In the opening keynote, British ambassador Tom Fletcher quoted Michael Angelo:
“It’s better to aim high and not achieve than to aim low and achieve your goal”
a modified version of the original quote:
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
I was looking forward to hear Rand Hindi but apparently he didn’t come. On the other hand there was Imad Riachi, Chief Scientist at Esentia Analytics and Alexand Asseily, CEO & co-founder of “Jawbone” & “State”.
Asseily quoted George Bernard Shaw
“…all progress depends on the unreasonable man…”
He articulated on this by repeatedly stressing about the importance of “confidence” & “perseverance”
“Knowledge economy is not transferred with books and facts but digitally”.
One important issue that was raised by Asseily and was repeated by nearly all speakers was importance of a high-speed internet service. It cannot be stressed enough how vital high quality internet is for startup and entrepreneurs especially that we live in a knowledge economy.
For this there’s a need for Lebanese and startups in Lebanon to demand better internet quality and speeds than ever. The improvements that we saw in the past two to three years are good but they are not enough if we are to have the slight chance of even thinking of having a Lebanese “Silicon Valley” or to be part of the worldwide tech industry.
Jean Nehme, founder of Touch Surgery asked him self
“How do I share knowledge with other surgeons?”
He also wanted students to be able to practice surgeries without risking patients because as per his saying:
“Surgeons are 25% technical ability and 75% knowledge”
The answer turned out to be the Touch Surgery app which simulates and let’s you practice surgeries before applying it on patients.
To be able to bring the app to life he had to
“take a very complicated surgery and break it down to steps”
Jean mentioned that we are now living in a “Knowledge economy” after having traversed from the Agricultural economy to the Industrial economy.
What is nice about knowledge is its power to be shared. If you share an idea with me you are adding to my knowledge without loosing that knowledge. In other words we are both gaining.
Another interesting and already promising startup founder and entrepreneur is Hind Hobeika, a Lebanese female innovator, the founder of Instabeat. I was happy to see a Lebanese female involved in innovation, tech, and entrepreneurship.
Though she did mention that it was hard to work in Lebanon but she did say that
“Lebanon is a great place to start from.”
She added that a few years ago she wouldn’t have thought that she could raise enough money for a startup, but that now, with BDL’s accelerate initiative, it is possible.
Hind and Instabeat are already successful. Her Instabeat, a device that fits on swimming goggles and monitors the swimmers heart rate, is already being manufactured.
They also have a team in San Francisco. She had an Indiegogo campaign and the pre-orders and returns exceeded the goal.
Antoine Saab, founder of “enery24” is another interesting Lebanese innovator and entrepreneur. He developed a battery-based energy saving system to counter the regularly recurring power-cuts in Lebanon.
At one moment during the panel talk he said
“In Lebanon you train at altitude”
“If you make it here you can make it anywhere.”
In other words he was implying that if you can have a minimum of success here in Lebanon under the “Lebanese” (tough and chaotic) conditions then the success will be achievable anywhere in the world.
It’s like going for a way in the park.
The 30 Startup finalists were (8 finalists are in bold):
- Presella
- 29 letters
- Cardiodiagnostix*
- bitfeed
- Eventus
- Feedeed
- Game cooks
- Go Ijaza
- Green Studios
- Integreight 1Shield
- Jobalist
- Ki
- Nawaya Network
- PiSlice
- Referd
- Rouladfouni
- Saily*
- Shoop
- Sohati
- Spectapp
- Tagaddod
- Tari2ak*
- THe Outpost
- Yellow
- Virtuosi
- waste
- Urbacraft
- Zawarib
All startups can be found at this page.
Today the 8 startups will be narrowed down to one startup which will travel to Geneva. The results and details can be found at the SeedStars Beirt Startupup Competition page.
Banque du Liban (BDL), or the Central Bank Of Lebanon, is organizing the first international startup conference in Beirut, Lebanon. The conference is known by “Banque du Liban Accelerate 2014”. Accelerate 2014 will be a melting point for entrepreneurs, startup companies, investors, and a select of highly prolific and successful people including ambassadors, ministers, industry leaders and professionals. And there will be fifty speakers (see below) who are mostly successful entrepreneurs and startup founders.
Ibrahim El Merehbi 