In this episode, we sit down with Alex Epure, co-founder and CEO of Qureos, an AI-powered hiring platform that's just raised a $5M seed round led by Prosus. Alex spent nine years at Cisco, moved to Dubai, and then went from managing global enterprise accounts to launching Saudi Arabia for Swvl during COVID. What started as a passion project helping university graduates land their first job has since evolved into a full-stack hiring infrastructure layer integrated with over 2,400 sourcing channels globally.

We cover:

• Why hiring has never been easier and is still fundamentally broken, and why more tools and more platforms haven't solved the problem.
• The 1AM Sheraton lobby conversation that convinced his co-founder Usama to join, and what it's like building a company through a market that changed three times in one year.
• Why their AI chatbot experiment completely flopped, and what they built instead.
• How Qureos built a nationality and gender prediction engine to solve a hiring compliance problem that's unique to this region.
• Why 9% of AI interviews still end with the candidate wanting to talk to a human, and what that tells you about the future of recruitment.
• Why the real job displacement isn't AI itself, it's the person who can do your job and three others at the same time.
• How raising a seed round led by Prosus involved a live tech pilot with operating companies, and why failing it would have killed the deal entirely.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - How the $5M Prosus Round Came Together
05:00 - What Qureos Does
08:00 - Nine Years at Cisco & the Move to Dubai
13:00 - Joining Swvl & Thriving in Chaos
16:00 - The 1AM Sheraton Lobby That Changed Everything
22:00 - Going Full-Time in the Worst Market Imaginable
27:00 - First AI Experiments & Why the Pivot Was Perfectly Timed
30:00 - Why Their AI Chatbot Completely Flopped
37:00 - The Business Model: Platform vs Managed Services
40:00 - The AI Adoption Gap: MENA vs the US
43:00 - Job Displacement & Why Your Replacement Won't Be a Robot

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Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/56d08ca6/transcript.txt

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Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
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Follow Alex Epure on LinkedIn:
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Check out Qureos:
https://www.qureos.com/

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In this episode, we sit down with Glenn Harwood, co-founder of AlgoDriven, who has just completed an all-cash exit to Emergence Software, a San Francisco-based hold-forever software company. Glenn started selling cars at Mercedes-Benz in Australia at 20, became a top-15 salesperson nationally, moved to Al Ain and then Dubai, and eventually turned a frustration with how dealerships valued used cars into a SaaS platform now used by over 1,000 dealerships across ten countries, appraising $25 billion worth of cars every year.

This is a rare thing in the MENA startup ecosystem: a genuine, completed exit story, all cash, with early investors made whole and the founders staying on to keep building. Glenn is refreshingly open about the mechanics of the deal, the sleepless nights, and what it actually takes to close an acquisition on December 30th.

We cover:

• How Glenn went from used car salesman to running the number one Mercedes used car department in Australia, and how that domain expertise became the foundation for everything that followed.
• Why five valuers in a dealership would give five different answers for the same car, and why every industry still running on gut instinct is a startup opportunity.
• Why every competitor digitised the clipboard and ended up with something more painful than pen and paper, and what AlgoDriven did differently.
• How they expanded to ten countries on a $2M Series A while remaining profitable, and what the lean international expansion playbook actually looked like.
• Why the acquisition beat raising a Series B, and how Emergence offered something a funding round couldn't.
• What it's actually like to close a deal on December 30th, chasing signatures across three continents over Christmas on no sleep.
• Glenn's honest framing of the VC game: you either IPO, get acquired, or go out of business, and why he's really happy with where they landed.

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Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
05:00 – "You Either IPO, Get Acquired, or Go Out of Business"
06:30 – What is Algo Driven?
08:00 – From Computer Stores to Mercedes Sales
10:00 – The Spark: Why Car Dealers Need Better Data
14:00 – The Real Cost of Getting Valuations Wrong
16:00 – Building a Mobile-First Product with Consumer Feel
20:00 – First Customers and Taking VC Money
24:00 – International Expansion on a $2M Series A
28:00 – The Path to Emergent's Acquisition
34:00 – Deal Mechanics, AI, and What's Next

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Thank you to the partners who make this possible:

• Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save.

👉 Register using this link to be eligible for a $200 bonus when you fund $5,000 across your Sarwa accounts within three months of signing up:
https://www.sarwa.co/register?promoCode=FWDSTART

Promo code: FWDSTART

Sarwa is regulated by the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority. All investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

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Transcript:

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Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/

Follow Jamie Lane on X:
https://x.com/jamienlane

Follow Glenn Harwood on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennharwood/

Check out AlgoDriven: https://www.algodriven.com/

Follow FWDstart on Instagram:
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Follow FWDstart on TikTok:
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Visit our Website:
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Subscribe to our Newsletter:
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In this episode, we sit down with Hassan Fayed, founder of Aydi, the company behind Orth, an AI agronomist now live in almost 200 countries just a few months after launch. Hasan grew up working his family's farm in Egypt, moved to Dubai, and then packed his bags during COVID to come back and tackle one of agriculture's most stubborn problems: the billion-strong workforce that's been almost entirely left out of the software revolution. What started as a workforce management platform has since pivoted into something far more ambitious.

We cover:

• Why software has broadly failed farmers, and why it has nothing to do with farmers being anti-technology.
• How 95% of the world's farms have never been visited by an agronomist, and why the advice most farmers do receive is biased by the people selling them inputs.
• How Orth went from zero to 80,000 users and almost $50 million in economic value delivered, with zero humans in the loop at any stage.
• Why Aydi deliberately hasn't figured out monetisation yet, and why Hasan thinks that's exactly the right call.
• How the team compressed time to value from 27 minutes down to 3, and why they're now considering slowing it back down.
• Why Hasan believes that if your job can be done remotely, there's a very high chance AI will be doing it soon.
• His surprisingly strong take on AI personality, why brand and tone will become a significant contributor to enterprise value, and why he thinks we'll develop relationships with AI agents whether we like it or not.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Cold Open

03:45 - Why Agritech Has Struggled

07:30 - Hassan's Farming Background & Origin Story

11:30 - The COVID Lightbulb Moment

16:00 - Getting Started: Boots on the Ground

19:30 - Russia-Ukraine Impact & Pivot to SaaS

22:30 - AI Enters the Picture

26:30 - The Global Agronomist Shortage

30:30 - Launching Earth in 200 Countries

33:00 - How Earth's AI Model Works

41:00 - Go-to-Market & Overcoming Farmer Skepticism

52:00 - Funding & Building the Cap Table

1:04:30 - Time to Value, Leadership & the Future

-----------------------------------------------

Thank you to the partners who make this possible:

• Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save.

👉 Register using this link to be eligible for a $200 bonus when you fund $5,000 across your Sarwa accounts within three months of signing up:
https://www.sarwa.co/register?promoCode=FWDSTART

Promo code: FWDSTART

Sarwa is regulated by the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority. All investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

-----------------------------------------------

Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/1e5b3625/transcript.txt

-----------------------------------------------

Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/

Follow Jamie Lane on X:
https://x.com/jamienlane

Follow Hassan Fayed on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassan-f-205745148/

Check out ORTH:
https://askorth.com/

Follow FWDstart on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/

Follow FWDstart on TikTok:
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Visit our Website:
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