4 ‘An ambitious project’ Sadeem’s path to inception was not a clear one. Both Canepa and Dehwah joined KAUST in 2009 as founding class master’s degree students, with Mousa starting his master’s degree at KAUST in 2010. By 2011, Claudel had joined the University’s Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division as an assistant professor, that year becoming the Ph.D. advisor of all three. “Everything started as a Ph.D. project in electrical engineering,” Canepa explained. “We needed smart cities technologies to do our research and write our papers for our Ph.D.s, but it was difficult to find this technology, so we developed our own, and as we did, we began realizing that this was something we could actually commercialize—it was bigger than just a research project.” “Our advisor talked to us about a wireless sensing networks project, and I knew it was an ambitious project—a huge project. I told him that I would be excited to join such a project, but that it was definitely a three- to five-year project for our Ph.D.s, which was what we jumped into,” Dehwah said. “Originally we didn’t have a special target,” noted Mousa, “but we knew that wireless sensor networks were becoming a trend and that they can solve complex problems, enhancing the quality of life in cities. We shaped these ideas into specific projects we led independently in our research, and found soon afterwards that we shared a common goal, which by 2014 became Sadeem.”
Becoming entrepreneurs On March 10, 2016, the team won the award for best IPbased technology startup at KAUST from the University’s Entrepreneurship Center, part of Innovation & Economic Development. Dehwah, Canepa and Mousa all agreed that this was the “life-changing moment,” as Dehwah said, when they began prioritizing their new startup over all else and embraced the roles of full-time entrepreneurs.
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THE BEACON | OCTOBER 2017
What matters the most is the team spirit. Entrepreneurial work is never relegated to one person—it involves our whole team working together to comprehensively take the next steps." - Ahmad Dehwah, Sadeem co-founder “I will never forget that moment. Beyond the economic prize we received, it was also the recognition of something we worked on for such a long time,” Canepa said. “That year was the tipping point in terms of us all saying, ‘This is what I am going to be doing for the years to come.’ The timing was perfect for us, because we also received our Ph.D.s together in December of 2016, and we were already a fully committed team. When everything aligns, things start happening, and you really see this.” Mousa agreed, noting, “It was a great feeling when we graduated together. By that time, we had already started our dream of Sadeem and we were already so passionate, with each of us adding his own field of research to our work. We’re still pursuing this with the same energy.” In 2016, Sadeem ranked 13th in the top 50 most promising Saudi startups by Forbes magazine, indicating how far the team had come from the start of their journey. Although Claudel left KAUST in 2015 to move to The University of Texas at Austin, he still remains an important part of the Sadeem team and is the fourth co-founder of the company. He and Dehwah, Mousa and Canepa continue their work together on a daily basis.