What it will take to have the middle east region create more startups: 1. Entrepreneurs and avoid the fear of failures 2. Infrastructure (internet, electricity, payments) 3. Education 4. Investments 5. Social connector (this is an important one - almost always ignored - Geekwire used to this in Seattle, etc..) 6. Exits. Hard to in our region with less M&A and IPOs but they will come with time. 7. Alumnis network of successful startups Georges is a software engineer that worked previously at Microsoft, Uber and Airbnb. He is currently helping startups, writing a technical newsletter at https://www.softwareengineeringtidbits.com/ and teaching a cohort based software engineering course at maven: https://maven.com/georges-el-khoury/mastering-software-engineering