Breaking Down Barriers in AI: How Humble is Making Technology Accessible to All w/ Mahdi Shariff | Humble AI

Mahdi Shariff: 0:00We want to help try and make AI and automation more accessible to everyone, just because we believe that the more people that can access these are developers. They build everything. The rest of the 99% use and it's not a particularly diversified group either, and so like for us, that is the problem to be solved. What's evolved is probably more the market's evolved in terms of people's excitement around it. People have more of an understanding with it and, more practically, people have used it and touched AI.

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‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:29

Today on the podcast we have Mahdi Shariff, co-founder of Humble. They're making the power of AI and computing accessible to everybody. Mahdi's got a great story, having grown up and gone into EY, which is fairly traditional, but from there jumping across to China and joining the start about there when he didn't speak Mandarin himself at the beginning, helping that scale and grow and from there deciding to now build his own thing. I hope you enjoy this episode. I'm Amar from The BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So, art, great to have you here today. I've known you for quite a long time, so probably the person I've known for the longest before actually getting on the podcast. So well done on that little accolade.

Mahdi Shariff: 1:10

Well, thanks, thanks for inviting me along.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:13

So you've done like so many different cool things in your career so far, but if you go back to the roots, when you were a kid growing up, what did you want to be?

Mahdi Shariff: 1:20

Actually, my actual job I think I really wanted when I was a kid was to be a Lego maker. Um, I still love Lego, uh, and basically I think, just being able to like create whatever you kind of imagine basically from these little Lego bricks, I thought that would be a really, really cool job.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:34

And then, what made you give up on that?

Mahdi Shariff: 1:38

That's a great question. I probably should do some more self-reflection, um, but I guess in a funny way, like these things kind of come all the way through in different aspects of life, and I think the stuff even that we're now focused on in the world of Humble, I think, in some ways, is a a more digital first version of what, what Lego making might be.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:55

So did that take you down a path towards engineering, get those kind of ideas, or what did you then end up studying?

Mahdi Shariff: 2:01

Uh, I end up studying chemistry, which is much more a function of uh, having Asian parents rather than uh, rather than the desire to do so. Um, I think probably, if I was wiser, I probably should have taken computer science and spent my life in that way. Um, but now I end up doing doing chemistry. But I think everything happens for a reason, so.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:20

But you say chemistry is a typical subject.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:22

But there's the other ones, like engineering and like even, say, computer science. That's fairly common for a lot of asians to do. Why chemistry?

Mahdi Shariff: 2:30

I probably wasn't that forward thinking, apparently, at that time. I think if I'd taken a more strategic choice, maybe that's what I would have done. I think, uh, given that, faced with the idea of doing one of the sciences, I felt the chemistry was the uh was the one at the time.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:42

A nd then, once you started doing it, were you like, made a good decision here or I think you soon realize.

Mahdi Shariff: 2:47

After spending many hours in the lab by yourself, you realize that that's probably not the best place for a social being. So I think, post then.

Mahdi Shariff: 2:56

Then yeah, took a slightly different life path.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:59

And at any point during this process were you thinking maybe you want to do your own thing or do something more creative or different, or when did those seeds start to come into place?

Mahdi Shariff: 3:07

So I think actually the seeds of trying to do my own ventures probably started much younger, um, so I guess as a kid I was kind of the one that was basically like buying and selling. Well, initially my selling my sandwiches, uh, basically at school your own sandwiches um and then literally my own sandwiches, uh, and then post then started selling like, yeah, chocolate bars and crisps and all sorts of little things like this, um, and then scaling up to even, like later on, mobile phones, um, so.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:41

Where did you source these mobile phones?

Amardeep Parmar: 3:44

Have you got a criminal confession coming here?

Mahdi Shariff: 3:45

No criminal confession. I've got to be careful now that I'm being recorded. So years ago, when all the first contract phones were coming out, I used to be obsessed with mobile phones, and so there used to be all these crazy redemption schemes where you'd basically buy a phone and get some money back. But I was maybe 15, 16 or something at the time, so I used to have to pretend to be my mom on the phone.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:11

Um, and then your dad, you went for pretending to be a mom?

Mahdi Shariff: 4:13

Yeah well, I was having to use her card, basically to try and like handle all my transactions on it so put on this little female voice and try and basically like, uh, sign up for these contracts, and then I would uh sell on the phone and then basically keep the contract. So that's uh, that's where my mini adventures, I guess, began earlier, in earlier in life.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:30

Did you think university on that side as well?

Mahdi Shariff: 4:34

So actually a uni. I took some time off uni, uh, after my first summer and did door-to-door sales um which, whilst not setting up a new venture, was like really a very quick way to get a kind of schooling on like really brutal entrepreneurship in so many ways, because you kind of build a team from scratch, you have zero salary and it's all on commission.

Mahdi Shariff: 4:57

So it's like a very quick way of suddenly being forced to try and learn the ropes about some of some of what that looks like, um, but actually I think first couple years of uni I just like just tried to learn about the world in a funny way. So I've always enjoyed working. So, yeah, I just kind of just started to just like speak lots of companies, trying to work out what everyone did, and then on the side then try to kick off a failed venture of basically like trying to put real estate on a exchange, so the idea being like if you could like pre-list houses, what could that mean for buyers that can basically pre-buy into it, and then construction companies to not have to go through intermediaries to sell so you bring down the cost of housing, which was probably a far too ambitious thing to do at university with an Indian friend of mine, but that's kind of what we were doing spending our nights and days hacking away.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:53

So door -to-door sales is really interesting because I think there's many American entrepreneurs in particular. So you have the classic thing of Mormons where, as part of their childhood, they're going to try and sell religion to people. Door to door right, they're trying to convert people and going through that process and getting rejection constantly really helps build that resilience and at the time was that something which you obviously most of the time, people slam the door in your face, I guess, or just not answer. How did you feel at the time? Was it a difficult thing to get through? Anything has helped you, or was it actually not too bad?

Mahdi Shariff: 6:24

Honestly speaking, I think door-to-door is probably the best way to accelerate like your comfort with being rejected because, basically, like you're knocking like 100 doors a day, you're probably expected to make maybe two sales. And there's this idea of based like the law of averages, where, like you will make two sales out of 100, that assumes that you're kind of like as happy on the 99th door as you were on the first door to be able to make the sale if it comes, and so it kind of trains you really heavily. So I'm actually a huge fan and incredibly kind of I feel a lot of gratitude towards like having that experience because, um, yeah, it's a pretty brutal environment but it was actually really, I think, helped, got me organized and framed a lot of the ways I think about the world of sales now.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:08

And I think the other good one as well is when you know when people are trying to get charity donations on the street. So you see it just outside the tube station and things like that. Again, everyone is just walking straight past you, and it must be. I've never done it myself. It must be so hard to deal with because you're just sitting there and you're trying to be jolly each time, but obviously, again, law of averages. Some of those people must then make the money for the charity in order for it to be worth it. And when you started your own ventures, you had said the house platform were you, was this a coding platform? How did you? How did that actually work? How did you actually start that off?

Mahdi Shariff: 7:40

Uh. So actually, to be honest, most of the time was initially spent trying to work out like how's it it functionally going to work with regulation, all these other things. And so it's literally like me another friend of mine who's a student at Warwick with me and this senior manager in Deloitte in India, and we were just like sat there on these calls trying to plan this stuff, so we hadn't even got into like the heavy coding of things, but it turned out to probably be a slightly too complicated adventure to be kicked off by two students on the weekends in uh at Warwick at the time. So I think one of those things is trying to work out like where can you actually play versus where where do you want to play, um? But I definitely that that experience kind of just got me like reconnected, I think, with building, because I think after my first kind of year of doing corporate because I took a year out of uni I needed to kind of reconnect with that part of myself and that was a really important part of that journey, I think.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:34

And then, obviously, when you left university, you didn't go straight into entrepreneurship, right? What did you go into?

Mahdi Shariff: 8:40

So I actually went into the world of M&A. So I did. I was tempted actually to go straight closer back into the startup world, working for a parenting startup, of all things. So that's kind of where I spent my time in the summer, but in the end it made more sense for me to go join. So I joined EY and then worked in like merchant acquisitions and I think if you're someone who's curious about like how business works, it's a really fun area because you basically spend your time like researching companies, digging deep and then, at least for me, like you're spending a lot of time with entrepreneurs and seeing like what those later stages look like. And that was a really powerful thing for me to kind of frame kind of what I wanted to do. And so whilst I went into M&A, I always knew that I would never stay in M&A. I would always want to go back and set something up, but that in itself was a really useful experience.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:26

And obviously a lot of people who are listening to this haven't worked in M&A and many entrepreneurs that have started in business haven't done that either. What insights do you think you got from that that really helped you later on?

Mahdi Shariff: 9:35

That's a great question actually.

Mahdi Shariff: 9:37

So one thing, I think, is understanding yourself. So I really loved what I did when I worked in M &am;amp ctually they were really really a great firm um. But every single time I like did a deal and we pulled to get. We spent months and months pulling to get this plan about raising this money to go do x and I'll get to the end. We'll raise the money and I'll be like I want to go do this plan now and they're like no, no, next deal. You're like I kind of want to go do that.

Mahdi Shariff: 10:05

And so I think the thing I'd realized about myself is that I wanted to basically be on the operator side of what that looks like um, versus on the advisory side.

Mahdi Shariff: 10:12

So that's, I guess, on the personal side um, from a business perspective, I think the key thing I then picked up was like how are investors going to look at your business if you're basically raising or about to be acquired, and trying to understand, like, what does valuation actually look like in practice for how they're going to measure it and how they're going to evaluate you as a company? And that was a really interesting insight and I feel very lucky to have been in those types of conversations. So I think that was one of the really big things, and I think the third piece is around negotiations. So when thinking about like M&A, there's like a very specific way that m&a negotiations go and there's a very specific process and there's a lot of like you can have a lot of different types of characters, some with big ego, some with based different rationale or motivations why they're doing a deal, and like understanding those deal dynamics and understand the people dynamics for negotiations. I think was um a really interesting learning which I think has continued to be incredibly helpful.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:08

And if anybody's trying to do negotiation right now, would you have any tips for them on that?

Mahdi Shariff: 11:16

So I'd probably say really understand what value you're creating for the other individual because, that gives you a pricing benchmark and with that in mind, then you know where, you know what basically, like one of the markers is of where to play, I think being really clear before you even get into a negotiation of where you're willing to play and where you're not willing to play and negotiate from, because sometimes it's too easy to kind of get deep into negotiation before you even realize like, oh okay, we should not even be having this conversation because your starting point is below what my minimum looks like.

Mahdi Shariff: 11:48

So I think, being really clear on that, I think the other key thing is like understanding the process. So what is the very clear steps and how do you basically get the buyer to commit to what you need them to commit to and be very clear about what you need to deliver to be able to achieve that? Because otherwise, often when you have negotiations, you have a lot of this stuff as discussions, but those discussions are based on a bunch of assumptions and it's really hard to hold a buyer accountable because unless you basically got them to write it down and then be like, no, this is what we've agreed, this is where it's going to and I think, making sure that you kind of follow that process and you don't give away too much information or give away your trade before you have something to trade for. I think is really key as part of those negotiations. But I think that's the mind.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:35

The whole element, like you said, about getting something written down, because in so many negotiations that you said, where you come out of the conversation thing, like the deal was done, but it's really not. And it happens so often, right, especially, I think, early stage entrepreneurs and we've had made the same mistake ourselves. Right, you talk to somebody. They said they're interested, okay, cool, they're gonna back us, and you start getting really excited and the amount of times that's happened but hasn't then followed through hasn't actually been confirmed and it's having that level of objectivity about it. Right, it's like, okay, they've said this thing, but they haven't written that down.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:08

So are they that serious or is it still? They're just excited in that moment and, like I said, anything you just say in a conversation you can't be held to that. There's no evidence of it, right? So, yeah, that's definitely something which I find really interesting about, because I know that I do it myself. Still, I still get really excited by things, but it's like, well, it's not actually in an email, so maybe it's just hype, maybe it's also because you're looking somebody in the eye, they're smiling, you think it's a really good point, and maybe they're just smiling and being friendly. So when it's in paper. It makes a difference.

Mahdi Shariff: 13:45

Yeah, you're so right. I think like, I think, also just being clear with yourself around, what are the actual steps that get it to when yes is a yes? Uh, because otherwise, yeah, I think, like as founders, we're like incredibly optimistic and we're like, oh great, it's coming, it's happening, it's going and it's like okay, but these are the actual steps that have to be ticked off before it's really a yes. And I think, especially founders fundraising that's one thing I've definitely seen as well, when in the fundraising process, where people get excited when people are starting to put commitments in. But like one of the big things for me is like you need to get your leads in first. If you don't have your lead investor, then yeah, like all the other yeses don't matter quite as much.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:15

Yet yeah, because I think I think when I first started in this world, I always thought people were just kind of like bullshitting, right, they're just saying, oh, we've got these investors coming on board. But it's not that they're lying, it's just that they think that it's a lot further ahead than it actually is. So it's not that they're trying to pretend. It's just in their heads like, yes, they're going to come in, even though the investor themselves are like, oh, no, just being nice. But that whole communication event is so difficult, I think, and because you're looking for a yes, right, you're looking for any signal that's going to be a positive news. And then you jump on those things. But you mentioned as well about how you knew you wanted to go into the operating side again. How did you manage that transition? How did you get away from EY and the advisory side onto the side where you thought you were best suited to?

Mahdi Shariff: 14:59

So I'd probably say I took a slightly unconventional approach so, as a bit of context, I was really interested in spending some time in a different market and looked at a mix of places across asia and ended up kind of landing in china, and the actual story is I kind of couch surfed out in beijing, um, and then was this while you were still working for ui.

Mahdi Shariff: 15:21

This is why I not pay for accommodation or so I did that kind of rogue trip, so, um, so I basically like went out kind of as an individual versus the company, just like scouting out there and uh, yeah, just couch surfed out in a like with literally this random lady uh in beijing and she literally just dropped me off on the side of the road in the tech district and then I literally cold called on doors in China without really speaking any Mandarin, so slightly ridiculous. And so I kind of found the office of like the tech crunch equivalent and then, yeah, and then basically knocked on the door and then, luckily enough, it was like, does anyone here speak English?

Mahdi Shariff: 15:58

And I found this one guy that spoke English and so just by dumb luck, he was the developer that basically built the equivalent of like angel list and I was like can you help me find these programmatic advertising tech companies?

Mahdi Shariff: 16:13

and he was like maybe, and then searched on his little system and then I cold called a guy and that's kind of how how things started and so, um, I end up basically like on the side kind of moonlighting while at ui, um, basically just like helping out this little startup. Um, and this guy was open enough to receive my cold call message and, um, that's kind of how I got a bit more ingrained into it and just started to help them out for free on the side, learning a whole bunch of stuff for them, and then, as we got a bit bigger, then, yeah, kind of joined them full-time so it's interesting.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:44

We talked about how cold calling builds resilience. I mean, there's like another level. When you cold call in a language, like cold knock on people's door when you don't even speak the same language, just knock on the door and just like blankly look at each other, it's like pretty impressive. Yeah, and even with this you said it is a very specific niche you went for. Why that niche? Because, like you said, it's very specific.

Mahdi Shariff: 17:05

So I'm kind of, if I think about like these like odd areas of obsession. I think like people is definitely one of my odd areas of obsession, and like data, uh, and at the time, the areas that kind of looked at like a lot of like people and data and information and these kind of clever systems was like the advertising technology and marketing tech space, and so it ended up being this kind of like random niche that I ended up spending a lot of time in, did some M&A deals in and was like warringly nerdy about to the extent I literally had these like posters on my wall of these like huge ad tech landscapes, and so, yeah, it was just an area that I spent a lot of time in, and so what it meant is that I can then also be helpful to this Chinese startup around what was happening in the West and other areas, and then kind of go from there.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:54

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. Hpc have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got a deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking.com. So you said you wanted exposure to another market. Right, it's by working for EY. When you actually took the decision OK, I'm going to work full time for this Chinese startup. How did that? Was that something? Something which you just in the flow of excitement, or can you talk us through that decision?

Mahdi Shariff: 18:46

It was something I'd been thinking about for a long time. So I was like I want to spend somewhere in a different market with a different lens on the world, cause I think you just learn a lot from just seeing something really different. So I looked at, like, India going to Hong Kong, moving to China or going to Singapore to get exposure, indonesia they were the kind of four markets I looked at and then, yeah, kind of ended up falling down the china track in terms of like starting to collaborate with this company and then from an early stage, but the actual process took about two years. So I actually held them on the side for about two years and then basically spent my own money and on my own holiday basically working for free for this random Chinese startup. So I did about seven trips in two years. So it's quite a lot of trips, um, and that's kind of how I end up, kind of landing out there and the rationale and kind of thinking process around it was like I could just go quit my job and go join a startup, um, but there's like a different risk that you're taking on um, again, probably the south Asian parent, uh, side of things basically gives you a different risk tolerance, um, which might seem really risky on one side, like quitting a job and leaving to join the startup. But like, because it was a two-year process, I'd already met the team. I'd kind of been with us from when we're like 15 of us in a really scrappy situation like squathole toilets, cockroaches, all of the perks, uh to we scaled up to about 60 by the end or by the time I kind of joined them full time and so I kind of knew a little bit more about, like, what was happening.

Mahdi Shariff: 20:13

And I used those two years as a way of de-risking, um, like, the decision because, like I was from the uk, I didn't speak the language. It's like, how do I know they're real? I don't really know they're real, so I need to go visit their offices, and so I used that time to go do that. And then I was like, is that tech real?

Mahdi Shariff: 20:29

So we like introduced them to some people at Yahoo which probably tells you how old it was ago and the people at Yahoo said, hey, we did the integration and it worked. So I was like, okay, cool, it's real. So for me it was about de-risking the decision and so I just used that time to take the steps so that I could then make that leap, whereas on the outside it might look a really risky bet joining this random no-name startup. But the flip side was it took a like a two-year long process, um, where I kind of ticked off a lot of the boxes I wanted to do before I kind of got there and again was really really lucky that EY was incredibly supportive. So I got a lot of time from my old colleagues.

Amardeep Parmar: 21:05

So it's interesting because I think that's a journey I haven't heard too often on the podcast. And it's really interesting because I think for a lot of people listening that could be a potential path they could take right when. I think what we see on social media, what we see everywhere, is this idea that you have to burn the boats, right, you have to take the leap, do all that. But in reality you can do things like this and obviously you went out to China to do that but right now there's people listening to this who aren't really happy in their job but they think they can do something more on the operator, startup side, but they're thinking, oh, I have to quit my job, I have to do this, and oh, but what people are going to think because I've got to take this risk, whereas actually some of them could be listening right now. I'm thinking, wait, maybe I could offer to help for free, a early stage startup and if they're doing them their free time, they find out if they enjoy it and then take the loop.

Mahdi Shariff: 21:51

There are these ways, like you said, of de-risking things which make it a bit less scary yeah, I think, um, I know sometimes it might feel like slightly controversial to be like cool, I should go help someone out for free and then work out whether it looks like it, but I think honestly, for me personally, I think about it more from a value exchange perspective. I don't think about it as like, hey, this is free work, it's not. It's actually that I'm getting a whole bunch of value learning about a thing and they're giving me access and they're open enough to do so and that learning a ton. So it's a value exchange. I think for it. I think, um, but I think definitely there's a lot of people in the offices.

Mahdi Shariff: 22:24

I'm sure there's many people that are kind of disgruntled and thinking, actually, I want to go do something else.

Mahdi Shariff: 22:28

I think when you're forced to actually go, hey, you're going to willing to actually spend your free time on this, you're going to be willing to spend your weekends on this, your evenings, when you should have been going out with your mates, but instead, for example, you're sat doing work.

Mahdi Shariff: 22:40

I think sometimes, like that in itself will tell you what you're willing to compromise on and if you're not excited enough about doing that thing, maybe you really don't want to actually start a company, you just want to actually stay in corporate because that's the best place for you. But the flip side is I think there are other routes for ways people can de-risk. But I think at some point definitely when I moved full-time onto the stuff that we do there was a big kind of mental shift because you had more headspace. So it was less about the commitment side. It's about like having the headspace to really get deep into the problem you're trying to solve. Um. But I think there is a lot more ways of de-risking, assuming that people are willing to sacrifice and compromise on things yeah, and as you said, it's always.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:20

There's always some level of privilege when you're working for free because you had the safe money coming in from ui right, and that's always one of the difficult things sometimes of like trying to make sure that we are conscious of that right, like I could do different things on the side because I knew that has my salary coming in. It's always interesting to think. You said that you had the ad tech background at ui so you're able to offer things to the shiny startup. When you went full-time, what was your role there? What were you actually doing for that shiny startup?

Mahdi Shariff: 23:45

that's. That's a great question that my mother often asked me and I didn't have to answer um, so I joined basically running strategy and ops, but in reality, like the title of like chief strategy officer kind of is kind of irrelevant in the startup. It's basically like firefighting. So initially it was looking at some of the kind of corporate strategy side of what we were doing and also working with like bigger strategic clients, especially some of the kind of larger western orgs, just to be able to help them navigate it in a more mature way, and also tech integrations with uh other larger like western tech companies. But then after that, then it's just actually just like into the operations so like honestly, it's all the random things. Like I end up like reteaching everyone excel because I was like sat looking what everyone did and I was like this is so inefficient, basically just like taught everyone how to use excel properly to like automate a bunch of these things.

Mahdi Shariff: 24:36

Um, you end up just jumping into random things. I was running hr for a while so looking at like how did comp doing a bunch of conversation, modeling, modeling for when we were growing we started to kind of grow a bit quicker just to make sure that those things are all aligned with, like the strategy and just using data for that. So honestly, it was a whole mix of things. But to be honest, it was a lot of like firefighting as you grow, basically, just like you hit like 50 people a as you grow, basically just like you hit like 50 people and you hit 100 people, 150 people. It's like everything breaks and it's just just getting stuck into the opposite of it. But yeah, it was a very, very different world, especially in china how was your relationship with the founders?

Amardeep Parmar: 25:11

I guess what you're describing in some ways what you imagine the founders. A lot of time we're doing right firefighting, so you almost like the right hand person there to just there's, so there's gonna be a million fires at any time. They were able to trust you to do with some of those fires so they could focus their attention elsewhere.

Mahdi Shariff: 25:25

Yes, I was super, super lucky, honestly super lucky in that sense. So, jang Sha Bai, David the founder, David Jang, he was incredibly open-minded One because of the fact that when I first spoke to him he didn't speak any English. We were just using translation tools for um and we were there were 15 of them at the time bootstrapped in Guangzhou. It was like and he responded to this random young analyst banker basically like pinging cold call, messaging him. So he was incredibly open and we spent a lot of time just onboarding what we were doing as a company together. And then we hired someone else I knew out in China and then, yeah, became basically kind of part of the core team, then defining like what we did. So that was really, to be honest, like credit more to David, I think, for his openness around it. And then you just get stuck in. I think, especially in startups, it's less about what you're being asked to do, more about you just see problems and just try and be helpful towards it, and then that kind of almost defines more what you do than what you thought was.

Mahdi Shariff: 26:29

On the JD.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:30

It seems to be, because we talked about how you were trying to make sure they were legit, but see, they were doing the same thing to you, right? It's like who's this random kid who's saying he wants to help us out? Is he going to scam us? Is he wants to help us out? Is he gonna scam us? Is he gonna try and take our secrets? That probably all went through the head as well, and you obviously were there for like a little while after you quit your job, went full-time there. When did you know it was the right time to leave him? What did you then come to do?

Mahdi Shariff: 26:50

great question. So actually, yes, I was there for a couple years, actually full-time. Uh yeah, really incredible, I think at that time of the Chinese internet was fascinating. I was kind of just like obsessed with the problem space and also just so distracted with like all the growth, pains and opportunities basically of a startup. And then I think when we, after a couple of years there, then we got a bit bigger and we're about 150 of us or so by the time I left, and I think by that point like the business becomes more normal as a business, and what it also meant is that then, as I slowed down, I kind of sat and reflected a little bit more about, like, where I want to be spending my time and as much I love people and data and all these types of things.

Mahdi Shariff: 27:33

I think I was slightly naive going into the ad world, like the advertising industry, thinking that people cared about, like people just using data to discover the things they care about, all these types of things, and it was like no, no, they just need to sell something. And so I decided that it wasn't the place that kind of aligned with where I like what I want to do from a value perspective, and and so I just found that some of the wider industry just didn't resonate with me. Actually I loved our company that I was working in, but some of the wider industry just didn't feel as kind of like morally aligned with where I want to be spending my time, and so I decided it was kind of time to kind of part ways. So that's kind of how I went through the decision of coming out of it.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:14

And did you do the same thing? Was it two years where you moonlighted for another company, then moved on, or how did you transition away?

Mahdi Shariff: 28:21

so, again, I was actually very, very lucky, uh, I transitioned partially into a part-time role, um, so I could then spend some time thinking, and then was really spent my time just thinking about what I want to do next, um, and so started exploring a new venture, uh, in the personal crm space, um, many of which some of the ideas end up evolving into what we do at humble today.

Mahdi Shariff: 28:44

But, um, but this is all still in china but this was in china at that time and then I end up basically doing some some part-time work, helping out a friend of mine, uh, running slush uh, which is a big kind of tech and pc conference um, and so I used to help them out just on the side for fun. And then when I basically came out of my old job then I somehow got recruited to spend more time in the org and then, yeah, we ended up running Slash out in the region. But I use that as kind of like a fun way of also testing some of our ideas operationally to see, like, okay, cool, if we want to help companies improve their operations and improve the way they interact with their customers and data, then we just kind of like tested some of our ideas internally while running slash and so then was doing that for a little while so it's interesting is that you obviously built this reputation up.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:27

It was mainly a Chinese reputation, right, but you're from here. You're now back here again. How did you try to maintain ties within the uk ecosystem as well, or the European ecosystem, or you, very much at this point, still thinking I'm going to continue growing in china. This is where I want to be long term.

Mahdi Shariff: 29:43

Really great question actually. So the way that I think about relationships, I just take a really really long term view on things. So like, regardless of where I am, I will still spend a bunch of time speaking to people from decades ago. That I know and uh, which why?

Mahdi Shariff: 29:59

I'm just obviously, as you know, like slightly obsessive when it comes to things like personal CRM and some of these aspects, and so, yeah, I always kept ties with basically all the folks I spoke to back in the UK, um and so, especially when people were coming to China and China's quite a hard place to navigate then that was a way that I could help stay connected and also just be helpful when people are coming over, coming out there, um, so that was a way that I could help stay connected and also just be helpful when people are coming out there.

Mahdi Shariff: 30:21

So that was one of the ways I kind of tried to stay connected. But also I just do a lot of calls. So even now that I've moved back to London, I still speak to my really close friends over in China on a kind of every couple of days, if not every week for sure, and that's, I think if you really want to maintain relationships, then you have to spend time kind of staying connected, and so even when I then moved back, I suddenly remembered you kind of re-remember actually, how many people you know when you kind of land back in and yeah, that's been really, yeah, been really really helpful that I did maintain it, versus just kind of like move and then forget everyone.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:59

What was then behind the drive to move back here then? Because obviously you had this Slush gig. Which people who don't like? Slush is the biggest European conference. So I'm going in Helsinki in a month's time, two months time, whatever it is. So I'm kind of excited because there's a big hype around it and I've never actually been myself. You won't regret it. So you've got all of this cool stuff going on in china. What then?

Mahdi Shariff: 31:22

makes you decide okay, it's time to come back to the uk now. Yeah, it was a super intentional decision. I uh came back for Christmas december of uh, 2019 and then I was about to fly back in january 2020 to china, and I'll let you do the work, the maths. I never quite made it back, yeah, so that was a slightly sad end to my four years in China, um, so, uh, wasn't quite how I intended to leave China, um, but I think at the time we'd already then started building out some of the new venture with my co-founder, who's Nilou, who's back here in the UK. So at some point I was kind of planning on shifting back.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:57

But yeah, not quite how I planned. As you mentioned, mentioned nearly there. How did you guys get in touch? Because obviously you're in china building a company where one fund is in china, one fund is in London. How did that kind of come about? What made you decide, okay, we're going to build something here. Obviously now you're working together in the same country, but originally, when you decided that maybe that wasn't the case, yeah, no.

Mahdi Shariff: 32:16

So actually I think to your point actually about like staying connected. I think, um, so I probably know nearly for what, like 12, 13 years or something like this um met him in google campus, uh, when it kind of first opened and he was doing entrepreneur first, and uh, he's just always so. I kind of have, whenever I meet people, um, with my ocd nature or some of this stuff, like I'll be like, oh, this person's like a super interesting person. Remember to like have a chat with them about x, and so when I first left the startup and was then kind of thinking about some new ideas around what I want to work on next, I was like, okay, who are the smartest folks I know in the AI world? And so I literally just went through, literally went through everyone on my phone book and then was like, okay, cool, speak to them. Okay, speak to them.

Mahdi Shariff: 33:04

And then picked up the phone to Nulu and then explained a little bit around some of the things I was thinking about and he just gave me some awesome advice. And then I caught up with him a couple months later, was like, hey, thanks for the advice. Like this is kind of what we're where I've kind of got to with it and as we carried, carried on having those conversations, then it kind of emerged that actually like, hey, it might be worth us actually kind of collaborating with something together. And then we kind of started exploring it. And so, yeah, even the fact that it was like from years and years and years before yeah, because we stayed connected over those years, because it was a really close friend of mine, then they ended up kind of co-founding the company together end up kind of co-founding the company together, and obviously you were looking at AI before.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:41

AI was cool, right? So tell us what exactly the idea was, and how has that idea evolved to what it is today?

Mahdi Shariff: 33:46

I think we start with a very clear view of saying, like we want to help try and make AI and automation more accessible to everyone, just because we believe that, like, the more people that can access these types of technologies and build and create with it, the more people that can access these types of technologies and build and create with it, the more opportunity there is for everyone and the more equal opportunity is distributed fundamentally.

Mahdi Shariff: 34:05

So that is fundamentally the kind of guiding principles around kind of what we think about and where we spend time and, to be honest, at a kind of really high level around like really helping educate a generation of people with the right skills and ability to be able to build and not just consume technology but actually to create with technology.

Mahdi Shariff: 34:25

Like that hasn't really changed, um, because it's kind of crazy, but if you think about it, like in the world of tech today, it's kind of like being in the dark ages. You have this tiny group of people you don't want like point of a percent of the world are developers. They build everything that the rest of the 99% use and it's not particularly diversified group either, and so like for us, that is the problem to be solved. That has pretty much stayed consistent since we, since we've began, in terms of what has evolved as the market's evolved, and like, obviously, if people weren't AI these days, then it can mean so many different things and people have very different expectations. Now with the world of chat, gbt and I know you did it before it was cool.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:10

I can, I can back that.

Mahdi Shariff: 35:11

Yeah, you didn't just jump on the trend, yeah so yeah, so we've definitely been anchored in, kind of like, where we think this stuff is actually going to be useful for it. I think what's evolved is probably more the market's evolved in terms of people's excitement around it. People have more of an understanding with it and, more practically, people have used it and touched ai. In the past, for example, ai was very much um, specifically just for a group of very technical individuals, and I think, with that in place, I think what's evolved for us really is more around saying, okay, well, how do we then take that excitement and then channel it into the right expectations of what actually can do well?

Mahdi Shariff: 35:48

And so I think my best definite, the best definition I've heard of some of like the LLMs in the AI world, I think was one of one of the guys from Andreessen Horowitz who said, um, ai is like seeing your back, your dog walk on the back legs for its first time.

Mahdi Shariff: 36:02

You're impressed because it's doing it, not because it's doing it well. And so I think for us, we're trying to say, okay, cool, like, yes, you have like a bunch of these tools that can do some of these things, but like, how do we actually connect these tools and basically turn them into actual solutions for you and make it specifically for you, so like customizable for you in a way that works for you. And so I think what's evolved for us really is about just leveraging some of those newer types of technologies that now exist, but still staying in the frame of how do we build tech that basically is like really easy to use, really easy to onboard, that kind of works in the way that you work and customized um as a structure. So, to be honest, it's funny we were going back through our original pitch deck and it hasn't really changed that much.

Amardeep Parmar: 36:45

We've kind of just stayed towards the kind of principles of how we wanted to build with and, like I just said, like that's a huge problem there, right, have you kind of focused your priorities at different times and now who you're targeting first as customers how are you making this a sustainable business and to be able to grow that who you're kind of targeting right now?

Mahdi Shariff: 37:01

So what has definitely changed and evolved is kind of like us honing in on the specific problems that we really want to kind of go deep in.

Mahdi Shariff: 37:07

So, fundamentally for larger organizations, we basically help them make better decisions by enabling them to basically break down the kind of data and knowledge silos that exist across an org, and especially because people like fed up with tools they've got so many different tools and so different data sources and checking all these things and so for us it's about saying, like, how do you rip away all of the tedious stuff and just make it really easy for you to be able to centralize all your information, make it really easy and streamlined as a workflow and then make it easily shareable across the team? And so the types of companies we focus on specifically are in, especially, teams that work with customers, so like sales teams, customer success, account management, those types of teams, um, but there's often a lot of other industries that also touch there, like one of which being like things like even the venture ecosystem, and so we kind of support a mix of different use cases across there where we just try and help really connect, automate and then leverage AI within these workflows.

Amardeep Parmar: 38:04

And you stayed in stealth for quite a long time, right, and that's the reason why we hadn't got you on the podcast before. What was behind that reasoning? And then, why did you decide to come out of stealth when you did? I think for us.

Mahdi Shariff: 38:15

There's a lot of noise in the market and there's especially in the world of AI and now more so than ever, and I think we really want to just stay true to the principles of how we want to build with and not be distracted, because it's actually really easy to be distracted, and I think for us it's more important for us just to just work with our existing customers and Karen, co-building and going really deep, versus um just trying to make a bunch of noise in the market around things.

Mahdi Shariff: 38:43

So even now I probably would say we're like not really particularly that public because you'll have to kind of know us to like use us um, if you know, you know um, but that's kind of more the approach that we prefer to take. Um, and we will obviously do some stuff that's a bit more public later on down the line. But I think the things that matter for us I'm less worried about the there's a lot of like metrics that don't that look great but don't really actually move the business forward, and I think we want to just try and stay as focused as possible on like what does progress mean for us? Around product, around product market fit around, like impact on customers. Those are the things that kind of matter for us more so than the other kind of like external, external parts and like along those lines, and what have been the biggest wins so far?

Mahdi Shariff: 39:28

honestly, the, the the biggest wins for for me, like when, like like one of our like power users is just like, oh my god, like I can't, I like I couldn't imagine now not having this thing, um, that for me is the biggest wins.

Mahdi Shariff: 39:44

And when they're then naturally advocating for you into new customers or internally across their teams, like that for me is like where the magic actually happens, and so that's like, I guess, like on one side.

Mahdi Shariff: 39:56

The second piece for me which is magic is when our end users and customers and clients are like inventing their own use cases. So the cool thing about some of this tech is that you can start plugging in and building from these lego blocks like these little like structures that are useful for different types of mini assistants you might want to spin up or different types of automations, and when they just like, they're like hey, would it be possible if? And you're able to kind of take this concept and then get them actually something like live and running in a really quick like within within the call, that for me is like a really satisfying feeling. So that's the stuff I think that is most important for me, because, especially when you're talking about some of these teams that are non-technical I not developers. That's where the magic happens, because that's where, then, you kind of free up all these different types of people to then start inventing what they want to be possible, and actually they have then the tools to make it possible.

Amardeep Parmar: 40:46

And that's kind of where the magic is and well, you've also been growing your own team as well, right, and I know you did some quite cool things there, I think, because in morocco you went to with them as well. How big is your own team and how do you, how's the experience you had in China, helped you to build them in the right way?

Mahdi Shariff: 40:59

So we're now 11 of us soon to be 12, across the team and thankfully, actually, especially with the tech world, a fairly decent mix of people across that, which is nice. And then, yeah, so I think our team is built remote, well hybrid, so there's a few of us here in London, but also talent's global, and so we have a whole mix of people from different places, and so what we try and do is basically bring the teams together, as we do two off sites every year, which, to be honest, like is probably one of the most important times of the year, and it makes such a big difference. So there's something about just like being sat here, like if we had this on a zoom call, this would feel very different. And the same thing is super true with like teams, and so that's been really powerful to have the whole team be in the same place, living together, working together, playing together. It just creates a very, very different dynamic, which means the team's like super tight and that's been really powerful. So, yeah, so we try and do that and we will continue to do that, because I think it's like a super important part of kind of building a team.

Mahdi Shariff: 41:59

And I think, to answer the second part of your question around, like how has China impacted that? I think the way that China works from a team and culture perspective is that like trust and team is like so important. In fact, when you're hiring, trust in a person is like the most, in China especially, is like almost like the most paramount thing, and so which, and to the point where in while I was in China, for example, I've seen decisions where you would choose someone because you trust them over competence, isn't over someone who might be more competent in that area. Yeah, but the funny thing is, while I might on one side feel really strange, actually on the other side, because you have a super high level of trust, it means that you actually cut off so much communication cost because there's an intrinsic trust level between you, and so I think like trust is really important for me.

Mahdi Shariff: 42:52

So actually we also, so we do massively high for talent specifically, but then also like we think about trust a lot across the company and across the culture. So some of the individuals actually I've also known for about like 10 plus years, there have been people on my list that we've now managed to kind of slowly gather together to join the team. Um, but also we try and have a very open environment where people can also challenge us as founders and have a pretty know the base of the voice is going to be heard. Um, because I think that's been a super important part, I think culturally, I think to make that really work if you're going to bring those types of people in different aspects of china, for example, have different kind of cultural styles, and I think it's about for me, it's about like stealing the best bits from both sides, of both the eastern methodologies and the western methodologies, and, um, so I guess we have our own flavor to it so it's been really interesting.

Amardeep Parmar: 43:40

We have to move on to quick fire questions now because we've run out of time, so the first one is who are three british asians you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out, okay cool.

Mahdi Shariff: 43:51

So, um, I'm gonna first one. Uh, I'm gonna shout out nikita thakra. You've probably already heard him many times on this podcast Fantastic, I think like the level of mission she has around basically just like building more inclusive ecosystem in venture capital and across basically the tech ecosystems is phenomenal, highly recommend everyone who has an interest in venture should be checking them out. If they're from a kind of different background around what that looks like. The second person I'm going to shout out is Zinaina koreshi.

Mahdi Shariff: 44:22

So she is a super low-key founder who is incredible uh, so, uh, she used to run a company called synantic or she was a founder, co-founder of synantic ai, which is like a voice ai company before. It's cool, and she sold it to spotify and so basically it's worked all on all the ai dj stuff. Um, she is incredible as a founder. She's been incredible mentor and kind of coach, frankly, and and investor on our side and she's been amazing. So, especially any female founders would check out her. And, okay, actually, third person I'm going to think of actually is mary lynn. Um, so mary basically is the founder of Odin. They're an awesome platform for basically a lot of founders have used them to raise money for their angel tickets and SPVs, really again trying to help democratize a lot of stuff in the finance world. So definitely give Mary a shout out.

Amardeep Parmar: 45:14

Awesome. And then if people want to find out more about you and Humble AI, where should they go?

Mahdi Shariff: 45:17

to cool, well I'm, I'm actually pretty accessible, uh. So just find me on linkedin, just drop me a message, just send a personal message, because there's a lot of automated ai spam bots these days. So send me an actual message. Um so, linkedin, otherwise you can find me at. Uh, I do this probably a bad idea, but marty the humble aicom, if you have a thing, if you want, want to ping me.

Amardeep Parmar: 45:38

And then obviously, the website, if people want to check out Humble itself, humbleai Thehumbleaicom. And is there any way that the audience today could help you or help Humbleai?

Mahdi Shariff: 45:48

Oh, great question. The thing that I love the most and would be, is basically like people that are really passionate about improving their workflows using AI and improving their workflows using AI and improving their productivity. So if that sounds like you, then drop me a line, and we'd love to hear some early feedback for some of the things we've been building. Um, so just get in touch so we're massively over time.

Amardeep Parmar: 46:08

We're gonna get in trouble, but have you got any final words?

Mahdi Shariff: 46:12

I guess, if you're thinking about building a startup, make sure you really do want to build a startup. Uh, if you do want to build a startup, then, um, basically the world will make it happen, basically, if you start taking the steps towards it, um, and then we'll go from there. But any questions, feel free to reach out thank you for watching.

Amardeep Parmar: 46:30

Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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