Fifteen years across MENA
I walked two paths at the same time.
Fifteen years building B2B SaaS inside big companies, and ten of them teaching and advising the founders trying to build it from nothing.
The two halves
Career one
Building B2B SaaS inside enterprise
I started in social media research in Singapore, monitoring conversation across six Asian markets for Nestlé, Unilever and Shell. The Arabic side of that system barely worked: the tools had been built for languages that behave differently, could not handle dialect or Franco-Arabic, and returned sentiment any Arabic speaker could see was wrong. I rebuilt it. That was the first time I understood the problem that has followed me since, most of the toolkit arriving in this region was designed somewhere it was never tested.
The decade after that was spent building products for this market from inside companies that had enterprise budgets, enterprise politics and enterprise timelines. At Crowd Analyzer I built the insights and reporting function from nothing, delivered more than three hundred custom research reports for telecom, banking and the public sector, and helped raise $6M. Then I stopped analysing companies and started running one: back as COO, reopening Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, taking the team from two people to over a hundred, launching three products and generating more than $1.5M in SaaS sales inside two years.
Career two
Teaching and advising founders
The second career ran alongside the first rather than after it. Ten years of cohorts, workshops and one-to-one sessions with founders across accelerators, incubators and universities: the American University in Cairo, Egypt University of Informatics, and programmes across six countries in the region.
More than three thousand people trained, two hundred and fifty founders advised one to one, and over a hundred and fifty startups. Teaching while still running the function is what kept the material honest: you find out quickly which recommendations survive contact with a payroll date, and which are merely correct.
Why ASaaSI Middle East exists
Seeing both sides is what made the decision. Enterprises have the budget, the process and the reach, and they move slowly and defensively. Founders have the vision, the speed and almost none of the operating experience that would let them survive their own growth. I spent years watching each one lack exactly what the other had.
ASaaSI Middle East exists to hand founders and SMEs the experience I had to acquire the expensive way: the SaaS business model as it actually works in this region, not as it is described somewhere it was never tested. I know it, and I can deliver it to them.
My journey
- Founder & CEO
ASaaSI Middle EastMay 2026 – present - SaaS enablement for MENA: training, consulting and curated delivery. Runs the SaaS Foundation Masterclass and SaaS Majlis.
- FounderArab Media Intelligence Network (AMIN)Sep 2025 – present
- A community of analysts, marketers and technologists working with digital data across the region.
- Chief Operating OfficerCrowd AnalyzerJul 2022 – Sep 2025
- Led the turnaround after the 2021 closure: reopened Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, grew the team from 2 to 100+, launched three SaaS products, and generated over $1.5M in SaaS sales in two years.
- Business Insights DirectorExtend | The Ad NetworkMar 2021 – Oct 2023
- Built the Business Insights unit from nothing, managed 14+ analysts producing 114 reports a month, and cut client reporting time by up to 70%.
- Head of Research & Consumer InsightsCrowd AnalyzerNov 2015 – Feb 2021
- Built the Insights and Reporting function from scratch, delivered 300+ custom research reports, and supported a $6M raise.
- Research & Teaching AssistantThe American University in CairoFeb 2020 – Sep 2025
- Research in social informatics and digital transformation; co-authored and presented four peer-reviewed papers.
- Digital Marketing InstructorAUC School of Continuing EducationDec 2013 – Jul 2019
- Designed the Digital Marketing Certificate programme and trained 500+ professionals across 20+ cohorts.
- Adjunct InstructorEgypt University of InformaticsFeb – Sep 2026
- Taught Management and Organizations to Business Informatics and Computer Science students.
- Social Media Research AnalystiSentia Brandtology, SingaporeDec 2011 – Nov 2015
- Rebuilt the Arabic monitoring system and led multilingual reporting for Nestlé, Unilever and Shell across six APAC markets.
- MSc Social InformaticsUniversity of York · 2011
- BSc Information SystemsCairo University · 2008
Elsewhere
I write The SaaS Newsletter weekly for just over ten thousand subscribers, and run SaaS Majlis, an Arabic-first community for MENA SaaS founders.