Tehran is the most populous city and capital of Iran, capital of Tehran province and Tehran county. Tehran city had a population of 9,039,000 in the estimate of 2022 and according to the 2018 estimate of the United Nations, it is the 34th most populous city in the world and the most populous city in West Asia, Tehran metropolis is also the second most populated metropolis in the Middle East.
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Iran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). Fixed-line penetration in 2004 was relatively well-developed by regional standards, standing at 22 lines per 100 people, higher than Egypt with 14 and Saudi Arabia with 15, although behind the UAE with 27. Iran had more than 1 mobile phone per inhabitant by 2012.
Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
The Iranian diaspora refers to Iranian people or those who are of Iranian ancestry living outside Iran.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Kamran Elahian is an Iranian-American entrepreneur who is the chairman and founder of Global Innovation Catalyst and advises various governments on the needed transition from fossil-based economies to sustainable innovation economies. In the past, as a global high-tech entrepreneur, he co- founded ten companies, had 6 exits, 3 of them were Unicorn IPOs with a total market cap of over $8B. For 15 years he was Chairman of Global Catalyst Partners, a global VC firm with investments in the U.S., Japan, China, India, Israel and Singapore. Underlying his vision for global philanthropy is the conviction that modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be instrumental in dissolving barriers between nations and bridging the social and political differences among people. This vision was reflected in Schools-Online, a nonprofit he co-founded in 1996 to connect the world, one school at a time and merged with Relief International in 2003; Global Catalyst Foundation, co-founded in 2000 to improve lives through effective education and empowerment of the youth using the leverage of ICT, and UN-GAID, a United Nations global forum that promotes ICT in developing countries where he served as Co-Chairman (2009-2011).
Babak "Bobby" Yazdani is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and investor specializing in early-stage, private U.S.-based modern enterprise technology companies.
Startup Village is a not-for-profit business incubator based in Kochi, Kerala, India, started in April 2012. The organisation aimed to launch 1,000 technology startups over the next ten years and start the search for the next billion-dollar Indian company. It focusses primarily on student startups and telecom innovation. It is India's first incubator that is funded jointly by the public and private sectors. As of October 2013, Startup Village has supported 450 startups through Incubation and Virtual Incubation combined. Businessman Kris Gopalakrishnan is the chief mentor at Startup Village.
AfriLabs is a Nigerian social networking service for African technology startup companies and business incubators. AfriLabs provides a network for 300 organizations across 50 nations.
The Global Innovation through Science and Technology initiative (GIST) is a U.S. government program on innovation and entrepreneurship. The program assists businesspeople in establishing startups. GIST participants in 135 emerging economies can develop skills, build networks, find mentors, and access financing through a combination of in-country training, a pitch competition, interactive online programming, and direct connections to U.S. experts. GIST helps create conditions for successful local entrepreneurship ecosystems and enables global youth to develop local solutions to local problems. GIST is also one of the key programs under President Obama's SPARK Initiative, an initiative under which programs are selected to represent the best work being done by the U.S. Government to advance entrepreneurship around the world.
The Founder Institute is an American business incubator, entrepreneur training and startup launch program that was founded in Palo Alto, California in 2009. Although based in Silicon Valley, The Founder Institute maintains chapters in over 180 cities and more than 65 nations. It offers a four-month part-time program for new and early-stage entrepreneurs that helps them develop their business ideas and form a company. Among the key requirements for graduation is the creation of a fully operational company by the end of the four-month program. As of 2018, over 3,500 companies had been created from the program, which raised over $800M funding in total.
TiE Silicon Valley is the largest and founding chapter of the TiE brand, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. The chapter provides technology entrepreneurs with mentoring services, networking opportunities, startup-related education, funding, and incubating.
Cafe Bazaar is an Iranian Android marketplace founded in April 2011 by Reza Mohammadi and Hessam Armandehi. In April 2019 Cafe Bazaar announced it has surpassed 40 million users. Cafe Bazaar provides its services specifically to Persian-speaking users and offers more than 25,000 downloadable Iranian and international apps for gaming, social media, messaging and other uses. It gets roughly 20 million visits a week within Iran and its value is estimated at €380 million.
The DigiKala Group is an Iranian e-commerce company based in Tehran, founded in July 2006 by Hamid Mohammadi and Saeid Mohammadi.
Snapp! is an Iranian vehicle for hire company, headquartered in Tehran that launched in February 2014. Users can request a ride via the iOS, Android, or web application, by indicating their location and destination. The price of the trip is set beforehand, to eliminate bargaining. Snapp! commissions drivers upon completing a background check, and showing a valid driver's license and insurance before hiring them.
The SETsquared Partnership, usually known simply as SETsquared, is a business incubation network run by five universities in Southern England. SETsquared stands for Southern England Technology Triangle. The partnership was formed in 2002, between the University of Bath, the University of Bristol, the University of Southampton and the University of Surrey. The University of Exeter joined the partnership in 2011.
A unicorn bubble is a theoretical economic bubble that would occur when unicorn startup companies are overvalued by venture capitalists or investors. This can either occur during the private phase of these unicorn companies, or in an initial public offering. A unicorn company is a startup company valued at, or above, $1 billion US dollars.
Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr. also known as CFA is a Nigerian journalist, technology entrepreneur, business coach, public speaker and television presenter at Channels TV where he hosts the show Tech Trends. He is also a columnist for The Punch called ICT clinic. He is the co-founder of godo.ng, director of Innovation Support Network Hubs and Director of Founder Institute Lagos, and the founder of CFAtech.ng.
Nazanin Daneshvar is an Iranian Internet entrepreneur who founded the discount website Takhfifan. She is unusual as a woman establishing a company in Iran and she has attracted some attention. In 2019, she became one of UNCTAD's "eTrade for Women Advocates" from the developing world.
