OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK– Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Mona El Kheshen (LinkedIn), co-founder and COO of UNLOCK.

My name is Mona El Kheshen, and I’m the co-founder of UNLOCK. I studied economics at AUC before moving on to do my master’s degree at Cambridge University in the UK. My entire career has been devoted to strategic marketing and brand development. I was fortunate to have worked with many well-known brands, including Cadbury, Schweppes, and Johnson & Johnson. So I spent the first part of my career working with multinational corporations on consumer marketing before moving on to B2B marketing. Prior to founding UNLOCK, I worked as the marketing director for a large life sciences company in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

I am very passionate about bringing people together in ways that provide value and have a beneficial effect on both their personal and professional lives. I first got the idea for UNLOCK while I was working in the UK. I actually started EPN — what I referred to as my passion project. It was essentially a network for Egyptian professionals. I founded it on Facebook with the intention of connecting business executives and professionals in Egypt for networking, cooperation and knowledge sharing. It was through EPN that I met my co-founder at UNLOCK, Fady Younan (LinkedIn).

Within a few months, Facebook contacted us and informed us that it had been recognized as one of the most impactful communities on their platform, out of 30 mn Facebook groups worldwide in 2020. In the same year, Facebook named me one of the top 20 most influential females on social media.

At UNLOCK, we leverage technology by looking at the services procurement platform and using AI matching technology to connect the best service providers with the most relevant client brief, in order to help both providers and clients throughout the entire process, all the way through to service delivery. We have created our own internal match management service to assist in viewing the matches.

We’re also addressing a major issue in the market when it comes to B2B payment options. It’s always a hassle in the market, and many service providers frequently struggle to collect their own invoices on time. Another concern for clients is having to pay upfront and then not receiving the expected delivery. UNLOCK solves this problem by serving as a trusted third party and platform that helps to moderate those transactions. So, in a nutshell, we do three things: AI matching, match management, and we make the payment process easier for them.

Because our model is commission-based, our most important KPIs are the accuracy and effectiveness with which we can make matches, the type of transaction conversion and the project conversion ratio, as well as the number of onboarded service providers, and the number of clients served.

Over the last year, the number of transactions on our platform has increased by 3.5x, and we have handled service requests worth more than USD 3 mn. Last quarter, UNLOCK raised an undisclosed sum in its first angel round. We are very proud to have some notable investors on board, including our lead investor Tarek Roushdy, founder and managing partner at UI Investments and a member of the AUC angel investors, Hanan Abdel Meguid, founder and CEO at Kamelizer and co-founder and managing partner at Consoleya, Nader Bassit, CEO of Wakira Investments and an active member at Dubai Angel Investors, and a few other private angel investors. We will be raising a pre-seed round in 2023, which we are currently planning and will announce soon.

The best aspect of my job is seeing talented service provider agencies grow and our clients’ businesses thrive as a result of our connections. I also appreciate the fact that we assist Egyptian service providers in exporting their businesses overseas and bringing foreign currency into the country.

One of the most challenging aspects of my job is that Egypt still lacks many B2B payment regulations. There are options for simplifying and facilitating payment services; however, there is a time lag between the regulations and the market’s most recent technological offerings.

We have very ambitious growth plans. We are, at heart, a tech startup, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of our technology roadmap. We previously doubled our conversion ratio in 2022, and we intend to do so again in 2023 using improvements in matching technology. We are also taking steps to become an international cross-country platform, which will assist both service providers in exporting their services and clients in gaining easier and better access.

If I could only give one piece of advice to someone, it would be to have an agile and growth mindset. You may believe you have discovered an idea or have the answer or solution to a problem, but it is critical to remain open-minded, agile, and learning throughout the process. It’s also critical to focus on breaking even sooner rather than later, as well as having a good cashflow.

I believe we are extremely fortunate to have some truly amazing mentors to learn from whenever we face a difficult problem. Some of them are younger than we are, while others are a little older. They all, however, have excellent insights and a very strategic way of thinking.

If I were to exit my company tomorrow, I would do so through an acquisition that adds value to our stakeholders and moves UNLOCK faster than we could. I’d like to stay on as an employee because our journey is just beginning, and we have so much potential that we’d like to realize in the coming years.

I come from a family of entrepreneurs and they were all very excited about UNLOCK. I was probably the last one to jump the ship from the corporate world, and join the entrepreneurship world. My children in particular are very proud.

The last great thing I watched was The Playlist on Netflix, which demonstrated how it fundamentally altered the music industry as it was known a few years ago. I also recently read the Shoe Dog, a biography of Nike told by its founder and written by Phil Knight. I also listen to the podcast This American Life. It features stories from different walks of life.

I am a people person who values family, so I spend a lot of time with my two children, Hannah, 14, and Adam, 11, as well as our family dog. I also spend a significant amount of time with my extended family and friends. I enjoy trying new and unusual experiences — I travel both locally and internationally whenever possible. I also love playing board games.

Inspiration can come from anyplace and at any moment, often even at the most unexpected occasions. But if I had to pick one, I would say that local and regional founder stories motivate me. I love hearing stories of resilience and creativity.