3 July 2026
The next battle in tech won’t be over AI, it’ll be over credibility
Read more
Have a plan B. Stay politically correct. Build like everyone else. In the first episode of Un.Scrolled, Issam Hijazi talks about the advice he ignored, the moments he questioned himself and the decisions that shaped UpScrolled.
1. What’s the one piece of advice you heard most often that you deliberately chose to ignore, and why?
"Have a plan B." I heard it constantly, and I ignored it every time. To me, a plan B is planning for failure. My plan B is making plan A work. I fully trust our biological survival instinct, when the brain is pushed to its limits, it works things out. Keeping a safety net within reach, only guarantees you'll never push that far.
2. Was there a point during the journey when ignoring conventional wisdom genuinely made you question yourself?
The conventional wisdom I was raised on was "keep it safe" and "stay politically correct", especially true if you're Arab. When I started speaking openly about what was happening in the world and calling things what they are, I was labelled "controversial." I was told that, as a tech CEO, I shouldn't "mix things up."
There were moments I sat with that. When people you respect keep repeating the same warning, you do wonder, even briefly, whether they see something you don't. But I kept coming back to the same conclusion: I refuse, and will continue to refuse, to be a "conventional" tech CEO. People deserve real leadership that isn't afraid to speak up. They're tired of corporate CEOs. They want to know the service they use is led by a fellow human being, someone who feels what they feel, and stands for what's right.
3. Have there been moments where following your instincts put you at odds with advisers, investors or outside expectations?
All the time. Social media is a difficult business, everyone has an opinion, but very few truly understand the scale of the challenges involved in running one. The clearest example: investors weren't convinced by my startup thesis. They didn't expect the platform to exceed 100K users. Then, overnight, we crossed a million, entirely organically. Only after seeing that spike did they come around.
Through all of it, my instinct was simple: stay focused, keep building the product, and believe 100% that people will come along and join the mission. They did.
4. Many tech companies optimise for growth above all else. Have you ever made a decision that slowed growth in the short term because it aligned more closely with your values?
Changing people's behaviour is one of the toughest problems in business; in life, actually. Users are addicted to social media platforms because those platforms are designed to make them addicted. One of our defining decisions was to refuse to build addiction loops, and to deliberately design UpScrolled so users can log off.
That's a real tradeoff. Every metric the industry optimises for, engagement, screen time, session length, takes a hit when you design this way. It has cost us, and I'd make the same call again tomorrow. We're not building a platform that traps people. We're building one they trust.
5. Looking back, when did ignoring other people’s advice stop feeling risky and start feeling like conviction?
Honestly, that shift happened long before UpScrolled. It's always been part of who I am. That doesn't mean I ignore every piece of advice, it means that, in the end, I do what my gut tells me to do.
I believe other people's past experiences don't dictate your outcomes. There are too many variables, and the biggest one is you. I'm a fan of writing my own story rather than playing out someone else's "success playbook."
6. When it comes to where UpScrolled stands on Palestine and BDS, has anyone close to the business ever pushed back on that? What did that look like?
All the time. And I understand it. People have different opinions on what's "right", and when you take a stand, you hear from all of them.
But here's the thing. A company is not a spreadsheet. A company is a set of beliefs. And if your beliefs change every time someone pushes back, you never had any.
The people who push back are usually thinking about the next quarter. I'm thinking about the next decade. Short-term thinking says: stay quiet, stay safe, keep everyone comfortable. Long-term thinking says: stand for something, and the people who share those values will build something with you that no amount of comfort ever could.
We didn't take a position to be controversial. We took it because it's who we are. I'd rather build something that matters with people who believe what we believe, than build something forgettable with everyone else's approval.
7. Has anyone ever told you UpScrolled’s business model doesn’t make sense? What did they think you should be doing instead?
Yes, and it always came down to the same assumption. Social media has been running on one playbook for over two decades, so people believe the only way a platform succeeds is by copying it. The suggestions were predictable: inflate engagement, rank content the way every other platform does, chase the same metrics.
If we did that, we'd just be building another copy of what already exists, and that goes back to the challenge I mentioned earlier: changing people's behaviour is one of the hardest problems there is. Refusing the playbook makes our job harder. We have to invent creative ways to grow and sustain the platform. But that's exactly what we're invested in.
8. Is there a type of hire that’s standard at this stage of a platform’s growth that you’ve avoided? What made you skip it?
The conventional "marketing" persona. I don't believe a social media platform, or any product, really, should spend money convincing people to come in. I'm a strong believer in organic growth and letting the community do the work. The people who believe in UpScrolled want it to succeed, and they're the best way to reach others and let the network effect kick in.
I believe in two things: great necessity for great products, and a company with principles. That's the new recipe for success. Anything else is artificial success, and artificial success is either destined to fail or never be as great as it could have been.
Download UpScrolled:
About UpScrolled
UpScrolled puts people back in control of their social media experience. Founded by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, it was built on a simple principle: social media should serve people, not exploit them. No shadowbanning. No data sales. Share freely, connect safely, trust your feed. Fairness and freedom in a digital landscape that has lost its way.
Media contact
Leila Dastyar | PR Director | leila@dna.online
