Building a Startup Was Never the Goal

The two questions I've been asked the most over the past few months are, "Where did you disappear to? We don't see your Instagram account anymore." This mostly comes from people who don't have my personal accounts and only find my LinkedIn, which I only brought back a few days ago. Believe it or not, some people even end up messaging me through Pinterest. Very few people from the Instagram community have my personal number, so mashallah, the fact that so many people noticed I disappeared and actually reached out means a lot. May Allah reward them all with goodness.

The second question always comes with the first one.

"What happened to Nhance? It looked like it was doing well. Why did you stop? What really happened?"

So I thought this would be the right time to reflect on the story of Nhance, how it all started, why it stopped, and everything that happened in between. Very few people know the full story from the beginning.

Let me take you back to 2018, when the seed of the idea was first planted.

At the time, I was working at an agency as an Art Director and Creative Department Manager. Part of my job was constantly hiring talented creatives for projects, whether interns or full time employees.

The biggest problem I kept running into was that I simply couldn't find people I could truly rely on. There were plenty of young creatives in the market, but very few who were dependable enough to build a strong team with. Every time someone joined, I found myself having to redo their work or constantly supervise everything.

Some just didn't care enough. Others didn't like the agency environment because they wanted to live the artist lifestyle where they only worked whenever inspiration came. Others simply lacked the artistic foundation needed for the job.

All of those problems eventually came down to one thing. It was incredibly difficult to build a solid creative team that you could genuinely depend on.

Without realizing it, I started giving every new hire a small training program before they could properly work with me. I was only around 25yo at the time, so I was close enough in age to understand people who had just graduated. They trusted me, I trusted them, and together we managed to compensate for many of the gaps I kept seeing in the market.

That was the moment the core idea behind Nhance was born.

I thought, why not build a service that becomes the link between agencies and talented creatives?

Companies kept saying they couldn't find good people.

Creative people kept saying they couldn't find work.

The real gap wasn't a lack of opportunities. It was the quality of education available in Morocco and the mismatch between what companies expected and what candidates believed they could offer.

So I wrote the idea in my notebook, the same notebook that was already full of ideas built around real problems I had personally experienced in the market.

And then... it stayed there.

Time passed.

Eventually I became an independent freelancer, working directly with clients, and alhamdulillah my client base kept growing. At some point I realized I couldn't continue working alone forever, so naturally I needed to build a team.

At first I worked with freelancers from around the world because almost all of my clients were outside Morocco.

Later I started thinking, why not build my team here in Morocco instead? The people would be closer, the clients would be closer, and to be honest, I had become exhausted working across multiple time zones.

North American clients meant I was working during our nights.

European clients had completely different schedules.

Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleeping properly just to keep up with everyone.

It reached a point where it was directly affecting my health.

Once I decided to slowly transition toward Moroccan clients, I immediately ran into the exact same recruitment problem I had faced back in 2018.

Nothing had changed.

So I opened that old notebook again, and suddenly the idea of closing that gap came back to life.

But around that same period, a personal family situation forced me to put everything on hold. Client work stopped. Every project stopped. I took a long break, very similar to the one I recently took, simply to regain my peace of mind and rebuild myself mentally.

Fast forward to the end of 2023.

I finally started feeling ready to work again.

But this time something inside me had changed.

During that long break, I had gone through a spiritual journey. As usual, I spent a lot of time reviewing my old notes and reflecting on my work. That's when I realized many things I had been doing were either clearly haram or involved serious doubtful matters.

Since most of my clients were international, there were many situations that conflicted with my religious values.

So I began completely rethinking my business model.

That was when the Nhance idea came back stronger than ever.

I wanted to build a service that would genuinely close the gap between companies and creative talent, and to be helpful to humanity and my community (Halal stuff)

At the same time, I had already started building a creative community on Instagram, as I mentioned in previous posts, so the timing felt right.

I spoke with my friends, and they were excited to build it with me. We spent a lot of time discussing the best way to attack the problem and what form the solution should take.

Eventually we landed on the idea of building a startup.

Now, if you're familiar with Morocco's startup ecosystem, you already know it's extremely difficult. There isn't much infrastructure, there aren't many resources, and if you want to build something, you're usually funding it from your own pocket.

Around that time I had been reading a lot about business, and I came across the concept of bootstrapping.

More specifically, Service Based Funding.

The idea was simple.

Instead of raising money from investors, the startup funds itself by selling services first.

Since I already worked in branding, and my friends specialized in development, and we had already collaborated on projects for years, the plan made perfect sense.

We would build a startup whose main mission was connecting companies with creative talent.

That was the long term vision.

To finance it, we would operate like an agency, offering branding services and mobile app development to clients.

That was the birth of Enhance Consulting.

Why the name Enhance?

Because enhancement has always been part of my DNA.

Whenever I enter a business or a project, my instinct is to improve it.

So if I was entering the startup world to solve this market gap, then my goal was simply to enhance the Moroccan creative ecosystem.

My team and I created a roadmap.

We decided to launch gradually.

First came Enhance Brands, since I already had branding clients and only needed a new identity.

Then came Enhance Development, where my friends handled mobile app development under the same brand.

The plan was simple.

We would finance ourselves through client services, then reinvest those profits into building the infrastructure needed for the real mission, closing the gap between talent and the market.

Then life happened.

Client projects became one problem after another.

Some clients refused to pay.

Others delayed endlessly.

Some projects never even reached completion.

The entire bootstrapping strategy that was supposed to move us forward started working against us.

At some point we realized that if we continued, we'd end up sinking ourselves instead of building anything meaningful.

So we made the difficult decision to stop everything.

Looking back, it was the right decision given the circumstances we were facing.

That was when I accepted that the startup should remain on standby until I was truly ready.

Not 30% ready.

100% ready.

With a clear vision.

A solid financing strategy.

And the right resources.

I even gave myself a timeline.

I told myself that by 2030 I would have my master plan ready, enough capital, and everything necessary to finally build the startup the right way.

But then, at the beginning of 2025, I brought it back to life once again (pchakh ala 2030 lol)

This time, however, the motivation behind it was completely different from what drove me in 2023.

I'll leave that story for the next post.

This one was simply the story of how the idea of Nhance was born.