Today we’d like to introduce you to Mohamed Soussi.
Mohamed, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
It all started when I was 11 years old. My mom would tell me these stories about a classmate of hers who went on to become a world renowned physicist, and my dad would get me these science magazines, and I remember the first one he got me had a black hole on the cover. Reading about these astrophysical objects pretty much put me on the path I am on today; I decided I wanted to become a physicist to study black holes. I stayed on that track, read all I could get my hands on; Special and General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, etc. Throughout these formative years, I knew one thing for certain: I needed to come to the US and enroll at one of the top schools here if I wanted to become a good physicist. So a few years go by and my freshman year in high school I hear about this program that lets selected high school students spend a year in the US, living with an American host family and going to an American high school, all expenses paid. I applied, and after four rounds of tests and interviews, I was one of 20 that were selected from a pool of thousands of applicants to be part of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study program. I was 16 years old at the time, and I was about to have the time of my life.
Fast forward 10 months, and I had made tons of new friends, I was speaking English fluently, and I had my mind set on one thing, and one thing only: I was to go back home, finish high school in Tunisia, and then apply to American colleges and universities my senior year, and that’s exactly what I did. After graduating top 10% in Tunisia, I was accepted at Williams College, the #1 Liberal Arts College in the US, and that’s where I would study physics. I had been coding since the age of 15, and always loved it, so during the second half of my freshman year, I took intro to Computer Science and fell in love with the major, and decided I’d double major in Physics and CS. Those two subjects perfectly encapsulate all of my interests: Physics, Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Space Exploration. If I could successfully complete a degree in those two subjects, then I’d be set to do anything I wanted with the set of skills I’d acquire.
In 2016, I graduated with a BA in Physics and Computer Science and moved to Miami to co-found Daycation with Matt Boney, a Brown University drop-out, and Alex Novo, a Miami local and ex JP Morgan analyst. For about two years and a half, I was the only engineer on the team. I designed and built the website (https://daycationapp.com), built our hotel-facing Dashboard, built the API backend, architected Daycation’s technological infrastructure, and hired our first engineer about six months ago. Today, I’m living in Miami Beach working on Daycation around the clock.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road. As a 16-year-old, I had only spoken English in class. And overnight, I found myself in a place where nobody understood either of the other languages I speak, Arabic and French. I managed to only speak English, and now people don’t believe me when I tell them I wasn’t born here in America, and that I went to a public school in Tunisia.
Before I was able to enroll at Williams College, I had Visa trouble. My case was going through “further system processing” for three months, my flight to the US had come and gone, and I still didn’t have my visa. I did everything exactly as I was supposed to. I had good grades, I graduated top of my class, I got accepted to one of the most prestigious colleges in the US, I had already bought my plane ticket, and yet I could already taste how all of that was about to come crashing down, and I’d have to stick to studying something different back in Tunisia. I’d never be able to become an astrophysicist. Then overnight, just as I was about to lose all hope of ever achieving something I had planned for the previous ten years, I get my visa and I board a Lufthansa flight headed to the US.
When I moved down to Miami to work on Daycation with Matt and Alex, I didn’t expect it to be a smooth sailing because of the stuff we read about how startups are statistically unlikely to succeed. When we’d pitch our idea, we’d get a lot of no’s. No’s from investors, no’s from hotels, over and over and over and over again. We wanted to build a global business and were struggling to get a total of 4 hotels to start using our platform. Matt and I lived in a 100 sqft apartment with one room, and no kitchen. We weren’t making enough money to pay ourselves and were barely making enough to pay rent. We kept at it, heads down, getting stuff done. We believe in our mission. That’s what kept us going then, and that’s what keeps us going now.
Daycation – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I co-founded a technology and hospitality startup called Daycation (https://daycationapp.com) that allows anyone to go to a hotel for the day and enjoy the amenities it has to offer, all without getting a room or staying overnight. Think relaxing poolside, going to the gym, using the steam room, etc., and then going home to sleep. I am Chief Technology Officer at Daycation, which means I engineered and built our consumer-facing website, our hotel facing dashboard, and our backend API. And for lack of a designer on our team, I had to pick that up as well while building the product. They say that as a startup founder or co-founder, one has to be really good at wearing multiple hats, and I think that’s what sets me apart from others. I am really good at wearing multiple hats, and I am a fast learner.
Is there a specific memory from when you were younger that you really miss?
My favorite memory from my childhood is when I saw a falling star for the first time. I was jumping up and down around the house and wanted to tell everyone about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://daycationapp.com
- Email: info@daycationapp.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/daycation_app
Image Credit:
Alex Orchilles Instagram: @alexthecinematographer
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