Sukna Ventures

Sukna Ventures

Sukna Ventures operates as a Riyadh-headquartered early-stage venture capital firm, founded by Managing Partner Waleed Alballaa and Founding Partner Fares Bardeesi. The team includes former operators and investors with backgrounds spanning corporate leadership and technology company building. The firm describes its investor base as a network of exceptional leaders and decision-makers, cultivated alongside leading companies to provide exclusive deal access. The firm targets digital transformation businesses across the Middle East and North Africa. Its investment approach spans building, partnering, and investing in ventures that offer meaningful regional impact. The portfolio includes companies at the intersection of enterprise technology and institutional workflows: an automated bilateral price negotiation and settlement platform for institutional digital assets, a collaborative and interactive learning environment provider, and a consumer-facing application enabling everyday micro-investing. The firm operates from its Saudi headquarters with a stated global presence, though additional office locations remain undisclosed. Sukna Ventures lists ten team members on its website, led by Alballaa, Bardeesi, and General Partner Mazin Alshanbari. Investment Advisor Marvin Liao, a former 500 Startups partner, joined the advisory roster alongside Venture Partners Asher Siddiqui, Jason Best, and Ahmed AlMadan. Principal Omar Hamdalla rounds out the senior investment team. The firm has structured at least one formal vehicle, SV Fund I, to which several venture partners are directly assigned. No recent operational events from the past 24 months are publicly verifiable. Sukna's architecture blends domestic Saudi origination with Silicon Valley-anchored advisory talent, a structure designed to source startups across MENA while injecting early-stage venture discipline from a more mature ecosystem. The presence of Venture Partners explicitly allocated to SV Fund I suggests a fund-cycle model rather than an open-ended family-backed investment company, distinguishing its commitment structure from permanent-capital peers in the region.