Top 6 questions raised at Mix N’Mentor Dubai

The Mix N’Mentor crowd during the morning opening session.
(Image via Abed Kataya)

As
promised, Mix N’Mentor Dubai, took Wamda’s
signature event to a new level.

Eighty entrepreneurs and 30 mentors attented the festivities at
the Hult Business School in Dubai Internet City, held on December
10.

The Marketplace
Edition was introduced to Dubai for the first
time. The five participating corporations were Careem, Payfort,
Emirates Airlines, DMS Choueiri Group and Aramex. They each sat
with around 15 startups and agreed to schedule meetings with the
ones they saw as having potential for collaboration.

During the market place sessions. (Image via Stephanie Nour
Prince)

Hot topics

Some of the hottest topics raised during the day
were around business growth and development, and
co-creation.

“It was very impressive to see the eagerness
among startups to look for an opportunity to collaborate and
co-create a novel product with the enterprise world,” said Sanjay
Sharma, manager of IT Innovation at Emirates Airlines. “I think
it’s a very powerful combination which brings the best of both
worlds together to offer smarter services to the
consumer.”

Other discussions focused on next year’s
downturn, in terms of how it will impact startups and
VCs.

“This will help entrepreneurs come up with
solutions that will deliver better value at a lower cost, which if
they can achieve while maintaining profitability, will put them at
a great level when the market bounces back again,” said Mansour
Salameh, Facebook’s MENA client solutions manager
for retail and ecommerce.

Nevertheless, fundraising and investment remain
the most popular topics.

“Don’t get side-tracked by stupid money not every dollar
invested in a startup is smart money, if the potential angel
investor wants to sit on the board of your startup and he has no
appreciation for your vision, better wait until you find an
investor that supports your plans,” – Prashant Gulati, founder and
maker-in-chief at The Assembly.

“Be very lean. Delay all luxury for your startup
and learn to survive with little money until you get the exposure
you need to negotiate better with your investors.”

During the discussion break up groups (Image via Kamel Al
Asmar)

Mentors’ top six questions

We asked the mentors about the most interesting
question they heard from an entrepreneur during the
day.

“I hear more and more that Facebook is not highly effective
in delivering scaled volume of sales at low cost. How we can use
Facebook for better performance?”

“Imagine Facebook to be a car, you need a good
driver to be able drive it and win the race. For that you need
first to hire great people who are passionate about Facebook and
train them to become the best. Second, you need to tune it. This is
similar to integrating your business with Facebook technology, i.e.
Pixels and SDKs [software development kits] to be able to improve
performance via achieving a better accuracy in targeting and
optimized performance. Third, you need to constantly A/B test and
optimize the key levers from creative, to targeting, ad placements
and format, and finally bidding. And last, tie up with a marketing
partner, which can take your performance to the next level given
their knowledge about our API and products. If you are doing these
correctly, then your performance should be on the right
track.” – Mansour Salameh, Facebook.

“Should I be spending my time as a founder
selling?”

“The best person to passionately sell your
company’s value is you. No one can do it any better. So often it’s
not the words you say to your clients that stick but rather how you
deliver your pitch. It is the emotion and passion and carry for
your company that has to show your client, and no one can deliver
this better than you. While all of the other hats are important and
depending on the company’s stage, you should eventually focus on
supporting other team members to wear the hats as early as possible
to allow you to focus on a hat or two and sales is always one of
these.” – Abed Agha, managing director at
Vinelab.

“How about appointing partners and distributors for a
B2B business?”

“It is very risky to let others tell the story
at this stage. It’s much better to build a strong customer base and
depend on direct sales or different distribution channels (such as
online) instead of hiring partners.” – Hany Bayaa,
director of operations, Commercial and Marketing at GE
Healthcare.

Wrapping up the day with a fireside chat (Image by Abed
Kataya)

“How do you convince someone from a corporate
environment to join a startup?”

“Not everyone with a corporate background is
ready to give up that comfortable life for a startup. However, we
are finding that more people are willing to make the change in
order to work in a startup environment that is dynamic,
challenging, entrepreneurial and allows them to feel that they are
part of something they are building.” – Yousef Tuqan,
Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Wamda Capital.

“What’s the biggest fear of an enterprise
while engaging with a Startup.”

“There are many factors for an enterprise to
consider while engaging with the startup like budget, scalability,
agility, innovation etc. The most important point is the real-time
support. Considering the point that an enterprise supports millions
of customers and they cannot afford to let any of their services
fail, it is very important for startups to show their capacities
providing 24/7 support post the implementation.” –
Sanjay Sharma, Emirates Airlines.

“Many entrepreneurs were sharing how they discovered or
stumbled upon new revenue streams and were wondering if they should
explore further, even if it wasn’t part of their original business
plan.”

“It doesn’t hurt to explore new opportunities, if it doesn’t
distract them too much from building their core, more lucrative
revenue stream. If the core isn’t panning out, then new revenue
streams would be a welcome pivot. Found it interesting how all
these start ups began with what they thought would be their
business model and how overtime, their models evolve.” – Ziad
Khammar, strategy and development director at DMS (Member of
Choueiri Group).