On Monday, April 26th to coincide with Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, AllWorld Network will release the first real time data on the performance of growth companies in the Middle East and North Africa. AllWorld has launched the Arabia 500 - a massive effort across the Middle East and North Africa to find and analyze the fastest growing emerging companies of the region. These companies have the potential to create the next economy of jobs and represent the leading edge of a new wave of growth and competitiveness.
The preliminary results of the Arabia 500 applicants from Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Saudi and the United Arab Emirates show a sophisticated entrepreneurial base with strong "entrepreneurial DNA" for high intensity entrepreneurship - the number of companies created by one entrepreneur that are still in existence. The challenge for these companies is that they are currently not on the global economic radar screen.
In 2008, co-founders Deirdre M. Coyle, Anne Habiby and AllWorld Network chairman Harvard professor Michael Porter, an acclaimed expert on global competition, began the process of identifying the fastest-growing companies in emerging countries. First was Saudi Arabia where they developed a list called the Saudi Fast Growth 100 with partners the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and AlWatan Newspaper. Now in its third year, the Saudi 100 has changed the way Saudi Arabia sees itself and competes. As individual companies the Saudi 100 were largely unknown, but as a group they represent a powerful economic engine that is expanding the Saudi and regional economy in real time. Some of the interesting Saudi 100 findings include:
-- 35,000 jobs were created by the winning companies, of which 15,000
were created in last five years
-- The winning companies grew an average of 43% a year and represent 15
industries, with the fastest growing companies in the technology space
-- Over 70 % of the CEOs have founded other companies of which an
impressive 90 % are still in business
-- In the next two years, most of the CEOs have plans to start another
business and nearly a quarter plan to do an Initial Public Offering
-- The CEOs are an average of 30-33 years old when they form their
companies
-- 15 industries were represented, and High Tech & Telecommunications was
#1
Encouraged by the success of the Saudi 100, AllWorld has launched the Arabia 500 and is also launching the Africa 500, Asia 500, Eurasia 500 and Latin America 500. AllWorld's mission is to find and advance ALL the world's growth entrepreneurs by 2015. We aim to move markets in real time.
The challenge for emerging countries is that their growth companies stall at a small size because they are not known. As a result, they do not have access to the growth capital, talent and opportunities their US and European counterparts have. The 500s are designed to address the critical challenge of scaling growth and job creation in the emerging world by finding the best entrepreneurs, credentialing them based on their performance, and putting them on the global radar screen.
