We're bringing House of Arāya to Dubai

This summer, investors gathered around one table in London for the Summer Lounge, a series of private morning discussions exploring the questions shaping capital right now.

Those conversations brought together different perspectives, experiences and approaches to investing, creating space for thoughtful debate around where conviction is being built.

Now, we’re bringing that same spirit to Dubai.

On 4th September, we are hosting an invite-only event exploring where AI is creating new possibilities for investors, and what we see changing as the next generation inherits capital.

Together with communities we admire, we’ll bring investors, operators and leaders across technology and capital into the room for an evening of thoughtful conversation.

This is the first House of Arāya gathering in Dubai; the first room of many.

If you’d like to join us in Dubai, reply and I’ll share more details.

One of the conversations we’ll explore that evening is how investors think about AI companies.

So what do you look for when an AI deck lands in your inbox?

In late 2024 a deck landed in my inbox for a company in a category I've previously been sceptical about. It came from another VC fund. Too early for them, but they knew the founder and rated him, so they passed it on. The company is called Cold, and my first thought was it's an AI sales tool in an already crowded market. Then I started reading.

By slide seven I wanted to meet the team.

Three things turned it, and they're worth looking for in any early deck.

It made me understand the whole business in one image

The problem slide was a single picture, no wall of text, and I got it in seconds because I live it. You finish a Zoom call. Now you owe a follow-up email, the right attachment, the customer context, a CRM update, and a next step, except you're already in your next call. The best decks make a complex idea feel obvious. If a founder needs three paragraphs to explain the problem, they usually don't understand it well enough yet.

It answered the question I ask of every AI company

Why can't ChatGPT, Claude, or the next model just do this? That's the question that kills most AI startups, and Cold answered it without me having to ask. It doesn't wrap one model and act as a chatbot. It sits above your existing tools and orchestrates them. The model drafts the email, but the customer context is pulled from across your systems, the attachments are added automatically, and the suggestions are shaped by that specific lead. That's the line between a feature that gets absorbed and a product people build their day around.

The moat was built to compound

The defensibility slide was titled data network effects, and it's what I look for the most in AI now. Every task teaches Cold something about how that team works and what actually drives revenue. The product gets more useful the longer it's used. Competitors can copy features in a quarter. They can't copy years of proprietary workflow data.

The deck that wins you over usually isn't the flashiest. It's the one that makes you understand the whole business fast, answers the hardest question before you ask it, and shows you something that gets stronger with use. Next time a deck excites you, check it against those three. If it only manages the first, you've got a good storyteller. If it manages all three, you might have a company.

In this week's video I go through the full Cold deck the way I first read it, slide by slide, and talk through exactly what made me want the meeting and why I invested.

It's the closest thing to sitting next to me while I read a deck for the first time. Watch it below.

Warmly,
Rupa

P.s. When you're ready, here are 3 ways to connect further: