Ahmad Hammouda
The story
Ahmad Hammouda studied business administration at the American University in Cairo, qualified as a CFA charterholder and became a vice president in investment banking at CI Capital. There he pitched an app that would let anyone buy shares with a few hundred dollars, but the bank turned it down. Knowing finance but not technology, he joined Uber and became general manager of Uber Egypt. When he left two years later he had saved exactly two years of his children's school fees. With co-founder Seif Amr he built Thndr; 45 investors said no before Y Combinator offered a term sheet, and Thndr joined its Summer 2020 batch. Licensing was harder: Egypt had not issued a new brokerage licence since 2008, and Thndr's came through in August 2020. As Egypt's currency crisis pushed people to protect their savings, 75% of new users made a first investment under $500. Thndr now has around $960 million in platform assets and is Egypt's largest brokerage.
By the numbers
Their company
EgyptFintechThndr
Egyptian app for investing in stocks, bonds and funds from small amounts
