Made in Dubai with Spencer Lodge #395: 45 Years, 7 Tech Waves & a $1.5 Billion IPO at 71 | Fayez Ibbini on Building Alpha Data, AI & Why Retirement is a Lie
He arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1981 when roads turned to soft sand and ceilings collapsed because villas were built with saltwater cement. He came for six months. He never left. Forty-five years later, he just took his company public at a $1.5 billion valuation and he's 71 years old with zero plans to stop.
In this episode, Spencer sits down with Fayez Ibbini, founder of Alpha Data, one of the UAE's most enduring technology companies. From coding assembly language for the Kuwait Stock Exchange on 16-hour days, to pivoting from IBM mini-computers to PCs, to riding every wave from networking and the internet to cloud, mobile, big data, IoT and now AI. Fayez has been at the frontier of technology in this region for nearly half a century.
But this isn't just a business story. It's a story about passion over comfort, about the cost of obsession, about what it really means to build something that outlasts you. He'll tell you that if you haven't started a business by 40, don't bother. That retirement was invented to push you out. That AI is not another wave - it's a tsunami. And that the most expensive lessons in business are almost always about people.
Whether you're an entrepreneur at the start of your journey, a leader navigating the AI revolution, or someone who wonders what it looks like to still be curious and hungry at 71. This conversation will challenge everything you think you know about success, technology, and time.
Timestamps:
00:00 – "A golden cage": why Fayez came for six months and stayed 45 years
01:28 – Abu Dhabi vs. Dubai and the mind-boggling speed of UAE transformation
06:34 – From electrical engineering to poultry imports to farming — finding what actually excites him
11:20 – Coding the Kuwait Stock Exchange in assembly language and the moment he realized talent has value
12:29 – His first client in the UAE: a video rental library, a 2,000-dirham cheque, and why he never cashed it
15:54 – Seeing every stand at CeBIT with a PC and making a decision that changed everything
17:17 – The seven waves of technology: mainframes to AI — and why AI is the tsunami, not the wave
21:36 – Why Alpha Data's greatest asset isn't talent — it's 2,200 relationships built on trust
23:00 – Life only makes sense in the rearview mirror: navigating the fog of action
26:00 – The three ingredients for success: passion, innate ability, and demand
28:00 – His controversial take: if you haven't started a business by 40, don't bother
29:24 – Why Fayez took Alpha Data public after 44 years — and the succession problem that forced his hand
34:00 – Deliberately leaving money on the table at IPO and why that was the smartest move
38:00 – The stock market chief's warning: "The sleepless nights start after the birth"
41:40 – Alpha Data's three core values: care for people, no red tape, and speed
45:15 – Overcoming introversion, shaking knees, and the demon in your brain that tries to protect you
50:00 – On giving back: why his model is teaching people to fish, not handing them fish
57:00 – AI compared to electricity: we are at the very start of it invading every aspect of our lives
1:00:25 – What AI can never replace: trust, the handshake, and the look in someone's eyes
1:02:40 – Quickfire: what money really means, the hardest decision he ever made, and a belief he's completely abandoned
1:04:24 – Why most people fail and his single biggest leadership lesson
1:09:11 – Why retirement is an invention of the industrial age — and what he's learning right now at 71
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