By Hend Kortam

CAIRO, Dec. 10 (Aswat Masriya) - Two days ahead of the RiseUp summit, the GrEEK Campus, one of several venues hosting the event, is having a make-over, with make-shift table stands, benches and leaflets serving as reminders to the anticipated annual gathering.

The RiseUp Summit, a two-day event primarily concerning entrepreneurs, which will bring the world to the “heart of Downtown Cairo!”, is running from Dec. 12-13, and will bring about 4,000 attendees from over 60 countries offering 140 sessions.

All of this may sound overwhelming, and RiseUp Co-founder Con O’Donnell agrees that the summit hosts a “very, very packed programme” and says that if “you are just thinking of starting it out, you need to pay attention to what you want to do or you will get lost.”    

Sitting down with Aswat Masriya in the GrEEK Campus, just days ahead of the summit, O’Donnell’s excitement was clear as he told us that “knowledge was a big component” of the summit, as well as business networking and finally, the ability to meet investors.

“This mixture of content, knowledge, inspiration, networking and opportunity for investment is what draws entrepreneurs to this place,” he said.

Speakers from 500 startups coming from 15 countries and representatives from the worlds of gaming, fashion and technology will flock to the event from across the MENA region, with giants like Google, Uber and Amzaon taking part in the summit.

But to help newcomers and young entrepreneurs deal with the event without losing sight of their targets as simultaneous sessions are held, O’Donnell says “we have created a mobile application to allow people to plan out their targets.” It is just like a calendar application, but it also allows people to contact people in advance.

“For newbies, somebody who has not been here before, the opportunity is there in abundance but you have to treat it like you would treat any kind of mission for work. You need to plan out who you want to meet, who you want to talk to…”

“You need to clearly practice what you are going to say… and what you are asking for, what you are expecting from the person,” he added.

But there is more to RiseUp, O’Donnell says, perhaps playing a motivating role for young people from MENA.

“It is a showcase for all of the MENA region to say, we are here. We are just as good as the Europeans, just as good as the Americans. We have great talent. We have great engineers. We have great business people. We have great ideas. We know how to build great businesses.”

If you are wondering what makes RiseUp any different from just any other business conference, it is that it is “entirely crowd-sourced” and collaborative meaning that the basics like the furniture to the technology, such as the mobile application are created by startups.

“This is a movement, rather than a new way of doing business,” O’Donnell said.

“There is a whole community” involved in bringing the summit together, “hundreds behind the scenes,” including volunteers and people who are taking time off their day jobs and showing up to offer help.

O’Donnell says they do so because in the bigger picture they believe in “changing the world, certainly changing the human experience by building better things.”

These entrepreneurs are tackling some of the bigger issues, like health, education, transportation, irrigation, all problems which O’Donnell says will no longer be solved by governments.

But many of Egypt’s young no longer want to wait for solutions and are opting out of the country instead. O’Donnell believes that the RiseUp Summit may change some people’s minds.

“It is very easy to take people out of Egypt today, especially the guys," he said, adding that major companies like Google and Microsoft are recruiting from Egypt.

The RiseUp co-founder believes that there was always a brain drain in Egypt but describes it now as being an “accelerated brain drain, it's worse than it ever was”, one which has left an entire generation “totally disinterested in continuing here.”

He hopes that when Egypt’s young see the summit, they will think, “if this is happening and there is all this momentum, then there is something to stay for, something we can build,” he said, but admits that that is very fragile and can be torn apart unless there is real investment and fast-growing businesses.

O’Donnell says Egypt’s investment climate is in transition as more and more opportunities for funding are being made available for startups especially as rapidly emerging technology makes its way to the scene.

Startups that have been passed over multiple times by venture capitals are being picked up by investors from outside Egypt, which will have “a profound effect”, he said.

Even two years ago, it would have been almost impossible for someone in Egypt to pitch someone in the U.S., he added.

Venture capitals are also under threat from angel investors who are offering investments with values that have recently swelled into venture capital territory.

Another factor opening up funding opportunities is that Egypt is now considered an emerging market. Before that, it was just overlooked, O’Donnell said.

But factors outside of the investment climate are also affecting entrepreneurs in Egypt, namely the security and political situation of the country.

There are factors affecting the willingness to invest in Egypt, O’Donnell said, with the state’s dollar shortage and banking restrictions and antiquated labour laws.

He admits that there are “policy… environmental factors, historical factors that make it not exactly the best- most fertile ground for running a business or getting an investor.”

“But we find our ways around. As entrepreneurs, we cannot stop … we are not going to be pulled back by that. We are going to find a way around. We are going to dig under, climb over, break through, whatever it takes to get on the other side of the wall,” he said.

“We have got to be very good at obstacle courses,” he said, laughing.