Information Technology Development in Egypt - Article Example

I. Details of the Article Sarah Hamdan Egyptian Entrepreneu Shares Lessons From Her Playbook November 02, Source :New York Times URL : http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/egyptian-entrepreneur-shares-lessons-from-her-playbook/?scp=17&sq=middle%20east&st=cse II. Summary of the Article The article talks about how Hanan Abdel Meguid’s success in the information technology sector in Egypt. She is now the chief executive of OTV, the spinoff company when Link was sold to Mobinil for $130 million. In the article, she dispensed advises to the depressed labor force in Egypt that success is not only confined to working in a multinational company, but also through business. When Meguid first joined the American University in Cairo, she has never seen a computer before. In addition, the field was dominated by men when she started in the industry. Yet, she managed to put up a company of her own after college and initially succeeded. The first company she put up was Microlabs. She and a classmate Khaled Bichara realized that there were no  were no companies in Egypt to develop programs for the Windows platform. I.B.M., one of the few international technology companies in Egypt at the time, had only a sales office with no development capabilities. So they decided to start their own business. So they put up Microlabs to address this need. The company got off quickly from a mere $3,500 starting capital. It later put a partnership with Pie Practical Solutions which proved to a very hard lesson to learn when Meguid did not pay due diligence to the legal papers. Microlabs, in effect was taken over by another company and was not entitled to any profit. The company eventually shut down but Meguid persisted with her entrepreneurial drive. After the failure, she went into Web Development business with the government which led her to join  a start-up affiliated with Orascom Telecom. Later, she was to become the chief executive of OTV, the spinoff company of LinkdotNet and Mobinil. III. Critique/lesson learned There are several important lessoons that can be learned from the article. First, which I think is very important is the faith and belief that we can succeed in the midst of hardship if we have faith in our ourselves and pursue it. Hanan Abdel Meduid impart this lesson to young Egyptians who are currently depressed because they cannot find the right work opportunities. But according to her, we have to veer away from the employee mindset that after graduation, one must find a job a multinational corporation inorder to succeed. He advised that you can still build your dream and become successful without being an employee. That is by being an entrepreneur whereby one can look for the opportunities in the market and address it with one’s capability. The second most important lesson to be learn in this article is that no new skill will be difficult enough to learn and nothing is impossible. We can learn this lesson from Hanan Abdel Meguid, an internet icon in Egypt who operates the largest technology company in Egypt, operates in 17 countries, and maintain exclusive partnerships with Facebook and Microsoft when she started learning about computers. In fact, when she went to the University in American University in Cairo to take up computer science, she had never seen a computer before. Which means that she only learned everything during college and became so good at it that she was able to build a technology company after college. Also, her persistence is laudable. At the time when she took up the computer course and put up the business, the world of information technology and programming were still dominated by men. Twenty years later, she now dominates the technology business in Egypt. Third lesson is always be mindful and pay due diligence in the legal aspect of business. This might be placed third but its importance is not diminished. In the technical and legal aspect of a business, the lesson imparted should be learned by every student. Meguid herself learned the hard way with this mistake. The legal aspect of a business may sound distant to students like us because we have no experience in the complication of the legalities of the business, but still, we students must learn from the lesson of Meguid so as not to repeat the same mistake. The first company that Meguid put up, Microlabs would not have suffered a financial collapse had she paid due diligence with the legal aspect of partnership when she merged with another company Pie Practical Solutions. What happened was Meguid entered into the partnership without taking care and formalizing the legal paperwork of the combination of companies. The business took off, but it was named after the partner, Pie Practical, and Meguid’s company, Microlabs was not entitled to any of the profits. Instead of a partnership, Meguid’s company ended up being taken over by another company. Not only that the business was not entitled to profit, but the process of getting out of the partnership was equally complicated especially with the liquidation of the business and settling debts that even after it was shut down, Meguid still has to pay outstanding taxes six years later. All of this happened because Meguid did not put proper diligence on the legal aspect of a business before getting into a partnership. She learned the hard way and we students does not have to make the same mistake to learn the lesson. The last lesson imparted in the article is do not give up. Meguid, after her bad experience with the partnership with Pie Practical Solutions still persisted to become an entrepreneur. She lost her company but still looked for other opportunities to make business. After the failure, she put a Web Development business which later led her to join a start-up affiliated with Orascom Telecom. She took the lesson from her partnership with Pie Practical Solutions and paid extra attention to the legal process when Link merged with InTouch Communications in 2000 to form LinkdotNet. This started her success that only two years later, Meguid took on the role of chief executive of the spin-off firm OTV ventures (the spinoff company after Link was sold to Mobinil for $130 million). From one big failure, she is now a one big success. Read More