The Relentless Rise of Smartr AI

In this edition of Founder’s Hustle, we explore Rodolph Khlat’s journey, as founder and managing partner of Smartr AI. Launching the company at just 20 years old, he built and grew the business while navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, figuring it all out as he went, learning from failures, seizing opportunities, and growing himself as a founder every step of the way.

Building Against the Odds

Rodolph Khlat’s journey began in Lebanon, where he met his co-founder, Hanna Daoud, at the University of Balamand. What began as academic mischief quickly evolved into a shared passion for technology. During their time at Balamand, Hanna introduced him to software development, and soon after, they took on their first web development project together, a contract worth $16,800.

“At 19, I was on top of the world, I felt like a billionaire,” Rodolph said. But the euphoria didn’t last. As Lebanon’s economic crisis deepened and the currency collapsed, the project’s value evaporated. “We worked an entire year for the equivalent of, like, $300.”

The experience, though frustrating, was formative. It opened their eyes to the volatility of working in Lebanon and pushed them to look beyond its borders. They secured a $7,000 website project and used the money to relocate to Dubai in October 2020. The transition wasn’t easy. For months, they struggled to find clients, but by February, their perseverance paid off. “Just as we were about to run out of funds, we booked a $50K project, and that's how the entire company started.” 

The Birth of the Engine

Before Smartr AI took shape, Rodolph and Hanna operated under the name Azuresoft Solutions. It looked like a straightforward services company, but behind the scenes they were building something more ambitious. “Azuresoft was the initial brand,” Rodolph explained. “Smartr was the engine we were developing and using under the hood.”

That engine being built automated and standardized large parts of the development process by using pre-built modules, reusable code patterns, and repeatable workflows. In practice, this meant they could take on projects that normally required senior engineers, but deliver them with a lean team of juniors. The engine acted like a playbook plus toolkit: it had ready-made solutions for the entire development cycle, and automated how those pieces were assembled into a final product. Developers didn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time; they  were powered by Smartr.

The impact was massive. By streamlining 70–80% of repetitive work, Azuresoft could build faster, cheaper, and more consistently than competitors. Clients didn’t see the engine itself, but they experienced its results: reliable, scalable software delivered at a fraction of the cost. “We got around 10 clients, all serviced with this engine,” Rodolph recalled.

Over time, the name of that internal tool, Smartr, became the company’s new identity. Momentum built quickly. By the end of 2021, Smartr AI had become profitable after securing a major contract with a Dubai-based client. Those profits were reinvested into scaling the team and expanding their proprietary engine’s capabilities. 

From Engines to Agents: Smartr 2.0

The original engine gave Azuresoft a strong foundation, but it was time to level up. The next chapter, what Rodolph calls Smartr 2.0, merges the structure and reliability of the original engine with modern AI workflows and intelligent agents. “Anyone can build with LLMs, but you’d be building bullshit 85% of the time,” he said bluntly ‘We’re not here to create another GPT wrapper, we’re here to build a solution that actually powers real businesses.’”

In this model, Smartr AI functions like a digital software development team, where agents are pre-configured for specific stages, front-end, back-end, database, deployments. “You have agents tuned to a certain area, and you’re organizing your development cycle into stages where you can deploy those agents to do the work. Then you serve as the integrator.”

The goal is a conveyor-belt process: multiple agents collaborating under human oversight, producing working software quickly, consistently, and without the hallucinations that plague generic AI tools.

Customers and Validation

One of Smartr AI’s earliest and most striking successes was with a Dubai-based smart city platform. “We started with a small microservice, but we impressed them so much that we ended up replacing their entire development team and rebuilt their product from scratch,” Rodolph recalled. 

Another standout project was the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism app, a national tourism companion built in just eight weeks. “Hannah single-handedly built the entire AI infrastructure with an army of AI agents, while our lead UI developer Elias built the mobile & web apps,” Rodolph recalled. “The app featured an AI concierge powered by crowd-sourced tourism data, a first for any tourism app”.

While Smartr’s AI agents are still in development and not yet commercially available, early validation is already underway. “We have four companies using Smartr with their internal developers. We helped them onboard, and now they develop with Smartr, using us for power augmentation whenever they need it,” he said. This hybrid model reflects Smartr’s long-term strategy: “become the long-term partner for building world-class software.”

The Trifecta: Services, Product, and Education

Today, Smartr AI operates as a three-pronged business model.

• Services: Delivering enterprise-grade projects, powered by the Smartr engine, often with lean teams outperforming much larger competitors.

• Product: Building out Smartr 2.0, a platform where companies can use AI agents directly, either with Smartr’s help or independently with their own teams.

• Education: A developer academy that trains absolute beginners to build full applications in hours, creating a steady pipeline of talent for both Smartr and its clients.

It’s an ambitious mix, but one that Rodolph sees as both strategic and necessary. “We want to build the best software development house in the Middle East,” he said. 

The immediate focus remains on capturing market share in services, where Smartr’s proprietary IP provides a decisive edge. Education reinforces that advantage by continuously supplying trained developers, while the product side positions the company for long-term scale.

The revenue model is evolving too. The company is now shifting toward a hybrid SaaS model, selling its ad-hoc services as well as AI agents as a subscription to development teams and companies. This transition not only creates stability and predictability but also aligns with Smartr AI’s long-term vision: moving from a service-heavy business into a scalable product company.

A Hard Lesson from 2024: Financial Health Above All

If there’s one year Rodolph will never forget, it’s 2024. After years of building credibility as a services company, they decided to pivot Smartr AI into an AI product company (what he describes as Smartr2.0), but the shift nearly broke the business.

“We toned down our software house revenue and really focused on going the full VC AI company route,” he said. “The problem is, you’re not building out of Silicon Valley, and the venture market in the region is very cautious. Everyone wants to invest in a moving train, no one will fund it while it’s being built.”

In September 2024, things came to a breaking point. Smartr AI was rejected from the second phase of an accelerator program. The following months were a struggle, “we were on the brink of bankruptcy for around 4 months,” shares Rodolph.

A lifeline appeared almost by chance. Invited to pitch at Expand North Star, Rodolph didn’t win, but caught the attention of AGCC, who connected him to an Italian Angel Investors Committee in Dubai. While pitching for funding, he landed an unexpected client. “One of the founders pitching came to me and said, listen, I really like your company. Can you guys build this for us?” That contract, signed in December, covered November payroll just in time.

After that breakthrough, that same founder who had been impressed by Smartr AI stepped in to lead the company’s funding round, closing it in just three days with a group of investors he brought in. “That year was traumatic. I had no idea how to make rent or cover payroll. We were going to lose everything. But then in three days, everything changed,” Rodolph recalled.

Momentum returned quickly. Through a long and successful partnership with Razor Capital, and with the guidance of Ramzi Farah, Razor’s managing partner, whom Rodolph describes as a mentor and a big brother in his career, Smartr AI landed the project to build the Ministry of Tourism’s app. Soon after, VCs began reaching out, asking Smartr AI to help their portfolio companies build software. 

Looking back, Rodolph describes the hardship as transformative. “The level of personal development that trauma put me through is unheard of. I would repeat these two years any day of my life. It teaches you a lot, and you find out what you’re really made of.”

Finding the Right People and Expanding the Team

One of the toughest challenges beyond capital, Rodolph admits, has been finding the right talent. “Finding quality people has always been an interesting challenge.”

Early hiring experiments sometimes paid off, but not every experience was smooth. Some senior hires struggled to adapt to the company’s culture. “They weren’t prepared for the workload we had taken on and ended up leaving within a month or two.”

For Rodolph, the challenge is cultural. Many in tech aim for management too quickly, often without the technical grounding to justify it. “Every employee wants to work one or two years, and become a manager. The best managers are technical people who get forced into management because no one can do as good of a job.”

As Smartr AI has matured, Rodolph recognizes the need to expand beyond developers. He has handled all business development himself, but that approach isn’t sustainable at scale. To grow, the company needs structure: a brand, a marketing engine, and a sales team that can consistently generate pipeline.

Guided by his friend and mentor Mahdi Shafiei, founder and CEO of Triffid Media, Rodolph is embracing a pragmatic approach: invest in the right hires even if the timing isn’t perfect. “I want to build my sales and marketing arm, even though part of me thinks we’re not ready. But another part, and that’s what I’m taking from Mahdi specifically, is that sometimes you have to force yourself into these types of situations. If you’re always waiting for the right time, you’ll never get there.”

Biggest Lesson Learned as a Founder

For Rodolph, growth as a founder has been shaped by two constants: surrounding himself with high-performing people and continuously auditing his own actions. “Today, it’s something I have to do,” he said. As the company grew, he embraced a principle he once dismissed as a cliché: you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. He reframes it as: you are what you consume. Being around people who challenge and exceed him, and absorbing their ideas, habits, and mindsets, has been as crucial as mentorship itself.

Equally important is self-discipline. Rodolph developed a practice of daily self-audits, recording and evaluating every action to ensure it contributes to progress. “You can only see your true impact if you evaluate your actions objectively, because otherwise, self-sabotage creeps in unnoticed,” he said. Showing up consistently, even after failures, and preparing relentlessly for opportunity has been central to his approach.

Complementing these personal practices is his partnership with co-founder Hanna. “We challenge each other, cover each other’s blind spots, and push the company forward together.” For him, having a co-founder who truly complements your skills, and with whom you share trust, honesty, and mutual respect, is one of the most important foundations for building a strong, successful business.