Bio

Fouad is the Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Maqsam, MENA's friendliest cloud communication suite for SMEs. Previously, Fouad has served as a partner and manager at a number of forward thinking ventures between the United States and MENA region, particularly in Jordan. He has offered and led technical as well as strategic consulting efforts to top tier telecom, software & internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Verizon & others. Fouad began his first proper venture during his university days and returned to the MENA region in 2009, with the hope of playing a part in growing opportunities within the tech and consumer online spaces. He served as Director of Technology and Analytics at Open-Insights, a data mining and data strategy firm based out of Bellevue, Washington, and then moved to focus on the region as partner and “Chief Rascal” at one of the Arab world’s most vibrant content sharing portals, d1g.com, where he was responsible for business and product development throughout MENA up till 2013. Initiated by HM King Abdullah II and building on the initial tech exits in the region, Fouad was part of the founding team that started-up Jordan’s first technology accelerator and incubation program, Oasis 500, where he was Chief Networks Officer and built the mentor and angel investor networks that facilitated the investment of the first 50 startups in the program. Thereafter, he moved on to manage of the recommendation engine and data team at BlueKangaroo, a US based big data firm focused on social shopping solutions. Noticing challenges in a growing e-commerce market, in 2015 Fouad co-founded Alpha Apps Inc., a venture-builder focussed on building technology and infrastructure within emerging markets around online trade. Alpha Apps Inc.’s products resulted in a number of accolades for the business, notably the 1st place at the largest startup gathering in Eur-Asia, Startup Istanbul in 2016, and recognition by Amazon founder & CEO, Jeff Bezos. Fouad's career story was part of a select group to be featured in the “Startup Arabia” book by Amir Hegazi published in 2018.