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

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), 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 in our country" to "what can you bring us from outside." * Why Series A and B is the real capital gap in Africa, and how they're thinking about complementing equity with debt, callable equity (the NICE facility with STV is the worked example) and potentially securitisation down the line. * Where the real FinTech opportunities sit, the long tail of underserved SMEs and consumers, the rise of AI-native fintechs rebuilding the plumbing, and why embedded finance in logistics, agriculture and mobility is under-appreciated. * How AI is changing the economics of running a VC firm, and what a flatter, leaner fund looks like as LPs start squeezing management fees. * How Rana learned to underwrite currency risk in Egypt across multiple step devaluations, and why you can still make excellent returns if you price the 8 to 10% annual devaluation into your model. * The tech bro renaissance, why it's quietly reversing progress right now, and what allyship from the top actually looks like in practice. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps:  00:00 - Intro 00:50 - Behind the headlines of the fundraise 04:15 - Why shift from opportunistic to a dedicated regional strategy 11:20 - Inside the QIA and Mubadala deals 19:00 - Where the real capital gap sits at Series A and B 22:00 - Innovating the capital stack with STV's NICE facility 24:00 - FinTech, SMEs, and the rise of the AI-native incumbent 27:30 - Why Africa's long tail is the real opportunity 30:00 - Picks and shovels vs AI-native bets 34:00 - How AI is reshaping VC firm economics 36:30 - Pricing currency risk and lessons from Egypt 43:00 - The tech bro renaissance and women in VC ----------------------------------------------- Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/00307acd/transcript.txt ----------------------------------------------- Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/ Follow Jamie Lane on X: https://x.com/jamienlane Follow Rana Abdel Latif on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rana-abdel-latif/ Follow Deepali Nangia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nangianomics/ Check out Speedinvest: https://www.speedinvest.com/ Follow FWDstart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/  Follow FWDstart on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fwdstart  Visit our Website: https://www.fwdstart.me/  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.fwdstart.me/subscribe  -----------------------------------------------

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 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 not reliable indicators of exceptional work. * How he closed a $40 million deal in a day and spent six months closing half a million, and why there's no such thing as a set sales cycle in AI infrastructure. * Why the cost of over-investing in AI infrastructure is going to be cheaper than the cost of under-investing. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps:  00:00 - Introduction ----------------------------------------------- Transcript:  ----------------------------------------------- Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/ Follow Jamie Lane on X: https://x.com/jamienlane Follow Mahdi Yahya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahdi-y/ Check out Radiant: https://radiant.co/ Follow FWDstart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/  Follow FWDstart on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fwdstart  Visit our Website: https://www.fwdstart.me/  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.fwdstart.me/subscribe  -----------------------------------------------

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 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 - Introduction 02:00 - How the $5M Prosus Round Came Together 05:00 - What Qureos Does  08:00 - Nine Years at Cisco & the Move to Dubai 13:00 - Joining Swvl & Thriving in Chaos 16:00 - The 1AM Sheraton Lobby That Changed Everything 22:00 - Going Full-Time in the Worst Market Imaginable 27:00 - First AI Experiments & Why the Pivot Was Perfectly Timed 30:00 - Why Their AI Chatbot Completely Flopped 37:00 - The Business Model: Platform vs Managed Services 40:00 - The AI Adoption Gap: MENA vs the US 43:00 - Job Displacement & Why Your Replacement Won't Be a Robot ----------------------------------------------- Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/56d08ca6/transcript.txt ----------------------------------------------- Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/ Follow Jamie Lane on X: https://x.com/jamienlane Follow Alex Epure on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderepure/ Check out Qureos: https://www.qureos.com/ [https://www.qureos.com/] Follow FWDstart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/  Follow FWDstart on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fwdstart  Visit our Website: https://www.fwdstart.me/  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.fwdstart.me/subscribe  -----------------------------------------------

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 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 – Introduction 05:00 – "You Either IPO, Get Acquired, or Go Out of Business" 06:30 – What is Algo Driven? 08:00 – From Computer Stores to Mercedes Sales 10:00 – The Spark: Why Car Dealers Need Better Data 14:00 – The Real Cost of Getting Valuations Wrong 16:00 – Building a Mobile-First Product with Consumer Feel 20:00 – First Customers and Taking VC Money 24:00 – International Expansion on a $2M Series A 28:00 – The Path to Emergent's Acquisition 34:00 – Deal Mechanics, AI, and What's Next ----------------------------------------------- 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 ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority. All investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results. ----------------------------------------------- Transcript: ----------------------------------------------- Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/ Follow Jamie Lane on X: https://x.com/jamienlane Follow Glenn Harwood on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennharwood/ Check out AlgoDriven: https://www.algodriven.com/ [https://www.algodriven.com/] Follow FWDstart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/  Follow FWDstart on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fwdstart  Visit our Website: https://www.fwdstart.me/  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.fwdstart.me/subscribe  -----------------------------------------------

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 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 - Funding & Building the Cap Table 1:04:30 - Time to Value, Leadership & the Future ----------------------------------------------- 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 ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority. All investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results. ----------------------------------------------- Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/1e5b3625/transcript.txt ----------------------------------------------- Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/  Follow Jamie Lane on X: https://x.com/jamienlane  Follow Hassan Fayed on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassan-f-205745148/ Check out ORTH: https://askorth.com/ Follow FWDstart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fwdstart/  Follow FWDstart on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fwdstart  Visit our Website: https://www.fwdstart.me/  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.fwdstart.me/subscribe  -----------------------------------------------