Ray Dargham set up his starup company and now connects small firms with business leaders
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:09 One day, a group of people that run something called the
00:12 Company Program walked into the classroom.
00:16 It's a three-month program where, as students, we would
00:19 create a team, a company, using real money.
00:22 And you need to create a real product and build a business
00:25 out of it.
00:25 So we did that for three months.
00:27 We won the competition in Lebanon.
00:29 It was just an amazing experience.
00:31 Then suddenly, I was back at school, and there was no
00:33 program anymore.
00:34 Something was always missing.
00:36 I was imagining myself--
00:37 I'm like 60 years old-- thinking, what
00:39 would make me happy?
00:40 From that day onwards, I decided I'm not going to apply
00:43 to a single job.
00:44 I'm going to start a company.
00:46 Five days after I graduated, I went on a plane and came to
00:50 Dubai.
00:51 When you're first starting up any company, anything that
00:54 you're doing, nobody knows you.
00:55 I also didn't know a lot of people in the city.
00:57 When we did the program, I think part of me was inspired
01:00 from people coming together and meeting each other.
01:03 So I decided, OK, the best thing I can offer is a
01:06 platform for people to make meaningful connections and to
01:11 help grow their businesses.
01:12 And that's when Step was born.
01:14 I remember when we did the first Step conference.
01:17 We had no reach.
01:19 I'd have all sorts of nightmares about the event was
01:22 empty, nobody was there.
01:24 But it was amazing.
01:25 By the end, people came in.
01:26 And then you see that energy and that vibe go up
01:30 exponentially throughout the event.
01:31 And as talks happen and as people have more
01:34 conversations, all of a sudden you go from being
01:37 extremely stressed to being really happy and excited to
01:41 what you're seeing.
01:42 The first five years or six years, almost every event we've
01:45 done was met with great success.
01:47 The timing was really right in terms of the city and in terms
01:50 of the startup ecosystem growing really fast.
01:53 And we went from barely being able to get a few startups to
01:56 showcase to being able to get 85 startups to showcase.
02:00 And all of a sudden, we wake up and learn that the world is
02:04 shutting down.
02:05 And it was very obvious that we were going to be
02:08 most hit by COVID.
02:10 The first thing is taking care of your people.
02:12 At the end of the day, what a business is, is a collection
02:15 of people that created it.
02:16 It's really nothing else.
02:18 We had to go through a lot of staying on our feet.
02:21 And we managed to do that successfully for two years.
02:24 This year was particularly stressful because we were all
02:27 in the fate of the company.
02:28 It was on the line.
02:29 But then on the day, it's kind of looming away.
02:31 We had a lot more people, a lot more excitement, a lot more
02:34 engagement.
02:35 I'm proud of Step being a part of this growth in Dubai and
02:39 the region, playing a crucial role in fostering and growing
02:43 what's today a multibillion dollar ecosystem, creating
02:48 hundreds of thousands of jobs around the region.
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