 Hi guys, you are watching OxyVlogs and today I'm going to meet with the Dubai entrepreneur. He is only 22 years old and he has his own start-up, he is the CEO and co-founder of Let's Work. So, let's go to meet him. Hi Omar, I'm so happy to meet you. I really like what you are doing, I personally use your services and I'm sure that many people haven't heard about you, you are quite a new start-up in Dubai, so can you introduce yourself? So, I'm Omar Al-Muhari, I'm the co-founder of Let's Work. Let's Work is a platform for co-working spaces around Dubai. It's a new concept where we partner with hotels and restaurants and we use them during their off-peak hours to open them up for freelancers, consultants, start-ups, some corporates too, just as a place for them to work, connect with people and have the flexibility to move around the city. And I know you are only 22 years old. 23. 23 already. So, you are almost like first graduate, correct? Yeah, I graduated last year from university in Boston. I studied electrical engineering, so this has nothing to do with my major but I've always had a passion to start a business of my own. Oh, okay, we'll see. And how everything started? So it came up with an idea between me and Hamza, my co-founder. We actually just wanted to find a place to start coming up with a new business plan. So, we looked at the different options where we had co-working spaces, we maybe like an office or just the usual, like working in some coffee shops. Nothing really fit what we needed and even the ones that fit our vibe was maybe a bit too pricey. Every day we were ordering like two coffees, a water, it would come out to 50, 60 dirhams and it's just like, why am I paying for this when the whole place is empty? So then we came with the idea where there's such an over-saturated market of restaurants in the UAE with the amount of freelancers, the amount of people that want to start businesses and the amount of people with offices outside of Dubai where Dubai is the hub for businesses. So we saw a few people working around us and we came up with the idea, let's connect two of them, the over-saturation of restaurants in Dubai and the expense that is needed just to work somewhere when work is conducted from your laptop anyways. Yeah, and you don't have that much budget because you're just a student of freelancer. Yeah. Even some co-working spaces, they charge a lot of money but you have to understand they're doing this to cover their rent and rent in Dubai is naturally high for commercial places. So we thought let's use this dead space where the restaurants are not seen as much as they want so we can convert it into something else. I read yesterday that let's work as a part of E25 initiative, correct? Exactly, yeah. How did you get positive out and how did you become a part of it? So the E25 is an initiative envisioned by Mohamed Al Abbar, which is the chairman of AMR properties. So what he wanted to do is to bring people under the age of 25 to come up with different startups that have core competencies within AMR. So for example, one of them was looking to co-working spaces, we're looking to this new concept, new trend that hasn't really hit the market properly here in the UAE. So we did a few feasibility studies and this is how we came up with the model. We saw that there are a lot of like hotels that are just going empty during the day when they can be utilized and there are beautiful spaces and there are people that work from them. So we wanted to just kind of get the people out of the coffee shops. I can't mention any brand names but the usual coffee shops that they don't even want you to be sitting there all day. They rather people to come in, have a coffee and leave. Because the coffee shops in the hotels are usually like quite expensive. So if you go to Starbucks, it's like 20 dirhams and the hotel can be 35-40. Exactly, but no, but our location specifically, we choose them based on if they work, if you can actually work there. So we go through a long process of choosing which location works, which one doesn't and on top of that, we choose places that are fixed to actually want to be a part of this platform. So we're not going to choose the very high-end restaurants that are saying no, we're not interested in this. For example, the hotel we're in right now, the Rove, they love it. They love the concept and they're very helpful to us. They're always coming up with new concepts, new ideas that could work and help us. We do all our events here. So it's finding that good relationship with the partner as well that helps. Rove Hotels is the new concept in Dubai as well as a hotel. Yeah, Rove Hotels is great. It's needed in the region for sure. The target audience are mostly young people, young generation. It's very trendy, the decor you can see. It's a no-thrills hotel, which is just what you need. And it's not that expensive, it's very affordable. Yeah, it's massive value for the money. Even some of our members who don't know the Rove Hotels, as soon as they come in here, they think like, I didn't even know this existed in Dubai. Yeah, and how many people do you have in your team at the moment? So it's just me, Hamza, and we just hired an intern who's helping us out with, we say sales are marketing, but in the start if you do everything. So she's like a third person is more than what we need. I don't want to say we were struggling, but we were definitely stretched a bit then because when we were managing 14 locations and we've had quite an influx of people signing up. So it's a bit hard to manage. Even we don't have a customer support line. So all the calls, on my way here today, I think I had four calls of people asking, like, oh, how can I sign up? Yeah, so as you mentioned, your number in the email is how I can get in touch with you. My number is in the email, yeah, Hamza's number is in the email. Yeah, I mean it's a burden at the same time that we don't have someone just answering the phones, but on the other end of it people like hearing like, oh, you're actually the co-founder. That's great. And then they kind of buy into you, not just the business. Yeah. They like you. You're the co-founder's story and the concept behind that. So I don't know how we're going to go off that, but we hope that our voices remain in the business as well. Yeah, and how do you spread your responsibilities with Hamza? So it's interesting. In the beginning, obviously, we were doing everything. And even now I can still do what he does and what I do. Because I'm more engineering based, so I handle the platform. So we have a platform that allows people to sign in, sign out. So I handle that. I do the design for the website, so I built the website too. I do the operation, so if anything goes wrong in one of the locations, I'm there to fix it. Hamza does the legal work, so he's a lawyer. He's an ex-lawyer. He was working in a company here in the UAE, also in London, but he quit his job to do a startup. He was also very young, right? He's 24. He's very young. He's 25, yeah. But he's the same as me. He's very ambitious to start his own business. And on top of that, he's very good at, I don't know if you see our social media, but he handles all of that. I do the design sometimes, but he handles all the social media. And people love our Instagram. It's very interactive. Yeah, and your posts, like the stories. Our posts are very funny. He's always making fun of me in the posts. And people love to engage with it. He always tries to get our voice in the page. So how is it difficult to start a business in Dubai when you are young and you're just graduated from the University? I mean, personally, I've always had a passion to start a business of my own. I've had different projects when I was in university, which kind of could have led to being a business, but I never, because my studies obviously kept me away from actually starting something. I think it's not too... You come up with an idea. A lot of people have that stage and then they don't go further because they're like, oh, there's all the complications of licenses and everything. But you have to understand there's a lot of services and there's a lot of different co-working spaces with accelerator programs that can actually help you get funding. A lot of the universities here. The UAE is trying to become a startup hub of people starting their own businesses. So it's not that hard. I think the only challenge we face is the licensing. It's a bit too pricey. Sometimes it's complicated, but like I said, these services actually can help you. So actually, if you have a great idea, you can find an investor for that. Yeah, yeah, there's always... There's so many investors here. I mean, the STEP conference in March is a perfect example of that. There's a lot of cool ideas there that we saw. And there's a lot of people that want to invest in businesses here because it's... I like to call it the slowly growing giant. It's becoming very popular. Dubai is becoming very popular and a lot of big companies are coming out of it. Like we see Karim, we see Noon, we see Fetcher. These companies are becoming huge and they grew from here as well. So actually, you need to start your business and then look for an investor or you can even have just an idea and pitch it to the investors. Both. So if you're lucky enough to be able to fund your own idea, I like to tell people to just keep it very simple and very minimal. People like to do like, oh no, I'm paying 20,000 Dems for a website. It doesn't make sense. Validate the concept first. See if people work. So I'll give you an example of what we did at Let's Work. We started in one location and we gathered 20 people. We asked them, we managed to find 20 members. Like a focus group. Yeah, just a focus group. They were already working around and I found some people in coffee shops and I told them, sit here, pay for a monthly membership and work and it worked out great. They loved the concept and they were my first and some of them are still with us today. They were the first people that actually believed in the concept and like, no, this is what the region needs and even without the multiple locations it was just one and people liked it. And I have so many subscribers. They don't live in the U.E. but they have some great ideas to think and can they find an investor here if they come? Yeah, I think you have to understand it's different markets in different places so an idea abroad might not work as well here or it might need some time. I think if they can come validate it and get some feedback on it attend these networking, there's so many entrepreneurial networking places and events and stuff. Get an idea of is it feasible, does it make sense and then start looking for an investor if you need it. And how many locations do you have at the moment? Fourteen as of now. Fourteen. We're planning to extend to twenty, hopefully by the end of this year. I think if we go further not it might stretch it too thin but obviously the more the merrier. We're just trying it because what we see when we open a location we hit a community. Certain like even here in the marina we hit the marina area where everyone a lot of freelancers, a lot of startups live in marina. So this was perfect and even we have two locations here one in pier seven and this one. And what are your favorite places? No I can't say that. I mean everywhere has its niche so the Rovo tells people love it it's very millennial. I'd say it's built for working in my opinion. It's perfect. But then you have the other places like a parlor boutique. Design district. That's in the trade center so parlor boutique is very French very a lot of light and it's very minimalist which is kind of my style so I like that too. D3 is very fun. Just walking around there is very it's like funky. You're not in Dubai anymore when you're in D3 and the restaurant there molecule is perfect the food is amazing. I like being outdoors so when in the winter a lot of the different places you'll see we'll start to promote them because when we first started we started in February so the weather was okay. So we used to sit outside so pier seven is beautiful the scene you can actually see outside and you can sit outside we used to have one day where we have all our meetings just out there on the table and people loved it it was different it was like a breath of fresh air. Yeah that's nice. So how did you meet with your partner co-founder Hamza? So we were in the E25 program which was an initiative to bring innovation together and come up with different startups. We just synergized well I think the co-founder relationship needs to be not you can't have a similar skill set I think you need opposing you need to oppose each other in the sense that he's very he's very detail oriented he's very concise with what he looks at I think that's from his lawyer background where he looks into everything whereas I'm a lot more laid back not creative personally I didn't know we're both creative but I think he's very like no this needs to be this this needs to be this well I'm just like no this doesn't matter but sometimes it does so I think finding that relationship with someone where it's you're very opposing characters he's more into micro management yeah maybe maybe yeah I'd say yeah maybe micro management I'm sorry you see this I'm more tech oriented so operation side and stuff he's more sales and marketing how do we push it to the next level but at the same time we have the same vision and the same goal in mind which is very important so we know what let's work is going to look like moving into the same direction just that's the most important thing we know where it's going to be in a month we know where it's going to be in three months we know where we want to be in three months because the thing with startups is you reach a point where it's just putting out fires every day it's operations every day so you need to find like how is this useful to me what am I learning and it's good to reflect on that too so we tend to do that all the time like are we in a good state this is good what we're doing is this helping me as a person just helping you are you growing in your career so obviously this is my first official job going out of university so it is scary I mean I studied engineering for five years but I'm not doing anything to do with engineering necessarily so it's like did I waste my degree or am I doing something different but you know how to create the website yeah you learn that build the platform exactly so you learn that yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of skills you use without realizing it but I think you have your whole life to work if you have a passion for something you should do it you shouldn't overthink it yeah yeah just move forward just move forward achieve your goals yeah and what are your plans plans at least till the end of this year yeah there's a lot we have in mind we have an app that we're developing right now which is a lot of work but we're designing it it will change a lot of things we've taken a lot of feedback obviously we work from our spaces so we like to speak to our customers our members the community we like to speak to them and from that we get we get like different everyone's trying to help everyone so they tell us like oh you should do this you should do this I don't like this I really like this so we're just trying to build something together we had the MVP which is this simple sign in sign out we wanted to keep it as simple as possible and hopefully we'll roll something out very soon I can't really say what the app is I want to keep it as a surprise but once it's there it will change a lot do you have any competitors like with similar personal services yeah I mean it's Dubai you don't need to tell them this yeah I mean it's Dubai all you're trying to compete with them like you're thinking about some new services how am I trying to compete with my competitors I mean we were the first ones to do this in the region so I don't see any I see I don't want to say copycats but it's a free market it's a concept that's well known around the world it's new so once people saw what we were doing people wanted to copy us too which is fine I think the more the merrier it allows the concept to be understood more how can we get the one up from them I think it's still the same thing going back to the Instagram it's Hamza and I's voice how do you connect yeah how do we connect with our how much do we care about this and how much do we give in to our members I mean even we've had some ridiculous requests people calling like I've had people ask me like how do I set up a business I have no idea but I've heard enough to help them out and I have enough connections from the community to help people out so it's just like how much effort do you want to put in I could have easy said like no sorry we're co-working space but no we try to push as much as we can and people have people always have event ideas and stuff and we love to hear about that even within our community so for example I know a few graphic designers I know a few freelance photographers so whenever someone actually asks me whether I'm inside doing my work or outside I'll always try to recommend someone that I know because we have that huge pool of diverse professions and we need to make use of that a bit more which might be what the app is about but yeah I think that's pretty much it that's our edge in order to get a freelance license do you need to present your business plan or marketing plan idea I think I'm not really sure on that but no I don't think because if you're a freelancer you're essentially the graphic designer or web designer so you're service based so I don't think or events planning for example I don't think you need a business plan I think you just need valid credentials valid documents and then you apply for it okay you were studying abroad did you think to move to another country don't come back to the UAE? I mean the UAE is my home but I wanted to I worked in Dell EMC in Boston for a couple of months I was a global supply chain hardware tester so how was the experience in the corporate structure yeah I mean it was a lot of fun just applying all the stuff I learned which was it was interesting I liked the person I was dealing with big machinery I was in a lab all day corporate though is very if I have to compare the lifestyle corporate was very like okay I come in at nine I look at the clock once it's done at five but then sometimes we stay later obviously then I go home and then when I'm home that's it start-up lifestyle it's the weekend it's after I come home from work it's you meet much more people you meet a lot more people my network now has grown massively compared to when I was in a corporate lifestyle as well as that no one's no one's on your back I think one thing start-ups need to do is self-motivate yeah it was the hardest thing that's the hardest thing is actually like why am I doing this no one's no one's gonna if I don't wake up this morning so to work who's gonna say anything to me so Let's Work offers like three different packages at the moment what is the difference so the daily we just we took a normal day in a coffee shop how you'd end up spending like 50 dirhams so we thought from two perspectives one if someone's already in our location without knowing about Let's Work and they come there planning on working the road is the perfect example of that we give them the value by giving them 39 dirhams they get unlimited tea, coffee and water 20% discount off the food and they get our we have our own Wi-Fi network which is faster it's perfect it's perfect it's people the daily is one of our most popular obviously because people want to try it out and then we have the weekly which is actually one member when we first started told us this when they're like I work outside the country but I'm here seven days a week so we're like okay perfect let's have a flexi option for people to have just seven sign-ins throughout the month which is I think more than enough and it's still like very very valuable for your money it's 209 dirhams so with that you can sign it to any seven locations and if you have 31 days to redeem it and you can do with it what you want does it include any extra services? no it's the same as the daily just a bit cheaper a bit cheaper and then I think the most the best value for the money is the monthly it's good to think for some freelancers freelancers yeah freelancers for even we have a lot of people that actually have offices of their own but they come work in our spaces so that was the why we thought of that it's priced at one coffee a day so if you're going to work every day it comes out to like 20 dirhams a day and that one has a few more benefits where it's the same unlimited tea, coffee and water and 20% discount off the food on top of that you get a U buy MR silver tier card which is the loyalty program run by MR so that gets you discounts in MR outlets MR outlets right the restaurants some of the the kids' union all that stuff and then on top of that you get meeting room usage so these beautiful meeting rooms you get two hours of them and all Let's Work members get the preferential rates for meeting rooms that we've negotiated with the hotels but the cool thing about the meeting rooms is it's not just like a private meeting room for yourself we've had people do events with the two hours we've had people do workshops and then they add an hour even they come to us and they say hey can we do a co-branded event we're like yeah, perfect we'll help you guys out that's really cheap so what's three advices you can give to the young generation to start their own business I think the first one don't overthink it don't think of every possible scenario possible so that's number one to elaborate on that don't so we've had so many assumptions before we even launched which don't make any sense right now because a thousand came up after number two I think I always say keep it simple we're a very simple business we're not it's not complicated for people to wrap their heads around it's a work space exactly there's not much there's no layers to it it's just very sign up sign in very clear exactly yeah number three try not to do it alone find someone that can help you with it because start-up life is lonely sometimes you need support you need support you need someone there to actually help you whether it's a co-founder whether it's a mentor find someone to give you a second perspective and push you every day and push you every day exactly yeah you need someone to motivate you and also you might think in a certain way but you have to think from the customer's perspective so I might think oh this is going to be perfect but and I'm going to end up spending a lot of money on it and then the customer is like no I actually I actually don't want that so have someone to bring a second perspective have someone to motivate you so guys this was one of the Dubai success stories I hope you find it inspiring thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video bye bye