#41 - Sam Marchant, Partner at Inaugural & Founder of Forward Pursuit: MENA Startups Overview, Building AI Camels and the Power of VC Media

Sam Marchant builds AI companies designed to exit at $20 to $100 million, and thinks the industry has been chasing the wrong animal.Sam is a partner at Inaugural, an AI venture studio that has built eight revenue-generating companies in 24 months, and the founder of Forward Pursuit, a Dubai-based family office. He also hosts the Now We Build podcast and runs Scaling MENA, the weekly newsletter for anyone paying attention to the Gulf and broader Middle East ecosystem. Before Dubai, he founded and exited a food brand at university, then spent years in early-stage VC in London.In this episode, Mauro sits down with Sam to unpack a deeply contrarian thesis on how AI companies should be built, funded and exited, and to get a clear-eyed view of what is actually happening across the MENA startup ecosystem.We discuss:🐫 Why he's betting on $20 to $100 million exits instead of billion-dollar unicorns, and why his LPs love it 🤖 How Inaugural takes AI companies to $20-30k MRR before handing the keys to founders 🏗️ The industry-insider partnership model that powers their bets🇦🇪 Why he chose Dubai over the US, and what most founders get wrong about the region 🗺️ Where to actually build each product in MENA🧢 How to balance multiple hats in VC📰 Why he thinks media will be one of the last industries flattened by AI 📧 🎙️ Scaling MENA, Now We Build and Sam's approach to media🗣️ Getting started with media and overcoming fears of cringe🌍 What the war has done to UAE deal flow, and why Q3 and Q4 could see record investmentGive it a listen. Follow Sam on LinkedIn and subscribe to the Scaling MENA newsletter.Episode links:Sam Marchant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-marchant/Inaugural: https://www.inaugural.ai/Forward Pursuit: https://forwardpursuit.vcNow We Build podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/65dN21XYOgD5wVzLWcPpRx Now We Build podcast (Apple Podcasts): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-we-build/id1755152119Scaling MENA: https://substack.com/@scalingmena =================================================================Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn.Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more.Black Unicorn PR is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC.For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog