[caption id="attachment_5344" align="alignright" width="300"] A number of participants in the Tehran Startup Weekend[/caption]
Dropbox, Ebay, Zoosk, were all founded by techies of Persian descent, who represent some of the most successful entrepreneurs of the Iranian Diaspora.
Youtube’s CEO, Shahram Dabiri, and the Producer of World of Warcraft, Salar Kamangar, are also among the Information Technology gurus, like Omid Kordestani, who advised global innovations like Netscape and Google. Kordestani earned a place on TIME Magazine’s 100 in 2006 and represents the hundreds of Iranians that pursued their engineering degrees abroad.


It is perhaps ironic that a country like Iran, that is notorious for its advancements in certain technology, like nuclear development, does not scream advancement in the information technology development. Meanwhile, in spite government policy and slow internet access, Iran has unwittingly produced a community of tech innovators abroad. Iran’s tech ecosystem strikes a sharp contrast with the Persian Diaspora startup story.


Call it the casualty of emigration out of Iran, or brain drain.


“It’s a missed opportunity for Iran to capitalize on its own talent,” Iranian-American, and startup Founder of awesomize.me, Elias Shams explained.


Shams' startup, awesomize.me, connects businesses to businesses (B2B) across different industries to generate “leads” around the world. Awesomizeallows a company to aggregate all of its existing social networking platforms into each one of the company’s awesomize.me pages. Plus, there is a unique rating system embedded into each page. Currently over 1,000 companies use the awesomize.me platform,which focuses on B2B connections and goes “beyond Iran’s bandwidth”, since it’s a global concept. Their platform provides companies with the ability to create pages for each one of its products and services. The real added value is that awesomize.me has figured out the algorithm to increase your business’s “searchability” on Google. For example, a business can leverage awesomize’s ‘Ask a question’ feature, which boosts a business’s search rank.


B2B connections for startups are also valued in Iran.


“Iran is behind the Arab tech ecosystem, that is why we have developed networks and workshops like the Iran Web Festival,” said Mohsen Malayeri, CEO of Khavarzamin, an e-learning and e-commerce site.


Khavarzamin co-organized with another Iranian based tech leader, Iran Web Club, in hosting the Tehran Startup Weekend. According to Iranian tech blogger and attendee, Reza Hashemi: 120 developers and 30 mentors participated. Hashemi reported that BoiceApp emerged as the winner. No surprise here. BoiceApp is another phone application, just like the majority of participants in the neighboring ArabNet competition. Twenty-five million Iranians are more likely to have access to a mobile phone rather than a computer. Unfortunately, Iran web services are limited because there is no credit card processing due to a mix of government regulation and international sanctions.


Neighboring emerging markets, like Egypt, tell a more advanced tech ecosystem story. Recently, CNN Money ran a piece by Chris Schroeder that emphasized optimism in the broader MENA region for tech innovation and investment. Schroeder made no mention of the scene in Iran nor in Turkey. Another question remains: how much longer are we going to see phone apps as the mark of innovation in the MENA region?


Where there’s talent, there’s innovation. So...how do we identify Iranian talent? And will knowing where the talent is better project some sort of timeline for innovation for Iran?


“Iran has the tech talent and a separate pool of people with the business know-how, but the two groups need to merge--especially since foreign investors express interest but face the limitations of sanctions,” Malayeri said.


That is one of the reasons why he approached Iran’s Kerad Institute, which focuses on information technology, to join the list of sponsors. Iranian Bank Pasargad, and global, non Iranian ones, like Startup Labs, rounded out the first Startup Weekend Tehran event. (Startup labs boosts early stage startups with seeds capital and mentorship.) Aside from inviting Iranians from around the world to attend SWT, both Khavarzamin and Iran Web Club, have offered training workshops to over 125 tech entrepreneurs at its fourth Iran Web Forum. Also, between 4,000 to 5,000 tech startups attended. Meanwhile, there’s a parallel universe tackling a different tech entrepreneur challenge: matching the tech talent with seed funding in areas with large Persian American communities, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and the Washington, DC/Virginia area.


The Persian American tech startup community succeeded in part, by maintaining connections with another, but vital, segment of the Iranian Diaspora: the Venture Capitalists who supplemented the idea with the financing needed to transform many of the startups into global name brands. There’s a site that promotes the synergy between the tech idea and investment for Persian Tech Entrepreneurs--it’s called persiantechentrepreneurs.com and is preparing for its annual October Elevator Pitch competition in San Francisco.


Aside from Silicon Valley, DC metro area and Boston is a huge hub for tech entrepreneurs of Iranian descent can establish their startups. Boston also has universities densely covered the city, which reap the benefits of heavily defense-funded projects.


Alternatively, private investment offers stronger support within the Persian Diaspora. For example, Amidzad Investment Group is widely known on the West coast as a venture capital group that funds tech startups, many of which were founded by those of Iranian descent. However, what is not widely known is that it originated in a Persian rug store in southern California where Pejman Nozad first identified connected the investment with the idea and made all stakeholders a healthy sum of money.


“Innovation is a function of opportunity and culture--a culture where there is no fear of failure,” said both Shams and Hooman Radfar, the founder of Clearspring and Addthis.


Iran’s government produced more than a political and religious shift following the events of 1979. The ripple effects went beyond brain drain as regulations became tighter in the business and academic communities, which resulted in limiting tech innovation. Consequently, the risk-loving culture--which is so critical to the startup phase in the tech industry--never developed in Iran. Even if the Iranian Diaspora took an active interest in re-investing money and tech know-how into Iran, via sponsoring startup competitions, local Iranians would have to risk going beyond phone applications development.


By Vancouver Observer





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