Show notes
Waleed Tuffaha is one of the founding engineers at Jawaker — Jordan's latest success story. Jawaker, a developer of mobile card games was acquired for 205M USD in Sep 2021. Since day one, the company's leadership team has focused on profitability and long-term sustainability. They have only raised a small seed funding round in 2011. Waleed joined Jawaker in 2009 and helped build and launch the first iteration of the product. Today Waleed leads and manages the product and tech team at the company. On the episode, we walk through the journey of Jawaker, reflecting on how they built things back in 2009 and how they steadily and organically grew their user base throughout the years. We also chat about their progressive product development process, the impact of cool-down periods, and how they were able to recreate the social experience of playing cards in the app. Finally, Waleed highlights the big role culture and leadership has played in retaining and developing their team all throughout the years. 00:51 - 03:01 Waleed's career path & early days at Jawaker03:01 - 03:46 What Jawaker looked like in 200903:46 - 06:37 Acquiring early adopters06:37 - 10:04 Replicating the social experience of playing cards on the app10:04 - 15:37 Focus on profitability over growth since day 115:37 - 17:39 How and when did the team grow17:39 - 23:03 The impact of cool-down periods between development cycles23:03 - 26:36 Listening to customers & prioritizing requests26:36 - 29:47 Determining your own speed of growth29:47 - 31:29 Current structure of product and tech teams31:29 - 33:45 What the future holds for Jawaker33:45 - 39:33 What made the company a successLet's Talk Product is brought to you by Propeller, a seed-stage venture capital firm based out of Jordan. If you're building software out of MENA, get in touch, we'd love to talk!
