A Land of Plenty at Bayt.com

I was out on a meeting yestderday with Dan Stuart, the head of strategy for Bayt.com, the jobs website. We were talking about Intilaq, a new initiative by the company. Intilaq is a very interesting combination of venture capital fund, angel investor and business incubator (expect a story in tomorrow's newspaper).

But what really struck me was how big these guys are, in terms of physical presence and staff numbers. I knew they were big, but I never thought they were this big. According to Dan, Bayt currently have about 200 staff, based in 11 offices across the Middle East - all the way from Morocco to the Gulf. For an internet company, that is huge. Being a careers website, they have a lot of sales staff calling up companies and recruiters, but they also have a fairly large technical team, split between offices in Dubai and Amman.

Having a physical offices all over the Middle East is not cheap, or easy. And with a staff of that size, it is fair to say that Bayt must be generating some serious cash flow - enough, Dan says, to have a decent pile of extra cash ready to invest in new ventures. It is good to hear that there is some serious money to be made, somehow, on the internet in the Middle East.