Published December 12, 2021

Noor Sweid is the founder of Global Ventures, a Dubai-based, growth-stage venture capital firm focusing on investing in emerging markets. Previously, Noor was the Chief Investment Officer at The Dubai Future Foundation, where she spent time developing the technology and innovation ecosystem in Dubai, and a Managing Partner at Leap Ventures, a growth-stage venture capital firm based out of Dubai and Beirut.

Noor moved back to Dubai in 2005 after spending time in the US as a biotechnology and pharmaceutical strategy consultant. Once in Dubai, Noor joined her family business, Depa. Implementing best-practice corporate governance and enabling the scaling of the business tenfold in three years to reach US$600 million in revenues, Noor then led the IPO for the company in 2008, on the NASDAQ Dubai and the London Stock Exchange.

During this time, Noor also founded ZenYoga, the first yoga and pilates studio in MENA, which grew to become the largest chain of wellness studios in the Middle East, and which she exited ZenYoga in early 2014 through sale to a private equity firm.

Noor is Chairperson of the Middle East Venture Capital Association, was on the Founding Board of Endeavor UAE, and serves as a Director for MIT Sloan, TechWadi, The Grooming Company, the Collegiate American School in Dubai, as well as the portfolio companies of Global Ventures.

In 2018, Noor was named as one of the World’s Top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes, and received the Arab Woman Award for Finance. Noor has also been named in the Arabian Business 100 Most Powerful Arab Women list three times, and has been profiled on the covers of Forbes Middle East, Entrepreneur Middle East, and Arabian Business magazines.

Noor holds bachelors’ degrees in Finance and Economics from Boston College as well as an MBA from MIT Sloan. Recorded September 2, 2021.

Transcript:

Jesse: Okay, here we go. All right. Hello? Hello everyone. Today is the 2nd of September, 2021. Time goes by quickly. And, uh, today I have the pleasure of a very interesting guest who I met many years ago and really excited to talk to. Uh, and I'm hopefully going to pronounce her name correctly.

Noor Sweid. 

Noor: That's perfect. Thanks Jesse.

Jesse: Uh, and Noor, are you joining us from Dubai? 

Noor: I'm in Dubai right now.

Jesse: Great, great. So Noor is, uh, joining us from Dubai, who is the founder of Global Ventures, um, which is I think where the most interesting venture capital firms I have come across. So Noor, welcome to the Reorient podcast. 

Noor: Thank you, Jesse, for having me and, um, and for giving us the opportunity to share what we're working on here out of Dubai.

Jesse: Well, you have a great story and I'm looking forward to delving into it. So before we go into what, um, sort of the Global Ventures. And what your work is there. Um, give us a little bit of sense. You have a very interesting personal story. So let us know a little bit about your journey of how you came to become a venture capitalist, uh, sitting in Dubai. What was your journey to this point? 

Noor: I grew up in a bunch of different countries. I was born in Boston, raised in London. We moved to Saudi Arabia when I was 12. We moved to Dubai when I was 15. I, I then went back to Boston for college. Um, I studied, I worked at Accenture for awhile as a consultant in biotech and pharma, and then I did my MBA and after a time staying in Boston, came back to Dubai in 2005 where my family had remained since I had gone off to do my studies and came back as a consultant with Booz Allen, and then between my first and second projects kind of had three weeks as consultants do, to, to relax or recover depending on how you see it and just kind of zone in on, on home turf rather than continuing to travel every week.

And then within that three weeks, I worked for a little bit with my father and his company, Depa. Three weeks in the trenches grew into three months. Over the subsequent three years, we grew the company, which was an interior contractor from about 16 million top line to 600 million, from a thousand people to 9,500 across 22 markets, becoming the largest in the world and other space.

And the learning there was, you can build the largest in the world and a vertical from anywhere, including Dubai. In April ‘08. Um, I ran the IPO for the business, which was fantastic. It was one of the first out of the region to list internationally. Um, we listed on the main board in London, um, and the NASDAQ Dubai as well.

And then I continued with the company for five more years until 2013. At the same time I had started a side project in early 2006. I had started a yoga studio in Dubai. So I had become a big avid yogi since the year 2000, when I was living in Boston, when there were one or two studios in Boston, by the time I left in ‘05, there were at least 20. Um, so coming to Dubai and yoga still hadn't really existed here,started a studio, brought two teachers over from the US, um, that were keen to, to explore. And they came for two years, um, which obviously then turned out to be much longer because then yoga went from being kind of my weekend project into a proper yoga chain and to a large wellness chain, and I sold that to a private equity firm. And my learning there was, it's so hard to be an entrepreneur. And so I went back to wait, I have this, I mean, we had 72 teachers, 6,000 students a month and so on, but, you know, and I would, I would look back on my day and I would say, wow, the hardest part of my day was dealing with these yoga studios, not running a billion dollar company.

And 12, 13 years ago, a billion dollar company was very large. It wasn't a unicorn, you know, um, like the, these days. And so that learning then took me to, how can I work more with these entrepreneurs? Because if it's that hard and I'm so blessed and fortunate that, um, that I also have experience running a large company and all these, all this expertise in other areas, um, let me help others figure it out as well.

And so I became an angel investor because that's all I could do at the time. And then these young angel investments, these companies started to scale. You know, they need to scale. I'm not that scalable and figured, you know, let me, let me think about this into this. Well, I had had these two exits done, um, and started just investing a little bit and then looking at venture.

And it just seemed to me that venture just didn't exist in the region. There was a few firms, like three or four, but nowhere near what we needed. I'm very data-driven. So once I started taking a look at the data, I realized that we invest as a region 0.02% of our GDP in venture. The U S is at 0.7, so 35 times more.

And so those numbers just were staggering to me. And then as I looked and I had this moment of what am I doing with my life? I want to do something that's meaningful. And so on. It really hit me that the most meaningful moment in my life was when we were writing the prospectus. And we were looking at the job growth.

And so I said, okay, wow, the job growth went from 1000 to 9,500 people in three years. It was amazing. How do we replicate that in a sustainable, scalable fashion? So then I started doing research around, well, you know, what, what stimulates job growth, and then America and in the US, VC backed companies create 2.8 times as many jobs as non-VC backed companies.

So I said, okay, well then the obvious solution is if you want to scale the concept of job growth, you don't go start one company, you enable many. And then in that learning, I said, okay. Um, for those who are familiar with emerging markets, in our market that’s 40% unemployment, that's four zero, not one four.

And, and that's particularly in the youth segment. So the under 30. And that's half our population. So you take a look at the one and a half billion people we have here, half of them are under 30 or 35. And 40% unemployment, if you have a job, your brother or sister doesn’t.

And so if you really want to start affecting unemployment and creating these jobs, then venture is probably the right way to do it. And given that there's no VC funding, and no access to capital for founders. I’m like, that's a problem I want to tackle. So I don't come to venture from, I want to be an investor.

I come to venture from, I'm an entrepreneur that wants to solve a problem that I believe is worth solving. And here I'll put a little dent in this massive unemployment problem, my being a VC, because I believe that given my experience and given my background, um, I can probably pick the companies that have mission driven founders, but at the same time, we'll create these incredible returns.

And so that's how I got into venture. 

I took a side step for two years into government and served as the CIO at Dubai Future Foundation. How do you go from a tourism hub to an innovation hub. And how do you invest in startups? 

And then, um, almost four years ago, I left that role to start my own firm, um, so started global ventures really, as I can, I have in the past, helped build a global company out of the region. And if you can do that for interior contracting, which is boots on the ground, and you're actually building out interiors of hotels and airports and infrastructure, then you can do it for tech, right?

Like it's actually, it should be much easier. Um, and so it really it's about global thinking, networks, scalability, um, and hence global ventures. It's not that we invest globally. We invest in the Middle East and Africa. It's that we want the invested ventures to become global. And so starting a little venture with this, you know, relatively crazy idea of we're going to build and we're going to help global companies in the region. At the same time, we're going to tackle unemployment and take a look at five UN SDGs. So on the impact of that we aligned with, um, but 

Jesse: SDG being what ?

Noor: Sustainable Development Goals. So the UN many years ago, all the countries got together and said, where does the world want to be by 2030 and 2025? And, um, and they built, they have 17 different goals.

Things like education, unemployment, access to water and so on, and environments and so on. And so the world, including like my children, will tell you exactly what those 17 SDGs are, because we're teaching young children these things these days, um, and most investment firms around the world in emerging markets will say there's one or two that we’re aligned to, um, and they're usually environment or governance. And in our part of the world we have decided this job growth, financial inclusion, healthcare inclusion, so things that are much more, you know, they're often seen as basic human rights, but in our part of the world, the vast majority of people don't have access.

And so we figured let's run a venture capital fund and create the great returns that, that we expect of VC funds. But at the same time, try to touch people's lives.

Jesse: Well, that's a phenomenal, uh, introduction. Uh, and I know, uh, each part that you mentioned, we could go in maybe levels deeper into the granularity, but that's a great overview, and I should add for our audience, I mean, Global Ventures now, I don't know if this is the latest data, but um, it has really grown since I think you established around five years ago, and you have a, I think over 20 employees and you're operating in six countries and at least 24 portfolio companies.

So you've really scaled into a very significantly sized venture capital firm in the region. Um, just, uh, you mentioned sort of mission driven and, and really trying to address the problem of unemployment and sort of basic needs. It makes me think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Does that, is that sort of a fair way to sort of look at it and say, listen, before we get into this highfalutin, you know, uh, touchy, feely stuff, let's, people's real day-to-day problems.

Is that, is that a fair way of describing it? 

Noor: You know? I think so. And for me, it's a chicken or egg problem, right? Well, what's the point in fixing healthcare and financial inclusion if the environment collapses and the planet doesn't exist. At the same time, what's the point in making the planet exist, and the environment is all great, if people don't have access to, like a piece of bread every day or a job, or, you know, our doctor when they're really sick.

So, you know, it's really, it depends where you sit in the world. We happen to sit in the middle of a market where four years ago we had 85% of the population's unbanked, now we're at 55%. And so you can prove that FinTech actually enables financial inclusion. Right? And so we're backing those companies that when they come in, they are tech companies through and through, but if they succeed, you're going to impact hundreds and millions of lives.

Jesse: I got it. So we're talking about real impact. So before we get into the sort of types of investing investments you make and that you look at and what's happening in venture capital, let's just first define the region. Um, so I think, uh, it's MENA: Middle East and North Africa, or is that not correct? You're looking at all of Africa. 

Noor: Yes. So 

Jesse: Africa. 

Noor: We've done a few investments in Nigeria. We've invested in Kenya. Um, for us Africa is, is very similar to North Africa. Imagine that, um, except some of the needs are more dire. 

Jesse: Okay. 

Noor: Regulators are more flexible and sort of technology is able to innovate more quickly.

Jesse: Okay. So we're talking about a very large, I mean, It's almost hard to call it a region, right? I mean, you have Middle East and this continent of Africa. I mean, that's a lot of geography, but do you view that as a cohesive region or would you more say, you're basically, you're looking at, you know, two continents or continent and a half. And so you're just, you know, however many countries are you talking about in population size? 

Noor: It's absolutely cohesive and we've seen it. So our portfolios grow from one to the other, I wouldn't say seamlessly, but very easily. Um, I'll give you a great example. So one of our companies in Nigeria is called Helium Health. It's an EMR, an electronic medical record system for hospitals. So 30% of hospital visits in Africa are documented.

Right. That’s sub-saharan Africa. Go slightly north, fantastic, now it's 45%. In Jordan and rural parts of Saudi Arabia, you might be at 60%. The problem still exists and still needs to be solved, but it's not as dire. Right. And so these solutions like M-Pesa, how that came out of Kenya. Right. So these solutions will come out of areas where there’s most dire need, where they are at 30%, but now Helium's expanded into the Gulf, because they're solving a real problem using up-to-date technology, cloud based solutions. It's an offline first solution because that's what works in emerging markets. It's a fully integrated with the regulator and patient and doctor. Right? So you take a look at Helium as just one example of yes, it's a solution.

Y Combinator founders, and when we syndicated the deal, we did it with  tencent and AIC out of Japan. So it's really the international community realizes that they're solving a real problem, that is global, it just happens caught of Africa because the need is so dire.

Jesse: Okay. So, um, when we're talking about, uh, sort of Middle East and Africa, you know, we're probably looking over 70 countries, uh, one and a half billion people, uh, just, you know, a lot of diversity. Clearly. Including the level of development, which you just touched on. So just sort of just before we get drill down, what's the sort of common factor in terms of how you're saying, where we're looking at these markets, what sort of tying them together? Is it basically that they all have basic needs that need to, that can be filled in net through the venture capital process? 

Noor: So they all have the same demographics where half their population is under 30. They all have super high mobile penetration. So you're north of 80, 90% mobile penetration, but yet low financial inclusion, low health care access. Right. As in, if you need to see a doctor, that is a very, very big problem. It's not about, oh, we're improving quality of care. No, there is no care. Right? So you're going from no doctor to tell a doctor, just like who went from cash and coin to digital. We fixed financial inclusion, not by building banks. We're going to fix healthcare inclusion, not by building hospitals. And I'll give you-- the numbers are the same. So in Sub-Saharan Africa, you have about 0.5 doctors per thousand people. And in North Africa, you're a 0.8. You go to the US, you are at four and a half, right? So again, it's incrementally different, but it's dire. So those are the commonality is the needs of these basic things, the population demographic, the mobile penetration and the unemployment.

Jesse: Okay. Fantastic. So, I mean, one of the things I think that makes what you're doing so interesting, and how venture capital in your, I don't want to call it region, I think it’s regions, anyway differs from say, the US, is the impact it has on people's day-to-day lives. Um, I mean, if we had to generalize, a lot of venture capital in sort of the developed world is aimed at sort of improving efficiencies, maybe making something, you know, more for a consumer to save time. A lot of it might be aimed at sort of business. And so it's hard to say that those, you know, in terms of impact really, uh, you know, enhance the quality of life for the people, whereas what you're doing, and you've mentioned um, telemedicine or, or doctors using tech, leveraging technology to improve healthcare, that's really, uh, impacting at a very deep and fundamental level, the lives of people in those markets. 

Noor: Yeah, and we, and it's, you know, not just the telemedicine, but one of the companies in our portfolio that's also done very well is an augmented reality for virtual surgery. So you can stream in a specialist surgeon from, for example, Cleveland clinic, which they've done into Afghanistan. So this was a female founder. She was a surgeon, living in Beirut, working with children and hospitals and realizing, I wish I could get to more places faster, fast forward, several years. She now has a contract with J and J, working with Teledoc, working with the NHS in the UK, because also the discrepancy between let's say, you know, rural America or rural UK and, uh, Boston or San Francisco or London in terms of quality of care, you know, the chance of fatality and complications from surgery is 3x.

So she went out to serve emerging markets, our part of the world, and that's where she started. That's where she's still serving, but because it's built for emerging markets with the low latency and the rest of it, it can then easily crack global markets, it’s regional founders solving regional problems that are much more dire, but they're actually global problems a little bit, but regionally she's saving lives.

She's not improving the quality and reducing complications. She is actually saving lives, they've done about now 9,000 surgeries on this platform globally. And so it's fantastic. It's called Proximity. It's one of my favorite companies and stellar founder. So yes, that changes lives. So when we take a look at our portfolio, Across the board, the companies have created 6,800 jobs, all high quality jobs. They have financially included...

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