Piotr Yordanov: Start-ups in Lebanon Lack Maturity and the Online Community is Full of Hate
Inspirational People from the Lebanese Online Community
In an attempt to promote
inspiring stories about people from the Lebanese Online Community, we, at
Cloud961, have decided to dedicate a monthly column to interview an inspiring
figure that has left a mark in the Lebanese online sphere. For your suggestions
for this column, feel free to email me on
mhijazi@cloud961.com.
Piotr
Yordanov is a Lebanese (with Russian origins) software engineer who graduated
from the American University of Beirut. He is an entrepreneur who writes code,
does web design and creates musical art. Piotr co-founded Baytbaytak, the first
MENA map-based real-estate website and is currently founding Beepl, a tool to
bookmark people and organize them across social networks. Piotr is now participating
in the Draper University fall session in California after he crowd-funded his
tuition money in order to attend it.
Q: Tell us about the experience you have in
entrepreneurship and why you got interested in this field.
A: It
all started after my internship at CMU in the summer of 2011. I realized that I
wanted a greater cause to fight for than having a boring day job.
I tried to
have my final year project to be a startup; it failed. I tried to create a
gamification app with a friend, but it failed too. I joined Anghami upon
graduation in 2012, and left 2 month later. In September of that year, I
co-founded Baytaytak but then left in April at which point I joined a San
Francisco based startup and moved there but had to leave for the core was not
what I’m best at.
At this
point, my previous failures taught me how to release websites, design them,
define, find and build products, handle customer support, and sell products. I
was confident that I can invest my own money to solo-found and bootstrap Beepl.
Q: How does it feel to have a failed start-up and what
have you learned from the experience?
A: As
I said, I have failed 4 times so far. It doesn’t matter how many times I
failed. In the valley, the question asked is always “What next?” Our Draper U
daily oath says: “I will fail and fail again until I succeed”.
And in the
words of Churchill, “Success is moving from one failure to another with no loss
of enthusiasm”.
I don’t have
business success yet, but I have enough business failure to turn my next
startup into a success. And this was only possible because of my previous
failures.
Fail fast,
fail cheap. And for those of you out there who see failure as being “3ayb”… no
comment.
Q: What is Draper University and why did you want to go
there?
A: DU
was created by Tim Draper, an insanely influential and successful venture
capitalist in the Valley whose family has been into Venture Capitalist for the
past 3 generations.
I applied
because I wanted to expand my entrepreneurial skills, expand my network and
increase the chances of success of BeeplApp, my new startup.
Q: What is the #IWanaBeAHero campaign and did it meet its
objectives?
A: I
invested 4,000$ from my personal savings to run Beepl. But then, I realized
that I needed 8,000$ to fund my tuition and trip to SF for DU. It was twice the
original budget and I couldn’t afford it.
So I
started this crowd-funding campaign to raise the money. The campaign ends On
Sunday 27 October, as of this writing I raised 7,200$ and still have 4 days to
go.
Q: Why didn't you use Zoomaal (a Lebanese start-up) as a
crowd-funding platform but used Indiegogo instead? Do you think that Lebanese
start-ups are still lacking international standards?
A: Even
though the campaign runs for 45 days, I only had 20 days before going to DU
meaning that I could only run the campaign for 20 days. Going for a fixed
campaign was risky. I had to do flexible and only Indiegogo provides it. Also, Indiegogo
gave me more exposure by allowing my campaign to be in partnership with Draper
University.
That being
said, it would have made sense to use Zoomaal to support me since I’m an Arab
entrepreneur.
What are
international standards anyway? Is it Silicon Valley? Boston? NYC? Berlin?
Singapour or Tel Aviv? A start-up is 3
things: entrepreneurs, investors and the market. I think all three lack some
maturity in Lebanon.
Q: Crowd-funding as a concept has gotten a lot of
criticism, especially when it is being used for personal reasons like raising
tuition money. How is it different from begging people for money?
A: You
beg and get money for free.
You
crowd-fund and get money in exchange of services you provide. I will be doing workshops,
mentorship, and provide my consultancy skills etc… It’s not free money, its
money in exchange of a service. Still some money comes as donation from people
who want to support me to get this dream come true.
Q: Your campaign has started off with a bang; you've
reached half your goal within two days of the campaign. Why do you think it
slowed off after that?
A: Because
the high cost perks got bought on those 2 days, which is “hire my skills”.
Afterwards, it was about small 10-100 $ contributions. I then had to use PR and
direct sales to get the rest, basically reaching out to people outside my
network.
Q: What was the reaction of the Lebanese Online Community
like for your campaign?
A: Hate
and lack of support from many people, in particular people I worked with
previously in the startup scene.
Those, who
have seen and done it before, supported me, for they knew how much hate you get
because the Lebanese don’t like seeing other Lebanese succeed.
Q: What are the three most important things that you have
learned at Draper University so far?
A: Humility,
perseverance and urgent optimism.
Q: What do you think is the hardest challenge in the
entrepreneurship field in Lebanon and how can we, as a society, overcome it?
A: The
hardest challenge is our mentality. People tend to be afraid (from bombs),
selfish (how many people open source or give help/art/music for FREE?) and lack
education.
Change is
hard. I’m afraid I don’t know how we can overcome as a society, but I know that
my job is to be the best at what I do and set a positive example for others to
emulate.
Q: What are your plans after you come back from Draper
University?
A: I
have to first fulfill the perks I offered during the campaign. The rest really
depends on how good will the outcome of DU be. My goal is to pitch Beepl to Tim
at the end of the program, raise money and push it to the next level: Grow the
customer base and build a team to scale the process.
