After three years as editor-in-chief of the news service Wamda, American Nina Curley was ready for a new challenge.
The Wamda job had married two spheres – journalism and entrepreneurship – and Ms Curley, not expecting to find another post that so perfectly combined her interests, set about identifying where her heart lay.
That was to be in entrepreneurship – setting up the Abu Dhabi arm of Flat6Labs, a start-up accelerator in Cairo.
While a number of incubators and accelerators have mushroomed in Dubai, Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi will be the capital’s first.
“Abu Dhabi absolutely needs an accelerator,” she says. “Abu Dhabi doesn’t have anything like that and while there are accelerators in Dubai I also think every accelerator has its own culture, and our accelerator is the only one in the region that I know of that has a focus on media.”
The accelerator, as well as focusing on media, will with the backing of various partners in Abu Dhabi support teams building products in online content, data and analytics, mobile applications, e-commerce, video and multimedia production, and social media and citizen journalism.
Ms Curley’s route to the job was unconventional.
“Coming out of that role at Wamda, I had to decide whether I was a media person or a start-up person,” she says.
After a spell in New York to see friends and family, she returned to the Middle East. Here she posted what she describes as “a little manifesto” on Facebook, thanking everyone she learnt from in the previous four years and stating the hope of being able to “keep building together”.
Her post was spotted by the team at Flat6Labs and they asked her if she would like to head up their new office in Abu Dhabi to focus on media start-ups.
“I was really drawn to the idea of being operationally involved in start-ups – helping them grow from just an idea to getting on their feet – and to still being able to work in media,” she says.
Ms Curley arrived in the Middle East in 2009. She had been studying for a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience in New York but had a moment of epiphany when she realised that, regardless of how much she loved her research, it wouldn’t allow her the kind of life she wanted – to travel and work in other cultures. She arrived in Amman, Jordan to work as a journalist and was hired by Syntax, a digital consultancy, to provide content for Wamda. She worked on the venture for a year before being promoted to editor in chief.
Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi will have its official launch at next week’s Abu Dhabi Media Summit.
The programme will mirror the one established in Cairo. Twenty teams participate in an initial boot camp weekend and the 10 best are chosen for the four-month accelerator programme with seed funding of $30,000 to $50,000, in exchange for a 10 per cent to 15 per cent equity stake. During that period they will develop their products and receive mentorship and training. On demo day, the teams will pitch to investors whose money will help them grow.
TwoFour54, Abu Dhabi’s media free zone authority, is supporting Flat6Labs’ Abu Dhabi with office space, and on the licensing and regulation to set up the company. United Markets International Holding is also providing backing. The first intake of teams is planned for early next year.
Working with twofour54 will allow Flat6Labs to leverage its media expertise. And as part of the Flat6Labs network, the Abu Dhabi accelerator will also be able to tap into its start-up community in Cairo and Jeddah.
Ms Curley says while the Middle East, and even the UAE, entrepreneurial ecosystem is fragmented, the Emirates offer companies unrivalled access to other regional markets.
As such, she hopes Flat6Labs here will not only fill gaps in the local ecosystem but also attract companies from across the globe and make Abu Dhabi and the UAE a global hub.
“It’s a really exciting time to be in Abu Dhabi because of the opportunities,” she says.
A separate project Ms Curley wants to continue here is a pilot programme she started called Wamda for Women; the series of round tables in Cairo, Amman, Doha and Riyadh addressed the difficulties women in the region are facing in entrepreneurship.
One issue discussed over and over again, she says, is confidence. “What women talk about is having confidence issues, and so that’s where skills like negotiation come into play,” she says. “The more we practice pitching and negotiating, the better we are at realising it’s not a scary thing.”
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