Power to the digital makers. I believe great things can happen at the intersection of disciplines, and digital makers are uniquely advantaged in that equation.

Founders are the heroes. We are all background extras. Starting a vision, rallying talent, and crafting products is not an easy feat. I want to be the most valuable extra to a founder’s story. 

Empathy is key. It is easy to be a problem finder. The harder job is to be a problem solver. I want STV to be on the side of “those who dare greatly”, and bring the loudest cheer to those in the arena.

Bet on MENA. I believe that MENA will be the home base for a great deal of the global internet GDP. Since 2012, I joined Aramco Entrepreneurship Center and saw annual VC deployments grow from low tens of millions of dollars to over a billion dollars today. The business incubator I led in my last years at Aramco felt like a single tree in a desert. Today that desert is a bustling forest of accelerators, angel groups, local and international investors, and a magnet to talent. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

I obsess over good code. In 2008, I created a hand-parsed OOP language with a browser-based interpreter. I then made a code editor specifically for that language and a website designed to house algorithms written in that language and rate them across performance metrics. From the “About” page of the website, it was “a global repository for all algorithms and an easy-access environment for algorithm design and prototyping”. That multi-year experiment did not go far, but I learned a ton - from managing complex code bases to thinking big. I wanted to make a dent in the way we approach software development as a craft.

Sales is hard. After my MBA, I found myself in a client-facing role where I needed to step out of my comfort zone and pitch my heart out every day. That taught me empathy for hardworking sales professionals, and great admiration for the disciplined and successful ones. Of course, being the tinkerer that I am, I also ended up building a SaaS sales enablement tool that served many thousands of customers for many years.  

Start with the product. I love learning about how you built your product, how you scale your infrastructure, how you incentivize and empower your sales team, and how all this comes together in the shape of a great company culture. 

Any time any day, I am likely obsessively refreshing Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Reddit.