I have attempted to answer your question several times, each time deleting my wish-list and not submitting because really there is no magical formula that can transform a country’s entrepreneurship culture. The ecosystem needs to grow organically, and from what I've seen, any attempt to 'rush' its development does not really work out.
Example: Our start-up is based in Jordan, and honestly on paper we have it all. Government has lowered minimum capital requirements for incorporation to $1400 (down from close to $50K) as incentive for entrepreneurship. We have over 10 start-up incubators with several focused on the tech industry. We have pretty decent telecom infrastructure with speeds up to 8MB and uncensored Internet - better than most of our neighbours. We have an active support community in terms of grants, access to training, micro-funding, subsidized internship programs, business plan and marketing plan development support, etc... that are all really pretty accessible. We also have 'active' investors in Jordan. Rent is very reasonable and income tax laws are OK (not great, just OK, but there are tax free setups one can pursue).
Most of the above has been in place, to a large extent, since 2000. We’re only now seeing the shining stars emerge from that ecosystem, be it in the form of the headline acquisition (Yahoo!Maktoob) or the smaller sized successes, web releases and tech dev projects. It took a full generation of first movers to set the pace, fail, reinvent, etc.. before the second wave of startups came through with quicker results. So what’s still missing? Or how to improve and build on this foundation? I can think of a few ‘wishes’:
- From Government, I wish they’d reinvigorate the support for the ICT sector by helping attract foreign (Arab + other) investment into the sector through tax breaks and investment incentives.
- From Academia, I wish they’d throw out their curricula and catch up with the rest of us in 2010 – enough with the .Net graduates who have never worked with any open source platforms or new web technologies. We have 4000 annual IT graduates, most of whom are unemployable straight out of university because of poor curricula structure (with few exceptions). All professors should be made to spend time with the private sector to understand the market trends and needs.
- From the banking sector, establish a lending system targeted at SMEs – as Mohammed suggested, access to loans for entrepreneurs is a major need. The first thing the corporate banking manager told us when we started the company was to forget about any facilities being extended to us without collateral. Ever.
- From the consumer, I wish there’s a major awareness campaign on the importance of copyrights and intellectual property, the value of the tech industry to the country, and above all, to establish trust in online transactions and in online credit card usage.
