MENADD
Investor-grade structure for MENA founders. Built from the diligence backwards.
Every diligence process asks the same questions. Who owns what. Who controls what. Where the shares sit. How money moves. Whether the cash is real.
Founders usually meet these questions for the first time with a term sheet on the table. By then, every gap is expensive.
This library maps what diligence checks in a MENA company, section by section, and what an investor-grade answer looks like. Before the investor asks.
Browse the library →Library Sections
Ownership & Cap Table
Vesting, ESOP, phantom equity, dilution, down rounds. Who owns what, and what that ownership survives.
Control & Governance
Board seats, veto rights, reserved matters. Ownership percentages are not control.
Structure & Jurisdiction
ADGM, DIFC, mainland, cross-border holdcos. A clean structure is not the same as a fundable structure.
Cash & Finance
Cash reporting, runway, backlog, working capital. Where the cash is, and who finances the gap.
The MENA Process
How a raise actually works in the region. Trust sequences, family offices, timelines.
Why "built from the diligence backwards"
Structure should be designed from the capital stack backwards. Before the first entity is opened. Not after the first term sheet.
A standard diligence process starts from the investor and works into the company. This library runs the same route in reverse: it starts from the questions diligence will ask and works back to how the company should have been built.
The material comes from operating experience, not theory. A decade inside venture-backed companies, on the founder and CFO side of the table, in the UAE and across borders.
About →Working tools, not frameworks.
Cash flow reports built from raw bank exports. Cap table scenario models. Diligence checklists. Each artifact comes from work with a real company.
Artifacts →Diligence Notes
Periodic notes on diligence, cap tables, governance and structure in MENA. Sent when there is something worth sending.