The Startup Event Connecting East & West

Fethi is the founder and managing partner of ESAS Ventures. Worked at Citi Group HQ in London as a part of the wealth management team pre-college at the age of 18. Since then, has been managing his personal public markets portfolio and real estate portfolio. After graduating with a degree of liberal arts-economics from Tufts University in the US , he pursued a course in finance at London School of Business and Finance. Then worked as a senior business analyst at BMO Real Estate Partners in London. Simultaneously, he has been an active global tech investor with investments in 5 different continents.

Salman T. Jaffrey is the Chief Investment Officer at Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures (also known as Wa’ed Ventures), a $200 million venture capital fund established by Saudi Aramco. The fund invests in innovative and impactful, early-stage startups with high growth potential, that promote economic development and enhance the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in the Kingdom. Salman is also an investment committee member for the ‘StartUp Lab’, a technology and innovation-driven incubator and seed fund at the Aramco Entrepreneurship Centre. Salman has more than 14 years of experience consulting and investing in venture capital and private equity deals. He has led a number of investments across the deal continuum – from originating, evaluating and executing deals to maximizing investment value – and has managed a sizable investment portfolio. Prior to his current role, Salman was the Chief Financial Officer & Head of Portfolio Management at Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, a $500 million corporate venture capital fund that invests globally into early-stage and high growth companies with technologies of strategic importance to Saudi Aramco, to accelerate their development and deployment in the Kingdom. He has previously worked at leading professional advisory and consulting firms, including PwC and Ernst & Young. Salman has completed an executive program on venture capital from the University of California, Berkeley and an innovation & entrepreneurship program from Stanford University. He holds a master’s degree in business forensics from the University of Melbourne and a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Bond University, Australia. He is a Certified Public Accountant and has undertaken several leadership programs at Saudi Aramco.

Merilin has been involved with the Estonian startup ecosystem since 2016, when she started working at Garage48 organizing hackathons in Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Georgia. Now at Startup Estonia she is in charge of the Estonian Startup Visa programme and developing the best possible environment for startups from anywhere in the world.

Oussama Ammar is Cofounder and Director at The Family. He has helped The Family’s portfolio companies to raise over €550M+ in the past six years, constantly pushing them to increase their ambitions in order to build the dominant companies of the 21st century. He also uses his years of entrepreneurial and investing experience to educate audiences across the globe, giving talks and writing regularly about the realities of building startups and the future of the digital economy.

The Family is an ambitious startup accelerator. It acts as a provider of Education, Leverage and Capital for founders in Europe. The Family has fine-tuned its fellowship program over the years and today around 20 startups join The Family every quarter where they attend onboarding sessions in Paris, Berlin and London.

Firat is a Partner at Hummingbird Ventures. His current portfolio includes Armut, Aspire, Billiontoone, Ciceksepeti, Frontier Car Group, Gram Games, Instacarro, Merlin and Modacruz. He is interested in marketplaces, frontier tech, fintech and gaming.

Previously, he worked at J.P. Morgan at the Emerging Markets Structuring and Solutions group. He received B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Management Science and a Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Osman is a serial technology entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and CEO of 3Dlabs – one time an almost $1B company listed on NASDAQ. 3Dlabs was a fabless chip company which started the 3D graphics revolution on the PC in the ‘90s and was the inventor of the GPU.

He is a deep technologist, a successful business leader and a deal maker with around $500M of equity and license transactions under his belt as an entrepreneur – including three exits and an IPO. In 2012, Business Insider magazine cited him as one of the top 15 technologists.

Osman is currently a Venture Partner at Atlantic Bridge Capital (www.abven.com) where he focuses on investments in Deep Tech companies. He also privately mentors a select few technology start-ups in an advisory or Chairman capacity.

He is an accomplished musician, composer and a music producer and continues to pursue such activities through his record label Songphonic when time permits. He has a First Class degree in Computer Science and Electronics Engineering from University of Birmingham and is the inventor of 19 granted US patents in the fields of computing, GPUs and pixel streaming. In 2016 Osman received ‘Freedom of City of London’ for services to IT

Magnus Gaarder is a technology focused venture capitalist, with a background in investment banking and computer science. As the Founding Partner of investment firm nFront, Magnus brings capital, software development and strategy support to companies across various stages of development. nFront’s focus is on game-changing, capital efficient, software propositions based in Europe or the U.S. Prior to nFront, Magnus was an Investment Manager at VC fund Nauta Capital in London, and a founding team member at M&A boutique Portico Capital's European arm. He started his career as an M&A-focused investment banker in New York. Magnus has an educational background in computer science and finance from UPenn and NTNU, specialized in machine learning and financial engineering.

Vijay is the Managing Director at Techstars. Techstars is the worldwide network that supports entrepreneurs succeed with a network of over 10,000 mentors in 150 cities worldwide. Through its mentorship-driven accelerator programs Techstars has invested in 1,900+ start-ups at seed stage with a portfolio valuation estimated at $22Bn. Currently he is managing the Techstars Hub71accelerator in partnership with Mubadala based in Abu Dhabi.

Formerly, Vijay was the Global CEO of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) based in Washington D.C. At EO he led the growth of 16,000+ leading entrepreneurs with the combined revenue of$600Bn, through the expansion of a world class peer-to-peer network present in over 180 cities worldwide. As a serial entrepreneur, Vijay founded several start-ups including manufacturing of safety helmets, association management, event production and a venture fund. Early in his career he served in senior executive roles namely in fashion retail, clothing manufacturing and real estate development. Throughout his career, he has taken up leadership and boards roles on several non-profit entities, such as the Young President Organization (YPO International Board), Richmond University (U.K.), the 16th Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games and as International Chairman of the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Now based in Abu Dhabi, Vijay has previously lived and worked in Dubai, Washington D.C, London, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He is proactive in supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem as an investor and mentor. During his spare time he is passionately exploring world heritage sites.

Cem is a partner at the Alarko Group – one of the most established conglomerates in Turkey with interests in construction, infrastructure, energy, manufacturing, tourism and real estate. Prior to joining Alarko, Cem led business development at EY for Infrastructure Projects Financing across Europe, Middle East, India and Africa. Prior to EY Cem worked with Bechtel Construction. Cem holds a BSc from Columbia University and is the co-founder of Turkish youth empowerment non-profit, Yenibirlider. Cem leads technology investments on behalf of his family with a focus in frontier markets.

Masaru has been running and writing for one of Japan’s leading media outlets focused on startups.

He's also involved in many projects such as helping foreign startups and accelerators touch base with the Asia Pacific market. He started his career as a programmer/engineer, and previously founded several system integration companies and consulting firms. He’s been traveling around Silicon Valley, Europe and Asia exploring prominent startups.

Have over 15 years of experience managing investment and business development for multinational technology institutions – including serving as Managing Manager at Karabiner Capital, and CEO at Rock Climbing Partners and Producing as Creative Direction at as Paramaze production for the Impact Creative project Investment.

He is also the Chair on board of the Global Angel Investment Network in ASIA, Impact association of the Private funds, and Creative Industry incubation, as a serial entrepreneur, business producer. Then sits on the board of several major international startups, and serves as a transnational mentor for innovative companies pioneering new developments in a variety of industries.

Khaled is Managing Partner at Wamda Capital, a Venture Capital fund investing in technology-enabled companies in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. He started his career at Dubai International Capital where he supported the development of the MENA region’s first seed capital fund.

Since then Khaled assumed a number of venture capital and startup roles including heading investments and strategy at twofour54 in Abu Dhabi. Khaled has centered his career around identifying and investing in disruptive businesses that displace incumbent inefficiencies in traditional sectors of the economy. His areas of interest include ecommerce, Fintech, marketplaces, digital content and enterprise solutions. Through out his career Khaled has focused on building lasting partnerships with the entrepreneurs delivering the region’s digital economy.

Khaled has invested in and managed over 60 early stage transactions including Careem, Littlebits, Mumzworld, Insider, Modanisa and Luxury Closet and Step Group.

Khaled attended Duke University and graduated with a BA in Economics.

Born and educated in Istanbul, Deniz lived and worked in Luxembourg, the UAE and Switzerland managing her advisory business in Zug. She holds double nationality, fluent in Turkish, French and English, basic in Luxembourgish. She is a CFA Charterholder and was an active Board member at the CFA Society Emirates for three years. She joined the Board of the Swiss Impact Investment Association end of April 2019.

Deniz has more than 27 years of solid international experience in financial services, working at executive level with market leaders, such as JP Morgan, State Street, Brown Brothers Harriman and PwC. Her experience covers investment funds, asset & fund management, corporate governance, audit & compliance, operations and client relationship management, combined with leadership.

Following her move to Switzerland, she became a strategic advisor and a management team member for investment opportunities combining impact investing, fintech & technology, investment vehicles structuring, fund management and corporate governance. Deniz is in active collaboration with strategic partners in Europe, China and the UAE to serve her passion and mission.

Her passion is for Water, Life under Ocean & Sea, physical & mental health, gender equality, climate change and education. Her mission is to scale up the projects with positive impact to humanity and the planet by actively collaborating with the asset and business owners and channeling a part of the available capital to impact investing. She speaks in the events in Europe, China and the UAE about impact investing, asset management and fintech.

John is a partner at Hatcher+, the world's most active early-stage venture investor, where he is responsible for executing the group's capital raising and business automation strategies.

He is also an angel investor with more than 30 years experience as an entrepreneur, technology developer, and investor, and a co-author of a number of US patents involving core cybersecurity innovations. His management experience spans decades, and includes senior management roles in the space, telecoms, fintech, and cybersecurity industries, where his customers included Comcast, Cox Communications, Google, McAfee, Microsoft, NASA, Symantec, Telstra, the US Department of Commerce, and numerous others.

John is a frequent blogger on venture-related topics, and an in-demand speaker at venture events globally, and has extensive experience raising capital and mentoring start-ups around the world.

Erik Vynckier is interim CEO of Foresters Friendly Society, partner of InsurTech Venture Partners and lay Chair of research at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, following a career in investment banking, insurance, asset management and petrochemical industry. He co-founded EU initiatives on high performance computing and big data in finance. Erik graduated as MBA at London Business School and as chemical engineer at Universiteit Gent.

Sohail has a proven track record of delivering shareholder value for principal investors through active management of a portfolio of companies. Over the course of his professional career, Sohail has built new businesses as a founder and early stage Director, delivered operational and bottom line improvements to companies in Family Office portfolios in interim positions, restructured or turned around businesses as a CEO and served Boards and CEOs of large corporations as a strategic advisor.

At home in a broad number of industries, Sohail has a deeper understanding, from the strategic, the investment and the operational leadership perspective across sectors including retail, technology, telecoms, media, education, financial services and private equity.

Sohail holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a Masters in Industrial Engineering from the London School of Economics and a bachelors degree with double major in Accounting and Computer Science from the University of Liverpool.

Ali has spent his career focused on technology and communications investments. After graduating from the University of Michigan, in 1999, Ali joined Arthur Andersen in New York where he oversaw mid-market transactions in technology, media, and telecommunications. In 2002, he joined Morgan Stanley Capital International where he managed the North American and European finance teams.

Ali spent a year from 2007-2008 at Deutsche Bank where he served on the bank’s principal investments team. In 2008, he shifted his focus to the Middle East where he seized on the opportunity to work on helping companies go to scale. He worked with the Turkish government and private sector on finance and private equity projects. At 212, Ali serves on the boards of Insider, Solvoyo, and ODC-Smartmessage. In addition, Ali sits on the Advisory Board of Endeavor and is a member of the Istanbul chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization.

Dr Abdul Malek Al Jaber is the Founder and Chairman of MENA Apps, a regional accelerator in the MENA region specialized in investing in starts-ups and fast growing companies, provides qualified and selected entrepreneurs with an incubator like logistic support as well as coaching for start-ups and innovative ideas and caters for the best exposure for such start-ups and companies over all the MENA region.

Dr. Al Jaber served as chairman of the Golden Wheat Mills Company, Middle East Payment Services, Palestine Industrial Estates Company, Wassel Logistics, Hadara, Dr. Al Jaber is also a founder of Al Rafah Bank, the first micro-finance bank in the region and served as Member of the Board of PADICO, PRICO, PalTrade, Cairo Amman Bank, Board of Trustees of Aal El Beit University and many other organizations.

Aditionally, Dr. Al Jaber is a member the Investment Committee of Grand Challange Canada, member of the Regional Board Of INJAZ and member of the Arab Business Council, The Arab Technology Forum, The Young Presidents Organization, the Global Agenda Council.

Dr. Al Jaber is a graduate of Jordan University of Science and Technology, McGill University, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the Dr. Al Jaber is a graduate of Jordan University of Science and Technology, McGill University, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the International School of Management in Paris. He holds a Doctor of Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration degree, as well as a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering. In 2001 he was awarded His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed Al Maktoum’s “Best Arab Manager Award for Excellence in Management” in recognition of his status as the leading business executive in Palestine.