Most founders approach investor outreach the same way. They open a browser, search for "VCs in the UAE," compile every name they find into a spreadsheet, and start sending the same deck to everyone on the list. Six weeks later they have a full inbox of silence and no clear picture of why.
Building an investor target list is not a research exercise. It is a strategic decision about who you approach, in what order, and why. This post covers how to do that properly for a UAE raise. It is one of the foundational steps in the broader guide to raising capital in the GCC, and worth reading alongside it.
The investor target list UAE founders tend to build is too long and poorly filtered. The fix is not to research more investors. It is to research fewer investors more carefully, then sequence your outreach with deliberate intent.
Why most investor lists fail before outreach starts
The spray-and-pray list is the most common problem I see when founders come to us mid-process. The issue is usually not that they have targeted the wrong investors, though they often have. It is that they have not prioritised. They have 80 names and no way to distinguish between a fund they have a warm introduction to and one they found on a website three days ago.
The cost is not just wasted time. The cost is sequencing. In a market as small as the UAE, the order in which you approach GCC investors is almost as important as who you approach. A fund that hears about your company from another investor before you have had the chance to tell your story is a fund you have partially lost before the conversation starts.
A workable target list for a seed round in the UAE typically sits between 20 and 40 investors, depending heavily on your sector. A deep tech or climate company with a narrow mandate may have a universe of 15 genuinely relevant investors. A B2B SaaS company with traction has more. The number is not the point. The point is that every name on the list should be there for a specific reason you can articulate.
The three filters that actually matter
Before any name goes on your list, it should pass three filters: sector mandate, stage and check size, and relationship warmth. These are not sequential steps. You apply all three simultaneously, and any investor who does not pass all three does not belong on the list.
Sector mandate. This is the most obvious filter and the one founders skip most often. A fund that invests in fintech and healthcare does not invest in logistics, regardless of how good your pitch is. This seems self-evident, but the number of founders who pitch outside mandate because a fund is well-known, or because they got a warm introduction to the wrong fund, is significant.
The research here is specific. You want to know not just a fund's stated sector focus, but their actual portfolio. Stated mandates are sometimes broader than what funds actually back. The only reliable signal is where they have deployed capital. MAGNiTT, fund websites, and Crunchbase all provide partial pictures of portfolio composition. None is complete. Cross-referencing two or three sources is worth the extra hour.
Funds worth understanding by category in the UAE: Global Ventures and Shorooq Partners have active, diversified portfolios with strong regional footprints. BECO Capital and Wamda Capital have longer track records across multiple sectors. Nuwa Capital focuses on growth-stage companies rather than seed. Venture Souq operates as a syndicate rather than a fund. Each has a meaningfully different mandate, check size, and decision process. Treating them as interchangeable because they all invest in the UAE is one of the mistakes this article exists to prevent.
Stage and check size. A fund writing $3M to $10M cheques does not write $300K seed cheques, even if their mandate fits and the meeting goes well. Understanding a fund's typical entry point and whether your seed funding round fits within it is table-stakes research that founders skip because it requires more than a quick website scan.
The practical implication: if you are raising a $750K pre-seed round, your list should skew toward funds that have written cheques of that size in the last 18 months. Not funds that say they invest at seed. Funds that have demonstrably done so recently. This matters because fund cycles affect appetite. A fund in its last year of deployment may be reserving capital for follow-ons. A fund that just announced a new vehicle is actively looking.
Relationship warmth. Once you have filtered by mandate and stage, you tier the remaining names by how easily you can access them. Warm introduction from a founder in their portfolio. Previous interaction at an event. Mutual contact through a co-investor. Cold outreach with no connection at all.
This tier determines your sequencing, not whether to approach the investor. An investor with a perfect mandate that you can only access cold still belongs on your list. They just do not go first.
How to research investors before you reach out
There is no single source that gives you a complete picture of the UAE venture capital landscape. The approach I use with founders combines several sources, each of which fills in gaps the others leave.
MAGNiTT is the most comprehensive database of MENA venture activity. It is imperfect. Deals are underreported and data is often delayed. But it is the best available source for understanding which funds have been active in which sectors and at which stages. For a UAE raise, filtering by recent activity in the last 12 to 18 months is more useful than looking at historical data. A fund that was active in your sector three years ago may have a different focus now.
Fund websites and LinkedIn are the next layer. Fund websites tell you what a fund wants you to think about them, which is useful for understanding positioning and less useful for understanding actual portfolio focus. LinkedIn tells you who the decision-makers are at each fund, which partners lead which sectors, and sometimes who has moved between funds recently. Partner movement matters. An investor who led a sector at one fund and recently moved to another likely has strong conviction in that space and may be actively looking to build a portfolio around it.
Your existing network is the layer most founders underuse. Not in the obvious sense of asking for introductions, which comes later. In the sense of using conversations with other founders, advisors, and anyone who knows the GCC market to pressure-test your assumptions. Which funds are currently in active deployment? Which are known to be slow at decision-making? Which investors are genuinely good board partners at early stage versus ones who are passive unless there is a problem? This information does not live in any database. It lives in the founder community, which in the UAE is small enough that a few conversations will surface most of it.
Partner or associate: who you should actually contact
Most founders know they should research funds. Fewer think carefully about who at a fund they should actually approach, and the answer depends entirely on your situation.
If you do not have a direct path to a partner, through your own network or through a warm founder referral, the associate or principal is the right entry point. This is not a consolation move. Finding and championing deals is their job. Associates and principals at UAE venture capital funds are actively looking for deal flow, and when they find something worth backing, they become internal advocates for it. A deal that comes in through an associate who believes in it is often in a stronger position at a partner meeting than one that arrives cold through a partner who barely remembers the conversation.
The calculation changes when you have a genuine connection. If another founder backed by that fund can make the introduction, use it. Go direct to the partner. Founder referrals are the strongest signal in the GCC investor market. When a portfolio founder tells a partner they should meet you, the meeting starts differently. Investor referrals, from a co-investor or someone the fund respects, are also worth acting on. But the tier-one signal is founder to founder.
Cold outreach to a partner at a fund you have no connection to is a lower-probability move than routing through the associate layer. It is not impossible. But partners at active UAE venture capital funds receive significant inbound volume. A well-researched, mandate-specific pitch going to the right associate will convert at a higher rate than a cold email to a partner who has no prior context on you.
Before any outreach, also confirm whether a fund has portfolio companies that compete directly with yours. The partner who led that investment is not going to lead your deal. That does not remove the fund from your list. It means you need to identify a different entry point.
Sequencing your outreach
Once your list is built and tiered, the sequencing question is about managing information flow and momentum.
The principle is straightforward: do not start with your highest-priority investors. Start with investors where you can afford to be imperfect. Earlier conversations where a rough edge in your narrative, an unanswered question in the Q&A, or a gap in your materials will not cost you a door you need to keep open. Use those meetings to sharpen your story. Then bring the refined version to the investors that matter most.
This is not about being dishonest with early-stage investors. It is about recognising that the first time you walk through your deck with a live audience, questions will surface that you did not anticipate. Better to encounter those questions with a friendly investor at a smaller fund than in a partner meeting at the fund you most want to close.
The sequencing also affects your ability to create momentum. When GCC investors ask who else you are talking to, and they will, your answer matters. A process where multiple serious investors are engaged simultaneously creates a different dynamic from one where you are working through your list one by one. Managing the timeline so that your highest-priority investors are in active conversations at the same time is one of the things a structured process achieves that ad hoc outreach does not.
Keeping the list current
One thing that catches founders off guard: the UAE venture capital landscape moves faster than most expect. Funds announce new vehicles. Partners move between funds. Mandates shift as funds build out existing portfolio positions. A target list built in January may be partially out of date by March.
The practical implication is to treat your list as a living document, not a one-time exercise. Before each batch of outreach, run a quick check on recent activity for that group of investors. A fund that just announced a follow-on investment in your competitor sector is signalling something about their current focus. A fund whose most recent announcement is from 18 months ago may be between vehicles.
Work with Dopamine on your investor research
Getting the list right before outreach starts is one of the things we work through directly with founders in the Data Room and Investor Readiness session. It covers investor targeting, documentation gaps, and how to pressure-test your process before it goes live. If you want to practice the pitch itself before you start approaching investors, the Pitch Simulation session runs you through a realistic investor meeting with feedback from the fund side.
FAQ
How many investors should be on a seed round target list in the UAE?It depends on your sector, but a working list for most UAE seed rounds sits between 20 and 40 investors. More than that and you are almost certainly including names that do not fit your mandate, stage, or round size, which means your outreach becomes unfocused and your sequencing falls apart. The quality of the list matters more than the length.
Where do I find active investors in the UAE?MAGNiTT is the most comprehensive database for MENA venture activity. Fund websites and LinkedIn fill in the gaps around individual partners and recent focus areas. The most valuable intelligence about which funds are actively deploying and which investors are genuinely good early-stage partners comes from conversations with other founders in the region. That network is small enough that a few introductions will get you most of what you need.
Should I reach out to a partner or an associate?It depends on your access. If you have a founder referral or a genuine network connection to a partner, use it. Founder referrals are the strongest signal in the GCC investor market, and a direct introduction to a partner carries real weight. If you do not have that path, the associate or principal is the right entry point. Finding and championing deals is their job. A well-researched pitch that lands with a motivated associate will often travel further internally than cold outreach to a partner who has no prior context on you.
Should I approach investors cold or wait for a warm introduction?Both are viable. Warm introductions convert to meetings at a significantly higher rate. But waiting indefinitely for a warm introduction to a high-priority investor is a mistake. If you have done your research, have a credible narrative, and understand the fund's mandate, a well-targeted cold email to the right person at the fund will get a response.
How do I know if a fund is actually deploying capital right now?Look at their recent portfolio additions on their website and on MAGNiTT. A fund that has not made a new investment in 12 to 18 months may be between vehicles, reserving capital for follow-ons, or paused for internal reasons. Recent LinkedIn activity from partners, including posts about new investments and announcements about portfolio companies, is a useful signal. If you are not sure, a direct question to someone in your network who knows the fund will usually get you an honest answer.
