IN SHORT

After seven years of working at Kuwait Investment Authority and launching successful business ventures, Mohammad Al-Munaikh needed a change: “I was about to turn thirty, and I decided my thirties should be different from my twenties.” So when Badar Al-Tahous came to him with an idea for a karaoke app, Ghinwa, Mohammad decided his thirtieth birthday gift to himself would be full-time entrepreneurship. His risk paid off—the app has more than thirty thousand followers: “We visualised how many people in the Middle East would actually just want to sing in their bedroom. The number was huge—and I saw the potential.”