#365 Driving Innovation and Growth in MENA Startups: Insights from Shehab Beram

Mehmet: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased, joining me, he's currently in Istanbul, Shehab Beram. Shehab, the way I love to do it, as I was telling you before we started, is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit more about your background, your journey, and what you are currently up to.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours.

Shehab: Thanks Mehmet. So currently I'm, I'm the founder of VisionX, the first personal branding studio for product leaders. I'm also a senior product manager with Marsool. Um, if you guys don't know about Marsool, it's a food delivery app, um, and turning to be a super app soon. I'm managing the payment squad as well as the M4B squad, Marsool for business, where we help merchants, uh, basically operate in a more efficient way.

Shehab: Um, before Marsool, I was a product manager with Kawaful. It was like a B2B, uh, marketplace connecting, uh, manufacturers with, [00:01:00] uh, retailers. We also built something called, um, Kawaful premium. This is something I personally let, and it was more of like introducing some sort of like, uh, new revenue stream for Kawaful.

Shehab: Um, I would call it SAS revenue stream, you know, where manufacturers basically subscribe to get access to tools that help them streamline. Their work, you know, like basically managing their team members, managing their sales, their sales happening inside of Kawaful and outside of Kawaful. So it was something that increased Kawaful's revenue by almost like 25%, I guess.

Shehab: Uh, when I left it was around 26, 27. At that week, by the way, before Cavafel, I was, uh, also a product manager with Taker. Taker is Shopify for restaurants. It's more of like, uh, a way for restaurants to get their own personalized sales channel instead of just always contracting food delivery apps like Marsul, Hunger Station, Kareem, etc.

Shehab: Uh, I was managing the [00:02:00] marketing services vertical there where restaurants can basically run discounts, campaigns, automated marketing, basically also campaigns, you know, and analyzing the data and the performance of. Of their marketing campaigns. Before Taker, I was actually residing in Malaysia. I lived in Malaysia for almost eight years there.

Shehab: I worked with two companies as an associate product manager, as well as a product designer, and I was working there with a bunch of like research labs, specifically talking design research labs, where we did a lot of UX research there. Because I had my, all the goal of like always being a product manager.

Shehab: So I wanted to experience different functions as well as like, um, doing the actual work myself, because as you know, my, my, um, product managers don't do the actual work, you know, they are like the orchestra conductors. So I wanted to do is I wanted to [00:03:00] work. On different functions before jumping into being a product manager, because I wanted to understand my team and I wanted to have the actual knowledge of building products.

Shehab: So learning how to do the design, doing coding, as well as like doing actual research on users, uh, with, uh, design labs was something I always get, uh, gave value to. So I published multiple research papers when I was, uh, in Malaysia. And basically I decided one day that, Hey guys, um, I'm just leaving the whole research journey and I'm just leaving Malaysia and I'm going to Istanbul, you know, so I moved to Istanbul with my family and I started my journey officially in product management, again, in the middle region.

Shehab: basically started with Taker and now I ended up with Merceau. Currently what I'm doing also is, um, I'm consulting, uh, consulting startups on BLG strategies as well as like product discovery [00:04:00] strategies. So I work with, uh, two startups now, um, a startup called HackTrack, which is basically a cybersecurity startup.

Shehab: And I'm working with another startup that I firmly believe in. Uh, it's called QMOS, which is, um, an operating system for, um, Accelerators as well as incubators, you know, so it's more of like, we're thinking of how we can digitalize, uh, the value stream for accelerators as well as incubators, you know, what kind of like tasks they have, repetitive tasks, you know, uh, how can we allow them to track the performance of their startups in the future, you know, after the graduation from accelerators as well as incubators, how can we make this easier through the product that they are building now, you know.

Shehab: How can we turn it from just basically a product with where they stored the data into a product where they can even track the data in the future, as well as having a sort of like active portfolio that they are tracking, uh, on weekly or monthly basis depends on the [00:05:00] time they pick.

Mehmet: Great. But what a fantastic journey, uh, she had really.

Mehmet: You know, it's a rich journey and I'm a little bit biased because maybe I repeated on the show multiple times. So I'm biased towards product managers. Um, I was lucky in previous lives when, you know, I used to sit on a technical consultant within startups, you know, and in smaller environments, you get access to the PMs as you know.

Mehmet: So, so these guys, you know, are my favorite, my heroes, because you know, the ones who are always on the ground willing to help, uh, and you know, they understand. Kind of the business requirements. Plus, they can go and talk to the developers, designers and so on. So, you know, I enjoyed to be in that space also as well.

Mehmet: And, you know, again, thank you for for being here with me today. So to kick things, I would say, um, I would like first, you know, from from product management perspective, and if you can tailor that little bit to our MENA region, because [00:06:00] You know, part of the things that we are trying to do with this podcast is also to get, um, a, I'm big believer, um, you know, she have in, yeah, of course there is like something which is global, you know, like everyone is do the things in a way, but when it comes to things that touch business and You know, especially in product management.

Mehmet: So I believe there are some different ways for doing, for example, product discovery, talking to people which are probably different than the way it is done maybe in other parts of the world. So I want from you to explain to us like a little bit the process, you know, that usually as a product manager, you go and do, you know, from from ideation all the way till we have, let's say, The first version, and then we have like some traction with, um, with users or customers, if it's a B2C, um, product.

Shehab: Lovely. So first amendment, let's agree that product management here in the MENA region [00:07:00] is still developing. Uh, now like, Lately, many companies started to realize the importance of having a strong product team, you know, um, however, um, many companies do, do you do have the common challenge of operating in a sort of like sales mindset, you know, or feature factor mindset, focusing more on just.

Shehab: Building features, shipping features out, you know, making sure that they have successful launches and the definition they have for successful launches is just a feature in production, you know? Um, and that's a common challenge I face as a product manager here in the MENA region, because when you join a company, they think that you're a project manager and your only work is to basically ship out multiple user stories and get them into production.

Shehab: Now, When you are joining as a product manager in a company, the first thing that you that I'm doing is I try to change the perspective of this basically, uh, situation, you know? Uh, so instead of you seeing me as a project [00:08:00] manager and my role is just to ship out multiple features, no, you need to basically understand that I'm here to ship value.

Shehab: I'm here to solve user problems and I'm here to even introduce value to your business, you know, just, Basically value like revenue, for example, or maybe like, um, owning, um, other, other, other critical matrix, like retention, activation, et cetera. So that's the first thing I face. Now, when you, you, when you overcome this challenge and you basically solve it and you kind of like shift this mindset slightly, uh, then the actual work of BM starts, you know, how I take it from ideation to market goes through a very simple process, you know, uh, that process is something I, I, I tried to build, uh, to myself early in my product days.

Shehab: And what I do is typically I try to do problem discovery, you know, so instead of like getting that solution from someone and getting a feature request, for example, or I have a feature on my backlog, I start with understanding what problem does it solve? [00:09:00] Is it just a fancy feature that we want to build or is it something that solves an actual problem for our users?

Shehab: You know, so it just starts with a very simple question. Does it solve a problem? If the answer is yes, then I take it into the further step. If the answer is not, then I just leave it and move it to the bottom of the backlog. You know, again, that's something collaborative I do with my product team, but that's the general framework of saying that, Hey, is this a problem For the discovering or not, if it is a problem, uh, it's going to introduce a sort of value.

Shehab: And then I run into analyzing the data of this problem. So do we really have a problem? So I basically check my product dashboards. I also talk with customers, you know, and I have basically this sweet spot of talking with seven customers, you know, to understand if they face this problem, you know, now, like let's take more soon, for example, um, We were paying Marsool Wallet, you know, uh, we were actually developing Marsool Wallet.

Shehab: Uh, Marsool Wallet is just a payment method for customers to use their coupons, you know, so if they [00:10:00] have like, let's say, marketing coupons, unused marketing coupons, or any sort of compensation, they can utilize Marsool Wallet to just go and pay, uh, their order, you know? So, uh, Initially, what I did was like, I analyzed this problem, found out that this problem is worth, uh, solving because Marsool had around more than X number of like million reals, you know, laying down there, you know, without being utilized.

Shehab: So I went to, to the customers. Group them into different segments and talked with them, you know, like, well, what do you think if you can basically obey your order using, uh, this credit that you have in your account, you know, instead of just basically having this credit as a discount and as an unlimited to just basically, uh, running it in, in a discount mode and not in, in the payment mode, you know, and just got basically a sense of like what customers do think about it.

Shehab: Once I have a validation of this problem, just basically go and [00:11:00] present it, you know, sometimes you don't even need to present it. It's a go go for them, you know, you just need to go and build a user story around it and pass it to your engineers. But when you present it to your theme, the thing happens is that you're creating some sort of like shared understanding of the problem as well as shared understanding of the solution.

Shehab: You know, because as a product manager, your role is not to just ship out, uh, features, but also, uh, to kind of like create some sort of like shared understanding data and insights that they can use even to empower their work. You know, for example, when you share data, marketing team can also make use of this data.

Shehab: The executives team can also make use of this data and these insights because, uh, they desperately need it. And they don't have the actual, the real people or the talent to, um, Empower them with, with data and insights sometimes, you know, unless they ask for it. Now, when you have a problem, you move into the solution state.

Shehab: When you move to the solution set, what I typically do is I don't ideate the solution [00:12:00] myself. And that's one of the misunderstanding of product management. I was actually trapped in before almost two years ago. You know, I thought that, Hey, if there is a problem, I just basically go write the solution myself, scope the solution, work on the wireframes, you know, and I own the solution.

Shehab: You know, no one else can have a say around the solution. It turns out that I was wrong, you know, uh, the solution is a sort of like shared, um, basically artifact between everyone in the team, you know, and specifically saying the product team. So I just go on idea, you know, I use, um, a workshop from Intuit called, uh, deep customer solution.

Shehab: And basically it helps me like align with my team and try to ideate some sort of solution. Once we have a solution, I work with engineers closely to build a solution, but now the real actual and the real and actual product management happens here, which is basically understanding how you can launch it, the art of launching a product, you know.

Shehab: So what you want to be doing [00:13:00] is you want to just craft a plan on how you're going to be launching it You know What what kind of like stages you want to roll out this? Features in and how you're gonna be basically positioning it into into the market because now other Brands and other competitors do have such features.

Shehab: So how can you position it? How can you tell your customers that? Hey, Marsool built this feature and it's different from other competitors. You know, that's one of the things that you want to be thinking of and it doesn't, it doesn't stop there where you just write bunch of texts and have a plan you need to align with your marketing team, you know, and again, one of the problems I face here in the MENA region is not having a product marketing management team.

Shehab: Uh, so basically you need to do the whole. Product marketing management here yourself, you know, thinking about the positioning, thinking about the messaging and how you can basically pass this feature into the market and make sure that it has its reserve and its place in and the sweet spot, uh, in, in the market, you know, once you launch the feature.

Shehab: Then [00:14:00] you need, you need to iterate. And when I say iterate, it doesn't stop in basically solving a bunch of bugs, you know, or just asking your customers, what do you think about it? You know, there is a whole science behind iterating here. Uh, what you need to do is. Basically, just build a bunch of dashboards, understand your numbers, understand what kind of numbers you affected with this feature, understand the feature specific numbers, for example, the adoption for this feature, you want to understand if there is a drop, you want to understand the usage here, you know, and again, you want to share insights with your team.

Shehab: Because you don't just ship out features. What you want to be doing is you want to be sharing insights and empowering them with data. The more you empower them with data, the more you basically have more common understanding and the more your trust bar would say increases. So once you iterate, then. You pretty much move, move on, you know, you don't move on again after iteration, but you move on [00:15:00] after launching this feature, but you need to have a sort of like reserved spot for this feature to do the analysis and iteration.

Shehab: So that's pretty much how I process the things from ideation into building, you know, it's just basically ensuring that the resources are will put into the right problem as well as it's not stopped after launching. It's something I can get insights out of, and it's something I can stand out, uh, with by, by actually building.

Mehmet: Yeah, great. Now, a couple of things, just, you know, maybe we can chat quickly about it. Uh, and I, I didn't plan for, for asking these questions, but I think it's important to highlight. Now you mentioned something about, you know, two things. So the first is, do you think the culture, uh, of having a product manager is still not very much, uh, adopted here in the region, Shehab?

Shehab: Having a product manager is well adopted, but the actual [00:16:00] function of a product manager is not well adopted here in the MENA, you know, so I found like literally Mehmet precede startups are hiring for BMs here in the MENA, specifically in Saudi, you know, they see that having a product manager is something that is cool and they, and a product manager can help them ship out features faster, you know, but they don't understand the actual value of a product manager.

Shehab: You know, so they just want to have a product manager for the sake of having a product manager, you know, for the sake of having someone to work with a technical team and not doing the actual business with them.

Mehmet: So very good because this was my next question for you, Shehab. In general, whether it's MENA region or in general, when is the right time to have a product manager?

Mehmet: And I put it between quotes, not a project manager, because I agree a hundred percent with you. A product manager is not a project manager. Maybe one of the tasks, yes, they have to put the sprints and then they have to do the standups every day and [00:17:00] all this stuff, but when is it the right time and you, because you mentioned about pre seed, so when is the right time to do this?

Shehab: Lovely. So let me first talk about the point of, uh, a product manager can do project management. I have this saying of every product manager is a project manager, but not every project manager is a product manager, you know? So it's something you'll be doing a lot. In terms of like managing the sprints as well as like talking with your Developers now the right time of having a product manager.

Shehab: It depends on the company goals You know, so if you are like in a pre product market for company, you know Uh, you lack basically with Discovering the right problems, you know, working on the right solutions and running effective experiments, then that's the right time for you to have a product manager.

Shehab: But there are actually companies with talented founders who excel with, um, just basically building [00:18:00] out their product. bunch of experiments on finding the sweet spot that their product lies on, you know, so they don't need a product manager at that stage. Why? Because they can run effective experiments and now they are moving quickly and they don't need someone to basically have another say, you know, or another cook in the kitchen.

Shehab: So that's not the right time for them to have a product manager. However, in general, after reaching the product market fit, it's the perfect time for me to have a product manager. Why? Because the product manager now can help the company streamline things up. Uh, as well as basically Help them with the product ops process.

Shehab: Um, so a product manager after reaching the product market effect can help the company save some costs, you know, increase multiple metrics, you know, based on the experiments that the product manager will be running and based on the business work that the product manager will be doing, you know, so if you are a pre product market for company, you need to evaluate yourself.

Shehab: Are we moving fast? Are we running effective experiments? [00:19:00] If the answer is yes, Then you don't need that product manager. Now, if you are both product market fair, and you already found that sweet spot in the market, then you need a product manager. Why? Because now a product manager can come and optimize your matrix and help build your product for the RNSKLA.

Mehmet: And I think this is, you know, from my humble knowledge, Shehab, Like this is where we start to call this startup. They start to become into a growth mode because now they need to Um acquire more customers. So their icp maybe they they had a niche they had specific, you know Uh early adopters and now they need to go after the bigger market and now they need someone to help them in coming and and putting these features and uh whatever is required for the product to become like more mature to come and put this into the plan.

Mehmet: So make, makes a lot of sense. Another thing you mentioned, and again, I relate it to another question. So I kind of a little bit stuffed question and sorry for [00:20:00] that. You, you talked about, you know, the lack of, uh, product marketing. And again, product marketing for me, You know, and I work for me. I, my experience is B2B just to, for the sake of, of the audience.

Mehmet: And I repeated this. So, but again, I think, you know, product marketing is something very important. And this is where I feel maybe I'm mistaken. Correct me if I'm wrong, Shehab. Nowadays, what we are seeing in the startups, because there are two mainly mainstream. So there's the product led growth and there's the sales led growth, right?

Mehmet: So And I think this is where, you know, maybe the founders, the executive teams are not getting this. And I see them doing things which are wrong sometimes because they're not getting things in order. So from your perspective, you know, let's categorize it first. If you want, let's categorize it, like when we should call it a product [00:21:00] led, uh, growth, uh, or sales led growth, PLG and SLG as we, what they are called.

Mehmet: And then, you know, which one, you know, fits. You know, a certain strategy from a product management perspective. So I know it's a long question, but I know like you can enlighten us on this.

Shehab: Lovely. So firstly, let's basically differentiate between product led growth and sales led growth. If you find yourself hiring a big sales team, aka what we call them in a car, in, in the MENA region, account managers, you know, B2B companies, B2C companies, I've seen this a lot, just having tons of account managers, you know, whenever there is a new feature, they ask you, Hey, product manager, go talk with the account managers.

Shehab: They will help you with launching this feature by calling the customers manually, you know? So, You're operating a sales led company. Why? Because you're spending tons of resources and your growth depends only on having a bigger account managers and, and [00:22:00] bigger sales teams. You know, now when we are talking about product led companies, product led companies are basically companies in which the product is the main drive.

Shehab: behind the acquisition, the retention, as well as any sort of like another critical metric that they are tracking. You know, for example, we can talk about revenue here, you know? So for example, now, Let's talk about Marsool. Marsool can be considered as a sales like company. Why? Because from the merchant side of things, we do have account managers and we cannot grow without account managers because account managers do onboard new customers.

Shehab: They do onboard new restaurants, you know, they help restaurants with issues, solve their issues as well as like Basically sell their products. They call the customer's manual and they tell them, Hey, what do you think of if you want to run a discount or if you want to join a campaign, you know, so everything is done from the account, uh, account, account [00:23:00] management team.

Shehab: Now, if there's no account management team in Marsool, Marsool cannot operate successfully. Why? Because now merchants cannot sign up, um, automatically, uh, into the platform. They cannot have new accounts into the platform. They don't have any sort of like automated verification around that thing. Now, if a product led company comes into place, what will happen is a product led company will be reducing the costs, you know, so I'm not going to have a big account management team.

Shehab: Of course, I need some account managers to run basically the basic business, uh, functions. However, if, I do have the product led model here. You know, I want to be, I want to be having this sort of like setting in which like, if I want to grow, I need to hire more account managers to manage more clients as well as like to help onboard more clients.

Shehab: You know, that's, that's the thing. There is a sweet spot behind, uh, between them, uh, that is called product led sales. And when we are talking about product led sales, it's basically empowering the sales team with a [00:24:00] product. Or with the product, you know, for example, in muscle context, what, what could happen is I allow the merchants to sign up.

Shehab: I run basically effective on, on, um, ads, for example, and I build a good SEO around muscle. And then basically when there is a restaurant that signs up, I allow them to do the signup themselves instead of like, uh, relying on the account managers. And then once there is a successful signup, I let the account managers know that, Hey guys, there is a successful sign up.

Shehab: And I give a choice to the customer if they want to have a call or not, this will reduce the number of daily calls that the account managers will be receiving, thus reducing the costs or more. So, so this is a sweet spot between both models, product led and sales led. Now going back to the first, uh, or to the beginning of your question, Mehmet, of, uh, product marketing management.

Shehab: Let's talk about it first and then how it fits into both of these models. Sure. So product. Product marketing management is just [00:25:00] basically the science behind how you launch a successful product. You know, how can you onboarded to the market? So instead of, for example, if you, if we recap, uh, the example that we talked about in Marsool, which is having a sort of like launch checklist, as well as, uh, launching the product into the market.

Shehab: That's something that should be owned by a product marketing manager. So the product marketing manager will work closely with the product manager to understand what can, what is the actual thing that we are solving? What is basically the positioning of this new feature, AKM or SolWallet like how can we position it into the market?

Shehab: What, Makes it a standout amongst the other competitors. Like why Marsul's wallet specifically is something that might outperform the other competitors. And who are the targeted segments, you know? Because Marsul wallet is, again, for all Marsul buyers. But there is a target segment that will benefit the most from [00:26:00] Marsul wallet.

Shehab: Now, after we understand everything here, the product marketing manager will be crafting three main artifacts. Artifact number one, it's going to be basically the launch plan. Artifact number two, it's going to be basically, again, uh, every single marketing material, you know, uh, to help launch this product.

Shehab: For example, if there is any sort of like social media posts, if there is any sort of like in app onboarding, You know, and that's something again, we don't have a lot in the MENA region. If there is any sort of like, um, In app, in app, uh, let's say Bob up or in a message if there is maybe, uh, let's say a Bush notification to be sent to the customers, you know, and then lastly, the product marketing manager will be working closely with the product team to produce the final artifact, which is having a sort of dashboard to track the market.

Shehab: However, the product marketing manager will be focusing more into the usage dashboard of the feature itself and not the overall matrix of the business, you know. Post [00:27:00] launching this feature. Now, here's the thing. If you are in a product, uh, or let's say, let's talk first about the sales that companies, you don't need a product market to manage it because the companies there by default are relying on the account managers.

Shehab: So if you're launching a new feature, you need to go and talk with your account managers, you know? Now, if I'm launching a new features for merchants in Marseille, I cannot tell the merchants that, Hey guys, here is a new feature for you. I need to go and talk with the account managers, a team of around like 300 people and tell them that, Hey guys, there is this new feature.

Shehab: It solves X, Y, and Z. Go and talk with your clients and tell them that Marsool is introducing a new feature. Now, if you are in a product led company where the mindset is different, You need a, you need a product marketer manager because the product marketer manager will be helping the product team or the product manager to just work on how can we onboard these customers successfully.

Shehab: You know, if there is any sort of like, uh, tutorial that we need to build, if there is any sort [00:28:00] of like video or article that we need to produce, you know, it just in general, the BMM helps the BM think of the end customer from, from a perspective that I don't know how to use this feature. Um, basically you need to explain it to me in simple words, you know, so the BBM will be basically thinking of ways, how can we explain this feature and let them know that this feature is available in the simplest way possible.

Mehmet: You know, this is very enriching. I would say she have like, because, uh, from my also, uh, chat with, with the force here in the MENA region, I think, you know, there's a lot of work to be done in this space. Um, and also to be fair, like, I don't want to be hammering the MENA region. Like, even when I talk to people, even in the U S sometimes I feel the same thing and it all comes, looks to me, you know, from this dilemma of the founders.

Mehmet: Again, I'm not hammering founders. [00:29:00] Everyone knows how much I'm, you know, I have empathy towards every founder, whatever ideas they have, you know, it's accepting, you know, the market dynamics and you are in product management, you have, and I think you, you understand it better than anyone else, which is, you know, we, we need, we need to find this to your point, this, uh, you know, balance.

Mehmet: Between the sales led growth and the product led growth or what you call like product led sales, right? So, um, and it's, it's becoming like a little bit a noisy wall. Uh, and that, you know, like there's a lot of, of, you know, competitions over there regarding the same area. And this is where I wanted to relate to the, to the next one.

Mehmet: So from product management perspective, anything you do, or you advise maybe the executive team about the competitive landscape, like guys. We've seen like one of our competitors, they included this. We think we should be doing [00:30:00] that. Or is it like something which doesn't fall under the product manager

Shehab: usually?

Shehab: So competitive analysis does fall under the BM, uh, built, you know, you need to actually talk with your executives and let them know about the performance of their, uh, competitors. Now, If you know, ClickUp, ClickUp is a project management tool. They do have a team that is called competitive intelligence team.

Shehab: You know, it's a team of three people. Uh, three people are just helping the executives understand the competitors landscape, you know, what kind of new features, how they launched their marketing materials, you know, how, uh, how they're onboarding new customers. customers, you know, any new strategies, they included any change in their messaging and their positioning.

Shehab: So it's a team dedicated to producing one report a week. And this report is spread to the executives, their product teams, as well as even the design teams there, you know, [00:31:00] so it's a pretty little thing. We haven't adopted that unfortunately in the MENA region yet, you know, now again, is this something as a product manager, you need to own?

Shehab: Definitely Mehmet, you know, definitely you need to own the competitive analysis. Now, does the competitive analysis, uh, or is, or should the competitive analysis be the main drive, uh, behind your decisions as a product manager? The answer is no. Competitors out there are just for the sake of not even benchmarking for me personally, just for the sake of getting some sort of inspiration, you know, understand their strategies.

Shehab: What they do, how they operate in the market, and then based on these insights, you gather, you need to do the work your own way. You know why? Because you're there to solve problems, not to copy competitors. You know, now there is this term that we use in product management, which is a copycat PM, a copycat PM, which is basically a BM who is like, Hey [00:32:00] guys, the competitor introduced feature X.

Shehab: Let's go and introduce this feature here in our platform. You know, however. You might think that that competitor is my main competitor or it's a direct competitor, you know, but turns out that they do have different customers. They serve different segment, you know. Now, if you go and build that feature and you spend technical resources on that feature, you'll end up failing.

Shehab: Why? Because you spent resources on something that doesn't add value to your customers. And it doesn't solve any sort of problem, you know? So what a product manager should do is they should own the competitive analysis, but be mindful about it, you know, share some insights, get some insights, get some sort of like actionable work to be done.

Shehab: However, don't just rely on it as a decision making framework. Your decision making framework should be a sort of like umbrella that falls under different components. One component should be, again, your competitors. Another component should be your users in which you want to be talking with. [00:33:00] Another component should be your context, you know, um, your business context in general, you know, your environmental context, your organizational context.

Shehab: Now that together will serve as a sort of like decision making framework for you. However, I don't recommend like just, Looking into competitors and thinking that hey, let me just go tell the executive that this is something that is happening now in the market Let's do it.

Mehmet: Yeah Just also from my side to what I have seen in in in companies that I work with so the competitive intelligence team But they were actually they crossed the startup mark.

Mehmet: They were a scale up at that time So it's a separate team to your point and but of course they work very closely with the product management team and And yeah, so their main mission is actually to empower. So two things. So first they give insights to product management and the executive teams of what's happening outside.

Mehmet: But for example, us who were the people in the field, because you know, like you go to customer and the customer say, Hey, [00:34:00] like your competitor has this feature. And then you're not empowered, for example. Oh, I didn't know because they told us that they don't have this. So their, their mission is always to keep, you know, what people loves to call battle card.

Mehmet: I don't like them by the way, between product X and product Y, uh, up to date. But yeah, I'm not saying they are not valuable, but to your point, yeah. So they, they play a major role. Now you mentioned something which is actually. I'm liking the way we are doing this into this flow around, you know, like, uh, adopting something maybe if, because of a competitor did it and, but it's valuable or maybe it's a trend in the market or something that the market needs.

Mehmet: And now everyone talks about AI, right? So everyone wants AI power things now from product management perspective, I'm sure that there's a balance between. The pressure of, you know, also having this tech or this, I don't know, a set of features and at the same time [00:35:00] being mindful that, okay, yeah, we can have this, but two things.

Mehmet: Do we have the capacity and time to go and implement that now and prioritize it? And the second thing, like, is it really needed? Like, will it add any value? So how do you manage this, you know, and what you have seen the best practice to manage these two, uh, pressuring, uh, components, I would say on, on, on, on product teams.

Shehab: So the best thing I found after the release of, uh, chat, GPT amendment is that 80 percent of the founders, at least the founders I work with, uh, once they started the adoption of, uh, or once they started to observe the adoption of chat GPT, they told their teams that. Guys, let's build a sort of like AI around our product, you know?

Shehab: And unfortunately, most of these products are just basically generative ai, you know, so they just integrate with chat GBT and get the customer to chat with it inside of the product, you know, so they're solving no problem. There is a food delivery [00:36:00] app in Southeast Asia where they introduced AI inside of their product.

Shehab: And what I did was. If you are like a buyer, you just go and chat with Chagibity inside of that product, and Chagibity can recommend some sort of like recipes to you, and then you can buy the ingredients from that store or from the, from the store hosted in their food delivery app. Now, does that really solve a problem for customers?

Shehab: The answer is no, you know, it might solve again problems to their segment, you know, however, if we reflect that the problem into our market and based on my understanding of the food delivery market, it doesn't solve any sort of problem. And I read some reports after they released that feature on, and it turns out it's all nothing.

Shehab: So. Managing the pressure comes down into asking one question. Does having this sort of AI in our product solve a real customer problem? If yes, then what is this [00:37:00] problem and can we solve it cheaply or not? Why? Because some VMs now are going into this fancy thing of like, Naming or titling themselves as AI product managers, you know, personally, I found some BMS who built like a very simple integration with chat, GBT feature.

Shehab: And then they went to LinkedIn and change their title into AI product managers. So BM sometimes do support executives on building these sort of features so they can talk about it in their future opportunity saying that, Hey guys, I built like a sort of like AI feature and that feature was one, two, three, four, five, without mentioning explicitly what kind of matrix that, uh, did it basically, um, optimize, you know?

Shehab: So again, If you really want to do AI in your product, you need to ask yourself two critical questions. Does it solve a problem? If the answer is yes, then can we solve the problem in a [00:38:00] cheaper manner? If the answer is no, then please skip it. You know, you don't need AI because the end customer doesn't care about AI.

Shehab: You know, it does care about the problem being solved. Now, CharGBD for us, Some of the people, when they, um, browse chadgpd and talk with chadgpd, they don't even think that chadgpd is AI, specifically here, the older generations. Why? Because chadgpd is serving them, chadgpd is solving a problem for them. Now, people don't care if chadgpd is an AI or basically a simple model, you know, that is built manually.

Shehab: Now, If you want to integrate charge into your product again, here's the critical question that you want to ask. Is this something worth building? Because the whole development thing is going to be super expensive.

Mehmet: You know, this reminded me pretty much actually. It just appeared in my, this video keeps appearing in front of, I think [00:39:00] many of us where, uh, someone asks Steve Jobs about, and he was, you know, coming new back to Apple and he asked about, Hey, like, what are you thinking about Java?

Mehmet: And like some of these internet, uh, programming languages and, you know, his famous answer, like, um, yeah. Yeah. Actually, we need to be thinking in the other way. We need to see like what the customer need first, what's their problems and then build solutions for that. Like, and I'm sure at that time, you know, Apple had a lot of technologies that their engineer were playing with, but they, they, they didn't build, you know, something that, you know, You know, no one would buy it or no one would need it.

Mehmet: Um, and I always refer this and I think from product management perspective, you know, this is, you know, to me, you know, I give the example of maybe Apple a lot on the podcast, but because I believe they have done it the best way, maybe not at the moment, but at certain times they were the best ones doing it the right way.

Mehmet: And here's the thing. This is something I need to tell also [00:40:00] the audience and maybe you will agree with me, Shehab. Like sometimes to convey that you are solving an actual real problem, you need to do two things. You need to first tell your audience that actually they are having a problem today because Maybe they are not aware that there is a problem.

Mehmet: Like if I think about again, Apple iPod, you know, one thought, Oh, I'm carrying with me a box like this, having a tape inside wherever I go. So, and this is, I'm relating to the second point and Steve Jobs did it in a very storytelling way where he said, You know see like this is why I have this small pocket here, you know when they even get the ipod mini I mean, I mean We need we need to put the customer experience first.

Mehmet: This is something i'm big believer in so And yeah, great great insights from you from you. Shehab. Thank you for for uh mentioning this

Shehab: now And why you mentioned now is user [00:41:00] centricity, you know, and it's one of the critical components a bm should have, you know If a bm is not user centric, you know, then unfortunately this bm is A feature factory, I call it.

Mehmet: Yeah, now, one thing, you know, from PM perspective, I'm not sure how you think about it, but I would AzShehab, yourself, and from Premiere Product Management perspective. The MENA region currently is a very active region, like, We, we've seen a lot of things happening in Saudi. We've seen a lot of things happening in UAE, even in, in, in some other countries that they started to pick up on the whole MENA region.

Mehmet: Egypt is, is a, is a rising star in my opinion. Um, you know, I can keep going on and on and Africa also, by the way, it's, it's a, it's a monster by itself, but are you seeing us becoming a. Place that really we [00:42:00] can claim that we can compete with the other startup hubs. Across the globe and mentioning, of course, Silicon Valley, London, Singapore, you know, if not, what we are still missing, Shehab, both from, I need to hear your opinion from both Shehab as you, and from product management perspective.

Shehab: Lovely. So, I think there is a huge opportunity for us being the next Silicon Valley. You know, and when I say huge, I mean, super, super huge opportunity to reach into that stage. Now, what we are missing, in my opinion, is the global thinking Mehmet, you know, we are building products to serve our local customers.

Shehab: We are not building products to serve the global audience. So if I ask you name for me products that scaled globally, Or even, let's say, SaaS products that got some sort of customers from the West and customers from [00:43:00] out of the MENA region. We can mention up to, like, 10 products or 15 products, you know, no more than that, unfortunately, you know.

Shehab: Why? Because we are missing the global thinking. We are missing the component in which we need to zoom out and think globally, you know. Um, Companies here operate for 15 and 20 years, you know, super profitable, but they don't think globally. Why? Because they're just focusing on their local customers and focusing on the monetization of such segment, you know, and they're missing the bigger opportunity.

Shehab: That's the critical thing that we are missing, you know, and why we are missing the global thinking is because of the way how we are Thinking about startups, we were brought into the world and thinking that if you are building a startup, do you need to focus on a small niche, you know, and never exit that niche and you need to solve that problem for that specific segment and not thinking about other segments.

Shehab: Except if you want to lose the opportunity, you know [00:44:00] now when when startups succeeded with that specific segment They always thought hey if I leave that segment and I zoom out and I think globally I'm gonna be failing You know, so it's a sort of like mindset thing. If we were to change that, if we want to really compete with Silicon Valley, we need that component of global thinking to be present.

Shehab: You know, how can I, once I reached a product market fit, I can scale, you know, something that was, uh, done successfully was by, uh, I guess the name of the startup was swivel. So swivel started from Egypt and scale to UAE and scale to Pakistan, India, multiple, multiple, uh, Countries and then succeeded to some point and then started to go and down, down, down, down the, uh, down the road.

Shehab: Now, why? Because they kept having a sort of like huge burning, uh, ratio, you know, but that's something we don't want to discuss now. However, They thought globally. [00:45:00] Now that's the kind of like mindset we need to have. Now, from product management perspective, what I really and firmly believe in Mamet is that BM should help with the global thinking.

Shehab: You know, if you're a BM and you're just executing and you're just a feature factory and focusing continuously on churning out features without properly measuring the impact of the value of these features, or without properly even thinking and giving the thought of these features, then you're not helping out.

Shehab: A BM should be. Churning out features should be building impactful features as well as zooming out and sharing continuously sort of like proposals to their executives, you know, what kind of new markets we can enter, what kind of new opportunities we can have, you know, so as a BM, you should have this sort of like chops off.

Shehab: What, what if we do X, what if we do Y and how can we reach to new heights and new levels as, as a company?

Mehmet: Fantastic. You know, you just, uh, hit the nail on the head. As [00:46:00] they say, I just want to add two things to your point. You're a hundred percent right. We think local, not global. And I think founders, and this is my word to you, this is like my advice to you.

Mehmet: Trust yourself more. And I see a lot of pitch decks, and you know what the exit strategy is? The exit strategy is always like, someone from a global player will come and buy us. Why? Why not you become the global player? Like, you should believe in yourself, guys. I think, and this I'm repeating a lot, the amount of talents that we have currently in this region, you know, with everything, Saudi is facilitating the visa.

Mehmet: You know, everyone can now comes to Saudi. You either say, you know, if you think about Turkey, the same thing, like guys, like, and, and, and people loves, loves our, our, our countries, because, you know, we have nice weather and, you know, inside the Gulf countries, we have the safety also as well. And you have the lifestyle and you have all this.

Mehmet: So we have real [00:47:00] talents here and the local talents are even. You know, like they, they, they studied abroad and they know this. I don't know what happens when they come here. They become like more of, yeah, thinking globally and sorry, locally. And we need to stop also one thing to hesitate that we can do it.

Mehmet: Like, I think this is one of the main obstacles I see now. And even to your point, yes. Some of the names that they became kind of global. I wish I see she have more of these startups that start something. Uh, that the globals will follow. Right. I know. You know, and I've seen like, uh, there is a very famous interview with uh, uh, AEX founder, uh, Fatur, and he said There's nothing wrong of taking something from the west and you know, applying here.

Mehmet: And this is what he did with Aex and this is what Kareem they did. And the other, and other, and other. I agree. And it was good move And souk.com of course. And Amazon, they bought it. I agree. We needed that. We needed that because no one was doing anything related to [00:48:00] startups. But I think we reach a stage now.

Mehmet: Yes, that was needed. That was a stepping stone in starting the startup culture in the region. But now I think we should take a different approach and become like more audacious, I would say more courageous to go and go out. And I know there are a lot of talents here. Shehab really, I enjoyed the conversation today.

Mehmet: Final things before we close where people can find more about you and get in touch.

Shehab: Lovely. So people can visit my website, www.shehabberam.com. I do have live chat feature there. You can even visit my LinkedIn from there, which is under the name of, obviously my name, Shehabpera.

Mehmet: Great. Shehab, really, I enjoyed the conversation and all the insights.

Mehmet: I hope this will inspire local product managers, It would inspire founders also as well to, to, to think, you know, on a global level. So thank you very much for, for being with me here today. And this is the way I end my, [00:49:00] uh, my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by.

Mehmet: If you like it, please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. We need your love and support. And if you are one of the loyal followers, thank you for keep sending me your suggestions, your comments. I read them all, let them keep coming, please. So I really enjoy reading all of that. Thank you very much for tuning in and we will be again in a new episode very soon.

Mehmet: Thank you. Bye bye.