Golden Gate Ventures’s Partner Michael Lints
Singapore’s leading VC firm, Golden Gate Ventures, has announced the first close of its inaugural MENA (Middle East and North Africa) fund at US$20 million.
The anchor investor is Al Khor Holding. Other Limited Partners are Al Attiya Group and former Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Jassim Bin Jabor Al Thani.
The US$100-million Golden Gate Ventures MENA Fund I will focus on powering startups in key sectors such as alternative energy, greentech, B2B artificial intelligence, and energy-related deep tech, on top of fintech, healthtech, and edtech.
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It is the first international VC fund to be established and managed in Qatar. Partner Michael Lints, who has moved there, will lead the operations of Golden Gate Ventures MENA Fund I.
In recent years, Qatar has been building its startup ecosystem with a supportive government, a strong push for economic diversification, a pro-business environment, and heavy investment in the startup space.
“MENA is emerging as a growing innovation hub, with Qatar rising as a beacon of progress. We see a real opportunity to drive a golden corridor of growth between Southeast Asia and MENA to help startups scale from one region to the other,” said Vinnie Lauria, Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures.
SEA has seen tremendous growth across these sectors and has launched several high-profile IPOs in the last decade. MENA’s trajectory is expected to follow that of SEA’s, and the connection of both regions is expected to have a multiplier effect on their growth.
Some high-profile startups in Golden Gate Ventures’s portfolio, namely CodaPay, Stripe, and Multiplier, have expanded to the Gulf.
Golden Gate Ventures’s SEA-MENA connection was established in the early days with QInvest, a Qatar-linked state fund as an LP in its Asia fund. Looking ahead, the firm expects to see more activity between the regions as the SEA ecosystem matures and the MENA ecosystem levels up as a global contender.
“Golden Gate Ventures has spent close to a decade curating our networks in MENA and building up our long-term strategy for the region – with the view of growing both SEA and MENA together – synergistically. We have connected the SEA and MENA startup ecosystems and hope to increase this manifold. There are opportunities for startups to scale between the regions and so many common areas of growth like climate tech, health tech and edtech,” said Lints.
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At the announcement of the Golden Gate Ventures MENA Fund I, the firm also announced the launch of its Qatar startup ecosystem primer entitled ‘Qatar Rising: Where Ambition and Capital Converge’. It provides an insightful look at how different factors – its robust economic policy, investment landscape, startup ecosystem, talent pool and cultural influence – have converged in the last decade to position the Gulf state as a progressive global economy.
In the last two years, Golden Gate Ventures has expanded its presence by establishing its Vietnam operations in 2022, launching an office in Saudi Arabia in 2023 to tap into opportunities in the Middle East—Southeast Asia corridor, and adding a New York presence in recent months.
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