How did I get into the VC Business?
How did I get into the VC Business?
After graduating from Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Amman Jordan as an Electronic Engineer, I started my career as a Studio System Engineer at Jordan TV, where I decided to get an MBA to leave that boring technical job I had there and to shift to the business side of the world.
During my 3 years of executive MBA at New York Institute of Technology in Amman, I worked for few web companies, I started my own web company that didn’t succeed, and I started to work as a freelance business consultant for European companies who wanted to access the Middle East market. During this period, I participated and won in the QRCE business plan competition.
Next, I worked as a marketing manager for Empretec, the UN’s behavioral training program for entrepreneurs. I can’t describe how much I learned from the 100 or more entrepreneurs I worked with. It was a life changing experience.
Then I was approached by the Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF) to manage its Startups Development Program. I worked on helping technology entrepreneurs to enhance their business plans, develop their business models, educate them on how to pitch their ideas to investors and how to negotiate deal terms, and to introduce them to potential angel and venture capital investors as well.
At ASTF, I worked with more than 30 technology startups and only few of them got investment. I learned how tough and time consuming it is to get a venture capital investment. Band because I was supposed to match between VCs and Entrepreneurs, I learned how to evaluate startups as a VC not only as an entrepreneur.
During this time, I participated and won in the MIT Arab business plan competition, but couldn’t raise capital for my own web idea!! Typically, all investors requested me to prove the concept first, and then approach them for seed stage investment. Well, even to do that, I needed investment, and I couldn’t find one crazy angel investor to provide me with the needed resources.
So I came up with the idea of “Beta Ventures”, an accelerator for web startups where ideas can be converted into startups after passing the proof-of-concept phase. It’s a customized Y-Combinator or TechStars model for the Middle East. I pitched the idea to few institutional investors and thank God finally got interest from N2V for which I work now.
At N2V I officially shifted to the other side of the table to become a VC. I started 4 investment programs at N2V and one of them is Café Startups, which is an enhanced version of Beta Ventures Idea.
Frankly speaking, the entrepreneur in me is still on fire, and I still hope to find a technical partner/co-founder with whom I can start the next big thing inshalla!!
