Silicon Valley AND/OR Tehran
In a recent trip to Silicon Valley, we set the objective of evaluating global growth opportunities for our startups. I met with like-minded…
In a recent trip to Silicon Valley, we set the objective of evaluating global growth opportunities for our startups. I met with like-minded investors and entrepreneurs to test our hypothesis: to what extent can connecting the two ecosystems contribute to growth of Iranian startups? In addition, I wanted to find those who can help bring the global vision that we are so passionate about to the Iranian tech ecosystem.
I met with nearly 70 amazing founders, VCs, angel investors and tech professionals during two weeks at meetings or events.
The first and most important observation was that everyone was genuinely helpful and welcoming. Every meeting led to a few others which positively compounded the experience. Many say, this #givefirst or paying it forward mindset is the undercurrent of all the success of Silicon Valley.
The majority (68%) agreed that there is a good correlation between success in Silicon Valley and how it can help the tech ecosystem in Iran. There were many excellent suggestions but they all converged to two central themes:
To study the Indian and Brazilian ecosystems and how these two leveraged their professional network outside the country to bridge the experience, funding and talent gaps. India built giant outsourcing companies such as Wipro and Infosys; this in turn developed more experienced managers paving the way for global Indians to build a base back home for business and family reasons (Mahmoud Pourmand discussed this with Saeed Amidi of Plug&Play in this podcast, listen to 5’30” to 9’30”). We have already initiated discussions with our network to find patterns that can be beneficial to our startup founders. This also ties in with our efforts on immigration to make it easy for tech entrepreneurs to travel and evaluate opportunities outside Iran.
The other was to arrange friendly and informal gatherings (not big events or conferences) for visiting Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and tech professionals who want to meet interesting and successful ecosystem players in Iran. Iratel Ventures breakfast series are the outcome of this suggestion and something we have been thinking about for some time. If you’d like to be notified about the dates and times, please sign up here or follow us on LinkedIn.
The remaining 32% mentioned that the market is small and high risk, they did not have access to a trusted network of individuals or didn’t see how they could add value. There were surprising ones too such as “I thought traveling to Iran is illegal due to sanctions”! #nocomment. We did discuss domestic market strength within the region and beyond, high quality of engineering graduates and high and growing internet and smartphone penetration.
At Iratel Ventures, our passion is to enable global growth, thinking and execution. Isolation of Iranian businesses for so many years makes this global vision too bold for some. For us, truly competitive businesses are built by strategic planning that predicts using all available local and global resources for growth at the right time. We have made it our business to provide (and create) this choice and to make global access as simple as possible for our portfolio founders.
The graph below shows the sectors represented in this qualitative research. We will keep updating this network to optimise resource availability for our startups:
If you’d like to be notified about our friendly gatherings, please sign up here or leave a comment.
This is the second in a series of posts about global growth and our professional services which was originally posted on our website here.