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Our friends at the former Muslim Business Club will be re-launching, changing their name and adding new features. Now known as Salam Business Club, we were graciously chosen to ask a few questions about the upcoming launch. Included are some first-hand experiences, challenges and problems of what can happen in the startup world. Farewell MBC, Greetings of Peace to SBC!

1. What has happened since the last time we featured Muslim Business Club, what’s new?

We’ll be re-launching at the end of August and just like during our first relaunch on April 1st, we have spent quite a lot of time and effort on the design and interface. But what you will notice first is the new name: Salam Business Club. We decided to switch from "Muslim Business Club" to "Salam Business Club" because it reflects the identity of the platform better than the current name. Most of our members are Muslims and live in Muslim countries but a huge percentage (more than 10%) are not Muslims and are very interested in getting into business with Muslims and Muslim countries from all over the world, be it American businessmen or Arab Christians. Nevertheless, the main reason was that we realized that people thought the platform was "for Muslims only" and propagating Muslim businesses only. But the idea has always been to enable people from Muslim countries to get into business with each other and not propagate a point of view on Islam. The only thing we do is run our company adhering to Sharia-laws, i.e. we’re not – and we never will – let anyone on our website propagate his/her business which is contradicting Sharia laws. This goes for gambling, anything related to alcohol or pornography etc. We have also turned down investment and venture capital offers that included paying or receiving interest but now we’re in talks with people and companies that might invest in our platform.

A huge percentage of our members live in Western countries, with the U.S. and the U.K. being in the top 10 of all countries, although LinkedIn, Ryze and XING are very active there. Apparently, the market is not as saturated as people would think. Still we don’t consider the Salam Business Club as a direct competitor to the other business networks because our main geographical target is the Arab/Eastern world. Due to our platform’s name, approach, our personal background and philosophy, it is easier for us to convince people to choose us over our competitors. Of course, appropriate features count as well but for now people have a lot of trust in our name.

Besides a completely new layout, we have added personal blogs to the member’s profiles. Members can comment on the blog postings and in the future we will also give our members the option to publish them as an RSS feed. [Editor's note: I love it! I can't wait for this feature. I can add it to my lifestream feeds.]

When you log in then the first thing you will notice is that your contacts activities will be shown to you right on the Dashboard, which is the page that you see after logging in. This is similar to what you see when you log in to Facebook and see what your contacts have been doing on the site. We have also added a status message and blocks of information about members that might be interesting for you in regard to your business… and dozens of other improvements all over the site.

2. How many members?

We can’t reveal the current number of members for a number of reasons but it’s a small five-digit value. We don’t run any ads, we didn’t make any press releases and the only publicity we had during our beta phase were two interviews, this being the third one. When the site has officially launched then this will change. There’s going to be press releases, more interviews and more public exposure. We were kind of running under the radar for the past 16 months but now we think the site is mature enough to be released to the wide public and we’re ready to grow.

3. Any organizations/business/media outlets that you have partnered with?

Besides IslamCrunch’s articles that we’re already featured in, we have also partnered with ArabCrunch and DinarStandard (the well-known and successful publication related to Muslim businesses and business strategies for the Muslim world). Additionally, we have received permission from the brothers at Illume Magazine to publish selected articles from their magazine which will give us more high-quality content. As you can see, we will be featuring news from the world of technology, business news as well as lifestyle topics.

4. Where do you see your site in 1 year?

We’re planning on reaching a nice six-digit number of members within one year and establishing the Salam Business Club as the main business tool for people living in Muslim, Eastern and Arab countries. Just as we said before, the market is huge and the growth rates are incredible, compared to the near-saturated American and European market. The Islamic Internet and business world is where the West was some eight years ago and with our business and personal background, we have the skills to tackle that market and bring our company to success.

5. Real life  stories from members that have benefited from your site?

Yes, we have quite a few such stories like the one we mentioned in the first interview with IslamCrunch about the Turkish businessman looking to import goods from Indonesia. This is the story we share frequently. In fact, this member is now importing fruits from Indonesia and the contact was made via our platform. We also have many freelancers from Arab countries that have found companies that have outsourced work to them from Europe and the U.S. – and vice versa! There’s one more interesting story which has developed in the last month about a businessman from Rias‘ [Editor's note: Rias is one of the founders of Muslim/Salam Business Club] hometown of Hamburg who found a business partner in Dubai. We’ll be getting into more details about that in the near future when we have all the facts ready. Those are just the stories that we’re aware of because we know those people but there will surely be hundreds more that we don’t know of.

6. What have you learned prior to your re-launch?

This is probably the toughest question to answer. As you can imagine we have went through quite a lot of disappointments. Rias is still privately financing this project as we didn’t let any investor get into our company yet.  We have grown from four people to about nine people working on various aspects of the platform. There’s a lot we had to organize – from marketing and PR to IT, design and business development. Some things we had to learn the hard way and we have been disappointed quite a few times. We have wasted money on advertising where we were deceived on what we would be getting for it. We have outsourced design issues to people that were not capable of sticking to deadlines and last year we got into talks with potential investors just to realize they were trying to not stick to the deal we had initially agreed on and thought we would be desperate enough to still accept their new terms.

We have learned from those experiences to only let people in that are willing to prove their skills and get compensated on a success-basis and not because of them sweet-talking us and bragging about what they will achieve once they’re in. It’s interesting to see how people decline to work with you once they realize they have to deliver before they get compensated.  The good side about all of this is that now we’re very relaxed in regard to where we’re heading and how to get there. There’s no urgent need to get financing and we can now spend our time bringing our business forward before we get involved with potential shareholders.

We also learned to always make sure to have written agreements – not necessarily expensive contracts from expensive lawyers, but at least a written and signed piece of paper between the involved parties.

7. The best compliment you have received?

We have received hundreds of compliments that we might eventually publish after our re-launch. Most of them refer to our approach of starting such a platform with Muslim business ethics behind it. We clearly have a very strong entry-point into the Arab and Eastern region and the Islamic business world as a whole. This is where our competitors fail as being active in Turkey, the UAE or Saudi Arabia doesn’t mean people will, after signing up, actually use and pay for your services. We think our competitors underestimate the meaning of religious values, especially in non-secular Muslim countries, and their influence on how business is conducted and this is where we come into play with our network.

Scour is a new social search engine that employs the power of the top 3 search engine giants: Google, Yahoo and MSN. The best part of Scour: You can gain points to redeem for Visa gift cards that can used to make purchases wherever Visa is accepted. FREE VISA CARDS without the credit strangulation!

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UPDATE: The easiest way to gain points is to add Scour in your browser search bar. They have options for Firefox and Internet Explorer. No need to remember every time about going to Scour.com. Just search from your browser window!

Check out their blog: http://blog.scour.com/ and find links to their Facebook page, Twitter account and read news about their operations.

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Here is my web 2.0, social networking, microblogging, widgetized business card. Check out my widgets to see what is happening in my pocket of the universe. See my profiles on the world wide web. If you would like to promote the work my wife, Su and I do at Zaytuna Institute, IslamCrunch or any of the various projects we are involved with, please embed this card on your favorite site, social network and/or blog.

After scanning the list of who’s who at the recent Web 2.0 2008 Expo, we noticed a couple of intriguing names. After a short Facebook research blitz and some Googling, we contacted Ahmed at over at Octopz to ask for an interview. He graciously agreed, check it out!

IslamCrunch: What is your web application/service about?

Octopz: Octopz Inc. (www.octopz.com) develops advanced online collaboration technologies built specifically for today’s creative professionals. With fully integrated support for text messaging, VoIP and webcams, Octopz allows colleagues and partners anywhere in the world to work together securely in real-time, or individually at their own convenience, using multiple document types. Team members can archive their work for subsequent retrieval, review and feedback. The result is accelerated decision making and speed-to-market – a significant competitive edge.

The company has built a secure and extensible collaboration platform with an initial primary focus on the Marketing & Advertising, Media & Entertainment, and Product Design verticals.

IslamCrunch: Why did you start this project?

Octopz: Originally, the company was a production services company, called diginiche, that specialized in building high-end photographically textured 3D models (clients included Ford, Nissan, Honda, Seiko, HP, Sony and others). The team built a browser-based synchronous 3D viewer purely for their own purposes – they needed a better way than email and ftp to get input and sign-off from clients – and once they started using it with those clients the founders realized there was a market for this type of product.

IslamCrunch: Who is your project developed for?

Octopz: Octopz is specifically designed for creative professionals who work extensively with rich media.

Today, creative professionals communicate with customers, colleagues and suppliers – whether down the hall or around the world – via phone, email, courier and face-to-face meetings.  Under increasing pressure to improve productivity, current online collaboration tools available to them are inadequate.

Octopz supports the iterative way creative professionals work, the applications and media formats they already use, and drives improved decision making and enhanced speed-to-market capabilities.

IslamCrunch: How much time do you devote to its growth?

Octopz: The company was formally launched at Web 2.0 Expo 2007 and devotes all of its time to growth.

IslamCrunch: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Octopz: The Octopz team is currently 15 people and continuing to grow. The majority of the team is involved in research and development, but the company has also expanded its leadership team to include experts in sales and marketing.

IslamCrunch: What is your design/service philosophy?

Octopz: At Octopz, our goal is to provide clients with the most powerful, versatile online collaboration solution available – and to make it so easy to use that teams will see results immediately. Octopz is also designed to work the way creative professionals do. It’s flexible enough to accommodate the way projects flow – even if each one is completely different – and creative [personnel] use the applications and hardware they already own. There are no downloads, and the license covers everyone invited to collaborate in an Octopz Meeting Room.

Octopz is so user-friendly that even people with minimal computer skills find it remarkably easy to use. But when there are questions, the answers are instantly available from comprehensive online help files, in both text and video format. Just click the Help button from within the application.

IslamCrunch: What technologies are you currently using?

Octopz: Architected on a highly scalable combination of custom-built, open source and licensed software (including Adobe’s Flash Media Server and Flex technologies), the application requires nothing more than the Flash plugin (already installed on 97% of computers) and is completely cross-platform (Mac, PC, Linux).

IslamCrunch: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

Octopz: One of the reasons Octopz works so well for creative professionals is because, in addition to being software developers, the inventors of Octopz are also creative professionals with successful careers in photography and digital media. Their first-hand insight into the creative process informed every decision made during the software’s development.

This approach, coupled with input from our users, now drives a continuous enhancement process. We listen to what users have to say about Octopz and make improvements based on their comments. As a result, Octopz will continue to become more functional, more powerful, and even easier to work with, thanks to feedback from our customers, the people who actually use it every day.

IslamCrunch: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

Octopz: The Company’s initial target markets include the Marketing & Advertising, Media & Entertainment, and Product Design industries. The extensibility of Octopz (via Flash, API and web services) facilitates deployment in the initial core verticals as well as adjacent markets that include Digital Asset & Content Management Systems (DAM/CMS); Architecture, Construction & Engineering; Printing & Publishing; and Social Networking & Online Communities.

IslamCrunch: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Octopz: Web 2.0 has unleashed a new wave of innovation in online collaboration technologies that include browser-based rich media web conferencing, team coordination tools, online content creation services, digital asset management and web publishing tools. These new tools and services are changing the way people work together and are coming to market in a more rapid fashion then ever before. Being aware of and becoming familiar with these new emerging technologies is a challenge. Additionally, not becoming side tracked and remaining focused on the priorities and direction of the Company are critical for the continued success and viability.

IslamCrunch: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Octopz: The company is implementing a go-to-market strategy that includes direct customer engagements as well as channel relationships with vertical leaders offering complementary products and services.

IslamCrunch: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Octopz: With clients ranging from small companies to large corporations, Octopz has built a strong and passionate user base in over 75 countries around the world.

IslamCrunch: Are there any aspects of this project that has made you proud?

Octopz: Octopz launched at the first Web 2.0 Expo in 2007, and was named one of the ‘Top Five’ Web 2.0 services at the show by the editors of Webware.com. Since then, Octopz has been identified as a 2007 rising star by InfoWorld, selected by Red Herring as one of the ten hottest startups in Canada, named one of Canada’s Companies-to-Watch as part of the 2007 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards, recognized as a Branham300 ‘Top 25 Up and Comer’, chosen as the Canadian Innovation Leader by CIX (Canadian Innovation Exchange) and has been a finalist in the Webware 100 awards two years in a row.

IslamCrunch: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Octopz: One year ago, companies were wondering what the whole phenomenon of Web 2.0 was, today, they are asking what strategies they can incorporate to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies.

IslamCrunch: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Octopz: News sites:

• www.guardian.co.uk
• www.webware.com
• www.techcrunch.com
• www.silconvalley.com

IslamCrunch: Which social media tools do you use? Why do you prefer these tools?

Octopz:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Technorati
• Flickr
• YouTube

IslamCrunch: Does social media and social networking play an important role in promotion of your organization?

Octopz: Octopz uses a combination of both traditional marketing activities as well as social networking and web 2.0 activities.

IslamCrunch: What do you hope IslamCrunch can help you to accomplish?

Octopz: If you believe that Octopz is an interesting online collaboration solution, then profiling Octopz to increase awareness would be desirable.

IslamCrunch: Thanks Ahmed!