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Egypreneur
Business Services One-Stop-ShopCook vs. Chef 16 May 2020, 10:25 pm
No recipe is given for the response to the COVID19 Crisis
That’s why Cooks are panicking while Chefs are rolling their sleeves getting down to their kitchen labs.
“I created this business in the first place and I will just have to recreate it with the tools and ingredients that I can get my hands on now.”
That’s what chefs are telling themselves now.
Who knows? Maybe the new recipe will be more tasty and popular than the previous one?
I’m a people’s person as they call them and I don’t let a Personality Assessment test go by without pursuing it.
On a recent test called “The Big Five Aspects Scale”, I scored 96/100 for Openness to Experience and also scored 12/100 in Orderliness.
Needless to say, the description of the Orderliness score was quite insulting. But there was something interesting, about the test and its meaning.
There is no right or wrong answer.
We are made to fulfill different functions and to complement each other’s competences.
I can see a pattern emerging from the many conversations I’m having with business owners, executives, and their teams during this crisis.
Where there had been no systems in place, sometimes projects are faced with a lot of resistance and the Chefs are often not given the space to innovate.
If you own a restaurant, do you have to be the best chef in town? You actually do not. If you can spot the best chefs and give them the space to innovate.
Remember that now is the time for this.
- Acknowledge what you are good and not good at
- Bring forth complementary skillsets and empower the chefs
- Demonstrate openness in pursuing innovative ideas
- Accept failure as part of the journey towards a new secret receipt
We are featuring some of these stories and scouting for more examples and best practices for our central COVID19 Business Continuity Emergency Response Landing Page
If you know a company and/or an entrepreneur who turned their business around during the COVID19 Crisis, we would love to hear from them and share their story.
And remember that you give {contactfield=companyname} the best chance to maintain profitability and growth by:
Unleashing your inner chef
Bringing forth and empowering chefs
Adding to the resources available in our COVID19 page, I have released the materials for The Competitive Strategy Workshop to be available for download for free.
- Learn more about the workshop (Here)
- Download the materials for Free (PDF)
- Download the Playing to win Strategy Canvas (DOCX)
CrisisComms for CEOs and Executive Leaders in Egypt featuring Omnia Samra 26 Apr 2020, 11:00 pm
COVID-19 is definitely an unprecedented crisis for many young CEOs and executive leaders in Egypt, figuring out the best way to respond could be a challenge, that’s why I connected with Omnia Samra, Crisis Comms Expert to talk about what Entrepreneurs and Executive Leaders in Egypt should focus on while responding to the crisis.
Step #1: Visibility
Good examples of communication with your employees
Step #2: Speed
Start communicating quickly and own the platform
Step #3: Simplicity
Maintain simplicity in your communications
Step #4: Consistency
Communicate frequently and often
Step #5: Transparency
Maintain transparency with your communications, say I do not know
Step #6: Frontliners
Empower your frontline employees to communicate with confidence
Want to learn more about how to best respond to the COVID-19 Crisis, visit our central CoronaVirus Business Continuity Emergency Response and subscribe to the mailing list to keep yourself updated.
Insights from Raising & Managing Money Panel at Startup Haus 24 Feb 2020, 10:29 pm
It was an impressive turn around despite the rain and almost blocked traffic in Cairo, 42 people showed up to attend the panel discussion featuring the visiting delegation of the ProFellows, U.S. Exchange Program.
Featuring panelists from Calvert Impact Capital, Village Capital, and LifeCents side by side with Egypreneur’s investment mentor Hamd Al Khayat – the “Raising and Managing Money” panel discussion featured dialogue in bridging the gap between the level of readiness of entrepreneurs in Egypt with available funding instruments globally.
Highlights from the panel included:
Investment is made according to steps, stages, and milestones, you need to understand and define your current stage and your next milestones, otherwise, you’d be wasting your and other people’s time.
If you never ask, the answer is always no. Erica
Do it now and apologize later. Hamd Al Khayat
Shared Resources:
- The Impact Management Project https://impactmanagementproject.com/
- Abaca: Matchmaking tool between entrepreneurs and investors https://abaca.app/
Do you want to raise funding? Start a conversation with Egypreneur Funding Assistant below
How do we reach you?
Tell us more about your team
Next Step: Find Co-Founders
It’s unlikely for a sole entrepreneur to be funded, you need to spend sometime to find co-founders with complimentary skillset to yours. Why not get started by introducing yourself at Egypreneur Community
Additional Team Members
How many years of industry experience do you and your team members have?
What level of relevant education have your team members completed?
How much is each team member working on the project per week?
How much salary is each team member taking?
Who among you and your team has any of the following experiences? Check all that applies
What kinds of tasks do you and your co-founders perform?
How much money are you planning to raise in the next 6 months?
How much money (if any) has your company raised from the following sources?
What industry are you in?
What are you charging for?
Which of the following best describes the primary way your venture will make money?
Who will pay for your service?
What kind of users make up your audience/user base?
What type of marketplace does your venture serve?
What is your primary way of acquiring customers?
How much do you have to spend on Sales & Marketing to acquire each customer as percentage of sale value?
What are these consumers currently paying (on an annual basis) to resolve this problem or satisfy this desire?
What are these enterprises currently paying (on an annual basis) to resolve this problem?
What are these advertisers currently spending on an annual basis?
How big is your market?
What market share are you planning to acquire in the next 3 years?
How many prospective customers have you interviewed about your product in the past 3 months?
What percentage of these prospects said they would purchase your product or service?
Have you already started making sales and generating revenues?
How much revenue have you realized over the past twelve months?
How much revenue have you realized over the past three months?
How many individual sales made up this revenue?
How many individual leads have resulted in this number of sales?
Cairo Creative Coding Meetup shows the potential transformation of The “Creative Coding” practice on arts & advertising 22 Jan 2019, 1:53 pm
If you could secure time over a weekend in Cairo, your life could get more exciting by attending one of these industry meetups in an area of interest.
Cairo is increasingly hosting local meetups as part of global specialist networks that help build & nurture collaborative communities of likeminded specialists, professionals and practitioners sharing the best of their experience and spreading knowledge, resources and case studies in emerging practices.
These kinds of meetups are extermely valuable to nurture the emerging innovation, entrepreneurship and startup movement in Egypt with globally exposed practitioners and workforce that’s able to compete globally.
Last week, we knew about Product Guys meetup, this weekend, Mohamed Hossam brought together another edition of “Cairo Creative Coding Meetup” at the FabLab Egypt rooftop in Maadi.
Just like me, you are probably trying to make sense of what Creative Coding might be. Creative Coding is the practice of using code as a canvas for art, using creative coding you could be able to produce visual and audiovisual performances that compliments static works of art, opening up a new dimension for the arts and advertising industries.
Here is an example for you to ponder.
The meetup featured a conference call with Omar El Kammar, a Creative Coder and audiovisual artist all the way from Berlin.
Omar started being known to Musicians in Egypt as the guy who do weird (innovative) things with computers, after four year of learning the tools and working on projects, Omar is now confidently executing top-notch Creative Coding projects as part of an agency in Berlin. You can follow Omar on Instagram here to see some of the recent projects he had been involved in.
Omar highlighted the importance of storytelling and aesthetics for Creative Coding projects to avoid being dragged into challenges with the tools you use, but rather using them to get the concept done.
Omar has been massively generous with resources that he shared a full resource pool with attendees to get inspired and use it for their projects.
Mohamed Hossam, the ambassador of Creative Coding Meetups in Egypt highlighted that getting a residence as a “Creative Coding” professional could be the start of the way to have access to the intriguing challenges of big projects, but you can always start experimenting on your own to develop the skillset.
We had a brief discussion on the potential of commercializing “Creative Coding” in Egypt and agreeing that spreading awareness about the practice and how it can be used in advertising project would be necessary for more applications to be brought to the surface.
If you are excited to know more about Creative Coding, join the next meetup, makes sure to follow Mohamed Hossam on Facebook and join the Cairo Creative Coding Group.
Product Guys bring insightful discussion about Product Management to Egypt’s Tech Space at Robusta Studio 14 Jan 2019, 11:31 am
Since I started working professionally in delivering technology products, analyzing the growing tech startup scene and lately prototyping solutions using emerging technologies. I could testify that most of the mistakes that I have committed and observed had to do with the discipline of Product Management.
At Robusta Studio, a group of product management professionals hosted their first meetup in association with Mind the Product and its community meetups brand Product Tank, the volunteer group called “Product Guys” has done a fine job featuring a presentation and Q&A panel tackling the basics of product management.
Michael Soliman led an interesting Career evolving from the technology side into the product management side. Beside his experience and insights, Michael’s charachter and attitude intrigued me as possibly being the most important asset in working in product management.
Michael sees himself as a facilitator for the tech and business teams to gurantee product success. I gathered my thoughts from the discussion and Michael’s story into the following pieces of advice – in case you a Black Mirror fan, I’m making reference to a favorite episode that help us visualize the role of product manager:
1. Empathy: Never Overstep on Anyone’s Domain Expertise or Responsability
One of the big challenges operating as a facilitator between different teams and disciplines is seeing how everyone is getting territorial, if this happens, the most honest of actions can be taken as undermining someone’s authority. Keeping your ego at the door is essential for productivity and the best way to reach that is to be the first doing it and inspiring the culture.
A product person must practice empathy with the teams and team leaders engaged with their work, on taking the time to process how they think about the challenge from their prespective without becoming pushover, a challenge for introverted empaths who naturally avoid confrontations and as a result commit to unreasonable deadlines and responsabilities.
Daly the introverted CTO from Black Mirror comes to mind as someone who supresses and often sacrifices his comfort, needs and leadership capacity for the sake of the comfort of everyone else, ending up with entrapping everyone in a digital game! Not funny!
Michael shared with me in discussion after that what he found essential in these discussions and negotiations is explictly relying on facts and maintaining a friendly relationship with everyone on a personal level.
Don’t be grandiose and don’t be a push over. Good luck figuring out what that means in every situation you encounter.
2. Committment: Take your time with estimates and trust people to decide and commit on their own
Missing a deadline or falling short on producing something they promised is a pain for every professional . You don’t want to be seen as not committed and you empathize with people who don’t want the same to happen with them.
By then getting people to commit also requires you to give them the time and space to assess their priorities, allocated time and provide a reasonable estimate that you can probably then negotiate.
Remember how Daly’s partner stormed into his room to tell him that the update will have to go live anyway, the way he shouted and tabbed our introverted engineer in the head? That’s not nice. Don’t be like Daly’s boss or you know the consequences.
3. Engagement: Engaging external stakeholders with the Product Management process
If you provide software development services, your client will think they control the flow of what gets done, the same if your CEO is not engaged or experienced in the product development process. By then, proactively engaging primary stakeholders (who don’t report to you) by explaining your product management process is a very effective practice to minimize future conflicts and have ground rules to get back to whenever conflict arises.
Imagine a product manager who can keep everyone happy? Yes, keep that thought, because that’s probably just meant to be an imagination.
Product Guys are planning to host a bi-monthly meetup and a bi-monthly Product Tank (indepth sessions). If you are interested in product management, you can join their Group on Facebook and keep yourself updated.
Technology Becomes Fashion at Telekom Fashion Fusion Awards Ceremony in Berlin 17 Jul 2018, 8:42 pm
I had the pleasure of being invited to Telekom’s Fashion Fusion Challenge closing ceremony in Berlin. And what I have discovered later to be more of an honour was spending time and enjoying a thoughtful conversation with Hans-Christian Schwingen, Chief Brand Officer at Telekom who won the CMO of the year award in 2016!
What was most impressive for me as an entrepreneur is seeing Antje Hundhausen of Telekom, being introduced as the Founder of Fashion Fusion – I know how sensitive companies are in calling a staff a “Founder” of something, so it was good to see an example where “Intrapreneurship” goes beyond lip service.
The same also happened with the Founders of “Electronic Beats” despite being staff on Telekom payroll, they maintained a long term “Founder” status of the business division. It also seemed like they had to “compete” internally for Telekom resources which was pretty close to how my world of “entrepreneurship” works!
You can find more information about the impressive projects that won everywhere, but I’m sharing my personal reflections and time spent at the event.
Network Nerves
I like to start at the end, that’s why Network Nerves landed most of my attention, probably also because it was the most visually active project – and if I want to be more honest, probably because it had the most attractive project owners as well! – Network Nerves uses “Smart Textile” to empower performers to express themselves on stage, the idea is great, the team intended to use a liquid for illumination but ran into “Mechanical” challenges so ended up using leds – the team didn’t seem to be happy about how it turned out to be. As an Engineer, I promised to look at the issue and offer support on resolving it, the market is niche and tricky, but this could be something.
#TelekomFashionFusion Network Nerves offers performers a new way to express themselves on stage through smart textile #Berlin @TelekomFashionFusion pic.twitter.com/qc7dT7tRUc
— Egypt Entrepreneur (@Egypreneur) July 3, 2018
Project Love
Project Love left me in awe, at the beginning it seemed very simple and basic business model of providing “PLus Size” with wardrobe options with a better fashion taste, but I was impressed to see their 3D scanner technology, where they can produce a 3D version of you through just an App and a scanning booth, then, you are able to pick the items that would fit it through the app, making it easier for them to identify specific size and fashion needs. On a proper scale, this project could be a winner too.
Petra from Project Love… Making it easier for Plus Size to find the fashion suitable to them backed by a 3D body scan technology @TelekomFashionFusion pic.twitter.com/h7lKlWscOR
— Egypt Entrepreneur (@Egypreneur) July 3, 2018
Smart Orthosis
How about you get a vibration everytime your posture is not right? Sounds a bit creepy, but Smart Orthosis offers a vest with a digital neuro-network that analyzes your posture through bluetooth connection to your phone and upon detecting a harmful posture, you get a vibration to adjust your posture. It seems to have benefits in theory, I’m not sure in practice whether you’d like to be vibrated into when your posture is not alright. Probably I would like to try that for a day and judge by the level of comfort later.
Smart Orthosis help correct unhealthy habits leading to back pain by using a vibration to notify you when your posture is unhealthy #TelekomFashionFusion pic.twitter.com/uq91kOwWhA
— Egypt Entrepreneur (@Egypreneur) July 3, 2018
The sweetest thing at the end of the ceremony was that my friend and DJ from Canada, Sarah Barrable, managed with her smooth diplomacy and leadership skills to take over the DJ table and produced some awesome dance Music for the whole crowd! For which all our group, event staff, attendees and remaining Telekom staff enjoyed sharing and connecting..
Green Entrepreneurs Prove it at Egypreneur Club; Switching to environmentally-sustainable business is a winning economic & social strategy for Egypt 6 Aug 2017, 7:15 am
Before we start, I have a confession to make: while being known for my business ventures in internet/technology/media/finance/business services, by education and academic degree, I’m a Mechanical Design & Production Engineer.
At almost 17 years of age, representing my first company at an entrepreneurship expo following The Art of Business Creation Workshop
Pursuing my natural tendency to choose an adventurous entrepreneurship path early on, I became an entrepreneur as a freshman at my engineering school and had been one since then. My Academic background didn’t in any how influence the type of ventures I choose to associate with to the extend that I have seen it as totally irrelevant, but probably this time and for the first time, working with Green Startups, I enjoyed being a production engineer as it allowed me to understand the underlying operations and potential impact of these green ventures on a deeper level.
Last Thursday, August 3rd, Egypreneur Club at Talaat Harb Square – currently on soft opening mode – hosted “Green Startups Meet Investors” event organized on behalf of the EU’s SwitchMed Programme; a program dedicated to assisting Green Startups in accessing capital and support services needed to scale their ventures. The event featured 7 entrepreneurs pitching their business for feedback from stakeholders, who had been generous with their insights during and after the event.
Egypreneur Club, Talaat Harb is hosting a few follow-up meetings between entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders who found some of these projects interesting. If you find any of the ventures below relevant to you, please, do get in touch, would be glad to introduce you to the entrepreneurs to discuss partnership.
Personally, I admired all the project ideas and was very delighted to see sophisticated solutions to real-life problems that is either already implemented and seeking growth capital or getting very close to commercialization. A stage in which I was able to work with the entrepreneurs on what my previous 12 years has been about, turning a great idea/concept/product into a great company.
Mr. Ahmed Ismail, or the Patents Designer as he describes himself, pitched Malek for Food Dehydrators. With a registered Intellectual Property and wide recognition for its innovative approach and possible economic impact. Ahmed’s startup builds and distributes a device that dehydrates fresh fruits and vegetables at farms for easier and cheaper transporation and consumption.
“40% of Egyptian vegetables/ 35% of fruits go to waste mainly due to high transport cost, while 6 million ton of Egyptian tomato crop go to waste that lead to up to 130 million m3 methane gas emission to environment and forms great loss for both of farmers income and many of natural resources as water, land, fertilizers, energy also labor and capital that go to produce food that no one consumes”
Malek’s device tremendously brings down the price for the final consumer while retaining the nutrutious value of the fresh foods – while also increasing the income of small farmers. Mr. Ahmed brought samples of dehydrated foods created using his device to be enjoyed by the attendees. Unexpectedly for me, the dried Mango and Bananas tasted as the best types of fresh fruits you can try.
Ahmed continues to seek the right financial and business partners to boost the commercialization of his invention by producing and distributing the device at scale for Egyptian farmers and beyond.
Mr. Magdy Sharaf takes the economic impact of recycling to the next level by mixing fiberglass and hardened cartoon fabric remnants to form a new material with better physical/mechanical properties – the material, which has an Intellectual Property registered – allows Mr. Magdy’s startup El Wady for Fiberglass to produce various products that’s up to 3 times cheaper than its alternatives and has even better and more durable features, products include but not limited to Street Lighting Poles, Doors, Outdoor Boothes, Caravans, Furniture and more…
In case you are a fequent visitor to one of Cairo’s most popular mega malls, City Stars, you most likely have slowed down to take a look at an Advert on a street bump on your own in or out of the parking lot. This Advert is developed by Mr. Magdy’s new material and developed by El Wady for Fiberglass for one of Egypt’s top Ad agencies.
So far, El Wady for Fiberglass has fulfilled over 15 purchase order with a value approaching 1 Million EGP for only 2 of its products developed using the new material, being, Street Lighting Poles and Doors. Its clientele included entities like Egyptian Ministry of Interiors, Real Estate Developers, Building and Construction Companies, NGOs. Yet, despite all this success, El Wady is forced to decline majority of purchase orders they are receiving now as their small factory runs out of capacity to deliver on large purchase orders.
El Wady is looking for expansion capital now by moving from the small factory – where they have achieved all their success into a much larger production facility where they can scale their operation and spend further on building an organizational structure that allows the business to scale.
The company defines its Total Addressable Market (TAM) in Egypt only to be 5 Billion EGP, competing head-on with manufacturers and suppliers of Street Lighting Poles, Doors, Furniture and more. The company expects to dominate 5% of this market in its first year upon receiving the needed funding and expand to 15% and 25% in following years.
I saw Magdy’s El Wady, just like I saw Ahmed’s Malek, truly disruptive models for very large markets across different industries and its success takes the practice of innovation and entrepreneurship in Egypt to a more real and mature level, moving beyond apps and tech and looking in-depth at serious problems the community is facing where innovation and entrepreneurship can have serious social and economic impact.
While majority of startup investors and funds in Egypt continues to focus exclusively on tech startups, and those who don’t, continue to require an exaggerated level of maturity for the startup, I’m sure there are plenty of intelligent investors who can bring lots of business acumen to the already successful implementations of smart innovations.
I had to go through discussions that got heated into debates with the entrepreneurs who complained about receiving only superficial support mostly in the form of recognition and celebration and that investors have overlooked their pitches because they were no flashy internet-tech startups, I had to argue on behalf of investors for a second chance on pitching to local investors, before heading to international finance opportunities.
Ahmed El Masry’s story is no different, realizing that only 5-12% of household waste in Egypt is getting recycled and that Egypt consumes 10 million tons of organic fertilizers annually while producing only 3 million tons locally – Ahmed’s Hand2Hand started getting down to business to fill the 7 million tons organic fertalizers market gap relying on the unlimited resource of recycleable raw materials from household waste.
In an impressively sharp pitch, Ahmed presented to the audience the logic and numbers of how he sees the problem and realizes the solution within reach.
Hand2Hand has already started the construction of the digester device necessary for converting waste into organic fertilizers. The company is raising 20,000 Euros to finish the digester construction, purchase the hardware necessary for managing the supply chain of organic waste and launch awareness campaigns to promote household waste segregation.
Ahmed’s startup Hand2Hand has presented a perfect example of fitting societal problems and accordingly market needs with available resources and opportunities, achieving both social and economic impact across the startup’s ecosystem on household level, farm level and national level through expanding reclaimed desert land using organic fertilizers.
Four other entrepreneurs has presented impressive companies being Vwaste, turning dried fruit (especially Orange) peel into Pectine that can be used across industries. EatWater which builds a device that clears food from any causes of cancer using nanotechnology. Tadweer which seeks to disrupt the supply chain for the waste collection ecosystem in Egypt by providing professional and consistent waste collection and segregation services. And last but not least Shamsia Space which supports the economic backbone of Suez as a main industrial hub in Egypt by launching a number of entrepreneur-empowerment initiatives including a co-working space and a maker space in Suez.
After seven impressive presentations, the audience had plenty of feedback to share, that’s when an extended networking period started for entrepreneurs to receive feedback from stakeholders
Mr. Ahmed Ismail of Malek Food dehydration discussing his business with Mr. Hassan Mansi from ABA.
Mr. Mohamed Mahfouz from Shamsia Spaces, discussing his business with Ms. Dina Hassabalah from Sawiris Foundation for Environmental Development
During the networking break, scoring sheets that attendees had during the pitches were collected in order for SwitchMed team to do the math and calculate the highest score achieved through the socring grid which included variables such as Pitch Quality, Business Model, Scalability, Solution Proposed, Key Success Factors and Clear Green Impact. Vwaste was announced as the winner of this year’s SwtichMed Content in Egypt and the team will travel to Barcelona in 2018 to present its business on the global SwitchMed event.
Ms. Claudia Pani, SwitchMed Program Manager handing over the prize to the winning team, Vwaste.
As we are also in the process of launching our membership program for Egypreneur Club in Talaat Harb Square, I was glad to announce granting all 7 entrepreneurs Premium Membership at Egypreneur Club, Talaat Harb. Turning the event venue from a one-time event into a permanent hub that will retain and expand on the energy created to coach, support and help Green Entrepreneurs access capital and support services they need.
Upon the request of some of the participating entrepreneurs, who considered her to be the first person to believe in them and provide them with real support. Prof. Ghada Amer, Vice President at Arab Science and Technology Foundation was invited to share her feedback with attendees, providing eloquent, constructive and inspiring feedback to all participating startups.
Following my previous post Is it time to Switch towards Collaborative Consumption and Production in Egypt yet? – I stand corrected that these entrepreneurs and their startups have already initiated a movement towards economically, socially and environmentally more sustainable approaches towards life and business in Egypt.
It remains a challenge for these entrepreneurs to persist against all odds to bring their projects to life on a reasonable scale and to be able to endure the challenges and lack of “real” support and often the superficiality of startup celebrations versus the real needs for these projects to turn to be fruiteful. Something that entrepreneurs has agreed that the SwitchMed program has done a very good job in raising their capacity to be able to deliver a convincing pitch and presenting their projects in such a way that will hopefully help them in raising the needed capital and acquiring the support services needed.
Representatives from Egyptian Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation, Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry joined alongside representatives from UNIDO, Sekem, Knowledge, Sawiris Foundation for Sustainable Development to put together the best ending for the event by a group circle discussion during which entrepreneurs’ spirits were boosted, energy renewed and the feedback they needed, was delivered and digested.
Mr. Hassan, Serial Entrepreneur and member of ABA Association sharing feedback in an open circle format pic.twitter.com/2piIRIsVkz
— Egypt Entrepreneur (@Egypreneur) August 3, 2017
Something we are committed to continue doing and repeating at Egypreneur Club as a hub for acknowledging and supporting entrepreneurs who challenge their surrounding circumstances to achieve greater social and economic impact for themselves, their beloved nation and the world at large.
PoshShop, the marketplace for pre-owned authentic luxury goods is making it safer to shop for original items online 18 Jun 2017, 10:48 am
“It was actually tailored to my late grandfather” this was my response to a colleague commenting on my grey wool suite, one of my all the time favorite pieces of wardrobe during cold winter days, today I could hardly find something as thick, well-tailored and a perfect fit anywhere.
Using pre-owned items as part of our wardrobe is not a totally foreign concept to Egyptians, items are often carried on by family members and occassionally gifted to close friends, special pieces of wardrobe carries stories, authenticity and meaning beyond its monetary value.
It’s not very different for shoppers for luxury items, often quite expensive and very occassionally used, the market for pre-owned luxury good has been nothing but expanding and with its expansion comes the risk of falling a prey for counterfeited items. Stories of high-value purchases of seemingly original items that turns out to be copies gets plenty of people to hold back from purchasing pre-owned originals.
The risk is realized by Daria Ilina, her over a decade of experience in the luxury fashion industry and the experience of her friends falling a prey to counterfeited items has inspired her to start Posh Shop to be the destination to buy and sell pre-owned authentic luxury goods.
“The black market is so profitable so sellers of fake products, sometimes purchase original receipts of boutiques, dust bags and packaging from people who have original items in order to manufacture the high copy with corresponding serial numbers, model number, color and sell it with boutique invoice. In this case the only chance to spot the fake is to inspect the item itself.” Said Daria
The verification process of these luxury items doesn’t go far from Sherlock Holmes investigations. Unless you follow a pre-defined process of testing several variables, you’d fall victim to fake copies even if you own similar items from the same brand. For this, verification can only be handled by professionals. The shop uses a verification consulting services that requires a quarterly visit and more than two dozen photos taken on a very specific manner – the angle, the lighting, the focus all affects the verification process.
And as she settles down with her Egyptian family, Daria sees the business through the goggles of sustainability.
“We are sustainable. We are doing our small part to be environmentally responsible. Giving opportunity to re-sell what it is already manufactured, extending the lifecycle of luxury goods, we reduce polluting effect from fashion production. Which greatly affects Oceans’ flora and fauna. Another issue, when people re-sell their unwanted designer items to somebody who will treasure them again they feel good knowing that they are part of the social responsibility program and making the good things not just for cash in return.” Says Daria Ilina, Founder of Post Shop
The Posh Shop has also created a luxury selling and exchange community, through which members can consistently update their items without the need to purchase each individual item. Daria’s passion for style also allows for member’s personal styling needs to be met with notifications of availability of suitable items.
To learn more about The Posh Shop and what kind of items are currently available visit their website www.poshshop-eg.com and join them on Facebook and Instagram
Step-by-Step Guide on launching your Crowdfunding Campaign – especially if you are a hardware startup 17 Jun 2017, 11:47 pm
Crowdfunding campaigns are one of the best ways to validate your products, especially if you are a hardware startup. For the followers of the Lean Startup Methodology – which should be everyone building a startup – you know you should be iterating the launch of your product while receiving feedback from your customers.
Crowdfunding provides the ideal medium to achieve this dynamic, yet sometimes it could be the kiss of death to a new startup if the process is not managed properly. And what’s better than other people’s experience, failures and successes to learn from while pursuing your own journey?
Inspired by the panel discussion on Hardware Startups Crowdfunding by FabLab Egypt; this article will introduce you to the storie and lessons learnt by hardware entrepreneurs who used Crowdfunding as a medium to develop their products and build growing businesses based on the initial success or failure of their Crowdfunding Campaign.
If there is enough interest, we’ll publish a follow-on article with Checklist and Score Card that will help you score your campaign and suggest ways to increase the potential of success based on the input shared by the entrepreneurs. Feel free to comment below is something like this would be helpful to you.
By the end of 2013, Bassam Jalgha’s first bootstrapped Kickstarter campaign (Roadie Tuner: the ultimate guitarist tool) attracted 2,002 backers who pledged $178,613, four years later, his company, Band Industries, attracted 4,741 backers who pledged $502,931 to its second Crowdfunding campaign (Roadie 2 and Roadie Bass Automatic Instrument Tuners), Bassam joined the panel live from China as he is working on delivering the product before the holidays.
Amr El Gabry is the Founder of VoxEra – The First Voice Roaming Killer, its Kickstarter Campaign recently attracted 633 backers who pledged $75,551 and in the process of launching their product.
Mahmoud Said of Happiana had less luck with his SunBank – The World’s Smartest Solar Charger Campaign on indieGogo despite successfully raising $3,000, the target for manufacturing the product had been $15,000 and you can’t go flexible with manufacturing, though, it seems the campaign has had a positive impact as his company recently completed a second pivot and was able to raise a seedfunding round to continue their operation.
Amr Saleh’s 1Sheeld: Replace your Arduino shields with your smartphone! campaign had been one of the inspirers of the Hardware Startup movement in Egypt, attracting 1,480 backers who pledged $85,210 and successfully delivering on their promise, Amr’s Integreight is getting ready to launch a second campaign soon.
Below are some of the top tips shared by the founders
Marketing Funnel and Conversion
The core component for the success of the campaign is proper design to the marketing funnel and a combination of persistence and intelligence in designing conversion points, as digital marketing practices mature, the process for online conversion becomes widely known yet the need for specialized professionals to run the campaign persists.
According to the founders the main tools they used for their funnel and conversion is:
- Landing Page with Signup Form – attracting traffic from different online social channels to the landing page
- Digital Advertising especially Facebook Ads (Using Leads Forms for Signups)
- Providing a “taste” and “small committment” before campaign launch to get engaement and buy-in
- Media, Events & PR
Prior to its campaign launch, Bassam’s Band Industries launched a Free App targetting the same niche, providing a taste for their upcoming product and attracting 10,000 leads, plenty of whom will then contribute to the Crowdfunding campaign later.
Bank Industres also hired an advertising agency that was able to generate $60,000 worth of revenues for a budget of $15,000 relying on Facebook Leads Forms, the cost of acquisition for a lead had been $0.2 and the conversion late was expected to be 7%. Bassam stresses on the fact that digital marketing is more about data than marketing, once you know what to measure and the ratios you’ll be able to make the right calculations and investments.
But the journey was not the same for Amr El Gably who fired his marketing team after the first few days of the campaign. They spent $2000 and acquired only 500 leads, only resulting in 50 purchases. VoxEra also used a smart pre-campaign $1 committment guranteeing super early bird prices, for which 100% of those who paid the $1 ended up contributing to the campaign.
Using Advertising Agency or Not
Amr has then moved between marketing agencies, investing $1500 for a return of $1500 with Gadget Floor, then $2500 with Funded Today which pulled back from the campaign for poor projected performance and another $2500 with PR Media Now which didn’t also proceed in delivering results. Founders stressed that the reviews for Marketing Agencies could be very positive and also very negative sometimes, achieving the chemistry with an agency had been a challenge for Amr.
Influencers and Affiliate Marketing
El Gably’s quest for results relying on agencies came to a disappointment, bringing matters back to his own hands, Amr reached out to influencers, offering a local travel blogger a 10% profit share and using an Affiliate marketing module, results started showing. For $100 boosted post by the blogger resulted in $5000 direct revenues to the campaign.
Momentum through Media Appearances
Media didn’t end up working well for VoxEra’s campaign as well. Amr stresses that timing for media appearances is critical, a duration of 7-10 days between media appearances have not scored well with the audience, these apperances should be schedule in a short span of time, communicating momentum and urgency to convince hesitating audience to commit. People wait to see what happens after each interview, whey they wait a few days, they lose interest.
Support System
Media outlets are growing less interested in idea-stage crowdfunding projects, giving the large number of projects that doesn’t deliver and accordingly affects the credibility of the media outlet, verification by testing the product is becoming essential to securing media coverage for your campaign. This was the case for Mahmoud, after trying sevearl routes, running out of funds while results are not showing. That’s when his Fab Lab Membership kicked in to provide the supportive community, network, knowledge and insights he needed to move further. Mahmoud strongly recommends entrepreneurs to assemble a support system before launching.
You’ll never get it all right on your own just sitting there with your laptop. Opeaning up and reaching out to the community of peers, mentors and fellow makers is essential for success.
Sniping the right Events
Integreight’s geeks don’t like to leave it for chance, the team studied 70 Crowdfunding case studies before launching their own Crowdfunding campaigns, accumulating a repository of know-how fo what to do and not to do, which tools to use, when. It all came together when the team has chosen to participate at TechCrunch Disruptin Berlin prior to their campaign launch and was able to get the TC coverage and generating momentum from there.
The Not To Do List
Despite that his campaign was not a success, the first experience of launching a Crowdfunding campaign had been invaluable to Mahmoud’s business. Since then he syndicated a “Not To Do List” listing everything they have done that didn’t work. Another reason why such community meetings are invaluable is the cross-sharing of the not-to-do lists among founders and making it available to the next generation of founders.
Providing on your promises, while efficiently handling negativity online
Another challenge these campaigns face is the effective handling of negative comments from audiences and backers who often lack the understanding of the process, challenges and flexibility required while working with startups. As an Application release gets slightly delayed, and one of the backers resorts to negativity and bad mouthing which could be a source of stress and possible mis-handling of the situation.
Keeping your cool, demonstrating the situation and terms of engagement with options to proceed often turns down attention-seeking negativity-seekers. In this case, someone initially posting negative comments turned down the offer to get a refund and showed flexibility in accepting the terms.
To keep its backers updated, VoxEra even decided to take it further and hire staff to make direct phone calls to 633 backers. When people receive a personalized phone call, it feels better and more trusting and engaging for them while you are working on fulfilling their expectations.
How to Protect your idea
Founders seemed to agree that it’s almost impossible to fully protect your idea, in some cases during the campaign on one platform, other groups post the same product on another crowdfunding platform. Or larger companies often copycat the products and launch it before the end of the campaign.
Some ways to gurantee your own success if to focus on:
- Branding & Community: If you have managed to make the brand stand out and build a supportive community around it
- Scientific Research: If you baed your product on documented scientific research
- Software Algorithms: If you have developed hard-to-re-engineer algorithms
Several options exist for getting a provesional patent, providing a protection for 12 month and starting only at a few hundred dollars, PatentWizard.com was mentioned as an option, though it was debated that using local legal advisors might be more engaging and cost effective.
Customer Discovery and Communication
Mahmoud’s experience with his first Crowdfunding campaign have taught him to listen carefully to the customers and design the offering and communication based on their needs and expectations. “Never compete on price, find a niche segment and serve them with a specific product” says Mahmoud. As a result of listening, Mahmoud decided to focus on 2 different customer segments and needs other than what was initially anticipated.
Choosing timing for Launch and Certification
It might seem promising to launch a campaign – from the scratch – but it’s highly advised by the founders never to launch a campaign before having a minimum of a prototype you can sell. Taking the risk of launching before producing a working prototype might destroy the whole process and affect you negatively.
It’s also vital to know that you’ll need to certify your product before assembly, receiving a certificate requires that your product complies with specific requirements, you have to take these factors into consideration before manufacturing not to end up repeating the process, make sure that the manufacturing partner you choose has a lab facility that can test the product for compliance with certificate requirements before manufacturing.
Pricing Considerations
4X of the cost of production should be the minimum pricing for hardware products, there are too many unforseen source of waste, re-design, cost of campaign .etc that needs to be factors in the pricing to avoid loss before making revenues.
The above are a few variables mentioned by the founders in their panel discussion. It’s not hard to build a step-by-step process to launch your own campaign then:
- Study market needs to verify the existence of a niche for your product idea
- Prototype the product and produce a working prototype
- Be open and engage a community of peers, mentors and potential segment
- Develop smart digital marketing strategy incorproating landing page, facebook ads and videos if possible
- Develop killer content for your digital strategy consisting of high quality video, Email Drip Campaign .etc
- Integrate Influencer Marketing – even relying on local influencers in your community with niche audience
- Snipe your event engagements for maximum exposure to the right media outlets
- Price your product at least 4X of the anticipated cost of production
- Schedule your media engagements all around the same week
- Listen very carefully to all feed back, be ready for pivots and delays
- Invest in communicate clearly and confidently while preparing the delivery of your product
- Don’t stop at celebrating or mourning the campaign, build a company, get funding from somewhere else and come back stronger.
As part of The Growth Manifesto, I have built a number of score cards to benchmark the startup/company performance and growth potential based on researched variables. If it’d be of interest to the community, I’d be glad to invest the time to design a specific tool for Hardware Startup Crowdfunding, comments below if this would be helpful to you.
DISLAIMER: Information shared is based on the insights shared during the panel discussion, if you’d like to revise any segment, please, feel free to contact us.
Is it time to Switch towards Collaborative Consumption and Production in Egypt yet? 11 Jun 2017, 3:36 am
I told Dr. Claudia Gross that it happened out of nowhere, despite that we discussed it several time, and every single time I thought the ideas of Green Economy are actually “very cute”, but I just could hardly relate to or integrated with my everyday life.
I admired the Green Hippies, but thought the ideas were too soft and impractical.
Until this one moment.
I was a typical entrepreneurs, with enough life and business experience to know the brutality of life face-to-face and understand the need to prioritize our actions towards survival, acquiring opportunities and resources and growing as a result of building an efficient system of consuming these resources to produce valuable outcomes.
I was concluding my journey to write what was then called Egypreneur’s Survival Guide – a book project collecting the know-how and prespective of Egyptian entrepreneurs on how to survive while building and growing a business – I spent almost 2 years meeting entrepreneurs, mentors and even sometimes picking up conversations with random strangers.
I had many questions hanging out of my head and I was very persistent to find fulfilling answers.
After almost all the questions got answered, the ideas syndicated and the stories harmonized; Survival didn’t make any sense to be in the book title.
It ran like an electric pulse through my brain, suddenly, that none of this is really about survival. I ran into the excel sheet where I kept the book structure and re-named different sections. I even updated my facebook cover photo to reflect the new paradigm.
While writing the book, I became a frequent traveller to Al Sorat Farm, where the book project was initially conceived, meeting the fabulous farm owner and discussing the connectedness of the universe, while actually learning more about how the farm works – something most of us – don’t get the chance to witness and think about.
It did make sense to me that we grow companies the same way we grow plants. It did make sense that, yes, nature is brutal and messy sometimes, but it’s also the source of life. It did make sense once we understand the laws of nature and play by its book, we become more grounded, confident and able to endure the brutal and messy seasons while embracing the seasons of growth and prosperity.
I learned about Spiral Dynamics and how individuals and societies alike shift their thinking and attitude towards life and the world.
It got me thinking of when would it be the right time for all of us to shift our thinking and attitude towards the world and each other and what can be done to allow this to happen?
As we get to work with SwitchMed on supporting Green Entrepreneurs to optimize their business models for scale and allocating the necessary finance to grow their businesses. I thought of this as a way to combine my new passion for green enterprises with my experience working with entrepreneurs.
If you work in any of the below sectors, you are invited to apply for the upcoming intake for the SwitchMed coaching and pitching program. (Deadline June 15th)
- Communication for sustainability (ITC & others)
- Organic food and agriculture
- Renewable energy and energy efficiency
- Resource efficiency and sustainable waste management
- Sustainable building and construction
- Sustainable cleaning products and cosmetics
- Sustainable clothing and textile
- Sustainable electrical and electronic equipments
- Sustainable furniture
- Sustainable mobility
- Sustainable tourism
I will be writing a series of articles featuring green entrepreneurs in Egypt, if you have any suggestions, feel free to nominate them to me
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