Alina Truhina is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Utopia Capital Management, a platform spanning VC funds and a venture studio investing across emerging markets. The firm operates Atypical Ventures, a Middle East-plus fund covering Turkey and Pakistan, Radical Fund focused on climate in Southeast Asia, and the recently launched UTOPIA Studio – an AI-native company builder that both creates new ventures and re-engineers portfolio companies for scale. Based in Doha, the firm recently partnered with the Qatar Investment Authority as one of the first international VCs to receive backing from its $1B Fund of Funds program.

Born in Europe during the Soviet era, Alina's family moved to Australia as political refugees – an experience that shaped her conviction that talent in emerging markets deserves the same access to capital and networks available in the West. This led her to build investment vehicles across Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, evolving from impact grants to blended finance and now to a fully integrated venture studio model designed to take founders from idea to Series A in under 24 months.

She joins the podcast to discuss why copying and pasting Western VC models to the Global South is a recipe for failure, the "Problem-Oriented Deep Dives" (PODs) framework she uses to identify category-defining opportunities, why climate adaptation is the overlooked half of the climate crisis, and her contrarian view that the standard "2 and 20" VC fee structure is fundamentally broken for emerging markets.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:05:00 – The Utopia Platform: Funds, Studio & Structure
00:07:30 – Why Emerging Markets?
00:09:45 – Personal Journey: From Refugee to VC
00:13:00 – Climate Investing: Mitigation vs. Adaptation
00:20:00 – Building Category-Defining Companies with AI
00:23:00 – PODs: Problem-Oriented Deep Dives
00:25:30 – The Venture Studio Model
00:29:00 – What Makes a Great Founder?
00:31:30 – Why Doha as HQ & The QIA Partnership
00:43:00 – What Makes a Good Investor?
00:50:30 – Biggest Misconception About Emerging Markets

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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.

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Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/25f4e507/transcript.txt

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Rami Tabbara is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stake, a digital real estate investment platform that democratizes access to property markets in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Allowing users to invest fractionally from as little as 500 dirhams, Stake has grown into a fintech powerhouse with over 2 million downloads, users in 170 countries, and nearly 1.4 billion dirhams transacted on the platform. The company is backed by regional heavyweights including Mubadala, Wa'ed Ventures, and Property Finder.

Before founding Stake, Rami spent over 16 years in the trenches of Dubai’s real estate sector, witnessing how high capital requirements locked out most investors – that he identified the need for a transparent, digital, and affordable entry point. He launched the business during the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns with childhood best friend Manar Mahmassani and later Ricardo Brizido, navigating early regulatory hurdles to build a platform that now pays out over 60 million dirhams in rental income annually.

Rami joins the podcast to discuss why he considers Dubai to be a "co-founder" rather than just a city, the brutal lesson of losing his first four hires by faking a "cool startup" culture, why work-life balance is a myth if you want massive outcomes, and the company's aggressive roadmap into 2026 – including the launch of "Stake One" for full home ownership and his pragmatic approach to real estate tokenization

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Timestamps:

00:00 — The "Binance for Real Estate" vision

03:32 — What is Stake? Investing with 500 Dirhams

05:59 — Rami’s background: 16 years in Dubai real estate

10:02 — Launching during COVID and finding the right co-founders

11:43 — The first (and terrible) MVP

14:58 — Why there isn’t a "Robinhood of Real Estate" yet

18:31 — Will technology replace real estate brokers?

20:58 — The algorithm: Rejecting 90% of property deals

24:00 — Stake One: Buying full homes digitally

27:44 — Scaling globally: US Logistics funds and Saudi expansion

31:54 — Startup Culture: Why work-life balance is a "myth"

34:31 — Managing the Co-CEO dynamic without ego

37:48 — The Property Finder partnership explained

41:27 — Tokenization and the future of the blockchain

45:11 — 2026 Outlook: Saudi Arabia’s freehold explosion

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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.

• Hubpay – A fully digital, ADGM-regulated fintech platform that gives UAE
businesses instant access to multi-currency accounts with named IBAN in 30+ currencies, payment links, payroll and more. No hidden fees, no minimum balance, and no waiting.

👉 Open your Hubpay business account today and get 30-day free trial at
https://wearehubpay.com/pricing and scale your UAE business with confidence.

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Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/1b08abfe/transcript.txt

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Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
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Nafez Dakkak is the Founding Partner of Anara Capital, a $50 million impact fund investing in early-stage startups across learning, climate, and wellbeing in the MENA region. Designed to be intentional and scalable, the fund backs founders solving critical infrastructure challenges across the Levant, GCC and North Africa.

Before launching Anara, Nafez was the Founding CEO of the Queen Rania Foundation’s Edraak, the Arab world's largest massive open online course (MOOC) platform, which today reaches over 10 million learners. His transition from operator to investor also includes establishing BLDR, a venture studio focused on the the potential of the learn to earn cycle across MENA.

He joins the podcast to discuss why AI tutors will fail the 80% of students who lack motivation , the "Game Boy Principle" of innovating through constraints rather than shiny new tech , why Arabic literacy is fundamentally broken by diglossia , and the critical difference between a founder who is passionate versus one who is truly obsessed.

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Timestamps:

00:03:00 — Is MENA EdTech Still a Sleeping Giant?
00:06:42 — Why EdTech Doesn't Scale Like SaaS (The Civil Engineering Analogy)
00:10:18 — From Neurosurgeon Dreams to Education Strategy
00:13:14 — Growing Up Palestinian: Education is All You Have
00:14:38 — The Story Behind Edraak & The "MIT of the Arab World"
00:19:49 — Lessons on Content Localisation & Completion Rates
00:22:28 — The Game Boy Principle: Innovation Through Withered Tech
00:24:10 — Why AI Tutors Will Fail (The Motivation Problem)
00:27:59 — "Vibe Learning" & The Manchester United Transfer Fallacy
00:30:17 — The Conflict Between Retention Metrics & Real Learning
00:33:20 — The Arabic Language Crisis: Understanding Diglossia
00:37:30 — Lessons from the Builder Venture Studio
00:40:10 — Anara Capital: Differentiating Impact Investing from Philanthropy
00:44:35 — The Exit Landscape for MENA EdTech
00:48:13 — Nafez’s "Favorite Problems": Climate, Mental Fitness & Motivation
00:50:25 — The Dangers of Cognitive Offloading with AI
00:53:26 — An Alternative Career as an Arabic Teacher
00:54:05 — Rapid Fire: Gamification is "Chocolate Covered Broccoli"

-----------------------------------------------

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.

-----------------------------------------------

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