just on paper. And probably he's going to take a salary that's. 50% less than what's typical in the market. Uh, so that's one thing. The other, actually, the other extreme is, um, uh, a wife actually talking to her, uh, husband, entrepreneur, and she was telling him, no, no, no, we do not need to take money.

Uh, we can, you know, salary from the company so that you extend the runway. I talk to them, I told 'em, no, you have to take money and maintain your house. And that actually helped them to maintain their, uh, healthy relationship, uh, within the family. So that's how you build and maintain your family. Now, the second role that is really important is.

The mentor and a mentor by the way, is, is different from advisor. You know, a lot of [00:23:00] people say, well, yeah, I have a few advisors. They, they can help me. There's a big difference. A mentor is someone who would always challenge your mindset and you would try to change your perspective so that you have a healthy perspective of your startup.

Uh, there's also another story about that. So, one way I was talking, one day, I was talking to one of my mentors and, um, we were talking about the team and the leadership and, and what need to be done, uh, you know, to grow the team and make sure that they're healthy. I. He asked me that question, he told me, Mohammad, let me ask you this question.

Are you helping your team by giving them salary and a job, et cetera? Or are they the ones who are helping you to realize your vision? You know, without them, you know, doesn't matter how much money you have, you're not gonna be able to achieve your vision. And then just challenging my thinking about around that and, um, making me think about the team as there is an exchange of, [00:24:00] uh, I would say benefits.

Uh, we're both elevating each other and there are a few things that I have control on with my team, and there are a few things that I do not have control on. So that's a mentor, that's, that's what I call the mentor now, who's an advisor then, because a lot of people would, uh, say, okay, if that's the mentor, what would an advisor do?

Now an advisor is someone who would show you around the corner. And, um, and, and this means for example. They know they're ahead of you in their business. They know a bit more about what you, what you should expect in your business. So for example, as an advisor, I might, uh, help some of the entrepreneurs to build their own sales machine, uh, and how to do a founder led sales.

This means I talk with them, what they should, what should they expect in terms of managing their time, having conversations with their customers, how can they accelerate all of that? How can they get the best results and so on. So, and I tell them, if you do this, this is gonna happen. This is what's called [00:25:00] showing them around the corner.

And then the last role, so, uh, is the, is a friend. And again, people confuse who's a friend and who I should be connecting with a friend. Um, you may have a lot of your friends coming from, let's say, if you already work at Microsoft or AWS. Probably most of your friends are coming from those spaces, or maybe an old school friend, but that's not the correct friend that you should have and, uh, have them with you in that journey or to basically talk with them about the journey.

A friend is someone also who would understand what's going on inside you and, you know, uh, based on the situation that you're going through and support you emotionally, pretty much like your family. For example, if I talk to one of my friends who are working at Microsoft right now, and I tell them I'm about to run out of funding, or I'm about to, or I cannot find the engineer that I'm really looking for, the first response that they're gonna have, [00:26:00] you know, is going to be coming out of their position at Microsoft.

They'll say, okay, uh, then pay them more. You know what, this is not how you hire engineers in startups. Um, it's not about paying them more. You're looking for pirates who would take the risk with you and work with you. Um, so you need to find a friend who was an entrepreneur, already an entrepreneur, and they can empathize with you.

They can connect and understand what was happening inside your head as you pass through different situations. The other friends, you still need them, of course, to just disconnect, but they're not the ones who are going to give you. Uh, I would say the right advice. Everyone would be sincere with you. All your friends, hopefully love, love you.

But, um, and they, they're sincere in giving you the advice. But would it be really the right advice to guarantee this? The, the advice that would really matter to you, that you need to come from your friend who is ahead of you, who did that before. And that's why I usually advise, um, uh, entrepreneurs to [00:27:00] go and expand their network, uh, as they start.

This is part of the conditioning. Go and expand your network. 

Mehmet: Right? You know, like you dissected. Um. This Hamad in, in, in a very, I would say, detailed way for entrepreneurs, um, especially when you mentioned like, it's not what they see in the media. I like this part. It's not like it's, it's like more complicated than we are.

And I know you are not mentioning all these to scare them. Actually, you are mentioning all these to, to, to, again, part of the preparation of, uh, of being successful entrepreneurs. Now, one point here regarding, and you can't answered the question that I had in mind at the end about expanding the network.

Now, if I am first time founder, right? A first time entrepreneur coming from a technical background, regardless what's my background? Yeah. Um. [00:28:00] I can start, expand this network. I cannot tell you this from my kind of personal experience. Of course, I, I learned it with time. The issue is Mohammed sometimes, and I'm not sure if it's something global, is it, in some ecosystems you see these people that they claim, right?

So, so there is a lot of people who would come to me as a new entrepreneur say, me, you know what, like you should do this. You should not do that because blah, blah, blah. Or like, you know what, again, I introduce you to these guys. And then the problem is sometimes I hear, and I face it honestly myself, not as a entrepreneur in the sense of starting a a, a business, but in the sense of doing many things, there are these time wasters.

I would say that would suck your time. And at the end you say, you know what? Like if I, maybe especially as an an engineer mindset, oh my God, like if I have spent like these two, three hours instead of just talking no [00:29:00] sense and let's say coding something or maybe doing the architecture of our next, I dunno what I would have benefit a lot.

So how to avoid these pitfalls also as well, because Yeah, absolutely. Look, uh, there's, yeah, mentors, an advisor especially. 

Mohamed: Yes, absolutely. Now there is no magical, I would say there's no silver bullet, but of course, look, there are a few things, and this is also a tendency of engineers like you and me, we tend to go and build things.

Right, right. And we tend to have structure in what we do. And, um, this is a good thing. But you know what, here's one thing that I discovered. Opportunities are with people, and in other words, you need to go and talk with people. Now, uh, as you said, there're gonna be a lot of time, Wass, first of all, it's fine at the beginning.

It's an, it's a skill that you get. I'm working with an entrepreneur right now, and he's fundraising, and he talks to VCs and they say, we're [00:30:00] interested. We're gonna fund you. And I tell him, okay, tell me what, uh, what you have, what they're telling you, what kind of questions he ask you. And he goes through some of the questions and I tell him, you know what?

They're not gonna fund you. They're just asking this to what's so-called. They have, um, uh, uh, a startup pipeline to go to their LPs and tell them, Hey, we talked to a hundred startups this, this month and we're funding one. So you're part of their statistics. They're not, they're not going to fund you. How did I know that?

I know, I knew that from the experience I had to go through those time wasters. They're in reality. They're not time wass. So that's number one. So just have this in mind. Any time that you think that it, or any interaction that you think it wasted your time is a learning experience, you know, you're gonna know who not to talk with after that.

Now. Okay, so let's flip that. What, what kind of, um, considerations should you have to, um. To think of people and talk with them. First of all, as you, uh, implied, Mohammed, [00:31:00] being an entrepreneur is a very fuzzy term, by the way, in the us if, if you own a restaurant, you are called an entrepreneur, okay? Right.

And with all due respect to, uh, the restaurant owners, but that's not the entrepreneurship that we talk about, entrepreneurship, that we talk about an innovative idea that no one built before in very, uh, tough circumstances, very little resources. And you now try to make it a business that's the true definition of entrepreneurship.

So have that definition in mind. That's number one. Number two, when you talk with others, be clear about what you really want from them. I mean, it's okay to talk with an advisor and have an advisor relationship with someone who never be, you know, never was an entrepreneur before. But you want to be clear.

They're not going to with them and with yourself. They're not going to help you to build your company. They're probably going to help you, for example, to secure a contract with an enterprise. Right. They're not, do not take an [00:32:00] advice from them about, let's say, how to build your company or team. Actually, I have a story for that.

I had an advisor exactly like that. He's a great guy, uh, honest guy. He had, he was, he was sincere about my success. And one day I was taking his opinion about having a booth in a conference, and you know what, who should be in that booth? How should we organize it? And so on. We were a 15 person company and he told me, um, mohamad, you know what, um, you should not stand in the booth yourself.

There's no CEO that will go and stand in the booth themselves, and you should have this, this person, they're presenting the company. This is how you educate them and so on. He was sincere, but he got it from his own enterprise experience. You know, Satya, Nadela, you know, the CEO of Microsoft, he would never go and send in a booth.

So he got it from that perspective. That was the wrong, the right person, wrong advice for the wrong situation right now. But if talk with him about, let's say, how do you [00:33:00] make a deal with Accenture? How do you make a deal with, you know, uh, whatever, any other big company, enterprise company, he'll give me an advice.

You know, the right one without any problems. So this is also another thing. When you go and approach someone, you have to have the purpose, that purpose in mind, what exactly they're going to help me with. Maybe they're just gonna help you with a connection. Maybe they're gonna become an uh, you know, an injured investor.

Just be clear about that. And then the other thing, and here cells, and I think, I know this is difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially engineers, engineers. They feel impressed or they do not feel that they should ask for money or ask for that. They want in many cases, just straight up. So I, uh, at the beginning, I remember many, many meetings, even with VCs, I go spend maybe if it's one hour meeting where I spend 50 minutes talking about the product, the technology, and maybe at the end I would ask for money.

It should be the other way around. You spend the first 10, 15 minutes telling them about [00:34:00] your idea and you tell them, I need this amount of money to do such and such. And then you spend the rest of the meeting discussing with them why this money would make sense or how this money would help help you.

That's also another thing. Be straight up about what you want to ask, because that's how you, if it's a, I would say you pop the bub bubble. You basically, if they're here for different expectations. You said it from the beginning, and by the way, you know what? They're the first ones. If they know that they, they do cannot help you or you do not have what they're looking for, they're the first ones who are gonna just stop it and move forward.

And you move forward, ask what you want for. And that's not, it doesn't mean that you are, let's say, a mean person or you're doing something that is not right. You, you still want to be a human and build the relationship. There is no doubt about that. This is definitely non-negotiable. I think you should connect with everyone, but in between, just be clear, you know, we're meeting today, hopefully if everything goes well that [00:35:00] you would fund me, right?

Or you would help me with 1, 2, 3. But we're not gonna just sit, uh, you know, in a cafe, spend a few hours talking about non-related stuff. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know, I asked this question on a purpose, and I know that you're gonna answer it this way because I lived it. Now I. To your point, you know, um, it depends on our personalities.

And I think Mohammad, you, we share all, you know, the, the, the journey. And we share like, little bit. I feel the personality of being nice and kind also as well. So as act of kindness from me, I used to accept anyone, like, who say, Hey, like for example, I'm visiting to buy, let's meet. Yeah, yeah. Let's meet.

Right? And because I have something I want to share with you. And you know, there's this famous thing, especially I'm sure like a lot of people, they get it on LinkedIn. Uh, let's try to find some synergies. And you know, like at the beginning, and especially, you know, I, I went out from, you know, I was working at the.

In corporate work, let's say corporate job. And then I went out starting the podcast trying to discover what's around me [00:36:00] and said, okay, let's discover. And after I learned to, to ask this question straightforward, and you know, I'm not mean to your point, and this is just to confirm what you're saying, Hey, like I, I like to reply people.

This is something itch in me. Even, even if it's a very cold thing. But I, here's what I start to say, okay, pleasure, you know, emitting you whatever. Especially if it's like LinkedIn. Uh, look, I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to waste my time. If you can just tell me exactly what you're trying to, to, to achieve here, if we can.

And I think this is very good and I learned it from some other like, famous entrepreneurs, like, uh, setting the purpose of any meeting, right? So. W and you know, there's like it or don't agree with him, like Elon Musk is famous, like for saying like, you know, if it no need for meetings, Jeff Bezos, they say the same thing.

Yeah. Uh, like, why we are [00:37:00] meeting, like, tell me why you want to meet me. Uh, okay. Just to know each other's fine. We can do it on a Google meet. I don't need to drive like maybe one hour to just say, Hey, how are you? Right. So I, I think this is, this is exactly what I was mentioning Mohammed. And then regarding some other things you, you, you, you just mentioned about the being able to filter down the road, and I think this is part of the journey now as entrepreneurs.

Um, we need also, and you touched on it multiple times, talking to raise funds, like talking to investors, whether annual investors, VCs, and so on. Yep. Uh, anything that they need also to prepare themselves. For this journey because I know a lot, again, there's a lot of noise out there, so people who shows investors as evil, some people say like all VCs are not necessarily like they are evil of [00:38:00] all thing and sometimes like, do this, do that.

How they can also filter this out and really what they need to do to go and say, okay, you know what? We are ready for. Raising a a, a, a round, whether it's an angel round or a uh, seed round and take it forward. And I know if they are second, I know because I interact with a lot of founders, second time founders, it's much easy for them because they learn it already.

It's not easy in the sense of reaching, but they know now they know how it works. They have the right expectations. 

Mohamed: Exactly. 

Mehmet: Yeah. But first time founders, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm too much. Yeah. There's empathy with them. 

Mohamed: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm happy that you're asking that question because also I, I was in the same situation at the beginning.

I, I didn't have a clue. I didn't know what to do. And, and a lot of things were going in my head. Now, let's assume now what, whatever I'm going to share at the moment is, uh, based on the fact that you are already ready. I mean, do you have an idea? You vetted your idea. Mm-hmm. [00:39:00] And now you want to fund, uh, raise or talk to VCs.

So let's talk about a few fundamentals and then maybe we can talk about the process. So the fundamentals, number one, number, VCs make lots of mistakes and they're just like you, uh, and. Raising money does not mean that you are, you made it or successful. That's number one mistake that I see with a lot of entrepreneurs.

They think, okay, uh, I need to fundraise. I need, this is for me to go faster to build the product. As a matter of fact, talking to VCs should come for you only to grow, not to just build a product from scratch. That's, that's my point of view. Number two, VCs are just human beings like you and me, and they do not like to make decisions based on just perception.

And they're not gonna meet you for one or two times and just give you the money. Especially it's a large amount of money. They need to trust you. They need to have that relationship with you. They need to know who you are. And there [00:40:00] is, there's a process for that. We're, we're gonna talk about it, uh, in a bit.

Sure. Now the third and most important thing is, you know, to un you need to understand as an entrepreneur how the VC industry works. And that's actually made a huge difference, frankly. After setting my company, I, uh, decided to, uh, become a vc. I really wanted to be a vc, so I, I went to a 16 week bootcamp. I learned everything about becoming a vc.

I even created my, uh, my thesis, and I even raised some initial fund to build my own fund. At the end, I decided, no, you know what? I need to be closer to the entrepreneurs and be on their side. So I decided not to really pursue that, but that gave me an insight of how VC industry works. Actually, here's, here's a number, just a small statistic from that industry.

When we did the model for our fund, it was a relatively small fund, $10 million, and we said, we're going to invest in around 13 to 14 companies. You know, how [00:41:00] many companies we expected to. Uh, to go bankrupt and still make three x the money, we would return back $30 million we expected outta the 14. 12 of them will be go bankrupt.

So it's expected in my model that 12 of them would just go nowhere. And one of them would have a great success and one of them would have a medium success, and they have a three x. So VCs, this is how they think. Okay, so those are the fundamentals. Now what's the process? How do you really start thinking of VCs?

Um, before that, uh, what you should not be doing. And then we'll talk about what you should be doing. Number one, it's not a transaction. So it's not something that you go and send, let's say hundreds of emails to VCs trying to connect with them and expecting, let's say one per 1% response rate. So this is good.

I'm gonna, all I need are just two VCs and I'm good. This is not how it works at all. VCs is a very small community. They talk to each other and if they learn that you are just [00:42:00] this kind of person who are trying to do transactional kind of, uh, interaction with them, they will shut you off and talk to everyone else, and you, and you have almost your chance to move forward.

So it's all about building the relationship. Now, how do you build the relationship? You know, we were talking earlier, should we just send them an email and say, Hey, I'm interested to know you. No, that's wasting their time. That's wasting your time. You need to be clear from the beginning. What do you want to do?

You, you, you really want to build a startup and you are now in your journey. So you start with an idea, and usually the, the startup would have, um, three to five stages. The first one is validating your idea. Do I have a really good idea or not? Let's say you did validate your, your idea with very little money from your pocket and you have some initial traction or some good insights.

This is when you start to talk with VCs. You, let's say you collect. 2030, uh, VCs, through your networks, your network would introduce [00:43:00] you to them and you set up a meeting for with them. You tell them, look, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur or about to be an entrepreneur. I'm building a company in that space, and uh, I'm now in the idea of validation.

Would you like for me to just come and show you what I got so far? I'm not fundraising at the moment. I just want to show you what I have. That's the beginning of building a trust with the vc, because now you're telling them, I trust your judgment. You're probably going to give me something. And also you're going to give them some insight.

You're telling them, I talked to a 50 potential customers in that space and this is what I learned from them. They like to learn that. They like to see that. And here's what they do. At the end of the meeting, they take a snapshot of you. They basically say, okay, hammed now is building this idea. And he's at the beginning and he validated it this way.

I know that he's not ready to raise money from me, but okay, here's what I learned about him. And then you, let's say you create a small newsletter, and this is of course part of it. You tell them at the end of the [00:44:00] meeting, Mr. Vc, I have a newsletter and I send monthly updates. Can I add you to this? They say, yeah, sure.

So you send them every month your updates, Hey, I validated with those customers. I was able to do this and do that. And then three months after this, ask for another meeting. And then the beginning I met, I met you when I was just validating the idea. Now I have an MVPA minimum viable product, and it works with those two, three customers.

And here's what I'm validating even further, they took another snapshot. You see, now you're building the relationship with them in a meaningful way. You're showing them that you are persistent, you're doing it. Even if you did not get the funding, you're showing them your thought process. And then you're, let's say two, three months after you tell them, Mr.

Vc, I'm ready now to raise fund. Here's the product, here are the customers. I have a good understanding of how things would work. And then you take it from that point. So that's of course, [00:45:00] very high level process. Um, if anyone is interested to learn more about that, again, if you go to my website, boundless founder.co/resources, you can download actually the VC guide or the fundraising guide.

And how do you build those relationship with VCs. That guide will take you through that process that we talked about. Um, it's that 30 something pages that took, takes you step by step, including templates of what kind of emails you need to send all for free. 'cause I, I really want to help us, uh, as many entrepreneurs as possible.

Mehmet: I'm happy you mentioned about this because, you know, usually as well, I, I ask, uh, my guests to guide us where they can find any useful resources. Of course, we, they will find it in, in the, in the show notes. Now, one point also Hamad, which I think we didn't touch on as a tech itself, right? So assets. You know, engineers mainly, we get excited when we see something new.

And of course, for example, let's take it as a case study for us. Yeah. The [00:46:00] ai, the, the generative AI and all, what happened now when we start to build, and this is maybe with related a little bit to, to the start of the conversation. Yeah. Now I'm building product versus I'm building, you know, uh, just a business.

Yeah. A business. Now, how I can as an entrepreneur, coming from engineering background without showing, and again, this is because of the noise, uh, we repeated noise because really there's a lot of noise out there. Yep. How I can really, whether to customers, whether to VCs, whether to, you know, maybe partners that I might work with, I can really take this idea that I have this technology that I'm building on top of.

Let's say ai, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, and I'm developing something which is really innovative. It's not just yet another AI powered something, and I want to talk to people about it. So where should I start? Should [00:47:00] I focus more on the coolness of technology? And, you know, I have this engineer who's a, my co-founder also, and he's like super smart in large language models.

Or I should go and focus on the problem that I'm solving and why now is the best time. So how also I can, I can get myself into this when I'm building. Um, such you're, you're 

Mohamed: spot on. Uh, you, you, you, you said it right? So, which is the focus on the problem. Because at the end of the day, technology is enabler.

And this is also another thing for us as engineers. We get excited about the technology. You know, I'm building an AI enabled such and such and such. VCs will turn, you know, will basically tune out. Your customers definitely will tune out. Yeah, maybe the AI will catch their attention. Uh, but if you are not clear immediately what kind of problem you're solving and whether this problem is really important for them or not, you're gonna lose them.

They're gonna think that you're just, [00:48:00] you another nerd trying to, um, show off your knowledge about the AI or any technology and they're not gonna connect with you. And that's why, um, it's, it's an art by the way, to learn how to demonstrate and understand the problem. There's a really nice book, uh, called the Mom Test.

And, uh, and the book is, uh, you know, probably, you know It, and a lot of people know about that. And this book actually turned my life, it changed my life, even though it's a very small book. It's only a two hour reading book. Um, but it showed me how to ask about the problem and assess whether the problem is really important or not.

And also, there's another thing, since we mentioned the problem. Not all the problems are the same that you know. I'll give you an example. If, let's say you, you came out of your work, your house, and you just found a small dent in your car. Would you take your day off, go and book, book an appointment with a, with a workshop and try to fix it immediately?

It's a small dent. You wouldn't do that. [00:49:00] It's a problem. Right? But you wouldn't do that. But let's say, um, your wife is calling you and you're telling you, she's telling you there's a rat in the house. Or there's fire, right? What would you do? You would just drop everything and go out and fix the problem, right?

Um, unless you want to play games with your wife, a story, but, um, but that's, that's, that's a problem that you want solve, not the first one. And that's also another misconception or another thing that many entrepreneurs talk about or they say, yeah, there's a problem. We cannot fix that problem. Yeah. You know what?

I tell a lot of entrepreneurs, I know it's a problem, but is it something that is happening every day? Is it acute enough? Is it really painful enough? If not, then you have a very little chance, unless there is a lifestyle, uh, lifestyle changes like what happened with Uber, like what happened with, you know, Airbnb.

Those are different categories, but generally your problem need to be like that. And there, [00:50:00] there again, it's an art, how to ask that. And actually I'm releasing next week, uh, uh, a free course on how do you validate your idea? Just a 45 minute course where you go through what kind of questions you need to ask.

You know, how do you really assess if this is an important, uh, problem? And not only that, how do you even pivot, uh, because this is important thing. It's not only about assessing the, the problem, it's also about pivoting along the way, uh, so that you, okay, it's not a big problem, but you know what, maybe there's a bigger problem beside in that same space beside that, that you can fix and then you keep going.

That's the journey of the entrepreneur. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Uh, I keep telling people, look, and that's no. No problem, no harm that at the beginning. Although maybe you are solving a real problem, but maybe you are not getting the right messaging in front of people. [00:51:00] Maybe you are not asking the right questions back to the, in the book.

Right. Uh, because it's all about discovery and making sure that really people understand. 'cause if I go and ask Mohamad, now Mohamad, do you have this problem? MAs probably will tell me no. Right? So, so this is the, the usually the mistake. I did it a lot. Um, you know, when I was learning about sales mainly, and I thought, yeah, it's easy.

I would go and ask questions and yeah, the questions are, are they yes and no. Usually, like, you'll not go, you will not get anywhere. Now, one thing, which is I should maybe have asked you before, so. You run boundless, right? So, so the word boundless? Yes. What do you mean by a boundless entrepreneur? 

Mohamed: Yes. Um, yeah, it comes from my own experience.

So I believe that everyone has the capacity to become an entrepreneur, and it's all about expanding your horizon. And expanding your horizon means that you believe that you can do a lot of things. [00:52:00] Life definitely has the impossibles, uh, but it's all about how you expand your mindset. And, and I really care a lot about the mindset.

You all, you either win or lose. Only in your head. So, uh, so for example, again, if I, if we recall the, the first two stories, uh, from my experience, I could say I lost in the second, the second one, or even the first one. Actually, in the first one I thought that I lost. And uh, it just happened. I got lucky and I was able to overcome that AWS build problem.

And the second one, I did not believe that I'm lost. I believe that there's something that can be done. And actually, by the way, here's also another aspect of that story. My VC told me back then, you know what, let's shut down the company. There's no way for us to do anything. And I told him, you know what?

No, there's one last bullet that I need to fire, and if it works, then at least, uh, you know, this is great. If it [00:53:00] doesn't, at least we try And I fired the bullet and it worked So boundless is, is that, and that's what I want everyone to think of. Again, it's is in your head and in your mind, how do you. Make, how do you progress and how do you look at your journey?

There's also another aspect that I talk about it in in the last chapter of the book, which is, what if your pro, what if your startup did not work? What would you do? And I'm telling everyone, even before from the beginning, you need to think of your company, your startup as a project you're working on. It is not you.

And that's also a big thing. Uh, a lot of entrepreneurs confused their identity, whether a startup, because they work a lot in that problem, they think they're the same thing. So when the startup fails, they think that they failed, and then they lose the concept of wide horizons and the boundless, their boundless abilities to really do things because they tie themselves too much into whatever they're doing [00:54:00] right now.

And hence that naming I I, I like that there is, there is no limit to what you can do as long as you have the right mindset. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And, uh, maybe I repeated this multiple times. I don't like the word fail. Um, because I don't believe in failure myself, and I learned this the hard way I think that we learn, right?

So, so we don't fail because you don't failing in. And as a non, uh, native English speaker myself, you know, failing, it was when I learned the word very similar to falling, right? So failing and falling and, you know. It's, yeah, but yeah. Right. But I can, I can stand up again. Right? So it's not like I fall, fell down and I cannot stand anymore.

So it's all about learning. And I think the successful, uh, entrepreneurs, regardless, again, what their background, where they work, small company, big company, are the ones who [00:55:00] believe that, yeah, we're gonna face problems. Yeah. Let's, let's do it. Like, don't give up before you try everything. I like this Mohammad.

Really? Really, I like it. Um, Moad like really the time flew. I didn't even so it, but before I let you go, just couple of two things. Um, first. If people want to get, you know, more from the book if they want. Do, do you offer any, you said about the courses is like what, what, what kind of things people can, can, can do to, you know, get hold of this treasure of knowledge that you have.

Mohamed: Well, thank that. Thank you Mamed. So, uh, absolutely they can go to our website. Uh, the website is Boundless Founder, the co and that's, uh, that's a community and you, anyone can register for free. Uh, and uh, and I brought the sense of community to it because again, you want to. Interact with like-minded entrepreneurs.

See their stories, share your stories with them. And we do that with a framework. Uh, I teach [00:56:00] the fundamentals there, there are courses around how do you validate your idea, how do you get your first 10 customers, how do you do the fundraising? How do you build a marketing and sales machine and so on. And what's unique about all of that?

Again, it's coming from my book, the Inside Out, uh, entrepreneur. I do not only talk about the mechanics of doing it, I talk about what is happening inside you so that you keep pushing and keep doing it. I guess that's, that's the key differentiator with that community. And um, and we always connect together.

You know, I like to connect with, uh, with entrepreneurs. They have a biweekly, uh, you know, sort of insight session for anyone. They can go and register, uh, through again, through the website. And I just talk with entrepreneurs, share what you have, share the challenges. You know, uh, like, and we have conversation pretty much like you and I had today, and, uh, it's really fascinating to see others' ideas and backgrounds and how it's shaping, uh, you know, their, uh, their [00:57:00] journey.

So Bound is founder, the CEO, and of course, you know, the book has a lot. And here's one thing I think I'm gonna, I do not do that, that, that frequently or with anyone. Uh, we will share in the, uh, in the show notes, a code for anyone. There is a paid version of the membership, but there's a free one. But we'll give everyone discount, 30% of your listeners, uh, if they want to go and take, uh, their journey to the next level.

Mehmet: I really appreciate that, Mohammad. Really, you know, I, I can't thank you enough on behalf of all the audience. The final thing I want to ask, and, um, it's something, you know, close to my heart now, how we, because when we talk, especially tech entrepreneurship, innovations, everything. Um, the first place to come to mind is Silicon Valley, of course, and some other spots in the US like where you are, Seattle, um, some places in Texas, some places.

But how we [00:58:00] can make this more global, 

Mohamed: that's a great, uh, question. I was, uh, talking with, uh, uh, friends from China and he was also talking about the same thing. And, um, first of all, each country has its own unique aspects. You need to get the, the heart and the core, or the spirit of the entrepreneurship.

This is what you need, but you do not need to follow the same exact, uh, aspect. You know, the, the US definitely is the model, uh, of capitalism, uh, around the world, but that's not necessarily the ideal system for all countries. You know, some countries are more geared more towards the social system. But that does not mean that the, you, you know, you cannot become an entrepreneur.

Some countries are a bit more regulated, like in China, for example. They want to regulate and, and maintain, maintain their culture. The US is built on, the culture is a bit more dynamic. It goes with the consumption or, you know, consumerism in general. So you do not want to bring [00:59:00] this copy and paste as is.

So what you want is definitely the, the spirit of entrepreneurship. And that's why I'm telling all the entrepreneurs look at the Silicon Valley and get what you believe is the right thing, which is how to build a business, how to move fast with stick with technology, how to build a resilient team. How to build an ecosystem.

And this is something that I am also passionate about, is I to go and talk a lot in the Middle East and other places about that ecosystem that would match the environment and yet boost the environment without losing. Um, what's unique about it? You still want to keep it, you still want to keep all of that.

There are a few things that might be tweaked here and there, but you should embrace that environment. Uh, so the Silicon Valley is definitely, uh, a shining beacon for the, for the whole world, and there's no dispute about that. I learned a lot and I go, and I, I meet lots of entrepreneurs there, but, um, not copy and paste.

You cannot really take it as is [01:00:00] 

Mehmet: absolutely no copy and paste. But yes, and, and, and thank you for mentioning this, Mohammad, because I think we, we, we need on a journey, especially in multiple emerging, uh, geographies around the globe, and of course, uh, middle East Min region is one of them that. Don't copy and paste, but at the same time, learn from the thing that worked fine and push for them.

And, you know, doing this podcast and talking to people like yourself, MOED, I'm hoping that we, you know, spark, you know, this, this we ignite, you know, this, um, you know, things in every single entrepreneur to go and try to, to do the next big thing. Also for investors as well, also for early adopters. And recently I start to talk about the early adopters more than I talk about founders and, and, and the VCs because without.

People who buy the product, we don't have a business. Right. Yeah. So, so we need, we need to [01:01:00] spread also and encourage people to, you know, go and try what these entrepreneurs are building. Yeah. It'll not be perfect, right? It, it'll be like, uh, very much like, uh, I would say instable at the beginning, but that's fine.

Like, give them a chance, see if they can execute, if they can do what they're promised. So absolutely. On this moment, thank you again. 

Mohamed: Yeah, please. No, I love, that's why I love that. And I love the, again, the mission that you had just mentioned. Uh, you're connecting or bridging, you know, the, the best practices in gold standard from the west or the Silicon Valley to the Meese.

Great. 

Mehmet: Trying to, trying to, I try my best all the time, uh, far from, from, uh, you know, where I want to be. But yeah, keep, as you mentioned, keep trying, right? It's a journey. So you said, let me, let me try to do the last bullet. So this is what, uh, I always aim to Mama. I really enjoyed a lot. And thank you also for, uh, you know, the, the code you mentioned at the end also as well, this will be in the show notes.

I appreciate your time. I know how [01:02:00] busy it can. And just for the sake of transparency, yeah, Mohammad like made it very early in his morning to record this. So thank you also for this. Um, and this is for the audience. This is how I am usually my episodes. Guys, if you just discovered this by luck, thank you for passing by.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so give me a small favor, share it with your friends and colleagues and subscribe. Of course, we are trying to do an impact here. And if you can share this, if you find it useful, please do so. And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you so much for being, you know, supportive, uh, for the show and for me.

Without you, I couldn't do what I do, of course, without my guests. Also as well, this is why I'm so humble this year, starting from May and now continuing in, in June, the podcast is doing it in the top 200 Apple, uh, podcast chart across six countries simultaneously. This is unseen. Beginning of the year, we are doing like two at the same time, three at the same time.

This is not me. [01:03:00] This is my guest, of course, and you the audience. So thank you very much. I'm so grateful for your support and as I promise you always, I will be with you very soon in a new episode. Thank you. Bye-bye.