Paradigm Shift: RiseUp Summit’s Abdelhameed Sharara On How His Egypt-Based Event Helped Mainstream Entrepreneurship In The MENA

A lot has changed for RiseUp Summit—the entrepreneurship gathering that takes place in Cairo every year—since Abdelhameed Sharara co-founded it in Egypt in 2013. Now in its 13th edition, the latest iteration of the event, which was staged under the theme “The Turning Point” at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) from February 5-7, 2026, reflected an entrepreneurial landscape that has been impacted by everything from the coronavirus pandemic to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). For Sharara, however, the most profound shift to witness has been cultural: entrepreneurship has now become mainstream, a far cry from what it was when he launched RiseUp Summit.

“The culture of entrepreneurship has been democratized and scaled, and it’s become one of the career options for people in general,” Sharara tells Inc. Arabia. “In the beginning, it was not. It was an extremely niche space. We used to find it very hard to explain to people what we do.” Here, he recalls the first edition of RiseUp Summit in 2013, where he staged a demonstration featuring a hologram of Talaat Harb, the founder of Banque Misr (widely considered the first bank to be established with Egyptian capital), to explain to people what it meant to “found” something. Fast forward to 2026, and that explanation is no longer necessary. “Today, every youth, not just from Generation X or Gen Z or Gen Alpha even, they all want to start something or even to work with a startup; so, that’s a massive change,” he points out. “And I think that’s the most important change. Our dream was always to see this happening, and not to own it, but to just continue being a catalyst rather than an umbrella.”

As entrepreneurship has scaled, so too has RiseUp, shifting its format toward immersive programming that today includes live demos, debates, and simulations. The venue has changed as well; what began at the innovation hub and coworking space, The GrEEK Campus, in downtown Cairo, has since moved to the GEM. For Sharara, that is a meaningful shift. “[The GEM is] a place that was built at an intersection point between Egypt’s rich cultural heritage and its history, and its future, the people,” he explains. “We always tell people, everyone comes to the museum for its history, but we’re coming for the future; so, that’s quite a change as well.”

RiseUp Summit’s scale might be its most most visible change from its origins, with the latest event being staged under the auspices of Egypt’s Ministry of Planning, Economic Development, and International Cooperation, the Ministerial Group for Entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Investment, and the Egyptian Tax Authority, and in partnership with the museum’s operator, Legacy Development and Management, a company under the umbrella of Egyptian real estate developer Hassan Allam Holding. In what may be one of the event’s proudest moments to date, RiseUp Summit this year played host to the launch of Egypt’s Startup Charter, an announcement that saw Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and the country’s cabinet convening on the closing day of the gathering.

In spite of all these changes, Sharara maintains that RiseUp’s mission has not shifted. For him, it remains a neutral platform that connects startups with resources, continuously engaging with other ecosystem players, even as competition has emerged from both the public and private sectors. As far as he’s concerned, RiseUp continues to be a space where people can “meet investors, do deals, get inspired, hire, focus on opportunities—whatever they need… They have a guide that helps them all find it, but at the same time, there’s some kind of serendipity in it… And that’s because we have it in our DNA, our culture, in our processes, in our daily routine at RiseUp to stay a platform for the startup ecosystem that is born from Egypt to the world. This has stayed the same.”

Perhaps most tangibly for Sharara and his team (which, he tells us, now includes a mix of veteran millennials and fresh-faced Gen Zs), the exhibition floor has expanded to include startups and scaleups. Notably, many of the companies that first participated in RiseUp as startups over the past decade have since gone on to see great success, with some even listing in public markets. “I’m always proud to see companies when they’re just 2-3 people, and see how massive they can grow, it’s a testament to this potential,” Sharara says. “As for us, we’re a catalyst. I can’t say that we’re the reason behind this success; on the contrary, we’re actually a very small part of that story. But what we do is the butterfly effect; we connect and keep the space in a natural, organic way, and that way it starts mushrooming into success.”

Indeed, the real validation has come from seeing many of these startups return to the summit. “The success is in finding those startups [returning] and giving back,” Sharara notes. “They want to come and sponsor the event or exhibit at the summit 10 years later, because they want to give back. So, we’re launching an e-commerce summit with [Cairo-based logistics leader] Bosta, which used to be an exhibitor here, and today, has tens of thousands of e-commerce businesses in Egypt delivering on their platform. So, it’s like a loop, and I think this is the ripple effect that we want to see continuing."

Beyond its annual iteration and more recently, specialized gatherings focused on sectors like proptech and retail, RiseUp Summit has also expanded its activities further as an ecosystem enabler. In 2021, it secured funding from the Cairo-based investment firm A15, and it’s now set to co-launch a sector-agnostic accelerator in partnership with it. It has also forged partnerships with Egyptian businessman and Shark Tank Egypt judge Ahmed Tarek and the real estate developer Misr Italia to develop innovation hubs across Cairo. It is also set to launch a 11,000 sq. m. flagship hub at the GEM, which will include an innovation and startup program, creative labs, hackathons, media spaces, coworking, and offices. From Sharara’s point of view, such partnerships are further evidence of how the region’s startup ecosystem has developed. “Everyone wants to give their space to this community, to those entrepreneurs, to those startups; so, that’s going to sustain RiseUp’s momentum on a daily basis, and it will eventually create [more] success,” he says.

Reflecting on his own entrepreneurial journey, Sharara is candid about what he did right—and what he could have done better—when advising his peers in the ecosystem. First and foremost, he tells other founders to focus on all aspects of their health—physical, mental, and emotional. Secondly, he points to humility as a value that every entrepreneur should practice. “Be humble, stay grounded, focus on doing things rather than just talking about stuff…,” he advises. “You’re never the smartest in the room, so stay down to earth.” And finally, keep purpose front and center. “Be a big believer in what you do,” Sharara says. “If you keep reminding yourself of your values and culture, the measure of success will not be the small tangible things in the moment; it will be a bigger change. And this is what drives me as an entrepreneur: to see change on a wider level in a positive way.”

Pictured in the lead image is Abdelhameed Sharara, co-founder of RiseUp Summit. Image courtesy RiseUp Summit.

This article first appeared in Inc. Arabia's February 2026 edition. To read the full issue online, click here.