The Straight Up Start Up

Send us Fan Mail To kick off women’s history month, Merissa Khurma spoke with Lynn Mounzer, a leading expert on women and entrepreneurship in MENA, about important milestones and persistent barriers facing the region’s women innovators. She researches how women can overcome this lack of support and get access to the tools to build businesses and become more independent, as well as the socioeconomi...

Send us Fan Mail Continuing on the themes of Women's History Month, this episode zooms into the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Jordan and explores how women fare. Do they face more barriers because of their gender? Are there policies in place to facilitate access to finance for women, or mentorship programs to help them start a business and hence grow it? Merissa Khurma spoke with Reem Badran,...

Send us Fan Mail  The Ready to Launch podcast featured key stakeholders in the MENA entrepreneurship ecosystem to survey opportunities and challenges facing the region’s innovators. On the last interview of the month, co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri spoke with Yehia Houry, Managing Director of Flat6Labs Tunisia branch. Flat6labs is MENA’s leading seed and early stage venture capital firm...

Send us Fan Mail أجروا المضيفين المشاركان، ميرسا خرما ورجائي ساحوري ، مقابلة مع تامبي جلوقة ، الشريك المؤسس والمدير العام لشركة Propeller Inc ، وهي شركة رأس مال مخاطر في الأردن. تحدث  تامبي عن مهمته للاستفادة من الشركات الناشئة في مجال التكنولوجيا لمعالجة التحديات الرئيسية التي تواجه الاقتصاد وريادة الأعمال في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا ، والقضايا التي لا تزال من الصعب التغلب عليها ، مثل الف...

Send us Fan Mail Co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri interviewed Tambi Jalouqa, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Propeller Inc, a Jordan-based venture capital firm. Tambi discussed his mission to leverage technology startups to address the major challenges facing MENA’s economy and entrepreneurship scene, and the issues that remain particularly difficult to overcome, such as the gender ga...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast , co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri chatted with another key pillar of the Jordanian entrepreneurship ecosystem, Deema Bibi. Deema is the CEO of INJAZ, a Jordanian youth organization that has established itself over the past 20 years as, “a leading solution provider linking the public, private, and civil s...

Send us Fan Mail In February, the Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast will feature key players in the Jordanian and regional entrepreneurship ecosystem to better understand what they offer, what is lacking, and how they can be strengthened to improve the performance of local startups. To kick off this discussion co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri spoke with Marwan Juma, a seria...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast, co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri interviewed Reem al-Smeirat, a pioneer in automotive design. Reem’s passion for automobiles dates to age five when her father gifted her a BMW catalog. Since then, she founded the first transportation studio in the Middle East and hails as the region’s first female car de...

Send us Fan Mail To kick off 2022, the Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast hosted a discussion on Arab youth, their aspirations for the future, and key obstacles they faced in 2021. Co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri spoke with Sunil John, Founder & President of ASDA’A BCW about the latest findings of the Arab Youth Survey. The co-hosts also spoke with Eli Habib, Co-Founder...

Send us Fan Mail In the last episode of Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast of 2021, co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri spoke with Christopher Schroeder, American entrepreneur, investor, and author of Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East . In this discussion, Chris evaluated how the startup scene has changed across MENA in the decade since his...

Send us Fan Mail في الحلقة الثالثة من Ready to Launch: بودكاست حول ريادة الأعمال في الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا ، استضافوا رجائي ساحوري من The Straight Up Start Up ومريسا خرما من مركز ويلسون منى بن حليمة ، رائدة الأعمال تونسية مخضرمة  ورثت أعمال والدها الفندقية ورفعتها إلى  المستوى آخر حيث تمكنت بناء مرونة  خلال الربيع العربي في تونس عام 2011 وازدهرت من خلال الانتقال من نموذج السياحة الجماعية السائ...

Send us Fan Mail In the first episode of Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast, a joint series by the Wilson Center’s Riyada and the Straight Up Start Up, co-hosts Merissa Khurma and Rajae Sahouri spoke with Fida Taher, a serial entrepreneur from Jordan. After watching her mother struggle to start and sustain her own business, Fida now runs multiple startups that support and strengthen...

Send us Fan Mail في الحلقة الثانية من  Ready to Launch: A MENA Entrepreneurship Podcast ، وهو بودكاست مشترك بين بودكاست ريادة من مركز ويلسون وبودكاست  The Straight Up Start Up ، تحدث مضيفان البرنامج ميريسا خورما ورجائي ساحوري مع فؤاد جريس ، الشريك المؤسس لشركة مقصم في الأردن. روى فؤاد قصته عن نفسه. كيف شكلت تجربة والده تفكيره حول المخاطرة وبدء عمله الخاص ، وهي رحلة بدأها في المدرسة الثانوية واستمر...

Send us Fan Mail في هذه الحلقة يحدثانا يزن مدانات عن عالم الاقتصاد التشاركي، وكسفسة الدخول لهذا العالم بطريقة مجدية وفعالة. كما شاركنا عن قصة الريادة في نيويورك وكيفية تطورها و تحولها لمؤسسة في الاقتصاد التشاركي.  بدأ يزن  في شركة ديلتا بارتنرز في دبي و بعدها انتقل لشركة كيرني  وبعدها اسس شركة QallOut في نيويورك والتي هي مؤسسة ريادية وفرت أول منصة على الإنترنت  لمناقشات الفيديو الحيةLive debates o...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Straight Up Start Up, our guest Ennis Rimawi unfolds to us his journey of developing multiple sectors, starting from automotive to technology to renewable energy. Ennis studied Engineering systems at MIT and later on continued his higher education with an MBA at Sloan School of Management, after that he kicked off his career with Ford and then founded his IT...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Straight Up Start Up our guest, Lana Ghanem Walks us through her career journey and how she ended up in the venture capital world of the Health industry, Lana explains what she does every day to support innovation within startups how she incorporates it as a new innovative method to be adopted in the Life sciences world. Lana is the Managing Director of Hikm...

Send us Fan Mail في حلقة هذا الشهر من البرنامج ، يرافقنا ضيف خاص جدًا هو معالي أحمد هناندة وزير الاقتصاد الرقمي وريادة الأعمال ، ناقش معاليه الإستراتيجية الوطنية للتحول الرقمي وخطة التنفيذ توفر الاستراتيجية إطارًا استراتيجيًا للتحول الرقمي في الأردن لمدة خمس سنوات وتوضح التغييرات الاستراتيجية والمتطلبات اللازمة لمواكبة تقدم التحول الرقمي عالميًا استمعوا لتتعرفوا على  نهج معاليه للتعامل مع التحول ا...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Straight Up Start Up our guest, Merissa Khurma walks us through the latest economic, geopolitical, and gender-related challenges and their effect on youth in the MENA region, based on her research with the Middle East program at the Wilson Center about the workforce and women leadership. Merissa is the program director of the Middle East Program at the Wilso...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is unlike any other. Join us to discover Dr. Yazan Hijazi’s inspiring story of how he left the engineering world to work with people specifically youth. In this episode, you will reflect on your life and dive deeper like no other episode through Dr. Yazan's Self-discovery journey. As mentioned in the episode, below are the link and the coupon for an exclusive 40%...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Straight Up Start Up Start, we discuss a very rich topic with a prominent guest, Mr. Nashat Al-Masri managing partner of Fursan Investment, he discussed private equity and their strategy of investing at Fursan Investment. He also talked about the future of work and what are the upcoming trends in the industry  and in the work environment. Join Nashat to lear...

Send us Fan Mail In this month's episode join our guest Rami Alkarmi the CEO of AhliFintech and CIO for Ahli Bank while he discusses his story with entrepreneurship and how he started his first start up at the age of 19. He also talked about what are the career options for fresh graduates and what is it like to be an entrepreneur running your own company and creating a business model from scr...

Send us Fan Mail What is Emotional intelligence, how is it like to be emotionally intelligent and why Leaders and entrepreneurs need it? All these questions and more are answered in this episode of The Straight Up Start Up with the Emotional Intelligence Coach Seren Abu Maizar, Seren has been in the emotional Intelligence field for about 10 years, after leaving her corporate job to pursue her pass...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our guest Hamdi Tabbaa discussed how to create, manage and strategize any entrepreneurial product before launching, our Hamdi created one of the most important and influential ed-tech platforms Abwaab, Abwaab allowed adolescents to study online using the same material from multiple teachers and numerous topics online, he also talked about his previous experience a...

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Send us Fan Mail In this episode our guest Hamada Abu Nijmeh, the founder and CEO of the worker's house organization which is a not-for-profit and non-governmental organization that studies the work and labor conditions in Jordan and the region. Join our illuminating interview as Mr. Hamda explains labor right in Jordan, how the youth should be informed and what are each side's rights an...