Today we’d like to introduce you to Mohsin Veerani.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born in New York City and raised in Dallas, Texas — a blend of hustle and heart. My dad sold watermelons on the streets of Harlem, and my mom was a top professional at IBM. Growing up watching both worlds taught me something crucial: success comes from a mix of grit and intelligence.
I’ve always been obsessed with business. As a kid, I would spend hours playing Tycoon games and negotiating with my cousins at Monopoly — not realizing that someday I’d be building my own real-life business empire.
My first hustle was selling sneakers in 9th grade. Then I started video-editing and selling highlight reels for our school’s football team. People doubted me, and some even burned my CDs and sold them cheaper just to push me out. It stung — but it pushed me harder.
I learned early that sales come and go, but real success comes from recurring demand. So I went all-in on businesses that serve communities every day — brick-and-mortar, retail, food, and customer experience.
It wasn’t all smooth. There was a moment where I almost walked away from entrepreneurship. I took a job at Trader Joe’s and driving Uber— and after long shifts, I’d come home and keep grinding late into the night. My family kept reminding me of the vision I couldn’t let go of.
Then everything changed. I leased a convenient store, and launched Hot Cheese Steak to grow sales — and the recurring revenue allowed me to reinvest, elevate operations, and build strong teams. Hot Cheese Steak continues to serve as a symbol of what a small, local business can grow into with the right heart and the right systems to become the top local choice.
But the marketing tasks became overwhelming, because skipping these tasks made sales drop — so I built AI agents to help automate it. That turned into MapScan.ai, originally created to support our own locations. Soon restaurant owners and medspa owners began asking if they could use it too, so they can grow their businesses.
We grew faster than I expected. Today, MapScan.ai has helped over 210 local business owners rank in the Top 3 on Google Maps — and save 10+ hours a week on marketing busywork and content creation. Seeing their wins feels like my wins, because I know what it’s like to fight for every customer.
Now, my mission is simple:
Empower local entrepreneurs to rise.
I want business owners to experience the joy of growth, the pride of building jobs in their community, and the confidence of providing for their families.
The same kid who loved Monopoly is still here — just now playing the real game at scale, helping others win too.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all — the road has been anything but smooth. Entrepreneurship looks exciting from the outside, but on the inside, it’s a constant cycle of pressure, doubt, and risk.
One of my biggest challenges early on was building something from nothing while everyone around me questioned if it would even work. When I was selling highlight reels in high school, competitors would literally copy my work and undercut me just to stop my momentum. It hurt — but it taught me how to stay focused and keep delivering value no matter the noise.
Later in my journey, the struggle shifted from proving myself to surviving long enough to succeed. Money doesn’t last forever — recurring revenue became a necessity, not a luxury. There was a point where I was working at Trader Joe’s to keep the lights on, then coming home late shifts and driving Uber to working on my business dreams. I tried e-com, blogging, affiliate marketing. Exhaustion was real. Self-doubt was loud. But giving up never felt like an option.
Building brick-and-mortar businesses brought completely new challenges: supply chain, payroll, staffing, customer experience, and figuring out how to attract people consistently — day after day. When you operate 6,000+ SKUs, one mistake can ripple into a week of problems. There was also a time where we didn’t have electricity for 4 months, which caused us to be closed and we had to bid farewell to our team members. Then we had to rebuild our team and customer base again, once we had access to electricity again. Our sales took a big impact and were still working to reach the targets we once used to hit.
And then there’s the emotional side that people rarely talk about. You carry the weight of your family’s expectations, your employees’ livelihoods, and your own fear of failing publicly. It tests you.
But every challenge sharpened me.
Every setback became fuel.
Every low point forced me to level up.
Today, when I help local business owners grow with MapScan.ai, it hits different — because I know exactly what they’re going through. I’ve lived those trenches.
The road wasn’t smooth —
but the bumps are what built the entrepreneur I am today.
We’ve been impressed with MapScan.Ai, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’m the founder of MapScan.ai — a marketing automation platform built specifically for local brick-and-mortar business owners like restaurants, medspas, smoke shops, salons, electricians, plumbers and retail stores.
Here’s the reality:
Most customers choose businesses that show up in the Top 3 on Google Maps. But ranking there consistently takes hours of marketing work every week — responding to reviews, posting online, fixing listings, building citations, monitoring rankings, and more. Most small business owners simply don’t have the time or the team for that.
So we built a solution.
🚀 What MapScan.ai Does
MapScan.ai uses smart AI agents to:
✅ Rank businesses higher on Google Maps
✅ Attract more new customers automatically
✅ Save 10+ hours per week of manual marketing tasks
✅ Convert happy customers into 5-star reviews
✅ Respond to all reviews immediately and dispute negative reviews
✅ Create content daily to post to social media
✅ Make sure business information matches across online directories
✅ Keep them ahead of competitors without extra work
Businesses plug into MapScan once — and the AI runs marketing in the background 24/7.
🥇 What We’re Known For
210+ local business owners ranking Top-3 using MapScan
Proven to increase calls, website visits, and foot traffic
Dedicated to serving the same entrepreneurs we are — people who grind daily for their families and communities
Customer support that actually cares — because we’ve lived the pain we’re solving
We aren’t a “Silicon Valley startup guessing how small business works.”
We are small business. Our solutions were built in the trenches.
💡 What Sets Us Apart
Most marketing companies charge thousands a month and still expect the business owner to help create content and manage systems.
MapScan.ai flips the script:
No learning curve
No marketing homework
No additional staff needed
No extra ad spend
We automate growth so owners can focus on what they love — serving customers and building community.
🔥 What I’m Most Proud Of
Beyond the technology, I’m most proud that MapScan.ai has:
Helped keep family-owned businesses alive during tough times
Created wins that ripple into local jobs and local prosperity
Turned stressed owners into confident leaders again
It’s a blessing to serve the same entrepreneurs who remind me of my own journey — hustling every day to build something meaningful.
💬 What I Want Readers to Know
If you see a local store, restaurant, or spa that you love — there’s a real family behind it fighting for it to survive.
MapScan.ai exists to make that fight easier.
We help level the playing field so that small businesses can win against big corporate chains — and we’re just getting started.
What are your plans for the future?
The future for MapScan.ai is all about empowering local entrepreneurs at scale.
We’ve already proven that AI can help brick-and-mortar businesses compete and win against big chains — now, we’re taking that mission nationwide.
Over the next few years, we are focused on:
✅ Expanding MapScan.ai into every major U.S. city
✅ Helping 10,000+ locally owned businesses reach the Top 3 on Google Maps
✅ Building more AI agents that automate sales, content, customer follow-up, and reputation growth
✅ Creating growth playbooks that turn struggling shops into thriving community hotspots
But beyond the tech, I’m planning something deeper:
I want to build a new era of local entrepreneurship — where small business owners have:
The tools
The confidence
And the community support to grow with the same power that corporations have.
Hot Cheese Steak will continue serving as a living laboratory — a model showing what a single-location business can become with the right systems and AI support behind it.
We’re also working on partner programs so other entrepreneurs can launch MapScan.ai in their own cities, creating more local jobs and more economic wins in their neighborhoods.
The big shift is simple:
I’m no longer just building businesses — I’m helping build business owners.
What I’m looking forward to most is watching families like mine grow, expand, and dream bigger because their local business succeeded.
Because when a small business grows…
🌆 A community grows.
👨👩👧 A family thrives.
🔁 A legacy begins.
That’s the future we’re building — together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mapscan.ai
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mohsinpicture
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohsinveerani/
