Baghdad's "Irrational Optimists"

I think there is a pent up energy when people have been unemployed for a very long time, denied opportunities such as university, so they can be very passionate when opportunities arise and that can breed innovation. Are there any stories that stand out in terms of people striking out on their own?

Totally. We’ve helped several people get on their feet. For example Mu3amala. This means govt. procedure or a govt. paper. There is the huge challenge of bureaucracy in Iraq, from anything as simple as getting a document such as proof of address etc. to starting a business.

For example, if you have a company and you need to fill up your cars, there are rules to which fuel stations you can use. So one of Fikra Space’s members started this app called Mu3amala which lists all the documents you need, how much money you need to spend to get through these processes, so it is a crowd sourcing program where people send in tips to speed up these processes, and this is a mobile app on iOS and Android.

That has been very helpful because one of the most difficult things is finding this information online--you have to physically go to the government institution, and then there is a risk you may be exploited and asked for fees. So the app reduces opportunities for corruption. Within a couple of months, 10,000 people had downloaded the app, and Ahmed received a lot of recognition, he was interviewed by Al Sumeria and other news outlets in Iraq.

Another one of our guys is working on an intelligent text editor called Journal, which is online and researches for you at the same time that you are writing, and it runs functions in the background based on the text that you are writing and it produces the most relevant information for you in the same window. And that was chosen as a semi finalist in the MIT Arab Startups competition in Kuwait. But with all these stories there are very Iraq specific challenges, which I will come back to.

So Ahmed got to the semi final in Kuwait, and he won a place at Singularity University in Silicon Valley. He is spending 3 months there to be accelerated and to work on his idea. And then there is another bunch of guys working at Fikra Space and they launched a startup called D3, which stands for Design, Develop and Distribute.

They are basically a bunch of guys that design websites and develop apps for people. And they were recently funded by an Iraqi investor and they have a lot of money right now. So we have a lot of these success stories.

But back to Mu3amala. The govt. launched a website called EGS.IQ and instead of helping this guy out with what he was doing, they launched the same service with the same function. And some of the content was taken directly from his app. So instead of giving him tangible support for what he was doing, they looked away and did it themselves.

Another challenge was when Journal started getting interest in Kuwait, I had to step in and visit the country on my Swedish passport because Journal developer had problems getting there with his Iraqi passport. So these are the kind of challenges that are very specific to Iraq. But people work around them.

(Page 3 of 4.)