Show notes
Tarek Kabrit is the CEO and co-founder of Seez, an intuitive car selling, buying and lending app in Dubai and Kuwait, which has been cited by leading publications as a ‘tech game-changer.’By using artificial intelligence to gather and cleanse the jungle of car data online, Seez reduces the process of finding a car from 17 hours to 6 seconds. Tarek and his team also invented the world’s first A.I. car negotiation chat bot called Cesar, who finds you the best deals, estimates the fair value of the car, and even negotiates the price on your behalf.As a testament to Seez’ success, they celebrated 250k downloads. They are also number 3 on Apple Store with over 3,000 ratings and number 5 on the Android Store.With over 17 years of regional and international experience in strategy consulting, investment banking, private equity and VC, with industry leaders such as Deutsche Bank, Abraaj Group, Mubadala, Wamda, and Booz & Co, Tarek understands both sides of the start-up journey.Enjoy the show!Show Notes:01:30 - Tarek’s background in Private Equity & Venture Capital in the region prior to becoming an entrepreneur3:45 - From Pre-Med to Economics4:30 - Consulting to Banking5:45 - The reason he became an entrepreneur after being a VC8:15 - Dealership partnership for leasing plans9:00 - How Cesar works?10:45 - Why Tarek chose to pursue this startup?13:30 - How Seez started as a side hustle14:45 - Reaching out to his nephew to be his co-founder15:30 - Sourcing the AI/ML tech talent from Denmark for Seez16:45 - Coders, penthouse and cardboard boxes17:15 - Bootstrapping note: Tinder for second-hand office equipment18:15 - The uncle / nephew co-founder dynamics at play19:00 - Regional expansion20:00 - One of the key criteria when deciding a country to expand into20:15 - The challenges Seez faced when expanding into Saudi Arabia23:15 - Difficulties Tarek overcame when learning to manage a technology team24:45 - Transitioning from VC to a founder role and the learnings25:45 - The ability to step back and look at the bigger picture of your startup26:15 - Seez’s funding journey and the pivots26:45 - Scrapping all they had and starting fresh28:00 - Knowing how to pitch VCs from his past experience as a VC30:00 - Looking to Steve Jobs’s drive, Airbnb’s attention to design detail and Netflix’s culture for inspiration32:45 - Tarek’s closeness with all his employees33:30 - The importance of Dreaming Big35:00 - Love for movies at the cinema36:30 - Tarek’s dream of a humanity scale dream initiative36:15 - “Start a startup in your 20’s”, his advice to his 20 year old self See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
