ARAMCO Entrepreneurship Center “Wa’ed” participated as an exhibitor in Saudi Arabia start-ups forum aimed at strengthening startup presence and initiatives in local economy and to inspire the individual initiatives as well as creativity and to accelerate the promising chances through developing start-ups along with SMEs and investing to develop them.

The center also aimed to highlight the strategies and programs that sponsor entrepreneur’s ideas and to transfer them to projects and businesses that can be implemented and developed.

Khalil Alshafei, CEO of “Wa’ed”, said during a panel discussion with other executives about the possible methods to accelerate businesses. “It is true that business incubators and accelerators existed not only recently. However, they struggle because of certain issues such as lack of interest from investors and laws that would facilitate the work.”

Alshafei noted that “although entrepreneurs faced a lot of obstacles in the past, I can see clearly that with the Vision 2030, there is a real attempt to revive entrepreneurship and there is a great ambition to achieve the Silicon Valley model.” — SG