JD Durkin: Earlier today at Money20/20 Middle East in the city of Riyadh, Money20/20’s very own Dalia Kamar sat down with Yazeed Al-Shamsi of Ejari. Take a look.
Dalia Kamar: This is Taking Stock here live from Money20/20 Middle East. I’m Dalia Kamar, Head of Investor and Startup Programs at Money20/20 Global, and I’m really excited to be joined by Yazeed Al-Shamsi, Co-Founder and CEO at Ejari. Welcome, Yazeed.
Yazeed Al-Shamsi: Thank you for having me, Dalia.
Dalia Kamar: Now, two years ago, you stood on this stage and you walked away with our pitch competition prize. I know at the time things were quite different. A couple weeks later, you raised one of the largest pre-Series A rounds, or seed rounds, I should say.
If you were to go back and tell that Yazeed two years from now this would happen, what would you kind of advise yourself?
Yazeed Al-Shamsi: Well, I think the seed stage, the pre-seed stage, it’s always the best time. Your product’s, you know, you haven’t raised a lot of money. You have these grand ambitions and you want to take over the world, and then, you know, you get humbled by a lot of things. You get humbled by the market. You get humbled by investors. You get humbled by the ecosystem.
So I would say, keep going. You’re just getting started. Rougher days are ahead. And I think in the early days, there’s a lot of risks that are not execution-related, that are not market-related, which you can easily get through, given, you know, the stage that you’re in. But it does get harder as you go on. It doesn’t really get easier.
So just keep your head down, keep going at it, and eventually get to that breaking point.
Dalia Kamar: Yeah, I think founder tunnel vision is definitely very significant. Now, I know Ejari started from both a personal experience, and you were joined by those that were also quite close to you.
So, rent now, pay later. I think for a lot of people that may not know, there is a very painful process in paying a full year’s rent upfront. And this process is not just unique here to the GCC, but globally.
When does this frustrating personal experience become big enough that, you know, it allowed you to move back to Saudi and think, this is actually what I’m going to solve today?
Yazeed Al-Shamsi: Well, to your point, it did come from a personal pain point. I was a college student in the U.K. Most international college students in the U.K. need to pay a full year’s rent upfront as a nonresident.
You know, there was a perception that there was flight risk associated with international students, so landlords would ask for a full year’s rent upfront. As a student, that was a very difficult thing to do.
The solution there was something called the rent guarantor, essentially someone that would guarantee your rent. You’d be able to pay monthly. If you missed a monthly payment, that guarantor would take on that payment risk. Great solution for the British market.
But when I moved back to Saudi in 2018, wanting to rent an apartment as a fresh graduate and not having $10,000 just to pay it all upfront, it was very humbling. You know, I had to move in with my parents.
Dalia Kamar: It was a painful and excruciating experience, I’m sure.
Yazeed Al-Shamsi: So, and then throughout the six or seven years living in Saudi, the problem kept popping up again and again and again. Me and the guys wanted a place to hang out. They had the same problem. Me and my co-founder had tried attempts at previous ventures, and we couldn’t even get started because we didn’t have a full year’s rent for our office.
And, you know, when we benchmarked, this was not a local problem. It was a global problem, but it just manifested itself differently in different markets. It’s, you know, it’s a cash flow issue.
So, you know, in Saudi, people’s salaries are paid monthly, rent is due yearly. And in some markets, like the States, a lot of people are paid weekly, their rent’s due monthly. So same cash flow, or inflow and outflow gap, but just an order of magnitude smaller. And you see different problems, you know, manifest differently in different markets.
Dalia Kamar: As a user of Ejari, I deeply thank you for what you’re doing to so many people that are navigating, you know, moving to new countries or even new cities and looking at how best to finance their home and their safe space. So thank you so much, Yazeed. It was a pleasure having you.
And this is Taking Stock here live from Money20/20 Middle East. Thank you, everyone.
