Nectar’s founders learned AI can’t build a brand for you

Before launching Nectar, an AI-native social operating system, in 2023, sisters Misbah and Farah Uraizee spent years working at Meta—Misbah in product and Farah as an engineer. While there, they watched the way consumers discovered, discussed, and shared products shifted from public feeds into private channels, communities, and DMs. They saw brands struggling to keep up with that behavior—and the growing number of places where customers were talking about them.

What surprised them most was how little room brands had to respond to it.

Marketing teams were running lean while being asked to manage more channels, build relationships with customers and creators, and defend every dollar to their CFOs, said Misbah. The kinds of interactions that can make a brand memorable aren’t always the easiest to measure.

“There’s a constant push from a C-level to constantly be thinking about ‘How do I justify the spend that I’m doing in these channels if it’s not in paid media?’” said Misbah.

That realization shaped Nectar’s approach: using AI to help small teams manage the growing number of conversations happening around their brands.

Nectar, Misbah said, can surface comments and DMs, respond to customers, recommend products, and connect hidden social interactions with purchase data. According to their website, Nectar has worked with brands including Babylist, Caraway, Goop, and Daily Harvest.

“AI is like a scale multiplier; it’s going to help multiply your voice. It’s going to help multiply your team, but it’s not going to invent your brand,” Farah said.

Built together

Trust has also shaped the way the sisters run Nectar.

Misbah, who serves as CEO, leads product and is closely involved in sales. She’s often the first to hear what customers want. Farah, the company’s CTO, leads the engineering organization that turns those signals into product.

“She’s osmosis in my calls. I’m osmosis in her meetings,” Misbah said.

Farah says the two of them are “customer obsessed,” and that has become a central operating principle at Nectar. If they hear the same problem from customers five times in a week, they want to know whether it belongs on the road map.

“That’s how you win,” Misbah said. “You build something that customers are actually going to use and you do it the fastest.”

The downside: There isn’t much separation between being sisters and being co-founders.

Misbah described dropping Farah off after a customer dinner. They had spent the car ride talking about Nectar, and when Farah got out, Misbah called her phone again—this time realizing they hadn’t talked about their personal lives.

“Nectar was top of mind,” Misbah said. “We’re interchanging personal with work all the time.”

Full speed ahead

The sisters had expected enterprise sales to move quickly once potential customers saw the value in Nectar. Instead, procurement could stretch for months. Larger companies also came with their own AI review processes, legal requirements, security checks, and requests for integrations.

But Nectar still had to learn the rhythm of enterprise sales through experience: which teams would get involved, how long approvals would take, and what would happen next.

The lesson showed up inside the company. As Nectar grew, the sisters repeatedly found themselves planning for a version of the business that was already larger than the one they were running.

“We’re always like, ‘We should be doing more. We should be doing it faster,’” Misbah said. “That feeling never goes away.”

Farah, who leads Nectar’s engineering organization, has felt the same pressure on the technical side. Early on, the team prioritized speed and customer validation. As Nectar’s platform grew to ingest millions of pieces of content, comments, and DMs, the company had to invest heavily in infrastructure to support that scale.

“Knowing where we are now, I would have just said, ‘Hey, from day one, start building for scale,’” Farah said.

The sisters are also trying to apply that forward-looking mindset to the people and culture around the company. One lesson they’re still working on is slowing down enough to recognize what they’ve already accomplished.

Misbah said they can hit a major milestone and immediately start thinking about the next one. It’s something they’re trying to change, particularly as Nectar signs customers whose brands she would have been thrilled to work with when the company was starting out.

“Every moment, milestone in the company, document it…Take a step back and celebrate more as well.”

Moving fast creates a need to look further ahead. Now, Misbah and Farah are learning to pause long enough to recognize what they’ve built.