Event recap (FundingBot, Slides, Video)
Building A Global Startup
On Saturday 16th April, we had the privilege of hosting a forward-looking group of entrepreneurs, investors and tech professionals at an event in Milad Tower in Tehran. The objective of the event was to learn what VCs can do to fill the infrastructure, skills and maybe the vision gap for Iranian startups to start thinking and executing globally. We invited Ali Tahmaseb of Blocks to speak about his experience of building a global startup in a fireside chat with Milad Saberi, the CEO of Karbank and organiser of the local Startup Grind chapter.
We formally introduced Iratel Ventures, why we insist on building for global scale and shared some of the data that we thought would be interesting for the ecosystem.
We asked the attendees to tell us about the gaps that are preventing Iranian startups from having a global mentality. Below are some of the answers:
Real connection and communication with high level universities in Iran. Creating a forum or society for more interaction and finding the best talents. Connecting them to the right people and places in the world.
Lack of planning.
Long term global vision by entrepreneurs, lack of professional experience, mindset needs building up and regulatory issues are existing as well.
Some legal limitations from inside and outside country, and technology creation is not advanced.
Young & talented founders but not experienced & professional Managers.
Infrastructure, Legal Issues, Governmental IT restrictions.
Lack of world class engineers and training systems. we do have brilliant talents in Iran but they need training and coaching and our universities are far from international standards.
Slides
You may find the slides on SlideShare. There are three slides I’d like to expand on:
- Why Global (Abundance);
- Deal Flow Locations; and
- Startup Valuations in Iran.
Why Global (Abundance)
We believe that the values on the left are derived from the mentality of abundance. Abundance occurs when a technology is created to turn a scarce resource (or an artificial scarcity) to an abundant one, changing the dynamic of the market in the process. This mentality means that when that technology (product or service) is created, it is inherently global. When your values are global, taking the product global is a choice rather than a forced strategy.
Deal Flow Locations
Inline with this mentality, Iratel Ventures is founded on the same values and invests in entrepreneurs who believe and execute on them. This is why we are hunting deals not just in Iran and are looking for founders in or related to Iran who have these values.
Startup Valuations in Iran
Data is hard to come by in Iran. There is no CB Insight or CrunchBase (a few are shaping up). The reason we included this slide is to promote transparency within the investor community to give some headline numbers in order to serve entrepreneurs. Giving entreprneurs the full picture when they want to raise VC funding for their startups creates a more sustainable and stronger ecosystem.
@FundingBot
We also launched a chatbot that would help the community evaluate their startups and provide transparency about our own due diligence process. We go through the same process for all the startups that move beyond pitch stage and acts as a quick guide in our portfolio matrix.
If you have Telegram, search @FundingBot or click here: https://telegram.me/fundingbot. Alternatively, you can see the same questionnaire on our website: IV Score.
This is still an early version and is only in Farsi, please give us your feedback in the comments below on how to improve it.
Video
The YouTube video of the fireside chat with Ali Tahmaseb will be provided soon and the link posted here. Check back for more details.
As a final note, we’d like to say a big thank you to Milad Saberi, Ali Tahmaseb, the event team at Milad Tower and all those who attended. It was a pleasure to meet every single one of you! If you wish to attend our next event, please sign up or follow us on LinkedIn.
If you found this post useful, recommend it (by clicking the❤ button) and share it with your friends and entrepreneurs who are building global startups in Iran.
