entrepreneurship – StartUpArabia

Palestinian Hassan Hamdan Receives Award At 2010 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010 MMM 8 Comments

Palestinian entrepreneur Hassan Hamdan, Co-Founder of Optimal Technology Solutions and recent graduate of Modern Science and Art University, has been awarded the “Lessons from the Edge Award” in the 2010 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) Competition.

The award was given as a specialized category within the GSEA, a program of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the premier competition for students taking a full course load of classes while running a revenue-generating business.

He also came up as the Overall Second Runner Up in the competition, chosen from among 2000 student entrepreneurs from 44 countries; and earlier this year, he was picked as the Middle East Regional Champion by GSEA.

Dubai Silicon Oasis Technology Incubator To Support Startups

October 23, 2010October 23, 2010 MMM 3 Comments

Dubai Silicon Oasis, the integrated free zone technology park, has launched a new big project in the UAE, the ‘DSO Technology Incubator’.

The incubator’s goal is to support new start-ups and encourage entrepreneurs in the field of technology by stimulating the development of successful companies, and chart a new avenue for investment in technology in the Arab region.

The incubator comes as part of DSO’s hi-tech ecosystem and the six technology sectors that remain the focus of the technology free zone.

TechWadi Marks Launch Of Entrepreneurship Initiative In Egypt

October 22, 2010October 22, 2010 MMM 5 Comments

On October 25-26th, 2010; TechWadi, the Silicon Valley-based non-profit organization working to promote entrepreneurship in the Arab world, will be hosting two days of free events that are focused on developing the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in Egypt and the MENA region.

On October 25th, at the Smart Village Convention Center in Cairo, Egypt; hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives and investors will join together at the Rising Tide Forum to build their networks, discover synergies, and learn from US and regional business leaders. [Agenda]

Panel leaders will address targeted topics of direct value to entrepreneurs and investors alike: venture capital and angel financing best practices; challenges and opportunities in Egypt; the role of mentors, incubators, and entrepreneurship education; mobile and Facebook applications; enterprise software; and a host of proven strategies ready to be transplanted into the MENA region.

GoSolo Entrepreneurial Workshop: Raising Capital for Your Startup

October 13, 2010October 13, 2010 MMM

Tandem, the Dubai-based business advisory company, will be hosting a 5th installment of GoSolo at The Shelter in Dubai, today Wednesday October 13th, 2010 at 7PM.

GoSolo is a series of entrepreneurial workshops organized by tandem and that aim to help and guide aspiring entrepreneurs through the different challenges of launching a startup and give them answers to all their various questions.

This month’s session, titled ‘Raising Capital for Your Startup‘, will include a discussion led by the founders of tandem, Rabih Brair and Amir Farha on the industry, and insights on what investors are looking for in today’s market. The topics include the regional investment landscape, the selection criteria that investors look at and a Q&A session with one of the founders of Duplays.

Win Free Incorporation & Online Advertising With Falcons’ Lair Business Competition

October 10, 2010October 10, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

Virtuzone, a virtual UAE-based free zone, in partnership with Dubizzle, the UAE’s leading online classifieds service, have launched a new business competition under the name of ‘The Falcons’ Lair’, offering entrepreneurs an opportunity to make their business dreams a reality.

Entrepreneurs whose ideas are chosen at the end will get an offer from Virtuzone to set up their company for free, including all the costs for the first year of incorporation; and they’ll get the equivalent value of that in online advertising on Dubizzle for free. The competition’s official site claims this amounts to an accumulated value of over AED 100,000.

Fourth Edition Of Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition Launched In Jordan

September 30, 2010September 30, 2010 MMM

The Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC) is officially launching its 4th cycle for 2010 – 2011.

This comes as part of the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship’s continued effort to empower Jordanian entrepreneurs to take their ideas or startups to the next level.

The vision of QRNEC is to evolve and expand into a comprehensive entrepreneurship enabler, involved in fostering creativity, incubating viable concepts, and facilitating the success of entrepreneurial ventures to a level that affects the cultural orientation of the Jordanian community.

What is your exit strategy?

August 21, 2010August 21, 2010 nagi

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?

I wonder…

All eyes on you, there’s never been a better time to start-up than now

July 18, 2010July 18, 2010 dotone 4 Comments

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?

Event: U.S. Delegation On Entrepreneurship – June 28th 2010 (Amman, Jordan)

June 18, 2010June 18, 2010 MMM 2 Comments

Barack Obama 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.

Arabize, slap an Arabic funky name on it n’ you got yourself a new startup

June 15, 2010June 15, 2010 dotone 9 Comments

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 very functional and online industry evolutionary reasons behind that. Simply it’s not our copycat genes that make us race for developing an Arabic version of the next big thing. Facebook? hah, we can make one in Arabic. Twitter? now that’s easy to make, let’s do that.