Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund (ISSF): How Jordanian Startups Actually Reach Jordan’s Government-Backed Venture Capital

Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund (ISSF): How Jordanian Startups Actually Reach Jordan’s Government-Backed Venture Capital

Correction, July 2026: An earlier version of this page described an “Innovate Jordan Venture Fund” offering USD 250,000 to 1,000,000 directly to founders on a rolling basis. No such institution exists. The domain it pointed to, innovatejordan.gov.jo, does not resolve in DNS, and no Jordanian government body, World Bank document, or ecosystem source records a fund by that name. Jordan’s actual government-backed venture vehicle is the Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund (ISSF), and it works in a fundamentally different way — one that matters enormously if you are a founder deciding where to spend your fundraising energy. This page has been rewritten around the real institution.

The single most important thing to understand

ISSF does not give money to startups.

That sentence sounds discouraging, so let us be precise about it, because the distinction determines everything about how you approach the fund. ISSF describes itself on its own site as “primarily a fund of funds, backing leading local, regional, and international venture capital funds with strong conviction in Jordan’s founders and startup ecosystem.” Its stated mission is to bridge the funding gap for Jordanian startups “through investing in venture capital funds.”

So ISSF’s counterparties are fund managers, not founders. It writes cheques of roughly USD 2 million to 7 million into venture capital funds. Those funds then invest in companies, including a contractually dedicated allocation to Jordanian startups. Your money, if it comes, arrives from a VC fund that ISSF is an investor in — not from ISSF.

This has a concrete consequence: there is no application form, no submission portal, and no published intake process for startups on the ISSF website. The navigation runs About Us, Our People, Portfolio, News, Contact Us. There is no “Apply” anywhere, because there is nothing for a founder to apply to. The only published contact channel is [email protected] and the office line, +962 6 4636333 / 2, at 3rd Circle, Tawfiq Abu Al-Huda St, Middle East Insurance Company Building, 1st Floor, Amman.

Founders who email that address with a pitch deck are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, writing to an institution that has no mechanism to invest in them. The productive move is to treat ISSF as a map of who has money earmarked for Jordanian companies, and then go to those people.

ISSF at a glance

The headline figures above are published by ISSF on its own homepage and were verified on 28 July 2026.

Where ISSF came from, and where it is now

ISSF was set up as a private shareholding company and capitalized in 2018 with USD 98 million — USD 50 million from the World Bank, routed through a financing agreement with Jordan’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, and USD 48 million invested directly by the Central Bank of Jordan. The problem it was built to solve was structural: Jordanian companies at founding and early-growth stage could not find risk capital, because almost no venture funds had a mandate to write cheques into Jordan.

The first investment cycle ran through 2025. In May 2026, ISSF announced that the World Bank had given the completed phase a “highly satisfactory” rating in its Implementation Completion and Results Report. The reported first-phase results: USD 108.97 million of private capital mobilized, 160 Jordanian startup transactions, 22 investment funds brought into the Jordanian market, and roughly 2,600 direct jobs plus an estimated 5,500 to 10,000 indirect ones. Twenty-six percent of backed startups were women-led; 56 percent of jobs went to youth and 37 percent to women.

A second phase is now running. World Bank project documentation puts a further USD 50 million behind it with implementation continuing to 31 July 2030, allocated roughly as USD 42 million into venture capital funds, USD 3 million for direct co-investments, and USD 5 million for project management and capacity building. Stated phase-two targets include mobilizing USD 150 million in private capital, supporting 100 startups, and generating 1,500 direct jobs, with sub-targets of 30 percent women-led and 40 percent youth-led beneficiaries and 10 percent in green technology. Priority sectors are ICT, FinTech, HealthTech, and GreenTech.

The ratio in that allocation is the honest answer to “can I get money straight from ISSF?” Fourteen dollars go through funds for every one dollar of direct co-investment. The co-investment sleeve exists, but it is small and is deployed alongside a lead fund that has already done the work — not through an open call. If no VC is leading your round, that sleeve is not available to you.

Phase two opened publicly in June 2026, when ISSF committed USD 7 million to Endeavor Catalyst Fund V, a global co-investment vehicle managing more than USD 300 million and active in over 60 countries. The agreement was signed by ISSF CEO Mohammad Al-Muhtaseb and Endeavor Catalyst managing partner Allen Taylor, announced in Amman in the presence of Jordan’s Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, Sami Smirat. Endeavor Catalyst had already backed Jordanian companies including Tamatem Games, Altibbi, EON Dental, Tarjama, and ZenHR.

In July 2026, ISSF announced a strategic partnership with STV, the Saudi technology investor, framed around building an artificial intelligence corridor between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, with a USD 5 million commitment and a focus on generative and applied AI companies.

A note on the name, because the press is inconsistent

If you search for this fund you will hit two English names. Jordan’s state news agency, Petra, reported the STV partnership under “Jordan Entrepreneurship Fund (JEF),” while Zawya and ISSF’s own newsroom reported the same July 2026 agreement as ISSF. Both refer to the same institution — the fund’s Arabic name, الصندوق الأردني للريادة, translates closer to “Jordan Entrepreneurship Fund,” and the same CEO, Mohammad Al-Muhtaseb, is named in both accounts of the same USD 5 million STV deal.

Do not waste weeks hunting for a second, separate fund. There is one institution, at issfjo.com.

How the money actually reaches founders

Here is the working method, and it is genuinely more tractable than a mystery application form.

1. Open the Funds Portfolio directory. ISSF publishes its partner funds at issfjo.com/en/funds-profile, filterable by stage — Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+ — and by sector: FinTech, EdTech, FoodTech, PropTech, HealthTech and Health & Wellness, IT Services, Enterprise Software, Transport & Logistics, E-commerce & Retail, Media & Entertainment, and Sustainability.

2. Filter to your actual stage and sector. This is where most founders waste their effort. A pre-seed company pitching a Series B fund is not a near miss; it is an automatic decline that also burns the introduction. Filter honestly.

3. Identify the two or three funds that genuinely match. ISSF’s publicly announced commitments give you a concrete starting list, with the dates ISSF published them:

• Endeavor Catalyst Fund V — USD 7 million, June 2026
• STV — USD 5 million, July 2026, AI focus
• BECO Capital Fund IV — September 2025
• Antler MENAP Fund — USD 3 million, April 2025
• Saqr Fund II, managed by Vision Ventures — USD 5 million, November 2024
• Rua Growth Fund I — USD 5 million, October 2024
• Oasis500 OVII — additional USD 2 million, August 2024
• Global Ventures Fund III — USD 5 million, July 2024
• VentureSouq Fund II — USD 2 million, June 2024
• Sadu Capital — May 2024
• MSA Novo MENA fund — May 2024
• Propeller Ventures II — increased to USD 5 million, May 2024
• Hambro Perks Oryx Fund — USD 2 million, July 2023
• Middle East Venture Fund IV
• Flat6Labs Mashreq

4. Approach the fund on its own terms. Each has its own process, thesis, and partners. Some run open applications; some work almost entirely on warm introductions; the accelerator-linked ones such as Flat6Labs Mashreq and Oasis500 run structured cohort intakes with real deadlines.

5. Use the ISSF connection as context, not as a claim. Knowing that a fund holds Jordanian-allocation capital from ISSF tells you it has a mandate reason to look at your company. It does not mean ISSF has endorsed you, and telling a partner that ISSF sent you when it did not will not survive one phone call.

6. Check the Startups Portfolio before you pitch. ISSF publishes backed companies at issfjo.com/en/startups-profile. If a fund has already backed your direct competitor, that is usually a conflict and a decline. Better to know first.

What the partner funds are looking for

You are pitching commercial venture capital, so the bar is a VC bar, not a subsidy bar. Across ISSF’s partner funds, the recurring themes are consistent:

• A Jordanian anchor with a regional story. Jordan is a strong engineering and cost base and a small home market. Funds want to see the base used deliberately, with a specific next market and a reason for it, not a vague promise to expand.
• Evidence over enthusiasm. Monthly active users, retention curves, paid pilots and what happened after them, free-to-paid conversion, and revenue over the last 6 to 12 months. “People love the idea” is what every declined founder says.
• Technology central to the value, not decorative. A logistics business whose edge is its routing and tracking software qualifies. A traditional business with a website does not.
• Unit economics that are not fundamentally broken. You need not be profitable. You do need a defensible path to workable margins, sane acquisition costs, and customers who stay.
• A team that ships. Regular releases, fast learning, the ability to attract good people, and composure under hard questions.
• Real job creation in Jordan. ISSF’s mandate is measured in Jordanian jobs, and its partner funds carry that allocation. A company that builds its engineering team in Amman is directly relevant to why that capital exists.

Materials to have ready

No public checklist exists because there is no public form, but every fund in this portfolio will want substantially the same pack:

• Pitch deck — problem, solution, market, traction, model, team, competition, use of funds, headline financials. Clear, not long.
• Financials — historical revenue and costs even if simple, current burn, 18 to 24 month projections, and what this round changes about your runway.
• Cap table — founders, employee pool, angels, SAFEs and notes, prior investors.
• Traction evidence — dashboards, pilot reports, signed contracts, renewal rates.
• Product demo — live, recorded, or sandboxed. Something that actually runs.
• Clean legal basics — shareholder agreements, IP ownership, licences. Diligence surprises kill more deals at this size than weak metrics do.

Beyond capital: the programs ISSF runs directly

Where ISSF does engage founders directly, it is through ecosystem programs rather than cheques, and these are real entry points:

• The JOIN FinTech Launchpad with the Jordan Payments and Clearing Company (JoPACC), launched January 2025 and completed April 2025.
• An artificial intelligence incubator with Orange and Princess Sumaya University for Technology, concluded September 2025 under the patronage of HRH Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan.
• The CORE@HTU incubator and accelerator at Al Hussein Technical University, whose final startup cohort graduated in May 2024.
• A memorandum of understanding with IFC Middle East, signed June 2025, covering entrepreneurship and private sector development in Jordan.

These are announced on the ISSF newsroom at issfjo.com/en/news as they open. For a very early company with no VC-ready metrics, a program cohort is a more realistic first step than a fund pitch.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply to ISSF directly? No. There is no published application route for startups. ISSF invests in venture capital funds; those funds invest in companies.

What about the direct co-investment money? Phase two allocates about USD 3 million of USD 50 million to direct co-investments. These are made alongside a lead fund that has already committed, not through an open call. In phase one, 25 of 160 supported startups were reached directly while 135 came through funds. Plan for the fund route.

Do I have to be Jordanian? The anchor is the company, not the passport. Partner funds carry a Jordanian allocation, so what matters is Jordanian registration and genuine operations and employment in Jordan.

Is there a deadline? Not at ISSF. Its partner funds invest continuously, so timing is set by each fund’s process and by whether your metrics are ready. Accelerator programs within the portfolio do run fixed cohort deadlines.

How much can I raise? That depends entirely on which partner fund backs you and at what stage, from pre-seed through Series B+. The old figure on this page, USD 250,000 to 1,000,000 from a single government fund, described a program that does not exist.

Is ISSF still active in 2026? Yes. Its second phase opened in June 2026 with the Endeavor Catalyst V commitment, the STV partnership followed in July 2026, and World Bank implementation runs to 2030.

Next steps

Start at the official site, https://issfjo.com/, and specifically the Funds Portfolio at issfjo.com/en/funds-profile. Filter by your stage and sector, build a shortlist of two or three funds that genuinely match, research each one’s thesis and portfolio, and approach them through their own channels with a tight deck and real numbers.

Use [email protected] for what it is good for — questions about the fund’s programs, partnerships, and ecosystem work. Do not use it as a funding application, because on ISSF’s side there is no process waiting to receive one.

The capital behind Jordan’s startup ecosystem is real, it is public, and its recipients are named. It simply arrives through fund managers rather than from a government window, and founders who understand that difference spend their time in the right rooms.