promoting high impact entrepreneurs

Endeavor Jordan had its first local selection panel on Monday. This is the process whereby Endeavor Entrepreneur candidates are vetted by a local panel of top business leaders to determine if they should present at the Endeavor International Selection Panel (ISP), held four times per year. The next Endeavor ISP will be held here in Jordan at the Kempinski Hotel, Dead Sea. This ISP will also mark the official launch of the Endeavor Jordan office - go Jordan!

Our panel consisted of the top business leaders in Jordan. They include, from left to right: Ali Al-Husry, former Chairman and CEO of Capital Bank and Chairman of Endeavor Jordan; Laith AL-Qasem, CEO of Arab Business Consultants for Development; Fadi Ghandour, Founder and CEO of Aramex and Endeavor Jordan Board Member; Maher Kaddoura, MD Huron Consulting Group; and Safwan Masri Professor at Columbia Business School and Endeavor Jordan Board Member. In the front you'll find Endeavor Jordan Managing Director Carmen Saad and me of course! These guys are very busy. As Fadi Ghandour tried to hurry out of the meeting, I intercepted him and asked that he pose for a proper group picture. Thankfully, he's a very nice guy and happily obliged.



It was an exciting day of entrepreneurs presenting to the panel, great discussion and (sometimes) heated deliberation. The event spurred my thinking again about the state of entrepreneurship in Jordan and the level of sophistication among both entrepreneurs and capital providers. I must say the search and selection team put together quite an inspiring and varied group of entrepreneurs.

Sitting in the room with the panelists, hearing them joke with each other and interrupt the entrepreneurs to ask incisive questions, I felt like I was sitting around the board room with the partnership at my old venture fund:

"How do you quantify your target addressable market?"
"Your greatest risk lies in successfully executing on your franchising strategy."
"What is your pricing model and how will you work to build your recurring revenue base?"

The entrepreneurs were quite impressive as well. They brought energy, charisma, shiny power point presentations, and well thought out responses to the panelists' questions.

The entrepreneurs included a female PhD who founded a profitable social enterprise, the creators of a very innovative new green technology, a couple of Web 3.0 gurus, and a niche retail specialist who has grown a sizable business already. We're very excited to see who makes it through the ISP to become an Endeavor Entrepreneur. Stay tuned to this blog - I'll announce the new Jordan Endeavor Entrepreneurs in October!

The entire experience made me think: "Yes, Jordan is ready. The seeds have been sown to grow a strong knowledge-based economy built on entrepreneurship."

How does Endeavor help?

First, Endeavor provides access to a network of top business leaders. In addition to 3 of the panelists mentioned above, Endeavor has Samih Darwazeh, Founder of publicly traded Hikma Pharmaceuticals on its board, as well as Peter Kellner, co-Founder of Endeavor. The office has also assembled a group of VentureCorps members, other business leaders who serve as mentors to the entrepreneurs. Endeavor provides consulting/mentorship, makes introductions to potential partners, customers and funders, and can provide training on raising capital and pitching to investors.

Endeavor seeks the entrepreneurs with high potential and gives them a bit of a push, or a shoulder to stand on, in order to ensure their success. In this way, the organization helps build large companies that can employ many people and helps build a culture of entrepreneurship that encourages others to achieve. Endeavor entrepreneurs give back by coaching others and in some cases donating a portion of their revenue.

A key question in my mind is: How much of a role does Endeavor play in the entrepreneurs' success? Would these entrepreneurs be as successful without Endeavor's help? I'll come back to this in a later post. But the short answer is, I think Endeavor does have a unique and important role to play.

Finally, here's a quick tour through our office:

Modern set-up.

Beautiful views.

Outside garden. We have 3 undergraduate interns (in suits), me (also in a suit), Ismail and Ali (search and selection team, Ismail on the left), and Carmen (managing director, center).

entrepreneurship initiatives versus public policy

For a small country, Jordan is making a big push for entrepreneurship. On Wednesday last week I visited the El-Hassan Science City (http://www.elhassansciencecity.com/), home of the Princess Sumaya University of Technology, The Royal Scientific Society (an applied research institution), and the Higher Council for Science and Technology (policy and strategy). Co-located with Science City is the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE). Together, these institutions are working hard on very lean budgets to implement a vision of an integrated science park with students, incubated budding entrepreneurs and more mature businesses working alongside one another. And they are promoting a grander vision of a Jordan built on a strong knowledge based economy.

The QRCE has pioneered several initiatives, most notable of which is a national business plan competition sponsored by Google. They've also partnered with the Cisco Entrepreneurship Institute for business training and created a Made in Jordan competition whose aim is to turn innovative research into high growth companies. Additionally, business plan winners and runners-up, as well as some other companies, are supported at Science City's Incubator.

Courtesy of my friend Bob, who works as a consultant for Science City, I had the opportunity to tour the campus, meet with some companies and meet with the Deputy Director of the QRCE, Mohamad Khawaja. Here's a picture (and article) of Bob and Mohamad meeting with Her Majesty Queen Rania a few hours before I visited: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=17456.

I think the effort is quite admirable, and I believe it will pay off. It already is. Mohamad, the QRCE's Deputy Director, is a young pragmatic yet passionate guy who can make things happen. The entrepreneurs at the incubator are young, hard-working and fired up about their prospects and the support and recognition they are receiving. I hear more talk of entrepreneurship than a few years ago. And while still rare, I see a venture fund popping up here, one there, focusing on high growth local entrepreneurs.

But there's still a long way to go for the government in terms of policy. Regulations often go counter to the goal of the business promoting initiatives. Take for example import tariffs. They're great, right? They generate revenue for the government while protecting or encouraging local business. But this is where Dani Rodrik's voice rings in my ear, "coordination failure." If the inputs that business require don't exist in country (coordination failure) and it's too costly to produce them in country, then they must be acquired from abroad. Now the import tariffs don't seem as appealing, since they might serve to depress business growth that can fuel the economy and generate many multiples more in tax revenue than the import tariffs currently generate. There are many other examples. For one, it is very costly and cumbersome to open a business in Jordan. Permit and license fees are very high as are working capital requirements.

Thus, we have exciting and ambitious government initiatives to foster entrepreneurship and build a knowledge-based economy coming at us from one direction, and mismatched government regulation that hinders entreprenuership coming at us from the other direction. Fortunately, in this monarchy government, strong potential exists for getting things done. If you are able to find and convince the right person things can start moving. Bob spends some of his time working on this. I'd like to as well....

west meets east

Amman is a booming city with a sharp mix of West and East. Walking by a new cafe in the trendy Jabal Amman neighborhood you hear the latest club tracks as the intoxicating sounds of the afternoon prayer fill the air. The towers of the Shmeisani financial district have a view of the old, crowded, traditional Amman to the East; the new, modern, wealthy areas of Abdoun, Deir Ghbar, and Khalda in the South and West; and the massive Abdali downtown development project below. Veiled women walk alongside those in the latest designer skinny jeans and Prada sunglasses, down streets full of billboards and brandname logos. Everything is written in Arabic and English. Amman is a hub of commercialism and real estate development. Every time I visit there are new neighborhoods and new development projects.


Doesn't really seem like the country needs economic development workers. The unemployment rate is 13.5%, the Country spends 6.5% of its GDP on education (slightly above average for the Arab World) and has a 99% youth literacy rate, and real estate development projects abound.

But beneath the shiny veneer lies a more complicated story. Jordan has a very large youth population with 70% under the age of 30. Perhaps they should be spending more on education. The actual unemployment rate is estimated to be upwards of 30%-40%. Female participation in the workforce is an abysmal 12%. The Country has very few natural resources (traditionally Jordan has relied on some phosphate exports), leaving it dependent on external sources for its energy requirements. The one "natural resource" it has in abundance, national sites / tourism, it fails to effectivley exploit.

The business culture has a shiny veneer as well, but beneath the surface seems to lack a certain degree of professionalism. Verbal promises and agreements are often broken, contracts often renegotiated. Availability of capital is still ambigous to me. Capital seems abundand for large real estate and business development projects, but very difficult to come by for entrepreneurs.

Look forward to digging deeper and learning more.