Habib Haddad of the E14 Fund at the MIT Media Lab and Ziad Sultan of Google discuss emerging ecosystems and the power of communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Mark Weber of the MIT Media Lab gives the introduction.

The MIT Venture Capital + Innovation Conference is held annually in February at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Thank you to our lead sponsor IBM Research, as well as Solvay, Wilmer Hale, Finnegan, The MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the MIT Startup Exchange, and Startup Hub Boston. Visit http://www.mitvcconference.com/.

Habib is a serial entrepreneur and an early stage investor. He is currently the President and Managing Director of E14 the MIT Media Lab fund focused on early stage companies out of MIT. Prior to that he was the founding CEO of Wamda, a platform of programs and networks that aims to accelerate entrepreneurship ecosystems across the Middle East and North Africa region. He also served as a Venture Partner of Wamda Capital, a growth capital VC fund. His work in the MENA region is credited with playing a key role in strengthening its nascent entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Before Wamda, Habib was based in Boston where he founded Yamli an award winning startup focused on linguistics and the Arabic language. In 2012 he sold the technology to Yahoo! He was also the founding member of Mok3, a venture backed MIT CSAIL spinoff that developed an image based modeling software

In 2009, the World Economic Forum recognized Habib as a Young Global Leader and was named as a top innovator under 35 (TR35) by the MIT Technology review in 2011. In 2013, He was the Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum council on entrepreneurship and currently sits on the Global Future Council on Systems and Platforms.

Habib holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer and Communication Engineering from the American University of Beirut and a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Ziad leads Product Management for Newsstand, Google Play’s premium newsreader installed on one billion mobile devices. Prior to joining Google, Ziad founded Nextly, a venture-backed curation platform used by top publishers including the Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

Previously, he was a Venture Capitalist with Longworth Venture Partners, and is currently an Angel Investor. Ziad holds a B.S. and an M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.