The Caravan Podcast

Youssef El Sayed Built a 350K Audience Telling One Man's Hajj on Horseback

What 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 open
00:45 Welcome to the show
01:31 Growing up in Dublin, moving to London for Warwick
03:47 The "everything but your degree" era
05:22 Meeting Marwan and the 99% SME stat
07:40 First attempt: the NatWest Accelerator and Summer Launchpad
11:31 Why the pivot happened
15:29 Building After Hours from scratch
17:00 Trusting the Redwood team and finding community through faith
22:26 Why they opened up beyond just Muslims
27:12 How Redwood is actually funded
30:17 Free office space and the Hawken Offices story
33:27 This year: The Shard, Google HQ, and London's inflection point
38:11 Batch sizes, zero equity, zero fees
44:24 What it actually costs to run something like this
49:57 Why he shows up every single weekend
53:48 Where he sees opportunity: SaaS vs B2C
59:17 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 Morality

00:46 Welcome to Muslim Tech Fest

01:43 Why MTF Feels Different

03:18 Early Entrepreneur Roots

04:54 From Medicine to Banking

06:31 Distress Calls Spark Zeropa

08:49 Building Zeropa Model

13:47 Not a Charity Scale

16:37 Who Qualifies for Zero Percent

18:37 Retail Cashback Revenue

22:56 Against Buy Now Pay Later

24:23 Last Resort Lending

25:26 Food Loan Demand

26:44 Repeat Loans Rules

27:41 Pitching The Model

28:59 Muslim Community Reach

31:22 UK Regulation Plans

33:17 Growth And Underwriting

37:48 Affordability Criteria

39:28 True Zero Interest

42:18 Reinventing Yourself

43:13 Never Too Late

47:49 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 Cruelty

01:38 Podcast Intro Yusuf Omar

03:17 Privilege And Career Choices

07:03 South Africa Explains Palestine

10:34 Anger As A Marathon

14:04 Seeing The Wins

15:12 Why America Is Hated

16:43 Detached America And Propaganda

19:33 Muslim American Identity Clash

26:19 Make Your Own Journalism Path

28:30 Durban To Damascus Breakthrough

33:20 Faith Shaken By War

35:04 Gaza Reset And Media Power

40:31 Why Muslims Avoid Media

41:56 Funding Muslim Media

43:15 Storytelling Is Power

44:32 When Narratives Turn Deadly

46:36 Representation Inside Newsrooms

49:26 Empathy Through Awe

52:24 Building Seen.tv Verticals

55:36 Investors Without Control

58:32 Lean Production Playbook

01:04:03 Censorship In Conflict Zones

01:09:01 Live News Future

01:13:48 How To Support Seen.tv

01:16:38 Creator Accelerator Vision

01:19:01 Closing Thanks

Follow Yusuf Omar:

• Instagram: ⁠@yusufomar⁠
• TikTok: ⁠@yusufomarsa⁠
• Company: ⁠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.

On the Caravan podcast, Babar Bhatti (founder of Dallas AI and Chief AI Officer at Prism Skills) discusses why “technology is never neutral,” how AI’s recursive improvement is creating rapid change, and why society and policy are not moving fast enough to address risks like bias, misinformation, erosion of trust, surveillance, and warfare. He recounts building Dallas AI from 2017 with a focus on authentic, vendor-neutral, high-quality events, consistent meetups, and practical learning for both technical and non-technical attendees despite early low support. Bhatti explains Prism Skills as a 15-minutes-a-day microlearning platform that personalizes AI literacy by role and industry and helps companies manage AI adoption and change management. He also shares his background studying and working in Japan, early internet-era experiences, founding a 2010 social media analytics startup, and lessons from selling it for under $2M.00:00 Technology Is Not Neutral02:57 Why Dallas AI Started03:47 Building Meetups That Matter05:41 Early Struggles And Support10:29 Bootstrapping Quality Events13:12 From Deep Learning To ChatGPT16:11 What Prism Skills Does20:10 AI Jobs And Change Management23:03 Risks Misinformation And Power30:15 Policy Education And The Future32:39 Life Abroad Japan Chapter33:25 Studying Japan in 199234:10 Learning Japanese vs Chinese35:43 Work Culture Lessons36:58 Why Move to America38:39 Bilingual Skills Mindset40:52 Culture Shock Comparisons42:29 Internet Era Inspiration47:05 Startup Idea Social Analytics49:30 Social Media Dark Side54:34 Bootstrapping and Early Sales59:06 Exit and Acquisition Lessons01:01:55 Closing Thanks and Wrap

On the Caravan podcast, host Hamza interviews Mohammed Musa, founder of Deepen AI, about moving from the Bay Area to Dallas for stronger Muslim community infrastructure, identity reinforcement for youth, and programs like iThon Robotics, which has grown to 44+ locations and won the Texas state robotics competition. Mohammed shares navigating Muslim identity in post-9/11 Silicon Valley and in Japan’s drinking-centric work culture, then traces his career from elevator software to semiconductor startup Sonics (where stock dilution left him $800 back from a $10K investment), to game tech at Havok and Emergent, and six years at Google during its innovative era. He explains how VR and self-driving “aha” moments led to Deepen AI, which provides sensor-fusion data labeling tools and services, calibration software, and a data “refinery,” including SafetyPool.ai to share crash scenarios for safer ADAS/autonomy. 00:00 Stock Loss Cold Open00:44 Podcast Intro Guest Setup02:14 Texas Move Community05:42 Identity Youth Programs07:09 Ithan Robotics Impact11:34 Post 9 11 Identity15:26 Faith Quran Reflection19:03 Workplace Assimilation Pressures23:29 Japan Startup Detour26:37 Game Tech Startup Shutdown30:49 Early Career Elevator Tech32:07 Sonics Equity Heartbreak38:42 Dilution Horror Story40:22 Regret and Lost Upside42:13 From Startups to Google45:17 Google Culture and Lessons47:33 VR Experiment to Autonomy53:04 Why Mobility Matters56:16 Deepen Explained Simply01:01:16 Calibration and Data Refinery01:03:48 Safety Pool for Edge Cases01:07:12 Twia App and Quran Reflection01:12:45 Closing Thoughts and Farewell