The Station kicked off its Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) activities with a panel discussion, and I took part representing Miswag — the first homegrown startup in Iraq — to discuss the country's startup landscape.
Iraq's national entrepreneurial landscape is still young compared to the region, and it has moved through several phases to reach its current setup. About ten years ago, in 2013, a handful of workshops and hackathons kicked off; in the years since, many local communities and international chapters launched, transforming the atmosphere toward SME and startup promotion. Today the scene favors pre-seed and seed stages — the natural evolution after a decade of ecosystem formation amid economic unrest. The remarkable work of entities like The Station and KAPITA, supported by private-sector corporates, paved the way; founders like Ammar Ameen, Omar Al-Banna, and Bassam Al-Ateia led the homegrown scene to more advanced stages like pre-Series A and B.
Foreign investment is watching the largest Arabic-speaking Levant country, with 42+ million inhabitants, closely. Ticket sizes will rise as younger, digitally equipped generations navigate digital services and apps — and CrossBoundary is doing great work on investment readiness. The next 12 months will be extremely interesting given the massive growth in the digital economy nationwide. Challenges are ahead, but with them come opportunities, and Iraqi founders are well positioned to prevail.