While tech hubs across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region have sprung up and several regional start ups have gone onto opening offices in New York or Berlin, the aim of many is to go global and the best place to do so is in the most global of all tech ecosystems in the world – San Francisco.
For most tech entrepreneurs, a move to Silicon Valley is not only a step in the right direction, it is a recognition of success and the hard work of creating and building up a company that has the potential to appeal to consumers worldwide.
It is after all where most of the money is, investments in tech start ups are the highest in this part of the globe and appetite for risk (and failure) seems insatiable.
Below we have five companies that began life in the Middle East and managed to make the transition to Silicon Valley.
1 – Qordoba
Founded by May Habib and Wassim AlSheikh in Dubai back in 2011, providing translation software to companies. Qordoba’s technology allows firms to localise their content and optimise it for different markets without the trouble of creating that content from scratch. The company underwent two rounds of investment in 2012 and 2015 and raised $4 million in total. It has an office in Berlin and last year, it opened its office in San Francisco. Today, Qordoba counts Cartier, Nestle and The World Bank among its clients and the company has won a patent in the US for its remote localisation technology.
2- Instabug – this Cairo start up was launched in 2013 as a tool for mobile app developers to find bugs on their platforms. Founded by Omar Gabr and Moataz Soliman, Instabug allows mobile users to report bugs in apps by simply shaking their phones and screenshots and device details are then sent to the developer to improve the app. About 50,000 bugs are reported every day for customers that include PayPal and Hilton Hotels. Having completed Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Class, Instabug raised $1.7m in seed investment led by Accel Partners and opened its San Francisco office earlier this year.
3- Saily – a location-based online marketplace for second-hand goods founded by Jihad Kawas and Dany Arnaout based in Lebanon in 2013 when they were aged 17. The two were met with a great deal of scepticism when aiming to launch their app for the US market, but after some interest in Texas, the app now has more than 800,000 users and 2000 new customers daily. Jihad learnt how to code at the age of 13 and became the first Arab to be accepted as one of 19 Theil fellows 2015. Founded by Peter Theil, co-founder of PayPal one of the most prominent Silicon Valley investors, the Fellowship offers $100,000 grants to young entrepreneurs and two-years of mentorship. Jihad is now based in San Francisco, developing Saily with the help of the Theil Fellowship.
4 – Instabeat – the brainchild of Hind Hobeika, an avid swimmer from Lebanon who developed a gadget that tracks a swimmer’s heart rate and provides real-time feedback on performance. The gadget, called the butterflye is mounted onto goggles and the prototype was first developed in 2010 at Stars of Science in Doha. Ms Hobeika has patented the optical sensor that measures the heart rate from the temporal artery. Instabeat turned to crowdfunding to raise the investment needed for production and design and is currently working on an app before commercial launch of the gadget in Spring 2017. Insteabeat is now headquartered in San Francisco and maintains an office in Beirut and last year Berytech Fund II committed to investing $4m in the company.
5 – Glanse – this fashion app began life in Silicon Valley, founded by Jordanian entrepreneur Evelyn Zoubi who ended up in San Francisco after taking part in Hilary Clinton’s TechWomen in 2012. The initiative was designed to strengthen relations between the US and Mena region through technology by providing women working in the tech sector in the Mid East a chance to experience life in Silicon Valley. Glanse is a mobile application that allows consumers to see clothing items on sale from brands like Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom and select the ones they wish to buy or reject by swiping right or left. It was founded in 2014 and raised $125,000 in seed investment and is now affiliated with more than 1,5000 clothing brands.