Walid Hassouna on crisis management
From The New Calculus Founder Series: Walid Hassouna (CEO, Valu) · · MIT Kuo Sharper Center
“In Egypt, when it's bad, it's an opportunity. The most important thing is to put your ego aside. If you made a wrong decision, just roll it back. The problem with management and leadership is that when they make decisions, they usually want to fight for a couple of months before it fades. The right thing is: if it didn't work, okay, we shut it down.”
On , Walid Hassouna, CEO at ValU, spoke about crisis management during The New Calculus Founder Series: Walid Hassouna (CEO, Valu) on MIT Kuo Sharper Center.
About Walid Hassouna
Walid Hassouna, co-founder and CEO of ValU, spoke at MIT in April 2026 as part of the New Calculus Founder Series. He discussed ValU's evolution from Egypt's first Buy-Now-Pay-Later platform to a publicly traded consumer finance firm following its 2025 IPO on the Egyptian Exchange. Hassouna described his approach to launching products outside existing regulatory frameworks, stating that in fintech "you just have to do whatever you want to do as long as it's not illegal." He also noted that he approached banks to sell them ValU's bonds and portfolio in exchange for their support in pushing for new legislation. Hassouna emphasized the commercial viability of serving unbanked customers, saying "it's commercially viable to include the unincluded people in your system" and that without those customers "we never make money." He commented on the challenges of introducing stablecoins in Egypt, attributing resistance to the government's reliance on bank lending. Hassouna also described ValU's workplace culture, which he said attracts Gen Z employees by focusing on achievement rather than attendance, and advocated for making fast decisions and taking advantage of opportunities within volatility.