More often than not, young entrepreneurs find themselves with groundbreaking, innovative business ideas; however, without proper guidance, most of these ideas do not make it to the real world, and the talented people behind them feel discouraged from pursuing this career path.
One business incubator believes in the potential of the upcoming generation of Egyptian entrepreneurs and wants to end this cycle by providing them with enough expertise to follow through. In case you haven’t heard of Start Up Egypt, it is one of the largest entrepreneurship pipelines in the country that enrolls enthusiastic, yet inexperienced individuals and turns them into successful entrepreneurs. To enroll in the program, you have to be an Egyptian between the ages of 21 and 30, graduated from any field, and have minimal business experience.
Start Up Egypt believes in sustainable entrepreneurship, aiding its participants in formulating long-term business plans that are guaranteed to grow into large-scale operations that contribute to the economy and provide jobs.
In an intensive incubation program, Start Up Egypt will provide participants with a series of challenging obstacles designed to ensure that upon successful completion, they will have already built a viable enterprise, received equity-free seed funding, and gained exposure to a huge network of mentors and investors. In other words, if you complete their program, your startup will be ready for growth and further investment.
The program is comprised of three stages. First, ideation, in which, participants shape their ideas and test their viability, and in the case that any of them is promising, then the team prepares for a presentation around that idea. The second step, validation, includes training, prototype development, market and BMC validation, as well as pitching and showcasing. Finally, the incubation stage, in which entrepreneurs obtain seed funding and register their enterprises. Furthermore, this step includes office space provision, mentoring, international exposure, and a demo day.
Start Up Egypt has been providing this program to aspiring entrepreneurs and there are many success stories that started here. Orcas, a local startup that offers access to qualified and experienced babysitters as well as young and motivated tutors, Upfuse, a startup that works on decreasing amount of waste worldwide by designing and manufacturing luggage and cases from up-cycled plastic bags, or Solarize Egypt, an alternative energy startup that aims to unlock Egypt’s solar potential, are just a few of the success stories that came out of Start Up’s incubation program. All of these growing, successful businesses took their first steps at Start Up Egypt, and you can too.
