Tunisian Entrepreneur participates to GIST program
Smarter++, a Tunisian IT startup, founded by Nizar Ben Neji was selected among Top 12 most promising startups to participate in the GIST US Entrepreneurship Journey, a two-week program held in June 2014 at Chicago and Washington DC. The GIST Initiative (Global Innovation through Sciences & Technology) is a partnership led by the U.S. Department of State and CRDF Global and is designed to support technology-based entrepreneurs through competitive funding and through a virtual support network that offer mentorship, technology assessment, business linkages, and access to potential investors. The GIST US entrepreneurship program was a good opportunity for the Tunisian young entrepreneur to learn more about the American innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and to showcase his startup to a community of US entrepreneurs, investors, government officials, NGOs, development agencies and the media. Nizar’s mentors during the two-week program were Kurt Brasch, patent licensing manager at Google and Eric Lunt co-founder and CTO of Signal, a global leader in real-time cloud-based marketing technologies based in Chicago.
In his words, Nizar explains what Smarter++ offers: “It specializes in designing and creating smart techniques and tools to be used in marketing and advertising. The goal is to help businesses save time, money, attract customers and increase revenue. Smarter++’s main product is Smartcatalog Generator, a cost effective and easy-to-use tool to create promotional product catalogs without the need to have computer skills or the need to hire computer designer. The product is very flexible and help user save time and money especially when a minor change inside the catalog is necessary like changing prices, product features, photos, etc. Smarter++ started few months ago and has now a first US customer Peter Schmidt, LLC based in Austin, Texas. ” Steve Jonas, Co-Founder & V.P. Sales and Marketing at Pete Schmidt, LLC said that “SmartCatalog replaced our old static catalog and added a tremendous value to our company. It has helped us gain new customers and increase our sales and market share in both domestic and international markets”
We hope that Nizar’s successful experience and venture will set a good example to inspire other Tunisian entrepreneurs and encourage the development of the entrepreneurship spirit in Tunisia.
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Nizar Ben Neji