#372 Revolutionizing F&B Discovery in Dubai: Insights from Places’ CTO Walid Abou Ali

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me, someone very close geographically, which is I get excited when I have, uh, founders from the region, uh, Walid Abou Ali walid, thank you very much for being with me on the [00:01:00] show today. The way I like to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, to tell us a bit more about your journey and what you are currently up to.

Walid: Thank you, Mohamed, for, I'm happy to have to be in your show today. So this sounds like I thought my journey is not in software engineering, not in technical industry. I started as a 3D artist. I know it looks weird, but it was my passion for a long time. But even when I used to do 3D animation stuff, part of things I like to do was building plugins for 3DS Max.

Walid: Even I have plugins still used today by people around the world. So at the same time, I have passion for game development. So these two passions plus the animation, all of this makes me, you know, go through towards the technology sector by time. I start seeing myself, like, enjoying the writing code more and more.

Walid: I like the fact that you can turn an idea into something people can use. So, this dragged me more and more and more into software. Then it [00:02:00] became like I'm doing both things, 3D animation and software, 50 50. Then, I'm like, More software and this 3D animation and last maybe I think four or five years. It's all software engineering, no more 3D animation in my life.

Walid: Like I focused all my energy into this field. So in software, like I worked in different entities. I worked. And local companies, big ones, small ones, startups. I worked also almost three years at IBM Dubai. Then, you know, till we reach the journey now and places where I'm a founder and CTO of Places, which we can, of course, explain more.

Walid: When we have the discussion, but this is like a summary of my journey where it started where I am now

Mehmet: Fantastically, you know, I like these stories. Uh, You know, it reminded me, you know when you said You enjoyed when you do something like you build a software and people use it And you know, there's [00:03:00] a famous video by steve jobs when he say, you know, like it was a turning moment for him when he Figured out that you create something and people start using it like this is something really nice to hear From you Yeah, so I like also this is a a kind of a traditional question at the cto show I love to know a little bit about places.

Mehmet: So, you know, where's the idea come came from, you know, what inspired you to, to, to have this journey with the, uh, with your co founders and, you know, like, what is the vision for it? So feel free to tell me a little bit more about places.

Walid: Okay, to know more about places like how it started, I have to start back a few years ago.

Walid: Something happened. It was like the spark of this. So I'm a foodie myself. Also, I used to be a competitive eater, which means these people [00:04:00] who eat crazy amount of calories for fun. So I was one of them. Yeah, for some time. And I used to have a YouTube channel about doing food content, but it didn't go very well.

Walid: But You know, there was one video, it was the last video on the channel, I said I want to do my best in it, just, you know, and this is my retirement video. So, best visual effects, best editing, all of this, and I have something, I want to make my car a character in the video, so how I made it, I built an app runs on Android.

Walid: You can speak to it in Arabic and it can search for restaurants and respond you back in Arabic and show you the results on screen. And my car at that time had an Android system. I could, I installed it in my car and use it in the episode. I was like going for burger restaurants in that video. So I said in Arabic, Audi, which means Audi, which is my car, search for burger restaurants in Dubai.

Walid: And it did the search, presented on screen, and I picked restaurants from them and started [00:05:00] visiting them, like five restaurants. The funny thing is, everybody thought it was a visual effect. No one believed it's a real app that's working, and actually, it was a real app. I built it that time with an available public API of the Dubai restaurants, and I coded it like in two days, something like this, something very small.

Walid: And this was left aside till, you know, years later, I'm it. Matthew Davidson, who is the CEO of places currently, like we met somewhere and, you know, we used to work together. We used to chat a lot. He's also a foodie, used to chat a lot about food, like, um, where's the best shawarma is where things like this here.

Walid: And one day I told him the start of this video and showed him the app. And when he tried it, like he was like, you know, we'll eat one day. We have to build this into something bigger. Like, The fact you can search this easily like voice or text or whatever, but you are doing a very nice idea. We have to turn it into a business point of time.

Walid: And two years passed, no discussion about this. [00:06:00] You know, so, but still, I believe it was in Matthew had always, he need to do something about FMB and also this idea like trigger the spark again, uh, till he, one day he spoke to me like, you know what, he, he, Matthew is like, uh, one of the top business people in the automotive industry in here in Dubai.

Walid: It's very known, like every car, like car business, you think about Masio has worked in it or part of it or has connection in it. He's really very well known in this industry, is one of the top entrepreneurs in it, but he likes food. We also likes food. So he said, you know what, my last project before I retire, I want to be F& B.

Walid: And I'm thinking about building an app, people discover F& B in Dubai, like they never saw before. At the same time, it was the rise of the AI hype, chatgbt, all this kind of thing. So we said, we start discussing like, what can we build in this? [00:07:00] And turns out, you know, the biggest challenge you have in Dubai is.

Walid: where to find a good dish. Like, for example, you like Eggs Benedict. Where's the restaurant? Or you need to know what restaurants have it. Okay. You need to know Eggs Benedict and also you need to have a smoking area. Things like this. As a foodie, how I do it usually. I go search every app you can think about.

Walid: I go search Talabad, Zomato, at that time, like delivery, whatever delivery apps. I have maybe six, seven delivery apps on my phone because I know they have the updated menus. And then I will go search Google to validate the location and amenities. Then you can go search something like a trip advisor to see what what recommendation says about it.

Walid: It's like a long journey to really have a list of restaurants that all this dish can be here. I can go here and try it. And you know, as a foodie, the worst thing I had in life is I order a food or go to a restaurant and have food and it's not good. Go ahead to [00:08:00] my expectations. So to fix this problem, we said, you know what?

Walid: We will collect all the data from Dubai, from every F and B players, restaurants, cafes, bars, all of this, like put them into one place and build a very advanced search engine on top of this, that it makes you search very easily, for example, like in places you can, I want a dog friendly cafe that has X Benedict.

Walid: and has, uh, like lemon juice, something like this. So see like the completeness of this term. You look for a place with two dishes should be in the menu, and it's, it's habit to accept those. Imagine also if you add also it should be in a specific area, and you want it with high rating. All these combinations, when we did places, there's no system that can give you all of this from a single search prompt.

Walid: And this was the focus. We want you to write. The normal [00:09:00] English, you know, the normal English you use in your daily life. And it responds to you back with an accurate results of F and B response. No, like non matches. For example, it happens to us in many other apps. You write something, there's no matches.

Walid: It throw you with other results that are not related. We don't do this. Also the data itself, uh, People sometimes shocked when I say this, but the biggest amount of people we have in places is in the data entry team. It's the biggest thing we have. I don't call, I don't like to call them data entry. I like to call them data engineers because they are not just filling excels, they are people who collect, validate, communicate with restaurants to get the latest information.

Walid: It's like, it's a very tough job to do and why they are our biggest team because without this data, there will be no places. This is like what sets us apart from day one, the accuracy of data we have. Then it's the search engine. Of course we are the second big team [00:10:00] is the engineering team. So building such a search engine was a challenge in the beginning.

Walid: Uh, you know, especially people will always compare you to Google, will compare you to charge GBT compared to others. And I can say today we are in the stage, we, we where we can beat every other search engine and other p prompts. And then I can make it a public challenge. Pick a prompt you can do in places and put it in any other app and compare the results and say which one is more accurate.

Walid: Call the restaurants and validate it yourself.

Mehmet: One thing, jokes aside, Waleed, what I liked in this, um, journey and story is that you have put, of course, first of all, the idea is coming out of, uh, a challenge that yourself you face. And of course, a lot of other people they have faced, but what I liked more, honestly, Is what, how you thought about the customer journey, you know, and while you were explaining, I said, yeah, actually, this is what I do.

Mehmet: For example, if I have guests coming from abroad [00:11:00] and, you know, they're visiting, let's say Dubai the first time or the UAE. And yeah, I have, because, you know, for me, I know the places I go usually, I know my dishes, but maybe they will come and say exactly to your point. And, you know, sometimes I even do more, um, let's call it due diligence, you know, for, for that.

Mehmet: Oh, do they offer that? Do they have good ratings? Maybe people will, will, will, will relate. You know what? Maybe not enough to go and check. Let's say TripAdvisor. I want like another source also as well, you know? So, so, you know, the time. That you spend on this. It's like a project by itself. So really amazing.

Mehmet: You know, um, how a project that comes out of self frustration for a second, you know, it touches everyone's lives. And I like, you know, the fact, uh, so question will eat. Do you do? So you mentioned like you can talk in the app that you developed before. So today is it the same thing? Can you like, is it voice?[00:12:00]

Walid: Yes, it has both text and voice. Uh, but let's be honest, they're like voice based. It's not that common with people. Maybe the amount of users are using voice. It's very, very low. Like most of the people for it's text because you know, you are typing in the Metro, you are writing anywhere, voice recognitions technology, like, you know, pick your phone, use, I don't know if you are iPhone or Android, pick the voice recognition on your phone and try to speak in a noisy place.

Walid: You know, many things can happen, especially Dubai FNB is complicated because The multi culture, like,

Mehmet: there is

Walid: a job, there is, sorry, a dish in Japanese, you need to speak in English, the Google voice recognition will not, like, pick it right. That's why we have the voice from day one, and well, it's Arabic and English.

Walid: But, It's still, like, we need to wait for the technology in the world to be bigger, for example, now I'm using NVIDIA broadcast to make the noise cancellation and all of this while I'm having this interview with you. Once you have something like this on [00:13:00] the phones, we'll have more voice based apps, but as a place we are ready, and it's already built, it's not like we need to catch up.

Walid: It's there. This is why you don't see much marketing around it in places, because we know, like, it's not the ideal situation still currently, maybe for web users. We are focused more on text, but both works fine, both identical. If the phone can understand what you said, you will have the same result as typing at places.

Mehmet: I see. Waleed, like out of curiosity, uh, and maybe like, I know you, I know you're the CTO, but, uh, like what's the business model like for, for such application? Like, okay, for Google, they can put ads, you know, like a TripAdvisor again, sponsored, blah, blah, blah. So, so what's the model for you?

Walid: Okay. So you mean the revenue model, how we can make revenue out of it?

Walid: Yeah, just out

Mehmet: of curiosity.

Walid: Okay. Yeah. So for user, it's totally free. So your, our app is totally free. All you need is a Dubai SIM card because we require a valid phone number to look into places, make sure that there's no spam. There's no [00:14:00] fake reviews. There's no nothing like this. Business review come really from the places themselves.

Walid: See. We are solving a problem for users, but there is a bigger problem we are solving for places, the restaurants, the bars, the cafes. The amount of money places are paying to list their offers, to list themselves, to be appear on searches, all of this is massive. Like, we are hearing like massive budgets.

Walid: How places is a better choice for the restaurants or cafes or bars. At first, everybody on places is a foodie. If you run an ad on, like, Facebook or Google, you are targeting massive amounts, oh, some of them can foodies. Places, you are a foodie. You know who, everybody here is foodie. You know what people are searching for.

Walid: I know you are searching for steaks. So you are more attracted towards text. I know like, uh, what's your profile? You are a vegan, you are a vegetarian, you are a low [00:15:00] carb, what allergies do you have? All of this information, like, are given to places into a very informative analytics that can be done. We are not selling your data to a third party.

Walid: It's like, you visit the sisterhood page, We give this person the analytics about you, according to what data you put on classes, not something hidden behind. So, we start with restaurants with a free dashboard, which means you can manage your menu, you can manage your profile page. You can, like, do one promotion.

Walid: One promotion, uh, one active promotion at a time. Then you can upgrade to true dashboard, which is paid. What's the advantage of this? The first thing is you can have, like, multiple, Like promotions active we can't record feature posts can be given or promotions. What's the value of having this? Let's say you put you have a buy one get one free or breakfast or [00:16:00] a discount on latest night If someone in the search right I want the places with latest night you will appear Still, I'm not using this to spam you with ads as a user.

Walid: It means you can search for it. We will match you with them. And the second thing is we allow you to add more photos of your place and allow to add videos of your place. What's the advantage of this in places? We have also, when you're logged in the app, you still, you didn't search anything yet, or some people don't know what to eat.

Walid: We came up with something called place like inspiration wall. It's like Instagram experience. You scroll, but all the content you see are the photos and videos from places, profiles, offers, events, promotions, menus. So you are, again, it's Instagram, but only for FNB. So by adding more photos and videos, you have more chance to appear on this.

Walid: Plus, you get the analytics of whose, the searches you are appearing at, and places, you are getting analytics of your visitors at places. [00:17:00] You are also getting analytics of your sector. We, we have our own algorithm to categorize place in the sectors based on their information, their price ranges, all this kind of things.

Walid: So I can tell you, for example, in your sector, what's trending today is, like, a vegan pistachio pizza. So as a place owner, you think, Oh, maybe I should add this item. If I want to attract more people, like things like this. And we are still like, and also we have some, another thing for sports. I don't know if you are football fan or anything.

Walid: I am not myself. The only sport I like is MMA, but, uh, yeah, it doesn't have too much people here, but for example, uh, people who watch football games, I know people can relate. You want to watch a football match in a place that serves a specific dish. There is no way you can have this, only in places. Places team, every week, go and takes all the football matches, all the Formula One races, and all the rugby matches.

Walid: Why these three? Because [00:18:00] with our research firm, these are the top three sports people like to watch in Dubai, outside. We index all of them. If you are subscriber to the places, a true sports plan, you go and your dashboard and just do two clicks. One click, say you are airing this match or not. And then click, say you're airing it with audio or not.

Walid: What happens again? You're right in the places. I want to watch Manchester United versus Liverpool while having a bacon burger. You will appear. So we are giving all of the solutions for places, make them appear in the searches, but they're on plus get analytics out of this. And by then we will have more things, more plans to get benefits for places.

Walid: I can also bring us a review, but I cannot like say all of them. Now we went to everybody will know about them, but this is the main model. Like we want to give things for places. that really make them appear in our app and make them don't need to waste all or spend too much extra money everywhere else.

Walid: One of [00:19:00] the advantage for, for, for restaurants or bars, cafes using us, we don't charge any fees like, like from your offers. You know, most of solutions that makes you list your offers. They are you, you are paying all this 25% from the bill as a place owner. Mm-Hmm. . And also the platform you use to list your offer, taking a percentage out of it on top of that, right?

Walid: Same thing with ordering, same with all of this. We don't do this. You pay the fixed fee for our dashboard. You could put one offer. You put 20 offers. We don't charge you extra for this. Mm-Hmm, . So we're hoping you to claim or make your offer stand out without paying extra fees.

Mehmet: Really amazing, Walid. Now, I want to go back to the technicality part.

Mehmet: You mentioned, like, you know, that you had a, let's say, not difficulty, but you said, like, building a search engine for such sophisticated use case was kind of a challenge. Now, When we say [00:20:00] challenge, and this is where the CTO comes into the into the place, right? So, um, like without going, of course, I believe maybe you have a proper propriety technology behind it.

Mehmet: But on a high level, like, did you have, for example, to leverage a mix between, you know, what usually a traditional search engine does, plus, you know, the benefit that You know, something like open AI API can do so when, when doing this development of the core, which is the search, actually, you know, like, what are the methodologies like without going, even if you want in the details of the technology, you know, that you have used.

Mehmet: So you, you made that challenge. You know, appears easy at the end.

Walid: Okay, see, what we came up with in Places is like a unique formula. I will tell you a little bit about my history with search engines in general. Because I'm obsessed with search since long years, and I hate every search engine that exists.

Walid: You, you always have two options before the AI, uh, uh, we [00:21:00] have two options. One, one field to search in, and it gives you really very generic results. Or you have these forms, they call, they call them advanced filters, when you need to fill a big form. To get a curated result. A few years ago, I was working on a patent research, like making a new way of search, but I didn't file it.

Walid: In the end, I had some, you know, some circumstances that I couldn't file it, but I did a big research, writing the code, doing the technology behind it, but I kept it on the shelf for myself. Then the AI era came. Everybody went to, you know, Oh, you should now do it like a chat. What's the challenge of doing it without a chat?

Walid: The first thing is the cost. Many people don't know this, but chat. gpt running cost as infrastructure is 100, 000 per day. Like the running course is crazy. Second thing is a delay. You have something to charge your team. You would spend minutes till you find, till you get your results back and forth and every time in the process.

Walid: So [00:22:00] why people need something quick to get results quickly. So you have two options. One text search field, which gives you quick results and work in a legacy way, and, but it's very generic. Or you go advanced form, can give you fast results, but the user need to do too many steps. Or you go to AI, the user do less steps, but it takes time and processing and the cost is massive.

Walid: We created a hybrid of all of these. Like, we are, our engine is, the, like the backend engine is considering it as, like a form of filters. Thanks. But the form filters, the user is not filling. You are writing just a text. This text, we are using our own AI model to analyze this text and convert it to filters.

Walid: And then, this goes to the legacy way of searches, which is very fast. It's called legacy because it's for the AI era, but actually it's how search engines works. Like, you have many search engines, technology has been [00:23:00] there for for tens of years, for decades, like serving sessions. So they are the best tools you can use.

Walid: Really, you can put data in them, index it in the right way, and they can extract it. The thing is, you need to tell them what exact filters you are looking for. Here. Our AI models are coming to take what the user wrote, convert it to the format that these search engines understand. What's the advantage we had in this?

Walid: At first, the AI model is trained in house inside places, which means the AI models are not coming with this massive extra data you don't need. This is a big mistake happens. If you can go take something like the GPT model itself, it has, I don't know the number, something maybe thousands of billions of data that you don't need.

Walid: But you are paying the penalty of hosting this data, and you need more GPU to run it because of this. No, we took AI models, trained them with the data we need, trained mainly on places data. This is very important, so they understand everything we have. Then we end up with AI models, lightweight, [00:24:00] Hosting them is like it's cost money, of course, but but it's not that massive amount.

Walid: And they I'm with this can perform like something like 100 to 200 milliseconds. So all their job is to not look into data. I'm giving you a text. Tell me what filters the users mean by this. If it was a filter for what user repopulated with. And of course, we continue monitoring the result of this. And, like, enhancing it by time, by time, it's cycles of this, but this is the formula, it's like Combination between AI and what actually a good search is like for the last 30 years combine them Both you have the best results because the focus is not to follow a hype or trend We need to build the right technology, which is you see everything exists Take the best of every word and combine them into one.

Mehmet: Right. Um, I had a, uh, you know, another episode. So, okay. For the sake of transparency, we usually, [00:25:00] the episodes are recorded almost like one month before they get released. So by the time now you're going to be listening or watching this, this is going to be like now two months since I had this conversation.

Mehmet: So it looks like, uh, Waleed, uh, you mentioned something very fundamental and I like this because when AI started to come out, the people, you know, like it's a, they said it's the gold rush and we started every single person going to open AI later to Gemini and then to, to Anthropic, which is that they have the cloud, which, you know, People, they didn't think that, yeah, like why I'm paying.

Mehmet: And by the way, to your point, like you have to pay for the API calls and actually you are sometimes, um, getting results for something not related to what you do because it's general model. So what I wanted to ask you, do you think now it's going to become like. [00:26:00] You remember like at some stage, you know, so first there was like, uh, you know, this idea of, for example, you, you build a project specific database, for example, in, in the old, uh, client server model.

Mehmet: So we had like a database and each customer, you know, or each client, they, they. customize this database to their needs, right? So you can't have a database that fits all. So is the LLM becoming, you know, kind of, you know, the database in a sense of a software engineering program? So this is kind of the platform that we need to focus on to build it in house.

Mehmet: Of course, hosting it, we can debate this on premise in cloud. But are you seeing this LLM becoming the core instead of the database?

Walid: Uh, see, I see LLM is really overhyped, overused. It's being enforced into things it doesn't need to use LLM. See, like, people think AI is LLM. [00:27:00] No. Artificial intelligence is something that exists since years before LLM.

Walid: Right. This is why I, no, I don't think LLM is not going to be focused anytime soon. Like, see, LLM has specific applications that will be great. I'll say, for example, if the home assistance and the assistance we have on our phones starts using some offline LLMs, it will be a great application to have. But still, whatever you do, doesn't matter how much LLM will have extra processing time.

Walid: It doesn't matter how much the hardware will expand because LLM is like having a conversation with a person. It's like you need to ask the question and you need to process and give the answer and then correct the context. Like, This is the LM lifestyle. It, it, you, it's a fact that l LM takes processing time.

Walid: So if you are building something customer facing and it, uh, like, and the, the customer expectation is it need to give quickly, m will never be the choice. It's like, [00:28:00] you know, I'll give other example. When you pick a database in, uh, for your project, we have relational and non-relational databases. Some people think one of them can replace the other one.

Walid: Actually, you have to use both based on the application you need to build. So, so like if you, if you want like some good data management and all of this, you need to use relational. But if you are doing searches, you are doing analytics and quick results, you need to use like, uh, like non relational databases.

Walid: And most of companies have hybrid of both. This is the same thing where we're saying, you know, I will replace the database, I will replace all of this. It will be just another element based on the application you will need it or not. So I don't agree with enforcing LLM and everything, it's just to use it where you need it.

Mehmet: You know, as technologists, this is what we always say. We say, uh, pick a technology that fits the problem. Don't search a problem that you [00:29:00] can, you know, use that solution for it. So, um, yeah, and this is what happens usually in, in hypes like this. Um, funny enough, you know, like multiple conversations we used to have, especially when the AI with the chat GPT was still very new.

Mehmet: I mean, released to the public. So people ask, can you show me the AI features? And the guy is saying, yeah, we have a machine learning model, you know, in the background and it is, you know, using like, for example, this algorithm to do predictions to do the, no, no, no, no. Where is the chat? Okay. My friend, AI is not a chatbot only.

Mehmet: Of course, it's one of the use cases, which is, you know, the natural language processing and then, you know, the, all the things that I don't want to go into details. But yeah, 100%. But I like this approach. Um, you know, Waleed. And this brings me to the other question. Now, as a CTO, Of course, the CTO bridges the gap between the business requirement, the startup requirements in your case and the technology.

Mehmet: [00:30:00] So how it's important, you know, to be, you know, sometimes we get excited about technologies in general, like forget whether it's AI, whether it is, but as a CTO, like how from your personal experience, how you can hold yourself and say, Hey, Hold on one second. Does this fit my business or not? I'm asking you a question because maybe for fellow CTOs who might be, you know, hyper and you know, so what's your advice for them to calm down and, you know, really pick the solution that fits their startup business, whatever.

Walid: Okay. See, uh, when you take technical decisions, there's two problems. One of them is what you said you want to, you know, to test everything you want to try everything energy. And there's another thing. You will always think the technology you like is the best. These are two problems many people who architect systems fall into.

Walid: See, like, for me at least, I never had this problem because I had this kind of problems before replaces and [00:31:00] I fixed them in myself before replaces. Because I have been like leading teams, architecting solutions for like maybe five, six years before replaces. So, I learned through the journey, like by observation, first thing you need to be a person honest with yourself and you need to identify, here you did a mistake, here you did something right.

Walid: When you do the mistake, you need to decide why it happened. I found myself like historically, like I did some wrong choices because I was picking the technology I like, which means, you know what? No, it's wrong. Before I built something, I have looked at every technology and either it's a technology I like or hate, I have to think about like all the aspects of what I'm trying to build and where it fits.

Walid: The other thing is, you know, you want to try everything, you want to watch everything. When, I, I faced this problem myself years ago and I overcome it because I find myself, I'm just writing code, throwing it, writing another code, throwing it, because, you know, after, you know, the excitement's going settling at all.

Walid: Yes, it looks an exciting technology, [00:32:00] but now, it's not what I, what I expected. I can give an example for people, maybe from years ago, GraphQL, when Facebook released GraphQL, it was, I was so hyped for it. Like the eye, like how they change, how we do API calls and all of this. And I started one to enforce the GraphQL and everything I'm doing.

Walid: I found myself, I am over applicating the project for myself, for the engineers working with me and all of this. And in the end, what I did, I stopped using GraphQL, but I took the concepts I want, or I need from GraphQL and apply them myself easily. I found I could write a code and maybe in a few hours, That covers what I did from GraphQL without paying the penalty of having the full GraphQL ecosystem in my applications.

Walid: Because it changes your backend, your frontend, how you do all the communication, yeah. So, you need to be aware of this. It's a maturity you need to reach. You cannot teach it to people easily. You have to, uh, to know, and to measure it very well, you have to listen [00:33:00] to the people who work with you. For example, at places, uh, like, we built a backend framework that I hate, but why I picked it?

Walid: Because it is the right backend framework and technology to use to build something like this. But to select it, I have, like, when I hired, like, my head of back end and the back end engineers and all of this, I hired people who are experts in this technology, and I started listening from them a lot. There are many things I used to have this technology for, I found, you know, I didn't have the enough knowledge.

Walid: That's why I was hitting so much. There are other aspects I didn't know about. So all this I listen from the people works with me. They are above you, they are under you, and the hierarchy doesn't matter. Who have the expertise, you have to listen to them. I'm now building an application with PostgreSQL, for example.

Walid: I have a person who know it very well, I have to go listen. They are going to do a research and all of this. Not because you are the top of the hierarchy, the decision should be isolated to [00:34:00] you, because you have the authority. If you will do like this, you can. But I guarantee the failure for you after time.

Walid: You need to always listen to everybody, do your research, take all the opinions, put your personal opinions aside and do the judgment. This is the only way to do it and have the correct solution.

Mehmet: Waleed, this is wisdom, you know, like, uh, and I think this comes after many trial and errors because, you know, I, I, I work in technology, but not on the coding side, much like more into, let's say, systems and all and infrastructure networking.

Mehmet: And yeah, like, yeah, you know, you see the toys, you know, that comes out, hey, like, let's try to see if we can fit that in here and let's try to put that in there. And then to your point, what we figured out, okay, you know what, it was much simpler, even with the, like, without mentioning names, of course, now, you know, like, Oh, let's get like the latest version of this, uh, Operating system that they have 100 new [00:35:00] features released.

Mehmet: Okay. But you know what, like that, uh, old style, you know, 30 years old thing was working fine and we didn't have problems. So actually when, you know, like sometimes even you would increase the number of problems that you need to solve, um, when you adopt a new thing. So, so of course, but I like, I like, you know, your way also lead, like you, you allow people to go explore and then let's see, you know, like I like, You know how you segregated these these two now you talked about scaling and I'm talking about technical from technical scaling um from your experience like because We hear the term technical depth a lot, and because some, I don't like to call them mistakes, but maybe some, yeah, let's call them mistakes, maybe wrong decisions, maybe we didn't, we were not aware, maybe we thought this, [00:36:00] so how much is important, Walid, is also from a CTO perspective to watch out, you know, while we are scaling, because Just as sake of example.

Mehmet: So maybe if today you have let's say 10, 000 active users, and I don't know, maybe 100, 000 Place. I mean your other side of the table So maybe tomorrow you're gonna have like 100, 000 here and 1 million on the other side So so what is the best approach to prepare for this scale and avoid, you know, what is known as the technical depth?

Walid: Okay I will give an advice that I give it to every startup co founder. You should have an in house, high skilled DevOps engineer. DevOps means like people who made the infrastructure and manage it. Why I'm giving this advice because almost in every startup I worked in, in the region, places is the only startup that has this dedicated position.

Walid: Like really we have a head [00:37:00] of DevOps, he is top skilled, highly paid, all of this, you know, like we didn't hire, you cannot go cheap with such things. Like I know if you say I want DevOps engineer, you can have 30 people who are in like junior skills or medium skills, but because of the salary, because of the budget, it's not like from day one, I know this position need a very good budget and I need to find Like a very high skilled guy.

Walid: Look, I was lucky. Like one of my friends is really a very, very skilled DevOps engineer. He has. I don't know how many, how many certificates from Amazon AWS, like he has been doing it for long years. But even with him, we needed another people, we hunted another talent, like someone at his level and all of this.

Walid: Why? These people worked with the scaling solutions before and they know the challenges. The biggest problem in scaling a solution, it's not the code. The code is the second problem. The first problem is your infrastructure. [00:38:00] Can your infrastructure scale? Is your database set up right? Is your server set up right?

Walid: Like, also, are you paying the right amount of money for your infrastructure bill? I have seen companies who pay five times the bill they need to pay. Because they are just put everything overscaling, and I think other companies, they are paying cheap, but they can never scale. I have met companies who their production database are public on the internet.

Walid: It means if you have database credentials, you can access all the data. And guess what? Their database credentials never rotates. And these companies have been years in the market. How do you avoid all of this? Of course, as a co founder, you can do all of this. I have some knowledge of this, but I am not a dedicated DevOps engineer.

Walid: I can never do it the best. So I give it to the experts people, but how I have discussions with them. They give me ideas, suggest, and they give me, we do cost estimations. We go rotate. I start challenging their ideas. What about this cheaper solution? What about this? What about this? From this discussion, we have all of it.

Walid: You can say you can go to a third party consultant, yes, but [00:39:00] it's much harder to find a third party consultant who cares. Why? I have this, like, opinion, doing third party work is about the timesheets. If I hire you a third party, your priority is a timesheet. If I was the guy who don't listen, and I'm working in the slavery mode where you just follow my orders, I'm paying this timesheet, and you know what?

Walid: It's not my company, why I should care? Some people will still have the care, but many of them will go to this, but if he is a person in the company. part of the, of the company members. Also, you are giving them some equity in the company. All of this, if I did the stupid decision, they will come to me and say, stop, here you are going wrong.

Walid: So these discussions between me and the DevOps engineers, what made Places scalable with reasonable budget. And really, I, I, I took some wrong decisions and they stopped me. Like, multiple times. Then the second thing come into the code. Here I had enough experience to know how to write a scalable code. [00:40:00] But if you don't have it, the same thing.

Walid: Go find, like, lead software engineers that know how to write scalable codes and have them in your compiler. This way you shouldn't spend money.

Mehmet: Right. So it's about building the right team. It's about, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, one of the things that I repeated a lot, and I hope like, uh, like others, so, so for you aed, I think, you know, you, you, you really, you know, and even before we, we did this podcast, so what I see in you, you are acting like a real CTO who knows all the aspects of the technology, not only the coding, right?

Mehmet: And this is what the, the, the CTO. And you mentioned something about, um, you know. A database being exposed online. And I was surprised even by some more simple things, like maybe database online. That's a extreme scenario. You, you and me, we might argue, you know, asking like much simpler things regarding hygiene and, you know, like, uh, [00:41:00] precautions for simple security.

Mehmet: And I figured out that, you know, what, uh, if it happens, it happens, or it would not happen to us. And I'm telling people, no, it's on the opposite. They will come after you because they think that you don't care and you for them It's one of the hundreds of target people that they they they would decide or start up that they decide to go So thank you for bringing this now.

Mehmet: I want to take you know, as you know, we're coming to the end almost You're based in in the mina region will lead and you know, the mina region from from cto's perspective It changed a lot. So if if you know, I can't imagine imagine myself Let's say year 2010 or 2011 and I'm having a podcast with a CTO of a startup in in MENA region.

Mehmet: Of course, there were like couples, you know, we can count them on maybe one hand So how have you seen this transformation in you know, the startup space in in MENA region [00:42:00] in the UE specifically now Of course like other countries Saudi, Qatar, Oman all they are picking up actually Jordan even so how have you seen this?

Mehmet: You What are you seeing? The, the next trends I would say from tech in, in our region.

Walid: Okay. See, like, uh, whenever like a new world happens, you always have too many things going up. Then men, most of them fall down and only the, the good ones stays the same thing. I can say here. See, like when I have seen many companies call the, call them themselves, startups, and really they're a startup.

Walid: They don't, they don't, depends on like fundraising or anything. It's a guy called his company start up just to follow a trend. It's just a company owned by one person who founded one company. Yeah. Like, and they're going to start up also the position CEO, CTO, whatever, like. Many places the CEO and CTO O are the same person, which is, doesn't make sense for me.

Walid: Like really, I, I don't think, I don't see it can happen, [00:43:00] but I have, I have seen it before. Also, I have seen like, you know, CT O is what, CT O is the, the engineer that you don't want him to work for you for free. There's also other companies, so there's big wave, many mistakes in it, but at least it makes, you know, if you are a person who really can build a good company, now you have the motivation and now you feel much safer to build it.

Walid: Like I was offered to make companies like from years ago and I was rejecting it because the first thing I feel I cannot do it The market is not ready what I have in mind cannot be accepted in the market Now with all of this now, it's easy to go to an investor say Uh, we are startup in tech. We are startup in this like speak about 10 years ago You go to a cto and you say I want to make an app that makes fnb search much easier Like do you think anyone will?

Walid: Get what you're speaking about now that the investor this helped educating the investors about technology Like before maybe this was mostly real estate we can say like 10 years ago. So this helped a lot [00:44:00] in this I know it has mistakes. I know many people are taking titles While they are not, they don't intend to build a company, but it helps the good people to go step in the market and build something like this.

Walid: So without this wave, I will never be having building places today.

Mehmet: Right. Uh, so what you just mentioned, Walid, I think, as we call it, growing pains for a, for an ecosystem. I'm, I'm optimistic all the time. And, you know, like people, sometimes when I tell them this, I've seen this, you know, when the first sign of people trying to build something here and, you know, these are heroes.

Mehmet: Of course, if I want to count, you know, I'm, I'm afraid I will miss some people, but really there are some names here in the region that they started this wave and, uh, you know, hats off for them. Because after that only, You know, we start to see and yeah, but of course now, but let me tell you the other side of the of this will lead.

Mehmet: So the same thing that [00:45:00] nowadays you see people who call them startups or themselves. I mean, their companies or they call themselves CEO, CTO. Unfortunately, also on the other side of the table, there are people who Are calling themselves investors and they are calling themselves, you know, uh, expert

Mehmet: Regardless, you know, like I don't have problem with people calling themselves, you know, whatever but as long as you don't go and trick people Right. So if someone I don't know He or she they are on linkedin and they call themselves entrepreneurs investor, whatever. And, but they don't harm people. I mean, they don't do actions to trick people.

Mehmet: I'm fine with it. You know, I don't care really. Maybe they are, maybe they are trying. Okay. I will encourage them. But what I don't like is when someone claims something and then they start to act. To trick and, you know, so I need an episode about this later, [00:46:00] but nevertheless, yeah, exactly. Waleed, just final thing, where people can, you know, download, uh, the app or where they can find the site and where they can get in touch with you.

Walid: Okay, at first, our website is places. uae. com, very easy name for anyone to remember, you can download the app from there. You can, of course, download it from the stores, but to make sure you know, like, store searching sometimes. I can't, I can't argue like I'm not fun of the store searching because they don't use really the search up to my standards.

Walid: Yeah. So anyway, still you have there, you you can download for iOS, for Android. All you need is a, a phone number. Are you still in OTP? You are in. No, you don't need to set up an account with password or anything like It's very easy process and you can directly, you, you are inside. You can start discovering f and b also connecting with us.

Walid: You can, so our website, if you are an f and b business and you wanna [00:47:00] join our platform on the website, there is a form, you fill it directly. Our this deal will be, will, will contact with you mostly in the same date. Uh, like. Also, we have our LinkedIn places. It's also, we also, by the way, I like to mention in the end, we also becoming, uh, us and be influencers ourselves.

Walid: So on Instagram. ae, if you wanna follow influencers will tell you about the restaurants without getting paid. What to say. I'll say it like if you go, if, if you go to our Instagram page, you'll find something. Most of the restaurants we spoke about, maybe you don't know about them and they are really great.

Walid: Like, cool. So all of these are channels plus, uh, many people come to me, to my personal LinkedIn. That's also like, welcome now, you know. The workplace is easy. You can search places anywhere and you will find us. So, but mainly the website is the main channel. If you want to directly land on something for us, [00:48:00] get, this is the way to go.

Mehmet: Okay. I forget to ask you this, Walid. Any plans to expand in, in, in the region?

Walid: Like currently we are only in Dubai, we are only in one city, like,

Mehmet: we

Walid: have plans to expand in other cities and other countries, of course, but we will do it in the right way, like Dubai itself has around 10, 000 F& B places. If I say I want to have the best data, I have to research all this, I have to give Dubai its own focus.

Walid: And then you, you know, and also once you build the brand, the brand, it's easier to start. Moving the model to other areas, because people know who you are. When we started, no one knows places. As you call a restaurant, you need data. Like, it was a challenge. Now, it's much easier. So, we have plans to expand when?

Walid: When we say it's ready. When we say we are ready. When we say we fulfill Dubai 100%.

Mehmet: Absolutely. I like this, you know, I like to start small and then grow later. And for the audience, [00:49:00] you will find the link in the show notes. So if you are listening to us on your favorite podcasting app, you will find the link to the website, uh, and you know, the Instagram and the link it in, In in the show notes if you are watching this on youtube, you will find in the description below Walid, I really enjoyed this discussion and i'm happy because I talked to a cto sitting, you know in the same region I get so excited when I do this and for the reasons, you know, we mentioned at the end of the episode So thank you very much for your time.

Mehmet: And you know the valuable information you shared. I think you shared really Gems, I would say for for any city or whether they are in the region or globally about choosing technology You You know how they can overcome the challenges. So I really enjoyed the discussion with you today and you know, this is how I end my episodes.

Mehmet: Usually this is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so, please give us, you know, some encouragement by subscribing and sharing it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one [00:50:00] of the people who are loyal to us, keep sending me their comments, suggestions, something you like, you don't like, Doesn't matter.

Mehmet: I read them all. I appreciate your honest feedback. Keep them coming. And as I say, always, thank you very much for tuning in. We'll be again very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.