My First Investor's Pitch and The Inspiration it Gave Me
My First Investor's Pitch and The Inspiration it Gave Me
On this day 6 years ago, I pitched for the first time in front of a panel that comprised of an Angel Investor, 2 govt funds and a banking executive.
The pitch was part of a month long entrepreneurship accelerator for Emiratis.
Our task: Develop a concept or prototype that addresses a challenge in the market and pitch it in front of a panel to win support or funding.
Our concept was called 'The UAE Catalysts Initiative.
This was a 'talent accelerator' aimed at developing not only top local talent, but also ensure through our process that these talent deliver measurable impact to the economy and their communities. Ultimately turning them to catalysts for growth.
The initiative would address a problem I personally, and so many others like me faced: UNEMPLOYMENT and UNDEREMPLOYMENT.
Two things I've faced as a jobseeker, then as an employee and later on as an entrepreneur after the first financial crisis hit in 2009.
You see at the time we were pitching our concept, the UAE was confronted with a number of challenges when it came to unemployment. These were:
Around 42% of the UAE national population were considered youth.
Estimates showed that anything between 100,000 - 150,000 young Emiratis were due to enter the job market in the next 10 years.
Unemployment was (and I believe it still is) highest between the ages of 15 - 24 years old
Majority of nationals were still looking for work in the public sector which was expected to reach saturation. (fast forward, the public sector has reached saturation point)
This meant majority of Emiratis were not participating in the private sector that contributes significantly to the GDP.
You might be able to tell from the video that I was nervous, but I turned that nervous energy to the energy I needed to connect with the audience and the judges in the 3 minutes allowed to pitch.
We ultimately won 1st place. The irony however was we only took away a certificate to show for it. Me, my partner Dr. Petar Stojanov were dissapointed.
Watch the video here
Fast forward and after a lot of work we have now turned that idea to a talent accelerator platform with its own unique program. It is now known as Sdara (check out https://sdara.co/).
The last cohort of nationals who graduated from the program were fully employed and pitched solutions that would deliver an estimated financial impact in millions of dirhams to their respective employer.
Why do we believe the Sdara model is a game-changer in the region?
We designed Sdara to address the key challenges global recruitment firm Manpower identified in a white paper titled ‘Youth Unemployment Challenge and Solutions’. These challenges are:
Lack of information and connections in the job market
Lack of skills relevant to the workplace
Lack of the required experience so that young talent can ‘hit the ground running’ when joining the workforce
Lack of jobs for entry level national talent
So What Is Sdara Exactly?
Sdara is an online talent accelerator platform designed to deliver multiple program aimed at helping companies attract, activate and accelerate top National talent within their organisations, so that they can enter the workforce, hit the ground running, and deliver tangible business value during their on-boarding process.
Sdara works by repositioning companies from great brands to recognised National Employers Of Choice.
Next, Sdara pipelines talent through proprietary tools and bespoke activation events where participants solve real organisational challenges as part of the final on-boarding process.
Finally, Sdara is a virtual learning platform with programs designed to accelerate talent to produce business value as part of their on-boarding process through context-based learning and solving actual business challenges that are relevant to the local region
I will be sharing more about the value Sdara does and the progress we make helping employers and national job seekers. Again, you can learn more about Sdara .
For now, I’ll just leave you with this quote that is befitting to our determination for our idea to see light despite the lack of support or resources.
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn"