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After an awesome three-day run in downtown Cairo, RiseUp Summit 2018 is finally wrapping up today with the promise to return bigger and better next year. The summit was action-packed from the word go and saw a wide range of activities aimed at further polishing the thriving startup ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa.

As a leading startup community in the region, there was no way StartUp Bahrain was going to miss out on MENA’s largest innovation and entrepreneurship summit. So we made downtown Cairo our home for the past three days and witnessed the global community admiring the efforts put up by MENA’s homegrown entrepreneurs to turn the region into a startup haven.

As always, StartUp Bahrain was committed to demonstrating to the global community what makes Bahrain the ideal launchpad for innovative startups and how they are always welcome to approach us should they ever need any guidance for leveraging the Kingdom’s business and investment-friendly environment.

As for those of you who couldn’t keep up to all the excitement the summit had to offer, here’s a quick overview:

Pitch Competition: Not just any pitch competition, RiseUp Summit 2018 set the stage for 50 of MENA’s most promising pre-seed startups to compete and pitch to an audience comprising high-profile investors, business leaders from all over the world, prominent names in the startup scene, key government officials, and of course, policymakers.

Algebra Ventures Investor Office Hours: In one-on-sessions spanning 15 minutes, selected startups met with industry leaders to discuss ideas, ask questions, seek advice, and pitch their ideas.

Uber Pitch and Ride: For the fourth consecutive year, Uber is organizing the Pitch n’ Ride competition where 10 entrepreneurs were given the share a 10-min ride with an established investor one-on-one. Each of the shortlisted entrepreneurs had to pitch their ideas to the investor before the ride ended. Depending on their performance, the investors participating in the event either chose to invest in these entrepreneurs’ startups or provided a free consultation.

HIPO by Algebra Ventures: This is an event reserved for only high potential startups (or HIPOs, as they’re fondly called). 12 of the region’s most promising startups were shortlisted and given a platform to make themselves visible to the global community.