About women founders in MENA, tech trends, expansion in MENA and building a remote team.

Elissa Freiha is the CEO and co-founder of Womena, a media company focussed on creating original content around women change-makers, they run an accelerator program for women founders and have created an online community of Womena Bossladies. 

Elissa is the recipient of numerous awards including Entrepreneur of the Year from Esquire Middle East, Most Inspiring Business Leader -UAE by Forbes and Investor of the Year by Arabian Business Startup Awards.

AccessMENA: Elissa Freiha

Mai Medhat is the co-founder of Eventtus, an event tech company for event organisers and attendees that enriches the event experience by encouraging social engagement. The startup was founded in 2012 in Eqypt and today serves 10,000 events around the world. Eventtus is considered one of the dominant players in the industry. In 2016 at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit Mai was on stage with the President of the United States Barack Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In this interview we talk to her about pivoting the business during Covid19, understanding user behaviour and growth strategy.

AccessMENA: Mai Medhat

Joy Ajlouny is the founder of two startups. She co-founded Fetchr, a Silicon-Valley backed company based in Dubai aimed at solving the no physical address problem in emerging markets.

Prior to Fetchr, Joy founded Bonfaire, an e-commerce discovery platform for luxury footwear and accessories. Bonfaire was acquired in 2013. Joy, on behalf of Fetchr, was on the cover of Forbes Magazine in the Middle East, which named Fetchr #1 startup in the region. The company has raised $100 million in funding.

In this interview we talk to her about fundraising, being a venture capitalist, entrepreneurship and the "Joy effect".

AccessMENA: Joy Ajlouny

Katherine or Kat is the co-founder of NOW Money. Seeing the success that mobile money solution providers in the UK were experiencing Kat and her co-founder jumped on the opportunity to adapt the business model to the region. According to the duo, in the GCC there are 25 million low income workers that earn less than AED5000 approximately €1,130 which is below the limit required to open a bank account. With a tagline of “empowering the unbanked,” they launched NOW Money in 2015. We spoke to her about operating a fintech company in the region and her expansion plans.

AccessMENA: Kat Budd

Loulou Khazen Baz founded Nabbesh in 2012. Nabbesh is the Middle East’s first virtual skills marketplace where work is commissioned, paid for and delivered online. The platform connects businesses with top quality freelancers in MENA. Baz beat over 2,000 entrepreneurs from across the Middle East to win the UAE’s very first reality TV show, The Entrepreneur for the Nabbesh idea. In 2020 Nabbesh was acquired by the freelance platform Ureed.

In this episode we discuss talent sourcing and women's participation in the workforce.

AccessMENA: Loulou Khazen

About storytelling, building relationships and how to go about creating partnerships with governments in the region.

Thea Myhrvold is the CEO and founder of GetBee. GetBee’s mission is to Bring Expertise Everywhere, it is a white label SaaS solution for enterprises. Partnerships with Accenture, Microsoft and the H.H Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid initiative One Million Coders means that Thea is on track to scale the technology globally. Thea has been recognised by Expo2020, Cartier Womens Awards and is a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador.

AccessMENA: Thea Myhrvold

Ulrika Hedlund is the founder of edtech company Storyals. The company provides organizations with a content subscription offering to help them in their transition to a digital workplace on Office 365 through story-based tutorials. Storyals has offices in Sweden, the UAE and the US.

We talk to her about setting up in the UAE, the business culture and the merits of networking.

AccessMENA: Ulrika Hedlund

Born out the Survival Survey and the needs 667 Swedish startups expressed in it, we hope you will enjoy this Survival Guide.
Startup Sweden accelerates promising tech startups, helping them on their journey to enter the global market.

StartupSweden