Essays on operations, scaling and MENA
What I have learned by getting it wrong first
Operations, scaling and the MENA market. Published when I have something to say, not on a schedule.
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Most SaaS companies do not start with a legal department. They start with two or three people, a product idea, a few late-night calls, and a shared belief that the details can wait.
The backlog has 200 items and every feature feels urgent. How the MoSCoW method gives a SaaS product team one visible way to decide what ships.
A SaaS COO is often described as the person responsible for operations.
My recent consultations with SaaS founders in GCC raised the same question in different shapes.
Did your SaaS company grow last year, or did it scale? Why founders confuse the two, and what that costs them after the Series A.
Documenting every process will not give you an operations culture. How a SaaS COO builds one without slowing the team down.
Can you upskill Customer Success managers into Forward-Deployed Engineers and solve your hiring problem? The short answer: usually not.
Most MENA SaaS founders I work with can describe their ICP in about 10 seconds. "SMEs in Egypt." "Mid-size companies in the Gulf." "Businesses with 50 to 200 employees."
Hiring sales to escape selling just burns cash. When a SaaS founder in MENA should hire a first salesperson, and the signs you are actually ready.
Bookings, billings and revenue are not the same thing. The money basics every SaaS founder should know before hiring an accountant.
What a SaaS COO actually does to push growth: build RevOps, own unit economics, and keep sales, marketing and customer success on one set of numbers.
If you run a SaaS company, there is one number on your financials more dangerous than revenue itself: cost of goods sold. Get it wrong and your gross margin, and your valuation, go with it.
For a long time the golden advice to any SaaS founder was: grow fast, profit comes later. That advice has expired. Growth without efficiency is no longer an advantage.
Have you ever wondered why rising sales/capital can drain your business?
Going from 1 to 100 employees stresses your operating system, not just your headcount. How MENA SaaS teams scale processes and systems without breaking.
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Every week: what moved in the region’s SaaS industry, what it actually means, and the practical tips I would give a founder sitting in the room. Published on LinkedIn. Subscribe and it comes to your inbox too, with no algorithm in between.