Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. He co-founded HealthCentral.com, one of the nation’s largest social and content platforms in health and wellness, backed by Sequoia Capital, Polaris Ventures, The Carlyle Group, Allen & Company and IAC Corporation. The company was sold to the health media publisher, Remedy Health, in January 2012 where Schroeder remained a board advisor.
Schroeder was invited to speak and mentor at the Celebration of Entrepreneurship in Dubai in 2010, one of the first major gathering of tech startups in the Middle East, and it began his journey that became Startup Rising. In thirteen subsequent trips to the region, interviewing over 150 entrepreneurs, investors and global tech leaders, he has written extensively about startups and technology in emerging growth markets for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Pando Daily, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider among other publications. He speaks regularly around the globe, and sits on the board of advisors of The American University of Cairo School of Business, the Jordanian incubator Oasis500, the Middle East online entrepreneur information platform and network wamda.com. He was named one of LinkedIn top 50 Influencers.
I have these moments where I’ll sit with someone from Sao Paulo and someone from Jakarta and someone from Cairo and like 80% of the conversations is the same, but it’s not the same conversation they’d be having in Silicon Valley or New York.
Chris Schroeder
On this episode, you’ll learn:
What was Chris’s first impression of the Middle East ecosystems back in 2010? [10:00]
How much of the narrative in emerging economies should be driven by VC-backed startup entrepreneurs vs. SME owners and freelancers? [13:05]
What types of companies are Chris’s favorite to see being built in emerging markets? [21:04]
Recorded in partnership with
PeaceTech Lab works to reduce violent conflict using technology, media, and data to accelerate and scale peacebuilding efforts. An independent nonprofit, the Lab brings together engineers and activists, MBAs and conflict experts, social scientists, data scientists, and other innovators to put the right tools in the right hands to build peace.
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