Abdallah Absi has been creating start-up enterprises since he was 17, an age at which, he points out, he wasn’t even legally allowed to own a company. Four years and half a dozen (largely unsuccessful) business ventures later, he has combined his knowledge of the pitfalls of new enterprises with his impressive contact list of potential investors to found Zoomaal; a pan-Arab crowdfunding platform launched last month. Zoomaal allows users to acquire funding for their venture by securing multiple, small donations from the public in exchange for a range of rewards. It is a slick, local variant on the booming Kickstarter brand; the US-based funding platform which has raised $714 million and counting for more than 45,000 creative projects since its launch in 2009. Like Kickstarter, Zoomaal is purely project based; all campaigns have clear end dates and equity stakes are never on offer: “The projects we work with are
