Small cheques.
Large outcomes.

The first cheque

Mudassir Sheikha and Magnus Olsson left McKinsey to bootstrap a ride-hailing service for MENA. Their earliest cheques came from regional angels who believed Arabic-language product, cash support and driver captain economics would beat global incumbents on the ground.

What happened next

Careem reached unicorn status in 2016 and was acquired by Uber for US$3.1bn in 2019 — the largest technology exit in the Middle East at the time.

The first cheque

Four co-founders pitched a licensed crypto exchange into a region with no regulatory precedent. Angel supporters co-signed the operating model with the Central Bank of Bahrain sandbox, writing the first cheques before the licence was granted.

What happened next

Rain became the first regulated cryptocurrency exchange in the Middle East, later raising a US$110m Series B led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins.

The first cheque

Omani founders built Thawani as a mobile wallet and payment gateway when digital payment adoption was in single digits. Early family offices in Muscat backed the team to productise local merchant onboarding and QR acceptance.

What happened next

Thawani is now a Central Bank of Oman–licensed payment institution serving thousands of merchants and powering public-sector payment rails as part of Oman's Vision 2040 agenda.

The first cheque

Co-founders Mohamad Ballout, Saman Darkan, Andy Arif and Bader Ataya convinced a small syndicate of GCC angels that restaurants would outsource their kitchens within five years. The pre-seed was written on a single-site pilot in Dubai.

What happened next

Kitopi reached unicorn valuation in 2021 after a US$415m Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 — one of the fastest MENA ascents from pre-seed to unicorn on record.

The first cheque

Hosam Arab left Namshi and pitched a MENA-specific buy-now-pay-later product when merchants and banks saw no demand. The earliest believers were angels who had lived through cash-on-delivery commerce and understood the working-capital problem first-hand.

What happened next

Tabby reached a US$1.5bn valuation in 2023 after a US$200m Series D — the first BNPL unicorn in MENA, serving more than 10m shoppers across the region.