June 23, 2020–
By: Nazila Fathi
Late last month, a group of immigrants called iBRIDGES held a virtual conference on a Zoom call to bring a cross-generational community of high tech entrepreneurs of Iranian-descent together. Their previous conferences had drawn hundreds of participants from all around the world.
This time, they were not sure if the two-and-half-hour virtual event, which had replaced a conference in Stockholm, Sweden, would garner a large audience. There was no chatting or greetings with some of the leading investors.
But the global pandemic had prompted some soul-searching questions. Entrepreneurs Kamran Elahian, CEO of Global Innovation Catalyst, and Fereydoun Taslimi, CEO of Sensorscall, had never before seen a risk scenario as unpredictable and confusing as the coronavirus pandemic.
“Over 25 percent of Startups in our incubator at Atlanta Tech Village, which is the fourth largest in the US, have gone out of business,” Taslimi, the president of iBRIDGES, said.
Private funding declined steeply during the pandemic. The prospect of going back to normal any time soon seemed dim. Many high-tech startups had no choice but to close.
iBRIDGES Aims to Connect a Fragmented Community
Like other immigrant communities, entrepreneurs of Iranian-descent are scattered around the world. To say the least, many are marginalized.
So they embraced iBRIDGES when Elahian along with several Iranian academics and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs founded it in 2014. iBRIDGES’s aimed to create a community of high tech entrepreneurs to exchange knowledge, best practices and innovative thinking. Their events in Berkeley, Toronto, Barcelona and Berlin attracted large crowds.
For the virtual event on May 30, the group invited some of the most inspiring Iranians. Among the speakers were Anousheh Ansari, CEO of X-Prize, who became the first female space tourist and Firouz Naderi, the former Director of Solar System Exploration at NASA’s JPL, who has an asteroid named after him.
To their surprise, nearly a thousand people logged to Zoom. Among the speakers were Iranian and non-Iranian, high tech startups and venture capitalists. Every single one of them urged the audience to find paths around every hang-up and ride out this storm.
Sheherzade Semsar, CEO of Politico EU, said startups should make their business model “COVID-proof.”
The moderator, Niclas Carlsson, CEO of Founders Alliance, urged the audience “to pivot now and get to the other side.”
Naderi proclaimed that “with every crisis comes an opportunity.”
Ansari went a step farther and called the crisis “a great time.” Because, she said, “at the heart of every innovator is a problem-solver.” She added that startups could re-examine everything and digitize any aspect of their business they could in this environment.
Their advice was the tell-tale sign of their ironclad resolve. Johann Romefort, the Managing Director of Techstars in Munich, Germany, put the conversation in context when he referred to entrepreneurs as “disruptors” who wouldn’t get deterred by failure.
In fact, many of those present had extraordinary stories.
Becoming an Entrepreneur During the Hostage Crisis
Elahian, the iBRIDGES co-founder, began his journey at the age of 18 when he left Iran to attend the University of Utah. For the young Tech-savvy Iranian, the University of Utah was an exciting place. It was where computer graphics was invented in the late 60s and was the playground of the founders of Pixar, Adobe, Attari, and Silicon Graphics in the early 70s. Elahian got two Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree by the age of 22. He joined Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto and as part of HP’s honor program was accepted to Stanford University to design a communication chip.
But as his real-life experience began, the road got bumpy. The chip did not work. Then, HP rejected his proposal to lead a program that would use computer graphics in the development of Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) software. He was too young and inexperienced, they told him.
Frustrated, and eager to launch his own company, he left HP. By this time, the Islamic Revolution had ousted the Shah in Iran and held 52 American diplomats hostage.
Never Took No for an Answer
Elahian began looking for venture capital at a time when his home country was officially a pariah state. Investors suggested that he should change his name to sound less Iranian.
Further, diversity and inclusion were myths back then, too.
“They said immigrants can make good engineers but not CEOs,” Elahian told me.
Ninety-four investors turned him down before he was able to raise money. The rejections helped him develop the resilience necessary to weather the obstacle-ridden road of entrepreneurship.
Three years later, in 1984, he sold the company, CAE Systems, to Tektronix Corporation for $75 million.
Over the next sixteen years, he co-founded nine startups and built three unicorn startups—companies worth more than $1 billion.
“You win only when you overcome the fear of failure,” he told the audience on May 30.
“The only way you find out if your way works is by trying.”
His story resonates with other entrepreneurs. Fast-forward, over three decades later, another young Iranian, pursued a similar dream.
Immigrants Are Resilient
Martin Basiri, 32, believes that immigrants, by nature, fit the profile of an entrepreneur.
“If you are not a risk-taker, you don’t leave your country in the first place,” he told me from his home in Kitchener Waterloo, Ontario.
“Those who migrate are different from average people from their circumstances to their personalities.”
He may be right. Planning for an arduous path, hard work, and a steep learning curve are all experiences common among entrepreneurs starting new ventures and also for immigrants starting a new life in a different country.
In 2010, Basiri came from Iran to Canada on a one-way ticket. His English wasn’t good and he had $6,800 in his pocket.
He finished a Master’s degree in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and moved to Ohio for two years. While working to improve his English, he helped his two younger twin brothers, Meti and Massi Basiri, immigrate to Canada.
In 2015, he applied for funds to start his company, ApplyBoard, a digital platform that helps international students find and apply to schools. He, too, was rejected by some 200 investors. By the time he attended the iBRIDGES Toronto conference, he was already on the right path. “Naderi‘s talk gave me goose-bumps,” he said, adding how important it was to meet successful Iranians who had made it during tougher times.
By this time, Basiri and his brothers had cemented their own reputation as entrepreneurs in Canada. His brothers who work with him were named among Forbes three top 30 under 30 list. They were among the top 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30. Basiri’s company has helped over 100,000 international students to study in North America. It employs 520 people and is worth $1.4 billion today.
Passing the Torch
It is stories like Basiri’s that propels iBRIDIGES to step up its efforts, even as COVID-19 is wreaking havoc.
Nadereh Chamlou, iBRIDGES board-member and former senior advisor to the World Bank, told me that Iranians are dynamic outside Iran and contribute to the economies of the countries where they lived in. “iBRIDGES wants to create a community for high tech startups so that people can pass on their experience and help one another,” she said.
iBRIDGES intends to ramp up its website to provide more resources for startups, like webinars with speakers and coaches.
“A lot of Iranian immigrants contact us and many of them have great ideas,” Taslimi told me from his home in Atlanta, Georgia. “But most of them cannot raise funds and have a difficult life as some have immigrated to countries with little opportunity.”
And as almost every business, from small start-ups to the largest tech companies in the world, is preparing for a challenging year, Naderi has found himself coaching younger people.
“I had to think like a startup during my entire career,” the seventy-four-year-old NASA scientist said. He spent most of his career conceiving ideas like sending a spacecraft to the moon of Jupiter.
“So, it was easy for me to coach young people,” he said. “They don’t lack ideas but they are looking for a soundboard to execute their ideas.”
Naderi may be the perfect person for it. He believes in approaching projects in a methodical way. “How do you go about them systematically?” he asked.
