Lessons From Two Decades in MENA Venture

Over two decades, Issa Aghabi has participated in more than 100 transactions, navigated market booms and corrections, and ultimately launched his own $35 million fund, Access Bridge Ventures, with a thesis rooted in discipline rather than unicorn chasing.

In this Industry Voices conversation, Issa reflects on stumbling into venture before it was fashionable in the Middle East, why execution and discipline matter more than momentum, where the real gaps in MENA’s capital stack still exist, and why humility is the most underrated trait for emerging fund managers.

Stumbling Into Venture Before Venture Was Cool

When Issa first discovered venture capital in 2005–2006, the Middle East’s startup ecosystem was still nascent. At the time, he was working as an equity trader and researcher, had already earned his CFA, and was ticking all the “right” boxes. Yet something felt off. “I was unhappy,” he says bluntly. 

A chance dinner conversation changed the trajectory of his career. He approached Dr. Fawaz H. Zu’bi, founder of Accelerator Technology Holding (now Silicon Badia), who was in the process of launching one of the region’s first venture capital funds. “He took a bet on me,” Issa recalls. Unlike the archetypal venture investor, former founder or domain expert, Issa entered the industry as a junior analyst and learned by doing.

Over the next two decades, he would participate in and execute more than 100 transactions. “Half of them failed miserably,” he reflects. Those failures, rather than the wins, became his true education, sharpening his pattern recognition, shaping his judgment, and teaching him what not to repeat. 

His path, however, wasn’t purely investment-focused. Early in his career, Issa stepped into an operational role, running a technology company that grew from 20 to 200 employees. At a time when few in the region were building serious digital infrastructure, the company developed e-commerce platforms, content portals, and fintech solutions. “I don’t say it’s extensive operational experience,” he notes, “but I did have it for three to four years.” The experience grounded him in the realities of execution: hiring, scaling, delivering products, not just underwriting them.

Today, Issa is quick to downplay credentials as his defining edge. It’s not about technical mastery or having been a founder, he argues. It’s about intensity, hard work, discipline, respect, and an instinct for people. “If it’s something I enjoy doing, I will live and breathe it day in and day out.” He points to something seemingly simple as proof: responsiveness. “If you send me an email and you don’t get an answer within hours, there’s something wrong.”

Launching Access Bridge Ventures

Before launching Access Bridge Ventures, Issa spent nearly two decades investing across private funds and government-backed platforms such as twofour54 and the International Finance Corporation. He had built a strong track record, deep LP relationships, and executed numerous transactions, but he wasn’t always the final voice in the room.

“I wanted to be more autonomous,” he explains. Launching his own fund meant full decision-making authority and a clearer alignment between the value he created and the financial upside he captured.

His pitch to LPs was intentionally contrarian. Issa argues that in emerging markets, the obsession with unicorns is often misplaced. Large funds depend on one or two billion-dollar outcomes to drive returns, events that are statistically rare. Validated in his own career, most successful exits weren’t unicorns; they were trade sale exits or secondaries.

Access Bridge Ventures was built around that reality. The strategy: invest very early at disciplined valuations; focus on sectors the team deeply understands; play an active role in supporting portfolio companies; reach equity ownership thresholds; and exit pragmatically. If you enter at the right valuation and a company exits at $100 million, a handful of those outcomes can return a right-sized fund 2–3x, without relying on outlier bets. This thesis is only viable when investing at the earliest stage of the value chain.

With that backdrop, Access Bridge Ventures was launched around 2021 with a $35 million pre-series A fund, at a moment when capital was accelerating across MENA, fueled by new government-backed funding programs and a broader structural shift in how entrepreneurship was supported in the region. 

The LP base includes institutions such as Mubadala Capital, Saudi Venture Capital Company, and Jada Fund of Funds, many of whom had worked with Issa previously, co-invested alongside him, or backed funds he had helped allocate capital to during his fund-of-funds years.

“It’s more about the relationships you build,” he says. The thesis mattered, but so did two decades of trust.

Valuations & Capital Discipline

When Issa began investing nearly two decades ago, early-stage startups in the region were raising at $2–3 million valuations. Today, he says, similar stage companies can command $10–20 million, sometimes higher. “At one point, valuations here were higher than San Francisco,” he notes. “That’s insane.”

For Issa, that shift reinforced one principle: price discipline matters a lot. For a small fund, concentration is essential. Generating meaningful returns, particularly within the exit ranges discussed (trade sale exits and secondaries), depends on securing sufficient ownership from the outset. Without enough stake in the company, the economics simply don’t work.

When Access Bridge Ventures launched, the team resisted the urge to deploy capital aggressively in the first one or two years, a strategy many funds adopt. Instead, they spread investments more evenly across the first four years, deliberately pacing deployment to manage cycles and avoid overexposure to inflated pricing, especially during the 2021-2022 boom.

That doesn’t mean rigidity. “Sometimes you have to take a bet,” Issa admits. There are moments when conviction in a founder outweighs the spreadsheet. In other cases, discipline means walking away, even from companies you love. He recalls passing on a startup that later returned 18 months later with five times the growth at half the valuation. They invested then, having mitigated the risk.

There are missed opportunities. There are moments of overpayment. “Do I regret some decisions? Yes, 100%,” he says. But in venture, hindsight is easy. What matters is staying anchored to your thesis while adapting when necessary.

The trade-off is timing. Roughly half the portfolio today is less than two years old, meaning realized returns will take time.

“What Do You Actually Need From Us?”

For Issa, one of the biggest differentiators in his investment process is deceptively simple: he flips the conversation.

Instead of only interrogating founders on metrics and projections, he asks a direct question, What do you want from us? Money, he argues, is increasingly commoditized. Strong founders can find capital. What matters more is whether the investor can deliver tangible value beyond the check.

“We’re always the ones dictating terms and negotiating,” he says. “But you’re not talking to robots, you’re talking to human beings.” By sitting down with founders and understanding their expectations, whether it’s business development, governance, strategic introductions, or simply structured thinking, he assesses two things: is the ask realistic, and can his team actually deliver on it?

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it isn’t. But having that candid conversation early helps establish alignment and humanize the relationship.

The Need for More Growth-Stage Capital in the Middle East

While early-stage venture has matured rapidly across the Middle East, Issa sees a persistent gap in growth-stage funding, the capital that helps Series B and later companies scale and professionalize before exit. In many cases, startups raising $10–$20 million rounds today find themselves stuck: it can take 6–12 months to secure a lead, often needing to cobble together commitments from multiple investors, or turn overseas for capital. Issa calls this a “big problem” for the region’s scaling companies and believes more dedicated growth vehicles are needed to break that bottleneck.

Recent developments suggest the ecosystem is beginning to respond. Shorooq Partners announced a $200 million late-stage growth fund to support scaled companies with clear exit pathways, particularly toward IPO readiness. At the same time, BECO Capital raised a $250 million growth fund alongside its early-stage vehicle as part of a $370 million dual-fund close, designed to back Series B through pre-IPO companies across the Gulf.

For Issa, these moves are welcome, but he doesn’t see a flood of growth funds yet. He believes the work from the past several years, more companies reaching scale and clearer unit economics, will increasingly drive demand for local growth capital, and that having more of it would strengthen the region’s ability to keep strong scale-ups rooted in MENA rather than exporting them to global financiers.

The Opportunity for Working Capital Fintechs

Looking ahead, Issa notes that a slowdown in the region is already visible. In his view, economic tightening tends to hit SMEs first and hardest: payments get delayed, receivables stretch, and working capital becomes strained. That pressure, he believes, creates opportunity. Startups that can solve SME financing gaps stand to benefit. Despite years of fintech momentum, he argues that financial infrastructure across emerging markets is still not built to properly support small businesses, leaving significant room for innovation in credit, embedded finance, and cash-flow management.

Advice for Emerging Managers

For emerging fund managers, Issa’s advice is blunt: don’t romanticize it. Venture may look glamorous from the outside, but building and running a fund, especially a small one, is grinding, operationally heavy, and emotionally taxing. “Don’t do it,” he says half-jokingly, at least not until you’ve failed a few times. In his view, no one should be launching a fund straight out of university or without having been tested. You need scar tissue: deals that fell apart, partnerships that went wrong, moments where you misjudged people or markets and paid the price. That lived experience builds judgment, and without it, you’re learning with other people’s money.