251. The Holdco Founder: Failing Loudly, Growing Quietly, Winning Weirdly w/ Muhammad Malik | Founder at Tijara Ventures

0:00Amardeep Parmar:You're backing me cry man, what the hell bro? That's Muhammad Malik, founder of Tajana Ventures. Tajana Ventures allows me to do a lot of random stuff, right? The red thread I guess is venture. Building ventures, scaling ventures, also investing into ventures. And to be honest man, I was a solo founder before and it went through mad stress. In the past, he founded several startups before running accelerators for the likes of NatWest. As two people helping the next generation of founders, me and him had a good riff. Pareto rule applied is 20 % idea, 80 % execution. But bro, I think I beg to differ.

0:36I think now it's like ideas are really important because the execution is so easy now. And the typical thing that we're seeing is as soon as something AI related is launched, then there's a open source version, there's a cheaper version, there's a quicker version. Dumb money can come to you, but that might weigh you down.

0:52Amardeep Parmar:This is a wide ranking conversation, including finding PMS, building a moat in the world of AI, expanding to emerging markets, really what is a founder mindset and so much more you can also find out what made him say this but you gave me so much goosebumps i was like crying

1:12Amardeep Parmar:so good to have you here today and as we're just chatting about you've done so many different things and for all this as well like i know mohammed pretty well so we got a bit more of a laugh today but you've done so many things it's quite hard to actually keep up with what you do so you now have a holding company right and that's quite rare for people in this space so can you explain what a holding company even it is and what you do under that you're being a lot nicer on camera yeah but i think um yeah it's a bit of a matter so so essentially um tojara ventures allows me to do a lot of random stuff right um the red thread i guess is venture uh building ventures scaling ventures and also investing into ventures and to be honest man i'm i was a solo founder before and it went through mad mad stress so today our adventures is my vehicle to partner man i'm looking at you to partner with you as well when i'm on a few things but yeah allows me to to leverage essentially you know partnerships the network and we're able to support founders and that's where i feel my ikigai really is is to help others get to where we spoke about prior to recording um to a growth phase and hopefully you know build the most impactful startups that will benefit society for the better and you literally just launched their venture year right yes man yeah so so we've got a motley crew together um myself maybe more so on the you know mentoring coaching venture side we've got somebody who's a ux ui designer we've got somebody who's really good with the tech kind of side and we've got somebody who's there really good with products so we've come together and i guess maybe investment as well for me um a way we're supporting founders particularly those that are looking to focus on emerging markets and for us that means Middle East particularly Qatar and Saudi but then also those who yeah we call it underpriced I love the phrase underpriced I think I learned this from Black Seed Ventures as well right?

3:01Black Soil sorry, the idea is it Black Soil? Remind me, who are we talking about? I know Black Seed, I know the Black Soil Black Soil is something I mean? Good Soil, Good Soil Ventures okay and uh propped already but yeah going back so essentially yeah i love this phrasing instead of saying overlooked underserved where you're almost asking for pity what we're saying is we're unlocking alpha for you by showing you the best founders who are underpriced that's how we

3:28Amardeep Parmar:look at it yeah man and you mentioned as well you were a solo founder before you've done different things in the past and like obviously from your background as well right so you've come into this like as an outsider you've had a different few founding journeys like tell us like how you got to having this holding company right because it's not something you can just start out doing it's because you've accumulated so much experience right yeah no you know it's just yeah random bits of experience it was very serendipitous journey started off as a good brand boy good putter you know as as a lot of brand brand guys would i would understand you're either a doctor engineer lawyer and I went for a content and that's how you say it right so I'm like you know doing my book mom proud I did accounting and finance and then went into Deloitte right Deloitte to meet you if anybody of my Deloitte alum are here right so dad jokes galore but I'm going back to it I think for me the thought process even when deciding what to do was as as um you know i might sound soft when i'm saying this but it's like how do i help people right quite simply like how do i help people for me okay becoming a doctor i looked at that and i was like okay finance is interesting i met finance leaders in you know partners and other people um at the big four that are able to do a lot of charity work go back home and they're from africa asia they're able to support the community but i thought what's a one degree even more than that and then came across people building their own ventures uh and they're able to um you know a shout out to people like Shaz from Moos for example uh we've got our own you know people that have been on this podcast that are doing incredible work right they don't necessarily that their main focus might be scaling their startup but through that they're able to do a lot outside of that as well so that that's kind of what led me through to this idea of building your own venture and having your own impact and scaling that impact so what did you do as a founder yeah as a founder so my first startup I don't know if I've spoken to anybody about it but my first startup was a watch brand right so back when um you know influencer uh you know martin was popping off the kin k effect right i managed to somehow get an ambassador on board who was drake's girlfriend right um you're done uh you know what don't go google don't go googling because she's now no longer you know she's no longer safe for work right uh she she's if you want to google that no paper why but she at the time had close to a million followers at this time by the way Amara man you you're gonna you know it's gonna sound really painful to hear but I hadn't read any of these books I hadn't come across somebody like you who would have taught me how to go about it I spent a lot of money on uh you know developing this watch not knowing anything to do with lean startup uh not knowing to do anything to do with kind of you know pre-sales or anything like that i went straight in i thought i've got this uh you know censored name uh ambassador and i've got a few others as well that were popping off in that time by dance prior to tiktok right so we had a few uh latin latino latina uh influencers we had people i had the whole world covered right i thought in my mind but little did i know that i i hadn't done big up the mom test i hadn't done any customer discovery i hadn't spoken to my customer segment i hadn't understand their appetite for this particular brand nor did I have any insight to um the demand or pricing anything right I just went straight in and that's that was the journey that began okay I need to research this crap and and and just to uh parallel this it was similar to my journey in in public speaking I thought I was a sick public speaker man all my um my my schoolmates would be like oh you're a sick speaker you're funny as well but then the real test of that for me was moving away from my trusted circle.

7:15I went down stand-up. I did stand-up two, three times. At first, I was an absolute flop, man. I sat there, I was thinking, bro, I'm really whack at this. But then I went and studied the craft. Six months, there was this wonderful comic guru, and you can Google this person. His name is Logan Murray. He teaches stand-up. So I learned the art. And look, I actually did, not to big up myself, but I did really well in my first gig. Standing ovation. And I realized how difficult that was. i'm not going to not going to dedicate my time to that but so similarly start up i had to go and learn how to go about it and then that became a bit of an obsession i now teach um entrepreneurship and innovation uh to younger people and hopefully they don't go through the main same mistakes that i have and now we're also helping build ventures as well yeah yeah and i think one of the things

8:02Amardeep Parmar:about like that journey right is that because even for example we teach it as well right I'm not teaching where I did it because I'm trying to get you to not have the pain I had right and I guess you have the similar experience of that it's be smarter than us that's the more we're trying to put forward into the world right is that you can say like oh but you did it that way but you did that I was like yeah but it sucked hard it's like don't do it our way do it the way that we're trying to help people we spoke about our own journeys man I'm still trying to lose that way but you managed to lose all that way you know following following you know the difficulty of the path and to be honest with you I would go a step further, but in the last nine months, I'm just seeing this right now, the news from Lovable and all these stuff, it's incredible.

8:43The game has shifted so much that today, when I was in class earlier at Imperial, I said to my, I'm calling my kids, but they're adult, right? I was like, listen, man, before we used to say 80-20 rule applies to business in this way, my first mentor with a thick New York accent said to me, Mohamed, you know, I can't do the New York accent. you just came out from new york so maybe you can um it goes to me man ideas are ten a penny execution is key pareto rule applied is 20 idea 80 execution but bro i think i i beg to differ i think now it's like ideas are really important because the execution is so easy now it's like you know i can get an mvp how long was it five minutes or something with lovable or now there's a new agentic ai yc spoke about two days ago which is almost n8n like automated So it's like, and that you can just prompt and create your own kind of, you know, agent.

9:40So what I'm saying now is something what I didn't do is now I'm focusing on the idea. I'm getting people to think about systems thinking. We're delivering, I delivered a workshop on first principles thinking, which is how do you, you know, the idea of boiling down to the fundamentals and then building back up. Takes a lot of mental energy, but I think that's where people are going to really, really thrive. is those really innovative ideas, game-changing ideas, sector-shaping ideas. But of course, look, when it comes to vertical AI, for example, YC, according to them, they say that this is going to outstrip B2B SaaS by about 3.2x, right?

10:16But then there's this idea of Johari's window, this idea that unknown unknowns, right? And that's what we talk about in our mentoring a lot, is basically you can create something that doesn't exist, but you need to put in the mental energy to do so. And that's where I think now the founders that we spoke about are going to be the 1 %ers, the 10 %ers, that's where they are going to be compared to everyone else.

10:43Amardeep Parmar:I think there's a really interesting topic to get onto as well because it's something I debated on my head about, there's two elements of the AI, right? There's lots of elements, but two conflicting ones. One is that it's a lot easier to start than it's ever been. the secondary aspect it's a lot easier to duplicate than it's over there so cool you've got a good idea somebody else before it could take them a year to copy your idea yeah now they can copy it easily if they've got better access to resources better access to funding bigger brand all that stuff and you look at the lovable story for example is that when you look at it is that lovable as a product isn't necessarily better than cursor than the other ones but they had a better branding in the way they did that so even though these other people had a first mover advantage yeah that level came in they did the branding really well they got the highlights that he did so the challenge now is like let's say you come up this out of the box idea right you come up because you you're seeing the future yeah even if you've got this amazing idea somebody else who's richer than you's got more money than you who has venture capital funding they don't know what to do with they're gonna win how do you defend it and it's that that that battle right like okay yeah it's easy to get started emma but then it's harder to defend than ever as well oh 100 % man you know i love how you frame that somebody mentioned this as a phrase he said don't let your launch become somebody else's lunch and what was that the typical thing that we're seeing is as soon as something ai related is launched then there's a open source version there's a cheaper version there's a quicker version there's a chinese version i don't know that's a throw shade on on china china's and just a side point right people used to say this uh this old adage it's like america innovates china replicates europe particularly london uh regulates all we're seeing now is is this idea that china is innovating man um the deep seek moment really changed things right but going back to what you said um how do you defend um yourself in this ever you know shifting landscape right the winds have changed you just hear it it's just it's crazy for a lot of people they're just wanting to the dust to settle until there's a clear winner but i you know anyway i i'm not really good with my foresight as much but i think um the futurists that i do look up to they say look right now is actually the goldmine uh time right now to develop if you do have that unique insight and that's where i think when i'm obviously given given what i what what I do I think I'm a real I'm bullish on this idea of person person to person interaction I say there's no no amount of data scraping no amount of reddit you know forum scraping will get you the insights you can get and glean from a one-to-one conversation right and that's where I'm bullish that maybe I'm wrong maybe there's somebody out there that believes that but I really believe in this man the fact that this idea of emotional delta as well this that you described lovable compared to cursor look i think tip bar for bar like or pound for pound like repli is like sick man it's really really good cursors banging that but lovable just the brand the ease and how like just today i saw the post when just before i spoke to you it said man we've got a 14 page guide it's not a bloody 100 page guide cursor this and that and it's so easy to get started they're the ones who are doing events they're the ones who are i met nad adam the event nad chishti head designer and he brought his baby along man and he's just chilling with us that's that for me is lovable because they're person to person whereas these other guys they don't really um well in my opinion and maybe yours as well they don't really invest into community like lovable do so that's where the differentiator is as you know soft as it sounds it is it is about the personal differentiator and connecting with the people so there's going on peace here as well right so one thing i'm now seeing from a lot of people is about how communities differentiate it right yeah the thing i find is that somebody who's building a community is that we're now seeing is startups who are doing community because that's new the new thing and a new fad and it's less authentic and it's that challenge of like okay cool you want to build a community but we all know you're only doing that because there's reason right and it's that personality trace how do you get the right people into a company where it does work authentic like you said like nad where he brought his kid along and he could just be like he was chilling with you right we're playing with his kid man he's like look take a picture of my kid and chill I was like man this is what that feels authentic at least yeah and that's the hard thing right because if you're saying like okay I'm gonna build this company I'm gonna like out-concure everybody because I'm gonna build the best community but if you're going into that with that mindset of like I'm gonna build this community to help my product right at the start you've got to have some kind of natural affinity you know a hundred percent of that personality right like are you personable because I know so many people who are building communities like you don't have the chat it's like how are you gonna you're saying oh you want to build this massive community but you're not very friendly not very friendly and it reminds me of um two things is there's um there's a guy on twitter that on x right he says about flipping the model completely it's like instead of going product first and then you know getting out there just start with the community start nurturing the community and then there will be they will you know for those into marketing know these idea of the thousand crazy fans they're they're going to be the ones who unlock viral coefficient for you because they're going to be telling one or two people those are going to turn into your fans and then suddenly you're a big deal right um but but but you touched on something there which which is another maybe it's another conversation but it's the whole thing that we actually were about to touch on prior to recording which is the idea of archetypes and personalities right and you spoke about this in the context of a struggling founder that in this day and age we know maybe you're limited in terms of your archetype your belief your sorry your hours and whatnot but that doesn't mean you can't bring somebody on that is good with community it does have the time to chill does have the time to network and i think there is the idea of personality and and i think um data driven vc they spoke about this i was pleased to meet them and they spoke by this idea they do quite a bit of looking into the founder what are the ethereal building blocks of a founder um and everybody talks you know from harry stebbings to like you know local globe everybody's talking about but you know um uh which is the founder of nikolai exactly nikolai the founder of um revolute right and they always talk about his intensity and so we talk about this offline right um but yeah boiling down to it in this essence coming back to community not everybody's a good community builder so there's this idea of a fractional community lead and i think that is a powerful way to get started i think yeah if anyone wants to spend loads of money on me as a fraction let's see you hit me up that's cool but yeah it is this idea now where we're seeing a lot of people who want to like it's in the last year so everybody's now trying to start a community and i look at it it's all about consistency is that if you do one event or you do two events it's like actually it's really hard on making the money the the snowball effect right it's like we are where we are today because we've been going for a while and there's first events people don't realize we didn't always fill up the room there's been events i've been to it's like oh crap this is kind of a bit dead wow but we carried on going anyway and i think that's the hard thing is that with ai it's like okay yes it's easier to build maybe the tech than it was before even then in reality it's easier to build the mvp it's not easy to build the actual product necessarily we still need someone who actually knows that otherwise you're just going to have a something full of bugs and that's the challenge like you get your the ndp is to get in a way to get the funding to be able to hire somebody who actually knows what's going on yes if you don't know if you're not a cto yourself if you haven't got that beginning and it's the whole nature of okay cool it's quick to get started at the same time you don't have a billion lovables right yeah it's still really hard it's still hard man i think you know what without blowing your trumpet for you, right, is the idea that, like, you're a living example of somebody who's started off and continued persistently, man, tenacity.

18:44Look, the majority of podcasters, they don't go past, what's it, 18th episode according to studies or what was it, what was it, survey. And the idea that, look, things are going to get better. Mr. Beast and his playbook. It's a wonderful playbook, man. I don't know why people don't read his stuff, man, just because he's, you know, all over the place. Because his playbook, he talks about this idea of like um actually not in his playbook but he talks about it generally is the fact that it's just dead in the beginning bro it is dead but then suddenly something kicks off and then you've got this exponential rise and and and and you know to you to your point it is so difficult being you know being the one who's running the event there's nobody there and then you're like but you have this thing in your mind that this is already going to get better and you just keep going in this so i actually want to ask you the question man what's in your mind like we don't back then what was in your mind so i know this is a common thread through karate bro bangra like everything that you're doing community building startups investment what goes through your mind

19:45Amardeep Parmar:in the difficult when you're in the trenches man what is in your mind i think it's the obsessive nature of freaking stuff out and it's a bit of you know the whole thing i enjoy the journey not the destination all that crap but it is the way i look at things of i'm the nerdy guy like you said about when you're figuring out stand-up comedy right is that you only do that if you actually liked the process of figuring out right i like the process of figuring stuff out i like that new challenge so say for example the podcast i get bored as hell when it's following the script once i kind of worked okay this is how i can make it flow i can make people feel comfortable and even but you're coming on this now with the podcast been renamed that i made a bunch of changes i need to keep making it hard for myself and even what we were supposed to right now you're talking about this you know for example like i at the beginning i used to prepare for the podcast i'm prepared for the podcast the past 200 episodes you can literally like you can do it i literally asked you before you came in what the hell do you actually do i'm so confused by your life like what is this and uh their confidence that comes with the reps right it's because i know that i've done so many reps i can figure stuff out on the spot and that makes it challenging for me if i spent in the whole last week researching you cool i'd be able to just walk into this and do it but it'd be so formulaic, same old, right?

21:03Amardeep Parmar:Whereas now we can go off-piece, we can go into different directions and I'm comfortable doing that. Whereas I always think about when I go to community events, when the person hosting the event is looking at a script or looking at their phone or their notes, how the hell can you not remember? You only talk to people like half an hour and I just do it. And to me, it's always something which from my background and the way I think about it, I'm like, go with the flow, like figure it out. Yeah, I figure it out. And it's also, I say go with the flow, because you've got to work yourself into that position, right?

21:29Amardeep Parmar:all these events which wasn't full up all these podcasts that nobody listened to were stuff it's reps it's reps it's reps it's me getting better and when you think about it in that way right whatever you're trying to build how long are you willing to suck to get good at it say bungalow right look at me dancing at the beginning I'm crap right I'm terrible but you can never get good initial willing to suck well that what are you getting with me goosebumps all over my arms but honestly like real talk because one of the most paradigm shifting realizations for me was from Tom Bilyeu. He is the founder of the Impact Theory.

22:05And he made, he earned his stripes through a nutrition brand, which has nothing to do with tech, but now he teaches AI implementation. That's what he's going, he's going hard on. But he, I remember like sitting, I was in my balcony when I heard this and I was like, bro, I was to sit in my balcony for a while. But to encapsulate what I'm hearing from you, right? And look, we have to celebrate people like you because through that others would be like okay i can do it too right this is these are the the whack days for you only going to get better right and that's that's hopefully the audience resonates with this is i'm going to shift my self-esteem bun all the accolades bun everything that our brown families celebrate bun all of that and i'm going to put my self-esteem on the fact that i'm the best learner in the room I don't give a damn if I'm looking like an absolute waste man or a waste girl I'm gonna go and do this and the tenacity and then one day you're gonna be celebrating with me right and and that takes a certain level of self-belief bro so I went out it feels like I'm flipping the script sorry but would how would you say your self-esteem is built on is it um is it that learner thing or is it the fact that I've done the reps and something else and that's translating

23:15Amardeep Parmar:into this so one idea i use for this right in my head i don't know if it comes out well so if it makes no sense just like call me out and take a business so so it's two types confidence right egg confidence and avocado confidence egg is what i'd say a lot of people need to stunt in the social media right it's hard out of shell you look confident but as soon as you get a bit of pressure pulled to you you crumble and there's nothing inside right and it's just gooey with avocado confidence okay it's a bit rough from the outside maybe but you squeeze into the center that core is really strong and you can crush it but then you can plant and it grows again right wow you crush an egg you can't like that's it's done and how i look at that is how do you build that core and you said i think you hit the nail on the head when you said about the stuff i've done in the past right is i'm just some random freaking nobody and with a karate is one element right it went from where i grew on that journey but when you look at the writing journey of some nobody who then grew so following there the podcasting i started podcasting they didn't have the you're not gonna be crying man what the hell bro but it's the whole thing it will come down bro i've had these consistent things where i shouldn't have been able to do what i've done so i'm like well i can just do it again and if i if i fell it's fine because i've done this other stuff bro you're motivating the crap out of me man i've got tears in my eyes bro it's crazy man but that's all it is yeah man and what I struggle with and when I'm trying to help other people is that if you don't have a story like that for yourself how do you get that story yeah and it's just you've got to do something you suck at for long enough until you get good at it yeah and prove to yourself that you can do it yeah and you can't shortcut that and I struggle with it man because like how do you how do you teach somebody that because yeah man you want instant results but you've got to be willing to suck at something and whatever it is right and then you can prove yourself I was terrible at that but I got good at it.

25:05Amardeep Parmar:And once you can tell yourself that, it's the same school, same school, wherever you do it in. Oh, hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about Bay HQ. We're the community for high growth, Asian heritage, entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally free at thebayhq.com forward slash join. There you'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content events and opportunities you can also get access to a free startup fundamentals course by joining let's go back to the show oh it's amazing man there's one quote i hate to quote it's samurai in this moment but i mean uh i thought his name is he's the author of the wave of the five rings he said that when the path becomes clear in one but he gave me so much goosebumps i was like crying but it's like when the path is when you understand the path you see in everything right uh sometimes i think about you know the likes of richard branson the others you know like virgin virgin media virgin music virgin this everything so the idea that yeah it is an idea you you killed it in one thing and those are the reps that you can now translate into other parts of life this is why they quote that you know fortune 500 ceos a lot of them had you know martial arts backgrounds or military backgrounds because of that the idea that i've done something right i'm able to do so So that's why I say to my kids, as I call them, that, look, do something well.

26:33The GCSE, the A-level, whatever it is that you're doing is actually building the idea that I can see something through to the end. And then that will pay dividends later on, whatever you do as well.

26:43Amardeep Parmar:It means that the accolade, right, is that BayHU hasn't won a single award. As a founder of BayHU, I've won no awards because I just don't give a crap. If I really wanted to win awards, you just promote yourself, you nominate yourself, you get all your friends to vote for you and stuff, right? but is it what's more important because i think by doing things that we have we're actually getting the respect of people because they can see why we're doing it exactly we get loads of awards and you might get people who see that from the external perspective oh wow you're doing so well but in reality it's like i'm very transparent about the struggles you've had with cash flow and things are going wrong because it's what's and this way i look at things as well right and we just see how you feel about this with your incubator and your people you're working with right are you doing it to impress people or to actually be good at the thing and it's a lot of people you can look at them from the outside and it's insecure to whatever it is it's all driven towards how do i impress people about what i'm doing as opposed to how do i actually do the thing that i'm trying to do 100 % really so look you've reached out so obviously we've been uh you know you've been in touch for a while man a long time and you've been it took tell me to come on the podcast one of the reasons why i didn't want to come on any podcast was because i want to build in silence man and i feel like obviously raising this back to the ai the ai phase we're in right now a lot of the times building a stealth is very it is preserves your um sincerity i feel like because if as soon as you you know blow your own trumpet back which is which is also a good go-to-market strategy don't get me wrong you suddenly start having external drivers right And then you move away from the intrinsic motivation to do something, which is love of itself, what we describe in your journey, which got me emotional and stuff, right?

28:27Because it's the beauty of that, man, the beauty of the human spirit. You know, the way that you explained that, I was like, man, like, if only we could teach that. That was a part of me that was like, oh, man, in a way, you just have to experience it. And when you feel that, that becomes something that you become.

28:46Amardeep Parmar:you know what I mean yeah I know people as well they call it unteachable lessons right yeah what do you feel like some of those unteachable lessons where you you know the end goal for you if you could just tell somebody that they're not going to listen to you the classic one is like money doesn't make you happy right and everyone's like yeah you're saying that because you're rich but then they get there like oh actually you're right you're right but you can't tell somebody that do you feel like there's other lessons that you when you're working with founders they're not paying attention to what you're saying yeah and like they just have to go through that experience themselves yeah man so half of the week i'm i'm mentoring uh founders right and um one of the things i keep i say in the first call is like you are the company and the company is you um so sometimes i don't want to talk about i'm like cool like we normally look at growth levers we do like sprints we'll go into like numbers and that kind of stuff but there's that element um of personal growth apart person like you are the business the business is you particularly in early phases are you spending time to allow yourself are you spending time to you know with your family man at the end of the day nobody's going to give a damn about you apart from the ones that love you man uh damn we're getting emotional again bro but but really man like 30 40 years from now you've had your accolades and stuff bro it's like how your you know what you call it your mom looks at you or your your dad your other half and kids and bro that's why I literally say to these guys and girls, why are you spending enough time with your family and stuff like that?

30:15It's like, come on, one day you're talking to me about profit and go to market, and now you're talking to me about family. And that's the thing. It's like, you learn that one day it might be too late when the loved ones that were with you. Damn, man. When they're not there anymore. You know what I mean? Yeah.

30:31Amardeep Parmar:And that's the thing is that, okay, you need to work exceptionally hard if you're going to build a startup to do well. But then you've got to have the people along that journey to make it worth it yeah otherwise you can work as hard as you can you can have all the money in the world but if and it all depends but again it's archetypes right some people that is lone wolf and for them that's not important right but for many of us it's like if you miss those let's say kids first steps always different things that look passive stories you've got to make sure that it's worth it for you and you've got to know what you're sacrificing 100 % no thank you for nuancing that right the idea that um yeah I don't want to go to a past or philosophy too much but I think um generally speaking you have to sacrifice in order to get somewhere there's no doubt about that um founders that I've spoken to that I've recently backed um I think it was a local globe event I went went to and they're like man I feel so bad that I'm not being able to be there for my little daughter and stuff like that but I'm like I'm doing this for you as well i'm doing this for my daughter as well so every situation is is is uh you know uh i can't give an objective truth here but ask your gut ask your your your your your inner inner inner self right and be like okay am i sacrificing too much here so it's all life is a balance i think the big thing is like it's knowing your side because your sacrifice is different than somebody else's sacrifice you've got to do that like internal work of like is am i saying the truth here or not because we lie to ourselves all the time right so it's like if you're saying you're doing this for your kids yeah you've got to be sure that you're actually doing it for your kids you can't use it as an excuse i'm doing it for a better future it's like if you're already worth like 100 million they're already sorted you're now doing it because you want to do it and if you want to just say that just say it just say it as it just know your own like understand your own motivation right you're right man you reminded me of a classical example that we often speak about in our family right um desi families often you know a lot of us came through the corner shop route right so um wonderful father loved his kids but he spent literally 24 7 in the corner shop and then one day he found his daughter like doing you know on a path uh you know doing something illegal right and he's like what is going on here like you know it's an illegal activity it's in the home as well and it's like dad oh man when I say this I get the chills bro like if I dad you weren't there when I needed you yeah and it's like it's like but I loved you you know and she's like that's not love it's like I just needed your time but you're there grinding out and then it's like woe is me it's like that of everything didn't mean all that money all that corner shop time but didn't mean anything in that moment because he's lost his daughter man and and so i fear that for myself i fear that for the people that i work with because yeah it's cool but like make sure you try look my philosophy is like try to balance as much as you can if you're in a phase where you're able to sacrifice then go ham and steve job talks about it the younger founders are able to do it um but yeah and don't don't let go don't let's go of that which means the most in your life man 100 yeah yeah it's all about the phases of life right yeah the seasons right the seasons of sometimes you have to go sprinting hard right but then that can't be forever well it can be forever it's like is that the life you want to live right it was like for example like i am fundamentally lazy i don't like how hard i work it's not it's by a mistake it's not by design if i can get this at a stage where this runs without me and i can just chill out i'll happily chill out i'm not addicted to the hustle the hustle is a consequence of me caring about what i'm doing and having like high standards of what i'm doing right but then i don't i'd rather like if i could do this and i could just chill out most of the time and everyone's being helped and we're making the change you want to make great i don't want to work on and for example we've said about like i've got the karasi i've got the bhangra there's always other interests i have that i'm not nurturing because I'm focusing this right now.

34:30Amardeep Parmar:About New York as well, yeah. But mentioning New York and you were mentioning about different places, right? One of the things you're focusing on is emerging markets as well. How did that come about and what you're doing there? Yeah, man, I actually began Tejara in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, I think, would you call it, in other languages, in Farsi, means trade, right? You know what? I'm not going to lie. When I've seen the name, I thought it was Mexican. I was like, why? Why is he ara? I have Tejara, yeah? so that actually came about because of my trip to Saudi and we were in a place called Al-Ula which is which has only recently become a tourist destination where a lot of meditation retreats happen there's also this like um you know curse place this is Kaka city but um what what happened when I was on the outskirts not in the curse part was um we met we met with founders we met with people that are local and there's a local plant in Al-Ula that it grows nowhere else but it has so many applications from medicine to like uh rehabilitation and like also taste wise is really good apparently and they're looking for local founders to build and then we were having a conversation with a co-working space over there called waves so it's called um vibes vibes and right absolute vibes they're like how do we explain startup and series a and all that to these people that are essentially bedouins right they've literally like lived their lives in the desert bro and they're coming out of that and then the way that we spoke about it was it's tijara it means it's trade it's literally the modern uh post-modernity like way of uh talking about trade because essentially what you're doing is you've got a product and you're selling it to people and then people invest into it we call it seed whatever it is so so that was the the the beginning of this idea of all the crazy stuff i'm doing it let's set up a company let's do something that um also helps local founders to expand to that market and then interestingly from there to here uh but but yeah mainly our interest that we get is startup founders um those are you know even larger incumbents as well we've we've helped them uh explore the market shall we say in saudi um and also get things like the premium residency which is actually quite a big deal man it's like the golden visa in dubai except um it is for saudi you're able to own uh property as somebody that's not a Saudi national which is a huge thing for Saudi opening up to the world and obviously you've like born raised here you've done so much here where do you set opportunity in these different places like what makes you look elsewhere yeah now it's a little so being really a lot of people talk about this idea that the fact that the UK is a brilliant incubator economy but it's not the best place to scale and the typical typical thing that I'm seeing right i work a lot in imperial is and ucl for example we're in conversations with ucl in terms of incredible uh talent right but they don't go to the local incubators because the incubators takes take a lot of ip they don't really support them as much and they see places like america as scaling scaling markets what we're trying to do is connect that to a new market which is essentially you know saudi qatar uh we have the capital right and are looking for solutions to what we call an RFP list, the list of problems that are happening in their government space, in the kind of, you know, the railroads, the hospitals, and we want to connect that talent.

37:51Because, and the underlying notion is the definition of justice I was taught is to put the things that, you know, have value into the right places. And I think when I see Bay, for example, what you're doing is you're connecting people together. I see it as you're enacting justice through your you know what you're doing is it's justice and that's why that's the one of the values i want to i want to i want to be a just person the the incredible talent we have let's connect it to the right right places that can nurture and help grow that talent yeah is there

38:22Amardeep Parmar:anything like tips you give people when they're trying to go out there and like how the system's different like yeah the culture the way it works yeah is anything particularly you'd say like if i'm listening right now it's going to be okay i want to expand salary other than contacting you what could they start doing to make sure that they're yeah well positioned i mean people talk about it in dubai as well right but so interestingly nudged the region of saudis where a lot of people from the emirates they're from right from particularly tatar as well from there they all have very similar traits the idea is a people first i'll give you a quick example a friend of mine from birmingham went to saudi and he's having a conversation with a particular investor a particular partner and he's like the whole time they're meeting over food is no conversation about business and he's like waiting for the opportunity no conversation at all and then right at the end of like an hour and a half two hours the guy goes uh by the way you know that thing that you wanted to consider it done why because he trusted that individual so it's a trust-based uh you know society i can go into a little bit of detail about saying that riyadh for example a lot of people that want a slice of vision 2030 they'll go in but they'll forget this trust-based kind of society that's focused so deeply on individuals for example Amr they'll be like Amr that's an interesting name where are you from so this is the thing complete different culture they're going to ask you about your your background they're going to ask you about your your village okay which part of Punjab I know Punjab oh I know Punjab so which part of Punjab what did your family do were they were they um uh the Raja clan or this clan because they with me so for example over here I can say I'm Asian it's enough it's like no where are you from they they say that you're uh this man he's a kashmiri man right they want to know particularly which part of the indian subcontinent i'm from so so yeah be prepared to go deep be prepared to um be in for the long term as long and and it'll pay dividends man in places like saudi and khatar you know so when i went to jordan they didn't believe that i was an arab so like oh it's a it's an arab yeah you're egyptian yeah and it's like no and then they kept talking to me in Arabic I was like I don't know what's going on and they didn't believe they thought I was lying I was like no like it's also Punjabi name I was like sorry I don't know if you went to Jordan anytime soon hopefully I listened to this but it's like I was almost like detained because they didn't believe that I was in Arabic yeah oh my god yeah I can see the Egyptian the Egyptian in you right now but they're like oh I'm not you're Arabic and then it's like no I was like I don't know what you're saying and it's like why are you lying to us I'm like I'm not lying But one of the most famous singers is Amar Diab He's Yeah a lot of his songs Were spun out into Bollywood songs Interestingly right So his name is Amar as well So they were like No man you're our cultural icon You're named up there Sorry we can't let you go Can imagine that I know like with Imperial as well You helped them with like PMF right Yeah yeah Is there Can you use the same models Both here and in other countries In the emerging markets Or do you think about it differently How do you go about that That's a good question man So like I'm researching into this right now so each market has its own constraints the issue that Saudi has had so look our friends at strategy tools who actually do deep dive researching into ecosystems and VC ecosystems they're very surprised in terms of how good the market is in Saudi in terms of growth and stuff but they still have an exit problem they still have a valuation problem typical thing that's happening is a lot of startups that are you know backed by venture studios and places like incubators, the biggest one being the garage.

41:53Wonderful place. It's a play on the idea that Amazon and all these guys will build it. They're literal garages, right? They call it garage, it's a Saudi accent. They value companies, there's a valuation problem happening whereby they get backed and suddenly they've got a huge valuation and then the actual revenue, the actual kind of cash flow isn't matching. So that's an issue as well. So what what we're doing is still however tweaking an existing model that kind of i've i've gathered over over the years there's very there's other model that there's the uh hundred tasks by um martin bell for example i'm actually really impressed by that because it's like a list of 100 things for for me we'll call it the prove model p-r-o-v-e the idea is like you've got five phases you go from finding your customer to then you know building an offer then you that offer then should elicit some sort of a currency and that currency allows you to then create move from a minimal viable product to a minimal lovable product which has stickiness and then we go into scaling i can go to the phases later on sometime but what we what we'll do is we'll look at a startup founder who thought that this person oh what backing man i'm i'm on the the saudi whatever list of bigger entrepreneurs and then we do it all they'll be like you know what man you're actually in phase one right now um despite the amazing uh you know investment you've got um it's hollow inside.

43:12And that's not to say that's the case. I'm not being condescending here. There's some wonderful startups, one to look at, Ninja, in Saudi grocery kind of delivery thing. They've absolutely smashed it. In fact, I would say some Saudi startups are so good, we can learn from them in the UK and particularly maybe in the US as well. But I'm just saying that this is the current situation over there. And yes, if you have a model to ascertain PMF, that can be tweaked and nuanced in different markets.

43:41Amardeep Parmar:So interesting on that point, it's about some of these companies, they're getting large valuations very quickly. Yeah. And obviously in the UK, and when you talk about early stage founders, they all want funding, they all want external capital, they all want that, right? And I guess it's one of those unsearchable lessons that having too much funding is actually a big problem. Because then you aren't being as resilient and as efficient as you can be, right? So can you talk about that? What are the problems that you're facing things when they're essentially overfunded no for sure man it's a bit of a debbie downer when uh for example as soon as you've got that investment in you boy we've got this deal room you've got everything you've got your pitch that everything's all it as soon as the funding comes in as you know uh i'm like the the clock starts ticking you're having to uh you know answer to other another set of people um so this is why i think you know what you're doing with the angel syndica is really powerful right it's um people that are with you uh they're essentially maybe have operator skill they're not going to put as much uh of a stress on you as a visa and that's why we're also uh using that angel uh model for those startups looking to move into emerging markets so yeah i mean the thing is as soon as you've got the you know that that funding brilliant you're going to be asked loads of questions about it now but um sometimes depending on the model that's the probably the only route of scale uh but depending on the model as well so and look you've probably heard this a lot but but i i really do believe it's the truth that try to um entertain and elicit funding you know bring the funding in when you don't really need it when you've got other suitors that way the power dynamic shifts you're not begging for it right you're not dying for it i'm asking for it no you're you're not puja right you're essentially you're now in a very strong position you're able to um actually have a real analysis in terms of who's a value add for me who's a market lock for me and who's able to uh yeah essentially contribute to our growth in a meaningful way as opposed to just capital dumb money can come to you but that might weigh you down i love the niche poochie reference i'm going i'm not going to explain i'm going to see who understands you understand it right so yeah yeah obviously all it for me is going on at the moment right what are you most proud of right what are you most happy about of what you've done that you've had these different things i've worked together and obviously you've worked with natwest incubator and always were incubators and now you're like imperial but what is it you feel like you've made the biggest impact on that you feel like that sure yeah of your very early career so far your many years to come but what is it that you feel like that's what i'm like yeah i've been out of that man you know when you ask me man like i i'm you've got me emotional before so like i think it's just the one founder like being able to tell them that you know are you you got this right I remember a particular mentoring call that I had I think look the thing is um for me mentoring and coaching was a huge unlock man it's like a mirror that's placed in front of you that you would never see there's a big like star in my eye I didn't know about it until somebody spoke to me about it that's why I tried to be for others and that's why like I'm pursuing this in a master's level I'm doing an ILM level seven which is a master's equivalent in coaching and mentoring so there was a conversation I had with the founder who was literally crying on the call she she believed like you know what i just imposter syndrome was there i'm not good enough this is too scientific of a methodology i'm more of an arts person and just saying to her look you've got this right and then just literally it doesn't mean anything it's an empty platitude to many people but just being there for the person because i learned in that conversation that the catharsis happens not in the solution we give others but the space that we give others and those who are leading um in companies would be able to resonate with this somebody comes to you with a complaint just listen in so i just listened and in that conversation now i can be very proud to say i don't know if she wants to be um you know pulled out in this way but she went from that to running a startup that is doing really well and then also being a thought leader in a space and having a book published so she she works in the kind of the greening space she's a wonderful you know people call her an eco warrior considered to have to be changing the narrative for public spaces and also greening in essentially so so seeing her now like she's killing it she's she's a she's public speaker she's got a startup and um and i remember what that point i was with her and that's what i'll go back to sometimes it's conversations like that so what we're saying now right is that 250 something episodes in whether this comes out is that people can come on again 200 episodes later so about two years time right so let's say you're sitting here in two years time and after the same question again like what you're most proud of what do you hope has happened in the next two years yeah very good question um so i have uh sometimes you know people talk about this uh mapping kind of future mapping exercise and stuff like that i've mapped it and this changed so many times that i've that i've forgotten uh how many times i've done done this but then i guess i'll do this live in the flesh right now with you and say that hopefully in two years we have created a community of you know what we call it mutually beneficial kind of stuff it's almost like you know they're building off on each other as well the community created and and they're supporting each other and they're supporting their wider communities right so we hope hopefully the viral coefficient is unlocked one of them then pays it forward and pays it forward and suddenly we've got the Dessie uh Wall Street you know what I'm saying so so yeah that's my future uh goal essentially and let's say I don't know a one community developed like this so in two years time we're gonna get a tv up there right so if people come back on the podcast again we'll play that little clip of what you just said and then see like what actually happened man damn man greasies bro greasies let's see see what happens man see I appreciate that man appreciate that man I want to ask you this as well but I to know if it's yeah i want to ask you this as well man three years time that's not fair because i'm on i i miss every episode right so i can't if i answered it i'd be answering every single like week like twice a week yeah so you got you got you that's cut yeah that's always a good cheat i have right sorry so we're gonna get quick five questions now right cool so who are free british asians or asians of britain you think you're doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out i want to shout out my man uh what do you call it obviously ash my boy uh big up ash every single time ash ali is a founder of um sorry one of the first marketing director at just eat he's now the uh you know the co-author of the unfair advantage i also want to give a shout out to um a wonderful um she's a sharp from up effect so she is essentially a founder of other effect she's a social entrepreneur she's also phenomenally talented like whenever you have a conversation with that oh my god like she's there's something new that she teaches us uh in her cause as well and then i want to give a shout out also uh so i was going to give a shout out to non-desi who's helping desis and megan loist from diversity vc as well but i'm going to give a shout out to nikita hold tight nikita come on yeah um they got what you call included vc i definitely think you're gonna like spike the microphone there it's like on the recording that's gonna be like noise now on a big opening here man because look we need um capital is a bigotry for us right the more um asian asians we have uh you know i say desi because this is a wonderful i love the word desi it was like when i hear it i remember i remember bangolasi i remember like time in the village in the you know speaking Punjabi so loudly you think you're fighting um so our fellow desis and we need more investors man we've got we've got a lot of entrepreneurs in my opinion right and we need more high achieving entrepreneurs, but we need more investors.

51:22And that's why I think, you know, big up Nikita every single time.

51:25Amardeep Parmar:So that's Nikita Thakraf from... Nikita Thakraf from... Nikita Thakraf from... Nikita Thakraf from... Yeah, exactly. So we've got Tariya, and then she's a Shah, she's from UpEffect, and then we've got Ash Ali from Unfair Advantage. Yeah. So, and if you want to find out more about you, what your ups in the future, where do they go to? Yeah, man, you can shout out me on LinkedIn, Mohamed Malik, Tajara Ventures. Also, I work at BSMBF, which is a small business forum. So malik at smbf.global is my email if you want to shout me as well. LinkedIn is probably the best place as well. And do you know the audience could help you today?

51:57Man, help me by, we were looking for founders at the moment, right? So we're looking for founders that's particularly focused on emerging markets as well. So anybody interested in that, give us a shout. And also we're looking for educators. So I'm teaching, you know, young people innovation entrepreneurship. So if you have an expertise, whether that's via coding whether that's deep I understand your psychology come we want to pay you to teach young people

52:23Amardeep Parmar:obviously great to have you on good to have a good laugh as well but any final words from you? bit of a cry as well my boy I really appreciate this I just want to give a shout out to Bay HQ man you're doing a phenomenal job man and like I said we need this you're doing justice and this is the idea like when I started off in the startup space look there was diversity meant just a particular you know ethnicity essentially you know and I think there's there's so much you know diversity in diversity and that's what you're doing a phenomenal job with man so hold tight BTHQ man every single time.