“Today you have 20 leading companies in Lebanon that employ people — that do a lot of good. they provide A livelihood to a large number of people. Having another 20-40 companies in the next 10-20 years that reach that size and that have that income just doubles the opportunities out there”
“At the seed stage, you want quantity. You want more and more startups because you know that most of them are going to fail … you need a factory of startups that gets them out one after the other”
“Imagine our first fund does not perform well … We lose our investors, they will not come back. we need to make money in order for the investors to be happy, to reinvest in other funds, in bigger funds to help the ecosystem get new funding”
“Role models inspire people to emulate them. They think if he can do it, I can do it. The world is filled with inspiring people that have been copied, emulated, and looked up to THAT get people to act”
“The best way to create cohesion is to form an entrepreneur-led board for the entrepreneurial community. You need to have people talking to local authorities. And you have to have the traditional business leaders helping”
“Serious economists wonder why our economic activity in this country hasn’t dropped further. Because any country that has normal arrangements facing these sorts of stresses — normally almost always ceases to function”
“[Entrepreneurship] is the only way to transform the economy. The region is stuck in a model that doesn’t work where most employment comes from the public sector. Few individuals think about starting their own company and following their own destiny”
“Clearly an entrepreneur in 2013 in Lebanon is so much better [off than] in 2010. I started my first company in 2004 and clearly it’s so much easier in so many ways”
