Omer (00:09.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Abdullah Al Saadi, the co founder and CEO of Taker IO, an online ordering platform and mobile app for restaurants.
How many failed startups could you handle before you gave up?
Well, Abdullah was working as a security systems engineer in Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
He had an idea for a cryptocurrency app.
He was so excited about it that he jumped into building the product and after writing almost 30,000 lines of code, his app was ready.
But that's when he realized he'd built a cool product, but there was no market for it.
Sometime later, he had an idea to build an app on the Salesforce platform.
He'd learned his lesson from his last failure and had a clear market and customer in mind this time.
But Salesforce wasn't set up at the time to support app developers in the Middle east, so Abdullah wasn't able to sell anything on their platform.
He then decided to build a B2B last mile delivery company.
This time he made sure that customers could actually pay for his product and his solution was a success and he had happy customers.
But the business wasn't profitable and there was no easy way to find efficiencies and scale the business.
But his perseverance and grit kept Abdullah going.
He pivoted to a delivery management software product.
He knew this business could be profitable and his prospective customers loved the product.
But they used legacy point of sale systems which were impossible for him to integrate with.
So it seemed like no matter what Abdullah tried or how good his idea was or product was, he just couldn't find success.
It was failure after failure.
Now, most of us might have given up by now, but Abdullah started working on his next idea.
But he was out of money and didn't have the funds to actually build a new product.
And he didn't exactly have a strong track record of success to persuade investors yet.
He found a way to build the product and get it to market.
And this time things started to move in his favor.
He's grown Taker IO from zero to almost a million US dollars in annual run rate.
There are some great lessons on what Abdullah and his co founder did right with Taker IO and how he funded the development, found customers and grew the business.
But more importantly, he learned far more valuable lessons from all the failures he had over a period of five or six years.
And that's what's really interesting about Abdullah's story.
So, so I hope you enjoy it.
Abdullah, welcome to the show.
Abdullah Alsaadi (03:19.390)
Thanks so much for having me.
Omer (03:21.870)
So do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you or just gets you out of bed every day?
Abdullah Alsaadi (03:28.270)
Yeah, of course.
I do have one that I think I invented myself which says fear failure, but fear the fear of it.
Which means, yes, plan ahead of time, make sure you don't fail, but at the same time do not let the fear of failure stop you from doing anything.
Basically love it.
Omer (03:48.750)
So for people who aren't familiar with Taker, just tell us, what does the product do, who is it for, and what's the problem that you're helping solve?
Abdullah Alsaadi (03:56.510)
Taker basically is a SaaS based online ordering system for local on demand businesses.
What we're trying simply is that the local on demand businesses, like restaurants that we are focused on today, we help them have their own online ordering channels like a website and an application so the customers can order directly through them.
So this is simply what Ticker does.
Omer (04:19.060)
Okay, so like any restaurant can, can sign up, use Taker and they basically get their own website ordering system and they just pay you a subscription for that.
Abdullah Alsaadi (04:31.540)
Exactly.
You could say shopify, but for restaurants.
Omer (04:35.060)
Okay, so you've got an interesting story.
You've bootstrapped the business, launched Taker early 2019 and you are approaching getting very close to a million dollars in ARR.
So I want to really dig into what you've done over the last year to build this business out.
But before we get into that, I think you have a really interesting story about the multiple failures and different businesses that you try to build before you got to Taker.
So why don't we start with that and why don't you tell me about the first attempt at building a business?
Abdullah Alsaadi (05:22.730)
Yeah, it's actually interesting.
You know, my background is computer science and I actually was specialized.
I got masters in computer science, but specialized in crypto and I was looking at crypto from an engineering side, not from the math side.
Basically, if you know how crypto works, it has two parts, the math side where they invent the equations, etc.
And the engineering side where you implement the systems, cryptosystems.
The first startup that I actually did was called SecureMe.
It was basically content security solution.
It's interesting that I actually spent six, six months coding myself that solution.
I wrote, I don't know, 20, 30,000 line of code.
And I was actually trying to target businesses.
But the problem was that when I created the first version of it, it's like I was asleep and I woke up and then started looking up for who my client is, who my segment is, you know what I mean?
I completely forgot about the business side.
I was focused so much on the, on the technology side, how I should build it and how it should work, et cetera.
And I know many founders might fall into that trap, but I was, it was actually very, very bad because I wasn't focused on, on a specific segment.
I wasn't focused on a specific set of clients I wasn't like, aware of.
Because if you didn't know that, if you didn't know that, you wouldn't be able to have product market fit as to speak, basically.
So it didn't work out.
Basically.
I tried to find clients, I tried to find here and there.
Everyone had different ideas, different requirements.
That was actually my big mistake.
I actually killed it eventually.
But when I wanted to kill it, what I did was that I, you know, it had a mobile app.
I actually took that mobile app, okay, and kind of tweaked it a bit and then I released it on the Android Google Store.
I had actually, I remember, you know, back like six, seven years ago, someone actually, it was.
There was a lite version and a paid version.
Someone actually paid for my app.
It was kind of a $2.
Yeah, someone did, actually.
So it was, it felt good that I, you know, made money, but it was $2.
But it's still, you know, someone wanted to pay for it.
And, and the funny thing is, until today, okay, Google is still sending me email saying that, you know, we're holding your money because they don't have my, my bank account details to give me, to give me that, that $2.
So, yeah, but I dumped it.
I dumped it out.
I did not continue it.
I just killed that, that, that business basically.
Omer (07:54.130)
You know, I mean, I love marketing and I spend a lot of my time on marketing these days.
But when I get a chance to start coding and I get really in the flow, I really don't want to think about that other stuff like customers.
And I just wish, like, oh, I wish somebody else could take care of that because I'm just so into the code and I just don't want to do anything else.
I don't want to think about eating or whatever.
And I think a lot of developers get into that because you're doing something that you really love doing.
You can see that you have this.
This vision of this solution that's going to solve this problem, but you just don't know.
You haven't thought about who it's for or.
And that's where it often falls over.
So you got the $2.
That's great.
And, you know, I was kind of joking about that, but I think it's just for anybody.
And the fact that you still remember that, it's just like when you do something and you get the first sale, no matter how small it is, you always remember it.
Right.
It's an awesome feeling.
Abdullah Alsaadi (09:03.320)
Yeah.
Omer (09:04.520)
So what happened next?
So you've sort of.
You.
You did something on Salesforce as well, right?
Abdullah Alsaadi (09:11.240)
Yeah, actually, when we basically stopped that crypto solution, we basically started thinking about, okay, what to do next.
Okay.
We wanted to do something on cloud.
All right.
And when we started digging, where should we go?
What approach should we take into, you know, offering a cloud service or cloud solution, whatever.
We actually came across Salesforce.
Salesforce at that time was very famous, as you know.
And then we decided to build an app over the Salesforce platform.
As you know, they have an app exchange platform where developers can actually build their own app on the Salesforce platform.
So we decided to do it that way to leverage the infrastructure, to leverage the existing clients.
Because anyone who's using Salesforce can actually buy our app with, like, few clicks, which was amazing, an amazing business approach.
And then we thought about, okay, what to build?
What kind of app should we build?
We decided to build an app, like an HR management solution.
Our app, we called it Hu Manage from, like, human management.
So then we started actually building it out.
We had.
Okay, we had the first version.
And then the problem was that we had two problems.
Okay, the first problem was that you had.
There has to be an approval step from Salesforce.
They have to approve your solution that you built on their platform, as you know, because there is an agreement, there's a revenue share agreement, they have to know the value provided to their clients, etc.
Which was fine for us.
We actually passed all of the steps, but one step that actually stopped us.
For how long?
It stopped us for a year and a half.
Omer (10:55.110)
Wow.
Abdullah Alsaadi (10:56.310)
And the problem was that we found out later we were the first in the Middle east to build an app over the Salesforce platform.
And in fact, Salesforce did not know how to treat us because we were the first.
One of the things that Salesforce focuses on is pricing.
They have to have an agreement with you where when they basically determine the lowest price that you could go with and you sell, basically.
This is where we spend a lot of time just discussing.
I want to go into the details, but we spent a year and a half trying to get the app approved and as you know, year and a half for a startup not being able to sell is a nightmare basically.
So I wish my opinion can hear that.
But yes, that was actually a big.
The business approach was amazing, the product was amazing, the way we crafted this solution was amazing.
But we could not sell, actually we could not sell it.
The other problem is that we decided to basically seek, fund and you know, approach investors.
The other problem that we faced was that when we told investors that we're building an app or solution open Salesforce platform, they actually didn't know what Salesforce was.
And I remember one of them told me that why would I invest on something that I don't know?
I said Salesforce is at that Time is a $70 billion company.
It's listed the market, stock market and you know, the biggest cloud company.
But still they actually did not know what Salesforce was.
So we could not actually respond for that.
So yeah, and then the business just was bankrupt basically.
We could not sustain it anymore and we killed it, as you already know.
Omer (12:48.240)
Okay, so that's like the second sort of business and then you got into the delivery business.
Abdullah Alsaadi (12:57.420)
Yeah, exactly.
And then we actually after that we did.
We created a company called duke.
It's basically B2B last mine delivery service.
Our approach, what we wanted to do is that we wanted to deliver products okay in one hour.
Like it's faster than you going out to buy something.
So we wanted to make it so easy and fast to buy products online and get it delivered within one hour.
It was a very risky way because you know, it's kind of from a logistics point of view, it's a warehouse list approach where there is no warehouse.
We don't collect products and bring it to the warehouse where we re dispatch them again.
No, we pick and deliver quickly.
After some months we realized how difficult that was.
And in fact the clients were happy, the businesses were happy.
The end consumers were happy because they get products past.
But we were not happy because business is not scalable at all.
You cannot really scale up the business.
Then we, we decided to turn it into a SaaS product.
It's a delivery management platform, SaaS based delivery management platform where we wanted to basically help those who have the delivery fleets have, have a, like a software to manage their, their deliveries.
Yeah.
And then we, what we did was that when we turned the business pivoted Basically we said, okay, who do we sell to?
There were multiple segments, there were the logistics companies, the retail food delivery, the restaurants also.
So what we did, we said, okay, we need to focus on one segment.
And we decided to focus on the restaurant segment because they have high volume of orders, delivery orders, but at the same time everything is paper based operations basically.
So we wanted to help them with efficiency, to reduce the cost, to improve the efficiency, et cetera.
When we started to sell and approach the restaurants, in fact, everyone loved it.
Everyone loved the product, how it works, the problem it solves.
But the problem was everything has problems.
Obviously the problem was that our product by nature comes integrated.
It has to be integrated with other sources like POS systems or whatever for the order to be created on Duke for them to deliver.
But the problem is that the restaurant industry in general, they have like desktop based legacy systems that you can never integrate with.
They're not cloud, you know what I mean, that you can integrate, etc.
So this was the biggest problem that we faced.
Everyone wanted to use our product, but they're going to be creating the delivery of this manually.
Just a nightmare.
It's against the whole idea behind efficiency, right?
So yeah, that was actually the thing that I hated the most.
Everyone liked the product, but no one was able to use it because of this issue.
We tried a few tricks, we tried a few things to overcome this issue.
One of them was to partner up with one of the biggest cloud based rational care systems in the region.
We did do that and were successful and they did the integration with us, it was like one click away from using our software again.
Technically it worked strategically, it worked better when it comes to sales.
It didn't work again for other reasons that I can talk about later.
So we figured out that unrealized, it's not going to work that way.
We have to do something.
Then we decided to build Taker because Taker is going to solve the problem of the order source for the delivery management, where we can integrate products together perfectly.
Omer (16:38.230)
Did you think about building Taker as okay, this is going to become the flagship product or was it we're going to build this Taker so the restaurants can start using it, so then we can sell our delivery management software.
Abdullah Alsaadi (16:53.750)
We knew there was a need for Taker, we knew that, but we didn't have the time to build it out at that.
When we were building the delivery management software and we had to focus, but when it didn't work out with the delivery management software, we had to build Takeout.
We didn't know.
Like, we didn't know it's going to be the lead gen. We didn't know it's going to be the flagship product, basically.
But it has become the company.
It's not just a flagship product.
Omer (17:22.380)
So when.
When was it that you got to that point where you decided to build Taker?
Was that in 2019?
Was it sort of before that?
Abdullah Alsaadi (17:33.160)
It was actually late 2018.
Omer (17:35.720)
Okay.
So late 2018 is when your focus starts to move towards this idea for Taker.
Everything that you've described so far, the crypto solution that didn't have a market, the Salesforce app that you couldn't sell because they didn't know how to deal with products in the Middle East.
The last mile delivery, everybody's happy except you guys, because you can't kind of run this thing efficiently and scale it.
Over what period did all of that happen from the crypto solution until you got to the point of late 2018?
Abdullah Alsaadi (18:10.710)
I think we started 2014.
Omer (18:13.510)
So it was about four years that you were on this journey trying to figure this out.
Abdullah Alsaadi (18:18.380)
Yeah.
Omer (18:19.660)
Okay, great.
So you've got the idea for Taker, and one of the reasons you said you hadn't built it was because you needed to focus and you knew it was going to be a fair amount of effort and to kind of build it out.
So how long did it take you to get to a point where you had something that you could get in front of customers?
Abdullah Alsaadi (18:40.860)
When we came to an end and realized that, or we had to do something, we had to build takeover, we need fund.
Okay.
And we had two ways.
Either we seek investments and approach investors to get, you know, funded, or we find, you know, other ways.
What we did was we decided not.
Not to go after investors because it's a very long journey and you don't have anything in hand.
You know, it's going to be very difficult to respond.
Very, very difficult.
What we did was that we approached clients before even we had product, and we sold them the vision and we had them pay like, five years worth of subscription in advance.
Omer (19:22.410)
For how long?
Abdullah Alsaadi (19:23.530)
Five years.
Omer (19:24.730)
Five years, yes.
How did you get people to commit to paying for a product for five years that they hadn't even seen?
Abdullah Alsaadi (19:32.490)
Well, as I said, we sold them the vision.
Omer (19:37.700)
Okay.
Abdullah Alsaadi (19:38.260)
And we gained interest.
Yeah.
And they.
They did that.
Omer (19:41.540)
And did you sort of give them a.
A great deal to.
For them to want to commit?
I mean, if you'd come to me, even if I was excited about it, I'd probably say, well, that sounds great, and maybe I'll commit for a year.
So what was it?
Were they getting some really great deal for the pricing to sort of make that sort of commitment?
Abdullah Alsaadi (19:59.780)
Yes, of course, yes, they had to.
They have to have something, basically.
But it was a good deal for us, for both of us, basically, until today.
They're getting a very special treatment, to be honest.
But the thing is, when they committed to that, we used that fund to build the product and we did deliver.
We did deliver a very good product.
That was what we actually promised and they were happy.
And in fact, they came back to us asking us to build a POS system, point of sale system, to that extent, how happy they were with us because we did deliver a good, a good product to them.
But of course we said, okay, we barely focus, we barely can build ticker.
Okay, busy 100% with taker.
We can't build other systems, actually.
Yeah, so we used that fund to build Taker, which was actually.
Which worked perfectly fine.
We did not have to actually seek investment at all, which helped us focus on the company, growing the company and building the product.
And we had a great team.
That's actually, I think that was the most important factor.
The great team that we have was able to successfully build the product in a very, very short amount of time and resources.
Omer (21:08.380)
How many customers did you pre sell this product to?
Abdullah Alsaadi (21:13.500)
If I still remember?
I think four customers.
Omer (21:16.700)
Okay, and are they still customers?
Abdullah Alsaadi (21:20.300)
Yes.
Omer (21:21.020)
All four?
Abdullah Alsaadi (21:21.980)
Yes.
Omer (21:22.420)
That's good.
Abdullah Alsaadi (21:23.460)
Yeah.
Omer (21:24.660)
Okay, great.
So you did something smart there and you found a creative way to finance fund the business by pre selling to these customers.
And that gave you enough there to be able to build out the product.
And when you launched, they were happy with what you'd created.
What did you do to start finding more customers growing beyond those initial four?
Abdullah Alsaadi (21:52.340)
Yeah, we did something that was very risky and I don't recommend B2B SaaS companies do that, but this is what we did.
We started to approach the big clients, the big guys.
We knew that if we were able to get them in, the rest would follow.
But if we were not able to get them in, we would have wasted our time and resources.
I knew it would be a very bad thing for the business.
It was a very, very risky thing.
So when we did approach them, we basically showed them the product, how it works.
We create successful stories.
We showed them the success stories basically, and we were successfully able to get them in.
When we got them in, it's just like, you know, the B2B companies, as you know, it's just like a ball Rolling, you know what I mean?
It gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
So then eventually, instead of, because we started, when I'm from sales perspective, we started to do Campground typical B2B sales where we outreach and approach clients, et cetera.
That was our plan actually.
We knew that if we got the big guys, it would turn, we'd be turned into like a word of mouth, referral sales.
This is what is actually happening right now.
Omer (23:09.220)
So when you say big guys, how did you define that company?
What sort of size are we talking about?
Abdullah Alsaadi (23:15.130)
You know, if we talk about restaurants in general?
There are two things to put in mind when you're defining how big that restaurant is.
First is the number of branches, number of stores that they have if it's a chain.
Second, sort of sales, their sales, basically how much are they making a year, etc.
Because why I'm saying this is because there are people, restaurants that are like maybe have five branches only, but they're making like huge sales a year and we consider that as a decline.
So if it comes to a number of branches, we were looking at like 20, 30 plus restaurant chain.
If it comes to revenue and sales, we were looking at like those who have overall like $40 million sales year.
That was our definition of sort of a big guys.
Omer (24:06.760)
And how many of them were there?
Was this just in Riyadh or was this kind of broader across, you know, different markets in the Middle East?
Like where were you focusing till today?
Abdullah Alsaadi (24:21.650)
We're focused in Saudi.
Saudi and Riyadh specifically.
It has like 70% of the Middle east market almost or 60% of the Middle east market.
So we have a wow, very big enough market to, to, to conquer.
So that's why we're still focused on there.
But of course we always say Taker is born global because we're a SaaS company.
But until we get, until we basically dominate our market, then we will be looking at other markets.
Omer (24:51.229)
Yeah, I mean there was one thing sort of surprising about Taker and the website was I didn't see any clues that this was a business focused in Saudi.
Well, I knew it was because of you, but in terms of like the way that the website came across, it just didn't have an idea other than when you look at maybe some of the logos and the companies that you have there.
Also it was, it was interesting that it's just like everything is in English.
Was there ever, you know, a need for people to say, well we, we need sort of for you to support Arabic version or anything like that?
Abdullah Alsaadi (25:31.070)
It has two Languages.
Right now even the product has two languages.
It has English and it has Arabic too.
By the way, even though we are in Riyadh, the population of Saudi is 32 million, half of which is expats, speak mostly English.
So English has to be there in any way.
Omer (25:50.750)
You have 16 million expats?
Abdullah Alsaadi (25:52.990)
No, not half of the 32 million.
Like almost 10 million in Riyadh.
Half of 10 or 15 million in Saudi.
Sorry.
Wow.
Omer (26:03.280)
Okay.
All right.
So you've identified these bigger companies.
What did the sort of the, the outreach to these companies look like?
And tell me a little bit about what type of challenges or objections you had getting them on board.
Abdullah Alsaadi (26:20.520)
Well, if your question is about sales on sales strategy, you know, the B2B sales has its own challenges.
And there is like I would say a scientific way of doing it where you have to identify the stakeholders, you know, inside the company, the decision, decision makers.
And then you have to know who your champion is that you can, you know, that can help you inside the company making the decision.
To go with Taker.
We had to play all of these games as you already.
No.
So we played that game basically with the company.
It's not a game, but it's a way of selling to the businesses in general.
We had definitely.
We had friends also.
We had friends of friends also that all together we tried to leverage every single channel that we had in hand to help us facilitate the sales.
But overall we knew that if we had a good product, we will be able to sell.
That was actually the thing that we really focused on.
We did something that helped us in a big way why big companies started to join Taker.
We knew that people loved apps.
We could have sold only website ordering website, as you know.
But we decided to build an app.
And this is something that I want to talk about why we decided to do so.
Because you know, at least in Saudi, pretty sure everywhere kind of the same people are used to ordering food from the apps, not from the websites.
And we got those statistics from our friends building the aggregators applications, you know, the food ordering applications like Uber Eats Hanger Station that we have in Saudi.
I would say over 90% of the orders over those platforms come from the app, not from the website.
So we knew that people are used ordering food from the app.
So we focus so much in building the applications and perfecting it.
And our strategy did work because the potential clients didn't look at the website, they actually looked at the apps and they liked the apps and then they decided to join us.
And in fact, until today, 95% of the orders created on Techl's platform comes from apps, not from the website, by the way.
So that was something that we knew beforehand when we wanted to build a product, which helped us a lot with our growth because everyone wanted an app.
So.
Yeah, so I forgot your question, but if you have a question, how did you.
What was your question again?
Sorry.
Omer (28:58.010)
So, yeah, the question really was how did you do outreach to these companies?
And as you've talked about it, it was an account based marketing approach, right?
You have a certain number of target customers here.
You're, you're figuring out exactly who the, the key people are, the decision makers, the stakeholders.
You're, you're working the relationships, you're trying to figure out how to do personal outreach here.
Once you got your foot in the door, what did the sales process look like?
What did you have to do to, to get to a sale?
How many meetings were they?
How many demos did you have to do?
Abdullah Alsaadi (29:33.950)
It's a good question.
Today it takes us, you know, no more than two phone calls today because we have already established the brand, have established the company and everyone knows us.
But before we had to do many, many things we had like it used to.
The sales cycle used to be three months, by the way.
Now it's been shortened.
Now it's almost like, I would say two weeks when the client started interacting with us.
But of course, when you do B2B sales, after identifying stakeholders and decision makers, you have to do one thing that is very, very important.
You have to have your champion inside the company.
Because, you know, restaurants are companies, at the end of the day, they have management and these sort of things.
How to get the champion is a different story.
But you have to, at the end of the day, get to know him, have to talk to him.
You have to, you have to make him feel that, you know, choosing taker and going with taker would get him promoted in his job.
And if you reach that level, it means he's gonna fight for you inside the company when they are on one table deciding whether to go with taker or not.
But it's a combination of, I would say social intelligence, you know, I mean social engineering, you know what I mean?
It's all sort of psychological tricks also that you need to do to get, to get there.
Omer (30:56.870)
How did you figure out who these champions were in the, in the organizations?
Abdullah Alsaadi (31:00.310)
Well, you have to do your homework before approaching a new client.
You have to do research.
You look at the company up on like LinkedIn or elsewhere.
You have to look at their social media, how they work, you have to know who they are working with.
Like other companies they're working with.
You have to ask, you know what I mean?
We do ask our clients also about other companies and restaurants.
There's no like one way of doing it.
But at the end of the day, before getting in a meeting with them, you have to have a good idea who they are, who the stakeholders are, who the decision maker is.
Not only that, what the pain that they are having is.
Because if you come talking about how brilliant your product is, no one cares.
They care about the problem that you're their problem that they want you to solve, basically.
So that's why when you are after all of this research, you have to, in the meeting itself, the first meeting, you have to let them talk for you to grab what their problems are.
So when you talk about your product, you don't talk about your product.
You're talking about the solution to their problems.
So if you did all of that, you maximize your chance that the sales is going to go through.
Omer (32:13.450)
Do you have a sales background?
Abdullah Alsaadi (32:15.450)
I never studied sales, but I did.
So I practiced it.
I would say, okay, most of my time, like with building those products and the journey that I went through, it was all B2B.
I never did B2C.
Any B2C business.
Yeah.
So that's why I kind of learned how to sell in a way or another.
I'm still learning, actually.
Omer (32:36.870)
So in the four years before you got to take A, you were getting practiced with B2B sales?
Abdullah Alsaadi (32:44.480)
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, yeah, see, we did make many, many mistakes.
We did lose deals actually before because we didn't tackle the sales properly.
But we learned again.
We learned okay.
Omer (32:57.520)
And so of these, you sort of targeted about 20 companies, these big guys.
How many of them were you able to land as customers?
Abdullah Alsaadi (33:05.520)
I think at least 15.
Yeah, at least 15.
Omer (33:10.110)
Wow.
Were you the only show in town?
Were there other products or solutions out there or were you the only, like, what were the alternatives that they could choose from?
Building something themselves?
Was there something some other product they could buy?
Abdullah Alsaadi (33:25.150)
There were actually other products locally and internationally too.
Not only that, they had other choice of building it themselves, but however, as I said to you, we have an extensive experience in the industry.
We know how it functions, what the pain points are, we knew what people wanted and we worked building the product.
We worked with clients, as I said to you right from the beginning.
So we were working with them to understand exactly what to deliver to them.
So I would say we Just built a very good product.
That was actually the point.
If our product wasn't good, it would not.
We will not be able to sell it.
Even though if we had experience selling B2B, you know, solutions, et cetera, product at the end of the day is what the clients look at at the end of the day.
So this is how it worked.
Omer (34:17.780)
And did you find that once you'd worked with those initial four customers, like, did you get to a point where you felt like, yeah, we've pretty much nailed most of the problems that most of these customers are going to have?
Or were you finding that when you still went in to do these deals with these bigger companies, there was a bunch of work you still needed to go back and do on the product?
Abdullah Alsaadi (34:42.270)
Before Taker, as I said to you, we had a delivery management software which we were targeting restaurants to.
So we were not new to the industry.
We knew the problems, we knew what the clients wanted.
But of course, there are many, many things that we learned as we were building the product.
But right from the beginning, we would not be able to sell the vision, as I said to you, to the clients before building even the product if we did not know what they wanted.
Yeah, we knew many, many things.
We knew the pain points, as I said to you.
And also working with them closely, building the product was actually also very, very helpful.
So when they talk, people, when they talk about product market fit, right from the beginning, we had about product market fit because we did not almost have assumptions, you know, to validate.
Everything was validated right from the beginning.
So, so that's why that, that actually escalated our growth because when we approached new clients after those four, everything was there almost.
So they did not, like, they did not say, okay, you don't have this, you don't have that.
Everything that is, they essentially needed was there, which, which was helpful for us.
Omer (35:53.190)
Right.
And then as I think you mentioned earlier, that the.
Having the social proof as well, that when you've got some of these bigger brands or logos as already as customers, it kind of makes the decision for a lot of the smaller businesses easier.
Right.
In terms of, well, if these companies are using taker, it must be good.
Abdullah Alsaadi (36:10.710)
Exactly, yes, that was part of it also.
Omer (36:13.030)
So it's, it's kind of been an interesting journey that we've talked about here for you and the multiple businesses that you, you try to build.
And all of them were, you know, there was, there was just like something missing.
Right.
In terms of whether it was like, oh, we got the product, but don't have a market or we've got a market but we unable to sell it to them or all of these things until you get to the point where you.
It kind of almost really prepared you and primed you for.
For being able to build takers.
And I think that's probably part of the reason why you've been able to bootstrap this business and do really well in terms of growing it very quickly over the last year.
Looking back at this journey, what do you wish you had done differently?
Abdullah Alsaadi (37:06.150)
Well, many things actually.
See the failures, yes, they are failures, but actually they're lessons at the end of the day.
We would not have been able to build taker or grow ticker or even sell taker if we did not go through those obstacles and failures at the end of the day.
But the thing that I, if I, you know, go back, the thing that would really focus on is focus on specific thing and choose the segment, not only the industry, also the segment inside the industry.
As I said to you, when we built the delivery management software, there were multiple segments.
Like there were the delivery companies, logistics companies, there was the retail industry, and there was the restaurants, a couple of others.
So we picked the restaurants.
Basically we had to pick one because even though they all had the same pain point, but everyone solves it differently.
So focusing on one segment is the thing that I would.
We did it with the delivery management software, but we did not do it with Human, the Salesforce product.
We did not do it with securemi.
You know what I mean?
We did not even know who our client was.
So, yeah, choosing the segment, even though if you had wrong assumptions, being focused on one segment would help you correct it quickly.
Instead of being really scattered around multiple segments, multiple problems, multiple ways of approaching or solving the same.
The same problem.
Omer (38:42.410)
Yeah, I think that's good advice.
All right, we're going to move on.
Let's do the lightning round.
You're a listener of the show, so you know the drill here.
I'm going to ask you seven questions and just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Ready?
Abdullah Alsaadi (38:55.330)
Yes, ready.
Omer (38:56.210)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Abdullah Alsaadi (39:00.510)
Focus.
Omer (39:01.550)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Abdullah Alsaadi (39:04.030)
The book that I love is called Law of Human Nature.
It basically teaches you how psychology works and that when it comes to business, that holds a lot, not only in your personal social life, also with hiring and managing employees, etc.
Also dealing with clients.
So it just teaches you how psychology works.
Omer (39:26.930)
Do you know who the author is?
Abdullah Alsaadi (39:28.930)
He's called Green Robert Green.
Omer (39:31.650)
Robert Greene.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I think I. Yeah, I think I know you're talking about.
Okay, we'll include a link to that.
And what's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Abdullah Alsaadi (39:44.130)
Well, I would say perseverance.
Omer (39:47.650)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Abdullah Alsaadi (39:52.500)
A productivity store.
I like Spark.
It's an email client that is really brilliant.
It helps you with your, with your.
It helps you be productive with emails.
You know, let's put it that way.
Omer (40:04.180)
I use Spark as well.
There's two of us.
Abdullah Alsaadi (40:06.900)
Oh yeah.
Cool.
Omer (40:08.420)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?
Abdullah Alsaadi (40:12.820)
I wouldn't call it a business idea, but it's actually something that I have been.
Because coming from a crypto background, what I want to know is I want to know how AI can help break crypto.
I'm not sure if someone has done like a scientific research doing like trying to figure out if that works or not, but I believe there is, there is an interesting things to it, how
Omer (40:37.270)
to break crypto with AI.
Interesting.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Abdullah Alsaadi (40:46.180)
Well, I write poems.
Omer (40:48.100)
You're a poet?
Abdullah Alsaadi (40:49.620)
You could say that.
Omer (40:52.660)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Abdullah Alsaadi (40:56.660)
Oh yeah, I'm actually a cultural tour guide.
I have been doing this for nine years voluntarily.
What I do is people coming from outside of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
I take them out, we will go to the like traditional and historical sites, we talk about, you know, culture and etc.
I have met about like, I don't know, thousands and thousands of people from over 150 countries, you know, having different backgrounds, different educations, you know what I mean, different nationalities, different colors, different way of thinking.
I think this has been extremely helpful for me.
That's why I'm passionate about it.
Because people think they are learning from me because I'm the tool guide, but I'm actually learning from them because they come from all different backgrounds.
So yeah, that's kind of a passion that I do outside of my, of my work.
I'm not doing much these days, but
Omer (41:58.970)
wow, that's awesome.
Great.
Well, Abdullah, thank you for joining me.
It's been, it's been a pleasure talking and sharing your story.
If people want to find out more about Taker, they can go to Taker I.O.
and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that.
Abdullah Alsaadi (42:17.000)
They can reach out to me on my email at dellahteka IO or also they can reach me out on LinkedIn or Twitter where it says my handler is sadiner is W a d I e u r. Yeah, I'll be happy to help.
Omer (42:33.880)
Awesome.
Okay, well, they got the email, so Abdullahaker IO and then the links to the LinkedIn and the Twitter, we'll include that in the show notes for people.
Abdullah Alsaadi (42:46.920)
Great.
Omer (42:47.280)
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate you joining me and I wish you all the best of success with taker.
Abdullah Alsaadi (42:54.760)
Thanks, Emma, for having me.
Omer (42:56.680)
My pleasure.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Abdullah Alsaadi (42:58.480)
Bye Bye.
