Category: Inside StartUpArabia

StartUpArabia, A Month Later

MMM 20 Comments

It’s been exactly one month since StartUpArabia was launched to the public, and I thought I’d just share some thoughts and numbers from this first month with you all.

Before anything, I’d like to thank every single person who has taken the time to visit StartUpArabia; leave a comment, email me, call me, IM me, tweet me, blog or do anything in relation with StartUpArabia; I really appreciate all your support, encouragement and offers to help. Rest assured I’ll eventually take you all up on your offers, and that you can count on me too if you need anything at all.

So let’s start with the blog itself and some numbers; up to now 64 published posts, 2 reader polls, 82 comments and 57 spam comments caught by Akismet.

Statistics-wise, things are still picking up steadily, the site has served around 5,700 page views up to now, of which just over 3,000 are unique visits, from all over the world; The feed has 142 subscribers now, and has served 6,980 views over the past month. So yeah, interestingly, more activity on the feed than on the site.

StartUpArabia was noticed by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on its first day and he tweeted about it here (Thanks Mike); which was a nice little boost for the launch, bringing a good number of visitors.

Content from the blog is currently aggregated on Alltop Startups (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki), TN-Blogs (Thanks to Houssein Ben Ameur), Dwwen (Thanks to the whole Dwwen team), Qwaider Planet (Thanks to Samer Qwaider), and tn-pla.net (Thanks to Nihed & Chiheb).
These are the sites I’m aware of, I’m sorry if I missed anybody, please do let me know.

A big thanks to everyone who links to StartUpArabia from their blogs and websites, it’s much appreciated, and means a lot to me.

Finally, it’s awesome how many great people I’ve been able to meet through the blog this past month, people I really respect and look forward to working closely with throughout the months and years to come.

Thank you all, I hope you continue to enjoy StartUpArabia and the content that is published here.
And again, if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions; I’d more than love to hear them from you.

Do Arab Startups Really Need An Arabic Interface? [Poll]

MMM 4 Comments

A new poll has gone live on StartUpArabia, you can find it on the first sidebar on the right or vote straight from this post.

This poll’s question is quite specific to Arab startups, and it asks:
Do Arab startups really need an Arabic interface?

Is it really a necessity? For each and every startup? No matter where in the Arab world the startup is from?

What do you think?

Feel free to further expand on your response in the comments section of this post.

Is It Important For Startups To Have Blogs? [Poll Results]

MMM 2 Comments

In the first poll on StartUpArabia, the question to the readers was:
Do you think it’s important for startups to have blogs?

The result of reader voting came out as follows:

– 85% of readers thought it is definitely important for startups to have blogs.
– 15% of the readers thought that it wasn’t really necessary.

Personally, I share the opinion of the 85% who think it is important: At the very beginning of a startup’s life, it’s very important for the project team to be in touch with users, to communicate on what’s going on, and what new features they’ll be rolling out; creating buzz around their project, offering a transparency that garners users’ trust and builds a sense of community around it; getting as much feedback as possible from the people who are using their service/product daily; keeping their ears as wide open as possible, being flexible to integrate any interesting new ideas into their original plans and having discussions with people on what they really need and how the product can better serve them.

A blog is certainly one of the best ways out there to do all the above, and build a direct connection with your userbase, helping you to develop the best-suited solution for their needs, which would clearly translate into happier clients, good word-of-mouth marketing, which also means more clients, and therefore more success for your business.

Welcome To StartUpArabia

MMM 27 Comments

First of all, I’d like to welcome everyone to StartUpArabia, which I’m officially launching today. There might still be some little details to work out here and there, but overall, I think it’s ready for me to share with you all.

I’ve been very busy working on this project recently, that I’m very passionate about, which I personally view as an important community project, and which I hope many people will want to get involved with.

StartUpArabia is a weblog dedicated to new Arab technology startups and services, profiling and reviewing them, providing interesting market news and information, and sharing tips and advice for the entrepreneurs behind them.

In addition to covering these new startups, existing services and companies that are making interesting new changes and big steps in the Arab world will be mentioned and discussed.

The idea and goal behind this project for me is to give a push to Arab entrepreneurs and the startups they’ve started by shedding the light on them and introducing them to a wider audience, and providing them with information that could come in very handy for them.

Another goal is to help promote a whole Arab startup culture that brings entrepreneurs, to-be-entrepreneurs and people who are interested in startups from the Arab region together, creating a better buzz, opening more doors, and really making the Arab world a new hub for creative ideas and projects.

Something my friend Isam Bayazidi said when he took the blog for a beta spin, and which I think portrays one of the main reasons behind me launching this project in the first place is that, and I’m paraphrasing here: It’s easier to hear and know about a newly launched one-man startup in San Francisco than an Arab startup that has been working hard for the two past years.

That is so true, we have many talented people who come up with very cool ideas and projects, some of them work on them and launch them from their own bedrooms or garages, some of them have a company behind them to support them a bit more, and they all do some really great work, but many people don’t even hear about them in the first place, they don’t get the chance nor the support to keep their projects going, and they end up by shutting them down. StartUpArabia aims to change all that.

I know the project sounds very ambitious, but believe me that’s only the beginning of what I have in mind and where I want to take this, and it’s all very possible. Up to now, I’ve had some very positive and encouraging feedback from the people I shared the project with.

Please do take the time to take a little tour of the blog, I’ve already put up a dozen or so interesting posts for you to read. If you have any ideas, thoughts, suggestions or anything at all, please do not hesitate to share them with me, they are more than welcome and will be greatly appreciated.

If you have any startups you’d like me to write about, please do share, so that we can spread the love even more and get more people covered and promoted.

Also if you come across any links or articles that could be interesting for others or if you want a certain topic to be covered, it’d be great if you could send them my way.

And finally, do not hesitate to link to StartUpArabia from your own blogs, it’ll be very much appreciated 😉