About.

About Azm

Azm means resolve — the will to begin, and the will to continue. It is a private venture studio in Doha, and its purpose is older and simpler than the word suggests: to find worth before the world does, and to give it a path.

Everywhere in this country there are young people with more potential than direction — capable, ready, and waiting for a door. The market overlooks them, because the market rewards what is already proven. Azm begins exactly where the market loses patience: with a capable young person and, often, nothing yet but the raw material of a founder. We do not wait for the finished article. We make it.

What follows is less a program than an apprenticeship in becoming. Across a guided journey — from the first raw idea to a company that can stand on its own — a builder learns to think, to validate, to build, to sell, and to lead, with real mentors beside them and a studio that has walked the road before. When a venture proves itself worthy, Azm stands behind it: with capital, with partnership, and with a growth engine of our own that brings a young company its first real customers — the hardest thing any founder ever has to find alone.

We are small by design, and unashamedly selective. We choose our builders and invite them ourselves; we would rather build ten founders completely than pass a thousand through halfway. We put in the first cheque and open the door to those who follow — and we share in success only when our founders succeed, our fortune tied to theirs, as it should be.

Azm is our own capital, our own conviction, our own time. It is not an accelerator counting graduates, nor a fund chasing returns. It is a studio built on a single belief: that the surest way to build a nation is to build the people who will build it.

The Studio

Azm is a private venture studio — small by design. Led by its founder, Nouf Almarri, and co-founders Mohammed Al-Naimi and Nur Diyab, decisions are fast, personal, and honest. We are not a committee; we are a studio that builds alongside the founders it supports.

Nouf Almarri

Founder, CEO

Two decades building and leading — companies, institutions, and the people inside them. She has founded ventures, backed founders, and sat on both sides of the table where worth is judged and capital is decided. Along the way she learned that the rarest thing in a young builder is never talent; it is someone who sees it early and stays. Nouf founded Azm to do the one thing she wished someone had done for her: see the worth in a young builder before the world does, and give it a path. She invests her own capital, her own conviction, and her own time — and she keeps the studio small so that every founder is known, not processed.

Mohammed Al-Naimi

Co-founder, COO

Fifteen years spent building capability in people — beginning with high performers in sport and rising to the leaders who guide them. His career has turned on a single question: how raw ability becomes performance that holds under pressure. He knows that talent is only the starting line, and that what separates those who arrive from those who fall away is how they are trained, tested, and believed in. At Azm, Mohammed builds the builder — turning a young person's capability into the discipline, resilience, and judgement a founder needs to carry a company.

Nur Diyab

Co-founder, CGO

A builder of growth. Nur has spent his career turning early ventures into real businesses — working alongside venture funds and accelerators in Italy and London before bringing that craft home to Qatar. Here, he and Nouf have co-founded and built several startups and venture studios together, among them Banan Ventures, their studio for the region's artisans. He knows the exact distance between a promising idea and a company that can stand on its own — and how to close it. At Azm, Nur builds the growth engine: he turns capability into traction, and traction into a venture that lasts.

The Majlis

Every builder is guided by mentors — not an app, and never answers handed down. We call them the Majlis: a circle of people who have built, failed, and built again, who sit with the builders we support and help them think for themselves.

01 / Fictional example

Leila Darwish

A product builder who once found her first paying customer by listening before designing. Brings: product and validation.

02 / Fictional example

Rami Selim

An operator who learned to grow a team without losing the habit of doing the work. Brings: operations and scale.

03 / Fictional example

Alya Nasser

An early-stage investor who knows when a founder needs a question more than a cheque. Brings: capital and judgment.

The Majlis grows with each cohort. We add mentors slowly, and only those who believe a young person is worth the hours.