Capital is intelligent, said CEO of KI Angel venture capital fund Khaled Ismail, as it always goes to the opportunities that will achieve rapid growth.
He added that in 2011, many entrepreneurs and creative thinkers emerged, and, in turn, capital began to be made available to pump investments in these companies. “Capital always turns up at the right time, and there must be success stories to attract it,” he noted.
Ismail believes the state’s role is to provide a better educational system, to produce efficient people who can devise solutions to societal problems, noting that there are about 250,000 university graduates annually, of whom 25,000 are highly qualified and should be well employed.
He further demanded laws and legislation for entrepreneurship, separate from the existing investment laws. He further called for reliance on the Internet for the completion of such procedures, so young people can fill out a form online and finalise procedures quickly to launch their companies as soon as possible.
Ismail anticipated that in 2016, investments ranging between $300m and $400m will be pumped into the field of entrepreneurship. He noted that business incubators such as Flat6Labs and Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) are well suited to fund start-ups in their early stages.
Once they reach the stage of exiting from such incubators, companies must rely on small-risk investment funds, such as Cairo Angels, or on friends and family, while the next stage depends on attracting investors with adequate financial solvency, Ismail concluded.
