All eyes on you, there’s never been a better time to start-up than now
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?
It's not about the possibilities, it's about the culture.
Most people in my country have access to Internet (it's cheap now), computer and free education. But where the bandwidth of our country is going? Facebook.com.
Wikipedia is ranking 10. Most of the top 20-40 I checked are social and video websites. Did we benefit from the current infrastructure? Can the average secondary school student write a sentence in English? No.
You don't need to build a nuclear plant to create an industry. The industry is what create demand for the nuclear power.
as we are on the topic of start ups, came across an interesting one today http://www.taqwa.me
seems like a well thought out product and rather interesting i must say. i type in some common “rude” words that are generally blocked from google and yahoo, but everything seems to let the me view the results.
nice one.
I agree with you Omar. The internet somehow changed the shape of civilization. Who could ever thought that this little machine can control everything from banking, shopping even falling in love.
Don’t forget localized Arabic domain names coming out very soon. Currently we’ve been able to reg Arabic.English(com) but pretty soon its gonna be Arabic.Arabic(com) aliasing to what is current.
I think localized domain names will really push the rest of the web to get online and do business.