I build technology businesses where software runs into the real world. For more than 25 years, that meant innovating on customers’ behalf at eBay, Souq.com, and Amazon. Now it means BlueLux: software, AI, connected equipment, and a field operations team serving homeowners.
What I am building
BlueLux started at home. I wanted a straight answer to a simple question: is the water my children swim in safe and comfortable?
This is an operating company. We buy and run pool-service businesses, serve hundreds of customers across San Diego, and build the software our own teams use every day. The work is physical, local, and full of messy details. Good. That is exactly where field data, AI-assisted workflows, connected sensors, and better training can make a real difference.
Learning in the field with the retiring owner of the first pool-service business acquired by BlueLux.
Selected work
I have spent my career building marketplaces, teams, and the systems underneath them. Sometimes from scratch. Sometimes at global scale.
Before 2010
eBay and early ventures
Before eBay, I co-founded three internet businesses. We raised money, found customers, and learned the hard way how much a small team can get done. At eBay, I worked on trust, site security, payments, seller programs, and user-generated content.
That work made me a named inventor on three U.S. patent filings covering behavioral reputation, identity verification, and content policy. The idea behind them was practical: help buyers and sellers trust each other enough to transact safely at internet scale.
June 2010 to May 2017
Souq.com
I joined Souq in 2010, when the product and technology organization was a team of 10. By the time I left, it was more than 400 people across engineering, product, data science, and DevOps. We rebuilt the business from consumer auctions into a fixed-price marketplace, moved the core platform to AWS, built search and personalization, launched first-party retail, and created the payments business that became Amazon Payment Services.
Later, as COO, I ran logistics, fulfillment, delivery, and customer service across four countries and more than 4,000 associates. We shipped over one million units a month through a delivery network spanning 128 cities. Souq became the Middle East's leading ecommerce company, then Amazon bought it for $580 million. Big outcome. Still, I am proudest of the people we hired, trusted, and watched become leaders.
May 2017 to June 2021
Amazon, Middle East
After Amazon acquired Souq.com, I led the product work that brought the two companies together. We launched Amazon.ae, Amazon.sa, and Amazon.eg while moving customers, sellers, catalog, payments, and operations onto a new regional platform.
This was not a translation job. We built Arabic and Hebrew shopping experiences, local search and discovery, country-specific payments, and catalog systems that could handle the quirks of each market. What worked in Seattle did not automatically work in Riyadh, Dubai, or Cairo.
October 2022 to January 2025
Amazon, worldwide retail pricing
Amazon asked me back in 2022 to own worldwide retail pricing. I led more than 80 people across product, software engineering, and data, supporting 12 million products in 40 marketplaces.
The scope covered every retail-pricing area except shared platform components and the Applied Science team. I defined the science roadmap while my organization built and ran the product, engineering, and data systems around it. We evaluated billions of pricing signals each month. In 18 months, our work delivered more than $1.5 billion in incremental profitability.
3 patent filings
Inventions
At eBay, I became a named inventor on three U.S. patent filings. Each tackled a different part of the same problem: helping strangers trust one another online.
BlueLux is currently working on several provisional patent filings tied to problems we encounter in the field.
Angel investing
Backing builders
I am a builder first. Since 2017, I have made 33 investments across 32 companies, sometimes directly and sometimes through syndicates. The common thread is not a sector. It is the people: builders who see a real problem, move with urgency, and keep doing the work.
We moved to San Diego in 2021 to be closer to family and because it was where my wife and I wanted to raise our children.
A year later, I went back to Amazon and led worldwide retail pricing from here. By early 2025, it was clear that staying meant moving to Seattle full time. I said no. I made a family-first decision: keep George, Nicolas, and Angelina rooted in San Diego, and be present for them and for my wife. Around the same time, a home and pool remodel pulled me into water chemistry, equipment, and service operations. I went into the field, bought the first route, and started BlueLux.
With my family at Petco Park in San Diego.
Speaking, biographies, and media
Short and long biographies, selected coverage, and photographs for events and editorial use.
Short biography75 words
Wisam “Sam” Daoud is a builder and technology executive with more than 25 years of experience. He helped turn Souq.com into the Middle East’s first billion-dollar technology company, then led product, engineering, and data teams for Amazon’s worldwide retail-pricing organization. Today he is building BlueLux, a San Diego pool-service company that combines hands-on field operations with its own software, AI, and connected equipment. Sam lives in Rancho Santa Fe with his wife and three children.
Long biography340 words
Wisam “Sam” Daoud is an entrepreneur, operator, and technology executive who has spent more than 25 years building internet businesses in the United States and the Middle East. He co-founded three companies before joining eBay, where he worked on trust, security, payments, seller programs, and user-generated content. That work made him a named inventor on three U.S. patent filings.
Sam joined Souq.com in 2010 as Chief Technology Officer. He grew product and technology from 10 people to more than 400, helped move Souq from auctions to a fixed-price marketplace, and played a central role in more than 50x growth. The team also created White Friday, the regional shopping event that competitors later imitated. As Chief Operating Officer, Sam went on to run marketplace, retail, fulfillment, logistics, supply chain, customer support, content and studio production, as well as product management, and software-development operations across four countries and more than 4,000 associates.
After Amazon acquired Souq in 2017, Sam transitioned to lead the integration of the two companies. His product team led work behind Amazon.ae, Amazon.sa, and Amazon.eg. He moved his family to San Diego in 2021, then returned to Amazon in October 2022 to own worldwide retail pricing. His team of more than 80 product, engineering, and data professionals priced millions of products across 40 global marketplaces. They ran large AI and machine-learning systems and delivered more than $1.5 billion in incremental profitability during his tenure. Sam defined the Applied Science roadmap while directly leading the surrounding product, engineering, and data-platform teams.
In early 2025, Sam chose San Diego over a full-time move to Seattle and started BlueLux. The idea came from a question at home about the water his children swam in. He learned the pool-service business in the field, invested more than $200,000, and completed more than five acquisitions. He is building BlueLux to become the operating system for the pool-service industry, combining experienced technicians and careful water testing with its own service software, AI-assisted field decisions, connected sensors, smart water-chemistry tools, and greater homeowner control of pool equipment.
