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You’ve had a non-traditional path into tech and finance leadership. How did it all begin?
About 10 years ago, I thought I’d become a partner at an audit firm. That was the plan.
But my first real opportunity came from a company setting up in Riyadh, no office, just a warehouse. I convinced my dad to let me interview there, and that’s how I joined Wadi.com. It was fast-paced, experimental, and messy in the best way. Within months, I was building full P&Ls, not just crunching numbers.
Later I joined Shipa to build their Saudi operations from scratch, which taught me a lot about legal setup, regulation, and how competitive the market really is.
Now at Squadio, I lead finance and strategy. It’s not just a job, it’s a creative lab. We’re building, evolving, and scaling, and I love that no two weeks look the same.
You stepped into a CFO role after years in operational finance. What changed when the job became more about leadership?
You have to step outside the boundaries of your own department and ask bigger questions. It’s no longer about “Are my numbers right?” It’s about “What are we building, and is it sustainable?”
Leadership, in any function, means you can’t stay in your silo. You have to challenge others, understand the product, and zoom out to the bigger picture.
Finance is often seen as a bottleneck in fast-moving startups. How do you avoid that?
Finance needs to be embedded in your system. I don’t want people constantly going back and forth with the finance team for approvals.
So I make it a point to align early. I’ll sit with sales or other teams and tell them what’s doable and what’s not so they don’t need to ask every time. We also build things into the system itself.
For example, when we automated hiring, we created a hiring projection tracker in ClickUp. If a role was above the approved threshold, it was a no-go. If it was within, you could proceed without asking me. That’s the goal: self-awareness and clarity, not bottlenecks.
You’ve worked closely with investors. What do they care about most that finance teams sometimes miss?
Investors mostly want to focus on sustainability. Not just your burn or your margins or your payback. They care about what value your business brings to this region and whether it will last.
One round of 5 or 10 million should create real value, not just lead to another round. Also, not everything from Silicon Valley applies here. You need a model that works for this market.
When you’re hiring finance talent at a startup, what do you look for?
Exceptional communication skills and curiosity. I want people who will ask questions, not just run numbers. A lot of finance folks prefer to stay in the background. I don’t want that. I want someone who will say, “Let’s book a meeting and understand why this happened.”
A red flag for me is a corporate mindset. In a startup, we might’ve made the process three days ago in a meeting. There’s no manual. You have to be flexible.
I work on an 80–20 rule: 80 percent is good enough. Move on. If you’re obsessed with presentation formats and perfection, you won’t survive in a startup. It’s not about pixel-perfect. It’s about impact.
What’s one tool that genuinely changed your day-to-day?
Power BI. It completely changed how we work. We used to manually pull data just to get one number. Now we have live dashboards where you can drill down as much as you want.
It’s not just for finance. We use it across the business. From open roles to hiring pipelines to profitability forecasts. And it’s live. That changed everything for us.
We also use SIFT Analytics, which integrates with Xero. It helps with consolidation, ratios, and analytics all in one place.
You’ve built ERP, payroll, budgeting, and compliance from scratch. What’s one painful but valuable lesson from that?
You never realize how fast you can scale. And then the system you picked becomes a bottleneck.
It’s fine to start with basic tools. That’s normal in early stages. But don’t over-customize or over-engineer too soon. Always think: can this scale with us?
Pick tools that are easy to use. If it’s too complicated, your team won’t use it properly. Start small, but build with tomorrow in mind.
You’ve lived in Saudi for 20 years. What excites you most about the ecosystem today?
We’re no longer just replicating global products. We’re building for this region from scratch. That’s exciting.
Things are moving fast: serious funding, serious hiring, serious products. And that creates a lot of new challenges too.
For finance teams, the biggest shift is understanding how to explain new business models, even when the regulator doesn’t fully exist yet. You have to help founders and auditors understand how money flows in and out. Education is as important as reporting.
What’s one thing finance professionals need to grow into leadership that they won’t learn from a course?
It’s confidence, honestly.
You can do all the certifications you want, but if you can’t talk to people, build relationships, or start a conversation, you’ll struggle.
You’re not going to walk into a room and say, “Hi, are you raising money?” That’s not how it works. You need to ask, “Where are you from?” “Why are you here?” That’s how relationships start.
So if there’s one course I’d recommend, it’s not a finance course. It’s a communication one.
Bio
Maheen Wahid is a CFO who thrives at the intersection of chaos and creation, where startups are raw, scrappy, and ready to scale. With 12+ years of experience across MENA’s tech scene, she’s built finance functions from zero, restructured pricing engines, and led investor-backed growth at companies like Wadi.com, Shipa Delivery, and Squadio. Maheen is known not just for her financial acumen, but for her ability to bring clarity to uncertainty, build teams with heart, and turn messy beginnings into structured, scalable businesses. An ACCA and data science graduate, she leads with sharp thinking, grounded execution, and a deep belief that finance should enable vision, not just report on it.
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