Doha, Qatar is a crossroads of the world that is rarely seen from the United States. A few months ago, I was attending the Web Summit technology conference in that glittering city. Approximately 20% of the founders in attendance were from the African continent. About half were from the MENA region. Approximately 37% of participants were women, demonstrating how many women outside the United States are entrepreneurs or want to become entrepreneurs.
After returning to Japan, I thought a lot about diversity. I met fewer than 10 Americans. Journalists, speakers, and several executives were brave souls willing to venture beyond the increasingly isolationist walls of America and Europe to see what other parts of the world were doing. . “People aren't looking at these emerging markets in the way that they are opportunistic,” said her Web Summit CEO Katherine Mahler at the time. (Below is an excerpt from an interview she gave when she won the top spot on NPR). She said, “It was incredible to see the entrepreneurial ecosystem change and witness the maturation and sophistication of companies on the show floor.”
Many of the Web Summit attendees were headed from Doha to Riyadh, where bigger deals could be made at another conference called LEAP. Saudi funds are not sitting idle. Nor is it committed to one side of the world, the West, or the other side, China. The Middle East is a player, whether it's through oil or the money that flows out of oil.
I heard that a new technology is emerging: the Internet built on blockchain. We heard about a new Middle Eastern alternative to TikTok. AI training. You can read more about the future of entrepreneurship in India here. “Too many people are hungry for success,” says Yashish Dahiya, his CEO at PolicyBazaar. “The cycle of disruption is always getting shorter.”
I kept coming back to the issue of information and how little accurate information there is in consumer media. Anne Applebaum writes about dictators' use of new AI-powered information to counter democratic narratives. Generative AI is flooding the world with bad stories. Algorithms, another form of AI based on mathematics, then target them. What I think is worrying about AI in the information field is not so much what AI will do, but what people will stop doing, such as writing, driving, and thinking, because of AI. That's it. Having a dictator is bad enough. If no one thinks and acts to counter them, disaster will occur.
Americans are absent
From the vantage point of the world conference in Doha, the United States is a stumbling giant. On the shuttle bus from the airport, I told an Egyptian-born venture capitalist about a Middle Eastern technology company with potentially valuable semiconductor technology. “I think the US is worried about it not coming into China's sphere of influence,” I said.
“Oh,” he laughed. “I think they decided a long time ago to throw their chips in the East.”
Even America's closest allies are thinking along similar lines. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute recently published research showing China leads in 37 out of 44 key emerging technologies. Generative AI and cybersecurity are two areas where the United States continues to lead.
At a moment when one force is sinking and another is rising, from a business perspective, opportunities are in the air. And the Middle East has always been the crossroads, the linguistic center, the mixing bowl of the earth. Strangely, in this age of the internet, with the attendant decline in accurate information, I feel like I, like the men who once sat on the island, have traveled back in time from the fringes of capitalism to assume the role of telegraph operator. I felt like that. Strait of Hormuz.
Iran is just a stone's throw from Qatar. Sunlight shines off the glass skyscrapers and the waters of the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea, depending on which side you sit. In the restaurant at night, the gold on the bodies of women and some men shines. And the people who attended this technology convention were very engaging.
Lauren Gray, an influencer with 85 million followers, struts through the convention halls in a sparkling gray sequin suit. Although her following was built on beauty and music, she finds her identity in being open about sexual assault and mental health. “There’s something valuable about showing how people talk about what they’re going through,” she told me.
Yes, there is, Loren.
Steve Clemons, founding editor of Semaphore, the latest popular media startup, was holding court. Princess Lamia of Saudi Arabia has an idea to save the planet, and so does Adam Niewinski, co-founder of OTB Ventures, a European deep tech venture firm with $300 million in assets under management. “I see AI as a way to work with space technology data to democratize access to information on how to actually protect the planet,” Niewinski said.
Below are some excerpts from interviews and impressions from the event.
Edtech shifts to focus on AI
I met the German-born CEO of Silicon Valley-based edtech company Udacity. He was stopping here on his way to Saudi Arabia for his LEAP. More than a third of the company's business comes from the Middle East, including a large contract to provide technical training to schools in Egypt. Kai Roemmelt said the platform is increasingly focused on AI training. A former publishing executive, he joined the company to make it profitable, and he did just that. Days after Web Summit, Accenture announced that it would acquire the company, but the deal was rumored to be much lower than previously expected for the former unicorn. This was another sign that the era of invisible returns for VCs that helped make Silicon Valley briefly the envy of the world was over. Of course, these returns were usually reserved for insiders anyway.
Killer AI apps for environmental applications
AI was the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and it was the topic of two panels I moderated. my book, The Little Book of Robo Investing: How to Make Money While You Sleepis a piece about how tech companies implemented a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning to automate their investments.
Generative AI is attracting global attention. Enter the prompt and output the text. The written word is one of the most important ways people learn how to think critically. And unique syntax, vocabulary, and stories are one of the most important ways people transmit ideas across generations.
I was a little depressed about AI being unleashed on the world because I believed in the power of the written word. But a conversation with venture capitalist Nie Winski cheered me up a bit. The company has invested in companies such as ICEYE, ClearSpace, Kevin, Soter Analytics and SilentEight, increasing its focus on semiconductor chips.
The company is also investing in space technology, which has a lot of potential as an environmental use case. Satellite detection systems, combined with big data and machine learning algorithms, make it possible to see patterns in everything from potential flooding to illegal deforestation. “They will start developing these solutions,” he said. “Aside from the government and the military, there is no one (at the moment) who can take the raw data from satellites and make something out of it.”
But what if that could change? Niewinski described possible use cases. If satellites with the right algorithms can be trained to detect tankers illegally dumping oil, perhaps that information could spawn a whole new industry in helping tankers responsibly dispose of old oil. There is sex.
Kathryn Maher heads to NPR.
When I asked about the lack of American attendance at the conference, then-CEO Kathleen Maher said it was a result of “broader geopolitical trends,” a highly politicized response. He said it in a similar way.
Maher became CEO of WebSummit (she was a board member) but resigned after founder Paddy Cosgrove made comments about Israel on Twitter, plunging the organization into crisis. He took office at the time. US-based technology companies boycotted the Web Summit, but it was well attended in Qatar anyway. Ironically, the entrepreneurial ecosystem that the U.S. government and business community has fostered for decades is taking off, and only the United States appears to be retreating.
“The Middle East provides access to Asia and Africa,” said Kathleen Maher, then CEO of WebSummit, and the day I interviewed her, she had just announced her departure to NPR ( (more on this later). “People[in Europe and the United States]are not focusing on these emerging markets as much as they should be opportunistic.”
“You can't bring African entrepreneurs to an event in Portugal,” she pointed out. Visa restrictions between developing countries and Western countries cut off some of the talent that is the lifeblood of innovation. Her Web Summit, which began in Dublin in 2009, has become a window into entrepreneurship developments around the world. So is Maher. Early in her career, she worked at the World Bank, UNICEF, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
She said that when she took the position, NPR announced that it was hiring a CEO. When she was approached by a recruiter, she said, she couldn't say no. “An opportunity like this only comes once in her lifetime,” she said.
There, too, she soon found herself embroiled in controversy. Editor Uli Berliner was suspended for criticizing NPR for becoming too left-wing, and she subsequently resigned. The New York Times said NPR was “in turmoil,” but this seems like an exaggeration due to mainstream media's tendency to cover Washington and New York as if they were the entire world. . From a business perspective, as Mahler pointed out in an interview, NPR's greatest strength is her 250 affiliate stations and her 17 foreign stations. One of the ideas she had when she began her tenure, she said, was to think about how to make these affiliates a more authentic network. Interestingly, Ms. Maher's first major media appearance that I noticed was on her friendly business podcast, Masters of Scale.
Scenes from the press dinner
Meanwhile, at a dinner for journalists, I was sitting near another writer who will remain anonymous.When the latter heard that I had just published A small book about robo investing, he immediately launched into a series of counterfactual statements about robot investing, moving far beyond the realm of polite conversation and into mansplaining. I rebutted him one after the other about the potential returns of this style of index-based investing (easily in the top quartile), the growth of companies, and the history of this movement.Last year I literally The co-authored book on robo investing is the latest in the prestigious Wiley series, which also includes Vanguard founder Jack Bogle as an author. And this guy at the table still thought he knew more than me. Then one of the other men at the table asked me about it. “That guy seemed to be badmouthing you,” he said.
So, in a world where people seem to only believe the evidence they see with their own eyes, here's another breaking news. Yes, it is true that women do indeed face a sexist world.