(This post was originally posted as an appendix to a LinkedIn article (April 2019) about people trying to be more real/authentic in their LinkedIn/social profiles/how they talk about themselves) - Text edited for clarity and sections created for readability.

Childhood

It all starts with being a total nerd kid from a super young age, growing up during the last 8 or 9 years of the civil war in Lebanon. Spending a lot of time between reading, tinkering with Legos and taking apart toys and a lot of other things.

This is a representative picture of a good chunk of my childhood (and a lot of the time since): Warning nerd alert!

I guess this introverted geekiness was balanced with a love of the outdoors and years spent hiking and camping with a small boyscout troop including my 3 childhood friends (Best men at my wedding, godfathers to my son, etc etc). Being out there in the "great outdoors" trying to survive the week with whatever you packed beforehand teaches you planning, frugality, independence, self reliance, and to appreciate going back to a mattress, whatever kind it is, after a week sleeping on the ground.

A topic I was always fascinated by was astrophysics, so when I had to choose a major I opted to study physics because my goal was to do graduate studies in astrophysics (not astronomy). A year or so into it, I was convinced to switch to engineering, through a combination of practical family members and the fact that doing differential equations for hours didn’t turn out to be as exciting as I originally thought!

Moving to the US for College
I then moved to the US and started at North Carolina State University. During my first year, I did a variety of jobs including building static Web-pages to cover the 2000 Sydney Olympics for an NBC affiliate. I also worked full time for a semester between 3 in the afternoon and 11 or midnight in a manufacturing plant in Durham -a 45 minute drive from campus- through a staffing agency. This is one of those time-sheets I kept. (This was one of the lighter weeks, as I always shot for 10+ hours of overtime because it paid 1.5 times the normal hourly wage).

It was a very interesting period and I really enjoyed the core curriculum but also started developing a curiosity towards business as I stumbled into an issue of HBR in the library and read it cover to cover and started reading the back issues in binders as I found them fascinating. One day a professor (Thanks Steve, life changer!) walks in to let us know about the "Engineering Entrepreneurs Program" (Thanks Tom for creating this amazing program!). I joined the program and participated for multiple semesters. Loved interacting with the visiting entrepreneurs, the energy of everyone in the program and our super-geeky spring break trip to Silicon Valley in 2004 (That included a lunch with Steve Wozniak)!

After that I kept working weekends throughout college, a few odd jobs like painting a nursery during spring break) and did a cold calling job for a month: If you are studying any technical field, highly recommend this, very few things are more uncomfortable than calling people during dinner time to invite them to a financial management seminar even if it is by a reputable financial firm.

First job/jobs
At graduation I didn’t have a job but later that summer I interviewed with large engineering/manufacturing companies and ended up joining Eaton Corporation because the recruiters and the people I met seemed much nicer than other employers. (Thanks Jessica!) Ended up starting in sales engineering working with a fun crew and thanks to a great boss (Thanks MLP!) joined the rotational Leadership Development program doing operations excellence (Working with the great Clint to dive deep into Lean Six Sigma and change processes and habits in plants and doing a crazy high intensity project in Los Angeles to keep Airbus and Boeing aircraft production going, going from knowing nothing about machined parts and CNCs to developing processes to make them faster 3 weeks later), supply chain management (being stretched way out of comfort zone by Karim, insane learning curve relocating some manufacturing plants to Mexico with dozens of constantly moving variables and a very weird dynamic where we were asked to get the employees who were just laid off to help us train the new team members) and wrapping it up with aerospace program management (Great team in Glenolden with the forever wise Robert) learning about price segmentation in its extreme cases.

Working in manufacturing was intense and real. That's the environment you meet the really smart people. You can't solve the problem then nothing comes out at the end of the line. But, at the same time, working in manufacturing in the U.S. was also a bit depleting with so many offshoring projects, seeing people lose their jobs mostly because some bureaucrat in HQ calculated some theoretical savings and an unnamed tax strategist came up with a new structure.

Bschool
Decided to leave to business school to figure something else out. In my application I mentioned how I would like to find a way to weave entrepreneurship and economic development to make a real impact. The 2 years in business school were an incredible experience but is the topic of maybe another post, many great great friends made during that time)

363 days in consulting and starting the entrepreneurial journey
Considering my deep interest in business and solving problems and the big vacuum wielded by management consulting in business schools I ended up working at a strategy consulting firm. While it was an interesting experience, and I definitely learned some things and met some great people, it was underwhelming. I have written about this in other instances and maybe will also consolidate those writings at some point in the future, but long story short I left and started an e-commerce company (Thanks Mekki!)

Starting Namshi was a true energizing experience again, building something from scratch and the team that actually made it happen. An intellectual and leadership challenge that really reminded me of the "build the airplane while you are mid-air" analogy several times. Too many great team members to count here, you know who you are, but an amazing group of people who were a joy to work with and is now shaping the tech ecosystem in the region. As the team remembers me saying one of two things "good times" (Translation: things are intense) and "interesting times" (things are crazy). [Note: Team, shall we do another reunion soon?]

Full circle back again to the original plan and started building AstroLabs with the plan of having a real impact on the MENA tech ecosystem over the long term. Six years later: Our co-working spaces in Dubai host hundreds of incredible entrepreneurs and tech scale-ups from around the world building incredible companies. Our space in Riyadh, KSA launched last year and we became the only international organization with a foreign investment license to help scale-ups setup 100% fully owned companies in Saudi. AstroLabs Academy has been growing exponentially driven by the impactful programs we do for the largest corporations in the region powering their digital transformation journeys, on top of graduating thousands of people from our open programs such as the Digital Marketing Track, Coding Bootcamp and others.

Anyway, I think this article got to be much longer than I expected. I hope you skipped the Appendix, but if not, thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing from you in the comments, in DM or in other channels. I do apologize though, I have a 6 month old baby I adore spending time with, so most likely we might not be doing coffee unless there's something super concrete I can help you with or you can help us with.

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*(The other 20% of the time I start playing games in my head while simultaneously thinking about a pseudo-polite way to end the meeting)

**on that note please read this article from 1984 from Asimov, he didn't even call himself a futurist!

***I continue to advise and have advised a significant group of founders and startups but I mention none of them on my profile since I don't want to feel like I am riding on the startup's success. That said I am not morally opposed to it if you do it with caution.