FWDstart
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.
Episodes
Stride Ventures’ Ishpreet Singh Gandhi on $1B in Credit, Equity Dilution and Expanding to the Gulf
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 e
COLABS’ Omar Shah on Saudi, Coworking Economics and Building Across the GCC
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 headqu
How to Raise a Seed Round in MENA: MilkStraw's Jawad Shreim and Orbii's Nauman Ali on FOMO, Term Sheets and Choosing VCs
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 Nauma
Quiqup’s Bassel El Koussa on Raising $65M, Surviving Uber and Rebuilding in Dubai
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 ret
Bayzat’s Talal Bayaa on Raising $55M, Running Out of Runway and the Pressure to Deliver an Exit
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
Bayt’s Rabea Ataya on 26 Years of Building and Why the Old MENA Startup Playbook No Longer Works
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 ecosy
Algebra AI’s Anis Harb on Raising $7M, Leaving Deliveroo After a Decade, and Why Managed AI Services Are Booming
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 create
Lean Technologies’ Tewfik Cassis on Launching Pay by Bank, Building the AWS for Fintech, and Why Stablecoins Could Transform Payments
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 n
ClearGrid's Mohammad Al-Khalili on Building AI for a Trillion-Dollar Debt Market
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 o
Comfi's Sanjar Samiev and Denis Gavrilin on Raising $65M and Building B2B BNPL for MENA's SMEs
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
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
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), t
Mahdi Yahya (Ori / Radiant) on Getting Acquired by Brookfield, Building the Backbone of Sovereign AI, and Why Intelligence Is Infrastructure
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
Alex Epure (Qureos) on Raising $5M from Prosus, The Future of Hiring in a Post-AI World, and The Truth About Job Displacement
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 jo
Glenn Harwood (AlgoDriven) on the Future of SaaS, Exiting for 8 Figures from Dubai, and Expanding to Fourteen Countries On Only $3M
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
Hassan Fayed (Aydi) on Building AI for Every Farmer on Earth and Why Software Has Failed Agriculture
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 almos
Fouad Jeryes (Maqsam) on Why MENA's Fragmentation is the Opportunity, Why Arabic AI Benchmarks are BS, & Why Your Competitors are Your Best Salespeople
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 Tue
Talal Hasan (44.01) on Turning CO2 Into Rock, The Journey From Omani VC to Earthshot Winner, & Why Transportation is Carbon's Real Bottleneck
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 Ar
Djamel Mohand (Governata) on The Rocket Internet Baptism of Fire, Scaling Foodics to 30K Restaurants & Why Your Data Isn't AI-Ready
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 t
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
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 cr
Rami Tabbara (Stake) on The Saudi Real Estate Explosion, Tokenising Real Estate Assets & Why Work Life Balance is a Myth
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 transact
Nafez Dakkak (Anara Capital) on Why AI Tutors Will Fail, Is MENA EdTech's "Sleeping Giant" & Solving the Arabic Literacy Crisis
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 Rani
Nour Al Hassan (Arabic AI, Tarjama) on Building Arabic AI from MENA, Why Most Pilots Fail, and Hiring Only A Players
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 globa
Arya Bolurfrushan (AppliedAI) on Raising $42M for AI Before ChatGPT, The Future of Work & Why AI Needs Human Supervisors
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 hi
Ibrahim Manna (BRKZ) on Lessons from Careem, Founder Grit & Disrupting Saudi Construction
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 c
Mark Kahn (Omnivore) on GCC Food Security, India’s Venture Depth & Agritech Investing
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
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