Ahmed Abaza: AI for Human Advancement

AI, positioned at the forefront of contemporary and future technologies, is poised to enhance the efficiency of our daily lives. By assuming the responsibility for mundane and repetitive tasks, AI stands ready to assist in both professional settings and domestic environments. Its practical applications have already manifested in realms such as travel navigation, smart home devices, drones, and intelligent automobiles, showcasing its transformative potential across various facets of our existence.

As a child who ended up playing with computers instead of regular toys and a teenager who always dreamt of building his own robots, Ahmed Abaza was inspired by Japanese cartoons and the Game Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid. He started reading about AI very early and decided that this is what he wanted to do. His curiosity peaked when he realized the potential AI had to change the world and augment human potential to its maximum. All of this culminated in Synapse Analytics, his startup. The company is focused on making AI useable, and practical for businesses, organizations and governments, in serving our society and communities, empowering economic growth, and wellbeing.

“I believe we are on the verge where AIs can really enable universal income, making humans live more meaningful lives, learning, enjoying and spending time with their communities, while AIs can be in charge of production, and we can live in a peaceful more connected world. I know this sounds a bit poetic, but this is what we always strive for,” says Ahmed.

An Inspiring Story

Ahmed’s rendezvous with AI started through incredible books like Zero to One, Exponential Organisation and more. Absolutely inspired, he decided to venture to be an active contributor to the AI revolution. He partnered up with Firnas Consulting, an SME consulting agency that specilaized in digital transformation consulting.

He soon founded Synapse Analytics with Galal El-beshbishy to focus on enabling businesses, governments and organisations to adopt AI through its Konan platform. His company has helped businesses adopt AI use cases, with Konan, such as AI credit scoring, AI behavioural customer segmentation, Dynamic Pricing, AI-powered forecasts, and Computer Vision such as OCR and CCTV analytics.

Distinctiveness Style

Synapse has a very unique team, a fusion of mathematicians, designers, AI and software engineers, Philosophers and sociologists, all together solving to better integrate AI into our everyday life, safely, smoothly and easily. Ahmed hires his own managers of great talent who share his innovative ideas and solutions. “My team inspires me to be better, to work as hard as I could, to be constantly learning, to match their intelligence and work ethic,” he says. He always looks for people who want to master their respective domains, who really strive to build quality, and accept nothing less than the best.

“Usually, it’s not easy working with this kind of calibre, they are challenging, opinionated and don’t give in easily. If I have an idea, I have to study really well, before pitching it to my team, and this is how we always make sure, that the ideas that get into play are always the best ones,” shares Ahmed.

Ahmed and his team have a very interesting problem on their hands, that is AI adoption by businesses, and great diverse talents trying to work every day to solve the problem. AI adoption is not only a technical problem, it has cultural, societal and economic dimensions to it, that also have to be accounted for. They are working on tackling all of these problems in their design. He believes that this fusion of mindsets, perspectives and talents will create products that are truly unique and empowering. “At the end of the day, we are all working to ensure our customers are exceedingly successful adopting our solutions, and we work really hard, to make sure that our products meet our Client’s expectations,” says Ahmed.

Contemporary Entrepreneur

The surge of start-ups is indicative of the fact that entrepreneurship is now more accessible than ever, Which makes it difficult to differentiate oneself and to make one's ideas rise above all the noise. It requires a tremendous amount of learning, pitching, experimentation, drive, and perseverance.

Ahmed believes that entrepreneurship today has somewhat of a status quo for itself. Some business models have proved to be massively successful, encouraging more money into the start-up eco-system, but most of this money is still looking for the familiar stories and models, that have been successful in the past, rather than what’s really innovative, and bearing a lot of risks. So, some really creative entrepreneurs nowadays, with some of the most innovative and creative ideas, are still struggling to fund their ideas, because they beg to differ from most start-ups.

Being based out of the Middle East, Ahmed also points out that certain regional policies and regulations have a slowing effect on the time to market some innovations. Talents, in roles like product management, and software development are sometimes lacking behind. Further, foreign companies hiring from the region due to the cost difference, create barriers to hiring great calibres. Also, there is a big salary disparity in the market, which can play in favour of highly funded startups and big enterprises. The mistrust in local products over more international ones can create friction in any homegrown solution growth, especially, that sometimes there is a stereotype that local solutions lack in features (which most of the time is actually not true) and should be priced lower.

Goals

Ahmed is looking forward to more global outreach. One of the great things about Synapse’s products is that everybody around the world is trying to adopt AI, there is an unannounced arms race when it comes to AI between businesses and governments. It’s more of a global problem rather than a local one. Synapse’s suite of SaaS and on-premise solutions will prove to be the best bet for any business to make sure that AI is successfully adopted by any organisation. Whether they are building an AI to build credit scoring models, behavioural customer segmentation, SKU forecasting, or a recommendation Engine, their Usecase focused MLops platform, will make that happen in a fraction of the time it usually requires.

“I believe we will penetrate more industries than we currently have (we are working in more than 12 industries so far), I believe AIs hosted on our platform, will have a massive economic impact and will create an incredible amount of uplift to businesses and GDPs around the world,” says Ahmed.

Guidance for those embracing the Entrepreneurial Journey.

Ahmed encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to steadfastly trust in themselves and their concepts. “When investors, clients, or people express disinterest in your idea, carefully consider their feedback, but also understand that scepticism often accompanies what isn’t fully comprehended. Ultimately, the market holds the decisive verdict,” he emphasizes.

Additionally, Ahmed implores patience, recognizing that each idea’s progress unfolds at its unique pace. He underscores, “Your worth isn’t defined by success or failure, acceptance or rejection; it resides within you. The transition from a downturn to an upswing is fleeting, so embrace the journey, relish the unpredictability, and face the future fearlessly,” concludes Ahmed.