Vibe Coding Is About to Unlock a New Era for MENA Startups

For years, the biggest bottleneck in the MENA startup ecosystem hasn’t been ideas, ambition, or even capital. It’s been execution - specifically, the ability to build.

If you weren’t technical, your options were limited. You either learned to code, found a technical cofounder you trusted enough to marry your idea to, or outsourced development and hoped timelines, budgets, and incentives stayed aligned. For many aspiring founders across the region, that friction alone was enough to kill promising ideas before they ever made it to an MVP.

That dynamic is about to change.

We’re entering the era of what many are calling “vibe coding” - a new way of building products where founders describe intent, outcomes, and user experience, and AI handles much of the technical heavy lifting. This shift is not just a productivity upgrade. For MENA, it’s a structural unlock.

From code-first to intent-first

Vibe coding flips the traditional startup equation. Instead of asking “Can this be built?”, founders start with “Should this exist?” and “Who is it for?”

Tools like Replit, Cursor, and other AI-powered development environments allow founders to build real, functional products by expressing logic in plain language. You don’t need to know frameworks, syntax, or infrastructure decisions upfront. You need clarity of thought, user empathy, and a strong sense of problem-solution fit.

That’s a profound change for a region filled with operators, marketers, domain experts, and business builders who have always had the ideas - but not always the code.

A regional proof point hiding in plain sight

One of the strongest signals that this shift matters for MENA is who’s building the tools powering it.

Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of Replit, is Jordanian. He built one of the most important developer platforms in the world, and he did it by obsessing over accessibility - lowering the barrier between an idea and something runnable.

I’ve known Amjad for years and had the chance to interview him on stage at Step. What always stood out wasn’t just the technical brilliance, but the philosophy. His belief has consistently been that creation shouldn’t be gated by credentials, geography, or formal training. That mindset, shaped in part by growing up in the region, is now manifesting in tools that can radically reshape how MENA founders enter the game.

This isn’t symbolic representation. It’s functional impact.

From theory to practice - my own experience

What makes this shift impossible to ignore is how quickly it moves from concept to reality.

Over the past few months, mostly on weekends and purely out of curiosity, I’ve personally vibe coded multiple tools that would previously have required a developer or an agency. A call option monitoring tool to track positions and alerts. A wardrobe app to organise outfits and recommendations. None of these started as companies - they were built for fun, to scratch an itch, and to see how far intent alone could go.

The results were eye-opening.

At Step, we took this further. We vibe coded three internal applications to replace third-party tools we were actively paying for. These weren’t demos or experiments - they were production tools solving real operational problems. We went from dependency and recurring SaaS costs to custom-built internal software in days, not months.

That’s when it really clicked - this isn’t about hobby projects. This is about leverage.

What this means for non-technical founders in MENA

The biggest immediate winners of vibe coding will be non-technical founders.

In MENA, many of the strongest startup ideas come from people deeply embedded in real industries - logistics operators in the Gulf, fintech insiders in Egypt, retail and supply chain veterans in Saudi, media and community builders across the Levant. Historically, these founders were forced into compromises early: build decks instead of products, chase cofounders instead of customers, or wait for funding just to test a hypothesis.

Now, the first version of the product can come before all of that.

A solo founder can prototype, test, iterate, and even launch without raising money or assembling a full team. An MVP is no longer a six-month, six-figure commitment. It’s a weekend, a clear prompt, and relentless iteration.

That changes who gets to participate.

More shots on goal for the ecosystem

At an ecosystem level, this creates a powerful compounding effect.

Lower barriers to entry mean more experiments. More experiments mean more learning. More learning means higher-quality companies emerge faster. Most startups still won’t work - that doesn’t change - but the cost of finding the ones that do drops dramatically.

For MENA, where risk tolerance is often lower and capital more cautious, this matters. Founders can now self-fund learning. Investors can evaluate real usage instead of speculative pitches. Accelerators and platforms like Step can engage founders earlier with tangible products, not just ideas.

We move from an ecosystem optimised around permission to one optimised around momentum.

Talent, redefined

Vibe coding also forces us to rethink what “technical” means.

The most valuable founders going forward won’t necessarily be the best engineers. They’ll be the best translators - people who can convert user pain into clear intent, intent into prompts, and prompts into products that actually get used.

This plays to MENA’s strengths. The region is rich in multilingual, cross-cultural operators who understand complex markets and fragmented user bases. When code stops being the bottleneck, context becomes the advantage.

The moment to lean in

Every technological shift creates winners and laggards. The regions that benefit most are the ones that recognise the shift early and lean into it intentionally.

For MENA, vibe coding is not a trend to observe from the sidelines. It’s an invitation to expand the founder base, accelerate experimentation, and redefine who gets to build.

We’ve spent years talking about unlocking potential in the region. For the first time in a long time, the tools are catching up to the ambition.

And this time, the starting line is much closer than it’s ever been.

About the Author:

Ray Dargham is an entrepreneur and the Co-Founder and CEO of 'Step,' a dynamic media company headquartered in Dubai, UAE. Renowned for his role in spearheading the city's premier tech and entrepreneurship festival, Step Dubai, Ray and his team have played a part in the initial stories of hundreds of entrepreneurs, earning recognition on Forbes' Arab 30 Under 30 list.