Successes in the tech sector are examples of Saudi Arabia’s growing diversity, inclusion, and innovation
Endeavour Saudi Arabia in collaboration with Endeavour Insight launched its latest research project that studies, analyses, and maps the activity and connections in the entrepreneurial tech ecosystem in Riyadh for the past 20 years. The report is titled Mapping The Riyadh Tech Sector: A Network Analysis of the Entrepreneurship Community and was published during an event that hosted the Endeavor network in Riyadh and with the attendance of Eng. Haitham AlOhali, Vice Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Successes in the tech sector are examples of Saudi Arabia’s growing diversity, inclusion, and innovation.
The report focuses on understanding scaled companies in the ecosystem, who these companies are, who leads them, how long it took for them to scale, and what support they need to expand. The purpose of the study was to provide insights into the sector’s current state, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and enable decision-makers to better understand and support local tech entrepreneurship.
Research showed that Riyadh’s tech sector has grown rapidly with 50% of companies in Riyadh’s tech ecosystem founded in only the past five years, but only 18% of those young companies have become scaled companies.These scaled companies provide the majority of jobs in tech in Riyadh with 90% of jobs created by only scaled companies. The ecosystem’s growth has accelerated in recent years from VCs, government initiatives, universities, and globally connected support organisations.
Social network analysis was used to visualise the Riyadh tech sector. This methodology helps trace the flow of people, capital, and information among entrepreneurs, their co-founders, employees, mentors, investors, and other stakeholders. Network maps highlight existing entrepreneurial assets and challenges in a community grounded in the experience of entrepreneurs rather than secondary data, and point to opportunities to increase access to capital, talent, or markets.
Riyad Bank supports the research as a strategic partner, Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center (Wa’ed) as a supporting partner, OCEANX as an ecosystem partner, and is also backed by Endeavor Saudi board members.
