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Awesome. That's great to hear! Venture funded, or bootstrapped / self-funded? Did you build the business in Qatar?
by charlesdm 9y ago
Awesome. That's great to hear! Venture funded, or bootstrapped / self-funded? Did you build the business in Qatar?
- TuringNYC 9y agoWe bootstrapped initially and later got some institutional funding. You'd ideally need some institutional funding from a local institution as they help arrange for visas, licenses, etc. We did our best work in Qatar but there are early efforts in several other regional countries. The Arab embargos from this past summer really put a damper on that unfortunately. There is still hope, someone else is now running the effort and I hope it succeeds. Our top thing was real-time TB diagnosis for use at airports but we developed a number of other classifiers.
- 616c 9y agoI'm guessing UAE. Qatar insists they are good for this stuff. But they only recently started making good on deregulation promises they have made for years. Not sure but I think the Qatari free economic zone near KSA is still only becoming an imminent reality. UAE has had them plural for years.
- TuringNYC 9y agoQatar and UAE both have interesting free-hold business zones ideal for IP-heavy work. One of the interesting aspects of some zones is that they are chartered to do all dispute resolution via foreign law (e.g. UK law) You are right, UAE is way ahead on the freezone aspect. Qatar, however, is way ahead on the academic front with the most concentrated selection of western academic branches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City). For us, having a Cornell University Medical School branch next door, complete with tenured Cornell Med School professors was a huge sell for Qatar.