Taking the Plunge: Learnings from backing founders in Emerging Ecosystems

Investors and founders are much alike. As a Founding Partner MENA at Golden Gate Ventures I have built and invested across three emerging ecosystems. In every ecosystem, capital has not been scarce. What is scarce is access to experienced networks and investors who have gone through the full cycle, as well as to the network of investors and strategic partners that help grow the founder’s business.

My hope is that this article helps founders understand how investors view and navigate emerging markets, as well as the importance of cross-border opportunities.

Investing and building in emerging markets felt to me like taking a plunge in the deep sea. It reminds me of preparing for my Ironman 70.3.

My first Ironman 70.3 was in 2017. I wanted a personal challenge, and although I wasn’t a good swimmer, participating felt like personal growth. Standing on the beach in Hawaii, right before the race, I was scared. I remember looking at the ocean and running through every version of what could go wrong. Would the panic hit me halfway through? Would I burn so much energy fighting the water that I'd have nothing left for the bike and the run? I didn't know. There was no way to know. The only way to find out was to jump in, feel uncomfortable, at times scared, and trust that I'd figure it out along the way. I finished the race and went back for my second Ironman 70.3 in Hawaii in 2019.

Taking the plunge was the only way to finish the race.

Michael Lints - Ironman 70.3 Hawaii 2017

As the summer starts in the GCC and everyone is getting ready to travel, I've been thinking about that moment a lot. It has been such a common thread throughout my career, as I remain ambitious to grow and learn.

Three times now, I've stood at the edge of an emerging ecosystem — across Southeast Asia, MNA and Central Asia. Each time, the water looked different, but the fear was the same. Am I ready for this? How do I navigate building in a new ecosystem? Each time, the answer only revealed itself after I jumped. When I moved to Singapore in 2013 to join Golden Gate Ventures, Southeast Asia's venture ecosystem was young. The infrastructure we take for granted today — the fund managers, the secondaries, the exit pathways, the generations of experienced founders — didn't exist yet. I had left everything familiar behind and knew I had to be patient. Trust the process, trust your partners, trust your team and your ability to pivot when needed. The majority of my network was in Europe, and I had to adapt and learn quickly to make myself at home in Singapore and extend my network. Southeast Asia rewarded that patience. I witnessed the region produce unicorns, its first IPOs, its first generation of founders who became angels and fund managers themselves. I got to see a full ecosystem cycle up close — and that education became part of a playbook for everything that came after.

Launching Golden Gate Ventures' MENA Fund I from Qatar was, on paper, a bigger leap than Singapore. We became the first international VC fund established and managed within Qatar. There was no template to follow. Once again, it was exciting to take the plunge and be the new person in the room, earning trust in a region where relationships move on their own clock.

My computer science background was instrumental for building and understanding systems and frameworks. Every system has constraints, and understanding the constraints is understanding the system. I've never stopped looking at the world that way. To me, a startup ecosystem can be compared to system architecture. Capital is throughput. Regulation works as the operating environment. Talent pipelines, business development, strategic partnerships, exit pathways, and founder networks are dependencies. When I land in a new environment, it’s important not to look for the hype — look for the fundamentals. Where are the bottlenecks? Which dependencies are missing? What's the order of operations to build them? Use that same analysis on the Gulf and the narrative of "capital, not innovation" falls apart quickly. The inputs are all there: sovereign commitment measured in decades, regulatory sandboxes, world-class infrastructure, and a young, digital-native population. The system just needs continuous connectivity — bridges to proven technology companies and experienced operators. That became our fund's thesis: a two-way corridor between the Gulf and the world's most dynamic tech ecosystems.

Pattern recognition from Southeast Asia helped enormously. But it was important to resist the temptation to copy-paste. Patterns rhyme but don’t repeat. Moving to the Gulf taught me to hold my playbook loosely — to treat every prior lesson as a hypothesis to be tested rather than a truth to be applied. 

In 2025 and 2026, I have spent time in Tashkent, and together with our partners, we launched our fund's first initiative in Uzbekistan and Central Asia. A third ecosystem. A third culture to learn. When I run the system analysis, the signals are unmistakable. Uzbekistan's venture funding has grown elevenfold in three years. Active funds are multiplying. The corridor between the Gulf and Central Asia is strengthening in real time — trade routes, capital flows, and founders who can now scale cross-border. We are already seeing proof points across our portfolio. I recognise the feeling on the ground. It's the same energy I felt in Singapore in 2013 and in Doha when we started building there. A generation of founders who are early, hungry, and largely undiscovered by global capital. I've learned to trust that feeling — not as a substitute for analysis, but as a prompt to do the analysis. If Singapore taught me how ecosystems grow and Qatar taught me how to adapt the lessons, this next chapter is about combining everything into what I ultimately want to be for our founders: an added-value investor. Capital is abundant. Every market I've worked in has proven that.

What's scarce is the network that lets a logistics founder in Tashkent meet an operator in Riyadh who solved the same problem. What's scarce is having actually sat with founders through the entire cycle — the hype, the drought, the recovery — and being able to say: I've seen this before, and here's what matters now. As an investor, I hope to continue to evolve. Back in Hawaii, the swim never became comfortable. I didn't exit the water transformed into a swimmer. I exited tired, relieved, and behind on time — and then I got on the bike and ran my race. That's the honest version of growth: the fear doesn't disappear, you just get better at jumping in anyway.

I am still a work in progress. Still growing, still learning, still a bad swimmer. But I keep taking the plunge. It's the only way to finish the race. 

For any founder navigating emerging markets and trying to find their narrative, reach out. I have gone through a long process of learning by doing, and parts of my experience might be relevant.

I am grateful to the partners who gave me room to grow, inspired me, and guided me on this journey.

---*Michael H. Lints is a Founding Partner, MENA, at Golden Gate Ventures, where he leads the firm's MENA Fund with Hussain Abdulla — the first international venture capital fund established and managed from within Qatar. He has over 25 years of experience in technology entrepreneurship and venture capital across Europe, US, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.*