🗄️ OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s business or startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a company, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Hussein Wahdan (LinkedIn), co-founder and CEO of Bluworks.

My name is Hussein Hatem Wahdan, and I am the co-founder and CEO of Bluworks. Our mission is simple: to streamline HR operations for blue-collar focused companies and give workers the visibility and predictability they’ve never had before.

My journey into tech wasn’t straightforward. I studied economics at AUC from 2005 to 2009 — a totally different field from what I’m doing now. After graduation, I took the traditional route, working at CIB for six years.

But about three years in, I caught the tech bug. It was around 2016, and I was following tech news religiously. I saw how tech companies could make people’s lives easier — with products like Uber Eats and Fawry making services more accessible. I knew I wanted to work in tech and eventually start my own company in the space.

But I needed a rebrand to enter tech, so I did my MBA at IE Business School as a sort of reset. After my MBA, I joined Jumia, leading strategy and planning for four years and actively engaging in its IPO in 2018. At Jumia, I saw firsthand the challenges Bluworks is now solving. Every Black Friday, HR faced issues recruiting, managing traffic, and paying salaries at warehouses. A lot of manual work that still led to pay disputes and staffing issues.

And this wasn’t unique. My co-founder Farah and I saw how underserved the HR space was in both Egypt and the region — especially for companies with blue collar workers. We talked to almost 100 companies across labor-intensive sectors before a single line of code was written. We interviewed companies in construction, manufacturing, F&B, retail, you name it. We ultimately found that they face the same problems, and HR solutions in the market weren’t addressing them because they were built with a white collar use case in mind.

But blue collar workforce management is much more difficult. A blue collar person’s salary is 100% variable — with inputs related to changing shift times, lateness deductions, absenteeism, incentives, penalties, etc. The issue that companies face isn’t just the number of inputs being collected, but that these inputs are collected from different stakeholders manually and then processed on Excel. This means time wasted chasing the data, and even more time spent correcting the mistakes in manual inputs. The most surprising thing is that big companies in the market still operate this way.

That’s where we come in — and why we’re called Bluworks. Our vision is to create an integrated HR platform for operationally dynamic companies, whose workforce is 70% blue collar and 30% white collar. After closing our first round in November of 2022, we began building the product, acquiring our first client in the F&B sector (our sector zero) in March 2023.

The rest of that year was all about working and iterating on the product. We acquired clients early on — choosing to take a modular approach, test live with clients, and iterate quickly based on customer feedback. On average, B2B SaaS companies generally take 12-18 months to have a usable product, and it took us around a year until we had a product that people were willing to pay for.

That was the moment we knew we were on to something — our first paying client. It still hits me now, even with EGP mns in revenue, that a business saw the potential of the product so early on. Here was someone that my co-founder and I didn’t know, have no affiliation to, deciding to buy this product. This was a milestone for us, and a big validation of how clear and present the pain is.

Once onboarded on to Bluworks, our clients save anywhere between 70-80% of payroll processing time and 7-10% of payroll costs every month. At the same time, we give the employee the benefit of visibility for the first time ever. One of the biggest problems our clients have is high turnover, and the lack of visibility and information contributes to that. Even though turnover is a complex problem, the transparency Bluworks gives is a starting point.

Do we have direct competition here in Egypt? Yes and no. Our direct competition is actually Microsoft Excel. People love Microsoft Excel. Even now, people cling to manual processes, finding software a threat to their job or positioning at the company. This makes manual processes and Excel the number one competitor in the segment we serve.

Looking forward, there’s a massive window for Bluworks to be the gateway for anything blue collar. We want to be a one-stop shop — as cheesy as it sounds. Imagine a new business owner or foreign investor coming into the market. They don’t know anyone, have a limited network, and want to start a business. They will come to Bluworks to hire, manage, and pay out their employees — one platform for blue collar workforce management, hiring, and benefits.

Market trends support this, with more and more SMEs digitizing. The issue is owners usually digitize HR last — focusing on inventory management, finance, payments, etc., first. But if business owners understand people are the second biggest cost item (usually after raw materials) and are actually a main driver of a good business, they would digitize earlier.

Businesses also need to reframe their thinking — a tool like Bluworks isn’t a cost, it’s cost-saving. Because yes, you spend money to acquire Bluworks’ services, but the return is much higher than the money you’re spending — it’s just not a cost companies aren’t used to calculating.

But that’s changing — and our client feedback is the biggest proof of that. We see business owners and HR managers go out of their way to refer us to other businesses. We also see how employees feel more appreciated and engaged when using Bluworks — a software that serves all employees, from the most junior blue collar worker to the C-suite, all on one platform.

Three years in, I think the hardest part for any business owner is managing themselves, managing your day and week, trying to fit everything you want to get done in a way that makes you feel comfortable. Finding that balance is very important, and that looks different for everyone. I am very strict with my schedule. During the week, I focus on work and my weekends are for family and friends. There are rarely any exceptions to this routine.

If I weren’t building Bluworks, I would still be building. But if I could rewind my career, I would be a product manager — something I fell in love with at Bluworks. Outside of tech though, that would be my second passion — sports. I would love to be involved in managing a football club.

I would tell my younger self to just focus on yourself. Make the best decision you can with the information you have, and trust that everything else will work itself out. You can only control what you do and how you respond. So I learned that as long as you put in the work, don’t worry about the rest. It will work itself out. Not always in the way you want, but it will work out.

My advice to new entrepreneurs would be: focus on your product. Whether it’s an app or a burger, focus on your product. And that means talking to customers a lot. Never stop talking to customers. Even if you are running a USD 1 bn company, never stop talking to customers.

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