Hello everyone ,
I’m Basel Kilani from Tech Sparks ,
I have a distinguished Guest in entrepreneurship in the US
Ramy Adeeb
Ramy is a very accomplished entrepreneur
He is been living in the US quite sometime
Now he is working on a hot startup accelerator ,
Its name is rocket space
I’m not going to speak much about Ramy
Cause I want him to start giving us a brief about him self
Also we need to hear from him about his life
And about the things that he accomplished in his life
Also we need to hear about the companies that he worked for them
Ramy I will leave it to you from here
Thank you Basel
My name is Ramy Adeeb from Egypt
Born and raised in Egypt till the age of 16
I learned how to program in Egypt
My passion for computers started when I was a little kid
My father was working in the army
Sometimes I used to go with my father to work ,
They had computers there so I was playing with it
And I was learning MS-DOS too
At the age of 16 we moved to the United State
I studied computer science in Harvard University
After that I finished my MBA in Stanford University
My professional background started to grow after the finishing college
I worked for a startup company here in San Francisco called Tellme Networks
Tellme was a startup company specialized in voice technology
I worked there for 7 years
We built the company when we were 3 or 4 or maybe 10 to 15 people in a garage
The company got bigger and bigger till we reached 300 engineers
Then Microsoft bought our company in 2007
After that I worked in Venture Capital company for 2 years
Then I decided to leave the investment business
and went back to the startup companies so I can build my own product
cause this is what I’m really passionate about
so I started the snip.it company
and its been six months since I’m working here.
Excellent Ramy
Lets get back to the investment space
You worked for one of the most famous investment companies
Which is Khosla Ventures
Can you tell us briefly about how did you work with them
and how they reached you … etc.
my working story with Khosla Ventures was very interesting
I went to Khosla Ventures with no intention to work in the investment field
I was thinking about building my own company
But when I spoke to them , and the more I talk to Khosla Ventures
the more they wanted me to work with them in the investment field
indeed I spoke with them many times ,
and they asked me to come and work with them as partner
and they wanted me to use my background
to help build a new companies in the investment field
the experiment was amazing because I learned from that experience
what is the investors really looking for .
Investor is mainly looking for 3 things
Well the venture startup is something small ,
It can start with 3 or 4 people with an Idea
So it doesn’t matter how big the market is
What matter most is the team
The most important thing is
what is your capabilities
what is your susceptibility
and this time or your susceptibility has more than part
the first part is technical
do you have the ability to build good programs
the second part and its more important which is leadership
are you welling to do everything all by your self?
And of course everyone of us tend to do things alone
Like I will do it alone so I can finish faster
Like I’m superman ,
Yeah superman
In fact you can’t manage a company alone
You need to have a team with you
You have to depend on others
You have to create a vision for the team
So they can be excited about this vision
And through this vision you can build this team
And you can accomplish a lot of things
more than you can accomplish alone
So first thing he will do is to ask to build a team
And after building a good team
he can change his focus on the market and the products
and there is one interesting things that Venture Capital saying that
if you want to build a company that has a million dollar revenue
it’s the same difficulties that u will face when building a 10 million dollar revenue company
or even the same as building 100 million dollar revenue company
what matters is the market
building a company itself is a difficult thing to do
so try to identify a good market
so your big effort will return to a good revenue
or will return a good product that will have a wide user base
so this can apply to anyone right ?
yes to anyone
so your work is focusing on the ventures
so tell us about your experience with Vinod Khosla and pierre lamond
I worked with Vinod Khosla for almost 2 years
Vinod Khosla is the co founder of sun Microsystems
Pierre Lamond is the co founder of National Semiconductor
So these 2 considers one of the co founder of the silicon valley
Of course
Pierre Lamond is 80 years old and still working
He is a wonderful man
I learned form them a lot of things
But the most thing that I learned is that
The most important thing
Or when an entrepreneur talks to you
The most important thing is what kind of questions you ask him ?
Today when someone gives you an idea
And tells you that I want to build a company like this one
I can set down and you know
I might have a meeting with this person for an hour or maybe 2 hours
And I can ask him a lot of question like
How would you do this ?
And how would you do that?
But Investors like Vinod when he looks at the company
And start thinking about this particular company
would say that the main risk is this one
And this kind of risk could be something of a lot things
It could be like is there market or not ?
Or could it be a technology risk ?
Can you really create such a program or product ?
Or It could be a business development risk
Or something called customer acquisition risk
Which means can you be {from 5:50 – 5:51 one word is not clear}
To be so you need a sales man who will coast you 500$
This means you don’t have a business
What matters is to set down and to listen to the idea
And to choose the question you want to ask
Your question must be direct to the point
And you must concentrate all your division process
To identify what is the main risk
And try to address the risk .
The second thing that l learned from them is
You have to think big
You can create
Vinod tried to buy google portal
And Yahoo wanted to buy google for one million dollar
And today google is about 100 billion dollar worth
The founder of a company could think like
Oh yeah one million dollar is a big catch
Vinod was thinking different , he said
We can make this company a billion dollar company
Lets think how we can make it bigger
Lets aim very very high
So the combination between asking the right questions
And being very ambitious
And have big aspirations
Is probably the main things I got form these people
Can you tell us more about the biggest deals
that you accomplished while working there
I remember square and group me and Ness Technologies or any other company
That you were aware of its investment , please tell us about it
Yeah I worked for square
Square company was
Square company belong to Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey is the creator of Twitter
And now he is working for Twitter
And he opened another company and called it Square
Square story is very interesting
Well Square if you are not familiar with it ,
It’s a device you attaché with phone and any iphone user can receive a credit card payment
And its now available for android users
Oh yes
I’m an Android user
So Jack Dorsey pitched the idea
And it was nothing but Idea
it was nothing but Idea
but the idea was very very ambitious
incredibly ambitious
and he was a very accomplished investor
he was asking for a very high evaluation
I mean for only Ideas
And he was a big debate paranoid
Do you make an investment?
Do you provide for somebody a 10 million Dollars?
For something up in the air ??
And it was a tough decision Basel
Apart of the thing they decided to do
Because the idea was big
And the entrepreneur is very accomplished
With a result today are phenomenal
Once I worked with group me ,
And group me was a free text messaging
It was in new york city
It got acquired by Skype few months ago
And now
Although I work for snip.it full time
I still represent coast Ventures of the number of works
And still want to start a few companies with new
{from 8:41 – 8:44 I can’t hear it well }
Lets talk about the entrepreneurship
How , of course we will not talk about the subject which already talked about like the distance to the office and etc .
What made you drop all the exciting jobs
And took you back to the business space
Where you start to build a company from the scratch ?
Look , the investment space is very prestigious
It brings tremendous prestigious
And tremendous influence
Its almost a dream job
But frankly I found building a startup is much more exciting for me
You know, its like the difference between being a couch and a player
Its like the difference between someone telling the others to do so and so
Versus doing it by yourself
Its a lot more exciting
Its a lot more exciting to build a company yourself
To be honest the other reason that made me open snip it is the risk
And I’m a living believer that in every stage of your life you will take a risk
When you are young you might take risk many times
What would happen
You will always have the job you want
But if you are married and have 4 children’s
And have responsibilities etc
That’s make it harder for you to take risks
I was 32 years old and I was working in a very comfort job
But I wasn’t getting enough risks
What I mean , I found in Venture Capital that I can’t be the next Jack Dorsey
Or I could never be the next Mark Zuckerberg
So if I take some risks
And do a startup
It may fail and that’s ok
But if it succeed there will be a tremendous outcome
The third big I think factor for me
That there is a lot of people who are talking about startup
Speaking about the end like Oh will it succeed or will it fail?
Will it be acquired or will have to acquire ?
They almost forget about a journey
Its really about the journey not the destination
When you are in a startup
there is a tremendous amount of development you go through
its you right hustle and bustle , its all stress
but simultaneously there is you are managing people
and managing people is a tremendous room for opportunity
when you are getting nervous on someone
and then you learn the hard way not to get nervous on someone
its shorten gain but a long term lost
how do you recruit ?
how to convince somebody to work for you ?
how you convince him with your vision?
All of that will give you a tremendous person development
Even if the company failed ,
you will get out of it in much more developed individual
that much better well around individual than you were before
Last and most important thing about Khosla is that I got really excited about snip.it
I felt that there is a real market for snip.it
And I wanted to achieve that goal
And as an investor I could have hire a CEO and build a company
Lets just go build it my self
Lets talk more about snip it
Tell us what is the idea about
Is there an investment in it ?
How many employees in it ?
And lets talk about the place that we are in right now
Sure the story behind snip it was very simple
Actually during the Egyptian revolution
A lot of my friends in America asked me about my opinion on what is happening in Egypt
And I was as you could imagine [from minute 12:08 – 12:09 not clear]
All the day long I was watching youtube ,
Reading all the articles related
And every possible news source
My friends were telling me what is interesting
So I started doing basically what everybody does
I would share facebook shares with them
So it was very frustrating
In the 25 of January I posted
You know the most civil counter revolution it says
Today is etc etc 25 January
It appeared on everyone facebook feed
then after 2 or 3 hours it disappeared from the feed
nothing permanents , the feed disappeared from facebook or twitter
another problem for example
all my follower were people
who interested in entrepreneurship
so I can’t all of a sudden speak about the revolution
cause they might not be interested
but I’m interested
so I figured something out
well it was very frustrating
so I took a step back and said what is I really want ?
what I really want to do is to have a place where I can freely say I love Egypt
and I love entrepreneurship
and love San Francisco and maybe I love football etc
and here I’m constantly consuming content
here all the important links
the important pieces of videos ,articles , images that I find
and here is my opinion associated with it
and you can go to that page
and you feel it must be like an album
in it everything that matter
and I can share it with the world
and that was the idea behind the snip it
we built
oh I left the investment
I just built the original prototype myself
There was help from another individual
After 3 months we had a prototype and we raised funding
After raising the funding we built a team
And now we are about 6 people
Excellent
And we have a few thousands of users
The large number are actually from the middle east
The website is sinp.it
While we were talking about Egypt
What do you think about entrepreneur space in Egypt ?
What do you think the direction will be ?
are you polish on the market in the middle east and the arab world ?
and what do you think about what is going on in all the investment companies and all the startup that shows up ?
look im very optimistic
and perhaps it’s a good thing in me
I am optimistic for many reasons
The first reason is the young generation in Egypt has exposure on the media
You understand me
Egypt was Fourth most popular country on facebook in 2008
So we are not keeping up updated with the world
We almost ahead in our use of technology relative to many other countries
Has the same social economic status
We are of course behind in the innovation technology
But we will get it
And the new generation is up to the new technology
And he use it in a different ways
Even the western people use it differently
Also we innovating our ways in using the social media
And its something that makes me feel optimistic
I think there is awareness from the western
In our culture there is fear of failure
Because our culture is a very rich culture
And our community is very connected
And its something good
But one of the consequences for this
Is that you get scared of failure in front of the others
Or you get scared if opening a new company
But this feeling start to change
Today the idea of entrepreneurship has changed for youth
And youth started to struggle to make something different and good
Third thing that makes me excited
If you think about the arab spring
You know just forget about the political influence
One of the arab spring results specially in Egypt
The young people felt that they have a voice
Even the young individual felt like he is important
I was speaking with for example
Remember when the revolution started in February
I was speaking about my mam and dad in Egypt
We didn’t know how we are going sleep
without the youth who is protecting the street
My father once told me that we are
The kids did something we never imagined they would do
So forget about all the political outcomes
Just to have sense of empowered
That the youth sense
I think in my opinion that’s the most important outcomes
I would like to ask you about the arab community
Do you feel that there is a good connection with the arab worlds
Like Egypt and Jordan and arab world at large
And I know that you are involved in the community aspect
In the founder of harvard arab alumni association
So I don’t know what you think about the connection or a Bridge
Between the arab world and the silicon valley or the US at large
I think the bridge is weak
I think the bridge is very weak
I think its in a nap
With few other organization
If you compared our network arab community in the US with silicon valley
And arab community for arab world with silicon valley
Then compare it with Indian community
Or compare it with east European community or the Chinese’s community etc
Its very very weak
We absolutely nap behind but its improving
Its improving a lot but still its very very weak
What do you think we can do ? or what ideas can encourage us to work on this matter?
Do you have any ideas for us and for other of course ?
No no I love it to decide something I have to come up with an idea
To honest its our mistake
First thing we need is to be connected
If you want to be connected with others
You have to have incentive , no matter what it is
Whether its financial incentive
Or a self expression
Or self fulfillment
You must have incentive
And if you have incentive there must be results
[from minute 18:35 – 18:38 so fast that I can’t get ]
Frankly it did an amazing job trying to bring technology from Egypt
One thing that could really help is exchanging programs
People form here to go to Egypt or from there to come here
But we have to do it regular like every 2 months or 3 to keep connected
The second thing which its name is exchanging programs to the see the tasks
I think we need to better work on communicating the results
Do you understand what I mean ?
People get excited if they felt that there work gives results
So what im saying that we had 10 startup
And now we have 25 startup thanks to this program
That gets people excited
That gets people excited
The third thing I think we could really need is
We should make it cool to work with people back home
And to work with people in Egypt
you should make it the fun things to do
we are very good at marketing
if you watch our Ads at TV you will find out that we are very creative
now lets not make it just like oh this is a tech entrepreneurial programs
lets make it fun
lets make it hip
lets make it fun to be entrepreneur
so it’s a very high level
we have to think about it somewhere
lets talk more about this
now we are , I think the market in the middle east on the verge of big crawls
so I think it’s a best time for everyone to work on it
at the end of this show I would like to thank you so much for being here
About the Guest:
Ramy loves building things — as much as he loves breaking them. After finishing college, Ramy led the enterprise engineering team at Tellme Networks shortly after the company`s founding in 2000 and until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2007. There, he led the development of over 30 products. Before founding Snip.it, Ramy spent a couple of years at Khosla Ventures working on investments such as Square, Groupme, and Ness Technologies.
Ramy got his BSc. in computer science from Harvard university, which was later followed by an MBA from Stanford University.
Ramy Adeeb, an Egyptian entrepreneur and the founder of snip.it. Snip.it lets you collect the best of the web, organize your thoughts and find things that interest you.
