I am an engineer by diploma and a business analyst by trade. I didn't set out to build an AI transcription company. I built Audiomaktube out of necessity, to solve a problem that nearly broke me at my job.
I spent my first few years working as a BA across multiple multinationals. Exactly one day before my notice period ended at my first company, I discovered I was pregnant. I joined my second company anyway, knowing they would eventually expect me to take maternity leave shortly after joining—timing that clearly wasn't beneficial for them.
I faced a difficult choice: tell them early as the law suggests, or hide it until my probation ended. Friends warned me that if I told them during probation, they could easily fire me for "low performance" to avoid the cost of my maternity leave. But my manager was a woman who seemed decent, so I took the courage and told her. She was supportive and successfully defended my confirmation after my probation ended.
While still on probation there, I took a one-month freelance mission on the side. It was technically against my contract, but the check was tempting. Later, after returning from maternity leave and working remotely with my daughter who was still under six months old, my manager suddenly mandated the whole team back onsite. The stress of being separated from her for the first time led to me getting physically sick at work. It felt less like an operational need and more like a test of compliance.
Beyond that, the company itself was a good experience, except for one colleague. He wasn't doing his job properly, and because I handled the next stage of the work, he would use the handover window to mix things up and blame his mistakes on me. Once I realized what he was doing, I became extremely meticulous, gathering irrefutable proof of everything I did. The problem was solved, but I hated it. I didn't want to work in an environment where I had to constantly cover my back with proof. That is why I ultimately applied for a new job and left a company I otherwise really liked.
I moved on to a third company. It was an overall good experience, except for some micromanagement and one strange incident. My manager became angry after learning I had spoken Arabic during a meeting where all attendees were Arabs—and he wasn't even present. He insisted it was an Anglophone environment and that we should speak English in professional meetings. It was an ironic stance, considering he and I spoke French to each other all the time, especially during our bi-weekly one-on-ones.
The First Firing
I didn't actively look to leave that third company, but a headhunter contacted me for a role at a fourth company. Since I had no urgent reason to leave, I asked for a high salary. After I passed all their tests, they met my number. Unfortunately, the IT architecture role turned out to be a complete mismatch from day one. For five months, my daily reality consisted of reformatting colleagues' CVs into commercial-offer decks. One deck I spent real time on got scrapped because a colleague's version was judged "more convincing" — without anyone explaining what that actually meant.
During that same period, I was told to sit as a silent observer in an important client meeting. The client used a technical term repeatedly. The senior architect leading the meeting — someone with 25 years of experience — used the term back confidently. On the break, I asked him what it meant. He admitted he had no idea. A director later confirmed it plainly: the culture of confident guessing was real. Pretending to understand was the norm; admitting you didn't know something was a risk.
Around that same time, I had started wearing a niqab part-time. I knew the workplace wouldn't allow it onsite; the dress code leaned toward showing rather than covering. I would put it on the moment I got in my car, and take it off before entering the building, wearing a face mask inside instead. My manager saw me put it on in the car one day. When asked about the mask, I said I had a dust mite allergy.
Shortly after, HR fired me, citing "misalignment." Did the manager seeing the niqab cause the firing? I honestly don't know for sure. Did my preference for modest clothing clash with their culture? Almost certainly. The ambiguity of being let go without a clear reason, right after a potential clash over personal identity, is the core of that experience.
The Gap
I took time off, hoping to build a business of my own. It didn't work. I burned through my savings and realized I had no choice but to go back to being an employee.
I joined an offshoring company for a Canadian telecom. It was a dense project. Every week brought offshore calls, complex architecture reviews, and new technical acronyms.
Two Features, One Origin
I was struggling to keep up with those dense meetings, so I started running recordings through free transcription tools. One of them capped me at two 30-minute audios a day, forcing me to pay to get past the wall. (Ironically, when I built my own free tier later, I set a similar limit of 20 minutes. I know how freemium works from both sides).
But none of the paid tools actually helped me understand the meeting. They just gave me a raw wall of text. They confidently guessed at unfamiliar acronyms and got them wrong every single time.
I needed a way to keep a list of company-specific terms so they would stop being transcribed wrong — so I built the Vocabulary Library. I needed to ask what got decided across a month of meetings and hit a wall because chat conversations didn't stay linked together — so I built "Ask Across Recordings."
I began building Audiomaktube on the side because I needed it, and nothing else provided it.
The Second Firing
After nearly six months on that telecom project, despite getting good reviews, I received a sudden "we have doubts if you can keep up." That job ended, too.
The Cost of Bad Timing
Exactly 15 days after I was fired from my last company, my father suffered a brain stroke. Treatment costs used up half of my remaining savings in a matter of days. My budget for marketing and growth disappeared overnight.
I nearly stopped building. The competitors were huge and established. When I explained this discouragement to my mother, she offered a four-word Moroccan proverb: "الحوانت تصافو و الأرزاق ختالفو" ("Shops stand side by side, but fortunes are not the same"). So I kept going.
I finished it, priced it fairly, and launched it with the features that were actually missing from the market.
And almost nobody visited it. Good pricing and real features aren't enough on their own. Nobody is going to hand you traffic.
I am building Audiomaktube for the people who sit in complex meetings and need to know what was actually decided, not just what was said. No sales team is going to call you. It's still just me.