A Look at Innovation and Investment in Emerging Markets: Jon Grall at GEP Turkey
Channel: Wamda
Date: 2012-06-27

Jon Grall, former Senior Manager of Product Marketing at supercool Twitter-for-companies platform Yammer, and Product Lead at Dropbox before that, was also the youngest delegate at the recent Global Entrepreneurship Program delegation to Turkey at the end of last month. 

Grall, now the founder of startups SimplyListed and Just Landed, describes to Wamda contributor Gulay Ozkan what he sees in the entrepreneurs he mentored, and how the entrepreneurship environment in Turkey compares to that in the U.S. "None of the presentations I've seen so far are just Turkish copies; they're all new ideas, which is very encouraging." 

Ozkan puts her finger on a critical point: copycat ideas tend to get investment more easily than truly innovative ideas in emerging markets. Yes, says Grall, "a copycat idea is easier to understand, because it's lower risk, but I think it's less exciting overall."

A lot of new ideas take more time and more capital to bring to market in an emerging market than most investors are comfortable with, he says. "I'm hoping that this delegation will change that."