The 2018 roadshow for Wamda's flagship event, Mix N' Mentor, is about to kickoff starting with Amman on August 16th. The event, which has been carried out over 30 times across the region since 2012, has a new format that will be centered on roundtable group discussions. Topics of discussion will be selected based on the most relevant and pressing issues within each city's tech ecosystem. This will allow participants from a wider set of stakeholders in the startup ecosystem to engage than the previous format which was more exclusively focused on early stage startup founders. 

This year's Mix N' Mentor Amman will be held at Zain Innovation Campus (ZINC), and will be carried out in partnership with Bank Al Etihad and Jordanian telecommunication company Zain.

The day will start with a panel on the different support and funding initiatives that are being launched in Jordan, and how banks are increasingly becoming an important part of the country’s startup ecosystem.

Deep-dive discussions will follow, each focusing on the following topics: Fundraising, Customer Acquisition (B2C) and (B2B), Sourcing and Retaining Talent, Scaling to the Gulf from Amman and Starting Up. Entrepreneurs, investors, corporate representatives, government officials and supporters will join the conversation, share their expertise and widen their knowledge about the discussed topic.

A designated person will be leading the discussion to ensure the roundtables are inclusive and dynamic in nature. Some of the participants will include Sabri Hakim, General manager of Careem in the Levant and Fouad Jeryes, Cofounder of CashBasha on the Customer Acquisition (B2C) session; Hussam Hammo, Founder and CEO of Tamatem and Mohammed Al Shaker, Founder and CEO of ArabiaWeather on Scaling to the Gulf from Amman; Ala Alsallal, Founder and CEO of Jamalon on Fundraising; Ahmed Moor, CEO of Liwaa and Hanan Khader, Founder and CEO of HelloWorldKids on Customer Acquisition (B2B) and Zaid Farekh, Cofounder and CTO of Semantic Intelligent Technologies on Starting Up.

This year’s event will put forward the importance of creating deeper conversations with the wider ecosystem, as new initiatives emerge in Jordan that are detrimental to the country’s startup ecosystem. Later in the day, technical workshops will be conducted by experts that aim to help founders gain critical skills, like cashflow management, branding and communications, agile web development, among others.

The event is open to startups, investors, government officials, corporations and anyone else keen to engage the tech and startup ecosystem in Jordan. Those interested can register here. Applications will be reviewed and selected by Wamda based on whether or not the participants will benefit from, and add value to, the round table discussions.