More startups raise money than build. This venture builder does it backwards — putting in its own capital and its own team first, producing an $850 million portfolio out of Dubai. Joining me is Dr. Jonathan Doerr, Senior Vice President of Venture Building at Disruptor.com. John, welcome to Wall Street to Mena.
Thanks for having me.
You build the team and put in the capital before anyone else's money shows up. Why does that order actually matter?
We are trying to de-risk the investment for outside money. We use our own money and our own teams — on the go-to-market side and the technology side, out of Pakistan and Dubai — that help build these ventures with founders that come in. We do ideation and validation beforehand, up to the MVP stage, and then before we raise external money, it is very important to de-risk first. That is very specific to our model.
Cloudways was sold for $350 million — the biggest tech exit tied to Pakistan's startup scene. What did that teach you about building something you can sell?
Cloudways gave us the capital to build and to institutionalise what we have learned. We built companies over the last 15 years — like PureVPN and Scott Wolf, which is also active here in the region. With these companies we built our clusters: cybersecurity, B2B SaaS, and blockchain with ZIGchain. What that allows us is that the ventures we are building now are in specific clusters where we have a right to win — we have access to distribution, we have licensing, and we have a lot of knowledge and expertise.
A venture at Disruptor.com moves through four stages: ideation, validation, MVP, and acceleration. Where do most startups outside this model actually fail?
They mostly do not fail in the building. They fail in what was not validated. Building product today is actually way easier than it was only a few years ago. But if you move too fast, if you forget about the ideation phase — if you do not truly understand the problem and the customer needs — sometimes you build something and the product-market fit at the end is not there because you moved a little too fast. They build immediately an MVP, forget user interviews, and do not really talk with the customer. Product-market fit — building the right solution — is something that is still challenging even with AI today.
What is the thread connecting your fintech ventures from blockchain to Islamic finance?
I think what combines all of them is access. One of our ventures is called Rich — they tokenise natural assets. Almost half of global GDP, $58 trillion, is related to natural assets, and almost 80% of institutional investors want to invest in this category by 2030. Rich tokenises them in a securitised way so institutions can invest. We built an AI tool that helps Rich conduct due diligence on these natural assets — a process that used to take banks three months. Rich can now do that due diligence in a few hours.
What is broken in Islamic finance that you are trying to fix?
In the GCC alone there is a finance gap of $250 billion when it comes to financing SMEs. We are now launching Zamana — a $100 million tokenised fund for private credit to help close that gap, in a Sharia-compliant way. It provides access to private credit not only for companies to raise more money, but also for a wider audience to invest in these financial products.
How much is AI driving the ventures you are building?
AI for us is the driving factor for all the ventures we are building. Big enterprises use companies like Palantir — forward-deployed engineers helping transform organisations. On our side, we are building ventures from day one as AI native. AI is not just a sprinkle on top — it is at the core of the venture. The ventures being built from scratch today will be built completely differently from the companies we see out there. It will be very interesting in the next couple of years to see how they compete.
A founder walks in today with just an idea and no team. What is the first test you put them through?
We always start with ideation. What has changed is that before, a founder had one idea and tried very hard to build it. With AI and our own ideation engine, we can ideate and validate way faster. A founder today will always ideate more ideas than in the past. They need to be more flexible, let the data speak, and find where the right problem is and where the right solution can be built. AI drives this and makes it way faster.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you.
