Talking about the tech sector might be a niche topic — dare we say treading ‘tech geek’ territory. Talking about women might be hinting at feminism. Combining the two topics is just good business.
PITAPOLICY is excited to post the 3-part series “The New Middle East: Women at the Center of a Start-up Ecosystem” by Christopher M. Schroeder–with his permission. As a ‘pitapal’, Schroeder has posed great questions and pointed PITAPOLICY towards some thoughtful pieces regarding the start-up community in the Middle East regarding: business challenges, women in tech, and responding to political risk as an investor. Considering that almost every Arab related topic begins with the epoch of the Arab Spring, it is refreshing to hear about the tech sector in the pita-consuming region because that takes years to burgeon, and doesn’t necessarily rely on the Arab Spring. In fact, many of the entrepreneur stories are independent of the political events that have transpired.
Schroeder’s review compiles over 25 years of experience as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and advisor. So it is with great pleasure to post the series below so that pita-consumers can read it in one go.
The New Middle East: Women at the Center of a Start-up Ecosystem
By: Chris Schroeder
Source: PandoDaily
Part 1
Having spent much of last spring touring the remarkable and little-reported-on tech startup communities in the Middle East — from Cairo to Amman to Beirut to Dubai — I was excited to see that no one was rocking this scene more than the women entrepreneurs.
They are running platforms for Arabic translation out of Beirut and eCommerce enterprises in …[click here to continue]
Part 2
As a mentor and advisor to two remarkable ecosystem builders in the Middle East — the region-wide start-up portal and angel investor Wamda and Jordanian incubator Oasis 500 — I see (but take no economic stake in) some pretty astonishing entrepreneurs. Through them, I discovered two wonderful stories that offer significant opportunities for the Arab speaking world.
May Habib came to her idea out of …[click here to continue]
Part 3
Ask any woman in the Middle East startup community about her greatest challenge, and the first things you’ll hear are familiar to any entrepreneur. Can I do this? Will anyone care? How do I choose from a hundred different priorities? When do I raise money? How should I hire? Can I move fast enough?
Press a little further and…[click here to continue]
Note: Christopher Schroeder is a Washington, DC and New York-based entrepreneur, venture investor and former CEO of the online content and social platform start-up healthcentral.com, which he sold last January. He has been published by the The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Fortune, and several other media outlets. You can follow him here on Twitter. He is working on a book that will review the entrepreneur environment in the Middle East that will be coming out in Spring 2013.
