Building Community: HUB71’s Vision for Startup Success in Abu Dhabi

I am Vince Molinari from FinTech TV, and we're coming to you today from Abu Dhabi at Hub 71's Impact event 2025, and I am delighted to be joined by Mohammed Al Khouri, who is the head of marketing and communications here at Hub 71.

Mohammed, it is so delighted to talk to you today. it's great having you here today.

Well, we are honored and privileged always to be here in Abu Dhabi, ADGM.

There is so much happening, and I love the theme that you were talking about in your keynote speech today.

Year of Community.

Tell me what that means to you and what it means to Hub 71.

As you know, in the UAE this year we're celebrating the Year of Community.

And as of 71, we truly believe that what it takes to build an ecosystem, and specifically a startup ecosystem, is not just a platform or a program or a building.

You actually need the community to come together.

So over the past few years we've really focused on how can we build a community around our startups, including investors, regulators, and corporate corporate partners and academia.

So this year we took advantage of that and said how can we go even bigger.

As you saw, we launched multiple programs today starting with uh Initiate, which is a program that's run by our partners to see how we can support startups in the early stage, specifically in ideation.

In addition, we launched top 71 plus Life Sciences, bringing in the wider community in healthcare to see how they can attract and support startups in the healthcare industry or in health tech specifically, um.

And most importantly, how can we celebrate our current community?

How can we celebrate the startups that have joined us here from all around the world?

How can we support the investors that believe in these startups, and how can we support the corporates that have supported these startups over the past 5 years?

Well, it's really been incredible, and FinTech TV has been so fortunate to be broadcasting from ADGM for almost 4.5 years now, and that's.

Community, everything that you just spoke about just seems to be the core DNA that transcends through Hub 71, and I think why you've been so successful as we've watched this grow over the last several years almost exponentially.

I think I think that's very true, and I think that comes from the belief from the very beginning is that you need that community and if you see our office space, if you see the way we work with our community, it is.

An open office space when we see the doors are open, it is literally open.

We have coffee, we with our founders, we support them in every step of the way, so we don't see ourselves as just an ecosystem player.

We really believe ourselves as an extension of a startup team.

Maybe you can give us a little bit more detail because it's so impressive.

I think it's nearly 390, almost 400 companies within Hub 71, very diverse from a Geographic representation, talk to us even about the stages of companies that come here.

So currently I have 71 or over the past few years we've focused on pre-C to Series A startups as you saw in the event, we launched our first program that looks at the earlier than presage looking at ideation and how can we support startups and build homegrown startups for founders who have an idea and need that support kicking off the ground.

Um, I think we've been very fortunate over the past 6 years to attract startups, as I said, almost 300 startups from 60 nationalities.

That truly showcases not Hub 71's ability, but Abu Dhabi's ability to be the capital of capital and how all these startups support the Falcon economy.

Our ability to attract startups that are joining us with an average funding of $5 million really showcases showcases how our ability to attract startups that have raised funding of an average of $5 million really showcases Abu Dhabi's ability to attract global startups with high growth potential.

Close out, maybe just share us a little bit about this new phase of ideation because that is, that's kind of some of the most instrumental part and very rarely incorporated into something like a 1.

So I think thankfully we've done a great job in attracting startups.

So we're starting to look at how can we actually build more startups from Abu Dhabi, um, so we, we went out and we asked the Marrati founders what, what do you need, and we realized that we need that start of the program.

Um, and we thought the best way to do it is with various venture builders.

So we're over the past few months and in the future we'll continue attracting venture builders in different sectors and with different models to see how they can support founders in Abu Dhabi to launching their startups.

Well, Mohammed, it was delighted pleasure having you.

We're so honored to be here with you today.

I think it's a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.