Pursuing a vision - Ahmed Ahres

00:00

I am personally someone who aims to be a founder one day. I'm working now in a very early stage startup, and I work very closely with the founders, I'm actually the employee number two in my startup. And I think when people talk about becoming a founder, doing your best work, there is one skill that I think is not talked about a lot, and is actually crucial. It's discipline. I feel like discipline is probably one of the most important traits out there, either to become a founder or even in general, doing your best work and being the best version that you can be. But when you ask people, "What do you think makes a successful founder?" They'll say, "Oh, important network, being smart, understanding the problem." Yes, all of that is correct, but I never heard someone saying discipline.

00:53

What role has discipline played in your working life?

01:00

Right, so that's a good question. I started my career at a company like Revolut. You know Revolut and people around the world know Revolut. And I was very young when I did, I was 20 when I started my career over there. And from the beginning I had big projects. So two weeks into Revolut, they asked me "Ahmed, we have this problem of people getting into other people's Revolut account. We want to build a new authentication system, a new security feature, where if someone tries to log into your account, we want them to take a selfie and compare that selfie to when you open the account. And if the both faces match, you can enter, otherwise you can't."

01:42

And so you can imagine I was only an intern. I had no work experience, and I was given this huge project that was going to impact the whole Revolut app. And so when you have such a project, you need to start working early, first of all. A lot of people just wait until like the last week, for example, or the last few weeks to start crushing it. But I knew building this is with practice. So I started extremely early. And so every project that I have usually that I get, or that I think about, I always start extremely early doing it. And that, I think, is a product of discipline. Because I know what's out there, I know what's coming and I shouldn't let myself just start at the end.

02:28

Second one is also maybe also my personal life. I think, to be the best version of employee that you can be, you need to, for example, value sleep. So sleep early during the week. And so in my personal life, I'm someone who is very much on the work hard, play hard... Well, during the week, I am extremely disciplined where I sleep early, I eat extremely healthy, I work extremely hard. And then on the weekend, I try to be a different person where I'm more social, I go out a lot more. And I see a lot of people out there that mix both, where during the week it's Wednesday, they have a big deadline coming up, a big presentation coming up and they just let themselves go on a Wednesday night or on a Tuesday night. Which to me, I mean, you might say it's fine, but to me it's not. And that separation, that balance that comes between who you are at work time versus who you are at social time, makes a big difference on a daily basis.

03:21

How do you reconcile that against I guess, situations where we need to be our kind of true selves. And it sounds like almost when you've got these two versions of Ahmed, I mean, are you being your truest self in both of those instances? And how does someone continue to make sure that they are really being themselves without compartmentalizing in any way?

03:52

Well, I think maybe the point here is not to be two different people, it's to know what to prioritize on a given time. So for example, during the week I try to always be enthusiastic and positive energy to everyone, either during the week, or within the weekend, because that's the kind of person I want to be. But I know that, for example, I don't know, if I have a big deadline coming up or a big presentation coming up on a, let's say Thursday at 10:00 AM, the most important thing to me at that moment, so on Thursday or on Wednesday evening, is that presentation. Therefore I will optimize, I'll put myself in a position where I can be the best Ahmed I can be on that Thursday at 10:00 AM.

04:28

So it's not about being two different people, it's to know what to prioritize at a given time, and put yourself in a position where that thing you have prioritized, so in this case maybe we're talking about work. So in that presentation, supposedly at 10:00 AM, if that's the most important thing to you, then you should put yourself in a position where you are the best version of yourself at that given time. But it's not about being two different people. It's about knowing what to prioritize and when.

04:57

How have you used that, not just in your weekly routine, but in your longer-term routine? It sounds like you have real clarity on where you are headed, and you need to know what your priorities are in the first place in order to be able to align your behavior against them. Does that play itself out on a longer-term basis? And if so, how so?

05:23

Right. So something, a framework that I use in my life to make big life decisions, and in this case how you know how to approach the longterm career, is to ask myself, "What kind of person do I want to be remembered for? What kind of person do I want to be?" And so, for example, I know me as Ahmed, I want to become a founder, not in terms of title, but in terms of impact. I want to have the impact I want to have on the world. So if I am at point A right now, let's say right now, I'm being here, an engineer in London. And point B is to be the best version of an entrepreneur, of a founder, that I can be. I know where I want to head. And so what is the optimal step that I can take right now that can get me closer to that point B?

06:05

Let me give you a concrete example. In December, 2019, I had a choice of either going back to school to finish my masters, or staying at Revolut for full time. So Revolut told me, "You could go back to school and then come back in the year's time." And it's a very difficult conversation to have, for example, with your parents. And in this case, I think my mother was a bit, she wasn't really okay with me dropping out of school. But I knew that I was at the time an intern at Revolut, and I wanted to become an entrepreneur. And to me, the next step was clear. Between picking the decision of either going back to school or staying at a company that was taking off like Revolut, and my impact was so big at that time, the next step was clear. And every single decision that I make, especially career-wise, but also in life in general, well, that's what I try to be, and that's what I try to do.

06:59

If I want to be remembered as this person who brought positivity, who inspired people, who inspired their friends... I like being that person who brings the best out of my friends. So how can I act on a daily basis to be remembered like that person?

07:14

How do you know you want to be a founder?

07:18

Well, I mean, apart from the fact that people just telling me, it feels right to me. That's what feels the most right thing to do.

07:29

And is that because there's... It sounded like you... Did you use the phrase remember, I think. What was the phrase you used, sorry? Was it I impact, or...

07:46

Impact.

07:49

I guess, why do you want to create that type of impact? And do you know... It sounds like you know you want to have a large amount of impact, but don't know what the impact is that you want to have. So I wonder why you want that impact.

08:07

Well, I think the answer here is pretty easy for me. It just energizes me. When I think of my time, I don't know, at a company when I was working at Rev or even here, what I'm doing in my career right now. The people around me are probably the most important thing, because they pull me up and they are what makes me happy on a daily basis. But when I think of the fact that something I built or I worked on that had a big impact on people, that just makes me sleep peacefully at night. And it energizes me on a daily basis. That energy it gives me is just incomparable with anything in the world.

08:42

So, okay. Now, if I know what energizes me and I know what kind of person I want to become, I don't know if I built that as a mental model or if it just appears to be, but both actually go together.

08:58

You have this incredible energy, and it's rare to find someone who's raw energy is the thing that is driving them versus, I guess like an idea or a worry. But it feels like it's actually just this raw energy, where does it come from?

09:23

Honestly, Ben, I have no idea. I didn't realize it. When I started my career, my first performance review, I was like, "Ahmed has such positive and high energy." And then in my second job, someone even told me, my old manager told me, "I wish I could take your energy, bottle it and give it to people." And my third job, my first performance review is energy. And this comes from both the founders of the company, but also people that work with me. And that's when I realized I was like, "I had no idea."

09:54

But to answer the question where does it come from, I don't know. I don't know if it's something that I was born with or maybe tennis gave it to me as I grew up, or it's just in general, I just love where I am. I love what I'm doing in life. And maybe happiness in general gives you this energy. I can't answer that question, but I know it's here and that's my superpower and I want to use it in whatever I'm going to do next.

10:17

How did the tennis impact you, and what is that story? And how on earth do you go from potentially becoming a professional tennis player to becoming a machine learning engineer at Revolut and now the founding engineer at startup?

10:35

Yeah, no, that's a good question. So I started playing tennis when I was, I think, four years old. And I have one of my older oldest brothers, Amin, who was also playing tennis. So we were tennis people in the family. So I started training when I was four years old, and around nine, I think in 2008, so I was 10 years old. I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to try to play some tournaments in Tunisia." I was 10 years old. And I think one of the first tournaments I played, I won. I became number one in the country for my age range. And that's when we started to understand that maybe there's something here. So it wasn't planned.

11:09

That just came out of nowhere. You were just like, "Yeah, I'm going to go play some tournaments." And you'd just come first.

11:15

I mean, I played for six years, so I knew I was... We were training, but I didn't know if I was good or not. We needed to go on tournaments to know if I was good or not. So I ended up first and then the second tournament I win again, and then the third tournament I win again, and things started just going well. I was being coached by one of the best coaches back in Tunisia, who I owe a lot of who I am today., and my family was very supportive as well. I had a brother who always came to every game. He was very supportive with me.

11:45

And I continued playing, so at 10, I think I finished number two or number one in Tunisia. At 12, so in 2010, I also finished first or second in Tunisia. And I continued playing profession until I was about 14. And then I had to make a decision. I was like, "Okay, should I focus all my energy on school or on tennis?" I loved tennis. And I was not... I mean, I was not bad. I was pretty good at it. But I knew somehow that it wasn't where I wanted to head next. I love tennis, but not enough to make it my whole life.

12:21

So what happened was, "Okay, so I didn't want to go into tennis. What do I want to do in my life?" And I was young at that time and I was always playing a lot of video games with my friends. More specifically Call of Duty. And actually video games got me extremely close to my friends. We got extremely close and today some of my best friends come from those times where we were playing games together. So I said, "Well, I'm seeing that video games can have a very positive impact on people," in my case, the social part. Let me try to pursue this, not as a player, but as a creator. So I told myself, "Okay, where I want ahead next is build video games. What is the next best thing I can do to become to become big in the video game industry?" And the answer was-

13:06

That's such a young age to working through these huge decisions at 14.

13:10

Well, I mean, just on the side, I am lucky to have been around people that are very inspiring my whole life, and I was always with people older than me. So I was 14 in the class of 16. I started university when I was 16. So I spent my whole life being around people that are older than me, and I think that helped me get the maturity I needed to make these decisions from an early age. So to get back on the background story... And then when I just decided to study computer science, I went to the Netherlands when I was 16. And for a year and a half I couldn't go out because I was 16 and people can only go out at 18 over there. So I was like, "Okay, I can't really go out. I can't do much on my weekends. What am I going to do?"

13:57

Well, I want to become proficient in the video game industry, I can't go out, therefore I'm going to use my time to build video games. So I started building video games, and that's where I learned how to code mostly. A computer science degree doesn't teach you how to code. It teaches you mostly how to solve problems. But I learned how to code mostly from my video games, and I have the chance that over time to build and ship, and one of them is on Android right now. I'm not sure if people are playing, but the fact that just one person just played it and liked it to me made the whole world. To me, it was amazing.

14:28

So now I'm at university, I'm building games, and when I was about 18, I got into this whole computer vision machine learning world because I got super interested in virtual reality. The technology of virtual reality to me is the big future because it's the only technology in the world that tricks the human brain. So I started to shift a little bit from video games to VR, but both are experiences, so from video games to VR, and I went to do my master's with a specialization in computer vision at EPFL in Switzerland, and halfway through my master's I get this internship at Revolut as an ML engineer specialized in computer vision. I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to go for six months and come back and finish my master's." And then halfway through I get a full-time offer and I just stayed and then since then my career has started.

15:19

It's fascinating that as you've navigated your journey, it sounds like you're not only extraordinarily ambitious and driven and want to do the very best work that you possibly can, but at the same time, you're also just doing what you're interested in.

15:34

Absolutely. Feel like at this moment right now in my life, I found the perfect combination because I do what I love. I'm doing what I love. I'm being surround by very inspiring people. And at the same time, it's also heading where I want to be. I realize how lucky I am that those two are just to go together.

15:57

They don't all that often.

16:01

No, I don't think so. I think what I see out there when I talk to people is usually they don't know where they want to be. That's the thing that I see missing most often, which for some people might be not a problem, but for me, it's unacceptable if I am at a certain point in my life, and for months or even years, I don't know what kind of person I want to become. To me, personally, as Ahmed, it's unacceptable. So I always try to not put myself in that position.

16:30

It's interesting to wonder what might happen when you do reach that.

16:42

So I'm more about the journey and the process rather than the result. So right now I tell myself I want to become a founder and I want to have maximum an impact as possible, but can you really ever reach the maximum impact? I don't know. I can become a founder. I could probably, maybe in two years, build a company and become a CEO and maybe I have an amazing team and have a great impact, but I think there's always more to be done, and I'm not saying this saying that I'm not enjoying the process, I just want to get there, because no, that's wrong. That's something I look forward to, but I always make sure to enjoy the journey. So answer your question, I don't think I'll ever reach the final point and I don't want to, in a way. I just want to keep continue working. And if at some point I feel like I reach the point where I can't grow more, it means I have to probably rethink my path a little bit.

17:40

That's funny, because I think that so often we see following our interests and our passions and having this drive and desire to have impact, we see them as in some ways mutually exclusive and two different separate things that don't talk to each other, like, "I'm in the rat race, I'm working so hard, I'm trying to do a good job in my career," blah, blah, blah. But maybe I'm not really, truly that passionate about that thing, and actually I want to do something different. But it sounds like it's absolutely not the case in your circumstance. And I wonder why you're able to find it and have such clarity on it when other people find it so difficult.

18:24

So I think if you ask me right now, I have clarity, but maybe there is a world, there is a version of the world where the vision that I'm working towards is not the right one. It might be right. And the fact that I'm taking all of these steps to reach that vision, even if at some point, let's say in five years, I completely shift, I don't want to become a founder anymore, maybe I want to become a tennis player, I have this belief that all the steps that I took to reach that first vision A, even if it changes at the end, will be beneficial for vision B. So that's what I think that people out there don't really always get is that it's okay to choose something, even if it's going to change later on. I think people out there usually are thinking, "Oh, but once I find something, it cannot change. If I'm going to take the path of becoming, let's say, an artist, I have to follow that path my entire life."

19:22

And that's very scary. It's very scary to say, "I'm going to follow that for my entire life," because in reality you don't know who you're going to be in 5 or 10 years. Maybe you're going to meet someone who's going to change everything. Maybe you're going to have a... I don't know, you're going to go on a trip and it's going to change everything. I'm not scared of that. And that's something that I try to keep in myself is that I'm not scared of that. I'm not scared of the fact that maybe in three years, I don't want to do all of this anymore. Maybe I would want to become an artist and I'm okay with it. But right now at this moment T, I know where I want to head and I will do everything for it. If it changes later on, I am convinced that all the steps that I'm taking right now will somehow be beneficial for also that new version of myself if it ever changes.

20:08

As human beings, I think we need this almost this kind of pyramid triangle, where our decision making doesn't work unless we are looking ahead and we have this thing in the future. I wonder whether it's anything to do with time and the impact that time has on our biology, and then the way that we make decisions, because if it was... It almost feels like if things were flat, that wouldn't be the case and you would just like literally live in the moment and it'll be completely okay. But because we need this destination in some ways to be able to actually define the decisions today, turns out the destination doesn't matter in the end. But in order to make a decision, you just almost have to recognize that you need to choose something that's outside of your remit. Something that you need to chase.

21:02

Absolutely. I've read multiple times in I think in neuroscience books where us as human beings, it is impossible, physically impossible for us to project ourselves in the future. All the decisions we make are based on our past experiences. But a framework that I also used to make decisions is I trust a lot my gut feeling and peace of mind. If I make a big decision and I feel in peace with it, I know it's the right one. And I think people out there, either, I don't know, maybe they don't listen so much to their gut feeling or they don't really value peace of mind, but that's why also I'm not afraid to make any big decision. If tomorrow, I don't know, I say if I tomorrow wake up and my gut feeling tells me I got to change everything, change path and go to something else, and then I make that decision and I sleep with a peace of mind, I know for a fact it was the right decision, or at least I believe it was the right decision, and that's enough to make it right for me. And that's enough to make it right for me. And that's enough to give me the energy to pursue it and do the... and try at least to be the best at it.

22:10

It sounds similar to a concept that I've been using, which is where it is far better to find clarity, not certainty. There's a huge difference between the two. Certainty is the kind of... you know that it will actually happen, but when we make decisions, we can never really be certain of their outcome. So what you should actually optimize for is clarity. And it sounds like you've almost created this six... kind of this physical embodiment of that day to day when you were going to bed and you got that peace of mind.

22:47

I tried to.

22:49

How did you decide to leave Revolut? Because that must have been a big call that challenged some of that decision making. And how did it happen?

23:00

Well, as Revolut grew, I love my experience here. I had a great time at Rev. I owe my team at Rev a lot of who I am today. Unfortunately, as it grew and they were applying for banking license, etc., as a machine learning engineer, I had to do less engineering work and more opsy work like ops. So for example, let me give you an example, right? If I had an idea and I need to ship something, they tell me, "Ahmed, go for it, build it, ship it, test it, and ship it in production." Cool. I'll do it. Towards the end of my work there, if I had an idea and I wanted to ship it, I was asked to talk to lawyers to prove that my model was, for example, fair. So for example, I was working with computer vision.

23:48

So I needed to prove that my model worked better, worked as well on, let's say, people of color than people of not of color. I didn't want to be the person working on that and there was no choice. I didn't want to spend my time as a 21 year old engineer talking to lawyers and proving to them that my models were okay, versus actually building and shipping. And so once that touched on what kind of person I what kind of person I want to develop into, which is the person that builds ships and stays close to the team, etc. And I had to spend a lot of time talking to lawyers, doing politics. The answer became obvious [inaudible 00:24:30] that it was the time for me to leave.

24:34

Did that happen quickly or slowly, and what was that realization like? How did it manifest?

24:46

Honestly, I would say it happened across maybe a few months where things started to change and you can feel it. You can feel that things... you want to do things fast, which is exactly where Revolut was amazing at, do things fast, ship fast. And I could start saying that whenever I wanted to ship things fast, unfortunately, it just didn't work out. People were telling me, "You have to do this and you have to do that before we need to validate that you have the right to ship this, etc." So maybe I'd say it took maybe four or five, six months to make that realization. And for some people, it might take a bit more, but I knew exactly that it's not the kind of person I wanted to develop into. Therefore, I just decided to leave.

25:34

And how did you decide what to do next? Because it must have been... You can feel yourself getting closer away to the person that you truly want to be. You got multiple options here: join a bigger company, join a tiny company, found your own company. How did you narrow down those choices and what was that journey like?

25:56

Right. So, I was leaving Rev. I was still young. I didn't feel like building my company yet. I didn't feel ready. With these kind of decisions, people say you don't feel ready. I don't think that's true. I think it's like getting married. Whenever it feels right, you do it. And so, okay. So I had either joined a bigger company or a smaller company. And the question was in the process of becoming the best version of an entrepreneur that I can be, what is the next optimal sub step I can take to reach that? I knew that at a big company, probably would get a higher salary, be more comfortable, but I knew at a smaller company, I would learn how to build and I would learn how to build a company from scratch. And so that's what I decided to do. I decided to just join an early stage startup because I knew that's what got me closer to Ahmed, the founder. And basically, it boiled down to that.

26:57

And when you were deciding which early stage company to join, what were you looking for to optimize, to be that great founder?

27:09

So at that time, I wanted to go get into... I was still very fascinated by the gaming world. So I decided to go into the gaming space. That's where I found the startup that was focused on gaming. And this was perfect because I was given a position of lead, so I would be building something big from scratch. And it was around the gaming space, and especially, it also touched on the computer vision. So it was a company that was building games based on movement, where you would place your phone somewhere, you would go sit in the... go in the back. And if you start moving with your body, there was a character inside the phone that would follow your body movements. And so to me, it was perfect. It was gaming and the field was amazing. It was where I wanted to head. It was the technology I was working with. It was an early stage startup. And therefore to me, that was the right thing to do. So, that's how I made the decision.

28:03

So it's just a combination of all of those different things?

28:06

Yes. Yes. So, field, what I'm going to be doing on a daily basis, and especially, does it get me closer to the person I want to be? And I knew that an early stage startup would.

28:20

Mm, but am I right in saying that's not what you're doing now?

28:25

No, that's not what I'm doing. So, you asked me about that experience. So, that experience last lasted for three months, unfortunately. Not for so much. And the reason that happened was because that startup completely shifted. It was a great team. I'm still in contact with them today. We still talk and that we had a great relationship. And what happened was that they completely shifted. I was hired as a lead machine learning engineer who specialized in computer vision, and they stopped doing computer vision. They just started doing game development. Now, I was doing game development, but I wasn't an expert at it. I did it when I was young. I built a couple of games, but I wasn't very... It wasn't my specialty.

29:02

So unfortunately, after three months, what happened was that they said, "Okay, Ahmed, you're amazing and we loved working with you, but you're a computer vision person. We're not doing computer vision and we'll have to let you go." And at that moment, I was fairly crushed. My career was taking off, everything made sense. I was 22 and I feel like I was going through something. And I remember my roommate at the time was staying, "You're 22 and you're living already what a 30 year old lives." I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but at that time I was crushed. I didn't know what to do. I lost self confidence for a month or so.

29:41

Yeah. It must have felt awful.

29:42

It was awful because I knew it wasn't me. I knew it wasn't my performance, but still to me, it was perfect. I had the perfect opportunity, gaming and good team, etc. And so I spent a month kind of thinking about what I want to do. I started thinking about building my company, etc., and I said, "Maybe this is the right moment." And then what happened was that I spent two weeks just really thinking and I told myself, "No, I still need, I think... I still have a lot to learn." And so I went on my network and I said, "Who do I think in my network is going to become a great...? Who in my network is a great founder? And I want to be like them."

30:20

I didn't focus on the field this time. I didn't focus on what I want to do. I focused on the people. This was the main difference. The first time, you could say it's a mistake or not, it felt right at the time, was to focus on the field and what I want to do. This time, I said, "I'm not going to focus on the field. I'm not focused on what I'm going to do exactly. I don't know. I don't care if it's computer vision or not. I'm going to focus on the people. Who is in my network, really inspiring, and I think they're going to do great and I want to be like them, and are going to get me closer to being Ahmed, the best version of an entrepreneur that I can be?" And that's when I thought about who is currently my manager, Dominic. And Dominic was a director at Revolut. And I spoke to him twice, but I felt something was right with him and I just texted him.

30:59

I was like, " Hey, I'm looking for a position. I know you're an early stage startup", which is called Heron Data now. "Are you looking for someone?" And it appeared that yes. So I interviewed and I joined, I think a month and a half after being let go for my first position. And looking back now, being let go a year and a bit ago, it was the best thing that happened to me because what I've learned in the past year about building a company, I couldn't have learned it anywhere else. I am surrounded by very inspiring people and I feel more and more ready to go and build my own thing. I learned so much that I feel more and more ready. I'm not there yet, but I know it is in the right direction and I could feel it. I could feel it in my peace of mind when I sleep at night, and especially my gut feeling tells me that I'm doing the right thing. And at the end, that's the most important bit for me.

31:48

That's funny how as you explained that, I was thinking, "Yeah, this is a brilliant introduction on how to build a company." By literally being let go because your role completely changes and then you messaging your old boss and then working with it. You're getting the best, raw education of what it's really like in the early days because it is messy and difficult, but yet, you would never necessarily consciously choose that path. Despite the fact that it might be the best education, you might look at that and be like, "No, actually, the nicer path is to join an early-stage start-up." You think before you go into it that that would be better. You don't proactively choose the difficult path, despite the fact that it sounds like it's working out.

32:43

So to you, you're mentioning easier versus difficult path. So I'm getting here that the easier path is to go for an early stage startup and a difficult path is just to stop everything and go build your company. Is that right?

32:56

No. How do I phrase this? When you were deciding to join that gaming company, you didn't make the...

33:00

Hiding to join that gaming company.

33:01

Yeah.

33:02

You didn't make the decision. If you had known what you know now, you probably would've done the same thing again.

33:09

Yes.

33:10

Because it's given you what you wanted. But if someone had told you that that was what was going to happen, you may have looked at that and thought, I don't think that is the optimal path. And it seems like that's, in some ways, one of the tricky parts to trying to build your working journey perfectly is that actually the true greats have a messy working journey that teaches them a lot but our brains work the other way around, and we think that the narrative has to make sense because we like stories that kind of go upwards and to the right, but in truth, that really isn't how you learn how to build a company.

33:52

I think that's a fair point. And just to come back to your point, if someone had told me that, you know what, that's what's going to happen, the last experience, I would say probably yes, I wouldn't have picked that because I don't want to have that again. I don't want to feel like that again, right? Now, the answer to that question would always forever be unknown, but what I do know is that I'm a big believer in the fact that everything happens for a reason. And you might sound like it's a cliche, but if you've ever watched the Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford in 2005, who in my opinion is the best speech I've ever been in the history of humanity. The fact that someone believes in that is enough.

34:29

If I look back right now and I tell myself, oh, it happens for a reason that I joined that company and I was let go of, even if I felt terrible at that time, just the fact that I believe in it. And I believe that that's the best way of getting me closer to my goal, which is building a billion, ten, fifth, I don't know, the sky is the limit, so a hundred billion dollar company, and actually have an impact on the world. I believe that that was the best path. Is that correct or not? No. And it honestly, on a daily basis, it doesn't matter and just believe in it, and that's enough.

35:01

How do you balance emotion and rationality at the same time when you're making key decisions? Because you are the type of person who listens to yourself and your body and your emotions, and they inform certain parts of your decisions. But there's also a responsibility to, I guess, quiet down on monkey brain and be rational and recognize that we are kind of fallible pieces of biology that need taming at certain points. How do you find the balance and key moments?

35:42

So there's a few ways I do balance emotions and rationality, either in big decisions are in smaller decisions. First one is, I always sleep on my decisions and this is extremely important before making any big decision, to sleep on it. There is a whole book called Why We Sleep, which is the reason why we sleep and what happens when you don't. And it explains what happens to your brain when you just sleep on it. And this is probably the number one thing that I do. Whenever there's a big decision, I sleep on it. Two, I try to be always... I'm lucky to be surrounded by very inspiring and people and there are mentors, either friends here, or my brothers and I ask for advice, and I'm convinced that those people want the best out of me, not out of jealousy. They won't lead me to the wrong decision, they want what's best out of me.

36:33

So number two is ask the right people, and I'm already lucky to be surrounded by some of the most inspiring people that I've ever met. And three, maybe this is the final one, I always try to put myself in a position where I can make the best decisions on a daily basis. For example, I try to exercise a lot. And the reason why I do that is not so much to look good or for my body, no, because I know that when you exercise, you... I personally feel very good. And a lot of my decisions that have come, whether ideas for games I built or things I've done on my daily basis came when I was actually working out or playing tennis, therefore I go and work out and play tennis pretty much all the time, especially working out, I do it like four or five times a week. And so, A, sleeping on it and valuing that, B, asking the right people and C putting myself in a position where I can always make the right decisions.

37:29

At least in the past few years that I can remember of, I don't remember struggling between making a rational versus emotional decision to be totally honest. And I think those three factors have played an amazing role at this.

37:46

I think that's your sound that's so... What's the word? It's not fortunate because you've worked so hard to build these people around you, but it sounds like quite naturally, you've built these check and balance systems in your practical life that help you make those more difficult decisions, whether that's by accident.

38:30

Self-awareness is a big role here, whether it's by accident or not, I don't know, I can't answer that, but self-awareness, and I was just very lucky my whole life to grow up next to older, very inspiring people. And I think that played the key, just a key role. And I tried to not only keep that, but also be that person to younger people, whenever someone needs advice, I'm close to a couple of people that are younger than me. I mostly hang out with people much older than me, but people younger than me. And I try to be that person that inspires them and gets the best version of themselves that they can be. And ultimately, and that's what I've been saying for the past probably, I think 47, 48 minutes, because that's the kind of person I want to be remembered for. If tomorrow, God forbid, something happens to me and people say Ahmed was the person that got the best version of me, and so someone else saying that, I'm in peace,

39:31

The self-awareness sounds like it's come from your surroundings as you've come of age and as you've entered your working life. Is there anything that you proactively do now that isn't kind of happenstance, but is you actively working on your self awareness?

39:56

So I read a lot of self-help books. I like them, for example, How to Make Friends and Influence People, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think all of these big names people know about them. I think reading helps me so much, and I try to read one book every two weeks or so, so that helps. Two, as I said earlier, exercising, sports, I don't know, it has just a fascinating effect on me. And I think on most people, when they build a habit out of it, it has a fascinating effect. And that's why I always try to push people to work out. Whenever someone tells me I don't work out, I don't do any sports, I'm like, " Just go do it." Both on the physical, physiologically, it will make you feel better.

40:35

And also, it will just improve who you are. And three, I balance time with good people and I'm trying to be extremely picky on how I spend time with, but also with myself, I don't always spend time just socializing, but also being with myself sometimes. So I think those three things so far, and maybe there are better ways to do this, but so far have worked great. And I can feel being 1% better on a daily basis, 1% better Ahmed is 1% better every day. And when I don't, I try to ask myself why. So always be on that critical path of like, "Oh, am I the being the best version of who I want to be?" If the answer is no, you got to find why really quickly and fix it and move forward.

41:19

The thing that I think I resonate most and I learn most about from your story is the way that you both create this person to chase in the future, but you also do it for the love of it in the moment. And I think that's something we'd all embody. And thank you so much for sharing your journey, your story, and how you've made these decisions in the past.

41:50

Thanks Ben. It was great meeting you and hope to talk to you soon.

41:53

Cool. Enjoy the heat.