saunokonoko ink

Robert Xie’s small wooden garage in Sydney’s north-west was unremarkable but for a tiny clue that hid a terrible secret.

There, on the concrete floor, underneath the bottom of an unused wooden tallboy, was a faded bloodstain, smaller in size than a cigarette lighter.

Full article: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2017/06/17/dna-tests-changing-criminal-trials/14976216004797

by Mark Saunokonoko

Competitive stair running doesn't give a damn how fit you are, so the theory goes. You only find out if you'll be any good once you're ascending the claustrophobic spine of a beastly skyscraper that very first time, step by step, clamouring for air and the way out. Australian Mark Bourne is one of the world's great tower runners. To make it up the planet's tallest buildings and iconic superstructures like the Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower and Taipei 101, Bourne recommends not starting too hard and avoiding looking at floor numbers in the stairwell. Both will break you, one way or another. Full article: http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/how-to-climb-a-skyscraper-20160728-gqfy6p.html

by Mark Saunokonoko

Brett Archibald has days when he thinks he's actually dead; that everything has just been a dream since being plucked from the ocean in a rescue that defied the most unbelievable odds.

The South African surfer describes those days as a kind of out-of-body experience. He comes to, parked in his car on the side of a coastal road in Cape Town. It's always the same. The rain is lashing down from thunderous skies, and the ocean is raging – just like that black, stormy night when he fell into the sea from his surf charter boat in Indonesia, 100 kilometres from anywhere and anyone. Hopeless.

"I've been sitting in the rain, sobbing my eyes out and scratching my flesh to draw blood because I thought in my mind I wasn't really alive, that I'd fallen overboard and I'd actually died," Archibald says.

by Mark Saunokonoko

The millisecond Kevin Hines let go of the hand rail on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge he was hit by an overwhelming feeling of regret.

Fifteen years after he should have died, Hines is talking to 9 Stories, recounting the day he vaulted over the barrier of San Francisco's iconic bridge and survived. At the time he was suffering from severe untreated bipolar disorder.

The 75m freefall is the same height as a 25-storey building, and it takes four seconds to reach bottom. Only one percent of jumpers survive the brutal impact. Several of Hines' vertebrae shattered and splintered like glass. Miraculously, he walks today.

Published Good Weekend Magazine (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age).

I wrote a 2500 word feature on Feliks - the greatest speed cuber of all-time.

http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/feliks-zemdegs-cracking-the-rubiks-cube-20150821-gj50m9.html

Published The Saturday Paper, front page lead

Mandy cannot forgive Defence for the lack of support she and her family received after war left her partner violent, abusive and finally homeless.

- Read full story

Published Forbes Middle East, February 2015

By Mark Saunokonoko

American writer Greg Easterbrook once reckoned you can torture numbers and they will confess to anything. Of course he’s correct, yet the available data on the tech gender gap is undeniable and points to an abysmal low level of female participation in the burgeoning sector. A 2013 study conducted by Startup Compass, a Californian research firm specializing in analysis of the tech industry, revealed that just 10% of worldwide Internet startup entrepreneurs are women. But, while women are conspicuous in their absence, for those who view tech ventures as a male domain, it could be time to think again.

Though fewer in number, research by Google shows women-led tech companies achieve 35% higher return on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12% more revenue than male-owned tech companies. The same 2014 study by the search giant revealed women are highly efficient with capital, running companies on two-thirds the funds of their male counterparts.

Against this backdrop it is rather mystifying to find gender diversity across the Silicon Valley tech titans so tremendously lopsided, particularly when the Middle East, a region fraught with perceptions of gender inequality, boasts a tech startup scene with a healthier 35% female presence. Publicly released employment data that emerged in August showed that the teams at Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter are each approximately 70% male versus 30% female. Yahoo, with CEO Marissa Meyer at the helm since 2012, tips the scales 60/40 in favor of men.

As an Egyptian residing in the US, Rana el Kaliouby co-founder of tech firm Affectiva, straddles both worlds. For her, there are two sides to gender imbalance in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. On the one hand, yes, she acknowledges a lack of women role models as she set off on her entrepreneurial journey five years ago. On the other, el Kaliouby believes, and she tells this to her daughter, it’s also an advantage, because you can stand out in an ocean of XY chromosomes.

She should know. El Kaliouby has raised $20m in funding from tier one venture firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Horizon Ventures on the back of Affectiva’s pioneering facial reading software. This highly nuanced technology, developed by el Kaliouby herself, can accurately measure human emotions though interpreting minute facial expressions and is finding exciting—and lucrative—applications in smart wearables and gadgets, gaming, mobile and advertising.

“On my list of challenges in starting a company in technology, being a woman is not in my top 10 or 20,” el Kaliouby insists. “There are a lot more challenges around hiring, finding customers, raising capital. These are the problems at the top of my list and will be at the top of other founders’ list, whether you’re a woman or a man.”

The Cairo native speaks candidly from her office in Boston, Massachusetts. She sits not far from MIT Media Lab, where she honed the Ph.D research she had conducted at the University of Cambridge into the beginnings of what is now Affectiva – employer of 35 staff, and with corporate powerhouses like Coca Cola and Unilever as clients. El Kaliouby admits eyebrows were raised among family and friends—all “very well-educated and open-minded” people—when she veered away from the security of academia into the uncertainty of the startup world. “I was an outlier,” she nods.

“Being out there and showing other women that this is possible and being a mentor is something I care deeply about,” says el Kaliouby. The 36 year-old mother of two is also a United Nations World Ambassador for Women’s Entrepreneur Day, and has graced many of the tech industry’s media rankings of the accomplished and ‘ones to watch.’

El Kaliouby shares a telling anecdote about attending TechWadi’s forum in June of this year, a large annual gathering in Silicon Valley of the best and brightest Arab minds in global tech. It is a mingling of entrepreneurs, luminaries, accelerator networks, VCs and investors, invited by the highly influential non-profit organization, who are based in San Francisco. “Very smart, very committed, very accomplished people all in one room,” reflects el Kaliouby. “I was humbled to be part of that group.”

She was also apprehensive. She was due to take to the stage as part of a panel discussion titled Arab Women Rising. “I have to say I thought [the panel] was going to be a disaster,” confesses el Kaliouby, worried disinterested men would make beelines for the exit and evacuate the conference room en masse. Instead, it was one of the most popular sessions of the day. “There was great participation from men, and a very lively debate and dialogue around how we can involve more women in technology and support more women to go out and start their own companies,” says the tech entrepreneur.

TechWadi, with its charter to build bridges between Silicon Valley and the Middle East, is eager to reform what it sees as a misplaced perception problem when it comes to the role of Arab women in the tech startup space. Four of its seven board directors are women, including el Kaliouby, who was invited to join the TechWadi board following the June forum. Furthermore, one in three entrepreneurs TechWadi selects to accelerate in Silicon Valley is female.

“I believe this is the golden age of Arab women leadership, especially in tech,” effuses Dr Ossama Hussanein, who sits as chairman on the TechWadi board. “The quality of startup women founders, their leadership styles, creativity, values and impact is most impressive.” From his home in San Francisco’s Menlo Park, the epicenter of US venture capital, Hussanein reels off a dozen Arab women business leaders and entrepreneurs, and quietly adds: “Almost invariably these women are focused on a double bottom line of value creation and social impact.”

TechWadi has recently thrown its support behind WOMENA too, a Dubai-based angel network that launched in November this year, made up exclusively of high net worth female investors.

WOMENA co-founder Elissa Freiha, 24, is well-armed with a raft of regional statistics about education, wealth and Arab women, that suggest the angel network, which is invite-only, may be primed for lift off. The pre-screening process will be intensive, claims Freiha, to ensure that angels are suited for membership and ready to make several investments each year. “The average angel investment creates an average of four jobs,” she declares. “If we have 20 angels, all able to make one investment, the impact is huge–not just for the startup, but the economy of a region.”

Freiha, of Emirati-Lebanese origin, says angel networks in the US are comprised of just 15 percent women, while that figure falls even lower across Europe. She tells of attending meetings of angel investors in the UAE with her co-founder Chantalle Dumonceaux, where they were consistently two of a mere handful of women in the room. “That can be quite intimidating,” says Freiha. “We want to bridge the gender gap by informing and educating women to be strong investors.”

WOMENA will invest in both male and female led startups, with founders pitching to angels at monthly demo days, confirms Freiha. “Surprisingly, most of our shortlisted entrepreneurs we have looked at so far have been women, which is fantastic but it wasn’t necessarily a preference for us.”

Access to funding is one area where women founders fare terribly compared to men, says Salma El Hariry, founder of startup cultivator and mentor program ScaleUp Ventures and co founder of tech accelerator PITME Labs. Google research shows that women founders receive roughly four percent of available venture capital.

“Most VC funds and angels are men. And men trust men,” maintains El Hariry, who has recently relocated to her home city of Cairo following a stint in Silicon Valley, where she was heavily networked across the startup scene. “When it comes to accountability and responsibility they think because of the obligations of marriage and kids that women are a risk.”

Freiha is keen to impress that WOMENA should not be interpreted as us against them. And El Hariry, who has participated in prominent San Francisco women groups Girl Geek Dinners and Girls in Tech, adopts a similar tone. “It’s really important to build women support groups, to highlight the issues and feel that you are not alone. But to solve these problems we need to include men in the conversation.”

Most of all, success stories will break down and shift out-dated narratives, says El Hariry. The right initiatives, support structures, talent and desire all seem present in a young, blooming ecosystem. Time is sure to tend the outcome. Thrustful leaders will continue to accelerate change.

Published EDGAR Middle East, February 2015

By Mark Saunokonoko

As with so many of life’s great ideas, the premise for Uber was beautifully simple. Push a button and get a ride. This was the idea punted around between both of Uber’s co-founders as they stood stranded, cold and miserable, in Paris on a December’s winter night in 2008.

Setting up an interview with Uber’s top man in the region, their Head of Middle East and Africa Expansion, is equally straightforward. It comes fast and it comes easy.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. Only two weeks before, Uber, the transportation and ride-sharing app, had been battered by a proper shit storm of negativity as one of their most senior executive rainmakers was exposed wanting to build a team of dirt diggers, armed with a Dr Evil sized budget of $1million, to smear journalists who were critical of the company.

It was a rotten incident, and it prompted legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, and the first outside investor in Facebook, to infamously call out Uber out as being “the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley”. Uber, who were increasingly being painted by the media as some kind of brash schoolyard bully, had finally gone too far, reckoned multi-billionaire Thiel. Enough was enough, he said. There were Uber’s fights against taxi unions on multiple fronts; rumours of anti-competitive dirty tricks and poaching drivers from rivals; legal battles with city regulators across swathes of the US, Europe and Asia; and then there were accusations of an aggressive, misogynistic company culture that permeated down from its co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick.

Californian native Kalanick, 38, a self-proclaimed veteran brawler from the startup mean streets, is today believed to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of $3billion. Uber is currently valued at $40billion, and is a real chance of becoming a ‘super-unicorn’ – Silicon Valley parlance for an elusive tech startup with a value that grows so preposterously, frighteningly large that it is considered a freak of nature. Facebook, Google and Amazon are members of that rarefied $100billion plus club. Data shows, in each decade, 1-3 of these super-unicorns will be born.

Uber’s Dubai office is situated in the top floor corner of an otherwise non-descript low-rise, glass façade building in the city’s media and tech zone. Inside the third level corridor, Uber’s gunmetal gray door, marked with its distinctive black and silver logo, is closed and locked. More security conscious than their office block neighbours, an intercom and camera lens greet visitors to Uber’s first - and most important - regional outpost.

Around 18 months ago, Anthony El Khoury became Uber employee number 1 in the region. He is the man in charge of all international launches across the Middle East and Africa - a hit-and-run, fix-it role, a bit like Harvey Keitel’s Wolf in Pulp Fiction. El Khoury is 28, smooth talking, good-looking and eminently likeable. He’s well educated. Search out Uber employees on LinkedIn: look at where and what they studied; previous companies they’ve worked; and you’ll see the top tier talent Uber likes to recruit. He smiles big. If you want to dislike Uber, then El Khoury makes that difficult.

Dressed in jeans, untucked white collared shirt and charcoal loafers, sans socks, El Khoury kicks back in his black chair in a sunny boardroom, as the theory of any publicity is good publicity is discussed.

“It’s been maybe a difficult couple of weeks for Uber,” he acknowledges, and explains why the hatches haven’t been battened down. “We have a very important message to get across, and it’s a message of Uber changing the way people travel in a city.”

The ‘transforming transport networks’ theme is something El Khoury will press throughout the conversation. Equally, he is keen to distance the term ‘disruptive technology’ from the Uber model. And, yes, he believes Uber is misunderstood.

“It’s the media,” says El Khoury, “who portray Uber as this big corporate company that is going to come and aggressively take over the market.” He raises Facebook’s PR woes over data privacy issues – for so long Mark Zuckerberg’s Achilles heel – before saying something that rams home the ambition of the Uber vision and mission. It feels a little unsettling to hear him speak it, because it sounds almost, well, evangelical.

“The publicity that comes with Uber, or any company that is trying to move the world to a better place, is very mixed … Uber has a lot to give the world. It really is changing how people transport themselves and travel in cities.”

Change the world. If that sounds mildly delusional then it’s important to get beyond the perception that Uber is a neat Silicon Valley idea where an app on your smartphone orders up a car to take you from point A to point B. Think about the implications of Uber’s rapidly scaling technology, and how Travis Kalanick and his ‘Math Department’, as they are known internally, a team of Ivy League rocket scientists, computational neuroscientists and nuclear physicists, envision Uber shaping cities of the future.

Kalanick’s company, with its model of merging technology bits and real world atoms, plans to make Uber so ubiquitous, and its cost so low, that you will no longer need to own a car. To achieve this Uber needs tremendous scale. By the end of 2014, Uber had spread into 252 cities across 50 countries, and continues to grow at an explosive rate. Uber cars are right now available to 55 percent of the US population. Latest statistics show the Uber platform is creating jobs for 20,000 new drivers every month, and the company has just raised another$1.2billion, earmarked for further expansion into Asia Pacific.

UberPool is the brainwave that Uber is betting on to radically lower costs – and thus bring about radical change. Currently being tested in several key US cities, with UberPool, you share a ride - and split the cost - with another person who just happens to be requesting a ride along a similar route. Uber claims that UberX, their lowest cost service (Uber Black is premium limousines and SUVs), is on average 40% cheaper than taxis. They say UberPool has the potential to shave another 40% from that price point. El Khoury thinks UberPool could launch in Dubai from the middle of 2015.

It’s way too early to gauge whether UberPool can work, let alone be a success, but Kalanick’s crew of big data crunchers and analysts are clear about the profound effects this bold idea could have. One fully utilized UberPool car makes enough journeys, they predict, to take 12 cars off the road. Uber points to London, where 3 million cars are used only 5 percent of the time. Car parking takes up 14 percent of space in the city, and congestion is amplified with cars driving around searching for scarce parking. Energy, environment, economic efficiencies and the well being of urban communities can all be touched by Uber, so the thinking goes. Expand the mindset a little further and start imagining driver-less Uber cars. Google Ventures, who have already developed working prototypes in this field, is a $258million investor in Uber. “This is the future,” says El Khoury. “This is where we want to get to.” Kalanick sure has ruffled some feathers along the way, but do ‘nice guys’ bring dreams as big as this into reality? The Uber CEO’s focus on the mission has been described like that of a heat-seeking missile.

El Khoury has met Kalanick several times, including lunch with the CEO while attending Uberversity, an induction program where all new global recruits travel to San Francisco and spend two immersive weeks learning about each division in the company and the Uber culture, which El Khoury describes as “very open, very transparent.” Every Uber employee is awarded stock options, says El Khoury.

He clasps his hands behind his head, pauses and reflects, when asked what Kalanick, his polarizing chieftain, is like. In life you come across would-be entrepreneurs with their big idea, says El Khoury. “When I met Travis, within five seconds I understood why this guy made it and others did not. He’s super smart. You can ask him about any Uber metrics on any city and he will answer. He is in sync with everything Uber that is happening all over the world. I cannot imagine the workload he has.”

Each Uber city team runs a lean, bootstrapped operation, made up of three people: a general manager (alpha personality, 10 years’ experience post-MBA), ops manager (analytics guru, focused on supply) and community manager (creative whizz, responsible for demand). When Uber Dubai first began, the team worked out of El Khoury’s home. “Yes, we are a huge international company,” he says, “but we’re a local startup in each city.” El Khoury runs through each city Uber is operating in across the Middle East and Africa, grading their performances against expectation. Dubai, which is Uber’s fourth fastest growing market outside of the US, gets an A+. “Uber HQ is very happy with regional progress,” nods El Khoury.

It’s dark and some time after 8pm when Mudassir Sheika, cofounder of Careem, Uber’s regional rival, sits down at our street-side café table in Dubai’s media zone. Taxis are on the hustle, horns are honking. There are no early finishes for Sheika, not when there is a turf war unfolding in key cities across the Middle East. “This really is a 24/7, 365 business,” says Sheika, who launched Careem in July 2012, a little over a year before Uber entered the Dubai market.

Sheika’s tan trousers, black leather shoes and white collared shirt with sleeves rolled mid-arm hint at his background as a former McKinsey consultant. Equally, his responses to questions – considered, intelligent and informed – are the hallmark of a Stanford Computer Science and Economics graduate. Like Kalanick, there’s a determined, steely focus to Sheika.

Days before our meeting, Careem announced they had raised $10million. Sheika arrives in a buoyant mood, though he won’t reveal where that funding puts the market valuation of Careem. He does say Careem will use the battle chest to double down on existing markets, currently 14 regional cities; expand into new territories; and strengthen the technology platform. Their new Saudi investor Al Tayyar is a major player in the tourism and hospitality sector. Sheika says Al Tayyar brings fleets of cars, numbering in the thousands, and customers to the table – not just cash.

“[Uber] are trying to drag us into a price war,” claims Sheika, as talk turns to their competition. Careem’s counterpunch, he says, is to soak up the supply of drivers – an essential cornerstone of the on-demand service. Fewer drivers equals slower response times means a drop in service levels. Sheika goes off the record to explain how, he says, Careem is already winning the hearts and minds of drivers – or ‘captains’ as Careem calls them. There is no secret skullduggery involved, but what Sheika reveals are clever strategies, and Careem clearly see this as an area to be exploited.

Sheika says although both offerings may look comparable that Careem is the more reliable service. He outlines several operational features that, he claims, give Careem a local edge over global Uber. Careem has a call centre, and they have built their own maps, processes and algorithms – all specifically geared to tackling chaotic cities and ever-changing streets and road networks in MENA. “Anyone can get one trip right,” he says, “take ten trips, then let’s talk.”

He pauses when asked about Uber’s company culture. “I’d like to think that we live in a paradigm of abundance versus a paradigm of scarcity,” says Sheika. “You won’t see us booking competitor cars or poaching their captains. From the little I hear and read, we don’t aspire any day, any minute to be like them. We feel there is a different way that business should be done. We feel that how we conduct ourselves is a huge competitive advantage.”

Anthony El Khoury checks the time. There are only two hours to go before Uber’s festive promotion of delivering on-demand Christmas trees across Dubai begins. Moving products, not just people, is a space Uber (ice cream, kittens, burgers) and Careem (suits, cupcakes, sheep for slaughter) are both experimenting with. Micro logistics and local deliveries could be the next sector to be given a shake- up. El Khoury talks about changing “incumbent industries” – a favoured phrase of Kalanick to describe the taxi business.

El Khoury remembers London being brought to a standstill last summer, when the city’s iconic black taxis went on strike over unlicensed Uber drivers operating in ‘their’ regulated industry. Amid all the striking hullaballoo, the Uber app went from being 32nd most downloaded in the UK to number one spot for the next two months straight. “We do prefer to show our positive side,” says El Khoury, “but the reality is publicity is publicity.”

Published EDGAR Middle East, December 2014

By Mark Saunokonoko

After batting several emails back and forth, agreeing to certain off-limit topics and a digital handshake to ensure his closely guarded anonymity is retained, everything is finally in place.

The brains behind popular satirical news website The Pan-Arabia Enquirer (PAE), let’s call him Mr. A, tells me this will be the very last interview he plans to give. His claim doesn’t sound like a wind up, but how sure can you really be when the mystery man in question has built a loyal band of followers through artful satire masquerading as comical regional news?

“Part of the fun of the website is that people don’t know who is behind it, and that’s why I’m determined to keep it a secret,” confesses Mr. A. “So the more stories and interviews that come out, it kind of tarnishes that.”

The likes of CNN, Vice, The Wall Street Journal, Dazed and The Guardian have all come calling in the last 12 months; some out of curiosity over this unlikely pairing of satire and the Middle East, others fascinated by the gaffes made by ‘real’ journalists and media organisations who have embarrassingly reported the PAE’s stories as fact.

Mr. A allows himself a chuckle when asked about those infamous hook, line and sinker moments: “It’s like all my Christmases have come at once.” Karma and social media humiliation paid a visit to Pakistan’s biggest-selling English broadsheet when they flat out plagiarised a PAE story that was wildly claiming Qatar, in response to very real rising political tensions among GCC member states, was banning Saudis, Bahrainis and Emiratis from Harrods. Other hall of shame entries include Al Arabiya TV running a segment on a Dubai man who had supposedly paid $200,000 for the privilege of reserving the region’s first iPhone5, and several newspapers fell for the brilliant - almost plausible - ruse of Emirates introducing onboard shisha lounges on their fleet of A380s. The shisha send-up crashed the website through sheer volume of traffic, and remains the PAE’s most-read story.

“There’s always that worry that you’re just going to run out of jokes and material, but it generally seems to come thick and fast,” reflects the Enquirer’s chief illusionist. A quick scan of the site’s headlines reveals the nature of this so-far bottomless pool of inspiration: Stunned Gulf motorists line up to see ‘indicator’ device at Luxury Car Show; Man lost in Dubai Mall for 13 months describes ordeal; New luxury cinema service allows guests to sleep through film and have someone tell them what happens after. Mr. A, who was raised on a diet of popular British comic Viz, enjoys tomfoolery but is no fool. “I think from living here for enough time you know what you can and can’t do.”

Despite the cloak and daggers to arrange the interview, our conversation, when it transpires, isn’t exactly a secretive Edward Snowden meeting in a questionable three star Dubai hotel room. We connect over Skype (sans video) 9pm on a Saturday night, and Mr. A is breezily slicing and dicing ingredients in preparation for a dinner party while we speak. His girlfriend interrupts us mid-interview with a call from the supermarket to confirm what kind of curry paste he needs. They settle on masala.

The PAE story began back in Christmas 2005, when Mr. A and a couple of likeminded pals mocked up a satirical front page of UAE news to alleviate a case of the festive season bores. The Dubai Enquirer, as it was first known, was born. It was circulated via email amongst friends, and slowly began to enjoy a fledgling, cult-like following. “This was when Dubai was in silly season, building all these ludicrous projects and towers,” remembers Mr. A. “So this was our way of not taking the place as seriously as it took itself.” One year later, and with a mailing list of around 2,000 readers, the pin was pulled. “Sometimes we just couldn’t compete with Dubai, and reality beat satire on so many occasions. There was one particular announcement for a tower in the shape of a man in a kandura, and I just thought: ‘Oh, you win, I couldn’t even have come up with that one’”.

It lay dormant until three years ago, when it was reincarnated as The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, resplendent with a mischief-making, news style website and the nuisance enhancing tools of Facebook and Twitter for Mr. A to amplify the fun and games.

Today the website records 400,000 monthly page views, according to the PAE’s media pack. And if you think its audience is primarily a bunch of expats having a giggle at everybody else then you’d be mistaken, says Mr. A. More than 50 percent of readers are Arab, he says, who also regularly email in ideas for him to fix his crosshairs on. Positioned next to the site’s traffic statistics is a screen grab showing clothing brand Diesel’s online ad campaign on the Enquirer. And while potential advertisers do come knocking, seduced by the viral nature of its content, Mr. A reckons the PAE is a bridge too far for most marketing departments, who struggle with the uncertainty of jumping into bed with the playful Enquirer.

“By and large, the Enquirer has been very well received, which has been hugely rewarding,” he says. “But I couldn’t say that everyone loves it.” He pauses, and breaks into a laugh. “A lot of my traffic – certainly for the bigger stories – comes from people who just don’t get it. They see a headline and the red mist rises and they are absolutely outraged at whatever ludicrous suggestion I have put across.”

The sound of background chopping stops, Mr. A lays the knife down and explains: “I don’t go out there to upset people. That is absolutely not what it’s about. I’m not doing stuff so that people get outraged. If people are outraged it’s simply because they haven’t read the big thing at the top that says ‘this is a joke’. And I think this is one of the things about social media. You just see a headline, a few words, and you’re instantly outraged and want to tell all your friends how outraged you are. But you just can’t be arsed to take 10 seconds and have a proper look at it, and realise that it’s a joke.

“It’s not my intention to piss people off at all - but it is quite funny when it happens.” Mr. A’s speech and delivery throughout the interview is lively. At times he drops into almost character-type voice roles, and deadpans well-timed sarcastic one-liners, to magnify the humour. It’s easy to believe him when he says the intention all along was to just make a small circle of friends laugh. “There was no grand plan for social change or millions of dollars.”

Political satire in the Middle East is not a pastime to be taken lightly. “Somewhat awkward bedfellows,” is how Mr. A diplomatically describes it. The Enquirer isn’t afraid to get political, but it is very careful to not defecate in its own backyard. Revolutions in Egypt, uprisings in Bahrain, Syria’s civil war, Israel’s blockading and bombing of Gaza and Barack Obama’s White House administration have all been picked up by the Enquirer in one way or another. “I have to say some of our stories that cover Gaza or Syria, they’re not always particularly funny. Satire doesn’t have to be funny all the time.”

One only need look to Egypt and Bassem Youssef to grasp the delicate balancing act that is unavoidable for satirists in the region. Known as “Egypt’s Jon Stewart”, having shot to prominence during the Arab Spring and the 2011 uprising, Youssef suddenly announced he was ending his popular TV show in June of this year over fears for his family’s safety. Youssef’s lampooning of political, military and religious leaders was embraced by a population that had been starved of free speech for almost three decades under the Hosni Mubarak regime – but the heat was never far away. Youssef, whose show began in 2011 as a homemade YouTube channel, was forced to change television networks on three occasions before its latest cancellation.

“Satire can be a very powerful tool,” says Mr. A, who especially enjoys designing the PAE’s notoriously funny merchandise, largely a collection of coffee mugs and t-shirts emblazoned with razor sharp slogans and artwork.

Our time is drawing to a close, and dinner guests will soon be arriving. I ask Mr. A if he considers the Enquirer to be a success. “I think part of the Enquirer’s success is down to the fact that satire is quite new over here, and people don’t really understand it or they haven’t really got to grips with it,” he says. “Has it been a financial success? No. Has it made me laugh? Absolutely. Has it made other people laugh? It seems to. So, yeah, I would say it has been a success. It’s difficult maintaining it, and it is hard work. And I have to admit that there are times when it does feel like a job. But it’s a job that I very much enjoy.”

Published EDGAR Middle East, October 

By Mark Saunokonoko

Jawad Mian breaks into a grin and shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he laughs, when I half-jokingly ask if he’s expecting to be invited as a panelist to Dubai’s inaugural bitcoin summit in December.

“Look, I’m not a bitcoin basher,” explains the 30-year-old financial markets analyst, as we signal a waiter for the cheque and close off a long lunchtime discussion on the cryptocurrency. “I just take a critical view, and right now the sentiment around bitcoin is so positive that people don’t want to hear the other side.”

The other side, according to Mian’s way of thinking, points to a rather bleak conclusion that nobody holding bitcoin really wants to hear or entertain. If you own bitcoin, sell. He is adamant: “Bottom line, it’s a bubble.”

Mian speaks rapidly, and his comprehensive thesis on where the price of bitcoin is headed – and why – is expounded across the table like the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun.

Although bitcoin had been launched four years earlier, it was last year that it really took off. On New Year’s Day, 2013, one bitcoin was worth $13. Come the start of October, bitcoin’s price had steadily risen to around $100. Nine astonishing weeks later it had ballooned to $1150, and ‘To the Moon’ became the tub-thumping battle cry for bitcoin diehards the world over.

“That’s an 89-fold rise,” exclaims Mian, almost in a state of agitation. He goes back to look forward, pointing to Dutch tulip mania in the 1600s; the rise of gold in the 80s; the dot-com crash of 2000. Mian, a deep thinking disciple of economics, finance and history, pauses and stares at me through his Woody Allen style specs. “Bitcoin has seen the most extreme price appreciation of any asset, at any time, ever.”

Since the giddy highs of last year, bitcoin’s price has shed more than half its value, and for the last four months has been in a slow bearish descent, hovering in and around the $500 mark. Mian envisions more pain to come. “Typically you see bubbles correct 85 percent, so based on that scenario you should see the price of bitcoin collapse further over the next 12-18 months to somewhere around $300.”

Greed and fear, together with herd instinct, comprise the twisted heart and soul of all speculative bubbles. Bitcoin is no different. Enter Alejandro Sánchez, a former professional online poker player turned fulltime bitcoin trader, whose livelihood depends on his ability to gauge the intensity of sentiments at play in the bitcoin market.

Sánchez agrees to meet me in a café in Downtown Dubai, his local neighbourhood and arguably the most prestigious address in the city. We sit and he tells me he is soon moving into a new apartment in the Burj Khalifa, which towers over the Dubai Fountain and the swarm of tourists below, vainly attempting to crowbar themselves and the 800m silver skyscraper into selfies.

I try on a number of occasions, and in various guises, to ask how much money he is making, and in particular how well he did during the bitcoin boom of late 2013. Sánchez, a lean Spaniard with short-cropped dark hair, piercing bright blue eyes and a more boyish face than his 25 years suggests, isn’t biting. Good poker players don’t blink.

He does tell me, in a rich Madrid accent, that he’s been trading bitcoin fulltime for almost one year now. “People think I have another job, or that maybe I am joking,” shrugs Sánchez. He has never had a traditional job. He recounts a story of working as a lifeguard at a swimming pool over the summer break when he was 16 and deciding then and there he didn’t ever want to be in the position of an employee again.

Sánchez left school at 18 and entered the world of online poker, quickly realising he could make a decent living on the virtual tables. His strengths? Smart math, shrewd bankroll management and never, ever getting emotional. Sánchez also went on to build the biggest online poker school and news site in the Spanish-speaking world, which he has since sold. Once again (frustratingly) he won’t reveal the sum, but he does say that it has financed his foray into bitcoin.

“Trading in bitcoin is not like trading stocks,” Sánchez says, leaning forward. He describes the bitcoin market as being particularly prone to the madness of crowds and the kind of price volatility that gives ice cool traders a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

It’s easy to forget that, until last year, bitcoin was an obscure virtual currency being quietly championed and groomed by a niche of cryptographers, hackers and tech geeks. These pioneers used their computers to mine bitcoin, a process of verifying transactions by solving mind-bendingly difficult cryptographic problems. They were rewarded with bitcoin. The 5000% meteoric rise of bitcoin in 2013 made many of these early adopters wildly rich, and spawned an unlikely group of millionaires. The mysterious mastermind behind bitcoin’s open source code, Satoshi Nakamoto, (a pseudonym for an anonymous ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘they’), is believed to own around one million bitcoins – a bounty which at the peak of 2013’s bull run was worth a staggering $1billion.

“There are a lot of young kids who own thousands and thousands of bitcoin, and when the price starts to go down they think they are going to lose all their money and they start to panic,” says Sánchez. “That’s when you can make profit.”

He sees similarities between the bitcoin market of today and the frontier days of online poker. Sánchez speaks of easy pickings at poker tables before the explosion of the online gambling industry created a new breed of card sharks. “There are very few professional bitcoin traders around right now,” he says. “It’s a risky market, and it’s a small market.”

Sánchez, a pragmatic man adept at rationalising odds and outcomes, seems largely unconcerned as to whether the price of bitcoin goes up or down. But he is a self-confessed believer in cryptocurrency technology and he wants bitcoin to succeed. Have people missed the boat? “No, it’s not too late,” he counters. Several high profile bitcoin evangelists, who could hardly be considered impartial, believe a single bitcoin can one day be worth tens of thousands of dollars. I put Sánchez on the spot, asking for a 12-month forecast. “We could see bitcoin go as high as $5,000.” He pauses, before adding glibly: “But it could still fail. It could be zero.”

And that’s part of the problem for the bitcoin neutral. Who or what to believe? On the one hand you’ve got legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffet claiming bitcoin has zero intrinsic value and is a ‘mirage’. And then there’s iconic Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen – a man with a knack for spotting winning trends and technologies – who predicts that bitcoin will be as transformational as the internet itself.

Bitcoin is more than just a digital currency. It’s also a cryptographic technology that enables a peer-to-peer exchange and payment system without the need for a trusted third party. Few pundits question that this revolutionary technology holds great merit and potential power. It’s the value of bitcoin where things get foggy. Buffet argues that cheques and money orders transmit value, just like bitcoin, yet both cheques and money orders in themselves have no actual value.

Guardian technology writer Alex Hearn observes: “There's no fundamental reason why bitcoin should have any value at all. The only reason people are willing to pay money for the currency is because other people are willing to as well.” 

Never scared to take a punt on uncertainty, Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists sniff an opportunity and in the first seven months of 2014 have invested $158million in bitcoin companies. That figure is up from $90million last year and $2million in 2012. Growth, for sure, but relative pocket change in the Palo Alto economy.

Mian, who defines his role as solving complex intellectual puzzles to figure out future trends, themes and opportunities, reflects on the political roots of the cryptocurrency. “If you look at the libertarian psychology behind bitcoin, it’s a movement against evil government and bloodsucking banks. If you create something that invades the way a government runs the country, which is money, then the government isn’t going to stand still. Technologists have had so much success disrupting music, media and telecoms they feel this is the next wall they’re going to break down. I can understand that psychology. However, I think it’s misplaced because they don’t fully appreciate the history of money, and the way governments run an economy.”

Sánchez walks through a list of potential risks and developments that would likely cause panic and the price of bitcoin to plummet and crash. Chief among them is the idea of central banks developing their own cryptocurrencies.

Mian agrees, and predicts such an outcome is ultimately inevitable; that governments will move to counter the threat but embrace the technology. “I see bitcoin as the first in a series of innovations in this space,” he concludes. “It’s not the solution or the endgame.” 

By Mark Saunokonoko

Zomato’s aggressive expansion is hurtling the company towards a showdown against US tech titans Yelp and Trip Advisor. With no intention of slowing down, founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal has global ambitions and $10m plans for MENA.

Just after midnight, in the small hours of August 23 this year, Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, logged into his Twitter account and sent out a tweet to his 4040 followers: Big hug to all who said we cannot build a global tech company from India.

Earlier that day, Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery business founded in Delhi in 2008, had just announced their expansion into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Goyal and his executive team had negotiated deals to acquire the leading online dining guides in both countries for $3.25million, and the addition of this eastern European duo boosted Zomato’s international presence to a total of 15 markets.

This double acquisition was yet another indication of Zomato’s aggressive appetite for growth. Only two years prior the tech startup made its first move outside Indian home soil, entering the UAE. Success in the emirates emboldened Zomato, and inside the next 24 months they had quickly and methodically added Brazil, United Kingdom, Qatar, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia, Philippines, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Turkey to their rapidly expanding portfolio of markets.

Goyal’s tweet, crafted with Gen Y social media bonhomie, and simple though it seemed, was infused with a deep sense of Indian pride. And in the context of everything that had unfolded, from Zomato’s beginnings as a bedroom startup to its latest round of funding in November 2013, when they raised a whopping $37m, it was something of a rallying cry for the inevitable showdowns that lie ahead against the world’s biggest online user review portals, Yelp and Trip Advisor.

“There isn’t another Indian tech company that has scaled internationally the way we have,” reflects Goyal, 31, a Masters graduate in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi. “It’s good to be a leader. There’s a very healthy startup community in India so there are lots of companies here who are encouraged and believe they can take on global markets.”

Self-belief is a principle Goyal is keen to instill in his worldwide team of 800 employees (500 are based in India). In fact, now more than ever, he says, mindset is critical. Zomato have just deployed a team of 30 into Toronto to break open Canada. This move will act as a North America testing ground and launch pad for a push into the US – the Holy Grail for online businesses seeking lucrative exits by way of acquisition or IPO, and the backyard of tech giants and competitors Yelp and Trip Advisor.

Goyal lightheartedly toys with a David versus Goliath metaphor, before bringing the bigger picture back into something much more manageable and real. “It’s not about us being up against brand names,” states Goyal. “It’s about building a great product that people want to use.”

Zomato has a monthly user base of 25 million across web and mobile, up from 15 million this time last year, with just over half of those visits coming from outside India. Mobile platforms account for 55% of total site traffic.

The numbers offer up a promising narrative, and Zomato have raised $55m over five rounds of funding. Notably, Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential VC firms, invested in last November’s $37m Series D round, which gave the Delhi-based tech company a market valuation of $161m. In the financial year ending March 2014, Zomato reported operating revenues of $4.9m, up 168% from the previous year. Over the same period, they incurred EBITDA operating losses of $6.75m – a jump of 311% - but this was largely a consequence of international expansion. Zomato is currently profitable in two markets - India and UAE.

Goyal refutes suggestions of over-inflated valuations and speaks instead about building revenues beyond their local ads business model, which comprises 95% of total revenues. “What we really want to do now is create the entire dining loop,” outlines Goyal. This means developing online booking functionality, integrating payment systems and connecting merchants with users, he says. The other key strategic shift over the last 12 months has been a focus on driving social engagement, and this explains the emergence of Facebook and Twitter-like social elements that have evolved Zomato into more than just an exhaustive directory of restaurants and menus - last count: 261,900 global listings.

There is a sense that the modifications and adding of bells and whistles are all part of an underlying master plan to be ready and battle hardened for the US. Goyal won’t be drawn on timelines, but does add: “We will be looking at another round of funding before we launch in the US.”

In the meantime, Zomato’s intent is to add another 11 countries in the next six months, and they have earmarked $10m for expansion in the MENA region. Goyal confirms Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Oman are on the hit list, and that Zomato are set to intensify their efforts to monetise Qatar, which is currently seeing 10% month-on-month growth in traffic. “Saudi is a very, very big market,” says Goyal. “We feel it is a fantastic opportunity for us.”

Zomato’s operations in the UAE were profitable just nine months after launching into Dubai in September 2012. They now list 10,000 restaurants across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, with 750 of those restaurants being active advertisers to a monthly UAE audience of 2 million users, says Goyal.

The UAE team, currently 50 strong, is about to be “aggressively ramped up” in preparation to cover the remaining emirates of Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Quwain. One of the key differentiators between Zomato and its competitors is the depth of its content and information. There is no short cut to achieving this, says Goyal. Zomato puts feet on the ground, painstakingly gathering menus, taking photos and maintaining a database of up-to-date details – hence the large numbers of company employees. The upside of this is the frontline gatherers, who visit each restaurant once every three months, double down as a sales force.

Goyal, hampered by a cold and a mobile phone that buzzes relentlessly throughout the duration of the interview, confesses the things that keep him awake at night, aside from his year-old baby daughter, are the same issues Zomato has always faced – growth and hiring the right people.

Focus is listed as his favourite word on Goyal’s Twitter bio, right underneath a profile picture of him casually dressed in a black hoodie, smiling and looking like a regular kind of guy who knows how to have laugh. Focus, he says, was the antidote against the knockers who told him the dream was too big, and that it couldn’t be done. “We have silenced our critics to some extent,” reckons Goyal in a matter of fact fashion, but he doesn’t linger the point. “We’re just getting started and there is a long way to go.”

By Mark Saunokonoko

As you sit in Raw Coffee Company’s popular Dubai warehouse café, listening to the hum of a busy espresso machine and surrounded by sacks of beans stretching towards the 30-foot ceiling, it seems absurd to consider the Kiwi-owned boutique roastery very nearly went bankrupt before it made its first cup of coffee.

“We were still insolvent even in year four,” remembers Kim Thompson, founder and managing director of Raw. This was the long tail of a troubled beginning in 2007. They’d been blindsided by an internal family dispute at a German manufacturer which left Raw, who’d been out to establish themselves as Dubai’s first organic, fair trade roastery, with no roasting machine for eight long, despairing months and buckling under crippling overheads.

By the time Raw got their roaster, the money had run out. They were forced to sell in late 2008, and downsize operations into a converted 40-foot container where they started again, serving up their locally roasted premium blends that have since seen Raw become the darlings of Dubai’s java aficionados, including members of Dubai’s royal family.

“When people tell you that you need three years’ cash flow, listen to what they say,” says Thompson, who sold her home as Raw fought to survive. Money was borrowed – but not from Dubai’s banks, which have a notorious rejection rate of 75% for SME loan applications. Instead, family came to the rescue; and debt - so often the unlikely friend of the entrepreneur - was a powerful motivator.

It was really only two years ago, admits Thompson, who co-owns the business with fellow Kiwi Matt Toogood, that it looked like Raw was going to make it. “We were tenacious,” she says. “We were on a rollercoaster that we couldn’t get off.”

For all Dubai’s glitz and glamour, even in the early 2000s there was no decent locally roasted coffee, recalls Thompson, who was managing a café in the emirate before she founded Raw. “We were bootleggers, bringing in bags of coffee from our favourite New Zealand roasters back to Dubai inside our suitcases.”

Toogood, a former senior manager for Telecom, and Thompson, a registered nurse from Nelson, might not have known much about the coffee trade – but they’d spotted an opportunity. Raw had small, but very clear, ambitions: “We were thinking there was a gap in the market for roasting organic, fair trade coffee,” says Thompson. “We weren’t even thinking about commercial supply.” So much for plans.

The past three years have seen Raw post consecutive year-on-year growth of 45 per cent. In 2007, their first import was one pallet with 10 sacks (690kg) of Arabica beans.

This year, Raw will grind and supply cafes, restaurants and retail outlets across the United Arab Emirates with four container loads (75,000kgs) of ethically sourced beans from Ethiopia, Congo, Colombia and Yemen. No wonder then that banks are now calling every day to offer finance, and wealthy Arabs are proposing partnerships or franchise deals in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So far, all comers have been waved away.

There is an exit plan, says Thompson, who is designing a home for the plot of land she owns in Bali. “But I don’t want to leave any time soon because it’s fun now.”

Fun means an incredibly ambitious wave of new initiatives over the next 12 months. Thompson confesses delegation doesn’t come easy to her. Needs must. One month ago Raw hired an operations manager from New Zealand. He’s going to be very busy.

Staff numbers, currently 19, are set to double. Raw are about to close the deal on a new 7000 square foot warehouse which will double their storage capacity. A second Raw café is to open at one of Dubai’s premium retail precincts. They’re going to market with a “super premium” brand called Mokha 1450, in a corporate social responsibility partnership with an American equity firm who want to focus on poverty in Yemen, where the prized Mokha bean is sourced. And – perhaps most surprisingly of all – they are launching a breakaway retail brand that will operate from barista kiosks in the lobbies of Dubai’s most prestigious commercial towers.

Thompson says this brand – whose name is currently being trademarked – promises to be edgy and will jolt conservative, corporate Dubai. Another differentiator is the coffee. Baristas will serve ‘Third Wave Coffee’ – a movement where only the best-trained baristas work with special origin beans and techniques to create an artisan product and experience, like winemakers. Guerilla marketing and aggressive sales targets (1000 cups per day per kiosk) are cornerstones of the business plan, where you’ll also find the word franchise.

“This is an opportunity to build a new brand and franchise it,” says Thompson. “Raw will not be franchised. We don’t want Raw to lose its soul.”

Thompson loves coffee, like really loves coffee. Talk to any specialty roaster and you’ll discover an almost OCD approach to plantations, elevations, climates, bean varieties and roasting techniques. She ponders the merits of different espresso machines and grinders, like Jeremy Clarkson might a Ferrari and Porsche.

That obsession over product and process saw them signed up by Verre, Gordon Ramsay’s first restaurant outside the UK, and Raw’s first commercial client back in the day. “It was a huge breakthrough,” reflects Thompson. Dubai’s restaurant and café trade took notice, and others began to follow. “People come to us because we have a reputation for very good coffee,” says Thompson. “And we care.”

Every year Raw sends employees to courses in Europe to learn the latest techniques and trends, and they invest heavily in training the baristas at venues they supply. So focused is Raw on quality that potential new clients must submit business plans to prove they are committed to a programme of staff education and will invest in a minimum spec of espresso equipment. Thompson is clear on this: “We’ve worked so hard to get where we are that we know there are certain types of businesses we don’t want to work with.”

In a part of the world where exploiting unskilled labour in favour of the bottom line is the norm, Raw has chosen a different path. They pay their original frontline staff, a diverse bunch hailing from India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nepal, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil, double the market rate. Raw employees can access interest-free loans to buy land and meet family expenses. “We want our team to stay with us on the journey,” says Thompson. She proudly beams that Raw has produced three UAE barista champions, and Toogood won third place at a Turkish / Arabic coffee world championships in June.

Beyond word of mouth, events (they’ve just bought a 24-foot FedEx truck from the US for onsite promotional work) and social media – especially Instagram – have been critical marketing tools for Raw.

“We’ve had very powerful royals and Sheikhs come in, who are being followed on Instagram by huge numbers, posting images of our coffee and café,” says Thompson. She recounts a story about the barista training and coffee appreciation classes they hold regularly at their warehouse. “We didn’t know it at the time, but we had one royal family member standing on a wooden pallet doing her own dishes. Someone came over and said: ‘Do you realise who that is?’ No idea. But she likes coffee.” 

Published EDGAR Middle East, September 2014

By Mark Saunokonoko

Stories. You’d hope a man who has photographed and toured with some of rock music’s biggest names is going to have a few ripping yarns to share. Julian Castaldi doesn’t disappoint.

The tape is running for several hours as Castaldi, an affable 45-year-old photographer and enthusiastic raconteur, blazes through an odyssey that traverses venerable rock pits on LA’s Sunset Strip, tour buses and bars across Europe, arenas and hotel rooms in the US, all the way to his new home city of Dubai.

It can be hard work keeping up with him. Even Castaldi, his banter full of humour, much of it the self-deprecating variety, has trouble chasing his own tail. “My wife Ellie told me to make sure I talk before I have three or four drinks,” he warns.

Throughout the interview, Castaldi, unshaven and dressed like “an old skater” in baseball cap, t shirt and long, baggy shorts, often hits dead ends on maze-like anecdotes: “I need Post It notes,” he shrugs. “What was the question? I’ve forgotten the point,” he laughs. The words Destination and Journey are each tattooed on a left and right forearm.

It’s amusing. Never boring. Hey, man, this is rock n roll. A roll call of rock gods and superstars he’s snapped on film peppers the conversation: Oasis, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Iggy Pop, Black Crowes... the list goes on. He toured extensively with The Charlatans, Supergrass and Stereophonics, documenting life on the road and backstage hijinks. “There are stories,” nods Castaldi, when asked about groupies and partying, “but I don’t want to pin specifics to people because there would be backlash.”

He has felt the venom before. One of Castaldi’s most remarkable tales of the afternoon is of Kelly Jones, lead singer of Stereophonics, discovering the long-time band photographer had got together with his ex. “It blew up with him coming over and smashing my cars up and me smashing his head into a 1950’s American vintage fridge in my house. It was unpleasant.” Jones later wrote and released a song about the incident – Rainbows and Pots of Gold - which Castaldi is adamant he has never listened to.

Castaldi grew up in the Welsh valleys and had been boyhood friends with members of Stereophonics long before the band formed. “There was nothing I enjoyed in school, apart from painting and drawing,” remembers Castaldi. “And in the valleys there wasn’t particularly a burgeoning art scene.”

At 17, he sold up his record collection and, with a thousand quid in his pocket, boarded his first ever flight to Los Angeles, finding a cheap place to stay above a Venice Beach jazz club. “I started going to clubs and photographing all those epic Sunset Strip bands of the nineties. Great craic, rubbish pictures,” laughs Castaldi, recounting meetings with Slash and Motorhead’s Lemmy in iconic Hollywood venues Whiskey a Go Go and The Troubadour.

It’s compelling to try and live out rock’s inner sanctum vicariously through Castaldi, but he’s quite content to have all that in his rearview mirror. Now, he rises early, cycles to Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach in the mornings to swim and relax and then pedals home to quietly work on his art until late.

“Coming to Dubai was all about trying to spend more time painting. I love it more than photography. And there comes a time in life when you really need to do what you love,” says Castaldi. He talks about several friends in the music industry who didn’t have an off switch and never made it out alive. “It’s better to fade away than burn out – it really is,” offers up Castaldi in a rare moment of seriousness. He lightens the mood with a story about actor John Malkovich. “Great guy. I did a piece of collage art for him, commissioned by him – of him! Maybe he got sick of watching himself on DVD?”

Castaldi will this month exhibit a year’s worth of work in Dubai’s Gallery One, and he’s excited about the latest new beginning in his “random life”. He reflects on missed opportunities to exhibit in big galleries because he’s not naturally the pushy type. So, is he here to play the game in Dubai? “Yeah, I am. Because I’m older and wiser and I want to live in a house by the beach.” Family matters to Castaldi. He speaks often and fondly of second wife Ellie, and there’s likely to soon be an extra small mouth to feed. “Next year it’s on the cards for me,” he grins, raising his glass. “The oldest new dad in Dubai.”

Does he ever get nostalgic and pine for those crazy days? “I suppose now, looking back, you don’t realise how privileged you were. But, no, I wouldn’t want to go back. There’s no privacy on those tour buses and people are caning it, some more than others. All you’ve got between you and that party is a curtain - and some tours last six months.”

Throw into the mix regular in-band fighting and bickering with tour managers over “the demon cash” and it’s clear the lifestyle can quickly take its toll. Castaldi tells of two well-known singers having emotional meltdowns right in front of him – one at a bar and another over the breakfast table. “I didn’t know what to do,” he exclaims. “I mean, I’d find that awkward if it was my wife.”

The commercial photographic work he now undertakes – Tom Ford, American Apparel, Adidas – is less chaotic and better paid. Castaldi reckons he always finished tours dead skint. The real pay off, he says, was opening the bus door in a new city and stalking the streets and alleyways with camera in hand.

“I love it here in Dubai,” smiles Castaldi, who claims the city’s only problem is a dress code that stops him wearing his beloved baseball caps inside bars. He begins to elaborate and pontificate, but instead somehow weaves off into a narrative about photographing a feuding Public Enemy in a Bristol hotel room. The tape rolls on.

Published Forbes Middle East, July 2014

By Mark Saunokonoko

Dubai is uniquely placed to profit from a bitcoin revolution. The time is now and the payoff could be profound for the pioneering emirate.

As governments debate the need to regulate bitcoin, a vacuum is forming that may render discussions a sideshow to an endgame of much greater consequence. The instinct to cautiously regulate the cryptocurrency may, in hindsight, be a classic case of failing to see the wood for the trees, if some of the world’s most influential technologists are to be believed. If Europe, China and the United States continue to pass legislation that risks smothering the nascent technology, could this spawn a Silicon Valley 2.0 in a location away from the tech cradle of San Francisco? And what if Dubai were the ideal place for this emerging Bitcoin ecosystem?

Bitcoin, claim enthusiasts, will be the catalyst for the next wave of high-tech growth and development. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreesen believes it will be as big a deal as personal computers and as transformational as the Internet itself.

The implications could indeed be huge, but the jury is out on just what the future has in store for bitcoin in its most widely-known form as a virtual currency. Meanwhile, less well documented, but of greater significance, is Bitcoin’s potential as a groundbreaking technology that could disrupt traditional financial models and payment systems, and revolutionize the way people pay for, and own, things.

It is on this technological level that start-ups and venture capitalists are fizzing with enthusiasm for Bitcoin. Tech geeks foresee boundless opportunities for innovation. California’s venture funds sense a new frontier and potential cash boom. Global financial institutions are wary of a game-changing technology that may challenge their hegemonic power. Regulatory agencies around the world have, for the most part, adopted a cautious view, or already passed early legislation that is keeping colossal sums of VC money on the sidelines – for now.

Arising from the regulatory uncertainty is an opportunity for a country to declare a progressive Bitcoin-friendly environment and claim pole position in the race to become the world’s Bitcoin epicenter.

Bruce Fenton, Founder and President of the US-based Bitcoin Association, and a 20-year veteran of Wall Street finance, is bullish over Dubai’s credentials to step forward as Bitcoin’s global hub. Fenton asks what might just be a multi-billion dollar question: “Ten years from now what is going to be the new Facebook, the new Google, the next Microsoft - and where will that company be?”

All roads lead to Dubai, according to the expert on the peer-to-peer payment system. “Dubai is what’s next in the world. And Bitcoin is what’s next in the world of finance and technology. So it seems to be a natural fit.”

Central to this, argues Fenton, are Dubai’s tax structure, low levels of regulation, open immigration and hands-off attitude towards the private sector. “These things are exactly what have contributed to Dubai’s growth and they’re exactly what made the United States grow 60 years ago.”

A US Government announcement in March that the IRS would treat bitcoin as a property, not a currency, was a body blow for the digital movement. The tax implications were clear in a neat explanation from Bloomberg: “Paying for a $2 cup of coffee with bitcoins bought for $1 would trigger $1 in capital gains for the coffee drinker and $2 of gross income for the coffee shop.” The burden of bookkeeping for everyday purchases was impossibly impractical; the cryptocurrency’s price dropped 17% the week of the announcement. Conversely, this served to strengthen bitcoin’s viability in a tax-friendly economy like Dubai.

Fenton is critical of an “over-zealous” US approach. “In the United States and some of the more heavily regulated economies the first reaction is ‘how can we regulate something?’ And in the Gulf it’s sometimes more like ‘why should we?’”

But there are concerns. Bitcoin affords users a degree of anonymity, which creates a potential channel for money laundering by criminal elements. Although, Fenton, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker, shrugs off what he sees as a red herring.

“[Money laundering] happens on a much, much larger scale in the mainstream financial system to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars—far, far larger than the entire size of all bitcoin in existence.”

The 42-year-old from Boston says money laundering is a government concern, and that the public is rightly more interested in job creation and a strong economy. “I don’t hear a lot of people saying, ‘they’ve got to do something about those money launderers.’”

So far, the official Dubai Government position on bitcoin is unclear. The sole communiqué has been from the Department of Economic Development (DED), which in March declared that no bitcoin licenses had so far been granted in the emirate.

More broadly, the Middle East remains quietly watchful. Only the central banks of Jordan and Lebanon have released official statements, both recently issuing cautionary consumer warnings to its citizens over the use of virtual currencies.

Fenton, who acts as GCC advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has engaged in “high level” bitcoin discussions with regulators across the GCC–in some cases, Royal Court level.

The mood of GCC regulators towards the virtual currency and technology in those meetings “has been pretty good,” says Fenton. He pauses, and reflects: “I’m cautiously optimistic. Dubai is an exciting area of the world that is not afraid to take bold steps and do big things. I think it would make sense for Dubai to be the leader in this space.”

Christopher LaBorde, a 34-year-old American technology broker, has extensively researched the application of Bitcoin in the UAE – with particular focus on Dubai.

Widespread adoption of bitcoin transactions by merchants could open up a new layer of niche tourism in Dubai, fuelled by those around the world who have made a small fortune from the rising value of the digital currency, predicts LaBorde.

LaBorde, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Steve Jobs, believes Dubai, with its glamorous hotels, shopping and nightlife, has all the ingredients to become a “beautiful Pied Piper of bitcoin commerce”.

He also points to a “perfect personality match”, in that Dubai’s long-standing culture of trading gold and silver is a close real world representation of bitcoin. Both are commodities that fluctuate in value and can be used as currency, says LaBorde, and this part of the world, more than any other, has a level of comfort with that duality. Allow the Bitcoin technology room to breathe, he urges, and watch global tech talent, international start-ups and venture capital flow into the UAE economy. “Someone in government is going to have to champion this adventure,” presses the American broker.

In March, HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, launched his strategy for Dubai to become a world-leading Smart City. The vision featured 100 initiatives, yet there was no mention of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, by nature, decentralizes and removes total currency control, and this can be a scary idea for any government, acknowledges LaBorde. It’s always safer to say ‘no’, he says, but there are too many “incredible upsides” and “like any classic technology lever, once you see it, you can’t un-see it.”

LaBorde, who has a background scaling up start-ups and technology, believes bitcoin can provide a solution to the Middle East’s high proportion of citizens without bank accounts (anyone with a smart phone can operate a bitcoin wallet and store cryptocurrency). This, combined with the region’s massive remittance market, some of the world’s highest rates of smart phone penetration and youth bulge, make the Middle East a prime market for Bitcoin companies to flourish.

Still, despite the potential, only one merchant in Dubai – a pizza outlet – currently accepts bitcoin. Local start-up Umbrellab is awaiting a license so they can roll out 400 bitcoin ATMs across the city. Founder Tarik Kaddoumi says the Bitcoin scene in Dubai is ready for lift off, and that Umbrellab is one of many start-ups waiting on Dubai’s Government to categorize bitcoin and approve licenses.

These are delicate times, and just how the DED classifies bitcoin (currency, commodity, property or technology) will be pivotal. Ideally, for local bitcoin start-ups, asserts Kaddoumi, the DED will opt for commodity or technology. The one word they are dreading? Ban.

Kaddoumi’s Umbrellab is getting proactive, in an attempt to cut through bureaucratic confusion, educate government departments and expedite classification. “We’re now talking with our legal team, trying to classify bitcoin ourselves, and then we’ll present our ideas to the DED.”

So, how does Dubai advance its Bitcoin strategy? LaBorde proposes a government sponsored bitcoin exchange, providing regulators a level of comfort and control, and the administering of appropriate licenses.

Meanwhile, Bruce Fenton, who sits on the liberal end of the free market spectrum, believes Dubai should establish a Bitcoin economic free zone and companies be allowed to operate in a regulatory-free environment for a 10-year period.

The theme for Dubai Expo 2020 is Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. It’s a declaration that resonates harmoniously with Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer platform. But catchy slogans are easily conjured up by marketeers. It will be fascinating to see how Dubai, never afraid of a challenge or putting its head above the parapet, might walk the talk. They say a particular kind of athlete is made for certain decisive occasions. Can the same be said of a city?