Premium

Column

Qatar goes viral, MNT-Halan's IPO explained, parastatal competition

Oct 5, 2026

•

10 min read

Qatar goes viral, MNT-Halan's IPO explained, parastatal competition

A QDB startup incentive programme goes viral on X, Pure Harvest’s Saudi greenhouse sale raises bigger questions about parastatal competition, and MNT-Halan’s EGX listing turns out not to be quite the IPO it first appears to be.

Jamie Lane

Fintech

Open finance, AI agents and the price of being chosen

Sep 30, 2026

•

12 min read

Open finance, AI agents and the price of being chosen

The UAE’s open finance payment volumes have nearly quadrupled in three months, with Lean doing almost all the running. Now add AI agents to the mix, and there’s the small matter of who wins the customer, who moves the money, and who gets to take a cut.

Jamie Lane

Interview

Breaking America and the forward-deployed PT

Sep 23, 2026

•

6 min read

Breaking America and the forward-deployed PT

Fresh off an $18.2 million funding round, Enhance CEO Tarek Mounir on an accidental US expansion, why software is becoming a route back into services, and the rise of the forward-deployed personal trainer.

Jamie Lane

Op-ed

Money 20/20 Field Notes: mega-rounds, growing faultlines, and the increasing importance of taste

Sep 16, 2026

•

9 min read

Money 20/20 Field Notes: mega-rounds, growing faultlines, and the increasing importance of taste

Mega-rounds, Saudi-UAE faultlines, an alarming amount of AI-generated slop and why Paul Graham’s 2002 essay on taste feels more and more relevant; some semi-unfiltered observations from three days at Money20/20 in Riyadh.

Jamie Lane

Public Markets

Inside Abhi’s IPO: the bank, the gold book and the logic behind its listing

Sep 9, 2026

•

14 min read

Inside Abhi’s IPO: the bank, the gold book and the logic behind its listing

Abhi is preparing to list the Pakistani microfinance bank that now accounts for roughly four-fifths of its lending, with gold-backed loans at the heart of the business. We dug into the numbers and spoke with founder Omair Ansari about why it’s going public now and what investors are actually buying.

Jamie Lane

Startups

Builder.ai founder Sachin Dev Duggal launches Dubai-based SeKondBrain after unicorn collapse

Aug 28, 2026

•

4 min read

Builder.ai founder Sachin Dev Duggal launches Dubai-based SeKondBrain after unicorn collapse

New venture marks the return of the Builder.ai founder 15 months after the QIA-backed startup entered insolvency, with an initial product designed to carry memory between competing AI models

Jamie Lane

Food Delivery

What Uber is actually buying inside Talabat and HungerStation

May 29, 2026

•

6 min read

What Uber is actually buying inside Talabat and HungerStation

Two MENA assets, HungerStation in Saudi Arabia and Talabat, account for much of what makes Delivery Hero worth roughly €12 billion to Uber.

Jamie Lane

VC Playbook

Apr 1, 2026

•

28 min read

Due diligence 101 for MENA VCs

Eight of the region's top VCs on how they evaluate startups in a market with limited data, high founder variance, and the youngest venture ecosystem of its size.

Jamie Lane

VC Playbook

Feb 25, 2026

•

22 min read

Fundraising 101 for MENA VCs

Eight of the region's top VCs on the mechanics of raising a fund in MENA: where the LP capital actually sits, finding anchors, pitching sovereigns, and what it takes to survive a fundraise that will almost certainly take twice as long as you think.

Jamie Lane

Data

Oct 29, 2025

•

29 min read

The MENA Diaspora 50

Meet 50 of the world’s highest-potential tech startups led by MENA diaspora founders.

Jamie Lane

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Data Embassies And The New Geopolitics Of Compute

Oct 8, 2025

•

5 min read

Saudi Data Embassies And The New Geopolitics Of Compute

The Kingdom’s compute triple advantage, its forthcoming Global AI Hub Law, the emergence of one of the world’s largest inference clusters in Dammam, and the looming prospect of a “compute OPEC.”

Jamie Lane

Analysis

Sep 17, 2025

•

11 min read

How to find the right co-founder

Co-founders are like a marriage, the cliché goes. But beyond the saying, how do you actually choose the person (or people) you’ll build with? And how do you set that relationship up for long-term success?

Jamie Lane

Interview

Inside the shifting landscape of debt financing in the Gulf

Aug 27, 2025

•

10 min read

Inside the shifting landscape of debt financing in the Gulf

Armineh Baghoomian, Managing Director and EMEA Head at PFG, reflects on the $300M they’ve deployed across MENA, the region’s debt literacy evolution, why Tabby was an obvious bet, the typical ranges in the Gulf for spreads, fees, warrants, and covenants, the green (and red) flags they watch for when founders come knocking, and what excites her most about RNPL and B2B BNPL.

Jamie Lane

Analysis

The rise and rise of venture debt across the Gulf

Jul 30, 2025

•

7 min read

The rise and rise of venture debt across the Gulf

What's behind the increase in new venture debt funds launching across the Gulf, promising “founder-first,” non-dilutive capital? Who are the players rewriting the playbook? And what does all of this mean for founders, investors, and LPs?

Jamie Lane

Food Delivery

What led to Ebrahim Al-Jassim’s exit from HungerStation in 2019

Jul 4, 2025

•

4 min read

What led to Ebrahim Al-Jassim’s exit from HungerStation in 2019

A detailed look at HungerStation’s 2019 leadership transition, the legal dispute between Delivery Hero and Ebrahim Al-Jassim, and the rise of Ninja as one of Saudi Arabia’s first q-commerce unicorns.

Jamie Lane

Fintech

Jun 25, 2025

•

9 min read

Valu and the Discipline Engine

Inside Valu’s EGX debut: With Amazon now on the cap table, we unpack the model behind Egypt’s most disciplined fintech, covering product strategy, underwriting logic, unit economics, investor dynamics, and the operators running the machine.

Jamie Lane

Saudi Arabia

Tamara turned a profit, but the real story is how

Jun 4, 2025

•

3 min read

Tamara turned a profit, but the real story is how

Saudi Arabia’s fintech crown jewel is now profitable. But its Q1 financials come with caveats, and reveal a seemingly quiet re-architecture of its business model.

Jamie Lane

Interview

May 28, 2025

•

9 min read

Arabic healthcare: for us, by us

Why obesity in the GCC isn’t just medical, how GLP-1s could be the iPhone of health, why D2C is a necessary (but temporary) proving ground, and what asynchronous care gets right about shame and scale.

Jamie Lane

Deep-dives

How to get (and keep) your first 100 customers

May 14, 2025

•

13 min read

How to get (and keep) your first 100 customers

An 18,000-word playbook drawn from interviews with 7 of MENA’s top post-Series A founders, tackling how to build trust before brand equity, validate before users, retain in transient markets, and know when to follow data – and when to trust your gut.

Jamie Lane, +1

Interview

Rewiring B2B finance in Pakistan and beyond

Apr 24, 2025

•

9 min read

Rewiring B2B finance in Pakistan and beyond

What it means to build in a market where volatility isn’t a risk – it’s a cyclical certainty, why going top-down beats direct-to-MSME, and how you build real moats in enterprise fintech — not with UX, but with trust, switching friction, and time.

Jamie Lane, +1