Runway Equals Resilience: Why (And How) MENA Entrepreneurs Should Rethink Their Business Playbooks

For startup founders across the MENA region navigating their businesses through the current period of geopolitical instability, a few questions are increasingly top of mind. For one, how long can their businesses keep running under such challenging conditions? How much cash runway do they have? And how resilient is their company if customer spending softens, funding slows, or markets shift?

To break down how founders should approach this moment, Inc. Arabia spoke to two figures from the region’s business ecosystem with deep experience in capital allocation and financial strategy: Youssef Salem, CFO of ADNOC Drilling, the sole provider of drilling and associated rig-related services to the Abu Dhabi-headquartered ADNOC Group, and Shane Shin, Founding Partner of Shorooq, the Abu Dhabi-based multi-strategy investment firm. Between Salem’s experience in senior roles at companies like AIQ, Swvl, and Moelis & Company, and Shin’s track record backing high-growth ventures in the MENA and beyond, their insights offer a pragmatic lens on navigating volatility.

According to Salem, such situations often reveals what a business—and its founders—are truly made of. “In times of geopolitical uncertainty, the most important principle is that runway equals resilience,” Salem tells Inc. Arabia. “During stable periods, founders often treat runway as the time until the next funding round. During conflict or regional instability, that assumption becomes dangerous. Capital moves slower, investors become more cautious, and economic activity can shift suddenly. Runway should therefore be measured against how long the company can operate if external conditions worsen, not just until the next planned raise. A useful mindset is this: your runway should give you enough time to withstand shocks, adapt your strategy, and reach a milestone that makes the business undeniably stronger. In uncertain environments, time becomes one of the most valuable strategic assets a founder has.”

From a venture capitalist’s point of view, Shin suggests that the current period will not slow investment activity, but rather, it will reshape investor priorities in the region. “We’re more disciplined, not frozen,” he says, speaking with respect to Shorooq. “In periods like this, the market often overreacts in the short term—but the long-term drivers of MENA tech adoption don’t disappear overnight. What does change is the bar: we’re prioritizing strong governance, clean cap tables, clear unit economics, and companies that can extend runway. If anything, this environment tends to separate durable operators from momentum-driven stories.” One notable difference, Shin notes, is in how investors are underwriting risk. "We’ve moved to more explicit scenario planning around operational continuity (payments, logistics, talent mobility, and supply chains), because the conflict has already shown it can disrupt energy flows, shipping lanes, and insurance coverage in and around the Gulf,” he shares. “We’re also leaning harder into resilience-first fundamentals: founders who can run distributed operations, build redundancy into vendors and cloud infrastructure, and sell mission-critical products with clear return on investment—not nice-to-haves.”

Youssef Salem, CFO, ADNOC Drilling. Image supplied. 

For founders, such a shift in mindset must quickly translate into operational decisions as well. So, what should business leaders do today to protect or extend their cash runway? From Salem’s perspective, the first step is scenario planning. “Founders should not rely on a single financial forecast,” he says. “In a volatile environment, it is essential to build at least three scenarios: a base case, a slowdown scenario, and a stress scenario where revenue growth pauses or declines. From there, founders should focus on three priorities: preserving liquidity so the company can operate through disruptions; protecting core revenue streams and customer relationships; and reducing expenses that do not directly support survival or growth.”

Salem also suggests that in times like these, founders should be cautious about finances from the outset, rather than expecting market conditions to stabilize overnight. “A common mistake during periods like this is reacting too late,” he notes. “Founders often assume conditions will normalize quickly, only to realize months later that the environment has fundamentally changed. Another frequent mistake is cutting costs indiscriminately. Eliminating spending that directly drives revenue or customer retention can weaken the business precisely when resilience is needed most.” Salem adds that founders would be wise to focus not just on reducing burn, but on actively strengthening their financial position. “One of the most effective moves is improving cash conversion,” he says. “This can include encouraging annual contracts, upfront payments, or enterprise deals that bring cash into the business faster. Founders should also look for opportunities to deepen relationships with existing customers, since retaining revenue is far more efficient than acquiring new customers during volatile periods.”

Business leaders may also need to review spending to extend their runway, and for this, Salem recommends that they examine customer acquisition spending, product priorities, and operational overhead. With regard to customer acquisition, for instance, he suggests that they ask themselves whether marketing channels are producing profitable or expensive growth. When it comes to product priorities, founders should question whether teams are focused on features that customers are willing to pay for. And finally, when it comes to operational overheads, he recommends that they review software subscriptions, vendor contracts, and fragmented tools that can quietly accumulate into meaningful burn. “In uncertain markets, focus becomes a competitive advantage,” Salem adds.

Beyond founder quality and governance though, the current environment is also influencing where investors are directing their attention. At Shorooq, for instance, Shin says that while its methodology wont change for the medium- to long-term, the near-term, however, will see it invariably assess sectors that become more essential during volatility. He points specifically to sectors such as cybersecurity, identity, and fraud (including protection, compliance, and continuity), as key during this period. He also notes that fintech infrastructure (risk, collections, business-to-business payments, and regtech), artificial intelligence (AI) applied to operations for cost reduction, automation, and decisioning—particularly for regulated industries—as being critical during this period. Also on the firm’s radar are sectors such as supply chain, logistics, and enterprise resilience tooling, as well as energy efficiency and industrial tech, including optimization, predictive maintenance, and grid/consumption intelligence.

Shane Shin, Founding Partner, Shorooq. 

For Shin, three sectors in particular are increasingly pertinent as geopolitical risks rise: cybersecurity, energy, and defense. He notes that industries such as cybersecurity and energy, both of which Shorooq has several portfolio companies in, are increasingly gaining attention from the firm. “Cybersecurity is clearly a priority—when geopolitical risk rises, so does digital risk,” Shin explains. “We’re seeing increased urgency from enterprises and governments to harden systems and reduce vulnerabilities... On energy, we’re interested in technologies that improve efficiency, reliability, and industrial performance—especially given the real-world disruptions to oil, gas, and shipping we’re seeing.” Shin also reveals that Shorooq is eyeing defense-adjacent startups, albeit in a “thoughtful” manner. "We’re comfortable in dual-use ‘resilience tech’ categories—security, infrastructure, emergency response, critical communications—while staying firmly within legal and ethical boundaries, and avoiding anything that directly harm or contravenes our firm principles,” he shares.

But for entrepreneurs seeking to raise capital in these times, how they show up to investors is increasingly important. According to Salem, fundraising should be approached cautiously during this period, grounded in the understanding that, in times of volatility, investors tend to shift their focus from growth stories to risk management and operational discipline. “This means clearly explaining how the company would perform under slower economic activity or disruptions in the region,” Salem explains. “Investors are especially reassured by signals such as strong unit economics and improving margins; evidence of cost discipline and responsible capital allocation; stable or growing customer retention; [and] a credible path to profitability or breakeven. In uncertain periods, investors are less interested in ambitious projections and more interested in founders who show calm, data-driven leadership.” Shin agrees, saying that for investors, optics are increasingly centered around clarity and fundamentals, as well as shifting industry priorities. “We’re seeing more pricing sensitivity and, more importantly, more structure—investors want better terms, clearer milestones, and sometimes smaller initial checks with follow-on reserved for execution,” he says. “That said, the best companies don’t get ‘cheap.’ In uncertain markets, capital concentrates into category leaders and teams with undeniable traction—while weaker stories struggle to meet last year’s expectations.”

Looking ahead, Shin lists a number of signals that could either slow or accelerate venture activity in the region. On the former, Shin says, “We would slow down if we see prolonged disruption to critical logistics corridors (e.g., sustained constraints around key shipping lanes), material restrictions that break startup operations (payment rails, cross-border contracting, key staff mobility), [or] a broad risk-off shift that reduces the ability to finance follow-on rounds responsibly.” But Shin also says that investment could pick up on the back of several key signals, with the obvious one being a clear de-escalation of the crisis, which, in turn, would restore travel, trade, and capital flow predictability. Additionally, stabilization in shipping and insurance markets as real, immediate transmission mechanisms into the economy would support increasing investment. Finally, Shin points to active government support, and particularly government procurement, as a clear signal to amp up investment.

For business leaders, however, the implications of this environment ultimately return to the same principle that Salem highlighted at the outset: resilience. As founders in the MENA work to manage their businesses and cash flows in the immediate future, Salem recommends that they treat this period as a test of fundamentals. “Stay close to your customers, understand your economics deeply, and maintain the flexibility to adapt quickly if conditions shift,” Salem advises. “Periods of instability are challenging, but they also reshape markets. The companies that survive them often emerge stronger, more disciplined, and with fewer competitors. Resilience will define the winners in the months ahead.”