News
Silicon Valley’s Tribal Credit Eyes MENA, Closing Round to Bank Startups
Silicon Valley-based Tribal started private beta testing with MENA startups and is closing a funding round that includes some of the top VCs in the region, a source told Digital Boom.
The fintech, according to its LinkedIn description, promises to help startups in emerging markets overcome local financial barriers, which include difficulty opening bank accounts, issuing corporate credit cards, and restrictions on making cross-border payments.
Fintech Unicorns: Brex, Divvy, Mercury
Similar fintechs which provide services to US-based startups have raised staggering funding amounts. Valued at $2.6B, two-year-old startup Brex raised $382.1M from several investors with Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, Greenoaks Capital, and Barclays in the lead.
Divvy, Valued at $2.6B, also raised $252.5M over three years from lead investors New Enterprise Associates, Insight Partners, and Pelion Venture Partners among others.
Whereas Series A startup Mercury valued at $100M, secured US $26M in funding this year with Andreessen-Horowitz and CRV as lead investors.
MENA Startups’ Banking Battles
This comes at a time when entrepreneurs in MENA are becoming more vocal about financial barriers. “I’m sick and tired of stories about banks in the UAE refusing to open bank accounts for startups because they are too small, newly registered, related to specific industries like e-commerce,” wrote Mirna Sleiman, Founder & CEO of Fintech Galaxy, in a LinkedIn post.
“We need to stop this PR machine about supporting SMEs and get real financial inclusion happening,” she added asking banks who would be willing to open a simple current and savings account for a young startup.
McKinsey: 200M Financially Excluded SMEs
A 2018 McKinsey report shows that about 200M small businesses in emerging economies lack access to formal savings and credit.
In a recent Forbes piece, CEO of Tribal Credit Amr Shady said emerging markets go through so much pain trying to scale, grow and expand. It takes months to open a bank account for startups in emerging markets compared to a few minutes in advanced markets, he wrote.
“Our aim is to bridge the wide business financial inclusion gap between the two,” says Tribal Credit on its LinkedIn description.
Who’s behind Tribal Credit?
The executive team includes Amr Shady, an Endeavor Egypt board member who founded TA Telecom (Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA) and Aingel, backed by 500 Startups, BECO Capital, and Endure Capital. Ex-HSBC Duane Good is President, and founding member of eCapital Financial, MBNA International, and MBNA Canada Bank.
Bill Crawley is Chief Growth Officer, with ISON Technologies, Bubbe Motion, Net2Phone and IBM on his resume. Chief Strategy Officer, Mohamed Elkasstawi, is a founding partner of the Chicago-based blockchain investment firm, zk Capital. He is a co-investor with Sequoia China, Polychain, USV, Coinbase VC and Pantera. And Chief Compliance Officer, Mark Graves, is ex-Marqeta Inc., SVB Financial Group, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority among others.
News
Putin, Obama war on social media starts with unfriend on Facebook
New stage of the cold war, is it?
The Social media war between Putin and Obama started with UnFriend, this is the action taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Facebook diplomacy with American president Barack Obama.
The unfriending comes after an official White House update about the possibility of a US-Syrian war. President Putin revealed that Obama’s updates about the Congressional debate on a possible war with Syria have annoyed him.
After unfriending, President Putin update status on profile “Something I should have done a long time ago”
Also, He said to Russia’s Pravda News Service “President Assad and I, we are the Facebook friends. We like the same pages, we share pictures of cute women and all that. Obama needs to lighten up on there, it’s not for serious stuff,”
President Obama’s latest posts about the possibility of the war in Syria have been reported by someone and he received a warning from Facebook that he will be prevented from posting on his profile for 24 hours.
He has also commented “Really, Putin needs to grow up. If he didn’t like that [post], he could have just hid it from his news feed instead of creating all this Facebook drama,”
JOE BIDEN “Vice President of the United States” announced to reports that President Obama has signed into his Twitter account to unfollow Putin.
The turmoil generated between Putin and Obama over their dispute on the Syrian crisis. Expanded to reach the social networks
Putin and Obama on social Networks
The question now is, are we witnessing a new stage of the cold war between the two countries, will they continue the war online instead of the military tactics and old spy war?
It’s obvious that social media is really changing the game in everything, and now it’s taking over on a very high level.
Keep an eye on Digital Boom and we will keep you posted with more news and updates on the cold war and even more…
News
Amr Diab Gets Hacked on Twitter
Amr Diab’s Facebook page has announced that his twitter account has been hijacked by anonymous and now tweeting political.
Update: Amr Diab’s Facebook Page announced that “Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been restored successfully and you can follow Amr’s tweets normally now”
Amr Diab got hacked on Twitter
On Thursday 9th of Jan, Amr Diab’s Facebook page announced that Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been hacked by anonymous and now tweeting politics!
Amr Abdul-Basset Abdul-Azeez Diab (born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. He was awarded the World Music Award for Best Selling Middle East Artist, three times: 1998 for the album “Nour El Ain”, 2002 for the album “Aktrr Wahid Byhbak 2001” and 2007 for the album “El Lillady”. Amr Diab also won The African Music Awards 2009, Big Apple Music Awards; Life Achievements Awards: Best Singer of The Year in 2009, and Best Male Act in African Music Awards 2010.
He is known as the Father of Mediterranean Music He has created his own style which is often termed “Mediterranean Music” or “Mediterranean Sound”, a blend of Western and Egyptian rhythms.
In The Mediterranean in Music, David Cooper and Kevin Dawe referred to his music as “the new breed of Mediterranean music”.According to author Michael Frishkopf, Amr Diab has produced a new concept of Mediterranean music, especially in his international hit, “Nour El Ain”.
In his analysis of The Very Best of Amr Diab album, Victor W. Valdivia of All music said: “His music melded traditional Arabic sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instruments. The mesh was dubbed Mediterranean music, and The Very Best of Amr Diab displays Diab’s superb skill in creating it.”
In 1997, he won three awards at the Annual Arabic Festival: one for Best Video, for Best Song, and for Best Artist of the Year. Diab received a Triple Platinum Award for the sales of Nour El Ain and a World Music Award in Monaco.
After the success of the previously shared overall analysis of Sherine’s new album “Ana Keter” and her social media presence, we decided to fulfill your requests with more details and additional insights.
The report is from Jan 15 through Jan 31, 2014; however, starting Feb, we noticed that Sherine’s team has enhanced and developed how they engage with fans on Facebook.
Still, there’s more to do; please review the slides below to know what exactly they are missing with recommendations.
Check out the report:
Key take-outs in 15 days after the launch:
- Album gained 11 million views in 2 weeks on YouTube
- YouTube Channel subscribers boosted by 90K subscribers in 15 days out of 127K total subscribers overtime
- Buzz reached 15K tweets/RTs since the launch on Twitter
- How do people talk about the album/Sherine on Twitter?
- People are sharing songs from YouTube & SoundCloud
- +90% positive sentiment on Twitter
- Sherine’s Twitter account is excellent at spreading the news about the album’s success.
- People are tweeting the song’s lyrics.
- Sarcastic tweets about Sherine & few songs (regular) - Almost zero negativity about the album
- Album teasers on Facebook created credibility for Sherine’s page, reflected in the page results after the album’s launch in the next 15 days with 92K Interactions & 312K New Likes.
- The album received tremendous engagement on the launching date of Jan 15. However, no posts for four days after the launch negatively affected the interactions.
Recommendations:
Sherine Abdel Wahab’s Facebook page would have received double or maybe triple new likes and interactions if the improved posts’ quality; please find below the points taken:
- Long updates with no extra value-added will lead to losing your fans’ interest
- The text-only format isn’t preferred, as it is well-known that they generate less reach than other content (Facebook announcement)
- A call to action is essential to generate leads & increase engagement
- Each post has to have its visual, audio, or video so you can attract/engage your audiences
- Understand the situation and act upon it, always be relevant to the time and avoid posting irrelevant content at the wrong time.
- Revise the tone of voice in future activities.
To recap - Overall performance is average to good - Enhance your content formatting - Improve the tone of voice on all networks - Be creative to engage your fans better - Be Consistent - Start your SoundCloud account.
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