
Dubai Billionaire's Tech Startup Takes on Amazon - jkuria
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dubai-billionaires-tech-startup-takes-on-amazon-1514480803
======
bob_theslob646
Who would want to work for someone like this? If I can get my work done
efficiently, why do I have to stay at the office?

This billionaire should read deep work, maybe he would attract more talent.

>“I want people who sleep in the office,” says Mr. Alabbar, the founder of the
now three-month-old startup. “Want to go walk your dog in the afternoon and
all that? I’m not the guy you work for.”

~~~
a012
Sounds like a modern day of slavery.

~~~
jswizzy
They actually have real slavery in Dubai and I'm guessing because this guy is
in real estate that he is probably involved in that.

~~~
throwaway31321
Amusing, considering that his employees are likely to have also been sourced
from India.

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avh02
I'm not comfortable with a company like noon being called a startup. They're
not really cash strapped (billion dollars went right in), granted building a
logistics company isn't cheap but it's not like they went through phases of
operation and testing the market/product, they just launched straight in like
a regular business.

On another note, their glassdoor reviews are outright scary. Granted there are
only 7 reviews but it sounds like typical dubai: throw money acquiring the
best (in this case talent) then screw up the execution.

~~~
orf
[https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/noon-
Reviews-E1669856.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/noon-
Reviews-E1669856.htm) if anyone is interested.

~~~
felipelemos
This worse than what I expected

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realbrucewayne
[https://archive.is/sPiBx](https://archive.is/sPiBx)

~~~
tylerruby
You're a great man

~~~
bradbatt
Redirect through FB gets you past the paywall. Put the following in a
bookmarklet and click it when on a WSJ page.

javascript:window.location="[https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window...](https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent\(window.location.href\);)

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jeandejean
What a motivating call for talent! I'm applying right away, I love being a
slave to my employer.

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bryanlarsen
Thought exercise. You're on the Fortune 500. Your goal is to be on the top of
that list. So you decide you want to spend $1B to build a single venture to
create something with stereo typical VC return expectations: >100x.

IOW, you're looking at potential trillion dollar markets. Not too many of
those! Taking on Amazon may be one of the most accessible, IMO. Start by
dominating a region that Amazon has trouble in, like the Arab world.

But like any startup execution and team is more valuable than idea...

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baybal2
I'm sceptical, to begin with, they need to overtake Alibaba and co. who are
the real elephants in the room there.

My father ran a construction materials wholesale business in Russia's East for
like 20 years. Naturally, he does a lot of imports from China and he had an
Alibaba outlet. Despite fact that it was written black on white in bold font
that the product is warehoused in Russia and is imported from China, he was
receiving regular orders from companies in the gulf countries who were saying
something like "we care not where it is warehoused, just get it there for n
amount of money by that date". Companies in the gulf shop stuff on Alibaba as
if they buy cookies in a corner store, and they don't care much about money
(you can understand now why and how Alibaba charges companies up to $1m and
more for front page placement and first positions in search)

For anybody who ran an Aliexpress store, it is know that the only people who
can order DHL delivery for <$1 items are guys from Saudi Arabia or UAE

It will be super tough for any newcomer to break the habit even if the talk is
about B2C market.

Moreover => halfpastnoon's post below.

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brad0
This guy sounds like he has more dollars than sense.

He’s made many foolish investments as stated in the archive link another user
mentioned.

But what can I judge. He’s rich I’m not.

~~~
kabes
"This guy sounds like he has more dollars than sense."

Well, that's Dubai for you.

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Yabood
Aside from the ambitious goal itself, the Arabic version of the website is
executed well [https://www.noon.com/ar-sa](https://www.noon.com/ar-sa) which
is somewhat rare. I couldn't read the whole article due to the paywall, but I
don't think Noon is trying to compete with amazon.com directly. I think
they're trying to compete with Souq[1], which was recently acquired by Amazon
in an effort to enter the Middle East market.

1) [https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/03/amazon-souq-com-
completed/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/03/amazon-souq-com-completed/)

~~~
koevet
The site is very fast and it offers a smooth experience.

A key missing aspect are product reviews and the shipping time is not great (5
days for a book)

~~~
baybal2
Of course, because the must have microscopic inventories, and they order stuff
on short notice from wholesalers in China.

This is and old old trick

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halfpastnoon
ex-employee here. throwaway for obvious reasons.

This isn't a three month old startup. People literally were sleeping under
their desks. Wretched company. Multiple people burned out and one suicide
attempt. Hired some of the best and brightest from all around the the globe.
Used them. Burned them. Banned people from working in the UAE ever again. Zero
transparency between investors and management. Zero transparency between
management and product. Zero transparency between product and engineering.
Missed three launch deadlines successively with Alabbar committing to hard
dates for launch in the press. Alabbar looked like an idiot one too many times
in the press and fired everyone including the CEO. Threw away all intellectual
property. Purchased competitor JadoPado with zero due diligence. Intent was to
repaint JadoPado with noon paint. Founder of JadoPado joined as CTO, left
seven days later. Threw away JadoPado code base and created everything from
scratch. Minimal lovable product was ready to launch nine months ago but
didn't sign up enough suppliers or SKUs to actually launch.

[https://www.reddit.com/user/halfpastnoon](https://www.reddit.com/user/halfpastnoon)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6813vw/nooncom_is_no...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6813vw/nooncom_is_now_ceoless/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6c23nb/noon_closing_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6c23nb/noon_closing_operations_in_cfc/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6elfio/nooncom_reshi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6elfio/nooncom_reshift_again_with_no_more_omar_kassim/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/69vjgt/can_confirm_j...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/69vjgt/can_confirm_jadopado_is_being_reskinned_to_nooncom/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6fsmkb/exnoon_ama/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dubai/comments/6fsmkb/exnoon_ama/)

[https://omarkassim.com/whats-hiding-behind-noons-
beta/](https://omarkassim.com/whats-hiding-behind-noons-beta/)

[https://blog.esanjo.com/the-jadopado-experiment-is-at-an-
end...](https://blog.esanjo.com/the-jadopado-experiment-is-at-an-
end-1afd427de16e)

[https://www.arabianbusiness.com/alabbar-s-noon-com-set-
launc...](https://www.arabianbusiness.com/alabbar-s-noon-com-set-launch-
within-weeks--668197.html)

~~~
omarkassim
3 weeks, but who's counting.

Also, the codebase wasn't thrown out. Some bits definitely were (we had a fair
amount of legacy given 7 years), but large parts of the same team (e.g. SVP of
Product, VP of Engineering) that built our product by and large designed and
built the product that noon launched with.

~~~
jkuria
Hi Omar, how can we reach Mr. Alabbar. I briefly reviewed your site and
believe we can help you with Conversion Rate Optimization. Here's what we do:
[http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/wp-
content/conversion_wizar...](http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/wp-
content/conversion_wizards_info_v2.pdf)

What is your email?

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Pyxl101
Non-paywall link:

[https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/dubai-billionaires-tech-
sta...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/dubai-billionaires-tech-startup-
takes-on-amazon-1514480803)

Change link from wsj.com to fullwsj.com to bypass. Uses Facebook redirect.

~~~
tchen
only works for me sometimes. facebook redirect is a good hack!

[https://outline.com/AEnNh6](https://outline.com/AEnNh6)

~~~
downandout
Totally off topic, but I am genuinely curious what copyright law says with
regard to these archive-type services, especially ones that alter the content,
in this case by removing “clutter”. Awesome service IMO, I’d consider running
one myself but don’t want to be sued.

Edit: I just read their DMCA section. It appears that they are saying “don’t
submit content you don’t own” but then on their home page describe it as a
service to remove ads (and other nuisances) from articles. In other words,
they are trying to hide behind the DMCA while encouraging people to submit
content that isn’t theirs. Again, I love the service but I fear for their
legal standing should WSJ or others decide to pounce.

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vadimberman
Real-estate tycoon, Dubai, 3-months-old startup, take on Amazon.

I get that he is a billionaire, but IMO this is not newsworthy.

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MollyR
Good luck. Taking on amazon is basically taking on an arm of the USA directly
now.

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TechiTimes
That's really helpful.

