Moustakim Jalal

The Academic and the Builder

Most people have to choose between academia and entrepreneurship. Moustakim Jalal decided he didn't have to. A PhD student in Finance, he is simultaneously running Jalnix — a mobile game and app studio headquartered in Casablanca, Morocco — as its CEO and sole founder. The two worlds, he argues, are not as far apart as they look.

"Finance is fundamentally about understanding value — how it's created, how it's distributed, and how it moves," he explains. "Building a studio is the same question, just answered in product form. You're creating something people want and figuring out a sustainable way to bring it to them."

"I didn't have funding. I didn't have a team. I had a laptop, a conviction that Moroccan culture was worth building games about, and enough stubbornness to ship anyway."

— Moustakim Jalal, CEO & Founder, Jalnix

Why He Started Jalnix

The origin of Jalnix is straightforward but rare: Moustakim looked at the global App Store and saw a gap so large it almost felt intentional. Tens of millions of Moroccan smartphone users, and almost nothing on the market that reflected their culture, their language, or their daily life.

He had played card games all his life — the quick, social, competitive kind that Moroccans play in cafes, living rooms, and family gatherings. He saw no reason why those games couldn't exist at the quality level of the best global mobile titles. So he built one. That game became Hezz2 Star, now available on both the App Store and Google Play.

The second product, MoorTaalim, came from a different but equally personal place. As someone who has navigated Moroccan academia in Arabic, French, and Darija, Moustakim understood firsthand how fragmented educational resources can be for Moroccan children. MoorTaalim is his answer to that — a multilingual learning platform built specifically for Moroccan kids.

Finance Brain, Product Heart

What makes Moustakim unusual as a studio founder is the analytical lens he brings from his doctoral work. He thinks about unit economics, user retention curves, and lifetime value the way other founders think about aesthetics. But he never lets the numbers crowd out the craft.

"A game that isn't fun will fail no matter how clean the spreadsheet looks," he says. "But a game that's fun and financially unsustainable will also disappear. You need both. I'm lucky that my training forces me to hold both in my head at the same time."

This dual thinking is visible in Jalnix's product decisions. Hezz2 Star is free to download and free to compete — with monetization built entirely around cosmetics and seasonal content, not pay-to-win mechanics. MoorTaalim is designed with access in mind, priced to reach Moroccan families at every income level.

"The best Moroccan developers I know are among the most resourceful people on the planet. We just need someone to bet on us first. Jalnix is me betting on us."

— Moustakim Jalal

Building While Researching

The question people ask most often is simple: how? How does someone write a doctoral dissertation in Finance while simultaneously running a mobile studio, managing App Store submissions, designing game systems, and building a brand?

Moustakim's answer is equally simple: time is a design problem. "I treat my schedule like a product. I design it deliberately, cut what doesn't matter, and protect the blocks that do. The PhD sharpens how I think. Jalnix is where I apply it. They feed each other."

He also points to the nature of academic research itself — the patience for long feedback loops, the comfort with ambiguity, the habit of questioning assumptions — as unexpectedly useful in building products. Most startup founders have to learn those skills the hard way. His training gave them to him for free.

The Road Ahead

Moustakim has made clear that Jalnix is a long-term project, not a startup sprint. He is building a studio with a catalogue — multiple apps across games, education, and student tools — that compounds in value over time. A third app is already in development.

He is also building a team. Jalnix is actively hiring Moroccan designers, developers, and community managers who share the conviction that their culture is worth building for. If that's you, the Careers page is waiting.