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The FWDstart Podcast is a weekly show at the intersection of venture capital, startups, and strategic industries shaping the MENA region. Each episode features candid conversations with founders, investors, and operators behind the region’s most ambitious companies, from frontier AI and fintech infrastructure to climate tech, construction, energy, and space.
FWDSTART PODCAST
Episode 02: Ibrahim Manana, Founder & CEO of BRKZ
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[00:00:00] COLD OPEN
Ibrahim Manna: Do you know how many people told me no? Any given fundraising, I go through a hundred to 120 calls, almost 90% says no. Some people even ghost you, but one person putting a bet on you will erase all of that. I always felt like a co-founder at Careem. I've ended up launching 11 out of 15 markets. I was traveling every single week, eight years with barely any stop.
Jamie Lane: Uber acquisition, and then you go into BRKZ. Did you take any time off?
Ibrahim Manna: I was planning to take a gap year, which lasted a month. If you look at any modern economy today, construction is one of the main pillars. Saudi has the largest layers from manufacturer to the end customer, around seven to eight layers. This whole industry is run through pen and paper, on WhatsApp groups, and it's not digitized. No one trying to actually disrupt that market. I said, okay, let's start.
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[00:00:58] INTRODUCTION
Jamie Lane: Today's guest is Ibrahim Manana. Ibrahim is the founder and CEO of BRKZ, the Saudi construction tech company disrupting one of the region's largest and most offline industries.
Before that, Ibrahim spent eight years at Careem as one of the core architects of its expansion, launching 11 out of 15 markets ahead of the company's eventual $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber back in 2019. In this episode, there are some deep cuts. We talked through his first startup delivering DVDs at 18, how Careem empowered operators like founders, and what it really takes to scale into markets like Iraq and Jordan.
We also explore how buying his own house at the height of the pandemic led to the creation of BRKZ and how the company is using technology to work with, not against, entrenched contractor behaviors. I'm super grateful to Ibrahim for coming on the podcast. He doesn't do a lot of podcasts. I believe the last podcast that he did was 13 years ago, so it was an absolute joy to have him on. More than anything else, lovely, lovely guy. As well as being one of the grittiest and most incredible founders. I hope that you find this conversation as valuable as I did.
[AD BREAK: Sarwa & HubPay]
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[00:04:02] IBRAHIM'S EARLY ENTREPRENEURIAL ENDEAVOURS
Jamie Lane: Ibrahim, very welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.
Ibrahim Manna: Thank you for inviting me.
Jamie Lane: So in preparation for this, I reached out to Zach from Class Five Global, a former colleague and a backer of BRKZ now as well.
Ibrahim Manna: Great friend.
Jamie Lane: Yeah, absolutely. So I asked him what should I ask Ibrahim? And one of the things that he mentioned was definitely ask him about his prior entrepreneurial endeavors. And he said the one word that he used to characterize you is persistent. And what I was really struck by, when looking back to your earliest days up until the present, was you've sort of always been focused on the same problem from when you first started to now. It's very much getting things from point A to point B. The things that you've been moving have changed. So it might be DVDs or if it's food, it's groceries, it's laundry, it's people, it's cars and food again with the launch of the super app, and then obviously now we have building materials. But it's very much always been about moving things as efficiently and as effectively as possible. Why?
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah. Funny enough, I've never thought about it this way. So it's a great way to think about it. I always believe that there's a problem statement or a challenge, and fulfillment usually is a part of the problem statement. And this is why we end up in a lot of cases managing the fulfillment or at least creating a marketplace where there's different players and they are being managed through us, like either through prior experiences or through BRKZ in this case of basically making sure that they fulfill.
Because if you think about it, in a lot of these different cases, reliability was always questioned. Like whether it's the food delivery or whether it was taxis and rides, or whether it was building materials fulfillment, reliability was a problem. It wasn't the only problem. I think in a lot of cases, whenever I am fundraising in the west, a lot of people look at this piece or part of the business as the unattractive part, right? Like, why are you delivering? And I think what a lot of people don't understand is we don't have the same luxury of having these reliable services. They take it for granted.
So unfortunately right now, what we've realized at least at BRKZ is once — and I think this was the point where we saw a turning point — we've realized that a lot of people, due to seasonality, it was Ramadan, stopped taking calls and stopped delivering on time and took longer. And because we were like on it and we were delivering on time and we were reliable, from that moment onwards, our growth trajectory was much, much larger and bigger than it was prior to that.
Jamie Lane: Was that the initial kernel of an idea if we were to go back to the very, very early days? And I suppose it's become a cliche that you often find the best founders start exceptionally early and they're always sort of entrepreneurial from a very young age. And obviously you kick off with DVD on Wheels. What, 18 years old?
Ibrahim Manna: I was 18, yes.
Jamie Lane: Why?
[00:07:17] Ibrahim Manna: I loved movies. I guess it's as simple as that. I loved movies and I thought — I wasn't thinking about it the right way. Like you were thinking about, okay, what's cool? What's something that I would love to be associated with? The way that you think about business is much, much different.
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[00:07:35] LESSONS FROM CAREEM
Ibrahim Manna: So later in the day, and I think prior to Careem, I actually didn't think about businesses the same way. So Careem was a turning point for me as well in the way that I was thinking about problem statements and how do I need to look at these businesses.
So back in the days it was more about, okay, what is this business about? How am I associated with it? Am I proud about being identified as that business? Because at some point those lines become very blurry, where you become your business and your business becomes you. And I thought — I believe in every business when it got shut down or transitioned to the next phase, I lived with an identity crisis for a while. I didn't know how to define myself. And it became a challenge.
Jamie Lane: Were you looking at — like Netflix had been around since '97. Were you looking at other sort of business models and you were going, okay, I think we can apply this in this context, or what was it born out of?
Ibrahim Manna: I think at some case we were looking at Netflix. And back in the days, by the way, Netflix wasn't a streaming service. It was more of an exchanging service, right? You get your DVDs and then you give it back and you get new ones and it was more of a subscription model. And I think that lasted for three years. And then we actually started thinking, okay, there's a much bigger market out there. And this is back in 2008, where we created an aggregator for food, for laundry, for groceries and DVDs as well.
Jamie Lane: What did that actually look like from a platform perspective? It seems like a crazy thing to do to expand from DVDs to everything in an hour. It sounds nightmarish operationally. And I find it really interesting as well that you predate this recent obsession that Quick Commerce has with sort of the arbitrary time constraints that they set. Okay, it's gonna be 15 minutes or 20 minute delivery, but you were promising an hour all the way back then. What did that look like logistically?
Ibrahim Manna: Sure. Keep in mind that was I think the year where the iPhone was launched. Or prior, like something like that. So there were no apps. There's nothing called apps back then. So it was a website and there was a call center where you can call and place an order. And back in the days, I think people were used to, at least in Jordan, free delivery. So this was premium delivery that you had to pay for. So it was a bit early.
Logistically what we've realized is that one of the fast food restaurants, their delivery employees finished their shift at four. So we started the business at 4:00 PM and it lasts until midnight. Because I had to run that business while being in college as well. So we took a lot of their learnings. And we've managed to actually teach ourselves on the go what it means to actually deliver better. And we didn't have any of the sophistication in thinking where you have the geofencing and certain zones. And luckily I think Amman, Jordan is a much smaller city where you can actually operate with a crew rather than defining zones. So you can deliver from point A to point B and deliver within 30 minutes maximum. So that helped. I think if that proposition was in Riyadh it becomes a lot more difficult. Point A to point B can be quite a bit away.
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[00:11:11] CHALLENGES IN MARKET EXPANSION
Jamie Lane: What was it like at that time from a funding perspective? This was like the very early days of Oasis 500, wasn't it? Like this was just only kicking off? Did you have a hard time convincing people that this business model made sense?
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah. I think we spoke about this a bit earlier. Like where our common friend had actually sat down with me, we had coffee and he explained to me the whole concept of entrepreneurship, investments, angels, VCs. And for me that was honestly the first time I've ever heard of it. And then I think in Jordan, the Oasis 500 was setting shop and I was part — Wheels Express back then was part of the first wave.
Where we've actually worked closely with them. And I think one of the great things about incubators, and I would recommend a lot of the first time founders to actually go through this experience, it's a learning experience. You get to learn a lot of these different things. So it's a structured learning experience where they'll tell you more about how to pitch, how to think about your business, how to organize it, how to actually approach investors.
I think prior to that, if you wanted to raise funds, it was mostly from family and friends, right? And I got a small amount from my father. My two partners got a small amount from their father as well. And this is how we started. And then with the help of Oasis 500 and with a lot of different angels that were part of the network, we have managed to actually raise a small amount as well.
Jamie Lane: I'm led to believe you did a lot of deliveries yourself during that time as well. Is there a story regarding a shawarma delivery?
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah, sure. So once, we were growing so fast. But with wrong unit economics, unfortunately. So at that point, I didn't know that the faster we grow, the faster we were actually gonna die. And at some point, all the delivery people were out and part of our offering was shawarma. So there was this order that was right next to the office. And it was so late. And I got to a point where I said like, look, I'm gonna go and deliver it myself, roll up the sleeves. And funny enough, the person who actually opened the door is one of my high school colleagues who I haven't seen for the past five years. So imagine me showing up with two shawarmas at your doorstep as a delivery man. That's so funny.
Jamie Lane: And then how big was the team in Wheels Express?
Ibrahim Manna: At the highest, we were around 20 people.
Jamie Lane: And in terms of, was it all like similar age to yourself in terms of colleagues?
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah, we were like all kids figuring it out. We've ended up with friends and friends of friends working together. And I think with the delivery men that were on the crew, these were basically, as I told you earlier, the delivery crew of a fast food restaurant that were joining us and they kept referring one another.
Jamie Lane: And then it eventually shuts down.
Ibrahim Manna: I think it was too early the way that I look at it.
Jamie Lane: I was gonna say that's the impression that I got as well from this.
Ibrahim Manna: Two things. One, it was too early, and then the market size is quite small and limited.
Jamie Lane: Did you feel like that at the time, though? Did you think it was?
Ibrahim Manna: No, I didn't. But I was looking at other markets. So I believed at that point there was this other startup called Brown Bag in UAE, in Dubai, that I've actually met the team at some point, and I've realized that, man, Dubai is a much bigger market. This is where I need to be. So I've set my eye on basically coming to Dubai at some point.
Jamie Lane: And you did?
Ibrahim Manna: I did.
Jamie Lane: I was reading, I think it was an interview that you did with Wamda when Wheels Express shut down. And you were really self-reflective, but you were quite mature in your outlook. There was no sort of sense of self-pity. It was very much, this has happened. It is what it is. Move on to the next thing. Did you feel like that at the time? Or were you projecting to an extent? Or did you really, were you able to process it and go, okay, rationally we were too early, just doesn't make sense. Let's try again somewhere else.
Ibrahim Manna: Look, in all experiences, I don't want to eliminate any lacking from my end as well. So a lot of these different challenges happened because I wasn't as experienced as I needed to be. But I guess this is the part where we need to start thinking about failure in a different perspective. I wear failure as a badge of honor. Like for me it's experience. I would much rather invest in someone who's tried and failed rather than someone who's starting fresh, honestly.
And I feel like I've realized that you end up with, you don't learn what you need to do. You learn what you need not to replicate again. So basically you avoid things that you potentially can avoid, right? Because in every business you'll have different circumstances and you wouldn't know potentially what you need to do. Otherwise, we would've all been successful. But the reality is that you start avoiding challenges. So for me, I've always looked at it differently. At the moment it sucks. It's not a great feeling. You feel it's the doomsday or the end of the universe. But the reality is after a very short period of time, you just shake it off and try again.
Jamie Lane: Do you think that's some innate ability that you've always had in terms of your outlook? Or is that a learned behavior?
Ibrahim Manna: I think with time you become more mature. I think with age as well, you become more mature. But resilience — I found that really what defines one entrepreneur from another is how much you have resilience and grit. If you don't have that, it's very challenging for you to actually make it. It's a series of bad experiments and bad events, that one good event will erase all of your prior attempts.
So if you don't go through this, like I was just talking to a friend about fundraising. Like, ah, it sucks. And it's terrible and it's not comfortable. So man, do you know how many people told me no? I told them at any given fundraising I go through a hundred to 120 calls and like almost 90% says no. Some people even ghost you. But one person putting a bet on you will erase all of that. So it is a persistence game. It is all about having grit.
Jamie Lane: A game of who can survive the longest. I think is why you show up every day. You get lucky eventually, I suppose, if you keep putting yourself in those positions. You moved to Dubai then. Ship and Collect, was it three years you spent?
Ibrahim Manna: It was three years, yeah.
Jamie Lane: Three years there. And then Careem thereafter. How does Careem come about?
Ibrahim Manna: I think Careem, at that point, I was meeting Magnus, and when we met, I remember it was more of a chit chat. It wasn't — I wasn't expecting anything out of it, and it wasn't a job interview. And at some point Magnus said, ah, man, you have to meet Mudassir. And we were sitting in Media One, which is the hotel next to the Shatha Tower where Careem is. He said you have to meet Mudassir. So okay, I'll meet Mudassir. Sure. So we went up to the office. I met Mudassir, spoke for a good two hours.
Jamie Lane: During that same meeting?
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah, same meeting.
Jamie Lane: Oh wow.
Ibrahim Manna: So we finished with Mudassir and he said you have to come with me and meet Mada, met Mada, spend a good hour or two. And then he said, ah, you have to speak to Abdullah. So I spoke to Abdullah as well. And then they came back with an offer that, you know, join us. We are gonna change the world. This is the problem statement.
I was quite impressed by a different way of thinking about business. I've always thought about business prior to that moment as, ah, this is an opportunity for me to make money. Sure. They were not discussing that. They were more discussing about the problem statement and they were discussing about how are we gonna create an institute that inspires people and improve their lives.
And I was blown away by the vision. And we were not talking about getting rich. Like basically the monetary value of it was, it would happen if we managed to do this. The byproduct of it, right? So you manage to change people's lives and enhance it and create an institute that inspires others, we will automatically have that.
And for me, this is a new way of looking at business. So refreshing. I believed in it. I still believe in it. I still believe that whatever we have done at Careem is an extension of what I'm doing today at BRKZ and honestly of what I'm gonna do moving forward. I think that purpose, once you have purpose in life, it becomes a guiding principle for you moving forward.
Jamie Lane: Yeah, a reason to get up. Always helps. How big was the team at the time at Careem?
Ibrahim Manna: I was colleague number 25.
Jamie Lane: Very small.
Ibrahim Manna: Very, very small. Like you would shake everyone's hand in the morning. Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Jamie Lane: What was the transition from being a founder on your own into being an operator as part of a larger team? Was that transition difficult? Was it easy?
Ibrahim Manna: I think the founders of Careem were smart in the way that they positioned it. I've never felt that I was an operator. I always felt like a co-founder at Careem. I was empowered to take decisions. I was given a budget and a few guardrails here and there and off I go.
I remember a lot of the markets that I've ended up launching, it was my initiative with like maybe once in a month catch up. Yeah. I'm gonna launch Iraq. Alright, off you go. Chat next one. I'm telling you like I had a busy schedule. I've ended up launching 11 out of 15 markets and I was traveling every single week for a good eight years with barely any stops.
If I visit the first market at the beginning of the quarter, I need a quarter to visit them again. And I was one of the few connections between what we used to call back then Mountain Peaks, which are the cities and the countries that we operated, and the Base Camp. So I was that connection. And I took it seriously and I made sure that I'm always there. Even when I was in these Mountain Peaks, in the cities, I made sure that I dedicate enough time to speak to each and every colleague of ours, where I give them a good 15, 20, 30 minutes chitchat. Just to understand, okay, what are you going through? What are the challenges? How can I help you? How can I support you? By the time I'm talking to the GM of the country, I know everything at that stage. I got it from the bottom up.
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[00:22:37] LEADERSHIP AND CULTURE AT CAREEM
Jamie Lane: There's a very specific type of founder that emerges from Careem, and I think it is due to that agency. What did you learn about leadership from that time? Was that something that was very much driven from the top down? That sense of you own what you do.
Ibrahim Manna: So, you know, we had values that we believed in. I'm a bit rusty on them, but you know — shooting to the moon, you're of service to others and a lot of these different values that we had. People embodied them, right? And people were empowered even at the lowest layer of the hierarchy.
And it was quite flat back then that people will correct you and tell you, look, I don't think you are exhibiting the right values here, and you would accept it and you would actually thank them for the gift of feedback. And it was such a refreshing feeling where people can actually gift you feedback, help you, and you would look at it from a perspective of like, they care about me and they love me, and this is why they want to tell me this. And I think we all started to uplift one another.
I think the one thing that I loved about leadership at Careem is the concept of leading from behind. Where you want people to actually excel. You want people to be at the front end. You want to make sure that they get the credit that they deserve, and you want to be the force that pushes them forward rather than you doing the job that you need to do. So the way that I thought about it always was I was more of the coach rather than the player. And there were multiple players that I needed to help and guide and support and remove any obstacles from their way.
Jamie Lane: How do you cultivate that atmosphere though? Is it through hiring? Are you very selective in terms of the sort of person that you're hiring? Like it seems like ego is just sort of a big no-no.
Ibrahim Manna: Ego was a big no-no. And I think, you know, I'm not against having ego. I'm against using it in the wrong way. I think in a lot of cases you do need an ego to give you that boost and confidence, which is required, but you need to also be humbled in the right moment and in the right time. And you know that humility is actually quite important.
I think hiring was one. I think having the right culture and values set by leadership and making sure that everyone understands it and investing enough time for people to actually understand it prior to joining. I remember we've let go of a lot of talented people that were not actually culturally fit.
Jamie Lane: How quick do you make that decision?
Ibrahim Manna: I think when they exhibit that they're not within the boundaries of that culture, quickly. Because it does affect everyone. So I think you need to be quick and straightforward when it comes to this.
Jamie Lane: Localization, I think, is one of these things that's always perceived as the great strength of Careem. Whether it's, I dunno, the cash — that was such a differentiator in comparison to Uber. And as you mentioned, you were responsible for so many of the market launches, 11 out of 15. Which is just absolutely insane. And some of these I'd imagine were incredibly difficult. Whether it be politically, just operationally, logistically. Can you talk to me about Jordan in particular? 'Cause this is somewhere where Zach mentioned it was one of the smallest markets initially and ended up being one of the very, very top markets. You mentioned something like 80% market share at one point. Practically speaking, what does that look like?
Ibrahim Manna: I'll tell you the challenge — and each market has a different challenge.
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[00:26:23] NAVIGATING LEGAL AND OPERATIONAL HURDLES
Ibrahim Manna: I think personally my challenge was that I needed to get myself familiar with the country on multiple levels. So in a lot of these countries I've never visited before. So I had to learn a bit about their culture, read about their history, examine their transportation system, take a taxi ride, take a metro if there's one. Just to understand what an average citizen of that nation is offered in order for me to be able to offer something better.
And then there's this whole value proposition where you need to understand how to get supply. I've always believed that in that marketplace, supply always comes prior to demand. If you didn't have cars, you wouldn't even be able to offer rides to anyone. So needed to understand, okay, who are the players? What is the ecosystem?
I think Jordan was tough because Jordan did not have limousines back then and did not have an alternative path other than taxi. And taxis, unfortunately, although at the end we managed to crack that segment, but at that moment, that segment was very tough to crack. They were entirely against it.
And I think the challenge in Jordan was that we needed to rent cars, and we needed to get drivers — captains — to ride those cars and offer the service. And instantly what happens is that you're acting in a very gray area. Where the police will start acting against you. Stopping the cars. Then there are fines. But the people are asking like, please, we want a better transportation mode here. Like, can you legalize it?
So it was a battle between creating pressure points, creating the service, offering a reliable service while going through all of this and marketing it. Because the bigger it got, the more levers and leverage you had in order for you to actually get it legalized. And I think this is very similar in a lot of the different markets that we were in. Some markets were a bit advanced, and laws that needed to be changed — and a lot of these laws were from the sixties and the seventies — that needed to be changed, got changed quickly. Jordan, unfortunately, it took us four years to get there.
Jamie Lane: Oh, wow.
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah. But eventually it was done. And a lot of the people that, with the team of course, we managed to get them to work on the platform. I still meet them every now and then when I go back home.
Jamie Lane: Sharing more stories.
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[00:28:59] STORIES FROM IRAQ
Jamie Lane: Do you have any stories from your time launching Careem in Iraq?
Ibrahim Manna: I'm not sure if this is a podcast, frankly, but we can cut it if you want. No, no. Iraq was a great market. I had to figure out the different players in the Iraqi environment. And basically who to hire to manage who. And sometimes with the lack of law — and I think that was a bit early when Iraq was still recovering out of the war — the tribal law would precede. And in a lot of cases where we had to let go of a captain who was committing fraud, we had to go and meet the sheikh of the tribe and explain ourselves. And if he's not convinced, we need to figure out an arrangement.
But it was a tough market to operate in, but we eventually managed to crack it. Iraq actually was one of the fastest markets for us to grow. And we were not launching in Kurdistan like everyone else was. We started in Baghdad and that opened the way for other startups and other companies to actually show up after us. But I do believe that because Careem went there and showed people that there is a path for you to actually create a sustainable business in that environment, a lot of different businesses actually started showing up.
Jamie Lane: I think we did see the same thing pan out in a Pakistan context as well, with InDrive coming in and their model. How did you keep your stamina up during those years? Because what you're describing is incredibly intense travel, long hours. It sounds both physically and mentally draining.
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah. First of all, I was younger. That helps, I guess. I had a good support system. I think my wife — a lot of gratitude — kept up with my crazy hours and for me not being there and having to raise the girls on her own with me showing up during the weekend almost nonexistent for a while.
I think also my team, back then at Careem, we had what we called it the Mountain Peak Base Camp. So we've created a company within a company, right? Because at that point I was managing emerging markets and the other four big markets were managed by different managing directors.
So I created an ecosystem around me where I got someone who leads operations, someone who leads marketing, someone who leads finance. And these colleagues have managed to help me basically. So it wasn't a one man show anymore. It was more about we're a group of five, six people that will support 11 markets. And yes, I am showing up physically there, but on a weekly basis there's a call from the ops director to them, marketing chips in, finance, and you name it.
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[00:32:16] LAUNCHING AND LEARNING FROM CAREEM CASH
Jamie Lane: Was there anything that you launched during your time at Careem that you were convinced or thought was going to work really well that didn't and just flopped, and why?
Ibrahim Manna: I think the first product — the reason why I was actually asked to come to Careem — I've created... So I was initially responsible for creating a product for delivery. My experience, as you said earlier, is moving things from A to B. And hence this is why I was asked to figure out what can we do with that massive fleet of cars that we have.
So I came up with an idea called Careem Cash, where we would offer collecting cash for digital services on behalf of the suppliers. And I think back then we were talking to one of the airlines here in UAE, where we would offer to create a payment mode called Careem Cash, where you can actually pay for your ticket in cash in one of the Careem rides. And once you pay, we can release the ticket for you automatically.
It didn't work. Not because it didn't have a need. I think, which is a great lesson for me back then, is because Careem needed to focus. And creating in a very early stage of the company parallel verticals and different revenue streams actually dilutes and distracts you from your main objective. And this is when I made the transition to launching new markets and then eventually I became the GM of Jordan. And then I started picking markets.
Jamie Lane: What was the most enjoyable part about working at Careem?
Ibrahim Manna: I think this whole sense of unity, right? We were one group, we were all together. I remember back in the days we were always looking at this channel on Slack — maybe prior to Slack there was something else, but Slack for lack of a better word — we were monitoring growth basically every 15 minutes. And it was exciting, right? Because every week we were breaking records. And it was a team sport. Like all of us together, we were breaking records.
And there was this internal competition where my city will beat your city and your city will come up with something greater. And there is healthy competition from within. But overall, when you look at it collectively together, we've managed to change how people transport in MENA. And hopefully, with different services today, like what's happening with the Super App.
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[00:34:58] TRANSITION TO BRKZ
Jamie Lane: We have the Careem Uber acquisition exit, and then you go into BRKZ. Did you take any time off?
Ibrahim Manna: I took a month off.
Jamie Lane: Did you get bored? Why was that? Did you intend to go back into entrepreneurship straight away?
Ibrahim Manna: No, I didn't. I was planning to take a gap year, which lasted a month.
Jamie Lane: I think that says a lot. That says an awful amount.
Ibrahim Manna: Look, honestly, you live once. There's a lot to do. I'm still young. Relatively young. I feel energetic. I feel like there's a lot of challenges out there, which means that there's a lot of opportunities. I do feel like I am well equipped to actually go through these challenges, regardless of the industry. I liked being on this side of the game rather than on the other side. So I do believe that we do need more experienced entrepreneurs to be out there, with purpose, to help solve and uplift our region.
Jamie Lane: Tell me about BRKZ then. How does that come about?
Ibrahim Manna: Sure. So back in 2020, I was a bit courageous. A lot of people were thinking it's the end of the world. I took a decision of buying a house for my family.
Jamie Lane: Okay.
Ibrahim Manna: And I said, if we're gonna die, it doesn't matter. If we live, great. Then we have a new house.
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[00:36:27] IDENTIFYING GAPS IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Ibrahim Manna: So I've ended up getting a house and then starting to work on the house with a contractor. Good company overall, but I've felt that there was a lot of questions that I had. About prices, about selection of different materials, basically transparency on when will these products arrive and all of these things. And I felt like the contractor wasn't equipped enough for them to give me an answer. And I was quite curious why.
And so I started asking a lot of questions, and I've realized that this whole industry is run through pen and paper and on WhatsApp groups, and it's not digitized. And there's a lot of different actors and layers in the value chain, which creates a lot of different operational hurdles for anyone to actually operate in that industry.
I had around a hundred plus interviews. And this is after me exiting Careem, I've started actually traveling. I went to Pakistan, I went to KSA, I went to Deira in Dubai, Egypt, just to ask people about it. And I've realized that this problem is common. It happens. And I've realized that Saudi has the largest layers from all the way from the manufacturer to the end customer, around seven to eight layers.
And I've realized that there's a big opportunity out there. If you look at any modern economy today, construction is one of the main pillars of any modern economy out there. And then you realize that there's not a lot of people in that industry that are trying to innovate. There are a lot of legacy players that are there for quite some time. There's no one trying to actually empower and disrupt that market. And this is where I said, okay, let's start.
And we went through different iterations. I think when we started it was more about the retailers rather than the contractors. Then we quickly realized after a couple of months that the retailers have limited space. Their orders are quite small, and yet their logistics are quite expensive. So we started tackling that industry from different angles rather than from the initial thought.
Jamie Lane: Most people would probably just go, oh, it's unfortunate that the contractor is encountering inefficiencies as far as that's concerned. Probably not embark on hundreds of interviews across the entirety of the region. Was it a problem space that you were interested in prior to that? Was that very much like you encountered it then and it just took hold? You couldn't let it go?
Ibrahim Manna: No, not really.
Jamie Lane: Does that frequently happen where you encounter a problem and you just become obsessed with it? Do you think it is obsession?
Ibrahim Manna: No, it's not obsession. I'm not very attached to the industry as well, to be honest. I'm more passionate about the journey. So the journey is what I'm passionate about. The journey of creating something meaningful that has impact, creating a team that has the right kind of culture, that embodies the right values, and something that grows massively.
And when you think about things that grow massively, they're naturally part of a large industry. So if you look at industries today, what are the large industries? There's construction, there's transportation, travel, there's hospitality, there's banking. So these are common themes. Whatever you go in, any country. And I feel like construction had a gap that no one was actively trying to fill. I still feel like we don't have enough startups in this domain as well. And I feel like there can be a couple of BRKZ rather than one of us. And I feel like that whole industry and ecosystem is quite large, yet the people going after it are not too many.
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[00:40:21] CHALLENGES AND INNOVATIONS IN CONSTRUCTION
Jamie Lane: When it comes to trust — obviously there's a trust element with Careem as well as far as getting customers to trust to use the platform, et cetera. It's quite a different story, I'd imagine, with the construction side of things. You've really entrenched behaviors. 'Cause you mentioned it's phone, it's paper, probably opaque pricing structures, timelines as far as deliveries is concerned. So how do you establish that trust, or how are you establishing it?
Ibrahim Manna: Let me tell you one thing. I think I thought captains were tough to attract. I was wrong. Contractors are a tough crowd. But yet, as any rational business, there is a problem statement. And I think the challenge with contractors, at least from my point of view, is a lot of people got used to doing things in a certain manner. And this is often where it becomes a bit of a challenge to show them a different way of doing things.
And I think one of the things that I've learned through my journey, it's very hard to change habits. And you have to start working around those habits and trying to enhance them rather than trying to change them. For example, one of the things that we heavily rely on is WhatsApp. They use WhatsApp heavily. We use WhatsApp heavily, and we make sure that it's a low digital touchpoint kind of product in order for us to be able to capture that demand and give them a digital response through channels that they are comfortable with.
And if you wanna offer it to someone who's more technology savvy and wants to basically use the whole suite of things that we have created, that exists as well. So you can use it as basic as you want. And you can go as sophisticated as you want with technology with what we have created.
Jamie Lane: Obviously playing around with just the web version — it's a really interesting juxtaposition of the size of things and the types of things that you're ordering and the ease of use in terms of just slotting in like the numbers that you want, whether it be in tons or whatever unit of measurement might be. How much of that was sort of born out through your conversations with suppliers and contractors about what they want from this?
Ibrahim Manna: We had to make it as simple as possible. You know, today I think one testing measure was always asking a product manager, if your parents are able to place an order here, then that would fly, right? Without much onboarding.
We wanted to get to a point where there's a product that is straightforward. If you notice, even when you raise, for example, a request for quotation, it doesn't take you to a different page. It doesn't ask you to click on a card. It's the same page right there for you to actually click on it. Big buttons, clear text. No, the UX can be much better. But what we were solving for is more for you to be able to natively go through it without much hassle.
Jamie Lane: Now that you've explained it, it makes so much sense. We could have made it fancier than that. It does remind, and I don't mean it in a disparaging way, but it's like you get a phone with really big buttons for your grandparent.
Ibrahim Manna: You have to take it step by step. I believe different iterations in the future will be more advanced, but we are in an industry where people don't often use this. And in order for us to be able to do so, we needed to do two things. One is to make it as friendly, as simple as possible. And in terms of selection of goods, we needed to go with goods that are very common. So basically Tier A and Tier B kind of products only. Brand names very familiar. No one will question that kind of steel because they know the factory, they know the product. We're not gonna offer them something that they don't know about. So for us, that becomes more of a commodity rather than something they need to figure out, test it, see it. We went with that decision just to make sure that it gives us enough room to digitize as much as possible.
Jamie Lane: Would you be able to offer any insights into user behaviors? I struggle with wrapping my head around it because it feels like such a foreign industry. It's not a space which obviously I'm super familiar with. Like an average order size, or even you mentioned brands there. I found that really interesting when I was going through the site and you see, oh my god, there's so many different brands of cement. Like is brand loyalty a really important thing?
Ibrahim Manna: Yes, it is. Because when you go to a project, by the way, a lot of projects have approved vendors. And approved vendors usually are three kind of vendors, right? Like three brands. So there's plenty of cement, different products. But when you get to a point where you're dealing with the engineer in charge, he sets from day one, I'm gonna get type A, B, and C. That's it. So you can't get type D because it's not approved.
Jamie Lane: On the financing side of things, how easy an upsell is that? Was that always in the roadmap that was something that you were going to be incorporating? Was that very deliberate?
Ibrahim Manna: I think, funny enough, a lot of our investors understood the concept of embedded financing prior to us thinking about it. We were always looking at it from a perspective of a marketplace. And we had the sourcing challenge and then we had the fulfillment challenge. And now we have the financing challenge as well.
What we've realized is in order for us to tap into larger contractors, we needed to offer financing. And offering financing in this industry isn't as straightforward. We need to have a lot of different alternative sources in order for you to be able to build a financial view in order for you to be able to underwrite and set a limit and disperse amounts.
So for us now, I'm glad where we are today, we're getting much better. We have different iterations of the policy. Now we look at any customer that we wanna provide products on credit from three different elements. One, who's the ultimate owner of that project? And we try to underwrite that entity or that landlord. The second is what is the ability of the execution of the contractor? Because the contractor, it's not about their financial stability as much as it's about their ability to execute, as a lot of those different amounts are passed through from all the way from top till us. So it passes through them. And the third, which are the products, right? And what kind of products are we offering on credit? What is the MOQ rate that we offer and these different questions that we need to answer.
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[00:47:09] THE AI STORY
Jamie Lane: Are you white labeling any products?
Ibrahim Manna: We are. We started getting a couple of products from China. We started white labeling them. We've discovered that there's a gap in the market where there is either products that we're not able to tap into because of the price margin is quite tight between the first layer to the end layer. Or there's lack of that product or the quality is lacking.
So we went on a trip to China. This was my first time to actually go to China.
Jamie Lane: Amazing. What part of China was that?
Ibrahim Manna: I went to seven cities in one week. So it was quite intense.
Jamie Lane: That's intense.
Ibrahim Manna: Yeah. And it wasn't part of the main cities. Basically we went to Guangzhou, but we went to Lianyi, different cities as well. And it was quite a trip. A memorable one.
So what we've discovered is that a lot of the products that we are up against are actually made in China. They're delivered directly from China all the way to Saudi. And we started offering some of these goods where we found there's a gap that we can fill. If we're able to get the gap filled from domestic players with a reasonable margin, this is something that we do. If we're not able to do so, this is where we expand the margin and go through white labeling goods from China.
Jamie Lane: What's the AI story? Do you have an AI story?
Ibrahim Manna: We do, yeah. Everyone has to have AI.
Jamie Lane: Tell me a little bit. I was like, what is it? Come on, give it to me. It can't exist without an AI story. Gimme the pitch.
Ibrahim Manna: I'll give you the pitch. Look, I think the way that we're thinking about AI is that we do have a wealth of information when it comes to BRKZ, right? We have three years of data when it comes to RFQs, to quotations, to pricing, to different products, to trends of the market.
And with the right kind of machine learning and the right tools that we use, we will be able to create a lot of products that will create a lot of productivity gains and efficiency gains for us internally and for our customers as well. So if you take for example pricing as an example, pricing today requires a couple of different questions or if statements to be answered prior to us sending you a quotation.
Funny enough, a lot of these different questions are already answered ahead of time. So if you have the right tools in place that are looking at the right data, I can actually offer you personalized pricing rather than asking you to submit an RFQ and for you to get a quotation. Imagine that whole process becomes legacy. That time lag which just exists — you don't need to wait for a day. Like for us, we issue it within 20 minutes. But that comes at a cost. So imagine if you get it instantly. That's much faster than anyone else.
And honestly, what we would love to believe is that as a group of people, we do understand tech. We all come, or most of us come from a tech background. And a lot of these different advances, we'll start seeing soon at BRKZ.
Jamie Lane: So at the moment we have transaction fees from the marketplace structure, financing from financing. And what's next?
Ibrahim Manna: Oh, come on. You have to gimme something. Gimme something. Equipment, machinery, contractors. I mean, you know...
Ibrahim Manna: Look, I'll tell you. Workforce. There are maybe — someone's been looking at our pitch deck! No. Look, I think these are the four elements, right? So procurement and sourcing, financing, workforce, and then there's equipment. So naturally, if you want to extend what you're doing with customers in different areas, these are potentially areas where we could tap into.
Jamie Lane: Keep your cards close to your chest as far as that's concerned, but that's okay. I respect that.
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[00:51:09] BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND CUSTOMER TRUST
Jamie Lane: How do you further build stickiness? I guess is one of the things that I'm thinking about from a switching cost perspective. Obviously the financing probably helps to that end. And then is it further diversification as far as offering is concerned? Or is it, I guess, once you become used to this disruptive way of doing things whereby it's so seamless in comparison to what predated that, you're like, why would I go back to that? But I guess maybe it's difficult for an incumbent because they'd have to cannibalize their own offering to a certain extent. But how do you think about the switching costs side of things?
Ibrahim Manna: Look, unfortunately switching cost is very low. People can actually switch from one provider to another with a phone call. But I think what builds stickiness is building a meaningful relationship with a customer, making sure that they understand the value that we bring, and the reliability factor as well.
Financing is a part of the offering as well. But sometimes, unfortunately, financing, if there's a bad repayment behavior, it actually works against it rather than with it. So we don't look at it as a retention tool as much as it's an enablement. But we do believe that we offer a wide variety of different products at an affordable price with good reliability and good customer service. What else can someone ask for?
Jamie Lane: It's true. Something I do a lot of time when I'm analyzing companies — do you know Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers Framework? So the seven powers: you have scale economies — tick, I'll give you a tick there. Network economies — yeah, absolutely. Two sided marketplace. The data. Counter positioning — yes. I would argue, yeah. Switching costs — we just touched on. Branding. Talk to me about branding.
Ibrahim Manna: We're not the best at branding. We do believe that our product and our service is our brand and this is what people talk about, usually, in the industry that we're in. Reputation is quite important. And for us, that's the most important thing. And I think that's our brand and this is what we're focusing on.
We're not focused much on marketing. We do have a few experiments here and there. But we do feel that this is a high touch, networking kind of business model where we need to make sure that people know who they're dealing with. We often meet our customers, we have a relationship with them. Like having that kind of relationship and people appreciating it, and us appreciating our partners in success, which are our customers, is our brand.
Jamie Lane: Yeah. It's unlikely, I suppose, you're getting much from organic discovery via SEO.
Ibrahim Manna: We're working on it actually. We got a few orders from it, which is good. It lowers our CAC — cost of acquisition. But then again, think about it this way. We put an effort on getting a customer at the beginning, but that customer lasts long and we typically take a month and around 10 days to actually recoup that investment.
Jamie Lane: The cost of acquisition. Okay. So basically it takes you 1.1 months in order for you to actually recoup. So it's relatively quite fast and quick.
Ibrahim Manna: Is that something you've refined over time as well?
Jamie Lane: Exactly.
Ibrahim Manna: Typically you would need a couple of months to actually recoup that, right? We recoup it in almost one month. Very quick. And I think that's the nature of the industry that we're in. And we wanna make sure that we get as many customers that are meaningful into the platform, that we are able to serve them in a very reliable manner.
Jamie Lane: How big is the team at the moment?
Ibrahim Manna: Today, we're around a hundred colleagues. Maybe one third of that are engineers and product. So there's a heavy investment when it comes to future proofing and creating products for the future.
Jamie Lane: Branding — that's five, six cornered resources. I feel like we can... And then process — that invariably takes time. What does BRKZ look like in five years time?
Ibrahim Manna: Look, I can give you an answer. My challenge is that I don't believe in that lengthy time horizon. These things change so rapidly. There's a lot of different pivots that happen. I do believe that as a company, we are actually working more towards creating an ecosystem, more towards catering for different players in the industry. It doesn't have to be only contractors. So now there's a focus on factories. There's a focus on different kind of players in the industry itself.
I feel like we are working through going one layer or two layers up in the value chain as well as we speak. Financing is becoming a bit more sophisticated and we're gonna get more people involved into that. There's hopefully a marketplace in the future of different players that wanna participate in that and we can provide them with the right data and underwriting and opportunities as well.
So there's plenty of things to do. I think these are the areas where we are focusing on right now. Maybe something else might appear after a while. I think our advantage in tech still has to basically prove itself. We are building a lot of things right now, and we do feel like these things will start adding up at a certain point. I think our digital adoption is quite good so far compared to others in the industry, but we do need to get to a point where we use a lot of these tools that we are seeing right now in order for it to actually make us more advanced, more resilient, more future proof.
Jamie Lane: Have AI tools made much of a difference from an engineering perspective internally within your team?
Ibrahim Manna: It does. Yeah. So all of our colleagues — and this is a company initiative — they have a co-pilot. And I think we've recently launched something where it was mostly done through AI. Which is great. And you hear about these things, you don't often see it. Now you see it.
And we have a tool, for example, in finance called Finance AI, and basically it reconciles between invoices and POs that we get. And it typically takes a full resource to do this. Now we can dedicate that colleague to actually do something else rather than do this with minimal interaction. And now we wanna start testing more use cases. So I think with AI, it's not about creating this one grand thing. It's like, where can you input it within the process to make it more efficient and get more productivity gain out of it.
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[00:58:12] REGIONAL TECH ECOSYSTEM AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Jamie Lane: What are you most excited about from a regional perspective as far as the tech ecosystem at large is concerned?
Ibrahim Manna: I think we're going through different evolutions. I think at the beginning, when we were discussing this earlier, I think Wamda at some point was the spark. When we started, I think back then Jordan was at the frontier of this, and I think there was a milestone of the Maktoob acquisition where people at that moment of time believed that, ah, it's actually possible. Because at that point it was mostly textbook. You can get acquired — now someone got acquired. So a lot of people started believing and we saw a wave of different things.
And I think Careem was a milestone and a point that a lot of different people are reflecting upon, where we started seeing such a valuation given to a startup in the region. So it's no longer we're getting acquired, but acquired for a small amount relative to what we see in the west. No, but this is real. This is big.
And I think what we've done correctly at Careem, and I've tried to do the same thing in my company, is where everyone gets options. Meaningful options. Where if the company gains, everyone gains and everyone will gain. And I think what was great at that moment of time is that you saw a lot of companies pop up after the acquisition of Careem. And I think that next wave of entrepreneurship happened because a lot of people were given that financial freedom, were given that ability for them to actually step up and get outside of the role.
Although it was not in the best interest of Careem at that moment, Mudassir, Mada, and Magnus didn't only think about it in that perspective, but thought about how can this enable a full ecosystem moving forward that lives beyond Careem. So we've lived, I think, true to our mission to basically create an institute that inspires. And that basically created more companies that inspired.
And I'm hoping now with the likes of different companies that we're seeing either in Saudi or in UAE or Egypt, there's plenty of companies that can create more value. If you see today at every single sector or industry, there's someone trying to disrupt and innovate and do. If you look at groceries, there's plenty. If you look at restaurants, there's plenty. If you look at financing, there's a lot. If you look at banking, there's a few. So you look at it, it's more diversified definitely than back when I first started in 2005.
There's definitely a lot of support that we're seeing from different governments and enablement from the private sector as well. We have seen a lot of different players actually show up from abroad as well, which is uplifting the ecosystem, which is great.
So yeah, I'm quite optimistic. I think it's a great time for you to be an entrepreneur in this region.
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[01:01:24] FUTURE PROSPECTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Ibrahim Manna: This is a great time to start.
Jamie Lane: Is there any problem that you wish more startups were focusing on? Aside from construction?
Ibrahim Manna: I have to keep something for the next one. I can't spill the beans.
Jamie Lane: Come on. Please let us in.
Ibrahim Manna: No, I'm kidding. I think, look, in terms of the big ones, most of them are covered. I think then you start getting into the niche kind of startups, which — I promised myself not to get into more niche stuff moving forward. So I'm focusing more on the macro, larger.
Jamie Lane: Exactly. Thank you very, very much for your time. This was really, really enjoyable.
Ibrahim Manna: No, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Jamie Lane: Amazing.
Ibrahim Manna: Thank you. We're good.
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END OF EPISODE