LeWeb 2011 conference, the biggest tech conference in Europe, took place on December 7,8 and 9th this year in Paris, France. Founded in 2008 by Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic.com, the conference has become #1 tech event in Europe, attracting the best and brightest people in the tech world,from Google’s Eric Schmidt to Spotify founder Daniel Ek to Instagram’s Kevin Systrom.
Karim Helal, the founder of Monaqasat, Seeqnce advised startup and premier online tendering solution for the Middle East, attended LeWeb 2011 conference. Yesterday Seeqnce had a chance to interview Karim via email. Let’s see what it looked like through Monaqasat lens!
“As the only Middle Eastern startup attending LeWeb, we definitely felt as if we were entering an incredibly busy world of European startups. With people coming from all corners of Europe (including the only Siberian entrepreneur), this was an incredible opportunity to meet and mingle with the creators and designers of the apps we use on a daily basis”, said Karim.
We asked Karim if he could share with us some memorable moments, speakers, or talks that put an impression on him. He said:
“First, I have to say that the vast majority of the speakers and conferences were extremely interesting and different enough to keep you interested throughout the 3 days. For me, however, the two most memorable speakers were Karl Lagerfeld and Eric Schmidt of Google.
Seeing Karl Lagerfeld, now almost 80 years old, take his iPad out of his bag (that also contained 4 iPhones and countless iPods) and demonstrate how he now uses it on a daily basis to sketch his ideas and new concepts reminded me of the story where Andy Warhol discovered the Macintosh, proving once again how omnipresent these new devices have become and are firmly established as the new standard.
The other highlight was when Eric Schmidt stated that Silicon Valley needed competitors from all around the world in order to better compete and bring in new ideas. Paris, Berlin and other cities around Europe have understood that the future belongs to entrepreneurs and they’ve made it their priority to become the new hotspots. It then dawned on me that while the Middle East has everything needed to really make it a central hub for entrepreneurship (a large talent pool, vast amounts of money and business opportunities), the culture of entrepreneurship is not as firmly established and the political will is not quite there yet. The time is ticking to change that and bring the Middle East at the forefront of entrepreneurship”.
Karim further shared his impressions from LeWeb in regards to Monaqasat networking with potential investors. This turned to be quite difficult because the majority of investors were interested in investing in their own regions. He said: “Going to LeWeb was definitely a new experience for Monaqasat as it was the first non-MENA event that we attended and as a consequence, we met a lot of companies, investors and startups that we would never have had the chance to meet otherwise. Since we are looking for funding to further accelerate our growth across the region, we focused primarily on finding investors that were interested in investing in B2B businesses and with a non-European or non-American base, something that proved quite difficult as most investors like to invest in their own regions. We did however meet and start discussions with very interesting prospects and will communicate more once they become more official”.
We also found out that Karim attended Sean Parker’s private party. “After attending the official LeWeb party in the basement of the Louvre, we got wind of Sean Parker’s private party in an exclusive club in Paris. A group of us went and managed to get in thanks to Robert Scobble, first web blogger and tech evangelist now working at Rackspace and overall great guy. Inside, in a maze of corridors and crypts, we met with a lot of the Valley tech stars, including the founders or AirBnb, Instagram and Sean Parker, the man behind Napster and Facebook. Great night, great drinks and very deep conversations”, said Karim.
In the end Karim explained the importance of LeWeb conference for Monaqasat . He said: “The main outcome of the conference for Monaqasat has been a renewed sense of excitement about all the incredible projects and startups that are coming up in Europe and the US and an overall feeling of satisfaction that we, as a Middle Eastern company, can definitely compete with any of them. We will definitely attend next year with a larger group and hopefully an on-stage presence to demonstrate how the Middle East is definitely part of the global scene”.
