I spent sixteen years learning how one company compounds. Investing is where I take that lesson and put it to work in companies I do not run day to day. It is the third of my four pillars, and it runs on the same logic as the building one. Patient. Concentrated. Long horizon.
1 · What I invest in
AI-driven services rollups. Mid-market founder-operator businesses. Companies with real revenue and real margins that compound under patience rather than venture-style speed. I am not chasing the next platform. I look for businesses that already work and can work better with the operating discipline I have spent a career building. My edge is cross-border. I know how to run engineering and operations talent across Pakistan, the Gulf, and the United States, and I look for the places where that knowledge actually moves the numbers.
2 · Current bets
The operating side of this logic is public. DevBatch, DeaEssentials, and DeltaOne are on /work. The investing side runs quieter, on purpose. I do not name positions here. The founders I back are not looking for a press release, and the work is better done without an audience. If we are already talking, you know what I am in.
3 · How I evaluate
Cash flow first. A business has to make money before I am interested in what it could become. Then the operator, because I would rather back a good one in an ordinary market than a weak one riding a tailwind. Then the tailwind anyway, since timing is real. Then the cross-border arbitrage, if there is one. Last, the fit between how the founder works and the long-arc model I run my own companies on. I am a patient partner and a poor fit for anyone in a hurry to flip.
4 · Mistakes I have made
Every honest investor has a list, and mine is real. The bets that cost me the most were rarely bad businesses. They were good businesses with the wrong operator, or the right operator I was too slow to commit to. The lesson keeps repeating: back the person, not only the numbers. I trusted the spreadsheet over the people more than once. I do that less now.
The investing pillar runs on the same shape as the building pillar. Patient. Concentrated. Long horizon. Refuse work that does not fit the thesis.
5 · What I am looking at next
Two things have my attention. First, what AI is doing to the unit economics of services businesses. The cost of delivering good engineering work is dropping fast, and the firms that win will be the ones that roll up smaller shops, re-tool them, and run them with patience instead of speed. I am studying it closely because I am living it inside DevBatch. Second, founder-operators in unglamorous mid-market categories who are ready to take their business more seriously than the market expects. If that is you, the door is /connect.