We all know about the importance of advertising on facebook if you’re targeting any of its almost 1Bn users. But there was something that was bugging me for a while, I’ve been running a lot of ads on facebook for different clients with different objectives, but I’ve always preferred CPC over CPM, I felt that paying for an action is much more reliable then paying for display.

Now some people might argue that CPM does well for branding, getting the word out and making people notice you. That’s good if you have the money to spend or if your objective is to waste it. But generally I never do CPM until recently, I thought I should take a look at it from a scientific point of view (and by that I mean using excel!).

So I did some research about the average cost of advertising in KSA and the UAE, and found the following numbers on social bakers:

Facebook advertising costs (in USD):

As you can see the prices are close for both UAE and KSA, the rates have recently went up, because when I was doing the math last month the price for CPC was 0.29 USD and 0.06 USD for CPM in KSA, but I don’t think that should change the point I want to reach at the end of this article.

Ok now that we have the prices out of the way, we have to find the average click through rates (CTR) for ads on Facebook and after a quick google search I found a number of sites and forums with similar numbers. But I liked the numbers mentioned in this Quora answer just because the contributor of the answer claims to be a facebook API partner.

Facebook ads Average CTR:

So lets take the following scenario, I want to carry out an advertising campaign on facebook with a daily budget of 10.00 USD, what would preform better?

Assumptions:

I went with the higher costs of the UAE and the CTR of average performing ads of 0.05%.

lets see how many clicks and impressions we would get with each, starting with CPC:

CPC Numbers:

Before I can move forward I have to explain how I reached these numbers, since we have the budget we can work backwards to calculate the number of clicks, and since its CPC the number of impressions is not very important so we don’t have to calculate it.

No. of clicks = Daily budget / Cost Per Click -> 10.00/0.48 = 20.833 clicks

You will also notice that I added a second column called “No. of actions” this is a number to track conversions, for this example I gave it a value of 30%. Basically from every campaign you run, not a 100% of the people who click on the ad actually convert to customers or do whatever you want them to do (like a page, register for a newsletter, fill a survey, etc…). So if 30% of the number of clicks actually carry out the required action it will brings us to a total of almost 6 actions.

CPM Numbers:

Now for CPM the calculations are a bit longer, because we have to find the number of impressions first. But again we can find out all the information since we have a budget and we’re assuming a CTR of 0.05%:

No. of Impressions = (Daily Budget / Cost Per 1000 Impression) * 1000 -> (10.00/0.1)*1000 = 100,000 Impressions

No. of Clicks = (CTR * No. of Impressions) / 100 -> (0.05*100,000)/100 = 50

Whoa! On paper you can get more than double the number of clicks if you do CPM!

So I planned to run two identical campaigns on facebook each with two ads (total four ads), the only difference between the campaigns was that one was CPC and the other CPM.

I decided to run it for eight days and wanted to see which would preform better, so before running the test I did some math using the same numbers above to have a rough forecast of what to expect. I also went a step further to see how much I would pay for a single action, here are the numbers I got, again starting with CPC:

Campaign forecast for CPC:

Campaign forecast for CPM:

An action costs 1.00 USD less with CPM? But how can this be true, were all the campaigns I ran a waste? Could I have done better going with CPM? You can imagine what was going through my mind as I was reviewing the numbers.

Now back to reality, The campaign was targeted to different countries in the MENA, and the action required was for people to fill out the Online, Social Media & E-Commerce usage in the UAE survey. Each campaign had two advertisements as mentioned above, the advertisements were similar in every detail except one linked to the article page on our website and from there users would go to the survey. The other ad was linking directly to the form page which was setup on google docs. Below are screenshots of the ads:

I realize its better to test different ad formats to see which preforms better, however this would have effected the results of what I was trying to do, so I tried to minimize all variables as much as possible.

And here are the results of the campaign (I took out the social clicks and reach):

Facepalm moment!

First of all the numbers don’t match with the forecast, because of the following reasons:

1. The actual cost of media was much less than the assumed price: 0.07 vs. 0.48 for CPC and 0.02 vs. 0.10 for CPM
2. The CTR was also different between predicted and actual results: 0.08% vs. 0.05 For CPC and 0.01 vs. 0.05 for CPM
3. Targeting features on Facebook, both geographical and behavioral

Ok this is by no mean a definitive study to show that CPC is better, especially since facebook serves different ads according to a number of variables, but below are the learnings that I will take from it you’re welcome to give your own thoughts:

1. I’m sticking with CPC
2. I forecasted a 30% Action rate for conversions, when in reality it was more like 3% for this example. But to be honest a 30% conversion for filling a survey is a little bit optimistic especially users are getting nothing in return. Had it been a competition or a giveaway things would’ve been different
3. I managed to get a 0.08% CTR for the CPC campaign without trying to optimize it. I’m pretty sure if I had different formats with different headlines, images and copy I would’ve achieved a higher CTR and a lower cost per click. The best I’ve ever managed to achieve on a CPC campaign was a 0.03USD. But it was a giveaway competition campaign
4. Something not in the screenshots above is the “Frequency” or number of times the ad appeared to the same user. The average for the CPC campaign was around 3.5 and for CPM was around 10.5. So if you want the same users within your target to see your ad, then go for CPM other than that dont do it
5. If you’re paying for advertising, might as well pay for an action. Because the CPC campaign turned out to cost 0.05USD per thousand impression which is 0.03USD higher than what I payed for the actual CPM. But the cost per click for the CPM campaign was 0.18USD which is 0.11USD more expensive then what I paid for the actual CPC

What do you think? Do you have any tips or advice from previous experiences on advertising on Facebook? Then let us know. If you wish to receive tips like this to your inbox signup to receive our newsletter.

Finding talent in the MENA region can be a difficult task, there isn’t a specific place for people to find creative minded individuals with trusted feedback. The problem also exists for the people at the other end i.e. for freelancers who are looking for work. Where do they go? And how can they be sure to trust whom ever is hiring them.

Enter tasmeemME, a social network dedicated to creative talent, that allows for both companies and individuals to share work and connect with each other to form a working relationship. I had the pleasure to meet the entire team last week, and they were very nice to take the time to sit down and talk with me. They’re located in Amman, Jordan. And from what I understood they’ve recently moved into new offices after securing a round of investment last year. The office had a distinctive vibe which I can’t really explain but it felt like a place I’d like to work at.

Noor and The B!

tasmeemME is the brainchild of Noor El-Fadl who is a graphic designer that used to work in the “corporate world” (as she puts it) for a couple of years then decided to work as a freelancer. “I found it difficult to market myself and find work” explained Noor, which is one of the main reasons why she thought of tasmeemME and went on to launch it out of her basement in 2009. (Coincidentally they launched around the same time interactive ME launched in May 2009, so happy 3rd birthday tasmeemME!)

“tasmeemME was operational for a year, and then Arabnet happened – it was out of the blue, within 2-3 days we were there and we got pushed extremely quickly to the deep end.” Said Noor, describing her experience with Arabnet and how things quickly became serious.

Throughout our discussion we were interrupted by a special team member Balilah aka The B! A very cheerful and hyper dog, it was obvious she just wanted to play. I couldn’t resist not writing anything about her in the article, she was a delight!

Anyways I digress, back to the website, according to Noor tasmeemME is gaining traction and the user base is growing “people are enjoying using our network” she also added “as a pilot it worked out pretty well, users got hired and jobs were posted but now its time for a new expansion with a new revamp hopefully in the near future.”

Luckily for Noor she’s not alone she has a team that helps her make tasmeemME possible, currently they are a team of four people:

1. Noor El-Fadl, founder & CEO (Although she doesn’t like to be called CEO because she doesn’t believe in titles – which I happen to agree with)
2. Yahia Houry, COO
3. Yamama Jaradat, Community & Outreach Manager
4. Haya Majali, Junior Developer

Haya Majali

Other than the fact they are successful at connecting people to work with each other, Haya attributes the early success of the site to the fact that freelancers can upload their own portfolios. “A strong facet of the site is that People like to browse and see portfolios, so they have an idea of the person’s capabilities” Explained Haya.

I then turned my attention to Haya, I wanted to know more about the technology side and how she manages to handle the website. Currently tasmeemME is built with Code ignitor which is flexible but difficult to manage from the backend, they are looking to change that in the near future to Drupal, how they ended up with Drupal is a long story according to the team. Although it isn’t as flexible as Code ignitor it is easier to manage, and at least for the time being they need something that is easy to manage especially that there isn’t a big team in house to do it.

Yehia Houry

We then moved on to talk about the daily activities going on at tasmeemME, I asked Yahia what he liked most about working at there “What I Like is that its challenging, every half an hour I take care of something different, there is lots of overlap in terms of our roles” he also added “in a startup if you think of an initiative you can run with it. Which is both exciting and kind of scary at the same time!”.

What sets tasmeemME apart in my opinion is what they are doing to ensure that the users on the site are genuine, “We’re meeting all creatives on the site. in person or via Skype. We ask them questions, such as what are their strengths (corporate design, illustrations, etc…) in order to create the most extensive database of creatives in the Middle East. And according to the information we gather we can recommend freelancers to our clients.” Stated Noor.

They offer recommendations to clients through an assisted search service where they get in touch directly with clients (or clients get in touch with them) and discuss what they are looking for and then they go off matching them with the most suitable candidate according to the client’s requirements.

As mentioned previously the site is completely free for both individuals and companies, and apart from their assisted search service they sometimes act as a promotional arm for some of their clients.

That is why they are thinking of introducing some sort of membership model to the website, in order to add a revenue stream, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on how and what will exactly happen with that.

As an example of their promotional work they are currently working exclusively with the Welfare association on a logo competition for a Palestinian museum in Beir Zeit, the museum is more a topical one than a historical one. The competition is running until May 20, 2012, and 1st place receives 1,500USD prize, 2nd 1000USD and 3rd 750USD. ”Its really a great initiative to be a part of, we’ve done a number of these collaborations in the past with unesco and ruwwad/aramex” Said Yahia.

Naturally I wanted to know how well they were doing in terms of traffic or number of registered users, and Noor was actually quite happy to provide the numbers, but she stressed the fact that they are targeting a very niche community and that they haven’t been doing any marketing. Their registered users are 2,700 the majority of whom (60%) are from Jordan and 20% from Lebanon with the remaining from a mix of countries worldwide.

Yamama Jaradat

So how did they reach this number and what are they planning to do to increase it? This is where Yamama comes in, she is the community & outreach manager, although she spends her time meeting and contacting creatives that are adding themselves to the website, she also takes care of tasmeemME’s social presence.

“Currently we have a facebook page & Group although we’re focusing more on the page now, we’re also on twitter & Pinterest and soon getting on Linkedin & Google Plus.” Said Yamama.

So far all activities done were direct marketing and the majority of traffic and users were genrated organically. However they recently began advertising on social networks a few months back. ”So far Its working good, all our marketing activities are mainly online and social” stated Yamama.

Obviously tasmeemME’s major aim is to bring people to the website and hopefully convert them to registered users. Which is why they believe social networks such as Facebook will help in the long run. Yahia mentioned an example of a previous campaign they ran on Facebook that generated 1,500 likes in a couple of weeks. “Once users like our page we can communicate with them better and make sure we cater to their needs in a more effective way.” added Yahia.

As to what they communicate with these users from Facebook and twitter, Yamama explained that they are currently posting scheduled items that they feel relevant to their users, covering topics such as design or social media, as well as job opportunities that match their skills.

So there you have it a quick look inside tasmeemME. I must confess I really enjoyed our chat and expect them to have a bright future ahead because they seem to know what they’re doing. So I would like to wish them the best of luck, a happy third birthday and want to thank them for taking the time to meet with me.

Have you tried tasmeemME, If so what do you think? Let us know your comments. Also if you’d like to stay updated on changes with tasmeemME, signup to receive our newsletter.

Continuing with the companies I met at AmmanTT 2012, I had the chance to sit down with Gaith Kawar and Odeh Haddadin from Taktek games, the story of this venture is an interesting one, it starts back in 2008 when Gaith Kawar the current CEO and Co-founder launched a company called Zero3 Digital which is a website design and development company based in Amman, Jordan.

Gaith remembers how it all started with 3 employees. It was co-founded with his brother Yazan Kawar who is now the Creative Director. Then in 2009 a breakthrough moment happened “we were approached by a client that wanted a branded game for volvo, after doing the research and completing the game [it was designed for facebook] we realized that we can make money out of this” stated Gaith. So since he already had a ready made game Gaith decided to go look for investors and show them the game, his plans were actually to add a department as an extension to Zero3 that develops games, they weren’t really considering a separate gaming company.

“In 2010 we found an investor, and in october of that year we officially established a company and called it Taktek games“ - Gaith Kawar

After registering the company they went on to hire the team, currently they are a team of 22 people and planning on hiring 10 more by the end of the year. The core of the team are designers, developers and 3d designers/animators, with a couple of business development people such as Odeh.

Taktek team - Gaith 4th from the right standing against the wall. And Odeh 2nd from the right in the middle row.

In January 2012, Taktek announced that one of their games “My Marbles“ is expected to be published in the summer of 2012 by chilingo. If you don’t know chilingo they are the global premium game publishers (part of EA Games) that published games such as Angry birds and Cut the Rope among others. My Marbles will be available for iOS and Android (no pun intended!), however they can be ported to other platforms such as Playstation, XBOX, etc… which is something that they are looking forward to do in the future however they want to find the right publishers first.

Below is a video demo of My Marbles the game that is 100% developed by Taktek and will be published by chilingo:

They are also in talks with another global publisher to publish a second game called Replanet, they couldn’t get this game published with chilingo because each publisher has a set of requirements according to their portfolios. However they are hopeful to publish this game by summer 2012 as well, unfortunately the publisher’s name remained confidential. We’ll have to wait and see how it works out for them.

Below is a video demo of Replanet:

So with all this good news, Taktek games became bigger than zero3, the first company they founded, and in March 2012 Taktek acquired zero3, however they are both still running.

All in all they’ve raised four rounds of funding throughout the years, although Gaith admitted that the funding wasn’t secured through the normal structure of raising capital.

I asked Gaith how a company in Jordan was able to reach a publisher such as chilingo, and he simply replied “At the Game Development Conference that was held in San Franscio last March.” They went there with the target of getting both of their games published with chilingo, and they ended up meeting 18 publishers and getting 12 offers. Not bad!

Gaith explained the “long” process of getting approved with a global publisher such as chilingo. What helped Taktek is the fact that both games were completely developed “the more complete the demo is, the higher your chances are. With chillingo we had four people playing our game just to decide whether or not they would continue discussions with us or let us go.” explained Gaith.

Once the game got pushed on to higher management and all the agreements were finalized, chilingo did some quality testing and provided Taktek games with comments and feedback in order to produce a better gaming experience for users and increasing its chances of succeeding.

Although anyone can publish games on iTunes and the Android marketplace, Gaith mentioned the following advantages of going with a publisher instead of doing it alone:

1. Publisher’s feedback is very valuable
2. Bigger publishers have leverage with networks and operators worldwide, for example for Android chilingo have 300+ connections with operators worldwide
3. Publishers are going to spend money on marketing the game across different networks, including online and mobile ads as well as with their partners
4. PR, when a company such as EA games publishes a game it will get more exposure then if Taktek were to do it themselves

Gaith also added “If I had to put a price on it, I would say their contribution would be worth around 250,000 – 300,000 USD.”

Obviously publishers don’t give you all that out of the kindness of their hearts, they eventually share the revenue with the game developers. Gaith wouldn’t say how much the exact breakdown was but he did say “we get a big chunk!”.

Thats not bad if you think about it, these two games had a life cycle of five months from start to finish. So if they keep working on cool new ideas and getting them ready to be published with respectable companies, sooner or later one of them will turn out to be a big hit just like angry birds.

We then moved on to talk about why hasn’t the gaming industry in the MENA taken off and more specifically why haven’t we heard of any success stories from the region. Gaith replied saying “what is missing in the region is experience, the gaming companies here are very new 2-3 years, it needs more time. I don’t think its fair to judge us now!”  he continued to add “From our experience, we spent our first year on Research & Development – we cannot produce a blockbuster in 6 months.”

“To us we have reached an agreement with an international publisher within one year. Which can be looked upon as a success story” – Odeh Haddadin

Since it’s such a new industry in the region talent is still lacking, and this is one of the major setbacks. Gaith admitted that they hire web designers/developers and train them on game design. So whenever someone leaves its a great hassle to find replacements. “The ecosystem still needs time to develop.” explained Gaith, stating that in the past some of his designers left to start their own gaming companies, which he views as good thing because it’s helping the ecosystem. Now its a hassle to replace talent, but if this trend keeps going on in a couple of year’s time instead of receiving one applicant they will be receiving five for a specific position.

Throughout our discussion we brought up the startup scene in the region, so I wanted to know his thoughts on entrepreneurship in genreal and what kind of advice they have to offer to would be entrepreneurs in the region and Gaith’s number one advice is “Find a mentor, don’t ask your friends, ask people with knowledge and experience in the field and get their advice and input. I’ve had a lot of mentors throughout my career, I call them up all the time and talk with them to get feedback. It’s amazing you can spend hours talking and one sentence could change everything. I understand some people shy away from approaching mentors because they think that a person might be busy or wouldn’t offer help because he is famous or something, but you have nothing to lose, keep trying to till you get in touch with the person you would like to talk to.” stressed Gaith.

He continued to comment on the situation in Jordan, “People especially in Jordan are jumping in without really thinking and without having the right mentorship. You find a lot of them crash and burn after a year – I’m with jumping in, but it has to be well thought of, strategic and more realistic.”

Second tip is “get a good team, if you don’t have the full team please don’t start.” Said Gaith.

“Securing funding should be the last of your worries.” – Odeh Haddadin

When it comes specifically to the gaming industry, Gaith explained that there is no excuse for people who are serious about starting a company not having at least one ready made game. “We use unity 3D, its no secret you can download it for free because they want to help the community. So there’s no excuse for people not to have a game ready, I find it surprising when developers come in for a job interview claiming that they like games and want to work with us but they don’t have anything to show. Everything is available online, from free tutorials to forums and blogs. Had these people came in with a ready made game I would’ve hired them on the spot! The simplest thing anybody can do is just copy another game and test it, the knowledge they will receive will be huge. This is one of the very few fields where you can prove to people what you can do and not just show them a CV.” Said Gaith very passionately.

Finally, I will leave you with this sketch which is framed in Gaith’s office:

Taktek Breakthrough Sketch

Remember the breakthrough that happened with Gaith at the beginning of the story, well this is one of the first sketches of the game that the client requested in 2009. The funny thing about this game is that not only was it never published it was never purchased by the client! But in a twisted turn of events it spawned Taktek Games.

I want to wish Taktek the best of luck in the future with all of their projects and hope they can continue to come up with interesting ideas. If you’d like to stay updated with on Taktek games and other startups from the Middle East, register to receive our newsletter.

So you must be wondering what Feesheh means, literally it means plug in Arabic and the founders of this new Jordanian startup named it Feesheh as a play on words in Arabic which would be very difficult to explain, so I’ll just move on.

Feesheh is an Oasis 500 company incubated on Feb. 1, 2012. Its the first of its kind in the region, they provide musical instruments at competitive prices and are looking to create a community of artists that will no longer have to suffer to find instruments they need.

The key people at Feesheh are:

1. Nur Alfayez, Co-Founder & CEO
2. Fahed Farraj, Co-founder & COO

Fahed Farraj Co-Founder & COO

Nur Alfayez Co-Founder & CEO

So how they came up with the idea is actually quite straight forward, they saw a problem and wanted to solve it. As you can see from the images above both of the founders are musicians, “we had to go through a great deal of pain to look for instruments, they were either expensive or not available in the local markets so we ended up getting them online from overseas suppliers which also wasn’t hassle free, we had to face issues such taxes, clearing customs and of course the long wait to get our instruments.” Explained Fahed.

“We also found examples of people who were dealing instruments unofficially, so there clearly was a market for it in Jordan.” Explained Nur. Apparently people would smuggle in instruments and sell them to people who needed them.

At the momemt the startup is focusing on the Jordanian market, but they are planning to expand regionally. And I don’t see why not, they have an understanding of what people go through to buy instruments in the region and there’s nobody else doing what they’re doing. So I think this idea has great potential. Another thing I realized is the amount of work they were putting in, I met with them last Saturday (which is the weekend in Jordan, well pretty much everywhere except Saudi I think) and I asked them if they usually worked on weekends, to which it was obvious that the concept of working hours was no longer part of their vocabulary, they were working non stop to get the job done.

As they were explaining their services I wanted to know how they managed to solve the problem, if they had difficulties finding affordable instruments, then how were they selling them? Apparently they are partnering up with international, regional and local suppliers to provide all instrument and equipment. And they have plans to have their own inventory in future – pretty impressive, right?

Nur Alfayez at AmmanTT

I must admit, I was pretty skeptical about their business model when I first spoke to Nur at AmmanTT and quite honestly I was basing my judgment on absolutely nothing other than a gut feeling. But I was proved wrong, “sales are actually pretty good, and much more than we expected.” explained Nur and according to her I wasn’t the first person that doubted their business plan, in fact the majority of the people they speak to feel the same way. (What do you know persistance and believing in what you do eventually pay off!)

I was interested in knowing what items were selling the most on the website, and no surprise it was guitars, ouds and small accessories such as strings. Now since they sell directly online they must be paying a percentage fee per transaction so I asked them whether or not its worth it to sell smaller items such as strings and so on, to which Fahed replied “The point is not money, I can’t give you a guitar and not strings. We want to create a one stop shop for music and for the community”.

The longer the meeting went on the more impressed I was with the team, they were very energetic and optimistic. “We wanted to go live quickly, we had the website up and running in three weeks from our incubation date” Said Nur, they also added a used instrument listing page on the website, they realize it’s not as great as it can be however right now users have the ability to list their own instruments, improvements for this feature are being worked on. Which is, I think the way to go, don’t waste time by perfecting something, but perfect it as you go.

As for their marketing efforts, they initially had focused on online and social networks just like all the other startups I’ve been talking with lately, but they have also been busy visiting a lot of concerts, shows and events giving away flyers and talking to the crowd. They are also working closely with the local bands to help spread the word, in the coming weeks they are running a radio campaign on Play FM which was offered to them for free as an effort by Play to support Jordanian startups, also the ad was done by a famous local band in Jordan called autostrad.

“Online ads are working, but you need to know how to do it, testing with different formats and call to actions. We found that offer ads preformed the best especially if they were good offers. But even if we don’t run ads traffic is still coming. Most of it is from Jordan now.” Said Fahed.

I asked them if they had any advice they would offer people who would want to start up something, Nur pounced right away and said “You have to take risks! you have to leave your job and give your idea the time it deserves, you have to be serious.” She continued saying “Our experience with Oasis 500 was really good, it provided connections, sound advice and exposure. It wasn’t the fund it self but more of the value you get.”

“To quote MarkaVIP’s Ahmed Khatib, Go big or go home! you have to give it your all to get big. Plus the atmosphere of people connecting each other at Oasis was very helpful, we wouldn’t have pulled it of without them.” Added Fahed.

They gave an example of Oasis’ value, when they first decided to enroll they were going in with an idea that was completely different, and after much guidance and mentorship the idea they came in with changed so many times that currently Feesheh.com barely resembles it.

Another point they wanted to make sure entrepreneurs in the MENA region were aware of is that the funding is there, if people have an idea they recommend them to go for it, “If you have an idea, just go for it. If you knock on doors people will answer. When you don’t have options you will settle, but once you know that there are a lot of options available you will not be limited.” Explained Nur.

What do you think of feesheh, is it something you would use? If you have any comments or feedback please let us know. Or you can signup to receive our newsletter to remain updated with the latest venture news from the MENA.

Istikana launched just over a year ago at Arabnet Digital Summit 2011, and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Samer Abdin, one of the Founders in Dubai to chat on how things have went so far.

The key players at Istikana are:

1. Samer Abdin and Tareq Abu-Lughod (co-founders)
2. Sami Shalabi (Investor & Technology)
3. Habib Haddad CEO of Yamli and Wamda (Advisor)

When I asked Samer why and how istikana started, he replied “we [the shareholders] were all sitting and complained that we couldn’t use Hulu in the [MENA] region, till now we still cant remember who asked the question: is there such a such thing for Arabs? Is there an Arabic version of Hulu?” He continued “we needed a business guy, a tech guy and a content guy and we were all on one table so there was no objection as to why not start it ourselves.” Then he went on to explain why they wanted to do it, “We wanted to prove to ourselves that an Arabic version of Hulu would work”, and after they did the research they ended up building it, from the looks of it things seem to be going well. They currently have a team of 10 people between their Amman and Dubai offices focusing on developing, curating and reaching deals with content companies.

The website revenue is based entirely on advertising at the moment, however they are keeping a close eye on things according to Samer. And they are looking to grow their revenue with their recent announcement of partnering up with Arab Radio & Television (ART) to provide streaming service access to its comprehensive film library. As well as being featured on the new smart Internet TV’s as an application that links directly to the website. When I asked Samer how they reached such agreements he replied “Tareq worked his magic” referring to the years of experience he had in dealing with media and content publishers in the region.

As for the future of Istikana “we want to be the leaders in the online video content space” said Samer, “Tareq and I are working on this full time to reach our goal and we are fiercely ambitious.” For the time being they are focusing on getting Arabic content and getting it right once that is done they can start thinking about other things.

If you use the site you may have noticed that they are available on different mobile platforms as well. Which was a surprise even to the founders, they didn’t expect users to view content, especially theirs since it was long, on mobile devices. However they realized that the amount of traffic coming in from mobile platforms justified the need to develop native apps for different platforms “it was a data driven decision to work on mobile and place more resources on it” explained Samer. “We think very hard on behalf of our users, we want to make it easy for them to view, share and be social with us.” He also added “The easier you make it for people to use the more it is shared assuming the content is good”. Samer then shared another recent example of how they managed to simplify the viewing experience, “Last summer we got whitelisted on Facebook which needed approval,” whitelisting is the process of having the videos play directly on Facebook similar to youtube. This according to Samer made the experience easier for people to view videos directly and share it with their friends without the need to go the website or any other pages.

We then moved on to discuss how they were marketing Istikana and what they found to be working for them, Samer was a big advocate of social media saying “the best thing is social, because our content is inherently social. We focus heavily on Facebook and Twitter. It’s an iteration that you have to figure out there is no set formula. You have to be on social networks, listen and respond to what people say. And don’t be afraid to try different things.”  He also mentioned that they usually run targeted Facebook and adwords campaigns, however the majority of the traffic is organic. “We would need to spend six to seven times the amount of money we’re spending right now on Adwords to get the same amount of traffic from ads – Currently the biggest generator of traffic is other people!” Stated Samer.

Finally I asked Samer if he has any advice for people starting up in the MENA. He replied that there are two major points people should be aware of and they are:

1. When u come up with the business plan – it sounds silly but its very difficult to do – you have to be realistic. Naturally you have to be passionate to do this or you will go insane, but this passion makes it difficult to think objectively, you have to learn to take yourself outside the passion and focus on getting things done.
2. Flexibility: The business plan is like a battle plan, as soon as the first bullet goes the plan goes out the window. You have to be flexible and you need to change, you have to be stubborn but at the same point detailed oriented and objective.

I’d like to thank Samer for taking the time to talk with me and wish him and the entire Istikana team the best of luck. Have you used Istikana? what do you think? Let us know your thoughts below, and If you’d like to get the latest startup news from the MENA region, please register to receive our newsletter.

This past Tuesday the first of May was a special day for startups in the MENA, especially in Amman, Jordan. Amman Tech Tuesdays which is a monthly gathering for techies in Jordan celebrated it’s second anniversary last Tuesday and they threw an impressive event. I personally thought it was a success, it had panelist discussions as well as a drop in visit by HRH Queen Rania of Jordan, but what did it for me was the fact that there was 100+ startup companies some of whom were very interesting. I must admit I found the startups in the event to be more exciting and more original than the ones at Arabnet.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay till the end of the event, however I spent the majority of the day there and got a chance to speak to most of the startups and managed to get some videos, below is a short video montage of some of the things that went on:

The guys playing guitars and having a good time are from i3zif.com (Arabic for play music/instruments – loosely translated) they are a startup which provides music lessons online, users can register and start learning to play instruments.

Another interesting startup was Sajilni (Arabic for sign me up) which is an online solution that targets event organizers and event seekers. There were many more startups, hopefully we will be writing more about them in the coming days.

After speaking with some of the startups attending the majority were facing or were wanting to secure funding. Unfortunately for them there weren’t enough investors in the crowd, most of the people attending were people such as myself and other techies/geeks wanting to know what new things were being developed. However one startup did mention that they got some much needed exposure to their target which was helpful.

Finally I want to link to some pictures of Prodigi’s T-shirt’s that were given away in a karaoke competition at the end of the day as well as some other photos taken during the day.

Stay tuned to read more news about startups from the Amman Tech Tuesdays event. Or signup to receive our newsletter straight to your inbox.

It is worth mentioning that Social Media channels, in particular Twitter, played a role in terms of sharing pictures and commentaries; something which could potentially be seen in a wrong way by people if Primark didn’t step in at a right moment.

People of Dubai were excited to see Primark opens a store in highly populated area of Bur Dubai; but within hours Primark made a statement that the store is not owned by the brand and it is bogus. If Primark sell low price clothing, that doesn’t mean the brand has cheap positioning with no legal protection; Primark is massive with hundreds of stores across Europe and indeed popular amongst almost everyone. This is probably the reason behind setting up the fake Primark in Dubai; trusted, popular and affordable brand.

It is however a odd case to see counterfeiting of a brand which not that many would consider for their personal image and proud with regards to traditional social class classifications.

Primark realised that majority of people can’t afford expensive clothing and there’s a gap in the market; yes it is commercial but also thoughtful of those with tight spending budget. Needless to say, quality of garments at Primark might not be of the best, but certainly value for money.

The brand Primark has a registered trademark licence and that makes them protected; which leads to legal consequences for those ignore the rights of the brands – in this case the owners of the two floors fake Primark in Bur Dubai of UAE.

Primark made their position clear that they’re considering their legal options and now working with relevant legal bodies in the UAE; a unique case to watch and follow its further development.

Meeting with Al Hassan Dandash, the basket ball player for the Champville team, number 7, for three years now, with a point guard position; Dandash wasn’t active on social media.

‘I have no accounts on Facebook or Twitter. I think it’s a waste of time, if nothing of a value is going on.  For me as a person I don’t think I need any of these tools, mainly because it won’t make any difference in my life to be honest,’ Hassan said.

While some people’s jobs depend heavily on social media, others just use it In order to waste time. We should differentiate between these two aspects that, having a Facebook or Twitter account is something, and depending on websites for information is totally something else.

There’s a thin line between mixing business and pleasure. And while to some these tools can be entertaining, where other tools are credible source of information; there are networks like LinkedIn where we depend on it heavily. It connects people within the same fields; it paid off as a benefit to a lot of employed people.

But when it comes to Dandash he sounded certain that if social media was to change his life it would have. ‘I’m always available to my fans. It happened to me before some of the fans called me and checked on me. I appreciate that a lot, its always encouraging seeing how much people care about me, or support me on my playing. For me it means the world,’ Dandash stated.

Being an active person himself, Hassan is full of energy, he loves swimming, and he’s been doing this hobby for 9 years.  He’s a student at the Lebanese American University majoring in Business Management. He’s an ambitious person where in the interview he discussed his future. He plans on seeking a career with his degree and not just basketball.

And with his understanding character, Hassan doesn’t have a problem with social media; on the contrary he feels that it’s important to some, while to him it’s just something he can go on without.

Take a moment and think about your life with no social media intervention, how would it be? That’s something intriguing I think…

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This is not the first time that a student production takes place on social media. Students, who direct plays at universities, always publicize their play on social media.

From a student perspective, I always think that it’s amazing how some of the artistic work is reaching almost everyone. For once I attended a play at LAU and it was pure student production; from direction, to crew, to props…

On Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 6  PM at the Lebanese American University in Irwin Theatre,  was a student production of the play ‘Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street’ for the director Sandy Joulfayan.

The play takes you back in time to London’s smooth, gloomy, winter’s atmosphere. What was significant about the play is the crew’s adequate British accent. For a first the actors where all in mood of the plays’ frame, they did a great job by being synchronized and well prepared to such a performance.

As for the director, Sandy Joulfayan, her disquiet stress, and unease during rehearsals, all fired back to the excellent well-developed play that people came and saw. Sandy is currently in her last year at LAU, where she plans on proceeding with filming in the future.

‘I was inspired by the movie Sweeney Todd that was played by Johnny Deep and directed by John Burton. I didn’t change much from the movie and the play, though I edited it into my special views and imagination. The play took seven weeks of my time. We rehearsed on daily basis; it was a lot of harsh provisions,’ Sandy said.

Joulfayan exposed all the details concerning the play on Facebook. This was of a great deal to her. The audiences weren’t just LAU students but rather a lot of people showed up to see who is behind the direction.

Once again social media helps in making exposure and success not much of a hard work. And Sandy like her colleagues was very excited about her play, for she made a lot of effort to develop it into a marvelous work of art.

And as Sandy puts it, it’s more of a magical play to her. And it taught her a lot from this experience. Being a young student she wanted to tell the Lebanese youth a word to remember. ‘Whatever you do just give it your best, even in the simplest things like waking up in the morning. Appreciate what you have, and always work with a heart full of love when doing something you want,’ Sandy said.

And this is reflected straightforwardly  through social media, on her Facebook account, how with the slightest matter as posting a picture one can see how Sandy appreciates every bit of it.

A word that strikes me most in Sandy’s words is that, ‘those who have known love in their life understand the great power it holds over humanity.’ But the question is, in a world were social media is a must as breathing, what is the power that it holds over humanity?

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Entreprenerurship in the MENA region is changing I’m meeting a lot of young ambitious people with great new ideas lately, but what about VC’s and investors in the MENA? Are things changing on that front? Luckily I had the chance to meet with the founder of Dubai’s first startup accelerator and he had some very good insights as well as sound advice for entrepreneurs worldwide.

If you don’t already know who I’m talking about it’s Rony El Nashar, Founder and Managing Partner of Seed Startup. I first met him at the step conference where he was a panelist encouraging all attendees to focus on execution rather than ideas. I remember him saying that there is no marketplace for ideas – you can’t go to a place to buy and/or sell an idea. Not that he’s against a good idea, but he prefers people not to waste too much time on perfecting an idea but making it work to gather enough traction for it to take off and find a good product market fit.

To give you an idea about Seed Startup it’s a UAE based startup accelerator and seed venture fund that focuses on digital media web, mobile, software startups launched in October 2011. During our conversation I was surprised to find out that they accepted startups from any part of the world and not just the MENA region, “the goal behind it was to make it open to the world, we value meritocracy the only thing that matters is the team” Stated El Nashar.

Interested entrepreneurs can apply for the program on their website. The next round starts on June 14th, 2012 and the application deadline is on May 3rd, 2012. In the previous round they received 74 applications and only accepted three, that’s an acceptance rate lower than Harvard’s according to Rony. As for the round coming up on June they already had 140 applicants when we spoke, I’m pretty sure they’ll be around the 200 mark by the deadline.

Successful applicants receive mentorship and seed investment of up to 25,000 USD (depending on the team size) in exchange of 10% equity stake. I asked Rony whether he thought that was fair or not, to which he replied “yes, its comparable to other seed accelerators everywhere, we’re not doing anything different in this regard”.

We then discussed the restrictions of applying to the program I was specifically interested to know why they don’t accept single founders to which Rony clarified that in the early stages of a startup it doesn’t make sense to outsource all the work, “Build cheap, build in house. It’s a very bad idea to spend a lot of money before getting any traction”, although he did mention that it is alright to outsource the design. Rony believes that teams should ideally consist of three members with a technical background and one business person (even though they accept teams with 5 founders into the program), because startups should be nimble and able to change quickly so a lot of the work will initially be handled by the founding team. The reason he doesn’t prefer all founders to be from a business background is that “you can learn the business aspect faster than the technical aspect”.

Accepted applicants are then expected to spend three months in Dubai to work on their startups with the help of the Seed Startup’s mentor network. The list of names is a very impressive one from big global and regional companies, and Rony stated that a number of them actually contacted him to be in the network and not the other way around. Each startup in the program is assigned to a mentor which they must meet at least once a week and the remaining time they are working closely with Rony to set targets and discuss progress. I wanted to know why the mentors were doing it, so I asked Rony what was in it for them and he replied “there’s no compensation for the mentors they usually do it to give back” and he believed that mentors in his network fall under one of the three groups below:

1. Entrepreneurs: These are the most altruistic, they want to help and be a part of a group
2. Angels & VC’s: Giving back and looking for deals
3. Domain experts: Looking for business development in the future and to network with the other mentors

Moving on I wanted to know on what basis they selected the teams to join the program and who it was making that decision. Rony replied that the decision was made by him and his business partner Salem Al Noaimi CEO of Al Waha Capital PJSC, although he doesn’t get involved after the decision that is left up to Rony. How they come to the decision is more of a process, they review the application forms – which are designed on the website to simulate a business plan – the ones they do like, they contact. Afterwards Rony either meets the startup team in person if they’re located in Dubai, or via Skype if they’re located abroad.

What he looks for in a team is mostly the ability to adapt and change, which raised the question if there is a way to find out if a team possesses that ability or not? “Unfortunately not, you can never know!” replied Rony, the closest thing is their past work, CV’s or track records but even those were not a 100% indicators whether a team has that ability or not.

We then moved on to discuss what’s going on in the MENA region, Rony believe’s that there are interesting startups popping up in the region and said that “we shouldn’t really compare ourselves to Silicon Valley because we have the potential to do and we are doing cool things.” He also mentioned how important it is to have good events such as Arabnet Digital Summit to get the word out, “the buzz from Arabnet was inspiring” referring to the recent investments made by Middle Eastern Venture Partners (MEVP).

Finally I asked Rony what advice he would give to anyone that’s looking to venture out on their own, and he said it’s difficult to narrow it down but the general advice would be “launch by spending as less as possible, launch with most important features. And keep in mind that the business plan is a hypothesis, it’s probably not going to work! A good team is a team that has the ability to adapt and change their backgrounds if need be – it makes sense to be nimble.”

I’d like to thank Rony for his time and valuable advice and would like to wish him the best of luck with Seed Startup. If you’d like to receive other valuable insights to your inbox, register to receive our newsletter.