#FoundersFridays: Meet Shadi Alhakimi

#FoundersFridays is an interview series about Amsterdam’s wellbeing economy: for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Each frontrunner answers questions on their entrepreneurial journey, learnings, milestones, and bottlenecks, as well as on Amsterdam’s and the Dutch impact and innovation ecosystem. It’s a platform for entrepreneurs to speak their minds freely and pass on their learnings to anyone considering founding an enterprise.

For this #FoundersFridays interview, we spoke with Shadi Alhakimi, the founder of Taaly. Taaly is an app that connects language learners with buddies for personalized and flexible language coaching. It also helps newcomers integrate into society and the labor market and supports businesses and organizations with customized solutions.

What is the best (career) advice you have ever received?

When people approach me and tell me they want to be an entrepreneur, I always ask them the same question. “Do you like solving problems?” Most of these people say yes. So, I nod and ask: “Would you like to work on just one problem for a long period?” Some people say yes. Good, I say, make sure it’s a problem close to your heart. That is what entrepreneurship is; it is trying to solve a problem for years and years and years. So that is my advice. Choose one problem close to your heart and solve it.

How did Taaly start?

This problem has always been at the back of my mind. For the past nine years, I have been in the Netherlands. People who come here and quickly speak the language have a happier life. They have a healthy social network, better job opportunities, and good health. People who come here and have trouble speaking the language have a far greater chance of depression, fewer job opportunities, and are, overall, less happy. Language plays a far bigger role than people, who don’t face this problem daily, realise. As I said, entrepreneurship is solving problems, or solving a problem. This is mine.

What inspired you to start working on the solution for this problem?

This problem was in the back of my mind for a long time, and then, at the end of the corona crisis, came a solution. I was having tea with some neighbours at the Buurtkamer in Sloterdijk, and the issue arose. And literally, everyone had something to say about it. How difficult Dutch is to learn, meet, and bond with Dutch natives. Someone mentioned the enormous waiting list for taalmaatjes - people who can help you informally learn the language. This conversation planted a seed. The minute I came home, I just started googling. Is this a problem that more people face? Or is it just my neighbours? There is little research, but there is an NGO that has some data, Stichting Het Begint met Taal. They did some research that showed that over 600,000 people were searching for language coaching. And I thought: that is a huge problem. How did nobody solve this before?

So where did you start?

So after some research, I started small. I was studying at the University of Amsterdam, so I had a lot of Dutch colleagues. And I knew a lot of people who wanted to learn the language. So, I started a WhatsApp group to bring those two groups together. The conversation was dead within three days. So now I could look at what went wrong. And a lot of it was logistics and miscommunication. People were afraid to ask for a meeting or just weren’t used to the Dutch directness. People cancelled easily. With this came a lot of frustration and miscommunication.

So, I started to take care of the logistics. Organising dates, reaffirming, double-checking, and setting up Zoom meetings. But next to my master's degree it almost became a full-time job, and there were only 15, 20 people. If you wanted to do this for 600,000 people, what kind of solution would you need? This is when the idea for an app came to the table. We needed something like WhatsApp, something that would easily take care of all the logistics. We wanted something that made it easy and fun to meet people and learn from each other.

Can you tell us something about the different phases Taaly went through?

My background is in IT, so I used to work in cyber security and build apps for a living in Yemen. We started with a setup of the app, to test it with a small group of people, just on one laptop. When this went well, we wanted to create a beta version, so we could test with a bigger audience. But we needed funding at this stage. Building an app costs a lot of time and money. I lived on social security at that point. I had a little over 1,500 euros in my bank account, and so did my business partner. We started with this. Just 3,000 euros to build an app.

So how did this search for funding go? Where did you start?

I think I went to every bank that would have a meeting with me. They all said no. ‘We don’t give money to refugees. And we don’t give money to people with social security.” And even worse, I couldn’t even have a business bank account because of my status as a refugee. So, I looked at venture capital. They all turned me down. “You’re too small”. So, I went to a couple of Angel Investors. They all said: “There is too much risk here.” One of them called me ‘a black box’. I asked him why. He said: “I just never invested in someone like you.” Often, they commented on my potential users. If you want to help refugees and migrants that’s fine, they said, but there is no money there. Expats have paid classes already; most companies provide this when they ask people to come and live here. I made a list of potential investors, and they all said no. So, after this, I was talking to a friend of mine, and she mentioned that her husband had some savings he sometimes invested in small companies. I had a meeting with him, and I pitched the idea. He is Spanish and moved to Amsterdam 20 years ago. And he immediately said: this is a problem, and it has been a problem for a while. I want to help. We got 20,000 euros and we started from there.

How did you proceed with Taaly after securing the initial funding?

We built a beta version with that money. And just by word of mouth, had 800 users in no time. To improve the app, we needed more funding. So, I decided to try something else and started writing grant proposals. But this is a whole different ballgame. My Dutch isn’t nearly anything good enough to write this kind of proposals. This is when I approached Ignite Award. During their training programme, we could improve the app, work on a realistic business plan, launch the beta version, expand our team, and start some new collaborations. We qualified for the Ignite Awards. Then we got through the semi-final. And then the final. We won. This was such a happy day. It just gave everyone who had been working so hard the space and energy to keep working on the product.

What is the first thing you did the day after?

We just started implementing the first thing from our business plan right away. Started up social research, and designed the app. Starting in January 2023, we started rebuilding the beta version. We redesigned, improved, and implemented, and in October we launched the first official version. In December, we had a couple of thousand users.

What has been a recent win moment for Taaly?

We just got extra funding from Stichting Doen, Oranje Fonds, and Rabo Foundation. Now we have the resources to build a professional social company, increase the team and I can finally pay myself a salary.

What has been a recent challenge?

We have a lot of users now, but we need a delicate balance between learners and tutors. It has been a challenge to find natives who want to invest time. We are now working on a marketing campaign to attract university students who would like to work on this app with us, as paid tutors.

What is Taaly’s goal for the coming months?

We have the goal to be 50% self-sustaining in three years, 100% in six years, and in ten years, we want to be able to support other initiatives. A big part of our community doesn’t have money to pay. So, we need to figure out how we are going to derive this kind of revenue.

What do you need in the future to make even more impact?

All the research shows that (informal) language coaching - meaning practice - works, whether it is a taalmaatje, volunteer work, or an app. We know that people learn the language faster and better this way. Yet, at this moment, municipalities don't have the budget to pay for these informal ways of learning a language. I’m now talking to the municipalities of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, and Utrecht to see if we can work together and offer people this informal language coaching with Taaly in addition to the official language lessons.

If you’re an Amsterdam-based founder working on an innovative solution that solves an urban or social challenge, and you’d like to share your story with our audience, email impact@amsterdam.nl