Tag Archives: startup

Q&A with Thijl Klerkx

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Thijl Klerkx
Founder, Thijl.nl
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Thijl Klerkx is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. At the age of 12 Thijl started a webhosting company which he sold at the age of 13. After this first entrepreneurial adventure Thijl started working on his current company which he started at 15. With help from an investor, Thijl started doing deliveries of organic groceries by cargo bike.
 Now, 5 years later, he is working on fine-tuning his business model and scale his delivery company.
 In addition to that, Thijl advises corporates like Randstad on the use of technology and the internet.

 What was the biggest mistake you’ve done as an entrepreneur? What did you learn from it?

You do not want to know how many incidents come to mind. However, the biggest mistake was probably that after running my business for about a year I thought I knew exactly what needed to happen to make it grow faster and I spent a year fixing that issue. Only then I realized other underlying issues were the actual issue. So I basically spent a year on fixing an issue that did not need any fixing… So from now on I try to spend a little more time analyzing the situation.

 What is the most critical phase in a startup’s lifecycle? How did you navigate the tides of this cycle with your own startup?

To me this would be the phase after launching but before scaling where you get the chance to use the feedback from your first customers to really improve your product and get it ready to scale. Many successful startups change their entire proposition in this phase. Efficiently using the feedback of your first customers is absolutely necessary to get your startup ready for successful scaling.

 What does it take to build a great product and scale it across the world?

I have no real experience scaling startups across the world yet. However, I am personally a big believer in the fact that in most cases you should first take time to make your startup successful in your region, before scaling very big very fast. A good business model, hard work and a couple of good people are not enough to really scale across the world. You will have to create a fluid machine that launches your product in a very structured, efficient and uniform way.

 

Q&A with Marianne Hoayek

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Q&A with Marianna Howayek

Marianne Hoayek
Director of the Executive Office, Banque du Liban
Beirut, Lebanon

Marianne Hoayek has a degree in Business Economics from the Lebanese American University, a degree in Law from the Lebanese University and obtained her Masters in Laws of Banks and Capital Markets from the Saint Joseph University. She is currently the Executive Director heading the Executive Office at Banque du Liban since its establishment in July 2007. The office directly reports to the Governor of the Central Bank.
 Marianne is member of the official Lebanese delegation to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings and member of several committees such as the Investment Committee and the Open Market Committee.

What has been the feedback/reactions to the Circular 331?

Since we issued circular 331 in August last year, we have had very positive feedback from all participants in the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.

For the first time in Lebanon and I think in the Arab World, an innovative approach has been used by a Central Bank to create a platform dedicated to providing equity finance for Entrepreneurs through commercial banks.

Lebanese banks can invest in the capital of startups, incubators, accelerators, and funds. The Central Bank will guarantee 75% of that investment up to 3% of each banks’ capital.

This scheme made available around $400 million USD. Some were saying that the Circular will pave the way for Lebanon to become the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. We are keeping our hopes high… In all cases, once fully utilized we believe that this scheme will contribute to economic growth by 1%.

How is the selection process like? What are you looking for?

Well in terms of what we are looking for, as I said earlier, we are looking for investments in companies that will help foster the knowledge economy. The world we live in is directed by technology, and Lebanon has a big potential in this sector. We believe that the digital sector is a very promising one along with other sectors that are based on innovative and creative ideas. Supporting sectors where Lebanon has a comparative advantage could help increase competitiveness and create new job opportunities in particular to the talented youth.

The text of the circular specifies the conditions and the selection process; most importantly, the company should be a Lebanese joint-stock company with nominal shares, not a financial or an offshore company. Its work should rely on knowledge economy and aims at supporting creative intellectual skills. It has to have a positive impact on the economic and social growth in general and on job creation.

To date, we have had quite a number of companies that benefited from the circular. Presella through Al Mawarid Bank, was the first pilot project (June 2014). Since then we have approved the disbursements of funds for several venture capital and we have some other applications in the pipeline.

What are the next steps with the Circular?

In Lebanon in the past few years, we have been facing challenging circumstances that are putting a heavy toll on the economy’s ability to grow. The need to help the economy to face those challenges was one of the main reasons behind issuing the Circular 331. We will continue our efforts to help stimulate economic growth that can be translated into increased job opportunities and a better socio-economic position.

As for what’s next, we have been keen from the beginning to engage all stakeholders in a constructive dialogue regarding what we can do to help the economy. Last year in December we introduced the new platform to the banking sector and entrepreneurs alike in an event that we called: INNOVATE – Banking Outside the Box, and this year we believe that BDL Accelerate will help us shape the next steps needed based on the presentations of the prominent speakers regarding their experiences and best international practices. I believe that the discussions and interactions that will take place will be very useful to assess what more can be done… I am looking forward to learn from those interactions… 

What does Lebanon have to do to up its startup game?

I think we need to work on improving the business environment in general. In the World Bank’s latest report Doing Business 2015, which measures ease of doing business in 189 economies, Lebanon unfortunately slipped from the rank 102 in 2014 to 104 in 2015, a sign that we did not make any serious effort to cut red tape or introduce new regulations to improve the business climate. In the ‘starting a business’ category, Lebanon ranked 119 out of the 189 countries. If we would like to encourage entrepreneurs to start a business we need to make it as simple as possible and to decrease administrative costs. We also need to invest more in upgrading our educational systems and include entrepreneurial learning as part of school curriculum.

As for what concerns the Central Bank, we need to continue the work on improving access to finance for startups. Some work still has to be done on not only decreasing cost of capital for SMEs—this we have been doing for some time, and will keep on doing it for next year through our stimulation package—but we also need to make it more competitive and less burdensome.

We need to encourage banks to innovate in the tools they make available to SMEs in general and entrepreneurs in particular. We also need to work on encouraging the creation of incubators and accelerators in Beirut and outside the capital to be able to reach the largest number of entrepreneurs.

 

Q&A with Mark Haidar

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Q&A with Mark Haidar

Mark Haidar
Founder & CEO of Vinli
Dallas, Texas, USA 

Mark Haidar is a serial entrepreneur who combines advanced technological skills with astute business knowledge. Throughout his career, Mark was able to build more than 42 different notable products and grow several technology-based businesses. Mark started his first technology company in Lebanon at age 17. By the age of 21, he had built the first fully integrated web-based university management system in Lebanon, the first 3D game engine built locally in the Middle East, the first wireless application protocol based internet-to-home remote control system in Lebanon, and won a People’s Choice Award for Best Web Product in the Middle East for transforming municipality records from paper to digital. In 2006, Mark moved to the US and led the development of a state of the art research and development project for the US Army Tank Automotive Research Development Engineering Center (TARDEC). He was able to successfully create an original service-oriented intra and inter-vehicle communication system for transportation, robotic, and military systems that enhanced each vehicle’s situation assessment and awareness in military combats and have the potential to help create safer and more efficient highway systems.

With a huge demand for innovative and scalable technology solutions, Mark co-founded Dialexa, a global product-focused technology innovation and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Dialexa has been growing at an exponential rate with clients ranging from venture-backed startups to Fortune 20 companies and governments around the world. In 2014, Dialexa started a division under the name of Dialexa Labs, a self funded venture lab that develops internal products or services that spins out new companies. In September 2014, Dialexa Labs launched Vinli, the first connected car technology platform at Techcrunch Disrupt. Mark is currently serving as the CEO of Vinli.

Mark has numerous journal publications, pending patents, and is a regular speaker at global technology conferences. Most recently Mark founded Peace.Report, an online news aggregator that focuses on current conflicts around the world. It collects news articles that promote peace and expose atrocities. Peace.Report is scheduled to go live early 2015. Mark is also working on launching LISA (Lebanese International Startup Association), which helps Lebanese startups launch and scale their companies in international markets.

As a Lebanese entrepreneur who has worked in Lebanon and also had a big break outside Lebanon, what advice do you give to Lebanese entrepreneurs who are starting up businesses in the country?

It will be hard but you can make it.

Here is why it is hard:

  • Instability: In Lebanon we have no idea when a war is going to erupt or when you are going to have electricity. This poses a real struggle in maintaining a stable operation.
  • Lack of capital: A lot of rich people and banks but no traditional VC or angel investment.
  • Small market size: The whole country of Lebanon is smaller than Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and the Lebanese GDP is smaller than some companies in the USA. So building a startup that scales to its potential is very hard when the local economics do not support it.

Here is why you can make it:

  • The most important capital for a startup is human capital. Lebanon has some of the most talented and educated people around the world in a really high percentage. People are what make a startup successful and not money. Startups are all about execution and Lebanese can execute.
  • The Lebanese mastered the most important art a startup should possess: survival. They don’t teach survival skills at schools; in Lebanon we live it every single day. Everything is an uphill battle and somehow we manage to make it. Yes building a startup is hard but managing to stay alive, go to school, go through poverty, and get a university degree in a country that has continuous sectarian and regional wars, high poverty rates, no electricity, and no public support is much harder!
  • In a country and a region that doesn’t have much advancement in technology, you have less competition.
  • The world is a global village. With technology, your startup can reach global markets and customers without the need for you to be there. The Internet and new business models broke the barriers.

Here is my advice to the Lebanese youth:

Do not give up and settle for a boring corporate job because it gives a steady salary. Do not join political parties whose sole job is to keep the status quo. Shatter your glass ceiling. Do not wait for your government or political leader to do you a favor. You are better than all of that. Join or create a startup and change the world and discard the noise that is telling you that you cannot make it. Don’t be afraid to fail because you will be facing failure every single day until you make it. Fear is a choice. And what is the worst-case scenario? Your company fails completely and shuts down. In which case you have gained experience and connections that allow you to leapfrog anyone else who in the corporate world. If you have the guts to create a startup and the stamina and persistence to pursue it to the end, you will always end up winning.

What are the limitations of the Lebanese ecosystem? What do you think Lebanon needs to do to up its startup game?

I think I covered the limitations in the previous question. But to summarize it: lack of capital, small market size, and the inexperience in launching and scaling a startup.

To be realistic, you cannot depend on the Lebanese government to fix this. This is wishful thinking; with all the politics involved nothing will happen. I think that for Lebanon to up its startup game, you need to focus on the strengths that Lebanon has and take advantage of them instead of dwelling on the weaknesses.

Lebanon is the probably the largest exporter of human capital in the world relative to its population. We have 12 million Lebanese living abroad and 4 million inside Lebanon. I can’t think of any other country whose 75% of its population is dispersed around the world. That’s the number one export from Lebanon. The Lebanese diaspora contributes directly to 20% of Lebanon’s GDP. So Lebanon is by definition geographically located in the Middle East but dispersed globally around the world. This effectively makes Lebanon a global country; and we need to apply the same mentality to our startups. Startups need to start local and then go global. This is part of the Lebanese DNA. We need to put the mechanics in place to connect the Lebanese technology ecosystem to the rest of the world and allow startups to grow beyond the boundaries of Lebanon and also connect talent and expertise from around the world to Lebanon.

That’s why I think what BDL is doing is a spark of genius. With the Circular 331 and BDL Accelerate, BDL became the catalyst for establishing this ecosystem and established itself as the epicenter of progressive change in Lebanon. Now, it’s time to build on that!

You are currently working on launching the Lebanese International Startup Association. Can you tell us a bit about this?

As part of building on top what BDL is doing and in line with solving the need for Lebanese startups to have global reach, we created LISA (Lebanese International Startup Association).

With the entire world coalescing into a single global village and the U.S.A. being the epicenter for startups, a global strategy and framework that is complimentary to Circular 331 is not only ideal, but also necessary. Lebanese startups cannot depend strictly on the Lebanese or MENA markets for big, continuous and/or sustainable successes. LISA will be an entity whose purpose is to enable the success of Lebanese startups in the global market in general, but with a particular focus on the US market, and will have the following mission:

  1. Educate the Lebanese youth and entrepreneurs on starting a startup that is positioned for success in the global market.
  2. Communicate with the Lebanese startup community and maintain statistics and data on what is happening in the Lebanese startup scene.
  3. Promote Lebanese startups and the community globally­­­—specifically in the US.
  4. Assist Lebanese startups with coming to and staying in the US.
  5. Help Lebanese startups in business development and introduce them to people in the US who may be able to help.
  6. Create a framework that will enable Lebanese startups to pursue and hopefully obtain capital from US investors.

In order to successfully access the US market, LISA will need to create a robust ecosystem and market demand engine to support the landing of new entities in the US. The key attributes here are as follows:

  • Awareness: Marketing and PR activities in the US that promote the great things going on in Lebanon and how technology startups are being born.
  • Advisement: Creating an ecosystem of advisors and mentors with a focus on the US for market development activities and to help these startups adapt to and operate in the US culture and market.
  • Office Space: Bring select startups to the US and provide a physical office space for them to work from.
  • Professional Services: Provide companies with services that all businesses need from credible service providers, such as legal, accounting etc.
  • Introductions: Connecting and introducing select startups with VCs, media and people who may be able to help.
  • Launch: Business Development and Marketing activity to help these startups with introductions and positioning of their solution to meet market demand and generate initial revenue.

LISA will start accepting applications from startups as early as December 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elise Nebout – Le Camping – France

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Elise Nebout
Manager, Le Camping
Paris, France

Elise Nebout is the manager of Le Camping, a unique 4 month program to accelerate innovative startups powered by NUMA, the largest digital hub in the center of Paris where tech events take place daily. She graduated from Sciences Po Lyon and started her career as a journalist for digital and traditional press magazines such as Philosophie Magazine and Usbek & Rica. In January 2011, she joined Le Camping as Community Manager until she became Manager in November 2012.

Le Camping, based in Paris, started in January 2011 and has raised over $14 million in funds to date. It leads and builds French innovative startups and has already helped create several success stories. Sixty-two startups in five batches went through the program. Companies such as DocTracks, a solution allowing encryption and control over distributed documents, raised $2 million and was acquired by Intralinks for over $10 million. Another successful story is that of Mesagraph, a piece of software that analyzes millions of online conversations in real time to provide analytics and actionable insights. Twitter acquired it for an undisclosed amount.

Startups receive the assistance of exceptional mentors and professionals, and over $120,000 worth of services and resources in addition to the opportunity to meet and network with potential investors.

Today, Le Camping is a prominent French acceleration program based in the main entrepreneurs and digital hub in NUMA. Twelve innovative startups are selected every season to go through the intense 4 month program to develop and grow. Being located in NUMA provides the startups with a network of thousands of international entrepreneurs, investors, mentors and companies that would surely benefit them.

Q&A With Paul Papadimitriou

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Paul Papadimitriou
Founder, Intelligencr
London, UK

Paul Papadimitriou is the founder of Intelligencr, an innovation scouting firm. He advises companies on how to understand the new consumer and the technologies of tomorrow—most recently for the launch of a mobile ecosystem in China. Paul believes a new citizen is emerging, with emerging values, enhanced by emerging technologies. How we transact, learn, consume, communicate, work—how we live and love—is being altered. With a truly global outlook, he studies the key signifiers in this crowded space—economics, culture, behavioral studies, politics—and surfaces what is important, what isn’t and what it all means. He is a Swiss, a Greek and a Finn. His homes have included Tokyo, Manila and Geneva. Lobbyist turned storyteller, he has given keynote speeches on four continents, appeared on The Economist, ABC, TF1, ABS-CBN or the Japan Times. Companies like Microsoft, Fujitsu, Canonical, SABMiller, Criteo, Tumblr or Siemens have trusted him to challenge them. Paul resides in London, runs TheDigitalLoop podcast and loves chocolate.

Where is the next digital revolution happening? What will it be about?

You cannot connect the dots forwards, did Steve Jobs famously say. But the future is already here, just not evenly distributed, as William Gibson quipped: I can’t tell the future—no one can—but I can foresee multiple existing trends that will explode or continue to explode.

The technological shift towards mobile is an evidence. It is poised to continue at a rapid pace—it’s the race to the next billions, the populations in emerging and frontier countries that haven’t yet access to the internet. Everyone of us becomes a connected node on a massive network.

The generational shift is the undercurrent. Think of it this way, social media was kindergarten, we started to learn communicating in a distributed way. We are now learning how to consume with distributed marketplaces. We will soon learn how distributed networks can change all types of human transactions, from finance to education.

The power shift is the byproduct. The current hierarchical institutions, from government to corporations are in crisis, which explains a lot of clashes we’re seeing, from Uber versus the regulators to the political struggles seen around the world. The hardware is failing, the people software is upgrading and we’re all unsure what the next operating system will be, only that, enhanced by technology, by human invention, it will come distributed.

You say that a new citizen is emerging. Can you tell us more about him or her?

The emerging trends I mentioned above are feeding off each other, creating a new sense of identity.

When you’re born in a world of distributed power, the way you envision yourself, the way you define yourself is altered. What you see possible is changed. Your choices—from how you buy to how you wish to influence the future of the planet—have shifted. You understand that making sense information flows is paramount—communication is information, product is information, capital is information. Understand those flows and you acquire knowledge. Interface those flows and you can change the world.

Don’t misconstrue my statement. There’s no great equalizer. It’s not the rise of a single citizen bounded by sameness. It’s actually the opposite, a greater variety of citizens all armed with the tools that I’ve outlined, all leveraging ideas, the new capital. The more I travel in frontier and emerging markets, the more I’m comforted in this view.

You’re currently involved in a mobile ecosystem launch in China. Can you tell us more about this and what you’re learning from this experience?

There are tendencies of reducing China to the factory of the world, and to conflate everything we read about it—from IP laws to cultural artifacts—to create this monolithic image that drives suspicion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an immensely complex country that I’ve only started to comprehend.

In terms of technology, think of Japan in the 60s. There was mockery about their cars, their transistors. The “Made in China” suffers from a similar stigma. It’s intellectually lazy—and dishonest—to believe that China is just an on-demand factory copying everything. Innovation is about understanding your customer and I’m seeing tons of companies doing that more than well there. And trust me, Xiaomi, the handset maker that everybody mentions nowadays, is only one of the first brands that will appear globally.

As for my personal experience, China’s scale is beyond imagination—it gives you this exhilarating feeling of an enormous blank canvas to draw on. Thinking of strategies on such a scale is a fantastic opportunity. Having to imagine what you can do on platforms like WeChat is also really fun; there are tons of possibilities that you can’t play with in Europe or North America. The potential for hardware is another fascinating avenue. You can really scale fast, just visit Shenzhen to grasp this reality. Like any country, there’s more than meets the eye. China also more ideas than my brain can store. A land of opportunity.

 

Gary Stewart – Wayra – UK

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Gary Stewart
Director, Wayra
London, UL

Gary Stewart is the Director of Wayra UK and founder of nuroa.es, a Barcelona-based startup. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and was the executive editor of The Yale Journal at the university’s Law School before working at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett in London, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Spain.

Like most entrepreneurs, Gary never thought he would be where he is today.  While attending Yale, he thought he would become a litigator for a company similar to Microsoft, however, he later decided he didn’t want to live in the U.S. anymore. Gary settled in London where he worked in Mergers and Acquisitions at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett before moving to Madrid.  The turning point for him came 4 years after his move; when he was told the terms of his contract would have to change in ways he wasn’t comfortable with. It was then that Gary decided to become an entrepreneur.

However, he did not instantly succeed in his endeavors. His first creation was an offline real estate company, which flopped.  Determined to make his mark, Gary later founded nuroa.es, an online property search company where he stayed for 5 years, and raised £4 Million in funding.  He was also an associate professor and the entrepreneur-in-residence at IE Business School. Gary learned a lot from this position, as he spent two years redesigning and re-launching IE Business School‘s accelerator for MBA students. After that, he joined the British branch of Telefónica’s start up accelerator, Wayra. Since then, he’s been helping entrepreneurs grow and build successful businesses by providing them with a physical working space, funding, and resources to mentors, investors, and all round support. They even fly their entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley to learn from the world’s largest tech hub.

Gary Stewart’s passion for entrepreneurship perseverance have led him to the core of his business. Today, he seeds and mentors promising startups to get them to pitch in front of British investor panels thus gaining exposure, reputation, and a chance to get larger funding.

 

Ivan Hernandez – The Digital Loop – Poland

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Ivan Hernandez 
Co-Founder, The Digital Loop 
Warsaw, Poland

Ivan Hernandez is a Digital Marketing Strategist and Business Development Consultant to early stage startups with several years of international experience in strategic consulting, advertising, marketing and media sectors. He is the Co-Founder of The Digital Loop, an organization that provides advisory services in the areas of Digital Marketing and Strategy.

Additionally, Ivan co-hosts The Digital Loop weekly video series about the opportunities and challenges of the digital era. He has recently joined D-RAFT, to lead the company’s Digital Commerce program. D-RAFT is a new corporate accelerator focused on helping both corporations and startups in the CEE region grow.

Ivan is an internationally recognized keynote speaker. He mainly speaks to organizations and in conferences about the impact that digital technologies, mobile and social media can have on business performance. He also speaks of other topics related to Innovation, Collaboration and Business Development.

In love with disruptive ideas, Ivan consults early stage startups to make them change the way they think about their business, industry and competitors. He strongly encourages them to be curious, experiment and start doing things differently.

The world is rapidly changing and companies have to embrace and react swiftly. Ivan believes that adaptation is essential for companies to survive. He encourages them to be empathetic and put themselves in the user’s shoes, to understand their behavior and add value to them through human-centered designs.

Ivan’s immeasurable expertise has helped many organizations understand how the digital era impacts their business. This prepares clients for the challenges they might face and pushes them to grasp the opportunities they find, moving up to that next step.

Charlie Graham-Brown – Switzerland – Seedstars

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Charlie Graham-Brown
CFO, Seedstars World
Geneva, Switzerland

Seedstars World CFO, Charlie Graham-Brown, has six years of investment and analytical investment experience in innovative financial institutions primarily focused on developing countries.  He studied at The University of Leeds (UK) with a year at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), where he secured a Master of Engineering First Class Honors degree. He later got an MBA at the  Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris then became a CFA charter holder. Now working at Seedstars World, Charlie manages business development and the investment fund.

Seedstars, the parent venture firm, is a business development and investment fund management for startups and investors focused on emerging markets. They wanted to identity startups in emerging markets that they could invest in and started the Seedstars World Competition, as a method to scout out startups from around the world.

Seedstars World is a global startup competition being held in 35 emerging cities around the world this year, and is crucial since they also offer startups from different areas exposure to European and U.S. investors. It is a great way for venture capitalists to scout for potential investments from emerging markets. The 35 winning startups will make it to the global competition in Geneva, Switzerland where they will spend 3 days at a workshop to work on their pitch, then compete for a $500k investment from Seedstars.

The final showdown happens in front of a panel of European investors, which earned last year’s laureates an additional $6M investment.

Seedstars has truly been uplifting startups in emerging markets, providing them with global exposure, the opportunity to find financiers on a global scale, and a real chance to compete in much larger markets. For the entrepreneurs, the risks are a lot higher, but so are the potential rewards!

All in all, Charlie has spent most of his post-academic life empowering the global startup ecosystem and is far from done. Seedstars is expanding every year and has just made its way into Lebanon for the first time.

 

Seedstars World Coming to Lebanon For The First Time

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Seedstars World is an exclusive worldwide startup competition traveling to over 30 cities in 2014 and taking place in Beirut on November 20-21.

The competition aims at finding the best young entrepreneurs in emerging and fast-growing startup scenes such as Lebanon.  The pitching event is exclusively sponsored by Banque du Liban and hosted by Lebanon’s first international startup conference, Banque du Liban Accelerate 2014. The bank has been supporting startups in Lebanon for the past couple of years, providing them with a boost and turning Beirut into a strategic hub for them.

Up to 50 startups will be selected to participate in the competition. Each one will have an exhibition stand at the conference, and will conduct a 1 Minute Lightning Round Pitch on the main stage on November 20.  The top 10 startups will then enter the Finalists Round on November 21, from which the winner will be selected.

The winning startup will be crowned “Seedstars Beirut Regional Winner“ and flown to Geneva, Switzerland for a 3-day boot camp and the Seedstars Final Event. They will represent Lebanon and compete for the prestigious title of “Seedstars World Best Startup”, which will grant them a $500,000 investment as well as the opportunity to pitch in front of a wide panel of European investors. Last year’s winner was able to raise $6M thanks to this final pitch.The winner will also receive $20,000 worth of hosting services from Softlayer and $60,000 worth of prizes from our global partners. The 2nd and 3rd runners-up will get $50,000 worth of prizes.

The 50 competing startups will receive regional media coverage and have the opportunity to meet with potential partners and peers. The startups can come from any field but have to be for-profit and prepared to pitch in public, in English.  The company must have been founded less than 2 years prior to the competition, and have a maximum funding of $500,000.  If your startup fits the criteria, you have until November 14th to apply; Seedstars World will inform you if you have been selected 5 days before the event.

Seedstars World is after the next big thing and is willing to push it as far as it can through training and pitching opportunities. This is a rare opening that can change the future of your startup.

Apply here

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Bragiel – i/o Ventures – USA

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Paul Bragiel
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, i/o Ventures
San Francisco, California, USA

Paul Bragiel is a superstar in the tech industry. Entrepreneur, investor, speaker and aspiring athlete, Paul is also Co-Founder and Managing Partner of i/o Ventures, his fourth company. His first three creations were Lefora, a product that revolutionized online forums; Meetro, the first location-based social network; and Paragon Five, a game development studio.

i/o Ventures is a three-month accelerator program for tech startups in Silicon Valley. It invests up to $25K per startup and only focuses on five of them at a time, with a total of ten to twelve investments every year. This means that they get to work very closely with the selected startups that want to move to the next level, need to raise funds, and need guidance.

During the three months, partners (from companies like MySpace and BitTorrent) and mentors (from companies like OpenDNS, Yelp, and Digg) coach the startups. Stationed in i/o Ventures offices, the young enterprises focus on their product’s market readiness, and meet other entrepreneurs. At the end of the 3 months, angel investors and venture capitalists come in and listen to what the company offers.

Besides his entrepreneurial and investing skills, Paul has competed in the 2014 Winter Olympics on the Colombian Cross Country Ski team (a childhood dream of his), canoed the entire Mississippi River and bicycled across the United States.

From entrepreneur to accelerator, Paul has become a staple in the field and has gathered immense insight on the startup world. His dedication to making his dreams – and the ones of younger entrepreneurs – a reality is an inspiration to take risks and just go for it.