Startups Without Borders Podcast

Startups Without Borders Podcast

The Startups Without Borders Podcast is a business interview show that uncovers the unspoken lessons of some of the world’s most audacious risk-takers: migrant entrepreneurs. Each week, we will dig into the different aspects and mindset behind building a startup, as told by industry leaders, brave change makers and bold disruptors with one thing in common: they are refugees and migrants. From the Middle East, to Europe and beyond, the show will focus on concrete, tangible strategies and tactics for entrepreneurs, from productivity tips, to business hacks, to industry insights, as told through the inspiring journey of entrepreneurs on the move. The show is hosted by Valentina Primo, an Argentine journalist and the founder of Startups Without Borders, who spent 6 years in Egypt interviewing startup founders across the Middle East, and fell in love with the relentless, unstoppable spirit of its entrepreneurs. Valentina previously launched Startup Scene Middle East, Egypt’s largest English-language publication on the entrepreneurial landscape, and has covered stories for international outlets, including BBC Business. Photo Credit: Ahmed Najeeb. Music: Funky Music ( Vlog Music ) by Dj Quads https://soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/7y1mi7ggtt0

Episodes

March 18, 2024 33 mins
Maria Amelie is the co-founder of Factiverse, an AI-startup that automates fact-checking and research with AI and NLP, which recently raised 1 million euro in private and soft funding.

Maria, who had to leave her home country of Russia in 2002, became the center of a political controversy when she was arrested after a speaking engagement and denied asylum, only a year after she was awarded “Norwegian of the Year.”

Her first book, whi...
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Born and raised in Cameroon, Bibi de Vetter has been based in The Netherlands for over 17 years. As the founder of Startup Investments, she hosts private events to help early-stage startups raise capital and to find the resources they need to achieve their full potential.

Bibi's life took a turn when she was let go of her corporate job. But instead of letting that event become an obstacle, she decided to take the risk and start her ...
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Rana is a Syrian American advocate for refugees and civilians in conflict, and the solution owner of IBM’s Refugee & Migration Predictive Analytics Solution -- a first-of-a-kind solution, leveraging machine learning and cognitive computing to enable Government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations to better manage refugee and migration crises.

She’s been published in the Wall Street Journal, WIRED magazine, and her work ha...
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Born in Peru, Luis Daniel Maldonado comes from multicultural family origins, in fact, there is Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Nordic and Slavic blood running through his veins!

Driven by the need to find his own place and culture while at the same time valuing his ancestors, he moved to the Netherlands in 2016. He engaged in Multidisciplinary archeology expeditions and began researching ancient civilizations, until eventually developing...
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Today, I wanted to share one of the top panels from our last Startups Without Borders Summit, which took place in Cairo Business Park last February.

In this fascinating conversation, Tey Alrjula, Founder of Fluus Finance, shares how blockchain inspired him to change the ID system through this revolutionary technology.

After raising 1.5 million and exiting, he is now on a mission to help places where the system can’t reach through s...
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Today, we speak to Hasan Dayoub, an award winning entrepreneur, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning engineer who is obsessed with changing the world.

Having reached over 20,000 people with his AI Club in Syria, Hassan went on to build FutureLaby, a startup that uses Augmented Reality to help dentistry students.

In this episode, Hassan shares the story of how he stepped up to lead a group of developers to train, empower, and...
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Today, we speak to Jane Oma, the protagonist of an inspiring tale. The President of Upside Africa and a Leadership Coach, Jane arrived in Spain with nothing but a strong desire to search for purpose.
Today, Jane is an advisor at the Geneva Business School and the founder of The Mother Eagle Mentoring Academy, a platform that provides mentoring for African women and youth.
In this intimate dialogue, Jane shares her journey and the min...
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Spandana Palaypu was only 20 years old when she started her social startup, ZoEasy. Having moved from India to Dubai at 6 years old, she experienced the richness of cultural diversity first-hand. However, she soon realized it was not the same for everyone.
Inspired by the heart-wrenching stories of blue-collar workers she met in the UAE, she decided to build a business that supports workers to find fair employment opportunities.
She...
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​In episode 32, we meet Min Chen, an entrepreneur who has lived the entrepreneur's life since she was 4, when her parents moved to migrate from China to Panama with only $800 in their pocket.
Min knows what it means to start over and then lose everything all over again, as it happened when the US invaded to Panama in 1989.
But her unstoppable hard work earned her a Fulbright scholarship to go to Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley, and...
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Becoming an immigration attorney wasn’t in Tahmina’s plan. But ten years after moving to the USA, she was at the epicentre of the fight for the Startup Visa bill, to support entrepreneurs who were not allowed back into the US.

When the Muslim Ban was signed, she became a warrior for change, advocating for the Startup Visa Bill and later writing “Legal Heroes in the Trump era,” a book of inspiring ordinary people doing extraordinary...
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In episode 30 of the Startups Without Borders Podcast, we team up with RefugeeForce to talk about a new reality reshaping the workplace across Europe: Hiring talented Refugees to Fill the skills Gap in workplaces.

In this candid conversation, we speak to to RefugeeForce co-founder Gaspar Rodríguez, and Salesforce graduate and Azmi Wahab, about this new promising landscape.

From the Salesforce Economy, to the legalities of hiring re...
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Anas Alchalabi or “That Entrepreneurship guy” as he’s known in the streets of the Middle East, has enabled hundreds of Refugee founders to create Small Empires (Tech Startups) that solves major challenges in Industries like Finance, Education, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retail.
 
For the past 4 years, Anas has contributed to initiatives with Governments, UN, World Bank, Venture Capitalists, Google, Facebook, and many more to brin...
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Yama Saraj is an entrepreneur and a "social hacktivist" as he calls himself. He was born in Kabul Afghanistan, raised in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and is now based in Paris where he working n his startup while is lecturing at an MBA school. 

After  working in developing assistance in Kosovo, DR Congo, and Afghanistan, He founded a startup called SensAi, a smart punching bag made from car tires, which aims to make mental and physic...
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Irma Rodriguez had a great job in Mexico, working for one of the biggest banks for medium and large corporations. But at some point, the situation in her home country became too much of a risk for her family. 

As she moved to Milan, Irma faced a myriad difficulties to set up a business and effectively sell. Today, all these difficulties are the basis of her consultancy business, Emigrar y emprender, where she advises over 5,000 entr...
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Today, we speak to Randa Bennett, a London-based tech founder and CEO of V-Loop, who recently launched her podcast, An Immigrant Girl.
Having immigrated to the UK in the late 1990s, Randa worked through learning English, going to university and building a career in a male-dominated tech industry, winning several awards as a Fintech founder. As the Covid19 pandemic hit the entire world, Randa had to once again readapt and pivot her ...
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Majd Mashharawi is one of the fiercest, most relentless women you’ll ever meet. Having grown up in war-torn Gaza, Majd came up with an incredible idea: to rebuild damaged buildings using bricks made of ash and rubble. 

Her second startup SunBox, an affordable solar power system that produces energy to alleviate the effects of the energy crisis in Gaza, where electricity is only available three hours a day. 
In 2018 she was selected a...
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Today, we speak to Francisco Ortiz, a Digital Nomad who has taken on the mission of teaching thousands of people how to become financially free. 

Francisco is a Youtuber, social media influencer and investor who left the comfort of his office job in Argentina and began exploring the world full-time in search for more freedom.

He sold all his things, invested his savings and created an online business to be able to travel sustainably ...
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In this episode, we speak to a tech wonderwoman democratizing capital in the Nordics: Nora Bavey. Nora is an award-winning entrepreneur, and the General Partner at Unconventional Ventures, a VC fund investing in startups created by underrepresented founders.

Having moved from Iran to Sweeden at an early age, Nora has made it her mission to improve the possibilities for underrepresented groups to access technology, entrepreneurship a...
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From London, to Amman, to the Greek refugee camps, There is a growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, incubators, supporters and investors building a movement made up of valiant migrant entrepreneurs. What does that transnational ecosystem look like today? 

Join us in this exciting panel from our last Startups Without Borders Summit, where key players in the refugee and migrant startup world share their insights. Meet Charlie Fraser: co...
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If there is one word that dominated the media landscape this past year, it’s diversity. The Black Lives Matter movement brought to light a whopping disparity in startup funding: Black women have received only 0.06% of all Venture Funding since 2009.

In this power-packed fireside chat, we meet the powerhouse woman leading a movement to change that: Lauren Maillian, CEO of Digital Undivided.

Join us in this intimate conversation, to...
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