64 June 2014 www.bahrainthismonth.com interview Bahrain-based tech entrepreneur Ali Mohsen is dreaming big. Last year, the 26-year-old quit his job at Microsoft to launch PaperV, one of the region’s first crowd-sharing platform. “All the new trends in social media are geared to simplify how people communicate and share things. Companies such as Twitter and Instagram didn’t reinvent the wheel. Rather, they either simplified the process of communication or made the content richer,” notes Ali. However, existing social media channels are not effective storytellers since they enable sharing in bits and pieces, rather than multilateral contributions, he feels. “At PaperV, we’ve solved this problem by allowing people to share stories by tagging others, who will, in turn, add more content to this story, enriching it through multiple contributions. You can glide stories with multiple video, audio, photos and texts imported from your Facebook, Instagram, Picasa and Flicker platforms, and use these to re-glide your stories. Users’ privacy is protected so that content is exclusive to people who are invited to be part of the story,” he says. PaperV is Ali’s fourth venture and the only one where he hasn’t made any money yet. Ali built his personal website at the age of 12. Two years later, he launched an online business providing web-hosting services to clients across the GCC. He soon had over 500 clients in what was essentially a one-man show and the first such service in Bahrain. His second venture, while still a teenager, was a website which sent free text messages. Within two months, the mini portal had sent three million text messages on behalf of clients. In 2006, he founded a remote backup solutions company called Data Shell, but believes the market wasn’t ready for such a service then. Based on open source software, PaperV is also available on a mobile application. The platform has 20,000 registered members and about 5,000 active users, half of whom are from outside the Arab region. However, in order to take the site to the next level and turn it into a world-class product, Ali needs a capital infusion in his company. He estimates that he can then reach a million users in eight months as well as introduce a monetisation model. However, Ali has not been able to find an investor for the project. “Investors here don’t appreciate online ventures even though the fastest growing companies worldwide are tech businesses. Despite winning four awards last year, there hasn’t been any appreciation from the so-called angel investors. They’re supposed to be risk-takers, but we don’t see any risk-takers in Bahrain,” he says. Ali is now in talks with venture capitalists in the region for seed capital. Even as he looks for investors who will share his passion, excitement, the risk and eventually the returns of this new idea, he concedes that there’s always the option of incorporating in the Silicon Valley. However, he wants the venture to be based in Bahrain. Sharing Stories Ali Mohsen SIMI KAMBOJ Ali Mohsen’s home-grown social media platform bagged four awards last year. He tells us why he’s yet to find an investor.
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