Structure First, Scale Second - The Cliff Notes

24six9 Riyadh Founders Workshop with Zubair Chemb

Somewhere between your first pitch deck and your first “what have I done?” moment, you realize startups are less “build in public” and more “build on paperwork.”

That’s exactly where the last 24SIX9 Founders Workshop in Riyadh decided to camp out.

24six9 Rewind

The 24six9 community in our Riyadh Chapter gathered at NeoNexus on Olaya Street last month, late-night Ramadan timing, caffeine levels questionable, ambition levels very much not. Our aim for the evening was to understand corporate governance, and its role in the longevity of our startups. Thankfully, we had an amazing speaker host the workshop, so in this blog, we’ll go over the meticulous and curated pointers Zubair Chemb left us with. Read on for the full experience.

Zubair Chemb took charge of the room, equipped with his 16 years of experience in Saudi’s travel and hospitality game. As the CEO of Travel360.ai, and someone who’s clearly spent way too much time untangling startup messes, Zubair knew his task for the workshop was to a hefty one; make corporate governance digestible.

He kicked things off with a story from Bangalore in the early 2000s. Two investors buy huge chunks of land right by a new airport. Investor A does the unsexy work: perfect paperwork, airtight deeds, every dotted i and crossed t. Investor B figures “it’ll sort itself out.” Fast forward: Investor A flips half his land for 25x profit, the rest for 50x. As for Investor B, he’s basically bankrupt and has a full-time job fighting government lawyers.

“Your startup is that land. Your corporate structure is the deed. No deed, no matter how brilliant your product is, you’ve got nothing but a very expensive hole in the ground.” - Zubair Chemb

Governance without the buzzwords

Instead of throwing legal jargon at people who just want to build, Zubair broke corporate governance down into four pillars founders can keep in mind easily:

Accountability: What did you do with the money people trusted you with?

Transparency: Can anyone actually see what’s going on under the hood, or is it “Inshallah accounting”?

Fairness: Does the person who wrote your first tiny cheque get treated with the same respect as the big flashy fund in your Series B?

Responsibility: Are leadership and management acting in the company’s best long‑term interest, or just playing CEO on LinkedIn?

The underlying message of these pointers, in this context, is to think of longevity. The companies that last decades, not funding rounds, bake this thinking in from day one.

HoldCos, OpCos, and avoiding the “one lawsuit kills everything” problem

One theme hit especially hard for 24six9ers juggling multiple projects or family businesses: structure. A lot of people run ten different things out of one entity, whether it’s clinics, tech experiments, side hustles, “small projects” your distant uncle insisted would be easy. It works for a while, right up until one part blows up.

Here’s what Zubair recommended:

1. Put the crown jewels, i.e., IP, assets, core ownership, in a Holding Company.
2. Run the messy, daily, real‑world business through separate Operating Companies.

If one OpCo gets hit by a lawsuit, regulatory issue, or catastrophic mistake, you can isolate it instead of watching the whole empire go down. Think of it as building fire doors into your corporate structure.

The romance and horror of investors

Of course, it wouldn’t be a founders’ workshop without talking about investors. Zubair called a bad investor relationship akin to “a bad arranged marriage”. You didn’t really know what you were signing up for, but now you’re locked into group decisions about everything. So Zubair gave us some pointers and key takeaways to make this marriage work:

1. Term sheets are not stationery , they’re power. Make sure to read every line.
2. The Shareholders’ Agreement (SHA) is the real gospel. That’s where rights, vetoes, exits, and expectations live.
3. Veto rights can be reasonable (“don’t sell the company without me”) or ridiculous (“don’t hire a junior accountant without me”). You want the first kind. You will deeply regret the second.

The 24six9-ers in the room quickly came to the same conclusion. While you can own 50% on paper, you could still have effectively zero control if you sign the wrong terms.

Equity: Chocolates in the fridge, not a buffet

As the floor opened for a quick Q&A session, founders immediately brought up the classic headache: What do you do when you’ve given a co‑founder 10%, and they check out mentally but still sit on the cap table like dead weight?

To which Zubair shared his rule:

1. Nothing should be “given”, everything should be earned.
2. Use vesting – equity releases over time, usually with a one‑year cliff.
3. Use clawback clauses – if someone leaves badly, the company can take back recent vested shares.

“Equity is like chocolates in the fridge. You don’t hand the whole box to the kid on day one. You give them one at a time, if they’re still showing up and doing the work.” - Zubair Chemb

The Lonely Truth (and Why You Don’t Have to Build Solo)

Amid all the land stories and liquidation clauses, the real 24six9 magic lay in the raw questions bubbling up, questions that every member in each chapter wants to ask: what if my co-founder’s dead weight, what if I’ve already mixed personal and company money, what if I signed something dumb?

As a global founders community, we know this to be a fact: Founders don’t just show up for answers. They show up because it’s scary to admit you don’t know, and scarier to admit it alone.

And that’s 24six9’s superpower. We love putting founders in a room where someone like Zubair says, “Yeah, it’s complicated, but you can learn it”, and ten other founders nod because they’re right there with you.

Startups aren’t just code. They’re jurisdiction, structure, and fine print too. 24six9 makes sure no founder figures that out alone.

Join the community. Build smarter together. Spread the word.

Our Community in Action

As always, our journey is fueled by the incredible energy, creativity, and courage of OUR community. Every meetup, workshop, event collaboration and partnership; demonstrates what we can accomplish when passionate entrepreneurs come together. Keep an eye on our Luma, Instagram, and LinkedIn for upcoming events, dates, and locations - we look forward to seeing you soon!