Nawaf AlKoheji’s theory of the useful room

The room was expensive. That was the objection Nawaf AlKoheji remembered when he looked back on creating The Collective Hub. Building a place for entrepreneurs, investors and creatives required money before the first member could sit down. The argument against it had the reassuring solidity of a construction bill. His answer depended on people wanting to be there.

They did. In November 2023, he said demand for the spaces had beaten expectations and the business had been profitable from its first day. Those were his own assessments, delivered with the affection of a founder discussing a favourite project. “The Collective Hub is like my baby!” he said. An investment executive can spend a working life discussing other people’s companies. Here was one he plainly wanted to claim.

There is a useful way to read his career through that room. Before the Hub came a catering business, a shopping festival and the leadership of Tenmou, Bahrain’s business angel investment company. After Tenmou came Reete, which arranges executive retreats. Across these changes, his work has repeatedly involved organising the conditions in which people meet, buy, learn or make decisions. The furniture changes. The problem of getting people together keeps returning.

First, feed the customer

One of his early business ideas began in Delhi, during an internship after his studies. He noticed the city’s tiffin-box culture and saw room for a subscription food-delivery service back in Bahrain. In 2010 he started the company he called Food Limited. The idea was practical: members paid monthly for meals to arrive. Lunch, that dependable interruption to every working day, could become a business.

The venture later became known as The Culinary Company. His subsequent career included its managing directorship from 2016 to 2018. The food business gives his investment work an unglamorous foundation. A meal has to reach a customer; a repeat order has to be earned. Catering leaves relatively little room to confuse an attractive presentation with successful delivery. The customer can inspect the evidence with a fork.

His education had taken him through international relations in London and an MBA at the University of the Incarnate Word in Texas. The combination put politics and commerce on the same résumé. His next roles would bring him into contact with both public institutions and private businesses, often with a crowd of customers somewhere in the picture.

A festival is a business with several front doors

At Tamkeen, Bahrain’s labour fund, AlKoheji worked on the Bahrain Shopping Festival. By late 2015 he was publicly explaining the aims of its second edition: draw visitors from neighbouring Gulf countries and encourage spending across the national economy. The programme ran from December 24 to January 23, bringing retail, hospitality and entertainment into a shared calendar.

He described the earlier edition as having attracted more than 2,000 participating retailers and BD18 million in shopping over six weeks. These were festival figures, rather than personal earnings, and they describe the scale of the coordination involved. A shopping event succeeds through a collection of businesses doing different things while giving customers a reason to treat them as one occasion.

The details could be wonderfully concrete. Seef Mall’s locations joined a loyalty system in which spending earned points, with different participation tiers. Alongside the commercial arrangements came workshops and family activities. It was a lesson in making partnerships visible to the people expected to use them. An agreement between organisations has limited charm until it gives somebody a reason to walk through a door.

Taking the investor’s chair

AlKoheji became Tenmou’s CEO in 2018 and held the role until 2024. The organisation had been founded in 2011, so he was taking responsibility for an existing investment institution. Its remit brought seed funding and mentorship to entrepreneurs building scalable businesses, particularly those using technology. The job placed him on the other side of the table from founders seeking support.

His own professional development continued there. He completed the VC Unlocked programme associated with 500 Startups and Stanford in 2019, then received a Qualified Angel Investor credential from the World Business Angels Investment Forum in 2021. Those dates matter because they show formal learning continuing after he had accepted the executive title. A title can arrive before the end of one’s education. Ideally, it does.

He also served on the boards of businesses including Malaeb and Unipal. Such appointments connect the initial decision to invest with the less theatrical work that follows: oversight, questions and an ongoing relationship with the people running the company. The pitch may be the occasion everyone remembers. The board meeting is where the relationship acquires a calendar.

The useful part happens between meetings

In February 2022, he outlined a Tenmou programme with the US-based Center for International Private Enterprise. It aimed to support 50 Bahraini small and medium-sized businesses in two groups of 25. Participants would be arranged by sector, with mentors providing individual guidance once a month for three months. Sports, retail, technology, food and manufacturing were among the areas included.

The timetable was modest enough to be revealing. Monthly sessions imply work between appointments: a question to investigate, a decision to try, a business to return to. Mentorship gains substance when the conversation is specific enough to affect what happens next. For an entrepreneur, a person who can explain a problem may be useful long before that person offers an investment.

The Collective Hub gave such relationships a physical setting. Its Bahrain Bay branch formally opened in February 2022 after a period of hosting events and incubating projects. Khawla Alshaikh directed the branch, with Flat6Labs named as its first incubated firm. The Adliya location continued operating alongside it. Here, the network had rooms, offices and people responsible for keeping things running.

“The Collective Hub is like my baby!”

Nawaf AlKoheji · November 2023

By February 2023, AlKoheji and Tenmou chairman Suhail Algosaibi were meeting Bahrain’s industry and commerce minister, Abdulla bin Adel Fakhro, to discuss a third Hub branch. That meeting makes the organisational relationships clear: the founder worked with a chairman, branch leadership and public-sector counterparts. A community may sound informal. Creating the place where it gathers involves quite a few formal appointments.

Two hundred people, twenty startups

Another version of the useful room appeared at the seventh MENA Angel Investors Summit, hosted by Tenmou at ARCAPITA in Bahrain Bay on November 14, 2022. Around 200 participants and 20 technology startups attended. The gathering put founders within conversational reach of investors, venture firms and family-business owners from the wider region.

AlKoheji and Mishari Yousef personally invited the visiting Infusion 51a team, whose photograph records them alongside Scott VanderMeer and Mehrab Ajalli. It is a small detail with some explanatory power. An international investment connection can begin with the ordinary act of inviting somebody. The event supplies the occasion; somebody still has to make the introduction.

A larger market requires a different conversation

When AlKoheji joined a February 2024 workshop for Bahraini women entrepreneurs, his advice about expansion was cautious. Beside GrubTech co-founder Omar Rifai and Villa Mamas founder Roaya Saleh, he emphasised understanding the market a business planned to enter and securing its position at home before moving outward. Growth required attention to local conditions.

He also described what attracted an investor’s interest: technology in the business model and founders capable of carrying out what they proposed. The emphasis on people belongs beside the emphasis on place. A promising market does little for a company whose leaders cannot execute; a capable founder still needs to understand the customers beyond the next border.

His policy argument extended the circle further. He suggested encouraging successful Bahrainis to invest capital in other local firms. In that view, entrepreneurial success can create the means to finance another generation of businesses. The country’s relatively low startup costs also offered a way to attract foreign founders. Bahrain could be a starting point for people with connections and ambitions elsewhere.

The Collective Hub’s collaboration with Export Bahrain and Bahrain Development Bank on the 2024 Creative Business Cup gave that international outlook a competitive route. Ten Bahraini founders were to pitch to a jury; the national winner would represent Bahrain at the global finals in Copenhagen. A local gathering could end with a ticket to a different audience.

Now, take the team out of the office

In 2024, AlKoheji moved into another founder role with Reete. Its current business brings executives together for retreats, leadership programmes and work on strategy and governance across the GCC. He is CEO and co-founder alongside COO and co-founder Melody Mercedes. He leads growth, client relationships and destination partnerships, while she leads the design of its leadership and organisational programmes.

The connection with his earlier work is easy to see, though the participants have changed. A coworking space brings people from different businesses together. An executive retreat creates time for people within a business to consider how they work together. Both involve deliberate choices about the setting and the conversations it should make possible.

Reete’s strategy programmes promise practical outputs, including priorities, ownership frameworks and implementation plans. Its family-enterprise work addresses succession, governance and continuity. These are subjects with a life well beyond an afternoon’s workshop. A pleasant location may help a difficult discussion begin; the decisions must survive the journey back to the office.

AlKoheji also became an independent board member of Naseem International School in 2024. By 2026, his public career record placed that responsibility beside Reete and his completed Tenmou tenure. The story has continued beyond the investment title through which many people first encountered him.

From meals to festivals, shared workspaces to executive retreats, his businesses and roles have dealt with different kinds of demand. The recurring proposition is recognisable: organise something people have a reason to join, then attend to what happens when they arrive. At the Hub, that began with an expensive room. The more interesting calculation concerned the people who would fill it.