My name is Anmar Alharbi and I am the founder and CEO of Rize.gg — a team-building and competition ecosystem for esports.

We want to be the LinkedIn of esports, where team leaders can use our comprehensive recruitment tools to screen potential candidates and increase the odds of team success.

I am a serial entrepreneur and have founded and exited multiple businesses in industries as diverse as agriculture to AI.

We raised $450k at a $4.5M valuation cap SAFE note. We started the business in November of 2022 and started fundraising in January of 2023.

By February we had half of the $450k raised and by June we had the rest.

We had a major signal from the Saudi Arabian government that they wanted to see startups in the esports and gaming sector. 

They announced a $38B investment in that area — so we knew it was a good time to get started.

Since we were just starting out as a business, this was the capital needed to get the project moving forward. 

We thought of each stage of the process as allocating a certain percentage of our equity toward fundraising — this would allow us to have enough runway to reach the next round.

Our goal with the money was to build a freemium product that attracted users. At this stage getting users onto the platform is the most important task. 

We modeled our value proposition after Discord. 

We wanted to add the most value possible to attract and retain as many users as we could with gamer-centric features they can’t find anywhere else.

At this stage, I was less concerned with who is investing and more concerned with getting the project moving forward.

We were so early - all we had was a PDF of the business plan - getting money coming in at such a high valuation was enough of a win.

I used an advisor to make introductions in exchange for 3% equity in the business. I met the advisor through an angel investor in one of my previous ventures.

I told him about my idea for this business and he offered to connect me to this advisor. He is a highly connected member of the local start-up community. 

He is not only familiar with the start-up ecosystem here, he plays a leadership role at the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially helpful for this project because we are relying on the government to invest in the gaming sector.

The advisor really streamlined the process so we had 5 meetings and all 5 invested.

The main thing investors cared about at this stage was belief in the founder.

Given that we are at an early stage and the gaming and esports sector is so new to Saudi Arabia, the best information they have to work with is the competence and enthusiasm of the founder.

They could see my track record with other start-ups and that I believed strongly in this idea. 

They could also see that I was prepared and had thought this idea through. 

Anticipating the types of questions you may get asked and having a thoughtful prepared answer goes a long way.

A lot of the investors I pitched do not speak English. This can work against you because they might be more cautious if you are speaking to them in another language. 

We translated versions of our pitch materials to send to them after the meeting. 

This really worked because in addition to them feeling more comfortable about taking in the information in their own language, they also got to spend more time with it.

We are starting to raise money again and it has been a more difficult process this time without tangible traction.

Our advisor has slowed down with the introductions, which is common at this stage.

Using the advisor to get started is a double-edged sword because it was so easy that we did not have to learn the tactics needed to do it another time.

We reached out to some VCs who did not want to invest. The challenging part of the process was getting feedback about why they said no.

In a few cases we did not feel they gave us a clear answer — which can be difficult because that makes it harder to know if we did something wrong, or if it’s something else.

Raising money in a Muslim country during Ramadan is very difficult. People are fasting and dedicating themselves to worship so things slow down.

We have found it is best to wait until after the month ends, rather than waste effort during that time.

Before Ramadan this year we attended the Leap Event here in Riyadh. It was a massive start-up event that over 200k people attended from around the world.

We met some great people there who have introduced us to potential investors and partners.

I would go to conventions and exhibitions — mingle, be friendly, and tell them about your company. 

There are so many serendipitous connections you can make and potential valuable insights you never would’ve otherwise thought of.

For Saudi Arabia definitely check out the directory managed by the Hussein Attar, a leading VC figure in KSA:

Always find and take shortcuts — as a startup you cannot afford to be a perfectionist 

Visit SaaS directories like Product Hunt and always be on the lookout for potential tools that can solve your problems and accelerate your growth

AI is the new calculator — you wouldn’t walk into a math test without one so make full use of them.

Pro tip: I compare my AI assistants against each other to help me think through problems. The results are outstanding. If you ask ChatGPT a question, take that answer over to Claude and ask Claude what it thinks of the answer.