Tag Archives: Competition

Leila Janah – Sama Group & Laxmi – San Francisco

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Leila Janah

Leila Janah
Sama Group & Laxmi
Founder & CEO

Leila Janah is an award-winning social entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Sama Group, a family of impact enterprises dedicated to ending poverty and promoting social and economic justice. Laxmi is her latest venture under the Sama umbrella with the same mission: to Give Work.

Leila is passionate about creating a social impact and strongly believes that there is so much potential to fix a lot of the problems and issues the world faces through using techniques adapted from the private sectors. She founded Sama Group in 2008 which has grown three successful social ventures and helped cultivate a new industry, Impact Sourcing. Their focus is on poverty alleviation and access to health care, and they have successfully moved twenty-seven thousand people above the poverty line since they started by pioneering a new model called Impact Sourcing, which is using technology-based jobs to provide opportunity to people in very poor locations.

In 2014, Leila launched Laxmi, a luxury beauty brand that aims to enable their producers to earn at least three times the local average wages. Through this venture, as with all Sama Group enterprises, Leila aims to end global poverty by connecting the world’s poorest people to dignified work – impact sourcing.

Prior to Sama Group, Leila was a visiting scholar with the Stanford Program on Global Justice and Australian National University’s Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. She was a founding director of Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor, and a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.). She has also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let’s Go in Mozambique, Brazil, and Borneo. Leila is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Director of CARE USA, a 2012 TechFellow, recipient of the inaugural Club de Madrid Young Leadership Award, and in 2014, was the youngest person to win a Heinz Award.

Meet the Lebanese VCs

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As we’ve witnessed the rise in Lebanon’s startup ecosystem, we have witnessed the Lebanese venture capital market grow at an unprecedented pace in 2015.  Attributed to Banque du Liban’s initiative Circular 331 , which provides incentives to commercial banks to make equity investments in startups or venture capital funds, we have seen the VC scene flourish with several new players.

Below is a brief overview of the main VCs in Lebanon:

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Berytech
Berytech is the oldest firm in Lebanon to provide support to startups.Ever since its inception, Berytech has been driven by the will to create positive impactful initiatives.

Berytech was established in 2001 as an initiative from Saint Joseph University to provide an environment that startups and SMEs can be created and developed in through incubation, counseling, networking, funding, and company hosting.  It has since grown through the years to become an ecosystem of 3 incubators, 3 finds, 1 accelerator, and coworking support spaces.

Since its inception, Berytech has created over 90 startups, invested in over $6M in 15 ventures, and supported over 3000 entrepreneurs. Since BDL Circular 331, Berytech launched the Berytech Fund II, a $50 million Beirut based venture capital fund to invest in SMEs with high growth potential.  The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Berytech also announced in April 2015 the official launch of “Insure & Match Capital” (IM Capital), a new $15M Investment Fund under MENA Investment Initiative.

Speakers at BDL Accelerate 2015: Maroun N. Chammas, Chairman and CEO of Berytech, Dr. Nicolas Rouhana, Executive Director, Paul Chucrallah, Managing Director of Berytech fund2.

Workshop Sponsor

Leap Ventures
Leap Ventures was founded in 2014 as a venture capital firm specializing in investments in startups. The firm is based in Beirut and is also located in Dubai. It invests in the MENA region with a focus in Lebanon.  It considers investments between $3 million and $7 million and up to $12 million through partnerships with other firms. Leap Ventures closed off its first round at $71 million and is expected a second closing that would most likely increase the fund size to $80 million.

Leap Venture has 4 founding partners with over 70 years of combined experience in founding and exiting companies.  The partners are Henri Asseily, Hala Fadel, Herve Cuvilliez, and Noor Sweid, each with a wealth of experience as investors and entrepreneurs. The 4 have founded and scaled 8 companies leading to over $ 2 billion in exits, and have invested in a total of 47 startups to date.

mEVP

Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP)
Founded in 2010, MEVP is the region’s leading independent venture capital firm with over 25 investments since inception.  Conducting business across three offices in Beirut, Dubai, and Silicon Valley, MEVP’s assets under management have reached in excess of $100 million.

MEVP manages 4 funds:

–   MEVF I: Launched in 2010, Fund size $10M, sector: ICT companies with a focus on consumer services in MENA region, ticket size: $200k to $1M.

–     BBEF: Launched in 2013, Fund size $ 7.3M, sector: ICT companies with a focus on retail and F&B, ticket size range from $200K to $1M.

–     IMPACT: Launched in 2014, Fund size $70M, sector ICT companies and creative industries in Lebanon, ticket size range $1M to $5M.

–     MEVF II: Launch in 2015, Fund size: $15M first out of $30M, focus on ICT companies in MENA, ticket size range: $300k to $3M

MEVP has 3 managing partners; Walid Hanna, who has led more than 30 investments and has been active in venture capital and in new venture development for over 15 years; Walid Mansour, also has more than 15 years of experience in venture capital, strategy and corporate finance; and Ihsan Jawad, based in Dubai, an internet entrepreneur who had founded Zawya.com and co-founded HoneyBee Tech Ventures.

The Power of Hackathons

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The rail industry in the UK organized Hack the Rails – a 48-hour hackathon that took place last weekend. Over 100 developers and designers from around the world traveled by train from London to York over the span of 2 days while tapping away on their laptops in an attempt to solve overcrowdings, delays, and improve WiFi on the rail network. The best ideas from the hackathon will be presented to ministers and rail executives next month and the winning plan will be awarded a £25,000 investment fund to help get their idea off the ground. The hackathon aims to change the customer experience problem the rail network has been facing.

Similarly, BDL Accelerate 2015 is hosting two hackathons, Web & Mobile Hackathon and Wearables Hackathon, that will be tackling challenges that the public is faced with on a daily basis in Lebanon. The participants of the Web & Mobile Hackathon will be provided with a brief that will consist of a specific theme and the contestants will have to collaboratively brainstorm and work extensively to find a web or mobile solution to a specific issue that is shared with them at the start of the hackathon. This hackathon is organized by MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab & WDS with cash prizes of $6,000.

As for the Wearables Hackathon, it’s powered Innovo, a DNY Group company that will be providing electronic components, a whole bunch of sensors, a wearable sleeve, 3D printing capabilities, and more to the participants grouped in teams, who will dream up and hack together wearables to enhance lifestyle or sports in 36 to 48 hours. In addition to the $6,000 cash prize, the participants will also have the opportunity to pursue their project at Innovo’s lab after the hackathon is over.

Hackathons are considered as a great way to start solving real life problems, as a training session, or as a way to prepare participants and educate them on the process of solving issues. Think of a hackathon as the start of a long journey rather than 36-48 hour hackathons as a solution. Anyone from any background or age can participate in the hackathons hosted by BDL Accelerate 2015. 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 participate in the hackathons. 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.

Loïc Le Meur – LeWeb – San Francisco

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LOICLoïc Le Meur
LeWeb
Co-Founder

Prolific serial entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur is based in San Francisco. He has co-founded the #1 European tech event LeWeb and is an active business angel. He was an early investor in LinkedIn, Evernote and Lending Club, among many others. He was named one of “Europe’s Tech25″ by the Wall Street Journal as well as one of the “25 most influential people” on the web by Business Week. He is featured in The Economist as one of “Europe’s Blooming Entrepreneurs”, and is a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum where he helps select the next Tech Pioneers and is a regular speaker.

Loïc founded his first company B2L, a web agency, in 1996 while he was enrolled in business school at HEC in Paris. He used money from a student loan to fund it and the car manufacturer he interned with became his first client for whom he built one of the first car dealership websites. Loïc sold B2L 2 years after he graduated from HEC to BBDO. He then launched and sold a web hosting company RapidSite and the same with Tekora.

At the World Economic Forum in 2003, Loïc met entrepreneur Joi Ito who introduced him to blogging and he also met Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman to which he became an early angel investor. With his new found love for social media networking, that same year, Loïc acquired one of the first blogging services in Europe, Ublog, with the goal of building it into a global business and in order to achieve that goal, he merged with Six Apart (Now Say Media) where he became Executive Vice President EMEA.

In 2004, Loïc and his ex-wife Geraldine founded LeWeb as LeBlog, a meetup for bloggers which rapidly evolved into a tool to inspire entrepreneurs and not only bloggers. Today LeWeb in Paris brings together 3,500 entrepreneurs, brands, geeks, investors and press from 76 countries.

After moving to San Francisco in 2007, Loïc founded Seesmic, a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. Hootsuite acquired Seesmic in 2012.

Today Loïc still works on LeWeb and continues to angel invest in startups around the world. He will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 on December 10-11.

Idea Stage Workshop: Session #3

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The third workshop session was kicked off with the formulation of insights about the Reimagine Challenge theme each team was assigned. Insights have to be supported by observations and offer a glimpse into what people think or feel.

The teams were asked to develop a mind map using keywords, highlighting emphasis and categorizing ideas. The diagram is used to visually organize information by drawing the concept in the center of the page to which the associated representation of ideas, such as images and key words, are added directly connecting to the central concept with ideas branched out.

The teams proceeded to ideation, the final phase of the workshop. In this phase they were asked to chain write storm, the process of writing an idea and passing it on to the next person to build on the idea. They participated in pair brainstorming, in which teammates sit down in pairs to write ideas for several rounds until every teammate has done the exercise with the other, and finally draw storming, where they are to draw their idea.

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The workshop is the third of five weekly workshops in the series of design thinking workshops offered by SETT, part of the BDL Accelerate Idea Stage Startup competition 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.