Rise, fall & reinvention

Hi, friends! 👋

Few startup journeys are as electrifying, or as brutal, as Idriss Al Rifai’s.

A former professional basketball player turned special forces operative, his path to entrepreneurship – and to founding Fetchr, a logistics startup once hailed as MENA’s next unicorn – was anything but conventional.

Fetchr’s mission was audacious: to crack last-mile delivery in emerging markets, where half the population lacks a formal address.

To make it happen, Idriss raised tens of millions from global investors – including a landmark round from Silicon Valley heavyweight NEA – and built a company that scaled at breakneck speed.

Revenue skyrocketed from $8 million to $256 million in just three years.

Planes were chartered, fleets of vehicles deployed, and at its peak, Fetchr operated across 500 cities with 6,000 employees.

And then, the unraveling began.

A perfect storm of geopolitical shocks, investor pullouts, and operational hurdles sent Fetchr into a tailspin.

Funding lifelines vanished overnight.

Within weeks, Idriss and his leadership team were wiped off the cap table entirely.

The company he had built from the ground up was no longer his.

For most, that would have been the end of the story.

But for Idriss, it was another beginning.

On the eve of his latest venture, Flow48, announcing a $69M Series A, we sat down with him for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about the realities of hypergrowth, the emotional toll of tying self-worth to a company, and the profound isolation of being a founder.

He shares his hard-won lessons on hiring, scaling, and raising capital – and why, despite everything, he chose to build again.

In our interview, we cover:

• 🚀 Fetchr’s meteoric rise, raising millions, scaling across 500 cities, and what led to its downfall

• 🌍 How Idriss convinced Silicon Valley investors to bet on MENA, and why he approaches fundraising differently at Flow48

• 🧠 The hidden toll of building at breakneck speed, the isolation of being a founder, and why losing Fetchr forced a complete reset

• 🚫 Why prestige hires often fail, how Glovo changed his approach, and the biggest mistake he won’t repeat

• 💰 The $140 billion opportunity Flow48 is tackling and how Idriss plans to scale differently this time around

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Actionable insights 🧠 🛠️

If you only have a few minutes to spare, here are a few of the tactical takeaways from our interview with Idriss — from a building perspective.

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