Building the Infrastructure for Private Markets in MENA

This week’s Founder’s Hustle dives into Rawan Baddour’s journey. When Rawan reflects on her career, one thing is clear:  she enjoys building from the ground up, challenging the ‘business as usual’, and deconstructing and rebuilding stronger processes. This drive took her from banking and strategy to entrepreneurship and ultimately to co-founding Zest Equity, a platform designed to power private market transactions in MENA. 

The Entrepreneurial Itch

Rawan grew up in Jordan with a love for problem-solving, math, and economics, a curiosity that led her to study quantitative economics in Boston, “one of the toughest things I’ve ever done,” she admits. 

After a brief period working in economic policy and public sector development, she transitioned to the private sector, joining a Jordanian bank in a unique role that bridged strategy, governance and operations. “I loved taking a process apart and putting it back together,” she recalls, an experience that sparked her entrepreneurial spirit.

Following that, Rawan completed her MBA in Madrid and spent seven years working with the same group but this time running  their investment firm in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC)l . There, she developed deep expertise in regulations, compliance, and stakeholder management. She suddenly felt the entrepreneurial itch again: “This was great, but I needed to go back to building,” she reflects.

Around the same time, her childhood friend Zuhair Shamma shared his frustration with the complexities and illiquidity of private market transactions. Together, Rawan and Zuhair set out to launch Zest Equity and fundamentally redesign how private market deals are executed.

A Liquidity Solutions Platform

Zest Equity was born from a pain the co-founders knew firsthand. For Zuhair, years of angel investing across MENA built a strong portfolio, but with no path to liquidity. Small-ticket secondaries were expensive, tangled in governance hurdles, and required board approvals, making it nearly impossible for companies to accommodate and for angels to exit their positions.

Rawan saw the flip side as a global investor: MENA’s private markets were opaque, access to opportunities was limited to insider circles, and reliable performance data and verified information were almost nonexistent.

Zest’s first vision was straightforward: a liquidity solutions marketplace connecting companies who had shareholders who wanted to sell their stakes with investors eager to gain exposure to early-stage private market deals. Companies could let shareholders cash out without affecting fundraising or valuations, while investors gained direct access to verified data and documents straight from the companies themselves. But like many early startup ideas, the prototype evolved very quickly.

Pivoting into an Infrastructure Layer

As Rawan and Zuhair began speaking with founders, in search of the first clients to offer the liquidity solution to, they uncovered a surprising insight: most companies didn’t need Zest to find secondary buyers; the real challenge was execution. Founders either didn’t know how to process secondary transactions or found the process too expensive. More than one asked if they could simply use the tools Zest had built to get their deals done.

This feedback was consistent across the ecosystem. Family offices, private equity firms, startup founders, VCs, even angel investors, were all voicing the same frustration: there was a lot of friction involved in executing even the simplest transactions. “You have to listen to the market,” Rawan reflects. “But you also need a little stubbornness in your vision. The trick early on is finding that balance.”

Instead of a secondaries’ marketplace connecting sellers to buyers, Zest quickly evolved from a venture-focused platform into an asset-agnostic infrastructure layer. Now, the platform powers primary and secondary transactions across VC, private equity, and real estate, handling execution, Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) creation, compliance, and workflows seamlessly behind the scenes. 

The “Pipes” of Private Market Transactions

More specifically, Zest digitizes transaction execution workflows and brings all transaction stakeholders onto a single platform for streamlined communication and transparency. 

All stakeholders get full access to all documents upfront. The platform also embeds institutional-grade AML, KYC, and compliance processes. This enables seamless co-investments and allows companies to onboard new investors effortlessly, preventing unpleasant surprises when stricter cap table due diligence arrives at later stages.

The pivot expanded Zest’s use cases far beyond startup secondaries. Family offices began using the platform to bring in co-investors into SPVs. Venture funds leveraged it to run co-investment vehicles. Scaling startups relied on it for cap table cleanups, rolling numerous small investors into a single SPV, consolidating them into one line on the cap table ahead of their Series A or B rounds. Even first-time founders and angel groups found value in Zest’s streamlined deal execution. By staying asset-agnostic and tech-first, Zest evolved into the “pipes” of private market transactions.

Building Trust with Potential Customers

In private markets, trust isn’t optional; it’s the reality of doing business. Rawan and the team knew early adoption would come through credibility, not hard selling. “Early on, it was all about listening,” she recalls. “We weren’t asking clients to take huge risks. They were going to run their transactions anyway. We simply offered a cleaner, more streamlined way to do it.”

That credibility stemmed from the founding team’s chemistry. Rawan’s corporate background anchored Zest with structure, governance, and institutional discipline, while Zuhair’s investment banking experience (and naturally fast-paced, action-oriented personality), brought speed, and a willingness to experiment. Together, they struck the balance between rigor and agility, delivering a product that felt both innovative and safe.

To reinforce the trust, Zest also operated with institutional-grade processes from day one. They partnered with top-tier structuring lawyers, had top-tier law firms vet their frameworks, and worked with seasoned administrators, ensuring every SPV and transaction met the highest standards. 

That combination of careful execution and low-risk entry points got the first few clients over the line. After three or four smooth transactions, word of mouth took over, and referrals fueled the next wave of early adopters.

Ideal Transaction Profile 

Zest is initially focused on transactions around $100 million or less, a somewhat arbitrary cutoff, but one that revealed a critical market gap. Whether raising $4 million or $100 million, Rawan and Zuhair observed that companies face many of the same challenges: bringing stakeholders together, managing due diligence, coordinating KYC for investors, and handling stakeholder communications. These complexities often come with similar costs, regardless of deal size.

Larger transactions usually have the budget and support of large institutions or investment banks to manage these processes, while smaller deals often lack such resources, leaving deal leads to navigate them alone. Zest’s mission is to bring institutional-grade governance and streamlined workflows to these smaller transactions, reducing operational and legal expenses.

Complementing Legal Counsel

Importantly, Zest doesn't replace the essential role of legal counsel in transaction negotiations and document drafting, areas like SAFE notes or shareholders' agreements remain firmly in the hands of relevant stakeholders and their lawyers. Instead, Zest focuses on democratizing access to the operational infrastructure that surrounds these deals, particularly the setup and ongoing maintenance of SPVs, making the transaction execution process more affordable and scalable. The platform operates strictly on an instruction basis, servicing clients and their stakeholders’ requirements.

Early Adopters

Zest’s early adopters were primarily venture capital investors; roughly the first 60 to 70 transactions focused on venture assets. 

However, the platform’s structure was thoughtfully designed to be both boilerplate and productized, yet flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of transaction needs. As Zest built a track record and earned trust within the ecosystem, it naturally expanded beyond VC into more traditional asset classes like private equity and real estate. 

Today Zest serves an incredibly diverse clientele; anyone running a deal becomes their client, whether that’s a family office, private equity firm, startup founder, VC, an angel investor or syndicate lead managing a network of co-investors. Their role is clear: once terms are agreed upon with their stakeholders, Zest steps in to streamline execution, compliance, and communication, making the complex simple for a broad range of private market participants.

Pre-Series A Fundraise

In April 2025, Zest secured a $4.3 million pre-Series A round, led by Prosus Ventures with participation from Morgan Stanley Inclusive and Sustainable Ventures (MSISV). Joining Middle East Venture Partners, Dubai Future District Fund, and their existing shareholder base, the raise was about fortifying Zest’s infrastructure-first strategy, and continuing to bring in talent and strengthen the systems, processes, and governance for scale. 

The Next Milestones

Looking ahead, Zest’s ambition is to become the default transaction execution layer for private markets. “We want 80% of Limited Partners (LPs) in the region to have executed their transactions on Zest within the next three years.”  

The vision is to be the “pipes” behind every deal, starting with SPVs, expanding through new digital tools and regulated products, and eventually scaling into similar underserved markets across Asia and Europe. 

For Rawan, the journey is as demanding as it is exciting. “It never gets easier,” she reflects. “The more you grow, the more complex it becomes, but the foundation you lay on day one is what determines your success in the years to come.” It’s that long-term discipline, paired with a bold vision, that Zest is betting will make it the indispensable backbone of private market transactions for years to come.

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