We’re putting something together and want your participation.
Over the years, the region has been quietly building an ecosystem while the world wasn’t watching.
It’s taken a village to get this far, and it will take a collective effort and reciprocity from those of us who succeeded to reinvest and get us even further.
There hasn’t been a more pivotal moment for us to band together as a block of ecosystem builders than today, to empower the future founders of tomorrow. Our region is hurting during this challenging time. And yet, despite all of this, people are still building and advancing our region forward. We continue to be inspired by the founders that are coming out of our ecosystem with bold ambitions of a better tomorrow. And we’re here to back them and believe in them, having faith that over the long-term the region will continue to progress, with new role models emerging, and more value being created and recycled back for future generations.
As you know very well, starting and building a company is one of the hardest things anyone can do. It requires an insane obsession, determined persistence and incredible courage to endure. Each of you are role models and leaders of our ecosystem.
This means you are sought after, and get plenty of opportunities coming to your door all the time, without the bandwidth to adequately review them.
Most of you are fully focused on scaling your respective companies, and you might lose track of what is happening around you. It’s hard with so much going on in the region, and with the rapid development of AI.
All the while, talent continues to be one of the most competitive and critical areas that you continue to solve for.
This initiative brings everyone together to address a lot of the challenges we just described. This does not have any obligation or time commitment, no expectation to mentor and no recurring meetings. We will enable this impact through a vehicle that unites us together. This is purely opt-in, and nothing additional is required from you other than to participate with and leverage what we have built at COTU, where we will do our best to find the best founders, invest in them and deliver returns and impact along the way.
This isn’t a charity or impact fund at all, but a way to enable a network of extraordinary people to participate in the development of our region.
The COTU Champions Circle SPV is an invite-only investment vehicle designed to align exceptional founders, and a limited number of operators, with COTU’s long-term vision.
This is not a community, nor a network or an information-sharing forum. It is a high-trust, low-noise alignment vehicle for people who value good judgment, and want to contribute to something impactful.
This gives you some skin in the game where you play a part in the impact we’re trying to have in the ecosystem. You’ll also get access to co-investments subject to availability, founder alignment and COTU’s discretion. No reporting or information rights. See next section for more detail.
When normally, our minimum LP check is $250k. As an LP you will benefit from capital calls spread out over time (around 4 years), access to our annual LP event, and richer quarterly updates from the portfolio and ecosystem. Here is a link to our deck for more information.
Today, we are fortunate to have Mudassir Sheikha, Magnus Olsson, Michael Lahyani, Jad Antoun, and several other founders as LPs, and we would be honored to have you join us on this mission.
This is not a typical LP investment. It’s an investment in a network and an extension of you, both in talent and brainpower, as well as access to new opportunities to invest in across the ecosystem. While you’ll technically be an LP through the SPV or directly into COTU Champions Fund II and its economic upside, you’ll also have the following:
Whatever capital you decide to invest should be returned to you in spades over the next decade (so this will hopefully be at no real cost to you). Again, no guarantees, but we are confident in the region's potential, the pipeline of talented founders, and the size of the opportunity in front of us.
Especially true for later-stage co-investment opportunities (Series A onwards). For Pre-Seed and Seed opportunities, we will try to carve out room for some of you so that you can go directly into the company, subject to alignment between yourselves and the founder directly.
Using COTU to help diligence deals where you don’t have the bandwidth to diligence yourself. This gives you the ability to write checks with low cognitive load.
If you have an idea of a new venture, you can have founder equity and watch it come to life. We don’t intend to do many incubations, but if we find the right idea and leverage our network of talent, we may find ourselves building a couple of ventures internally. Should you have an idea you’re excited about, you can just tell us, and we can find a way to make it happen, while giving you skin in the game.
Being part of something bigger than yourself.
The goal here is to ensure we preserve trust with our future founders, portfolio companies, and institutional LPs alike. In order to do that, the following guardrails need to be in place:
This is a founder-led vehicle, with a small number of invited exceptional operators. Admission is by invitation only, capped, and based on trust, discretion, and experience building at scale.
While there is no guarantee of success, we know that with your support and participation, the ecosystem has nothing but upside. We’re committed to the region, driving entrepreneurship and empowering the next generation of founders. Together, we know we will make a meaningful difference.
We are trying to create the highest quality network of ecosystem builders that the region has to offer. If this sounds like something you’d be excited to stand behind, let us know. We would be honored to have you. Either way, we truly appreciate you taking the time to go through this, and we hope to connect again soon.