Misreading Saudi entrepreneurship [Opinion] – Wamda

When looking at it from the outside, Saudi
Arabia’s entrepreneurship potential appears very different to the
reality.

There are arrogant misperceptions on investor
interest and plastic stereotypes about customer bases, uninformed
judgments about legalities, and plenty more puzzling ideas around
what is actually happening that blur the reality that is the Saudi
startup ecosystem.

We can all agree that entrepreneurship, both as a culture and a
mindset, is slowly but surely growing in the Kingdom. However, one
must also realize that a country with a landmass ironically roughly
the same size as Greenland is home to many varying yet thriving
mini-ecosystems stretching from coast to coast.

As it came up in one discussion, most risk takers are in the
West, the techies are in the East and all the money is in the
middle.


The faces of Saudi Arabia’s entrepreneurial future. (Image via
the BBC)

Today’s piece is not about the state of the ecosystem in Saudi
Arabia for an international audience – I’ll be talking about that
later in other posts. Instead, part one of Misreading Saudi
Entrepreneurship
will be about the untapped potential of
‘wantrepreneurs’ and more specifically a message to women hesitant
to take the leap of faith. The willingness is there, but the
resistance to risk taking is strong. The value from failure is
misunderstood, and the overwhelming cultural deterrents are all too
real. Job security, family business, fast income, complacency,
reputation, social expectations and family conditions.  

As an active contributor to the Kingdom’s startup ecosystem, I
increasingly get to meet more women wanting to become entrepreneurs
than men. You can see their growing determination, solid work
ethic, boundless curiosity and graceful optimism towards
collaboration and suddenly, in more ways than one, they seem to be
the most qualified change agents for actually getting things
done!

In other words, I see an entrepreneurial future in Saudi Arabia
that is female.

The entrepreneurship space in Saudi Arabia is
one in which I believe women can not only excel, but also play
substantially greater leadership roles than their male
counterparts. As such, here are my top reasons for why I believe
more women in Saudi Arabia should explore their entrepreneurial
ambitions further.

The gender inequality issue is no secret: We
witness it everyday. It’s not fair and it’s not going to change
overnight. As an entrepreneur however, she is seen as an equal for
her ideas, her skills and her unwavering ability to make her idea a
reality. Investors care about her mindset and attitude and not so
much about her gender. Interestingly enough, they actually prefer
seeing more successful women lately.

Limited choice in academic and job variety: The
list of what women can and can’t do starts at elementary school. By
the time she’s in college, she’s faced with the same dilemma of
lack of variety, let alone graduating and not finding the job she
feels most passionate about. Many of Saudi’s female graduates
overseas even find identifying a suitable job as an issue. It’s
only as a womenpreneur that choice of what she can do becomes a lot
more fruitful.

The right kind of social: There are probably
more social entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia per capita than there are
entrepreneurs in Dubai, and yes most of them are women. These are
the same women who embrace volunteerism, are already part of some
network of non profit initiative, and actively spread the word on
every social media channel without any ifs and buts. As of this
week, Saudi Arabia is still the world’s most Tweeting country on
the planet (per capita), the worlds most active Youtube-viewing
nation, representing a third of all global daily Youtube views.
Saudi youth upload more unique content per day than a few countries
combined.


Investors are more interested in an entrepreneurs skills and
mindset than in her gender. (Image via Cisco)

Low-income families need supermoms: With the
rise of poverty and non-nuclear families, more mothers are put in a
position where they must become breadwinners. According to a May
2015 report by the Ministry of Justice, around 82 divorces take
place a day in Saudi Arabia. She’s either inventing today’s new
definition of a ‘productive family’ or fed up with depending on
organizations to get by. The grit to achieving financial freedom is
a great motivator.

Never before have women been as qualified as they are
today:
I won’t dwell on this too much but here are the
hard facts: over 60 percent of all Saudi university graduates are
women, and over 60 percent of them are unemployed. It’s needless to
say that women hold significant economic power as well.
Irrespective of what your conclusion is, the truth is that more
educated women will be available to work, explore opportunities and
become bigger contributors to the economy.

Foundations are in place: Saudi Arabia has over
40 business incubators and plenty of accelerator programs,
specialty funds are popping up, and many private investors are
beginning to understand what it takes to be an angel investor. New
tailored initiatives and programs that take into account the
recognition that womenpreneurs must be supported are increasingly
becoming more popular.

From local to global: Saudi
Arabia is a great market to build scalability on a massive level.
It has more established pipelines with global markets than the
entirety of the GCC region. Unlike regional startups that tend to
rely on markets such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to scale upwards
before they go international, Saudi Arabia enjoys a position of
being big enough on its own with the capability of accessing global
markets directly.

There hasn’t been a better time to become a
‘womanpreneur’:
Entrepreneurship is in itself a viable
solution to many socio-economic issues that exist today. The
government and the private sector believe that entrepreneurship is
a critical component in the formula of creating jobs, building
skills, and spreading innovation.

It’s fair game territory for you, ladies. You can be whatever
you want to be through entrepreneurship. It’s the loophole of all
loopholes where the real obstacles are seen as operational, just as
a male entrepreneur would face. There are no gender specific issues
that prevent you from following your passions and bringing an idea
to life. The Saudi startup community is alive and kicking, and
women have a role to play like anybody else. Furthermore, this is
just the beginning.

To leave you with a Tom Walton quote that pushes me forward
every time: “Capital isn’t scarce, vision is.”

For more information on taking a step forward,
feel free to drop me a line to know more about the supports
available to you in your own city in the Kingdom.

Source : Wamda.com

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