13 September 2012

BEIRUT: Over the years of starting different ventures Mark Dickinson has learned some important lessons on how to start and run a business – like not expanding too quickly, or hiring too many people in the beginning or straying from the company’s focus.

Today, with his Ideaz Factory, a Beirut-based business incubator that he established two years ago, he is teaching young entrepreneurs those very lessons he learned the hard way, with the hope that they will make a difference through creative innovations and business plans in their own communities.

So far Dickinson has mentored and invested in five companies and he is now in the midst of choosing eight new ventures – on a weekly reality show on MTV Fridays at 8:45 p.m. The winner will be announced Oct. 19.

“Our objective is to help many people over a long period of time instead of a short period,” Dickinson said at the Ideaz Factory, a spacious loft with high ceilings, wall murals and chairs made of scrap metal surrounding a long table for communal working space in the industrial area of Dora.

There, the serial entrepreneur from Scotland – who previously lived in the Far East and has branches of his business in Bangkok and Tokyo – mentors young Lebanese as they develop their business plans. The second season of the competition gives Lebanese residents aged between 16 and 30 the chance to pitch business ideas and win prizes that will help create viable projects.

This year’s ideas include a website for housewives to sell their handcrafts by Karine Mansour, a device that helps deaf people communicate by Alaa Dahdal, a vending machine that can be accessed by mobile phone, a combustion system that produces energy from waste by Jad Jallad, an agricultural investment program in cows by Bilal Derian, an online platform to connect people with dreams and those who can make them come true, and a magnetic bracelet to help people avoid losing items by Ahmad Rabih.

The winning innovator will get LL45,000,000, support registering their company, a lawyer and an accountant for a year, LL15,000,000 as seed capital, one year of mentoring by a judge, and a business manager for four months. The eight finalists will receive LL750,000 each and one year of mentoring by a business professional.

Local business leaders serve as the competition’s judges in addition to being paired with a contestant to play the role of mentor and potential angel investor for one selected company. The idea is to have an experienced entrepreneur “protect and promote” a company and help it meet its full potential, giving contestants support they wouldn’t otherwise receive.

“Too many people give up the day before their idea would have succeeded,” he says.

However, these contestants are no quitters. Some of them have been refining their ideas for a while, not making the cut for other contests, and learning lessons just to get prepared for the next opportunity.

Ali Chehade, 27, who applied for the first season last year, is now in the running for this round with his Dream Matching network, where he gets people together both online and at live events to connect people who can make their dreams come true and vice versa.

Past gatherings have matched people who wanted to learn photography with photographers, a Japanese speaker with someone who wanted to learn the language and a Harley Davidson rider with someone who wanted to participate in a motorcycle rally.

The youngest contestant, Jad Jallad, a 17-year-old high school student from Tripoli, has created a waste management system using a machine that turns refuse of discarded petroleum products into fuel. Although he didn’t win his school’s science fair last year, he’s determined to improve his product into something useful for Lebanon. With it, he aims to solve two problems: waste disposal and lack of fuel.

“I started working on this for a school competition. But I didn’t win. Then I saw an ad for the Ideaz Prize, so I applied. I’ve been working on it all summer,” he says.

A fundamental problem that plagues aspiring entrepreneurs in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East is a lack of support networks, infrastructure and seed capital for new startups.

In recent years, some organizations have begun filling the gap. Beirut’s oldest and largest incubator and business development center, Berytech, established in 2001, is now in the company of Seeqnce and Alt City, both of which opened their doors within the past two years in the capital’s Hamra district. In addition, the Beirut Digital District, launched earlier this month near Downtown in Bashoura with the support of the Telecommunications Ministry, is promising state-of-the-art infrastructure for new startups.

But even with more available resources these days for new entrepreneurs in Lebanon, many believe that there’s still room for more such support networks, especially with so many well-educated new graduates seeking better opportunities abroad due to high unemployment rates in the country and throughout the region. Nurturing job makers rather than job seekers appears to be the motto for Lebanon’s business community these days.

According to a report issued earlier this month by the International Labor Organization about increasing global youth unemployment, “In North Africa and the Middle East youth unemployment rates are projected to remain above 25 percent over the next years and might even rise further in parts of these regions.”

Ekkehard Ernst, lead author of the paper and chief of the ILO’s Employment Trends Unit, said, “Schemes using employment guarantees and an emphasis on training could help get jobseekers off the street and into useful activities, providing a safeguard against further economic stress.”

What’s worrying specifically for Lebanon’s tech entrepreneurs is that as of 2009 unemployment was highest among those with university degrees – 8.8 percent followed by those with secondary education at 7.7 percent, Lebanese with an intermediate level of education at 5.2 percent, and those with a primary education at 4.6 percent. Unemployment was 15.6 percent for those aged 20 to 24.

But Dickinson believes the global recession could actually be an impetus for the making of creative companies that can solve local problems. “Some of the greatest [business] plans have come out of the greatest adversity. “Three to five years from now we’ll see global companies that were inspired by the recession.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2012.