About Me

TLDR: Entrepreneurship, design and marketing background. Chief Growth Officer at Symptoma and startup mentor at Oxford University Innovation. Previously Head of Product and Marketing at Zilch and Cofounder at Esplorio. Here's my Linkedin & Twitter.


Hiya đź‘‹,


If you’re reading this, you’ve probably clicked through from another post or are just curious as to who I am. I’ll try and answer that by outlining the events and experiences that have shaped both me and my perspective.


Who I am

I’m Essa Saulat. I’m originally from Karachi, spent a few years in Kuala Lumpur and then came to the UK to attend the Oxford University Software Incubator. I’ve been here ever since, despite the rain and lack of sunshine!


It’s hard to put “me” into a box, as who I am is in a constant state of flux. This is especially true in recent years as an unexpected illness forced me to re-evaluate how I see myself and the world. This led to two core realisations:


  1. I was stuck in a firefighting loop, a side effect of my difficult past, even though the fires were put out long ago.

  1. I had accepted certain universal and culture specific “truths” without questioning if they were logically sound. Spoiler alert… most weren’t.

Since then, I’ve tried to continually question and consciously shape who I am, rather than be defined by past circumstances.


My work

Simply put, I like building things and helping people.


I’m currently Chief Growth Officer at Symptoma, Startup Mentor at Oxford University Innovation and also volunteer as an independent startup mentor. Previously, I was Head of Product and Marketing at Zilch (a London based fin-tech currently valued at over half a billion USD).


I’ve founded a few startups of my own, the most recent being Esplorio , which raised over 1 million USD with backing from VCs, British Airways, the ESA BIC and Google.


In the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and learn from organisations such as Apple, British Airways, the United Nations, MasterCard, General Assembly and Flatiron School.


Startup mentoring

I owe a lot of my success as a founder to a long list of amazingly talented mentors, to whom I’m eternally grateful. I mentor startups not only to pass this forward, but also because I truly enjoy it!


Specifically, I offer help in the fields of entrepreneurship, design and marketing. I’m relatively sector agnostic, having helped startups that range from one building new forms of electric propulsion for satellites, to another using behavioural science to help people with ADHD build consistent habits.


What this blog is about

This blog is intentionally broad. The following topics are of particular interest, so are likely to get a bit more love:



For four years, I’ve been writing just for myself. Writing in a public medium however, helps me adopt a more critical mindset which encourages brevity and clarity.

This enables me to better distill and develop my ideas, plus share them with anyone who might find them useful. If you’re one such person, enjoy!


Cheers,

Essa


Notes:


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