Tag Archives: Lebanon

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.

Cigdem Toraman – Startupbootcamp – Istanbul

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Speaker18

Startupbootcamp Istanbul Managing Director Çiğdem Toraman is one of the top experts on marketing, digital media, finance and commerce in Turkey.

She has consistently played leading roles in her career of 26 years, which include building the electronic trading system for Borsa Istanbul (BIST) in early 1990s, managing all of the research and development activities of Karma International in the second half of 1990s, a 10 year period in Doğan Holding (one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates) with positions including Group Director responsible for Media Sales, Marketing and Technology in Doğan Gazetecilik and later the General Manager of Doğan Online’s private shopping site.

After managing the country-wide operations of the global personalization technology company in 2012-2013, she started her own business in digital media (yumurtaliekmek.com – a specialized news site covering daily news and information in a format that is compatible with the perception of children and teenagers) and e-commerce (arkofcrafts.com – a unique shopping site with a vast collection of works from artists performing traditional Anatolian arts and crafts).

Along with these activities, Çiğdem also acts as a business advisor to several startups (Voscreen, Newsmeter, Neredennereye) and teaches classes at several companies and universities on e-commerce, digital and social media, business development, sales and marketing. She is also the marketing lead at StartersHub.