As a startup founder of www.loomni.com, I wonder what are the possible exits for my company in the future? It’s a topic I think every founder should really think of. How many other Maktoobs can we really have in the region? It took 10+ years for the exit to happen. And it was a foreign company who acquired an Arabic company. I think it is a bit sad to see that the biggest web acquisition in the region was a foreign acquisition.
Although it was a really awesome story deal for the Maktoob team, it was great to place Arabia on the world map, It gives hope to young founders, but should the biggest web acquisition in Arabia, sized at around $175M (I do not have the accurate figure) – a relative average deal based on US standards – worry Arab founders? Did the Yahoo-Maktoob deal set a valuation ceiling for future acquisitions? Can local Arabic companies hope to exit their companies for higher valuation deals?
The other questions would be, who are the potential acquirers of web startups? Should founders rely on foreign corporations for their exit strategies? Can startup founders hope for any big exits from within the MENA region?
Governments support, communities, talent, funds, role models & case studies, cutting edge software n’ tools, and soon, better broadband & higher Internet penetration, and a great deal of awareness/coverage by media. You’ve got it all.
Take it back to the days when Web meant that big Blue “e” icon. That’s exactly when we read all about the .com boom in the US and all we could think about was if that was real, spending millions of dollars on some Websites?
You’ve got access
All we had then was a handful of web start-ups, and they really were untouchable, and corporate, mostly founded by those who lived or were educated abroad either in US or Europe where broadband and eBay culture were building up. And oh boy how much we loved Arabia.com. There was no Techcrunch, all we had was TechTV before we get access to DSL connections n’ be able to watch podcasts. So if you weren’t in the US or EU then you couldn’t really keep up or know what was going on. I remember in order to keep up with Linux distros n’ try’em out I had to be at Spinneys before 10AM on Wednesdays to grab one of the two copies of Maximum Linux magazine, and oh man I’d be lucky if they actually remembered to keep me a copy of Computer Arts Magazine. Think now. We’ve got it all, never short, always there & informed.
It’s never been any more casual to get investors’ attention
Before the Web revolution, it was the IT & Software worlds that had investors attention and even that was entirely Suites class. In our golden Web days, Investors try to blend in instead, attending unorganized events hunting for the next best idea n’ team. They’re even there on Twitter. Funding houses, Incubators & Angels, so open, so casual, almost unbelievable.
A great sign, over PRed & over covered Start-ups
You know that the media is hungry and is in looks for start-ups to cover when little projects get covered in almost every paper n’ News channel. They want more, so give it to them. And plus, if you’ve noticed Geek has become Chic, so make the most of it while you can.
You don’t need to hear more about funds, or events/conferences as they are big News here at Start Up Arabia. And in these rainy days, start-ups are the hopes for every government to create jobs and move the economy. It’s your time. Make the most of it. So where are you at?
This is (I believe) a very interesting book for those of you who manage an IT system, or are simply interested in more environmental friendly practices.
Is it possible to build a Silicon Valley in Russia? With President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Silicon Valley on Wednesday and his ambitious plans to build “Innovation City” in Skolkovo, just outside of Moscow, this is the question that so many people are asking.
The short answer is “no.” But with enough political will and oversight, Russia can create the conditions in which a smaller version of Silicon Valley can grow by itself. Think of the project as a garden rather than a construction site.
For this garden to grow, Russia must create the following conditions:
1. No killer weeds. Entrepreneurs must be free from blackmail, expropriations and other shakedowns.
2. Healthy seeds. Russia needs to attract and reward technical talent and scientists for good ideas.
3. Nutrients in the soil. There must be a steady source of good managers, businesspeople, and marketing and sales talent.
4. Careful gardeners and consumers. There must be mentors for entrepreneurs, as well as customers who buy the products and services on the basis of quality and price rather than bribes.
5. Cross-fertilization. There must be critical mass so that people can learn from and compete with each other.
The guy is almost a freak, he tells extraordinary things about his childhood (he is probably a special case) but he has a very strong point: if you teach your kid how to create a business and create wealth, you are giving him an important asset against unemployment in the future.
If these unemployed people who are whining at the industry, economy structure and government had the capability to spot a problem and find a solution for it or catch an opportunity, they would have created jobs for them and for other people, instead of waiting for one.
Bottom line: be proactive, be inspired, think outside the box; have the idea, have the passion, see the need, stand up and do it. Otherwise you will be depending on others to give you the fish.
Later this month, the U.S. Department of State will be leading a delegation consisting of venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and pioneers in startup acceleration to Jordan, as part of the ongoing push to foster entrepreneurship in the region by the US Government.
The event will be held on Monday 28th of June, 2010; at the Friendship Auditorium of the Princess Sumaya University for Technology, from 6:00pm – 7:30pm.
It will offer a chance for attendees to hear from and engage with members of the delegation, as well as other entrepreneurs, investors, educators and government officials.
In hopes of supporting emerging entrepreneurs and furthering President Obama’s vision for a “new beginning” between the United States & the Muslim world, the members of the delegation have committed to provide venture & seed capital, offer high impact mentorship, share their expertise, and learn about the economic and entrepreneurial environment in Jordan and the region.
The members of this delegation follow below:
- Magid Abraham (President, CEO and co-founder of comScore)
- Saeed Amidi (Founder, President and CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center)
- Mike Cassidy (Co-Founder and CEO of Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation)
- Court Coursey (Managing Partner of TomorrowVentures)
- Usama Fayyad (CEO of Open Insights, Executive Chairman of Oasis 500, and Chairman of D1G)
- Ossama Hassenein (Entrepreneur, mentor and venture capitalist)
- Tom Keller (Managing Director of TechStars)
- Shervin Pishevar (Technology entrepreneur, published researcher and incubation expert)
- Greg Behrman (Member of the Policy Planning Staff, U.S. State Department)
- Steven R. Koltai (Senior Advisor for Global Entrepreneurship, U.S. State Department)
The event is open to everyone for free, on a first come first seated basis. No registration for the event is required either.
So if you skipped the class where your math teacher introduced Equivalence, you haven’t missed much. You can easily learn it while checking up some of the Arabia’s start-ups with some of the online services that you usually use. Mind you some will confuse you with Equality.
While this could be a degrading statement, there are [...]
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Following TechWadi’s entrepreneurship conferences in Silicon Valley in March and Washington DC in April, they’re organizing their first Global Entrepreneurship Forum in Beirut, Lebanon, on June 23 2010 at the AUB Olayan School of Business.
The goal of the conference is to build the necessary bridges between business leaders in the US and the MENA region, [...]
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4SITE Forum (Investing in Sustainability, Innovation, Technology & Entrepeneurship) is an event being held in Beirut, Lebanon, bringing together over 200 investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs in Lebanon and the Middle East region. The goal of the event is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship towards sustainable economic development and social impact.
The event is organized by RootSpace and Baraka Groupin conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week (a yearly event taking place in November in over 80 countries worldwide), and will be held over two days, full of participatory panels, keynotes, workshops, demonstrations, and networking.
The event will be taking place at Bayt El-Tabib Conference Center in Beirut, Lebanon, on November 17-18th. The plan is for this event to be the first in a series of other 4SITE Forums to take place around the region.
The keynote speakers at the event include Joi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons, John Wilbanks, the CEO of Science Commons, and Rabea Ataya, the CEO of Bayt.com.
Besides the fixed program, there are some slots in the schedule that are planned for Barcamp-style presentations and demos by the participants.
The full program schedule for the event can be viewed online at the official website here: 4SITE Forum Schedule. Tickets to the event can be bought here.
Along with the event, 4SITE Forum and Hibr are also hosting the Global Innovation Tournament (GIT), an initiative of Global Entrepreneurship Week, in Lebanon, with this year’s challenge being to come up with a way to make saving money fun, in light of the current global recession.
A group of 10 Angel investors gathered in Jordan to attend the first match-making event for the newly created Bedaya Angel Network, where 20 pre-selected entrepreneurs got to pitch their projects to the investors.
Entrepreneurs were given 20 minutes to present their project and explain why they were looking for investment. Presentations were followed by another 20 minutes with questions from the attending Business Angels about their project’s details and concept, business development, the market for their project and what any eventually invested money would be used for.
The Bedaya Angel Network initiative was launched only a few months ago, in May of 2009, and has attracted over 30 important figures from the Jordanian investment, business and economic development communities.
The goal behind the creation of Bedaya is to offer national financing vehicles for innovative business startups as part of the El Hassan Science City’s mandate to foster knowledge-based enterprises with a promising potential for growth. The network will be offering investments for early stage start-ups with a focus on science and technology.
The process starts with the selection of entrepreneurs who are looking for funding and giving the ones that are most ready the opportunity to pitch their projects to an audience of business angels at match-making events that should be held every 2 months.
Before pitching to investors, the entrepreneurs received special full-day training and coaching by Mr. Nelson Grey, a seasonal expert on business angel investments.
The next Bedaya pitching session is planned to happen next October.
[Business Angels are private individuals willing to invest their own money into high growth potential startups; not only offering money to the companies they invest in, but also a lot of experience and their personal business networks.]
Tamakkan!, an initiative aimed at supporting young Emirati entrepreneurs who need industry insight to achieve their business dreams, has been launched by BrandMoxie, a UAE based marketing firm.
BrandMoxie has set up Tamakkan! to nurture the spirit of entrepreneurship and provide an informal environment for the development of knowledge sharing and the spirit of mentorship for the benefit of young Emiratis.
Sana Bagersh, the CEO of BrandMoxie explained, “the idea is that through Tamakkan! industry professionals would be able to give back to the country, and the community, by helping to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs. We hope to create a vibrant monthly platform of discussion, in the form of a free two hour seminar, open to those young entrepreneurs who want to attend an informative session presented by a professional, or expert, on a key topic in business.”
Bagersh explained that Tamakkan! would aim to provide high calibre seminars given by practicing professionals. The focus would be on the transfer of practical skills and information. “These would include short seminars on marketing such as branding, positioning, merchandising, franchising etc, and business topics such as the fundamentals of how to set up a business.”
Tamakkan! is intended to facilitate contributions by the business sector, and welcomes the participation of companies and individuals who can lend their support by giving their time or assistance in kind.
BrandMoxie won the Tamayyuz Award in June for its commitment to young students, offering them practical experience and professional guidance. Bagersh explained, “what has encouraged us to do more is our surprise at the high calibre of work performed by university interns. These students are very good; they have built up the skills and are passionate at what they do, but they lack the ’street smarts’ and the understanding of the broad work context. And this is only something they can pick up through experience and professional guidance.”
Bagersh believes that Tamakkan! would support fresh graduates with entrepreneurship dreams by providing them exposure to knowledge from industry practitioners.
The event aims to open an interactive discussion with a number of interesting international speakers who will speak about several important topics in Entrepreneurship, Business and Management.
The topics to be discussed are the following:
BlueOcean Strategy: How to transform a new business idea into a winning strategy
Speaker: Mohammad Ajlouni (Managing Director, MDS)
Identifying your Strengths as an Entrepreneur
Speaker: Ronald Evans (CEO, SIMA International)
Idea to Reality
Speaker: Habib Haddad (Co-Founder, Yamli.com)
Innovation in Open Networks - Perspectives from an Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist
Speaker: Joi Ito (CEO, Creative Commons)
Cross-cultural business issues as companies expand internationally
Speaker: Doug Christgau (Director, Cross-Cultural Development)
The current U.S. and world financial market situation.
Speaker: Larry Hutchins (Certified Financial Planner, Wachovia)
Insights into family-owned companies in regards to economic and human resource issues.
Speaker: John Carmon (President, Carmon Community Funeral Homes)
The event is free of charge. For registration or any further information, you can check out their website http://www.qrce.org/eweek or call +962 6 515 4892.
If you’re registered to the StartUpArabia Events iCal feed in your calendar software, the event should already be showing up in your calendar for the days of the event.
Plans to create a media city in Beirut, that were recently launched by Kuv Capital, are still moving ahead steadily, with the date for the first open discussion scheduled for April 29th 2009 at 6:30PM in Beirut. It will be at GEM - Beirut, Gemeyzeh, St. Nicolas Stairs.
This first open discussion will be to get more people involved and giving their opinions and suggestions, and to brainstorm on services the community thinks should be available at the Beirut Media City, among other things.
In the mean time, they are also still looking for places for the media city, and ask people to suggest any old buildings they think could be refurbished anywhere around Beirut.
They’re also in discussions with architects (both young talents, as well as big names) to work on the project.
Talks are also ongoing with international companies who could be interested in working out of this future Media City.
A site has been launched to follow the developments of the project at: beirutmediacity.info
If you want to be involved in any way or help in growing this project, you can contact Kuv Capital at: info@kuvcapital.com
Update: The open discussion will be taking place at GEM - Beirut, Gemeyzeh, St. Nicolas Stairs.
My friend Hervé Cuviliez, Founder and Managing Director of Kuv Capital just wrote about a great and ambitious new project that they’re launching in Beirut, Lebanon: The creation of a Media City in Lebanon.
This stems out of their belief that Beirut has a window to become a Digital Middle East Hub, and that despite the weak broadband infrastructure, unreliable power grid and Lebanon’s inability to reform itself, it still is a country that offers a great opportunity to entrepreneurs with all the necessary ingredients to create a startup and have a low burn rate.
Creating a company is cheap and easy (limited liability company starts at 3500 USD) and so are office space and expenses. There’s a great pool of talent available, at lower costs than the GCC countries for example.
The idea is to find old warehouses or factories, rehabilitate them into offices with decent broadband and electricity, free spaces for students who want to work on innovative projects, showrooms for high tech companies …etc.
They’ve already started working on the project; they’ve spotted three places around Beirut, talked to investors, convinced six digital related companies and a media group to move in, and they’re still reaching out to more.
The hope is that by doing this, and grouping all these innovative companies and people in one place over time, they will be able to replicate to a certain extent the creation and growth of Silicon Valley.
If you want to be involved in any way or help in growing this project, you can contact Kuv Capital at: info@kuvcapital.com
Updated: Kuv Capital released more details on the project on their official blog.
They’re in the process of setting up a company that will run this project, and will be creating a strategic committee to advise the company on what needs to be done in the Media City.
The timeframe is currently:
April-May(-June if needed) will be dedicated to identify potential locations and initiate discussions with landlords.
May: First community meeting to brainstorm on services that should be found in the media city.
June: second community meeting, presentation and business model finalization.
Submit is a conference / gathering that will be taking place in Dubai’s Habtoor Grand Hotel next week, on the 8th & 9th of April 2009, for entrepreneurs and professionals involved in the Internet industry in the Middle East.
The goal of Submit is to kick-start a yearly gathering to get people with a common interest in the internet, building web applications, entrepreneurship, technology, marketing, and design together in one place, in an attempt to share the latest innovations and developments taking place in the Internet industry across the region and the globe.
Among the speakers at the event are:
- Ray Milhem (Director and Chairman of the Board - AdvancedIO)
- Robert Hoekman, Jr. (Founder - Miskeeto)
- Ryan Carson (Founder - Carsonified)
- Simone Brunozzi (Web Services Evangelist, Europe - Amazon)
- Tariq Al Asiri (General Manager - Argaam)
- Alexander McNabb (Group Account Manager - Spot On PR)
- Ashraf Khalil (Usability expert & University professor - Abu Dhabi University)
- Cloves Carneiro Jr. (Co-Founder & CEO - SpinBits)
- Rida Al Barazi (Co-Founder & Dev. Manager - SpinBits)
- Mohamed Marwen Meddah (Founder - StartUpArabia)
StartUpArabia has managed to get a limited offer to the next 10 readers interested in buying tickets to the event a 30% discount, if you buy through this link using the discount code ’startuparabia’.
Later this month, the U.S. Department of State will be leading a delegation consisting of venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and pioneers in startup acceleration to Jordan, as part of the ongoing push to foster entrepreneurship in the region by the US Government.
A group of 10 Angel investors gathered in Jordan to attend the first match-making event for the newly created Bedaya Angel Network, where 20 pre-selected entrepreneurs got to pitch their projects to the investors.
My friend Hervé Cuviliez, Founder and Managing Director of 