"Open-mindedness, high trust, diversity, team-building, information-sharing, willingness to take risks, experimentation, rapid iteration. Those are soft and fuzzy. But innovation thrives in those environments." - Victor Hwang, CEO, T2 Venture Creation

When I moved to Palo Alto in 1994, University Avenue and the surrounding downtown was still fairly sleepy. Apple was struggling to survive, Larry Page and Sergey Brin wouldn't meet on the nearby Stanford campus until the following year, Facebook was 10 years in the future, and the future CTO of Uber was still a young software engineer in our group at HP Labs. Few would have guessed that within 5 years, the Nasdaq would quintuple, due in part to irrational exuberance, but also in large part to the combinatorial chemistry of intellect, capital, hard work and the "soft and fuzzy" attributes cited in the quote above from one of the co-authors of "The Rainforest: the secret to building the next Silicon Valley".

When my wife and I moved to Abu Dhabi in 2014, we were struck by a similar sense of potential. True, there are many challenges on the road ahead, but with thoughtful national leadership and a growing community of cosmopolitan entrepreneurs and savvy investors, the next few years should see a significant shift from an economy that's largely carbon-based to one that's much more knowledge-based.

With our GCC/MENA friends in the clinical, academic, technology, and business communities, AEDVentures is delighted to be a part of this shift, and we think our focus on health/tech will benefit founders, funders and the region at large.