Noura Sakkijha and Majed Masad met in 2009 through mutual friends, and they were instantly drawn to each other’s entrepreneurial drive.
They got married two years later, and launched jewelery company Mejuri together in 2013. Sakkijha is the CEO, while Masad, the cofounder and president, oversees marketing, data, retail, merchandising, and real estate.
Being married cofounders can present some unique challenges.
“We’ve had many instances where we’re like, ‘should we be doing this together?'” Masad said.
But their relationship has also been an asset in building the company, both told Business Insider.
‘Crazy trust’
Both Sakkijha and Masad said that their greatest strength is their trust in each other.
“I have blind, crazy, crazy trust that he’s got what he’s working on,” Sakkijha said, adding that they’re both “in it to win it.”
Masad said one advantage of working together is their ability to be direct. That level of openness helps the business move more quickly, he said.
Both said that working together also brings out their individual strengths. Masad said he sees himself as detail-oriented, data-driven, and passionate about problem-solving and strategy, while Sakkijha thrives in communication, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. That “divide and conquer” approach has been key to growing the business — as well as managing responsibilities at home with their twins.
“We balance each other out, even in the boardroom,” Masad said. “Sometimes we’ll be like, I’d be going sideways, and Noura’s course correcting, or vice versa.”
‘Disagree and commit’
While the couple’s different strengths help create balance, they can make decision-making more complicated. Masad said he tends to evaluate choices through a commercial lens, while Sakkijha focuses more on design and product vision.
Sakkijha said they see eye-to-eye about 95% of the time. When they reach a disagreement, Masad explained, they’ve learned to defer to the person who’s closest to the issue to make the final call.
Masad said he applies Jeff Bezos’ management philosophy of “disagree and commit,” as described by the Amazon founder in a 2016 shareholder letter.
“If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?'” Bezos wrote in the letter.
Masad noted that while some of their decisions revolve around “two-way doors” — which Bezos describes as decisions that can be reversed — there are also tougher “one-way door” choices, which are more permanent and involve more back-and-forth. In those moments, he said, it’s crucial to trust that the person handling the decision has thought it through carefully.
“I’m not gonna say it’s always pretty and it’s always easy. There are situations where we’re like, ‘come on, that’s not the right call,'” Masad said.
Masad said the early days of the business were the most challenging, as the couple was still newly married and learning each other’s working styles while trying to build a company from the ground up. Then came the pandemic and twins.
He said the two have worked hard to separate their home life from work, but it’s an ongoing effort.
“Noura’s problems are my problems; my problems are Noura’s problems,” Masad said.
Masad said that the two have learned to tell each other when they’d rather not discuss work. To keep business conversations away from the dinner table, the couple also schedules one-on-one meetings to discuss business matters and resolve disagreements.
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