An adapted version of this newsletter first appeared on Inc.com
Values and purpose should come first. Then financial success will follow naturally. That is the lesson offered by Mona Ataya, founder and CEO of Mumzworld, the first and largest online baby store in the Middle East.
Ataya’s purpose can be encapsulated in two words: empower women. In an interview with me for my podcast, Ataya described the many ways that her clear sense of purpose has guided her decision-making and helped her business grow exponentially over the past 10 years. At this point, “We’re an indispensable online extension of a mother’s life,” she said – one that includes elements of both commerce and community.
Here are some highlights from Ataya’s entrepreneurial journey:
She was motivated by her own personal struggles to find products that met her needs. A decade ago, as a mother of three young children, Ataya was dismayed by the lack of consumer choices available to her online, and quickly realized that she was not alone. With previous corporate and startup experience to guide her, she was galvanized into action. “On one side I’m an entrepreneur, on the other side I’m a mother, and they hold equal weight,” she said.
She hopes to pass on her entrepreneurial spirit to her children, who are now teenagers, with the hope that they will give deep consideration to the legacy that they want to leave behind.
Challenging the status quo has been a necessary part of her purpose. In a socially conservative region like the Middle East, Ataya raised eyebrows with her ambitious plans. At first, she faced skepticism over the viability of e-commerce in the Middle East, only to prove the doubters wrong.
“We set out to revolutionize the ecosystem and reshape people’s perception, and in so doing we would be contributing to the region,” she told me. “We would be creating jobs. We would be empowering our customer and we would be demonstrating how you build something from nothing in an ecosystem that was very nascent.”
In addition to upending the accepted wisdom around the viability of an e-commerce business without a complementary in place, she also disrupted the status quo by filling most of her top ranks with women. Her nontraditional ways have extended to the financing of her company: In its second year of operation, the company opened a funding round exclusively for women, and it proved to be a resounding success.
She hires for characters over skills. As Ataya put it: “You can build skills; you can’t build character.” When employees join Mumzworld already possessing grit and a strong moral fiber, they are better equipped to weather the hurdles and unknowns of startup life, she believes.
When she hires, she looks for a complementary vision: “Can you see the finish line the way I see the finish line? We may not agree on the road to the finish line…but are we aligned on what that finish line actually looks like and are our values aligned?”
One interview trick she uses: “I always ask people, do you consider yourself to be a lucky person? Because people who consider themselves to be lucky are optimists. They figure things out. Whereas people who believe that they have a burden on their shoulders and they’re unlucky, and they’ve been dealt difficult cards are always looking for the negative part of the story.”
Impact and values motivate her more than money. Almost any entrepreneur can build top-line revenue growth for a short period, she saids, “but unless the brand has purpose and has a finish line that’s creating impact around it,” then success is likely to be short-lived, she asserted.
The impact she sought was “to create a brand that would become the indispensable online extension of a mother’s life and empower her to make the most informed decisions for her children.” And if you empower enough mothers and their children, then you have the ability to change the world, she asserted.
