Startups Without Borders Podcast

Maria Amelie is the co-founder of Factiverse, an AI-startup that automates fact-checking and research with AI and NLP, which recently raised 1 million euro in private and soft funding. Maria, who had to leave her home country of Russia in 2002, became the center of a political controversy when she was arrested after a speaking engagement and denied asylum, only a year after she was awarded “Norweg...

Born and raised in Cameroon, Bibi de Vetter has been based in The Netherlands for over 17 years. As the founder of Startup Investments, she hosts private events to help early-stage startups raise capital and to find the resources they need to achieve their full potential. Bibi's life took a turn when she was let go of her corporate job. But instead of letting that event become an obstacle, she dec...

Rana is a Syrian American advocate for refugees and civilians in conflict, and the solution owner of IBM’s Refugee & Migration Predictive Analytics Solution -- a first-of-a-kind solution, leveraging machine learning and cognitive computing to enable Government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations to better manage refugee and migration crises. She’s been published in the Wall Street Jour...

Born in Peru, Luis Daniel Maldonado comes from multicultural family origins, in fact, there is Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Nordic and Slavic blood running through his veins! Driven by the need to find his own place and culture while at the same time valuing his ancestors, he moved to the Netherlands in 2016. He engaged in Multidisciplinary archeology expeditions and began researching ancient civili...

Today, I wanted to share one of the top panels from our last Startups Without Borders Summit, which took place in Cairo Business Park last February. In this fascinating conversation, Tey Alrjula, Founder of Fluus Finance, shares how blockchain inspired him to change the ID system through this revolutionary technology. After raising 1.5 million and exiting, he is now on a mission to help places whe...

Today, we speak to Hasan Dayoub, an award winning entrepreneur, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning engineer who is obsessed with changing the world. Having reached over 20,000 people with his AI Club in Syria, Hassan went on to build FutureLaby, a startup that uses Augmented Reality to help dentistry students. In this episode, Hassan shares the story of how he stepped up to lead a group...

Today, we speak to Jane Oma, the protagonist of an inspiring tale. The President of Upside Africa and a Leadership Coach, Jane arrived in Spain with nothing but a strong desire to search for purpose. Today, Jane is an advisor at the Geneva Business School and the founder of The Mother Eagle Mentoring Academy, a platform that provides mentoring for African women and youth. In this intimate dialogue...

Spandana Palaypu was only 20 years old when she started her social startup, ZoEasy. Having moved from India to Dubai at 6 years old, she experienced the richness of cultural diversity first-hand. However, she soon realized it was not the same for everyone. Inspired by the heart-wrenching stories of blue-collar workers she met in the UAE, she decided to build a business that supports workers to fin...

​In episode 32, we meet Min Chen, an entrepreneur who has lived the entrepreneur's life since she was 4, when her parents moved to migrate from China to Panama with only $800 in their pocket. Min knows what it means to start over and then lose everything all over again, as it happened when the US invaded to Panama in 1989. But her unstoppable hard work earned her a Fulbright scholarship to go to C...

Becoming an immigration attorney wasn’t in Tahmina’s plan. But ten years after moving to the USA, she was at the epicentre of the fight for the Startup Visa bill, to support entrepreneurs who were not allowed back into the US. When the Muslim Ban was signed, she became a warrior for change, advocating for the Startup Visa Bill and later writing “Legal Heroes in the Trump era,” a book of inspiring...

In episode 30 of the Startups Without Borders Podcast, we team up with RefugeeForce to talk about a new reality reshaping the workplace across Europe: Hiring talented Refugees to Fill the skills Gap in workplaces. In this candid conversation, we speak to to RefugeeForce co-founder Gaspar Rodríguez, and Salesforce graduate and Azmi Wahab, about this new promising landscape. From the Salesforce Econ...

Anas Alchalabi or “That Entrepreneurship guy” as he’s known in the streets of the Middle East, has enabled hundreds of Refugee founders to create Small Empires (Tech Startups) that solves major challenges in Industries like Finance, Education, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retail.   For the past 4 years, Anas has contributed to initiatives with Governments, UN, World Bank, Venture Capitalists, Go...

Yama Saraj is an entrepreneur and a "social hacktivist" as he calls himself. He was born in Kabul Afghanistan, raised in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and is now based in Paris where he working n his startup while is lecturing at an MBA school.  After  working in developing assistance in Kosovo, DR Congo, and Afghanistan, He founded a startup called SensAi, a smart punching bag made from car tires,...

Irma Rodriguez had a great job in Mexico, working for one of the biggest banks for medium and large corporations. But at some point, the situation in her home country became too much of a risk for her family.  As she moved to Milan, Irma faced a myriad difficulties to set up a business and effectively sell. Today, all these difficulties are the basis of her consultancy business, Emigrar y emprende...

Today, we speak to Randa Bennett, a London-based tech founder and CEO of V-Loop, who recently launched her podcast, An Immigrant Girl. Having immigrated to the UK in the late 1990s, Randa worked through learning English, going to university and building a career in a male-dominated tech industry, winning several awards as a Fintech founder. As the Covid19 pandemic hit the entire world, Randa had t...

Majd Mashharawi is one of the fiercest, most relentless women you’ll ever meet. Having grown up in war-torn Gaza, Majd came up with an incredible idea: to rebuild damaged buildings using bricks made of ash and rubble.  Her second startup SunBox, an affordable solar power system that produces energy to alleviate the effects of the energy crisis in Gaza, where electricity is only available three hou...

Today, we speak to Francisco Ortiz, a Digital Nomad who has taken on the mission of teaching thousands of people how to become financially free.  Francisco is a Youtuber, social media influencer and investor who left the comfort of his office job in Argentina and began exploring the world full-time in search for more freedom. He sold all his things, invested his savings and created an online busin...

In this episode, we speak to a tech wonderwoman democratizing capital in the Nordics: Nora Bavey. Nora is an award-winning entrepreneur, and the General Partner at Unconventional Ventures, a VC fund investing in startups created by underrepresented founders. Having moved from Iran to Sweeden at an early age, Nora has made it her mission to improve the possibilities for underrepresented groups to a...

From London, to Amman, to the Greek refugee camps, There is a growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, incubators, supporters and investors building a movement made up of valiant migrant entrepreneurs. What does that transnational ecosystem look like today?  Join us in this exciting panel from our last Startups Without Borders Summit, where key players in the refugee and migrant startup world share the...

If there is one word that dominated the media landscape this past year, it’s diversity. The Black Lives Matter movement brought to light a whopping disparity in startup funding: Black women have received only 0.06% of all Venture Funding since 2009. In this power-packed fireside chat, we meet the powerhouse woman leading a movement to change that: Lauren Maillian, CEO of Digital Undivided. Join us...

It’s a well known statistical fact that immigrants are over-represented among entrepreneurs; in fact, 55% of one-billion dollar startups were founded by at least one immigrant. How can the investment sector tap into this opportunity, as the number of refugees is projected to dramatically increase? Don’t miss this insightful debate. In another Episode of our Talks Revisited, where we share the most...

I’m super excited to present another panel from the Startups Without Borders Summit, with two entrepreneurs and media powerhouses from Egypt and England: Anthony Rose, and Amy Mowafi. Anthony Rose, “the man who saved the BBC” sits down with Egyptian media mogul Amy Mowafi to crack the code behind making a company stand out. Anthony is a technical and product visionary who founded SeedLegals, a leg...

How to get people to listen when the whole world is entering panic mode? As we dive into a Brave New World where everyone is constantly bombarded by messages online, getting your story across is one of the hardest challenges. To answer this question, we’re bringing you one of the top panels at the Startups Without Borders Summit, with two powerhouse female entrepreneurs: Maha Abuelenein and Dina M...

How are top websites dominating the new normal? As we just concluded the Startups Without Borders Summit in Amsterdam, Cairo and San Francisco, I’m very happy to announce the first of our Talks Revisited. In this episode, Selina Bieber, GoDaddy’s Senior Regional Director for Turkey, MENA and South Africa, digs into the behind the scenes of what makes a leading website. This year, as the Covi19 pan...

This is a very special interview. Tey Al Rjula’s story is one for the movies. Having spent two years in a refugee camp in the Netherlands, Tey used that time to do an online masters in Blockchain, and then created Tykn, a startup that offers stateless people a virtual form of ID, using blockchain. Brace yourselves for an intense interview, as Tey delves into his story in detail, narrating how he c...