Against All Odds: VC & entrepreneurship forge ahead

Transcription

1 Against All Odds: VC & entrepreneurship forge ahead Middle East & North Africa Outlook Q Florence Eid-Oakden, Ph.D Tel: With Charlene Rahall, Robin Mills, Mingqiao Zhao, Atousa Tahmasebi, Oliver MENA Hayakawa, Outlook Moussa Q Saab.

2 MENA Region: Bringing a balance to the entrepreneurship ecosystem The Mowgli Foundation (Mowgli) argues that while both investment in the form of technical training or financial capital are valuable, they are unlikely to yield the best return on investment if provided to would-be entrepreneurs who may have the technical skills but are not confident, resilient, motivated, and ultimately empowered to take on the entrepreneurial journey. The Mowgli Foundation is an international UK headquartered award winning mentoring organisation that works with international and local governments, financial institutions, philanthropists and corporates globally to provide mentoring programmes that empower entrepreneurs to drive economic growth and strengthen leadership. - Mowgli has an alumni with over 1770 members and has matched over 790 entrepreneurs with trained mentors in 14 countries; Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and the UK. - Mowgli has received three awards to date which reflect its key purpose and impact: The Employment Generation Award by Ta ather (2016), the European Quality Award by the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (2016) and the Young Business Leaders Award in (2012). Mowgli has created an entrepreneurship ecosystem map to highlight the pillars of support required to develop sustainable entrepreneurs (Figure 1). Mowgli s programme involves: 1. Strengthening entrepreneurs and their businesses by matching them with trained mentors in facilitated, supported, and supervised long-term relationships over a 12-month period; 2. Training and nurturing mentors to ensure that the entrepreneur s business direction is aligned with their purpose and that they have a safety net to rely on when they want to step outside of their comfort zone. 3. Building of a global community of trained mentors and entrepreneurs that are able to access networking, learning, and growth opportunities. Since 2008, Mowgli has worked with over 790 entrepreneurs from across 13 MENA countries and the UK and their mentoring programmes have achieved an average Return on Mentoring Investment (ROMI) 2 of 890% for program funders as a result of job creation and safeguarding. 1 The Mowgli Foundation ROMI = (Jobs Created + Jobs Safeguarded) x Average Pretax Annual Salaries= Economic Generation/Project Investment. This calculation is based upon the economic generation resulted from the salaries of the Mowgli Entrepreneurs as well as their employees only, and does not take into account the revenues of the entrepreneurial businesses. Figure 1 MENA Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Map 1 After each Mowgli-facilitated mentoring year, an average of 3.3 new jobs were created per Mowgli Entrepreneur, with the total reported reaching Ninety-one percent of entrepreneurs existing jobs were safeguarded after the mentoring year. Eighty-nine percent of entrepreneurs businesses stayed operational after the mentoring year. An economic generation level of USD 18.4M was contributed to the region through the salaries of the reported jobs created and safeguarded by Mowgli Entrepreneurs since

3 Spotlight Mowgli: Significant ROI can be achieved by investing in mentoring ROMI 1 data released by Mowgli shows that Lebanon has generated the highest levels since This is not surprising given that Lebanon s entrepreneurship ecosystem is one of the most developed in MENA. Although Lebanon lags in terms of total PE exits, the country continues to represent an important VC hub in MENA, evidenced by the rise in the number of deals from 3 in 2007 to 22 in In 2013, Banque du Liban (BDL) launched an ambitious initiative to support SMEs via Circular 331, which encourages commercial banks to invest in venture capital funds, accelerators, or start-ups directly. However, we identify three key challenges that continue to affect the progress of the Lebanese entrepreneurial ecosystem. - One of Lebanon s major problems is retaining talent. Roughly 200,000 Lebanese leave the country to settle abroad every year leaving more graduates abroad than at home. - Geopolitical risks (the war in Syria and domestic political stalemate) continue to impact the country s investment climate. - The costs of registering a company are one of the highest in the MENA region, according to the OECD in Jordan has achieved the highest number of new jobs created after the mentoring year at an average of 8.1 compared to the region's average (3.3) (Figure 2). This could be attributed to the fact that Mowgli s programmes were launched in Jordan, the country s greater understanding of mentoring and its impact as well as a larger entrepreneur alumni base. Despite funding challenges, entrepreneurship in Jordan is growing -- in large part due to their strongest resource -- human capital. Jordan is developing into a regional technology hub, giving rise to hundreds of new tech startups but often losing them to Dubai, also due to the cost of doing business. The government is considering more breaks for entrepreneurs. Given Algeria s nascent and somewhat closed and fragmented entrepreneurial ecosystem, generating the third highest ROMI at 570% is an outcome worth further analysis. Figure 1 ROMI, by Country, (%) 1 Figure 2 Average Jobs Created After the Mentoring Year, by Country 1 1 The Mowgli Foundation. ROMI = (Jobs Created + Jobs Safeguarded) x Average Pretax Annual Salaries= Economic Generation/Project Investment. 2 SME Policy Index. Implementation of the Small Business Act for Europe in the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa

4 A: When founding Mowgli, Tony Bury had developed a 40+year relationship with the Middle East, having lived in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE but having spent a considerable time in Jordan, Lebanon and Oman. He started 14 out of his 19 businesses in the region, with Mowgli being his 19 th. In 2007, he was feeling suffocated by the successes of his businesses and wanted a new learning curve as well as to give back. In 2008, after having read the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by the late CK Prahalad, he joined CK at Michigan Business School to hold a session with his MBA students where they posed the question: how can we get more and more entrepreneurs into the system and how can we help them to be successful. In 2007, there was no shortage of money and the resounding answer was a mentor, someone to stand beside and support me. Looking at the MENA region s million jobs by 2020 goal, Tony drew upon his own experiences and passions and decided that he wanted to support the entrepreneurship drive in the region. He evaluated that the majority of focus and therefore funding would be dedicated to providing entrepreneurs with skills training and financing. Special Feature: Q&A with Ms. Kathleen Bury CEO, Mowgli Foundation Today, the political instability currently being faced in the region is providing more and more challenges for entrepreneurs to break through. Kathleen Bury is Mowgli Foundation s Chief Executive Officer and holds a BA Hons Business degree from the Nottingham Trent Business School, UK. She has undertaken a number of Executive Education programs in Columbia Business School, NYU, Wharton University and INSEAD Business School and trained as a Coach through Coaches Training Institute (CTI). Having worked in the UK, Middle East, North Africa, Asia and East Africa, Kathleen has over 15 years of experience spanning profit and not for profit management, strategy development, project management, business development, consulting, research/market analysis, marketing/communications, knowledge management, process design, family business and start up/entrepreneurship. She is also an author of leadership and entrepreneurship focused articles within leading international magazines and online communities. During her time working within and at the helm of Mowgli, Kathleen has led the team to double its size, win 3 major awards for employment generation (impact), mentoring program quality and mentor network in the Arab Region, as well as expanding into 8 new territories including Sub Saharan Africa; enabling Mowgli to considerably increase its reach, impact and sustainability. Q: What is the inspiration behind Mowgli Foundation and its focus on MENA? Although both important, he realised from his own journeys as an entrepreneur, that it was the empowerment of his core spirit (resilience, confidence, motivation etc.) and the development of his human capital, especially behaviours and mind-set that truly served him, and enabled him to be successful. His dream was that sustainable jobs would be created and existing jobs would be safeguarded because businesses would become more successful as a result of the entrepreneur s personal growth, the empowerment of his/her core spirit and the strengthening of his/her leadership. In 2008, Tony gave the philanthropic seed capital for Mowgli to be born and piloted. A holistic entrepreneurial-mentoring program, which focuses on the personal and business lives of the entrepreneur, was developed and we ran our first program in Jordan in Q: What about the political instability of the region? How is that affecting your plans or just your mood about moving forward? A: The political instability currently being faced in the region is providing more and more challenges for entrepreneurs to break through. Unfortunately, the situation is not allowing the region to focus on human capital development and therefore this aspect is being defocused on rather than being given the right care, attention and funding. 25

5 Special Feature: Q&A with Ms. Kathleen Bury CEO, Mowgli Foundation This process involves the recruitment of high quality mentors and entrepreneurs, the training of mentors and matching of them during a face-to face Kickstart workshop, setting the foundations for a yearlong facilitated mentoring relationship This can be seen with the fact that donor funding to date has predominantly had to come from non-mena region funders, due to lack of funding internally within the region. Given this, we are looking for areas where there is a higher propensity for self-funding and philanthropic giving in order that we, and the initiatives we are involved with, can be scaled and become more sustainable. As a result, we are looking to regions such as sub Saharan Africa and Asia. Q: How different is Mowgli from others doing similar work in the MENA entrepreneurship ecosystem? What would you say is your niche? A: Within the region, and globally for that matter, the word mentoring has many definitions ranging from business advisory, consulting, to training. Mowgli s definition of mentoring is having someone who stands beside you in a shoulderto-shoulder relationship and works with you to empower you to develop your own leadership, thought process and decision-making capabilities. They do this by acting as a listener, friend, mirror and sounding board and, therefore, they don t tell you what to do, but provide you with hope, aspiration and motivation. According to Mowgli a mentor tells you what you need to hear and not necessarily what you want to hear. Given the above, Mowgli s approach to mentoring coupled with its EMCC 1 accredited program and the multi-tiered impact areas that we seek for our enablers, direct and indirect beneficiaries are unique: Personal growth and strengthening of leadership, which leads to Business growth, sustainability and success, which leads to Economic growth, job creation and safeguarding. Mowgli s USPs are: Mentor training: A critical component which increases the rate of success of the mentoring relationship. Some mentoring programmes do not train mentors if others do, it is for a maximum of 4 hours only. We train mentors 1 The European Mentoring & Coaching Council for a minimum of days to help them gain a deeper understanding of mentoring, develop the right skills and mind-set to be an effective mentor, feel more committed to the mentoring relationship and are therefore better equipped to serve their mentees, especially on the personal front. The process: The Mowgli process, which has been developed and improved a number of times since we were founded, is unique, and has allowed us to achieve the results we have achieved so far. This involves, but is not limited to, the rigorous recruitment of high quality mentors and entrepreneurs, the training of the mentors and mentor-entrepreneur matching that takes place during the face-to-face and highly experimental Kickstart workshop. To guarantee a successful long term trust based mentoring relationship, they are also supported by events, frequent follow up, impact assessments and feedback. Holistic and longer term relationships: The mentor-mentee relationship thrives better through holistic mentorship, which focuses on the personal and professional development and is supported for the first 12 months. After this point, the pairings are encouraged to continue developing their relationship, and over 95% of entrepreneurs keep in touch with their mentors. Global and local: Program beneficiaries join a global network of entrepreneurs and mentors after graduating, allowing them to interact and benefit from a wide international network. Locally, building a network of partnerships and fostering community-level engagement that increases the reach and impact of the mentoring programme allows us to expand the benefit to a wider range of beneficiaries. Q: There is an imperative need for entrepreneurial mentoring in the MENA region. What in your view are the main challenges faced by Mowgli in MENA, and how do they differ from those you face in other similar emerging markets? A: Mowgli faces four main challenges in delivering the mentoring programmes: 1. Recruitment: One of the main challenges is recruiting top calibre entrepreneurs and mentors committed to the programme. Sourcing applicants who are willing to dedicate enough time to the development and mentoring relationship is key to success of the relationship. 26

6 Special Feature: Q&A with Ms. Kathleen Bury CEO, Mowgli Foundation Potential Interference + Mentoring = Success 2. Mentoring understanding and awareness: We hold regular Mentoring Awareness Sessions to raise awareness about the benefits and impacts of mentoring for entrepreneurs and help clarify the difference between mentoring, training, advice and consulting, which is a main challenge in the MENA region. There is also the need for Expectation Setting Sessions within the mentoring programme within an emerging and immature market. 3. Openness: Entrepreneurs and mentors need to be empowered to open up to one another to build trust and therefore boost the mentoring relationship. To facilitate this, the Kickstart workshop and ongoing support activities focus on accelerated relationship building activities so that this can take place early on in the relationship, providing the foundation for a productive and mutually beneficial mentoring relationship to flourish. 4. Financing vs. human capital: A key factor that affects the ease of guaranteeing needed funding for human capital development programmes involves working in an environment that emphasises more on financial than human-capital development. As a result, continuous engagement with key stakeholders and communication of the return on mentoring investment (ROMI) is critical to proving the value that holistic mentoring offers. 5. Securing regional funding: The uptake and sustainability of our programme has been affected as a result of the above financing vs. human capital challenge, as donor funding to date has had to come from non-mena region funders, due to lack of funding from within the region. This has also affected our focus on the region today, and as a result the decision to look for new markets which have a higher propensity of self-funding and philanthropic giving. Q: You have argued that it is up to 10 times more difficult for Arab startups to become profitable than those in the US or Europe. What are the main obstacles that are still holding back growth in the entrepreneurial scene in MENA from reaching its potential? What are the sources of these challenges? A: The entrepreneurship ecosystem in the MENA region faces multiple challenges from within its own components as well as synchronisation between different areas. The regional governments and international organisations tend to overlook the bigger picture when drawing up development plans. Education systems in the region and parenting do not nurture entrepreneurship constructively. This results in a cultural reluctance to take risks or endure failures, which is a major part in the entrepreneurship journey. It also causes the lack of inspiring role models for the youth. Likewise, other components than education, including infrastructure, bureaucracy, laws, and regulations and so forth, move entrepreneurs back instead of motivating them to move forward. Financially, investments are scarce and in small amounts. Investors often enforce hard terms for entrepreneurs (even in growth investment), because investors are only achieving low returns on their investments. Most importantly on the human capital side, the main focus is to train and advise entrepreneurs and improve their business skills which is needed, but not as much as empowering entrepreneurs to develop their core leadership strength to withstand and deal with the obstacles they face, through real holistic mentoring. Q: Today, are you more optimistic about prospects for entrepreneurship in the MENA region than you were in the past, or less so? What factors constitute your view? A: Entrepreneurship in MENA has come along way over the past 8 years, since we have been operating. Numerous organsiations have come in to serve the entrepreneur, however, there is still a lack of cohesiveness and balance within the ecosystems making it even more difficult for the entrepreneurs to break through. An expression we use is to describe the situation is: Potential Interference + Mentoring = Success 27

7 Special Feature: Q&A with Ms. Kathleen Bury CEO, Mowgli Foundation if mentored and empowered, we can increase the quantity and the quality of female entrepreneurs Even though I believe that entrepreneurship is not viewed as negatively as it previously was, that skill levels are increasing within the region as a result of the school, university and NGO programs and that more small scale funding is available through the likes of competitions etc. However, the level of interference (especially those that are internal such as society and cultural pressures, confidence, and self-limiting beliefs) that the entrepreneurs have to deal with continues to grow, which in my view makes me less optimistic about the prospects for entrepreneurship unless more focus is placed on supporting them in this manner. This is where Mowgli s definition of mentoring plays a much greater role. Q: What would you like to see change further, and what is the best way of bringing about this change? The ultimate change that I would like to see is that there is a deep belief and focus on people and their human capital development so that they can reach their true potential and be able to employ that potential in the region for the benefit of the region. Again, mentoring is one of the best ways for bringing about this change. More specifically: 1. Funding wisdom: We can see sizeable funds being wasted and not achieving the intended return on investment levels. This is a wasted opportunity of development, while if well utilized, we could achieve more short and long term impact. 2. Women empowerment: Being half of the population, women are still not playing a vital part of MENA s entrepreneurship. While if mentored and empowered, we can increase the quantity and the quality of female entrepreneurs, enabling them to break through not only as entrepreneurs but as leaders of their society. Youth empowerment mirrors the same need. 3. Governments real support: Governments started to truly believe in developing human capital and supporting the development of entrepreneurial competencies from a much younger age i.e. embedding it within the education system so that the youth are truly equipped. 4. Partnerships: Would be beneficial on a number of fronts if we were able to see a wider range of partnerships between ecosystem players, governments, private sector and international bodies to affect greater change and have true and sustainable impact. 5. Understanding the beneficiaries needs: Entrepreneurs do not only need financial investment but also non-financial support through the development of the surrounding infrastructure, environment and the building their human capital. Q: In May 2016, Mowgli received the award for the significant impact that it has achieved through supporting over 790 entrepreneurs to drive and generate employment in the MENA region. What s next for Mowgli in MENA? In addition to Mowgli going global and our recent expansion into Sub Saharan Africa, Mowgli s long-term vision is to empower others, who fundamentally believe in the power of mentoring and wish to secure mentoring as a cornerstone of entrepreneurial and leadership development, by helping them to develop a local mentoring organisation (LMO) within their respective country. The establishment of these LMOs will be managed and driven by the people within that country to satisfy the specific mentoring needs of their beneficiaries, with Mowgli providing the necessary components under a franchise model. Further to Mowgli s core syllabus being accredited with the European Quality Award from the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, we want to take things a step further to ensure the quality of mentoring provision in each of the countries it operates in, both today and in the future. As a result, we are in the process of developing a Mentor Accreditation Programme. Finally, we still continue to focus on supporting more entrepreneurs and mentors through securing international donor, philanthropy and corporate funding for multi-country and multi-year programs, so that we can serve and benefit more entrepreneurs and mentors across the world. 20

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