Five hacks for building A TECH COMPANY

Renowned vlogger and traveller, Nuseir Yassin, popularly known as Nas Daily on social media, is a worldwide sensation for creating 1,000 daily one-minute videos on Facebook. A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Nuseir quit his software developer job to explore the world with the intention of documenting his travels and experiences on video. Nas Daily today boasts around 70 million followers and has garnered over 30 billion views across all platforms, like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

During his recent visit to Bengaluru, as a Star Speaker at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, Nuseir Yassin, CEO and Content Creator, Nas Daily, captivated the audience talking on his experiences as a famous vlogger and the five hacks he learnt, from his three years of building a technology company called Nas.io. Corporate Citizen brings you the excerpts

Five hacks I learnt from my three years of building a tech company:

1) Talent Hack

When it comes to building a technology company, probably the hardest thing is hiring, and hiring is very expensive especially if you want to hire talented people in America. If you hire somebody in Silicon Valley they will cost you half-a-million dollars, if they are really good. In New York they will cost 300 thousand dollars. The question is, how can we find talented people before they go to California. How can we find the next Sundar Pichai, before they enter America, because the minute they enter America they become very expensive. I am fully convinced that the next Sundar, is actually based in India. Around 65% of India is under the age of 35—the idea is how can we find them, work with them, hire them, start a company with them, before they go to America, and build the next Google here. I believe that talent is universal, but opportunity is not, and the opportunity is starting to become more and more universal.

2) Marketing Hack

I believe that every technology person, should build in one city and sell in another city. And, the reason I say this, because I have experienced it myself. Israel is a small country, and there are 70 unicorns—seventy billion-dollar companies. But, there are not enough customers for these billion dollar companies. All of them build in Tel Aviv and sell in America. It is standard and it works like magic. That is why I think, startups in India should not just build and sell in India, but also sell in America too. There is only couple of startups that are doing this. When you do this the benefits are 10x—it is the easiest way in the world to get that 10x leverage. The reason I say this is not just because of Tel Aviv products, it is also because of content, something that we do ourselves—we create content in India, Dubai, Singapore, and the people that watch it are in America. And, that is the easiest way to get that 10x value increase. The market in America is very ripe and there is a lot of money to be created there, but you don’t have to be based there.

3) Office Hack

I don’t think lot of people will agree with me on this, but location matters. With the internet you can sell anywhere, but when it comes to your office, location matters. My controversial opinion, most of you will hate me for it—remote work doesn’t work. It is not as effective as we think it is. I have tried both remote work and non-remote work. And, even more controversial opinion is that there are only six cities in the world, where your office should be headquartered — San Francisco, New York, London, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Bengaluru. The truth of the matter is, ecosystem is the real thing— we cannot measure it, we cannot see it, but density of talent and density of startups, is the real thing. Most billion dollar startups in the world, are built by the same group of people. I think there are only a 100 thousand people that build unicorns in the world. And, those 100 hundred thousand, build a unicorn, they quit, they go build another. And, those hundred thousand, most of them, live in these six cities.

"I quit my software engineer job and decided to live life. I decided to make videos—I put these videos on the internet and I made 1000 videos in 1000 days, that’s why it is called Nas Daily. I never missed a day"

-Nuseir Yassin

BEGINNINGS, GROWTH, AND ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

I grew up in Israel as a Palestinian, a very complicated background. At some point when I was 18 years old, I decided to go to the United States. Applied to Harvard—got a scholarship. I studied economics and computer science. When I graduated, I got my first job as a software engineer at PayPal, in New York. I hated my job—to be honest I was not a good engineer.

At some point I asked myself - When are you going to die? Turns out, there are two people who know when you are going to die—God and Google. When you search on Google “Life expectancy in America”, it says 76 years. Back then I was 24 years old —24 out of 76, is 32 per cent—I was 32 per cent done with life. That is when I decided, I need to do something different for remaining two-third of my life. And, that’s why I wear this t-shirt displaying a battery bar graphic that represents the percentage of my life I have lived. Been wearing the same t-shirt for the last seven years, and never worn anything else. I change my t-shirt every eight months. Every eight months, I am 1% older. So, now I am 42% done with my life.

I quit my software engineer job and decided to live life. I decided to make videos—I put these videos on the internet and I made 1000 videos in 1000 days, that’s why it is called Nas Daily. Its every day—never missed a day, not even once. No matter what happens, I have to make a one-minute video and post it on the internet. Each video takes around 14 hours to make. I filled the first 270 days—the first 270 videos nobody watched. Then video number 271, it blew up, it exploded, and Nas Daily became a thing. It became the biggest thing on social media. Right now, Nas Daily is in 14 different languages, across six social media platforms, with 30 billion views and 70 million followers.

A lot of you here know me for one thing—making videos. But, for the last three years I have been building a technology company called Nas. io, a platform designed to help content creators, coaches, and community builders, to grow, engage and monetise their online communities.

So, how do you measure if a city is good for tech or not. Go to a café and listen to what people are talking about. If they are talking about raising money, AI, tech and engineering, most likely that’s the city you want to be in. In a coffee shop in Bengaluru people are talking about unicorns, a coffee shop in Milan, Italy, people are talking about fashion. Nothing's wrong with fashion, but if you want to be a technology company, you got to be part of the ecosystem. And, that is why Nas.io has office in India and in Singapore, to build our technology company. Our media company Nas Daily, is actually based in Dubai, because Dubai is great for media and great for content. So, ecosystem matters.

"But, there is another wave that is happening, and I call it the India wave. Everybody in this audience, nobody thinks that India will be smaller the next year. Zero people think India is going to shrink in its economy "

4) Momentum Hack

You have to see where the momentum is, and go with it. Building a product is like surfing; you cannot control the wave, but you can learn to ride it. The stupidest thing you can do is to stand in front of a wave, because you will never succeed. The smartest thing you can do is, ride the wave. And I believe, startups should learn to ride the wave—this is so important for anybody in tech. There are few waves that are happening today that very few people talk about — we have the AI wave, crypto wave, and the creator economy wave. You should build a startup around them. It means, if you now come up with a startup and say I want to build an anti-AI—good luck… you are dead! If want to create an anti-creator economy or anti-crypto company, you are dead in the waters. So, you got to learn how to ride the waves, if you want to succeed.

But, there is another wave that is happening, and I call it the India wave. Everybody in this audience, nobody thinks that India will be smaller the next year. Zero people think India is going to shrink in its economy. So, that is the wave—everybody here has a growth mindset. I don’t know how much India is going to grow in percentage, but it is definitely going to grow. And, a 5% growth in a 1.4 billion people country, is a lot. And so, I feel there are opportunities in India to build the next unicorn. Like Zepto for example, they have a physical product and they are riding the India wave— that’s how you can have a unicorn in India without selling to America. So I believe, you got to build the right product, for the right market, at the right time. Timing is half the battle.

The momentum is now, the future is AI— it’s not artificial intelligence, it’s America and India. There are two waves happening—if you build in America, I think America is going to grow like crazy in the next few years and the same is with India. That is basically half the world’s economy right there. So, it makes sense to build on this wave.

"I think every startup, every big company, every government, every agency, every single human, should become a content company. Governments should become media companies. Startups and B2B companies should become media companies"

5) Content Hack

I think every startup, every big company, every government, every agency, every single human, should become a content company. Governments should become media companies. Startups and B2B companies should become media companies. Entrepreneur and content creator, Ankur Warikoo, said this really well at Nas Summit recently in Mumbai — “Content is like oxygen and every startup needs to breath”

I see a lot of startups here, they are doing incredible stuff—I open up their Instagram and see they have ten followers—that’s not good. Creating content to tell your story, should be the most important thing.

So, what kind of content should technology companies do? You make content about the founders, content about the employees, content about the customers, content about the product, content about the industry. Today, with social media, its literally free marketing. It costs you nothing to put a video on social media, it costs nothing to get a million views, it costs almost nothing to make a video. With AI, you can make an image for like zero dollars, and in two years you can make full video for zero dollars. You can put it on the internet for zero dollars, you can make a million views for zero dollars. When it comes to content, understand the free marketing component.

PIECE OF ADVICE

To increase your social media following

From zero to 100 thousand followers, its very hard and its very lonely. But, the minute you break the 100 thousand followers ceiling, you go from being weird to being cool. And, once you break the million ceiling, you go from being cool to being god or goddess. That’s how society works—we put you down until you succeed, then we call you a genius. So, you just have to push until you break that 100 thousand followers ceiling or 100 thousand revenue or 100 thousand customers. Push until you get to that first milestone, then you become cool. But, nobody starts as cool.

Authenticity is what matters

There is something the world calls 'fake radar'—our radar for detecting what is fake and what is not. People don’t love facts, they don’t love knowledge, they love authenticity. The year 2024 and beyond, authenticity is what matters, which means, do not hire a PR firm, which means do not type with hashtags— hashtag is corporate—you don’t even need to capitalise. Today, I am talking to you like I am talking to my friend, and that’s why you are listening, because I am not trying to be somebody that I am not. So, who are you really, put that on the internet—a lot of people will hate you for it, but that’s the point. When you try to please everybody, you please nobody. With extreme hate, there is always extreme love associated with it. But, the opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. You want people to hate you, you want people to love you, because that’s true emotions.

Go against the flow

There is this meme picture, which shows a person standing in front of a thousand people and that person says “You all are wrong”, and that thousand people clearly disagree. But, this one guy is standing and saying, “You are all wrong.” I found that the most successful people are the one’s that look at society and say “When it comes to this, you are all wrong, and I am willing to believe it and prove you wrong”. So, every time you see all your friends doing the same thing, that is a signal that you do the opposite, and every time you do that, beautiful things happen. Those who go against the flow, I have found they become the most successful in life.