On Tuesday 23rd of April 2019, Neil Flemming, Founder of MENA Angel Investor, had a fireside chat with Heather Henyon, Founding General Partner of Mindshift Capital, at the Middle East Investment Summit (MEIS) 2019 about venturing beyond ‘traditional’ deals: accelerating the MENA startup ecosystem.

Middle East Investment Summit is a networking platform that brings together people from regional and global sovereign wealth funds, family offices, private and institutional investors and high-level fund managers and economists. Middle East Investment Summit has been running for 20 years now, helping fund managers and companies build firm relationships with the region’s biggest institutional and private investors. Typically, a ratio of 2:1 investor to fund manager attend the conference. MEIS is a two-day event with around 800 attendees and 150 speakers.

This year MENA Angel Investor took part in the conference where Neil Flemming gave an inspirational talk alongside Heather Henyon, both shedding light on the power of women in leading successful startup businesses. Neil started by sharing his experience with hiring women engineers in his own startup company, Asset Integrity Engineering. He found that women are hardworking, resilient, coachable, and resourceful.

“Asset Integrity Engineering then grew to become a market leading engineering, software and training services company in just 6 years. AIE currently has 50% female workforce in different levels of seniority, which is not common in the Oil and Gas industry or even the engineering sector”, said Neil. Recognizing the contribution that the female workforce made, Neil set to provide a platform to assist women entrepreneurs in developing their businesses by launching MENA Angel Investor.