Jawad Shreim is the co-founder and CEO of MilkStraw AI, a platform that automatically cuts companies' cloud infrastructure costs.
Palestinian, born and raised in Dubai, he spent over a decade in Silicon Valley building and selling a startup before walking away to start again from the Middle East.
Today MilkStraw is backed by VentureSouq and Flat6Labs, with more than 100 startups running on it.
In this episode, he breaks down why he left America, the near-death experience in Mexico City that brought him back to Islam, and what a co-founder breakdown taught him about who to build with.
Find out more:
https://milkstraw.ai/
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0:00 - Introduction
2:49 - The Day His Father Walked Away From a CEO Job
4:18 - Watching Dubai Go From Desert to Global Hub
9:47 - The Paper That Concluded Silicon Valley Isn't a Place
11:40 - The USB Dongle He Sold to His Classmates
12:49 - The Running Costs That Killed His First Company
15:52 - Six Months Living Inside One Italian Restaurant
18:41 - When the Side Product Became the Real Product
20:25 - The Co-Founder Signals He Kept Explaining Away
22:15 - The Acquisition That Arrived Mid-Fight
27:59 - Losing His Grip on His Own Identity
29:29 - The Taxi Ride in Mexico City
34:10 - The Shahada He Couldn't Bring Himself to Say
39:54 - Why the Exit Money Meant Nothing
41:11 - A Year Before He Knew It Was Depression
42:31 - Becoming Muslim for the Second Time
45:14 - The Trip That Convinced Him to Come Home
47:53 - Silicon Valley Level Engineers, in Jordan
50:13 - The Company Name That Came to Him in a Dream
