The Godfather of MENA E-Commerce

In this edition of Founder’s Hustle, we sat down with Ronaldo Mouchawar, a pioneer of the Arab internet and a defining force behind the region’s digital and e-commerce evolution. Born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, Ronaldo helped build the region’s early internet infrastructure. From joining the early team behind Maktoob, the region’s first Arabic email platform, to building Souq.com into the Middle East’s largest e-commerce marketplace and leading it through its acquisition by Amazon, his journey traces the foundations of how the region learned to communicate, transact, and scale online.

From the US Back to MENA

Ronaldo began his career in the United States, working on cutting-edge projects in image processing, digital video, and early web technologies. Professionally, the path was promising, but something was missing. “Entrepreneurship was always part of our family culture,” he says. “There was this constant drive to build something of our own.”

That instinct became impossible to ignore. After five years in the US, Ronaldo decided to return to the region for personal reasons, bringing with him valuable exposure to how technology could reshape entire industries. “I could clearly see the potential, efficiency, and scale a network could create,” he reflects.

Back in a region where internet adoption was still in its infancy, Ronaldo and some peers started building websites for local companies, dialing into AOL to upload content. They even launched an email-to-fax service in Jordan, allowing users to send faxes directly from their inbox. Those early projects marked the beginning of a much larger entrepreneurial journey.

The Road to E-Commerce

In 2000, Samih Toukan had a vision: to create an email service entirely in Arabic, empowering users in a region where operating systems offered minimal support for the language. Ronaldo joined the effort, contributing to what would become Maktoob, the first Arabic-focused email platform. Embassies, journalists, and users around the world relied on it to communicate in their mother tongue. Over time, Maktoob evolved into one of the region’s most influential internet portals, combining email, forums, and user-generated content, helping bring millions of Arabic users online.

At Maktoob, the team was experimenting with ways to monetize a growing platform. Traditional advertising in the region was dominated by TV and radio, so Maktoob tested e-commerce initiatives like Mazad Maktoob and Shop at Maktoob, taking commissions on transactions. They also launched Cashew, a prepaid card usable on Skype and Facebook, a precursor to today’s digital payments.

By 2006, Ronaldo recognized that general-purpose portals weren’t enough for serious e-commerce. To build trust with merchants, brands, and customers, Maktoob needed a dedicated e-commerce platform. This insight sparked the spin-off that would become Souq.com.

Navigating the Maktoob Exit

The Yahoo! acquisition of Maktoob was a defining moment, but just as important was what the deal didn’t include. “We had offers that bundled Souq into the acquisition,” says Ronaldo. “But we chose Yahoo! specifically because they were acquiring the Maktoob portal without including Souq.”

At the time, the regional ecosystem was still immature, and global e-commerce players hadn’t yet turned their attention to MENA. But for Ronaldo and the team, that was precisely the opportunity. “We felt we had time,” he explains, “and I was deeply convinced about Souq’s potential.”

Keeping Souq independent proved critical. The Maktoob exit gave the team both the financial breathing room and the experiential advantage to build properly. Moreover, the exit taught them how to structure companies, think about governance, and avoid mistakes they had already lived through.

Building Souq on Maktoob’s Lessons

With Souq, Ronaldo wasn’t starting from zero, he was building with hard-earned lessons already in hand. “Maktoob taught me how to build services at scale,” says Ronaldo. Working with a lean engineering team forced him to think deeply about system architecture, reliability, and failure. Those lessons became foundational as Souq began handling real transactions, not just traffic.

Equally important was simplicity. Maktoob had made it clear: friction kills adoption. “At Souq, we were obsessive about removing complexity,” he explains. “What took seven pages on other platforms, we reduced to one.” That focus on intuitive user flows directly translated into higher conversion rates and faster growth.

Beyond product and tech, Maktoob served as a crash course in entrepreneurship itself. Ronaldo gained exposure to processes that were still rare in the region. Mentors like Samih, Hussam Khoury and Fadi Ghandour played a critical role, guiding him through B2C scaling, and investor relationships.

Solving the Chicken-and-Egg Problem

One of Souq’s earliest challenges was distribution. Big brands weren’t ready, mall culture was booming, and e-commerce was widely dismissed. Partnerships with players like Samsung or Apple were simply out of reach. “We were very small,” Ronaldo recalls. “E-commerce didn’t exist yet.”

That reality forced a clear strategic choice: start where value was immediately tangible. Instead of chasing brands, Souq focused on individual sellers. For a seller in Deira trying to move 10 phones a day, listing products on Souq and getting access to buyers in Abu Dhabi or Ras al-Khaimah created real, incremental revenue by turning local trade into a regional market.

This approach solved the marketplace chicken-and-egg problem from the supply side first. Ronaldo calls it “core building.” “Every network needs a core user base,” he explains. “Facebook started with Harvard students. Once you have that core, expansion becomes easier.” For Souq, small sellers were that core base. Starting with large brands would have produced the opposite effect: low volume, weak engagement, and no natural flywheel.

With supply-side liquidity in place, the focus shifted to demand and engagement. The early years weren’t about scale, but about learning the fundamentals of commerce. Lacking modern acquisition channels, Souq leaned into auctions to create urgency, repeat visits, and price discovery. SMS alerts reinforced the loop, pulling users back and increasing marketplace activity.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), however, was never the end goal. Data made the long-term direction clear. “B2C is 90% of e-commerce,” Ronaldo says. The strategy was to graduate the seller base, from individuals to small shops, then distributors, and eventually established brands. That progression became Souq’s moat. Competitors that tried to launch as an “online mall from day one” struggled to gain traction.

As volumes grew, focus became essential. In 2010, Souq shut down entire verticals, including cars and real estate, despite generating revenue. Ronaldo describes it as “escaping the local maxima”: stepping off a smaller hill to pursue a much larger mountain.

Building Infrastructure and Tools In-House: Logistics and Payments

As Souq scaled, it became clear that outsourced infrastructure couldn’t keep pace with e-commerce in the region. Souq was moving physical goods, with growth accelerating from tens to hundreds of millions in sales. [RH1] 

Logistics was the first bottleneck. Addresses were unreliable, delivery was slow, and costs were high. During peak events like White Friday, the limits were exposed: “We’d sell hundreds of millions in a single day, then spend weeks delivering.” Souq responded by building logistics in-house, creating a customer address database, and leveraging mobile technology to manage fulfillment more efficiently. This gave the team control over speed, reliability, and scale, and made high-volume e-commerce possible in a market lacking infrastructure.

Payments revealed another gap. Banks were conservative and mobile-unfriendly, leaving cash-on-delivery as the default solution. “The experience was broken,” says Ronaldo. Souq solved this by building PayFort, a mobile-first payment system that began internally but quickly served external merchants, airlines, and competitors. By separating payments from delivery, Souq removed friction, enabled safer transactions, and unlocked the next phase of growth.

The Souq Exit

Souq’s eventual exit was the outcome of years of deliberate preparation. Ronaldo credits a long sequence of institutional interactions for shaping how the company was built and governed. “We raised from Naspers, then Tiger Global, and later Standard Chartered and the IFC; those investors forced discipline.” Together, they pushed Souq to operate at a level of rigor rarely seen in the region at the time. “Our data rooms were always ready.  We invested heavily in compliance so that we wouldn’t get questioned on how the business was run.” That mindset mattered when acquisition conversations began. “If you’re scrambling to prepare during negotiations, it shows you don’t fully understand your own business.”

As the company scaled, pressure also came from within the investor base. Some funds were reaching the later stages of their life cycles and began exploring liquidity options. They evaluated regional paths, local family offices, and sovereign-linked funds, but when Souq met Amazon, the alignment was immediate.

“From the first meeting, we were aligned on the same challenges,” Ronaldo recalls. “Address systems, last-mile delivery, payments, installment plans, how to serve both banked and unbanked customers.” Souq wasn’t a marketing-driven business. Its spending was modest. What stood out was execution. “We were builders,” he says. “Focused on solving real problems in emerging regions.” That focus gave Amazon confidence, not just in Souq’s scale, but in how it was built. Strong governance, deep operational knowledge, and a proven ability to solve infrastructure gaps.

Building Souq vs. Integrating with Amazon

For Ronaldo, one of the most challenging phases came after the acquisition. “Building Souq was a journey,” he explains. “We’d done technical migrations before, balancing business growth with reducing tech debt, but integrating with Amazon was a whole different level.”

The process introduced new complexity. Amazon operates as a tightly linked system, and most of its acquisitions are technology or enablement companies, not full-scale marketplaces. Souq underwent a hard cutover, temporarily losing app users, traffic, and sellers, to align with Amazon’s global operational and compliance standards. Machine learning and data-driven operations sat at the core of Amazon’s model, but migrating Souq disrupted existing data streams and slowed progress, with language adding another layer of friction.

The transition was both technical and personal. “As a founder, you have to reassure yourself, your team, and your customers that this is the right path,” says Ronaldo. Conviction and leadership were essential. Looking back, Ronaldo sees the integration as a blueprint for the region. It enabled growth, talent development, and world-class technology in the Middle East.

AI, Agentic Systems, and the Next Operating Model

For Ronaldo, AI represents the next major shift in how e-commerce businesses will be built, similar in magnitude to what mobile and logistics unlocked for marketplaces in the 2010s. “In the past, customers searched, compared, and clicked,” he explains. “Now the agent acts as the customer.” AI-driven assistants will increasingly evaluate options, compare trade-offs like price and delivery speed, and even complete purchases autonomously.

That shift forces e-commerce companies to rethink their foundations. If an AI agent is choosing what to buy, visibility won’t be won through branding alone, it will be won through reliability: accurate delivery promises, predictable fulfillment, transparent pricing, and consistent product quality. “The system needs to be built for precision,” Ronaldo says, “because the margin for error becomes much smaller.”

In his view, the winners won’t be the companies that simply “add AI” as a feature. They’ll be the ones that redesign their operating model around it—using AI to optimize inventory placement, forecast demand, reduce delivery failures, and automate decision-making across supply chain and customer operations. The same execution mindset that defined Souq’s early growth, solving real infrastructure gaps with discipline, will matter even more in an AI-driven commerce world.

Lessons Learned and Advice for Founders

Ronaldo emphasizes that building a company is as much a personal journey as a strategic one. At the core, he says, is resilience. “What ultimately makes or breaks your ability to scale is determination. You have to be stubborn and resilient; there’s no other way through the challenges.”

He also speaks candidly about the loneliness of the founder path. “A lot sits on your shoulders. Early on, I didn’t have co-founders to challenge ideas with. We had mentors, but no one in the trenches.” Over time, he learned to close those gaps by building a complementary leadership team across different functions.

Being misunderstood, he believes, is part of the game. “Most people won’t see it at first. When I left the family business to build e-commerce, everyone thought it was a hobby. That’s fine, if you’re not misunderstood early, you’re probably not doing something new.”

Above all, Ronaldo stresses persistence. “You walk into meetings knowing the answer will be no, 90% of the time. You still go. You repeat, you iterate, and eventually, you find a way forward.”