Ayham Gorani, founder of expense management platform Pemo, shares his vision on turning tedious financial operations into smart tech solutions, highlighting the role of agentic AI in reshaping the business sector, and the importance of timing and validation for entrepreneurial success.
Article contents:
- Introduction
- Solving the boring problem: the birth of Pemo
- The factor of timing and financial success
- The agentic AI revolution in finance
- The art of validation: the golden rule for entrepreneurs
- Building a team rooted in trust and intelligence
- A struggle story: from despair to survival
- Future expansion in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
- FAQs
Introduction
In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, few succeed in turning routine, tedious problems into tech solutions worth millions of dollars. Ayham Gorani, a German entrepreneur of Syrian descent, is one of those who read the market smartly. Through the Pemo platform, Gorani is leading a fintech revolution in the Gulf region, targeting the small and medium-sized enterprise sector that has long suffered from a lack of dedicated banking services.
Solving the boring problem: the birth of Pemo
The idea for Pemo stemmed from a personal struggle Gorani faced. He describes financial and accounting operations as “a boring problem everyone hates,” but within that boredom lies opportunity. Gorani, who founded his first company in 2007 alongside the emergence of Web 2.0, noticed that business owners waste precious time managing expenses and tracking receipts instead of focusing on growing their businesses.
In 2017, Gorani tried to solve this problem, but fintech infrastructure at the time was not ready. Neither banks nor fintech solutions provided the necessary foundation to build a comprehensive solution. He had to wait for the market and infrastructure to mature, which materialized with the launch of Pemo in 2022, becoming an all-in-one corporate expense management platform offering smart corporate cards and expense automation solutions.
The factor of timing and financial success
Gorani believes that “timing” is the most critical factor in a startup’s success, potentially outweighing even the idea or the team. Had Pemo launched two years earlier, it would have failed due to a lack of infrastructure; had it been two years late, competition would have been impossible. The company’s launch coincided with an urgent market need and mature financial regulations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The numbers prove this vision right; the company successfully raised $7 million in a Pre-Series A funding round. Today, the platform serves 4,000 companies in the UAE and has aggressively initiated operations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, achieving exponential month-over-month growth. Expenses exceeding 1.2 billion UAE dirhams are processed annually through the platform, reflecting the immense trust it has gained in record time.
The agentic AI revolution in finance
Pemo did not settle for traditional solutions; it adopted artificial intelligence as an essential part of its architecture. Initially, the team feared relying on AI for expense categorization instead of strict traditional rule-based approaches. However, Gorani insisted on experimenting, and the result was astounding: 95% of expenses are categorized automatically with nearly 100% accuracy, saving accountants the vast majority of their time.
Yet Gorani’s ambition extends beyond mere automation; he sees a brilliant future for what is known as “agentic AI”. Unlike traditional conversational models like ChatGPT, this type acts as independent agents capable of collaborating to solve complex problems and take actual actions. Gorani believes this evolution will radically change the way businesses are founded and operated, opening vast doors for entrepreneurs to build solutions that were previously impossible.
The art of validation: the golden rule for entrepreneurs
When asked about the most important skill for entrepreneurs, Gorani did not hesitate to answer: “Validation”. He believes many fall into the trap of building products based on personal assumptions without real market testing. The core advice here is to run cheap, fast tests to confirm a real problem exists and that customers are willing to pay for the solution.
Gorani admits he learned this lesson the hard way, taking three or four failed ideas before mastering the art of validation. Decisions must rely on factual data rather than personal opinions, which distinguishes successful projects from those that endlessly drain resources without purpose.
Building a team rooted in trust and intelligence
Pemo transformed from a three-person team into a company of nearly 90 employees operating across 16 countries. In Gorani’s hiring philosophy, two criteria come first: intelligence and honesty in dealings. He looks for smart individuals capable of solving problems, but places utmost importance on psychological safety and mutual trust.
An employee must feel they are in an environment where they won’t be backstabbed, and that transparency and mutual respect exist. Gorani focuses on identifying key “pillars” within the team—individuals upon whom the company’s culture and operations are built—and forging a strong relationship with them to ensure continuous success.
A struggle story: from despair to survival
In a rare moment of candor, Gorani shared an emotional story from 2011 with his previous company, “Alpha Apps”. Despite the company’s success, it faced a severe cash liquidity crisis due to delayed payments from major clients. Things reached a point where he paid employee salaries and was left with only 15 dirhams in his pocket.
He recounts how he called his family in Germany to tell them of his failure and desire to return, and on his way back from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, he stopped at a gas station to buy food with his last remaining funds. At that critical moment, a text message arrived stating that a payment from a client had hit the account. This moment, which separated surrender from perseverance, taught him a harsh lesson about cash flow management—a lesson that later inspired him to found Pemo to help other companies avoid this fate.
Future expansion in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
Pemo is moving toward achieving profitability soon, with plans for a new funding round (Series A). Current and future focus is heavily placed on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where over 1.6 million small and medium-sized enterprises need modern financial solutions. Gorani believes the market is vast and that financial companies should cooperate rather than compete to build competencies and support the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, emphasizing that the ultimate goal is to empower small businesses to grow and thrive through technology.
FAQs
What is the Pemo platform?
Pemo is a fintech platform specializing in expense and disbursement management for small and medium-sized enterprises in the Middle East, offering smart corporate cards and accounting operation automation.
How does Pemo use artificial intelligence?
Pemo uses artificial intelligence to automatically categorize expenses and receipts with very high accuracy, eliminating manual entry and saving time for accountants and business owners.
What is “agentic AI” discussed by Ayham Gorani?
It is an advanced generation of artificial intelligence (Agentic AI) that acts as an independent agent capable of making decisions, executing complex tasks, and solving problems autonomously, rather than merely replying to conversations.
Why does Ayham Gorani focus on “validation”?
Because building products based on assumptions without market testing is a primary reason startups fail. Validation ensures real customers exist who are willing to pay for the solution before investing massive sums.
