Tom Sweeney describing "Open Venture Innovation".
The SDTC Investment Committee (IC) meetings are always fascinating because of the many wonderful and interesting projects and technologies that are discussed and reviewed. Also very interesting are the sidebar conversations with fellow IC members during breaks, before and after the closed-door sessions.
Tom Sweeney, an IC member now based in Dubai, had many thought provoking ideas following his move to Dubai last year to manage a new fund anchored by the Saudi Telecom Company. As background, STC Ventures is a $250 million venture fund that is launching in the Gulf. It is managed by Iris Capital Management, a Paris-based, globally-focused, fund management company with three venture funds currently under management. Iris has invested over $1.2 billion in more than 200 companies and is one of the top performing fund managers in the world. Tom is the General Manager & Partner of the fund which operates out of offices in Dubai, Bahrain, Riyadh and Paris. “We will be investing in the Gulf region and we will co-invest in Europe, Asia and North America, including leveraged technology transfer investments into the region.”
Tom described an “Open Venture Innovation” model he’s developing with the OECD and various thought leaders in India, China, the Kingdom and Silicon Valley. The model leverages VC investment, targeted technology transfer funding and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region’s (particularly the Kingdom’s, Bahrain’s and Qatar’s) “surging support for entrepreneurship and technology innovation”.
He describes how rapidly things are changing in the east and the massive “brain and business circulation” of Asian, Indian and some European political and business leaders in the MENA and pan-African regions. He submits there is a huge opportunity for Canadians to “go where the puck is going” and not to be exclusively focused on the US market. More explicitly stated, he argued that Canadian companies could be following more of an east-west strategic growth path, particularly if they are open to leveraging what they have (highly qualified expertise, innovation, etc.) to get more of what many early stage companies don’t have in Canada (working capital and facilitated early-stage access to new and emerging markets). This concept lies at the core of the model being developed. As he said, “It flips the historic VC funding model “on its side”, so to speak, by combining funding sources that have a common geo-strategic interest, in addition to generating returns. The Saudis and the Bahrainis are particularly excited about all of this and, given the bold funding leadership of STC, we are working closely with the right people to make it happen”.
In support of all this, he strongly makes a case that the Canadian government absolutely needs to open up its remarkably myopic and anti-business visa policy in the MENA region, particularly given that the Americans have already been very pro-active and now issue 5-year visas to many MENA countries, including Saudi Arabia.
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Sheik and Posse, 2010