 We have a very important topic today, and I guess we have a very beautiful blend of expertise over there So I'm just going to introduce them in a nutshell As I have the honors that I invited them and I thank them for Replying back positively to our invitation. So thank you Mahir Hakim is a moderator today He's a professor in Carnegie Mellon University and he is originally a senior entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley Barathek Sawi. He is the Intel captain senior director for Middle East Africa and Turkey Chris Berry. He is the co-CEO of US market access. US market access is one of the famous incubators And one of the oldest incubators of the Silicon Valley that is specialized in hosting foreign companies that would like to establish themselves in the US market Henry Holm. He is the ex-senior vice-president for Raview and now he's an entrepreneur back to the normal life out of the corporate thing and Murad Ektenaglo. Murad is the co-founder and managing director of one of the most important accelerators in New York that caters for digital content and Occasionally all of them Actually have an international Kind of flavors. They are coming from different backgrounds. They have actually except for class Most of them they have dual nationalities and if not dual nationality and for Henry as well At least you're living in another country than the country have been born in. So welcome aboard. I need the floor for Mahir and the panel Thank you so much once again Thank you Ahmed for the nice introduction and thank you guys for joining us and thank you for the panelists to for joining us And sharing the expertise. I guess what I'm gonna start with is maybe have each of you tell us a little bit about the company you're working with and Since the topic is about taking your startup global How is what you do relevant to global startups in general and then we'll start a discussion. I Work it into a capital. It's Intel's venture arm and we do invest into technology companies all around the world. So Man global technology investor so at US Mac we currently run programs in 21 different countries around the world helping non US technology entrepreneurs tick their companies global My background is in my last company. We took it from one location to offices in 28 different countries around the world And I had the distinct pleasure and pain of being the first person on the ground in a large number of those Company, excuse me countries. So I personally know the experience of having to take a company from one market into the next So the past 16 70 years have been working at different companies in roles in Asia Middle East I was the eighth employee of Nokia in mid 90s in Asia and The last three years spending building the Angry Birds brand for all of your entertainment across Asia and region and One of the things when I take away with these two experiences is that when you don't have a strong whole market There is only way to go global is to go global day one running an accelerator in New York City for the past three years So we work with over 60 companies so far and among these companies Four of them were they came into the US market from a different country. So we saw Over the four months accelerator periods how they adapt to the US market their difficulties the cultural in an adaption period and We experienced growth with those companies. So we saw how the global company can enter the US market Okay, so we've got the US pretty much US company that invest globally And that's part of you what you do. We've got an accelerator in New York who accepts Companies from overseas and help them. We've got a soft landing. I guess they call it company Entity that organization that helps companies expand into the US market And we've got an entrepreneur who build a company on day one with a global reach So that could capture it correctly. So so I'm gonna try to do with the with the discussion here is when we talk about Building a global startup or taking a startup globally I think they the sequence of events that you have to think about is the first question you ask for yourself is why Why do I want a global company? Why do I want to think globally and and for what reason and then the second question will be when When is it the right time in my company to actually start thinking globally whether about you know markets or investors or talent and Then the last question will be the hub now. I'm ready. How do I do it? So let me start with the why Why why do you see startups from your experience and your background? Why do you see startups want to go global? So there are multiple reasons and I think my dear parents are gonna alert a couple of them So I've seen mainly I'm gonna just touch on the market piece There are obviously other reasons but the market is at least for the companies that I have exposes the number one driver in Certain cases some countries some regions may not have the market there So that's one of the reasons why people want to go global to tap into a bigger larger market Or the market might be in the country or the region wherever the entrepreneur is But they already tapped into to the market. So they want to expand out of there So or they see other Collaborative market players or a complimentary market players which will unlock more value in the market for them And that's what they know so from the most of the companies that we can expose the domain reason They want to Europe US go to China is mostly driven by market If you don't mind if you don't mind can you tell us you you mention an example about a company that actually started on day One with a market outside their boundaries right one of the other companies that you're from from Beirut. Oh, yeah So one of our portfolio companies in Beirut NIM go so they are doing a voice over IP over-the-top voice services mobile app like Wibers and And they do it the great service in the region. They're operating but they are Their services bend in Lebanon and some other GCC countries They are most of their services is used by people who work in the GCC and calling back their parents and Families back home in Indonesia in India in China So the company has zero customers in the market They operate Lebanon and there is no market because it's been so they start the company there But they are customer services. They are sales operations Expand into different regions and tap into the market potential in other parts of the world So I would echo what was previously said is that a lot of the reasons we see entrepreneurs go global is about being able to access a market Being able to you know get out of your local market and expand in a way that you couldn't if you stayed in your local market The other thing though that I see is it's a question of ambition Right, it is a question of sort of personally. What are you satisfied with? We see that there are two types of entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that we call lifestyle entrepreneurs Who are looking for sort of a comfortable way to live? They want the nice house They want the nice car to take the nice holiday and once they have those things That's the end of their ambition But then there are what we call enterprise entrepreneurs and the enterprise entrepreneurs want to build the next Cisco the next Google the Next yahoo and if that is your level of ambition The only way you can do that in today's market is to go global Even inside the United States you can't build a company of that magnitude if you have that level of ambition Without getting outside of the United States So the question of ambition is a critical factor in terms of being able to go global This Crystal caffeine is working. I think you're doing much better than an hour ago. So Yeah, the jet lag is now satisfied by the caffeine Henry so you're an enterprise entrepreneur. So I guess I guess I agree bear from day one What you know Chris mentioned? Really the ambition is is the key driver for most of the companies driving They're thinking to the global The benefit of that is that you have to really take in a consideration global level of product quality and then also How you approach the global market? It just can't take any more an isolated market or one piece of a regional market and say well This is good enough for what you know what is worth of One reason is that the investors are global mainly so they look at it in a very different view point So they have a good benchmarks if your product is good enough in a global scale second, even you don't have your revenue model, you know fully Fledged out there. You still need to acquire users the most efficient cheap possible way Digital platforms of distributing applications or even selling through e-covers platforms your products gives you that so If you don't have that ambition to go global day one Likelihood that you're going to be even a local champion is actually diminishing So I'll give you two examples to do two very different companies and two very different reasons They expanded they decided to expand globally first is a company they conquered their local market and They were like, okay this market. It's done. We dominate this market. The product is Customer validated so we can go to a different market and they expanded to the US market and they were very successful the other one Complete opposite. So in their local market, they couldn't get traction. They couldn't get you couldn't raise money but that ambition like Chris said and then they thought Is this a really bad product? That's why we cannot get local traction or are we in a wrong market? And they said we are in a wrong market They entered the US market and they became very successful. So it's a really tricky. There's no I think algorithm Either you conquer your local markets and you expand or maybe your local market is not the right market for you So you go global and you might find a fit but in either case. It's a You know, you have to make a judgment. It's a you have to make a call So let's move on to the When question so, you know, I think all of the companies that presented today If I remember correctly all of their all of those companies were focused have been local So they're talking about Qatar and maybe GCC so if you can just in the back of your mind remember these companies and you know think about You know, what milestones do you think these companies have to accomplish? Before they start going globally Before they start thinking about putting together a plan to go to go globally I mean, it is a very difficult task. So you really need to be ready and when I first started venture I vividly remember one of the partners make this analogy and I still remember that so he resembles older startups trying to come to the US markets as the Soldiers during the war. They are waiting in their barricades in their trenches and then as soon as Say, okay, we're gonna go to US or we're gonna go to the other side They get up and they got shut down one by one. So right It's you really need to be very careful because it's a super competitive market. Yes, trying to start a business now. It's Relatively easier compared to ten years with Amazon web servers and things like that But now the gaming guys will probably know it better than anyone It's incredible tough to get distribution to scaling right? It's so how are you ready for that or if you're doing anything with direct with the customers Are you gonna scale your customer services or if you're doing deals within us as an enterprise? How are you gonna be able to get into those long-sale cycles with US corporations or European corporations or Chinese corporations? You really need to think through this before you start moving into that part of the world I mean that could be US Europe China wherever but I mean, I think there's two Entities here presented by Chris and run which are trying to help them Enter into the countries and I greatly respect what they do And I think it's very crucial if you don't know what you're doing My suggestion will be really work with someone like Chris and run to get a better idea about How to enter to the country because it's really like the war. I mean as soon as you get your head up someone is gonna shoot you So Chris out of the five companies that presented What milestones do they need to accomplish before you think your organization will be ready to help them Enter the US market So in typical Silicon Valley fashion, I'm going to be very blunt The first thing is is they have to stop thinking small Okay, I asked one of the entrepreneurs the question of why is the number so small? And I got a reason why the number was so small But it was not from my perspective a particularly good answer to the question Because it was just saying well, it's because here's the long list of things that make it hard, right? It comes back to what I said about ambition that if you don't have a global ambition If you don't have that global appetite to say I'm going to do what it takes in order to rule the world Then don't bother right because you're gonna put your head up outside of the trench and you're just going to get shot At a pitching competition in Silicon Valley such as this if the question were asked How big are you going to be in five years? The smallest number you would hear in response is a hundred million dollars Okay That's the competition in the US Now having said that You all technically are every bit is good as the folks in Silicon Valley Right the level of technical competence the level of technical skill in this part of the world is really good Every time I come out here. I'm reminded again of just how technically competent people are But they have to start asking themselves a different set of business questions not technical questions and That if you're not ready to sort of stop thinking locally and start thinking with globally Then I can't help you Right, but once you make that mental transition to being able to say I want to rule the world And we can start to have an interesting discussion So if you go back in the angry gross analogy, we set the hundred million download mark for ourselves People around us that the well it took Tetris 25 years to get there So what is going to be your advantage? But that by analyzing then quickly what we can do what have not been done before We realize that actually we can actually hit those certain Marks for example attracting for quadrant audience So it wasn't polarizing to any particular boys girls men women as a game But also the same way that you know it attracts to a question Why the birds are angry it becomes a story telling and that story telling doesn't know stop into one country It doesn't have any borders and it gave us an opportunity then to start rolling out Systematically country by country app store by app store the download numbers up and once you get featured of course Then the game changes. Well, that was quite a few years back nowadays The competition is even more intense, but pretty much the same rules apply if you have a very good product You have a sound reason to go and invest either time money or resources for all of them You should and then go really big because just think of the small numbers won't make you Couple more things first of all The product is going to start telling you if you start getting customers from the US by default without you doing anything for example a Gear now they released the game and they got dollars from hundred different countries So the product is going to tell you secondly If you are really really successful, you're gonna hit the limits in your local markets So once you do the limits in your local markets, then that's Telling you something like you you are dominating the local markets. You cannot grow anymore Your month-over-month growth has fallen. So it's telling you something. You have to go to a different market So there are many different like factors, but I think like ambition is the biggest one You have to have the ambition so from day one your product should be International it has to support different languages and also There are different cultural Like small things that are different around the world Terms and like cultural factors you have to add up to product to different countries But I can't even say angry birds fit like all different kinds of user groups different cultures very well So I think the product is gonna tell you itself, but you have to watch for it If you're not watching if you're just like happy lifestyle entrepreneur You'll never do it Maybe maybe I should just put some context before we go to the third the third the piece of the discussion So, you know the reason Chris is talking about you have to have an ambitious a hundred million dollar in the Silicon Valley It's because for the most part when you're doing a startup You're trying to raise money for your startup and investors look at a big market because they're gonna give you money And because at some point they're gonna see results of that money So if you paint a picture of a small market or small market, they cannot compute in their mind a return for that investment So if you don't want to take investments from investors by no means you can actually become a very successful Lifestyle entrepreneur and build a very good business So that's what common yellow comment is if you're starting in a country like the US you already have 350 million people So probably your market is big enough to be to swim in and make a good return for yourself and your investors Within the next five ten years if you're in a market like China, it's even better You know a lot of Chinese companies have built a fantastic business Very profitable the founders now are among the top most richest people in the world Just focusing and staying in a China market For the companies that have actually presented today I think there is a big opportunity thinking globally just in terms of Arab speaking people There are today 400 million Arab speaking people in the Arab world alone let alone a lot of the expats who live in different countries So when you think about taking your startup, whether it's, you know, you're nice or fight, you know You think about taking it across the boundaries think about the Arab speaking people in their countries But I do believe that the challenges that you're gonna face taking a you know product and a service fit from from Qatar Saudi Arabia to Morocco is not very dissimilar from the you know challenges you have taken it to the US You know, what is your distribution channel? How do you sell? How do you find the right people there who have the right incentives to help you and build it and all of that stuff? So as we talked through the house now and get into that conversation I want you guys the you know at least the people who presented here to be thinking in terms of growing from Qatar to GCC or Qatar Saudi Arabia for that matters for the Saudi presenter to The 400 plus million people I heard speaking people who could potentially be your customer base for the next scene of four or five years to come So we'll start with press So talking about how we're talking about the house. So, you know, if you kind of think about okay It's two or three things that you really need to think about Deeply and plan for before you can go beyond your sort of circle of five entrepreneurs and 20 teams who come every day to your office and have to You know to now all of a sudden I have to have an office to sell the product in Morocco Yeah, I mean, I must say I'm a big fan of going after Larger local markets. I mean the startups are already there risking there. There are a lot of things that could go wrong and having You know, what is called, you know, Israeli model, Estonian model, whatever you call them The small markets usually have the engineering team back there and one sales guy in US selling, you know, his brains out That model works well, but it's not not an easy model it worked very uniquely with few countries and And it's really tough because you have a lot of risk of having engineering to there Some guy selling without in touch with the customers over the technology It's what I would rather like to see is what we just described and being able to tap into your competitive advantage Because the startups is always having unfair advantages wherever you could get it I mean if this is a market of 400 million people with 7500 million people online, right? This is it is bigger than Russia, right? Russia supposed to which generated to be companies Yandex, right? You guys know Yandex, right? Yandex is a 11 billion dollar company when we invested in Yandex It was a you know, fairly small company with there is no advertising market at all in in Russia And now it created a $11 billion Yandex and $5 billion dollar mail are you same story could be told in Latin America In Mercado Libre right when Mercado Libre started an e-commerce it was listed You know $500 million market in total in Latin America Mercado Libre is already a six billion dollar company itself So it tapped into the local dynamics the local advantages of being in you know in Argentina in Brazil So have better relationship with the merchants and the user base. They didn't go directly to US Yandex the same way the unfair advantage of Yandex was obviously the technology But also being able to do something in Russia. Yeah, the funny story Sergey is Russian too But you know they could have gone to US go after the bigger Google market But they created their you know, they played under their unfair advantage and they're you know In this case, I think we the pen European Pan-Arabic market is a fairly attractive market like Saudi Arabia I think the gamer guys are one of them showed how high the ARPU is in certain regions and Saudi Arabia is one of them And they're one of the you know, the Saudi use Internet population is one of the most acts active Instagram and if I'm not mistaken the highest percentage of you to penetration and in the in the world So there are a lot of unfair advantages in this market where I will strongly suggest to tap into it If you quote because the guys in Europe or US will not be able to play in this market as well as you do So so we should try to take advantage of that I would just I would echo on that and build on it in the sense that One of the things that used to be the case was in terms of going global make you had to go to the US The pattern that we're seeing emerging around the world is just what you sort of described in terms of Look for market opportunities outside of your local market Where you do have an advantage where the amount that you need to change your product that you need to change your business model You need to change your universe is much smaller Right in terms of taking a product that was built for here in you know Qatar and Modifying it so that it works in the US is a much bigger challenge Than being able to change one so that it works across say Mina and that you all have a much better understanding of Mina and sort of the psychology of the users and the way people buy and the way companies behave and all of those kinds of things That it's actually many times more logical for you to go You know closer to home as you build out and then later make the leap into Europe later make the leap into the United States You used the Estonian example actually what we're seeing in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe is Expansion to other parts of Central and Eastern Europe or in the case of the Baltics Expanding from Estonia to Finland Sweden and Norway and then after you go to Finland Sweden and Norway Then you go to England and then after you've gone to England then you go to the United States It's about being able to make Incremental changes and learn as you go, but the pattern needs to be the same Which is you cannot ever assume that what works at home is going to work in the next place Right, you have to go back and revalidate your value proposition Revalidate your business model Understand the competition. It's almost every time you go into a new company Country you're building a new company. You're doing a new startup And you have to almost rewind back to the beginning and validate everything again Because if you just start dumping money in without testing what you're doing first, that's the simplest way to kill your company so the question of when When to go global when to go to the next country? One simple thing you know what we figured out that once you're ready And how do you then quantify once you're ready is that you have the right people around you You have found actually the right partnerships and the partners you that you can actually build something innovative new And not just taking a copy-paste method Which is then going to be either easily copied or it's just going to be dismantled by somebody, you know in the value chain But you have to feel as an entrepreneur that you are ready because if you are not ready then who is Most likely not your investor most likely not your in a future partners You don't know but this ambitious is the first thing You know what you have to keep in mind and find the right people with the right attitude around you that you can keep that Ambition high because the fact is that once you put your ambition really really high up there There's going to be so many people who's going to just keep on pushing it down not the vice versa So That was one thing the other thing was then that's spreading the resources thinly and now mainly starting from money That it's important to keep a lot of things under one roof as long as you can because you start to have a Highly distributed model no matter if it's a sales model or technical distribution technical creation and Or the logistics and distribution model it becomes more difficult to manage not necessarily Cheaper or or easier to to build the final product out like let's start looking into how do we Start building part of the product in in some of maybe so-called cheaper countries That's not necessarily the point the point is that you keep your product quality as good as you can Hopefully the best on the planet and then finally that as much you take resources into your technical Development of the team. It's important to take that also into your brand and marketing team Every person in a company is a brand ambassador of the product There is no hired guy who's going to do the marketing for us because if we are not going to do the marketing We're not going to believe in the product There will be no other people out there to do so especially when you try to expand from your own home market to the others The doubts will just increase So just have to be ready for it I agree with everything One thing I can say is one more thing Who's familiar with the term? growth hacking Okay, so growth hacking is the new digital way of marketing but done in a very analytical way so Almost hackers do the marketing and they grow So growth hacking is done by obviously like startups a lot in the world And you can do growth hacking from the MENA region to get us customers So you may want to test the idea you can spend a little money Do a little growth hacking and see if you're getting customers in the US. Obviously, this is for like consumer companies So that might also give you an idea about if you are ready to go All right, since you have the microphone, let me ask one more question on the on the how and then we will open it to the audience for Q&A So I know there are different ways and you guys can talk through them But I know the one thing that never worked. I've never seen it working for a startup is to say Let's just hire an employee and assign him as a country manager sales manager in Mozambique and then all of a sudden he's going to open the market for us. Why does that never work? actually Actually Henry touched on that So if we always tell companies that are applying to our program if the founders If it's a global company if the founders are not going to move to the US Don't even bother Like if the people who create the product who can sell the product the best way If they are not going to be in the US if you're just kind of try to hire like a marketing person And I have them do it. We tell them don't bother because as the question implies that it's actually It's a very difficult task. It's just like launching a startup in the US and Someone who does not know the product someone who's not bought into the product Someone who doesn't own the product is not going to be able to like sell the product in the US successfully You want any more comments on I think that summarizes totally Yeah and Just to expand on the logic because we have the same attitude the logic is basically this and this is more for Business-to-business enterprise type of software if it's if you're just doing putting something in the App Store You're probably not hiring a marketing manager, you know Directly in the US until you have some traction But the issue is is that if I'm a buyer in the United States and you're trying to sell to me And there's just some hired gun Right. I'm gonna say well when we have a problem. Who are we going to go to? Who are we actually buying from? It's just this group of people. I've never met. I never will meet I don't know I don't understand and they live somewhere 10,000 kilometers away as opposed to the founder of the company standing in front of me saying I would like you to buy my product and I personally am gonna make sure that it works and I live just down the road and That it's that ability to persuade the customer that they can trust you and buy from you You have to be physically present and it can't be some junior person It has to be a very senior member of the founding team. Yeah, I mean I totally agree with what said it's like I mean, there are two interesting examples. I think what works really well and Surprisingly even though I still consider Uber a startup I mean, how many people do you think works at Uber? When I heard that actually it was I was really surprised it's a very small number right you were that's why I think it's it was 400 in the beginning of the year Unbelievable right unbelievable that but for 400 people and I when I talked to it was like 600 now is 822 it's that few people can create an operation in 200 or 300 cities. Do you remember how many cities they are in they? They just launched their over 100 cities. So it should be maybe a hundred and ten hundred and fifty and it's international It's so how do you create? How do you hire a guy in I think there's one in Doha? I saw their booth over there So how do you get a guy who really believes in their story and you I think really ask your IPO stock options Yeah, I bet but I mean that's your that's some of the that's Inbound motivation, but at the end of the day as far as I understand Travis is still fairly hands-on in terms of who comes in and He's fairly aggressives, you know in terms of you know who Understanding if you really believe in that so understanding, you know having the why I mean I think that's a really good question you ask is really important especially with any consumer facing You know products because they are representing the brand and if you are not understanding and representing the why It's gonna fail and and that guy is the or that lady is gonna be the uber lady So whatever she says or does is gonna be uber not her or not him So I think it's really important and I feel like in many cases while Groupon did a great job I mean I got exposed to a lot of Groupon international people It was the feeling of a lot of hard guns and there was a huge turn nowhere and it creates a very different culture So I think hiring when you're scaling internationally. It's a very tough business It looks easier said that done really and I really really want to emphasize what Henry said about keeping everyone in the one roof is very underrated, but it's super important Well, just just to build on the the uber thing But if you go back to the very early days of their expansion It wasn't expansion internationally, but it was expansion inside the US and the senior leadership team was Incredibly hands-on during those early expansion moves It wasn't until they had a truly proven business model and they had raised a really significant amount of capital That they started to move internationally and so you know it's but even then The very early days of the international senior leadership was still very very hands-on Okay, so now we'll turn around the table and take some questions from the audience Monira Monira, yes, would you allow me to throw the first question before you go? No, I have a question So as you know Games or application in general, you have distribution channels, which are It is global actually. It's the app store and the Android store as well the Google store. So What are your advice from your own activities to get discovery in these markets and getting featured for example in Apple store So there it said there is basically There is a world out there. There's a country called the app store, right? People are throwing stuff on it How do you how do you? You know, how do you make sure yours is not the one billion? Advice it's not to use bots Of course your marketing plan your overall marketing plan and then putting you know enough creative visuals Available at the right time for the app store managers applying Early your time source rationalizing, you know, why would you need to be you know in a features list even that wouldn't necessarily change their decision Building the relationship with the people having good partnership programs which then gives them also incentives to talk about you which means then that you know There is a good payment methods actually a smart way of Creating money for both yourself as well as then the app stores all these different things, you know matter a lot There's a really good process to follow through and of course if you want to start looking into your conquering your market by markets You have a lot of small markets here Which will be easily to be on top of the charts and get the local featuring going in the region And which could be then used for the benefit of rationalizing larger markets To be featured at the time when you launch for example your new graphics for Saudi or Possibly, you know some other new markets you want to open up There's a lot of things what you can do I Will have one thing that it's because I think app stores is really important. It kind of let Create a level playing field I mean being able to get a distribution in US in China from here wasn't possible until the app stores came So it's a very I think advantages channel for the entrepreneurs I agree with everything Henry said in addition to that I will say it's if you're not an elliptical Don't get into it. It's a very analytical game and just pouring money into it and getting some downloads It's I think just a slower way than burning your money yourself It's you know you get the downloads, you know what happens next How are you going to retain them? How are you going to engage them? What quality traffic? What kind of growths or quality downloads do you get? I mean it's You if you don't understand it go get a service like contagion and things like that which does analytical services or mix panel Definitely have mixed panel But it's a very analytical process very different than offline distribution, right? It's it when people create almost trading platforms on this app stores So our question for you guys, you know, so there's a whole industry now who can help startups Move their ranking and have more downloads and stuff like that should start us for even You know when they get calls from these consultants saying I don't know for $20,000 we can get you 500,000 downloads I mean we had a terrible story We had a company was making two point five million dollars a month and one of the marketing services They use unfortunately was not allowed with Apple they took down that two point five million dollars disappeared We can we tried everything because it was an intentional, you know Don't believe in any of those promises. Nothing is stupid to be true if they are doing something like that It's probably using bots and things like that. So you may have a one month of Spike but Apple or Android in that Android is a little bit, you know, I think Wild West That says but Apple will definitely catch it either this month or next month. You're just gonna, you know Who's whole company risk the whole company that we had it to I mean Where's that might be wanted to ask a question So I mean we haven't received we have Softlanding this nation and we have an accelerator My question would be what is the number one thing that the startup came to you That would make it a cycle best post incubate team Value proposition Value proposition. Can you elaborate a bit on this? So One of my very best mentors in my career. I asked okay, so what's the best advice you can give me? I'm the new kid, you know, I don't know what I'm doing and his response was that's easy They have lots of money And how do you get people to give you money you get them to give you money because you have a good value proposition You're gonna make some pain a need a wanted desire of theirs be Please The way you get people to give you money as you make a pain or a need go away You satisfied a want or a desire if you don't have a good value proposition If there isn't a reason someone is going to want to give you money You're not going to be successful without a good value proposition Nothing's going to work. So we always look at the value proposition first For us it's really market and team and in if I prioritize that I think in Certain cases I will prioritize you only got to pick one. Yes, but if I prioritize that I think I was gonna say team But without a good market. I mean, there's a famous saying you put a A team in a B market market wins if you put a B team in a a market market still wins so there goes they go ahead and end but You get everything I In that sense, you should choose market but for me, it's 3d team because I think the valve I mean, I think it's a good discussion of that question. That's crazy. Good discussion Teams if you have the solid team they will try to figure out what's gonna be the value proposition because I Cannot invest in today's value proposition because it keeps changing Zim right and left is a great story for that Zim right is car sharing car pulling service great team didn't do well But the value proposition was solid going to Intel's of the world is like if you guys are you know Have a lot of employees going to San Francisco from Silicon Valley Why did the car pulling you provide the software platform and they said this is not doing well They created lift which is Uber's competitive and took off But it's the team who came up and then iterate on that I I just want to add one more thing like a bullish invests later stage So they have the luxury of seeing product market fits later stage We invest like two girls and a dog in a garage Nothing. There is nothing in a napkin So our advantages if we pick the team if they have a bad idea, they cannot execute They can do it. They can change the market or sometimes they teleport Where like initial idea? Let's say like a mobile marketing service becomes a Monthly subscription service for men you receive a box once a month So it's a teleport and this happened to us. We picked a great team They tried this like mobile app where you scan QR codes on bus stops and you go to a website It didn't work. They became a monthly subscription service for men and now they are killing it It's a very successful company. So when we you invest very early stage We totally look at the team because the team can change the market change the product change everything I noticed you said your early stage and you said team not the founder How many of your companies you funded are how many of them are actually teams as opposed to individual founders? Out of 70 companies 69 of them are teams. We only took one single founder. He was like a PM at YouTube Google And he was a coder and we loved him, but he was the only guy who took as a single founder To that point. There's a group in Silicon Valley It's called startup compass and they've done a lot of research on what makes startups successful and not successful Their research shows that teams two founders are more than twice as successful as solo founders And the balanced teams where you have a balance between technical and sales marketing slash operations Technical non-technical are twice as successful as teams where you have two technical or two business people and so Going, you know from your perspective You know saying solo founder versus a team that is technical and non-technical the technical non-technical There's four times as likely to succeed, which is why you want to have a team One more comment on that when you live as few of us of them in a place like the Silicon Valley And I think the advantage here you have in Qatar is something very similar Is that on day one when you start a company in a Silicon Valley with the young guys in America and the other guys in Ukraine and in Chinese three co-founders from three different backgrounds Going global will be easy Right because they sort of understand their perspective regions and they have an end to it So diversity in a startup is really you know Whether it's multi different skills or different people or different backgrounds is really core to success in in this game and When I think about sort of the context of the world I see too many of you know three Jordanians started a company or two calories started a company or three Saudi Arabia started a company Mix it up guys your chances of success are much higher if you do Next question next Actually, there's a question that needs to ask that entrepreneur actually people expect from entrepreneurs to deliver something you need so like Putting this uniqueness into our case We are having two weeks period to sell But the markets understand only the view and Netflix So but now we sell as a period like two weeks period But we can see some some viewers and unique visitors during this period So your advice is to go with the market like how the advertisers or the client Understand how it goes or we should come up with a unique Say way to sell Whatever we have Let me take a crack on that soap. I think you don't necessarily have to deliver anything very unique You need to deliver something very high quality and easy to explain and logical so if that is already a competitive advantage over the whatever has been proposed before is possibly unique enough but Seeking for just a unique things is you know, not necessarily a point I mean the point is that you keep on trying as long as it takes that it works But you stuff don't keep Trying the same thing. It's almost like opening up, you know hotel room The safety deposit, you know, I forgot the number. I keep on punching the same numbers all over again This won't work. So you have to change something So I give you know this example here that you know that you have a good team good chemistry, you know Good ambitious list to something really meaningful and great Can lead from one idea to something totally new not necessarily unique It could be your old idea, but in a totally different way Utilized and sometimes you know you talk about advertising world Well advertising world itself has changed in the last two and a half years dramatically when we started, you know the advertising as part of the game monetization in Angry Birds It was luxury rate cards were high today. There may be 10 8% of that Competition was less today Maybe 10 15 times of that and by the way the whole game pattern even changed The whole idea of advertising seems to annoy people now you're supposed to come up with something Which is a million dollar production, which is good enough to launch, you know for free to play and then monetize it So I have a little comment on your specific case So you are trying to get advertisers for your Wi-Fi network to show the users most brands Go through agencies And they give the agency they tell them buy 100,000 impressions for this demographic on these on these properties So when you go to them with a different offering The agency will not be able to match what's coming from the brands with your offering So there you're going to have some problem. I Think you should be more flexible in this specific case where you should be able to like work with agencies And also offer the agencies like something that matches what they have it in your particular case You actually have multiple customers Right, you have the agency as a customer and the brand as a customer But I don't think that you want to focus on what's unique You I sound like I keep repeating myself, but you want to focus on what creates greater value Right unless you can just demonstrate to your customer that what you were doing is creating greater value Than the alternatives they're going to go with the with the thing that's going to create greater value Unique not unique is missing the point greater value is where the money is Other questions. Yeah, you had one. Yeah, hi I'm working on a cyber intelligence idea and it can go both enterprise and So basically I have two ways to play I'm not sure which one Because there is an enterprise or offering The same service So people can use it and you know, no whether they why right there using secure or not Well the same thing we can deliver to enterprise It's the Most companies do this fatal mistake of saying I can do both, right? So it's got an enterprise. It could go in a price ago consumer. I would I would go enterprise obviously because They have the money. They have the budget for security, but if you can't find a way to monetize the consumer app, I Don't know, but I would go into price. I will do enterprise. So it's I mean, but on the other hand It's easier to Set that down to different products to different markets I'm not even sure if you can do enterprise, you know, the consumer product company CEO versus an interest product come enterprise product come is totally different. So Enterprise is better for security just because as what said the budgets is there But it's a very different product way deeper heavier different sales cycles And you really need to you know, spend a lot of time understanding their problem. So if you want to go through that Yeah, enterprise is the way to go. So I'm going to come at it from a completely different direction and Ask you where is your heart? Right Because to be a successful entrepreneur you have to do something This is a good idea or all that sounds like it would be fun But the best entrepreneurs wake up in the morning and do something not because they want to but because they have to I have no choice. This is what I must do, right? This is I Can't walk away from it and the question I would ask you is where's your heart? Because if you follow your heart You're gonna get a much better result in terms of the passion and the energy and the Diamondism and everything that you put into it. I'm less concerned about you go enterprise or consumer I'm concerned about where is your passion because we go back to all the conversation about team Right, if you have the passion, you're gonna build a team that shares that passion and then you're gonna go kill the market Whatever you do do not do both at the same time. Don't do both. No Other question is what would you guys say to a startup? Saying I don't want to go for venture capital money I want to slug it through slow and steady on my own as opposed to sharing and You know keeping all the shares under control of the team God bless I Grow growing slowly is in this environment the surest way to die Right if you look around the world the best estimate is there's probably a hundred thousand tech startups in all of the different Ecosystems less than two years old Out of those hundred thousand someone else has the same idea And if they over the course of time go raise fifty a hundred four hundred five hundred million dollars They eventually are going to show up and kill you And the simplest way to make sure you survive is to get big and get big fast And the only way you can get big fast is by raising capital. You can't bootstrap it Yeah, and it's depend on how aggressive you want to be if you don't want to be aggressive And if you just want to stay around, you know a smaller market or smaller product vertical yeah, you can't survive without raising money and There are a bunch of companies created like that and there are a lot of lifestyle companies especially in this region creating very decent in a decent amount of profits and that will make you very comfortable but Every day you wake up you get a check out your emails Oh some other player get into our market and stealing our customers So that's a threat that you need to live by or you take the control and try to be that big guy and go Into different markets, but it's to Chris's earlier question If you don't want it if you don't enjoy it It's a very tough path and I wouldn't recommend anyone going through that because it's not gonna be easy Are you really need to love to do that? Exactly, I totally agree, but I think the question is not right the question is If you had more resources Can this company scale quickly and if the answer is yes Then you have to go race you see money, but we see raising we see money is not the goal It's a means but only for the right company that can use that resource to scale the company But any company can go and find an investor probably if you're a good salesperson But we see many companies raise money, but then they cannot scale the company So maybe they were wrong in raising money So I would approach more like if I had a million dollars in the bank from Intel capital With their resources and their network Can I scale this business or is this still like a lifestyle business that cannot be scaled and You know if the answer is yes and raise money if not you are like destined to grow slowly I mean let me offer my advice as somebody who done both, you know, I think it's It's almost like asking a question. Should I stay single or get married? You know, it's you know when you say so When you want to raise money from venture capital, it's like getting married You're bringing a partner on board and you have to be mature enough to know how to deal with that and managing The flip side is when you get married you have kids. So your growth is Much more guaranteed and faster, you know, you shouldn't be having kids as your single So you're it's it's a matter of are you ready actually to bring on board a partner who can help you grow big Quick enough and are you mature enough to actually accept the fact that this partner now is a true partner? It's not just some investor. I'm taking the money and I don't have it doesn't have any say in that business You're not handing over a control. You're not handing over control. You're bringing one board a partner That's how you want to think about it And if you think a marriage has given up control to somebody to control my life, then you're not ready to get married You know what I mean? So it's as long as you have that concept that bringing money meaning giving up control I would say don't don't raise money yet The minute you start acknowledging that bringing money meaning bringing a partner who can help you build something bigger Then you're ready for it Well, and another way of looking at it is and okay full disclosure and Hardcore and enterprise entrepreneur. It's a disease. I can't help myself, right? But the question is is if you take venture capital you take it outside investor, you know Do you want to own 10% of a $500 million company or 100% of a $5 million company? any other questions One more I think we'll take one more and then we'll wrap up In this region, do you see any kind of trends of products that would be Different than all of the flavors of things that happen in the United States or in Europe It would be unique to here rather than just copying Altering things a little bit differently from what's already been Good question I don't know how to answer too, but I'll tell anyways I can't bullshit about anything So can I So, I mean, I think it's this region. It's we I think I see a lot of similarities to The areas of e-cover like Turkey Russia Central Eastern Europe Comparity us first. I don't like that whole cloning concept. I mean, it's I Mean, there's nothing wrong with that and I really mean there's this negative connotation about it that you know People just look at how this is a clone if it's Chris's point if you bring a value to the table And if you can sell it, that's a business. I don't care where the idea is from again If you look at a lot of this is technologies is they're all Evolution of something it's either you bring to a different region or they just add something on top of it So the way we look at it is there is in this market specifically. There's a major Transition in the consumer going digital the way the what the products they use from books Newspapers and things like that to more digital to smartphones tablets and things like that that there's creates a major Shift in user behavior that showed itself in gaming, you know how the gaming is distributed how content is being distributed How advertising advertisers playing in the market? So this creates a lot of technology Game in the in the region that could be local Advertising technologies from RTPs to DSPs real-time bidding platforms the demand side mine side platforms to all the way to Providing offline online integration meaning a lot of I mean one of the things in us We they take it for granted is there is a me. It's a very tightly connected to online offline right when you want to book a restaurant you use your open table you call your uber you send your Zaryl to get your dry cleaner up You now get the instant car to bring your groceries in your house. So it's really nicely done and For us in this region none of them is there yet So there is a lot of things to be there and that's the consumer and that consumer is shifting digital creates all those Opportunities and similar story. I must say is playing in the enterprise world, especially SMB's the SMB's in this part of the world is barely Technology hungry, and it's very open a lot of those SMB's and I'm not talking about only the mom and pop shop But I'm talking about 50 hundred people company. How they run their Accounting how they've done around their CRM how they run their ERP. So there's a lot of local play there They are not going to be able to buy SAP Oracle sales force They need someone to handhold them in the local language understanding the local dynamics and be able to penetrate that because a lot of you the Young people now are working the enterprises. They don't want to see this paper and pen Archaic systems they use their Instagram and go to work and work this stupid Expense report tool that no one ever uses in the world So I think there's a lot of opportunity in that part of the world So I will definitely look into a lot of SaaS based enterprise looking into SMB's and bunch of consumer models My brain is failing out finding between offline online so One of the things I would challenge you and I don't know enough about the market to be able to speak in depth about it But my guess is is that if you look across again if you look at sort of Mina 400 million people a lot of youth You know for instance one of the most interesting companies I saw recently was out of Palestine and that what they were actually doing was using a feature phone not a smartphone but a feature phone in a job placement job board kind of functionality and That the reliance on feature phone in both Mina and Africa the penetration of smartphone is Something that you don't see in the United States You don't see in Japan you don't see in Western Europe and that it creates a different Technology base that you have the ability as an entrepreneur to exploit That it would never even cross the mind of somebody in the United States If I'm if I'm building like an Odess or something, you know to offer jobs on a casual labor basis Everybody's like smart phone smart phone for smartphone, but in this part of the world There's still just an enormous installed base of feature phone and that you have an opportunity to look at the market and say Here are characteristics of the technology base that are unique here And how can I build a business around that because I see an opportunity that no one else sees I would use the analogy of like cultural context Anything related to family family applications or services That would be really big they may not exist in a similar scale Cross Western part of the world, but they are extremely scalable from from here to Asia so something that you could you could you know Master here package it and then start to Export it to its East So this kind of a service is a Big fan of online offline integration because that requires local partnering and understanding local This is environment and again back into the cultural context So it's very very difficult to copy global and take over one go Not much left to say but a lot more thing like in the US we went through like the way every side of the website and Now every startup starts with the mobile app or mobile website. So whatever you do Just go directly mobile ignore the web So be a mobile first mobile data startup and solve some of the problems that they were talking about With that I'd like to thank the panel for a very insightful discussion and thank you for attending Before we announce thank you so much Just before we announce the winner of such go has the first touch go how I just need to remind you that tomorrow We have the animation scene So we'll be having two competitions the kids one and an adult pitching competition for animation the first to happen on Qatar and let me remind also that on Wednesday, we have the cuttery to the nurse day where 12 Cuttery projects will be competing And the best for me choose it for incubation So dream I would like to invite you to join us in the stage, please So remember Mansour is the other assistant at the secretary for the digital society in the Ministry of Communication Information Technology and We have an announcement Some starter will be flying to Helsinki To attend a six thousand three thousand or six hundred Was three thousand last year right five thousand startups in November, right?