Despite a plethora of early stage activities in the MENA region (co-working spcaces, incubators, accelerators, private/public funding, mentoring..etc), the quality of startups graduating from many of these programs remain a serious concern.
1 Plenty of developmental money being poured into the ecosystem; this is not commercial money with no clear/measurable national KPIs or target RoI.
2 Most corporates continue to contribute to the ecosystem from their CSR pockets.
3 Lack of alignment of interest between investors and managers.
4 Many managers are learning on the job; You won’t get much beyond funding.
5 KPIs for accelerators should focus on quality vs. quantity.
6 Dry powder and investment period are pushing investments in the wrong direction.
7 Accelerators should not be treated as NGOs; They need to attract/retain real talent that have walked the talk.
8 We don’t need case studies to fill in college courses, we don’t need articles to post on the web/magazines, we don’t need stories to tell on a pod cast or on the news, we don’t need wannabes telling entrepreneurs what to do.
9 We need real entrepreneurs to start being more active in the community without spreading themselves too thin. We need real life experiences and learnings to be shared first-hand. We need founders to be more forward in sharing their experiences with managers...publicly!
