Thursday 28 April 2016

Iran's Startup Spring - Fortune

Iran's Startup Spring - Fortune:

"As sanctions are lifted, can a burst of entrepreneurship succeed—and even transform the nation?

The sun is streaming through the windows of a loft-like office where a half-dozen young tech entrepreneurs huddle over their MacBooks in sweatshirts and sneakers. They’re putting the finishing touches to PowerPoint presentations in preparation for a pitch meeting with potential funders, who are visiting from Germany and Austria. When the investors arrive, the entrepreneurs, most in their twenties, nervously take turns displaying graphs and figures that promise sharp growth for their new ventures. “Trello meets Slack on steroids,” notes one slide, describing a project-management platform that launched a year ago. Another predicts rapidly rising subscriptions for a remote-learning site.

With bean bag chairs scattered on the floor and a ping pong table next to the coffee machine, you could easily imagine this scene in Silicon Valley. But these startups are launching thousands of miles away. This is Tehran, a city that since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 has been associated in the minds of many Americans with stern-faced mullahs, women in black chador, and angry demonstrators railing against “the Great Satan.”"



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