In most markets, the thing that kills a startup is product or funding. In MENA, it is often something else entirely: licensing, regulatory approvals, procurement, and policy risk. Most funds hand a founder a check and wish them luck. Wes Schwalje and Walid Aradi built Red Tape Ventures, a $1MM seed fund backing marketplace and enablement technology founders across the region, on the opposite instinct. They run at the rulebook that scares everyone else off, because when it is still being written, that is exactly where the advantage lives.

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Walid frames the thesis without hedging. "We treat regulation as an opportunity. It's not a risk," he says. "Most investors run away from sectors" where the rules are stifling or undefined. Red Tape does the inverse. "We run towards that type of risk." The logic is durable. When a market is hard enough to kill most startups, the founder who actually solves it becomes very hard to displace. "The regulation itself is the moat," Walid says. It is why they named the fund the way they did. "We invest in red tape."

That conviction is earned, not theoretical. Before launching the fund, Wes and Walid co-founded Tahseen Consulting, a public sector strategy firm that advised more than 20 public companies and 14 unicorns as they entered and scaled across MENA, India, and Southeast Asia. Between them, they have backed founders in more than 20 emerging markets, work that has helped create over 2 million economic opportunities.

What separates Red Tape from a fund that simply cuts checks is the range of the support. Wes points to the most telling feedback they have received from founders they backed earlier in their careers. Some of them, he says, "would not have considered starting some businesses if they didn't have our support."

The pair have worked across the full arc of a company, from the first idea through scaling across a region Wes describes as "around 22 countries," each with its own regulatory reality. They have also sat close to two of the region's larger outcomes, including Uber's acquisition of Careem. At the launch stage, that translates into licensing and regulatory frameworks. At scale, it becomes government partnerships and de-risked market entry. At exit, it becomes competition policy and merger approval.

A common misread, Wes says, is that this is a game of access, of knowing the right people. He is blunt that it is more than that. "It's never really an access question. It's access plus what you say, how you lobby for regulation, how you lobby for licensing, how you can cooperate and partner with policymakers."

Walid, who spent time inside cabinet rooms advising governments before the pair started Tahseen more than 15 years ago, adds the strategic layer. In MENA, governments are not only regulators. They are "the biggest customers and distribution channels, potential partners," and sometimes competitors. The playbook is to align with the country's own agenda. "What they need to do is to align with government priorities, national visions and strategies in order for governments to see the value that they bring in to their markets," Walid says. "It's not about narrative. It's about becoming strategic partners for government entities that allows you to influence regulations in the right direction."

Formalizing the fund did not require reintroducing themselves to their backers. Walid notes that many of their LPs had already co-invested alongside them. "It's not like we came out of nowhere and had to explain to people what our value" is. The first believers are a specific archetype: technology executives from big tech, former clients who have watched them operate, and serial entrepreneurs writing larger angel checks who wanted exposure to a portfolio rather than a single bet. Increasingly the fund is also in conversations with smaller institutional investors, family offices, and high net worth individuals with a lens on the region.

What binds them is a belief in the region through disruption. Wes points out that category-defining companies have repeatedly been built in hard moments, from Network International during the Gulf War to BNPL leaders that grew through instability. Red Tape lives that thesis. "We started a fund and did a first close during a war actually," Wes says.

The fund invests at pre-seed and seed across marketplace platforms and enablement technology: e-commerce, mobility, prop tech, social commerce, supply chain, and financial infrastructure. The unifying thread is regulatory complexity. Their first investment is Charikati in Morocco, an AI-powered platform automating company incorporation, accounting, and corporate services. Forming a company in Morocco can take about 30 days of in-person paperwork across multiple agencies. Charikati compresses that to four or five days. Just as important to the thesis, Walid saw a model built to replicate. When the company expands into other MENA markets, he notes, there is no one better positioned to help it navigate each new rulebook than Red Tape.

Red Tape Ventures is a bet on a simple inversion: the regulatory friction that sends most capital running is the exact place a specialist fund can build a lasting edge. For LPs, that means a team with genuine operating history, real relationships with policymakers, and a portfolio-level answer to a region often treated as too complicated to underwrite. For founders building where the rules are still being drawn, it means backers who have walked that path with unicorns before and will walk it again. As Walid puts it, the regulation itself is the moat, and this is a fund built to hold it.

Learn more about the fund and request access on Decile Access: https://decileaccess.com/funds/red-tape-ventures

Red Tape Ventures is a $1MM seed fund backing MENA marketplace and enablement technology founders building in sectors most VCs avoid because the rulebook is still being written. Co-founded by Wes Schwalje and Walid Aradi, the fund pairs capital with deep regulatory and public sector expertise drawn from Tahseen Consulting, which advised more than 20 public companies and 14 unicorns across MENA, India, and Southeast Asia. The founders have backed startups in more than 20 emerging markets, helping create over 2 million economic opportunities.

Watch The Full Episode Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JX_xqXQ0lI