“Some people might look at that vision and say it’s too far fetched but that’s why it’s a vision, it’s a grand vision. It’s something that we want to dream about.”
~Ray Dargham
Ray Dargham, an ambitious entrepreneur straight out of university is known for founding the Step Group behind the popular Step Conference as well as many other media properties such as Stepfeed, YallaFeed and Arab Vines to name a few.
He is also the co-founder and a partner at Spider Frogs, a future technology consultancy agency working with corporations.
Listen to learn more about how he started his venture and his bold vision for where Step is going next!
Posted on March 14, 2018
Show Notes:
- 1:15 – The foundations for escaping competition
- 03:00 – Becoming a consultant : the lucrative job
- 05:00 – Envisioning his life at 60 acting as a motivator to action
- 05:30 – His perspective on hardships and bad times
- 06:45 – The failure of modern schooling
- 07:45 – How he looks back at his time in school
- 08:30 – Launching Step Group 5 days after graduation
- 09:00 – Spider Frogs as a future technology provider
- 11:00 – The beginning of the STEP conference
- 11:45 – Launching StepFeed and YallaFeed
- 13:15 – Scaling the Step team
- 13:30 – Focusing on the experience
- 15:30 – The motivation behind StepFeed & YallaFeed
- 16:30 – His vision of the modern Arab world
- 18:45 – How they raised their Series A
- 19:30 – Attracting strategic investors
- 21:45 – Wamda being one of the original kickstarters of the region’s ecosystem
- 22:30 – The Step Enterprise offering and it’s contribution to the startup ecosystem
- 24:30 – The progress made in the last few years in the Dubai startup ecosystem
- 28:30 – The risk of being too early for the market
- 29:30 – What’s in the pipeline for Step in 2018
- 32:45 – How Ray prefers to relax
- 33:30 – A well-known figure he thinks is inspirational
- 35:00 – The importance of sleep
- 35:45 – Prioritizing three things in your life
- 36:30 – What Ray’s typical day looks like
- 38:00 – Understanding what you’re good at and divide the labor
- 39:15 – Looking at the next 100 years
- 40:15 – Trying to learn more about AI
- 41:00 – Always the Step Conference promoter
- 41:15 – The Dubai dream does exist
- 42:00 – How he takes pleasure in this activity
- 43:45 – Dreaming of organic innovation & research in Dubai
- 45:00 – Not to waste our limited time
- 46:30 – His decade based outlook at chances we have in our lives
References
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos
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