The Emerging Startup Culture In Cairo Will Blow You Away

More than half the Egyptian population is under the age of 30 -- and these are the people who leveraged Facebook and Twitter during the revolution. Now they're starting businesses.

In June, the U.S. State Department's Global Entrepreneurship Program sent a team of American entrepreneurs to survey the start-up scene. The trip, officially called "NextGenIT Boot Camp," was also sponsored by the Danish and Egyptian governments.

We spoke with one of the American delegates, Scott Gerber, president of the Young Entrepreneur Council, about his recent trip to Cairo.

"I thought the start-up culture was nonexistent or remedial," he says. "I was blown away. Totally wrong."

He traveled with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com, Jeff Hoffman - Priceline.com, Shama Kabani, CEO of Marketing Zen and Ryan Allis, co-founder and CEO of iContact, an email marketing company.

The group evaluated 38 Egyptian entrepreneurs, with mostly tech (specifically mobile) concepts. "They spanned the gamut in level of acumen," he says. "We helped them with their business model, ripped their ideas apart, and brought them to a whole new level."

At the end of the week, there was a business competition.The four winning companies were:

Bey2ollak

Inkezny (translation

Crowdit

SuperMama.me