This is nine a’carly of wom de media I’m here in the WOM de booth at the Global Entrepreneurship summit chatting with sharifa Alberto me the founder of al-jazeera technical solutions and training not to be confused with the media outlet and also the founder of The Omen entrepreneurs Network she also is a prolific tweeter at the handle at omen entrepreneur without an a sharifa how are you I’m very well thank you pleased to be here it’s great to see the buzz and just to be part of this whole event I agree so how did you get inspired to get involved with entrepreneurs in Oman in the first place well I think it started with myself really because being an entrepreneur and having started my company back in 2007 I went through the mills of setting up a company and and and going through the whole startup phase and since we were already in the training and and and kind of coaching and consulting business I got more involved than with a Cisco entrepreneur Institute so I was hired to set up this is contra preneur Institute and a man and then I realized you know what we can do this we can really help other entrepreneurs to to just continue and and really flourish and you know bring up their companies and now you want to create a co-working space in Oman the very first how is that going very well I mean I think one thing that I’ve taken from being in the you know in the startup and in the Entrepreneurship ecosystem you have to have challenges to actually be able to sort of Excel and and make your product or your service much better so so it’s not easy but so far I think what we have found is that entrepreneurs in Amman do need a focal point where they can gather they can collaborate they can cooperate as well as just really exchange ideas and a place for them to fail but feel safe sothat they’re not out in the big markets if they fail they’re actually failing within our ecosystem so I mean that’s where the idea came from and we we just really wanted to set up a co-working space a kind of a accelerator model that will really support entrepreneurs in their ventures starting from an idea and they don’t even have to have a clear idea of what they want to do they can just join us sit and listen to other entrepreneurs and how they’re doing it and other startups and different life cycles of you know of the business itself and then they will be inspired to really know where their they’re at and continue from there and where is your average entrepreneur in Oman just in terms of you know what stage are most of them at the idea stage who are the who is your clientele going to be well we didn’t know in the beginning and we’ve we’ve run a kind of a pilot on the concept with with the support of a private company and they gave us they are the sponsors of what we call is the cell program the cell program is owned by the Oman fertilizer company Oman India fertilizer company and what they did is they said we want to you know show us the concept basically we want to support entrepreneurs and help entrepreneurship so we found when we went in we weren’t sure who’s gonna come and now we realize we have three types of entrepreneurs in our mind we have the research and development stage we have the startup the ones who are just going to startup and of course we have the expansion so it’s I can’t even put a number on it yet we I don’t think we have enough data from the market to really say that the majority of entrepreneurs in Amman are in the research and development or startup or expansion we need we need more time to kind of you know study the market but you have enough entrepreneurs to create a that that self-identify as entrepreneurs and want to scale to to start it to have a competition and have a sort of a beginning of the first class and your accelerator oh yeah absolutely I mean and this this we tested it by doing the amount entrepreneurs network this is something that started in February and since then we’ve been kind of trying to do it every month on a monthly basis we just open it up on social media platforms ask the entrepreneurs to choose a place a coffee shop usually choose a topic and choose a preferred time and I just do it like through Survey Monkey and then that’s it it’s set you just come in join in and bring your coffee and we talk about entrepreneurship I think it has developed enough now to know that there is demand I mean we every event we have around 40 to 45 entrepreneurs joining on the spots I mean we don’t know who’s gonna show up and that shows us that there is demand and that’s that’s enough for us to actually create something solid for them to to sort of refer back to and to go back to absolutely and what’s the breakdown between men and women it’s 50/50 surprisingly enough that’s another encouraging thing that we found in every almost every single session or even when we had the the sell program all of the applicants we had exactly 50% men and 50% women which means that the women are doing it as well and they they have a lot of great ideas we’ve got some fantastic businesses and I think you’re gonna interview them tomorrow as well beautiful ideas beautiful startups encouraging women women who are really strong and and sticking to their idea and forging ahead the same with the guys as well they’re doing very well with their ideas so it’s so nice to be able to see that and be able to be even if a small part of the success stories that they’re going to be created great well maybe we can bring our WOM to mix and mentor event there at some point for that insha’Allah we would be delighted to have it I think it’s it is time to sort of bring in the Romagna entrepreneurial scene back to open it up to the rest of the region and really collaborates with everyone in the region I think that’s what’s needed right now for the whole Arab world and I think we heard Sheikh Mohammed as well and and you know everyone who was here that we are at a point that we really need to create entrepreneurs we really need to encourage them and the only way we’re gonna do that is to open this whole plane and this whole land the whole region up to each other and I think Wanda do a great job of that they really do thanks triple you certainly helped us out with your can contributions from Oman so thank you for those thanks for chatting with us
