A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif
Join Executive Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, Dina H. Sherif as she brings together the stories of those brave enough to engage in leadership, with a focus on those who are working hard to see entrepreneurs thrive across global growth markets. The podcast will feature individuals who stand strong in their purpose and who are working hard to create change, now and for the future.
A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif
Entrepreneurship as a Form of Resistance: A Conversation with Ahmed Zahran of KarmSolar
In this episode of A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif, we sit down with Ahmed Zahran, CEO of KarmSolar and 2024 Foundry Fellow at the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. What started as a company born out of frustration and necessity has now become one of Egypt’s leading solar energy firms, transforming the way power is generated and distributed in the region.
Ahmed shares his journey from working in corporate energy to being forced out of a job—an event that led to the creation of KarmSolar. We explore the power of entrepreneurship as resistance, the role of adaptive leadership, and why building for the long-term often means letting go of ego and immediate success.
We also discuss the future of renewable energy in Egypt, why leadership is about championing others, and what it takes to sustain a mission-driven company against all odds.
**This Episode was originally filmed in November 2024**
Host: Dina Sherif
Produced by Donovan Beck
For Media Inquiries:
Donovan Beck
Communications and Storytelling Coordinator
Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
292 Main St, E38, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142
don_beck@mit.edu
I'm super excited to welcome you to our podcast, legacy with purpose. It's wonderful to be able to host a good friend, a foundry fellow and an amazing entrepreneur from my home country, Egypt, on this podcast. So today we have with us Ahmed zaharan, CEO karm solar, and also foundry fellow of the Center for development entrepreneurship at MIT. Ahmed, thank you so much for making the time. We're so excited to have you with us on this podcast. I'm very excited to be here. I'm glad that you are so I want to get started right away, and I want to ask, I want to start out by asking, Your journey has been an interesting one, and you started your career working in a big multinational shell, and you worked in London, back to Egypt. You still worked in a fairly large company, also in the energy sector, but at some point, you made a decision to step away from stable, big corporate job, and you decided to start your own company called Carm solar. What was behind that decision to leave the stability of regular income big company and then venture into starting a company at a pretty unstable time in the history of our country as well?
Ahmed Zahran:Actually, I did not choose to start consoler. The reason consoler started is because I was kind of pushed out or fired from the company where I was working, and we found ourselves basically having to establish corn solar because we still wanted to achieve the things that we were trying to work on with when we were hired at that company. So it was never a conscious decision. It was kind of we were being pushed or cornered to do that. Now the other, I think the the one thing that I could elaborate on is that when, when this happened to us, normally, we could have just looked for another job, but I think the reason we did not do that, and the reason we preferred to start our own thing, was, I think, I think it was because of the effect the Revolution had on us that suddenly it was very clear to me that there was so much power In the hands of that man, and he is able to fire and hire, invest and not invest in things that he wanted, and he associated that with what he believed in. And I thought that we deserve a similar chance that we work on the things that we believe in, and we support it ourselves, and we make it independent, and we secure our own source of income within an institution that we start ourselves. Tell us a little bit about Carm solar. So what is Carm solar? Well, at the moment, we define Carm solar as a solar utility company. So we're aiming to redesign the power utility, whether when it comes to power generation or power distribution, but this is a very recent definition of the company, the company, you know, changed many times on the way. When we started, we were just, you know, the company was fueled with anger, and it was started to get back at that oligarch, to show him that we can do it, and to show him that we do not need him, nor we need people like him, but then, you know, Anger can take you for a bit of time, but it doesn't. It's not able to take you for the entire journey. And we were again forced to mature and start thinking in a different way. It's very rare
Dina Sherif:that you hear somebody say, I didn't, I started a venture because it was more of a form of protest,
Ahmed Zahran:actually. Yeah, it was completely fueled by anger. I I hated the guy so much, and I hated the amount of power and influence he had. But this is not enough to build an institution, and that's what we realized midway. So at the beginning, when we started, we really started to try and develop a certain type of solar water pumping systems, because Egypt has a lot of underground water, and it is a main source of water for agriculture, and to use solar energy directly for the pumps. There was a kind of a technical difficulty that needed to be solved, and we managed in solving it with a patent. And that was the beginning of the company. And then we started really developing our business model. Instead of selling solar systems, we started investing in solar stations and selling power to the private sector. And then we started. It working on power distribution as well through investment in power grids, and then we started integrating power generation and power distribution through solar. Well, the plan is for all the grids that we're managing is that you would get to solar penetration that is 100% so each grid has its own story and has its own economics, but all of them are moving towards becoming 100% solar. So some grids are still at 2% sort of penetration. Some of them are 60% sort of penetration. It depends on how, how fast that grid is growing, how the demand is changing, whether there is a battery investment or not, and so on. But the aim is to eventually design the power infrastructure that would be able to have 100% renewable energy, because currently, our power infrastructure in many of our countries are designed primarily for fossil fuels, not for renewable energy, right?
Dina Sherif:So that brings me to my next question at the time that you started calm solar, the world was not, and definitely our part of the world was not all excited about solar energy, clean energy. It was still in the very, very early days. So in many ways, you started this company, in a way, by accident, and also you started in a space that was to great extent against the grain, and in a region that was the main provider of fossil fuels. So how did you manage to stay the course, to get to where you are today, with such a difficult beginning, where there are so many things moving against you, whether it be politics, whether it be that clean energy was still not the obsession of the Arab region, building a strong team, all these things. There's so many things, raising capital. There were so many things that were difficult at the time. How did you stay the course?
Ahmed Zahran:I think there were two specific things that helped us at the time. Number one, that I had access to really some great people that supported us, both financially, psychologically, technically, and, you know, they really felt that we represent them, and they felt that our success meant something to them. And the second thing is consistency. You need to show up to the office every day, working, smiling, you know, accepting the challenges that life's throwing at you, and realizing that if you keep doing that, and if you keep trying, maybe something is going to work out. So it was always a bet that maybe 1% of the 100% of things we're working on is going to work out, and that what eventually happened. I mean, the company has been around, and this this month, we celebrate 13 years, yeah, yeah, that's right. Which is the age of the revolution, the
Dina Sherif:age of my own company? Oh, yeah, so many of us started companies that year. Yeah, exactly. It was, many companies, for sure, in Egypt, and
Ahmed Zahran:that's one of the main things that the revolution did to the country that I'm still very proud of, because I still very much belong to that revolution and what it represented to me and to many other people like me.
Dina Sherif:Yeah, I really love this idea of consistency and just keep on showing up. But i i It's not always easy, so I still have to say, what, what did you need to tap into, to just keep showing up for your team and for everyone? Because it's not always easy to do that in the face of multiple obstacles. What do you think that you have that allowed you to do that?
Ahmed Zahran:I have a cause, and I think having a cause is something that provides with the energy and drive to do anything, and I only get to live once, so if I don't use my my life, my time on this planet, to work on the things that I really love and believe in, I'm not going to get a second chance to do that. And I believe I was created to help with a specific cause, and I'm there to do it. And I think that what makes me quite happy to go to the office or to decide every day
Dina Sherif:to believe in something bigger than yourself, yes, and
Ahmed Zahran:I do not measure my. My success by achieving anything during my lifetime. I think that a lot of the things that we're going to be that we want to achieve require time that is more than our lifespan. Yeah,
Dina Sherif:so we won't likely live to see it, but it doesn't matter. Yeah,
Ahmed Zahran:so I don't care if I die defeated, as long as what I believe in lives to succeed or win one day. And that's the thing that I think is very important that we you know, there's always this pressure from society for the instant gratification seeing the fruit of my work right now, yeah, or during my lifetime,
Dina Sherif:I used to be in it for the long, the long exactly, it
Ahmed Zahran:took me a lot of time to train myself not to be influenced by that. Because, listen, we come from a place where problems are quite complicated and they will take a lot of time to be solved, and not one single generation will be able to solve all of them, but someone has to start, and someone has to start who is not addicted to achievements. So we have to be addicted to patients rather than addicted to achievements. Yeah, it's
Dina Sherif:interesting that you say that. A couple of weeks ago, I had a podcast with his excellency president, Masisi of Botswana, and we talked about the meaning of leadership, but also specifically that ego has to be let go of when you are in the business of service or achieving something that is bigger than yourself, would you? It sounds like you would agree with that
Ahmed Zahran:very much. So, you know, there's a king called Mina Narmer. He's the founder of Egypt, basically. So he's the one who Egypt. Before there was Egypt, there was the kingdom of the north and kingdom of the South, and he unified them and created Egypt and the first central government. And
Dina Sherif:I'm sure not many, many of our audience would know that. So that
Ahmed Zahran:was around maybe 6200 years ago, and Mina never saw the pyramids. He knows nothing about them, but it is because of his work that the pyramids eventually happened. And that's, you know, I think, a lesson that I learned from that you have to be, you know, connected to what you want to achieve, and disconnected from when is it going to happen? Because many of those things, especially if they are of a high impact, you just need to create the grounds that would allow the people that come after you to carry on with what you're trying to do. So maybe I will not live to see 100% solar grid, but I want to get it as high as possible, so that the people after me can take it 100% and
Dina Sherif:maybe that's what leadership is all about.
Ahmed Zahran:I think leadership is about that plus many other things, because life is very difficult and we are created to have a lot of fights and struggles in life. And I think the most difficult thing in life, and that's what leadership could help us with, is gaining wisdom. And I think wisdom is, you know, is a very difficult thing to achieve, and it is my hope that one day I'd be able to be, you know, to be wise. And I think that, you know, one of the main goals of leadership should be achieving wisdom, because wisdom helps you. Understanding others helps you getting to where you want to go, but also it helps you in building a community building you know, a structure of ideas, a structure of you know, human beings, a structure of systems that allow humanity to prosper and reduce the injustice, the inefficiency, the waste that exists today. Yeah,
Dina Sherif:yeah. Well, I want to talk about something a little different. Rumor has it that you have very particular views about recruiting talent and retaining talent, and I would love for you to share your own philosophy around talent, talent recruitment, but also retaining talent, and as a result, how that translates into culture within. An organization.
Ahmed Zahran:I think that you know talented people like to belong to a cause and like to understand how their work is going to be impactful on their societies and on the people around them. And I truly believe. And I mean, from what we've seen at corn solar, it is important that the people you work with really understand the impact of what they're working on. It's not just about the money, it's not just about the financial compensation, and it's not just about the career development. It's not about the title. It's not about those things alone. It's about what are we trying to build and why are we building it? It's about the cause. Why does this place exist? Why does that place need me, and how can I use that place, this place where I'm working, that institution, to make life better for others and for myself. So it is about the accumulation of knowledge, accumulation of value. And I believe that it takes a lot of time to find those people who are willing to, you know, to work with that work mode, and I believe that it takes a lot of time for people to really understand what their cause is. We sometimes, you know, think that we're born with a cause doesn't work this way, and talented people are the ones who understand that it takes time to identify with what we align with and what we want to achieve in life. And I believe that it is the job of any institution to provide the platform for people to achieve
Dina Sherif:what they want to achieve exactly. And
Ahmed Zahran:if you have, when you have an organization that has that as you know as the core of what they're working on, you're usually able to attract talent that are normally only available for way bigger organizations that are offering much more attractive financial compensations, but we don't have as much money, and our people work in very difficult places, but still, we're able to attract that type of talent, and I think the core reason for that is the cause that They belong to when they work on those things,
Dina Sherif:and maybe the passion that you have for it.
Ahmed Zahran:Well, I, you know the what if I get hit by a bus and I disappear? Does this mean that that you know institution or that cause is going to disappear the power of any organization is in the ability of its leader to resign. So I think that my biggest achievement to crumb solo would be my resignation. Someday,
Dina Sherif:I would tend to agree with that, you know, because I left my own company, yeah, and it continues on exactly so I definitely, that definitely resonates with me and talk, talk to us a little bit about the culture of calm solar. For example, I know that you were very bullish about your team having lunch together and sitting on the roof rooftop and spending time together like what was behind that? Not everybody will take the time, you know. And building a company is not easy. There's time is never a luxury. But you would take the time for all of you to sit and have a meal together, and that was just part of the culture of carb solar. What what was behind that, and what was the actual culture that you wanted to build? So
Ahmed Zahran:let's start with the with the problem that I was trying to solve, you will find different companies working according to different work cultures. There is the American work culture, there's the European one. There is a very specific English one. There is the Japanese one, which is also quite different. And as Arabs and as Egyptians, we never really had our own working culture. And what I thought of is, what are the elements from our culture that I think we could add to the workplace that would make it more relevant to how we function as people, and what are the elements of that culture that if we introduce to the working environment, others outside of our culture can make use of you. Right? And Egypt functions like one big group hug. Yep,
Dina Sherif:we love our communities exactly and, and we love food exactly
Ahmed Zahran:and, and you'll find a lot of interactions between what is personal and what is business, and what is social and what is not, and so on, even with dealing with clients, with investors and so on, all those things you know, it functions in a fundamentally different way from other places. And the question was, how can you introduce that to the working culture in a way that would not disrupt it and but would be a reflection of how we as people, as a culture, view the world? And I realized that one of the best times that you have with your friends and your family is the way that we get together around food, for example. And also it's about the physical space where we work. It's about the the power of a courtyard, for example. So it's not just about the our office in Cairo, but our campus in the Black Desert, for example, is one of the places that I love working from. And a lot of people in the company, they love working from there. And it was one of the main things that I thought the company should invest in. It has a workshop for our engineers to work from and our technicians so that they can come up with ideas and experiment. It has a, you know, a kitchen and a chef so that they can eat properly. It has, you know, it has a very nice terrace, and it's in the middle of the fields. And the reason it was designed like that is to make sure that it really borrows from our architecture, our distribution of space, because it's different from from it's just a different interpretation of life. You know, we come from hot climates, and the role of a courtyard is important. Now, imagine what you can do with a terrace and a courtyard within our own architecture, it creates a type of experience for the people working, and a type of interaction between all of them that is different from from anywhere else. And that was the idea. And it succeeded to the extent that at certain points in time, very talented people who were and who were always very difficult to get to work in the desert. Loved working from there because it was quite enjoyable. Although it was quite primitive, it did not really have a lot of luxury into it. But it had good local food. It had a workshop where they can experiment. It had, it has good architecture, so all those elements contributed to that. And so what I realized is that, you know, a lot of ideas and a lot of suggestions could come when people gather around food to eat together. So it's not a question of offering a good meal. It's not about offering the good meal. It's about the interaction between different parts of the team during the around the activity of eating, and that's the most important thing, I think, in terms of how we manage it so they have to eat at the same time. It's not a question of the availability of launch between 12 and two, for example. No, it's about lunches being offered during a specific half an hour. And
Dina Sherif:you all have to be there exactly. I love it. I love it. So fast forward 2024 which is where we are now. And you know, Carm solar had a difficult few years getting started, with some difficulties in between, obviously, like any company. But you know now Carm solar is in a very, very different place. And not only is Carm solar very successful, but Carm solar has also given birth to a number of new subsidiaries, and that kind of family of companies continues to grow and evolve. And you're you've moved beyond Egypt to other markets. So I wanted you to share with the those who are listening in what is that full growth journey for you? What has that been like? And as you give birth to new companies and new ideas come into fruition, how does that fit into that original vision, or has that original vision also shifted with time? Or has that stayed very stable with other things falling right in between to achieve that?
Ahmed Zahran:I mean, definitely the vision changed many times. I. Actually, because as we were working, we were learning and discovering things, consolidating is a is a platform, and it has to function as a platform that allows others to build things that they believe in, and to be able to technically develop what they're working on. And the reason it has to function that way to achieve its scalability is because I have to be less involved. The the role that I play is to make sure that that platform is functioning efficiently and that people are getting the resources that they need to build, what they want to build, and it has to function in that manner, because there are many ways of doing things, and if I stick to My way, this means that there are many other possible, you know, alternatives, scenarios, methods that can be used, that will be missed by the company. When you're working in a difficult environment, a difficult economy, you cannot count on one way of thinking, and you cannot count on one source of revenue. And because I grew up in Egypt, and because Egypt is a difficult place to do business in, I was always thinking of that, that the importance of a backup all the time, the importance of options all the time, and that made me and the management make sure that different methods by different management teams or managing different companies can be implemented, and that we can support them and accept that people can do things in a different way, and we only intervene if they need support, if there are certain problems that are happening, if they're facing certain challenges that they do not Know how to deal with or if certain things require certain type of experience that they don't have. But in general, they are left to do things the way they want and to grow their own businesses within the umbrella of what comes with and that really what enabled us to diversify our sources of income and survive those difficult times, especially after COVID,
Dina Sherif:and allow people to evolve and create their own things, yes,
Ahmed Zahran:which is a because, I mean, not
Dina Sherif:necessarily a common model, right?
Ahmed Zahran:I don't know if this is a common model or not. Please remember that most of my learning is from trial and error. I did not really get As
Dina Sherif:with most entrepreneurs, right? That's a part of the entrepreneurial journey, exactly.
Ahmed Zahran:So I don't know what happened out there. The reason I do things like the fellowship and and other educational, you know, activities that I engage with is I try to find out what is out there and what can be used to minimize the impact of trial and error. Because at the end of the day, trial and error has an impact on the organization. And it's always better to try and discover things that you can reduce that impact. But again, I really learned a lot from how others within the company manage their part of the business, how they look at things. I really learned from our board and how they look at things,
Dina Sherif:there's a lot of beauty and diversity, definitely.
Ahmed Zahran:And previously, I was not like that. I was very specific and particular about how things should be done, and I always felt that I have to impose that on everyone. And it took me again time to realize
Dina Sherif:that doesn't always have to be done my way, yeah, and
Ahmed Zahran:that's not how you're going to scale. So you have to guard governance and efficiency and provide that for everyone, but they have to try and do things their own way, because they might reach a better conclusion than yours. And it's the survival of the best ideas
Dina Sherif:that's quite profound, actually. So hold government governance and proper governance stable, along with efficiency of the business, but allow space for everything else to emerge in its own particular way. You
Ahmed Zahran:cannot hire talented people and then force them to do what you want. That's right, yeah. You have to, you know, provide them with a platform for them to be creative, and I'm only particular about products that I am designing myself, but things that they are designing, it's just left to them. And that's the whole idea that when you believe in a certain product or certain services and you're designing it, you need to give it a chance, to try doing it your own way. So I always, you know, I always tell them, whenever I see someone suggesting something, and they really believe in it, I tell them, I will follow you. And when I say that, it creates the type of good liability that, that I think is important for any organization. So there is a difference between saying that I I approve something, and saying that I will follow the person. When you say that you will follow the person, they become more responsible for what they are doing, and they will start assessing it and scrutinizing it in a better way, because you gave them ownership exactly, and because they feel liable to you and the rest of the company. But when you approve things it, I see it is a, you know, it's not about approving or disapproving. It's about following good ideas, right, and allowing them to evolve and prosper. You know, because we, we are, we are working in a in a poor country with a lot of trouble and challenges. And when you put it
Dina Sherif:mildly, to put it mildly, and
Ahmed Zahran:when you're working in such circumstances, you really need every brain cell. And if you think that you have the solution alone, you would probably drown. But if you make sure that others are engaged and are trying and are doing their best to help and that they understand the responsibility of their participation, your chances of succeeding, I think, are going to be higher.
Dina Sherif:Very fair Well, you brought up the fellowship and the fact that you're a foundry fellow, and during the fellowship, you were introduced to this very out of the box and not very traditional framework that we call adaptive leadership. And the impression I got from you is that this framework deeply impacted you. And the question I have is, why is it that this particular framework of leadership impacted you, and why do you think that it's important for the center to continue to spread this particular approach to leadership within the context of the Arab region in Africa. More broadly.
Ahmed Zahran:The the problem with people like me is that we know how to talk and we know how to pitch, and that is sometimes a double edged sword, because we can say a lot of bullshit and it will appear as if it's concrete and logical. And sometimes you do it without intending to do it, because we were conditioned to do it when you're fundraising, you have to get the money in. When you're encouraging and motivating people, you have to say certain things. And sometimes when you're good at doing that, you miss the real problem. And there is, there is one of the profound things about adaptive leadership, the fact that there are certain challenges called adaptive challenges, that require the change of the system or the change of the way of thinking or the change of the framework, but when you become so good at gaming the system, you get addicted to what we call technical solutions that allow you to navigate the corrupted system, or the corrupted framework or mode of thinking that the company needs to change in the first place. So the really, the thing that I, that I you know, that I love the most, is, you know, for an adaptive challenge that requires a paradigm shift. You have to come up with an adaptive solution. But for an adaptive challenge, if you come up with a technical solution that just doesn't make sense, you know, people like me fill the air around everybody else with how we talk and what we say, and you can have a lot of meetings with a lot of ideas and suggestions and so on. But because we're able to do that, sometimes we miss the point. We miss the main challenge that we have to be dealing
Dina Sherif:with, which is much easier, an answer exactly, and why you need an adaptive solution exactly. So sometimes, when for those who are listening, who may not know the framework right, the adaptive. Challenge means that we don't really have an answer or a known solution, and that requires time, because that means that we need to come up with a new solution, something that has never been introduced before. And if the solution was there, then it would be a technical challenge with a technical solution, and everything would be great, and we wouldn't need someone, yes,
Ahmed Zahran:right? And because you can or
Dina Sherif:we wouldn't need leadership, per se, you would just need a good manager who understands the technical part of it, who can take that problem and provide the technical solution, because they have that expertise and be done with it. It's exactly
Ahmed Zahran:like how you market an unhealthy McDonald's meal versus a really healthy meal that takes a lot of time to cook, and that is what technical solutions are like. And because we can do a lot of marketing around technical solutions that are not necessarily doing that paradigm shift, it's much easier to sell them to the team and get them to work on things that are not really changing the reality of how we're working
Dina Sherif:and adaptive work takes time and takes a lot of effort and a
Ahmed Zahran:lot of resources and a lot of brainstorming and a specific type of interaction between the people involved in finding that solution. You know, one of the main things that I learned from the fellowship as well is how to uncomfortably work with others, because we always think and we always aim for that comfortable working setup where we are
Dina Sherif:all getting Along exactly and all is easy and easy flow, whereas the magic happens in the tension Exactly. And
Ahmed Zahran:one of the main things that I was always looking for before the fellowship, because it's a question that I always had, is, how can we learn how to fight within the context of where we are working or where we belong, to make sure that we reach the best conclusions possible or the best suggestions possible. In Egypt in general, in the Arab world, the first fight is usually the only fight and the last fight, and people just split. Well,
Dina Sherif:I don't think that's in Egypt alone. Tension is uncomfortable.
Ahmed Zahran:I think the Arabs have an expertise on but what I what I'm trying to say is that I was always looking for how, if there is a, you know, an academic way of learning how to fight and how to uncomfortably work with others and be outside of your comfort zone, but still achieve something and still stay connected as one exactly. And the the training on adaptive leadership that we had at the foundry fellowship really provided me with a with a with a potential option of how to deal with that. And I actually started using it
Dina Sherif:that makes us happy. Yeah,
Ahmed Zahran:that's actually where I came up with, I will follow you approach. I only started using it after the fellowship, because it is based on that, that I do not have to be leading everything. The whole idea of leadership is everybody,
Dina Sherif:and everybody can exercise leadership at any time, in any at any point, exactly.
Ahmed Zahran:And it's, you know, that's, that's, I would have never imagined myself thinking like that, because I was very comfortable to provide all the necessary leadership, and it was always in demand, and people were more comfortable following me, and I think it's when they realized that I am not just willing to follow them, but it is my intention to keep following them. I think it created a shift, yeah, it changed how people are perceiving, how we're working together.
Dina Sherif:Yeah? That makes me very happy to hear, yeah. It's
Ahmed Zahran:now. It has become a very scary whenever I tell anyone that
Dina Sherif:they're like, oh, I can take ownership now. The lights on me, yeah, I get that. You know, part of the during the fellowship as well, you are also exposed to our own views on Africa and the importance of, you know, Egypt is a part of the Arab world. It's also part of Africa. And at the center, we talk about there, there was Africa pre colonial times, and Africa during colonial times, in Africa in a post colonial era, and where we haven't
Ahmed Zahran:seen the third one yet. Well, we've seen we're still, we're still
Dina Sherif:the rise of. Political independence. What we have not seen is true, economic liberation.
Ahmed Zahran:I don't differentiate between the three. Well, I would agree
Dina Sherif:with you. I don't necessarily differentiate, but for the sake of the world, I think you know, in the eyes of many, Africa has achieved political independence, but we are still very much trying to find our way towards economic agency and sovereignty. And at the center, we have this deep belief that entrepreneurs are extremely important to the achievement of economic agency and sovereignty within Africa. What are your own thoughts around the importance of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs to creating economic agency within countries like Egypt and beyond.
Ahmed Zahran:Entrepreneurship is a form of resistance. It is a way of fighting stupidity, inefficiency, corruption and the oligarchs. The world is missing our interpretation of the world and our interpretation of life, and we have so many colors that the world has not seen yet. And I think that this will be only achieved if there is a true and sincere decolonization of Africa and the Arab world, and not just Africa and the Arab world. I think this is, you know, this is a thing that connects
Dina Sherif:Africa, Arab world, Latin America, Asia. Many countries have been a
Ahmed Zahran:part of this journey. I'd call them the unfortunates of this world. And the beauty of entrepreneurship is that it allows you with very little resources to fight against the powerful and show your point of view. And although we have a lot of resources in Africa, we don't have access to them. So there's a difference between having a resource and actually having access to it. And because of a lot of power struggles and, you know, and political issues and so on, we were cornered in a way where we do not have access to our own resources. And I think what entrepreneurship is providing us with is the tool to resist and change all of that, because entrepreneurship teaches you and allows you to use the very little resources that you have access to to tap into the bigger resources that You're not allowed to touch, and it allows you to outsmart the the power hungry, the outsmart dictatorship,
Dina Sherif:to outsmart colonialism, Imperial. Yes,
Ahmed Zahran:definitely. And I think it's, it's, I think it's going to take a lot of time, but I think that, I think that we are creative people, and I think that our the hardships that we had to go through, and the number of things that we had to struggle with on daily basis while growing up, has made us interpret the world and see it in a fundamentally different way from others, the way we are able and willing to confront things that are usually disruptive in many places is higher than what you would find in Europe or America or any other developed country. And I think this is our passport to a better life, because not only do we work with much, much less, much less, but we are capable of coping with tougher circumstances. Resilient? Yeah, no, I wouldn't want to use resilient, because resilient is a very Western way of looking at it's not resilient, it's we are more capable at dealing with randomness.
Dina Sherif:Yeah, I had a another fellow recently say about, we had a workshop, you know, about currency volatility. And she said, you know, in Africa, we just. Roll with the punches exactly. I said to her, said, How did what was going through your mind when, when the devaluation in your particular company or country happened? And she said, you know, Dina, we just roll with the punches. Where we come from, just the way it goes,
Ahmed Zahran:but the Yeah, but, but, you know, when you say resilience, it doesn't really cover resilience mean, means that I'm capable of dealing extreme situations with conditions that I can expect or that I know of, or maybe sometimes that I'm trained for, but it's like an extreme version of it, but our ability to deal with black swans is, I don't want to say unmatched, but it's quite good, or maybe it's our superpower, because we, you know, I like to say to notify I think we're street cats. I know you've said that before that you know, nothing comes easy. Nothing does come easy. That is very true, yeah, within a condition where everything is against you.
Dina Sherif:Yeah. And in spite of it all, we continue, right? Yes, yeah. I don't know. Maybe the word, I often say that there's this word called resilience, and then there's this idea of emotional resilience. And when I say emotional resilience, it's I mean it in the face of multiple struggles, you do not fall apart. You don't bury your head in the sand or go into a dark, deep, dark depression. It's more that you are able to push through the difficult moments and manage your emotions in a way to allow you to keep taking one step forward in front of the other. I have never seen that, you know, as much as I have seen that in my own country or in countries like ours,
Ahmed Zahran:because you cannot afford that 10 minutes of crying.
Dina Sherif:Yeah, in many ways it's very true. I mean,
Ahmed Zahran:you just simply cannot afford it. There are a lot of people dependent on you. You have a lot of commitments. You have to be always capable and ready to deal with unfamiliar situations, unexpected issues, and still grow, because it's not just about survival, by the way, it's about growing within that context and within those circumstances. And I think this is the thing that we this is the value that we, that we have to offer the world. I think this is, you know, a missing color that if people see in us, and what we are trying to build and what we're trying to do, that they might like and they might adopt some of what we have, just like music, you know, so African music is the cool thing now, but it has an impact in other types of music that are not necessarily related to African music today. Yeah, but people got a chance to see it, try it and integrate it within what they built. Yeah, that's right, but they haven't seen how we work, and they haven't necessarily seen how we solve problems. And I believe if they get to see it, and if they get to assess it in, you know, in a comprehensive and sincere way, that they have something to learn from us, we're always perceived as inefficient and lazy, and, you know, generally behind. And although this is true from a technical point of view, and although we are far behind in terms of human development, which is true, and we are poor, and we have to admit it, and we have to acknowledge it so that we're able to deal with it. But we have a lot of values, ideas, ways of doing things that are relevant to the extreme conditions, extreme, you know, unfavorable conditions that we're going through that are going to help us in not just solving it, but offering something to the world that they can, that they can also make use of. And I know that this is necessarily going to happen during my lifetime, but I know that the work we're doing today is going to have a contribution. To what our people are going to achieve 200 years from today,
Dina Sherif:yeah, or hopefully sooner. I have to ask you, you know you have become extremely famous amongst your fellow fellows at the center, and amongst many people who also know you with this term, entrepreneurship is resistance. But I've and you and I have been friends for a very, very long time, but I've never actually asked you, how did that phrase pop into your mind?
Ahmed Zahran:Because I always think of that oligarch that
Dina Sherif:I think we get I think we get it from here. We get it from here. No,
Ahmed Zahran:it's that anger developed into that, I think, more sustainable way of understanding the world. So I realized that what is better than anger is understanding what I have in my mind to to deal with the situation. You know, he was actually after we got fired, he was actually calling some of our potential clients, telling them not to work with us. He was calling some of the people who were willing to invest with us, warning them from and threatening them not to invest with us. And I didn't really understand why would someone who is 70 something years old, and I was like, 31 at the time, do that, really. I kept thinking, you know, it just didn't make sense to me, especially in the way our culture works where, you know, I'm very young, is very old, is very powerful. I don't have any power in my hand. Why would you would he have an issue with me? And I realized it's the problem of obedience. It is really about obedience. So the first thing that comes to mind when you when you feel how the person in front of you wants you to be obedient about something where they don't have the right to require or ask for that obedience, that there has to be resistance to that. And I realized by the work that we are doing, and by the institution and the company that we're building, it is resisting that, and that was the way that anger was channeled, was changed and developed into the understanding that it's actually its resistance. Yeah, so it is one form of resistance that some people can use to change the reality of themselves and of the people around them and of their community. People like me were not allowed to have companies like console and they were not allowed to think the way we started thinking in 2011 when the revolution happened. And I know that because I know myself and how I thought before 2011 and as I told you, I would have never thought of starting a company. I always viewed myself as the best employee ever, and there is nothing wrong with being an employee. It's just about the mentality and how much risk you're willing to take. And I am so upset, like really upset, that I was made to think like that, and I think it was not fair. I agree with that. So, yeah, so I think, you know, and that's why it is resistance to those types of thinking, and the fact that some people in certain societies feel that they have the right or they have the ability to force others to act or think in a certain way. So entrepreneurship allows you and provides you with the platform resist and enforce your version of doing things, you know, but it takes time. I mean, it's not a it takes a lot of time. Obviously, yeah,
Dina Sherif:I do feel you on many levels. I want to ask you a couple of more personal questions, because, you know, you and I are both Egyptian, and Egypt is going, you know, Egypt has gone through many difficult times, but there's something really wonderful, beautiful about the Egyptian, or I would say about you in particular, is that in spite of some of these challenges and things that for. Frustrate, frustrate us about state of the country and so forth and so on. You have this deep love for your country and for those who don't know you, you have a deep love for history, and you the history of Egypt and the history of the Egyptian people and the culture, and how the culture has evolved, and the food, and the different kinds of food that exists in our country, where did that love come from? Did it come from your family? Where did it where did it come from? And how do you keep that love alive, as you also have some feelings of anger as well.
Ahmed Zahran:Um, you know, people develop, develop particular taste for things, and usually when you grow somewhere and you know the place, you develop a taste for that. So I definitely have a taste for Egypt. But I think the thing that connects Egypt to other countries and to Africa and to South America is the suffering, and that's what I love about Egypt, is that I get a chance to punch some people, and I hope that this would be helping others. In other places, give punches to those who deserve it as well. And Egypt is, for me, is, you know, you know, I don't want to sound like nationalistic, but it is it. It can provide a lot of relevant examples to a lot of people, because it sits on the intersection of different cultures and trade routes. So it means something to Africa, because we have a shared history of oppression. It means something to the Arabs. It means something to the Mediterranean. It means something to different types of people in different societies. And that's what I like, that whatever you experiment with in Egypt, whatever you try and works out in Egypt, it is going to provide something that others can work with or develop. And I feel it's a responsibility being an Egyptian. I don't think it's it's easy being an Egyptian. I think being an Egyptian is, I wouldn't say, a liability, but it's just, it's not an easy job. You know, trying
Dina Sherif:an Egyptian woman, but
Ahmed Zahran:Egyptian women are quite powerful, I have to say,
Dina Sherif:according to you,
Ahmed Zahran:so, I mean, you wouldn't want to upset an Egyptian
Dina Sherif:woman. Fair, fair. I want to ask you another personal question. And this question is really built, I think, on my lived experience as your friend. And you know, you have your three kids, you have a wife, and you have this, like, army of friends, a lot of them, and amidst of all that you do running this big company and all of the other entrepreneurs that you mentor and that you coach, you're like this fierce protector of your family and of your friends. Why is that, and what's behind
Ahmed Zahran:that. You know, when you are living in a shitty neighborhood, that's what you have to do, because, like your friend said, you don't know where the punches are coming from. Anyhow, coming from, and you have to roll over with the punches, you know, every day. So the social depth is something that means a lot to me. I will only live once, and if I don't work with and if I'm not surrounded by the people I love and appreciate, then I think my loss would be really big. So that's why I think it's just it's an important aspect of of my life. Really
Dina Sherif:now I feel like the next time you. Eight, don't go to sleep early, come spend time with me when we're in Soma Bay next and I'm not gonna be able to say
Ahmed Zahran:no, yes, because we don't, we don't know when are we going to die. It's a fact of life
Dina Sherif:and a lesson we both learned very well.
Ahmed Zahran:So basically, I mean, it's just always, it's important to just invest in, you know, in relationships and then family and then and in quality time. You know, it's not just about spending time together. I think the one thing that is missing is quality time.
Dina Sherif:Yeah, but since you brought up death, and we all know that death is coming, this podcast is really also about the legacy of purpose that we want to leave behind. And I would like to end with this one simple question, when you leave this world, what do you want your legacy of purpose to be?
Ahmed Zahran:That people would say that I just tried hard. I'm not interested in success, really. I mean, it's a very, very long term thing that outlives us. I'm more interested in building the infrastructure that would support us and others and allow someone to succeed someday.
Dina Sherif:Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. We've been friends for such a long time, and every time I feel like I have a conversation with you, I learn something new, not just about you, but I learned something new to take away into my own life. And I just hope you know how much I appreciate you
Ahmed Zahran:same here, and I always enjoy being at MIT. Yeah, I think MIT is a kind of addiction.
Dina Sherif:Well, we enjoy having you, everyone around here the minute you walk in. You know, we're big fans.
Ahmed Zahran:Me too. I'm big I'm a big fan of you, personally, and for all the support that you provide for the people around you, whether in the US or back in Egypt, I don't know how much people are aware of that, but you do play a role, even in your absence back home. Thank you. I appreciate that. I hope you still call it home. It's
Dina Sherif:100% is home, okay? It is 100% home. I am also deeply in love with Egypt, not because I want to punch anybody, but because I love it. It's my home. It is Thank you. Ahmed,
Ahmed Zahran:anytime, anytime.
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