Ghada Ismail

When a company wants to grow, buying another business can sometimes be easier than building something from scratch. Instead of spending years developing a new product, entering a new market, or hiring a specialized team, a company can acquire a smaller business that already has what it needs.

This is the idea behind a bolt-on acquisition.

A bolt-on acquisition is when an established company buys a smaller business and adds it to its existing operations. The acquired company usually brings something specific to the table, such as new technology, customers, talent, products, or access to a particular market.

The focus is not necessarily on changing the entire business. It is about adding another useful piece to what is already there.

How does a bolt-on acquisition work?

It usually starts with a company identifying an area where it wants to grow.

Take a software company that has a large customer base but does not offer cybersecurity services. Rather than spending years developing those services internally, it could acquire a smaller cybersecurity company that already has the technology, employees, and customers.

The buyer can then add those capabilities to its existing business.

The acquired company may keep its own name and management team, or it may be fully integrated into the larger company. That depends on the businesses involved and what the buyer believes will work best.

What matters is that the acquisition fills a specific gap or creates an opportunity for further growth.

Why do companies choose bolt-on acquisitions?

Speed is one of the biggest reasons. Building a new product or entering a new market takes time. Companies need to hire people, develop products, find customers, and build relationships. Buying an established business can shorten that process considerably.

Bolt-ons can also give companies access to new markets. A business looking to expand into another country, for example, could acquire a local company that already understands the market and has an established customer base.

Technology and talent are another major attraction. In areas such as artificial intelligence, fintech, and software, smaller companies often develop highly specialized products or expertise that larger businesses may want to bring in quickly.

There can also be financial benefits. Once the businesses are combined, the buyer may be able to share infrastructure, eliminate overlapping costs, and introduce the acquired company's products to a much larger customer base.

How is it different from a major acquisition?

Not every acquisition is a bolt-on.

A large or transformational acquisition can significantly change the direction of a company. It could involve buying a major competitor, entering a completely new industry, or acquiring a business that becomes a central part of the company's future.

A bolt-on is usually more focused.

The buyer already has an established business and is looking for smaller companies that can strengthen it in specific areas. In simple terms, it is less about rebuilding the business and more about adding to it.

That can make bolt-ons easier to manage than very large deals, although integration still requires careful planning.

What is the challenging part here?

Smaller acquisitions are not automatically easy acquisitions.

One of the biggest challenges is making the two businesses work together. Different company cultures, technology systems, and ways of working can create problems if they are not handled properly.

There is also the question of price. A company may look like a perfect fit, but if the buyer pays too much, the deal may not generate the expected returns.

Then there are the promised synergies. Buyers often expect an acquisition to increase sales or reduce costs, but those benefits do not happen automatically. They need to be planned and executed.

To Wrap Things Up…

For companies with ambitious growth plans, bolt-on acquisitions can offer a practical way to expand without making one huge bet. Instead of spending a large amount on a single transformational deal, a company can make several smaller acquisitions over time. Each one can add something different, whether that is technology, customers, talent or geographic reach.

This approach is particularly common among private equity-backed companies. An investor may acquire a larger “platform” business and then use a series of bolt-on acquisitions to expand it.

Ultimately, a successful bolt-on acquisition comes down to one simple question: Does the smaller company add something the buyer genuinely needs?

If the answer is yes, and the two businesses can work well together, a bolt-on can be a relatively straightforward way to accelerate growth without starting from zero.

Noha Gad

Offering a strong salary is no longer enough to attract and retain top talent in today’s competitive job market, as employees increasingly look beyond base pay to evaluate the full value of a job offer, and that is where fringe benefits come in.

Fringe benefits are forms of non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to their regular salary, including cash equivalents, property, services, or other privileges, such as health insurance, retirement contributions, company cars, tuition assistance, or paid time off.

Although they are viewed as extras, fringe benefits play a pivotal role in modern compensation packages for both employers and employees. For employers, they serve as powerful tools to enhance employer branding, boost employee morale and productivity, and gain tax advantages when structured correctly. For employees, they can significantly increase the real value of their compensation while improving financial security, health, and work-life balance.

What are fringe benefits?

Fringe benefits are additional remuneration that employees receive from their employers. They are designed to enhance the overall employee experience and provide added value beyond monetary compensation, serving as incentives that attract top talent and boost employee morale and satisfaction. By offering these extras, companies aim to create a positive work environment where employees feel valued and motivated.

Fringe benefits encompass a wide range of non-wage compensation that add another layer of appeal to any employment package, while creating a supportive workplace culture where employees feel appreciated for their hard work and dedication without only relying on financial remuneration.

Examples of fringe benefits

There are various types of fringe benefits that companies can offer to their employees, including:

• Health insurance: Many employers offer comprehensive health insurance plans, covering medical, dental, and vision expenses for employees and their dependents.
• Retirement plans: Companies may contribute to retirement savings accounts or offer pension schemes to ensure financial security for employees after they retire.
• Paid time off: In addition to statutory holidays, companies often provide vacation leave, sick leave, personal days off, or paid parental leave to support employee well-being and family needs.
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAP): These programs offer confidential counseling services for employees dealing with personal issues such as stress management or substance abuse problems.
• Education reimbursement: Some organizations support continuous learning through tuition reimbursement programs or scholarships for further education or professional development courses.
• Wellness programs: These initiatives promote employee health through gym membership discounts, wellness challenges, on-site fitness classes, or access to mental health resources.

Why do companies offer fringe benefits?

Offering fringe benefits gives companies a competitive edge in the job market, helping them to attract and retain top talent. Some advantages of providing fringe benefits include:

• Increasing employee satisfaction. These benefits make employees feel valued and appreciated, leading to higher job satisfaction and making them more likely to be loyal and committed to their work.
• Improving morale and motivation. Through fringe benefits, employers show they prioritize employees’ well-being, thereby boosting their morale and motivation.
• Attracting top talent: A comprehensive package that includes attractive fringe benefits can be a major draw for highly skilled professionals.
• Enhancing productivity: Offering fringe benefits helps create a positive work environment where individuals are motivated to excel. 
• Reducing turnover: Investing in fringe benefits can help reduce employee turnover rates as individuals are less likely to leave an organization that provides valuable perks beyond salary alone.
• Saving costs for employees: Some fringe benefits, like health insurance or retirement plans, may come with cost savings for employees compared to purchasing these services individually.

To sum up, fringe benefits have evolved from optional extras into a core component of strategic compensation, enabling employers to differentiate their offers, strengthen retention, and build a culture where employees feel genuinely supported.

These non-wage benefits can materially raise the real value of employees’ compensation while improving health, financial security, and work-life balance. For employers, a well-designed mix, aligned to workforce needs and local tax rules, can drive morale, productivity, and long-term cost efficiency.

Fringe benefits become a genuine investment in employees and a real advantage when it comes to winning and keeping great talent. For employers, all what they need to do is to choose benefits that truly fit their team and their goals, understand the full cost and tax picture, explain them in plain language, and revisit them often to see how they stack up.

Kholoud Hussein 

Artificial intelligence is moving beyond consumer applications such as chatbots, image generators, and personal productivity tools. As businesses shift from experimenting with AI to integrating it into core operations, a new category is gaining prominence: Enterprise AI.

At its simplest, Enterprise AI refers to the use of artificial intelligence within organizations to automate processes, analyze data, support decision-making, and improve operational efficiency. Unlike consumer AI, which is designed primarily for individual users, Enterprise AI addresses the more complex requirements of businesses, including data security, governance, integration, scalability, compliance, and measurable returns on investment.

What is Enterprise AI?

Enterprise AI encompasses AI-powered technologies deployed across functions such as finance, human resources, sales, marketing, customer service, cybersecurity, supply chains, and operations.

A bank, for example, may use AI to detect suspicious transactions, assess credit risks, automate customer support, and analyze financial data. A retailer could use AI to forecast demand, optimize inventory, and personalize customer recommendations, while a manufacturer could deploy it to predict equipment failures and reduce downtime.

The key distinction is that Enterprise AI is not simply about introducing an AI model into a company. It involves integrating AI into existing business systems and workflows to generate measurable business outcomes.

This makes integration one of the defining characteristics of Enterprise AI. Even a sophisticated AI model has limited business value if it cannot securely access relevant company data or interact with systems such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, accounting, and supply-chain platforms.

From experimentation to infrastructure

The rapid development of generative AI has changed how companies approach the technology. Many businesses initially experimented with publicly available AI tools to generate content, summarize documents, or improve employee productivity.

The next stage is more complex: moving AI from an individual productivity tool to an integrated component of business infrastructure.

This transition is creating demand for technologies that connect AI models with proprietary company data and existing business applications. It is also increasing the importance of cybersecurity, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and human oversight.

As a result, companies are increasingly looking beyond the AI model itself and considering the infrastructure required to deploy AI securely and effectively at scale.

Where startups fit in

This shift creates a significant opportunity for startups.

Large technology companies may provide foundational AI models and cloud infrastructure, but startups can build specialized applications on top of these technologies to address specific enterprise problems.

Businesses often do not need a general-purpose AI system. They need a solution that understands a particular industry, workflow, or operational challenge.

A startup could, for example, develop an AI platform for insurance claims, legal document analysis, financial compliance, procurement, or logistics. By focusing on a specific problem, it can develop specialized workflows, integrate with existing enterprise systems, and potentially demonstrate a clearer return on investment.

This has contributed to the emergence of vertical AI startups—companies applying AI to specific industries rather than attempting to serve every type of customer.

Why Enterprise AI can be attractive to startups

Enterprise customers may be willing to pay more for technology that can reduce costs, increase productivity, accelerate revenue, or mitigate risk. This creates an opportunity for startups to build business-to-business AI products with higher contract values than many consumer applications.

However, selling to enterprises also raises the barriers to entry. Startups may need to pass security assessments, demonstrate regulatory compliance, integrate with existing systems, and convince multiple decision-makers before securing a contract.

Technical capability alone is therefore not enough. Successful Enterprise AI startups need to combine AI expertise with enterprise sales, cybersecurity, data governance, product integration, and a strong understanding of customer workflows.

The importance of proprietary data

Data is another critical component of Enterprise AI.

Companies hold large volumes of proprietary information that can make AI applications more relevant to their specific environments. Customer records, internal documents, transaction histories, operational data, and industry-specific knowledge can all support more specialized AI solutions.

This creates an opportunity for startups to build products around enterprise-specific data and workflows, rather than competing solely on the performance of an underlying AI model.

At the same time, enterprises increasingly expect clear controls over data access, storage, model training, and privacy, making responsible data management a central part of the Enterprise AI proposition.

The next opportunity for startups

The Enterprise AI opportunity extends well beyond building another chatbot. Startups can create value across the AI ecosystem, from data management and security to specialized applications, workflow automation, and AI agents.

AI agents are particularly significant because they can move beyond generating responses to performing sequences of tasks. An enterprise agent could retrieve information, analyze it, update a business system, and trigger a workflow with limited human intervention.

For startups, the central question is therefore not simply "Where can we use AI?" but "Which expensive, repetitive, or complex business process can AI fundamentally improve?"

That distinction captures the essence of Enterprise AI. Its value lies in transforming artificial intelligence from a standalone technology into a practical business capability that can be integrated into workflows, measured through business outcomes, and scaled across organizations.

For startups, this represents a growing opportunity—but also a higher bar for execution. Winning in Enterprise AI will increasingly depend not only on developing powerful AI technology, but on understanding a business problem deeply enough to turn that technology into a reliable, secure, and economically valuable solution.

Ghada Ismail

In this second part, Abu Zannad turns to the resource startups actually have plenty of: creativity. He explains why “out-noticing” the competition matters more than out-spending them, and why so many founders confuse visibility, reputation, and meaning when they talk about “building a brand.”

How can startups use creativity as a competitive advantage when they cannot compete with larger companies on advertising budgets, resources, or brand recognition?

I think we first need to stop treating creativity as incidental, as this magical thing that occasionally happens when a talented person walks into a room. Creativity is becoming a much more important competitive capability precisely because AI is making so many other capabilities abundant.

Today, almost everyone can produce more content, more variations, more designs, more headlines and more analysis, faster and cheaper than ever before. So producing more is becoming less interesting. The competitive advantage increasingly lies in seeing something other people did not see.

I often describe it as the difference between information and insight. Two companies can have access to exactly the same data and come to completely different conclusions. Same data. Different eyes. That difference is human judgement.

And I don’t think insight has to be left to luck. There are conditions that make it more likely. Experience gives you patterns. Curiosity makes you notice what does not fit. Scepticism stops you accepting the first explanation. Contradictions reveal where reality is behaving differently from the category’s assumptions. Connections allow two things that normally live separately to collide.

Sometimes even constraint helps. I call that creative desperation: when you genuinely cannot solve the problem in the conventional way, you are forced to find another path. That is why startups may actually have an advantage. A large incumbent can often buy another media plan. A startup cannot. It has to notice something the incumbent has stopped noticing.

Look at the extraordinary group of younger businesses emerging around us:

Dollar Shave Club did not beat the shaving establishment by producing a more expensive shaving commercial. It understood internet humour and attacked the seriousness of the category.

Liquid Death looked at bottled water and asked why water had to behave like bottled water at all. It borrowed from punk, heavy metal and entertainment culture.

PRIME understood that creator communities themselves could become an extraordinary distribution system.

Crumbl turned cookies into something closer to sneaker drops; weekly anticipation, scarcity, reviewing and participation.

Sleep or Die looked at the soft, calming visual language of the sleep category and contradicted it completely.

And Dubai Chocolate may be one of the most fascinating cases of all. Someone created an unusually sensory product: “the crack of the chocolate, the colour of the pistachio, the texture of knafeh and a platform discovered that people could not stop watching it”. The algorithm accelerated the phenomenon; it did not originate the human fascination.

I think we should stop treating cases like these as amusing stories about things that “went viral.” They are evidence. We are watching something close to a new applied science of cultural creativity develop in front of us.

Every platform is producing an enormous live laboratory of human behaviour. Every unexpected breakout gives us something to study. What was the human tension? What cultural code did the brand recognize? What category convention did it violate? What community carried the idea? What made somebody want to participate rather than merely watch? What behaviour did the platform reward? What made the idea travel from one subculture into another?

Those are not questions only for advertising people anymore. They are questions for founders, anthropologists, behavioural scientists, strategists and technologists. And over time, we can begin building frameworks around them; not formulas for producing virality, because culture will never be that obedient, but better places to look for the unexpected.

That distinction matters. Creativity is not a formula. But neither is it magic. We can study it. We can develop our intuition. We can accumulate cases. We can recognize patterns. We can learn the grammar of a platform, a category, a culture or a subculture; and then have the courage to break that grammar when the human insight tells us to.

This, to me, is where AI becomes enormously useful. Let the machine search wider. Let it retrieve more cases, make more connections, generate more possibilities and accelerate experimentation.

But the human still has to ask: Which one matters? Which contradiction is interesting? Which observation is merely strange… and which one reveals something genuinely human? Which idea deserves to exist?

Because AI can increasingly generate ten thousand possibilities. The scarce capability is knowing which possibility is worth pursuing.

So my advice to startups would be: don’t try to out-produce the large companies. You probably can’t. And increasingly, there is little advantage in doing so anyway. Out-notice them. Out-understand them. And then use creativity to turn what you noticed into something the culture cannot ignore.

What do you think startups misunderstand most about building a brand: is it about visibility, reputation, or creating an identity people want to associate with?

I think what startups misunderstand most is the word brand itself.

They often think the sequence is: Build the product. Acquire customers. Grow. And when we become big enough, we will “do the brand.” Usually that means a new logo, a brand book, perhaps a large campaign.

But the uncomfortable truth is that you are building the brand from the first day whether you intend to or not. The first product experience builds it. The first customer complaint builds it. The way your founder speaks builds it. The price builds it. The packaging builds it. The people who choose you build it. The things you repeatedly say, and the things you repeatedly do, build it. So visibility, reputation and identity are not really three competing answers. They are three different layers.

Visibility means: I know you exist.

You can buy visibility. You can hack it. You can go viral and acquire enormous visibility almost overnight. But visibility is not a brand. We are surrounded today by things that became very visible and disappeared six months later.

Reputation means: I have learned what to expect from you.

You deliver. The product works. You keep your promises. There is consistency between what you say and what actually happens. Reputation takes longer because it has to survive contact with reality. And then there is something more interesting.

Meaning.

At some point, the strongest brands begin to signify something beyond the immediate utility of the product. Choosing the brand says something. Sometimes it says something to other people. Sometimes, more importantly, it says something to ourselves.

That is very close to the argument I make in AdEntity. Modern advertising became powerful because it taught objects to carry meaning. A watch stopped being only an instrument for telling time. A car was not only transportation. A pair of shoes was not only protection for the feet. Commercial objects became signals through which ambition, taste, rebellion, belonging, care or achievement could become socially legible.

And AdEntity does not argue that brands invented those desires. It argues that the surrounding system; the brand, product, image, celebrity and media environment… helped teach people how those desires could be recognized.

That is why I would hesitate to tell a founder, “Create an identity people want to associate with.” It is almost right. But it can lead to another mistake: inventing a beautiful brand personality with no relationship to the actual business.

Meaning has to be earned through product truth.

If Liquid Death behaved like a rebellious entertainment brand but the product, packaging and every interaction reverted to conventional bottled-water behaviour, the mythology would eventually collapse.

If Apple talks about creativity but produces experiences that feel careless, the symbolism weakens.

A brand cannot indefinitely advertise a meaning that the business itself does not substantiate. And this is where I think startups face a particularly modern trap. Startups live inside dashboards: ‘CAC. ROAS. Conversion. Cost per click. Retention. Downloads. Funnels’.

These numbers matter enormously. I would never advise a founder to ignore them. But because they are visible every morning on a dashboard, they begin to acquire psychological authority. What we can measure immediately starts to look more important than what is accumulating slowly.

And brand accumulates slowly. Memory accumulates. Familiarity accumulates. Trust accumulates. Distinctive assets accumulate. Meaning accumulates. This is why performance marketing is so seductive. You spend today and something happens tomorrow.

Brand building is more like compound interest. For a while, it can look as though very little is happening. And then one day people search for your name instead of the category. They recommend you without being paid. They recognize you before they see the logo. They forgive you a small mistake because there is accumulated trust. They consider you before the performance ad arrives. They may even pay slightly more because the alternative does not feel equivalent.

That is an economic asset, not a communications indulgence.

Airbnb gave us a fascinating demonstration of this. When the company dramatically reduced marketing during the pandemic, traffic recovered to roughly 95% of its 2019 level before marketing expenditure fully resumed. By the fourth quarter of 2020, more than 90% of traffic was direct or unpaid. Brian Chesky’s conclusion was essentially that Airbnb had become culturally established enough that the brand itself was generating demand.

That is what founders should aspire to. Not necessarily becoming a verb. But getting to the point where every customer does not have to be rented again from an advertising platform. Because if every sale requires another paid impression, another promotion and another retargeting message, you may have built an efficient acquisition machine. You have not necessarily built a brand.

There is another problem that optimization culture creates for startups: they change too much. New headline. New proposition. New design. New tone. New campaign. New audience. New creative every week because something performed 4% better. Experimentation is essential for discovering what works. But once you discover something valuable, brand building requires the opposite capability: the discipline to repeat it.

Memory needs consistency. And let’s not confuse consistency with repetition.

The Ehrenberg-Bass work on distinctive assets is useful here. Colours, sounds, shapes, characters, packaging and other recognizable cues only become assets when people repeatedly learn to associate them with one brand. They are built and protected over time; they do not become distinctive because somebody declared them distinctive in a brand guideline.

So perhaps I would give founders a very simple architecture: Be visible enough to enter the mind. Be good enough to earn a reputation. Be consistent enough to become remembered. Be meaningful enough to stand for something.

And make sure the product continuously earns the story you are telling.

Because a brand, in the end, is not the campaign. It is not the logo. It is not the number of followers. It is not even what the founder says the company stands for. A brand is the memory and meaning that remain when the advertising disappears. That is what startups should start building from day one.

Ghada Ismail

Not every good startup is a venture capital startup.

That can be hard for founders to hear, especially when they have built a product people like, attracted their first customers, and started generating revenue. But venture capital is not simply looking for businesses that work. It is looking for businesses that could become much, much bigger.

That is what makes a startup “VC-backable.” It is less about having a well-prepared investor presentation and more about showing investors that there is a real opportunity to build something with significant scale.

Market Size and Growth Potential

One of the first questions investors will ask is how big the opportunity really is.

A startup can solve a genuine problem and still have limited room to grow if its potential customer base is too small. For a VC-backed company, the ambition usually needs to go beyond building a profitable small business.

This is particularly relevant for startups in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC. A founder may begin with a solution designed for Saudi customers, but investors will want to understand whether that business can eventually expand across the region or into other markets.

The bigger question is not just, “Who will buy this?” It is, “How many people or businesses could eventually need it?”

Customer Demand and Market Traction

A great idea is still only an idea until someone is willing to use it or pay for it.

This is where traction matters. Revenue, customer numbers, repeat purchases, retention, and transaction volumes can all show whether a startup is gaining genuine momentum.

For an early-stage company, traction does not necessarily mean millions in revenue. A growing user base, successful pilots, strong engagement or commercial partnerships can also demonstrate demand.

But there is a difference between growth and meaningful growth. Adding customers through heavy discounts, for example, does not necessarily prove that they will stay.

The Problem and the Value Proposition

The strongest startups tend to begin with a problem rather than technology for technology’s sake.

If a company can help businesses reduce costs, make a complicated process faster, improve access to finance, or solve a problem customers face regularly, its value becomes easier to understand.

Saudi Arabia’s rapidly developing fintech, healthcare, logistics, and technology sectors offer plenty of opportunities. The challenge is proving that the solution is valuable enough for customers to change their existing habits.

Founder Experience and Execution

Investors are putting money into a company, but they are also betting on the people running it.

Founders do not necessarily need decades of experience or impressive corporate backgrounds. What matters is whether they understand the problem, know their customers, and can keep adapting when things do not go according to plan.

Startups rarely follow the original business plan perfectly. Markets change, products need to be rebuilt, and early assumptions can prove wrong. Being able to respond to those changes can be just as important as having the original idea.

Scalability and Business Economics

Rapid growth sounds impressive until you look at how much it costs.

Investors will want to understand how much it costs to acquire a customer, how long that customer stays, and how much value they generate. A startup does not need perfect economics from day one, but there should be a credible path toward becoming more efficient as it grows.

That is also where scalability comes in. A Saudi startup might expand from one city to the wider Kingdom, then into the GCC or other international markets. The opportunity does not have to be global from day one, but investors will want to see what the next stages could look like.

Ultimately, being VC-backable does not mean a startup has to be perfect. Very few early-stage companies are.

It means giving investors a reason to believe the business can become significantly larger than it is today, and that the founders have a realistic way of getting there.