Former Swvl CFO Youssef Salem has sold his angel investment syndicate, Qora71, less than six months after launching it, in a move that signals both the growing demand for venture capital infrastructure in the Gulf and the increasing professionalisation of early-stage investing in the region.
The buyer is Stryde, a DFSA-regulated private markets platform, which will relaunch the network as Stryde71, a dedicated venture capital and syndication arm within its broader investment offering. For Stryde, the acquisition represents a deliberate pivot into startup funding — an area it had, until now, largely sat outside of, focusing instead on credit, real estate, and private equity deals.
For Salem, the quick exit raises eyebrows in a region where tech ecosystems are still finding their footing, but also highlights the value of ready-built angel syndicates to platforms seeking to capture early-stage deal flow.
Built Fast, Sold Fast
Launched earlier this year with backing from Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 innovation hub, Qora71 built an online-first angel investment syndicate, onboarding more than 130 investors, completing over 50 transactions, and deploying more than $2m into startups within just five months. The model was simple: group strategic angels, source promising founders, and channel capital quickly into early deals.
Stryde’s acquisition suggests a shift in how such communities are being valued — not necessarily for their capital firepower, but for their ability to build warm deal networks that plug into more institutional structures.
“Bringing Qora71 into the Stryde family is a major milestone,” said Hadi Halabi, cofounder of Stryde. “Youssef’s leadership, and what was built at Hub71 in record time, is impressive. Now we can scale this approach globally.”
Salem, who will now join Stryde as a partner, framed the move as the natural next step: “Qora71 was born to provide exceptional founders with meaningful capital, connectivity and market access. Now, with Stryde, we can do that at greater scale.”
The acquisition of Qora71 is part of a wider trend in the Middle East’s startup capital markets: the layering of digitally enabled, community-driven funding models onto regulated investment platforms.
For investors, Stryde71 offers the prospect of participating in syndicated early-stage deals alongside the platform’s wider range of private market investments. For startups, it provides access to a growing pool of angel capital supported by fintech infrastructure — rather than relying solely on informal angel groups or standalone funds.
Abu Dhabi’s Hub71, which incubated Qora71 from launch, sees the sale as validation of its role in fostering early-stage capital mechanisms. “The launch of Stryde71 reflects both the success of the initiative and the broader mission to strengthen Abu Dhabi’s capital landscape,” said Basma Ahmed AlBadi AlDhaheri, Head of Value Creation at Hub71.
Salem’s career reflects the region’s increasingly interconnected tech, finance, and energy ecosystems. After leading Swvl’s financial strategy through its ultimately troubled Nasdaq listing in 2021, Salem went on to join ADNOC Drilling — part of Abu Dhabi’s oil and gas giant ADNOC — before pivoting into the angel investing scene with Qora71.
His exit now underlines a wider challenge for angel syndicates in emerging ecosystems: building scale and deal flow is difficult without institutional backing or integration into larger structures. Platforms like Stryde, with compliance frameworks and broader investor bases, may prove better placed to turn early traction into long-term market share.
For Stryde, the test will now be whether its hybrid model of regulated private markets combined with startup syndicates can deliver meaningful returns for investors — and sustained funding for the region’s next generation of startups.