“There is a lot of cohesion in the ecosystem here. It’s a tight knit group and everybody knows each other. Everybody is more or less co-operative. You know everybody wants to works together, they’re collaborative, they want to do stuff together…”
~Tammer Qaddumi on the MENA ecosystem
Show Takeaways:
On how the MENA startup ecosystem has evolved over the last few years…
The macro economic consequences of Shale horizontal drilling in West Texas which ’caused oil to hit peak demand rather than hit peak supply; served as one of the catalysts for governments in the region to shift towards technology. Over the last few years, we have seen a lot more initiatives from the government sector to support the growth of the nascent startup ecosystem.
On where the MENA startup ecosystem is heading next…
There is a huge potential in a single market for the region, at least in terms of startups looking to scale. A 450 million person market is waiting if they are able to come together and act as one single market. Dubai is excellent at what it does for startups, the only thing is allowing those startups to scale to additional cities overnight, as they can in the United States or European markets; allowing them to expand into the 350 million person market in the blink of an eye. Bureaucracy and barriers to entry between the individual MENA region ecosystem markets act as a detriment to startups looking to expand in the region.
On the Step Conference…
We see a lot of cohesion in the ecosystem here, everyone knows each other and it’s very collaborative, in the sense everyone wants to do stuff together; there is competition but relative to other sectors, it’s generally a collaborative environment. There is a need for more interlocking with the corporate arena, and trend of Corporate VC is a positive trend in the market.
Check out more episodes from the 2018 Step Conference Series and learn more about VentureSouq.
