I’m very excited to publicly announce a new project of mine related to entrepreneurship in the Middle East: StartMENAUp.
As the subheader implies, the blog’s immediate mission is to introduce a wider audience to inspiring stories of entrepreneurship from the Middle East. If that can gain enough traction, then the long-term dream is to develop into an organization that can actually support those stories in a way that goes beyond just blog posts.
After my undergraduate studies, I spent a year working in Palestine. While there, I had the privilege of connecting with a blossoming Ramallah-based ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, engineers, and startup junkies. Those folks and their stories of resilience and hope sparked my own passion for entrepreneurship, a passion that has guided my career moves to date.
The two basic hypotheses behind StartMENAUp are 1) that others will find those same stories as interesting and inspiring as I have, and 2) that similar stories exist across the Middle East and diaspora.
I’ve actually had this project on my mind for a while now. I purchased the domain name www.startmenaup.com over two years ago and did some initial brainstorming sessions back then. After some consideration at that point though, I ultimately decided to dedicate my “outside-of-the-office” efforts to launching and growing Habibi Worldwide. Fortunately, the support that Habibi Worldwide has received over the past two years, and the connections I’ve made working on it, have further convinced me to give StartMENAUp a go!
To start out, I’ll share the stories mainly in the form of interviews with key characters, profile pieces of various organizations (startups, VCs, etc), and conference reviews. I’d also love to get some guest contributors involved to write about their own stories or publish advice for aspiring entrepreneurs themselves.
If you have recommendations of people or organizations for me to cover, or would like to contribute something yourself, please get in touch with me here. If you’re just interested in what comes next, you can sign up for my newsletter below and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.
Thank you!
Hani
StartMENAUp 