Ahmed Hilami

The through-line

Everything Ahmed Hilami says comes back to building for the long term in places and ways other people have not yet valued properly. He bought out his shareholders in 2012 precisely because they wanted to grow the company in order to sell it while he was building for the long haul [5], and the same instinct shows up in his reading of Morocco, where an initial strategic choice made more than fifteen years ago has, in his words, become a genuine conviction [2]. The second constant is his suspicion of anything inflated: prices, headcount, expectations, technology hype. "Ego en angst zijn de grootste vijand" [5] is the compressed version of a stance that reappears as a preference for process efficiency over margin games, for juniors over senior quick fixes, and for AI that is simple and practical rather than impressive.

What has shifted is the arena. The early material is about a printing business built on spotting holes in an old industry and replacing the middleman [5]; the recent material is about AI as the thing that now does the work, and about Morocco as the talent base that builds it [1][2][4]. The method is unchanged. Find the structural inefficiency, remove it, and stay long enough to own the result.

On Morocco as the underestimated bet

His most repeated public argument is that European companies are looking in the wrong directions. "Iedereen spreekt over Silicon Valley. Iedereen kijkt naar India. Maar nog veel te weinig bedrijven kijken naar Marokko" [1]. After seventeen years operating between Belgium and Morocco he calls the country one of the most underestimated strategic opportunities available to European businesses, and notes that it has become the most industrialised country in Africa [1]. He is careful to say that the industrial ranking is not even the main point for him. What stands out is the speed of change across industry, digitalisation, innovation and above all artificial intelligence [1].

The evidence he offers is concrete and consistent: high-level AI engineers and developers, universities turning out more digital talent every year, a national strategy in Digital Morocco 2030 that puts digitalisation and AI at the centre, and a position that sits between Europe, Africa and the Middle East [2]. He also insists on the character of the ambition. Morocco is no longer content to be a user of AI; it wants to help build its future [2]. And it is not trying to become a copy of Silicon Valley, but building its own model on its own strengths of talent, stability and proximity [2]. That last point matters to how he sells it: the case is not cheap imitation, it is a genuinely different asset.

On building the bridge

The Morocco thesis is not abstract for him because he has spent seventeen years constructing the connection himself [1]. With Elavi he has guided dozens of Belgian companies through setting up their Shared Service Center in Morocco and building strong local teams there [1]. FLUGIA | AI Business Platform is presented as the continuation of that same bridge rather than a new departure [1]. The through-line he draws is that the infrastructure of trust and local teams built over a decade and a half is what makes the AI work possible now.

On AI that is simple, accessible and practical

His stated belief about artificial intelligence is deliberately unglamorous: at FLUGIA the conviction is that AI must be simple, accessible and above all practical, which is why the work is about helping companies integrate smart AI solutions into what they already do [3]. He frames the value in the same terms when talking to entrepreneurs, partners and professionals, discussing how AI already creates concrete added value for businesses today rather than what it might do later [3]. Visibility work follows the same logic; sponsoring the BW Classic cycling event for the first time as main sponsor was, for him, less about the milestone than about the encounters it produced, and he credits Charles Caprasse and Max Cap Production with the organisation [3].

On AI Coworkers

The clearest expression of the practical framing is that he describes AI not as a tool but as staff. The AI Coworkers work intelligently and autonomously for a company so that the client saves time, works more efficiently and above all gets better results [4]. Each is given a name and a job title. David FLUGIA, the AI Marketing Manager, takes online visibility from A to Z: SEO and GEO analysis of the company, monitoring of online reputation, content creation for the website, and writing and optimising LinkedIn posts [4]. Emily FLUGIA, the AI Customer Support Manager, is available around the clock to prospects and customers, runs a highly personalised chatbot, answers incoming calls and automatically produces a summary with the necessary follow-up actions, and he puts a number on it: up to 85% of incoming calls are already handled by Emily [4]. John FLUGIA is the AI Sales Manager and prospects [4]. The AI Coworkers were already working for numerous companies before they were given a real-life format [4].

On efficiency as the actual product

The Flyer.be story is an efficiency story, not a pricing trick. The origin was the discovery that printing multiple orders together carries only one start-up cost, which makes each individual job dramatically cheaper, and he built the company on the holes he saw in the traditional printing world by replacing the middleman [5]. The result is that selling prices are two to three times cheaper than a traditional printer's cost price, and he is emphatic that this comes purely from process optimisation and efficiency rather than from cutting product quality [5]. "We zijn ondertussen de grootste online drukkerij in België" [5]. The bias toward action underneath it is blunt: "Ik heb het gewoon gedaan, dus ja, niet te veel over nagedacht, gewoon gedaan" [5]. And the appetite is for difficulty: "Hoe groter de uitdaging is, hoe liever dat ik het heb" [5].

On shareholders and misaligned visions

He bought out his shareholders in 2012 because their horizon and his had diverged, they wanted to grow the company in order to sell it while he was building for the long term [5]. His framing of that split is emotional as well as strategic: misaligned visions are like a couple growing apart, damaging for the founders and also for the employees, who sense the tension [5]. The implication he draws is that ownership structure is not a financial detail but something the whole organisation feels.

On growing too fast and hiring slowly

The most costly lesson he tells is about speed. Growing and hiring too fast, taking anyone who roughly fitted the profile, produced a negative atmosphere until he no longer recognised his own company [5]. The correction was painful and physical: he had to let several people go at the same time and take tasks back himself, which is what restored his feeling with the business [5]. The rule he built afterwards inverts the original error. Take a long time, run three to five interviews to genuinely get to know candidates, and prefer juniors with potential you can train over senior quick fixes that break the whole [5].

On mistakes, and on leading by showing

Inside Flyer.be, employees are explicitly allowed to make mistakes, because that is how you learn most, and because a company that does not allow mistakes becomes stiff and cramped and nobody tries anything new [5]. He applies the same standard to himself: "Zo leer je het meest. Ik heb altijd geleerd van mijn fouten" [5]. His leadership follows the same grain. He shows rather than dictates, going on the road with his people and demonstrating his own way of working while leaving room for them to reach the same result their own way [5].

On the loneliness of the decision, and on distance

As sole shareholder-CEO he has no one to share the final call with, and his method for handling that is to think out loud. He calls his board of directors together and talks the problem through, because in the act of speaking he processes it and reads the reactions in the room [5]. Alongside that he keeps a personal practice going back to 2010 and 2011, using Chinese medicine, meditation, yoga and breathing courses to take distance, calm down and see solutions to business challenges [5]. Expectation management belongs to the same discipline: too many expectations create a bigger chance of disappointment, so when a project falls through he gives it a place and moves on within minutes, analyse, accept, turn the switch [5].

On one deep dive a year

He runs his own attention the way he runs hiring, slowly and on purpose. Each year he deliberately dives deep into one aspect of the company: 2019 was reorganising production across fourteen machines, and 2020 was contracts, partnerships, the new French agency and digitalisation projects [5].

Takeaways

• Morocco is the most industrialised country in Africa, but the more useful signal is the speed of its evolution in industry, digitalisation and AI, and the fact that it is building its own model rather than copying Silicon Valley [1][2].
• Digital Morocco 2030, a rising output of AI engineers from local universities, and a position between Europe, Africa and the Middle East are the concrete grounds for treating Morocco as a talent base rather than a cost base [2].
• AI has to be simple, accessible and practical, and sold on concrete added value it creates today; FLUGIA's AI Coworkers are framed as staff with names and job titles, with up to 85% of incoming calls already handled by Emily FLUGIA [3][4].
• Being two to three times cheaper than a traditional printer's cost price came from process optimisation and removing the middleman, never from reducing product quality [5].
• Misaligned shareholder visions damage founders and employees alike, because staff feel the tension; buying out shareholders in 2012 was the price of building for the long term [5].
• Hire slowly with three to five interviews, and take juniors with potential over senior quick fixes that break the whole; hiring anyone who roughly fits the profile poisons the atmosphere [5].
• Allow mistakes explicitly, or the company becomes stiff and cramped and nobody tries anything new [5].
• "Ego en angst zijn de grootste vijand" [5], and the antidote is distance: thinking out loud with a board, meditation and breathing practice, and keeping expectations low enough that a lost project can be given a place within minutes [5].