Published on Arabian Blue Ocean, September 26, 2017
Ramzy Ismail, Techstars Dubai director, gave a splash about his personal journey as entrepreneur and how good he feels supporting newbies founders to launch their startups. His talk was the kick off of the Founder School program at GlassQube Coworking, a series of events organized with StartAD.
He addressed a packed audience and highlighted the importance of building a trust-based community that believes in #givefirst because “it is a concept connected with your own karma.”
Ismail insisted in the five key elements of the successful startup: “team, team, team, market and product,” and he made the point about the importance of the chemistry between the co-founders and alerted that lack of trust will lead to nowhere.
He recommended future entrepreneurs to cultivate a double attitude –“be stubborn & resilient as well as humble & coachable”- to walk through the hard path of launching their own companies.
Techstars Dubai Accelerator in collaboration with GINCO will accept applications until October 15, 2017. The program will begin on January 21, 2018 and the Demo Day of the first ten companies will take place on April 18, 2018. The program expects to attract project working on enterprise technology, transportation, construction, IoT, robotics, and wellness.
Projects selected at Techstars will go through mentor engagement & feedback, execution and preparation for fundraising. When the time comes for customer discovery, the best strategy is “the listening process and to have a credible connection to the customer,” Ismail insisted.
Techstars connects founders with investors and helps them to #domorefaster by providing access to capital, mentorship, marketing, business development, customer acquisition and recruitment.
Techstars supports teams and do not invest in solo entrepreneurs neither in companies that outsource in third countries, Ismail explained.
