Tech Eid Didani Tehran
Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series #13
Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series #13
We had the privilege of hosting an informal gathering of local and global entrepreneurs, investors and active ecosystem players at the thirteenth Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series event. This was our special Eid Didani event which coincided with the Norooz (Persian New Year). At the next few sessions, discussions will be based on 20 emerging technologies. The technologies for this event were:
ADM (Application Development & Maintenance)
Cloud Services
You can find the full list of technologies we’re tracking here.
Initially, the group discussed the current startup ecosystem environment and the fact that 1396, the Iranian new year, is an election year and may be a difficult environment for many startups to raise funding or operate in. However, many were optimistic and when asked for their new year objectives, the theme was focus. As investors, focus is music to our ears. We wish that every entrepreneurial team is laser focused on their purpose and startup mission. One of the attendees plans to go to Antarctica in October this year. We wish him well and would like to see more pictures like this!
The group discussed the lack of real cloud services or even the lack of a market for such cloud services. The smaller startups all use the standard hosting services from the ISPs and the larger companies have all set up their own infrastructure. There are unusual ways that some startups are running their operations on non-Iranian cloud service providers but it seems to be the only way for now. One of the attendees was a cloud services entrepreneur setting up a public cloud which will soon provide world class services to Iranian startups.
The discussion around app development and maintenance centred around the fact that almost all Iranian startups are centred around mobile and consumer. You rarely have enterprise or b2b applications. We highlighted the necessity of thinking about development and maintenance separately if we want to produce high quality apps and many agreed that this is an area of improvement which is especially hard for startups that need to allocate resources efficiently. It seems the ecosystem is currently at an early stage where maintenance services are still not at the top of the agenda.
Finally, it was decided to keep the discussions going in a semi-open environment and build a support platform for entrepreneurs which would become Breakfast Series’ digital twin. It was agreed that a semi-open Slack team would be the primary communication channel post events. Invitation to the Slack channel will be sent to the participants who provide their email address at the Breakfast Event and show an interest in being part of the discussions on the Breakfast Series Slack channel within a more selective Iratel Ventures Community.
The next event will be held on Thursday 27 April. The technology topics to be discussed are:
Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise Applications
Enterprise Architecture
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.
Finally, if you’d like to be added to the breakfast mailing list, please sign up or follow us on LinkedIn.
This is the fourteenth 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 our FundingBot to prepare for your next VC meeting.