Interview with TapLane Inc. Co-Founder & Product Manager Alaa Shaheen

Show Notes

InshaAllah we will always try our best to share the sources for what is discussed during the episode. Please find the sources below.

• @ time: 00:00

  TapLane Inc.

  Sources:
  • Company Website

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  - INTRODUCTION - So I would say that's the next gold rush, apps within apps. This is the nice thing being in software development. Keep up with the latest technology and always watch it you will know the next gold rush. All we have to do as software developers is to keep up with the new technology whether it be virtual reality, machine learning, etc and you will find all kinds of ideas waiting for someone to take them and get rolling.

  Sources:
  • Alaa Shaheen - Audio Transcription

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  - PODCAST INTRO - Assalaamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh. Welcome to 'The Halal Hustle' where we talk about Halal Business, Halal Entrepreneurship, and share stories about Halal Hustlers who are striving towards their place with Allah in the Here-after, by taking the 'Means' in this Dunya.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 00:51

  - EPISODE OUTLINE - In shaa Allah, on this episode I'm going to be sharing with you an interview that I had with Alaa Shaheen one of the co-founders and the product manager of Taplane Inc., a software development company based out of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. In this interview he shares his story on how he got into software development at a very young age and how through the support of his family, Taplane Inc came into existence. He also talks about viral success and how you can continuously benefit from the invention of new platforms and the benefits of being in the tech space. This is an amazing interview and I'm 100% biased because this is so relevant to my hustle but in shaa Allah I think that it's relevant to your hustle too; and it'll benefit all of us. So without further ado bismillah here's the interview.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 01:45

  - INTERVIEW - Jamal: Assalaamu Alaykum! Welcome! It's a pleasure to have you here Alaa. Alaa: It's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for having me. Jamal: Alhamdulilah, it's great and I loved how you, know an opportunity to work with TapLane ended up becoming you sharing and learning more about what it is that you guys do. So let's get right into it. Bismillah, How did you get into software development yourself? Alaa: First off, it was a pleasure meeting you at TapLane and yeah I know we discussed a little bit but the way I got into software development... It kind of started at a young age. I was always into technology, into tech. I would say around the age of 14, around that time I started tinkering with robotics. It has nothing to do with software at this point. Jamal: mm-hmm Alaa: And, that was for a few months but then I decided to design my own robot but I could never build it and I realized because it would cost a few thousand dollars to just get the parts. So, at the time we figured out we needed a way to get the money. My dad has always been entrepreneurial and supportive and he'd always push us to explore new things. At the time yeah he suggested that we start a classifieds website. At that point there was no development no... anything like that but I was interested in web development... web design in particular, like HTML, CSS, the basics. That was around 13 years ago. 2006, around that time 2005-2006. Around that time we started. I started. It was just me and my dad, my brother would also like you know suggest ideas but mainly I was doing the coding. We built a classifieds website. it was just you know for local businesses to feature and to post ads for users and it wasn't really focused at the time. It was again like a new idea. Jamal: mmHmmm Alaa: We worked on that for a few years. During those years I improved my software development skills and by the time I was a junior... In my junior and senior year I participated in a web design competition. We were living in Michigan at the time and the competition was organized by the University of Michigan. Jamal: mmHmmm Alaa: At that time I participated two years ago and ended up winning first place. To re-cap the question. To go back to the question it started as web design and slowly as any web designer, they start implementing more features. Learning new languages like JavaScript and PHP. Adding more and then pretty much becoming comfortable with any language (programming) at that point. And that's how I got into software development. 04:43 Jamal: Maa shaa Allah. Barak Allahu feek. That's amazing, Alhamdulilah. So you, your brother, and your dad, you guys together started TapLane Inc. 04:53 Alaa: Yeah, Yes. 04:54 Jamal: How exactly did that come about or what made you decide to start TapLane Inc. 05:00 Jamal: So back from the first question... We were always working together. As I mentioned, we started with a classifieds website and in 2009 that's when things took a turn and we started developing apps At that time Facebook platform was still very new and there was a lot of hype surrounding it. There were many popular apps. You might be familiar with Farmville at the time. So many people would play those games, those apps and there was a lot of hype around it. 05:35 Jamal: mm-hmm 05:36 Alaa: My brother and I, we were used to play some of the games and we decided that you know we could crack one of the games; you know code a simple app. To do that, I did that and took me a few hours to do the first app and that app was basically a crack for another game. It basically you know allowed me to cheat and beat my friends on the leader board. Not too serious here but it was a fun exercise. The game was like a Scrabble game so you know you have to... you're given letters and you have to come up with as many ways that you can. So at the time I ended up pulling a dictionary and using it, put in a small app that you basically give it the letters and generates all the words that are in that dictionary. That worked! We are on the top of the leaderboard at the time because of it. 06:27 Jamal: Haahahaha Ma shaa Allah. 06:32 Alaa: Yeah, so it started like that and we saw kind of like nobody used it outside our family but we decided you know we could make us another simple idea. Like there were people would post stickers on their profile at the time and all those simple gadgets. So we said 'You know what we could just something for valentine or could be used to Valentine as a love meter.' Except, it was December at the time. We did that and we did it at the beginning of these December. It took me, that one took me to develop just two days. It was a very simple idea and so we launched it in early December and slowly, slowly, it continued to grow on Facebook. By the end of December there was around 600 users per day on that app. So it was the end of the new year and at that point we said you know what we should hike up the percentages. So we raised them all to about 90% and as for that one day and by next day we had around 4000 people using the app. Everybody was sharing around like crazy just because we boosted the numbers and from there it took a life of its own. It started growing... It went viral the app. So January 1st of 2010, the app had about four thousand (4000) users. January 2nd it had around fifteen thousand (15000) users and... So it kept multiplying, multiplying... By the end of the... I think by by the time it reached the second week of January we had around one hundred thousand (100000) users per day. 08:13 Jamal: Wow. 08:14 Alaa: And it continued that way and then obviously we were mind blown by the growth, by the potential, by all the different ideas we could do and that was just an idea that took us two days. So from there, that's essentially where we got established into the app business. That's when we saw the potential, the first of 2010... At the time we were still running under our previous name from the classifieds website but you know essentially we got established at that point. It was just, you know, a business run from home. I was the main developer, my brother and my dad would work together coming up with ideas. At the time it was really... Just sit for hours brainstorming different unique ideas things that can be built around social media and they would` come up with so many ideas and and we basically moved on to the next app. The next app took two weeks to develop. It was a little bit more feature-rich. Then the next app to a month. Then the next app took six weeks. We basically started building bigger and bigger apps and all that time the app... that 'love percentage' that we made was still, you know, steady or growing. So it was averaging, I think around... I think it was averaging one to two million unique monthly users. 09:34 Jamal: Wow. 09:35 Alaa: That love, that love meter app... And the next app we did on Facebook was called 'Rate My Friends' which did exactly that. You'd go into the app and basically you could rate your friends publicly or anonymously so it was a little bit... It was actually fun and people liked it. 09:55 Jamal: mmm-hmm. 09:56 Alaa: They would be given random friends that would rate them from one to five stars (1-5) and I could leave a comment but everybody obviously... your friends with them so you never leave anything bad. So it would get shared on their profile and you know it's just a way to praise one another essentially and people would go there and add it as an extra tab on their profile on Facebook. That says my ratings. Essentially it's our app. What their friends rated them and everybody was averaging four and a half to five stars so it was all good. So that was an idea. That was the second idea we did. It was... Although it was basic, it was original on the Facebook Platform. There was nobody else doing something similar and we took it from this. Where we got established it was mainly as building web apps on Facebook Social apps, and it was busy ever since. We've built... On Facebook alone like we've built I would say over two dozen medium-sized apps and over a hundred of small apps. And we expanded into gaming, we hired freelancers, and we worked with with a lot of designers from different freelancing websites. So as a company we did not open an office until 2011. 11:15 Jamal: mm-hmm. 11:16 Alaa: So what happened was when we started doing the app business we were still in Michigan at the time in 2010 in March that we we moved over to Canada. We moved over here. 11:30 Jamal: mmm-hmm. 11:31 Alaa: You know so we were still a little bit unsettled and it wasn't until 2011 that we decided to you know establish an office and start hiring programmers... And essentially we continueed doing what we were doing building Facebook apps and since then you know in 2013 we started going to mobile... We've seen obviously that there is a slowing growth on the other social on social media in general and the hype was moving toward mobile. And we started moving there. Some of our successful ideas that were on Facebook we re-developed them for mobile and that includes our big apps and games. The logo apps, the food quiz... All those were number ones and in several countries when we launched them. And... We continued doing that and expanded... We also expanded into doing more complex apps and games and doing apps for clients and that is what we are right now. 12:33 Jamal: Maa sha Allah. Barak Allahu feek. That's amazing and it is really inspiring for me when I'm looking at myself and saying, 'okay I want to, I want to kind of move in those types of directions inshallah'. 12:44 Alaa: I'm glad actually yeah I think it's almost every few years a new platform opens up and I know you are in software development as well and that's that that's the nice thing being in in this field is it's... Think of it this way every few years there's a new gold rush and being a software engineer you really don't, you only need your laptop to tap into it. You don't need... like you know you don't need investments or billions of dollars and you don't need hardware companies and all that to get it started. It's a virtual gold rush and for us Facebook platform was that... Then mobile came and that is to this day a gold rush. It's slowed down a lot because there's so much, it's been pretty much saturated now but every few years there's a new a new thing happening. Last year a new platform opened up which was the instant games being which is in facebook Messenger. So I would say that, that's the next gold rush - is apps within apps. This is the nice thing being in software development. Keep up with the latest technology and always watch it you will know the next gold rush. All we have to do as software developers is to keep up with the new technology whether it be virtual reality, machine learning, etc and you will find all kinds of ideas waiting for someone to take them and get rolling. 14:04 Jamal: Wow that's... That's a great way to look at it. I like, I didn't... It just clicked when you uh... When you said that right there. It was like wow that's so true. SubhanAllah. 14:16 Alaa: that's how everybody got, that's how all the big companies started some of them started with really simple games or really simple app ideas and or a Hobby project. Facebook itself was just uh... Almost like a hack project that started... It was started in Harvard and then look where it is now. So yeah... 14:37 Jamal: masha'Allah okay so what is it currently right now in 2019... what is it that your company primarily provides as a business. 14:47 Alaa: So we provide... I would say to two things. The first thing is software development as a service. We have it available and ready and we have the manpower, the resources to build any app idea, any game idea for you know medium to large size clients. So that... we do from time to time and while we're not working on that we work on our internal projects. Essentially building apps and games and other products and ideas that we come up with as a company as a team. So while we're not working on external projects work on internal ones like the apps and the games that we maintain to this day. The new ideas that were working on and as of right now we are working we were working on five new games for the facebook messenger platform which is a new platform that launched last year. 15:49 Jamal: mm-hmm. 15:50 Alaa: I encourage you as a software developer to a software developer to check it out. You may find some success in that and especially because it doesn't require so much to get started on and right now we're carrying over some of our apps and re-implementing them for messenger and we are looking to expand it to more platforms like 'WeChat' which is very popular in. The i/o game that we're building is I'm not sure if you're familiar with games like Agar.io and Slither.io which are basically somewhat like Fortnite where you have a hundred people in one arena and trying to compete where only one person dominates the leaderboard and you know the rest lose and so on. 16:37 Jamal: Ohhhh ok ok. 16:38 Alaa: Its for mobile with simple basic you know flat graphics, I would say. 16:43 Jamal: Alhamdulillah. Still that's really. So you, your brother, and your dad... You guys grew very organically. What were some of the challenges when you kind of got to the point where you said, 'Okay we need a start... We need to formalize this a bit... We need to establish ourselves as a business.' Or you know into having an office what were some of the challenges in getting started with that. 17:06 Alaa: so let's see... The earliest challenges we went through that was before we even had an office before we even were thinking about being in an office. The scaling up of our apps that we were building because like I said you know when we first launched our first app. It had up to six hundred (600) users a day. That was for about a month but since then like it's grew very rapidly and it went from essentially within a month it went from six hundred (600) users a day to one hundred thousand (100000) a day. Now... You might be familiar with this but if the handling the amount of load, the scaling of the amount of users was very painful for us because at that time we had a simple hosting plan. Think of like you know a simple web hosting plan that you pay $5 a month for and that was okay with up to a few hundred users... six hundred (600) users was a little bit of a stretch for it but imagine that going all of sudden to one hundred thousand (100000) users. So all of a sudden we are experiencing downtime, service disruptions and so it's hindering growth and it opened up a whole new arena that we're not familiar with because this is all it's like with like when you when you ask me okay I know how to build the app I know how to write a code for it employer and all that but when it comes to server hardware doing all the server setups I had never had to do that at that point up to that point because I always relied on a simple hosting plan that would do all the simple setup for us. So scaling and setting up an infrastructure was the biggest challenge the first year I would say... And that was all before we even got established in an office. So what we ended up doing... We couldn't establish an office with that with servers and data center and all that it was too costly and requires too much investment and experience and essentially it wouldn't be practical at the time so what we looked into is cloud computing. Cloud computing was still a thing then but now it's much bigger. Everybody has heard of the cloud now. 19:25 Jamal: mm-hmm 19:26 Alaa: But back then it was still somewhat new. So the ability to cloud computing at the time meant that you could deploy servers on demand kill those servers and deploy as services as many services as needed. So the problem there is we still had to know how to administer servers... server administration. We were not... at that time... the skills that we had were next to zero so there was a lot of learning a lot of staying up all night dealing with servers down, restarting servers and it ended up being very costly for us because we had to essentially go with... At the beginning we had to go with dedicated hosting companies that would do all that for us and the moment you get people who... You know they know that we need this and so they would charge us like crazy for servers to do this all the setup all the deployments and by the summertime like of 2010 we had one hundred... Sorry not a hundred... We had around a million users a day and using all of our apps and games on Facebook that was... that's a huge number having to be able to handle a million users 20:41 Jamal: mm-hmm. 20:42 Alaa: and by that time we were we were spending fifteen grand a month just on hosting. So obviously it was all worth it because ad revenue was making up for that and then but but we were spending a large portion of income on just the infrastructure. Bring that today we spend less than a thousand dollars on infrastructure and we can handle more than what we could back then. So it's because we know better now and we do it ourselves and we set up... we've gained a lot experience since then but that was a big challenge back then. Finding the service provider, getting older, being able to scale the infrastructure to handle that traffic and you know because without that we can't even... there's no point in brainstorming new ideas. Why even brainstorm any new ideas when you can't even you know handle the users for the current one. and that all happened within a few months so it was... that was a busy time... Some many sleepless nights I would say... sleepless weeks we've gone through and yeah and but by the time we were like you know... come 2011 we had so much knowledge and so much more skills and a lot more stability going on and yeah and we had learned so many lessons by then. 21:59 Jamal: Wow! Amazing! I'm kind of just like... this is a treasure trove when I'm listening to it because I'm just thinking for myself because... that's exactly... I don't have much experience. I know using the basic hosting services and I know that there's Amazon Web Services now or Microsoft Azure... like the different cloud offers but... I'm thinking for myself right, and for all the listeners In shaa Allah but I'm selfish... What would be a tip for anyone who wants to get into learning how to make any other project scalable or making sure that it's . 22:34 Alaa: To make it scalable... I would say follow the... In most cases... like you wanna follow common sense and always keep... like early on you don't want to put too much emphasis on scale. like this is the kind of problem that everybody would love to have so it's nice if you go through it yes. You would have some sleepless nights and figuring things out... That was making your app more efficient, making your code more efficient, your database more efficient and we had to go through that but the number one lesson is keep it in the back of your mind. Don't think about it too much because this is the kind of thing that I would say one in a hundred projects would have to would have to go through. Most projects don't scale like the idea is that what we went through was the viral growth and that only happens in cases of social media. Things like that. But normal... You can still build an app and grow slowly a little bit more step by step and you know it gives you more room for you to prepare, to scale. I would say keep thinking about scaling like design your app to be scalable because you could design the app... if you're just gonna put it together and then hack it and just make it really quickly... The chances are it's not scalable. So you want to think of scale and design around it early on but don't like some people fall into the bad habit of over complicating the situation or thinking too much about scale and ignoring the actual feature that you're providing. So as a priority, prioritize the app functionality, prioritize what the user will be seeing, prioritize the product as a whole from the users perspective but keep as you design and build it keep scalability at the back of your mind. Think of you know will this be able to handle... at least what if I have to handle a million users? Is it just a matter of making the server bigger, is it a matter of getting more boxes and if the answer is yes then good! but in some cases people have to rewrite the entire app just to go from ten thousand (10000) to one hundred thousand (100000), essentially that is going to be a roadblock for you. If a situation comes where all of sudden your experiencing sudden rapid growth then okay you're gonna cross ten thousand and after that you need months to rewrite the app so at that point you're kind of you're in a very tough situation where you're missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So... I would say essentially keeping up the bank's and try to design for it but don't over engineer it otherwise you just take away from the product feature. 25:21 Jamal: Alhamdulilah, that's amazing advice because I went from thinking I just need to get something good out to whoa what if mine scales like this... just within the conversation. 25:31 Alaa: haha... Keep it in the back of your mind. 25:35 Jamal: In shaa Allah, In shaa Allah. With that being said with continuing on with your growth what were some of the challenges going from you know just hiring freelancers and having it being you know your family to hiring technical staff. I mean I applied for a job with your company and interviewed. 25:53 Alaa: Yeah and I mean it was a pleasure meeting you too and I look forward to working with you hopefully sometime down the road. 25:55 Jamal: Alhamdulilah 26:00 Alaa: Now the biggest... At the time when we opened the office I was still twenty years old when we opened the office. I would say the biggest challenge was getting outside my comfort zone as an employer because now you have to get people and and manage their interest manage their responsibilities and you have to start to be a role model. Essentially although at the time I was I would say programming maybe sixteen hours of each day you're gonna be looking at different set of challenges. Yeah new programmers and new engineers should take away at least a few responsibilities but now you're somewhat outside your comfort zone. Although I was working really hard at the time but I was somewhat in my comfort zone. Yeah I don't have to deal with anybody outside my family and you know I don't have manage anyone else's responsibility so that was the biggest challenge it's really getting outside that comfort zone and embracing that you know it doesn't have to be just you and you can... Essentially that it's inevitable you know embracing that this is inevitable so you have to go on with it and do the best that you can and it actually gets much easier after because now I don't have to work outside my work hours and I can delegate tasks and we cooperate as a team and everything flows really well. Now that's the biggest challenge from my point of view being the one in charge of the technical side of things that develop the engineering side. From the hiring process really evaluating the skills making sure that... whether a person will be suitable or not but that wasn't easy and finding the right talent because especially when you're small that's when... It's critical that you get you get the most talented people you can find and at the same time it's the hardest because it's hard to convince somebody who is let's say very competent to join your team and then seeing that oh you're there only like a team of three so chances are I'm not gonna last long or they're not gonna last long. So hiring the first I would say three employees was the hardest and since that it becomes like easy and you could establish protocols, interview questions, procedures... All that obviously you have to do the first time but afterwards it comes like you know like a routine so I mean you kinda almost can spot Talent just by meeting with the person or sometimes just looking at their portfolio on GitHub, on their resume... that kind of thing. 28:45 Jamal: mm-hmm. 28:46 Alaa: Yeah I mean, generally these are the challenging and when it comes to hiring. 28:50 Jamal: Alhamdullah that's cool I know it helps you because you are the technical person that you can gauge someone's skill level pretty easily. 29:00 Alaa: Yeah, yeah but it is like I said it can be even there can be difficult for me at the time I was it was somewhat intimidating because most of the people I would interview some of them would be twice my age and let's say like Who am I to essentially like to evaluate their skills. At the same time, I know that the technologies that we're working with are all really really new and it's not easy for anybody to just jump into it... and a point I forgot to mention is we're actually looking for people who... but you can't just say I need a Facebook app developer at the time because nobody is. And very few people have heard of it. So it's not like oh I need a Java developer I need a PHP developer so no we have to find the kind of people who have like front-end development skills JavaScript, they know PHP but also hackers in nature somewhat because that's kind of essentially you don't need the people who have... who know the skills but the people who know how to learn, who are very efficient or very embracing of learning new things that is the kind of mentality like we look for early on and we did find it and we did a good job with hiring the first two employees but like I said that was the hardest thing for us. it's really finding people who would be capable of learning and in a timely manner because you can't tell them ok we got to learn this over the next few months... no like you know next week you're gonna be starting on your first real task and it was like that. 30:27 Jamal: Alhamdulilah. Okay so what is it that is next. you know we talked about the past, the current, what's the future looking like for TapLane In shaa Allah 30:35 Alaa: So the Future I hope inshallah is very bright. 30:40 Jamal: In shaa Allah 30:41 Alaa: Now we are building these apps and games. A lot of what we do is cutting-edge technologies. Like we use really new features, new technologies that sometimes are in beta or alpha and we design our own new features and tools. So... Another front like we're learning and we will continue doing that and building new apps and games. But what we truly want to do I would say down the road is like building the end in-house apps and games it's fun as a creative process but I recognize that it's only going to get tougher down the road especially the marketplaces being more saturated now meaning Google Play and the App Store there's over a million maybe two million apps on each so now it's nice it's less lucrative to just go and you know get creative and build new ideas. It's harder to come up with me ideas and it's harder to get exposure so what we recognized as the future for us is really building real products and that of real-world value. Like right now what we build has entertainment value and obviously we provide services to other companies when needed. I wouldn't say I want to... like that we want to continue doing the business side of things building apps and services for outside businesses but I don't want that to be our primary focus. My dad, and I, my brother... we recognize but this is kind of like the... I would say the traditional kind of business where things become routine and we want we still want to do that and grow in it but we want to do more creative things. Real products, real services and we have an idea for a product right now that we want to that kind of takes into account our web development experience, our mobile, front-end development experience as well as hardware or some hardware electronic development and and we have ideas building a real product that we would sell to small businesses and retailers and this product essentially revolves around the idea of taking the online reviews that we have on Google Play on Amazon like when you shop for an item or download an app you leave a five star review but taking that and bringing it into the physical world into retailers, into restaurants, allowing people to rate their service on the spot as they would for any online service and the goal of this service is to provide insights to the owners to give them insights about how people... insights and analytics about how the business is performing how is the customer service, how is the customer satisfaction going, are the metrics up? Are they down? That means there is room for improvement. Improve business practices accordingly and so on... And we think like this is a part that we're currently brainstorming. We've already done the prototypes. What we want to do, we want to actually build an actual electronic unit that people could... that businesses could mount in their business as a kiosk or something and allow people to leave their feedback, they're reviews, to provide them with surveys and they have all they have to do is pay a monthly fee... a small monthly fee for the service and they'll get all this information delivered to their phones to their... they can access it online and they could get notified when something is... For example for that given day their metrics have gone down so maybe it could be like the washroom being unclean or the place being unclean our service being less than expected. So this is one of the ideas and we have a lot more like that, actual real products that can be patented... and that will involve more research and development and this is just the tip of the iceberg. So there's a lot but I don't want to take more of your time. 34:47 Jamal: Alhamdulilah. No, again, this is a treasure trove. This is amazing alhamdulillah. That's really cool and yeah as you were talking about I could see the real world benefits and definitely one thing for myself is that... I've learned once I you know studied and got a bit more comfortable with my development skills, was okay I have the skills to solve problems but what are the problems that I'm going to solve was the question I had to ask myself. 35:11 Alaa: Absolutely. Yeah and it's like sometimes like stuff like you start out with simple problems and then the solutions become very intuitive and then you move on to bigger problems to break them down into more into smaller intuitive problems and the cycle keeps on going... And you know like I said. The more you do software development the more you can see the more potential you can see. The more easier you can spot new... I would say opportunities for growth... Recognize a new gold rush before it happens or... yes that definitely happens the more you develop the more you program the more you get better at it and from what we've seen because we've done software development as a developer I would say because I've done different kinds of platform it becomes easier to move on to other things. You can even think okay I recently picked up on robotics which I started with that very long time now was just a hobby on the side with Raspberry Pi. Stuff like that, you realize that Wow because I have this software development abilities I can build all kinds of things with just limited electronic skills and I did just that. I ended up building a small prototype robot that can not yet complete but can play chess. So it's being a developer you could take your skills and apply them in different aspects of the real world and that's a very useful thing. 36:49 Jamal: Ma shaa Allah barak Allahu feek that's amazing... that's amazing okay I don't want to take too much of your time thank you so much again. The last question that I have in shaa Allah is... we talked a lot about what is your you know Halal Hustle what is it that you're working on in your daily life to make a living and provide for you know yourself and your family. I want to ask about your hidden Halal Hustle what is it that you're currently working on improving with regards to your Deen (religion - Islam) that someone may or may not be able to notice. 37:20 Alaa: Yeah I mean I think like this is obviously the most important question with respect to Halal Hustle... So what I continuously work on is trying to break or kick away all the bad habits and we've all got some bad habits one way or another that could be something Deen related obviously it can be or can be like you know it's just in real life like maybe you want to make sure that you're always on time, you're always productive, you're less distracted, you're essentially getting your daily... In my case for the Deen... I would say is keeping up with my prayer. That's one thing because I've been doing that for a few months now because I think I've been kind of been logging my daily progress. I would say for a few months now but like making sure I don't miss any prayer and praying on time that's the big thing for me and another big challenge for me is... because but right now I have two kids a boy and a girl. They are two years and one years old. They're still very young but almost like every few days like what my wife and I... We ask ourselves and I know me if we are doing the best we can raising them and this is a question people being like us being Muslim and in Canada generally you have to ask yourself that more... Because there's all kinds of possibilities how they could grow up to be and we want them to be righteous Muslims, productive, successful as well in their life and in the afterlife. So we kind of... this is kind of one of the big challenges. Just making sure like we're always kind of assessing our... I would say performance and then you know like in my head for example myself... okay I can't imagine where I want them to be in 20 years. In 20 years what do I want them to be like and I kind of asked myself... are we on the right track to that and sometimes you feel like okay maybe you're setting a bad example or you want to keep away any bad influences so so this is kind of like a continuous struggle. We're kind of... this is the kind of thing we're doing like every day just to... I realize that this is the kind of thing that any responsible parent would be doing but you know it's also ties in very well with Muslims and the Deen and all that. You have to be extra careful make sure that they don't get... I mean I would say like kids, you don't want them to go around any bad influence or be given any wrong ideas... or you know you don't want them to learn to steal, learn to do anything like that. We actually try to recognize any behavior like that and address it. I would say half the time we're successful, half the time we fail but it is what it is. 40:18 Jamal: Ma shaa Allah. 40:19 Alaa: Yeah, another thing, one last thing I know I may be taking some more time than I should. 40:23 Jamal: Not at all, not at all go ahead. 40:25 Alaa: I want to.. like this is kinda one of things I'm working on, I've been working on it for a while. I am trying to memorize all the short Surahs (chapters in the Qur'an) in Juz'amma (30th and last part of the Qur'an). Just... I haven't had that... like I need more dedication to get through to get through it but originally yeah I set a goal for myself to memorize that in 2018 so memorize all the you know the short surahs in Juz'amma but I only went through half of them last year. So hopefully this year I'll go through the rest of them and have maybe the entire Juz memorized... But yeah, I have to be more focused, more dedicated to get through it. 41:03 Jamal: In sha Allah. May Allah make you successful and reward you for your efforts. Aameen. That's amazing ma shaa' Allah. barak Allahu feek. That's awesome and again you know with Taplane and all of your efforts may Allah preserve and increase you guys. It's been amazing and Jazak Allah khair. Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate it. 41:24 Alaa: Thank you very much actually and I'm actually very thankful and for your praise and for all the... for having me also... its al pleasure talking to you and yeah I wish you all the best with The Halal Hustle and hopefully we will have another discussion down the road and we'll get to work together as well. 41:50 Jamal: In shaa Allah. Until then... Alaa, thank you again. Assalaamu Alaykum. 41:55 Alaa: Wa alaykum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription
  • Alaa Shaheen - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 41:59

  - CLOSING REMARKS - So there you have it an interview with Alaa Shaheen, one of the co-founders and product manager of Taplane Inc. This is an amazing interview alhamdulilah and I'm really thankful to have the opportunity. I learned so much from him and luckily for me you know alhamdulilah I get the opportunity to have him as a mentor figure and to you know ask him and talk to him more. alhamdulilah. With that being said if any of you are interested in learning how to program... you can it's really easy and if you understand 1 + 1 and 2 + 2 and you were half decent at math and algebra you could figure this out - although programming seems complicated it's more so just breaking down a really complicated problem into simple understandable and approachable steps. that's all there is to it there's no magic secret there's no secret sauce it's just having patience and being willing to try to break stuff down. Anyone can do it. With that being said for more information and for all the details about the episode and Taplane Inc. and Alaa Shaheen you could check out the show notes at TheHalalHustle.com. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram using our handles at underscore the Halal hustle and if you have any questions concerns don't be afraid to hit us up or if you want to share your story too - we're more than willing to listen and we'd love to learn. So with that being said until next time Jazak Allah khair. Assalaamu Alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

Please note that that all information related to Islam in this podcast is intended to be without a position. Although we strive to provide factual information (from the Qur'an and Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ‬) that is taken from an authentic source, we are not scholars nor students of knowledge. Therefore, please understand that our mistakes are not intentional. We are not a valid source for finality regarding any matters pertaining to Islam.