Most companies say they’re using AI. Very few can show you where it’s creating value. Ammar Naqvi has spent his career building technology where mistakes cost real money: from Amazon’s video platform to the AI that underwrites drivers across Latin America.

Ammar has led engineering at Amazon (on what became Prime Video), Careem, Talabat, and Moove, where he was CTO, helping scale a mobility fintech from early operations into an international business. Today at OneCarNow, he builds AI for underwriting, fraud detection, KYC and alternative credit scoring for thousands of gig workers in Mexico and Brazil.

In this episode we cover:

• How to build AI that solves real business problems
• What companies get wrong when scaling engineering teams
• How to lead remote and distributed teams without slowing down
• Build, buy or partner: the CTO decision framework
• What founders should know before hiring a CTO or outsourcing delivery
• Why automotive is becoming a fintech, data and trust problem

Chapters
00:00 Intro
[00:00] The first barrier Ammar broke
[00:00] What Amazon taught him about scale
[00:00] Careem, Talabat and building for MENA
[00:00] Moove: turning vehicle financing into a tech platform
[00:00] OneCarNow: AI for people with no credit history
[00:00] AI demo vs AI system
[00:00] Leading high-performing remote teams
[00:00] Build, buy or partner?
[00:00] The future of automotive and mobility
[00:00] What founders and investors get wrong
[00:00] AI and the next 5 years: bold predictions
[00:00] One tool, one tactic, one truth
[00:00] Quickfire close

Breaking Down Barriers is a podcast for founders, CEOs, CTOs and investors building in MENA and beyond.

Underneath every great financial ecosystem is infrastructure the systems that let money, data, and trust move seamlessly. In this episode, we sit down with Tewfik, Chief Product Officer at Lean Technologies, the company that became the first licensed open banking provider in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Five years ago, open banking didn't exist in the Gulf. There was no local playbook, no proven consumer behavior, and a cash-heavy market that had never been asked to authenticate a payment through a banking app. Today, Lean has processed over 5B+ in transaction volume and works with 300+ enterprise clients banks and fintechs alike.

But this conversation goes far beyond open banking. We talk about what it takes to become the default infrastructure layer for an entire region's financial system, why fintech "winning" doesn't mean replacing banks, why financial data might be a bigger opportunity than payments themselves, and how AI is about to rewrite decisioning, fraud detection, and UX from the ground up.

In this episode, we cover:

• Introduction: Why infrastructure is the real story in fintech
• Building what didn't exist: Lean's earliest days and the friction of localising open banking in MENA
• Why early clients stayed before the market was ready
• Has fintech actually won? Banks vs. fintechs vs. infrastructure
• Becoming the "AWS" or "Stripe" of financial infrastructure in MENA
• The hardest problems Lean solves that most companies never see
• Open finance as a credit access and financial inclusion story
• Why verified financial data may be the biggest transformation in financial services
• Inside the new Pay by Bank suite: Deposits, Collections, Checkout, and Pay by Link
• How the UAE is leapfrogging markets like the UK in open banking
• Building a world-class team: hiring for people who are "bothered by things being broken"
• AI and financial services: rethinking infrastructure, decisioning, and UX from scratch
• Will traditional credit scores exist by 2030?
• AI agents managing our financial lives - how close are we?
• What the biggest fintech company of 2030 might look like
• What's next for Lean beyond open banking
• Quickfire round: cards vs. A2A payments, contrarian beliefs, and Lean's best early bet

About the guest:
Tewfik is Chief Product Officer at Lean Technologies, the leading open banking infrastructure provider in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Under his product leadership, Lean has scaled to power connectivity, payments, and financial data infrastructure for over 300 enterprise clients across the region.

About Breaking Down Barriers:
Breaking Down Barriers is a podcast exploring the people and companies redefining industries — from fintech to infrastructure to AI. Each episode goes beyond the headlines to understand what it actually takes to build something that didn't exist before.

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with the founders and operators building the future of finance and technology.

From Lightspeed Partner to a MENA fintech operator Julie Kainz on the leap from VC to building inside Lean Technologies, the move from London to Dubai, and the lessons from backing companies like Granola, PlanA, Hook, CuspAI and Pyne.

In this episode:

• Why Julie left a top global fund to go all-in on an operator role
• The real differences between London, SF and MENA's startup ecosystems
• What MENA's startup scene needs most right now — capital, talent or something else
• Her biggest lessons from working with hundreds of founders
• Why fundraising is about momentum and story, not just metrics
• The ""less is more"" rule for building your cap table

Guest: Julie Kainz, Corporate Development, Lean Technologies

Subscribe @BreakingDownBarrierspod
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Connect with Ricci Putnam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricci-putnam/

From a skeptical investor won over by due diligence and a Tomahawk bone, to a founder whose biggest fear is losing company culture during expansion — this is one of the most honest conversations about building and backing a consumer brand in the region.

In this episode:
- The real role of founder chemistry and brand resonance in investment decisions
- Why consumer focus beats financial optimisation every time
- How CarniStore is expanding into local manufacturing to secure supply chains
- The viral split-screen marketing moment that changed everything
- Why automation is now non-negotiable for CarniStore
- What true investor-founder connection actually looks like

Guests: CarniStore Founders & EGF Investment Partners

Subscribe @BreakingDownBarrierspod
Powered by @saltdigital | welovesalt.com

Connect with Ricci Putnam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricci-putnam/

From WhatsApp's data org to Google Suggest, YouTube and Careem.

Wael Salloum has built AI infrastructure used by billions. In this episode he unpacks how AI is really adopted inside companies, how to lead senior technical teams, and where MENA's AI moment is heading.

In this episode:
How Wael scaled WhatsApp's data organisation from 4 to 200+ people globally

• What CEOs still get wrong about building data-driven organisations
  
  
• Where companies waste the most money in AI transformations
  
  
• The privacy vs personalisation debate and what WhatsApp actually did
  
  
• The AI belief almost nobody in Silicon Valley agrees with him on
  
  

Guest: Wael Salloum | former Head of Data at WhatsApp, data and AI leader at Google, YouTube and Careem

Connect with Wael:
LinkedIn: / waelsalloum

Subscribe ‪@BreakingDownBarrierspodX‬
Powered by ‪@saltdigital‬ | welovesalt.com

Connect with Ricci Putnam:
LinkedIn: / ricci-putnam

Walid Omar has built products and teams at Dropbox, Snapchat, DoorDash, and now HungerStation, shaping some of the most admired tech cultures in the world.

From scaling creator tools to designing merchant ecosystems, he’s spent his career turning product theory into products that win, and teams that win bigger.

In this episode, we go back to basics to uncover the operating system of high-performance product leadership.

- When does a PM stop shipping and start leading?
- How do you build elite product culture across geographies and business models?
- What skills will every PM need in the AI era?

Breaking Down Barriers - Hosted by Ricci Putnam, Chief Growth Officer @saltdigital

We cover:

• The barrier that changed everything in Walid’s career
• Building product culture at Dropbox, Snapchat, DoorDash, and HungerStation
• High-performance teams and the basics that actually scale
• Solving the right problems, shipping fast, and empowering teams
• C-suite lessons: clarity, alignment, and elite PM behaviours
• AI in MENA: which sectors will fail, which will thrive, and how product teams adapt
• Personal inflection points and leadership lessons you won’t find on LinkedIn

This episode is for PMs, founders, and product leaders who want to stop running and start shaping, 10x their teams, and build products that last.

Kristjan Kaar has been behind some of Europe’s most important fintech products.

From helping build OakNorth, one of the UK’s most successful AI-driven digital banks, to redefining SME finance at Finom, Kristjan has spent his career operating at the edge of product, regulation, and intelligent finance.

In this episode, we unpack what it really takes to build financial products people trust. Without slowing down.

• How do you move fast in regulated environments?
• Is trust more powerful than speed?
• And will AI replace product managers — or make them indispensable?

Breaking Down Barriers — Hosted by Ricci Putnam, Chief Growth Officer @saltdigital

We cover:

• Building AI-powered financial products that scale trust
• Lessons from OakNorth’s hyper-growth as an “intelligent bank”
• Product–engineering alignment in regulated environments
• What founders get wrong when hiring their first CPO
• Scaling product teams without killing innovation
• AI hype vs reality in fintech today
• How European fintech differs from Silicon Valley models
• The future of AI-powered banking and product leadership

This episode is for founders, CPOs, and product leaders building in complexity. Where speed matters, trust is non-negotiable, and culture decides everything.

Stake has quietly become one of the most powerful fintech + real estate platforms in the world.

• 1M+ users.
• AED 1.3B+ in transactions.
• 250,000+ investments across 500+ properties.
• AED 50M+ in rental income paid out.
• Now expanding across the US, KSA, and beyond.

In this episode, we sit down with Manar Mahmassani, Co-Founder & CEO, and Ricardo Brizido, Co-Founder & CTPO of Stake to unpack how they built a category-defining product, navigated brutal regulation, engineered trust at scale, and are reshaping global real-estate ownership through tokenisation and digital assets.

We go deep on product strategy, liquidity design and what it really takes to scale a regulated platform to millions of users.

Breaking Down Barriers - Hosted by Ricci Putnam, Chief Growth Officer ‪ ⁨@saltdigital⁩

We cover:

• Is real estate finally becoming liquid?
• Can tokenisation unlock global access to institutional assets?
• What does the future of property ownership actually look like?
• How Stake reached AED 1.3B invested and 50M+ in rental payouts.
• Balancing regulation, user experience, and financial reliability.
• What decentralised, global property fintech means for investors and renters.
• Plans, innovations, and what the growth trajectory reveals.
• How scaling fintech with real estate differs from traditional startups.

Subscribe now to hear more stories from founders building at scale, and learn the secrets behind the platforms shaping the future of money and property.