About Me

You’re probably wondering where on earth that name is from, right?

According to the Qur’an, Tariq is the “Morning Star” even though I’m much more of a night owl. For some more trivia Tariq Ibn Ziyad (d. 720) was the leader of the Moors who brought Iberia under Muslim rule and who gave his name to Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq ‘mountain of Tariq’ in Arabic). I’m also much more of a pacifist.

Valente, in Portuguese (also Italian) means brave/courageous, and is the derivative of the latin Valentem. It is said that it derives from pre 3rd century saint and martyr Valentinus, whose martyrdom happened on February 14th, which in the old Roman calendar marked the coming of spring

My father, Yacine, is from the South of Tunisia from a town called Zarzis. After starting his own business at the age of 8, selling chickens and eggs to his neigbours in the Jabana Azraq (“the blue graveyard” neighbourhood). He managed to find his break to London, with a few pounds in his pocket, and started washing dishes. He would tell other that he was a DJ and spent nights ‘spinning plates’ - yeh he is a funny chap. He then was lucky to meet my mother at the restaurant they worked at called Heroes.

My mother, Maria, is from the north of Portugal from a very small village (of a couple of hundred people) called Farejinhas, about 100km in land from Porto. This place is magical and played an important role in my life. It has been left largely untouched and has a resource-based economy. If you have more onions and your neighbour has more potatoes - trade away. She grew up in a farming family and despite being one of the smartest people I have ever met in my life, she dropped out of school at the age of 10 to help on the farm. However, she always spoke of times of mischief when she used to go and ride sheep through the fields. At 17 she also made a big leap to a far away land which was a rare thing in the village.

I was born in Kingston Hospital (not Jamaica!) in 1987 as a Leo. I spent my first couple of years in London where my parents ended up buying Heroes, the restaurant where they met. Maria, the hard worker she was, was still serving tables when it was my time to break into the world. My brother Jamil was born a year and a half later and then our parents decide to buy a 30 room hotel (as anyone does when brining 2 babies into the world!). It was located at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex where I grew up until I was 9 years old. Growing up in the hotel was an incredible journey for a kid, it’s there where I learnt that to serve was one of the most noble of things you can do as a human. I learnt to play the piano, was given my first camera, I entertained guests and got in to trouble, a lot.

In order to not forget our roots, every year we went to Zarzis and Farejinhas. In Farejinhas, my beautiful grandparents used to take me on long walks with the cows, took me to dig up potatoes, preparing the animals/food and picking fruit. Only good memories. My trips to Zarzis saw children working hard to help their parents make ends meet with the very little they had but they still wore a smile and always looked after their neighbours. In Zarzis, I would attend the Mosque on a Friday with my family and in Farejinhas, I would go to Church on a Sunday. These trips taught me to be grateful, to always work hard, to always count our blessings and that in the end of the day, regardless of our beliefs - we are all the same.

We moved to Lagos, in the sunny Algarve, when I was 9. Sun, sea, good food and another incredible place to grow up. I quickly adapted to the Portuguese way of life and am ever grateful for an exciting childhood. I started working in a restaurant at the age of 13 and quickly understood that if you serve well, you get more tips and gratitude. After completing my A-levels, I ventured to Plymouth in the UK to start university.

University was fun. Given my hustling DNA, I chose to study Business and Management as it would always be valuable. On the side, after getting to know the local night scene, I was asked to run the marketing team at a multi-million pound nightclub that was launching. I paid my own way through university with several jobs and also received a distinction in my Thesis which was based on Trust in Business relationships. During university I was part of the Football and Poker societies which remain two things that I am very fond of (an Arsenal fan, if you really want to know!). After university I did many things from starting a business with a friend, selling cars and then moved back to the Algarve where I did Real Estate during the 2007-2010 recession. Despite its challenges, I was still selling during the downturn. I found creative ways to generate new business and put in extra hours as sales will always be a numbers game.

After the Algarve I moved to Lisbon for just under a year and dived into another venture which unfortunately failed. That being said, it definitely taught me how to definitely operate under pressure and despite the challenges, it made me stronger. I packed up my bags, yet again, and moved to London in 2012 and tried recruitment for a bit but realised it wasn’t quite for me and that’s when I received a call from a little known tech company called Apigee based out of in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley). They were building out their office in EMEA and needed. That was the start of my career in the tech space. The tech was very cool, we were evangelising the open API vision, essentially the way apps communicate with each other and making it easy for developers to build stuff. I was officially an Apigeek. To better understand, here’s a video that was shown to me when I began so you can understand. The CEO, Chet Kapoor, was an inspirational leader who put together a world-class team of smart people, solving hard problems whilst having fun. Lots of travel to Silicon Valley and used to love hanging out in Antonio’s Nut House and other cool spots. Given my results, I was asked from management in the US to lead the sales development team in EMEA. Apigee then IPO’d and was subsequently acquired by Google. I am forever grateful for that journey.

In the words of Steve Jobs, “You got to start from customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with technology and try to figure out where you going to try to sell it.”. Like good ol’ Jobs, customer experience became something that I was truly fascinated with and after Apigee I joined Lithium (now Khoros) where I was responsible for developing business in the UK and Nordics. We were offering an Online Community platform for social marketing and support. I started mixing with CX leaders who were looking to accelerate their digital transformation.

In 2016, I moved to Amsterdam. London still has a special place in my heart but the parties were way better in Amsterdam :) Now the weather isn’t much better - but the quality of work-life balance, lack of mammoth commutes, beautiful scenery and friendliness of the Dutch are fantastic plus points. I a couple of different startups in the CX space and even started co-hosting growth hacking workshops which is another favourite topic of mine. Then, I met Nicholas, the technical founder of Surfly over some ‘biertje’s and bitterballen’ and instantly was captivated about the vision. I became his business partner in what was still a techie only company - I saw the huge potential in the Team and Product. An intelligent interaction middleware which allows brands to modify, audit, record and share any web content on the fly. Developers can instantly build on top of any existing application without the need of changing any of the underlying code. I helped grow MRR by 1000%, initiated and helped raise a €2M round of investment from a leading VC and built a team of sales superstars from scratch in a player/coach position - challenging! I also launched some fantastic projects with some amazing globally recognised brands, developed a successful partner ecosystem from scratch that contributed to over 50% of revenue (with players like AWS, NICE, Cisco, Accenture, DXC, TCS, RingCentral, Vonage) and won numerous of prestigious awards for Surfly around the world (see more below).

In May 2023, I had the honour of rejoining Chet, a number of ex-Apigeeks and a group of smart, passionate and hard-working individuals over at a very inspiring company called DataStax to spearhead growth of their GenAI and Vector Search offering. More to come on this…