What Drives Me
The more people,
the more confident.
Someone asked me that when I was young. I was representing my school at an event, stepping on stage in front of a crowd, and they asked how I did it without getting nervous. I did not have to think. The answer came straight out: the more the people, the more confident I feel.
That answer has stayed with me. Not because it was impressive to say, but because it was genuinely true and I had no idea that was unusual. Large rooms do not shrink me. They focus me. I have been walking into those rooms ever since: school competitions, MUN conferences, standing in front of judges, speaking to rooms of people I have never met. Every single time, that same thing holds.
The other thing that shaped how I work has nothing to do with business. At nine years old I memorised 604 pages of the Quran and scored 97%. Nobody made it interesting for me. There was no shortcut and no reward waiting at the end of each session. It was just showing up, repeating, getting corrected, and showing up again. That kind of work taught me what sustained effort on a hard thing actually feels like, years before I ever thought about building anything.
Two things I know about myself because of those two experiences: I do not shrink under pressure. And I can do the unglamorous work for as long as it takes.