Building YC-Backed Startup Using AI On Data To Enhance Strategy w/ Mariam Ahmed | Menza

Mariam Ahmed: 0:00

Only 2% of corporate data is ever leveraged. I think we all agree, right. Data-driven decisions are critical to us as individuals, but also especially for companies to be successful, and we're not tapping into that data. And there's so much we can learn about humans, so much we can learn about users, so much we can learn about just even processes themselves, and a lot of times it's because it's unstructured. I mean, we're collecting data in so many different forms constantly, whether it's through recordings or it's through phone calls, emails, you know random Excel spreadsheets, but just even when we interact with technology, we're creating data.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:43

Today's guest is Mariam Ahmed, co-founder of Menza, which is a YC-backed company. Menza is all about helping people to use their data better and more effectively. Mariam’s done a lot in a short amount of time. She wanted to be a doctor but fell in love with coding and, through that, started helping different companies for free as an accelerator, and she helped these companies to grow and learn great experience before going to Goldman Sachs because she wanted to get some more corporate experience. Now she's back to being a founder. She's been to YC, Y Combinator and San Francisco, and it's now growing and scaling the company. Incredibly rapidly. She's got such energy and I hope you really enjoy this episode. I'm Amr from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. Great to have you here today, and I think you're one of the youngest guests that's been on the podcast as well, so congratulations on that. 

Amardeep Parmar: 1:36

Oh, thank, you.And I always ask people what do you want to be in the growing up and that wasn't too long ago for you. So when you were a teenager, what were your ambitions? What did you want to be?

Mariam Ahmed: 1:44

Yeah, I think, even going back to when I was really young, I've always been really excited about working. So even when I was like four or five, what I would do for like fun playtime was pretend to work and to be clear.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:58

I pretend to work now.

Mariam Ahmed: 1:59

Yeah, well, that's true, we all pretending to work, but that was like my fun thing to do. I grew up in Manhattan, for context, so I think I'm very much a product of my environment, where I was obsessed with money and I would play with Barbies and I'd do like a bunch of different jobs and I really thought I could be a Barbie where I would like be a doctor, who was also a TV chef, who was also a fashion designer, who was also a veterinarian, like everything. And then when I actually got down to applying to university, I had to figure out, okay, what do I actually want to do? And I ended up applying to do medicine. Interestingly, I think I've always been inspired by doctors. A lot of my family members are doctors. It felt like also as a mathy, sciencey person or someone who's a bit more inclined that way that was like the obvious choice. And then it wasn't until I got to university. I actually coded for the first time and I realized okay, this actually fits my whole thing, because I love problem solving.

Mariam Ahmed: 2:55

This is a great way to problem solve. I can do a bunch of different things using this skill set and also I can make money. So it was like the perfect way to culminate my growing up ambitions, I guess.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:08

Was it hard to shift away from medicine?because I guess once you've got that ambition set out, yeah. Then other people like, oh, how are you going to be a doctor? 

Amardeep Parmar: 3:13

And then you have to actually know you want to take this other route instead? 

Mariam Ahmed: 

Yeah, I think my initial thing even personally, I found it hard to leave the idea of medicine, because I really do admire doctors, I love the idea of helping people, and I think it was hard to kind of be like, okay, so I'm not going to help people. But then I really. When I ended up coding, I was working in biotech and I realized I can help way more people by building some sort of technology rather than having one-on-one conversations. And then that's when I had a lot of validation from other people. My family was super supportive. I was really lucky to have that where they were happy for me to not be a doctor and they saw the value in what I was doing instead.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:52

So you mentioned there about the biotech side of things. Was that during internships at university, right?

Mariam Ahmed: 3:57

Yeah, at university, so I did a lot in biotech. I ended up writing my dissertation in the biotech space. I have such a passion for it. I love hearing about people's projects in the space. There's so many amazing founders in the space who are working there. It's something that maybe one day, down the line, past Menza, I'd like to get back into again. It's just, it's super cool.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:17

You had some pretty cool internships as well, so I know one was in biotech, for example, there. How did you get those? How did you find out about those opportunities?

Mariam Ahmed: 4:25

Yeah, I think again, I was so excited to get working. As soon as I got to university I was like, okay, I can legally work, this is great. So I was doing anything I could to get internships. So at King's we had this program. Essentially that was an accelerator. It was in the bottom floor of our university building so I'd be going to lectures passing it constantly and I'd look inside occasionally and I'd say, okay, there are a bunch of people working in there. They're working on.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:51

Were you jealous?

Mariam Ahmed: 4:53

A little bit. A little bit I was like this is so cool and I'm about to go sit in a lecture. And I loved school as well, but the idea of working and actually building something was super cool. And I was a first-year computer science student and I realized what I'm learning in lecture doesn't really mean anything if I can't apply it. And so I actually went into the accelerator and I was like, hey, I would be down to code for anyone for free so I can get the experience of building something.

Mariam Ahmed: 5:19

And because there are a lot of founders who are non-technical, who have amazing technical ideas, they just need someone to actually make it happen. And I was someone who was really excited. I had the skill set, I was technical, but I didn't have the practice, and so this was the best way to do it. And so then through that I was able to build relationships. So one of the biotech companies I worked for I was able to meet them just by going in there and working on some free projects for them, and I ended up doing my dissertation with them as well, which is quite cool.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:46

So it's really interesting because a lot of people talk about how to get opportunities and you literally just walked in and just said I hope we're out for free and go for it. And I think there's a lot of people listening can learn from that, because sometimes we think about all these complicated ways of how am I going to get experience, how am I going to do this, and sometimes you're just going up to people like I'm happy to help and just do it. So you said it very casually there, but I think that takes quite a lot of guts and you did that, which a lot of people wouldn't do as well. So once you did your dissertation, what was that actually on? So you mentioned it's in biotech.

Mariam Ahmed: 6:16

Yeah, so it was doing breast cancer diagnosis using machine learning.

Amardeep Parmar: 6:20

Yeah, so that's pretty cool to be able to do that at university, right, and using your coding skills, but also bringing into account that you love medicine as well. And once you've done that, and you're now looking further afield, what did you start thinking? Okay, I'm now done with school and I get to finally work, because you're so excited about that full time. What are you looking at?

Mariam Ahmed: 6:38

Yeah, so actually it even goes before that. It was my first year. I wanted to do a spring internship, so I learned about spring internships and again I was super excited because I was like I can work during the spring rather than just during the summer, and so I applied to a bunch of them. I had no interest in finance at this point. In fact, I actively didn't want to work in finance. Growing up in New York, everyone worked in finance. It felt like a really boring option, but I knew it would be good to have a good company on my CV and so I applied to a ton of them.

Mariam Ahmed: 7:07

I got into one at Goldman Sachs and I really enjoyed the experience.

Mariam Ahmed: 7:11

It was actually on the tech track, but then I actually realized, ok, I'm really interested in the work behind it and specifically in markets, which is quite interesting.

Mariam Ahmed: 7:19

It wasn't something I ever had real experience with, and so I ended up getting the full-time offer or the summer offer. I did the summer internship and then I had the full-time offer. So before I graduated I kind of had this track, and it's quite hard, when you have the opportunity to work in an amazing company for pretty good pay, to say you know, I'm going to do anything else. So, even though I had this interest in biotech, I really knew Goldman would be a good place to go at the end of the day, because I can get back into biotech, I can get back into this space. I was starting to think a little bit more about being interested in maybe being more of an investor rather than working on the implementation side, and I knew Goldman would be a good place to set myself up for my career. I would get a skill set, I'd learn how to work, I'd be surrounded by brilliant people, and that's exactly what I got out of it.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:03

So how did you find the experience of working at Goldman after having worked with founders and people in accelerators?

Mariam Ahmed: 8:08

Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:08

Do you think you learned a lot from that experience?

Mariam Ahmed: 8:10

Yeah, definitely. I mean it was interesting because my experience so I worked on the trading floor and it is actually really creative. So I worked in a role called structuring, which is kind of sits between sales and trading.

Mariam Ahmed: 8:30

So we do all of it, but we're coming up with trade ideas that we then sell to customers and I thought that was quite cool because it felt a little bit like a startup, because I was creating product, obviously very well-funded startup with a lot of support and private healthcare, which is great. But besides that, I think it had a very similar energy. I think the startup experience was so additive to my experience working in a corporate because I knew how to kind of get my hands on everything, come up with new ideas, how to kind of take myself and do beyond what I was told to do and really differentiate myself, and so I was able to stand out a little bit. And so when it comes to promotions and bonuses which you know, banking is a huge thing I kind of was in a good place for that. Besides that, I think I was really lucky to have mentors at Goldman as well who kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit, and so, even though I wasn't actively working in a startup, I felt like I was working on my skill set as well, and so now that I'm doing my own startup, I'm really grateful for that time that I had of working in corporate.

Mariam Ahmed: 9:28

I think a lot of founders are like you should get started as soon as possible. A lot of people drop out of school to start a business, but for me, I needed that time to mature and to learn how to work and kind of build really good habits so that now you know I am a hard worker, I know how to put in long hours, I know how to work with different kinds of clients as well, I know how to talk to investors, because that was literally my job. So I highly recommend it to people. I talk to young entrepreneurs all the time, people who are in university, people who've gotten amazing job offers, and I'm like, unless you're working on something that needs to be done right now or you have something you're really excited about, it's worth taking a bit of time and getting this experience. At least it was for me personally.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:10

No, I think that's really true and I think sometimes you said people will see the stories of people who've dropped out of university to start their companies, but in reality, that's a massive abnormality, like most people actually do have professional experience. And, like I said, one of the big key things was like when you're working for yourself and you have to work with different clients and relationships. I think it's one of the almost misnomers is that you're working for yourself but you're not really because you've got customers. You've got clients, you've got stakeholders. You need to keep other people happy too, and if you go into a mindset like I've got, I'm going to do things my way, then what happens if your customers don't like that? And it is important to get those other experiences, maybe doing things which aren't really what you want to do in some ways, or your boss is telling you to do something to just be able to understand how to manage those relationships. 

Mariam Ahmed: 10:52

100%.And, yeah, at the end of the day, you have a co-founder or you have people you work with on your team. You need to know how to work with them, and that's something that I really learned, because when you're in school, yes, you have group projects, but at the end of the day, you really determine how you work, and it's about figuring out how to work with other people, how to work in a team, how to make sure everyone feels counted for and listened to, and those are things that I learned while working in a corporate environment. Obviously, you can learn them in a startup as well, but for my personal growth, it was really important. 

Amardeep Parmar: 11:25

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. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the 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 were at Goldman Sachs for a couple of years there, and when did you start thinking about what your next steps were and what you're going to go into from there?

Mariam Ahmed: 12:07

To be honest, it came out of nowhere, almost. So I loved working with startups and I always felt like at some point in my life I want to go back to supporting startups. I'd never thought of myself as a founder. That was not something. I was never like oh, I have some big, great idea and I was doing quite well at Goldman. I actually had a really great experience there. I had some really great bosses. I was working on something super exciting. It was a really interesting time as well to be working in markets.

Mariam Ahmed: 12:36

And I all of a sudden get a text from a good friend of mine and he's like can we grab dinner? And we haven't caught up properly in a bit. So I was like oh, maybe he just wants to catch up. And this is my now co-founder, Qasim, who was my boss back in the day when I was in university, I worked for his startup and we became really great friends. You know we catch up every once in a while and he was like I really want to get dinner and he was really pushing it. So I was like okay, let's grab dinner. And he was like so, how's work going? And I was like yeah, it's going great. He's like any chance you'd be interested in leaving. And I was like why? And he was like I'm going to start another startup and I really would like you to be my co-founder. Would you be interested? And first thought I was like yes, but I had to play it cool. So I said let me think about it.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:26

Play it cool together, yeah.

Mariam Ahmed: 13:26

Yeah, I can't say yes immediately. And I just didn't feel like they're, you know, good practice. So I said, you know, let me think about it. And we had a really nice dinner and then I went home and I immediately called my board, aka my parents, and I was like, hey, mom and dad, would you be okay if I quit my job at Goldman, my very secure, highly competitive job that you're very proud of me for having and went to start a company with Qasim. And my parents knew Qasim at this time and they were just like it's a no-brainer, this is the time in your life to do it, go for it. And I was like thank God that they said that, because that's exactly what I wanted to do.

Mariam Ahmed: 14:10

And even going to work the next day, I still haven't told Qasim yet. So I was like, let me give it. You know I had to play it cool again, so I gave it a bit of time. But I went to work the next day and this job that was giving me so much joy that I was so excited about, all of a sudden I was like I don't want to be here, I want to be building, I want to be working on this, and it was so funny. It just felt like it must've been sitting inside of me somewhere. But I just knew this is what I wanted to do, and just the opportunity even to work with Qasim again was super exciting. The time we spent together working on his last company was just the two of us, so it was a very similar dynamic. And then the idea of building something my own was just so I had to do it. 

Amardeep Parmar:

So what's great there, like you said, where your parents supported you.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:56

I think that's one of the common themes we have, where a lot of Asians often say, like their parents come to get the good job and things like that. Yeah, so it's really good to hear that your parents were like no, you go for it. And that because obviously it's clear that you wanted to do it and to have that support as well. It just helps you right when you know that you're not having to fight somebody else and convince people. When you had that dinner, did you know what the idea was at that stage? Did he like pitch the idea to you, or was it more just, I want to build something else? Like how did he? Was it just the fact of building anything was going to get you on board, or was it the idea itself that you're like yes, this is the idea for me?

Mariam Ahmed: 15:26

Yeah, so he had a rough idea of the space. So what was happening at the time? So this is early 2023. Chat GPT was blowing up. But interestingly, back in 2020, 2019, when we were working together, we were playing around with the idea of large language models and natural language and it wasn't something that was like super popular at the time. I'd like to say we were working with it before. It was cool.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:54

Yeah, just 10 sets.

Mariam Ahmed: 15:56

Yeah. So well, I wouldn't say that. 

Amardeep Parmar: 15:58

I mean Sam Ullman just copied you guys yeah.

Mariam Ahmed: 16:00

Well, actually, we saw OpenAI at the time and at the time their big thing was the arms that they were working on right, the mechanical arms and we were like, oh, but they're doing this GPT thing. It's quite cool. I mean, at this time I think it was like early GPT two days. So it was like putting out gobbledygook. So it was like putting out gobbledygook. But the company that Qasim had before, shortly, was an app where you could read short stories. And then, when I was working with him, we were playing around with the idea of writing short stories and then we actually did interviews with actual writers and found that a lot of them were really suffering from writer's block and we were like, wouldn't it be cool if you could use AI to write short stories? And then GPT kind of came into it, and then that's what shortly ended up becoming was a platform to write stories using AI. So this was quite early on.

Mariam Ahmed: 16:51

Qasim ended up exiting that company back in 2021. It was a really great deal for him and but we'd also built all this experience with LLMs. So now LLMs are really hot and we're like, well, we've been in the space for a while, so this is what we knew we wanted to work in in terms of the space. We wanted to work on doing something that could help people at work, and so then it was really, I would say, pretty much pre-idea. I was down to work on anything. I joke today that if Qasim was like, yes, let's sell shoes to mermaids, I'd be like, yeah, let's do it.

Mariam Ahmed: 17:25

Because, it just was really exciting and again, the factors were in the right place. I was in the right place. In my life personally, but also in my career, I felt like I was. You know, things at work were getting a bit not boring but comfortable, you know. I felt like I was in a really good place at work and I was almost like it's going so well. Let me just like mix it up a little bit, yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:45

Yeah, so obviously with this new company it's a different relationship right. Before you're helping him out, whereas now you're coming on board as a co-founder. How did you work that relationship back? So it's a change of relationship. Did you have any discussions around that about who's going to be responsible for what or who's going to have different responsibilities?

Mariam Ahmed: 18:03

Yeah, that's a really good question. So now I wasn't reporting to him anymore, but we'd also been friends in the middle and I think that was a really good place to start. So we knew what it was like to work together, which I think was really important when deciding to be co-founders and we knew what that relationship was like. And I will say, when I worked for Qasim, he was really great at making me feel like I was a partner in a lot of ways, that I was equally as invested into the company and it made me really excited to work on shortly. And so then when we were friends, we would do some fun projects together and there we were more equal partners.

Mariam Ahmed: 18:38

And then, when it came to actually building the business, I think we had this establishment of we really trust each other. We really respect each other. These are two really important ones. And then we also have a really strong appreciation for each other's abilities, whether it's intellectual but also technical.

Mariam Ahmed: 18:55

And, being both technical people but also business minded people, we had to figure out okay, are we going to do everything together, or how do we kind of divvy up the tasks and at the end of the day you can't do everything together and it's just way more efficient if one person handles one bit a little bit more. But then we also understand each other when we can both step in when it comes to coding, but we can also both step in when it comes to raising or running the business itself, and so there are little things it's even a day-to-day thing sometimes where we're allocating tasks, but it's very much an equal partnership and I think it's that foundation of trust is. I know, if I'm working on something and then I need to pass it on to Qasim, I trust him to do the best to his ability and to do what's best for the company. So I don't have to stress out which I'm a very type A person.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:45

Really.

Mariam Ahmed: 19:46

Well, I'm really I'm very bogged down by details and kind of making sure everything's perfect, so it's really hard for me to trust someone. So I think that really speaks to our relationship that I can kind of let things go, because I really do feel like he's going to be doing what's right for our company.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:06

So now you're working together as co-founders and you said you've got the general space, but you didn't quite have the exact idea yet. Talk about that journey of discovering that actual idea you're going to work on and really focus on.

Mariam Ahmed: 20:13

Yeah. So I think part of it is. We sat down and we tried to understand what were some problems we faced ourselves, because I think there are a lot of ways founders can think about problems and try to dive into them. But I think it can be a really strong point if you have some sort of personal resonance with it and so that you can really understand your users as well. And so we were looking at his experience as a solo founder of a startup and then my experience working at a large enterprise and what were some issues that we faced at both of them.

Mariam Ahmed: 20:47

And I think one of the first immediate things was the idea of data. So Qasim spoke to the fact that as a solo founder, especially of a consumer company, he was collecting so much data but didn't really know what to do with it because he didn't have a background in data science. He couldn't really hire someone to do data analysis for him, but he felt that all of his best decisions were data backed right. He made data driven decisions and he wishes. He wished he could have done more. And then for me it was really interesting because when I was working at Goldman, I was a technical person working in a non-technical role, and so I saw so much data around me, but I felt like we weren't utilizing it and I had an appreciation for what that data could do. And I ended up building tools that we could use on our desk that leveraged that data, and I felt like, okay, we're really making data-driven decisions and those are ultimately leading to great client relationships. Okay, we're really making data-driven decisions and those are ultimately leading to great client relationships, great products that we're building. And so we have a similar thing.

Mariam Ahmed: 21:48

But we noticed that in organizations, big and small, there's this challenge where we're not leveraging our data enough, and that could be due to skillset. That could be due to the way data is siloed so how do we build this bridge between users and their data? And then this felt like the perfect use case for LLMs, so we didn't even go into it being like we need to have an LLM solution, we don't need to have an AI solution. I think that that can sometimes be a trap for people as well, as you think of the solution before you actually think of the problem. But once we identified the problem, we're like, okay, perfect, it also leverages our skillset, and that's kind of how we did it. And then we ended up talking to as many people as possible. So people from his experience, other founders, but also people from my experience. So I talked to former colleagues, I talked to friends, basically anyone.

Mariam Ahmed: 22:41

There was one point where we were like we built an MVP of the product and it was basically you upload an Excel and then you can start asking questions about the Excel spreadsheet. And we had a goal. We had two days and we were like within two days we're going to have 100 people upload a spreadsheet and ask questions. And so this included. I mean I called my mom right who..

Amardeep Parmar 

The board.

Mariam Ahmed: 

The board, exactly. I called my mom and my dad and everyone else. But it's funny because my mom she's like what even is a spreadsheet right? Why would I have one? And so then we ended up finding a random tax one that she had on her desktop and we were like, let's throw that in.

Mariam Ahmed: 23:19

My dad. He's an investment banker by training and at this time had gotten a new puppy and he'd built an Excel spreadsheet, like an investment banker, to track the puppies eating and then pooping. So he had it all down and that actually was some really interesting data. So I mean, and then I call friends and we're everyone we know and we have them upload these spreadsheets and it's really cool because then we get into okay, is it even working? Sometimes the upload wouldn't work. Sometimes, you know, the actual questions wouldn't work, stuff like that and so we started to work through it. But then we also got to see what kind of data are people trying to look at, like, what are the? What kind of questions are they asking? What are some of the challenges when it comes to asking questions? And so we're starting to build the idea of like okay, this is the problem we're focusing on, and then from there, I mean, we end up talking to way way more people. But this is just like an example of how to get started. 

Amardeep Parmar: 24:14

There's a quote I heard recently I think it's by cb insights is that without data, you're just an idiot with an opinion? So I quite like that because, like you said, where it's a lot of times there's so much discussion going on, but there's actually usually data that can make a more informed decision. We just don't use it for some reason or because we don't really know how to leverage it properly.

Mariam Ahmed: 24:35

100%. I mean it's crazy, but I think we all agree right, data-driven decisions are critical to us as individuals, but also especially for companies to be successful. But only 2% of corporate data is ever leveraged, and a lot of times it's because it's unstructured. I mean, we're collecting data in so many different forms constantly, whether it's through recordings or it's through phone calls, emails, random Excel spreadsheets but just even when we interact with technology, we're creating data and we're not tapping into that data. And there's so much we can learn about humans, so much we can learn about users, so much we can learn about just even processes themselves, and so we were like, okay, we need to tap into that in some way. So that's why we're really focused on not just structured data so your database, your data warehouse but also unstructured data so your data lake emails, phone calls, et cetera to really be able to make as informed decisions as possible.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:38

And so, obviously, you've got your idea now, yeah, and you've got a little prototype to be able to work out and test out from there. How do you then start to scale this out and to build it further?

Mariam Ahmed: 25:46

Yeah. So then what we started to do is we have this kind of MVP and then we're like we find all of the issues with it. Right, we start to really bug squash. So I have a Google Doc and there are way better ways to do this, but at the time we really just had a Google Doc and it was just a list of every bug that I'd collected from those 100 people using it, but also feature ideas. So when talking to those people because we didn't just have people upload we then spoke to them.

Mariam Ahmed: 26:16

So this is like two days dedicated, all day getting on the phone and walking through the process with people, and we started to play around with ideas. And then, okay, so we have like a slightly better version of our MVP. And then now we go back to more users and then we have, you know, we iterate on that and iterate and iterate our MVP. And then now we go back to more users and then we iterate on that and iterate and iterate and iterate, and that's even what we're doing today. So we have more fully-fledged-out product and we have actual users. We have actual customers, but what we're doing is constantly talking to them, trying to understand what problems they're facing what they're actually resonating with and then iterating on that.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:51

And on the other side of things as well. So obviously you went through Y Combinator, yes, and for many people that's the thing they. It has such transformational impact on their journey, right. So can you talk about that, like how much do you think you learned from that? Was that experience worth it for you? Do you think it's a good impact?

Mariam Ahmed: 27:08

Yeah. So it's funny, Y Combinator, we actually got in before we really had a fully fledged out idea, so we got in with that very basic MVP and so it very much was the start. I actually worked my full-time job until just before YC. So my last day at Goldman Sachs was on a Friday. On Saturday we flew out to California and on Sunday was our very first day of like full-time company and YC. So we were like fully in the thick of it. We meet our partners, we meet the other YC founders and it was really cool because I feel like it was a privilege personally, as a first-time founder, to be building my company surrounded by other people going through the same thing, because there are so many early stage founders at YC and so when we're kind of going through those initial hiccups, you have other people who can empathize with what you're going through, who are going through the exact same thing you can exchange notes with.

Mariam Ahmed: 28:06

Honestly, there's so many great things about YC. The partners are all so amazing, so knowledgeable. We worked with Michael Seibel, who's one of the co-founders of Twitch. He's amazing. All of our partners were super cool. Being in San Francisco is a great benefit, but it was really that peer group that you get the other founders going through the batch that were so valuable. They were a lot of our early users. They were so willing to test out our product, to give us feedback. We tested out their products. Now some of them are our customers and we're their customers.

Mariam Ahmed: 28:37

But also just even sometimes when things are really stressful, right and I'm sure you can empathize with this as a founder and any founders out there when you're, you know, basically banging your head against the wall, because being a founder is like so many highs and lows, and sometimes there's like the highs of like this is awesome, this is great, we're building a unicorn, and then all of a sudden you're like, okay, this is awful, this is terrible, what have I done with my life? I need to go back to my corporate job. When you're going through those points, it's really helpful to talk to other founders because they can say I've been through the same thing, or maybe even I've had the exact same problem you're having. Here's how I got through it, and so that was so valuable. I really think it put us in a really good place to build our company.

Mariam Ahmed: 29:20

And then there's obviously other great pieces of feedback as well that you get from the program Things like launch as soon as possible. That is super scary. Again going back to the type A perfectionist thing, especially if you're technical, when you're building code, you want your code to look really good. You don't want to have bugs. But they were just like launch as soon as possible, launch that buggy, terrible product and get feedback on that. And that was probably the scariest thing ever, but it was so helpful because then we could get that user feedback as soon as possible and we wouldn't start just building in the wrong direction based off of you know nothing. And that's something that I tell people all the time now and it's so easy for me to say it now. I've launched soon, but it was so difficult to get that through and to actually apply it myself.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:02

And you said about the stress there, right, and I guess one of the difficult things about your area is because you're in the AI space. It's obviously a very competitive area. There's so much happening all the time and it must be so exciting, but it's also the stress that comes with that too, right? You're seeing all these different trends, all different companies doing different things, and you're trying to keep ahead of that curve all the time. How do you do with that?

Mariam Ahmed: 30:34

Yeah, I think there are several different ways. One way is just in my personal life, I try to be really balanced and try to take care of myself, because we are working a lot and we're working long hours and there's a lot of stress. So I try to work out every day, I try to break a sweat every day. So, whether that's like getting my steps in or just going for a quick workout, that's like half an hour.

Mariam Ahmed: 30:52

I try to eat well, I try to sleep well, but on the other, side of it I think it's trying to deal with that stress head on and really take a step back and think, okay, I can easily look at all the news about my competitors because we're in a very competitive space and see who's raised what, who's built what, but at the end of the day, that's not productive.

Mariam Ahmed: 31:15

I really just need to focus on myself, my product and my users and not try to replicate what other people are doing, not try to raise the same rounds other people are raising, because that's not relevant to me at the end of the day. It should just push me. If anything, it should push me to work harder and to think of new ideas, but it shouldn't bog me down in any way. And I think that reframing has been really important, because initially I was seeing headlines and seeing new products and even people send you stuff and I would be like, oh, my god, what is going on? Why am I not working fast enough? But at the end of the day, I can only do as much as I can do and what I know, or I believe is the right thing to do, is to focus on my users. And so whenever I go through those really stressful points, I'm like, okay, let me just go back to my users and see what they think and see how they feel.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:11

And it's about headlines there, right? . So what are your headlines? What do you think have been your biggest wins so far that you're really proud of as a team?

Mariam Ahmed: 32:18

Oh man, that's a great question. I think some of our headlines aren't even things that would be headlines. It's just like, you know, whether it's my co-founder and I have figured out a really great way to communicate with each other, or even I have figured out a really great way to communicate with each other. Or even we had this one customer who used us like all the time, like obsessively, and it wasn't a big flashy customer, it wasn't even that much revenue, but the usage was just like okay, I think we're building something someone might love or like, or that was a big win for us, these things. And then then you get to the customers and you're like, okay, that's a win and contract size and all of that, but I think it's those little things that are honestly way more validating.

Mariam Ahmed: 33:02

Or even I think at one point we had a guy who he uploaded his credit card information and then he took it off but then ended up creating three other accounts to use up the free trial, and we were like, okay, not a win in the sense that he's not paying for it, but a win in the sense that he really likes the product and he sees there's a way to get around it and get it for free. What can we do to make him feel like, okay, there's enough value to pay for it? And so I think a lot of people would be annoyed that someone's you know gaming, the system, um, and maybe for a second we're like what is going on, but then we're like why don't we call this guy and ask him what he thinks and what he likes and why he doesn't fully see the value. And that was such a rewarding experience. And then what we learned from that was able to get us to the next stage of building something that people would pay for.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:54

And obviously, like you said, you're early in this journey at the moment and there's so much more to come. So if you're sitting here in five years time, what would you hope to be able to say? What's coming up in the future?

Mariam Ahmed: 34:03

Oh man, I think in five years time I'd like to be looking back and be like I worked as hard as I could and I put as much effort as I could. I'd like to think at least that I wouldn't care what the outcome is, just being proud of the work that I've put in, and I honestly think of this experience in many ways. Like that, I feel like I'm learning so much. I'm getting so much out of it. That isn't just necessarily revenue or those numbers, it's the learning experience.

Mariam Ahmed: 34:36

I like to think of being a startup founder as the ultimate MBA in a lot of ways, because there's so many factors outside of yourself and your effort that might determine your product. You could have the right product, wrong time right. There's so much luck that goes into it, and so I want to be able to look back and be like at least I did what I could to make it the best and that I thought of it in a very joyful way as well. I think work can be really stressful and but at the end of the day, it's a choice, and I'm choosing to be here and choosing to do this, and so why not look at it as like an exciting opportunity, and I hope I don't lose that because it is still early days. I mean, I'm very open to the fact that I might be jaded at some point, but I'm I'd like to hope that I continue feeling the way I do now.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:25

I hope so too. It's been a pleasure to interview you and if you were to, if you're people listening right now and wanted to know what's Menza’s mission, what's Menzaare hoping to achieve, what would you tell them?

Mariam Ahmed: 35:36

Yeah, I would tell them that what we're trying to achieve is enabling anyone so anyone to get detailed and granular insights into their business, to understand from their data insights that they wouldn't have thought of before, to really feel like. Mensa is almost like an extra brain that's supplementing the work that they do.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:58

So, as I said, great to hear your story. I'm going to get to a quick five questions now, yeah, so first one is who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out?

Mariam Ahmed: 36:07

Yeah. So the first one is Pahini Pandya. She is the CEO and founder of Panakea, which is actually the company that I mentioned earlier that I did my dissertation with. So they are using machine learning to improve diagnostics by analyzing biomarkers in tissue data or tissue images. What they're doing as a result is making diagnostics faster, cheaper, more accurate and thereby more accessible. They're doing amazing work. I think they've gotten a lot of great credit for what they're doing, but I wish they could get more, so please check them out.

Mariam Ahmed: 36:45

The other person would be Arfah Farooq. She is the founder of Islamic Makers and Muslim Tech Fest. I think the work she's doing in creating a community is really amazing in supporting Muslims in their journey, people who are interested in getting into tech, giving them the opportunity to get more into it, creating new founders. That's really amazing work. Also, on top of that, she's a mother to a young child, so she is definitely one of those people who does it all. The last person is Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan. So, a bit different, she's a poet and playwright. I actually saw one of her plays a couple of months ago and it's really resonated with me. It was called Blueberries and Peanut Butter, and what I love is that she's creating art that is representing young brown people, young Muslim people in a very real way. So it's a love story that I wish I had growing up, seeing people who look like me and have my cultural experiences going through. So, again, very different, but all three of them are doing amazing work and creating real impact.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:50

Awesome. And then, if you want to hear more about you and more about Menza, where should they go to?

Mariam Ahmed: 37:54

Yeah, so you should check out our website, menza.ai. So that's M-E-N-Z-A dot A-I. Let me know what you think of the website as well, because I've recently updated it. You can also check me out on LinkedIn. I like writing about kind of my experience building Menza, what it's like to be a female founder, some other stuff that just comes to my head so you can reach out to me there as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 38:18

And is there anything that you need help with right now that the audience listening could reach out to you and help you with?

Mariam Ahmed: 38:22

Yeah, so I would love to get more people using our product and trying it out, so feel free to check out our website if it resonates with you at all. If you want to make more data driven decisions and you're not really sure how to, or you want to make more out of your data, feel free to reach out and we'd love to get you started.

Amardeep Parmar: 38:40

Awesome. So again, thanks so much for sharing your story today. Have you got any final words?

Mariam Ahmed: 38:44

Thank you so much for having me. This has been really great. The BAE is doing amazing work and actually, if I were to even add you guys to my list of British Asians that I want to shout out, I have to say check out the BAE’s podcast list as well if you're looking for more British Asians. So you guys have an amazing lineup.

Amardeep Parmar: 39:03

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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