Month: April 2009

BarCamp Tunisie, Al Ghazela Technology Park, May 9th 2009

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BarCamp TunisieTunisia will be soon be getting its first BarCamp event, that will be held at the Al Ghazela Technology Park (Hannibal Hall) on May 9th 2009 starting at 9:00 AM.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering, born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. These events are quite intense with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

A number of Tunisian entrepreneurs will be at the event talking about their startups and demoing their products and services, then opening a discussion about them with the attendees.

The startups that are confirmed to be demoing at the first Tunisian BarCamp so far are the following:

  • Keejob: A new Tunisian job portal. (Demo by: Amira Mimouni)
  • Wezign: A Tunisian web & graphic design agency. (Demo by: Kais Ben Sedrine)
  • Resto Tunisie: A community powered directory of restaurants in Tunisia, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Kais Ezzine)
  • Tools4Com: A simple online invoicing system, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Mohamed Aymen Ben Abdallah)
  • Twitterists: A service that lists and watches celebrities on Twitter. (Demo by: Mohamed Ben Dhaou)
  • Je révise: A course revision service for college students. (Demo by: Myriam Sfar)
  • Markkit: A web 2.0 text highlighter, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Slim Amamou)

People interested in participating can sign up through the following form: BarCamp Tunisie Sign-up Form.

For more information and details about BarCamp Tunisie, you can check out the following page: BarCamp Tunisie (FR).

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 that day.

The event is being organized by my friend Mehdi Lamloum.

Interview with Dan Stuart, Managing Partner At Intilaq

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Dan StuartOne of the most interesting developments that have taken place recently in the internet entrepreneurship and venture capital space in the Arab world has been the launch of Bayt’s venture capital arm “Intilaq”.

To get even more details about this exciting bit of news, I got to ask Dan Stuart, who is Head of strategic initiatives at Bayt and a Managing Partner at Intilaq, a few questions about it all; why they’re doing it, why now, where they’re going and more.

I’d like to thank him very much for taking some of his time to answer these questions and provide us all with more insight into this new venture.

What made Bayt decide to move into the venture capital space?
The vision and mission of Bayt.com don’t say anything about being strictly a job site, per se. From the outset, the founders were focused on creating a Middle Eastern institution that empowers people in the region to build better lives. Jobs were the primary focus because of their direct impact on lifestyle – and we have maintained a firm leadership positioning in that domain as measured by any parameter – but from the outset we recognized that there are many other opportunities to better people’s lives in the Middle East. Combine this affinity to the people of the region with a first-hand understanding of the unique needs of the region as well as the challenges in starting a business in the region, and add to that a strong desire to expand our scope and invest the capital reserves that we have built over time, and we decided that an investment arm was the logical next step.

Why did you choose to do it now?
There has never been a better time to start an online business in the Middle East. Internet penetration is skyrocketing, there is a huge bubble in regional demographics at the youth level, successful online business models are prevalent globally, but still relatively nascent regionally, and agile and open source technologies are making it easier to put vision into reality. Inefficient processes are ripe for disruption, and with funding and mentorship, we think that there is great potential for not only local/regional Internet successes to emerge, but truly global leaders. There is no reason that a Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, Baidu, Salesforce, or other online tech leader cannot – and should not – emerge from the MENA region.

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Ekree, A Tunisian Portal To Rent Anything Online

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ekreeEkree, which means rent in Tunisian Arabic, is a new Tunisian portal that allows people to post any of their items or belongings online for rent, and gives people who are interested the possibility to rent them.

By providing a platform for renting things online, Ekree aims to fill a gap in the market of classifieds and e-commerce sites, targeting people who can’t afford to buy a certain item, or who only need a certain thing temporarily; and also offering a way for people to make some money out of certain belongings of theirs.

The site is open for both individuals as well as businesses who want to use the site as a platform to provide their products for rent online in hopes of expanding their reach and making their products easier to find.

The interface is pretty straightforward and very similar in principle to any e-commerce site out there, with the only difference being that you rent instead of buy. Available items can be found organized under categories and subcategories or through the search engine, which allows users to filter by keyword, category, subcategories, location, price and more.

After finding an item of interest, the user will find rental conditions with it, and will be able to directly make a reservation to rent the item online from the site.

ekree

In order to build customer confidence, Ekree provides a full circle rating system enabling the rating of items/products, renters, and owners. Standardized rent contracts are also generated through the system to organize rentals happening through the system.

The portal is in French and available for Tunisia only for the time being, but should expand to other countries in the future.

Ekree was founded by Habib Redissi and Tarek Nachnouchi, who are behind a young company called World Easy Web that mainly targeted the European market, but is making its first step into the Tunisian market with Ekree.

# Ekree

Vignette to Hold Middle East Web Convention 2009 In Dubai

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Middle East Web Convention 2009Vignette, the web content management software company, will be holding the first edition of the Middle East Web Convention along with its main partners on the 27th of April at the Madinat Jumeirah hotel in Dubai.

The event organizers say that it will be bringing together a multitude of senior executives from across the region and across various industries, to talk about how enterprises can maintain a competitive advantage by using innovative web technologies that provide dynamic web experiences.

According to Yahya H. Zeitouneh, General Manager of Vignette Middle East: “… The Middle East Web Convention 2009 has been shaped to bring into focus all the most modern web technologies available, whilst providing attendees networking opportunities with leading technology experts.”

Looking at the agenda though suggests that it will mainly be revolving around Vignette’s own solutions, and how those can be put to use in organisations to manage their online presence, engage their customers and more, making it a Vignette convention more than anything else.

On the other hand, results of an interesting report on web usage and trends in the Middle East across 12 countries as compared to Western Europe will be presented during the event by Chris Averill, Managing Director of we are:london.

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Beirut Media City First Open Discussion – Beirut – April 29th 2009

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Beirut Media City First Open DiscussionPlans 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. 

People interested in attending the event can register for it on EventBrite here: Beirut Media City First Open Discussion.

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.

Salam Business Club Takes Important Step Into Islamic Finance and Banking

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Salam Business Club

Salam Business Club (SalamBC), the social business network built especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world, and that recently launched versions in Arabic, Urdu and other languages (and soon in Persian), will be officially announcing an interesting new business development for their service in the upcoming days.

Through a partnership with the Institute for Islamic Finance and Banking (IFIBAF), they aim to be the first online destination to offer Islamic Finance and Banking products to its members.

The deal comes at a time when demand for Islamic financial products is really high and growing, both from Muslims as well as non-Muslims all around the world, yet this demand remains far from covered and satisfied by whatever offers currently exist in the market. And the current economic crisis is pushing even more people to consider Islamic finance and banking as a safer option, with a number of banks working on building up Islamic finance units.

The Islamic finance industry, which is still a nascent one, is currently estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion in asset size, with a 15-20 percent annual growth rate.

The move by SalamBC to launch such products also comes upon the requests and feedback that they kept constantly getting through listening to their members.

With this deal, SalamBC brings its whole database of members from over 180 countries worldwide to the table, while the IFIBAF brings its long years of experience with Islamic finance and banking, as well as its extensive global network within the Islamic Banking Community, to offer together a central entry point to Shariah-compliant financial products for everyone interested.

Their initial focus for their offerings will be on the European market, as the demand there is largely unsatisfied, but they will be extending to the rest of the world soon after that, as they continue to finalize more partnerships and agreements around the world.

# Salam Business Club

Interview With Mohamad Haj Hasan, Co-Founder Of Jawaker & Akhtaboot

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Mohamad Haj HasanGoing back to our interviews with Arab internet entrepreneurs, we bring you a new interview with Mohamad Haj Hasan, co-founder of Jordan based Boundless, the company behind online cards game destination Jawaker, and online job portal Akhtaboot.

Of course, before anything I’d like to thank Mohamad for taking the time to answer our questions about Jawaker, their experience with it and where they aim to take it.

How did you get the idea for Jawaker? and what made you passionate about it as a project?

The idea of Jawaker came about when my partner, Yousef Shamoun, and I were bored one day and felt like playing cards online. We knew that there were a bunch of sites offering a wide variety of card games, and we thought that there must be at least one that has the card games that we grew up with (i.e. Trix, Tarneeb, Basra, etc.). Of course, we knew there were many programs that allowed us to play with a computer, but we wanted a multi-player experience of playing with other people. After spending time searching for such a site with no success, we decided to build our own site.

We decided to have our gaming infrastructure be based in Javascript (without the need for any downloads) in order to allow us to rapidly develop new games for the site. It is very easy to be passionate about Jawaker, because everything we do is very fun. Testing literally means playing, and since you are the first mover in the market, the thrill of innovation is a huge motivator.

What were the main challenges you faced while bringing Jawaker to life?

We originally thought that a gaming website would be simple. But we soon realized that there were so many issues and hurdles, even beyond the obvious technical ones. Gathering the “official” rules for these games and applying the UI based on these rules is not an easy task. Also, having the game play be user-friendly, fun and as close to playing in reality is quite challenging. There were huge debates on how and what information to show and also how to design gaming transitions that would scale across multiple games.

Then came the users and all the issues that come with putting yourself out there in front of people. We were always focused on a multi-player gaming experience, and that means that a critical mass of concurrent users needs to be on your site in order for the site to become alive. Tweaking the options around the game play itself was a big challenge that we solved by gathering statistics, listening to our users and reading the logs.

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Google, AT&T, Automattic and Twitter Executives Visit Iraq

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Executives from Google Inc, AT&T Inc, Twitter and other high tech companies are visiting Iraq this week in a trip organised by the US State Department.

The department, which helped arrange the April 19-23 trip, said the executives would offer ideas on how new technologies could help foster transparency, strengthen civil society and generally empower people and local groups by providing the tools for network building.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said: “As Iraqis think about how to integrate new technology as a tool for smart power, we view this as an opportunity to invite the American technology industry to be part of this creative genesis.”

Other companies represented on the trip are Howcast, a website that offers how-to videos; Meetup, a website that helps people organize, or join, local communities; the video-sharing You Tube website; Automattic/Wordpress, which makes blogging software; and Blue State Digital, which provides tools for online fundraising, advocacy and social networking.

Officials wouldn’t name the nine executives taking the trip, but they are apparently all pretty senior. They will meet representatives from the government, education authorities, techolology organisations and other groups.

[Sources: Reuters, TG Daily]
[Via: Spot On PR] 

What Is The Best Business Advice You’ve Ever Received?

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I thought it was about time to do another crowd-sourced post experiment where I throw a question out there on social networks, try to gather different people’s feedback and bits and pieces of their shared wisdom, and then share it with everyone here.

The question I asked this time was: What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

And the replies I got were very interesting ones, both on Twitter and Facebook.

From Twitter (in reply to this):

  • Do what you want to do, complete your goals and don’t compare yourself to the others. (Saud Al-Hawawi)
  • Never get into the gold rush business, get into the business of servicing the gold rush business. (Bin Mugahid)
  • Don’t shit where you eat. (Kay)
  • Partnership due diligence. Be very selective with who you partner with. (Mohamed)
  • If you are selling something people don’t need, you are invisible – Seth Godin (Osama A. Dwairi)
  • Always be prepared to leave. (Tareq Abedrabbo)
  • Give more than half your business to somebody else. (Bin Mugahid)
  • Nobody really cares about your grades in school. This is ain’t school boy. (Bin Mugahid)
  • Business is connections; the more you have the more your business will be successful. (Rami Khader)
  • If u have your full time job, look for branding, marketshare & influence of your project & don’t look for money (Tarek Kassar)
  • Do one thing at a time. Focus, Focus, Focus (Tariq Al Asiri)
  • In life, you should never wait to receive blows to deal some. (Mehdi Lamloum)
  • Learn to delegate. (Houeida Anouar)
  • Be an innovator and a leader. (Mehdi Ladjemi)
  • A freelancer should know that the brand is the product, the product is the company and the company is him. (Aniss Bouraba)
  • If you have no work to show, find a charity that needs your service, or do free work for friends or family. (Aniss Bouraba)
  • Listen. (Khalil)

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How will the current economic crisis affect Arab online startups? [Poll Results]

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In the latest poll on StartUpArabia, the question to the readers was:

How will the current economic crisis affect Arab online startups?

The result of reader voting came out as follows:

Effect of the crisis

Out of 123 readers who responded to the poll:
– 43% of them believe the effects will be positive
– 39% say they think it’ll affect online startups negatively
 – and the remaining 18% don’t see it having any effect whatsoever

The results are obviously very close, which I guess reflects the existing confusion out there on how everything going on will be affecting different types of businesses on the short and long run.

Personally, my belief ever since the crisis began has always been that for online startups, there is eventually no way but up; I mean, it’s not like they were getting all that many big investments before the crisis, or making really big money from the online advertising market that makes up less than 1% of overall advertising spend. So with the option of investing in real estate becoming unsafe for investors, and with businesses cutting their marketing budgets; if anything at all, it would mean it’s a chance for a bit more investments to make it to the online world, and for a bit more advertising to move online.

From being in the middle of it all, I can actually confirm that this is happening, slowly maybe, but it is happening; more investment opportunities are becoming/going to become available for Arab online startups, and more businesses are currently experimenting with online advertising.

But now comes in the role of the entrepreneurs and startups to make sure they benefit from this chance, build their business case to entice the right investors for them, and make sure that those businesses experimenting with online advertising have successful online campaigns with maximum analytics transparence, so that they see how effective the internet is as a medium and stick to it even when things pick up again.

In short, the crisis can be a great time for Arab online startups if they grab the opportunities it offers them and are ready to jump on any chances hidden in its midst. 

What do you think? What’s your view of things?