The infrastructure layer
of the MENA creator economy.
400 million Arabic speakers. A $276M influencer market growing at 37.7% annually. Zero platforms built for it. Rawshi is the category — not a product in a category.
Every generation of the internet has produced one infrastructure company for each region.
In 2012, the Arab world got Careem — the region's ride-hailing infrastructure, ultimately acquired by Uber for $3.1B.
In 2017, the region got Noon — e-commerce infrastructure built for Arabic consumers, with regional payment rails, regional logistics, regional trust.
In 2021, Tamara and Tabby brought BNPL infrastructure calibrated for regional spending behaviour.
Each company had one thing in common: they weren't first in their category globally. They were the first infrastructure built for this specific region. And they won.
The MENA creator economy is the next category waiting for its infrastructure company. The timing window is open right now.
- 2012Careem$3.1B acquisition · Regional ride-hailing infrastructure
- 2017NoonRegional e-commerce infrastructure
- 2021Tamara + TabbyRegional BNPL infrastructure
- 2026RawshiMENA creator economy infrastructure← The open category
"The question isn't whether MENA gets a creator economy marketplace. It's who builds it. Rawshi is building it now."
There is no professional infrastructure
for Arabic-speaking creators
or the brands that want to work with them.
- —No public ratesEvery deal begins with a DM and a negotiation
- —No payment protectionThey deliver content and pray the invoice gets paid
- —No verified media kitNo professional profile that functions as one
- —No market dataCreators routinely under-price — no benchmark exists
- —No business toolsNo invoicing, no pipeline, no analytics in one place
- —No professional pathwayNo reason beyond fame to choose creation as a career
- —No rate visibilityTwo weeks of negotiation before knowing a number
- —No payment protectionThey pay and hope content gets delivered
- —No vetting infrastructureNo way to verify audience authenticity
- —No self-serve accessEvery campaign requires agency mediation at 20–30%
- —No discovery for nichesFinding a specific MENA micro-audience is impossible
- —No campaign managementBriefs by WhatsApp, approvals by email, receipts manual
Rawshi doesn't compete with existing MENA creator platforms — because there are no meaningful existing MENA creator platforms. It competes with the status quo: WhatsApp negotiations, informal agreements, and agencies. That's the incumbent. And it's extremely beatable.
The real TAM is not $276M.
It's the entire value exchange between creators and the economy around them.
Transaction fee on bookings
8% of every booking. At $5M GMV = $400K. At $50M GMV = $4M. At $500M GMV = $40M. The ceiling is wherever MENA creator marketing spend goes.
Creator OS subscription
Shopify model applied to creators: a marketplace that sells tools to the very supply it generates. 5,000 subs at $30/mo = $1.8M ARR independent of bookings.
Creator promotion credits
Creators buy credits to surface themselves. Direct supply-side monetisation and the currency for Creator OS features — a two-sided revenue loop.
Business subscriptions
Team access, API, bulk booking, dedicated account managers for agencies and enterprise. High-value, recurring, largely independent of booking volume.
Each revenue layer feeds the others. More creators → more bookings → more GMV → more transaction revenue → more creators earn well → more invest in Creator OS → higher LTV → platform can afford better creator acquisition → more creators. This is not a linear business. It compounds.
Rawshi is a marketplace. Marketplaces compound. The moat builds itself.
Every successful marketplace company in history has one thing in common: the product gets better the more people use it. Rawshi is designed the same way.
A competitor can build the technology. They cannot buy the data, creator trust, brand relationships, or booking track records that accumulate inside Rawshi as the flywheel spins. Networks don't transfer.
Five structural advantages that cannot be replicated by adding an Arabic UI to a Western platform.
Creator supply
A marketplace without supply is a directory. Rawshi onboards verified MENA creators first. Collabstr can't do this from Vancouver. Passionfroot can't do this from Berlin. This is built in Cairo and Dubai, by people from this market.
Regional trust infrastructure
MENA creators have been burned by brands. MENA brands have been burned by creators. Escrow, dispute resolution, Verified badge, AI scoring — trust infrastructure that takes time to build and is catastrophically hard to import.
Arabic-first design + cultural fluency
Arabic UI is the table stake. Cultural fluency is the moat — Snapchat in KSA, Egyptian TikTok aesthetics, Ramadan booking seasons, Fashion creator in Riyadh vs Cairo. Cannot be learned without being here.
Regional payment infrastructure
Whop preferential rates, Telda for Egypt, payout architecture across 17 active MENA markets. Regulatory and operational — not built with a credit-card API.
The Creator OS lock-in
A creator's entire professional life lives inside Rawshi — invoices, analytics, pipeline, content, earnings. Same lock-in that keeps Shopify shops on Shopify and Notion teams on Notion. Workflow lock-in compounds.
Rawshi is not a platform. It's the reason people become content creators in the Arab world.
The most ambitious version of Rawshi is the one we're building toward.
A young person in Cairo, Riyadh, or Amman decides to become a content creator because they know Rawshi exists. They build a genuine audience around a niche; businesses find them, book them at professional rates, pay reliably. Rawshi is the economic promise that makes the creative leap worth taking.
A founder in Bahrain, a marketing director in Dubai, an e-commerce seller in Morocco — they all default to Rawshi for creator marketing the way they default to Google for search. AI matching means they never wonder which creator is right. Escrow means they never worry about payment risk.
Rawshi is the dominant creator economy platform in MENA — the largest verified creator supply in the Arab world, the most liquid booking marketplace, the most trusted payment infrastructure, and the most indispensable professional tools for Arabic-speaking creators.
The sky is the limit.
That is not a modest vision. It is an achievable one.
Full-stack MVP. Production-ready. End-to-end booking live.
Rawshi is not a deck. It is a product. Here is what has been built and is ready to launch.
- —Creator profiles with AI Rawshi Scores across 8 dimensions
- —Browse with 8 filters — niche, platform, country, follower tier, engagement, language, budget, score
- —AI Business URL Matching — ranked recommendations with reasoning
- —Creator shortlisting and shortlist management
- —Full booking flow — package, AI brief, Whop escrow payment
- —Acceptance, delivery, advertiser review and approval
- —Revision requests, dispute management, 48hr auto-release
- —Escrow release → payout queue → manual processing at launch
- —Creator dashboard — bookings, earnings, deliveries, profile, packages
- —Business dashboard — campaigns, review, spend, CSV export, saved
- —Admin panel — payouts, verification, disputes, platform analytics
- —AI Creator Scoring — 8-dimension score per creator on publish
- —AI Business URL Matching — website analysed, creators ranked
- —AI Brief Builder — guided brief with gap detection (in dev)
A real business can sign up today, find a real creator, submit a real brief, pay real money into real escrow, receive real content, and release real payment. The full transaction lifecycle works end to end.
The recurring revenue business hiding inside the marketplace.
Creator OS transforms Rawshi from a transaction business into a subscription business. It is the most important thing we're building after the marketplace is live.
Financial Suite
Professional invoicing in Arabic and English. Income/expense ledger. Monthly P&L. Brand deal pipeline. Tax estimation by MENA market. Payout forecasting.
Rawshi Lens
Cross-platform analytics in one dashboard. Audience demographics, engagement benchmarking vs MENA averages, campaign performance, rate benchmarking, downloadable reports.
AI Strategy Assistant
Campaign angle ideation. Bilingual captions. Hashtag intelligence for MENA. Brand fit scoring on incoming bookings. Built for Arabic content and Arab cultural context.
Content Studio
Script and caption editor with RTL/EN side by side. Brand asset manager. Direct publishing to IG, TikTok, X, LinkedIn. Delivery submission from the studio.
A marketplace at $5M GMV generates $400K in transaction fees. The same marketplace with 2,000 Creator OS subscribers at $29/month generates an additional $696K ARR — independent of booking volume, recurring monthly, with dramatically higher LTV.
See it.
Not a mockup.
Rawshi's full platform is production-ready. Hover the sidebar of the creator and business dashboards below — populated with live demo data.
Welcome back, Nour 👋
Here's what's happening with your profile.
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Built by operators. Validated by the market. Ready to scale.
What's validated
- —Full MVP built and production-ready — complete booking lifecycle end to end
- —Payment infrastructure secured — strategic Whop arrangement at preferential MENA rates
- —Payout infrastructure live — Telda (Egypt), Whop (UAE), manual transfer for remaining markets
- —17-market regional database — all active MENA countries with local currencies and payout methods
- —Creator OS waitlist — early creators signing up before the feature is built
- —Corporate structure simplified — four operating partners, independent entity, MOA
What's in active development
- —Job board — business posts brief, creators bid, award converts to a booking
- —AI Brief Builder — bilingual brief creation with gap detection
- —Creator OS Phase 2 build
Pre-launch signals
- —Partner network across Cairo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi — day-one access to creators and brands
- —Ally Salama (CEO): $35M+ in creator revenue at SuperOrdinary in 18 months — most direct market validation we have
- —Mohamed Abdelsattar (CTO): proven GTM scaling SaaS from $0 to $33,400 MRR in 4 months; runs a hand-picked team of 14 developers with 60+ tech solutions shipped across industries
- —Mohamed Hosam (COO): deep regional business network and internal/external authority; built one of the UAE's top digital marketing agencies — intimate understanding of how brands actually run campaigns
- —Youssef Salem (CFO): Hub71 + ADX/Nasdaq relationships — direct line to Gulf institutional capital
$35M+ in MENA creator revenue at SuperOrdinary in 18 months. Brings the network, the playbook, and the relationships that turn this market on.
Proven GTM: scaled SaaS from $0 to $33,400 MRR in 4 months. Leads a hand-picked team of 14 developers with 60+ tech solutions shipped across industries.
Built one of the UAE's top digital marketing agencies. Deep regional business network, internal/external authority, and intimate command of how brands run campaigns.
Hub71 + ADX/Nasdaq relationships. $150B+ transaction track record and direct credibility with Gulf institutional investors.
First-booking conversion rate from new business accounts. We're not measuring this yet — the marketplace isn't public. But it's the metric that will define Series A. Every operational choice we make pre-launch is oriented around making that first booking as frictionless and trust-generating as possible.
Four operators. Two companies. One independent entity. The right people at the right time.
Forbes 30 Under 30. Founder/CEO of VYVE. Former MENA Director of SuperOrdinary (Fanfix parent) — grew creator revenue from zero to $35M+ within 18 months.
Founded the first online Mental Health Magazine in the Middle East — Harvard's Top 7 Most Impactful Social Initiatives 2019, WHO recognition. Youngest board member, World Federation for Mental Health (2023).
~20 angel investments including Haloai, Roomz, Evoost AI, Algooru, Lumi AI, Zypl AI, Gameball. Artist (KairoKid) — real experience on both sides of the creator economy.
Responsible for: company vision and direction, creator acquisition, business development, Gulf market relationships
Founder and product director across a portfolio of B2B SaaS ventures built under inSylos Group — MyStudyGate, ShowShield, VisaLab, Pebblhub, Faslak, Train and Gain, and others.
Mohamed built Rawshi from concept to production-ready MVP, leading product architecture, Lovable-based development, payment infrastructure decisions, and the full platform build sequence documented across this deck.
His background spans product, B2B sales strategy, and multi-product company building across MENA. International Relations, AUC. Operator's instinct rather than theorist's — Rawshi's MVP exists because he built it.
Responsible for: product vision, technical architecture, engineering, and platform build
A decade leading digital, marketing, and product across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt — inside corporates and as a founder. Led digital across Alfanar's five-brand portfolio in Saudi Arabia after early years at Tarek Nour Communications and Chisel.
Co-Founder and former Managing Director of ByGrit (Dubai) — scaled from zero to a 50-person, multi-million-dirham regional agency serving MullenLowe, FP7, Weber Shandwick, Edelman, and Mojo. Stepped down as MD in August 2025; remains on the board as COO.
CEO of inSylos, the AI-driven tech studio that has delivered 12 products in 9 months — including Distoor, Daily 8, Nephorie, and SaaS ventures Faslak and Pebblhub. Bridges brand, performance, product, and P&L with deep hands-on AI fluency.
Responsible for: day-to-day operations, corporate governance, brand and marketing leadership, and AI-driven product delivery
Youngest CFO in the history of both Nasdaq and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX). Forbes 30 Under 30. CFA Charterholder, Fellow of the Society of Actuaries.
CFO and Director at Swvl (MENA's first unicorn to list on Nasdaq) — led the SPAC merger at 28. Subsequently CFO of AIQ (MENA's fastest unicorn, first AI unicorn). Currently CFO of ADNOC Drilling.
13 years at Moelis & Company — $150B+ in capital raises, M&A, financings, restructurings across 60+ transactions. Founder of Stryde71 (Hub71-backed syndicate). Adjunct Professor, AUC.
Responsible for: financial strategy, investor relations, capital markets, and Gulf institutional relationships
Product × Creator Economy × Capital Markets × Legal Governance
Most startup teams have one or two of these. This team has all four — in the right roles, in the right markets, with the right track records to be credible to the investors, creators, and businesses they need to win.
Conservative path to venture-scale returns.
| Metric | Month 6 | Month 12 | Month 18 | Month 24 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published creators | 200 | 500 | 1,200 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 20,000+ |
| Active businesses | 50 | 150 | 400 | 900 | 1,500 | 5,000+ |
| Monthly bookings | 80 | 250 | 700 | 1,500 | 3,000 | 10,000+ |
| GMV (monthly) | $32K | $112K | $350K | $750K | $1.25M | $4M+ |
| Platform revenue (mo) | $2.6K | $9K | $35K | $90K | $170K | $550K+ |
| Creator OS subs | — | — | 200 | 600 | 1,800 | 7,000+ |
| Creator OS MRR | — | — | $5.8K | $17.4K | $52.2K | $203K+ |
| Total MRR | $2.6K | $9K | $41K | $107K | $222K | $753K+ |
| ARR run-rate | $31K | $108K | $492K | $1.28M | $2.66M | $9M+ |
Series A target: $3–5M raise at $500K MRR
5,000 published creators · 1,500 active businesses · $1.25M monthly GMV · 600+ Creator OS subscribers. Month 24 milestone — two years from first creator onboarding to Series A readiness.
Ally Salama drove $35M+ in creator revenue at SuperOrdinary MENA in 18 months working 1:1 with creators. If even 5% of that had flowed through Rawshi at an 8% fee, that's $140K in platform revenue from one operator's relationships alone. We are not projecting from nothing.
Creator-first. Then demand follows the supply.
Every marketplace has a chicken-and-egg problem. Rawshi's answer is sequencing: seed supply aggressively before demand marketing begins. Businesses don't browse empty shelves.
Supply Seeding
- —Ally Salama's UAE/KSA creator network activated — warm intros to 200+ creators day one
- —Creator referral program — invite a creator, both earn credits
- —Rawshi Verified badge as social signal — first verified creates early FOMO
- —Arabic TikTok + IG content showcasing successful bookings
- —Direct outreach to top Egypt creators across Fashion, Lifestyle, Food, Tech
- —Partnership with 2–3 creator agencies for bulk onboarding
- —Target: 500 published, verified creators
Demand Activation
- —Outreach to 200 MENA D2C brands, startups, e-commerce sellers
- —Ramadan 2027 push — highest creator booking season, requires Q4 2026 prep
- —PR in Wamda, Magnitt, Arab startup press — infrastructure story positioning
- —Google Ads on 'influencer marketing Egypt', 'creator marketplace UAE', Arabic equivalents
- —AI matching engine as top-of-funnel lead generation tool
- —Target: 200 active booking businesses by Month 12
Expansion
- —Creator OS beta launch — existing creators invited first
- —Rawshi Pro subscription tiers for creators and businesses
- —Expansion to Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria
- —Agency partner program — Rawshi Business tier for agencies
- —Arabic SEO content — own 'influencer marketplace MENA' terms
The business needs three things to prove itself before Series A: that creators earn well on the platform, that businesses come back for a second booking, and that successful deliveries vs disputes stays above 95%. Each of these is a metric we'll be measuring from Month 1.
USD · Pre-seed / Seed · SAFE or Equity
Close target: 60 days from first close
What we're looking for
- —Business deal flow — intros to brands, startups, SMEs from nano-startups to enterprise
- —Creator relationships — access to top MENA creators and agencies
- —Gulf institutional networks — government, tourism boards, sovereign wealth adjacent programs
- —Regional media and marketing connections — agencies, media buyers, marketing directors
- —Strategic operators with MENA creator economy depth
Use of Funds
Onboarding program, referral credits, creator events, partnership commissions
Senior developer hire, Creator OS build-out, platform scaling
MENA paid acquisition, brand partnerships, PR, Arabic content
Team costs, legal, compliance, regional entity setup, working capital
We will know Rawshi is ready for Series A when: business booking repeat rate exceeds 60%, creators average 2+ bookings/month, and Creator OS is generating meaningful MRR independent of marketplace volume. We expect to hit all three within 24 months of this round closing.
The Arab world has 400 million people.
A creator economy with no infrastructure.
And a team that has built this kind of thing before.
We're not asking you to bet on a vision. We're asking you to invest in infrastructure that is already working — and help us scale it across the fastest-growing creator economy on earth.