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Alongside my co-founders Eyad and Hassan (MENAs biggest creator), we're building 8FLAMEZ.…
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Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكThis is good to see. Creators in MENA do spend time nurturing their fan base.. views, views, views. But this encourages the best ones to generate some revenue without locking themselves into shitty agency contracts that enforce hard/soft exclusivity, abusive rights clauses and payment terms created for when people still traded gold bars. Smaller, higher quality creators will see an astronomic rise in the Middle East because of this move. If the shop's executed well. Let's see what YouTube can do with this.Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكMENA creators are getting closer to the checkout. 🛒 YouTube Shopping has launched in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with Amazon as its first affiliate partner. Eligible creators can tag products in videos, Shorts and livestreams, earning commission on qualifying purchases. Channels with as few as 500 subscribers can qualify, subject to YouTube Partner Programme and other eligibility requirements. For us at 8Flamez, the exciting part is what creators can learn from this. What does your audience actually buy? Which recommendations convert? Where is there demand for something you could build yourself? Those answers can inform product development, strengthen partnerships and help creators make better decisions about the businesses they launch. Working alongside Hassan Suleiman (AboFlah) has shaped our conviction that creator trust can be the foundation of a serious business. Turning that trust into lasting value takes product expertise, strong operators and healthy margins. Affiliate commerce gives creators another way to earn today, and potentially a clearer view of what to build tomorrow. That is why we build and invest in creator-driven ventures at 8Flamez. We believe some of MENA’s next defining consumer brands will be founded with creators. The question worth asking now: what would your audience buy from you again? - Eyad Siyam + Saad Sarwar
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Saad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكSaad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكOne moment from Qatar Toy Festival has stayed with me. It wasn’t just seeing the excitement when AboFlah took the stage. It was seeing the audience’s reaction to the first look at SlayMan. It reminded me that some of the most exciting ideas start with a simple question: What comes next? For some creators, the answer is another video. For others, it’s finding new ways to tell their story. It’ll be exciting to see where SlayMan goes from here.
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Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكAboFlah cartoon launching this summer on Spacetoon 🦾Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكPartnerships are always exciting, but some have the potential to redefine what's possible. This is exactly how I feel about the partnership between Spacetoon and 8Flamez; a collaboration I'm incredibly proud to be part of. Bringing together some of the region's biggest kidult digital creators is something we've been working towards for quite some time, and it all begins at Qatar Toy Festival 2026, where an exciting creator lineup will come to life. What excites me most is that this goes far beyond appearances. It's about creating meaningful experiences, launching new ideas, and building genuine connections between creators and their communities. A shared vision with Eyad Siyam is what made this partnership possible, and I'm truly grateful for the trust, collaboration, and ambition he’s been showing. I'm also especially excited to see the Abo Flah animation come to life alongside the incredibly creative and supportive Hassan Suleiman (AboFlah). This is only the beginning… and there's so much more to come… cannot wait for everyone to see what we’ve been working on! #Spacetoon #Partnerships #8Flamez #QatarToyFestival #Content #Creators #Animation
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Saad Sarwar نشر ذلك📹 PRODUCTION CREW CHINA 📹 Anyone know a solid production crew in China with experience working with YouTubers? For this week. Starting in Hong Kong then a week long trip through Macau, Shenzhen, Chongqing. Tag or DM me please.
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Saad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكSaad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكI’m used to YouTube… you can probably tell this from my energy I decided why not come to LinkedIn and show another side of me متعود على يوتيوب… واضح من طاقتي بس قلت ليش ما أجي لينكدإن وأوريكم جانب ثاني مني بعد
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Saad Sarwar نشر ذلكAnyone know a great videographer in Bali available asap who has XP working with big YouTubers?
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Saad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكSaad Sarwar أعاد نشر ذلكFirst day on LinkedIn. They told me to be professional and speak English 😂 I’m Hassan AboFlah. 50M+ on YouTube Giveaway at 1M followers!? 😂
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Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكThe BRIDGE Summit was not a reminder of how far the creator economy has come in MENA. It was a signal of where it is going. What we saw, and participated in, was a shift from creators as talent to creators as IP owners, partners, and long-term business builders. Creators in MENA are still treated as distribution. Reach rented on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Value measured in views. Success framed around virality. For some, that phase is ending. At Bridge, we announced that AboFlah's character universe was being licensed to Spacetoon, the Middle East's most iconic children's network, for an animated series called 'Slayman'. That's not influencer marketing. It's intellectual property changing hands. On stage at Bridge, alongside Live Nation Entertainment, AboFlah filmed a live TV pilot, 'King of Knowledge', to test the format with a real audience before it ever hits a streaming platform. That's not just content. It's product development in public. Eyad, myself, Hassan hosted a private session alongside Gerard Piqué to share insights on Hassan's club president role and our investment into the Kings League. When creators invest in a global sports and entertainment platform, they are no longer endorsers. They are stakeholders and business owners. And when the conversation, like the one I had with Dillon Lawson-Johnston and CNN's Paula Naoufal, focused not on views and CPMs to unit economics, scalability, and creators as owners, the industry starts to look a lot less like media. And a lot more like business. We met with so many people genuinely excited for the business opportunity to work with creators in MENA. For myself, Eyad Siyam and Hassan, we've spent the last 4 years working on building and breaking things quickly and publicly. Man there's been a lot of lessons. But it's super clear to us that the next phase of the creator economy here will not be built on campaigns. It will be built on infrastructure, rights management, IP development, and partnerships where creators sit at the table early. Not after the value is created. That is the work 8Flamez exists to do. Not for this year, but for the next decade. Thank you to the incredible organizers at BRIDGE, Waleed Laham (+his team) and everyone we met and were able to talk and learn from.
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Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكThanks for joining our Kings League session!Frontier sports x entertainment properties evolve faster so there will be opportunities we don’t yet realise. fan driven > board room huddles will drive fast change.Saad Sarwar شارك ذلكBridge Summit at ADNEC, Abu Dhabi, did exactly what it promised "It Bridged the Gap." From creators and gamers to brands, broadcasters, people, and platforms like TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Gerard Piqué Bernabéu, and Sony. The energy on the floor was all about collaboration and the future of media & entertainment. The Private Kings League x 8Flamez meetup was a perfect example of how sport, content, and community now live in the same space. Huge kudos to the organisers at Bridge for curating a summit that feels like conference, festival and playground all in one. 👏 Curious to see: 🔹 What new partnerships are born out of this? 🔹 How will creators and educators like me plug into this evolving ecosystem? Sharing a few snapshots and videos from my experience as a delegate. I would love to stay connected with everyone building what comes next. 🌉✨ #BridgeSummit #ADNEC #AbuDhabi #MediaAndEntertainment #Creators #FutureOfMedia
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكYou have to remember, I started 20VC as an 18-year-old in a bedroom in London. I had literally nothing and did not know anyone in tech. There are some days you dream about for a long time. Pressing publish on this episode today with Satya Nadella is one of those days. The man has taken Microsoft from a market cap of $300BN to $3.9TRN today. He is one of the greatest CEOs of our time Sitting down with him was one of the greatest honours of my career, and the 18-year-old in the bedroom starting 20VC would be very proud today. (Link to episode in comments)
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكAlex Hormozi on content volume: - His company has 35,000 pieces of content out right now - A $1M to $2M business posting once a day puts out 365 a year - He's doing about 100x that volume and getting about 100x the prospects - 1 in every 10 of his shorts does 2 to 3x his normal views, and he plans around that number Boring, but this is what organic growth at scale looks like. Run his math on an app. One brand account posting once a day gets you about 30 shots a month, and at 1 in 10 that's 3 outliers. And an outlier here means 2 or 3 times your normal views, which is a long way from viral. Most founders I talk to are sitting on one account and 30 shots a month, waiting for the viral one. Ten creators posting 5 to 7 times a week get you 200+ shots a month for around $5,000 in base pay, which at his hit rate is 20-odd outliers instead of 3. In his words, it's "far more linear than you would expect." How many shots did your app take last month?
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكNew GPT-6.1 Sol is insanely good for paid ads 🔥 Give it your product, audience and a few references. Sol studies what competitors are running, finds the hooks and angles behind those ads and builds 10 different directions around your product. Higgsfield AI turns them into UGC, image and video ads, and Sol launches the whole batch in your ad account. Once the results come in, you keep working in the same chat. Pick the concepts that are getting traction and ask for more versions: new hooks, another creator, a shorter opening, a different CTA or a version for another audience. Then launch the next batch and keep iterating from there. Creative testing on Meta is a numbers game. The faster you can test different ideas and build on the ones that work, the faster you find a winner. Try it through the Higgsfield AI plugin in ChatGPT.
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكTrying to sound sophisticated is often the fastest way to say absolutely nothing. If either the interviewer or the guest starts throwing jargon around, the conversation suffers. If both do it, the audience may need Merriam-Webster open in another tab just to follow along. The interviewer asks: “How are you leveraging AI-driven synergies to optimise operational efficiency at scale?” The guest responds with more transformation, innovation, ecosystems and value creation. & Everyone sounds important. Nobody has said anything. Instead ask: “What became faster, cheaper or better because of AI?” The first question invites a performance. The second invites evidence. And most importantly, the goal is not for the interviewer and guest to sound smart. It is for the audience to leave smarter. #ClearCommunication #Interviewing #CommunicationSkills #Journalism
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكAs some of you have already seen, the company I started 5 years ago has now become part of Tomorrow Group and joined SEED Studio AI Karta went from a vision of the future to working with some of the world’s biggest brands, artists and sports rights holders in months. To say I learnt more in these five years than I did in all previous ones feels like an understatement. Building this company, and helping shape and invent our new industry, has been deeply satisfying, extremely frustrating, and everything in between. Just like it should be. I would like to thank all the incredible people who contributed to the Karta journey in massive, medium and small ways, as well as all the clients and collaborators. An extra big thanks to my co-founder Tony Barnes 🔜 RDC and to Mihailo Mihailovic, and of course, Sebastian Gray. Thanks for believing in us and finding us a perfect home. So excited for Karta 2.0’s future! Over the last few months, I have been working with Karta and SEED’s MD, Cameron Gunn, to make the transition smooth. I have also, to be perfectly honest, taken quite a bit of time off. Something I did not do much over the last few years. Pretty sure my fellow founders can relate to that. In regard to my personal future, updates will come. But in the near future, I am planning to get back to this breakfast with my wife in the mountains near Kalamata in Greece. Full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/deiE-MeB
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Saad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكSaad Sarwar أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكEleven years ago I was introduced to Alexandra Zatarain about sponsoring a 20VC episode. She did not know but this payment was used to pay for some of my mother’s MS treatment. The partnership happened and a friendship blossomed between me, Alexandra and Matteo. I remember 10 years ago, everyone thought they were crazy. Italian CEO, not an engineer, doing hardware with a supply chain in China. Haha, good luck. How wrong they were. A multi-BN business today doing hundreds of millions in revenue. An insanely fun chat with my friend Matteo Franceschetti👇 1. How to Do Paid Marketing Really, Really Well Disciplined paid marketing means scaling one channel at a time, starting with Meta, while maintaining a strict cap on customer acquisition cost (CAC). Overspending destroys unit economics and eventually forces pullbacks that hurt year-over-year growth. Holding firm on CAC today creates the foundation for predictable, compounding growth tomorrow. 2. The Story Behind How Eight Sleep Partnered With Charles Leclerc The best partnerships come from authentic product adoption and long-term conviction. Eight Sleep tried to sponsor Charles Leclerc years before he reached F1. When they eventually met, Leclerc was already an unprompted Eight Sleep user, allowing a shared vision around AI and performance to turn into a partnership within days. 3. We Do $100 Million in Email Marketing With No Employees Operational constraints can force breakthrough automation. When Eight Sleep’s email lead left, co-founder Alexandra built AI bots in three days to manage the entire workflow. Today, the channel operates with zero dedicated employees while generating nearly $100 million in revenue. 4. What Seems Crazy but Will Be Very Commonplace in Five Years’ Time? Autonomous assets managed by personal AI agents could create entirely new forms of passive income. Within five years, an individual’s AI agent could buy an autonomous cybercab, manage its daily operations, and generate revenue with minimal human involvement. 5. Why Angel Investing as a Founder Has Taught Me So Much About Company Building Angel investing can become a powerful market intelligence engine for active founders. Reading investor updates from non-competing startups provides real-time insight into valuation shifts, hiring profiles, and acquisition channels that are working, all of which can directly inform operating decisions. 6. With AI, Every Company Will Turn Into a Holding Company With Multiple Products AI-powered internal tooling dramatically lowers the cost and friction of launching new ventures, allowing single-product startups to evolve into conglomerates. Like Chinese giants such as Xiaomi, AI-native companies could use shared internal infrastructure to launch and manage as many as ten distinct business lines under a single holding company. (links in comments)