A Strong Start: TechWadi in Silicon Valley
By all accounts, TechWadi’s Global Technology Forum 2010, held March 18 2010 at the PlugandPlayTechCenter incubator in Sunnyvale, CA, was a resounding success. Over 200 high-caliber investors, professionals and entrepreneurs from a dozen countries joined 30 distinguished speakers to discuss entrepreneurship, venture capital, and the economic future of the Arab world.
Feedback since the event has been thunderous. We are organizing a follow-up conference in Washington D.C. in partnership with President Obama’s Summit on Entrepreneurship, April 28 at the Hotel Palomar.
| Background: TechWadi organized this year’s Global Technology Forum as a call-to-action for the Arab and Arab-American Diaspora. The mission: to join together and contribute our resources towards a shared vision of entrepreneurship development in the MENA region, rallying behind President Obama’s initiatives as described in his “A New Beginning” speech at Cairo University. |
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The Incubators: The session kicked off with Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center – the most successful incubator in the world with 500+ startups and $750 million+ raised in 4 years. Saeed spoke about his experience establishing an incubator and the necessity of a strong support ecosystem to ensure the success of budding entrepreneurs. He was joined by Dr. Tarek El-Sadany, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communications and IT of Egypt. Tarek is an entrepreneur in his own right and understands Silicon Valley, having founded his own company and served as a VP at Oracle. Tarek spoke about the benefits that the PlugandPlay/Silicon Valley model would bring to MENA. |
| The Venture Capitalists: The next two panel discussions featured a veritable army of VCs, many of whom flew directly from the Middle East just for this event. A lively exchange between US-based VCs (InterWest, Canaan, SVB, USVP, and Khosla Ventures) and MENA-based VCs (Ideavelopers, Intel Capital, IV-Holdings, Sawari Ventures, Riyada, and DSOA) ensued on the topic of the region as an attractive target for venture capital and how entrepreneurship could be nurtured and accelerated. The MENA-based VCs painted a confident picture of the region’s future, particularly in technology innovation and entrepreneurship. |
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| The Mentors: At the conclusion of the VC panels, we broke for lunch and networking under the warm California sun. I was then joined by Dr. Usama Fayyad, chairman of OASIS 500 and former Chief Data Officer at Yahoo!, and Habib Haddad, founder of Yamli and YallaStartup, to discuss the steps we as a community need to take in order to promote – in MENA – more of the same entrepreneurial success that had the room buzzing with excitement. President Obama has set up a program to provide co-investment with VC funds in technology entrepreneurship and developmental projects throughout the MENA region. For this program to succeed, we need one thing above all: the involvement of the Diaspora. We need advisors, mentors, entrepreneurs, and executives. Under the auspices of TechWadi, we are forming the A100, a group of ultra-accomplished and dedicated Arab professionals with the willingness to give back to the region and help a new generation reach new heights. Fifty pros signed up in the first 5 minutes!
 The Entrepreneurs: The successful founders/CEOs were followed by our panel of young up-and-comers: a serial entrepreneur and current president of Stanford GSB’s Entrepreneurs Club (Abdullah Assal of GlobalTelecom), a mobile monetization guru (Tamer Hassanein of ZONG), a video-game and marketing expert (Rony Chammas of EA), a CEO/consultant specializing in technology transfer from the US to the MENA region (Dr. Ibrahim Almojel of SDG), and a social media CEO (Akram Benmbarek of Soovox). These Arab American future leaders were most inspiring.  |
| The Trend Setters: The next panel featured some of the most accomplished Arab Americans in Silicon Valley: Dr. Maha Achour, founder and CTO of RAYSPAN, together with Dr. Belgacem Haba, Tessera Fellow and CTO. They spoke at length on the topic of driving entrepreneurship through intellectual property licensing. With over 100 patents in their names, Maha and Belgacem can serve as powerful mentors to young scientists wishing to monetize their discoveries. They were joined on this panel by Dr. Taher Elgamal, founder and CEO of IdentityMind and among the world’s foremost experts on data and internet security. |
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The Pioneers: Last but most certainly not least, our event was wrapped up by Naeem Zafar (Lecturer at Berkeley Haas School of Business and founder of Concordia Ventures) and Bassel Ojjeh (CEO at nPario and lead investor in ArabCrunch). Naeem discussed his deep experience as President of OPEN (Organization for Pakistani Entrepreneurs) and the dramatic successes he has seen from their business plan competitions and subsequent mentorship programs. Bassel presented the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the platform of choice for connecting entrepreneurs, mentors, and VCs through an online community. He ended the conference by re-inforcing the theme of the day; focusing on the next steps required to build this entrepreneurial ecosystem and advance innovation in the region. |
| The Follow-Up: The next day Newbury Ventures hosted an entrepreneur/VC roundtable at our offices in Redwood Shores, where the founders of promising companies came and pitched to a room-full of both US-based and MENA-based venture capital firms. We had young and promising minds with business plans that spanned across the board: a new developer’s platform for online gaming, a dramatic new approach to remote education, a powerful tool to manage sales relationships across industries, a well-tested IT-based strategy to detect and contain future disease epidemics, and a map-based approach to real estate sales in the Middle East, to name a few. It is clear that Arab Americans and the Arab world as a whole are ready for the next step: infusion of Silicon Valley experience, guidance, and mentorship which will help propel the region towards becoming a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. Leveraging the brand of TechWadi, we intend to rally the community support that is needed to ensure our initiative’s success. Warm Regards, Ossama Hassanein |
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Hosted by:
 Conference Agenda:
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Our Speakers
 Saeed Amidi CEO, Plug and Play |
 Maha Ibrahim, PhD GP, Canaan Partners |
 Ossama Hassanein, PhD Managing Director, Newbury Ventures |
 Khaled Nasr Partner, InterWest |
 Emile Cubeisy Managing Director, IV Holdings |
 Nadim Maluf EIR, USVP |
 Hazem Abdelazim, PhD CEO, ITIDA |
 Hany Al-Sonbaty Partner, Sawari Ventures |
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 Bassel Ojjeh Lead Investor, ArabCrunch Group |
 Karim Fahmy Director, Intel Capital |
 Maha Achour CTO, RAYSPAN |
 Walid Bakr Director, Riyada Enterprise Development |
 Ronaldo Mouchawar CEO, Souq.com |
 Mohammed Alzubi Director, DSOA |
 Ash Lilani President, SVB India & China |
 Belgacem Haba, PhD CTO, Tessera |
 Ali Diab VP Product Development, AdMob |
 Akram Benmbarek CEO, Soovox |
 Taher Elgamal, PhD CEO, IdentityMind |
 Youssri Helmy Chairman, Idealratings |
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 Ramy Adeeb Principal, Khosla Ventures |
 Naeem Zafar President, OPEN Silicon Valley |
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 Ibrahim Almojel Consultant, SDG |
 Hisham Haddara, PhD CEO, Si-Ware Systems |
 Abdullah Assal President, Stanford MBA Entrepreneurship Club |
 Rony Chammas Product & Marketing Manager, EA |
 Tamer Hassanein Monetization Guru, ZONG |
