The Caravan Podcast

Fuad Harzallah, founder of Deen@Work, on what it’s like to be a practicing Muslim in the German workplace: prayer in basements, silence in the breakroom, and a 4% response rate for hijabis with foreign names. We talk about marrying young, moving from sales and consulting into founding a company, and how Deen@Work lets employees rate how faith-friendly their employers really are. Recorded in London, days after the platform’s UK launch at Muslim Tech Fest.

What if the goal was never to build a unicorn, but a camel?Umar Munshi, general partner of Ihsan VC, sits down with us at Muslim Tech Fest in London. He tells the story of losing everything at 26 in Indonesia, discovering Islamic finance, and becoming an accidental pioneer of Islamic fintech. We also cover why the unicorn model has never worked outside the US, how a camel startup builds resilience and real value, and how Muslim investors can put their money to work with the right intention.Caravan Podcast: journeys of faith, creativity, and entrepreneurship from the Muslim world.

Youssef El Sayed Built a 350K Audience Telling One Man's Hajj on HorsebackWhat does it take to turn an 8-month, 7,500km pilgrimage into one of the most compelling stories on social media — with no marketing background and almost no budget?Youssef El Sayed, co-founder of Hajj on Horseback, joins the Caravan Podcast to share how a promise made 30 years ago turned into a journey from Spain to Mecca on horseback — and how he built an audience of over 350,000 people telling that story one video at a time. We cover the origin story, the content strategy that led to a viral breakout just 10 days in, the wildest moments from the road, and what's next for the brand.🎧 New episodes of the Caravan Podcast every week.

He built the UK's first AI rental agent — and watched it fail. Instead of quitting the game, he moved to San Francisco, rebuilt from scratch, and exited his next company, an AI ops platform for real estate, before most people get their first promotion.This week, Rowan Aldean (founder, Opsansa) joins Caravan to talk through the real, unfiltered version of a startup journey: the day he quit a comfortable job at a $40B fintech, the "founder spiral" that nearly took him out, sleeping in a WeWork pod at 4am, and the acqui-hire negotiation that closed the chapter. Along the way: faith, family, risk, and what it means to actually design a life instead of just a business.

Six hours of marking, done in 20 minutes — that's the promise that won Hamza Mughal £30,000 and the top prize at Muslim Tech Fest Pitch. Hamza is the founder of Running Paper, an AI tool built to grade exams, and in this conversation he walks us through the hard problem: how do you teach a machine to mark like a thoughtful teacher? We get into the business model, who's actually paying for it, and the bigger question looming over the whole industry — are we heading toward a world where AI grades essays that AI wrote?This episode comes to you in partnership with Muslim Tech Fest — thank you for the support.Guest: Hamza Mughal, Founder of Running Paper🔗 Running Paper: https://runningpaper.co.uk/

Salman Bari, a leading member of the Redwood Founders team, joins the Caravan Podcast to break down how a Warwick University Islamic Society meetup turned into one of London's fastest-growing young builder communities — one that charges zero fees, takes zero equity, and is fully funded by founders who just want to give back.We talk about the failed first attempt (Summer Launchpad), the pivot that actually worked (After Hours), why 99% of UK businesses are SMEs nobody talks about, how they secured free office space in The Shard, and why London might be the next San Francisco.Chapters:00:00 Cold open00:45 Welcome to the show01:31 Growing up in Dublin, moving to London for Warwick03:47 The "everything but your degree" era05:22 Meeting Marwan and the 99% SME stat07:40 First attempt: the NatWest Accelerator and Summer Launchpad11:31 Why the pivot happened15:29 Building After Hours from scratch17:00 Trusting the Redwood team and finding community through faith22:26 Why they opened up beyond just Muslims27:12 How Redwood is actually funded30:17 Free office space and the Hawken Offices story33:27 This year: The Shard, Google HQ, and London's inflection point38:11 Batch sizes, zero equity, zero fees44:24 What it actually costs to run something like this49:57 Why he shows up every single weekend53:48 Where he sees opportunity: SaaS vs B2C59:17 What's next for Salman

At Muslim Tech Fest in London, the Caravan Podcast interviews Saqhib Ali, founder of Zeropa, about building an interest-free microfinance alternative for essentials. Saqhib shares how hearing distressed customers while working in Lloyds’ financial distress unit inspired Zeropa’s model, why he chose not to operate as a charity to enable scale, and how the platform lends only when repayments are affordable using income/expenditure analysis, open banking, and behavioral checks. Zeropa provides 0% financing for necessities (mainly food, plus utilities, clothing, furniture, and repairs) by paying retailers directly and earning revenue via retailer rebates so customers never pay more than retail price. He discusses community poverty statistics, misconceptions that Zeropa is only for Muslims (less than 1% of applicants are Muslim), plans for UK FCA authorization and future peer-to-peer licensing, and lessons on lifelong learning and career pivots in an AI-disrupted future.00:00 Interest and Morality00:46 Welcome to Muslim Tech Fest01:43 Why MTF Feels Different03:18 Early Entrepreneur Roots04:54 From Medicine to Banking06:31 Distress Calls Spark Zeropa08:49 Building Zeropa Model13:47 Not a Charity Scale16:37 Who Qualifies for Zero Percent18:37 Retail Cashback Revenue22:56 Against Buy Now Pay Later24:23 Last Resort Lending25:26 Food Loan Demand26:44 Repeat Loans Rules27:41 Pitching The Model28:59 Muslim Community Reach31:22 UK Regulation Plans33:17 Growth And Underwriting37:48 Affordability Criteria39:28 True Zero Interest42:18 Reinventing Yourself43:13 Never Too Late47:49 Where To Find Zeropa

On the Caravan Podcast in London during Muslim Tech Fest, host interviews Hani Chihabi, 24-year-old co-founder of Thaura AI, an ethical alternative to big tech AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Hani explains Thaura’s mission to counter “surveillance capitalism,” protect users through encrypted data stored in Europe, and avoid reliance on AWS, Azure, or GCP. Launched with Tech for Palestine, Thaura reached 100,000 users in two months without funding or ads, driven by community support and a Discord of contributors. Hani describes quitting a comfortable tech job after feeling complicit while watching Palestine’s suffering, declining investor offers to preserve mission integrity, and exposing an attempted acquisition by an Israeli company. He frames Thaura as a “revolution” to decentralize technology, decolonize the digital landscape, and prioritize truthfulness, sustainability, and user power.

Join us on this episode of The Caravan Podcast as we sit down with Yusuf Omar, the visionary co-founder of seen.tv. From hitchhiking 12,000 km across the African continent to reporting from the front lines of the Syrian Civil War and the Arab Spring, Yusuf shares his incredible journey of becoming a "one-man band" storyteller.In this deep-dive conversation, we explore:00:00 Apartheid Everyday Cruelty01:38 Podcast Intro Yusuf Omar03:17 Privilege And Career Choices07:03 South Africa Explains Palestine10:34 Anger As A Marathon14:04 Seeing The Wins15:12 Why America Is Hated16:43 Detached America And Propaganda19:33 Muslim American Identity Clash26:19 Make Your Own Journalism Path28:30 Durban To Damascus Breakthrough33:20 Faith Shaken By War35:04 Gaza Reset And Media Power40:31 Why Muslims Avoid Media41:56 Funding Muslim Media43:15 Storytelling Is Power44:32 When Narratives Turn Deadly46:36 Representation Inside Newsrooms49:26 Empathy Through Awe52:24 Building Seen.tv Verticals55:36 Investors Without Control58:32 Lean Production Playbook01:04:03 Censorship In Conflict Zones01:09:01 Live News Future01:13:48 How To Support Seen.tv01:16:38 Creator Accelerator Vision01:19:01 Closing ThanksFollow Yusuf Omar:Instagram: ⁠@yusufomar⁠TikTok: ⁠@yusufomarsa⁠Company: ⁠seen.tv⁠

In this episode, we sit down with Abubakar Sheriff, founder of Qariyb — a platform reimagining how Muslim organizations discover, manage, and host events. Born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Philly, and shaped by time in the Middle East, Abubakar brings a truly global perspective to entrepreneurship and community building.We dive deep into his journey from instructional designer and online education pioneer to solo founder navigating the highs and lows of building in the Muslim tech space. Abubakar opens up about bootstrapping Qariyb, finding his CTO through Islamic makers networks, and the pivotal decision to shift from a marketplace model to an event operating system — putting brand control and data privacy back in the hands of Muslim organizations.We also get into the bigger conversations around AI and the future of education, the untapped potential of the Islamic economy, why building niche isn't a limitation, and the real challenges of raising capital as a Muslim founder.