From Saudi Arabia to the Global Gaming Stage
Jasim's entrepreneurial journey began in the unlikeliest of classrooms: the intersection of multiple cultures, religions, and worldviews. Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, of Lebanese origin, he later moved to Lebanon for boarding school before ultimately landing in the United States for his undergraduate studies in economics at USF. That early exposure to diverse perspectives, he believes, laid the groundwork for everything that followed.
"Probably the best thing I ever did was to understand economics," Jasim reflects. "It's something that not a lot of people... or I'd say it's underestimated, right? Like I think economics can be really put into anything or applied in anything that you do especially especially within business."
His professional start came at Rocket Internet around 2010, during the e-commerce boom, where he cut his teeth in the subscription box industry. But the corporate path soon plateaued, prompting a move to the UAE where he rode the wave of digital media transformation—helping shift spending power from traditional offline channels to measurable digital platforms. It was there he first encountered emerging technologies like blockchain and crypto, well before they entered mainstream consciousness.
The Esports IPO That Crashed with COVID
Jasim's gaming obsession—casual favorites like Tetris and Mario Kart rather than hardcore AAA titles—eventually pulled him toward esports. He invested in and developed his own esports organization, then made an unusually ambitious move: relocating to the UK to take it public.
"What we were thinking is how do we connect such an emerging industry to capital through the capital markets so that it could actually sustain itself," he explains. "And you know it then became COVID and it all flopped."
Where others might see only devastation, Jasim found education. "I'm grateful... as an entrepreneur just as a human I'm more grateful for the failures that I have, right? For the things that flop because they, you know, get so much out of them."
That failure became the foundation for something larger. Pivoting from esports, he and his business partner began examining hyper-casual and mini-games—simpler, more accessible gaming experiences. The result was Plays Out, a company positioned not merely as a game publisher but as infrastructure for a much bigger vision.
The Super App Thesis: Why Uber Needs Games
Plays Out's core mission centers on a striking observation about global technology markets. In China, WeChat became dominant not through any single function but by becoming everything—a super app where users message, shop, pay bills, play games, and more without ever leaving. In the West, by contrast, consumers juggle dozens of single-purpose apps.
WeChat has become super successful not just from gaming but overall as a super app right. So like you can do anything inside one app whereas in the west we have an app for everything.
Jasim's thesis: games are the missing glue that could bind Western apps into cohesive ecosystems. Consider Uber—already technically a multi-service platform with ride-hailing, food delivery, groceries, and rewards, yet most users interact with only the car function. What if, while waiting five minutes for a driver, users could play a quick game and earn Uber Eats discounts?
"All of a sudden, I have transferred you as or I have acquired you into my foods services as well," Jasim explains. "So you become an Uber Eats customer as well, right? I activate you into different behaviors through my reward system."
This extends beyond transportation. Airlines, e-commerce platforms, even crypto wallets face the same challenge: users engage once, then bounce. Jasim argues that adding actual games—not mere gamification mechanics like points and leaderboards, but genuine playable content—creates emotional investment that keeps users inside ecosystems longer and deepens brand loyalty.
A parallel trend excites him equally: the collapse of attention spans is forcing even massive intellectual properties to discover audiences through short-form content first. "You have huge IP like AAA game releases, movie releases, song releases, anything that has long form content... will plug itself into short form first so that it can get discovered and so that it get familiar with its audience." Games, he believes, represent the next evolution beyond passive scrolling—interactive attention capture that builds toward deeper engagement.
Fundraising, Building, and Showing Up Anyway
Raising capital for this vision required Jasim to unlearn conventional wisdom. His approach emphasizes brutal self-honesty before approaching any investor: "Would you buy the product yourself? Are you going to invest? Are you asking yourself all of the hard questions?" He stresses that rejection contains valuable refinement signals—founders who incorporate feedback and return to previously dismissive investors often build stronger cases than those who simply move to the next name on the list.
Warm introductions matter enormously in today's crowded market, but so does genuine relationship-building. "You never want to feel like you're just money," Jasim notes. "I'm a person. So like you also you're telling your story to a human. If that human can really see and feel your mission then most of the time you'll get a yes."
The initial funding went almost entirely toward product development—building the SDK and proving the model with early partners rather than premature marketing splashes. Only now, with functioning infrastructure and validated demand, is the company preparing a strategic round to scale into priority regions including India, Latin America, and Africa.
Perhaps most unexpectedly, Jasim launched a weekly live game show—currently on episode four—where he hosts founders, athletes, and community members playing his company's games. Not a podcast, not an AMA, but genuine game show format with prizes and giveaways.
I'm not looking to become a billionaire off of a game show. I'm looking to expose my thesis and what I know what I'm passionate about.
The motivation, he insists, transcends metrics. "I don't care if two people are watching or two billion people are watching... it's not about that it's about what I'm trying to do." That consistency-through-uncertainty philosophy, applied to both content and company-building, may ultimately define whether his super app vision bridges the gap between Eastern consolidation and Western fragmentation.
Key Takeaways for Founders
1. Embrace failure as education. Jasim explicitly states he's "more grateful for the failures" because they yield the most learning. His collapsed IPO became the foundation for a more sophisticated infrastructure play.
2. Ask yourself the hard questions before investors do. "Would you buy the product yourself? Are you asking yourself all of the hard questions?" Rigorous self-examination builds the confidence to handle any investor challenge.
3. Use rejection as refinement, not rejection. When investors say no, incorporate their feedback and return. "Those are the people that are like, 'Okay, well, okay, you fixed that. Now, let's look at what else.'"
4. Build product before marketing. Jasim deliberately avoided marketing spend until the SDK was functional and early partners validated the thesis. "If I do find you and you don't have a product yet, you lost me."
