StartupQ8 monthly event introduced Ihsan Jawad as a first speaker in 2017

On January 25th we kicked off our first StartupQ8 monthly event in the already known Global Tower, but this time in a completely new format. You are wondering what it looks like? We have only one speaker and it’s more like an interview, plus we have an official networking part. This time we hade an opportunity to host Ihsan Jawad, founder of Zawya and managing partner at Middle East Venture Partners. Abdullah Alshalabi from fishfishme was interviewing him, but the attendees were also very active so the whole thing was very interactive.

As previously mentioned, the event itself was divided into two parts. The first one included interview format with all kind of entrepreneurial questions for Ihsan, while the other one was dedicated to networking and discussions about three topics — fundraising, design and technology.

(Information) sharing is caring

During the first part of the event Ihsan was talking about Zawya and how he started it and sold the company after a number of years, and how did he become an investor. He founded his own investment company and then he joined MEVP, the biggest venture capital in the region, and started investing in companies little by little. He was also talking about difficulties as a VC, internet companies and much more.

What he was trying to explain is that companies such as Souq.com are actually not internet companies, even though people consider those that way. He defined such companies as businesses with a website. Their website is like a channel for selling their products. For Ihsan, a real internet company is something where a user can add a value and can make a contribution. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram… According to him, these are all internet companies.

A change after for 4 years

As for the format of the StartupQ8 monthly event, Alshalabi says that after 4 years of organizing StartupQ8 monthly even the most important things for the team are human relationships and networking. They wanted to make it about networking and focus on one speaker who can add a value to the startup community in Kuwait.

In the spirit of the new event format, we would like to conclude this blog post with a quote by Michele Jennae:

“Networking means the act of exchanging information with people who can help you professionally.”

Photo gallery

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