Funding, in plain words.

Grant also: prize, award, non-dilutive funding

Money you do not repay, and for which you give up no share of the company. In exchange you usually accept conditions: spend it on what you said you would, report on it, hit milestones, sometimes match it with your own money or stay in the country for a period.

It is the cheapest capital that exists — and the slowest. Applications are long, decisions take months, and the money often arrives in instalments after you have already spent it.

On the mapCards in the Grant & Prize category, and any card whose Equity row reads “No equity”.

Loan also: debt, financing, credit facility

Money you repay, usually with interest or, in Sharia-compliant structures, a profit rate or fee. You keep one hundred percent of your company. If the business fails, the debt does not simply disappear — how far that reaches you personally depends on the structure and on your jurisdiction.

Development banks in the Gulf lend to startups on terms no commercial bank would offer: no collateral, long grace periods, subsidised rates.

On the mapThe Loan & Guarantee category — for example Emirates Development Bank, Khalifa Fund, the Industrial Bank of Kuwait.

Guarantee also: credit guarantee scheme

Not money to you at all. A third party — usually a government body — promises your bank that it will cover part of the loss if you cannot repay. That promise is what makes the bank willing to lend to a company with no assets and no track record. You still owe the bank the full amount.

On the mapMBRIF in the UAE and Kafalah in Saudi Arabia both work this way. They sit under Loan & Guarantee, not under Grant — the money is repayable.

Equity also: shares, a stake, an ownership share

You sell a percentage of the company for money. There is nothing to repay, ever — and that is exactly the point and the price. The investor now owns part of your company permanently, shares in whatever it is eventually worth, and usually gains rights: information, a board seat, a say in a sale.

Equity is the most expensive capital if you succeed and the cheapest if you fail. A grant of $100,000 costs you a report. Equity worth $100,000 today can cost you millions later — or nothing, if the company never gets there.

On the mapEvery card has an Equity row that says what you give up: “No equity”, “Yes — equity stake”, “Convertible”, or “Not published”. Read that row before you read the amount.

Convertible loan also: convertible note, convertible

It starts as a loan and turns into shares. When you later raise a proper priced round, the loan does not get repaid in cash — it converts into equity at the terms of that round, usually improved by a discount or a cap. For you that means no dilution today and no repayment pressure, but dilution later, on terms you cannot fully see yet.

On the mapSnoonu Startup Factory in Doha funds this way, and QDB Ithmar uses a convertible Musharaka.

Discount

The reward for going first. If your convertible carries a 20 % discount, it converts at 80 % of the price the new investors pay in that round. The early money buys more shares per dollar than the later money, because it took more risk.

Valuation cap

A ceiling on the valuation at which your convertible converts, no matter how well the next round goes. If the cap is $5 M and you later raise at $20 M, the early money still converts as if the company were worth $5 M — so it gets four times as many shares. It protects the early investor from your own success, and it is the single term first-time founders most often overlook.

SAFE Simple Agreement for Future Equity

A convertible without being a loan. No interest, no repayment date, no maturity — just a right to shares in the future, on agreed terms. It is shorter and cheaper to sign than a convertible note, which is why accelerators use it. It is also not debt, so there is nothing to repay if the next round never happens; you simply owe the shares whenever it does.

Musharaka Sharia-compliant partnership financing

A partnership in which the financier and the entrepreneur each contribute capital and share profit by agreement and loss in proportion to what they put in. Because there is no interest, it is Sharia-compliant. Some Musharaka agreements are convertible — the financier’s share can later become ordinary shares in the company.

On the mapQDB Ithmar funds up to 90 % of a project against 10 % from the entrepreneur, through a convertible Musharaka.

Buy-back

An agreement written in from the start that you may buy the investor’s shares back later, at a price and within a period fixed in advance. It gives a founder a route back to full ownership that ordinary equity does not offer — and it gives the investor a defined exit in a market with few trade sales and fewer IPOs.

On the mapSharakah in Oman takes equity with a buy-back path of roughly six years.

Ticket size also: cheque size

How much one investor puts into one company — not the size of their fund. A fund of $100 M with a ticket size of $250,000 is not writing you a $100 M cheque; it is looking for a few hundred companies. The two numbers answer different questions, and cards on the map keep them apart.

Valuation pre-money · post-money

What the company is agreed to be worth in this round — agreed, not measured. Pre-money is the value before the new money goes in; post-money is pre-money plus the new money. The investor’s percentage is always calculated against the post-money figure, which is why the distinction is worth a lot of money.

Dilution

Your percentage shrinks whenever new shares are issued. This is not a loss in itself — a smaller slice of a much larger pie is the whole point of raising. It becomes a problem only when you have given away so much so early that later investors see a founder with too little left to stay motivated.

Equity-free also: non-dilutive

The programme takes no shares at all. Grants are non-dilutive by definition; so are most loans, and many accelerators that offer only space, mentoring and introductions. Non-dilutive money is not free — it costs time, reporting and sometimes a commitment to stay in the country — but it costs you no ownership.

Tranches also: milestone-based release

The money is released in parts against agreed goals rather than paid in one transfer. A card that promises “up to” an amount is often describing the sum of all tranches, not the first cheque. Plan your runway on the first tranche, not the headline.

On the mapThe Startup Qatar Investment Program releases funding in tranches against mutually agreed milestones.

Pro-rata right

An investor’s right to put more money into your later rounds in order to keep their percentage from shrinking. Harmless and normal on its own; worth watching when several investors hold it at once, because together they can leave little room for the new investor you actually want.

Pre-seed

Money to find out whether the thing works at all. Usually a founding team, a prototype, and a first handful of users. Comes from grants, accelerators, angels and the earliest funds — very often as a convertible or a SAFE, because valuing the company at this stage is guesswork.

Seed

Money to find out whether people will pay. The product exists and some customers use it; the round buys the time to prove that acquiring them can be repeated and paid for. Usually the first priced round, so usually the first real valuation and the first real dilution.

Series A

Money to scale something that already works. Investors expect evidence, not a plan: revenue that grows, customers who stay, a channel that produces more of them for a known cost. This is where a Gulf company most often looks beyond the region for capital.

Accelerator vs incubator

An accelerator takes a group of companies through a fixed programme — typically three to six months — with a defined start, a defined end and often an investment. An incubator has no clock: you stay while you need the space, the support and the services. In practice the labels are used loosely, so read the card rather than the word.

Cohort also: batch, wave

The group that goes through a programme together, and the reason applications open and close instead of running all year. If a card says applications are closed, it usually means one cohort is running and the next has not been announced — not that the programme has ended.

Demo day

The event that closes a cohort, where the companies present to an invited room of investors, corporates and press. It matters less as a stage than as a deadline: everything in the programme is built to be ready for it.

Regulatory sandbox

Permission from a regulator to run a regulated service — lending, payments, insurance — with real customers, under supervision, at limited scale, without holding the full licence yet. For a fintech founder it is often worth more than money, because it is the only legal way to test the product at all.

On the mapThe central banks of the UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain, plus SAMA and the CMA in Saudi Arabia, all run sandbox routes.

Free zone

A defined area with its own company law, its own registration process and, in some cases, its own courts. It usually means full foreign ownership, simplified licensing and a package of visas — and a company registered there may face limits on trading directly in the wider domestic market.

ICV In-Country Value

A score measuring how much of your spending stays inside the country — local staff, local suppliers, local manufacturing. In the Gulf it decides who may bid for large public and semi-public contracts, which makes it a revenue question, not a paperwork question.

LP and GP

The GP, the general partner, is the team that runs a fund and decides where it invests. The LPs, the limited partners, are the institutions and individuals whose money the fund invests — sovereign funds, development banks, family offices, corporates. When you pitch a fund you are pitching the GP; the LPs are the reason the fund has a mandate and a deadline.

Term sheet

A short document setting out the terms of a proposed investment — amount, valuation, rights — before the long contracts are written. It is mostly non-binding, and it is nonetheless the moment the deal is really decided: almost nothing improves for the founder after it is signed.

Due diligence also: DD

The investor’s examination of everything you have claimed: the accounts, the contracts, the cap table, who owns the intellectual property, whether the company is properly registered. Nothing speeds up a raise like having these ready before anyone asks.

Cap table capitalisation table

The list of who owns what, including options promised and shares that convertibles will one day become. Keep it accurate from the first day. A messy cap table — a forgotten co-founder, an undocumented promise — kills more deals at this stage than a weak product does.

Runway

How many months you can keep operating on the money you have. Cash divided by monthly burn. It is the number that decides when to start raising, and the honest answer is: earlier than feels necessary, because a round takes longer than anyone plans.