24 months of working with entrepreneurs
Purpose and Global Entrepreneurship
Purpose and Global Entrepreneurship
Iratel Ventures was born two years ago out of our conviction that entrepreneurship propels humanity forward and that we can play a part in empowering global entrepreneurs.
Since then, we have been lucky to have invested in 6 outstanding startups; listened to 1000+ entrepreneurs, raised funding from some of the most inspiring individuals in the Iranian tech community; sat down with top investors from GV (formerly Google Ventures), KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Accel and Amadeus Capital and co-invested with Sarava, Plug & Play, Techstars and many more respected venture investors. We’ve also hosted nearly 500 people at our Breakfast Series; screened 700+ resumes for newly created jobs, pledged a part of our exit proceeds to good causes and last but not least built a focused team whose highest purpose is empowering global Iranian entrepreneurs.
From the outset, we believed that entrepreneurship can only be global. We believe an entrepreneur should have a purpose much larger than themselves. This purpose should be to benefit every human being on the planet, directly or indirectly. We are certain every great business that has ever created value does this in its own unique way.
One of the best models to frame and articulate your purpose is the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek:
This simple yet powerful concept helped us articulate our organisation’s purpose. It enabled us to focus our energy where things come naturally to us and put our productivity at its optimum level. This is what many call working in the “flow”. We are thankful to have found our calling and have found a way to use it on a daily basis as venture capitalists.
Iran and Global Entrepreneurship
We came up with a modified version of Golden Circle and wrote an explanation of how it can affect long-term value in this post in November 2014. This became how we thought about our purpose at Iratel Ventures:
We looked at our big-picture and communal why. This was empowering global entrepreneurs. In our quest for empowering the best, we’ve experienced the need for explicitly working from a bigger purpose.
We then looked at how we can make this happen. We looked at our own expertise and position in society. Where we can actually add a lot of value. This was when we decided to focus on entrepreneurship amongst Iranians. Given the success of the Iratel group and our experience witnessing this success first hand in Iran, the Middle East and Europe, we knew that we can model this success and empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to take it to the next level. We then built (and are still in the process of optimising) processes that facilitate this journey. We are calling this the Global Entrepreneur Experience (GEX). This is proprietary and unique to us and is what we call our “flow” or “genius”.
The next step was easy. The what is whatever we can do to help the entrepreneurial ecosystem that is linked to the Iranian technology community. In order to empower the best, we have to have the right tools. We decided that a venture capital platform (fund + innovation centre) is the best tool to achieve our goals. The fund enables us to be world-class and learn from the best. The innovation centre, which is our own version of an re-acceleration programme, enables us to channel this learning to and from local markets and connect startups and entrepreneurs with the global scene.
We’ve seen that there is a real need for explicitly working from this bigger purpose. It is something that we continue to work closely with our entrepreneurs on.
This is the second in a series of posts about our investment portfolio companies which was also posted on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from teams with crazy (but commercial) startups. Get in touch or attend our breakfast series. Finally, don’t forget to get your IV Score or talk to our FundingBot to prepare for your next VC meeting.
Iratel Ventures (@iratelventures) | Twitter
The latest Tweets from Iratel Ventures (@iratelventures). We invest in entrepreneurs building global companies. Venture…twitter.com
Iratel Ventures
Iratel Ventures is a VC firm investing in global entrepreneurs, those who understand borders but are not limited by…www.linkedin.com