This article is about three TBSers, two graduates and one who has a senior mini project !

In late 2019, my first partner Ahmed Ben Mahmoud and I decided to start a development agency dedicated to building new websites for small clients I know from my network. To start, we set a Bootcamp challenge in Ahmed’s house to finish the company’s website in 4 days and we succeeded in achieving that goal.

When covid hit the world we ceased our activities and I was interested in spending more time with family than sticking to the computer wasting my time on social media. March 2020 was a turning point in my desperate situation when a company from France contacted me to start working with its CTO as a virtual personal assistant to organize the workflow and supervise the team. At the same time, I landed my first contract on Upwork as virtual Boutique manager for a German Jewelry company. I enjoyed the work process and especially the multitasking although I felt overwhelmed by the amount of work sometimes. I managed this situation till the end of August 2020 when I decided to leave everything and start focusing on my senior year. 

The post-first pandemic period, October 2020, was known for its social media boom and the fact that businesses must turn to the digital world to continue to operate otherwise they won’t last too long operating. That’s where Ahmed saw a potential for starting a business idea to help content creators make a new stream of monetizing their work on the social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. This kind of monetization is an alternative to the collaborations’ payout and the low revenues caused by the low CPM rate in our country and in the MENA region.

So I contacted my friend Abdelhalim who was the creators’ friend like Yassine Sondes, Samy Chaffy, Mo5ek Ejja… and asked if the idea would be in the interest of the creators. Directly, he felt the potential of the idea and jumped to enhance it and give it a legitimate aspect.

As for the mini senior project, I opted to develop more deeply the idea to create an identity for the project and started developing the platform with my teammate in the senior project Ahmed ben Mahmoud during the first 6 months of 2021. We had many Bootcamp at home for days and even weeks. Adam, who was a junior student at that time, hadn’t had a successful application in a startup with his old startup idea. When I told him about this, he was hesitant at first since his first rejection of startupAct devastated him. Later in January, he accepted the challenge and joined the team.

In July 2021 we applied for the ImpactUP incubator program organized by Startup Haus and we were accepted from the beginning since they saw potential in the team and the program was freshly new. Later September we applied for the startup label to officialize our entity as a business, we were the last ones to apply and we submitted before 1 hour of the deadline, so, don’t lose hope buddy ! We got our pre-label later in October. We were super excited to start the journey and we kicked off the legal aspect of the company to obtain the label certificate.

At the same time, I was introduced to a French guy running a development agency having an expert certification in Shopify development called Expertify. After working for several weeks with Ahmed and Adam, he decided to invest in Tunisia by starting a new branch of his company in
Tunis. Since, I was experienced in launching companies and I had a large network in Tunis,

I introduced him to technopole Ghazala, one of the best workplaces in Tunisia. The staff was welcoming and they shortcutted procedures to convince him to start as soon as possible. We are now in the phase of decorating the office to make it a home for many innovative ideas and projects. As of 22 February 2022, we are a team of 12 people, half of them are from TBS, and two have end of studies internships. A big thanks to Adam Boulila and Ahmed ben Mahmoud who made this investment opportunity come to life and flourish.

As for Unify, we were lucky and super enthusiastic to fulfill our fire milestone in the startup, which is our label at the beginning of February 2022 and we are launching our first mentoring session with a social media artist well known in VFX art in March 2022. A big shootout to my co-founders Halim Zaibi, the CEO and the salesman, Ahmed and Adam, Binkey and Brain, CTO and co-CTO