The Entrepreneur Ship Story
The Entrepreneur Ship Story
After being in the venture capital industry for few years, I started to think that lots of the topics that we discuss on daily basis became rules of thumb and everybody knows them. I mean we talk every day about creating the next big thing, startups life cycles, investment stages, cofounders, business models, starting small and growing fast, exits, etc… and we started to forget that what we talk about might be news to some new entrepreneurs who are yet to learn about this.
In the past couple of years, I met great Arab entrepreneurs who are extremely passionate about an idea or a business concept, but know nothing about how to raise funds or even how to start. So I noticed the need to create some educational content to raise awareness and educate such entrepreneurs and guid them through the stages of investment in a startup life cycle.
The challenge was how to simplify such information, and deliver it in a quick and direct to the point approach? How to avoid (but also explain!) the common terminology in the venture capital industry that might not be easy to understand since each term has a specific definition?
One of the best ways to explain anything is to tell a story. So I decided to tell a story of an entrepreneur who started from a simple idea, and worked hard to implement it and start a business around it, then grew it to become a big company that was later acquired by a giant corporation.
Now comes the challenge of what would be the story, should it be a local story regardless of the kind of business or industry, or it must be a web/mobile startups story?! Well it doesn’t matter a lot if we project a local experience on a web/mobile startup experience!
Well, Arabs in the Gulf area used to be business people trading goods with India through the ocean. So shipping was big at the time, and big ships are still used till now as part of the historical heritage in all Arab Gulf countries. So the simplest thing ever was to relate “entrepreneurship” with this by simply separating the word into two different words: “Entrepreneur” and “Ship” and there comes the story!
It’s a story of an Arab entrepreneur who wanted to build the next big “Ship”, and throughout the story, I explain several topics that entrepreneurs need to know to start and grow their startup companies and to raise capital for all stages in the startup life cycle. Along the way, I added a web-preneur perspective to relate the story to real world terms and facts.
The story will be in Arabic Language soon inshallah, and we will add a place were readers can comment on each slide or even ask questions about specific stages or event in the story.
Before I leave you with the story, I would like to thank Ramzi Fawakhiri, who helped in finalizing the story slides and launching its website.
Enjoy The Entrepreneur Ship Story, and please share it with your friends and colleagues and send us your feedback and suggestions.
