Redefining Alternative Investments in Sports and Beyond

This week’s Founder’s Hustle follows Hadi Halabi, whose journey from M&A banker to entrepreneur led him to build Stryde, the first and only regulated private markets investment platform in MENA. Driven by a conviction that private markets should be accessible to everyone, Hadi created a platform that allows investors anywhere in the world to access global deals, starting with making sports a truly investable asset class. His story is one of persistence, vision, and a determination to reimagine how alternative investments are built and accessed.

From Banking to Building

Hadi’s journey into entrepreneurship was shaped by a strong foundation in finance and strategy. He began his career at EY before moving to London to pursue a master’s in economics and strategy at Imperial College. Following graduation, the onset of COVID prompted a move to Dubai, where Hadi joined Deloitte’s restructuring team. After a year, he transitioned into investment banking, focusing on M&A. 

Despite the fast-paced career, Hadi had been nurturing an idea for several years. Observing that friends and colleagues in finance, law, and consulting had disposable income but limited access to investment opportunities beyond public markets. He envisioned a tech-enabled platform that could democratize this access, mimicking the functions of a venture capital or private equity fund. “After a few years in M&A, I called it a day. I’d had this idea in my mind for at least five years, and I knew it was time to finally launch my own business,” Hadi recalls.

The Genesis of Stryde

Together with his co-founder Emad Yehya, a former Google engineer, Hadi built a seamless, end-to-end regulated digital platform that allows anyone globally to browse private market deals and invest in opportunities previously reserved for institutional investors. Initially, the focus was purely on tech businesses and private equity, but as they navigated the regulatory landscape in the Middle East, new opportunities began to surface. 

The team recognized the untapped potential in sports investments, a market that was massive yet underdeveloped from an investment perspective, and pivoted. This move made Stryde the first digital sports investment platform in the world.

Securing regulatory approval was a deliberate and defining milestone. The process took 18 months of persistent effort, described by Hadi as a “rigorous and tricky process,” but it ultimately allowed investors to onboard from anywhere in the world, complete AML and KYC checks, and start investing in global deals with as little as $1,000. 

The success in the sports model laid the groundwork for expanding into venture capital through the acquisition of Qora71, broadening Stryde’s reach and solidifying its position as a comprehensive digital investment ecosystem. 

“Today, Stryde stands as the first and only regulated private markets investment platform in MENA,” Hadi explains. “And when it comes to sports, we’re the only business in the world that allows people to invest in clubs and teams the way we do”.

Cracking Open the Sports Market

Stryde’s entry into sports investing began with a high-profile opportunity: Watford FC, a Championship football team with Premier League history. The deal came through a partnership with Republic, a US-based investment platform that was working on the transaction. Hadi and his team secured a $1 million allocation and launched it on Stryde. The results were immediate; platform traffic, engagement, and traction spiked in ways they had never seen before. It was proof that sports could unlock a completely different level of excitement among investors.

Unlike traditional startup deals, a football club captured attention on a visceral level. But the Watford deal also revealed the challenges of breaking new ground. For various reasons, the co-investment structure collapsed and the deal didn’t go through, forcing Stryde to refund all investor commitments, a difficult setback right at the start.

That stumble didn’t stop them. The first fully closed and completed deal came soon after with a different European football club. From there, Stryde expanded into other opportunities, including Epic Padel, a US-based paddle business that closed successfully.

Turning Curiosity into Commitment

If securing headline sports deals was one challenge, convincing retail investors to actually put money in was another. As Hadi recalls, “seeing a deal online and committing capital are two very different things”. Early on, the product itself wasn’t nearly as polished as it is today. Users struggled to understand the fees, returns, and even the mechanics of how the platform worked.

That friction forced the team into a period of intense, hands-on learning. Hadi spent hours calling potential investors, walking them through how Stryde worked, why sports was a compelling asset class, and what each deal offered in return. It was painstaking, but every conversation revealed blind spots in the platform. 

The feedback loop became invaluable. By combining these insights with data on user behavior, where people were dropping off, what pages they lingered on, and what ultimately drove conversions, the team began reshaping the product piece by piece. Today, Stryde can educate, attract, and convert users on its own.

From Source to Close: How Deals Get Done

In the early days, Stryde’s investment process was a delicate balancing act, a true chicken-and-egg problem. On one side were funds and dealmakers in sports; on the other were investors curious but uncommitted. Hadi had to convince both simultaneously. He would go to funds and ask, “Can we get a $1 million allocation? I can get you the capital.” At the same time, he approached investors with a simple pitch: “We have insane deals, come join the platform.” As he adds, “I had to convince both sides that I had something, even though initially I had nothing.”

The model worked, but it required immense effort to build credibility. Today, the dynamic has flipped. Deals now come to Stryde. An investor working on an NBA team, or a Formula 1 allocation, will approach them to see if they want in. If the deal is right, Stryde makes it available to its users.

Part of the appeal is scarcity. Sports assets are notoriously difficult to access. Even investors with a million dollars at hand rarely find a way into a Premier League club or an NBA team. That exclusivity makes Stryde’s platform uniquely attractive, pulling in a spectrum of investors from sophisticated retail participants willing to put in $10,000 to high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and institutions. The average ticket size on Stryde is strikingly high for a retail-facing platform: around $50,000 per investor.

This positioning is intentional. Unlike crowdfunding platforms where users can chip in with $50 or $100, Stryde has steadily moved upmarket. Though regulations allow tickets as low as 500 AED, the company has never accepted such small amounts. Sports deals today start at a $5,000 minimum.

The process, however, remains time-sensitive. Since Stryde invests alongside private equity funds or lead investors, allocations come with deadlines. If the platform doesn’t fill its share quickly enough, the opportunity disappears. As Hadi puts it, “this isn’t failure but simply part of the game, even major funds lose allocations when timing doesn’t work out.” 

On the business side, the model is straightforward. Stryde charges investors a 5% upfront management fee, applied once at the time of investment rather than annually, and takes a 15% carry on profits at exit.

Risks in Investing in Sports

Like any asset class, sports comes with its own set of risks, though they look different from those in startups or public equities. As Hadi points out, the good thing about sports teams is that they rarely go bankrupt. “Never say never, some French and Italian clubs have gone under, but in most cases, the downside risk isn’t a total wipeout. It’s more likely a drop in valuation rather than the team disappearing entirely.”

A challenge in sports is the presence of vanity ownership. Many wealthy individuals buy teams out of passion or prestige, with no clear plan to deliver financial returns. Stryde avoids this trap by focusing on co-investments alongside private equity funds. These financial investors operate with a clear mandate: deploy capital and generate attractive returns for their LPs within a set timeframe. That alignment of incentives ensures investments are guided by profitability, not vanity.

The second major risk is liquidity. Sports assets aren’t easily tradable, meaning an investor could struggle to exit when they want. To solve this, Stryde has built its own regulated secondary marketplace. All investors are pooled into a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) domiciled in the DIFC and managed by Stryde, allowing investors to sell or transfer their stake in the SPV without affecting the vehicle’s ownership in the sports team. To balance flexibility with stability, Stryde enforces a 12-month lock-up period, after which investors can begin selling their positions.

Building with Limited Resources

When asked about the toughest challenges outside of regulation, Hadi’s answer is straightforward: resources. In a startup, resources mean both capital and people, and Stryde was short on both. Without the cushion of abundant funding or a large team, much of the early burden fell directly on the founders. “The second you stop relying on yourself, the quality dips, because no one will ever know your business as much as you do,” Hadi reflects. Recruiting the right talent was also a constant struggle. The team went through cycles of hiring, realizing the fit wasn’t right, and starting over.

While the scarcity of capital was difficult, Hadi sees it as a disguised blessing. It forced Stryde to grow creatively and sustainably. Unlike many fintech startups, the company never poured money into digital marketing campaigns. Instead, it leaned on word of mouth and network effects, which kept customer acquisition costs at zero. Growth was slower and tougher, but ultimately stronger and more authentic.

That constraint also shaped the way Stryde designed its platform. In the early days, users could access everything by simply entering an email, but the influx of unqualified leads quickly overwhelmed the team. To stay efficient, they began adding friction deliberately, just showing the highlights, and eventually requiring full onboarding before accessing any deals. By filtering for quality rather than chasing volume, they were able to focus their limited resources on the investors most likely to close.

Expanding Beyond Sports: The Qora71 Acquisition

Stryde’s move into venture capital wasn’t a meticulously planned expansion; it was opportunistic. Hadi met Youssef Salem, the founder of Qora71 and CFO of Adnoc Drilling, and initially explored ways to collaborate. “But as conversations evolved, I saw a deeper opportunity: acquiring Qora71 and leveraging the community and angel network Youssef had built,” Haid notes.

Qora71, founded in Abu Dhabi, had quickly grown into a notable angel syndicate, with more than 200 members and a track record of 50+ syndicated deals. To accelerate its growth, Stryde acquired 100% of Qora71’s shares in a share-swap deal, issuing new equity in exchange for full ownership. 

Rebranded as Stryde71, the new venture arm expands Stryde’s offering into tech and venture deals. Youssef joined Stryde as a partner, bringing his network and expertise, and together with Hadi, moved quickly to integrate: “within six weeks, we had a fully operational website and live digital platform.”

The VC model mirrors the sports one, with slight adjustments. Minimum investments are lower, $1,000–$3,000, reflecting the different investor base, but the process remains the same. With a pipeline of over $1 million in transactions and a target of one investment per month, Stryde71 is already syndicating opportunities ranging from early-stage startups to late-stage companies. For Hadi, the acquisition is part of a larger vision to build an ecosystem of alternative investment opportunities.

Balancing Tech and Investment Operations

Running a company that is both a tech platform and an investment firm comes with unique challenges. In the early days, Hadi wore every hat. That hands-on approach is one of the hallmarks of building an early-stage business, giving founders an intimate understanding of every aspect of the company.

As Stryde has grown, however, functions have started to separate. The product team focuses on user experience, engagement, and iterating based on feedback, while the investment team concentrates on sourcing top deals, working with high-caliber investors, and securing premium allocations.

Even with this separation, the company remains tightly interconnected. Marketing, product, tech, finance, and investments are all interrelated, requiring careful coordination to maintain cohesion. Hadi sees his role as both overseeing these functions and gradually empowering specialized teams to take ownership. While he remains involved across the board, the focus is shifting toward building strong teams that can execute independently, allowing him to focus on strategy and growth without being immersed in every operational detail.

Funding the Vision

Stryde’s fundraising journey has been steady and strategic. To date, the company raised a million dollars initially and secured around $3 million in venture funding, though that round was ultimately paused. Hadi explains that at the time, there wasn’t a pressing need to dilute ownership, especially ahead of the Stryde71 launch. “We wanted to gauge traction, engagement, and the overall impact of expanding into venture deals before committing to additional external funding.” 

The decision proved wise. The launch of Stryde71 delivered strong results, giving the team confidence that they could continue growing on their own. That said, he leaves the door open: “depending on future growth opportunities, we could re-enter the funding market to accelerate expansion.”

Looking forward, Hadi hints at “big news” expected within the next three to six months. However, he keeps the details under wraps. Beyond that, the company’s priorities are clear: increasing market share, securing more deals, expanding AUM, and bringing more investors onto the platform. 

Lessons Learned and Reflections

For Hadi, building Stryde has been both the most rewarding and the toughest endeavor of his life. The journey tests discipline, resilience, and conviction daily. “It’s so tough… you are always one day away from just going bust,” he reflects. The constant challenges and responsibilities can be overwhelming, yet the personal growth and experience are unparalleled. 

Hadi emphasizes the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. He advises founders to work with problem solvers rather than problem seekers, professionals who help navigate complex frameworks creatively rather than obstructively.

Looking at the bigger picture, Hadi aspires to be “one of the most influential business leaders in the region, creating a lasting impact at scale”. His focus is on building something significant, meaningful, and enduring, a company and legacy that leaves a mark on both the investment ecosystem and the industries he touches.

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