Blackbox Venture Capital
This article is written by Milambo Kabeleka, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Mr. Fadi Bishara serves as the Founder of Blackbox VC. Mr. Bishara serves as the Founder of techVenture and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. He launched the Cofounder Network. Mr. Bishara had more than 15 years experience advising, mentoring and building teams for small venture backed technology startups. He has worked with 41 startups of which 14 have been acquired. Mr. Bishara has been a Member of Advisory Board of MIT/Stanford VentureLab since 2009. He serves as a Member of Advisory Board of Sydney Seed Fund. Bishara also served as a Member of Advisory Board of Colabs Startup Center Zrt.
For 5 years Black box has been empowering founders with the main focusing of elevating people globally. It does this by bringing people from all over the world, immersing them in the silicon valley experience and helping them play a better entrepreneurial game.
Blackbox encourages people to create value, stretch their minds and focus on their ambitions to in turn improve their craftsmanship of entrepreneurship. They serve entrepreneurs from all over the world, they are currently in 58 countries and over the past five years, have had applications from 4300 startups, 250 where accepted. 350 founders graduated from their program, with 38% female founders. It has a $520Million Portfolio Valuation and has raised over 65% in funding.
The world of entrepreneurship has changed; we are welcoming the dawn of a new entrepreneurial era. The internet has caused a global shift and has changed the way things run, moving from the industrial age to the digital age.
This Revolution has been shaped by three key global trends:
Democratization of entrepreneurship driven by technology: it is now easier to start a business. There are a lot of services that we can plug into to create value, which can help us run companies better from any part of the world.
Growth in innovation diversifying away from Silicon Valley: diversification is going globally. Entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley have learnt to be diverse and this has contributed to the change in entrepreneurship all over the world.
Emergence of first globally connected generation on the world stage : through the internet, the ability to see the world as one entity has allowed for entrepreneurs to get clients from all over the world.
Even with all this positive change in the world of entrepreneurship, there’s still a visible inequality of entrepreneurial opportunity in the world today. Millions of entrepreneurs all over the world are unable to realize their full potential because of institutional, cultural and social barriers. If entrepreneurship is supported even by 10%, the global impact would be enormous. Up to $22 Trillion is estimated to be realized in GDP globally. While in Turkey alone, 10% improvement in the conditions for entrepreneurship could add $331 billion to its economy, a very significant contribution to the county’s GDP. Innovation has five times a great impact on the economic growth of a country than ordinarily increasing inputs.
The inequality of opportunities can lead to a devastating cycle of destruction that starts with resistance, resentment and revenge. It is known that the conditions that support development and entrepreneurial ecosystem are the same as conditions that support prosperity and world peace.
As of today, the most common solution for economic growth is Startup accelerators. They encourage entrepreneurial activity, which in turn stimulates innovation and in the end multiplies economic growth. However this approach serves investors first and entrepreneurs second. The more sustainable approach is the support of entrepreneurial activities that create long term economic growth through running programs that turn startup ecosystems into innovation hubs and this is what Blackbox has been running.