What is N2V?

What is N2V?

Very often I meet people who have heard about N2V, or have read about it, but have not fully understood its unique business model. I end up explaining the model in detail until they reach the “Ah…ha” moment. In this post, I will share what led people to that “Ah..ha” moment.

N2V is Not…

First of all, although we have our Venture Capital investment programs, but N2V is not a Venture Capital fund management firm. I mean, we are not managing a specific amount of other investors’ money for a specific number of years.

So What is N2V?

N2V is simply a holding company, or more specifically, an internet holding company. This, in very simple words, means that we own and manage a group of companies. Those companies are independently registered and are owned fully or partially by N2V. Each of them has its own management and operations teams, however we at N2V are the group’s management team or the holdings team.

Employees…!

How many employees work for N2V? Well, for N2V holding, the group’s management, we are a small team, but for N2V companies, there are more than 200 people working for our companies all over the region. Our companies have offices and/or partners in almost all Arab countries.

What are those Companies?

We have two types of companies: Platform Companies and Portfolio Companies.

Platform companies are mainly service based companies, or the ones that offer infrastructure and essential services for any internet company in the Middle East region.

Examples:

• - Net Advantage: our online advertising platform. NetAd currently helps several Arabic websites in monetization through advertising. It is basically an advertising network, it brings ads for websites for a commission. So website owners can save the huge costs of sales teams and get focused on the website core competency.
• - OneCard: our online payment platform. OneCard currently helps several Arabic websites (especially e-commerce websites and online games) in monetization through providing easy to use and secure online payment tool that is used by millions of consumers in MENA region.
• - SNSEO: our online marketing platform. SNSEO provides comprehensive online media marketing services including social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
• - N2V Development House: our web design and development platform. Mainly to provide web startups with a professional web design and development services.

Portfolio Companies are mainly online product based companies.

Examples:

• - HawaaWorld.com: the region’s largest online women community with more than 7 million unique visits a month.
• - Mubasher.info: the region’s largest financial portal that covers stock market information and news in all Arab countries.
• - Yebab.com: the leading Arab wedding portal, directory and social wedding-planning network.

So What Do you Do at N2V?

As a holding company, we at N2V group’s management have one main task: Maximize the value of N2V’s holdings. How? We do the following:

1. Help our companies (both platform and portfolio) on a strategic level through board representation.

2. Provide direct support for our companies (both platform and portfolio) to accelerate their growth, this mainly includes PR, HR, accounting and legal support.

3. Expand through:

3.1. Building new companies internally. We do that by hiring entrepreneurs-in-residence or what we call the “Start Up” team of N2V. We provide them with all our resources for one reason: to start new companies! I should mention here that we believe in iterations, in try and error. So we allow them to try new concepts and test them in the market. If they click, we spin them off as separate entities. If not, we kill them and try other new concepts.

3.2. Acquiring established internet companies. If we come across a company that fits our criteria and adds value to either our platform or portfolio companies, we are open to acquire it.

3.3. Building joint-venture companies. We also expand by joining forces with other established companies to try new concepts and start new internet companies that will be owned jointly by the two parties.

3.4. Investing in internet startups. This is where our venture capital investment programs work. We invest in highly selective early and growth stage web and mobile web startups (not ideas! At least an alpha version). Here I should mention that we don’t only invest cash. We invest a package of cash and in-kind services provided by our platform companies and/or our long term service providers (who give us preferential rates), in return, we ask for equity stake in those startups (up to 40%).

In this context, we build, acquire, join or invest-in companies that we can add value to not only by cash, but also by our platforms and support. In other words, if you only need cash, you can go to any VC fund, but if you need a professional help in advertising, marketing, payment, design, development, PR, HR, accounting, legal issues, or if you need to have offices/representation in almost all Arab countries, and if you think that there could be a potential synergy between your startup and our current portfolio, you can come to us.