Investors

This doc is the investor-facing narrative. It is distinct from Pitch (audience-agnostic) and Deck (slide content). When a partner or angel asks "what's the round?", this page is the answer.

Last verified: 2026-05-18.

Executive summary

• Stage: pre-seed bridge.
• Target raise: $250K-$500K across instruments (grant + SAFE-cap + accelerator stipend blended).
• Instrument preference: SAFE (cap, no discount preferred; up to 20% discount acceptable).
• Valuation cap stance: $4M-$6M post-money (anchor — adjust per round dynamics).
• MFN: yes.
• Pro-rata: yes (standard).
• Info rights: monthly + on-demand.
• Board seat at this stage: no.

The opportunity

Why now: Sudan reopened schools in February 2026 after a three-year hiatus. Saudi Vision 2030 + NTDP is deploying $430M+ across new initiatives in 2026 with EdTech named as priority. MENA EdTech is sized at $14.4B → $33B by 2030. The market is being built right now, and the incumbent vendors are not Arabic-first.

Why this: Hogwarts is a complete cloud-based school operating system — one platform for enrollment, attendance, exams, timetables, grading, finance, parent communication. Arabic-first, RTL-native, multi-tenant. Open source under SSPL-1.0. We have a live paying-pilot at King Fahad Schools, a public demo, 4,912 source files, and AI integrations wired (Anthropic, OpenAI, LangChain).

Why us: The team is Sudanese-founded, distributed across Sudan / KSA / Egypt / Europe. We've shipped 14+ epics across the MVP scope (admission, attendance, exams, timetable, grades, finance, parent portal, transportation, lumos/video, notifications, payments). We work bilingual native. We have the cultural context and the technical depth — neither side without the other works in this market.

Use of funds (12-month, $500K scenario)

At $250K (lower scenario): drop the SDR hire, scope to 6 pilots, defer security audit.

Cap table

Public structure:

Exact numbers: in the Data Room under NDA. The contributor-pool design is documented in Shared Economy.

Deal terms we offer

Toxic terms — we will NOT accept

• Full ratchet anti-dilution
• Participating preference > 1× (or "double-dip")
• Board control at seed (any majority-vote arrangement that requires investor sign-off on operational decisions)
• Founder vesting acceleration only on "good leaver" — single-trigger only
• Drag-along below 60% threshold
• Restrictive covenants on the open-source license (we will not narrow SSPL-1.0)
• "No-shop" clauses longer than 30 days
• Personal guarantees from founders

Investor archetype map

Status column tracks where we are with each archetype. URLs are anchored on the most current public-facing page as of 2026-05.

A. MENA EdTech-aware VCs

B. Impact / mission-aligned funds

C. Open-source-aligned funds

D. Angels (warm intro list)

• Sudanese founders in tech (TBD — confirm 5 names with diaspora network)
• Saudi EdTech operators (TBD — solicit via Misk500 / NTDP networks)
• MENA SaaS operators (TBD — solicit via Wamda community)
• Open-source maintainers (TBD — solicit via OSS Capital portfolio)

Status: building this list is a Phase 2 deliverable. Currently empty.

Process

1. Intro — warm preferred; cold tolerated with high-signal email (T1 in Outreach).
2. 30-min discovery call — product walkthrough on demo + traction page + 2 questions for the investor (their thesis, their portfolio overlap).
3. Data room access — Tier 1 only on first ask; Tier 2 (financials, cap table) under mutual NDA. See Data Room.
4. Partner meeting — second call, full deck, partners present.
5. Term sheet — we counter with the term-sheet stance above.
6. Diligence — 2-4 weeks; technical DD via GitHub + architecture review; customer DD via King Fahad reference call.
7. Close — SAFE signed, wire received, intro to ecosystem.

Target timeline from first intro to close: 6-10 weeks.

Things we will say no to (in the room)

• Renegotiation after term sheet without a material new finding. We honor signed paper.
• Exclusive negotiating periods longer than 30 days.
• Mandatory pivots as a condition of investment.
• "We invest after you have $X MRR" when $X moves the goalposts during the conversation. We accept "not now" once; we don't accept moving milestones.

Things we are honest about (in the room)

• $0 MRR today.
• 1 pilot is not a market.
• Conversion is the gate.
• We will not promise unit economics we haven't yet proven.
• We are not the world's best EdTech founder team. We are the right team for Arabic-first, open-source, multi-tenant K-12 SaaS in MENA. Different question.

Related

• Fundraising — strategy hub
• Accelerators — alternative capital path
• Grants — non-dilutive alternative
• Sponsors — credit-program alternative
• Deck — investor deck content
• Traction — number set
• Data Room — DD checklist
• Outreach — templates (T1, T7, T8, T14)
• Business model — unit economics
• Shared Economy — contributor-pool structure

Sources

• Owl Ventures — Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen joins as MENA-expansion GP
• Wa'ed Ventures (Aramco)
• Raed Ventures
• Wamda Capital
• STV
• Sanabil Investments