20VC: The $3.1BN Meeting That Led to an Uber Acquisition, The Battle With Uber; How to Outcompete When You Have 10x Less Cash & The Marketing Campaigns That Led to Pakistan MDs Fleeing and Elon Musk Fanboying with Mudassir Sheikha, CEO @ Careem
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and Co-Founder of Careem. Over the last 11 years, Mudassir has scaled the service to more than 80 cities in 10 countries, with 1,400+ colleagues and more than 2.5 million Captains. With such success, in 2020 Uber announced they would be acquiring Careem for a reported $3.1BN. Prior to Careem, Mudassir co-founded “DeviceAnywhere”, a company that was acquired by “Keynote” in 2008 before joining the management consulting firm “McKinsey & Company” in Dubai.
In Today's Episode with Mudassir Sheikha We Discuss:
1. From McKinsey to $3.1BN Exit to Uber:
- What was the founding a-ha moment for Mudassir with Careem?
- What does Mudassir know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
- What does Mudassir believe he is running away from?
2. Finding Product-Market Fit:
- What is the single biggest mistake founders make when trying to find product-market fit?
- Does Mudassir believe you have to do things that do not scale, to scale? What did Careem do?
- What are some of Mudassir's biggest pieces of advice to founders on finding a core target audience and doing customer discovery the right way?
3. Competing with Giants: How To Win When You Cannot Outspend:
- How did Careem beat Uber when they had 1/100th of their budget?
- What advice does Mudassir have for founders who have competition that is much better funded?
- What is the story of spending the night in bunk beds and barely sleeping before raising $300M the next day? How did that happen?
4. The Acquisition: How it Went Down:
- How did Mudassir and Dara @ Uber first come to meet?
- How did Dara's approach contrast with the prior approach of Travis Kalanick?
- Why did Mudassir decide to sell and join Uber?
- What were the main reasons or arguments against the acquisition?
5. Talk to me About:
- Careem's Pakistan MD having to flee Pakistan for his safety post a marketing campaign?
- Elon Musk likes one of Careem's promotional videos and why?
- An investor who wired $1M with absolutely no paperwork?
- The catch up meeting that turned into a $3BN offer?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We're out of money. We've already put our savings into the business. So I call our lead investor, |
| 0:05.3 | and he's like, how much money do you need? I said half a million dollars. He's like, send me the bank |
| 0:08.8 | account details and I'll send it to you. No documents have been signed. This money comes from |
| 0:12.6 | his personal bank account. Maybe a few months later, I called him again another half a million |
| 0:16.7 | dollar arrive without anything signed, without anything in place, and he sends it again from his personal bank account, just to sort of bridge us. |
| 0:23.2 | Now, I chose that clip very specifically because I think every founder sees incredible companies like Kareem and thinks it was always up and to the right. |
| 0:31.1 | All of the great companies you see today have had moments like this, near-death experiences. |
| 0:36.4 | For founders listening, you're not alone and even the |
| 0:38.9 | best have them. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Mudasir Shaker, co-founder and CEO at Kareem. |
| 0:44.3 | Now, over the last 11 years, Moudasir has scaled Kareem to more than 80 cities in 10 countries, |
| 0:50.0 | with over 1,400 employees and more than 2.5 million captains, otherwise known as drivers. |
| 0:56.0 | And with such success, in 2020, Uber announced they would be acquiring Kareem for a reported |
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