Startup Funding: Mokhtar Ibrahim, Investment Principal, BECO Capital Mokhtar Ibrahim, Investment Principal, BECO Capital, showcases the principles that inspire investor faith and sustainable outcomes.

This article is part of Startup Funding - Investor Insights Every Entrepreneur Needs by Entrepreneur Middle East, a series where the MENA region's leading venture capitalists share practical advice to help founders navigate the challenges of building and scaling a startup.

Mokhtar Ibrahim, Investment Principal, BECO Capital, showcases the principles that inspire investor faith and sustainable outcomes.

What are the top 3 things founders should absolutely do when preparing to raise their first round?
Build a compelling, evidence-based narrative around timing and outcomes. A founder needs to articulate precisely why they're raising now (not six months ago or six months from now), exactly how much they need, and what specific milestones they'll hit within 18-24 months. This isn't only about growth projections; we also want to see that founders understand their business mechanics and have deep reasoning behind their plans.

Develop genuine capital discipline and efficiency metrics. Before founders access investor capital, they need to show they have a firm grasp of their financial dynamics. This means understanding unit economics at a granular level, modelling burn rates across various scenarios, and identifying the key drivers that impact their business, both within and beyond their control. Most importantly, they need to prove they can achieve significant progress with limited resources. The strongest founders view capital as an accelerant, not a substitute for resourcefulness. This disciplined approach prevents the trap of building quick fixes rather than sustainable solutions, ultimately creating businesses that can weather market volatility and thrive across economic cycles.

Master the art of confident vulnerability. Founders should be absolutely clear about their unique advantages and what they understand about their market that others don't. But equally important, own mistakes and knowledge gaps completely. The startup journey is long and not always up and to the right, investors know this. We get excited by founders who demonstrate clarity on why and what they're building, are open about failures and learn quickly, and have the intellectual honesty to pivot when necessary. This combination of conviction and humility signals they're coachable and won't waste time or money defending ideas that don't pan out as expected.

What are you really looking for when evaluating early-stage startups?
From an idea perspective, we want startups that tackle markets big enough to allow for large outcomes and wiggle room for iterations if the first approach doesn't work, yet we're also looking for ideas and approaches that are original and not so apparent that everyone's already rushing to solve the same problem.

Founders are the focus. Early-stage investing is fundamentally about identifying founders who can navigate significant uncertainty with limited resources. We look for founders who become genuinely obsessed with solving problems rather than falling in love with their first solution and are acutely data-driven in their decision-making. This obsession gives them the resilience to pivot when needed whilst staying focused on what actually matters.

The signals to pivot may not always be obvious. This is particularly important in today's market where businesses across sectors may be seeing rapidly scaling revenues as customers rush to experiment with new technologies and solutions (AI, for example). It is imperative that founders carefully collect and use customer data to diagnose what problem their product is solving for customers, if at all. Is the solution peripheral, or is it an essential part of their operations, and why?

This problem-first mindset enables them to develop an intuitive understanding of customer pain that extends far beyond research. That deep empathy, combined with unique views about how the world works, enables them to spot opportunities that others miss and make better decisions with limited data. Every major decision flows from this unique perspective.

We back founders who are obsessed with efficiency and understand where the future is heading. For these operators, AI becomes a natural tool to unlock internal efficiencies and scale with speed and intention from day one. Exceptional founders are already thinking several moves ahead, building competitive advantages into their foundation from the outset and constantly iterating. They know that early success will eventually attract competition, so they're preparing for that inevitability from day one. The best founders create learning machines that adapt more quickly than anyone can keep up with.
Perhaps most importantly, they can translate this vision into something so compelling that brilliant people abandon secure employment to join an unproven mission. When founders can attract talent that could work anywhere they choose, it's a signal that they've found something truly worth building.

Can you share a personal anecdote—either a pitch that truly impressed you, or one that missed the mark and why?
One pitch that really stood out started with the founder sharing stories from customers about their pain points; real people describing their daily frustrations in vivid detail. This made the problem incredibly tangible rather than theoretical. They immediately backed up those stories with data showing the widespread nature of this pain across the market. We could multiply those individual voices and see the scale of the opportunity.
However, what really sealed the deal was the reveal: these same customers who had complained about the problem were now enthusiastic advocates for the solution. Hearing the exact people who'd described their frustration now speak passionately about how this product transformed their workflow created deep credibility. It was this perfect narrative arc, from problem to scale to proof, all anchored by the same voices. Instead of hypothetical market validation, we were witnessing a fundamental transformation with real people. And founders who were versatile and humble enough to shift their product to customer needs. That warranted more than enough reason for us to dig deeper. The founder had clearly spent deep time with customers and let that relationship guide everything.

How should founders approach a "no"? What's the best way to build long-term investor relationships even if they don't get a cheque right away?
A lot of our successful investments at BECO were actually previous nos, so founders should understand that 'no' simply means the investor hasn't reached their confidence threshold yet.
The key is to bucket the feedback: was it poor storytelling, a structural problem with the business, or do they just need more proof points? Founders need to honestly assess the information and respond accordingly. Equally, investors should be clear about feedback. If they're not, founders should ask and take it constructively, not defensively. The best founders strike this balance where they're humble enough to absorb the feedback and driven enough to prove the investor wrong where they still have conviction.

When it comes to staying in touch, we find the founders who make the biggest impression go beyond generic newsletter updates. While those are important, the ones who really stand out remember specific concerns or points raised during our conversation. They'll reach out directly via email or WhatsApp with targeted updates on exactly those issues. It shows they were actually listening and creates much more effective communication than mass updates.

What startup sector or trend are you most excited about right now—and why?
Personally, I'm most excited about logistics right now because of the perfect storm of factors aligning in our region. There are macro shifts happening globally with supply chains restructuring, and our positioning in the Middle East puts us at the centre of emerging trade routes.
What makes this particularly compelling is our leapfrog advantage. Unlike markets with legacy infrastructure that create switching costs and complexity, we can build modern logistics networks from scratch. We don't have the burden of outdated systems that other regions need to work around. The sector is ripe for disruption across multiple layers. On the software side, there are massive opportunities in AI-powered optimisation and automation. On the hardware side, we're seeing robotics and autonomous systems becoming commercially viable. The combination creates this rare situation where you can disrupt the entire stack simultaneously.
At BECO, we've developed a specific thesis around logistics and are actively seeking founders who understand both the regional opportunity and the technology convergence currently underway. It's one of those sectors where timing, geography, and technology are all aligned. Our fourth fund, from which we're currently deploying capital, is sector-agnostic but thesis-driven, with focus themes including proptech, construction tech, fintech, and retail tech. Logistics underpins a lot of the growth we're seeing also, particularly in Saudi Arabia - representing a cross-section of multiple industries. All investments are supported by AI, as we seek founders building AI-first operations that leverage emerging technology to build efficiently from day one.

Related: Startup Funding: Tammer Qaddumi, Co-founder and General Partner, VentureSouq