Start-up founder repays the favours

The Life: Khaled Ismail, an entrepreneur from Egypt, discusses how an organisation helped expand his small business - and how he's now paying the assistance forward for other entrepreneurs.

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Khaled Ismail is an entrepreneur from Egypt who founded SySDSoft, a wireless communications company that has expanded from just two people to more than 100 staff. He talks about linking up with an organisation that helped him grow his business, and how he is now trying to pass this on to other entrepreneurs.

What was the business landscape like when you started in 2002?

The world was still coming out of the technology [slump], followed by [September 11] and the market collapse. The timing was such that it couldn't get worse. Markets were picking up in technology, and we were looking primarily at the Indian model and what they'd done.

How so?

Our model was not to replicate exactly what they did but to use the same concept of outsourcing, and go out to international companies and say "we have these good, low-cost engineers; let's do some design for you".

What major challenge did you face in setting up?

I think the biggest challenge was to define the business model itself. We wanted to go into high-tech in a country not known for generating [ideas in that industry]. It was a challenge. We knew the fundamentals were correct: we had very good, skilled engineers with a reasonable cost.

By 2007 you had multiple customers and became the first entrepreneur in Egypt awarded free advisory services from Endeavor Global. How did that help?

We were subjected to interviews by executives at Cisco, IBM and several other reputable companies. These individuals had a lot of experience and raised a lot of good questions. Sometimes a good question is more valuable than a solution or answer. Then we were subjected to even more severe scrutiny, and every panel asks you very fundamental questions about your business model. All of that helped us put everything correctly in context to grow the company with the right view of our strengths and weaknesses.

Once you passed the selection process, did you get anything else?

They assigned a mentor. We had an offer at one point to be [taken over], and my mentor gave me guidelines on what is a good price, and whether to sell or not. We did not sell at the time, which was a wise decision.

This March, you did sell most of your business' assets to Intel, where you now work as a managing director. And last week, you were elected board chairman of Endeavor Egypt. How will your role at Endeavor help other entrepreneurs?

With early-stage entrepreneurs, fresh out of university, a nice idea may just need help from angel investment. Then you start growing it and you can potentially become a high-impact entrepreneur, and that's where we pick up. But you need someone to work with the different entities and create that pipeline. Here, we have to make sure the pool of entrepreneurs exist and are helped. You have to bring the VCs [venture capitalists], investors and convince them this is a good investment.

What else is on your plate?

I'm supporting a couple of start-ups already. Once you've done it once, it becomes part of your culture and blood.

* Neil Parmar