Rolling updates on Beirut, a city and a tech community devastated

It was only relatively recently, in October 2018, that TechCrunch held

Startup Battlefield MENA

to unpack startups in the Middle East and North Africa. When TechCrunch went looking for a city in the region to host the event in, it quickly became clear that Beirut was the one for us. Vibrant, full of creative entrepreneurs, and a fantastic startup scene made it a natural TechCrunch choice.

That year Beirut came into its own as tech cluster, with the ongoing emergence of the

Beirut Digital District

, Antwork

and similar initiatives and spaces in the city.

Beirut has created many stand-out startups including

Instabug

and MYKI

, as well as local VC funds including BeryTech Fund

and Leap Ventures

among others.

Startup Battlefield MENA was a huge success and helped shine a light on that ecosystem.

But it goes without saying that both Lebanon’s financial and political crisis last year, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, has hit Beirut very hard.

We have therefore witnessed the

explosion

yesterday, which devastated

the city and so many lives, with enormous sadness. Our hearts go out to everyone there.

So this post will *not *be a traditional TechCrunch post about startups and investors.

This will be kept as a rolling list of updates and stories from the tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and investors in a city which is close to TechCrunch’s heart and will be updated as we get information, and put into sections.

Any tech founders or investors in Beirut can email me a statement about how they are doing, if they are well, how their team are doing, if their office was damaged etc. Any stories AT ALL can be sent to mike [AT] mikebutcher.me and I will assemble them for publication here. Put “Beirut” in the subject line.

URGENT NEEDS:

Maps of Shelters, Initiative to Locate Victims https://helplebanon.carrd.co/

FINANCIAL DONATIONS:

You can donate to the Disaster Relief Fund,

Lebanese Red Cross and others here

.

Lebanese Red Cross donations

should be done on desktop (not mobile as their app has some glitches).

Impact Lebanon, a non-profit organization, is a social incubator for driven Lebanese around the world and

is raising a crowd-funder here

.

Life Lebanon

is a relief fund created by the Lebanese in Finance organization (a serious organization formed of expats mostly in UK and US)

DONATE BLOOD:

To donate blood in Lebanon: https://dsclebanon.org/who-we-are | http://www.redcross.org.lb/SubPage.aspx?pageid=317

**Vetted and reliable NGOs worth supporting: **

Lebanese Red Cross

Offre Joie

Chance Association

Bank to School

Arc En Ciel

Bassma

Sesobel

VOLUNTEERING:

Offre-Joie is an organization that is very respectable and has done good work in reconstruction post-civil war, it’s now seeking volunteers and

raising a relief fund here

.

MEDIA / INFORMATION:

The961 is one of the leading Lebanese English media/news sites and nd one of the handful of independent and non-politically backed media outlets in the country. Check their Instagram page for pictures/details of missing people by families and friends following the explosion. They are working with a couple of full stack developers from the dev community in Lebanon to develop a platform of some sort where people can submit missing people and their info. It will be set up directly on The961.com as an extension to the news site. It’s also launched a fundraiser for the Lebanese Red Cross through their NGO (legally registered in Canada).

STORIES FROM THE GROUND:

• Entrepreneur

Omar Itani

: “Yesterday I lost a lot, my car, my house, my phone, one of our shops. The shop was inaugurated less than three months ago, we have poured hundreds of hours of work into the shop and invested thousands and thousands of dollars. Since its opening, the shop has been doing tremendously well and became one of the city’s fashion landmarks. Today the shop is only a memory nothing remains, all vanished in a second.” Read here

.

• Business Empower is a Beirut-based technology company that offers e-commerce, data analytics, security and cloud solutions for several local and multi-national companies. The business has sustained significant damage from the event. It was stablished in 2008 by founder Mouhammad Fakhoury. Fakhoury, a Syracuse University alumni and previous Software Engineer at Adobe Systems and Microsoft, who moved to Lebanon to start his own company. Thankfully no one was physically hurt, employees were working remotely due to covid-19 restrictions.

**MORE UPDATES WILL FOLLOW…. **

(Image credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla)(Hussein Malla)