Startup Migrants

Maria Amelie, Nicolai Strøm–Olsen

• Publisher: Frekk Forlag AS
• eBook ISBN: 9788293097594
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Jonas was born in Asmara. Today he is connecting Nordic investors with promising startups in Africa.

Fadi fled to Germany. Today his company provides work and new skills for refugees.

Zeina moved from US to Lebanon. Today she enables young people to start companies.

Many European countries make it hard for migrants to succeed. There is an alternative. This book tells the story of migrant entrepreneurs and the people, organisations and companies who support them in developing their talent. It's a book about their experiences, struggles and success formula.

Book Two

Northern Europe

In Northern Europe migrants end up with a lower labor participation rate than non-migrants. The picture is not black and white. Migrants are among the most entrepreneurial people in the region, but often they lack access to network, don’t know local business customs, or face challenges with the language. In addition, bureaucracy and red tape harm migrants more than non-migrants. As a result many companies struggle to grow in a region that needs all the innovation it can get. To remain prosperous in the future, Northern European countries need their migrant population to succeed.

Coding connections

There is a constant back-and-forth discussion on migration in Europe. ‘We cannot welcome more people than we are able to integrate,’ seems to be the refrain. A visit to a coding school in Berlin shows that the startup-scene can be a model of integration.

It was Fadi Zaim’s sister who told him about the ReDi School of Integration.

He was at a low point in his life. At the time, he was studying German for three hours every day. Technically, he could work, but lessons in the early afternoon made finding jobs with accommodating schedules difficult. He did some internships on the side, but had no luck.

‘It was killing me. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything. You don’t feel good spending almost two years just trying to learn a language. And language is the key to everything here in Germany.’

He explains that, paradoxically, it’s hard to practice speaking German in Berlin, where you can use English everywhere except for visiting the doctor, filling tax forms, or dealing with bureaucrats.

Fadi’s sister had been the first one in the family to come to Germany, to study dentistry. After a few months, their mother had come to visit. During her stay, the situation in their native Damascus worsened, so she applied for asylum. Fadi joined a year later. Their family was lucky, since they could fly to Germany, avoiding the dangerous sea voyages many refugees embark upon to reach Europe. Even so, when they finally got here, they were frustrated by the integration process.

That’s when Fadi started going to the ReDI School.

It is May of 2018. Close to the Nordbahnhof in Berlin, we walk up a staircase to the third floor of an old building. We pass a cardboard robot bearing the sign – ‘... are you ReDI?’ and come upon a large group of young Americans.

These are the Berlin offices of ReDI school, a coding school founded by the Danish migrant Anne Kjær Riechert in 2016. Her goal is to teach refugees digital skills and connect them to the technology and startup-scene in Berlin, a concept similar to SE-Factory in Beirut. Now, however, it has opened its program not only to refugees, but to migrants as well. So, why so many Americans? They are busy checking the attendee lists, carrying computers and various soft drinks, all of them heading somewhere.

In a few hours, it’ll be Demo Day at the school. The students will present on stage what they have learned over the past months, but before it can start, balloons must be hung up, cameras must be carried around, list items must be checked off, and people have to look busy. A decent-sized crowd has gathered.

In the middle of all this activity stands a migrant. This one is Canadian. He is one of the volunteer tutors at ReDI school. During the day, he works for the steel company Klöckner, founded in Duisburg in 1906. Their goal is to digitize the metal industry. They also invest in startups and are one of the school’s corporate partners. Since US President Trump is putting import duties on Canadian and European metal, this Canadian is working to create the future business model of German steel, and teaching refugees to code on the side. It almost sounds like something thought up by an advertising agency to showcase ‘the German alternative.’

It seems we are on the wrong floor. The action is on the floor above, where the room is already packed. There are Syrians, Russians, Venezuelans, Americans, and Pakistanis to name but a few. In pairs, the students present what they have learned, ranging from basic java, to setting up a web shop, to programming robots. Their presentations are polished, they speak good German or English. Anyone with even an inkling of entrepreneurial zest would be wondering: Should I be hiring these guys right away?

We notice a middle-aged man in a dark suit standing in a corner. He looks like a corporate partner. Who might he hire? It turns out he is not in the hiring business at all, but a professor at an American university who met the founder, Anne, in New York. He is accompanying his students on an excursion to Germany, and they are volunteering at the event to experience Berlin. That explains all the Americans.

Another man, Abdelilah Hicham, is watching the presentations from the back of the room. He is 23 years old, younger than many of the people on stage, but Abdelilah is not a student. He is one of the tutors, and has been teaching a class in basic Java and Android for beginners for the last two semesters.

‘I went to the Tech Open Air event last spring and saw the interview with Anne on stage. I was fascinated by the idea of teaching refugees to code, and I wanted to help, so I ran after her. She only had a few seconds for me but managed to invite me to last year’s Demo Day. Right after that, I was asked if I could teach basic Android development.’

When Abdelilah was one, his parents moved from Morocco to Faenza in Italy. 18 years later, he moved back to Morocco. The difference in living standards and job opportunities was striking. Most people in Morocco are unemployed or work on a part-time basis.

‘In Morocco, I was living alone for the first time – I could buy a whole meal for the price of a croissant and I spent all my time studying software development and computer science. It was a great experience.’

Abdelilah started coding when he was 13 years old. He was going through some log files on his Windows 98 machine and something just clicked. Coding became his hobby, and in a short time, he had his first webpage, a blazingly blue background with boxes in the foreground. Then he learned to program Java apps for his smart phone, and other coding languages like Python and Ruby. Throughout the entire learning process, he had one challenge.

‘I couldn’t speak English, so I tried to study coding in Italian, but there were no books or online materials available. I found an English book, a dictionary and started translating. In the process, I also learned English.’

This reminds us of the language challenge faced by the Nawaya Network in Beirut that teaches disadvantaged young people to start a small business. Their students mix Arabic and English for precisely the same reason. There is a lack of teaching material in entrepreneurship in Arabic, just like there is a lack of coding literature in Italian. Moreover, it is still not ‘the done thing’ for young Italians to dream of becoming techies, at least not in medium-sized Italian towns.

‘I did not meet one single person who shared my interest. Italy is a country of cars and mechanics, lawyers and doctors, and people dreaming about a football career. Most of the people pursuing these interests end up unemployed.’

In 2015, Abdelilah applied for a job as IT-developer for the startup Sparks42 in Berlin. He ended up with a job, a 15m2 bedsit in hip Kreuzberg, and a language problem.

‘When I got here, I was all alone the whole week before I started working. I was bored, sad, nostalgic... I missed my family and felt out of place. And I did not understand a thing because I struggled to connect with people in English.’

Then came his first day at the office and he entered the English-speaking Berlin startup world.

‘It was my first time in a real office. I met likeminded people who shared my passions. I could not believe it. It had been impossible to find in Italy.’

Abdelilah stayed at Sparks42 for 18 months. However, ever since he had moved to Berlin, he had dreamt of starting his own business. On the third of January, 2017 – the first business day of the year – he started his first GmbH (German limited company) with a partner from Sparks42. They were going to develop computer games. Some months later, the search for investors led him to a meetup where people were practicing their pitches.

‘I met this Dutch guy with a Swedish name, Bjørn. Bjørn was a business guy who also wanted to do a tech startup, but lacked the skills in tech, so he was looking for a software developer.’

The new friends started to talk about the problems they had encountered in their careers so far. They agreed that there was often a problem with transparency and that it can be difficult for the managers to get honest feedback on their leadership, and how that affected business culture in companies. Most juniors wouldn’t dare to give constructive criticism to a senior.

Abdelilah decided to shut down his game development company and go all in on a business partnership with Bjørn. Together, they started the business-to-business company Blindfeed. Their solution makes it possible for employers to give honest and useful feedback in meetings without repercussion. Users get a code when the meeting begins and invite their team. During the event, members can give feedback, but no one will see the feedback until 30 minutes after the meeting has ended. In June and July 2017, Blindfeed was tested by some people working for LinkedIn and Uber in Berlin. By June 2018, they had secured one million euros in funding. Blindfeed’s team has grown to four people and they have recently moved to a new office. Abdelilah is still the youngest of the team.

The team has many ideas, but none of them involves building a development center in Italy or Morocco. Abdelilah still goes back to Italy to meet his parents and Italian siblings. Nothing changes there, except that the town is growing poorer and unemployment is rising. They can’t even afford to fix the roads that often anymore.

‘In those countries, there is neither a passion nor a culture for entrepreneurship. I want to stick around in Berlin. If I succeed, I want to help Berlin become the strongest center of technological innovation there is.’

Downstairs at the ReDI school’s Demo Day, Jasmin Catering is busy serving dinner. Fadi Zaim is busy making sure that no tray is empty. In addition to his job as an outreach manager, he also runs the catering service with his mother, Salma.

‘I had been complaining to Anne about German food. Syrian food is the best. Suddenly, she asked, ‘We are having this picnic, can you make us some good Syrian food?’ I called my mom right away.’

The picnic was for students and tutors at ReDI school. It was a big success, and one of the tutors even asked if they could cater another event. To reach more people, Fadi built a website for ‘Jasmin Catering,’ and presented it at Demo Day as his graduation project. One of the people in the audience was a man from an American IT-company who approached him and gave him his business card. It took a while before Fadi realized that he had to follow up on this as a potential customer. When he finally did, he ended having to draw up a proper bid for the first time in his life – to cater Cisco.

His entire family went to work. They took photos of the food and checked all the ingredients and the requirements to scale their recipes from a small picnic to a full-scale event. A cousin made a flyer and his sister wrote the text – and then the offer was made. It was at this point the Zaim’s realized that they had to register a company to be able to issue an invoice. After a few hours, an Einzelunternehmer [sole proprietorship] was opened. The next hurdle they faced was that it is forbidden to sell and serve homemade food in Germany, so they had to find a professional kitchen.

The Cisco event went well, and for a while, Jasmin Catering led a nomadic existence renting kitchens here and there for every ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Book One
• Book Two
• The world of words in Startup Migrants
• Entrepreneurship terms
• Endnotes