Oil and talent
Iran produces two things in abundance:
Oil
Talent
We produce both in crude format. The key to unlocking wealth and abundance is to refine them to the best of our abilities.
Oil is our natural capital and talent is our human capital. We can only generate wealth from them if we strategise and plan.
Large scale country-wide plans are rarely effective. Instead, we need to refine our crude talent to become global talent through creating small communities across cities, instead of thinking about national plans, think about cities across borders connected by a network of investors and entrepreneurs. The best way we can do this is through investing in multi-city entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs by definition are literally asking to be refined. Investors can help with funding and “refinement” through expanding their city experiences and network.
Global data for VC deals per 1m residents shows how small cities that didn’t start with a lot of money are becoming leaders in empowering talent through venture investing.
There are some unlikely cities in the list above. Surely, these cities have well thought out socioeconomic plans and strong communities for venture investing.
In my work with Global Iranian entrepreneurs between London, Vancouver, Silicon Valley and Tehran, I have kept a close eye on the local ecosystems as well as the global activity of entrepreneurs with an Iranian background. The main barrier for the local entrepreneurs in Tehran is to see and explore the world. This means that they end up competing in a closed environment and their idea of what the global markets want is far from reality, many of them don’t even try to build something for global markets. Most of the socioeconomic planning is done by the Vice Presidency of Science and Technology which skews the ecosystem towards vanity metrics and not actual business results.
In this environment, the only way that our startups and entrepreneurs are going to get refined is to leave the local market for some time, or for good, experience healthy global collaboration (or competition) and actually build products for global markets with open eyes.
There are several ways entrepreneurs can move their company and teams to new markets. The best route we’ve found is the Canada Startup Visa which allows a team with up to 5 cofounders move to Canada and set up shop there. This is a promising route for a startup that’s serious about creating value at a global scale and can also be a promising route for the local Iranian ecosystem to become a global player in future.
This is the first in a series of posts about our startup advisory services. It was also posted on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from ambitious teams who already see themselves as global startups. If you’re looking for advice on global expansion, get in touch.