The first time I stumbled through RiseUp Egypt’s trade fair – a collection of fifty booths featuring various startup companies – I had no interest in hearing pitches. The only thing I could think about was the lack of caffeine in my body, as a result of the total, utter, shameless lack of coffee at the two-day summit.
As I was scanning the trade fair for coffee, my focus was interrupted by some guy representing a tech startup called Kablaow: “Hello! Would you like to learn about Kablaow?”
What the f*** is Kablaow? Go away! I thought, irritably. I asked him where I could find coffee and was kindly directed to the Costa on Mohamed Mahmoud St.
15 minutes later I arrived back to AUC chipper and ready to go. I made the rounds of the trade fair and talked to representatives from a variety of startups.
Here are my thoughts:
JIO: A Phone App for Mothers to GPS Track their Children
I had to climb through a bush to get to this booth.
JIO is a friendly phone application that offers a way for mothers to track their children using GPS. You can install apps on all of the family phones for a “one time only, monthly subscription fee” (Wait, what?).
To be fair, I’ve been biased against tracking devices ever since my parents put a GPS tracker on my car when I was a teenager.
“You just install it on each phone and the icon will appear. You can click it and see the location of all the other phones.”
Logically, I wondered, if you can see the icon on your phone, won’t the kid know he’s being tracked? And if the kid knows, would he not just uninstall it?
I asked whether you can uninstall the app using your phone.
The response: “Yes, of course you can uninstall it. Just delete it like you would any other app.”
Whoops.
I took a free mask and moved on to the next booth.
Juice Labs: A Revolutionary Accelerator for Noob Entrepreneurs
I’ll be honest: The booths that catch my attention first are the ones that are giving away free stuff.
People are simple. We like instant gratification. You know what’s even better? Free instant gratification. Give us something free to eat or drink and we’ll feel better about the time we’ve spent listening to you pitch your idea (even if your idea is awful).
Juice Labs, a small post-incubation startup accelerator, understands this about people. Their booth was easily the most crowded in the entire trade fair at any given time throughout the day.
People were lined up waiting for juice samples, which were creatively poured into laboratory flasks with #Jan25 written on the bottoms (to symbolize “revolutionary ideas” according to a rep I later talked to). I waited my turn in line with the shared assumption that Juice Labs was in fact a juice production company.
“Wowwww have you tried this? It’s amazing!” exclaimed a girl standing next to me. “I can’t believe they haven’t opened a branch yet.” I tried the banana nut juice, and alhamdulilah, Juice Labs doesn’t actually sell juice, because it was poorly blended and had a texture similar to vomit.
Although Juice Lab’s juice giveaway tactic may have been confusing to people who weren’t actually interested in the product, it was successful in that it got people to come to the booth in the first place. At the end of the day, that’s the point.
I stayed to talk with one of the booth attendants and it turns out the idea was actually pretty solid (unlike the juice).
Juice Labs is an accelerator that helps people from all backgrounds become entrepreneurs. It focuses on clients who have great software startup ideas but no concept of how to translate those ideas into viable business.
Every year, Juice Labs takes on two new startups and grooms them (with money, training, everything the startups need to succeed) in exchange for between 5-10% stake in the company.
Seems like a good idea, but they’d best pick their clients wisely.
Cairo Sitters: The Best Paid Babysitting Agency in Cairo
Let me just start by saying that whoever works this booth loves late lunch. Both times I passed by this booth, on Sunday and on Monday, there were signs reading “LATE LUNCH BE BACK AT ____ (4/5).”
Cairo Sitters is pretty self-explanatory, and frankly, not a unique idea. It’s an agency that offers babysitting services to all areas of Cairo. Something like this exists in most large cities.
How does it work? When Cairo Sitters receives a request from a client, they send a sitter who they have pre-screened and trained for the job.
Money is made through commission, but sitters are left with a decent takeaway (babysitting for just 16 hours can bring in 1400 LE). Not bad.
Applicants are required to pay a total of 150LE to become sitters. 50LE for their Cairo Sitters ID card, and another 100LE as a deposit that will come out of their first paycheck. An ID card also entitles holders to certain discounts around Cairo (for example, you can get 15% off any order at Pizza Mia or Gourmet Burger in Zamalek)
You can apply to become a sitter at cairositters.com.
Trustious: A Cairo-Specific Yelp.com
Since I’m being honest, I originally walked over to the Trustious booth because I am a simple human being with simple needs, and I saw that they were giving away free Snickers bars.
In exchange for a shameless plug on Twitter @Trustious, you were allowed to select your choice from a large pile of chocolate. Who said bribery doesn’t work?
As it happens Trustious.com was actually a really impressive, well-developed version of Yelp.com (except specific to Cairo) and I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of it already, given the amount of interaction on the site.
You can look up menus and reviews (rated on a scale of 1-100) for restaurants, and narrow them down according to specific areas of Cairo. And you can do the same for basically every other service that exists from bookstores to pet grooming.
I asked how it’s different from Yelp or Cairo 360. “It’s exactly same,” the rep proudly affirmed.
From what I could tell, there was only one standout difference: Trustious had not only more – but also better quality – interaction from reviewers than either Yelp or Cairo 360.
A Trustrious app for restaurants will be launched shortly and will be downloadable on Blackberrys and iPhones for free.
RecycloBekia: Turning Useless Electronics into Profit
I loved their concept. RecyloBekia’s idea is to cut down on electronic waste (i.e. computers, TVs, cameras, phones) by converting old, broken electronics into new electronics for resale.
The question is, how do you motivate people, companies, entities, whoever, to actually take the time to recycle their electronics? And to RecycloBekia, specifically?
RecycloBekia solves this problem by offering incentives for donations. In exchange for old electronics, donors are given a percentage off of all new products purchased from RecycleBekia.
This service is not only necessary in this day and age considering the impact of degrading electronics on the environment, but it’s also potentially lucrative.
Out of all the startups, they hands down had the coolest flyers, stickers, and other paraphernalia. They even had pens.
Tawwar: Build Your Own Smart App for People Who Can’t Code
Do you have a great idea for a iPhone app, but you don’t know how to code? For a small price, you can subscribe to Tawwar and create your own app from their selection of pre-coded formats.
Tawwar’s idea is premised on the fact that there is huge untapped market of people who have ideas for apps but aren’t able to put those ideas into action, because they don’t have the time, patience, or will to learn how to code.
The primary templates include news, malls, hypermarkets, shops and stores, restaurants, hotels, media, and events. They app creation process has been dumbed down into three simple steps: design (using a template), launch (to Apple Store, Google Store, or wherever else you want to put it) and manage content (editing content and design).
Tawwar has devised a great way to make the world a better place by inspiring entrepreneurship and profit at the same time.
Bus Pooling: In Case You Don’t Already Know About Buses
Traffic is an undeniable problem in Cairo. And when I was approached by a representative from Bus Pooling, I was fully sympathetic to their objective: cutting down on traffic in Cairo.
Their idea is to cut down traffic in Cairo by “buspooling” – providing bus services to people going to (and from) work and university.
It’s a nice idea in theory but unrealistic for two reasons.
a) Unless everyone in Cairo suddenly decides to give up their vehicles (and independence) by buspooling, there will still be horrible traffic. Buses will be stuck in traffic too.
And if I’m going to be stuck in traffic, I would rather be in my own car blasting music from my kicked up bass speakers than sitting quietly on a bus full of potentially sketchy strangers.
b) Buses already exist. If I wanted to take a bus, I can find one pretty easily. Why does there need to be a new service?
Kablaow: Hey Girl, Can I Scan Your Barcode?
I like to keep things simple in my life. If I meet someone at a party who I like, maybe I’ll add them on FB. If I meet someone at a networking event, maybe I will add them on LinkedIn.
One thing I will NOT do is go up to a person I’ve just met and say: “Hey, can I scan my social media information into your phone using this neat barcode?”
No. That’s creepy.
Kablaow is an app that consolidates all of your social media accounts into one personalized profile. Each account is assigned a barcode. To exchange social media information, two people who have the application must put their phones together and take a picture of each other’s barcodes using their camera.
The app attempts to tackle the problem of not being able to find other people’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media later on after an event is over. It’s true that you don’t want to lose connections. And yes, sometimes it’s hard to find people on social media (for various reasons including privacy).
My view is simple: if they want to be found, they’ll be findable. And I’ll save myself the embarrassment of asking someone to rub up on their phone’s likely non-existent barcode.
WE SAID THIS: Check out this interview with Omar Samra, founder of Wild Guanabana and a speaker at RiseUp.
