Tell us about yourself and your background.
For most of my career, the core of my work has been product: understanding problems deeply and turning them into software or services people actually use. I started on the data and content side, but really grew up as a Product Manager and then Head of Product, working across real estate, blockchain, sustainability, and enterprise startups over the last decade.
Along the way, I have also partnered with venture studios to take ideas from 0 to 1, which meant working directly with founders to shape and ship new products. Entrepreneurship always felt like the natural endpoint, but a big part of the journey has been the joy of helping other founders bring their own ideas to life.
How did you get started in entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship, for me, was a natural extension of product work rather than a hard left turn. As a Head of Product you already live in the space between customer pain, commercial reality, and technical constraints, and you are constantly making calls on what to build, why it matters, and what can wait.
After doing that across a few different industries and with different founding teams, it became obvious that the next step was to start building for problems I felt very close to, with the freedom to own the whole bet end‑to‑end.
You have recently launched your own venture, PerceptionX, tell us more.
PerceptionX is where the Head of Product background really shows. It is an employer reputation intelligence platform for HR, TA, and employer brand teams who are tired of guessing how they are perceived and want to work with real signals instead. PerceptionX shows ambitious employers how they appear across the ecosystem that shapes talent decisions today, including AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI, review sites, career pages, and other public sources, and turns that into clear visibility and perception metrics.
In short, PerceptionX is “reputation that recruits for you”. It gives teams unbiased insight and sharp recommendations so they can attract better fit talent, not just more applicants.
What led you to founding PerceptionX?
When I first got into this space, the plan was to stay a product guy and keep bouncing across industries, not to build an employer reputation startup. I worked on everything from supply chain and blockchain to sustainability and venture‑backed ideas, and over time I got clearer on what a good product looked like and which problems I cared about enough to bet on.
PerceptionX grew out of years building employer brand analytics products and seeing the gap between how companies thought they were perceived and what the data actually showed.
What is PerceptionX’s mission?
The mission of PerceptionX is to make employer reputation measurable, comparable, and impossible to ignore in hiring decisions. If candidates are already forming opinions about you across AI tools, review sites, and your own assets, leaders should be able to see that picture clearly and understand how it is shaping talent quality.
What makes PerceptionX unique to the market?
PerceptionX is unique because it applies the “AI perception” problem to candidates, not customers. While most builders are focused on how AI describes products and brands to potential buyers, very few are asking how those same systems describe employers to potential employees. There are billions going into tools that optimise how companies show up in AI for consumers, but almost no equivalent attention on how they show up for talent, even though hiring is often the thing that slows growth down.
Is PerceptionX focused only on the MENA market, or do you have a global scope?
Absolutely not. We are headquartered and incorporated in the UAE, but the focus is global. One of the big mindset shifts happening with founders here is realising we do not have to limit ourselves to our own backyard. The UAE is set up for people who want to build genuinely global businesses.
PerceptionX is designed to work wherever candidates are asking AI about employers, whether that is Dubai, London, Toronto, or Singapore. We have already worked with large, global employers, including Fortune‑level companies with people spread across multiple regions and time zones.
How does the process work for employers?
Most employers start with an audit. PerceptionX runs structured, knowledge‑based prompts across major AI models and combines those outputs with key public sources, including review sites, career pages, news, and social, to map how you currently show up to candidates. Because we typically work with large enterprises, we go deep into every major market they hire in, key job families, and the themes that matter most to their target talent.
The result is a clear view of which platforms and signals AI is leaning on to form its picture of you as an employer, and how that differs by market or audience. After that, it becomes an ongoing rhythm. We monitor your reputation on a monthly and quarterly basis so you can see how perception is moving, where new risks or opportunities are showing up, and whether your actions are actually changing what AI says about you.
What are your top tips for companies looking to hire?
I’m not a recruiter by trade, but I stare at this data all day, so a few things are clear.
- Know exactly who you want. Get painfully specific about the type of candidate you’re trying to attract, then go and see what they actually see about you online and in AI tools when they research you.
- Check if your story matches their priorities. If the things they care about, like career growth, pay, flexibility, and inclusion, are missing, vague, or conflicting across channels, you are losing the best people before they ever show up in your ATS.
- Fix perception with the same energy you fix pipeline. Treat employer reputation like a product: measure it, decide what to improve first, then track how changes in content, career site, and candidate experience actually affect the quality of applicants coming through.
What do you see as the future of recruitment in the UAE?
The UAE is entering a phase where it is not just a great place to live and work, but one of the hottest places in the world to build companies, and recruitment has to catch up with that reality. Dubai in particular is now a serious startup ecosystem on the global map, ranking among the top ecosystems for founders and early‑stage funding, which means candidates are no longer just comparing you to the company next door, but to the best employers and startups globally.
At the same time, the talent the UAE wants to attract is digitally native and AI native. They research employers through global platforms, social proof, and increasingly through tools like ChatGPT before they ever talk to a recruiter. The future of recruitment here belongs to employers who act like they are in a top tier global ecosystem, who are clear on who they are for, intentional about how they show up across digital and AI driven channels, and ready to compete on reputation, experience, and growth, not just salary and job titles.
What is your vision for PerceptionX over the next 5 years?
Over the next five years, the vision is for PerceptionX to become the default layer leaders use to understand and manage employer reputation in the AI era. That means deeper industry‑specific benchmarks, richer integration with the HR and TA tools companies already use, and more predictive insight into how today’s perception will affect tomorrow’s hiring outcomes.
Where can readers connect with you & find out more?
Readers can explore PerceptionX, the Visibility Index we just launched for large enterprises, and our latest research on AI and employer reputation at perceptionx.ai. The blog is where new rankings, trends, and practical guides on AI‑driven employer branding live.
For anyone who wants to continue the conversation, LinkedIn is the best place to reach me.
