Mohammad Nabhan and Saed Khawaldeh, co-founders of Desaisiv

Desaisiv started out in basic analytics and grew into an AI-backed InsurTech platform, helping companies manage ins. costs and portfolios while expanding into fleets, leasing, and property and casualty risk. Its services automate underwriting, policy benchmarking, negotiations, and claim audits.

Mohammad Nabhan and Saed Khawaldeh, founders of Desaisiv: My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. This week, we sat down with Mohammad Nabhan (LinkedIn) and Saed Khawaldeh (LinkedIn), co-founders of Desaisiv, to discuss their paths into entrepreneurship, the company’s evolution into AI-driven InsurTech, and the lessons they’ve picked up along the way. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: How has each of your careers evolved to culminate in founding Desaisiv?

Mohammad Nabhan (MN): I started out in pharmacy, but an entrepreneurship program at Indiana University pulled me toward business. I compressed a six-year medical curriculum into 4.5 years so I could get into the commercial world faster. From there, it was enterprise sales at Pfizer, then a marketing agency that took on over 100 enterprise clients, and a run of commercial roles across different business models where I learned unit economics and distribution from the ground up. The venture before Desaisiv, my tenth, was the real test of cross-border execution — I scaled a product through Jordan, Iraq, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia and took the company to acquisition. That’s what gave me the confidence to build Desaisiv and go after InsurTech.

Saed Khawaldeh (SK): I come from a deep tech background. I did an engineering degree and then a PhD in AI at the University of Oxford, which gave me a real understanding of how to build products on top of AI. After that I spent more than six years as a chief engineer and VP of business at several tech startups in London, building SaaS products and launching them into the UK and US markets. Working side by side with founders that whole time is what taught me to think like an entrepreneur and eventually led me to co-found Desaisiv.

E: Take us through the life cycle of Desaisive since its inception. Where did it start and where is the company now?

MN: Since we launched in 2023, we’ve gone from an early-stage startup to AI ins. infrastructure. The pivot was into enterprise InsurTech, using our own AI to automate underwriting and bring corporate health premiums down by up to 50%. We’ve since moved past predictive analytics into autonomous agents that handle policy benchmarking, negotiations, and real-time claim audits, and we’ve scaled beyond health ins. into commercial fleets, leasing, and P&C risk management. Today we manage more than SAR 2 bn in portfolios across 600-plus tier-one corporate clients and 18-plus insurers, spanning Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE.

We recently opened a USD 8 mn round, and the plan for it is focused on the Kingdom. We want to grow our enterprise base beyond those 600 clients across Riyadh, Jeddah, and the Eastern Province, deepen our integrations with licensed Saudi insurers and brokers — capturing large government, semi-government, and private-sector accounts. We’re also expanding the underwriting engine from corporate health into motor fleets, leasing, and general P&C, built for Saudi regulatory standards, and doubling down on our Riyadh R&D to push the autonomous ins. agent further.

E: What are the main challenges facing the InsurTech sector today in Saudi Arabia?

MN: I see the challenges in Saudi InsurTech falling into a few key areas. There’s evolving regulatory compliance — licensing, solvency, and data residency under the newly unified Ins. Authority. There’s the friction of connecting modern AI pipelines to the legacy, closed core systems of traditional insurers and TPAs. Data quality is fragmented, so cleaning up non-standard medical coding and inconsistent health records is a constant job before you can train accurate models. There’s a mindset shift needed, moving enterprise buyers and brokers from manual, relationship-driven negotiation toward automated decision-making. And talent is scarce. You need people who understand both advanced machine learning and local actuarial and CHI compliance, which is a rare combination.

Looking further out, the biggest opportunity is in hyper-personalization and real-time decisioning. As the data infrastructure matures, ins. will move from a static annual policy to dynamic, risk-adjusted coverage. AI will let claims get approved instantly at the point of care, which removes the paperwork entirely, and predictive health monitoring will let insurers shift from paying for illness to rewarding wellness and prevention.

E: What does a typical day in your life look like?

MN: My routine is built around focus and execution. I start early, no screens for the first 30 minutes — physical training, a look at my top priorities, and then the high-cognition work like strategy, key hires, or product architecture before the noise starts. Midday I'm in execution mode: aligning with my executive team, B2B sales meetings, investor and partner conversations. Late afternoon is for unblocking the team, reviewing metrics, and product reviews. In the evening I disconnect, read, and spend some time reflecting on the bigger picture to make sure we’re actually moving the needle.

SK: My day is about strategy and alignment. I set the company’s direction and work with the heads of department to execute it. I meet existing and potential clients to understand how our products are helping them and gather the feedback that shapes what we build next. I meet partners to establish new relationships, and I spend time managing our current investors and meeting new ones to plan the company’s growth. A big part of it is keeping the vision current and making sure the whole team is following it in their day-to-day work.

Nabhan and Khawaldeh’s favorites

MN: I listen to The Game with Alex Hormozi for no-nonsense scaling and sales tactics, and the All-In Podcast for macro tech and venture trends. On the reading side, I’m into USD 100 mn Offers by Alex Hormozi for structuring big B2B deals, alongside Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson on positioning and storytelling in high-ticket sales.

SK: I’m reading Zero to One and The Lean Startup, and I listen to The Diary of a CEO and Y Combinator.

A piece of advice that stuck

MN: Focus on the inputs, not just the outputs. In entrepreneurship you can’t always control the immediate result or every market variable, but you can control your speed, your focus, and your work ethic. If your inputs are relentless and high quality, the outputs take care of themselves.

SK: Build a product that solves a major problem no one has solved before. If you do that, you're not competing with anyone — you own the entire market opportunity, and you’re expanding the pie rather than building a replica of something that already exists. The problem just has to be one that genuinely matters in your clients’ lives.