Palestine's startup ecosystem stirs into life Feras Nasr is the CEO and Co-Founder of AidBits, a Palestinian cloud-based data management platform designed for the non-profit sector that was founded in Palestine in 2011. It helps organisations operate more efficiently by allowing them to collect, find, learn from and share their data using one centralised platform. He calls Palestine the "Silicon Valley of NGOs"; an interesting perspective on the West Bank where NGOs proliferate like biblical locusts. For startup founders here, it's a difficult step to take the plunge and leave their jobs to devote their time and effort into making their startup succeed. Failure isn't widely accepted here and a social system that would provide security in terms of healthcare, education or unemployability assistance doesn't yet exist. The legal structure in Palestine needs to be improved to encourage startups to grow. While the process of registering a company has been improved and shortened, it is expensive. The legal structure isn't investor-friendly, and startups will incorporate outside of Palestine to comply with most investor requirements, leading to more complexities and expenses," he says. Despite this, a startup community exists in Palestine, especially in Ramallah on the West Bank. Here it is just like any other hipster-city. Meetups, hackathons and social media events all happen on a regular basis and accelerators abound. Then there are those of the Palestinian Diaspora who have returned to Palestine from abroad to set up in the country. This movement has been helped by GloPal, a social IT Network that connects people interested in advancing the Palestinian IT economy, a sector that is expanding with the Israeli arms of Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco outsourcing work there. According to PITA, the Palestinian IT Association of Companies in Ramallah, the emerging Palestinian outsourcing sector now accounts for more than 10% of Palestine's GDP, a figure that is rising every quarter. One Ramallah company, Ezents was started earlier this year by three Palestinian entrepreneurs. It is an events management company that lets organisers of different types of events to collaborate, manage, control and market their events using a web-based system. Organisers can use Ezents to reach out to their customers by integrating collaboration tools such as task management and budgeting, and other tools that reduce the stress associated with managing events Its co-founder Odeh Quraan is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company when he was studying for his MA in IT at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, when he started making web development contracts for UK and European clients. He has since transferred them to a team he employed in Palestine, capitalising on labour arbitrage to make a profitable company. This influx of entrepreneurs into the country is beginning to make a difference to the Palestinian startup ecosystem, but even getting into the country with a Palestinian passport as there is no airport. Without Israeli ID, Palestinians have to fly out of Jordan and then undertake a three-hour journey through the Jordanian border to come home. During my past two and a half years in Palestine, a positive change is taking place in the startup ecosystem, and we are beginning to see some promising start-ups emerge. However, the road is still long to get to a point where failure is accepted and taking risk is encouraged," concludes AidBits" Nasr. If you make it there, you can make it anywhere says Sinatra's song about New York, but it is a sentiment that many Palestinians in Ramallah and beyond will relate to. Like Job around 4,000 years ago, Palestinians" patience will be tried, but the its tech ecosystem is stirring; there could be interesting times ahead.