Rabat – Casablanca hosted the 4th Middle East and North Africa Seedstars Summit for startups between December 10-12. Seedstars is an investor in emerging markets’ startups.
The three-day event aims to facilitate business and investment opportunities in the MENA region, and serve as a step for startups from all over the world to compete in the Seedstars World competition. The competition is an international contest aiming to fund the most promising startups from all over the world.
The summit started with a growth Bootcamp by the Seedstars Investment team to teach the 20 participating startups, coming from 15 different countries, how to scale up their businesses.
On the second day, startups had more than 78 one-on-one meetings with key investors, mentors, and entrepreneurs, as part of the Investor Forum.
On the final day of the event, startups delivered 1-minute pitches on the main stage in front of more than 150 ecosystem builders, corporates, and investors representing some of the most prominent names of tech and entrepreneurship in the MENA.
The last day also featured keynotes from speakers representing global companies.
In the evening, the competition’s jury crowned seven startups as the best early-stage startups in the region. The winning startups were from Qatar, Palestine, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. They all presented innovative ideas linking various fields to technology.
At the end of the summit, all attendees took part in a closing cocktail party to network with each other and celebrate entrepreneurship in the region.
The winning startups will participate in the final stage of the Seedstars World competition, taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 3, 2020.
During the 2020 Global Seedstars Summit, more than 60 startups will compete in a global competition to win up to $500,000 in investments.
“We had an amazing time at the Seedstars MENA Summit in Casablanca, meeting incredible people including investors, mentors, and entrepreneurs,” said Omar Ashour, CEO of E-Butler, one of the winning startups.
“The Seedstars MENA Summit was a breath-taking event where we brought together more than 19 startups. We had the chance to build the bridges of tech and bring people together to create opportunities,” commented Annie-Shan Morin, the event’s manager.
Seedstars is a Swiss-based private group of companies aiming to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. The organization’s activities cover over 80 emerging ecosystems through a variety of events such as the Seedstars World Competition, acceleration programs, physical hubs called Seedspace, venture capital investments and company building activities.
