Top American startup investor David McClure has expressed interest in investing in Iran's nascent startup market.
“I hope to visit Iran in the future. We will see how that arrangement plays out,” said McClure, who has invested in more than 1,000 startup firms all around the world and is often described as one of the super angel investors.
“We had a few invitations and are trying to find out the right time and place to come and visit. If we could go to Iran that would be great,” he has said in an interview with IRNA.
McClure, who has founded and runs the business incubator 500 Startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, says he has around 24 investments in the Middle East, among them Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Dubai.
He says most of his investments are in the US state of California and 30 percent are abroad spread across 50 countries.
Further in his interview, McClure emphasized that the Iranian startup scene had made considerable progress in recent years.
“I am not an expert on the Iranian startup scene but I am still learning a lot about the market in Iran. It seems there are a lot of talented people there,” he added.
The American startup investor said there are already many large e-commerce businesses and marketplace businesses in Iran. “It seems a lot of Persian startups are quite advanced,” he said.
McClure further said the opportunities to invest in the Iranian market once the sanctions against the country are lifted will be “huge”.
“Just the ability to invest in Iranian startups would be great,” he said. “If we see some of the things in Cuba now, we may be optimistic that the same thing could be happening in Iran,” said McClure in his interview with IRNA.
