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FINANCING TECHNOPRENEURSHIP AND STARTUP ECOSYSTEM.
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Book Review By Rushdi Siddiqui
Jamal Nassar’s book, Technopreneurship Financing and Startup Eco-System, provides an important reference reading for government officials, venture capitalist, corporates, founders, etc., and must read for universities, students, etc., interested in contributing to the building out of digital economy aspirations.
For viewing startups, its important to understand the difference between iteration (‘repetition of a function’), innovation (‘something new or to a change made to an existing product, idea, or field’) and disruption (‘significantly alter the way businesses or entire industries operate’).To appreciate the road ahead, one must review the starting point, and Mr Nassar’s provides a historical context of the multi-ethnic (including ethnicity and motivation/risk taking), racial and religious country and, importantly, linkage with number of scholarly/academic studies on innovation, entrepreneurship and technology, from Ibn Khaldun to Joseph Schumpeter, is appreciated. The ‘guts’ of the book are the interviews and connectivity to the attributes of a start eco-system within the context of Malay culture, ethnicity, and diversity.
This section is the matrix blue-print ‘to do-list’ for the above-mentioned stakeholders, where vital issues of access to funding (seeds for start-up), markets/partnerships (scaling), mentoring/accelerators (developing soft skills), etc., are discussed in colorful details. It must not be forgotten that VC investing is about returns, as may be 66% to 75% of portfolio company investments will fail, even amongst Silicon Valley VC funds, but there will be 5X (ponies), 10X (horses) and 20X+ (unicorns) returns from the few, hence, calculated risk-based investing worth the returns. Important segway to Islamic finance.
The coverage on Islamic finance and funding start-up ecosystem is ‘light,’ a proxy for the state of the situation, where there is more hype and less delivery…plus an unsettling (preliminary?) conclusion that the ‘risk sharing’ element (of Islamic finance) is deterrence to providing risk/growth capital for (early stages of) the start-up eco-system. Though, Islamic finance is more comfortable at Series B/C and beyond, where much of risks associated with product (MVP firmly established), operational (process and people in place), market (addressable market confirmed and CAC is manageable), etc., are reduced/contained.
At this stage, its more Islamic PE than Islamic VC. Thus, the book addresses, three most important questions would-be entrepreneurs must ask themselves: (1) do I have what it takes to be a founder of a startup; (2) do I understand the process from startup to scale-up, as book emphasis on universities as important stakeholder in start-up ecosystem, is the Islamic University relevant, feeder of educated Islamic entrepreneurs, for the Islamic digital economy aspirations?; and (3) what are venture investors looking for in entrepreneurs (or founders) and the business model?
Rushdi Siddiqui
Mentor – Islamic Economy Startups QUEST VENTURES
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Jamal Nassar 