Ben Harburg is the Managing Partner at MSA Capital, a Chinese VC with $2.5bn of assets under management and MSA Novo, a newly established emerging markets fund with focus on the GCC. Ben brings a decade of expertise investing in Chinese tech companies to the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region and is scouting for the next MENA based unicorns. MSA capital is already an investor in regional success stories like Tabby, Homzmart, Rabbit, Baly and KASO to name a few. A refreshing...

Huda Al-Lawati is a veteran private equity professional across emerging markets having had executive roles at companies like Gateway Partners, Savola and Abraaj. Huda has recently launched Aliph Capital, a private equity fund that focuses on the mid market segment.  I sat down with Huda to get an insider’s view on the private equity industry in the MENA region, what are the opportunites, where to fundraise, how to source deals, how to create value to companies they acquire by building the...

When Hassan Sawaf started working on machine learning in the 90s in Germany, no one thought advancements in AI would bring us to where we are today. Not even Hassan himself! In fact, people thought the AI field was too 'theoretical'. In this conversation, Hassan talks to us about AI’s evolution and his vision for aiXplain, a company he is building out of California that aims to make AI accessible to builders and innovators and provide them with tools to prototype their ideas with low or...

'I have my termination letter framed in my office’ that is the first thing that Jihad said to me when I first met him. Jihad El Eit, is the Founder & Group CEO at Kaykroo, the region’s creator of home grown brands like Manoushe Street, the Good Bowl, Fern el Balad, the Pasta Cup and many more. Jihad has a fascinating entrepreneurial journey that started after the company he worked at i2 shut down in 2007. Immediately after, Jihad saw an opportunity to become the distributor of Nokia in...

In this special episode shot live from the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival on February 4th 2024, Steven and I discuss the power of personal branding and authenticity. Steven is a celebrity in the world of podcasts, his podcast the Diary of a CEO gets 50million monthly downloads and is the #1 podcast in Europe! Steven is a successful entrepreneur, investor and author. Steven is remarkably humble, his passion is grounded in pragmatism and his story truly inspiring, a self-made, self-taught...

I sat down with Allen Taylor, the Managing Partner at Endeavor Catalyst to learn more about their unique approach to investing across the world. Endeavor Catalyst fund is part of the non-profit Endeavor network, the home of 2500+ entrepreneurs across 42 markets. Over the past 11 years, Endeavor Catalyst, chaired by LinkedIn Co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman, has raised $500m and deployed $2m cheques in 300+ companies. We discuss the importance and return potential of investing in...

I sat down with Elie Habib, the Co-founder of Anghami, the region’s most loved home grown brand! Anghami is a leading music streaming platform catering for the Arab world. We discuss Anghami’s much hyped listing on the NASDAQ New York on February 4th 2022 and the period that follows including the tumbling of their market cap well below their yearly revenues. We discuss Anghami’s new merger with OSN+ and Elie’s new role as CEO post merger. Elie gave me a carte blanche to ask him anything and I...

I chat with Philip Bahoshy, the CEO of Magnitt, about the dynamic tech startup scene in the MENA region after a turbulent 2023. We delve into how recent economic shifts affect venture capital and discuss the current trends and 2024 predictions for venture capital in MENA, including the impact of new funding from Saudi Arabia, the resulting high demand for startups and the rise of startups like Tabby and Tamara to unicorn status. We also speculate on potential 2024 IPOs and ponder if MENA...

In this second part of 2023’s wrap up, we take a look at some of the year’s most practical advice. We hear from top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists about company culture, shutting down a startup, selling a startup, re-purchasing a startup after a sale and the importance of founders at various stages of the startup building. We also remember a great episode on communicating with confidence.   I wish you a great start for 2024 and looking forward to bring to you insights from the world’s...

We’re looking back at 2023’s biggest AHA moments and what a tough year it has been. The common theme across the 19 episodes recorded in 2023 was ‘resilience’ and that is representative of the mood for the year. We saw soaring inflation, increased interest rates which led to a venture capital slow down, we also saw the collapse of several global banks including Silicon Valley Bank. We saw climate get a lot of attention especially as the UAE hosted COP28 and we ended the year with a brutal war...

I sat down with Ali Halabi, Founder & CEO of Volt Lines, a Turkish based B2B mobility platform solving for the daily work commute in Istanbul, a city of 15million people that is notorious for its traffic woes. Ali has had a fascinating journey from Lebanon to Turkey and has rubbed shoulders with failure many times. In fact Volt Lines was the re-birth of a previous startup called Volt which he had to shut down. He saw himself celebrate Volt Line’s exit to Swvl, a $1.5B regional startup,...

I sat down with Dr. Ryan Lefers, Co-founder & CEO at RedSea a climate tech company founded at King Abdullah University of Science and technology (KAUST) building technologies from the desert of Saudi Arabia to make agriculture more sustainable. With $36m of funding to date, RedSea products are currently selling across the world.  We discuss Dr. Ryan’s journey from scientist to entrepreneur and the process of taking big ideas through R&D in a lab, manufacturing and testing as well as...

I sat down with Tomaso Rodriguez, CEO at talabat to learn more about his experience growing the largest food delivery platform across 8 Middle Eastern markets. Talabat was born in Kuwait in 2004 and was sold to global player Delivery Hero in 2015 for $170m. Tomaso shares insights on talabat's complex operations, technology and artificial intelligence, building a culture of innovation, creating new revenue streams as well as his thoughts on potential acquisitions for talabat. Please spend 7min...

I sat down with GV Ravishankar the Managing Director at Peak XV (previously Sequoia India) to discus the state of growth stage investing given the current macro environment. The team at Peak XV are managing US$10bn in assets. GV walks us through Peak XV's investment strategy with a focus on MENA, what he looks for in target companies, the importance of founders as the startup matures, advice to founders in his portfolio companies as they weather the global downturn, and parallels between...

I sat down with Dr Saliha Afridi, Clinical Psychologist and Founder of The Lighthouse Arabia (https://www.lighthousearabia.com), to understand how we can prepare better, react better recover better from rejection.  No is a powerful word. Being comfortable saying no in the right situations is essential to setting healthy boundaries at work and in our personal lives. But sometimes in our professional lives hearing a no can be disheartening. Whether you are a salesperson, in negotiations, an...

I sat down with Dr. Ali Fenwick, Professor of Organizational Behavior & Innovation at Hult International business school, to discuss how culturally specific narratives of AI fuel fear or foster optimism and why he fully believes that AI should look and behave more like a human than a robot. An enlightening discussion about what AI means, how ChatGPT feels sentient, the predictability of algorithms and how Dr. Ali built a ~2 million social media following by creating viral content and...

I sat down with Philip Bahoshy, the founder and CEO of MAGNiTT, the leading VC data platform, to unpack the most recent H1 report on the venture capital landscape and trends across MENA, Pakistan, Turkey and SEA. We discuss the macro conditions leading to the slowdown, how are investors behaving, and what it means for our nascent ecosystem. We also touch on winning industries, new and emerging industries, artificial intelligence and I get Philip’s views on Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ work ethic as...

Marwan Chaar and Hassan Jaffar co-founded Carzaty in 2018 in Oman. Carzaty aims at transforming the customer's used car buying journey from a messy experience to a high trust, digital first journey. Carzaty followed a portfolio management approach to selecting, buying and pricing cars. The founders raised $5.9Mn since inception and exited to Mexico born Kavak in 2021. The founder's approach to building and exiting Carzaty is quite interesting as they were quite methodical and analytical....

Mudassir Sheikha is the Co-founder & CEO of Careem, the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan's (MENAP) biggest startup success story to date with a $3.1Bn exit to Uber in 2020. After the ride hailing success, In April 2023 Mudassir announced a new entity 'Careem Technologies' that will focus on building the region's super app and provide a wide range of services to meet the needs of MENAP's 500 million+ population. Mudassir and I discuss the learnings from the various stages of Careem...

Zuhair Shamma and Rawan Baddour are the co-founders of Zest equity, a platform that enables startup founders, employees and investors to sell shares they've earned in a secondary transaction, providing much needed liquidity and incentives. But not everyone is bought in, some investors are proponents of such liquidity events, while others remain skeptical as it may incentivize bad actors. A great discussion around syndications, secondary transactions, ESOP and the maturity of the startup...

Kareem Elsirafy is the Managing Partner at Modus Capital, a venture builder with offices in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and soon in Riyadh. Kareem emigrated to the US from Egypt as a toddler, grew up in a challenging environment and joined the US Marine Corps to get some discipline. 4 years later he found himself in a homeless shelter trying to integrate back into society. He eventually worked his way out of homelessness into Columbia University and ultimately co-founding Unite Us, a startup that...

Presenting confidently is a skill that no entrepreneur or business leader can ignore. The ability to communicate to different stakeholders in a clear, concise and attention grabbing manner is vital to success. I sit down with Bill Connor - veteran White House TV correspondent and anchorman for 15 years - currently the Founder & CEO of Three Media Consultancy to discuss how we can prepare content for presentations and speeches, present the content and then deliver a strong ask. We also...

Startups across the globe are reckoning with a down cycle as a result of the overall macro economic environment and some practices that were long romanticized by Silicon Valley - such as growth at all cost - that have led to bloated startups with a high cash burn and a long path to profitability. I speak to Basil Moftah, General Partner at Nclude, a Venture Capital firm based in Egypt about the impact of the global environment on local startups. We also discuss the challenges that Egyptian...

The post Covid era has been an eventful one with rising inflation, a war in Europe, choppy markets and a severe correction in the startup world with both private & public valuations plummeting. That precipitated the collapse of 5 banks within a few weeks including the #1 global startup bank; Silicon Valley bank. I invite my friend and finance expert Binod Shankar - an ex-finance director, ex-founder, executive coach and market analyst on Bloomberg & CNBC - to talk to us about...