Say we're cooking up a web start-up, first we need the following ingredients: Great Minds, Development Resources, Access to Capital, and a stellar Management team.
Amman has all of the above but with some extras. The first extra is the sheer number of great developers. When I place a job ad here in Amman, I always get more than 100 applications (in one case it was close to 500). This is stark contrast to hiring in Boston; I would be lucky to get 10 applications and was happy if just one or two were qualified. In Amman, as many as 80% of these resources are qualified enough for the positions; mid-level developers with 3-5 years of experience is who we mostly hire. While Amman can be sparse on senior architects [they all snuck off to Silicon Valley], the core development resources are here and eager to show off. Add to this an employee turnover that is next to zero and a cost of doing business that is a fraction of what it would be in the California or New York.
In terms of capital, we got it. This is probably because we're in a region swimming in liquidity looking for a home. Our team is building a start-up called Hashdoc, a site that uses social and productivity tools for businesses to find and create business documents. We are still a couple weeks short of a working prototype and have been receiving calls from regional Seed/VC funds anxious for an opportunity to invest. Fida Taher recently chose 4 from 24 offers of seed capital for start-up Zaytouneh.
A number of regional incubators and start-up funds are also making the connections easier. Oasis500 is leading the way in Amman and is currently incubating Hashdoc. With their vision to invest in 500 start-ups in 5 years, Oasis500 lead an accelerating trend towards the ability to build successful web companies anywhere in the world by giving access to the clustering that made Silicon Valley prominent in the tech scene.
Things look good for a successful start-up in Amman. Should Hashdoc or any other Amman based start-up start to gain traction, I see no reason why they would not continue to use Amman as their base for success. This is exciting and refreshing.