Breaking Down Barriers

From Lightspeed Partner to a MENA fintech operator Julie Kainz on the leap from VC to building inside Lean Technologies, the move from London to Dubai, and the lessons from backing companies like Granola, PlanA, Hook, CuspAI and Pyne. In this episode: Why Julie left a top global fund to go all-in on an operator role The real differences between London, SF and MENA's startup ecosystems What ME...

From a skeptical investor won over by due diligence and a Tomahawk bone, to a founder whose biggest fear is losing company culture during expansion — this is one of the most honest conversations about building and backing a consumer brand in the region. In this episode: - The real role of founder chemistry and brand resonance in investment decisions - Why consumer focus beats financial optimisatio...

From WhatsApp's data org to Google Suggest, YouTube and Careem. Wael Salloum has built AI infrastructure used by billions. In this episode he unpacks how AI is really adopted inside companies, how to lead senior technical teams, and where MENA's AI moment is heading. In this episode: How Wael scaled WhatsApp's data organisation from 4 to 200+ people globally What CEOs still get wron...

Walid Omar has built products and teams at Dropbox, Snapchat, DoorDash, and now HungerStation, shaping some of the most admired tech cultures in the world. From scaling creator tools to designing merchant ecosystems, he’s spent his career turning product theory into products that win, and teams that win bigger. In this episode, we go back to basics to uncover the operating system of high-performan...

Kristjan Kaar has been behind some of Europe’s most important fintech products. From helping build OakNorth, one of the UK’s most successful AI-driven digital banks, to redefining SME finance at Finom, Kristjan has spent his career operating at the edge of product, regulation, and intelligent finance. In this episode, we unpack what it really takes to build financial products people trust. Without...

Stake has quietly become one of the most powerful fintech + real estate platforms in the world. 1M+ users. AED 1.3B+ in transactions. 250,000+ investments across 500+ properties. AED 50M+ in rental income paid out. Now expanding across the US, KSA, and beyond. In this episode, we sit down with Manar Mahmassani, Co-Founder & CEO, and Ricardo Brizido, Co-Founder & CTPO of Stake to unpack how...

Dr. Bilal Baloch - Previous co-founder of an AI startup and managing a half-billion-dollar fund - is sharing how he’s rewriting the rules of venture capital in MENA.   Breaking Down Barriers - Hosted by Ricci Putnam, Chief Growth Officer Powered by Salt: ‪@saltdigital‬   | welovesalt.com    In this conversation, Bilal breaks down: How sovereign funds and government policy are rewriting the venture...

Fernando Fanton scaled Monzo to 10M users, helped Just Eat hit an $8B exit, grew Mendeley’s user base 4x, and is now shaping the future of Property Finder with AI-powered home search across the MENA region. Hear how he breaks barriers in product, scales teams fast, and shares bold predictions for AI and MENA’s tech future. Is trust more powerful than speed in a product? Can AI replace designers an...

Product Scaling in Fintech: How Sarwa Built a Multi-Product Wealth Platform with Robin Harb Today’s guest is Robin Harb, Chief Product Officer at Sarwa, one of the Middle East’s fastest-growing fintech platforms. Robin went from McKinsey consultant to leading Sarwa’s product team and scaling it from a single robo-advisor to a multi-product wealth platform that handles stocks, crypto, ETFs, and opt...

Orchestrating Hyper-Growth Product Teams to Build a Fintech Unicorn in the Age of AI Katya was in the room from day one at Tabby - helping scale the product and tech teams from just 7 people to over 300, and building one of MENA’s most successful fintechs, now valued at $4.5 billion. As Ex-Chief Product Officer, she reveals how to: Scale a product organisation from startup to unicorn Build a cultu...

The Digital Banking Playbook: Lessons from Launching Digital Banks in the UK, UAE & Saudi Arabia How do you build a digital bank from scratch across three countries, three regulators, and three very different ecosystems? In this episode of The Digital Banking Playbook, we sit down with an expert who’s spent the past 8.5 years building three digital banks in the UK, UAE, and Saudi Arabia and ho...

Ecommerce as we know it is disappearing.   The entire landscape of online buying is being rewritten by technology from AI-driven personalisation and live selling to composable commerce and virtual influencers. In this episode, we break down the death of traditional ecommerce  and uncover what’s replacing it. Our guest has spent over 14 years as a global CIO/CTO across some of the world’s most high...

Reimagining Customer Engagement: AI and the Future of Human Connection AI is transforming how brands connect with customers—but what does the next generation of customer engagement really look like? In this episode, Karim Zaki, CPO/CTO at Unifonic, shares over 20 years of experience building tech teams, scaling products, and driving innovation across Egypt, the US, KSA, and UAE.  From co-founding...

Engineering the Future: Building AI-Powered Super Apps in the Middle East  From Silicon Valley to the Middle East , Mohamad has been at the forefront of shaping the future of AI-driven platforms. With a PhD from Stanford , senior roles at Facebook , and now as VP of Product, Data & AI at Careem , he’s helping build one of the region’s most ambitious AI-first super apps. In this episode, we unc...

From Chaos to IPO: Lessons from Talabat’s CTO Sven Herzing What does it take to scale engineering teams from startup chaos to IPO in the Middle East? In this episode of the Sven Podcast, we sit down with Sven Herzing , CTO of Talabat and one of the key engineering minds behind the region’s fastest-growing tech companies. Sven has spent a decade in Dubai’s tech scene: Scaling Dubizzle during a time...

In this episode, we sit down with Qais Ammori, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Almosafer, Saudi Arabia’s leading travel brand. With over two decades of experience building and scaling digital platforms, Qais shares how he’s leading Almosafer’s digital transformation across consumer, corporate, and government travel. From real-world applications of AI to cross-sector lessons from telco an...

Welcome to this bonus LIVE episode of Breaking Down barriers where we explore  what it really takes to scale a fintech to 10 million users. Recorded live at Huspy in partnership with Arbor Ventures and AWS, this exclusive panel brings together product and growth leaders from the world’s top challenger banks—including Monzo, Revolut, OakNorth, Alpheya, Vision Bank, and Huspy. Hear bold insights fro...

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. Khalid Baareh - Founder & CEO at MealPlanet joins us on Breaking Down Barriers where we explore: Raw emotion: Entrepreneurship Journey and Personal Growth: Khalid nearly lost everything in 2020. His learns are...

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. We are joined by Ismail Omar, Co-Founder and CTO of Taager on the latest episode of Breaking Down Barriers Operationalising product is crucial in the age of AI, moving beyond just "tech-enabled" to truly...

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. Samer El Sahn - Chief Product Officer at Floward joins us and the 2X Unicorn builder talks about the MENA startup scene and why so many fail, building product organisations and the perception of these companies in...

inDrive CPTO Stephen Kruger joins us and shares his thoughts on how AI is having an impact on the pipeline of software engineers.  He shares the growth story behind inDrive as it squares up to bigger competitors in multiple markets globally. Sleeping giant? Find out! Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of som...

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. Yi-Wei Ang, CPO at talabat, joins us this week, where we understand what it takes to achieve the biggest IPO in 2024 and what it's really like to oversee a successful product function in a $10b company. talab...

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. We are joined by Ashu Gupta, CTO and Co-founder of Lean Technologies. Lean provides the Data and Payments tools to empower MENA's next generation of financial products | Trusted by Etisalat, Hubpay, Lulu Fina...

Welcome to the first episode of Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders from some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region. First up we're joined by Himanshu Niranjani, CTO at Property Finder. Property Finder is a leading Proptech in Dubai that has had phenomenal success of late.  Their current CTO Himanshu...