Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series #10
At Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series, we are privileged to host an informal gathering of local and global entrepreneurs, investors and active ecosystem players. We thought many who are visiting during the new year holidays would find these conversations useful. We got exactly what we wished for at the Breakfast Series #10 last Thursday. Nearly 40 people, including many from abroad, showed up to produce fantastic conversations.
The format was based on Lean Coffee, an agenda less but structured one where everyone got to introduce themselves, nominate a topic to be discussed and then vote for the most popular ones by the group.
These two topics were selected for discussion:
How can we connect those Iranians outside the country with those who are active inside Iran to make a unified purposeful community whose members support one another to make entrepreneurial efforts more focused and productive?
How it is possible to globalize Iranian startups?
The four streams discussed as part of the first topic were:
- Holding events similar to IV Breakfast Series
The contributors were tremendously reiterating the value and effectiveness of the events by mentioning different experience of how they could make benefit from events to understand startup trends and ecosystem players.
- Creating mentorship platform
A good number of contributors believed that a platform should be built that connects entrepreneurship ecosystem players to each other in order to help the new entrants. A truly seamless communication tool that is built by trust among members.
- Broadcasting ecosystem content
Creating, aggregating, curating and broadcasting content around the Iranian entrepreneurship ecosystem was considered a valuable tool to create a bond between those who are actually working in Iran in the field and those who are willing to get involved from outside the country (e.g. investors, angles, VCs, mentors and coaches).
- Startup education
Among all the participants it was consented that Iranian startup members have a great opportunity ahead of them to increase their presentation skills in order to be able to effectively and efficiently approach investors and mentors to receive exact consultation or appropriate fund.
The four streams discussed as part of the second topic were:
- Too soon to be global
Some believed that going global is too soon for Iranian established businesses let alone for startups; claiming that some hindrances are really debilitative (e.g. sanctions, standards). However they were completely conformist to the fact that future is global.
- Scarcity of global mindset and vision
A few number of people believed that there must not be any limitations for the Iranian startups to be reluctant to enter the global market. The only deficient in the account is the global mindset and vision of the ecosystem players.
- Cliché markets or emerging markets
There were a good number of the participants who believed that for gaining strength we must focus on clichés to exercise and get strength then go after emerging market opportunities while there were some people on the opposite of the continuum who believed from the scratch we can enter global markets.
- Start now and from ourselves
Almost all the participants agreed that the best way to start is to start now and from ourselves. We must do whatever we can right now and should not wait for the perfect time to come by very simple things. For example: Introducing people to one another and trying to foster an atmosphere of synergy through communication that leads to cooperation and collaboration.
At the end we asked participants to name two words form the first and second question that was mesmerizing in their mind. Here is the result of the four most popular:
Platform, Global, Standards, Trust
We believe the more open the dialogue, the better it will allow innovation and bringing different disciplines including investors together. These series were started to increase the dialogue opportunities among ecosystem players and especially to bridge the gap between those who are willing to know more about Iranian startup environment and meet up with other ecosystem players. This will increase openness and transparency.
We’re thankful that our guests constantly help us improve these events by the feedback they provide:
I found the topics interesting to discuss and I liked the fact that the event was composed of limited number of attendees from different backgrounds.
Finally, if you’d like to be added to the breakfast mailing list, please sign up or follow us on LinkedIn.
This is the tenth in a series of posts about Iratel Ventures Events. 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 ourFundingBot to prepare for your next VC meeting.
Thanks to Dr. Golnaz Borghei, Dr. Fardad Zand, Mahyar Khattak and Hamidreza Sarabadani for their contribution.