Noor Sweid on Venture Capital and Startups Exits in MENA

We talk to Noor Sweid, the General Partner at Global Ventures about building a top tier Venture Capital firm in the Middle East - North Africa region. We cover her recent startup exits with e-commerce startup Mumzworld that has undergone an M-A transaction and Kitopi, a cloud kitchen startup that has recently raised $415M via Softbank-s Vision Fund. We discuss fund return expectations in MENA and we wrap up by touching on Noor-s own journey as an entrepreneur and investor.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Facebook's Ramez Shehadi on the digital economy, entrepreneurship and impact

Ramez Shehadi is the Managing Director of Facebook for the MENA region. In 2020, Ramez was ranked among the top 20 of the -Top 50 Regional Executives Heading International Companies- by Forbes. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Aramex, the Board of Trustees of BeMA (Beirut Museum of Art), the Board of Directors of MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute-s Middle East Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network to name a few. What is striking about Ramez though is not his accolades, it is his humility. In this episode Ramez speaks openly about the differences between his lifelong consulting career and his leadership role at Facebook. He shares some of the hard lessons he had to learn along the way. Ramez talks about a stronger and more prosperous MENA region and why he has faith in the region and its capabilities. We talk about Ramez-s own experience as an entrepreneur and the outcome of the startup he co-founded. He continues to love and give back to the startup space by mentoring and personally investing in startups via R-R Ventures, a boutique VC he co-founded. We chat about the skills of the future and what advice he is currently giving his daughters who are transitioning from high school to university. We conclude with a recommendation for governments that are currently launching funds to invest in local startups and SMEs. This conversation is a peak into Ramez-s mind and would certainly leave you more optimistic about the future. For more on Ramez and his work, please check out his biography. If you-re enjoying this podcast, please subscribe, share and leave us a review!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crypto currencies, asset-backed tokens and building a MENA crypto exchange

As the topic -cryptocurrency- reaches its highest level on google trends globally, we decide to dig into this world in order to understand what it all means to us as individuals and potential investors. We-ve all seen the news and watched Elon Musk drive cryptocurrencies and particularly Bitcoin to its highest peak and then sent it back crashing. But is it all Elon? What else is at play? Are cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology the blockchain here to stay? Will they indeed fundamentally change the way we own assets and transact? We tackle these points and bring a MENA perspective as we chat with Daniel Ahmed, the co-founder of Fasset, a newly launched (but a couple of years in the making) emerging markets -Digital Asset Gateway- which offers a cryptocurrency exchange service and tokenization services for corporates/ governments with an emphasis on sustainability. We discuss cryptocurrencies, MENA trends, regulation, crypto cycles and his advise for first time crypto investors. To learn more about Fasset visit their website: https://www.fasset.com If you like this content, please subscribe to Conversations with Loulou on Youtube, it helps increase the reach and visibility and helps me as a content creator. For sponsorships, guest recommendations, feedback and other requests, you can connect with me here: https://conversationswithloulou.com/contact/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristel Bechara on embracing NFTs & crypto currencies

This inaugural episode for season 2 delves into the world of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and gives you a high-level overview of their use cases. We talk to Kristel Bechara, the award-winning Lebanese artist residing in Dubai about her experience being the first artist from the MENA region to mint and sell NFTs. Why do you need to know about NFTs? Because the underlying technology of NFTs could become ubiquitous sooner than you think and ultimately everything that we own could be made into and traded as an NFT.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brahms Chouity a.k.a Daddy Foody on becoming an accidental award winning food blogger

Brahms Chouity known by his Instagram handle @DaddyFoody is the winner of the Best Comfort Food Blogger at the World Bloggers Award for 2019. In this episode we discuss Brahm-s passion for conceptualising and identifying business opportunities with the goal to exit in a few years and how he managed to launch close to 30 startups in 2 decades. Whilst he was hard at work churning one business after the other and just before he turns 40, life throws Brahms a curveball that would change his perspective forever. Out of that experience, Daddy Foody was born. Tune in to listen to Brahms- story and find out about his plans for the future!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tara Rogers-Ellis on the vital role of public relations

Tara Rogers-Ellis, co-founded Mojo along with Louise Mezzina. Over the course of a decade, the duo have built Mojo into a successful PR and Communications agency, with top clients like Johnson - Johnson, the European Union, RAKBank, Montblanc and more. Tara grew up in South Africa during apartheid and an opportunity to move to the UAE meant that she could have a fresh start, it was at that point when she discovered her natural inclination towards PR and her love for building teams. During the episode, Tara shares useful tips for companies looking to fully leverage public relations, and what to avoid.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mishaal Al Gergawi on turning his thirst for learning into a startup

I-m excited to have Mishaal Al Gergawi on the show this week, one of the UAE-s top thinkers and intellectuals. Mishaal-s journey is quite fascinating as he started his career in finance yet quickly became renowned for his writing, a passion that fueled the launch of The Delma Institute, a think tank that he ran between 2012 and 2018. His work was centered around providing analysis and insights on West Asia and North Africa to governments and corporates. At that point, his curiosity to learn about the world peaked and he decided to undertake his first deep dive and learn about the world-s modern history, a gigantic task that took him 3 years to complete. He wrote a summary about his learnings on [medium](https://medium.com/thingsilearn/history-1453-2001-a1bbc16f455e)]. He is currently on his second deep dive and tackling both the world of sci-fi and crypto currencies. Mishaal wants to be an eternal student, the most well rounded person he can possibly be. His curiosity about the world and his wish to make an impact led him to launch [AXIS](http://axis.xyz), a startup with an audacious goal to build the world-s best graph for companies to understand the MACRO forces impacting their business and help them make informed decisions. I-d love to hear what you-re reading-you can tag me on [Instagram](https://instagram.com/louloukhazen) and leave me a review in Apple Podcasts and IMDb. For sponsorship opportunities, collaborations or guest recommendations, you can [email me](mailto:loulou.khazen@gmail.com) for details.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons from building LinkedIn's presence in MENA with Ali Matar

Ali Matar, LinkedIn-s Head of EMEA Emerging Markets, Middle East - Africa talks about the disruption that COVID has had on the MENA region and how people are coping with the new work dynamics, job losses and the need to re-think their careers, particularly women. We build on Ali-s experience as the first employee tasked to build the LinkedIn presence in MENA and how a misconception he had ended up being one of his biggest career learning opportunity. A great discussion if you-re currently managing people and looking for practical tips on building a thriving workplace.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's talk about sperm, with Khaled Kteily of Legacy

I-m joined by my friend Khaled Kteily, the Founder and CEO of [Legacy](http://givelegacy.com), - a startup he founded at the Harvard Innovation Lab - that provides from-home fertility services for men with the aim to change the outdated view that fertility is a women-s issue. The UAE is part of Legacy-s first phase of international expansion and Khaled is hoping to kick off at the earliest given the region-s struggle with infertility in general. Khaled and I talk about the similarities in our journies--we both left home at 17, we both started business from scratch as first-time entrepreneurs at 29, we both won startup competitions - believe in creating momentum to make things happen. We also talk about his own identity and the start of his career at Oliver Wyman followed by the World Economic Forum. A quick disclaimer: I-m a super proud investor in Legacy and fully believe in their mission to become the Fatherhood company helping over 100M men on the journey of becoming a father.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How a blast injury inspired Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram to create Proximie

Nadine Hachach-Haram is Lebanese reconstructive plastic surgeon based in London and the founder of Proximie, an augmented reality platform allowing surgeons to remotely guide local clinicians through complex procedures in real-time. She joins me on the show this week to talk about growing up in post-war Beirut in the early 90s, her first exposure to the world of surgery to her mission with Proximie to provide top-class healthcare across the world. We also discuss the importance of multitasking and finding a balance as a surgeon, entrepreneur, wife and mother of 3!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices