CAIRO: Relaxed, determined and composed. Three words that describe Ahmed Essa. For him, he is living his dream, and with it he is bringing along scores of others who now have the opportunity to live their own dreams of starting a business. The company, InveNst; a ventures boutique, aims to eliminate barriers in the face of creating innovation-fueled businesses and assist ideas from inception to reality. For Essa, this is part of his lifelong mission and dream of helping others get off the ground. “This was my dream," he told Bikyamasr.com. “It was either give up to frustration for not securing funds from investors for InveNst, or just give it my best shot using up all my personal resources." He chose the latter and founded InveNst, arguably Egypt's most ambitious ventures making machine; putting hand-in-hand with the inexperienced talents, who have little to no means of attracting investors for their unproven ideas. What Essa has established allows for potential entrepreneurs-to-be to send in their ideas, which he then dives in and designs a full package to push them forward. “Bright ideas need little effort and a great deal of vision and love to unearth their true potential. For any visionary idea to survive, the three Fs are very needed; InveNst is that altogether", he said. But Essa is hands-on in his approach. He helps the potential idea develop its business plan, marketing strategy and making the business as potentially successful as possible. In some cases, he funds the most appealing ideas submitted to InveNst regardless of geography or industry or experience of the entrepreneur behind the idea. Already, he has 8 ventures readying themselves for launch and he hopes that at least a few of them will be successful and help grow the funding capabilities of InveNst. “Even if most of them hit bottom, we don't call this failure as we will have then learned how to deal with our fears and acquired new skills that will boost our odds in the new batch of ventures we develop", he said. Even more inspiring, and where Essa seems to be having the most initial success is his business model assistance, where business owners can send in their ideas and get virtual assistance on their business plans regardless of where they are. Even those who have no business experience can pay a small fee of less than $30 to have Essa walk them through their plan, formulate a solid model and help them take their company to the next level. On top of being a boost to Egypt's entrepreneur-to-be segment, others from across the globe have already taken the consultative services offered by InveNst seriously. He said business owners from the Arab world, United States, Asia and Europe have started calling on his expertise to help make their business get started. It's accessible and open for anyone. Essa is no small-time businessman with a noble vision. He honed his entrepreneurial competency working many years for multinationals in multiple regions on top of being an innovator himself. In his last capacity as vice president at one of Singapore's leading investment firms, he learned that entrepreneurship is a compulsory option to revive economies bottom-up, especially in the highly-populated emerging markets. “Being in that kind of environment has been really helpful because I was able to learn how to innovate economically and design business concepts that touch the hearts and souls of the critical masses and I am bringing this now to others who don't have the privilege of learning the same on their own,” he said of his time in Singapore. For him, the concept of helping others is at the heart of his mission as a business partner for numerous ventures. He saw the void in the entrepreneurship ecosystem and how too many talented people were not able to get their foot in the door. So he had always wanted to jump on the chance. “I cut my expenses dramatically when I returned to Egypt. My wife and I were just like, let's make this happen no matter what and so many priority calls had to be made and I have been going after it ever since. It is said family comes first and I can't help it much if InveNst has become a family member,” he said. InveNst is not a micro-loan project; it is a complete micro ecosystem for visionaries, innovators and ambitious talents who cannot take no for an answer. If ideas don't get funded by InveNst, they would still be benefiting from collaborating with an organization knowing exactly what zero-capital startups need. “In our recent time of increasing financial inabilities, collaboration, resourcefulness and perseverance have become the name the game,” Essa added.
