2009 November | Infinite Reflections

Archive for November, 2009

MENA Entrepreneurship: Observations

26 Nov 2009 at 23:07

Sami Shalabi

abu dhabi, amman, entrepreneurship, gew, mena, mitaaa, mitpanarabconf

I had a great time in Abu Dhabi and Amman for both the MIT Pan Arab Conference and Amman Global Entrepreneurship Week. It was really an educational trip since I have not been connected with the entrepreneurial scene in the MENA. I saw two different approaches with regards to entrepreneurship in both Abu Dhabi and [...]

I am a software inventor & entrepreneur living in the Boston area. I share my life with my beautiful wife, Randa, and our children, Amir and Haya.

My interests are usually the subject of my blog. They include entrepreneurship, software engineering, photography, family and anything geeky. I now work at Google as an Engineering Manager after Google’s acquisition of Zingku, a company I co-founded in 2006. At Google, I work on Google Friend Connect, Google Buzz, and other fun secret projects.

I love to give back to the community which is why I co-founded YallaStartup.org, an NGO aimed at fostering early stage entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. At YallaStartup, our goal is to address the gaps in the early stage entrepreneurial ecosystem both online and offline. We focus on knowledge sharing, community building, mentorship, and assisting in finding seed investment.

My other activities include sitting on the advisory board of the MIT Arab Alum Association, as well as several Boston and MENA startups.

I hold over 30 patents and has been awarded the 2009 MIT ASO Young Professional Award.

Prior to Zingku, I lead both the technical vision and implementation of several products/projects at IBM/Lotus, Iris Associates, and MIT.