Beirut - Feb 26, 27, 2019

What used to be labeled as science-fiction few decades ago may now be a forthcoming reality, except for the whole ‘Terminator’ craze.

Artificial Intelligence research goes back to the late fifties, where the link between human intelligence and machines was widely observed. Fast forward to today, human intelligence is facing a real threat.

In fact, machines are getting twice better every 18 months and we’re now increasingly hearing of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), when machines start exhibiting intelligence that exceed human performance in all domains, versus Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), which is when machines outperform humans in certain domains. We’re currently in the ANI phase.

Are humans on the verge of becoming the second most intelligent species on earth?

In order to better understand AGI, how can we prevent it from destroying us and knowing its implications on several fields and economies, The Order of Engineers and Architects (OAE) in Beirut organized a two-day event on February 26 and 27, 2019 called Artificial Intelligence, Digital Revolution & Impact on the Economy.

The event included several talks and two panels and featured speakers from engineering background, as well as data analysis, AI, IoT, fintech, politics, economy, philosophy and others. We were also excited to have four of our LebNet members giving talks or moderating sessions.

The content of the sessions was highly rich and informative, backed with statistics, numbers and real examples. Below are some of the insights and observations that experts shared with us during the event. While they are not representative of the event, they do give a general idea of what has been discussed:

1- If tech progress was not combined with the preservation of good values and acting civilized, we will be facing a social deterioration, with one minority taking over politics and economy and the majority being marginalized. Quoting Einstein: It has become appallingly clear that our tech has exceeded our humanity. Jad Tabet, the President of the OEA.

2- People are debating as to when we will reach AGI. Some experts say as early as 2029, other say it might take 70 years. When we hit AGI, singularity will happen and humans will no longer be the most intelligent species on this planet. Mazen Skaf, Partner and Managing Director of Strategic Decisions Group.

3- AI crushed us in 4 competitions: the first one in 1997, when the world’s best chess player, Gary Kasparov, was beaten by a computer; the second in 2011, when IBM’s supercomputer Watson beat Ken Jennings during a TV quiz show; the third in 2016, when Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo algorithm beat the world’s number one Go player and the fourth in 2017, when the best poker players were beaten by a computer. Calum Chase, Author of ‘Surviving AI’ and ‘The Economic Singularity’.

4- AI is a misunderstood word. Everybody uses and misuses it. Machine learning is reversing the way we write programs and neural networks is inspired by the human brain. It has multiple layers and each layer is creating the features that will be used by machine learning. Bassem Monla, AI Subject Matter Expert at IBM.

5- Estimates by Mckinsey suggest that by 2030, we will be adding about 13 trillion dollars to the economy, thanks to automation and optimizing productivity. The countries that are most likely to benefit from that are the countries that are already developed. Today US and China have the highest level of AI skills penetration. Nasser Saidi, Economist and Former Minister of Economy in Lebanon.

LebNet’s member Rania Afiouni Monla moderating a session on the ethics of AI with panelists Calum Chase, Nasser Saidi, Mazen Skaff, and Anthony Bitar. (Images via LebNet)

6- I advise Lebanon to do a leapfrog. We can skip a generation of technology and get up to speed and become competitive by skipping a lot of technology that has been around for the last 10 to 20 years. Imad ElHajj, Professor at the American University of Beirut.

7- Computers can learn and understand feelings. We collected 120 pieces of music and published them online and asked people to listen to the music and tell us what emotions the music evoked in them. We collected the feedback and used the data to train our sentiment learner to detect and analyse emotions from the music and compose music on its own. Joe Tekli, Assistant Professor/Interim Assistant Dean/School of Engineering at the Lebanese American University.

8- In 2019, we have 130 devices being connected to the internet every second. Analysts predictions say we’re getting to 75 billion devices connecting to the internet by 2025. Rabih Nassar, CEO of Scriptr

9- In China, banks use AI to look at your social media accounts, your web browsing history and chats, then evaluate your credit worthiness. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithm is very much used today to recognise images and signature fraud used in banks. Next in Natural Language Processing we have chatbots. In wealth management it’s very well done. It prepares the room for analyst to be able to give you a better service. Crédit Mutuel, is using Watson and has improved customer satisfaction by 60% in wealth management. Chatbots, When they understand you it’s perfect, when they don’t it’s a catastrophe. Gerard Rafie, founder of FintekMinds.

10- The first AGI machines that we create should like us and understand us better than we understand ourselves. In the next couple of decades, people will have to re-skill and retrain themselves to new jobs. If AI takes over our jobs, we could focus on other things: become the best mountaineer or painter. We can have a second renaissance. And if we make the cost of living very cheap with a Universal Basic Income for all and rely on economic abundance, we can achieve that. Callum Chase.

11- AI might help us save ourselves from the problems we created: climate change, sustainability, mass inequality and cyberattacks. Some companies are using AI to identify cyberattacks from day 0 and intervene within seconds. The future of AI lies on adopting a code of ethics in the industry. Mazen Skaf.

Taking into account that it’s not easy to host several sessions discussing one major topic without being repetitive, The OEA’s event did a good job providing rich and varied content in every talk. We would like to thank our four LebNet members, Bassem Monla, Rania Afiouni, Gerard Rafie and Mazen Skaff for making the trip from Montreal, Austin and California to join the event.

Palo Alto - Feb 24, 2019

On February 24th, 2019, LebNet hosted Dr. Fadlo Khuri, President of the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Dr. Alan Shihadeh, AUB Dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture over a dinner event in Palo Alto, California.

A Trustee since 2014 and AUB former student, Dr. Khuri is AUB’s 16th President. He was a Professor and Chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University where he held the Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research. He also served as Deputy Director of the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and Executive Associate Dean for Research of the Emory University School of Medicine.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Dr. Shihadeh was appointed as AUB Dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (MSFEA) in September 2017. He earned his doctorate in sciences in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of combustion in 1998. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 refereed journal publications, reports, and conference abstracts that are primarily concerned with the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants. He serves as an advisor to the FDA, a scientific expert to the WHO, and a Project Director and Executive Leadership Committee member of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University.

After dinner, Abdo George Kadifa, Chairman of LebNet, AUB trustee and Managing Director of Sumeru Equity Partners moderated the fireside chat and asked Dr. Khuri to share AUB’s new vision and strategy with an audience of 30 LebNet members.

Following that, Dr. Shihadeh shared what his faculty was driving to enhance entrepreneurship in Lebanon as well as develop design process skills and multidisciplinary programs like the Humanitarian Engineering Initiative, which focuses on the design of engineering solutions for health challenges in crises.

The ensuing Q&A session was very lively and addressed areas where LebNet, as a tech diaspora group, could play its part and extend its members’ collective expertise to help enhance the learning journey of future AUB engineering students.

Dean Shihadeh promised to list the 5 areas where LebNet members could get involved. Follow-on discussions will help create tangible actions to operationalize the members’ engagement. Several ideas were explored like for example ‘Silicon Channel’ as a vehicle for LebNeters to deliver remote and in-person seminars and talks to AUB students, a quick and low friction way to share experiences.

You can check the event’s gallery on our Flickr account here. 

Silicon Valley - Feb 13, 2019

Headquartered in Nashville, Asurion is one of the largest and fastest growing subscriber-based businesses in the world.  In a little over 20 years, Asurion has expanded to provide its award-winning services to over 150 million wireless customers, with over 17 thousand employees in 21 countries around the world.

Co-founded in 1995 by current Chairman, Kevin Taweel and fellow Stanford GSB alumnus Jim Ellis, Asurion began by selling roadside assistance through wireless carrier channels.  Expanding to offer insurance for mobile phones in 1999, retail service contracts in 2008, and technical support in 2011, Asurion has become the global leader in technology solutions services.  

On February 13, 2019, LebNet hosted a talk in Silicon Valley, California given by Kevin Taweel and moderated by Abdo George Kadifa, LebNet’s chairman and the managing director of Sumeru Equity Partners. During his talk, Taweel took us through the journey of Asurion, how luck played its part and how tough decisions and competition made his company one of the leading providers of device protection and tech help.

Asurion cofounder Kevin Taweel discussing his company’s success during a LebNet event.

When opportunity meets readiness

Taweel, whose father is Lebanese, credits most of his successful journey to being lucky and ready. In other words, taking advantage of the opportunities that came his way and knowing how to react when bad things happen.

Asurion’s business model was totally different when it started. Kevin was introduced early on at Stanford to an investment vehicle called a Search Fund that financially supported an entrepreneur’s efforts to locate, acquire, manage, and grow a privately held company.  The goal was then to sell it and repeat the cycle. Taweel and Ellis had purchased a roadside-assistance company in 1999 which proved to be a challenging business to operate.  It did, however, have an important upside: the product was sold through wireless carriers, and exposed the young company to opportunities created by the emerging mobile phone market.  

In the early days of wireless, “…the phones were so big you could only put them in your car. So wireless carriers sold roadside assistance for $3 per month when you bought your wireless plan,” explained Taweel. The idea to sell mobile phone insurance presented itself when he came across a phone insurance brochure during a client store visit. Much of Asurion’s growth can be traced back to that decision in 1999, to purchase a small cellphone insurance company.  As mobile phones became ubiquitous and increasingly valuable, the business grew from a few million dollars in revenue at the time of acquisition, to the multi-billion-dollar enterprise Asurion operates today.

It proved to be a very wise decision.  While the original roadside business grew by a factor of 50x, the wireless protection grew by over 1000x.  “Today, approximately one in four people in the US use our services,” said Taweel.

So how does the product work?

Customers pay a monthly fee of around $12 to insure their phones and have access to other services helping them fully use the capabilities of the technology they own. If the phone is lost, stolen or broken, Asurion can replace it the next day or often, fix a cracked screen within a few hours. In addition, Asurion support services, via phone, chat, or mobile app, help customers realize the full potential of their phones and other consumer electronics.

Tough decisions make great companies

Taweel, who studied engineering at McGill University and business at Stanford, explained that in the beginning, he had to make a lot of tough decisions that helped the company maintain its culture and top clients.

In the early days, almost half of Taweel’s time was spent on hiring the right people and making sure that his best people were positioned in high leverage roles. Even today, he still spends about 30 percent of his time dedicated to people and talent.   

“It has been a great learning experience. The time you spend hiring people will take you a long way. The biggest mistake [you make] is when you hire misfits and let them stick around and then they hire others worse than them. [It ruins] the culture, so early on in our growth trajectory people who weren’t very good were exposed immediately.”

Culture remains a key component in Asurion’s success. It’s the glue that binds all members and Taweel attributed the company’s strong culture to its core values and leadership principles. Both core tenets reflect his beliefs and helps ensure the culture is true and strong by aligning how employees work and lead.

“It is challenging to institutionalize a culture. Most of our team is new but we’ve created a culture where the team focuses on reaching full potential by putting our customers first, taking ownership, and collaborating across the business,” Taweel stated.  

IPO and future plans

During the Q&A session, Taweel was asked why he has not filed an IPO and what will Asurion’s next steps be.

Without taking the IPO completely off the table, he told the audience that it was very unlikely. “We don’t need the capital and we don’t have liquidity issues. As long as our customers and partners find value in our service and have a great customer experience, that’s what’s most important. Being known for the sake of being known isn’t interesting to us,” he said, adding that making the company public requires a lot of work before and after. Taweel explained that he wants the entire team to stay focused on delivering the best service and experience for partners and customers, not be sidelined by analysts.

As for Asurion’s plans, the future looks bright. Taweel announced that the company will be offering a new smart home service, to connect, protect and maintain all electronics people use at home so they can enjoy their technology. A new software product will show all the available devices in the house and assess their performance to ensure everything is working at optimal level. “We want to be the trusted partner that actually helps customers keep [their devices] up and running and provide more services on top of that,” he concluded.

San Diego, Jan 31, 2020

On January 31st, The LebNet San Diego community hosted a talk and a panel on career development in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).

The event was held at Apollonia Greek Bistro in San Diego and attended by 26 people. Jeanine Akiki, ASIC Design Services Director at IBM/ Globalfoundries, kicked off the evening by walking the audience through her career journey spanning over 30 years.  

[Check the full event gallery here]

Born in Beirut, Akiki left Lebanon after high school to study electrical engineering at Western New England University of Vermont. She joined IBM in 1988 as a design engineer and was recognized with an IBM Division Award for Management Excellence. In 2015, IBM sold its microelectronics business to Globalfoundries where she became Director of ASIC design services. She retired from the semiconductor industry in August 2018 and is now searching for her next passion. She has become involved with LebNet and leading the launch of its internship program. You can find more information about it here.

Following her talk, Akiki welcomed the panelists – Ghina Yamout-Jomaa, PhD, Director of Business Development and Senior Consultant, Alta Environmental; Marie Huff, Software Engineer and Systems Applications Specialist, Sharp Rehabilitation Center; Nathalie Gholmieh, Manager, Data and Integration Services at University of California, San Diego (UCSD); and Shadi Dayeh, PhD, Professor and Principal Investigator, Integrated Electronics and Bio-interfaces Laboratory, UCSD – who discussed career development challenges, lessons learned, and tips on work life integration.  

Jeanine Akiki giving a brief presentation about herself before introducing the panelists. (Images via LebNet)

25 percent of U.S. companies host peer-mentoring programs

Panelists agreed that mentorship is a strategic tool that can attract and retain high-potential talent and accelerate leadership development and readiness. In fact, 25 percent of U.S. companies now host peer-mentoring programs, which is considered a significant increase from since 2007, when only 4 to 5 percent of U.S. companies reported sponsoring mentorship programs.

Education is a continuous effort

Speakers also focused on the important role of ongoing education, which includes webinars, degree advancement, attending conferences, reading, online tutorials and other skill training programs. Some fields like information technology (IT) require workers to regularly invest in new skills, according to Nathalie Gholmieh, otherwise they will become obsolete. Affinity groups are another mean that can help workers network, give back, learn and share best practices.

More women engineers are leaving the engineering profession

At the end of the day, panelists talked about work/life integration in demanding STEM fields and how many women today are not capable of maintaining a healthy balance due to the work/family conflict and occupational commitment. They also spoke about burnout, which is correlated with the inability to find time to juggle between work and family. Marie Huff is working part-time and Gholmieh believes having a supporting partner is crucial.

San Francisco - Jan 10, 2019

Healthy mind in healthy body.

We’re increasingly becoming curious about how our bodies function, how we can heal them and how they react to diseases. While we’re still far from figuring out how to cure certain serious illnesses and preventing them in the future, science and biotechnology are making a significant progress in that regard.

In a fireside chat organized by LebNet on January 10 – which featured Diala Ezzeddine, PhD, CEO of Xios Therapeutics, a biotech company developing a novel small molecule therapeutics capable of preventing tumors from evading the immune system; Omar Haffar, PhD, Founder and CEO of Eos Biosciences, a nanomedicines company developing a nanobiologic particle-based platform technology to facilitate the delivery of approved and novel therapeutics to disease sites and moderator Farah Fawaz, PhD, and VP Quality Control at Allogene Therapeutics, a company developing allogeneic CAR T therapies for cancer – panelists talked about targeted cancer treatments that do not harm other parts of the human body, new drug discoveries, intellectual property and attracting  investments to finance expensive and high risk medical products.

LebNet’s Biotech Event (Images via LebNet)

Fawaz, who is a LebNet board member, kicked off the talk by saying that finding Lebanese-American colleagues and professionals in the biotech industry to connect remains a big challenge and invited guests to be engaged in helping build the network. This is why a few months back, she launched a biotech community under LebNet, to help create more synergies and partnership opportunities.

Treating tumors without damaging the healthy parts

Haffar got his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley in the eighties and left academia to join Genentech for his postdoctoral training. For nine years, he worked at large pharmaceutical companies, but eventually he moved on to starting his own companies. Eos Biosciences is his 4th company.

Haffar’s recent company, Eos, was started in 2014 and focuses on oncology (the study and treatment of tumors). His drug-targeting platform technology was developed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA in order to treat the tumors in the body without damaging the healthy parts, unlike chemotherapy. The technology is based on generating self-assembling, nano biological particles (Eosomes) that entrap a chosen therapeutic (drug) and specifically deliver it to the interior of the target disease cells.

“We work with a technology that is made up of developing nanoparticles, where we put drugs inside the particles and once injected into humans, it hums right into the tumor, reducing toxicity.”

The path to drug discovery

Diala Ezzeddine got her Ph.D in Genetics from Harvard Medical School then started working at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where she learned a lot about drug discovery and business development. “I decided later to take advantage of spinning companies out of Millennium to go on my own and do something for myself,” she told the audience.

She co-founded HydroSpine, a hydrogel liquid that is injected in the spine to reconstruct it. She tried to do that with friends who had a proprietary gel before realizing the idea was a bit early for the market. So instead, she licensed the technology to other small companies. In 2010, she became the chief business officer of a company X-Chem, which applies innovative capabilities screening chemical libraries for the identification of novel small molecule therapeutics. She helped start the company from scratch and create a new drug discovery programs. In 2015, they decided to start a new company and fund it separately and that’s how Xios was born.

“In 2011 and 2014, there was a watershed moment in cancer research and therapeutics with three drugs going into the market. Cancer is not just a tumor, it actually develops into almost an organ with a number of functions. It has its own environment, ability to connect to the human system and it cloaks itself from the immune system. It allows it to grow unchecked,” said Ezzeddine when talking about the limitations of certains cancer drugs or treatments. “The first generation [of treatment] was chemotherapy. It’s very effective but kills everything that’s alive. Then second was targeted molecular therapy, where we exploit between cancer and normal cells to focus just on cancer. It works well in a number of cases. The third is checkpoint inhibitors.”

Her company aims to create a new generation of oncology drugs targeting checkpoint inhibitors.

LebNet Biotech Event

Intellectual property and proper funding

The second half of the panel focused on patenting new innovations and finding huge amounts of investments to finance them.

“In our industry, intellectual property is very important. We have nine patent families, 14 issued patents in six families. If you count them all, we have 28 US and global patents,” said Haffar.

While it’s crucial to protect an innovation idea, especially in a tricky field like biotech where every detail matters, Ezzeddine believes patents are not always the best option.

“When you have a complex technology that’s difficult to process, it’s more helpful to protect it by trade secret than by patent. Everybody knows about patents, so if somebody wants to practice it, they can change it enough to get around your patent.   Whereas if they don’t know what you’re doing and you keep it as a trade secret, it’s a lot stronger for protection,” explained Ezzeddine.

In order to discover and test new drugs or treatments, researchers and scientists spend years and years of testing and iterating, without offering any guarantees. This all requires heavy capital before starting up, which makes attracting  investments a hard task.

“Our industry is so capital intensive that no matter what you do, you can’t get a corporate partner to invest in the company, give you licensing fees, research support and you always find yourself going to a VC because they have the money that you need,” said Haffar. “They are the only ones that will invest in a private biotech [as they are always looking for the brightest ideas to invest in].”

Whether they secure money from a VC or from friends & family, the true challenge biotech scientists and researchers face is clinical failure, as Haffar said. Being unable to know if a drug is effective before testing it on animals then on humans is the trickiest part and if ultimately, the results were negative, the product is dead.

San Mateo - Dec 10, 2018

It’s an exciting time to be alive.

Technology and competition are providing endless convenience options to the point that it’s hard to complain about not getting what you need delivered to your doorstep, whenever and wherever you need it.

From Starbucks Corp. building on its partnership with UberEats to deliver coffee to around 150 cities this year, to DoorDash announcing plan to deliver to 500 US cities by end of 2018, and Postmates, doing 4 million deliveries per month in 550 US cities, the on-demand delivery scene is surely bustling.  

Launched in 2011, Postmates handles delivery and pickup of food, beverages and groceries and works with 300,000 merchants and 250,000 carriers across the US. It has recently raised $300 million in additional funding led by Tiger Global Management and is now reportedly valued at $1.2 billion.

This on-demand delivery unicorn might also be filing for an IPO in 2019, according to its CEO, Bastian Lehmann.

“We have a beautiful path to an IPO in 2019,” he said in an interview with Fortune magazine.

During a Holiday dinner event organized by LebNet in San Mateo California on December 10, 2018, Vikrum Aiyer, Vice President Global Public Policy at Postmates and former Senior Advisor at the White House with Sami Arayssi, Business Strategy Lead at Postmates and LebNet former board member, mentioned that the company is serving 60 percent of US households and explained how it is creating an impact on the local economy while being socially responsible.

LebNet organized a dinner on December 10 and hosted Vikrum Aiyer and Sami Arayssi from Postmates who discussed how this company is creating thousands of jobs and impacting the economy. (Images via LebNet)

Fighting food poverty: In an attempt to provide healthy food to shelters and help restaurant owners donate food leftovers, Postmates launched four months ago the Food Fight program, in partnership with the Mayor’s Operations Innovation team in Los Angeles, the creative talent community Working Not Working and Vice Media. Via a button featured on Postmates merchants’ platform in LA, restaurants can click and have someone pick up their food leftover and drop it off at one of the three shelters Postmates is partnering with.

Decreasing carbon footprint: Postmates may be in the logistics business but it doesn’t rely solely on cars to pick up and drop off goods. In New York, where they have the largest fleet, all their deliveries are done by bikes or on foot but in LA, it’s still almost entirely done by automobiles. They recently started testing with automated electric rovers on sidewalks in Washington DC, LA, Miami and other places, which will further decrease the company’s carbon footprint.

“The US spends 400 million hours going to and from grocery stores,” said Aiyer referring to a study by Brooklyn Institute. “We can minimize this and optimize pick up.”

Vikrum and Sami explaining to the crowd how the business is serving over 550 US cities and supplying food to local shelters.

Additionally, Postmates, through its multiple platforms (one for merchants, one for customers and one for carriers), helped local businesses sell over $1.2 billion worth of goods in 2017, according to Aiyer, and carriers earn an extra income.

“In the era of amazon, when more retailers are struggling to compete with it, more local businesses are now able to plug in and sell,” he explained.

On the other hand, the 250,000 carriers Postmates is working with have earned last year alone about $217 million in total, said Aiyer. This number also means that they are earning about $18.32 per hour.”

That said, their network of couriers include students and women over 52 years old, with most of their customers between 18 and 34 years old (60 percent of them are female) and 99 percent of them living in urban areas.

Collaborating with big names

In order to test how people would react to having the goods delivered using a driverless car, Postmates partnered with Ford and Walmart to test a grocery delivery service in Miami.

“When Walmart wants to deliver groceries in Miami they’re using a platform that we [developed] with Ford. This allows us to focus on how to test the future of the workforce and how we make sure that we’re not only investing in the wellbeing of this workforce, but if more jobs were to be automated, how do we make sure we’re developing the skill sets for those workers,” explained Aiyer.

What started with three guys trying to figure out how to get a surfboard delivered to them has now grown to a company of 850 people in the US. In the last four to six months alone, Postmates went from few hundred cities to 550 cities. Despite competition, Sami Arayssi believes there’s room for everyone. They’re operating in an industry worth $550 billion with a 1.3 percent penetration rate, he said. “That’s a huge opportunity for a lot of players,” he said.

By making all these deliveries, Postmates is adding additional jobs to the economy and creating a bigger effect beyond having your food delivered to you on a lazy Sunday.

Beirut - Nov 29, 2018

Impact investing is the purposeful act of investing in a business or product that will generate, in addition to financial returns, a social or environmental impact.

A 2017 survey conducted by the Global Impact Investing Network, a nonprofit organization for scaling and measuring impact investing worldwide, revealed that over 200 self-identified impact investors closed around 8,000 investments in 2016, with a total value of $22.1 billion. The businesses they invested in focused on creating a positive impact on society or environment, while generating profits for investors.

Seedstars, a global organization that empowers startups in emerging markets through events, workshops, acceleration programs and hubs, is an example of organizations doing impact investing. It aims to reach 10,000 entrepreneurs in 2019. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, between 5 and 7 trillion dollars of investment are needed each year, until 2030, to reach sustainable development goals worldwide.

Since the inception of Seedstars six years ago, their amount allocated to impact investing has multiplied by nine, said Seedstars event manager Laure de Peretti de la Rocca, during her keynote speech at Seedstars MENA Regional Competition held in Beirut on November 29.

“Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, have either acquired, launched or committed capital dedicated to impact. Despite the growing interest, the amount allocated to impact investment is low. If we look at Goldman, they have 1.3 trillion asset under management, less than 1 percent of it is dedicated to impact,” added Laure stressing on the importance of incentivising corporate and big investment firm to invest in impact businesses.

With a focus on impact investing and fundraising in the US versus Lebanon, the event marked Seedstars’ third regional edition and it was supported by several partners including Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL), MADA Assistive Technology Center, local telecommunication company Touch, Speed Lebanon, Berytech, Endeavor Lebanon, LebNet and many others. The 3-day competition had 351 attendees, 45 investors, 119 startup founders, 303 one-on-one meetings and a representation from 21 countries.

Lebanese telecommunications company Touch organized a workshop on business growth and accessing new markets and featured 64 one-on-one meetings with 8 local and regional mentors. (Image via Seedstars)  

Speakers included Christopher Schroeder, American investor and entrepreneur and the author of the book Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East; Fadi Zoghzoghi, CTO of Bridge Athletic and a LebNet board member; Sharif El-Badawi, partner at 500 Startups; Walid Hanna, founder and CEO of Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP); Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO of global success startup littleBits and Hassane Slaibi, CEO and cofounder of Band Industries, the company that built the most fundraised musical hardware on Kickstarter: Roadie Tuner.

Over 70% of Millennials and Generation X’ers  are investing with a purpose

Doing business to generate profits without expressing social or environmental values is no longer an option for most of the millenials and their predecessor generation. A study conducted this year revealed that millennial investors and generation X investors are becoming more attuned to socially responsible investing than their older counterparts. Another study revealed that 77 percent of millennial investors and 72 percent of generation X investors have made an impact investment, compared to just 30 percent of affluent investors from the baby boomer and older generations.

“It’s no longer about making money, but also about having a purpose. Not only is there this rising interest in impact investing, but also a rise in power of a new generation that believe doing business with a purpose goes hand in hand,” added Laure.

And the winner of last year’s Seedstars Global Summit is an example of investing in high-impact startups.

Impacting farmers’ lives through technology

Last April, over 1,000 attendees, investors, startups and enthusiasts attended Seedstars Global Summit in Switzerland. After hosting around 80 local competitions and organizing five regional summits, the global summit gathered startups from 65 countries including the MENA region, for a chance to pitch and win the grand prize of $500,000 of equity investment. Twelve startups were chosen to present and the winner was AgroCenta. This Ghana-based startup aims to solve two critical problems small farmers face: access to market and access to finance. The lack of an access to a market forces farmers to sell their produce to middlemen, who will in return sell the products at a higher price. The lack of finance won’t allow farmers to expand to bigger farms and increase their production.

The winner of Seeedstars Global Summit last year took home $500,000 (Image via Seedstars)   

AgroCenta built a platform, AgroTrade, that allows farmers to sell their produce directly to large food traders, to ensure fair prices and selling in bulk. It has another platform called AgroPay, which provides financial institutions more visibility over low-risk farmers.

Another Seedstars success story is eFishery, an Indonesian startup that won the global summit in 2014. It’s a smart automatic feeder for fish in farms, making it easier for farmers to track and schedule feeding times using a mobile app. eFishery’s goal is to increase feed efficiency while saving food, as many farm fishes die due to overfeeding.

We may have a long way to go to reach sustainable development goals, especially with the $2.5 trillion investment gap in developing countries, but today’s generation is more than ever willing to invest in businesses that reflect their social and environmental values. With most millennials located in emerging markets, we can only hope the next big success story comes from the MENA region.

What role should tech startups play to save their economy? (Image via LebNet)

Lebanon ranked as one of the least competitive economies, both globally and regionally, according to World Bank’s Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2018: De-Risking Lebanon.

The country was ranked 105th of 137 countries, ahead of only Yemen in the Arab region. The leading causes of Lebanon’s competitiveness have been its macro-economic environment, a weak infrastructure and institutions and governance.

That being said, the country’s economy failed to create new job opportunities and reduce widespread poverty and its GDP has been decreasing sharply since 2010. Its main drivers were the service sector (72.4 percent) between 2004 and 2016, industry and agriculture (14 and 4.3 percent respectively).

The report also highlighted that corruption in the ruling political class has rendered the country incapable of solving its most urgent needs and public services.

Could the private sector, startups and IT more specifically, bypass corruption and create new hope for Lebanon?

Yes it could. The tech startup ecosystem in Lebanon has made access to innovation and competition easier, according to the same report, and it’s helping small businesses create jobs for the future generations.

“Lebanon’s tech scene is becoming increasingly attractive driven by the example of successful startups that have tapped regional and global markets and the innovative initiative by the country’s central bank in facilitating venture capital financing. The nation now needs to leverage these developments by finding solutions to constraints hindering the blossoming of its tech startup ecosystem,” the report stated.

Lebanese startup BuildInk, which 3D prints eco-friendly cement blocks, is posing for a group photo after winning TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA held in Beirut in October. (Image via LebNet)

Tech and digital businesses have borderless characteristics and can generate profits by selling to outside parties, without the need to get stuck in bureaucracy, customs and taxes. Such businesses are bringing hope to an economy filled with corruption, said George Akiki, LebNet’s president and cofounder, during a talk he gave in Armenia about the LebNet experience in scaling startups globally.

In his talk, he highlighted some of the constraints that the report hinted at and these include the shortage of high-risk investments and lack of advanced research and development centers.

Attracting seed funds at the earliest stage of a startup was also a crucial need. “Nobody is focusing there, very few,” he said. “Execution is a problem, CEOs and CTOs have good ideas but they are not executing well. LebNet needs to help address and mentor them. They need coaching at many levels.”

Where are the Lebanese unicorns?

If you’re familiar with the startup ecosystem in the MENA region, then you know that only a few were able to exit, most recently Souq.com, which was acquired by Amazon for $580 million.

Looking closely at the Lebanese market, no considerable exits have been made, despite the fact that it has become an obsession for many Lebanese entrepreneurs, according to Akiki. He stated that they are obsessing too much about unicorns to the point they can no longer focus on smaller and more realistic exits.

Despite the challenges, there are positive elements that will help the ecosystem grow slowly but surely.

The creativity, talent and the good number of VCs and support organizations are a sign of hope. The Lebanese ecosystem boasts around 200-300 startups, two angel networks, around 10 VCs, three incubators and five accelerators, two small exits and about US $300 million of deployed investments, he said. Most of all, Lebanese entrepreneurs have good business acumen, strong problem solving skills, a multicultural background and fluency in three languages (English, Arabic and French) which opens more opportunities for them when considering scaling to the US, Europe or the Gulf.

Can the digital sector bring Lebanon’s economy to safer lands when its GDP still highly relies on services and real estate? Can this sector bypass corrupted governance and make a difference? Maybe time will tell.

San Diego - Oct 18, 2018

In 2035, when the full economic impact of 5G should have touched the entire globe, a broad range of industries, from retail to education and entertainment, are expected to produce around US $12.3 trillion worth of goods and services enabled by 5G mobile technology, according to 5G economy reports.

Reports also stated that by 2035, 5G will create 22 million jobs and generate $3 trillion in global GDP growth. It will also increase productivity by 89 percent, help small business grow and compete globally and stimulate the invention of new products.

At the forefront of 5G innovation is multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company Qualcomm.

The company’s president Cristiano Amon, spoke about 5G, mobile innovation, the internet of things (IoT) and emerging markets during LebNet’s event in San Diego, which was held on October 18, 2018 at Knobbe Martens law firm.

Cristiano Amon talking about 5G innovation during a panel organized by LebNet

The event drew 70 people from San Diego, Silicon Valley, Orange County, Los Angeles and Florida. It was introduced by Layal Rouhana, PhD, Staff IC packaging engineer at Qualcomm and LebNet San Diego Region Leader. The LebNet San Diego team aims at building a community of high-tech professionals and college students to learn from each other and give back.

During the panel, which was moderated by Ford Tamer, the CEO of high-speed analog and semiconductor solutions company Inphi Corporation, Amon discussed how 5G will be a major economic driver, his key success factors and how his Lebanese origin and grandfather influence helped him shape his journey.

“My grandfather left Lebanon when he was 16 years old. He went to Brazil, did not speak the language, worked in a farm, saved money, started doing some coffee transportation, bought merchandise and sold them in towns. He was a great inspiration for us, always had a goal and kept going forward.”

Perhaps his grandfather’s ‘can do’ attitude led Amon to pursuing his own passion and becoming one of the leaders of tomorrow’s technologies.

An ever-connected era

Amon tackled technological progress by distinguishing between 3G and 4G and how advanced underlying technologies in broadband mobile are making us underestimate the value of what we have nowadays.   

“There’s no industry today that doesn’t have a smartphone connected to what they do. Smartphone itself is an incredible device. When we were creating 4G, we didn’t know how apps will look like but we knew the underlying technology. We are now in a society where everything can be connected ,” said Amon.

Yet with 5G, connectivity will take a whole different meaning. Due to faster speed and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices, this technology will provide the right infrastructure to carry and handle huge amount of data, hence making our world smarter and more connected.

With 5G, people can connect to the cloud and all the data extracted from their devices will feed into machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), according to Qualcomm’s president. “Things will become smarter as they will have processors and be connected to the internet. Those will change societies again [and lead] economic development.”

What’s the role of 5G in healthcare?

5G in healthcare

This ability to connect at a very high speed will also bring benefit to mankind. In healthcare, 5G can facilitate the transfer of medical databases and help in analyzing them, hence improving machine learning. Machine-assisted tools can then give doctors a proper patient diagnosis based on previous diagnosis correlated with a certain condition. All of this can be made possible by just processing a bigger amount of data, indicated Amon.  

He gave another example related to translation and cultural difference. During an event he attend in China, government officials were relying on a machine learning software to receive a real-time interpretation. The phrases being formed did not make sense initially because they needed more context, but Amon believed that “those things will become better. If you’re connected to the internet with a very high speed you can enable all those things.”

5G will be a turning point for machine learning and IoT devices and PCs as well. Amon hinted that personal computers will be connected with 5G and start running on mobile technology.

New tech for emerging markets

The panel went from talking about 5G and its big economic potential to how emerging markets are creating new tech behaviors to fill a gap, i.e India, which is using WhatsApp to transfer payments. The global chatting app is now offering a billing system for specific countries to allow users to transfer money. “It’s amazing how much they revolutionized in emerging markets. They have a bigger reach over population.”

This event won’t be the last for LebNet San Diego this year. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, the San Diego community will be hosting several activities related to career development in STEM fields, female leadership in high-tech, work/life integration and programs for graduates and undergraduates in STEM field. Stay tuned. 

Montreal - Oct, 13, 2018

On October 13th, LebNet, LIFE and the Lebanese Canadian Tech Hub organized the Lebanese Fintech Global Conference at the CEIM (Center for Enterprise and Innovation of Montreal).

The conference, which was attended by 70 people, discussed the fintech ecosystem, future trends, the main tech players and how they are transforming the banking sector with AI and blockchain potential opportunities among other topics.

The morning sessions featured Alexandre Harkous, founder and executive chairman of OneWealthPlace, a digital platform for assets and wealth managers. Harkous, who has 20 years of experience in the finance industry and has sold two software publishing companies to leading industry players, shared his success story with the audience. The talk was followed by another presentation given by Gerard Rafie on the role of artificial intelligence in fintech and a presentation on blockchain uses and limitations by Dr. Nicholas Khabaz, founder and CEO of HedgeSight, a fintech company that provides a blockchain ready, end-to-end portfolio rebalancing solution for hedge fund investors.

The afternoon started with keynote speaker Stephanie Choo, partner at Portag3 Ventures who detailed the global Fintech landscape and related investment dynamics and then the conference ended with a content rich panel moderated by Rania Afiouni Monla and featured Joseph Fakhri, Antoine Azar, Joseph El Sayegh. Bassem Monla, and Mike Merdinian.

The conversations and discussions were highly engaging. For those who missed the event, we have compiled for you a list of inspiring quotes and insights from speakers and attendees.

Alexandre Harkous

Data is the new oil. [We need] massive data today to create new value.

Why I am an entrepreneur? I had no choice, I am lebanese, it’s in the genes. We all left Lebanon to be successful. If you have an opportunity to work for a startup, don’t hesitate. [It’s a] great learning experience before you start something on your own. Suffer as an entrepreneur, it’s good from time to time.

My dream is to create a success story in Beirut now.

Gerard Rafie

If you ask a head of a bank: what keeps you awake at night [they will answer]: Cost, regulation, profitability

Technology in banks is for cost reduction. That’s it.

Regulation on data in banking will never end, more keeps coming. The biggest investment in banking will be in AI to manage the data. AI can make autonomous decisions: that’s the beauty of it and the danger of it. AI should not automatically trade, just provide insight and suggested picks. At the end of the day, trading is about guts and until AI gets guts, humans will trade. I can see AI and blockchain converging in the future to create the best secured distributed data storage easily accessible by AI tools

Stephanie Choo – early stage investor at Portag3 Ventures

The confluence of activity in fintech (tech transformation, incumbents at a crossroads and regulatory tailwind in banking) has made this area very exciting and very well capitalized players [are] emerging. [It’s a] good time to be a fintech entrepreneur these days.

[We still have] a few more areas to solve: who becomes the consolidator of all financial services for a client? In M&A, how to integrate acquisitions into larger incumbent? How will big tech enter in fintech: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook.

Having expertise in the regulatory space is very important for entrepreneurs. Fintech requires time and significant capital at the early stage to scale. In fintech, [you] need an ecosystem approach to win

Dr Nicholas Khabbaz

95 percent of blockchain’s proof of concepts in the financial banking sector have failed to date.[He then spoke about a methodology to mitigate risk of failure]

Mike Merdinian – blockchain instructor at McGill University School of Continuing Studies

Blockchain is leveraging known technologies dating back to 1962 to create a new industry of ‘Trust’. The challenges are the lack of talent, regulatory, jurisdiction of various regions and people still don’t trust [it]. Blockchain is not Ketchup: you can’t use it everywhere.

Joseph Fakhri– president and CEO of Axiom Innovations

Blockchain is putting tremendous pressure on ‘cost’ in the financial industry

Joseph El Sayegh – president and CEO of SCOR Canada Reinsurance Company

Insurance companies are more geared to take risk than banks

Antoine Azar – co-founder and CTO of Thirdshelf

Quebec is extremely well positioned for fintech & AI talent.