“Entrepreneurs in Lebanon are not mature enough and not trained well enough to become investment ready, but once they are investment ready, they could find money here, in Jordan or anywhere in the world if their business model makes sense and has potential and scalability.”
“It is a risky environment and startups are even riskier. It might not be the right timing today to finance startups but we are definitely thinking of helping within the right environment and with the right product.”
“A lot of entrepreneurs know very little about raising funds. They don’t know what their options are and they get massively ripped off by people.”
“Lebanese are entrepreneurs in their souls. You would very frequently hear young men and women discussing dreams and projects of opening restaurants, fashion boutiques, etc. Provided the infrastructure is there, startups will pop up like mushrooms.”
“Banks are doing a great job in protecting money and assets of people but a very poor job in terms of building infrastructure that people can innovate on top of. The obvious one is online payment gateways.”
“Some young entrepreneurs don’t have the maturity or experience of what it means to safeguard shareholder value. Their primary concern is sweat equity and how much they get in upside rather than focusing on how they will make their business flourish and grow.”
“From the venture capitalist’s perspective, he knows that startups are risky and in Lebanon riskier than elsewhere so if he were to adopt a pure finance perspective, he would propose a very low valuation. And as Lebanese, we all have a good opinion of ourselves and high valuations [from entrepreneurs] can be expected. What ends up happening is that both give. Question is do they give enough?”
