When the Egyptian startup Instabug launched its app last Summer, CEO Omar Gabr couldn't believe how bad their timing was. Inside their office in Egypt's capital, Cairo, they had just put out a beta version of an app that rapidly identifies glitches in software and lets users provide feedback on those glitches, and everyone lavished it with praise.
But outside, the streets were jammed with people violently protesting Egypt's government, and the country was in the middle of a military takeover. It's hard to talk about business opportunities when the nation's future is murky at best.
Though the riots have somewhat waned since summer, Egypt's political turmoil has been ongoing since January, 2011 and was on display again on Monday after Egypt's interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi suddenly announced his own resignation and the resignation of his government. That turmoil has done what you might expect—damaged the economy, harmed international relations—but its effect has also spiraled out into Egypt's fledgling startup community.
See also: Out of War-Torn Syria, an Unlikely Startup Blooms
Egypt's revolving government over the past three years has made investors less willing to dole out cash to new businesses, especially when many new CEOs are better at discussing fanciful company ideas than turning those ideas into a staff, office space and money. And the stnartup community is small and experiencing growing pains, because tech scenes feed off new people who bring new ideas, which are hard to come by when it's difficult for anyone to see past the political violence to startup success.
Yet by many accounts, many startup founders have pressed ahead with their dreams. Startup fever has slowly spread from Cairo, the country's capital, into Alexandria and upper Egypt, and plenty of people believe the country's tech community as a whole has big potential. Transforming that into a thriving culture, though, is something founders should know is easy to say and trickier to do.
“One thing that entrepreneurs struggle with in Egypt is to get quality support," said Hossam Allam, founder of Cairo Angels, a company that invests in startups.

Participants in the Cairo Startup Cup plan out their business.
Image: Cairo Startup Cup Cairo Startup Cup
The country has incubators that help waves of infant companies get off the ground, but there is no ocean of experience to tap into like there is in, say, Silicon Valley.
"For Egypt's ecosystem to mature, we have to get more qualified entrepreneurs mentoring younger entrepreneurs," said Sean Griffin, CEO of Startup Cup, a competition for entrepreneurs that takes place in three regions of Egypt. "The more people who can gain those skills, stay in Egypt, and then have the desire to give back or pay it forward, over time that's when we're going to start seeing the ecosystem really take off."
Griffin's business competition is both a means of accelerating new companies and evangelizing the need for startups to help each other. He and others take a look at business proposals—last year from 264 groups in Cairo alone—and select 12 each year to work with, as compared to 50 startups that participate in Silicon Valley's famous Y-Combinator classes. From there, the Egyptian companies spend 5-7 months developing their product and going to market.
The idea is not only to grow businesses, but to get these startup founders to mentor future waves of entrepreneurs. His organization runs a mentor program to select businesspeople who he thinks can help navigate new companies to profitability.

Image: Flickr, Omar Robert Hamilton

Egypt has been through an off-and-on revolution since 2011, and violent clashes between political groups on the streets of Cairo have left hundreds dead in just the last few months. Though the intensity of riots has somewhat waned since the summer, startup founders and venture capital firms say the bloodshed has left investors more nervous than they already were about investing in companies in a country whose government is in transition.
"Definitely the political climate has a negative effect on our progress," Nahla El-Shamy, customer relations manager at RecycloBekia, an Egyptian startup that helps other companies safely get rid of their data and recycle in an environmentally friendly way, told Mashable. "We are dealing with international companies to complete our refining process, and sometimes we are facing hard cash cycles due to the client's fear to pay any advanced amount of cash because of the unstable scene of Egypt."
Political unrest leads to unpredictable consequences in the business world, and "unpredictable" is one of those buzz words investors try to avoid. That unpredictability also messes with the growth of Egypt's startup community in terms of the number of entrepreneurs.
Abdelrahman Magdy, founder and CEO of Egypreneur, another Egyptian venture capital firm, told Mashable that his organization scheduled plenty of entrepreneur meet-ups that never took place because of street violence and a government-imposed curfew in Cairo that was designed to keep potential protesters off the streets past dark. On top of that disruption, it's hard to galvanize a community around the idea of new business ventures when there is constant violence outside your office.
“It takes a bit of time for people to get back to their usual working habits, and it’s also a bit tricky for organizations to decide [what to spend their money on]," Magdy said. "We cannot really broadcast messages of positivity and moving forward and stuff like that, but rather you have to slow down some of your messages and some of your activities because there is something going on in the country."

Image: Cairo Startup Cup Cairo Startup Cup

Just like a startup that flees Ohio for the West Coast of the United States, a new company in Cairo might leave that tumultuous political atmosphere for the burgeoning business environment in Dubai, and others have flown halfway around the world to Silicon Valley.
Omar Gabr, CEO of Instabug, left for the U.S. soon after his company launched their beta amid last year's military takeover of the Egyptian government. He knows investment opportunities in Silicon Valley are brighter, and those opportunities are less likely to shy away from a company that is conducting a portion of its business outside a country in turmoil.
Yet Gabr does want to stay in Cairo and, despite the botched launch of the beta and the fallout that followed, Instabug has become a huge success, as have RecycloBekia, companies such as Fawry, an online banking service, and others. The nation's startup community, though still largely based in Cairo, has expanded to Alexandria and even more agricultural regions of Egypt. Plus, company founders, venture capitalists and others believe the startup network only got started after the revolution in January, 2011, making it a mere three years old with plenty of time to flourish.
"I would say [the startup community] is midway to maturity," Ziad Mokhtar, a principal at Ideavelopers, an Egyptian venture capital company, told Mashable. "The engagement of entrepreneurs and investors have shown resilience despite the turmoil in the country. I believe as the political unrest subsides, the effort of many startups will start bearing their fruits."
Griffin, the Startup Cup organizer, thinks growth will spread as long as the current tech scene guides the entrepreneurs to come.
"Egypt's really a special place, and there's definitely something powerful there that relates to this entrepreneurial community that's growing, and it's important for that to continue to be nurtured," he said. "It's still delicate, you know, in the time that it's been around. My hope is that it continues to get stronger and becomes a force for positive change."
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Image: Sean Griffin