The Guest –Jad Sayegh, Co-Founder & CTO at Sarwa
Jad Sayegh is Co-Founder & CTO at Sarwa, a leading fintech company in the UAE that is transforming wealth management with accessible, technology-powered investment solutions.
In this episode, Jad reflects on his journey from telecoms and high-speed trading in Canada to launching Sarwa in Dubai, and how the company has evolved from a prototype to a one-stop investing platform. He shares insights on building for a new market, navigating regulation, attracting and retaining global talent, and how his role as CTO has shifted as Sarwa scaled to 100+ people. We also touch on the challenges and opportunities of innovating in a fast-moving Fintech ecosystem, and the leadership lessons Jad has drawn from mentors and books along the way
Some highlights of this episode include:
- The Origin Story of Sarwa
- Pioneering Regulatory Change in the UAE
- Building and Retaining Talent in a Transient Market
- The Evolution of the CTO Role
- Customer Feedback, Product Coherence, and Experimentation
Q: One of the biggest challenges that I’ve encountered with scaling is the influx of feature requests from customers. How have you dealt with that and identified where the value is and built the right features?
“User feedback is tricky. Often, customers know what they like, but when they want something changed, they don’t always know exactly how or what the right solution is.
For example, our core business is investment accounts for individuals. But we asked ourselves, what if we also offered investment accounts for companies? At first, we tried this in a sandbox environment — limited, controlled, just to see how it worked and learn from it. Over time, it proved to be a genuinely interesting business opportunity, so we expanded it.
The challenge is defining that sandbox so it’s integrated enough to be meaningful, but not so entangled that it disrupts the core business. In the end, it’s about balance: letting experiments evolve on their own while ensuring they don’t slow down everything else. That’s the real finesse.”
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