Mindshift Capital’s Heather Henyon On Funding The MENA's Zillennial-Led, Female-Founded Future

Heather Henyon, Founding Partner of Mindshift Capital, brings a gender-lens perspective to the MENA region’s funding landscape through the Dubai-based firm she launched in 2019.

With the firm investing only in early-stage tech companies with a female founder or co-founder, Henyon explains that Mindshift’s thesis is based on the rise of the zillennial (i.e. those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, who blend characteristics of both millennials and Gen Z), where next gen consumers are disrupting traditional business models. “As a result, the fund’s target sectors are health/wellnesstech, foodtech, edtech and fintech, although we’ve also invested in the sustainability and disabilitytech sectors,” Henyon shares. “To date, we have backed 19 companies in six countries led by 26 female founders.”

From Henyon’s standpoint, funding stages can be broadly anchored around two camps: early stage (pre-seed to Series A) and late stage (Series B and beyond). “Traction and validation is how we define early stage,” she explains. “For example, pre-seed is ideation, seed is minimum viable product (MVP) and early user traction, and Series A is where the company has achieved product-market fit. The milestones depend on the sector (for example, biotech versus software-as-a-service), and they are usually categorized as revenue or user numbers. In emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), the milestones are being defined as we build, and they are changing rapidly as well.”

But despite the pace of change, Henyon believes the underlying framework for funding remains steady. “The labels continue to change, but the funding stages don’t,” she points out. “They are meant to reflect the growth of the business and the company’s funding needs as it develops.”

As for exits, Henyon notes that while initial public offerings (IPOs) have historically not been an option for MENA-based startups, this has started to change as regional exchanges grow and mature, and she expects more companies to list on them in the future.

However, Henyon is careful to stress that IPOs are far from the only exit path for startups. “Globally, the most common form of an exit is a trade sale, and the average acquisition price tag is US$50 million in the US,” she points out. “While IPOs receive media attention, there are other ways to exit a business, and some of those ways—for example, secondary share sales—have become more common for investors to generate liquidity over the last couple of years.”

Of course, before entrepreneurs can think about exits, they need to focus on survival, and that underlines Henyon’s advice for founders who are fundraising. “Create a Plan B,” she says. “If you can’t raise the funding, can you cut costs, or can you focus on getting to cash flow positive? Look for market signals early, and be proactive. We learned quickly that the startups that were able to react quickly to conserve runway during the COVID-19 crisis were the companies that survived. Sometimes, that’s enough!”

Fundraising Fumbles: Heather Henyon On What Not To Do When Chasing Capital

“I always recommend that a company map out its fundraising plan through exit. This includes the amount of capital that will be needed to grow and scale at each successive stage. Of course, this is iterative, but it can help founders to think through the milestones, and also the amount of equity to sell off at each stage. One of the more tragic experiences is when a founder has sold off too much of their company at the seed stage, making its capital structure much less attractive for venture capitalists. I recommend being conservative and building a model with scenario analysis to build in flexibility and unpredictability, especially in today’s market.”

Pictured in the lead image is Heather Henyon, Founding Partner of Mindshift Capital. Courtesy of Mindshift Capital.

This article first appeared in the September 2025 issue of Inc. Arabia. To read the full issue online, click here.