Mark Chahwan, group CEO and co-founder at Sarwa: Each week, 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. Speaking to us this week is Mark Chahwan (LinkedIn), group CEO and co-founder at Sarwa. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I’m Mark Chahwan, co-founder and group CEO of Sarwa. I grew up in between Montreal and Beirut. I studied finance at McGill University, and had a deep interest in investing early on. I worked in management consulting for a couple of years, and then started Sarwa with my best friends in 2017, where the mission is to help people invest and make money outside of their salary. Outside of Sarwa, I recently became a dad and I enjoy fitness and surfing.

We always hear “don’t mix business and friends” but for us, it’s been the best thing. It’s very scary to launch something on your own. When the idea of Sarwa came, I was in Montreal and a lot of people who would move to Dubai would ask me how they should invest their money. I found that people didn’t know their options, whereas in Canada, we had investment platforms that were helping people get started. I felt that there was a gap, and we realized that the banks weren’t doing a good job at making investing accessible.

We’re not taught how to invest in school or about money in general. We felt like there was a big problem to solve, because people want to do things on their own and we want to allow them to control their own experience with investing to match their values and interests, as opposed to getting certain products pushed to them so a salesperson can meet their target.

Several things make us stand out. The first one is the simplicity of Sarwa, from the name to the educational content to the onboarding experience and design and language we use. I think it comes from the young team we have that wants to build something that reflects the expectations of today’s world. The second one is choice. There’s a lot available on the platform — people can buy and sell stocks, or crypto, or options, or they can have a higher yield savings account or invest in private companies. The kind of product offering that Sarwa has built is very extensive, so that you don’t need to have many different apps.

We’re also profitable and count Mubadala among our backers, and I think that’s something that a lot of people care about more as they grow their wealth, especially with situations like in Egypt, and Lebanon where there’s been a lot of wealth destruction from poor governance. I think ultimately the value we bring in terms of educational content and community events also signals that we will go that extra mile to help people ultimately get better returns on their investments.

The worst thing you can do in times of volatility is to panic sell. Volatility is inevitable, and I view these moments as an opportunity for Sarwa to educate people about similar periods in the past and show them how resilient the stock market is. And I think it’s working — in April, we’ve seen a record amount of deposits, because people have almost rewired their thinking from panic-driven selling to thinking we should actually buy while markets are falling and prices are down.

US equities are still doing really well in terms of inflows. We’ve also seen increased investments in broad-based ETFs, which made a comeback in April, probably because there was confusion around which companies will be impacted by the volatility, so people started to diversify more than usual.

What also gained popularity is options trading, which is driven by a need for protection against sharp rises or sharp falls. Crypto and gold were also popular in May. There’s a very good balance, which I really like at the moment, between risky assets and protection against downturns. That’s really positive behavior, especially because a lot of our customers are super young. 80% are millennials and Gen Z, so they have a risk appetite, but they’re doing it responsibly.

I’ll typically gravitate towards one team a month. What’s good is that we have identified a leader for each team so they’re not relying on me to progress; it’s more about where I can add value.

One thing that’s a constant each week is that we have a Slack channel where we say what we’re going to work on for the week ahead. I think that’s important to make sure you’re doing what you said you were going to do.

On a good day, I aim to have some focus time, like a couple of hours in the morning — which is why I try not to book meetings early in the day — just to leave time for explorations, thinking about strategy, or a campaign or product, and about how to improve things. I’m usually woken up by my son in the morning, I make coffee and then he follows me around the house. Typically, I like to read a bit — usually some fiction – or hit the gym. And sometimes, more so on the weekend, I’ll go for a surf. There’s Sunset Beach in the UAE, but I’ll also take advantage of good surf spots outside of the UAE when I’m traveling, like in Portugal now or back in Lebanon.

My favorite book to recommend is Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a very complete book combining a lot of wisdom and philosophy from thousands of years. It has very useful insights on how to avoid some pitfalls. I’ve been reading almost once a year for the last couple of years.

On a professional level, the short-term goal is to reach more than USD 1 bn in assets; we’re at USD 600 mn as of April. I think a big part of our impact is in how much people are saving and how much is being put on the platform, so I think five years from now, that should reach USD 5-10 bn. Profitability was a big one that we reached last year, and now it’s more about unlocking more ways to reinvest that income for customers, employees, and shareholders.

On a personal level, my goal is to keep up with the growth of the company, because to have managed and started Sarwa with just a handful of people and an MVP, to now a very different company, it’s important to scale the company while staying lean, and using technology and AI to do a better job at that.

A few pieces of advice I’ve cherished: Give the benefit of the doubt — a colleague of mine told me this when it comes to seeing something you don’t like, to look at why something may have happened before assuming the worst. Another one is to attack the problem, not the person. This is really important at a startup, because a lot of times, when someone isn’t doing well, they just haven’t been set up for success.

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