Celebrating Emirati Women’s Day with Maryam A Hassani

On the special occasion of Emirati Women’s Day, Integrator Media had an exclusive interview with Maryam A Hassani, Co-founder & CEO at Zealous.

How did you start your career in technology? What was your journey like at the beginning, and how has it evolved over time?

After graduating from NYU Abu Dhabi, I started my career as a strategy consultant at one of the big four firms. My gravitation toward innovation and startup projects provided me with the opportunity to lead the Special Olympics Innovation Challenge and play a key role in the MBRIF Accelerator Program.

Over the years, I’ve supported more than 45 diverse companies in localizing and establishing themselves in the MENA region. I’ve always been passionate about the emerging tech ecosystem in MENA, from designing startup programs to supporting the localization of startups, and now, being a startup founder myself.

I’m driven by the mission to solve today’s most pressing challenges with technology. I believe that leveling the playing field in software development through AI will unlock substantial opportunities for entrepreneurs with similar goals.

Was there a specific challenge you faced early in your career that you’d like to share with our readers?

From the start of my founder journey, I knew I wanted to build a product leveraging emerging technologies, but as a non-tech founder, my ability to build and experiment was limited.

Initially, I explored working with regional software development firms, but any experienced founder knows that’s not the best approach. These firms are focused on delivering products ready for the market, but building a new venture is a journey of learning and iteration. You need to start with an MVP that addresses a significant problem and test it in the market. What I really needed was a technical co-founder with the expertise and the same level of commitment to the mission as I had.

Can you tell us a bit about your team at Zealous and the story behind the creation of Zealous?

My co-founder and I met at a leading international tech event, where we bonded over our shared passion for making professional networking intentional, easy, and meaningful in emerging tech scenes.

The mission of Zealous has always been to answer the question, “How can we leverage AI to help people?” Initially, it was about making it easier to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs in emerging tech markets. Today, we have two products in the market that are free to use:

1. Zealous Social App for professionals to find, meet, and stay connected with connections on the go.
2. Zaia AI Event Assistant for professionals to get personalized, real-time suggestions on how to collaborate with the connections they make at events.

As a bootstrapped company, our journey led us to develop an in-house AI code generation and testing framework, Zealous TenX, to help us meet the demands of building and iterating our software products in the most time- and cost-effective way. Using it ourselves, we quickly realized we were onto something significant with this framework.

Now, our focus is on supporting software developers and companies in developing products faster, reducing overhead costs, and maintaining quality code as they scale. We are still very much serving the emerging tech space, just from a different angle and addressing a more pressing problem in the market.

What initiatives has Zealous implemented to support the advancement of women in technology?

We are passionate about helping people connect better, especially in emerging markets in the Middle East. Women globally are roughly 25-30% less likely to network effectively and meet the right people.

I dedicate time to mentoring and supporting university entrepreneurship programs to encourage young women and aspiring founders to pursue their ideas. I also make an effort to demystify what it really means to build a startup. I wish someone had done this for me sooner. I share my learnings as a female Arab founder and my findings from the emerging tech space, with the hope that they can learn and be better off as a result.

How is Zealous leveraging AI to help women expand their networks? Additionally, what other functionalities and features does Zealous offer?

Both female and male entrepreneurs can benefit from Zealous’ professional networking products by connecting with others in the space. Creating intentional and meaningful connections today is challenging; at events with potentially thousands of attendees, it’s difficult to remember every face and every business card. We simplify this process, enabling event networkers to scan business cards or LinkedIn QR codes instantly and automatically save details such as where they met, the person’s role, their organization, and the intentions for the meeting.

Women generally need to know more about an individual before they feel confident reaching out or engaging in conversation. Our products take that into account. Although our products are not exclusively for women, the user experience and intention-based features are optimized to suit cultural and social norms.

Moreover, knowing that women founders don’t get as much capital investment (female-founded startup investments dropped by 64% in MENA in 2023), our code generation product helps them get a foot in the market with lower overhead costs.

What advice would you give to young Emirati women aspiring to careers in technology?

I would advise other women on their tech founder journey to focus on identifying a worthy problem to solve first, rather than starting with company setup.

The journey of any tech startup founder is challenging, from finding a problem worth solving to developing a viable solution for a large enough market that customers will pay to use. Given the time and resource intensity, I strongly recommend finding a problem that intrigues you and that you want to explore deeply.

Unfortunately, raising VC funding as a female founder is especially difficult, so be mindful of monthly spending and subscriptions. Also, make use of the support available, such as programs and incentives in the UAE that help reduce startup costs.