Ibrahim (aka, Ibba) Rasul Bernardo is the co-founder and CMO of Packworks, a B2B platform that empowers micro-retailers (like Philippine sari-sari stores) in the Philippines through tech. The Packworks app helps sari-sari owners with managing inventory, bookkeeping, and tracking accounts.

Founded in 2018, they're now used by 200,000 micro-entrepreneurs in the Philippines. They raised a $2M seed last year.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

As a founder, you do everything: motorcycle delivery man, messenger, traveling salesman, people-finder, cheerleader, and of course, dreamer. Like a sari-sari store owner, you have to wear a lot of hats on the job. Any job that needs to get done, if there's no one to fill that role, you have to step up and do it.

On the marketing side, I'm not a marketing pro, but for me, a lot of it is about listening and understanding, having conversations with our team and our sari-sari store entrepreneurs, digging into the data and finding something cool that we think other people might find cool as well. It's about telling our authentic story, and according to market Share of Voice, Google Search hits, and SEO, we've been pretty successful. :D

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I've met with fancy people in my pajamas, but I dress up to go meet our micro-entrepreneurs in person.

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

I wake up every morning with a mission, a purpose, and a big smile, because during the pandemic, we started out helping a little over 20,000 stores to now empowering over 200,000 stores nationwide.

Having a real impact on the lives of these sari-preneurs and their communities, providing them with a platform to increase their business and financial literacy, and knowing that 75% of sari-sari store owners in our network are women, makes my mom proud.

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

I love looking at what's happening on an international stage, and imagining how it can be integrated locally, in the lives of people in villages, in countries like the Philippines. Right now, I'm really excited about how AI can be used by micro-entrepreneurs to help further their businesses.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

You need a mix of audacity and humility. The audacity to come into a space and believe you are capable of making people's lives better. But you also need the humility to listen and learn to the people whose lives you want to change. In our case, that was what led to being taken to school by 65 year-old grandmas who had been running their sari-sari stores for decades.

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Motorcycles! One of the reasons why riding motorcycles is my passion is because it is such an efficiency amplifier, especially in the Philippines, where you deal with traffic and other terrible driving conditions. I If you look at sari-sari stores, motorcycles have helped increase their range and accessibility to their customers. And they're  f------g cool.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Right now, it's Succession. But my all-time favorite show is Silicon Valley. Catch both on HBO Max! (Hoping to get a free subscription)

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Cheese! The cheesier the better. Try the bleu cheese ice cream at Poco Deli, so stinky-good. #OnlyInThePhilippines

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FYI. We’ve edited this interview for clarity.