- December 29, 2021
EPISODE #
Unifonic’s Jonathan Labin on sabbaticals, scale-ups and the metaverse
About this episode
Jonathan is the President at Unifonic, a leading customer engagement startup with headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Unifonic, was founded by two brothers, Ahmed and Hassan Hamdan and is as Jonathan describes it: “A 15 year overnight success”. After years of perfecting the product and an initial US$20 Million capital injection in 2018, Unifonic announced in 2021 that it has successfully raised US$125 Million to help accelerate its growth and put it on a path to become the next unicorn to come out of the region.
I wanted to hear from Jonathan on what makes a startup appealing to someone who has built an extremely successful career working with some of the world’s top companies like Viacom and Facebook. Jonathan joined Unifonic in 2020 – just before Covid – to help the startup position itself for their next wave of growth.
This decision among others, was made off the back of a one year sabbatical that Jonathan decided to take to build on a main theme in his life: being a global citizen. We discuss the importance of re-setting, working with a startup, scale-ups including what works and what could go wrong and we wrap up with some advice to people considering a launching their own startup and some tech predictions, including of course, the metaverse.
A not to be missed conversation if you’re currently in the rat race and looking for a breakthrough.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
00:00 | Life is not a marathon and the need for sabbaticals
10:43 | Why join Unifonic, an upcoming startup based in Saudi Arabia
15:15 | what is Unifonic and what makes its story so unique
20:25 | what are the differences between startups and scale-ups (what can go right and wrong)
30:58 | Are you considering starting a company? what are the attractive sectors today?
34:25 | Tech predictions or trends for 2022
42:50 | Loulou’s closing remarks
If you’re enjoying this podcast, subscribe to Conversations with Loulou on YouTube or your favorite podcast app such as Apple Podcast and leave me a review, it helps increase the reach and visibility and helps me as a content creator.
For sponsorships, guest recommendations, feedback and other requests, you can connect with me here.
You can follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter on @louloukhazen
listen to the episode
guest profile
Jonathan Labin
Jonathan is an experienced and hands on business leader that is passionate about building high performance teams and growing businesses internationally. In 2020, Jonathan joined Unifonic as President to support its mission of making effective customer communication and engagement more accessible to enterprises in Emerging Markets.
Prior to Unifonic, Jonathan was the Managing Director of Facebook in the Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan and led the regional office in Dubai. As Facebook’s first employee in the region, he built the MENA team and business from the ground up and was responsible for growing revenues across Facebook’s family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp. Under his leadership, Facebook became one of the leading regional tech and media companies, both in terms of users and revenues.
Before Facebook, Jonathan was VP, Head of Ad Sales, Emerging Markets at Viacom in London and tasked with maximizing advertising revenues for brands like MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central across all media channels. During his tenure at Viacom, he also held the position of Strategy & Business Development Director for MTV Networks International, and played a key role in strengthening the company’s position across multiple lines of business and regions.
Jonathan has repeatedly been among the top 100 executives in Forbes Middle East’s Global Meets Local ranking and was named among the 50 most influential expats in the UAE by Forbes magazine in 2018. In September 2016, Jonathan was also named media and marketing business leader of the year by Gulf Business.
He holds an MBA with highest distinction from Columbia Business School in New York and bachelor degrees in International Business from Universidad Pontificia Commillas in Madrid and the European School of Business in Reutlingen.