Notes from running the operation

Founder lessons

An idea is not an MVP — and the gap is where most founders stall

By Alaaddine Nasloubi · Co-founder & CEO, Fufills

When we launched Fufills, the objective was never to build something perfect. It was to build something real — narrow, unglamorous, but actually working end to end for one seller, in one market, with one payment method.

A lot of founders confuse an idea with a minimum viable product. An idea is a description of a problem and a hope. An MVP is the smallest thing that survives contact with a paying customer. The distance between the two is where most companies quietly die, because polishing the plan feels like progress while it teaches you nothing.

The thing that moved us forward wasn't a better deck. It was shipping a version we were slightly embarrassed by, watching where it broke, and fixing the part that mattered most to the person on the other end. Cross-border COD is unforgiving that way: you find out very fast whether the order confirms, whether the package arrives, and whether the cash comes back.

If you're sitting on an idea, the most useful question isn't "is it good?" It's "what is the smallest version I can put in front of a real buyer this month?"

Operations

Why cash on delivery still wins in Latin America

By Alaaddine Nasloubi · Co-founder & CEO, Fufills

People who haven't operated in Latin America tend to treat cash on delivery as a primitive fallback — something markets will "graduate" away from once cards and wallets catch up. On the ground, it looks very different. COD isn't a limitation buyers tolerate; for a large share of them, it's the payment method they trust most.

When a buyer can inspect the product at their door before any money leaves their hands, the perceived risk of buying from an unknown seller drops to almost nothing. That trust is what unlocks the first purchase — and the first purchase is the hardest one to win when you're a foreign brand with no local reputation.

The catch is that COD is operationally heavy. You carry the cost of delivery before you're paid, you manage refusal and return-to-origin rates, and you reconcile cash across a fragmented courier landscape. Sellers who bolt COD onto a card-first system usually get the economics wrong and conclude the market doesn't work.

It does work — but only if the whole flow is built around cash from the start: hard-gated confirmation before dispatch, courier selection per zone, address quality, delivery attempts, and reconciliation. Get those right and COD stops being friction and becomes the reason buyers say yes.

Logistics

Building a logistics network across 16 markets

By Alaaddine Nasloubi · Co-founder & CEO, Fufills

From the outside, "a network across 16 Latin American markets" sounds like a map with lines on it. From the inside, it's a hundred small agreements, each with its own quirks, stitched together until a seller experiences it as one reliable service.

No single courier covers everything well. Coverage, delivery speed, COD handling, and reliability vary not just country to country but region to region inside a single country. The work is choosing the right partner for each lane based on historical performance — not one fixed contract per country — holding them to a standard, and having a fallback when one underperforms.

The technology layer is what makes that manageable. If confirmation, dispatch, delivery, and the cash-collection loop live in one system, you can see where things break and route around it. Without that visibility, you're flying blind across borders — and blind operators in COD lose money quietly until it's too late.

The goal isn't to own every truck. It's to make the seller's experience feel like one company, even when it's many.

Strategy

Why MENA founders should look at LATAM

By Alaaddine Nasloubi · Co-founder & CEO, Fufills

There's a quiet assumption among many entrepreneurs in Morocco and the wider Arab world that serious expansion means Europe or the Gulf. Those are real markets. But they're also crowded, and the gap between what a small seller can offer and what's already there is narrow.

Latin America is the opposite kind of opportunity: large, fast-growing, and underserved by good infrastructure. The barriers that scare people off — logistics, cash payment culture, regulation — are exactly what create room for newcomers willing to do the operational work. Difficulty is a moat when you're on the right side of it.

I'm not arguing every MENA founder should pivot to LATAM tomorrow. I'm arguing the region deserves to be on the list, and that the reasons people dismiss it are usually the reasons it's worth a serious look. That conviction is the whole reason Fufills exists.