All posts by Banque du Liban Accelerate

Hadi Farnoud – Camva – Tehran

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Farnoud

Hadi studied MSc Information and Business Systems in University of Surrey, UK. He started his first startup, Acamedium, after graduation. Upon slow growth of Acamedium, he started a second startup, Any1 Ltd, an app for airport parking.

Hadi moved back to Iran two years ago. The opportunity in Iran made him decide to stay in Iran. He started a popular weekly meetup for entrepreneurs, Hamfekr. Hamfekr is in 15 cities of Iran and had more than 4000 people attened so far.

In September 2014, Hadi started his Iranian startup, Camva. Camva is a website builder that allows average joe to design a beautiful mobile-ready website without any technical knowledge. It’s an integrated A to Z solution that makes this process very easy to do.

Lebanese Cuisine

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Leb Cuisine

A unique cultural history has helped to make Lebanese food the most popular of all Middle Eastern cuisines. Since BDL Accelerate 2015 will gather attendees, entrepreneurs, and investors from over 50 countries, it’s only natural to have Lebanese cuisine served at the 2-day conference and who better than Al Balad to do so!

Since Al Balad opened in 2000 with Beirut at the heart of its concept celebrating Lebanese cuisine, Al Balad has revolutionized the food sector by providing Lebanese dishes and delicacies as casual dining making it the ultimate trend throughout the region.

BDL Accelerate 2015 Team Visit Universities

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uni

 

Our team is at USEK today rolling in a golf cart through campus to prepare for presentations. In the spirit of finding the next generation of entrepreneurs, the BDL Accelerate 2015 team has been visiting all major universities in Lebanon to inspire youth to join the startup movement and attend the conference. NRJ Radio, Aghani, and Nostalgie have been tagging along to spread the word further and farther. High school students are also encouraged to attend, with a couple of schools already scheduling class trips for their senior students.

Idea Stage Workshop: Session #4

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The fourth workshop session started with an overview of how things will roll at the BDL Accelerate 2015 conference next week. Following that SETT checked out the teams’ prototypes of what they’ve been developing in response to the Reimagine Lebanon theme assigned to them.

The teams were then provided with a business model canvas so that instead of spending months planning and researching and then writing a lengthy business plan, the teams can jot down their hypotheses in a framework called the ‘business model canvas.’ The business model canvas allows them to look at all 9 building blocks of their business on one page, each component containing a series of hypotheses they need to test.

The workshop is the fourth of five weekly workshops in the series of design thinking workshops offered by SETT, part of the BDL Accelerate Idea Stage Startup competition that is sponsored by Daher Capital and themed Reimagining Lebanon. 24 participants were selected and assembled into 8 teams of 3 to develop a startup idea to address a problem assigned to them. The participating teams will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges in front of an audience during Banque du Liban Accelerate 2015 for the chance to win 5,000 USD.

Colm Reilly – PA Consulting Group – London

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Speaker21

Colm Reilly has substantial experience enabling public and private sector organisations to deliver substantial benefit by improving project performance. He works in technology-rich environments on complex project start-ups, turn-rounds and change programmes, and has accelerated system and product developments.

Over the past 10 years Colm has worked with a range of government clients to support their economic development objectives by directly working with companies to develop and expand their regional footprints.

Colm has also started and exited three companies in the past – Eureto, Aviareto and Lucid. These clients have included UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), JETRO (Japan), the State of British Columbia, Department of Enterprise and Trade (Ireland), and the Central Bank of Lebanon acting as CEO of the UK Lebanon Tech Hub.

For these organisations he has operated a number of accelerators and start-up environments including Sirus, UKLTH and Andromeda.