Castuner
Submit a podcast

FWDstart

Jamie Lane

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.

Podcast website

Listen in your app

Episodes

27 episodes

  1. Shorooq’s Shane Shin on Why Gulf Startups Still Struggle to Exit, Picking Founders and Building the Blackstone of the Middle East 41:25
  2. SPICE's Zeid Husban on Shaking Up Saudi Dining and Building His Third Startup 47:41
  3. Stride Ventures’ Ishpreet Singh Gandhi on $1B in Credit, Equity Dilution and Expanding to the Gulf 35:16
  4. COLABS’ Omar Shah on Saudi, Coworking Economics and Building Across the GCC 52:50
  5. How to Raise a Seed Round in MENA: MilkStraw's Jawad Shreim and Orbii's Nauman Ali on FOMO, Term Sheets and Choosing VCs 1:06:18
  6. Quiqup’s Bassel El Koussa on Raising $65M, Surviving Uber and Rebuilding in Dubai 1:09:42
  7. Bayzat’s Talal Bayaa on Raising $55M, Running Out of Runway and the Pressure to Deliver an Exit 45:27
  8. Bayt’s Rabea Ataya on 26 Years of Building and Why the Old MENA Startup Playbook No Longer Works 1:03:43
  9. Algebra AI’s Anis Harb on Raising $7M, Leaving Deliveroo After a Decade, and Why Managed AI Services Are Booming 35:54
  10. Lean Technologies’ Tewfik Cassis on Launching Pay by Bank, Building the AWS for Fintech, and Why Stablecoins Could Transform Payments 47:00
  11. ClearGrid's Mohammad Al-Khalili on Building AI for a Trillion-Dollar Debt Market 1:00:03
  12. Comfi's Sanjar Samiev and Denis Gavrilin on Raising $65M and Building B2B BNPL for MENA's SMEs 43:58
  13. 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 49:35
  14. Mahdi Yahya (Ori / Radiant) on Getting Acquired by Brookfield, Building the Backbone of Sovereign AI, and Why Intelligence Is Infrastructure 52:43
  15. Alex Epure (Qureos) on Raising $5M from Prosus, The Future of Hiring in a Post-AI World, and The Truth About Job Displacement 46:49
  16. Glenn Harwood (AlgoDriven) on the Future of SaaS, Exiting for 8 Figures from Dubai, and Expanding to Fourteen Countries On Only $3M 42:26
  17. Hassan Fayed (Aydi) on Building AI for Every Farmer on Earth and Why Software Has Failed Agriculture 1:30:41
  18. Fouad Jeryes (Maqsam) on Why MENA's Fragmentation is the Opportunity, Why Arabic AI Benchmarks are BS, & Why Your Competitors are Your Best Salespeople 57:52
  19. Talal Hasan (44.01) on Turning CO2 Into Rock, The Journey From Omani VC to Earthshot Winner, & Why Transportation is Carbon's Real Bottleneck 48:09
  20. Djamel Mohand (Governata) on The Rocket Internet Baptism of Fire, Scaling Foodics to 30K Restaurants & Why Your Data Isn't AI-Ready 57:06
  21. 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 53:37
  22. Rami Tabbara (Stake) on The Saudi Real Estate Explosion, Tokenising Real Estate Assets & Why Work Life Balance is a Myth 48:48
  23. Nafez Dakkak (Anara Capital) on Why AI Tutors Will Fail, Is MENA EdTech's "Sleeping Giant" & Solving the Arabic Literacy Crisis 56:39
  24. Nour Al Hassan (Arabic AI, Tarjama) on Building Arabic AI from MENA, Why Most Pilots Fail, and Hiring Only A Players 49:19
  25. Arya Bolurfrushan (AppliedAI) on Raising $42M for AI Before ChatGPT, The Future of Work & Why AI Needs Human Supervisors 47:28
  26. Ibrahim Manna (BRKZ) on Lessons from Careem, Founder Grit & Disrupting Saudi Construction 1:02:16
  27. Mark Kahn (Omnivore) on GCC Food Security, India’s Venture Depth & Agritech Investing 1:14:30