Background
Economic development in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) faces a critical challenge in the 21st century: its youth. With 65% under the age 30, the MENA region has one the youngest populations in the world while having one of the highest youth unemployment rates of over 25%. The long term prosperity and stability of the region hinges on the opportunities afforded to this generation. This is a dire situation that requires action.
The most effective way of dealing with this challenge is to empower more youth to take control of their own destinies through entrepreneurship. However, as things stand today the MENA region lacks several key components critical for a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem. These gaps range from the lack of awareness at both the educational and professional levels, to the scarcity of mentors and early stage investors.
YallaStartup is a project that aims to foster early stage and youth entrepreneurship in the MENA region. Our goal is to address the gaps in the early stage entrepreneurial ecosystem through a variety of programs both online and offline.
Our programs will focus on the following areas:
- Building an online network of entrepreneurs, investors and service providers.
- Facilitating startup creation through pre-seed investments.
- Knowledge exchange through community building and mentorship.
- Education through classes and online content
- Awareness of startup activity through press coverage
Yalla in Arabic slang means “come on, do it” and the name YallaStartup was chosen to convey a call to action for all young innovators to become entrepreneurial and transform their ideas into businesses. Once established we hope to replicate the model in other emerging markets.
To learn more about our programs and activities please visit www.yallastartup.org
Leaders
Habib Haddad YGL, Founder & CEO Yamli
Sami Shalabi, MTS, Google.
Elie El-Khoury, Founder, Woopra
YGL Task force members:
Mina AlOraibi, Abdulsalam Haykal, Emile Cubeisy, Khaldoon Tabaza, Soraya Salti
Looking for
- Domain experts to act as hands on mentors for young entrepreneurs and startups.
- Domain experts to develop legal templates necessary for entrepreneurship in the specific countries
- Commitments from investors/funds to take part of our pre-seed investment program.
- Professionals and educators in the region to support entrepreneur development
- Media contacts to help raise the profile of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs.
Contact Habib Haddad
10 Comments
Khaled Hakim
Posted January 26th
To stay in theme… Yalla guys, keep up the good work. Nice to see the fruition of a creative band of Arab youth…
Best of luck in your endeavors…
Alex T
Posted January 26th
I work for a prominent business and financial information site covering all sectors in the Middle East and North Africa. Many of our members are senior level executives in the financial and related industries
Time and again people talk about the lack of expertise, investment and good business plans in the startup industry.
Several initiatives have been started and stalled because whats really lacking is the right group of people to get something off the ground, who can attract the right people and who are willing to give back to the community their insight and experience
At least two of the leaders of Yallastartup that i personally know; are themselves entrepreneurs. They know what its like to go through the whole process in the Middle East and have managed to very quickly turnaround a product that caters to a specific need.
One of the most important steps they’ve taken is transparency, which can be seen in the Q and A that features right on the homepage.
This is not hands off approach, this is something that will allow you to connect directly to the people that have the experience and are willing to share it.
If you’re looking for a yellow pages, or a passive read, write then go away experience, this is not for you. Yallastartup is about getting your hands dirty and getting out as much as you put in.
Beatrice Ghorra
Posted January 26th
All the best!
Munther
Posted January 26th
all the mentioned above already available on http://ArabCrunch.NET which is from most popular blog about startups in the Arab world and in the top 25 list worldwide: ArabCrunch.com
Rafik Dammak
Posted January 26th
Yallastartup idea is simple like any terrific one that can change dramatically the situation in Arab world. It foster awareness and capacity building on entrepreneurship to allow young people to start their own business by learning from successful Arab entrepreneur and not waiting for governments (inefficient) intervention that we get used to wait.
Randa Nuseibeh
Posted January 26th
Best of luck guys!
Ghaida
Posted January 27th
Such a fantastic initiative. There’s a severe lack of internet startups in the Arab world. hopefully such initiatives will change the situation.
Mouna Moussi
Posted January 28th
Great Initiative!
Walid Hanna
Posted February 18th
Great initiative, bravo!
Being an entrepreneur and currently a start-up VC fund manager, I am constantly looking for innovative businesses to invest in, we hope to see Yalla Start-up become the premier venue to connect entrepreneurs with investors and progressively fill in the Equity Gap, thumbs up!
Mounir
Posted April 28th
Excellent idea and initiative – willing to help. Can offer project management expertise.