‘The startup cycle is finally taking off’

Omar Christidis is the founder and CEO of ArabNet, the leading online platform for everything startup and tech in the Arab world which hosts annual events in Dubai, Riyadh and Beirut. In anticipation of the ArabNet Beirut conference that will be held next week from March 4 to 6, Christidis spoke with Executive on ArabNet’s scalable business model, the Lebanese market’s strength and new developments within the startup space in Lebanon.   Does ArabNet fit the traditional Lebanese business model — where you test your product in Lebanon and then scale to the region? I think that Lebanon has tremendous competitive advantage when it comes to the conference business. People love to come to Lebanon when times are good. If the political situation had not deteriorated the event could have grown to be much bigger here. Expansion is definitely natural, and taking it to new markets — and the region’s