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This week on VC React, it’s all about second-time founders in MENA, from Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, the duo behind Expensya’s $120M exit, returning with ThunderCode and a $9M seed round, to Spotii’s Anusha Iqbal and Ziyaad Ahmed launching legal tech startup Qanooni.
We start in Tunisia, where Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani have launched ThunderCode, a startup using AI agents to automate QA testing. With early traction in four markets and backing from Silicon Badia, Janngo Capital, Titan Seed Fund, and angels like Roxanne Varza (Station F) and Karim Beguir (InstaDeep), the discussion turns to whether vertical-specific AI is the new frontier, and what it takes to avoid plateauing after early revenue bursts.
Then to the UAE, where Qanooni is rethinking how lawyers draft and review documents. The startup integrates directly with Microsoft Word and Outlook, meeting lawyers where they already work. We debate the merits of top-down versus bottom-up GTM as well as what defensibility looks like in the context of vertical AI use cases.
We then wrap with Kumulus Water, a startup producing clean drinking water from air using AI-enabled atmospheric generators. As it expands across the Gulf, we consider MENA’s water scarcity problem, and the viability of “hardware plus AI” models at scale.
This week, Jamie and Ahmad were joined by:
Brant Mayer, Partner at Trac VC
Elliott Denham, Head of Startup Programs at Oraseya Capital
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