Noura Sakkija and Majed Masad met in 2009 through mutual friends and were immediately attracted to each other's entrepreneurial aspirations.
Two years later they got married and launched jewelry company Mejuri together in 2013. Sakkija serves as CEO, and Masad, co-founder and president, oversees marketing, data, retail, merchandising and real estate.
Married co-founders may face some unique challenges.
“We've had a lot of times where we've wondered, 'Should we do this together?' – said Masad.
But their relationship also played an important role in building the company, both told Business Insider.
“Crazy Trust”
Both Sakkija and Masad said their greatest strength is the trust they have in each other.
“I believe blindly, madly, madly that he has achieved what he’s working for,” Sakkija said, adding that they are both “working hard to win.”
Masad said one of the benefits of working together is their ability to be direct. According to him, this level of openness helps businesses grow faster.
Both said working together also brings out their individual strengths. Masad said he considers himself detail-oriented, data-driven and passionate about problem solving and strategy, while Sakkija excels in communication, decision-making and emotional intelligence. This divide-and-conquer approach became the key to growing a business as well as managing household responsibilities with her twins.
“We balance each other out, even in the boardroom,” Masad said. “Sometimes we think I’m going sideways and Nura’s course is correcting, or vice versa.”
“Disagree and Agree”
While a couple's different strengths help create balance, they can make decisions difficult. Masad said he tends to evaluate choices through a commercial lens, while Sakkija focuses more on design and product vision.
Sakkija said they agree about 95% of the time. When they come to disagreements, Masad explained, they have learned to rely on the person closest to the issue to make the final decision.
Masad said he applies Jeff Bezos' management philosophy: “disagree and commit” as the Amazon founder described in a 2016 letter to shareholders.
“If you have beliefs in a certain direction, even if there's no consensus, it's helpful to say, 'Look, I know we don't agree on this, but will you take the risk with me? Do you disagree and agree?” — Bezos wrote in the letter.
Masad noted that while some of their solutions revolve around “two-way doors” that Bezos describes how solutions this can be reversed – there are also more rigid “one way door” variations that are more permanent and require more back and forth. At times like these, he says, it's important to trust that the person making the decision has thought it through carefully.
“I'm not going to say it's always beautiful and always easy. There are situations where we say, 'Come on, this is the wrong choice,'” Masad said.
Masad said the early days of the business were the most difficult, as the couple were still newlyweds and learning each other's work styles while trying to build the company from the ground up. Then came the pandemic and the twins.
He said they have both worked hard to separate family life from work life, but it is an ongoing effort.
“Nura’s problems are my problems; my problems are Noora’s problems,” Masad said.
Masad said they have learned to tell each other when they don't want to discuss work. To keep business conversations off the dinner table, the couple also schedules one-on-one meetings to discuss business matters and resolve differences.
