OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Galal Elbeshbishy (LinkedIn) co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Synapse Analytics.

My name is Galal Elbeshbishy, and I’m the co-founder and COO of Synapse Analytics, an AI-powered decisioning platform. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, where I spent almost two years working on bio-inspired technology research. I actually have no corporate experience — I co-founded Synapse Analytics with my partner Ahmed Abaza right after graduation, and it is where I built my career.

I was always passionate about math — boring, I know. I found myself excelling at it at a young age, and as I grew older I realized that I wanted to embed theoretical mathematics — the most complex (and beautiful) form of math — into the not-so-theoretical world. I was lucky enough to stumble upon an opportunity that would help me do just that: Data science.

We figured out what we needed to do to enter the market along the way. We started out selling AI as a service, making our first three sales without a single Machine Learning Engineer on the team. We found a huge gap and realized that we were early adopters — all we needed to do was demonstrate the potential of applying AI tech to our clients’ operations.

Our edge is that we aren’t industry insiders. While a lot of what we do differentiates us from our competition — from product, offerings, and even geography — but our advantage is our impartiality. Our clients are financial service companies, but we were never experts in the field. Because we are experts in mathematics and technology (nerds, in other words), we’re able to view things objectively, and our scope extends beyond what we are solving at any given moment.

We measure our success by our team. The talent we have at Synapse is second to none, and once our team members started inviting others to join the company, that was our first sign of success. Another indication, which may come across counterintuitive, was during an incident where our platform was surprisingly down for one hour. During this unprecedented incident we started receiving calls from clients pressing the urgency of accessing our services, and I realized the fundamental impact we had on the businesses that we serve.

Many ask where we see our business in five years, but let me tell you where I see it one year from now: I see us becoming the de facto underwriting platform in the region. Our clients are leaders — we work with most NBFIs in Egypt as well as banks, and we intend to expand that network as we grow our business into the GCC and in Africa.

The recent economic changes have been rough on all businesses, but we’re lucky in the sense that ours is an internationally ever-growing field conducted in the software space. This means that we are still able to export our products and our intelligence, and hedge against any additional instability that might arise.

As a company, we are already changing the landscape. Specifically in the way lenders underwrite their customers. If we’re hoping to see any external change, it would be the speed and accuracy of said underwriting. Luckily, with our product, lenders can give out more loans with less risk and across all products.

You’re always learning in this industry: It’s a consistently rewarding experience, whether it’s how to become the best leader for your team, or the ins and outs of a new industry. There are constant shifts, and if you don’t embrace the lessons, you’ll drown.

The definition of “difficult” changes as you grow your business, so there’s no specific part of my job that I can label as hard. I think the unpredictability of what is required to maintain a healthy business is what’s hard. There’s no playbook, and new challenges arise everyday. Sometimes just pinpointing what the problem is or what’s going wrong at any given moment is hard.

Being hands on makes it difficult for anyone to balance their personal and professional lives. Whenever I’m asked how I do it, my answer is simple: I don’t. There is no disconnect between my work life and my home life the way I live today — I prioritize on the go. Sometimes work will require all seven days of the week, sometimes for several weeks in a row, but sometimes I’ll have the chance to spend a random Monday and Tuesday with my family.

The last book I read was Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s my current favorite book — it’s also the only book I’ve finished as an adult. It goes into detail about the role of randomness in our lives and how we are so unaware of how unsystematic life actually is.

If I wasn’t at Synapse, I would probably be involved in another business in analytics. I think that in most scenarios, I would still find myself on the path that I’m on today. I don’t particularly think that that’s true for every decision I’ve ever made, but when it comes to this business, I do.

One of the hardest things about being a founder is the lack of guidance. Asking for advice from an outsider doesn’t help since they don’t have context for your business, even if they are founders themselves. You have to rely on your own knowledge and intuition.

On that note, if I could give one piece of advice for new entrepreneurs, I would advise them to pick their partners wisely. Spend more time picking your partners than on your business model. I’ve been very lucky to have met mine early on — they have always had the company’s best interest at heart.

There are always unknown factors when starting a business, and that’s okay. You’ll find their answers along the way — some will become irrelevant, and some will stay unknown. Just have a big enough idea and go execute your vision. You’ll learn to become a great founder on the job. But it’s a long and emotional journey and you have to have the discipline to keep going, even when you lack the motivation to continue.

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