Startup Weekend Damascus launches this month to create a 'paradigm shift' in Syria
It goes without saying that Startup Weekend Damascus
will be unlike the other Startup Weekends that have cropped up
around the Arab world over the past three years.
Ever since it began in Ramallah, Amman, and Beirut, and soon spread
to Cairo, Dubai, Casablanca, and beyond, Startup Weekend, the
54-hour business building blitz, has become a catalyst for students
and aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their prototyping skills and
take their first steps towards launching a web or mobile company in
the Middle East.
In Damascus, where strife has all but annihilated small businesses,
Startup Weekend will demonstrate the resilience of a community
determined to create possibility and cultivate hope.
“This will be the first educational event talking about how to
build a startup in Syria,” says Ahmed Sufian Bayram, one of the
event’s organizers. On February 18th, 19th, and 20th, the event
will gather aspiring entrepreneurs not just to develop new business
ideas, but to connect to an international community.
Mentors and speakers will include Abdulsalam Haykal, the founder of
Haykal Media, Rania Succar, Head of Brand Solutions for North
America at Google, and several other Syrian entrepreneurs,
including Kinan Sweidan of
Shooofi, Anwar Almojarkesh of Braci,
Fadi Mujahid of
Game Power 7, Leen Al Zaibak of Jusoor, and Ammar Joukhadar of
Elixir, among others, including Oasis500’s Karim Samakie, all
of whom will join the event online. Wikilogia, a local group that
promotes collaboration and an open source philosophy on the
web, will join as a community partner to host a
bootcamp on February 15th and 16th.
“Our aim here is to establish a new chapter in the Syria
entrepreneurial ecosystem full with actions, [to] draw the
attention of entrepreneurs in all over the world to [its] untapped
talent and creativity,” Bayram writes from Damascus, where he is an
advocate for
collaborative consumption and the MENA connector for community
OuiShare. “In addition, it would show the world the power and
enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs and their willing[ness] to change
the world.”
The hope is that entrepreneurs still living in the country can
reinvigorate their businesses and create new opportunities by
connecting to developers and team members abroad. “Several
students and entrepreneurs have been building startups, but they
lost members of their teams,” as those members fled or were
affected by war, Bayram explains.
“For each business that doesn’t have a developer, we will have
networking,” he says. The winner will receive investment, to ensure
that the startup will continue beyond the event. While Syria
doesn’t have a startup incubator, Startup Weekend Damascus is
developing a partnership with one, Sufian says, and accelerators in
Silicon Valley are also reaching out.
Thus far, demand is high. In the first 24 hours after registration
opened, the organizers saw 120 signups. “We are creating a paradigm
shift in the entrepreneurial culture here in Damascus,” Bayram
says.
Interested aspiring entrepreneurs, mentors and speakers can register here, and contact the team on Twitter at @SW_Damascus.