Oulad Attou: the beginning
I grew up in a small rural village in central Morocco. My father’s work in the Royal Armed Forces later brought us to Salé. My parents’ pride remained the motive that kept pulling me forward.
Journey
Does where you are born decide how far you can go?
This is not a straight success story. It is a story of attempts, pressure, loyal people, near-falls and new beginnings.
The cybercafé: a doorway
A neighborhood cybercafé opened a new world. I taught myself HTML, Dreamweaver and then PHP. My first site had 400 pages, so one small change meant repeating it 400 times.
Dimatop · J’aime Mon Maroc · Sawt Bladi
Dimatop earned my first Google cheque, around $100. After a guerrilla-marketing phase, J’aime Mon Maroc grew toward one million followers, then Sawt Bladi began with Anas Redouane and Abdeljalil El Hidaya.
Alyaoum24 · Soltana.ma
Working with Tawfik Bouachrine taught me media from the inside and helped Alyaoum24 become a major destination. Soltana was a leap forward, but the cost to my marriage and early fatherhood was real.
Next Media
I returned to development and built Next Media into a leading shop for major press outlets. As advertising moved to social platforms, cash flow nearly broke us. I protected the team’s morale while carrying the fear privately.
YouCan
The idea began with Simo Life and we chose to open YouCan to everyone. The server failed on launch day, COVID turned e-commerce into a lifeline, cyberattacks forced round-the-clock shifts, and a 0.25% commission made growth financially demanding.
January 17: 5,000 people
With Moad Rezki and Ahmed Tawfik, we gathered more than 5,000 people at what I consider Morocco and Africa’s largest e-commerce gathering. I then stepped back for more than eight months to travel and think.
Done
Done is the next chapter, not a restart. It carries lessons from the cybercafé, media, crisis, YouCan, loyalty and betrayal. The line remains simple: we may lean, but we do not fall.
“We may lean, but we do not fall. The time that looked wasted was often training for the next chapter.”