Hello, welcome back to the Bilna Sandeep Show.  I am Bilna Sandeep, founder of Built Market Lab and Growwie, which are two marketing agencies based in Dubai.  I am also fortunate enough to be the founder of Homepreneurs Club, which is a powerful networking platform for women entrepreneurs. And today on the show, I have somebody who I’ve been following for quite a long time, right from the time when I was working in construction.  You know, the way you follow people like you can relate to their journeys very well, but they have gone ahead of you.  So that is one person I want to introduce today to all of you. Welcome to the show, Shyam. 

Shyam: Thank you for having me.  Thank you so much. 

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Who is Shyam Visavadia?

Bilna: Thank you so much. So, for our listeners, would you like to say a short introduction about yourself?  And I know you’re a serial entrepreneur, so I would love to hear about all your three businesses. 

Shyam: Perfect.  So, my name is Shyam Visavadia. I don’t really know what to call myself, to be honest.  You know, I’m a recruiter, I’m a startup founder, and I’m also a project manager. 

Bilna: Three hats, right? 

Shyam: Three separate hats, amongst other things, other ventures that I’m basically working on as well. So, when people ask me at networking events, like, what do you do? And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, what do you do?” And then trying to find out, maybe I could correlate some interest between what you do and what I do, and then I can tell you, “Oh, I’m actually a recruiter, or maybe I’m a startup founder, or I do this or do that”. So it’s very difficult.  I think everyone kind of throws out the entrepreneurship name because it’s just easy to kind of put an umbrella over everything.  But yeah, I’m someone who wears many hats, traditionally from the corporate world.  I used to be a project manager for several large consulting and development firms across the UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Bilna: That’s nice. So, when did you start your very first business and what was it? 

Shyam: Well, I started when I was super, super young.  So, I think probably in my teens, college, and university, I used to be good at tech.  So, you know, like fixing computers, fixing laptops, fixing phones in my friendship circle, people used to come to me like, “Oh, this is broken, can you fix this on my phone or can you install Microsoft” or can you do this or do that?  You know, the days of like Napster and Kazaa and LimeWire.

Bilna: And you were probably charging early for that.

Shyam: Exactly. Like all these different things.  And for some reason, I just kind of knew what to do.  So, it started in the early teens where I was too young to work.  Being without an entrepreneurial mindset, I used to just go do it.  And not necessarily for money, but it was more just because I could do it. And then kind of growing on that, you know, going into my first job at 16, working on construction sites, as well as having a retail job, I kind of built on the skills and the hustle and also the failures of that.  And then kind of, you know, taking it from there. But I’ve done many, many, many, many things when I was young. 

Bilna: OK, I think still you’re doing a lot of things.

Shyam: Yeah, I guess, you know, it grows, I think, as your personality grows, as your experience grows, as you grow older, you kind of take the foundations of what you built through your experience, through your career and academia and you start building that across. And for some reason, I’ve continued doing that. Still very talkative as well as I was younger.  And, yeah, just use that to my benefit to grow several businesses. 

What is Wasta?

Bilna: So, you know, when I first came to UAE, that was like, 12 years back.  And they were telling me, you know, “If you want to find a job, you need to have Wasta”.  And I was like, what the hell is this Wasta? You know, in the by-terms. So now one of your startups is called Wasta.  What is that?  Can we hear more about it? 

Shyam: Yes, I think the name, I think anyone listening to this, you know, whether you’re an expat or whether you’re from the GCC or Emirati or the like, you would have come across this word in some respect, across your journey.  But it’s one of these words which has many definitions.  And I’ve done a lot of research on the word before we chose the word, because I know a lot of people say, “Oh, you know, you can’t use it. You can’t use this word.  It’s very bad”.  You ask why and they’re like, “We don’t know, but we’ve been told it’s bad”.  But they don’t know what it means to them.

Wasta to me means the connection, having the connection, knowing someone.

You know, we did so much research, having lived in Saudi Arabia and UAE for more than 10 years and also coming as an outsider having no link to the word.  When we did our research, we found that there was a lot more positive affiliation to Wasta than the negative aspect of it. So, when we’re thinking about networking, building relationships, connecting people together, because that’s the primary business of what Wasta does.  Why not use a word which means something to a lot of people, whether you’re an expat, whether you’re a local, whether you’re a GCC, or you’re coming new to the region, that word has some affinity to you, whether you know the definition or not.  So having that name, which is easy to spell, which is widely used with our logo, with the waving hand is almost welcoming.  And I think for us, Wasta is a way of connecting in the region, which means something to you.  And everyone should have Wasta.  And I think this is the reason why we launched the app, is to make sure that…

…whether you’re new, you’ve been one day in the UAE, or one day in Saudi, or one day in Egypt, or you’re moving, because it’s a very transient region, everyone has the ability to meet and network with someone who has the same goals, interests, and objectives.  Otherwise, as you may know, the region can become really lonely if you don’t have anyone to speak to.  And Wasta opens that up across the region. 

How is Wasta different from other Social Networking Platforms? 

Bilna: So, is it like a networking platform?  Is it like if I join, I get to meet other people through that?  How is it different from the social networking platforms, Wasta? 

Shyam: So, I love networking.  I’ve used LinkedIn to build my brand.  I’ve got 30,000 followers. I have two identities. I have my virtual identity, which is LinkedIn.  Everyone knows me. I’m very outspoken. I have tens of thousands of followers. I can post anything can get 10,000 views in 24 hours.  But then I have my real-world me, who is Joe Bloggs. I could be walking past a connection in the street and never even fidget or move or even know who you are.  But we could have tons of conversations through LinkedIn Messenger. That side of having connections is great, but it’s not meaningful. It’s not a meaningful conversation. You’re just aggregating connections.

When you go to networking events, it’s like, “Hey, what do you do?  I do this, I do that”.  And if you go to any other event where there are hundreds of people there, and if you’re not like me, who’s a very outspoken person, you could almost just go there and not say anything or not do anything or kind of tremble in the questions that you want to ask or the music’s too loud or the other person’s talking too much like myself.  And then you come back and you’re like, well, that was really rubbish.  That wasn’t a good use of my time.  I just aggregated 10 business cards, but I don’t even know who these people are. That’s not good.  That’s not the way to network, in my opinion.

So having Wasta, an app which is accessible to all in a curated network, because we curate people in terms of before they can come into the network to retain the quality.

Bilna: So, you shortlist them before they join?

Shyam: We do an interview with each person before they come on, just to make sure there’s a level of accountability with the people that are coming on the platform and to ensure that people are coming on for the right reasons.  We don’t want people coming on to date. We don’t want people to come on for business development and sales because imagine you meet someone, who’re like, “Hey Bilna, now I’m trying to sell this window product. You need to buy my cleaning products”.  And then it just becomes another networking site, whereas what we want to do is to create that level of connection with someone that you need to speak to or would like to speak to or can’t get access to through an easy-to-use video app where we connect you each week through video to someone new for 20 minutes.

How does Wasta work? 

Bilna: So, when you say through video, do I record my video and then send it to the connection?  Is that how it works? 

Shyam: No, so you basically give us some information about yourself.  What do you do, your background, your title, some of your history, your social media sites, etc. We look at that data in the background and use an algorithm.  It’s not AI, it’s just an algorithm that we’ve created to find other people in our network who are curated and bring you together.  We block out your calendar for 20 minutes each week, so at the moment we do Wednesday at morning, midday, or in the evening.  We connect you; you get a calendar invite; you click on the calendar invite at that time.  There’s a link there for a video.  You have the video call, hey, you meet that person. 

Bilna: Okay, so that’s a live video what we’re talking about.

Shyam: It’s live, you’re meeting that person in real time.  Yeah, they could be in Saudi, they could be in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar. 

Bilna: It’s more like matchmaking, is it something like that? 

Shyam: You meet that person, and because our data sets are matching you on 15 different elements, most of the time the connection is going to be useful.  If it isn’t, give us your feedback, and we will tweak your algorithm and see if we can give you new people.  But on the whole, the value of that connection over a 20-minute conversation has led to fundraising, has led to friendship, has led to job opportunities, has led to people visiting someone else’s country, has led to people finding their long-lost friends from primary school 25 years ago. So, when we hear these things, we’re just doing something simple by connecting two people together, but we’re using data to drive those interactions.

Strategies for Transforming Connections into Opportunities 

Bilna: Nice, that’s amazing.  So now when I usually go, just like you mentioned, when you go to networking, when you take the card and then 90% of the time you just forget them, right?  So, when it’s on Wasta, when I get a connection like that, how do I take it to the next level?  What is the strategy that you would suggest to the users of the platform? Be it on Wasta or be it on LinkedIn or be it on any networking events. 

Shyam: I think you need to understand why you want to network and what you’re looking for.  Once you have an idea of what you’re looking for, you can start asking the right questions, right?  And having a profile or having prompts that we provide you will give you an idea on why we’ve connected you up, right? So, for example, if it’s construction and you’re looking for something in marketing, then we will try our best to connect you up with someone similar in the industry who could potentially be a client or could potentially be someone you can do business with or someone who could join your business. And having access to a profile, you can view their profile before you have the chat.  So, you can look at their LinkedIn, you can look at their Twitter, you can look at their Instagram, you can look at other elements of their profile and find out, “Wow, like how the hell have Wasta put this together?  We have never seen anyone so similar”. But because we’re driving the connection via data or through data, there’s more of an opportunity that the conversation is going to be fruitful. And that’s really where the engagement happens. Once you have that 20-minute call or so, some people have a half an hour, some people have it 45 minutes if they think it’s amazing, that’s a good enough indication for you to then take that offline.  Because networking can’t just be behind a laptop and be like a keyboard worry.  I’d be like, hey, what do you do?  Some people might love doing that, particularly if they don’t live in a major city like Al Khobar, Daman, certain elements of the UAE, Fujairah, they can’t get access to it. 

But generally, once you’ve got that initial traction, it then prompts you or we prompt you or will prompt you because we’re still building the feature.  It’s like, “Hey, you met a Bilna, why don’t you then go for a coffee with her?”  Or you give us feedback to say it was really good because we get your feedback after the call.  Why don’t you go meet her for a coffee?  Why don’t you ask her for some support? And that is automated from the platform.  We are still building that feature out. When you’re building a tech solution, you can’t just rapidly build features, that’s the wrong way to build.  Ask your customers, what do they want, how do they want to proceed next?  Is it a chat?  Is it face-to-face?  Is it a prompt?  Is it something?  We’re still learning about that.  And then we will start building for the next stage. I don’t think as the product owner, we’re not there yet to make that decision to say what happens next.  

Right now, we just want to get feedback from our community to say, did you meet the right person?  That’s it. How good was it?  Was it easy to connect? Did you find it useful?  96- 97% considering we’ve only been running for about a month and a bit has been great.  There are some teething problems, we apologize, but as a startup founder, as a startup owner, there’s going to be teething problems in anything that you do, and then you can start. 

Exploring Work Panda

Bilna: I think it has to be built with the user together, right?  The second phase goes that way.  Now, coming to Work Panda as well as Wasta, both of it is more like people’s platform.  So, what’s the difference in there?  So, in Work Panda, what do you do there?  And would you explain Work Panda also for us? 

Shyam: I’ve been in construction for a very long time.  So formally around 10 years, but informally probably around 15 or 16 years.  I’ve worked with some of the leading organizations in the world, namely, EC Harris, Arcadis, Faithful and Gold, the Red Sea Global Public Investment Fund.  I’ve learned or absorbed the experiences that all of these firms have gone through in terms of finding the right talent, retaining talent, and understanding how that all correlates to the success of a business.  And I realized finding talent for one of the leading industries in the world, construction is 60% of GDP.  It’s huge and it’s growing, right?  All the way from buildings, infrastructure, all the rest of the affiliated sectors to construction.  It’s absolutely huge.  And if the construction industry wants to reach the demands of what they’re saying to attain to the growth of cities and of population and so on and so forth, you need to have people coming into the sector.  And unfortunately, and I’m sure you’ll agree, construction is the least sexy industry out of any other industry.  You speak to kids, children, teenagers right now.  What do you want to do?  Hey, I want to code.  Hey, I want to work in this.  Hey, I want to do that.  But if everyone wants to work in those sectors, then who’s going to come to the construction industry?  Who’s going to come and fill all of those backlogs?

Bilna:  How do you attract the talent to that industry? 

Shyam: Who’s going to come into the surveying roles, the project manager roles, the construction roles and so on and so forth? 

Bilna: I think especially here when you have to walk the sites in the hot climate when probably.  

Shyam: Again, people don’t really know the true value of working in construction unless people like me and you come on podcasts and tell people actually, it’s not just wearing hard hats and boots and going on sites.  Okay, it is like that, but it’s honestly fun.  I couldn’t think of anything less than just sitting behind a laptop, nine to five, drinking coffee and doing nothing, going on site, meeting people, learning how things happen. 

Bilna: And seeing the whole process of a building grow from the design board to the final.  

Shyam: Exactly, when you see, when I go past Al-Khail Road and I see King’s College Hospital and I’m like, I used to climb those stairs when there was no lift.  When there was nothing there, it was desert.  The master plan for Dubai Hills was nothing.  And to see that is like honestly amazing.  If I go to some of the other master plans.

Bilna: We have that level of attachment towards those buildings, right? 

Shyam: Anyways, taking all of that, having the understanding on how the ecosystem works across different borders, both in the UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia and the growing demand for talent to come into the industry.  There needed to be a level of a technological shift in recruitment, in HR to really drive the bridge between the demand and the supply of jobs. And so, me being a corporate person back in 2018, I decided actually before 2018, when maybe about 10 years ago that imagine there was a LinkedIn for construction where there was a curated community for construction professionals from all backgrounds, people who use tech, people who don’t know how to use tech because a lot of construction workers don’t have access to technology. There was a way we could bring them together through an app using data to connect people in the way Wasta works.  That would be amazing.  But low and behold, a corporate guy coming into the tech world to build something that I didn’t even know what I was doing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building it. We’ve got it completely wrong.  Completely, completely, completely wrong.  Everything that you could think of in terms of driving a business, running a business, building a product, maintaining a product, everything was a shambles.  And so, we sought to build something, realized that I wasn’t the person in the world to do this.  

Went to America, tried to launch there, tried to raise investment. Everyone said no, was kind of lost.  I think that was what we tried to achieve, realized that I wasn’t the person to do it, learned my lesson after many, many years building this product, lost all of that money.  But what I learned and the failures got me to Wasta.  And if I never failed and I never learned and I never went through those adversities, Wasta would have never happened. 

And that’s really where I think most founders will say that your first business is that trial and error, that car that you just ran into the bridge, you break it, you do whatever with it, you learn from those adversities and then you take that to the next level.  And all the lessons learned, if you’ve learned something which most people would have, you take it into build your next project and your next project and next project.  And it’s that evolution of learning which founders will take to the next stage.

Sustaining Entrepreneurial Motivation Amidst Failures  

Bilna: But when it comes to the failures, it’s not always easy to accept that something has failed, especially when it’s an idea that which we launched and then taking it to another product, it’s not an easy thing, right? And there’s something called motivation.  How do you stay motivated?  That mindset, that entrepreneur’s mindset of never letting it fail and just starting and running again.  How do you do that?  What’s your take on that? 

Shyam: It is tough. And I think if it wasn’t to do with the money aspect of it, because you’re building a business and you’re pumping money into something that may or may not work. So, there’s the money element of it because living in Dubai or I was at the time I was in the US.  So, living in the US or living in Dubai is expensive.  Every day you breathe in the UAE or in America, you’re spending hundreds of dirhams, hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dirhams, hundreds of dollars, rent, car, going out, doing anything.  It’s gonna cost you money.  And the money that I made in Saudi and before only had a limited number and there’s a burn in terms of what I kind of forecasted for two years.  And then there’s your life savings. And I had burnt through $250,000 and then I was burning through my savings.  And so, I was like stuck and I was like, I’m building something which if I do win, I’m probably gonna be the most famous person knowing that all my competitors had died out.  Still not listened because I was so hungry as a 29-year-old to say, “Ha-ha, I don’t care.  I’m gonna fix this.  I’m gonna be the superhero for the construction industry being naive and pretty thick at the time. But knowing that I only had $50,000 left or 50,000 pounds left to have a runway of probably around 18 months, that if this is gonna be the end, I would have to go back to my old manager and saying, “Can I please have my job back?”  Which for anyone is a hard and tough pill to swallow.  And I didn’t wanna do that.  So I think calling it a day and basically parking Work Panda at that time with $150,000 worth of tech sitting in a GitHub repository system that I couldn’t touch.  I couldn’t see, I didn’t have any kind of value on the money that I spent in two years just sitting there. And I was like, ouch.  It couldn’t even sell it because it was such a custom-built product.  Because I outsourced it and I spent so much money building something in my head.  Didn’t speak to any of my customers.  Couldn’t do anything with it.  And so, it was tough to make that decision.  

But in hindsight, because I kind of put it to a side, gave me the light to start Wasta.  And we built that in a completely different way which is working now. We’ve got a low burn rate. We’re kind of keeping an eye on the budgets. We’re not outsourcing. We built everything in-house.  And now that’s working.  And then in retrospect, now, a year and a half ago, we revived the construction element of Work Panda but not the tech.  So, we put it into a traditional model which is a percentage of gross salary.  We worked for maybe 30 of the leading construction, architecture and design companies across the UAE.  And we recovered all of our costs in six months. So, we recovered all of the money that we lost over the period of three years through a traditional model.  

And it’s a realization that sometimes it doesn’t work but it’s the lessons learned will then take you to the next stage. And fortunately, enough for me, like in this industry, in this market, which is very immature market in terms of, it’s very traditional.  You have to go by word of mouth.  Technology in the Middle East, in my opinion, isn’t as, I wouldn’t say lucrative, but permeable in comparison to maybe other markets. People are still learning about technology here. They’re still learning about the value. And when you’re working with a traditional sector like construction in the Middle East market, trying to throw technology at it sometimes isn’t the right method. And sometimes going back to a traditional model and then slowly, slowly, slowly chipping away, chipping away and including or introducing technology is definitely the way forward. And for me, that lesson learned has really supported me to grow all my businesses together now because I know how the market works. 

Bilna: That’s great.  So, for that first 150,000, it was you had to pocket, but the lesson that came out of it was the foundation for all the other three businesses that are running right now.  Nice. 

Networking for Growth and Success

Bilna: And now when it comes to before Work Panda, I’m sure you might have reached out to a lot of people as a founder because for us as a founder, that’s the most important part, growing your network and meeting the right people.  So how did you go about that?  And I’m sure even you’re probably during the times of a career as well, you might have done that.  How did you go about making those connections? 

Shyam: Let’s go all the way back to childhood.  I was the funny guy in class.  I was the guy that got along with everyone. I’m still the guy who organizes all the parties, the dinners, the this, the that. I’m the social butterfly in the group. I’m the guy who would bring people together.  If you’re fighting, I’ll bring you together. If it’s a birthday, I’ll bring you together.  So, I’m generally a very extroverted person and I love bringing people together.  So, I think when you bring that into a business environment, that was something that worked to my advantage.  Some people say that I am very crazy.  You got ADHD, you’re very excited, but I use that to my advantage by networking.  And I love talking as most people would know. I love talking and I love to listen as much as I talk, but listen to people and understand their problems. Like a psychiatrist listening in, but I look at them, I see patterns and then I can think about, “Oh, Bilna, you said this.  Okay, you need to connect with one, two, three, four, five people”. Yes. Boom.  And then I connect with them.

Bilna: I’ve seen you do that on LinkedIn too.  Like sometimes when I post, you always tag some people, right? 

Shyam: So, what I’ve done to that is I am a very social person.  I love connecting people, which is a big part of business, especially in the Middle East. But I’ve amplified that by using social media. By using LinkedIn as my primary tool. Because I always say everyone has their tool.  Some people love Instagram.  Some people love TikTok. Some people love LinkedIn.  Some people love Twitter.  But for me, that’s where I spend 90% of my day is on LinkedIn to see opportunities.  And the region isn’t big enough in comparison to a London or a USA.  Here, you could get to know the key decision-makers, in my opinion, in about a year. That’s a good amount of time to get to know the key players, who’s doing what.  

Unfortunately, I’ve been here for 10 years and utilizing LinkedIn, utilizing my own career history, working with PIF and some of these big companies.  People generally want to associate with me because of my career history and the value I bring on social media. Some of the articles, like we met through the APC with RICS.  And some of the companies I’ve worked for, some of the networking events, and so on and so forth. And as my career has grown and diversified with these big players, I have then latched onto their corporate brand and made myself a figurehead for those brands. For EC Harris, they put me on the newspaper, on the metro. So, every single person in Southeast England, if not the whole country, would have seen my face because I was associated to that.  When I was at ‘Faithful and Gould’, I wrote many articles for them, which is probably one of the reasons how you met me.

Bilna: Yes, that’s how I met you.

Shyam: Exactly. When I was at PIF, I wrote articles about moving as an expat to Saudi, as a 20-year-old something.  And I think it’s probably the highest-grossing article on Google today.  There’s something like 300,000 reads on that. And people still message me to say, I read your article and I’m living in Neom, I’m living in the Red Sea, I’m living in here, and you supported me to make that decision. So, using social media, using the internet to amplify my own brand from a personal perspective has really allowed me to forge those relationships. This is how we had a discussion before the podcast.  How do you get to meet these people? How do you talk to CEOs?  And it was because I’ve built such an amazing brand that they actually come to me or they know of me.  So, when I do go to a networking event, they know who I am already, which is exactly what I love.  So, I don’t have to introduce myself.  They’re like, oh, you’re the annoying guy on LinkedIn.  Or you’re the guy who wrote Fantastic Art School.  Or you’re the guy who messaged me on LinkedIn to join Wasta.  Or you messaged me because you’re a candidate. And so all of a sudden, I get to know everyone.  And so, when I want something to do with business, fit out contractor, client, recruiter, talent acquisition, bridge financing, venture capital, you’re one message away.  Not seven degrees of connection, you’re one message away.  And I love that.  

Bilna: That’s nice.  I think there’s a power of personal branding on yourself on social media.

Shyam: I think there’s two ways.  There are people out there who’s like, “Don’t put stuff on the internet, don’t put it on the internet”. I’m like, I want people to see it. Because that’s what’s getting me to the next stage. There’s a fine line. Obviously, the internet’s not policed.  You have to be very careful what you say, what you write, what you like, what you don’t like.  People probably don’t know.  But if I’m recruiting and you’re a candidate, I will research everything about you. I will go on your Twitter.  I’ll go on your TikTok.  I’ll see what you like, what you don’t like.  I’ll make a couple of phone calls.  I will find out about you. You’ve got to hide.  I will find you. And there’s the good side of it, which is like, you can amplify what you do, your work, the stuff I’ve done. People like yourself have picked it up.  And that can really benefit you if you use it in the right way, on the right mediums.  And that’s something that I found out pretty early in my career and have used that as a platform to amplify my future opportunities. 

From Career to Entrepreneurship: The Journey 

Bilna: So, while you were at your career, did you have a plan to really quit and start something? Or did it just happen?  How was that story? 

Shyam: I’ve always been business-minded. And going into big businesses was always a machine for me to learn.  If you are aware of this term, it’s called intrapreneurship, which is acting as an entrepreneur within a big business.  So, I always have to shout out EC Harris EC Harris, back 10 years ago, which is now Arcadis, was one of the pinnacle moments in my career because they were so pro in giving opportunity to their employees. Honestly, I’ve never worked for an organization who were so giving to their staff.  And being an entrepreneur or being someone excited to be part of this machine, a global organization, they worked on many amazing projects.  

Chelsea Barracks in the UK, FIFA, the Qatar World Cup, they worked in Ashghal in Qatar, they’ve worked in Saudi on Kingdom Tower.  They’ve worked on anything and everything. And to be part of that, maybe I wasn’t working on those projects to be associated to that.  And all the other opportunities that they gave me really built the foundations to who I am today and what I know.  The system, the structure, the support, the programs where they would send you abroad.  So, they sent me to China, they sent me to Hong Kong. And they are the ones who brought me to the Middle East.  And so being part of these big businesses gives you the opportunity to learn, to take on responsibility, to mature as a professional. And then once you work for a big business, getting to the next step often becomes slightly easier.  Not easy, but slightly easier because of the affiliation of the brand.  And then working for Atkins or Faithful and Gould, SNC Lavalin, it’s another great brand. And then obviously working for PIF. PIF called me in 2018 and they were like, “Hey, do you want to come work in Saudi?”  It’s actually through my old manager.

Bilna: That’s when you moved to Saudi. 

Shyam: Yeah, and this is through my old manager. And I think it’s an interesting story because I turned down PIF three times before I said yes. Because I think anyone working in construction back in 2018, living the Dubai life, a young chap, loves going out, loves partying.  You know, the lifestyle in Dubai is amazing for you to go Saudi.  You hear stories, I’ve never been.  And I was like, “No, no, it’s not for me. I’m staying in Dubai.  I’m staying in Dubai”.  They call me again saying. 

Bilna: Right now, you see there’s a huge boom there. But in 2018, it wasn’t the case.

Shyam: I didn’t even know what PIF meant.  I was Googling it and I was like, what is this?  What is this thing?  And fortunately enough, my manager at the time, super amazing, I said, “Listen, I’m going to resign”.  And he was like, what are you doing?  And I was like, I need to tell you, just wait.  I need to tell you.  He’s like, “Don’t you work for a great company, don’t move.  Or tell me if you’re going to move to him, he’ll counteroffer you.  You’re working on great projects.  You can only grow from here”. And I was like, “I’m going to join a company called PIF”. And he was like, “Just go.  Go because we have got some RFPs and there’s some interesting projects out there. And I think with someone with your ambition and drive, you would be amazing at working for them. Whatever you do, whether it’s PM, design management, PMO, wherever it is they want you to do, go do it. Learn. You’re going to be part of this corporate machine. It’s going to be the biggest development company in the world.  Go work for them. You just don’t know what you’re missing out on”. 

And I went there. And obviously, the laws and everything were from the past.  Saudi has completely changed.  I went through the whole transition as the country grew. I have amazing Saudi friends, the most hospitable people in the world. And being part of that project was honestly, when people looked at PIF or Red Sea on my CV, the conversation just changes.  Because of the clout, the brand, the vision, what they’ve done, what they’re still doing, it’s honestly amazing.  And I think testament to what they’ve done is a reflection on being part of that as well. So, people judge you differently on the brands that you’ve worked with, particularly in this region.

Starting a Business: Timing and Advice 

Bilna: Yes, yes.  So, if I were to start a business in this region, so you have got experience of now your business is successful and you have also had the experience of how some areas which failed before.  So, what would you advise?  Like if somebody is going to start, is it better they wait and have their own probably at least 10 years’ worth of experience before they go into, or should if someone’s really ambitious, can they just start a business?  What is your advice on that? 

Shyam: A lot of people come to me and saying, “Hey, we look at your journey and we’d love to do the same”.  I’m like, “Great.  What’s your idea?”. “Oh, I don’t really know what my idea is.  Like, what do you think your idea is?” I’m like, well, your experience and my experience are different.  And I always like to create businesses based on my own adversities.  So, if there’s something wrong, or if I think there’s somewhere where I can out beat my competitors, I’m going to drive that business. 

So, you need to have an idea. And a lot of people say to me, I need to wait until I have five years’ experience, 10 years’ experience, 20 years’ experience.  But waiting for what?  Like by the time you think of the idea, someone has already done it. Or the market’s changed, or there’s no need for that product.  You have a window of X number of years to build, to scale, to sell.  If that’s what your journey looks like.  And so, you have to do it now.  Right? 

There are two elements.  It’s don’t wait.  If you’ve got the resources, you’ve got the capital, you’ve got your runway, you’ve got a good idea, go do it now.  Like now. Like if you’re listening, go do it now.  But make sure that you’ve got a plan.  You know what to do.  If you’ve got a family, what’s the runway?  You don’t just resign and say, I’m going to go somewhere in business.  That’s dumb.  But have a plan.  Know exactly what you want to do.  Do your research.  I spent years and years and years researching, as you know, with graduate surveyors, eight years of research before I started building.  And even then, I got it wrong.  And that was eight years of me, every single day after work, trying to research on who my competitors were. You know, CRM systems, application tracking systems, who are the recruiters out there, who are the local recruiters out there, which demographics are there, what’s their turnover?  I did a lot of research on that. 

The second element is failure.  People don’t want to start because they know they are fearing the failure.  But the matter of fact is that you’re going to fail.  Your business, your first business is going to fail.  And anyone who hasn’t failed in their first business, honestly, hats off to you. But you’re going to fail.  You need to spare five years of your life before you see success. If it’s done in three or four years, honestly, congratulations.  But you need to just take away five years of your life.  

The partying, the going out, the sacrifices, the weddings.  I’m sure your wife is nagging you to get married or your husband is nagging you to get married or to have a kid or whatever.  Just sacrifice five years of your life.  And if you can do everything concurrently, go do it. But the road ahead is going to be a difficult one.  But you do need to sacrifice the five years. 

So, find the problem, find the idea.  It could be something that hopefully is an adversity to you so you can be passionate about what you’re building or what you’re solving or what you’re creating.  Be passionate.  It could be baking. It could be something that’s already out there.  But do it, but do it better than anyone else. 

And the second thing is if you’re fear of failing, you’re going to fail.  So, you rather fail fast than not do it at all. But you need to be a certain type of character to really drive because there’s going to be many obstacles in your way. If you keep on failing and keep on getting knocked down, if you can look up, you can get up.  So, this is some things that everyone needs to consider.  And if it doesn’t work, just go back to work. 

Essential Advice on Delegating

Bilna: Great, great.  And when it comes to now, since you have three businesses, I’m sure you are a pro at delegating because you can’t run three without having a team, right?  So as a founder, what’s your advice on delegating?  Who’s the first person that you need to hire in your team when you’re growing?

Shyam: Having good people around you is super, super important.  Whether they’re advisors, whether people you look up to, whether it’s people that are going to support you, people who are giving you ad hoc advice about certain things.  Because to be honest, I’m not a recruiter.  I have never done recruitment before.  I have no idea about recruitment.  I’m trailing on the internet most of the time trying to find the idea.  But then again, I was like, well, I’ve got 30,000 people on my LinkedIn.  Why don’t I just reach out to recruiters and just get their advice?  Whether they knew they were giving me advice because I was going to start a competitive firm or I was asking my friends for advice to how to write a contract. 

I winged a lot of it at the beginning stages. And I am still winging some of it.  But the matter of fact is that you’re only as good as what you know.  And sometimes if you don’t know, you just have to take the risk.  And that’s what an entrepreneur does.  

So, a lot of the beginning stages of what I did was absolutely winging it and failing and then understand why I failed and then adding a clause in or changing my approach or changing what I worked with and then so on and so forth. 

Bilna: Learning on the go.

Shyam: Learning on the go.  When it comes to people, again, I use Upwork, Fiverr.  You know, I was like, I want to just do it cheap but then maximize on the revenue. And guys, it doesn’t work.  You need to spend money in order to get some return on investment. And I’m not saying break the bank balance. I’m saying try to get some word-of-mouth recommendations from an entrepreneur or a founder or a business owner to say, I vouch for this person’s work and they do it really, really good.  And this is how much he charges or she charges and work with them and then do it that way. Start small.  Don’t go, “I’m going to revolutionize the marketing side and I’m going to take over the whole world”.  And I speak to founders like that.  I’m going to take 20% of the market share in the UAE and that equates to 400 billion dollars.  And I’m like, right, you need to learn my friends but you’re going to fail faster and it’s going to hurt you even harder.  But go find some good people.  

You can look online, look at Fiverr, Upwork, get some of their work, see their portfolio, see the testimonials, give them a piece of work, see how they work and then take it on.  If you’re looking for a first employee and you’re looking for someone a little bit more long-term, then obviously go through their LinkedIn, try to get some recommendations from previous employers, talk to them, give them a trial, a paid trial, a paid internship, see if you get along with them.  You need to get along with your employees in order for you to get the most out of them.  If you love their work but you don’t like them, okay, there’s going to be a problem.  And the people I work with, I treat them with the utmost respect and I have remote teams. I have people in Philippines, India, the UK, the US. Lalita, my co-founder for Wasta is in the UK, but she’s sometimes in Saudi.  So, we live in this world where you can have remote teams.  I think COVID has taught us that. 

Bilna: I think it’s after that we really started exploring that more, right? 

Shyam: You need to, in terms of finding the people, is use the various networks that are out there in the market and try to get along with that person and build a rapport. The beginning stages are always difficult, but once you start building that, then you can start asking them, do you know anyone? Do you know anyone?  Do you know anyone? And using those networks to find people.  Once you have three or four different people, you’ll have a good spectrum of what good looks like, what your culture looks like.  And then hopefully your employees will bring other employees and they will bring other employees.  And this is what’s happening with Work Panda and Wasta.  My employees, my colleagues, are bringing their friends from their companies, from that company, from that company, from that company.  Hey, we loved working with this person. Can they work for you or with me, not for with me? That’s how it’s all resonating.  And I think that’s how we built the initial employee culture for all of my businesses now. 

Managing Co-Founder Dynamics in Business

Bilna: Nice.  And you also mentioned about co-founders. So that’s something.  How does a partnership work in a business?  Like when there’s more than one person in a business, right?  You’re two individuals.  You might have some areas which you agree upon, which some area you might not agree upon. How do you overcome such situations when you have co-founders?  

Shyam: I’m not married, but people say co-founder- founder, relationship is like marriage.  There’s a give-take.  One day you might want this, one day they may want that.  But if you have a common goal, built on trust, because trust is super important in business.  I know so many people saying, “Oh my God, she ran away with that.  He ran away with that. He did this. He did that.  He gave equity away.  He changed the cap table. He took a client out and spent all of our business savings and so on and so forth”. 

So, trust, genuinely getting along with someone that you can work with and having yin-yang skill sets is definitely something that I looked for. Fortunately, enough for me, I think the stars aligned and we found each other.  Lalita being a friend and then obviously a business partner adds tremendous value to my businesses, both Wasta and Work Panda.  Because she’s the tech nerd, you know, if I can call her that. She’s the brainchild of the technology aspect. I’m the brainchild of connections. So, when you bring her and me together, this is a power team.  And she’s like, slow down.  And I’m like, let’s fail.  And when you bring that together and we discuss certain things, it just works.  Fortunately, enough for me, having her and other business partners around that I work with across the region, UAE and Saudi Arabia, we have that common goal and we genuinely like each other as human beings.

And when you have that relationship, because that’s all I’m about relationships, it works well. Underpinned by trust.  So, if you’re looking for a co-founder, listen, if any advice I have to give you, the person you’re looking for is a lot closer than you think.  And if you think about this and you think about what you’re trying to build, have you asked your brother?  Have you asked your sister?  Have you asked your best friend?  Most of your siblings and your close network don’t even know what you do for a living. Trust me.  If you look at your friendship circle right now, for those people who are listening, you don’t even know what your friends do.  You think you do, but you don’t even know what they do.  So, when you start asking the right questions, be sure you’ll get the right response.  

Because I started doing that.  I was like, hey, what do you do?  What does your brother do?  Oh, he works at Amazon.  Oh, Amazon.  I’m trying to get through Amazon.  Okay.  But if I didn’t ask that question, do you think my friend would come up to me and be like, oh, you’re looking for this guy?  No.  So, I go to everyone.  And if I’m looking for someone or something, I will find out pretty much instantly.  And so, in fit out, for example, if you’re a business developer, people are like, Shyam, how did you find that client?  How did you find out that they were doing a fit out?  How did you know there’s a new restaurant coming?  How did you know there’s a new beach club coming in the palm? I’m like, well, I built the right network, but also, I asked the right questions.  Like, hey, you’ve been in the office for 10 years.  When are you moving?  Oh, we’re actually floating a tender. Boom. 

Bilna: Nice.  So, I think it’s not just having the network. It’s also about bringing the right conversations with the right people on, right? 

Shyam: Honestly, my network is, you have my startup founders, serial entrepreneurs, and that’s my Wasta community. Then you have my core construction, fit out, developers, consultants.  That’s my work panda.  Yes. And then there’s another network, which is my friendship circle.  Nice. You have another network, which is my family.  Then there’s another network, which is my school friends from 20 years ago.  So, you have different bubbles, different segme