[Nile TV] Egyptian Coastal Cities as Potential Startup Hubs

[Nile TV] Egyptian Coastal Cities as Potential Startup Hubs

for many uh many opportunities as we do have a lot of potentials all this and more we are going to discuss with our dear guest live here in the studio who is an expert in the matter mr abdulrahman meghdi entrepreneurship expert thank you very much for being with us sir thanks for having me well uh good morning mr abdulrahman uh first of all tell us about your insight concerning a promotion of tourism and in a creative and different way yeah i think in my experience it’s like a naturally evolving phenomenon when it comes to entrepreneurship and people moving towards self-employment globally and because foreigners especially consider egypt a fabulous touristic destination they want to work and also they want to have fun in egypt so a pattern of activity that started happening in the past years was what is called co-working spaces in touristic and coastal cities around egypt by now i think we have three different co-working spaces in algona and dahab and there are others evolving in hergad and other cities and the idea here is that there are egyptians who are like self-employed they work in knowledge economy so they are not associated with a specific space they can work through the internet and also there’s a lot of foreigners on the other side who work at the same industry like designing websites writing code editing and writing publishing just a very quick and brief definition of this word the knowledge economy yeah the knowledge economy is all the activities it has to do with knowledge so it’s not about trade it’s not products not physical products but rather it’s about using the knowledge and expertise in doing business things that’s like almost virtual like writing editing designing so it depends on the scale of the individual other than any trade activities which is actually a huge industry globally so when it comes to the economy this is a huge industry and i think in egypt we still haven’t tabbed i mean how i can improve my knowledge economy i mean courses for example should i take courses should i train myself uh a self-trained this can be on online on the internet to go to certain places i mean how i think the challenge usually is not in in the lack of knowledge but it’s rather on if i have the knowledge how to use this knowledge to become an entrepreneur how to use this knowledge to offer services in the economy so i think in egypt there’s a lot of people with a lot of fabulous expertise when it comes to the the area of their interests and expertise but the challenge is usually how do i offer this service globally so what we’re talking about is that these co-working spaces or what we can call it clubs in these coastal cities can be a hub for those knowledge economy entrepreneurs in egypt to go there and to serve the global economy through these hops and the same thing would be for other entrepreneurs globally they would look at these clubs or destinations and coastal egyptian cities as places to go to to do business and also have fun so they would come for a week they would sort out what you want to do if you want to build a new website in a week you’re going to find the egyptian professionals to do the design write the copy publish it and host it and during this week while between the meeting they’re going to go from snorkeling climbing whatever they want to do so i think it’s a it’s a very fun package if this is being offered to um like foreign entrepreneurs they would come they’re going to have fun and going to do business now to what extent is that applied in egypt like you’ve mentioned there are some but to what extent is it and how workable and feasible is it well yeah that’s that’s a challenge because these become an individual initiative so it’s someone who sees the opportunity in doing that for example a german lady who visited dahab and she she loved the city and she wanted to stay there but she didn’t have an idea of what she wanted to do she thought of the idea that lots of her friends are coming to dhab so why not to start this club to get them to do the business to do the work in this place and also to attract egyptians who can actually work with them so this happens as an individual efforts so far there are some projects that being talked about like in technology in these remote areas but we haven’t seen something very solid to this extent and also not packaged in a way to attract foreigners to do business in egypt there are some consideration that has to do with the furnishing of the places there has to be consideration about internet connection which is actually the top on the left because uh like foreigners are used to very uh fast internet speed so they have to see something reasonable once they they come to egypt so the infrastructure for their internet speed the the furnishing and the packaging and the maintenance and sustainability of these clubs i think that’s that actually makes a very interesting national uh project between like trade international relations and tourism uh this is a very attractive area to attract tourists to do business and to connect with egypt i want to return once again to the human being i think that many egyptians knew how knew how to to be expert in this experts in this field in specific but they don’t know how to convey the message how to implement this on the ground how to deal with people and here by the way i’m speaking about simple egyptians not that well educated not that uh well cultured you name it but some they knew how to use their skills but they cannot they are not directed well how we can solve this problem or this is a very um sensitive equation well i think there are two aspects to that i think yeah as you mentioned like knowledge is something people acquire with time so usually if someone stayed for 12 15 years in the industry they become an expert they have the best buy all the experiences that they need and you have the expertise here comes two challenges the first has to do is what you mentioned as a service culture is that i am a service provider there are some specific regulations and ways to deliver the service and to maintain the level of service with the customer i think this is something that we’re lacking in egypt when it comes to the service culture and um me becoming a service provider and serving the client and how communication should go how should i get paid this is it because this is very important how i can solve this how i can move this person from from being not knowing even the potentials he has to someone who is that much successful and using all what he has because we are talented i mean egyptians learned very easily they knew how to absorb knowledge but to to use this this is the issue yeah i think here comes the rule of training and coaching and also experiences that gather the egyptians with their foreign counterparts like some of the best experiences would you bring the egyptian who do have the talent and expertise and they stay for two weeks to um like mingle with foreign entrepreneurs and to understand the qualities by which they work like i know lots of egyptians who started working at the age of 18 with foreign entrepreneurs and after four years they cannot relate to the egyptian market so it’s about the experience and the standards by which you get used to work so if you start working according to a specific standard of service it’s going to be very difficult for you to downgrade so if we benchmark the service culture and the ability to market and promote by offering training and coaching experiences for egyptians working on knowledge economy and offering them the opportunity for actual real experience and projects through which they can actually start benchmarking themselves to a specific standard so these are the the two ways to like enhance the likelihood of the knowledge economy and knowledge entrepreneurs in egypt to offer service globally now as an entrepreneurship expert to ex to what extent have you worked on these new projects or initiatives yeah i think like because these already are initiatives that’s happening in egypt so i get i get the chance to get in in direct contact with all these initiatives and what i can see is it because it depends on a specific individual that is usually the financial risk and lots of efforts that’s actually in the weight of a single individual so there is no structure to what’s happening it’s just an individual initiatives and it comes with challenges so for example if business is not big enough you’re gonna have to move to uh to another area so there’s a shift in location one thing that’s happened is that the german lady wanted to take a one-month vacation she has to shut down the club because she’s in a vacation she doesn’t have a staff to manage the the club so are these are some challenges to getting these to operate to a specific standard i think if there is an investment in a company that would go there and set up some really stable clubs managed properly and it it’s uh sending consistent marketing messages to achieve this is to have companies already there to manage this and to be on permanent basis i mean not something temporary yeah and that requires investment and investment requires infrastructure so it’s about the risk like someone or a company taking the risk to go and set up something there and i think we have seen some examples for foreign entities coming to places like ilgona but i think there is a chance for other mainstream areas or much more like areas like dahab and other uh destinations this was my coming question regarding the destinations regarding the touristic locations in which you see a lot of potentials are there and just waiting for someone to discover them yeah i think dab is it comes on top of the list because like maybe because it’s my personal favorite but also it attracts a type of character that’s um in a knowledge economy and they’re actually looking to relax and stay in the long term so if you go to the hub you’re going to find lots of like foreigners who are staying there for six months for a year for three years sometimes so these people come and they don’t actually settle down in the town of dahab and i think that’s provides an opportunity to build the um what we talked about in terms of the service culture um the infrastructure necessary for them uh to settle there and accordingly build a momentum and build an environment that supports uh business locally and globally now i’m quite interested in what you were talking about that german club for instance now you’re saying that she’s offering them services online so are they doing services that takes place in egypt or are they just visiting and they are just checking on their business abroad because what no it’s it’s mainly the internet so that will be um not like an industry or investing within the country itself it’s not like importing exporting or or or having a solid project in egypt so i’d like to understand more like is it just facilitating them to run their personal business abroad or is it creating businesses within the country itself actually it could go both ways i think for the time being because they are visiting mostly they are working on their own businesses and if you look at it what do people do in companies in any type of business you’re going to find like like 60 80 depending on the company is something that’s to be done online and most of those who come as individuals they usually have their own websites and they are selling products and services online which is actually a huge industry we have seen recently in the region some billion dollar investments in like e-commerce websites so these entrepreneurs are running these type of businesses it doesn’t have to be a small business they could be on a laptop you’re going to see them on a laptop and actually it’s a huge business online so most of them actually work within the industry of technology and internet business and knowledge economy so these are the uh industries but there’s other companies that might want to do what they call tree tree which is also a very big type of trading businesses we know the corporate training style that you go inside the company and do the the corporate training there is a new model which is retreats is that uh you could be a company in germany and you want to train five of your employees yeah and thinking thinking out of the box and so we do have much more questions but unfortunately we’re running out of time so we’re going to leave you sorry with our promise to see you again in another episode of our breakfast show mr abdullah magdy the interpreter expert we have today thank you very much for your input thank you for having me thank you very much sir and that brings us to the end of this episode of breakfast show but first of all i have to thank my colleague thank you very much nermeen thank you russia tomorrow is another day with another proof it will only online tv [Music] you
[Nile TV] What Egyptian Business Owners Can do about Devaluation of EGP

[Nile TV] What Egyptian Business Owners Can do about Devaluation of EGP

welcome back eddie viewers in this segment we are going to talk about the performance of the egyptian economy and how can business leaders how can business owners deal with the changes in exchange rate how can they adopt a new strategies to develop their business and work and to shed more light on this issue i joined here in the studio with their mr abdul maggie he is a business strategy coach good morning good morning good morning mr magdy sir how do you see the changes that occurred on the egyptian market after the liberalization of the egyptian pound and to what extent that could have an impact on the prices of commodities yeah of course i think all of us are witnessing in egypt the uh as you mentioned the devaluation of the egyptian pound as a result of like the free float that we have witnessed have affected most businesses and individuals when we look at businesses we can see that in a transportation sector in the um all sectors actually but all those relying on transportation and relying on machinery that’s being imported uh from abroad all these sectors are affected and of course as a result of the devaluation we’re expecting regular gradual increase in prices and accordingly it becomes challenging for both individuals and businesses yes so how can business owners deal with this yeah i think like um this is what we call disruption in the markets and i think for the egyptian economy we can look this on the long run from a positively positive standpoint like if the the macro economics go well as a result of the like a liberation of the egyptian pound as we mentioned like if we if business owners are able to sustain themselves and rebuild their businesses during this transition most likely economy is expected to improve in the future so the best options for the business owners right now is to revisit their strategy and to assess what they should like what is what is best for them to add to kind of reflect to this uh devaluation in egyptian pounds like some of the highlights of that and some of the actually good news for someone for some of the business owners in egypt are those who are already targeting the international market so for those who are already selling their products and services to the global market which is very active in the knowledge and the technology sector so those who have clients who are bringing already in the us dollar so um these type of businesses like they can view this as as a positive like um from the same point of the currency part and i think what could happen in the uh for egyptian businesses is to think how can we target the global markets so for all businesses across all sectors to think about first how can i sell globally because like the uh the free float means that we are closer to the global markets and we’re more competitive when it comes to the global market so whatever sector i’m at right now how can i expand my business geographically and also like in terms of the market size like for for for a business owner going through this transition it might be shocking to a lot of extent when they look to the numbers but what is advice is for them to actually look at what matters so it’s always advised to cut to the chase look at the bottom line of your business like the the volume of the business that i’m having is usually is a result of the number of clients that i’m having yes the average a sale and the frequency of sale so that’s basically by the end of the by the end of the year that’s how i calculate my profits and my revenues so as a business or owner it is if as a result of this devaluation i’m going to have to lose some clients probably i should start thinking about increasing the volume of sales that i’m having or the frequency of sales these clients are approaching me so doing the balance with these with all these variables is vital for business owners and like one of the usually highly advised exercises during these times is to visit the strategy of business owners and there are lots of tools and templates and way of thinking when it comes to how they can approach the strategy exercise and they can come up with a new strategy of their company to to be uh dealing with the new challenges and the new changes that’s happening in the market uh mr mati we have to mention here that during the past three days akhbar yum was holding its conference its economic conference with the challenge uh to face the challenges that egypt are facing concerning the economy the way to the future the breakthroughs and challenges at what extent uh this uh conference could be tackling the main problems that the egyptian economy is facing yeah i think like lots of uh conferences and events i think it’s uh it’s a very good investment of time for business owners to be part of such conferences and events because like the biggest threat for business owners during a time like that is for them to kind of uh look at things uh internally try to analyze things from sources like what’s being said the hive so going to these events and actually knowing what experts are saying and knowing also the options that they have that’s is a very positive action for business owners to take and usually during these conferences there’s lots of actual numbers and statistics being shared which actually makes the decision the decisions taken by business owners uh more to the point and and most likely to come up with better results for their business so to atex and the imf fund will uh give the egyptian economy a boost at this stage yeah i think like when we look at it from the the finances standpoint from a macroeconomic perspective we would say that this is a positive sign so egypt was able to attract external funding uh from imf which gives other investors the confidence to start economic activities in egypt so we can look at it as a positive uh like point on the short and medium term and hopefully um like that’s that’s quite a work when it when it comes to macroeconomics we hope it’s going to be like a shock for the economy to recover and as i said it becomes the rule of the private sector to rework their strategies and to find the best ways and the most efficient ways for them to run their business i think right now is a time for efficiency so in order for businesses to survive and flourish we have to work internally of how to like focus on what matters to them choose what to do what what to do and what not to do probably they might choose to close parts of their business or be new ones so it’s uh it’s time for change that requires lots of focused studies and some quite hard decisions as well uh mr mcd to what extent it’s time now to encourage the young entrepreneurs to enter the market of uh egypt yeah i think it’s not just for those who kind of call themselves entrepreneurs already and i think right now is an interesting time for everyone who’s looking to increase their income to look for other ways for them to increase their income and i think what had been happening around the world in the past 10 years is that lots of people have been moving to running virtual businesses so starting businesses on the internet around something they are proficient at getting that to other people coaching them and providing different types of like consulting coaching and probably uh speaking services so we think this model fits lots of expediency professionals in egypt and we have seen lots of people who are not like addressing themselves entrepreneurs moving into offering products and services online which i think that’s going to be a very interesting trend because for them also they are able to access global markets and like for this category of people who are who do have a focus to scale or or talent in something specifically that they can either educated online or coach other people um i think they have to benchmark themselves according to the global standards so they have to look at who’s best in the world in this matter to learn from them but not locally so they have to be thinking globally when it comes to benchmarking their scale because by the end of the day that’s going to be their markets and also they have to think intelligently when it comes to marketing and innovation so like relying heavily on digital marketing and also having lots of innovation in the way they package their products and services so it’s a very interesting time for those who are jumping into targeting global markets as entrepreneurs this might be challenging times for those addressing the local markets uh but i think it’s an interesting time for existing businesses to move into the global markets and also for those who are regularly probably employed to start like a side project also targeting the global market and what’s your advice to egyptian citizens at this stage yeah i think for egyptian citizens i think what’s happening right now is that we’re moving we’re becoming more open to to the world and i think the world um things according to a concept of individual capitalism which i think this is something that needs to be uh spread and educated for young egyptians specifically yes and um like individual capitalism is that an individual looks to themselves as an asset so myself the way i speak even my face my skills and abilities these are assets that i should monetize in the market so it doesn’t become that i’m searching for an employment opportunity but rather i’m investing in my knowledge on my skills and my abilities in order to be able to solve problems and then using myself my assets as the way for me to make money in the world so looking at yourself from this perspective i think it’s challenging according to the culture because like we we always like like look up to employment and multinational companies but i think we need to be talking to younger egyptians that it’s time for you to consider individual capitalism is to analyze your skills your abilities and to think that i’m going to monetize these abilities maybe sometimes by employment maybe sometimes through working as a consultant maybe sometime through starting an online business yes so it becomes you have to be more creative exactly it’s about innovation and creativity and also the way of thinking that i’m not searching for a job yes but rather i’m developing my skills in order to be able to solve problems that’s going to help someone else so i’m going to be driving economic value as a participant in a global economy and strata would take it from here not searching for a job because unfortunately many youngsters many people are complaining because of the unemployment and yet they are uh sitting at home just sending it to their cvs and waiting for the job i think the the the world market has changed now people are uh do uh have their own ideas young entrepreneurs entering the market so how can we change that concept of just sitting at home waiting for the job opportunity to come yeah i think some of the things that i personally was witnessing in the past years and i think also if we take a tour around egyptian universities we’re going to see lots of student organizations and student activities that’s promoting the concept of entrepreneurship and like matching the students with the knowledge and abilities and access to equip themselves incubators in order to help the the young entrepreneurs to enter the market exactly that’s that’s an extra step for them to be providing systemic programs to help them to start their businesses i think the culture plays a major role which is which becomes also the responsibility of the media and also for universities to start focusing beside the academic component and to spreading the concept of entrepreneurship and opening up to global markets and getting people to think about what can we do to monetize even during the time their studies so having more like market oriented education system i think um all that might provide better economic opportunities for egypt because the challenge economically and the value of the egyptian pounds by the end of the day depends on the level of productivity in the economy and the contribution of egyptians in the economy and we’re soon having 100 million egyptians and if we think that they’re going to become like a combatant globally and they will be able to provide products and services online that’s going to be a huge economic contribution and accordingly we can see the egyptian pounds uh increasing in value in in relation to other currencies so um do you think that the egyptian market is now more attractive to investors than before i think from one angle i can say yes so uh with the devaluation of the egyptian pounds it becomes cheap so current code cheap it’s uh actually actually it’s it’s not cheap the egyptian that do you mean the dollar the egyptian pound yeah i mean if i if i used to if i’m investing like a million dollars so it’s an incentive yeah for things to to a lot of extent it’s an incentive for them because uh like um i mean the chief becomes the labor and yeah yeah with the evaluation of the currency it becomes cheaper for those so one side and also we don’t have two parallel markets which is uh more important we don’t have two markets for the dollars it’s only the bank now yeah i think like um like the more this like dollars become available in the banks i think the more it becomes more attractive to um like investors and businesses to operate and give them confidence in the direction of the economy yes so definitely it becomes egypt egypt becomes attractive to uh foreign investors with the imf loan and also with other economic activities that uh that’s starting to show up but becomes a responsibility also for individuals and i think like um if individuals are able to understand this properly and to work with it by offering products and services globally i think that’s uh that’s a way to recovery for the egyptian economy do you expect now investors would start to come to the egypt more after the liberalization of the uh there are there are other important variables but possibly yes in comparison to before the decision after the decision it’s more likely for them to consider that given some of the variables yeah indeed mr abdul maddy business strategy coach thank you very much sir for your precious interest thank you thanks a lot thank you mr mcd and now dear viewers uh we come to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast church i’d like to thank my dear friend majesty robia and thank you very much our view viewers tomorrow we will be back with another crew with the breakfast show till then um [Music]
[Nile TV] Addressing Technology Disruption For Business Builders[Nile TV]

[Nile TV] Addressing Technology Disruption For Business Builders[Nile TV]

be talking on the second segment of the show on the effect of new technologies and advanced technologies and accomplishing business in egypt and worldwide of course we will be talking about youth entrepreneurship and how can they accomplish business using the different applications and specified or made for this uh special target and we also be using talking about using internet mobiles even the social media to accomplish business and on this issue we’re glad to be joined by mr abraham entrepreneurship and expert on smes thank you for joining us and good morning

thank you for having me thank you good morning mr dr abdulrahman and let’s first uh talk about the effect of what you’re doing on entrepreneurship and how could it be able to be pushing business uh climate in any country yeah i think what are we talking about when it comes to technology and how technology disrupting the business i think like in the recent years we all see how fast technology is evolving so it’s just a matter of years and technology are being turned around and people have to update their software and change their hardware and also like the vast growth of the internet and in the best decade that makes things evolving very very fast and i think when we talk about either starting a new business or existing businesses this evolution of technology and this rapid change in technology will have to affect the way business is conducting is being conducted and we can look at this from an entrepreneur as people who are starting new businesses they have to take into consideration the utilization tools and the potential customer base that’s using this technology if we can look at like businesses like the car sharing apps like um different type of applications that reporting traffic like using events we can see lots of successful examples that’s utilizing the um active users on the internet and if we look at industries especially in the us for example there’s a massive technology industry that takes advantage of the availability of users on internet for e-commerce or different types of applications like ending with the application uh pokemon go even like it’s uh it’s an old game that was brought back as a mobile application and increased the valuation of the company by almost nine billion dollars so all these are ways in which technology is changing the business sphere right uh what about the you’ve just mentioned the different applications used specifically for watching business would you tell us more in detail so what types of applications are used to accomplish business definitely i think it’s uh starting from the business creation process i think if you’re doing planning for your business you will find different tools that’s currently available that can help you plan ahead for your business like even developing a business strategy uh hiring you can use internet for hiring you can use accounting softwares online accounting softwares to manage your accounts you can use um like different websites with which is going to send you some knowledge about your industry updates about what’s happening with your industry you can use what we call the crm or customer relation management tools which that you can have all your customers in a single tool and you can even like connect the records to the internet so you can look at their twitter stream their facebook profiles what they are sharing online so all these are different set of tools that businesses can use today in order to enhance their knowledge and awareness about their clients and also save a lot of coasts and have much more efficiency in the way they conduct business right uh what are the challenges that are meeting interpretership here in cairo from your own perspective if we’re talking about entrepreneurship we’re just starting new businesses we’re going to see that like technology makes it easy but in order for you to kind of move move ahead you have to have the right to bring the right talent into building the right software tools or technology tools and i think like the funding space in egypt did not mature to the um to the needed maturity level for entrepreneurs to be able to kind of graduate um world-class applications and world-class uh software and technologies so in terms of developing new technologies it’s still challenging to write to find the right like funding sources for that so lots of egyptian entrepreneurs and companies who start in cairo and find some success or potential we receive funding from outside each when we have to relocate either to the gcc or to the u.s to further invest in building their technologies and eventually it becomes um like a a company founded by egyptian but it’s not an egyptian company so um the challenge of the funding the challenge also the market itself is that the user days in egypt egyptians and the region the use of technology did not mature that much yet the use of online payment is not that popular so all these are challenging challenges in accessing the user base in egypt and monetizing that so usually the talent front and development of technology for entrepreneurs and also the customer base for them and utilization of online payments these are the two sided challenges that usually technology entrepreneurs face right as an entrepreneurship expert how do you think we can or the government maybe can help the youth in establishing small businesses of course we’re talking here about smes or small and medium enterprises how can the government support this yeah i think like if we look at different um environments and how the evolution of small medium enterprises and startups has happened i think there was a little intervention from the government where only like the green light which i see that in egypt the government is doing some efforts when it comes to different entities like etida for example it’s a it’s an entity by the government by the ministry of communication information technology it’s specialized in helping small medium enterprises in a technology space and also there is a subdivision called teak or technology innovation and entrepreneurship center which is also specialized in helping entrepreneurs so these are government entities um that’s working with entrepreneurs i think like there has to be a different way to look at the industry because most of the government decision comes into building um real estate building hubs and and i think we need investments more in the mines and investing more into the culture of utilizing technology looking at very seriously at online payments so things that goes into the routes like online payments and like investing in the talent i think these would be more valuable um beside the investment in real estate and the major projects tell me exactly what do you do in your office i mean uh telling you to project and how important is it in that field or that medium yeah for us we’re specializing in helping entrepreneurs so like usually entrepreneurs find us by searching on google searching for egyptian entrepreneurs or startups usually land on our website and then they register and they send us their problems or they send us what do you want to accomplish so what we do is that we analyze the profiles of these entrepreneurs and we categorize them as well we can see that there are startups there’s high growth companies usually started by people with experience in technology or having someone who’s experienced in technology on board who want to scale very fast so these are fast growth companies that’s called startups there are others that’s small and medium enterprises companies that existed in the past five years they’re already very stable they have a number of employees and things have been moving steadily and usually these are looking for how to use technology to grow our business so the challenge for the first segment is how do we build our business based on technology and and kind of utilize technology as a platform the small medium enterprise which i think is going to be the vast majority of egyptian entrepreneurs they are running small medium enterprises stable yet small companies that wants to utilize technology to scale its operation which i think that’s where the majority of work is being done is that facilitating access to advanced technology to small medium enterprises so our mission is usually how do we bring the best available technologies to egyptian small medium enterprises there are some very interesting business models that make the investment and technology early on for businesses very small for example you can subscribe to a tool for your accounting needs and you can do this by paying a monthly subscription so it’s a pay-as-you-go basis um these are type of private uh companies private business companies support giving this this support this yes right of course there’s a lot of obstacles hindering small and medium enterprises in egypt up till now what are the major obstacles and how can we overcome them yeah i think like to distinguish also between the startups and the small and medium enterprises serves that they be young fast growth companies they have their own set of challenges and also smes do have their own challenges i think if we if we look at the uh the positive side i think ceremonial enterprises needs it we need to look at their structures and we need to kind of advance the business knowledge to kind of manage the business more professionally and firmly and like above all looking at the business opportunities differently so having the the knowledge of business strategy and understanding where the market is going and how to shift towards that so i think um like evolving a small business into a dynamic evolving environment changing the market and changing with the technology and that’s where the opportunities lies for a majority of these small businesses of course there will be challenges when it comes to funding do you want to scale their operation and you want to like find external funding there are some challenges there there are challenges in finding and retaining the right talent for them so all these are challenges that exist for small medium enterprises but we look at if things are going well on the technology in an innovation market front you’re going to always find a solution to these kind of challenges right mr abdulrahman magdie entrepreneurship expert many thanks for joining us sir thank you thank you for coming and i guess this brings us to the end of this edition of the breakfast show my name is tina and all the pleasure to have with me ramsey for saturday morning partners until we see you again tomorrow have a great day [Music]

[Nile TV] Challenges And Opportunities in Starting a Business In Egypt in 2016

[Nile TV] Challenges And Opportunities in Starting a Business In Egypt in 2016

welcome back and it’s time for our first segment here on breakfast show and today we will be talking about youth and entrepreneurship and means of helping them in starting a new business in terms of labor marketing as well as the various improvements that could be added to their business and economic empowerment and joining us right now in the studio to shed more light on that topic is mr abdulrahman maggie is a writer as well as an entrepreneur expert welcome with us and good morning

good morning it’s a pleasure to be here good morning now let’s start by defining uh what is entrepreneurship because so many people don’t really understand the definition how would you define it to us yeah entrepreneurship is defined as the practice and the skill set needed for people who want to start and grow their own businesses so the word entrepreneur it comes from the French and it actually into two uh segments which are the ones who start enterprises or the ones who start companies yes and um like even like one of the things that we did we tried to figure out in the Arabic culture an Arabic word that corresponds to entrepreneurship and we couldn’t get any close to that but uh i mean like there are some words that expresses being self-reliant and dependent and the ability to build things in your own so entrepreneurship is the practice of building businesses

okay mr abdulrahman now in terms of our youth how can we help them sort of business especially that usually they have a low budget

yeah i think the good thing is that startup entrepreneurs usually start with a very low budget and i think the good thing also that we can look at most of the successive stories that’s very popular around the world globally and also in Egypt because like in the recent year we started having some local success stories as well if you look at the Microsoft the apple all these companies we know that they start in the garage so the good thing about entrepreneurship is that you can start from anywhere and it becomes a matter of the skill sets and the ability to build move step by step to be able to build and scale the business so for Egyptian youth the good news is and now we have the internet now we have like changes in the structure of how business is being conducted now we have more openness from the bigger business historic with the smaller businesses and now we have like smaller opportunities exist exists in uh in the market which entrepreneurs can take advantage of of course it’s not an easy process there is lots of steps and lots of challenges along the way but we can say that the opportunity exists for those who can get themselves involved with the network because if we talk about it step by step if i get the idea or i have the passion or i have the dream to start my own business first thing i need to do is that i need to hang out with the people who are starting their businesses so if i have to find if i’m an egyptian youth and i want to start my own business i have to find where are the people who are starting their businesses hang out yes and you can find lots of events lots of clubs or you can join other youth for starting your own businesses online of course yes online and offline there’s lots of events taking places there’s lots of hubs that’s starting that’s called startups and like if you use uh even like google you can figure out some of these hubs that exists in in Cairo and also in other governorates around Egypt so if you hang out with the right group of people already starting their own businesses you will be involved with the events the right events that will equip you with the skills with the network and then you have to get the idea once you have a solid idea that actually touches your own passion by then you can really start taking the first step uh searching for your co-founders the guys or the girls that I’m gonna start the business with i kind of start assessing the financials i can start looking at building my marketing plan and my business plan probably i would need funding i would like to hire a couple of people get my first office scale get my first client and keep moving until i able to expand a business and the good thing is that if you look at the past five years there are at least four egyptian companies that were able to raise funds from outside egypt in more than one million dollars so egyptian youth who started businesses in the past five years they were able to get external funding of the amount of i mean external funding like international funding from major investment companies in the uk in europe and even in the u.s these egyptian entrepreneurs they just they were just like me and you and they uh they started up the exact same way that i just told you hanging out with the right crowd uh like being open to learn new skills engage with the right crowd work an idea be flexible to pivot and change the direction and by carrying all these steps and enjoying the process eventually we’ll be able to build and scale a great company

okay perhaps what distinguishes startups from other types of business is that you can cut down the number of staff and you can actually start up on your own and i have seen personally so many people who started just on their own and they started their online business and that was what distinguished them from from other types of business for example i’ve seen people working in the field of jewelry making jewelry and marketing their jewelry uh online so uh how do you see the what characterizes uh entrepreneurship from other types of business

I like to define is entrepreneurship i like to say that entrepreneurship is is a quite a generic word for people who want to start their businesses but there are different types of businesses okay there’s a lifestyle business and there’s a startup business so a lifestyle business is something that depends on my own lifestyle if I’m a jewelry designer for example and i think that um i used to work at a specific shop and I want to start my own business and the way I think about this and by the end of the day what distinguishes a lifestyle business from a startup business is how I think about it I might have the attitude is that i want to just build this as my own business so other than giving my time for employment I’m going to work in this business and keep it a small business to a lot of extent have my own job and this is going to be my lifestyle business on the other hand startup business is something that i design for growth so start usually have innovation lots of innovation and have massive potential so in the lifestyle business I’m gonna design like five pieces and sell it per month and I’m gonna make x amount of money and that’s how I think about it for the next five years for a startup business i would like to write down the process of designing the jewelry and i want to organize the production line of the jewelry and i want to scale this globally i want to sell all around the world and i have no ceiling to the amount that I would like to to sell so these are some of the decisions that entrepreneurs have to take early on would i like would i like to go for a lifestyle business or what would i like to do for a startup business um actually both can be started in a low budget uh but startups would require more effort would require more knowledge and also require external capital because eventually even if i start with two employees and i proved the concept so i built a product for example a technology product a product where people can purchase um like anything online for example and by then i started with with two people two employees and i arrived at the area that there is demand that i have to scale and i have delivery to handle so then i need external funding so startups requires external funding it needs lots of other different types of support so startups is high growth and this might not be suitable for everybody because it’s quite challenging a lifestyle business on the other hand and like one of the things that i see and actually lots of ladies for that is that especially ladies they get into the lifestyle business and they do excellent and some of them actually scale this and make it much more bigger businesses so um a lifetime even more convenient for women who have children who are working on other jobs for example unions especially i mean stay-at-home moms yes or usually are not employed we usually start lots of them in Egypt right now they are starting lifestyle businesses and they’re even even to shift and to scale these businesses like and also um ladies are also starting startup businesses there are some like some of the best startups in Egypt are actually started and led uh by ladies as well so it’s like a decision that you have to take when i go for a lifestyle or go for a startup um and actually i can shift i can start as a lifestyle lifestyle and then i shift at the right moment into this is a startup I’m going to open up I’m going to hire people and by then i decide to get myself out of the process and just oversee and design the process and make sure we’re able to grow tremendously now in terms of the startup business these they need as you said external finance and although recently like during this month there were a lot of inter and advertisement from certain national banks that encouraging the use come and do your own startup business and we’ll finance you but still do you feel that the banks in Egypt especially the interest rate is really helping the youth in terms of taking a loan and starting their own business because usually the interest rate is quite high well like i know about the initiatives of lowering the interest rate to five percent which is an interesting initiative but i think that that would go for more established businesses because the banking sector do have requirements and these requirements are not fit for someone who’s just starting a business so you need like they’re going to be requested at least three years of fully furnished accounting which is not gonna be available for a company that’s just starting out so there are some complexities that comes into that like dealing with banks and also banks are risk sensitive um so it just makes the startup the early stage businesses are not very favorable choice for them to get involved with but the good thing is that this startup in industry actually there’s especially in the us there’s which is something also that’s arriving in Egypt like quite slowly but it’s it is starting to evolve with time there is a finance industry that works in a startups there is a venture capital this is an industry that’s specialized in hunting the ideas that would have a potential for growth that things like Facebook things like all these small businesses that have the potential to grow these investors would be able to kind of invest a hundred thousand US dollars today and probably in six months this hundred thousand would become a one million dollars or 10 million dollars and in some cases can like get a 1000 x if the company is successful and growing properly so probably if we want to look at this strategically we would look at the possibility of finding the right investment vehicles for this startup stage because it requires a different mentality a different risk appetite and around the world the tools that entrepreneurs can use to develop and grow their businesses have been emerging and the biggest trend right now which I think is suitable to the Egyptian mentality is the crowd funding which is basically that you can submit your idea and you can allow other people to invest in your business so I think this is an excellent opportunity for Egyptians because lots of Egyptians would have a small amount of capital we usually put it in the banks or the invest in real estate if we tell them that there are existing startups that needs cash to scale and these actually are highly qualified individuals running these startups and they have been doing this for three five years and right now they need five hundred thousand Egyptian pounds and the potential for them in two years to reach this amount and you can actually each contribute like 20,000 pounds or 100,000 pounds and you own an equity in this company so like potentially a tool like that would allow entrepreneurs in Egypt and would give them access to something that would like help them source the the right capital for their companies and also with given an alternative investment opportunities to those with a small amount of capital would like to invest so I think when it comes to the banking sector maybe if we think about it differently of empowering the emerging vehicles for investing in startups and small businesses this might be a good option because I’m not sure how the banking sector would get into investing in startups even like this didn’t happen in the U.S. this didn’t happen like in a lot of other countries around the world the banks are still very risk sensitive so you usually do not engage in a very early stage of start-ups

okay how do you see entrepreneurship when it comes to affecting the egyptian economy ?

well i think to be honest i think that’s how like where the egyptian economy should be going and it should be going way more stronger because if you look at egypt like you have like a youthful huge youth population these youth population they are mostly graduating from university universities they are highly skilled uh they are very ambitious they are very well connected with the rest of the world in social media and they are very good at using technologies they they speak foreign languages so they become a very very important and strategic asset that can actually build businesses to sell products and services all around the world so right now there are the business models that allows building businesses that works on the internet or even like that uses the internet as a marketing channel for the products and services so i think if we look at the egyptian economy and if we look at the youth and the potential that start-ups would happen and actually around the region we have examples of countries that was able to create what they call the startup nation is that like the whole university all those graduating they are actually starting businesses so they are not the graduation projects for example becomes an actual business and we have some successful stories of egyptians who actually took their graduation project into becoming an actual business so i think if we want if you want to think about the egyptian economy strategically given also the huge youth population that we have we say that it becomes a startup nation let’s go for a startup nation model we want to empower these young people we would like to give them access to the knowledge to the tools to the network and we would like to evolve lots of startups that would be able to kind of um contribute to advancing egypt itself and also be able to sell and create economic value for the global economy and all around the world now what about the challenges facing young entrepreneurs in egypt well there are plenty of that and i would say that uh challenges are different from the step in which the business is is emerging um so there are like one challenge that has to do with the experience and knowledge is that to a lot of extent the idea of starting your own business and a scalable business it’s not something that’s uh that’s very popular i mean like we have the understanding of the classic business model of starting a shop starting like a small business in a in a cookie-cutter way that’s something that you really know how it works but it’s trying an innovative business with the potential to fail um i think we there’s a lot of learning when it comes to understanding the tools and the attitude about going into that there are some cultural problems also to be honest like given what we talked about is that we’re not used to this type of business so when someone really say that i’m innovative and i’m starting a new business to do something we’re ever heard about so usually there’s attitude okay okay good luck but there is uh to a lot of extent lack of belief people are not going to put their their money into these businesses so like um like understanding that innovation or something with potential this is also leaves quite a cultural challenge as we move forward we could find uh probably a challenge when it comes to the funding is that if i built a business and i need um to bump in more capital right now to scale the business i think that the options are very very limited at the current point in time so lots of lots of these startups they have to offer services rely on their cash flow to finance their expansion which is a very exhausting process and lots of worthy startups and worthy companies that could scale otherwise with external capital it has to provide services that’s not in the core to be able to attract the capital so all these are challenges and i think it becomes a matter of maturing and and here become comes the endurance part i think there are some very very interesting stories for the ones who were able to make it of how they actually went through downsizing like some of the success stories that exists right now some of them went into 70 downsizing so if they had a team of 20 they ended up just they lost most of their team and they ended up like small group and most likely they had like delays and uh and their salaries and lots of lots of challenges um but they went through that so they learned how to go through that another part is the flexibility of pivoting okay i was intending to do that but all right let’s say that this didn’t work so now like i say that this is uh we have the stigma around failure but so for me to convince that this didn’t work probably it might seem like i’m saying that i was not uh i was not smart enough at the beginning so like but to me for me to have the courage to say that this didn’t work it’s time to visit and also to communicate this to the team around me and to even the parents everyone who’s looking at the startup to do this pivot also this becomes quite like a sharp change um so all these are challenges but it comes down to the tense and endurance of the entrepreneurs are starting to process okay since we are running out of time i have just one final question for you if you would like to answer it briefly you touched on a very important issue which is funding perhaps this is an essential issue when it comes to entrepreneurship how would young entrepreneurs convince investors with their ideas oh um the good thing is that i’m writing a book about that i’m writing a small book about that and um like i think it comes down to a core belief in what they are doing understanding of what investors are looking for because you have to look at it from an investor standpoint an investor would like to put right now ten thousand pounds in one year it’s gonna be a hundred thousand so an investor someone who puts ten thousand and it gets ten percent of the company after a year the ten percent of the company right now equals hundred thousand so that’s what he’s thinking about that one challenge is that entrepreneurs usually get there with the attitude is that this is my i’m passionate about i’m gonna talk to you about myself and my ideas and what you’re doing you have to think about it from the perspective of investors is that i’m going to give you a stake in this company and this company to have the potential to grow and in order for them to be able to communicate that there are some hard scales and there are some soft skills the hard skills comes into understanding the potential for scale the potential for growth and being able to calculate and and kind of um do this properly and on the other hand he has to communicate this and have the charisma to convince the investors that i am the qualified entrepreneur to tap into this market opportunity and to scale this company so i think with the balance of the hard skills and the softer skills if i’m convincing right convincing you right now with the facts and figures and you see that i’m qualified enough most likely you’re going to put money on the table so a balance between both of that that’s that’s usually what gets entrepreneurs to respond to formula of success

yeah okay mr abdulrahman meghdi water an entrepreneur uh entrepreneur and expert uh thank you very much for shedding light on this very important topic and coming today thank you very much

thank you well indeed thank you

Using the #NewBasecamp to stay organized!

It’s an ongoing challenge for most of us to remain organized, using 37Signals suite for all my organizations and project management efforts, I’ve created couple of projects to both manage my executive tasks across all organizations and another one to manage my personal life.

Abdo Executive Tasks

Abdo Personal Projects

These projects helped me to put everything I should do in one place for a while, till it became quite hard for me to follow-up with both of them in a timely manner, having the New Basecamp introduced, I’ve decided to merge both projects in one relying on the fact that both include tasks and discussions that I’m the only one should have access to.

I’ll be experimenting with using the project to organize both my personal life and executive tasks and will keep you posted on how things go, how do you stay organized yourself?