MENA Opportunities

Dear Entrepreneur, Thanks for being in touch with our venture capital firm. We've thoroughly read your business plan, fully examined your forecasts and prognostications, and done full due diligence on you and the rest of your team. Unfortunately, after reviewing your 47 page PowerPoint, we've decided to pass on this investment. But, before we do, we’d like to leave you with some words of encouragement: basically, your startup is going to fail. And it’s not just because 75% of venture backed business don’t return capital. It’s actually because you’re not being honest with yourself. Here are 16 reasons why your company will fail: 1. You don’t really know who your market is (I mean, do you really know their pain points and how much they’re willing to spend to alleviate them?). 2. You’re not familiar with how to sell to this market. 3. Do you know how much they’re willing to pay for your (theoretical) product? You need to get the gospel. 4. Who cares that your best fr...

There is no guaranteed recipe for success when making a pitch but here are some tips and resources that can help: 1.The first step is getting in the door. Tactics that have worked on us in the past include bringing a celebrity musician to put on a live show in the office and offering to bring pizza. 2.On a related note, always be friendly to the administrative assistants. They are the gatekeepers. 3.Create an effective presentation. Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule is a good place to start: ten slides, twenty minutes, and no font smaller than thirty points.

1. Bootstrapping In the idea/experimental stage, use your own financial resources, such as money from a savings account or careful use of personal credit cards. Wise deployment of these precious dollars is critical. 2. Friends and Family  If you don’t have your own savings or credit cards – or you do, but your growing business needs additional funding – all is not lost. Consider inviting family and friends to invest in the company with the understanding that their money may not be returned. In most cases, these friends and family are investing in you, not your business. Both parties should think of this investment as a grant with no strings attached. If the enterprise succeeds, a reward to these risk-takers would be a nice gesture. 3. Crowdfunding Let’s take the “friends and family” investment discussion up a notch or two. If you haven’t heard about crowdfunding, you must not be serious about funding your business – or you’ve been living under a rock ...

Information communications technology (ICT) spending in the Middle East will top US$96 billion next year, according to a report from the research firm IDC, as infrastructure projects across the region spur the need for new technologies. Leaving aside the telecoms sector, spending on IT projects will exceed $32bn across the GCC, Levant, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. The region’s spending will place it as one of the top three fastest-growing IT markets in the world, surging at a rate of about 7.3 per cent year-on-year, said IDC. It is superseded only by Latin America and central Asia. Public sector investments to improve government services, education and health care will be the main drivers for growth. The numerous smart-city projects in the GCC in particular will increase machine-to-machine connections by 19 per cent to reach $224m. Saudi Arabia is the region’s biggest market, accounting for almost $7bn of spending, while Qatar is one of the fastest-growing markets. Egypt will also experie...

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MENA LIONS is a group for all Middle East and North Africa (MENA) LinkedIn Open Networkers (LIONS). Our goal is to get MENA LIONS to connect, interact, debate, network and do business among like-minded people. Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

Billionaire Fred Mouawad could easily qualify for the title of Most Interesting Man in the World. And the thing that interests him most these days is a brand new app he created called TaskWorld that helps enterprises manage employees and projects. Mouawad was born the eldest son and heir to the world-renown Mouawad diamond jewelry company, founded in 1890. He grew up "traveling with my father to different places in the world," learning the diamond business, he told Business Insider during a phone interview while en route between Bangkok and the Maldives. He studied business and gemology in college and assumed he would enter the family business straight from school and stay there. That plan didn't work out when it became clear his dad wasn't ready to retire. Rather than spending decades in his dad's shadows, Mouawad left the diamond business and launched his own series of companies. They didn't all succeed as planned, either, but one project always lead to ...

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Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. But much more importantly, we wish you a life full of meaning, a path full of purpose and a journey with fulfillment and contentment. We wish you anything that is important to you even if the world thinks it’s worthless s*. We wish your wildest dreams come true even if the entire planet thinks they are a pile of childish fantasies. Learn to say Yes. Learn to say No. Learn to say F* you. Be generous. Be selfish. For you see, it is all about you and yourself. By becoming a sun, you can heat up the hearts of those around you. Be the sun. And of course, we wish you a year full of useless mobile app downloads, hundreds of online and offline elaborate spams and scams and dozens of overpriced gadgets from Apple that people will buy not knowing they can get the same specifications at a 75% discount. If ignorance is bliss, this is the year of the monkey. Be the monkey. Or as Bruce Lee said: be water. Warm personal regards, Charles ...

Merry Christmas to you all! But to be honest and like the cool animated infographic below shows, the cost of 12 days of Christmas is more than Lebanon's annual GDP! Would it not make more sense (and be in line of the original Christmas spirit) to have all this money go to those who really need it instead of in the coffers of Chanel, Apple and Cartier...? What if each human being simply pledged 10 USD for Christmas! That would amount to over 60,000,000,000 USD! Can you imagine what a difference Christmas would make?! Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

We are happy to announce that MENA OPPORTUNITIES (“MO”) now offers thousands of the best MENA job opportunities through its extensive “Job Opportunities” section (powered by Bayt.com). This new section, in line with MO’s plan to expand its features and offerings to best serve its substantial reader base, allows users to find jobs, post their CV and access great career articles and guides. Users can browse jobs by country or by industry through a powerful yet simple and user-friendly interface. Says MO’s team: “this latest development comes amidst our plans to continually enhance MO’s features and usefulness to our loyal readers and subscribers. MO just recently rocketed past 200,000 pageviews/month and our (free) subscribers have been increasing exponentially. Our next move is most likely to be geared towards offering our subscribers “premium features” that they only can access. We therefore invite people to subscribe now and for free to MENA OPPORTUNITIES by simply adding their em...

At MENA OPPORTUNITIES, we simply love this post. There are so many life lessons to be learned by the "failures" of these legendary success stories. One of these lessons is that failure is an essential part of success. As written below "if you've never failed, you've never tried anything new". One can ALWAYS learn from failure while success is sometimes random. Another great lesson conveyed by this post is "don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do" or more importantly "don't let other peoples' judgements affect your own self-confidence". Pass this message on to anybody who feels (rightfully or not) that they have failed. This post will work magic! If Einstein, Jordan, Disney, Jobs, Winfrey and The Beatles can't convince them that failure is a blessing in disguise... then what can? Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

Move over, Google Glass. A Lebanese entrepreneur and his cofounder have just debuted a pair of wearable glasses that displays augmented reality in three dimensions as opposed to Google’s two. The glasses, built by Soulaiman Itani and Allen Yang at Atheer Labs in Mountain View, bring fantasies to life, allowing wearers to exercise with virtual targets, conduct conferences calls while browsing data online, and play three dimensional games, thanks to hand sensors and an advanced algorithm. Those who were wowed by Pranav Mistry’s TED Talk about Sixth Sense technology will likely go gaga for Atheer, which also offers a 65 degree field of view as opposed to Google’s 12 degree frame in the corner of one’s view. Today, it’s available on Indiegogo, for only $350; all it’s missing is precognition. With a lightweight design and integration with Android such that it runs any and all Android apps, the glasses are designed for the everyman, founder and CEO Itani explains. While Google’s SDK allo...

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Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal (AWBT) is still in the midst of suing Forbes for having underestimated his real fortune by a couple of billions of dollars. After having occupied the 3rd Richest Man in the World position for years, "poor" AWBT is now beyond the 20th position (according to Forbes). This exclusive snapshot taken by one of MO's daring reporters may explain the discrepancy. AWBT claims this room contains the 6 billion USD neglected by Forbes' estimate... Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

They say “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. I cannot but (finally and after having ruminated the question for years) agree. Some of my greatest ideas and projects went nowhere because I didn't know the right people yet. And some complicated deals went ever so smoothly simply because I knew the “person in charge”. In my 15 years in business, this oh so famous quote that my father kept repeating to me ever since I was 5, is probably the single most potent business lesson that I have learnt. At the end of the day and no matter what technological miracles are conceived, people do business with people. And some of the greatest deals in the world are sealed by a simple handshake (as some are broken over a simple personal animosity). We (Corm Capital) have carefully but surely been building our network. I humbly believe that the network we have built is not only incredibly extensive and far-reaching but is also one of the company's greatest assets way ahead of any mate...

The video does not work on iPads as it is Flash based. But it's a total must-see! So do whatever it takes to view it on a PC, Mac, etc... Simply brilliant and puts Jean-Claude Van Damme's epic split to shame... thanks to some CGI. Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

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The Middle East’s billionaires, with a combined net worth of $354 billion, hold a higher percentage of total wealth than in any other region in the world, according to findings from the Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2013. Forty percent of the Middle East’s ultra high net worth (UHNW) wealth is being held by the region’s 157 billionaires, compared to 28 percent in Europe, 22 percent in North America and 18 percent in Asia. Billionaires in Saudi Arabia control more than 70 percent of the country’s wealth, while their counterparts in the UAE hold 24 percent. Saudi Arabia leads the region with the most billionaires (64), and 25 of these individuals are based in the country’s capital, Riyadh, according to the report. The total wealth of Saudi billionaires ($204 billion) is more than half the combined net worth of their counterparts in the Middle East, according to data from the Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2013, the first-ever global study on the billionaire population. The...

The Bank of Israel said on Friday that foreign currency reserves hit a record $80.59 billion at end-November, after breaking the $80 billion threshold, for the first time, in October. MENA Opportunities estimates that Israel held only $25 billion in 2004. As Israel’s dollars-in-the-bank have grown to dwarf the reserves held by many of its neighbors, economists said the windfall from its natural gas deposits will help Israel fight above its weight-class, and compete directly against the oil-rich nations of the Middle East in the coming years. “Israel’s ability to put spare cash in the bank for emergencies very much signifies that the Israeli economy is growing, especially compared to its Arab neighbors,” said Professor Joseph Pelzman, the Institute for International Economic Policy the Elliott School, George Washington University Professor of Economics, International Affairs and Law, in Washington, D.C., and a permanent visiting professor at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in ...

Le Web conference in Paris has come to a close. This 10th edition brought together a record number of start-ups and entrepreneurs from around the world, who are all breaking ground in their specific fields. In the Middle East, tech start-ups are revolutionising the way people do business. Hala Fadel is the chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum for the Pan-Arabic region, a network of technology entrepreneurs. “The startup landscape in the Middle East is really booming. We have, every year, more than 5,000 companies that apply to the MIT Arab business plan start-up competition, about 50% of those are women,” she says. Elie Habib, the co-founder of an online music service, says there are still hurdles to overcome. “In some areas we still have problems. E-commerce, credit card penetration is still not as (present as we would like) because people don’t trust (this method of payment) as much as people do in Europe or the US,” says Elie Habib, co-founder of Anghami. The Middle East is a r...

Dubai retail group Majid Al Futtaim hopes to invest $1 billion a year for the next five years in the Middle East to double the size of its business, its chief executive said Tuesday. MAF, the sole franchisee of Carrefour hypermarkets in the region, has benefited from a trade and tourism boom in Dubai and is now expanding into other markets including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Lebanon. “Over the next few years we are very likely to be investing $1 billion a year. However, this very much depends on finding the right land in the right location and for the right price,” MAF chief executive Iyad Malas said at a news conference to announce a new branding strategy for the firm. About 70 percent of the company’s assets are currently in the United Arab Emirates, but most of the investments over the next few years would be in other countries, Malas said. MAF reported annual revenue of $6 billion in 2012, 10 percent higher than the previous year.

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By now you probably have heard that Mary Barra just became the CEO at General Motors. From humble beginnings, Barra spent her entire professional career at GM, starting as a co-op student only to become the first female CEO of a major automotive manufacturer. With a background in engineering and her MBA from Stanford, Barra proved herself to be an extremely valuable asset for the company. She has performed various roles, ranging from running an assembly plant to transforming the decades-old corporate culture at GM after the bankruptcy as the vice president of global human resources. But her most notable work, in my opinion, has been during the last two years as the senior vice president for global product development. She has been quoted as bluntly telling GM engineers that there will be “no more crappy cars.” You will find little argument that the global product portfolio of GM today is by far the best the company has ever had. I cannot quite say “mission accomplished,” but the di...

Their scores on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) are 700-plus, in some cases as high as 790 out of 800. They earned their undergraduate degrees at some of the best universities in the world, including the Ivies. They've worked for such prestige employers as McKinsey & Co., General Electric, Microsoft, Disney, and Abbott Laboratories. And yesterday (Dec. 11) they were dinged by either Harvard Business School or Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. How come? For one thing, the odds of acceptance are truly daunting. Stanford accepts less than 8% and Harvard less than 12%--yet many believe that as much as 80% of those who apply at top schools are fully qualified to attend and succeed. So luck and execution on an application plays an often significant role. Small imperfections, ranging from a below-average grade point average to an employer who lacks prestige, can torpedo a person who would otherwise be a shoo-in. Consider Frank. He’s a 26-year-ol...

An incredible article put together by some of the brightest minds and  biggest movers and shakers around. A total must read and amazing insights into 2014 (while still in 2013!). Please click HERE  for more and... enjoy! Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

A mesmerizing collection of 10 YouTube Ads that went completely viral! We're talking 67 million views here! A great testimony to YouTube's role as one the preferred channel for viral adverting from the likes of the biggest ad agencies and brands today! You can't miss out on this! To see the whole list (and videos!) please click HERE . Sit down, relax and enjoy... It doesn't get better than this! Subscribe to MENA Opportunities and get more...

Three decades after escaping Lebanon’s Civil War to fulfill her dream of making it in New York fashion, Reem Acra’s client list reads like a who’s who of Hollywood’s A-list. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Halle Berry, Kate Hudson and Eva Longoria are just a few of the famous names who favor her luxuriously embellished eveningwear. From the world of music, country singer LeAnn Rimes got married in one her creations – a low-cut chiffon robe slashed to the thigh and embroidered with pearls – while singer-songwriter Taylor Swift chose a strapless Reem Acra wedding gown for one of her videos. Acra is proud of her achievements, explaining that is she is the only Middle Eastern woman to establish her own fashion house from scratch in New York. Now, with success firmly under her belt, she is turning her attention back to the Middle East to help kick-start a homegrown fashion industry.The designer is working on a plan for the region, although she stresses it is in its early ...

The Middle East has some of the best and worst education systems in the world and they are attracting the attention of entrepreneurs keen to make a difference – and a buck. Entrepreneurs are using internet and mobile technology to create products to supplement or even, as in the case of TAGUINI e-university in Jordan, supplant traditional educational systems. Start-ups like the Hilaal Animation Workshop in Dubai and Ibtaker in Palestine are teaching in-classroom courses and developing ICT education kits. But business people and experts are divided over the impact these organisations could make, given the shortcomings of the Arab world’s education systems. Some are sceptical about whether these companies are worthwhile for-profit ventures or merely social enterprises. Hossam Allam, founder of Cairo Angels, a platform to link entrepreneurs and investors, believes that education is a field for NGOs not businesses. Allam told IPS that all the start-ups he has seen are not very profitable...

Advertising revenues in the Middle East and African markets are forecast to grow by 6.3 per cent in 2014, according to a report by Magna Global. Revenues were flat throughout 2013 in the Middle East owing to the political and economic situation in Egypt and a soft market in other parts of the region. However advertising in the African markets of Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria has been growing this year, the report found. Meanwhile, global advertising revenues have been recording positive growth unlike the flat regional performance. Magna Global estimate advertising revenues will have grown by 3.2 per cent to reach $489.6 billion this year. As the global economy accelerates in 2014, advertising revenues are expected to grow by 6.5 per cent to reach $521.6 billion. This will be the strongest year-on-year growth recorded since 2010, the report said. Major sport events such as the Sochi Winter Olympics and Brazil Soccer World Cup along with the US mid-term elections are expected to bo...

Mexican telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim Helu has catapulted past Bill Gates to become the world's richest person, according to Forbes magazine. But most Americans still know relatively little about this private man with a $54 billion fortune. Following are 7 must-know facts about Carlos Slim: 1. He's the first 'World's Richest' man from a developing nation 2009 was good to the super-rich in poorer nations: Brazil and Russia each doubled their billionaire counts; and China's new total (64 billionaires) ranks second only to the America. Slim, as an owner of more than 220 companies in telecommunications, banking, railways, and restaurants (to name a few), saw his fortune swell by $18.5 billion last year. 2. In Mexico, Slim is "Mr. Monopoly" The Wall Street Journal once quipped that "it's hard to spend a day in Mexico and not put money in [Slim's] pocket." You can barely make a call without doing so: Slim's pho...

Starting a business in Egypt is never an easy feat, but poses a unique set of challenges and advantages for Egyptian women in particular, who are increasingly leaping into entrepreneurial ventures. Yasmine El-Mehairy, the co-founder of Arabic-language parenting website Supermama, explains that the newness of "entrepreneurialism" in Egypt allows women in Egypt a significant edge, but there is still an everyday battle against cultural stereotypes. "It's as basic as… getting a plumber to work in the office without him staring at you or saying inappropriate comments and things like that," El-Mehairy said, adding that these are aspects of running a business that infuriate her. She described how difficult it is to get "workers to do anything, even just buying your laptops, without the guy asking: 'Oh you don't have a man coming to buy those laptops?' It's not because you're a woman entrepreneur, it's because you're a woman full sto...

Rabih Cassis is a marketing professional with an insatiable desire to discover and share fascinating and intriguing facts. He currently divides his time between managing, marketing and exploring around the net, studying Jazz, and running several other projects. Rabih is also the Asia Executive Officer of Fischer, Myers and Associates. The USA Is Turning Its Back On The Middle East. This is Why. Analysts and politicians alike, from Beirut to Riyadh, Tehran and Cairo are shouting foul to the recent American foreign policy in the Middle East for being unfocused, harmful and “dishonest.” However, taking into account the progressive decline in the political and economic importance of the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), this policy change was all but unexpected. This policy change is most obvious when it comes to Syria, where the US remains skittish about engaging in a conflict that is drawing in almost every other regional player, Especially long time American allies like ...

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MENA Opportunities is shedding some light on the fascinating yet "obsessively discreet" (his own words) Lebanese-Brazilian business tycoon and philanthropist Carlos Haddad (for those of you who actually have heard of him, it is not easy remaining discreet when Chairman of 4 major organizations). On discretion Haddad stresses: "I am not fundamentally against self-promotion. It's just that I am not a rock star or a politician and hence see no need, purpose or justification in engaging in it. And as a businessman, I am more inclined towards actions than words". Haddad humbly likes to be introduced as "the man behind" the Haddad Foundation, a charitable organization that provides social programs to young people from low-income communities. Says Haddad: "the Foundation is not something I can choose to stop or delegate. Thousands of lives are directly and indirectly affected by it. My duty is to honor its social mission and the expectations of those...

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