SIDELINES
FORBES MIDDLE EAST
6
Beyond Funding The global pandemic continues to hold the world of business in its grip, and as data becomes available, we are able to see how wide-reaching and devastating its impact has been over the last year. Sadly, support for women-led startups seems to have been among its casualties. After steadily increasing over the last 10 years, funding from VCs for female-founded companies is now dropping again, according to research released by the World Bank’s lending arm, the International Finance Corporation. Having reached a high of $20 billion in 2018, yearly global funding for women-led startups dropped to just $5 billion in 2020. More worrying is that it had already dropped to $7 billion in 2019, long before the pandemic hit. So why are female entrepreneurs seemingly always on the back foot when it comes to funding? For this month’s issue, I put that question to Ambareen Musa, founder of Souqamal, venture partner at Global Ventures, and one of the Middle East’s most successful female founders in the technology space. She explained that when investors listen to startup pitches and decide whether or not to offer funding, they are not just evaluating the idea, the business plan, the scalability— they are looking at the founder. The biggest product that an early-stage startup founder is selling is themselves. They need to present themselves with sheer confidence and blind ambition to convince potential investors that they have what it takes to lead a team, inspire other investors, and convince consumers enough to grow exponentially. Could it be that men are more confident at selling themselves while women hold themselves back? Of course, this is a huge generalization. Where it is true, it is also hopefully generational, and as new cohorts come through the ranks with young women that have been encouraged, supported, and inspired to champion their capabilities and demand parity, we’ll start to see a better balance overall. Another interesting point is that not all entrepreneurs want to be the next Jeff Bezos. Whereas founders of tech startups almost always need major investors to help set up and scale, there are many women leading their own businesses that are not tech-based and do not seek big funding. These founders fly largely under our radar as we focus on the size of a startup’s funding pot. But is external funding alone a fair way to judge success? The entrepreneurs on one of our lists this month—40 Women Behind Middle Eastern Brands— have largely done it on their own. They have established creative and lucrative businesses that would probably never appear on our annual list of the region’s most-funded startups, but that are very much success stories nonetheless, creating brand names recognized throughout the region and in some cases beyond. It’s a ranking that celebrates the unsung and gives much-needed representation to otherwise underrepresented female leaders. I hope you enjoy learning more about them. —Claudine Coletti, Managing Editor
F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M
AUGUST 2021
