Khaled Talhouni, co-founder and managing partner at Nuwa Capital: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Khaled Talhouni (LinkedIn), co-founder and managing partner at Nuwa Capital. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

My name is Khaled Talhouni. I’ve been in the VC space for about 18 years, and have done about 200 investments. I’m the co-founder and managing partner of Nuwa Capital. We’re an early-stage venture capital firm looking at investing in early-stage tech companies across the Middle East and North Africa, particularly focused on the GCC, so UAE and Saudi.

The key challenge we wanted to address was the lack of truly focused early-stage firms in the region. We thought there was still a lot of room for that — firms that really concentrate on early-stage opportunities and founders, especially in this part of the world. We wanted to be supremely founder-friendly and very helpful to our founders when we invested, and equally very transparent with our own investors, creating true partnerships with them.

There are definitely some founder traits we look for. Founders who’ve had some startup experience, that’s always a big plus. It gives us more confidence they know what they’re in for. But beyond that, they need a reasonable sense of self-confidence. That said, they also have to be receptive to feedback, especially from the market. One of the best predictors of success, in our view, is the founder’s ability to evolve and pivot their business over time. You need to have that balance between confidence in your vision and the ability to adapt. Having a strong positive feedback loop is critical.

At Nuwa, I basically oversee the firm as a whole. I help manage the team, direct relationships with our investors, and push forward our investment thesis. I also get involved in sourcing and executing investments, and I do direct investments myself as well. I sit on a number of boards across our portfolio. So it’s very much a 360-degree role — strategic and operational, but still very hands-on.

I try to clear my inbox on a daily basis, which is super important for me to stay organized. I don’t always succeed, but that’s a key habit for me. I also use WhatsApp a lot for communication, and I try to zero that out every day too. Again, not always successful, but I try. Structuring the firm’s operations around recurring weekly meetings like pipeline and portfolio management also helps us stay aligned and on top of things.

I used to be a morning gym person. I’d wake up around 6:45, have two, sometimes three, shots of espresso as a pre-workout, and then park near the office and walk to the gym, which is about 1.5 km away. I’d do strength training, then walk back another 1.5 km. So by mid-morning, I’d already walked around 7-10k steps. Then, I’d get to the office, check my inbox and email, and start the day. More recently, I’ve flipped my routine. So now I go to the gym in the evenings instead. That’s become my way of unwinding after a long day. I also still walk a lot during that time.

During those walks, I’m always listening to something, either an audiobook or a podcast. I consume a lot of content, and it’s usually a mix of three areas I’m interested in: venture and tech, history, and fiction. That habit of always listening to something valuable or enriching is part of my daily rhythm. It’s another way to unwind.

One podcast I’ve really gotten into in the past six months is Acquired. I’ve been listening to it religiously. It’s a business podcast that dives deep into the history of companies — like Facebook, for example. They go into a lot of depth, and the research is excellent. Each episode can be three to five hours long, and sometimes they break it into multiple episodes on a single company. You learn a lot from the journeys of these iconic businesses.

One of the biggest trends we’re seeing, which I think is going to have a huge impact, is artificial intelligence. AI basically allows you to create a ton of efficiency. We expect that the pace at which companies are formed and scaled will increase significantly. At the same time, the cost of scaling a business will come down, just because the ability to scale becomes so much more cost-effective with AI tools.

We’re going to see many more startups getting founded in the region. There’s more validation now, more success stories people can point to. In the early days, we had companies like Careem and Souq. But now we’re seeing exits like Jahez, and more like Tabby and Tamara gearing up for IPOs. Every success like this increases the odds that others will enter the market. Would-be founders look at these role models and think, “I want to do that too.”

Next, for Nuwa, we want to keep investing — growing the firm, growing the fund, and helping our companies grow. It’s an ongoing journey that’s never-ending and continuous, and that’s something I’m very focused on, both personally and professionally.

The best professional advice I ever received was around mindset. For a lot of people, our default setting is to be cynical, whether it’s a new relationship, a new idea, an investment, or even a concept. The advice I got was to try and reset that default to being open. That doesn’t mean you should be naive, but it means being very receptive to whatever comes through first, then filtering or reducing from there. So: avoid cynicism upfront.

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