NEW LAND OF
OPPORTUNITY
BY JAREER OWEIMRIN
Recently, a client wanted to open a business in the UAE. He had a great idea that he wanted to move from concept stage to reality. It was a copy of Airbnb.com for the Middle East (basically an ecommerce site for residence sharing). He began by writing a strong business plan with the help of a talented freelancer from the local market. He realized that there were plenty of professionals that had their day jobs and then would spend extra time in the evenings on other hobbies (if writing business plans qualifies as a hobby as opposed to incremental income is a topic for another article).
In parallel, he needed experts to create the website and platform. While there are plenty of talented developers based in Dubai, he realized that the price differential was substantial so he opted for Pune, India. He later told me that in the in hindsight, there were probably competent developers in Jordan or Egypt that he could have tapped into, but the level of urgency required for initiation didn’t allow him the luxury of going through a thorough supplier selection process.
Next, he proceeded to form a stellar team of management, but he needed people who could be trusted and be dedicated through thick and thin. That meant he needed people that wouldn’t take things personally when things got heated (as he explained it, he’s not an easy person from a soft skills perspective). He also needed people with “western” exposure to the way things were done. While there might be some ambiguity in what he meant, I think he was alluding to a different set of skill sets that he couldn’t find in the people that were educated in the region. He wanted more free thinkers, people who are more adaptive to different situations, and above all, people who would not compromise their values for the sake of achieving the goals or “settle for the second best alternative”. Whether this “western” exposure emanates from being educated in the US or Europe, or comes from working at multinational companies is something that I will have to extract from him in our next meeting. These soft points, he tells me, are critical when selecting your core team for the venture. When I drilled him about the harder, more technical skills, he replied that talent on this side of the world is really good.
Business Development
90 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST Q3 2015