StartupQ8

Fostering the
A Startup is NOT a Small Business
startup ecosystem
in Kuwait Abdullah Alshalabi Follow
Jan 22, 2013 · 2 min read
Follow

I just came back from the StartupQ8 event and it was great as usual. One of
our early readers and early supporters (MyGreenSofa) was asking me about
the reason why we are focusing more on Tech startups and neglecting other
type of businesses such as restaurants and retailers…etc. It’s a good
question, and I tried to answer this issue in a previous post back on July
2012. So allow me to explain this again.

There is a big difference between a Startup (Amazon, Google, 6alabat.com,

Airbnb, Uber.com….etc) and a Small Business (marketing company,
fashion shop, consulting company, Thai food restaurant….etc).

In a Startup you are:

Building a new product

Solving a new problem or fulfilling a new need

Entering a new market with new customers (doesn’t really know if there
is a need or not)

Founders have a vision to scale and become a world class company

Very risky, yet very rewarding

Want to change the world to a better place

Attract bright and smart talents (employ more than 1,000 people in the
long-term)

Revenue more than US$50M

In a Small Business you have:

Known product/service

Known Customer with known market

Low risk

Want to keep the business small or within the family

Have low potential to grow

Founder vision is to make enough money to feed the family

Attract cheap labor (create 10–100 jobs)

So here in StartupQ8 we believe that in Kuwait we have enough of small

businesses and a lack of startups. I’m not saying that small businesses are
bad, but I think they are doing good without us. However, we don’t have
many startups (companies that can grow globally, create value to customers
around the world, create thousands of jobs and create millions of dollars to
their shareholders). We need to have more of these companies, and we
believe that the kind of help they need is much different than small
businesses, and we also believe that these startups will most probably be
Tech related startups.

Thanks MyGreenSofa for your question today, and I hope this post made
things more clearer on why StartupQ8 is more focused in scalable Tech
startups.

General Topics

WRITTEN BY

Abdullah Alshalabi Follow

In love with shing and technology! Co-founder & CEO of

@Fish shme a @500startups company

StartupQ8 Follow

Fostering the startup ecosystem in Kuwait

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