Getting off the ground

The ingredients for creating a successful technology hub in Lebanon are on the table: ambitious entrepreneurs, power hungry venture capitalists and enthusiastic accelerators and incubators. Along with this growing ecosystem, there are increasing opportunities to invest in startups and when opportunities arise, money usually follows. In previous years, there were essentially two cards to play to fund a business in Lebanon: ask family and friends (the most commonly played card), or apply for a loan with Kafalat, the government-sponsored entity that helps provide small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with commercial bank funding by acting as a guarantor. The straight loan-from-a-bank card was, and still is, absent from the deck. “The environment is risky and startups are even riskier,” says Ibrahim Salibi, head of commercial and corporate banking at Bank Audi. “It might not be the right timing today [for banks] to finance startups.”    So far, banks have predominantly provided