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:
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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

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

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GxkYxN2hNSvQsIOjjqyse?si=4f2f8be6b7294c8e

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Nour Al Hassan is the Founder and CEO of Tarjama& and Arabic AI, a UAE-based AI company building Arabic-first language models, enterprise agents, and document intelligence systems for governments and large organisations.

Before Arabic AI, Nour spent more than 16 years building Tarjama& from a bootstrapped translation business into a profitable, technology-led platform serving global enterprises. That long runway of proprietary Arabic data became the foundation for the creation of Arabic AI, enabling a leap into small language models, agentic workflows, and on-prem deployments for highly regulated customers.

She joins the podcast to discuss what it takes to build technology from the region, overcoming internal doubt, why Arabic remains fundamentally underserved in AI, how human-in-the-loop systems will evolve rather than disappear, and why AI adoption fails unless it is driven top-down by leadership rather than delegated to teams.

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Timestamps:

00:00 The State of Arabic Content Online
00:46 Introduction to Nour Al Hassan and Tarjama
03:49 Nour's Entrepreneurial Journey
07:43 Building and Evolving Tarjama
21:14 The Rise of Arabic AI
25:54 Building Custom AI Solutions
26:56 The Importance of Data Quality
29:19 Challenges in Arabic AI Development
31:00 Real-World AI Applications
34:49 Sales and Business Development
38:20 Future of AI and Business Strategy

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

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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Arya Bolurfrushan is the Founder and CEO of Applied AI, the company behind Opus, a platform enabling enterprises to design AI-native workflows. The company raised a $42 million seed round in November 2022, days before ChatGPT launched, and earlier this year closed a $55 million Series A led by G42, with Palantir and Bessemer also participating.

Before founding Applied AI, Arya developed his conviction during a Covid quarantine in the UAE, where time alone led him to conclude that AI would be the most significant shift in human productivity since hydrocarbons.

He joins the podcast to discuss why he was "doing AI before it was cool," how the company had to rebuild its tech stack post-ChatGPT, why he believes democracies will struggle with AI-driven displacement, and how Opus is designed to keep humans as moral decision-makers rather than obsolete bystanders.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction
04:04 - Raising Before ChatGPT Was Cool
05:46 - The COVID Quarantine Epiphany
10:30 - From Oil to Electricity: Why Applied AI is Like General Electric
15:29 - Opus: Building the Machine That Builds Machines
22:17 - Hiring Less Than 1% of Applicants & Building an AI-Native Team
25:15 - Business Process Re-Engineering: Adding Humans to AI-Native Workflows
30:41 - The Large Work Model: Mapping 2.7 Million Business Processes
33:27 - Sharing Productivity Gains with Labour: Lessons from Das Kapital
39:51 - The $2 Trillion Investor Who Believes Humans Will Have No Work
44:57 - Building for His Son's Future in a World Where AI is Always Smartest

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

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.

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

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GxkYxN2hNSvQsIOjjqyse?si=4f2f8be6b7294c8e

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fwdstart/id1859499563

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Ibrahim Manna is the Founder and CEO of BRKZ, a Saudi construction tech startup built to address inefficiencies in construction procurement: fragmented supply chains, manual processes, and cash flow gaps faced by contractors and factories. Before founding BRKZ, Ibrahim spent eight years at Careem as one of the core architects of its expansion, launching 11 out of 15 markets ahead of the company's $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber in 2019. BRKZ has raised over $50 million in equity and debt financing, and serves 850+ contractors across major giga-projects including NEOM, King Salman Park, and Red Sea.

He joins the podcast to discuss how buying a house during the pandemic revealed a broken industry, why Saudi's 7-8 layer supply chain creates massive inefficiency, what Careem taught him about building culture and empowering operators as founders, and how BRKZ is using technology to work with — not against — entrenched contractor behaviours.

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Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction to Ibrahim Manana and BRKZ
04:02 – Ibrahim's Early Entrepreneurial Endeavours
07:35 – Lessons from Kareem
11:11 – Challenges in Market Expansion
22:37 – Leadership and Culture at Careem
26:23 – Navigating Legal and Operational Hurdles
28:59 – Stories from Iraq
32:16 – Launching and Learning from Careem Cash
34:58 – Transition to BRKZ
36:27 – Identifying Gaps in the Construction Industry
40:21 – Challenges and Innovations in Construction
47:09 – The AI Story
51:09 – Building Relationships and Customer Trust
58:12 – Regional Tech Ecosystem and Entrepreneurship
01:01:24 – Future Prospects and Final Thoughts

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

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.

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

Transcript:

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

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GxkYxN2hNSvQsIOjjqyse?si=4f2f8be6b7294c8e

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fwdstart/id1859499563

Subscribe on Anghami: https://open.anghami.com/mjWOJeeJ2Yb

Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/

Follow Jamie Lane on X:
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Follow Ibrahim Manna on LinkedIn:
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Follow FWDstart on Instagram:
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-----------------------------------------------

Mark Kahn is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Omnivore, India’s leading agritech and climate-tech venture capital firm with more than $300 million under management. Backing over 45 startups transforming food, agriculture, and sustainability, Omnivore has played a defining role in shaping India’s agritech ecosystem and the country’s emerging climate investment landscape.

He joins the podcast to discuss how Omnivore is building bridges between India and the GCC, why he’s not trading India’s deep venture ecosystem for newer regional opportunities, and how food sovereignty, controlled-environment agriculture, and life sciences innovation will define the next decade of climate resilience and food security.

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Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
4:00 - Why Omnivore isn't pivoting to MENA
6:46 - India vs GCC venture ecosystems
10:00 - India's IPO advantage
14:45 - Food sovereignty vs food security
22:00 - Controlled environment agriculture: hype vs reality
28:00 - Why we avoided alt-protein
34:15 - The agribusiness-first mindset
40:15 - Mark's path from politics to agritech
45:30 - Omnivore's evolution across three funds
52:00 - The GMV trap in B2B marketplaces
59:45 - Why India missed a beat on life sciences
1:04:45 - Eruvaka exit: from shed prototype to Nutreco acquisition
1:09:00 - Exit paths in Indian agritech
1:11:00 - What value-add actually looks like
1:13:45 - Building the India-GCC food bridge

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

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.

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

Transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/1b43e0ae/transcript.txt

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

Follow Jamie Lane on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamienlane/

Follow Jamie Lane on X:
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Follow Mark Kahn on LinkedIn:
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Follow FWDstart on Instagram:
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