Arabnet Arabnet

Wuzzuf, Egypt’s number one online recruitment website  has reason to celebrate this month. Wuzzuf, the brainchild of innovative startup Basharsoft,has made it to the list  of Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups seed fund and accelerator program. Silicon Valley is a term used for the South Bay portion of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Of more than 1,400 startups worldwide that applied for the 8th batch of the program, the Egyptian online recruitment technology startup was selected to join the esteemed incubation program, amongst 28 other startups. Founded by Dave McClure, one of San Francisco’s “super angel” investors who boost startups to success, 500 Startups is a prominent business incubator program in the U.S. It provides early-stage companies with up to $250K in funding, well-qualified mentors with plenty of start-up experience, platform-specific strategies for customer acquisition and other forms of guidance.

Wuzzuf has good reason to join Silicon Valley’s 8th batch of adopted startups. The leading player in the online recruitment market in Egypt has generated a remarkable 10X revenue growth in 2013, helping more than 1,500 companies in Egypt directly hire 10,000 employees.

With all the daunting political and economical turmoil in Egypt, Basharsoft certainly hadn’t had it easy. “A team of 6 back then persevered and managed to take the company from the verge of closing down into a viable and profitable company that is now leading the online recruitment market in Egypt,” Sherif said in a press release. Sherif also told Arabnet that “The [main] challenges that new startups face is getting good advice and mentorship. You must select the right people.”

Sherif made a point to express his satisfaction with the choice of mentors that The Silicon Valley program is well esteemed for. From UX designers to engineers and marketing experts, the mentors are often successful entrepreneurs who have had their own share of start-up struggle. “[The] mentor’s experience in Business development, Growth strategies and Distribution, will no doubt boost our growth,” says Ameer Sherif, CEO of BasharSoft. “We also have better access to interested investors in the US and the MENA region. That’s a capital plus”. 

Wuzzuf’s mission on the 500 startup website is as following: “We do intelligent job matching by simulating how “human” recruiters actually think, screen applicants, and communicate with both employers and job seekers.”