Building a Deep-Tech Ecosystem

Vineet Budki is CEO of CypherCapital, a ‘Web3 native’ VC firm based in the UAE that has led investments in the likes of Mysten Labs, Sei Network, Casper Labs, Web3Auth, ZKLink and many others. CypherCapital has evolved into a global presence, investments and insights. How did CyperCapital fare during COVID-19 and the ‘crypto-winter’? Are there signs Web3 is maturing from cowboy pump-and-dump to mainstream solutions? Will Gaming and Web3 really be the next big thing? Stay tuned for a conversation that probably should have happened earlier in the series.

One of the reasons for the continued growth of the UAE’s tech ecosystem, has been its ability to attract the world to Dubai. More recently, however, Abu Dhabi has made very significant strides in hosting mega-scale events - fashioning entire islands, such as Yas Island and Sadiyat island, for art lovers and racing car lovers to enjoy immaculately curated experiences. Ethara is a company that owns, manages and promotes some of the largest events and IP's in the UAE. This includes Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, alongside similar destination events including NBA and UFC in Abu Dhabi. We spoke with Baraa Khamis, Ethara's Chief of Digital and Technology Officer, to find out how it all works and how immersive digital experiences might merge with physical events infrastructure, in the future.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re drifting around a corner in Need for Speed, screaming ‘Get Over Here’ in Mortal Kombat, or dropping a banana in Mario Kart, video games are about one thing: Skill. Or are they? Aren’t video games also about having fun. Enter the debate over Skill2Earn, versis Free2Earn, and what the future of video games looks like. Shouldn’t users who spend upwards of 20 hours a week (and sometimes way more), be able to earn tokens, and exchange those tokens across other publishing platforms? Hasn’t this very tendency turned some supposed video games into glorified token farms? What about skill and competition? Skill2Earn gaming believes that when you execute that perfect uppercut, you get paid for it. So it is the best of both worlds?

In the UAE, Step Conference requires little introduction. But how did the darling of the Dubai tech scene calendar actually get started? What happened to the English and Arabic content websites? And what was it like running such a popular and successful conference … only to have COVID-19 shut down, well, pretty much everything. Ray Dargham, CEO and founder of Step Conference provides the inside story on how a student project at AUB has transformed, over time and with a little grit, into something far grander. This is the story of Step Conference from its foundings, to today.

Yuri Dvoinos sold his company Figleaf to Aura in 2020. He currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer at the Boston based cybersecurity firm, which is backed by none other than Robert Downey Jr. We wanted to begin our interview with “so what’s it like working with Iron Man,” but apparently everyone leads with this line, and they have not met. Also, Iron Man is a fictional character, so that would be weird. We digress. Yuri is a habitual entrepreneur. He’s workled on Kickstarter projects, digital education and has spent a decade right here in Dubai, where he bootstrapped 50M+ paying customers for Clario cybersecurity, a company he co-founded. We caught up with Yuri to share insights into how the city can attract talent, serve a global addressable market, and also grow into a new sense of itself as a mature tech industry, rather than a plucky upstart with a loveable swagger. Whatever the future holds, we hope Dubai keeps the swagger.

Hassan Al Noon is a graduate of the National Experts Program in Abu Dhabi, a mentorship program which pairs promising Emirati leaders with established experts in industry. Hassan’s capstone project focused on the development of deep-tech, and the need to create a collaborative ecosystem to support R&D in the UAE.