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Dubai – AREA 2071, an innovation ecosystem of Dubai Future Foundation (DFF), hosted a webinar titled ‘From Startups to the World’s Biggest Businesses: Lessons from Billion-Dollar Unicorns’ in partnership with the US Mission to the UAE. The session was part of a series of webinars that aim to analyze the challenges and opportunities of the entrepreneurship sector, and highlight its vital role in shaping the future economy.
During the four-part webinar, Dr Victoria Silchenko, a leading alternative funding expert, founder of Metropole Capital Group and author of Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain, presented an overview of the significant aspects that have formed entrepreneurship as we know it today.
Abdulaziz AlJaziri, Deputy CEO and COO of DFF, said: “As part of DFF’s efforts to support the local and global entrepreneurship sector, the webinar series seeks to examine the most important requirements for building the infrastructure required to assist the owners of future ideas in founding promising startups based on the adoption of new business concepts.”
He added: “Entrepreneurship has become one of the most prominent components of Dubai's competitiveness. In recent years, we have seen several startups established in the emirate, such as Careem, InstaShop, Media.net, Souq.com, Swvl and Dubizzle, reach the value of US$1 billion and become unicorn companies, in addition to many other high-value acquisitions by tech players from diverse economic sectors.”
During the session, Dr Silchenko discussed the growing phenomenon of unicorn companies across the globe, characterized by developing unique ideas for important services, products and solutions that address the needs of individuals, companies or governments, and leverage advanced technology to improve people’s lives. She noted that the previous year witnessed the entry of 162 startups among billion-dollar companies.
Dr Silchenko said that many countries and cities around the world are racing to build their entrepreneurship infrastructure and enhance ease of doing business for startups. She touched on prominent factors in the success of unicorn companies and the optimal approach to providing appropriate financing that ensures sustainable business growth.
Dr Silchenko reviewed a set of initiatives and programs that support entrepreneurs in the UAE, such as Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA) and AREA 2071, validating Dubai’s success in establishing an integrated entrepreneurship ecosystem focused on future sectors.
She added: “We currently have about 800 billion companies around the world that are active in many economic fields, and entrepreneurs can benefit from the lessons that these companies have gone through, such as focusing on the competitive aspects of any new idea or project, and analyzing and studying all the legislative aspects related to the nature of their activity.”
Previous sessions organized by AREA 2071 within the webinar series explored the growth of the digital economy and the entrepreneurial system in times of crisis, lessons learnt from Silicon Valley, and the vital role of governments in encouraging entrepreneurship.
The UAE Centennial 2071 aims to establish the UAE as the world’s leading nation by 2071. To support this objective, AREA 2071 hosts relevant initiatives and events with the aim of creating positive global impact. The ecosystem is purposefully designed to connect corporates, governments, startups, investors and the public in order to co-create the future. The platform seeks to develop new ideas that address key challenges in various sectors, such as aviation, education, energy, entrepreneurship, technology, health and logistics.
AREA 2071 builds synergies between like-minded individuals and organizations to enhance Dubai’s innovation landscape. To learn more about the ecosystem, please visit www.dubaifuture.ae
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© Press Release 2021
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