Entrepreneur · Advisor · Angel Investor
For most of my life, knowing things was the edge. It isn't anymore. What stays scarce is trust, judgment, and the people who can connect worlds that don't otherwise meet.
The one conviction everything else follows from.
Intelligence just got cheap. Trust, judgment, and the bridges between worlds didn't come down with it.
AI makes intelligence cheap. What it doesn't make cheap: trust, judgment under uncertainty, and the cultural fluency to be at home in a boardroom in Vienna and a workshop in Muscat on the same day.
I grew up between worlds — Persian roots, a European home — and learned early to read people across the lines that usually divide them. That instinct became the work: building transnational teams, companies and investments across DACH, the Gulf and Asia, where the distance others avoid is exactly where the value is.
Vienna · Between worlds
Three ways connection turns into value.
A sparring partner to founders, boards and C-level — shaping the culture and building the structures that let a company lead across generations and bridge legacy with new technology.
From first idea to operating company — built alongside founders with my own bench of experts, trusted for decades.
Early and hands-on — backing uncut diamonds at pre-seed and seed, with smart money and a team founders can plug in from day one.
A selection — one principle: bridges between markets and technologies.
Founder & Managing Director
Operational growth partner — tech, sourcing and management across DACH, MENA and Asia.
Co-Founder & CEO
Applied AI for real industries — a production-AI lab.
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
A modern fine-jewellery brand — craft meets contemporary design.
Member of the Management Board
Austrian IT group — data centres, digitalisation and software development.
Selected — further ventures & advisory roles by introduction
The reason to stay — and to call three weeks later.
Featured Essay
On what's still worth paying for once everyone can think for free.
Where I think the real value is moving now that knowledge is free — written from the companies I actually run between Vienna and the Gulf, the jewellery brand I started because of what AI is doing to everything else, and what I've learned about which bridges hold and which get commoditised.
Peer-reviewed research, published internationally.
A. Martin · M. Allagha · Y. Misnikov
In Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering · Springer, Cham · 2021
M. Allagha · O. Kruschitz · K. Voss · S. Binder · K. Truckenthanner
In The Human Side of Service Engineering · AHFE Open Access · 2022
C. Leitner · M. Allagha · J. Krenjova · K. Reinsalu · C. Stiefmüller
In Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering · Springer, Cham · 2020
How I earn trust — and keep it.
Trust is the one thing AI didn't make cheap — so I build it the slow way.
Everyone has the same models, strategies and answers now. What still decides outcomes is judgment under uncertainty, follow-through when it stops being convenient, and getting the right people into one room. That's the work — long before a deal, and long after it closes.
I've built since 2015 — early, often before the rules existed for what I was making. I'm a builder by nature, driven, but with a code: humanity, loyalty, honesty, the long game over the loud one, and the discipline to say no to noise and protect what matters.
If your next move connects worlds — markets, cultures, technologies — I'd like to hear about it.
No form, no Calendly — two direct ways, on purpose.