Written by Peter Thiel

Published in September 2014

I recently finished reading a book about startups. The name of the book is “ZERO to ONE”, written by PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel . My key takeaways from the book are the seven questions, that Peter Thiel recommends, that “Every Entrepreneur must answer:

1. The Engineering Question: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2. The Timing Question: Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3. The Monopoly Question: Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4. The People Question: Do you have the right team?
5. The Distribution Question: Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6. The Durability Question: Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7. The Secret Question: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see.

The book provides helpful information on being an Entrepreneur and how to be and remain successful. And how we can apply and answer these questions in context of Iranian Startups?

Let’s walk through one by one:

• On #1: Iranian universities produce lot of great engineers each year. But when it comes to creativity and coming up with new ideas, many of them tend to copy new ideas instead creating them. It might work for short time, but in the long run this will end up in a flop.  I like the quote from the film “Beautiful Mind” where John Nash says: “Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter.”
• On #2: Timing is another factor for any entrepreneur. I think the current Iranian market has a huge potential for launching new products and services, however we need to do our homework and be aware about the market trends and not to bee proud about our achievements.
• On #3: Thiel says monopoly, not competition, is the way to go. His advice to entrepreneurs is to find a niche and dominate it. From the current market situation perspective in Iran, many new ideas can play a monopoly role, but don’t forget, many similar ideas are on the way and this means you have to see constantly in your rear mirror.
• On #4: This is for me the most important issue many (established) Iranian businesses have in Iran and this is also a cultural one. Our education system never thought us to work as team during our 12 years of schooling.  Our parents encouraged us to compete with the others rather to collaborate. Teamwork should be learned and can be enhanced through education and proper working environment. We need to change our mindset and also trust others more thane ever.
• On #5: Many entrepreneurs I met, are very good engineers, but not a good salesman. No matter how strong is your product, Iranian startups underestimate the power of Sales and Marketing. Don’t be afraid, work also with somebody who has also have a sales and marketing background.
• On #6: Durability is another factor, which many Iranian businesses (not only startups) oversee. The reason is again our cultural mindset. We have never learned to plan for the long term. We want only make quick wins. Iranian businesses need to incorporate sustainability in their company culture.
• On #7: The education system in many countries (even industrial)  teaching us to stuffs that more or less are old standard. We never try to challenge those stuffs we learn in the school. We must learn to see what other people don’t see.

Looking forward to hear your thought on this review.

Happy Reading!

For more information and complete list of startups and etc you can check this out.

First of all, Divar has been developed on Android OS. After getting enough users, they developed the website and iOS application as well. The application is free and has more than 1 million active users on android. The application on iOS has been released lately and they’re working on it to make it better.

Two groups of people use Divar:

• Visitors who are searching for a service
• People who are going to provide a service

The second group is the main customers of Divar. Joining Divar and managing the advertisements is as easy as subscribing to a newsletter. After you submit your email address you will receive a link to your panel.

As Divar provides a service for all kinds of advertisement, there is two main branches. The advertise branch and the location branch.

With the location based filter you can see all the advertisements in a city. Cities shown on the first page, are being chosen by the population of advertisement in that city on Divar. If the numbers has passed the expected level, Divar will put the name of the city in the home page.

The other branch is about the advertisements categories. Except the employment category, all categories are free. Employer must pay for the job advertisement on Divar. If the employer did not delete the advertisement, every employment advertisement will stand on Divar 60 days.

There are specialized features in Divar. You can pay and use the urgent category in Divar. Every payment will put your advertisement in urgent category for 3 days.

So, Divar is an online Newspaper just presenting the requirement part.

This startup is the first of its genre in Iran. It has been launched six years ago and the first project was “Designing Logo for Pars Coders”.

Projects are classified as:

Time

• Short
• Long

Size

•  Small
•  Large

Complexity

• Simple
• Hard

The procedure is defined as:

• Order a project
• Select a freelancer
• Early Pay
• Delivery
• Payment

There are 11510 freelancer registered in Pars Coders. The average number of projects is 900 monthly and the total number of successful projects is 5374.

But here is the point: So, what were they doing those days of limitation? The answer: CafeBazaar is here.

CafeBazaar, founded by Hessam Armandehi, is a local app store for Iranian users who are using android devices.The aim was not just enabling people to download and use apps, also they can make money.The main probem of Iranian users besides restriction is that they cannot have an developer account and sell their apps officialy.It is because of the banking problem.However, there are many unofficial way that they use today for that.

CafeBazaar has also an android app that is more famous that its website.I can say that It is a combination of popular international applications and Iranian ones.You as an developer can apply your application and after a period of checking you can sell your local application and If your credit amount reach to 300,000 Toman(Approximately $100), they would take 30 percent of money and then they transfer rest of your revenue.In Addition, you can see the the reports of your app such as revenue chart and etc.

On July 2014, A report has been published by World Startup Report on The Economist that showed CafeBazaar is the third biggest internet company with $20M market valuation in Iran.

Some problems with that are that all of international apps do not publish as much fast as Google Play does.I said above you cannot find any apps on it but popular apps such as Facebook, Twitter and etc.Other problem is that the checking process lasts almost 5 working days.This process lasts just a couple of hours in Google Play Store.

Today, Google Play Store is open to downloading in Iran but the banking problem is still exist.

I am a big fan of music and I believe without music, life would be a mistake as Nietzsche said.Because of that interest of me, Beeptunes is one of my favorite startups in Iran.

So, What is Beeptunes? Beeptunes has three main goals:1.Providing discographies of music tracks and albums. 2.Accessing the newest music tracks and albums in the fastest way. 3.Respect the copyright laws of music tracks and finally selling the music legally.There are many arguments about international copyright law.Downloading is one of most serious problem in not just Iran, but many other countries.In Iran, we do not have strong and clear copyright law about musical and entertainment works especially foreign version.We are making people aware of buying legal products and tell them not to copy or download it in our media and advertisements.Maybe It is the duty of people to respect the rights of artists.

Amirreza Vohoushi (left) is the Founder of Beeptunes and also CEO of Rahnama Company.5th Iran Startups Meetups.June 17,2014.Photo By Hoora Vakili.

Now, beeptunes mainly wants to respect the rights of musician.It is not just Beeptunes works, but there are some nice collaborations between musicians and the company.They make a contract with musicians and sells their tracks and albums.It is a win-win situation.I can say in two words that it is a legal-downloading website.In addition, It has a feature of free downloading that owner of track(s) allow(s) them to sell for free.They have also an android app for smart devices geeks.

One main problem that I see people have in Beeptunes is the speed of its cloud server that reduce the rate of downloading.

Today, Beeptunes has more than 44000 music tracks which part of them are available for free.Based on an article that has been published on Donyaye Eghtesad Newspaper, they have sold more than 85000 single tracks from that time they launched.

Consequently, the way is long and competitors are around.They know this very well.Huh?