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Likewise, in poorer countries like India, social entrepreneurs address real needs — bringing solar lamps to villages, teaching women to weave shawls and connecting them to big-city markets. But the elites attracted to such projects are often less interested in combating the underlying structural problems. The villages need solar lamps because the government fails to bring electricity. The women must weave from home because their husbands forbid them to leave. These problems are not inefficiencies in need of smoothing. They are fights in need of picking. But picking fights is rarely the social entrepreneur’s way.

http://anand.ly

Like many in their cohort, Mohammed and Ali Rafea, who won one of the internships at iContact, are trying to solve some of Egypt’s problems through technology — and hope to turn a profit in the process. After the revolution, they said, Egyptians were turning to Bey2ollak to pass along information about the safety of the roads. “We added a new status to say that a road is a danger zone and there are protests and thugs,” Mohamed Rafea said.

and Sawari Ventures, a Cairo-based venture capital firm,

Ahmed el-Alfi, the founder Sawari Ventures,

Seeing the potential in Egypt, Mr. Alfi left Southern California in 2006 to move to Cairo. “Most of my friends questioned my sanity for making that move,” Mr. Alfi said. “But I was very encouraged by what I saw.”

“These entrepreneurs are thinking big and globally, and they are creating Web apps that you could see in Dumbo or Palo Alto,” he said, referring to the neighborhood in Brooklyn. “They are building companies and products that can be very influential. I would invest 30, 40 or 50 thousand dollars in these young entrepreneurs.”

As Mr. Gerber, one of the American delegates, put it: “We were just so amazed by the business acumen we found in Egypt.”

It’s never about the technology or impact it’s having, it’s about the game of entrepreneurship; getting users, funding and exiting as quickly as you can.

From an investor’s perspective, it’s a clever model; you put a group of extremely talented and hard working graduates together, give them seed funding, keep them lean and they pivot until they get you a hit and you make your return. But I wonder if the model is counter productive, producing risk averse entrepreneurs who, if they follow the right procedure, are almost guaranteed success in the form of a talent acquisition or exit. Should this be what entrepreneurship is about? What happened to irreverence, thinking outside the box, wanting to make a difference in the long run?

the gold-rush mentality.

there is innovation happening around health care related startups

One of the reasons for lack of innovation in the Valley is that entrepreneurs are not exposed to enough real-world problems.

consumers in the USA clearly want to play Angry Birds, whereas in some African countries consumers are more likely to be searching for their nearest Malaria drugs clinic.

you wouldn’t even imagine

many entrepreneurs can’t get to the US because of visa issues

Startup Chile

There is one thing though, that continues to set Silicon Valley apart from every other technology hub on the planet and that’s access to finance.

But the funding landscape is changing due to the cost of innovation decreasing rapidly which means anyone with a laptop and a WiFi connection can get an idea off the ground for dirt cheap.

Geeks on a Plane

i/O ventures

more media should cover tech outside the Valley