Jamie Lane

FWDstart

A Entrepreneurship , Business and Investing podcast

About the show

The FWDstart Podcast is a weekly show at the intersection of venture capital, startups, and strategic industries shaping the MENA region. Each episode features candid conversations with founders, investors, and operators behind the region’s most ambitious companies, from frontier AI and fintech infrastructure to climate tech, construction, energy, and space.

Newest episodes

Fixing the business of healthcare, with HealthStay’s Seán Conaty and Ruairí Tubrid

Nov 12, 2026 1 hr 8 min

Some clinics are so overwhelmed by patient enquiries that they switch their phones off for the morning. Meanwhile, nurses are printing referrals, scanning them and manually entering the same information into another system. That’s the problem HealthStay’s Seán Conaty and Ruairí Tubrid are trying to solve, and we sat down on the FWDstart Podcast to discuss how two Irish founders ended up building healthcare software in the UAE. We got into their shift from a consumer medical tourism business to software for hospitals and clinics, what they learned from an early pilot with King’s College Hospital, and why adding an AI chatbot doesn’t help much if the team receiving its enquiries is still working off spreadsheets and personal phones. The conversation also gets into the harder parts of building the company. Seán and Ruairí explain how the regional conflict stalled enterprise contracts and disrupted their hosting, why they stopped taking salaries, and how they rebuilt their infrastructure while raising $1 million over the summer, with existing investors and Enterprise Ireland backing the business. We also discuss selling into an industry some VCs consider too slow, why they price around patient journeys rather than seats or tokens, and what it takes to turn a promising hospital pilot into a paying customer. ----------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro01:19 Fixing the business of healthcare08:31 From medical tourism marketplace to B2B software15:10 Why patients travel abroad for treatment21:25 Helping hospitals convert enquiries into revenue26:55 Selling to hospitals and navigating long sales cycles29:55 1,000 referrals a month, still using paper33:45 Bringing HealthStay to Ireland35:45 Surviving the conflict and raising $1 million45:17 Building for international markets47:00 Finding a CTO as non-technical founders51:44 Building the software before the AI agents54:35 Pricing AI around patient journeys60:49 The road to $1 million ARR and a Series A63:19 Co-f...

How to raise a fund in the Gulf, with Stride’s Fariha Ansari Javed

Nov 3, 2026 30 min

Fariha Ansari Javed leads global capital formation at Stride Asset Management and also heads its GCC fund. For anyone raising a fund, there’s plenty here on how Stride approaches capital formation, from deciding which prospective LPs are worth spending time with to building a dedicated fundraising team and giving existing investors reasons to reinvest. We got into how the firm has moved beyond individual investors towards deeper institutional pools, why co-investments have become such an effective way to bring capital in, and what it takes to attract investors who want access to private companies without having to source and monitor every deal themselves. Fariha also explains how Stride is bringing its Indian lending experience to the Gulf, why its risk team never meets founders, and how the depth of capital in the region took her from asking investors for $2 million or $3 million to starting conversations at $50 million. We cover: From insurance underwriting to venture debtHow Stride raises capital and builds investor relationshipsWhat makes a company ready for debtThe role of founder discipline and personal credit historyIndependent risk review and the investment committeeBuilding a Sharia-compliant GCC fundLessons from India and the value of cross-border relationships----------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro00:40 From Wall Street underwriting to Stride03:55 What makes an investor worth pursuing?05:25 Building deeper pools of capital07:25 Co-investments and institutional fundraising09:50 How Stride finds companies to back12:10 What Gulf startups can learn from India13:45 When venture debt makes sense15:00 Why Sharia compliance matters16:25 What a founder’s credit history reveals17:55 From first meeting to investment decision20:10 The risk team that never meets founders21:10 Should equity investors also offer debt?24:15 Why Saudi Arabia dominates Stride’s GCC focus26:45 What makes an exceptional founder?28:15 What surprised Fariha about Riyadh29:0...

Shorooq’s Shane Shin on Why Gulf Startups Still Struggle to Exit, Picking Founders and Building the Blackstone of the Middle East

Oct 27, 2026 41 min

Shorooq's Shane Shin thinks the Gulf’s venture market has come a long way, but is still moving too slowly, particularly when it comes to turning funding rounds and rising valuations into actual returns for founders and investors. We got into what needs to change, from getting corporates more involved as customers and acquirers to bringing family offices further into the ecosystem, alongside the ambition behind Shorooq’s expansion across stages and asset classes. Shane also explains why he asks whether he’d work for a founder before investing, why the follow-on cheque can matter more than the first, and how he weighs selling a successful investment against holding on for more upside. We cover: What the Gulf’s venture market is still missingWhy corporates, family offices and private equity matter to exitsShorooq’s ambition beyond early-stage ventureHow a lead and a support make investment decisionsThe founder test: would you work for this person?Follow-on capital and portfolio constructionSecondaries, fund needs and the remaining upside----------------------------------------------- 00:00 Introduction00:40 Is the Gulf’s venture market moving fast enough?03:10 Shorooq’s expansion beyond early-stage venture06:20 Building a Blackstone for emerging markets07:40 The region’s exit problem10:40 Presight, G42 and investing in global AI12:20 Bringing family offices into the startup ecosystem14:10 How Shorooq finds investment opportunities16:35 Why investment decisions sit with two people19:10 Would you work for the founder you’re backing?22:30 Do investors have to like their founders?23:45 Backing unconventional bets: 44.01, Proteinea and Pure Harvest26:20 The investment Shane wishes he’d made28:00 Why follow-on investments matter more than the first cheque30:30 Are Saudi startup valuations too high?32:45 When to sell: secondaries, returns and founder relationships35:25 How Shane and Mahmoud Adi started Shorooq38:20 What Silicon Valley taught them about ambition39:45 Great inv...

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All episodes

Fixing the business of healthcare, with HealthStay’s Seán Conaty and Ruairí Tubrid

Nov 12, 2026 1 hr 8 min

How to raise a fund in the Gulf, with Stride’s Fariha Ansari Javed

Nov 3, 2026 30 min

Shorooq’s Shane Shin on Why Gulf Startups Still Struggle to Exit, Picking Founders and Building the Blackstone of the Middle East

Oct 27, 2026 41 min

SPICE's Zeid Husban on Shaking Up Saudi Dining and Building His Third Startup

Oct 20, 2026 47 min

Zeid Husban previously built and exited two food-tech businesses, ifood.jo and POSRocket, before taking a year off and eventually returning to Saudi to build SPICE. SPICE gives restaurants cash upfront in exchange for twice that amount in dining credit, which it then has to generate customers to redeem. Diners receive 20% cashback, while restaurants get financing and additional footfall. We got into the economics, why restaurants initially thought the proposition sounded too good to be true, the risks of the model, and why building a third startup has been considerably harder than Zeid expected. We cover: – Why Zeid returned to food-tech after exiting ifood.jo and POSRocket– How SPICE's restaurant financing model works, and why restaurants repay in dining credit rather than cash– The economics of 20% cashback, restaurant acquisition and generating new customers– Why Saudi's dine-in market presents an opportunity beyond food delivery– Balancing restaurant financing obligations with personalised recommendations and customer demand– Building a third startup, choosing co-founders and the ambition to take SPICE beyond Saudi Arabia ----------------------------------------------- 00:00 – Introduction00:53 – Life after exiting POSRocket02:10 – Why Zeid decided to build a third startup05:15 – Why food delivery has become a bloodbath06:30 – The opportunity in Saudi Arabia's dine-in market08:40 – How SPICE selects its restaurant partners10:40 – SPICE's unusual restaurant financing model12:15 – Restaurant discovery, reservations and 20% cashback14:45 – Why not just borrow from a bank?17:35 – Cashback versus discounts19:20 – SPICE's unit economics and restaurant pushback24:10 – Balancing personalisation with restaurant financing26:00 – Scaling supply and demand27:45 – Early results: 66% new customers30:10 – Is SPICE subsidising existing restaurant demand?32:25 – How SPICE finances its own growth33:10 – Competing with food delivery giants36:30 – Personalisation, customer data and...

Stride Ventures’ Ishpreet Singh Gandhi on $1B in Credit, Equity Dilution and Expanding to the Gulf

Oct 13, 2026 35 min

Ishpreet Singh Gandhi began financing startups at IDFC in India in 2015, long before venture debt had become an established part of the country’s startup ecosystem. He went on to found Stride in 2019, building a credit investment business that has since enabled more than $1 billion in financing for startups and growth-stage companies. That experience in India is now underpinning Stride’s expansion into the Gulf, with Saudi a particular focus. The firm has already led erad’s $33 million debt round, provided BRKZ with up to $30 million in growth debt, participated in Saudi-based Merit Incentives’ $28 million Series B, and supplied venture debt as part of Dubai-based Enhance’s $18.2 million financing. We get into how venture debt actually works, why founders can end up unnecessarily diluting their ownership, and how borrowing to fund working capital, capital expenditure or acquisitions can change the economics of scaling a company. We also dig into what Stride has learned from financing hundreds of businesses across India's startup cycles, how that experience translates to the Gulf, why equity investors can benefit from having lenders involved, and the risks that come with introducing debt into the capital stack. And there's a broader conversation about what separates successful founders from the rest, why the most difficult funding cycles can be the most revealing, what it'll take for more Gulf startups to reach the public markets, and whether the growing number of VC firms entering private credit is necessarily a good thing. We cover: Why founders default to raising equity and when debt might make more senseHow venture debt works, from working capital and CapEx to dilution and repayment riskWhat equity investors stand to gain, and lose, when lenders enter the capital stackBuilding Stride in India and bringing its credit playbook to Saudi Arabia and the wider GCCWhy private credit remains underpenetrated in the Gulf and where Ishpreet sees the opportunityWhat India's...

COLABS’ Omar Shah on Saudi, Coworking Economics and Building Across the GCC

Oct 6, 2026 52 min

Omar founded COLABS in Pakistan in 2019 after leaving a career in banking and private equity, turning an old towel factory into the company’s first location and, from there, building a network of flexible workspaces used by everyone from freelancers and startups to large multinationals. That business has since become the base for a much bigger regional ambition. COLABS has moved its headquarters to Saudi Arabia, where Omar now spends most of his time and sees the Kingdom as the biggest opportunity for the company’s next phase of growth. Getting there wasn’t straightforward. Omar spent six months trying to finance the expansion, taking more than 100 investor meetings and hearing no repeatedly, to the point that he was ready to walk away altogether. That experience sits at the heart of the episode, as we get into what it takes to scale beyond your home market and why Omar believes Saudi can become the centre of gravity for the business. We also dig into the economics of coworking, why COLABS wants landlords rather than shareholders funding much of its fit-out, why location matters so much, and how community can become a genuine commercial advantage without pretending the underlying business is anything other than real estate. And there’s a more personal story here too, about burnout, purpose and what years of building through Covid, fundraising and expansion have taught Omar about resilience. We cover: – Why Omar thinks COLABS is fundamentally a real estate companyWhat WeWork got wrong and what it proved about flexible offices– The economics of coworking, occupancy, tenant mix and asset-light expansion– Building COLABS from Pakistan and adapting the model for Saudi Arabia– Why Omar believes there is room for a MENA-native regional workspace platform– Fundraising rejection, resilience and learning to build without burning out ----------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro00:52 What is COLABS really?03:00 Why coworking is still a real estate business08:00 B...

How to Raise a Seed Round in MENA: MilkStraw's Jawad Shreim and Orbii's Nauman Ali on FOMO, Term Sheets and Choosing VCs

Sep 28, 2026 1 hr 6 min

Most startup fundraising advice tends to sound good in theory but becomes much less useful once you are actually in the middle of a round. Founders are told to build relationships, create momentum and find the right investors, but the practical details of how to do that are usually left unsaid. So for this episode, I sat down with Jawad Shreim, co-founder and CEO of MilkStraw AI, and Nauman Ali, co-founder and CEO of Orbii, two founders who have both recently been through the process themselves, to unpack how they approached it in practice. Jawad recently raised a $2 million seed round for MilkStraw, while Orbii raised $3.6 million after initially setting out to raise $2 million. Both began laying the groundwork months before formally opening their rounds, using regular investor updates to build relationships, generate inbound and understand which funds were actually engaging with the business. Jawad ultimately built a list of roughly 100 investors, compressed his meetings into a short fundraising sprint and closed the round in around 45 days. From there, the conversation gets unusually tactical. We get into how to create FOMO without losing control of the process, whether to tell investors who else you are speaking to, when to set a hard deadline, how to diligence a VC properly and what “value add” should actually look like once someone is on your cap table. We also spend time on the less glamorous mechanics that founders often encounter for the first time while fundraising, including SAFEs, liquidation preferences, side letters and the gap between signing a deal and actually seeing the money arrive in the bank. Finally, we talk about what happens once the round is closed and why both founders treated their funding announcements as something to actively optimise for customer, talent, partnership and future investor inbound, rather than simply another PR moment. If you are raising now, expect to raise eventually, or simply want a clearer picture of what actually...

Quiqup’s Bassel El Koussa on Raising $65M, Surviving Uber and Rebuilding in Dubai

Sep 7, 2026 1 hr 9 min

Quiqup has one of the more remarkable founder stories in the region, although it didn’t start here. Bassel El Koussa and his co-founders launched the company in London in 2014 around a simple idea: use a mobile app to let people get almost anything delivered in under an hour. Over the years that followed, Quiqup raised tens of millions of dollars, worked with some of the world’s biggest retailers and found itself competing in one of the most aggressively funded corners of technology. Then Uber Eats arrived in London, and the environment around the company changed remarkably quickly. Bassel talks in the episode about going from fundraising processes that could produce term sheets within weeks to spending months on the road trying to raise capital, while increasingly confronting the reality that the business they had set out to build in the UK might no longer make sense. What followed was a series of decisions that would eventually take Quiqup from London to Dubai and fundamentally change what the company was building. Some were forced on them, others were very deliberate. In 2022, Quiqup made perhaps the most counterintuitive of all, walking away from on-demand food and grocery delivery and cutting its revenue by 50% in the process. Today, the company looks very different from the one Bassel started more than a decade ago, with Quiqup increasingly positioning itself as the infrastructure behind a new generation of e-commerce brands building across the GCC. But the reason I enjoyed this episode so much isn’t really the logistics (although it is jam-packed full of terrific insights on this too). The truth is most of the time there’s only so much a host can do to make a podcast conversation “good.” You can do the research, understand the company and hopefully ask the right questions, but eventually yo’re reliant on the person sitting opposite you being willing to be open about what actually happened. Bassel was, and as a result this is honestly my favourite conversation...

Bayzat’s Talal Bayaa on Raising $55M, Running Out of Runway and the Pressure to Deliver an Exit

Aug 25, 2026 45 min

Bayzat has been around long enough to have lived through almost every version of the MENA startup ecosystem. Founded in 2013, the company began with an idea for a consumer fintech product, stumbled somewhat fortuitously into SME health insurance, and gradually expanded into what is now a much broader SaaS platform spanning HR, payroll, employee benefits, talent management and, increasingly, AI-powered workflows and applications. It's also raised more than $55 million along the way. But the journey has been anything but linear. We sat down with the company's CEO and Co-founder Talal Bayaa for one of the more candid conversations we've had on the podcast to date. Talal talks openly about nearly running out of money, fundraising rounds that fell apart after due diligence, the pressure that comes with having raised $55M+ and knowing investors eventually need liquidity, and the reality that, more than a decade in, he believes he is already behind on delivering that outcome. We also get deep into how Bayzat is using AI internally and inside the product, why some software categories are far more vulnerable than others, why he is most worried about entry-level jobs, and how AI is allowing the company to build the final 10% of customer-specific functionality that traditional SaaS economics historically made prohibitively expensive. We cover: How Bayzat evolved from a consumer fintech idea into a multi-product HR, payroll, benefits and SaaS platform, and why listening to customers repeatedly changed the roadmapHow Covid pushed the company into a “death spiral”, what having effectively zero runway actually looked like, and why charging for previously free software became its most transformational decisionThe realities of raising more than $55M, fundraising rounds that fell through at the last moment, and why Talal feels a responsibility to eventually engineer liquidity for Bayzat’s shareholdersWhy Bayzat is using AI to solve the expensive final 10% of software customisation, t...

Bayt’s Rabea Ataya on 26 Years of Building and Why the Old MENA Startup Playbook No Longer Works

Aug 10, 2026 1 hr 3 min

One of the luckiest things about doing this podcast is getting to sit down with people I’ve admired for years and ask them all the questions I’ve been storing up. Rabea Ataya is very much one of those people. As the founder of Bayt, he has spent more than 26 years building through multiple technology cycles, financial crises, geopolitical shocks and the rise of an entirely new startup ecosystem around him. Bayt itself survived an era in which many of its peers disappeared, became profitable and cashflow positive, and ultimately grew into something much broader than the job board it began as. So rather than spend an hour retelling a founding story Rabea has told many times before, I wanted to do something different. We sat down to unpack the lessons behind those 26 years: how his relationship with money and entrepreneurship has changed, why Bayt raised just $3M in outside capital, what founders misunderstand about building a cap table, how to stay hungry once you are successful, and why the playbook that made him successful in the Middle East would probably fail if someone copied it today. We also get into some of the extraordinary businesses built under the wider Bayt umbrella, including the story of vFairs, which went from a small virtual-events experiment to growing revenue roughly 60-fold in three months during Covid, and the decision to walk away from a potentially enormous private equity deal despite the money on the table. But what I enjoyed most about this conversation is how far beyond company-building it goes. Rabea is remarkably thoughtful about the things that become harder to talk about as a founder gets older and more successful: whether wealth dulls your hunger, why you need people willing to tell you things you do not want to hear, how to remain present with your family, the value of journaling and deliberate thinking time, and ultimately what entrepreneurship is actually for once money stops being the primary objective. This is a special one for me....

Algebra AI’s Anis Harb on Raising $7M, Leaving Deliveroo After a Decade, and Why Managed AI Services Are Booming

Jul 13, 2026 35 min

For Anis Harb, the real barrier to enterprise AI adoption is not access to better models. It is everything that sits between a promising demo and a system that actually works inside a business. After nearly a decade at Deliveroo, where he launched and led the company’s Middle East operation, Anis left with a growing frustration: as businesses scaled, they added more headcount, which created more complexity, more process and, eventually, the need for even more headcount. Algebra AI is his attempt to break that cycle. The Dubai-based company emerged from stealth with $7M in funding, backed by Infinity Constellation, BECO Capital, Silicon Badia and Waseel Investments. Founded in partnership with that investor group, Algebra is targeting the more than 30,000 mid-market businesses across the GCC that sit between off-the-shelf AI software and the cost and complexity of enterprise-grade deployments. Rather than selling businesses another piece of software or building a workflow and walking away, Algebra operates as a managed AI service. Its team works across the data layer, workflow logic, integrations, edge cases and human approvals, then stays embedded to monitor, maintain and improve the system over time. As Anis puts it, Algebra wants to be the accountable operator, responsible not only for getting an AI system live, but for ensuring it continues to run as intended and delivers measurable business results. The company already has engagements across financial services, food and beverage, manufacturing and distribution. While the industries may look broad, Algebra is deliberately narrow in the repeatable workflow patterns it takes on, identifying high-ROI processes that can be transformed from hours of manual work into minutes, or help businesses make decisions and take action in real time. We also get into Anis’s unusual journey into Deliveroo, why he originally planned to build his own food-delivery company in the Middle East, how AI is changing the structure of Algebr...

Lean Technologies’ Tewfik Cassis on Launching Pay by Bank, Building the AWS for Fintech, and Why Stablecoins Could Transform Payments

Jul 6, 2026 47 min

For Tewfik Cassis, Lean Technologies is not an open banking company, or at least not only that. It’s trying to become the AWS for fintech in the Middle East, an infrastructure layer so reliable, ubiquitous and necessary that payments, verified financial data, underwriting and money movement can be built on top of it without merchants stitching together five or six providers. That ambition now stretches well beyond Lean’s original open banking shorthand. Founded in 2019, Lean has raised more than $100M to date, giving it the backing to push deeper into Pay by Bank, Open Finance and the broader fintech infrastructure stack across the region. We sat down with Lean CPO Tewfik Cassis on the eve of the company’s biggest product launch to date, as it prepared to roll out its Pay by Bank suite across deposits, collections, checkout and pay-by-link. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Lean is building across account-to-account payments, open finance data, underwriting and money movement, while keeping one eye firmly on what comes next, from stablecoin-powered remittances to agentic commerce. While cards are unlikely to disappear any time soon, debit card transactions, manual bank transfers and clunky direct debit experiences are all up for grabs. And as Tewfik puts it, there’s no real reason for a customer to use debit over account-to-account payments if the experience, incentives and reliability are there. We also get into what it actually takes to build in a regulated market, why Lean is willing to over-invest before regulation fully lands, and how the company thinks about being first to market without losing discipline. This was a really, really fun and wide-ranging conversation, so a massive thanks again to Tewfik for taking the time to come on the FWDstart podcast. We cover: Why Lean is positioning itself as the AWS for fintech in the Middle East, and why Tewfik does not see the company as just an open banking providerThe thinking behind Lean’s biggest product launch to date,...

ClearGrid's Mohammad Al-Khalili on Building AI for a Trillion-Dollar Debt Market

Jun 22, 2026 1 hr 0 min

In this episode, we sit down with Mohammad Al-Khalili, co-founder of ClearGrid, the AI debt-resolution company quietly rebuilding one of the least glamorous, most avoided corners of finance. ClearGrid came out of stealth in 2025 with $10 million across pre-seed and seed rounds, co-led by RAED Ventures, BECO Capital and Nuwa Capital, with Aramco's Waed Ventures, KBW Ventures and a string of marquee angels, Replit's Amjad Masad, Twitch's Justin Kan and Marqeta's Jason Gardner among them, also on the cap table. ClearGrid is an outcome-as-a-service business. It doesn't sell software or seats, it gets paid when the lender gets paid, and whether the work is done by AI or humans is, in his words, its problem and not the client's. The thesis underneath it is blunt: debt is broken, the market is enormous, somewhere north of $400 billion and climbing towards the trillions, and almost no one wants to touch it. For Khalili, it's also deeply personal. He had watched debt take its toll on people he loves, and as he puts it, there is no bigger problem worth solving in his life. What began, deliberately, as an old-fashioned debt-collection agency, a way to learn the market from the inside before building anything, has since become a company moving towards buying the debt outright. We cover: – Why AI can be the more dignified debt collector rather than the harsher one, and why, as he puts it, it is not for private companies to decide who deserves empathy and who doesn't.– The deceptively small change that moved the needle most, swapping the word "empathy" for "dignity," and why it lifted both his agents' clarity and the company's customer-satisfaction scores.– Why he flatly refuses to call ClearGrid a voice-AI company, the race to the bottom, the collapse in pickup rates, and why voice is a channel, not a product.– The counterintuitive north star, that like a good doctor, success means the borrower never has to come back, from a founder who came up in growth hacking and retention.–...

Comfi's Sanjar Samiev and Denis Gavrilin on Raising $65M and Building B2B BNPL for MENA's SMEs

Jun 15, 2026 43 min

In this episode, we sit down with Sanjar Samiev and Denis Gavrilin, co-founders of Comfi, the B2B buy-now-pay-later platform that recently raised a $65 million pre-Series A to finance the invoices the rest of the market would rather ignore. Sanjar arrived in the UAE back in 2006, built a last-mile delivery business that exited to Amazon, then ran a manufacturing company, which is where he came face to face with the problem he's spent the last two years solving: suppliers across the region extending credit they can't really afford, waiting up to ninety days to get paid, and quietly turning into a finance department they never signed up to run. What began as a way to finance SaaS subscriptions has since become something far broader, an AI-underwritten credit rail for the traditional trade economy, now serving more than a thousand SMEs across the UAE and Saudi. Denis, Comfi's CFO and a former banker, takes us under the bonnet of the numbers: how a lender actually gets funded, and why a raise like this is as much about debt as it is about equity. We cover: – Why B2B buy-now-pay-later has almost nothing in common with the consumer version beyond the name, and why borrowing that name turned out to be an asset rather than a liability.– Why roughly 60% of invoices in the GCC get paid late, and what that does to a supplier forced to act as their own credit and collections team.– How Comfi underwrites a business in hours rather than weeks, with almost no human in the loop, and what that speed actually unlocks.– Why Comfi deliberately chases the smallest cheques, the hundred-dirham invoices everyone else considers too small to bother with, and why that's the moat rather than the compromise.– Why the banks structurally can't serve this market, and why a $120 billion financing gap has room for far more players than most people assume.– How the $65 million raise actually works, why a lending business has to run two completely different fundraises in parallel, and how equity quiet...

Rana Abdel Latif & Deepali Nangia (Speedinvest) on Raising from QIA, EIB, and Mubadala, Why Fintechs Are the New Incumbents, and What Catalytic LPs Actually Do

Apr 22, 2026 49 min

In this episode, we sit down with Deepali Nangia and Rana Abdel Latif, the partners leading Speedinvest's first dedicated Middle East and Africa fund, a flagship vehicle for the Vienna-based firm that's been quietly investing across emerging markets since 2013. Earlier this week, Speedinvest announced the fund with anchor commitments from Mubadala (through its MENA Venture Capital Fund), the Qatar Investment Authority (via its newly expanded $3B Fund of Funds programme) and EIB Global, which took the anchor on the Africa-dedicated vehicle with a €40M commitment signed in March. The fund will invest across fintech, embedded finance, health, climate, AI, consumer and digital infrastructure, targeting the Series A and B capital gap that Deepali and Rana have identified across MENAPT and Sub-Saharan Africa. The headlines make it sound like an overnight success, but as Deepali and Rana are quick to admit the reality is that this fundraise has been closer to a three-year marathon. Rana has been investing in the region since 2006, most recently running FinTech investments at Nclude in Cairo. Deepali joined Speedinvest to lead gender investing at the firm and has since become the driving force behind its broader emerging markets thesis, including its Micro GP programme backing female and diverse fund managers. Deepali and Rana are honest about the ups and downs, thoughtful on where capital really needs to flow in Africa and MENA right now, and refreshingly unsparing about the tech bro renaissance that's quietly reversing a lot of DEI progress in European and American VC. We cover: The real fundraising timeline behind the headlines, and why raising from sovereigns and DFIs looks a lot more like an enterprise sales cycle than anything else.Why Speedinvest shifted from opportunistic deals across emerging markets to a dedicated regional strategy with boots on the ground.The inside story of landing QIA, Mubadala and EIB, and how the sovereign narrative has shifted from "invest...

Mahdi Yahya (Ori / Radiant) on Getting Acquired by Brookfield, Building the Backbone of Sovereign AI, and Why Intelligence Is Infrastructure

Apr 13, 2026 52 min

In this episode, we sit down with Mahdi Yahya, the founder of Ori, which has just been acquired by Brookfield Asset Management and merged into Radiant, a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company combining power, capital, compute, and software into a single proposition. Mahdi fled Lebanon during the 2006 war at 19, took a taxi to Damascus, flew to London with no degree, and has spent the last two decades on one of the most unconventional founder journeys I've come across: telecoms, drama school at the Drama Centre London, an experimental art-and-technology gallery that nearly bankrupted him, a partnership with Ericsson that led to edge computing, and eventually eight years building what he calls the genetic code for AI infrastructure. We cover: Why Mahdi took a taxi from Beirut to Damascus during the 2006 war at 19 and what he was chasing when he arrived in London with no degree and no plan.How an experimental art gallery called Room One became a "financial disaster" but directly led to the founding of Ori through a partnership with Ericsson on 5G use cases.Why Ori spent six years building speculative infrastructure technology before the market existed for it, and what it was like knocking on a thousand doors to find the one investor who said yes.How ChatGPT turned a use case they were exploring into the use case that justified everything they'd built since 2018.Why the Brookfield acquisition happened and what Radiant unlocks in terms of capital, power, and global scale that Ori couldn't access on its own.Why Mahdi believes intelligence is becoming a sovereign asset on par with electricity grids and water systems, and why most countries don't need to build their own foundation model to achieve sovereignty.Why founders who try to build "the company" too early, hiring heads of HR and finance before product-market fit, are actually making it harder to attract the people they need.Why if somebody is a maybe, you fire them, and why experience and logos on a CV are...

Alex Epure (Qureos) on Raising $5M from Prosus, The Future of Hiring in a Post-AI World, and The Truth About Job Displacement

Mar 16, 2026 46 min

In this episode, we sit down with Alex Epure, co-founder and CEO of Qureos, an AI-powered hiring platform that's just raised a $5M seed round led by Prosus. Alex spent nine years at Cisco, moved to Dubai, and then went from managing global enterprise accounts to launching Saudi Arabia for Swvl during COVID. What started as a passion project helping university graduates land their first job has since evolved into a full-stack hiring infrastructure layer integrated with over 2,400 sourcing channels globally. We cover: Why hiring has never been easier and is still fundamentally broken, and why more tools and more platforms haven't solved the problem.The 1AM Sheraton lobby conversation that convinced his co-founder Usama to join, and what it's like building a company through a market that changed three times in one year.Why their AI chatbot experiment completely flopped, and what they built instead.How Qureos built a nationality and gender prediction engine to solve a hiring compliance problem that's unique to this region.Why 9% of AI interviews still end with the candidate wanting to talk to a human, and what that tells you about the future of recruitment.Why the real job displacement isn't AI itself, it's the person who can do your job and three others at the same time.How raising a seed round led by Prosus involved a live tech pilot with operating companies, and why failing it would have killed the deal entirely.----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction02:00 - How the $5M Prosus Round Came Together05:00 - What Qureos Does 08:00 - Nine Years at Cisco & the Move to Dubai13:00 - Joining Swvl & Thriving in Chaos16:00 - The 1AM Sheraton Lobby That Changed Everything22:00 - Going Full-Time in the Worst Market Imaginable27:00 - First AI Experiments & Why the Pivot Was Perfectly Timed30:00 - Why Their AI Chatbot Completely Flopped37:00 - The Business Model: Platform vs Managed Services40:00 - The AI Adoption Gap: MENA vs the US43:00 -...

Glenn Harwood (AlgoDriven) on the Future of SaaS, Exiting for 8 Figures from Dubai, and Expanding to Fourteen Countries On Only $3M

Mar 10, 2026 42 min

In this episode, we sit down with Glenn Harwood, co-founder of AlgoDriven, who has just completed an all-cash exit to Emergence Software, a San Francisco-based hold-forever software company. Glenn started selling cars at Mercedes-Benz in Australia at 20, became a top-15 salesperson nationally, moved to Al Ain and then Dubai, and eventually turned a frustration with how dealerships valued used cars into a SaaS platform now used by over 1,000 dealerships across ten countries, appraising $25 billion worth of cars every year. This is a rare thing in the MENA startup ecosystem: a genuine, completed exit story, all cash, with early investors made whole and the founders staying on to keep building. Glenn is refreshingly open about the mechanics of the deal, the sleepless nights, and what it actually takes to close an acquisition on December 30th. We cover: How Glenn went from used car salesman to running the number one Mercedes used car department in Australia, and how that domain expertise became the foundation for everything that followed.Why five valuers in a dealership would give five different answers for the same car, and why every industry still running on gut instinct is a startup opportunity.Why every competitor digitised the clipboard and ended up with something more painful than pen and paper, and what AlgoDriven did differently.How they expanded to ten countries on a $2M Series A while remaining profitable, and what the lean international expansion playbook actually looked like.Why the acquisition beat raising a Series B, and how Emergence offered something a funding round couldn't.What it's actually like to close a deal on December 30th, chasing signatures across three continents over Christmas on no sleep.Glenn's honest framing of the VC game: you either IPO, get acquired, or go out of business, and why he's really happy with where they landed.----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction05:00 – "You Either IPO, Get Acquired...

Hassan Fayed (Aydi) on Building AI for Every Farmer on Earth and Why Software Has Failed Agriculture

Feb 24, 2026 1 hr 30 min

In this episode, we sit down with Hassan Fayed, founder of Aydi, the company behind Orth, an AI agronomist now live in almost 200 countries just a few months after launch. Hasan grew up working his family's farm in Egypt, moved to Dubai, and then packed his bags during COVID to come back and tackle one of agriculture's most stubborn problems: the billion-strong workforce that's been almost entirely left out of the software revolution. What started as a workforce management platform has since pivoted into something far more ambitious. We cover: Why software has broadly failed farmers, and why it has nothing to do with farmers being anti-technology.How 95% of the world's farms have never been visited by an agronomist, and why the advice most farmers do receive is biased by the people selling them inputs.How Orth went from zero to 80,000 users and almost $50 million in economic value delivered, with zero humans in the loop at any stage.Why Aydi deliberately hasn't figured out monetisation yet, and why Hasan thinks that's exactly the right call.How the team compressed time to value from 27 minutes down to 3, and why they're now considering slowing it back down.Why Hasan believes that if your job can be done remotely, there's a very high chance AI will be doing it soon.His surprisingly strong take on AI personality, why brand and tone will become a significant contributor to enterprise value, and why he thinks we'll develop relationships with AI agents whether we like it or not.----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Cold Open 03:45 - Why Agritech Has Struggled 07:30 - Hassan's Farming Background & Origin Story 11:30 - The COVID Lightbulb Moment 16:00 - Getting Started: Boots on the Ground 19:30 - Russia-Ukraine Impact & Pivot to SaaS 22:30 - AI Enters the Picture 26:30 - The Global Agronomist Shortage 30:30 - Launching Earth in 200 Countries 33:00 - How Earth's AI Model Works 41:00 - Go-to-Market & Overcoming Farmer Skepticism 52:00 - Fundin...

Fouad Jeryes (Maqsam) on Why MENA's Fragmentation is the Opportunity, Why Arabic AI Benchmarks are BS, & Why Your Competitors are Your Best Salespeople

Feb 16, 2026 57 min

In this episode, we sit down with Fouad Jeryes, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Maqsam, MENA's AI-powered cloud communications platform. Fouad has been building in the region for over a decade, from co-founding CashBasha (one of Jordan's most trafficked e-commerce sites before its acquisition) to helping launch Oasis 500, Jordan's first tech accelerator, to running Amman Tech Tuesdays for ten years, bringing together over 40,000 attendees across the Jordanian startup ecosystem. We cover: – Why Maqsam's competitors are their best salespeople, and how customers keep migrating after poor experiences elsewhere. – Why most Arabic language accuracy benchmarks are nonsense, and why resolution rates are the only metric that actually matters. – Fouad's co-founder relationship with Sinan Taifour, why it's lasted longer than most marriages, and why being different is the whole point. – Why Maqsam has stayed deliberately quiet on fundraising while building a profitable, capital-efficient business. – What it actually means to build a MENA company as a Jordanian founder based in Riyadh, and why the question "are you a Saudi company" misses the point entirely.– Fouad's take on AGI, why he thinks it's much further away than the headlines suggest, and why voice will be the last interface we ever use. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 03:00 - The Genesis of CashBasha and Building for the Region 06:00 - Why MENA's Fragmentation is Actually the Opportunity 10:00 - A Co-Founder Relationship That's Outlasted Most Marriages 14:00 - Why Maqsam Never Pivoted to AI 15:00 - AI Will Replace Jobs and We Should Be Comfortable With That 19:00 - OpenClaw, Prompt Injection, and the Dark Time Ahead 23:00 - Voice is the Last Interface We'll Ever Use 28:00 - Why Arabic Accuracy Benchmarks are Complete BS 37:00 - Why Maqsam Stayed Deliberately Quiet on Fundraising 39:00 - Our Competitors are Our Best Salespeople 47:00 - Moving to Riyadh and Playi...

Talal Hasan (44.01) on Turning CO2 Into Rock, The Journey From Omani VC to Earthshot Winner, & Why Transportation is Carbon's Real Bottleneck

Feb 3, 2026 48 min

Today's guest is Talal Hasan, a lawyer turned venture capitalist turned climate tech founder who has spent the better part of a decade chasing a rather ambitious goal: turning carbon dioxide into rock. His journey started in the Omani investment world, helping set up the venture capital arm for the Sultanate's sovereign wealth fund, but a 2018 discovery about a massive dead zone in the Arabian Sea sent him down a rabbit hole that would eventually lead to 44.01. Named after the molecular mass of CO2, 44.01 is an Oman-based carbon mineralisation company that accelerates a natural process where ultramafic rock absorbs carbon dioxide and converts it into solid carbonate minerals, and it turns out the Arabian Peninsula has some of the largest surface-level deposits of exactly this rock anywhere in the world. What normally takes decades in nature, Talal and his team are doing in months. The company most recently raised a $42M Series A from a cap table that reads like a climate tech fantasy draft: Equinor Ventures, Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Sumitomo, Air Liquide, and a personal nod from Sam Altman's Apollo Projects for good measure. They're now scaling from pilot projects with ADNOC and Masdar to commercial operations, with plans to export the technology they've developed in the Gulf to formations in Norway, Canada, and beyond. We get into the Peter Kelemen article that sparked the idea, what it takes to convince the world that drilling into rock is actually the answer to climate change, and why transportation logistics might be the real constraint on scaling carbon removal globally. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 03:00 - The Arabian Sea Dead Zone Discovery 05:00 - From Venture Capitalist to Climate Founder 08:00 - The Peter Keleman Moment 13:00 - Why Oman's Geology is Perfect 19:00 - Accelerating Nature: Decades to Months 24:00 - Addressing the Greenwashing Question 30:00 - Building Propr...

Djamel Mohand (Governata) on The Rocket Internet Baptism of Fire, Scaling Foodics to 30K Restaurants & Why Your Data Isn't AI-Ready

Jan 26, 2026 57 min

Today's guest is Djamel Mohand, a Rocket Internet alumnus who landed in Saudi Arabia over a decade ago, back when relocating to the Kingdom for tech was rather less fashionable than it is today. What was supposed to be a six-month stint turned into ten years of building businesses across the region, most notably as COO at Foodics, where he helped scale the restaurant management platform to over 30,000 restaurants across 25 countries. Earlier this year he stepped away to start something new: Governata, a Saudi-based data governance platform that just raised a $4 million seed round from investors including Joa Capital, Sanabil Accelerator by 500 Global, and Plug and Play. Data governance is not exactly the sexiest pitch in the world, and Djamel will be the first to admit it. But his thesis is essentially this: everyone is talking about AI adoption, but very few organisations have their data house in order to actually make it work. Governata is positioning itself as that foundational layer, the Arabic-first, Saudi-built platform designed to get enterprises AI-ready rather than just AI-curious. We get into the Rocket Internet origin story, what he learned scaling Foodics, and why the gap between having a data policy and actually implementing one is where the real opportunity lies. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 03:00 - From France to Saudi: Djamel's Origin Story 05:30 - Rocket Internet Baptism of Fire 08:00 - The Culture of Extreme Fairness 10:30 - The First Ride Hailing Wars 15:00 - Pricing Agility as a Competitive Weapon 17:30 - Kitopi: 400 Employees in Nine Months 21:00 - How Saudi's Regulatory Approach Actually Works 25:00 - Discovering the Data Governance Problem 32:00 - Leaving Foodics to Start Governata 43:30 - The Enterprise Sales Playbook 53:00 - Arabic-First and Global Ambitions ----------------------------------------------- Thank you to the partners who make this possible: • Sarwa – An all-in-one investing a...

Alina Truhina (Utopia) on Why Copy-Pasting Western VC Fails, The Myth of 2-and-20 Fees in Emerging Markets, & Establishing a Fund in Qatar

Jan 20, 2026 53 min

Alina Truhina is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Utopia Capital Management, a platform spanning VC funds and a venture studio investing across emerging markets. The firm operates Atypical Ventures, a Middle East-plus fund covering Turkey and Pakistan, Radical Fund focused on climate in Southeast Asia, and the recently launched UTOPIA Studio – an AI-native company builder that both creates new ventures and re-engineers portfolio companies for scale. Based in Doha, the firm recently partnered with the Qatar Investment Authority as one of the first international VCs to receive backing from its $1B Fund of Funds program. Born in Europe during the Soviet era, Alina's family moved to Australia as political refugees – an experience that shaped her conviction that talent in emerging markets deserves the same access to capital and networks available in the West. This led her to build investment vehicles across Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, evolving from impact grants to blended finance and now to a fully integrated venture studio model designed to take founders from idea to Series A in under 24 months. She joins the podcast to discuss why copying and pasting Western VC models to the Global South is a recipe for failure, the "Problem-Oriented Deep Dives" (PODs) framework she uses to identify category-defining opportunities, why climate adaptation is the overlooked half of the climate crisis, and her contrarian view that the standard "2 and 20" VC fee structure is fundamentally broken for emerging markets. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction00:05:00 – The Utopia Platform: Funds, Studio & Structure00:07:30 – Why Emerging Markets?00:09:45 – Personal Journey: From Refugee to VC00:13:00 – Climate Investing: Mitigation vs. Adaptation00:20:00 – Building Category-Defining Companies with AI00:23:00 – PODs: Problem-Oriented Deep Dives00:25:30 – The Venture Studio Model00:29:00 – What Makes a Great Founder?00:31:30 – Why Doh...

Rami Tabbara (Stake) on The Saudi Real Estate Explosion, Tokenising Real Estate Assets & Why Work Life Balance is a Myth

Jan 12, 2026 48 min

Rami Tabbara is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stake, a digital real estate investment platform that democratizes access to property markets in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Allowing users to invest fractionally from as little as 500 dirhams, Stake has grown into a fintech powerhouse with over 2 million downloads, users in 170 countries, and nearly 1.4 billion dirhams transacted on the platform. The company is backed by regional heavyweights including Mubadala, Wa'ed Ventures, and Property Finder. Before founding Stake, Rami spent over 16 years in the trenches of Dubai’s real estate sector, witnessing how high capital requirements locked out most investors – that he identified the need for a transparent, digital, and affordable entry point. He launched the business during the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns with childhood best friend Manar Mahmassani and later Ricardo Brizido, navigating early regulatory hurdles to build a platform that now pays out over 60 million dirhams in rental income annually. Rami joins the podcast to discuss why he considers Dubai to be a "co-founder" rather than just a city, the brutal lesson of losing his first four hires by faking a "cool startup" culture, why work-life balance is a myth if you want massive outcomes, and the company's aggressive roadmap into 2026 – including the launch of "Stake One" for full home ownership and his pragmatic approach to real estate tokenization ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 — The "Binance for Real Estate" vision 03:32 — What is Stake? Investing with 500 Dirhams 05:59 — Rami’s background: 16 years in Dubai real estate 10:02 — Launching during COVID and finding the right co-founders 11:43 — The first (and terrible) MVP 14:58 — Why there isn’t a "Robinhood of Real Estate" yet 18:31 — Will technology replace real estate brokers? 20:58 — The algorithm: Rejecting 90% of property deals 24:00 — Stake One: Buying full homes digitally 27:44 — Scaling globally: US L...

Nafez Dakkak (Anara Capital) on Why AI Tutors Will Fail, Is MENA EdTech's "Sleeping Giant" & Solving the Arabic Literacy Crisis

Jan 5, 2026 56 min

Nafez Dakkak is the Founding Partner of Anara Capital, a $50 million impact fund investing in early-stage startups across learning, climate, and wellbeing in the MENA region. Designed to be intentional and scalable, the fund backs founders solving critical infrastructure challenges across the Levant, GCC and North Africa. Before launching Anara, Nafez was the Founding CEO of the Queen Rania Foundation’s Edraak, the Arab world's largest massive open online course (MOOC) platform, which today reaches over 10 million learners. His transition from operator to investor also includes establishing BLDR, a venture studio focused on the the potential of the learn to earn cycle across MENA. He joins the podcast to discuss why AI tutors will fail the 80% of students who lack motivation , the "Game Boy Principle" of innovating through constraints rather than shiny new tech , why Arabic literacy is fundamentally broken by diglossia , and the critical difference between a founder who is passionate versus one who is truly obsessed. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:03:00 — Is MENA EdTech Still a Sleeping Giant?00:06:42 — Why EdTech Doesn't Scale Like SaaS (The Civil Engineering Analogy)00:10:18 — From Neurosurgeon Dreams to Education Strategy00:13:14 — Growing Up Palestinian: Education is All You Have00:14:38 — The Story Behind Edraak & The "MIT of the Arab World"00:19:49 — Lessons on Content Localisation & Completion Rates00:22:28 — The Game Boy Principle: Innovation Through Withered Tech00:24:10 — Why AI Tutors Will Fail (The Motivation Problem)00:27:59 — "Vibe Learning" & The Manchester United Transfer Fallacy00:30:17 — The Conflict Between Retention Metrics & Real Learning00:33:20 — The Arabic Language Crisis: Understanding Diglossia00:37:30 — Lessons from the Builder Venture Studio00:40:10 — Anara Capital: Differentiating Impact Investing from Philanthropy00:44:35 — The Exit Landscape for MENA EdTech00:48:13 — Nafez’s "Favorite Problems": Climat...

Nour Al Hassan (Arabic AI, Tarjama) on Building Arabic AI from MENA, Why Most Pilots Fail, and Hiring Only A Players

Dec 30, 2025 49 min

Nour Al Hassan is the Founder and CEO of Tarjama& and Arabic AI, a UAE-based AI company building Arabic-first language models, enterprise agents, and document intelligence systems for governments and large organisations. Before Arabic AI, Nour spent more than 16 years building Tarjama& from a bootstrapped translation business into a profitable, technology-led platform serving global enterprises. That long runway of proprietary Arabic data became the foundation for the creation of Arabic AI, enabling a leap into small language models, agentic workflows, and on-prem deployments for highly regulated customers. She joins the podcast to discuss what it takes to build technology from the region, overcoming internal doubt, why Arabic remains fundamentally underserved in AI, how human-in-the-loop systems will evolve rather than disappear, and why AI adoption fails unless it is driven top-down by leadership rather than delegated to teams. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 The State of Arabic Content Online00:46 Introduction to Nour Al Hassan and Tarjama03:49 Nour's Entrepreneurial Journey07:43 Building and Evolving Tarjama21:14 The Rise of Arabic AI25:54 Building Custom AI Solutions26:56 The Importance of Data Quality29:19 Challenges in Arabic AI Development31:00 Real-World AI Applications34:49 Sales and Business Development38:20 Future of AI and Business Strategy ----------------------------------------------- Thank you to the partners who make this possible: • Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save. 👉 Register using this link to be eligible for a $200 bonus when you fund $5,000 across your Sarwa accounts within three months of signing up:https://www.sarwa.co/register?promoCode=FWDSTART Promo code: FWDSTART Sarwa is regulated by the ADG...

Arya Bolurfrushan (AppliedAI) on Raising $42M for AI Before ChatGPT, The Future of Work & Why AI Needs Human Supervisors

Dec 22, 2025 47 min

Arya Bolurfrushan is the Founder and CEO of Applied AI, the company behind Opus, a platform enabling enterprises to design AI-native workflows. The company raised a $42 million seed round in November 2022, days before ChatGPT launched, and earlier this year closed a $55 million Series A led by G42, with Palantir and Bessemer also participating. Before founding Applied AI, Arya developed his conviction during a Covid quarantine in the UAE, where time alone led him to conclude that AI would be the most significant shift in human productivity since hydrocarbons. He joins the podcast to discuss why he was "doing AI before it was cool," how the company had to rebuild its tech stack post-ChatGPT, why he believes democracies will struggle with AI-driven displacement, and how Opus is designed to keep humans as moral decision-makers rather than obsolete bystanders. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction04:04 - Raising Before ChatGPT Was Cool05:46 - The COVID Quarantine Epiphany10:30 - From Oil to Electricity: Why Applied AI is Like General Electric15:29 - Opus: Building the Machine That Builds Machines22:17 - Hiring Less Than 1% of Applicants & Building an AI-Native Team25:15 - Business Process Re-Engineering: Adding Humans to AI-Native Workflows30:41 - The Large Work Model: Mapping 2.7 Million Business Processes33:27 - Sharing Productivity Gains with Labour: Lessons from Das Kapital39:51 - The $2 Trillion Investor Who Believes Humans Will Have No Work44:57 - Building for His Son's Future in a World Where AI is Always Smartest ----------------------------------------------- Thank you to the partners who make this possible: • Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save. 👉 Register using this link to be eligible for a $200 bonus when...

Ibrahim Manna (BRKZ) on Lessons from Careem, Founder Grit & Disrupting Saudi Construction

Dec 15, 2025 1 hr 2 min

Ibrahim Manna is the Founder and CEO of BRKZ, a Saudi construction tech startup built to address inefficiencies in construction procurement: fragmented supply chains, manual processes, and cash flow gaps faced by contractors and factories. Before founding BRKZ, Ibrahim spent eight years at Careem as one of the core architects of its expansion, launching 11 out of 15 markets ahead of the company's $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber in 2019. BRKZ has raised over $50 million in equity and debt financing, and serves 850+ contractors across major giga-projects including NEOM, King Salman Park, and Red Sea. He joins the podcast to discuss how buying a house during the pandemic revealed a broken industry, why Saudi's 7-8 layer supply chain creates massive inefficiency, what Careem taught him about building culture and empowering operators as founders, and how BRKZ is using technology to work with — not against — entrenched contractor behaviours. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction to Ibrahim Manana and BRKZ04:02 – Ibrahim's Early Entrepreneurial Endeavours07:35 – Lessons from Kareem11:11 – Challenges in Market Expansion22:37 – Leadership and Culture at Careem26:23 – Navigating Legal and Operational Hurdles28:59 – Stories from Iraq32:16 – Launching and Learning from Careem Cash34:58 – Transition to BRKZ36:27 – Identifying Gaps in the Construction Industry40:21 – Challenges and Innovations in Construction47:09 – The AI Story51:09 – Building Relationships and Customer Trust58:12 – Regional Tech Ecosystem and Entrepreneurship01:01:24 – Future Prospects and Final Thoughts ----------------------------------------------- Thank you to the partners who make this possible: • Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save. 👉 Register using thi...

Mark Kahn (Omnivore) on GCC Food Security, India’s Venture Depth & Agritech Investing

Dec 8, 2025 1 hr 14 min

Mark Kahn is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Omnivore, India’s leading agritech and climate-tech venture capital firm with more than $300 million under management. Backing over 45 startups transforming food, agriculture, and sustainability, Omnivore has played a defining role in shaping India’s agritech ecosystem and the country’s emerging climate investment landscape. He joins the podcast to discuss how Omnivore is building bridges between India and the GCC, why he’s not trading India’s deep venture ecosystem for newer regional opportunities, and how food sovereignty, controlled-environment agriculture, and life sciences innovation will define the next decade of climate resilience and food security. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro4:00 - Why Omnivore isn't pivoting to MENA6:46 - India vs GCC venture ecosystems10:00 - India's IPO advantage14:45 - Food sovereignty vs food security22:00 - Controlled environment agriculture: hype vs reality28:00 - Why we avoided alt-protein34:15 - The agribusiness-first mindset40:15 - Mark's path from politics to agritech45:30 - Omnivore's evolution across three funds52:00 - The GMV trap in B2B marketplaces59:45 - Why India missed a beat on life sciences1:04:45 - Eruvaka exit: from shed prototype to Nutreco acquisition1:09:00 - Exit paths in Indian agritech1:11:00 - What value-add actually looks like1:13:45 - Building the India-GCC food bridge ----------------------------------------------- Thank you to the partners who make this possible: • Sarwa – An all-in-one investing and money-management platform. It brings together do-it-yourself trading in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options with Sarwa Trade, hands-off investing with Sarwa Invest, and high-yield estimated returns with Sarwa Save. 👉 Register using this link to be eligible for a $200 bonus when you fund $5,000 across your Sarwa accounts within three months of signing up:https://www.sarwa.co/register?promoCode=FWDSTART Promo code: FWD...

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Podcast details

Created by: Jamie Lane
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 12, 2026
Episodes: 29
Release period: Weekly
Avg. episode length: 53 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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