MENA Ecosystem Builders

About the program

With the support of the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF), Village Capital is launching MENA Ecosystem Builders, an accelerator for accelerators. This program will select locally-led entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) based in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Tunisia, and support them to better serve and drive capital to youth-led high-growth potential ventures while building networks across the region with key stakeholders.

What does program include?

• Technical training: this program will include a number of intensive technical trainings to improve strategy, sustainability and impact of organizations. Including themes such as:
  • Systems thinking and ecosystem building
  • Organizational strategy and growth
  • Value creation and market differentiation
  • Venture segmentation, sourcing and due diligence
  • Early stage financing for ventures
  • Financial sustainability
  • Partnerships and fundraising
  • Impact hypothesis and metrics
  • Operations and building your team

• Investment readiness: participating organizations will receive trainings from Village Capital on the key aspects of building and delivering an investment readiness program. This will include access to a selection of curriculum sessions and a supporter profile on the abaca platform to use with your companies.
• Organizational assessment: each organization will complete a detailed organizational assessment to identify opportunities, risks and plan critical milestones.
• Analyst support: one to one support with a dedicated business analyst to build out your strategic performance plan.
• Mentor sessions: multiple opportunities to connect with specific mentors chosen to support them to tackle your key strategic challenges.
• Partner forum: connect with development and philanthropic partners to share more about your organizations strategic plan and receive feedback.
• Peer learning: Village Capital programs prioritize peer learning opportunities. A number of sessions will be designed to share and receive feedback from your peers from across the region.

Who can apply?

This program is for entrepreneur support organizations. Not startups. The organization must be supporting early-stage, tech-enabled small and medium enterprises with significant growth potential, and/or ventures with scale potential:

• The organization must support ventures through a formal incubation/accelerator program.
• The organization must be providing or looking to provide training, resources, advice or support to entrepreneurs around finance and investment.
• The organization must have been in operation for more than 2 years OR has grown from co-founder/founder to 5+ employees including middle management (department leads, partnership managers, incubator and accelerator managers, program managers).
• The organization should have multiple lines of business or departments, raised funding, offer support programs and/or services for entrepreneurs and can demonstrate traction.
• The organization must be operating in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, or Tunisia.
• Ideal organizations support or plan to support young (under 35 years of age) entrepreneur led ventures, as defined as:
  • Entrepreneurs under 35 years of age
  • >50% shares owned by young entrepreneur(s), OR
  • ≥ 20% shares owned by young entrepreneurs, AND
  • ≥ 1 young entrepreneur as CEO/COO; AND
  • Has ≥30% of the board of directors composed of young entrepreneurs.
• Participating team members should include at least one member of senior leadership.