We recently had the privilege of interviewing Meenah Tariq, Co-founder and CEO of Metric, an AI-powered Financial Intelligence App. As a multifaceted entrepreneur, Meenah is dedicated to advancing the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Pakistan by empowering women entrepreneurs, fostering entrepreneurial thinking in youth, and equipping entrepreneurs with essential business skills for the successful scaling of impactful businesses and SMEs.
Meenah has been a business coach and mentor to startups alongside teaching entrepreneurship at local universities. In this insightful session, the CEO shares her career trajectory, and visions regarding her business, and offers suggestions for aspiring entrepreneurs.
The Beginning
We were curious to learn about the factors that led to Meenah Tariq’s current position in the industry. So, we asked, “What initially drew you to your field, and how did your early experiences shape your approach to business?
Meenah Tariq shared, “I got introduced to business and entrepreneurship very early on – I was six when I was making and selling things back to family and friends. I started my first ‘official’ business when I was 14 and ran it for 10 years. Throughout my life, I have constantly tried different business ideas and I always truly enjoyed them to be honest, I think I learned more from the failures,
I got to experience the hurdles and challenges firsthand and learn the on-ground realities of business. I also got to experience the joy that building value for the world brings, and the financial independence and growth that entrepreneurship can result in. I have seen business change the lives of not just business owners, but also their families, communities, and society at large. Over the last decade, I have worked with nearly 2000 businesses in frontier markets. I truly believe in the cause of entrepreneurship, and that’s what brought me to Metric.”
Meeting The Market Gaps
To learn more about the market gaps filled by Meenah Tariq’s business, we inquired, “Can you tell us about the genesis of your current business and what specific need or gap you aimed to address?”
Meenah Tariq replied, “My co-founder, Omar, is a Chartered Accountant who has worked with hundreds of startups and businesses in the last 5 years. Before Metric, both Omar and I were Partners in different venture capital funds. The one critical issue that we saw in both small businesses and high-tech startups was around the founders’ understanding of their numbers. Business owners make decisions based on vibes vs. data.
Decisions like what prices to set, how much discounts to give and when, which products to re-invest in, how much money to invest, and more, all taken based on individual experience or stories heard from others. These are all questions that can be answered through data. Business owners especially in emerging markets are often scared of accounting and numbers, and accounting tools are made for accountants, not the owners themselves.”
“This is what we are solving with Metric. Metric is the world’s most founder-friendly financial analytics tool, made for business owners. It translates numbers and stories, to help the founder know what the health of their business is, and to be able to make real-time data-driven decisions.
To add to that, Metric can give them sectoral insights, so you can compare your numbers with that of other businesses like you in your region and know if you are building in the right direction. Metric helps small businesses make more money and save money through optimizing expenses.” Meenah added.
Impact Of Values On Metric
We further asked, “How have your values influenced the way you conduct business?”
“Metric is a values-first company. This means that we are very clear about our organization’s values, and they are a part of how we operate daily. These values come directly from the founders and the founding team – when we were just a six-person team, we got together to commit to them, and over time we have continued to build on and operationalize them. We hire based on these, promote based on these, and even our partnerships and investment decisions are based on our values. These values are also detailed on our website for anyone to read
Our people, and the growth of these people, are supreme. This means we, as founders, spend a lot of our time thinking through growth for teams and individuals. One of our fondest wishes is to see Metric people go on to build phenomenal things and create a legacy in the world. We are already starting to see this happen.” She added.
Growth Amidst Challenges
Adverse situations are a part of every journey. We asked, “What has been the most challenging project or period in your career, and what did you learn from it?”
Meenah Tariq said, “The fun thing about startup life is that things can go wrong at any possible minute. And the next minute can also be the absolute best. I’m a war-time CEO. We started building this business at the tail end of the last bull run and had to fundraise as well as grow in a turbulent environment globally.
SMEs are hard hit by the deepening recession, individuals are impacted by financial stress, and we are all trying to figure out what life looks like post-COVID with wars raging in various parts of the world. I believe all of it has made me more emotionally resilient. I have learned to put things into perspective, pivot and move faster, and always keep a firm grip on what matters most to us: our people, our values, and our cause.
We are also proud to have been backed by phenomenal investors, such as 500 Global through Sanabil Investments, Hub71 in Abu Dhabi, i2i Ventures, and many more, who have been a huge support for us!”
Staying Ahead Of The Curve
To understand Meenah’s perspective of staying updated with all the latest developments and adopting the same, we inquired, “How do you integrate new technologies or innovative practices into your business operations?”
Meenah Tariq replied, “You’ve probably heard about innovation being a part of the DNA of a company. In my view, it’s more like a muscle, and as any muscle it needs to be worked on, flexed regularly, and developed to the extent that using it constantly becomes painless and normal. In an organization, people come from all sorts of backgrounds, and not all of them are used to being innovative in their approaches.
Actually, in many organizational cultures innovation is punished, not rewarded. Innovation is also not something that should be limited to the design or tech departments, every department, including internal finance, people/HR, administration, and procurement, should be encouraged and rewarded for innovation.”
Meenah Tariq further added, “Metric has quarterly innovation awards, a no-gatekeepers policy which means people can work on initiatives in different departments and with anyone they want, and bias to action is also highly rewarded. Innovation for us comes from a customer-first approach, making sure whatever we build helps us empower small and medium business owners.
An example is Max, our AI agent that acts as a micro-advisor for small businesses, in-app. Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, and we are creating Max to make this journey a little easier in tough frontier markets. Our CTO, Dr. Habiba has been building towards this since the day we started.”
Pivotal Turning Points
We asked Meenah, “Could you share an experience where you had to pivot your business strategy dramatically?”
Meenah Tariq shared, “The biggest shift that happened for us was in the first-month post of post-app launch. This is when we realized that Metric had organic users in 30 countries, within 30 days. This made us realize that this was a product that was default global. Over the next ten months, our users grew to 170 countries organically. This wasn’t a tactic or something we had designed for.
We had to move much faster and take a global approach towards not just design but also brand building, communication strategy, infrastructure, and more. It helped us start to think beyond national or even regional limits. Frankly, it was the most exhilarating yet scariest time of our lives. The learning curve across the compact was extremely steep, and thinking like a global company from day 1 primed us for the growth that we saw later.”
Unwavering Support In Each Step
We were intrigued to learn more about the impact of mentorship on Meenah Tariq’s journey. We asked, “What role has mentorship played in your career, both as a mentor and a mentee?”
“We have been incredibly blessed to have phenomenal supporters throughout our journey, starting from when we first conceived Metric, to building teams, learning about product creation, fundraising, international growth, and more. In the early days, we’d invite every friend of ours who could add value to come and speak to and train our teams. People are generally always willing to help if you ask.
As a startup founder, you genuinely need a whole team supporting you – it’s not a one-person job. You need to be both physically and emotionally resilient, and mentors/coaches bring in the knowledge, experience, and perspective that strengthens you emotionally and often brings clarity.” Meena replied.
Plans We Asked Meenah Tariq
Eager to learn about Meenah’s upcoming business plans and events, we asked, “Tell us more about your future business plans.”
Meenah Tariq shared, “Metric is growing fast across the GCC, especially in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Our focus is to continue this growth but also build innovations and localizations that would make life easier for business owners in the region before we move deliberately into other markets where organic growth continues even now. Egypt and Nigeria for example have high numbers of Metric users.
Our vision is to make Metric so simple and so easy to use, that it becomes a basic part of business building across emerging markets. We want to democratize growth by simplifying accounting and finance, a sector that is traditionally considered complex and scary.”
Words Of Wisdom For Beginners
Lastly, addressing the beginners, we asked, “What is one piece of advice you would give to someone starting in your industry today?”
Meenah Tariq concluded, “As an investor and now also as an entrepreneur myself, I can not emphasize enough the importance of founder-problem fit. Building a product, and then building a business around the product, while also building a company and a culture that would be able to grow and scale, is all incredibly hard.
At least once a week you will ask yourself why you signed up for this, and if your ‘why’ is not truly strong, you won’t have a convincing answer for yourself. So if you’re starting, make sure you’re building something that you feel some passion or emotional connection for. Solve a problem that matters to you, or build a solution that you care about. That is the biggest prerequisite.”
Follow Meenah Tariq on LinkedIn.
Find Metric on LinkedIn and visit their website http://www.metricapp.co
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