Mike Champion
Mike Champion, Tahaluf CEO and co-founder of LEAP, tells Inside Saudi how LEAP is supporting the creation of a thriving and long-lasting tech sector in Saudi Arabia and how AI is all that matters at the moment.
Mike Champion is Chief Executive of Tahaluf, co-creator and co-founder of LEAP, the world’s most attended tech event, as well as other major conferences and events in Saudi Arabia. Sir Martyn Lewis began by asking him what LEAP aims to achieve, and how it has evolved over the last few years?
MC –The Saudi government felt that they needed to help facilitate the establishment of a large-scale impactful major tech event that would help its transformation agenda Vision2030, the brainchild of His Highness The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The aim is to try and make Saudi Arabia not just an emerging tech hub, but one that will endure for many many decades if not indefinitely in the future. People in the Middle East, particularly the Saudis, really like to do business with people that they know, have met, and begun to trust, and so face-to-face meetings for them are extremely important. LEAP’s focus from the outset has been bringing a large amount of foreign direct investment into the Kingdom, building a big faculty of investors from around the world. It’s also been about trying to incubate and grow domestic businesses, with a start-up talent pool.
ML – Did you face any early difficulties or challenges in starting from scratch as it were?
MC – I’ve worked in events for around 15 years all over the world, from the Middle East to Africa, South America and in Europe and Britain, but I have never seen the quality and level of support that governments give to event organizers as I have in Saudi Arabia. And these aren’t just any sort of events; these are priority strategic events that the government is very keen to support. They normally lie around the fields of entertainment, or in our case, big impactful B2B events in strategic sectors – not just LEAP with its emphasis on emerging tech trends such as AI, but also in real estate, biotech, healthcare and pharmaceuticals. And so the level of support is deep, meaningful and highly impactful. The Minister sets up an action team which reaches out and supports two different arms of the government to make sure that the event logistically goes really well.
ML – A degree of government support which is not entirely usual in the West?
MC – Completely right. We have what I call a “magic mix” of support. The Saudis want exhibitors and delegates to have a seamless, great logistical experience entering and leaving their country – to an extent that initially really surprised me. Then there is some government funding that comes our way – from switching the wealth of hydrocarbons into other areas of development, particularly business and tourism. So the whole wider tapestry of Saudi government pulls in the right direction to help events go well. Combine that with a fantastic team of experienced people and partners, along with a lot of editorial independence, and events that would normally take 20 years to grow are achieving that growth in 2 or 3 years here.
ML – Networking is at the heart of every conference, and you are saying that you’ve improved that even more this year. How have you done that?
MC – The quality of attendance is important. Last year we became the world’s most attended tech event, but frankly it was too many people – 215,000 over 4 days. So we felt this year we should cap it, and look at something like 10/15% – maybe even 20% less. So we introduced ticket pricing. We target the right people very, very carefully. And by doing so at an earlier stage, we’ve been able to attract a more relevant kind of attendee – not people just coming to see, they are actually people who are coming to buy, people who can make meaningful decisions and that really helps improve the economic and strategic impact of the event. We’ve got a vast forum of 1600 investors most of whom fly in from around the world – chief investment officers from companies with north of $5 trillion of assets under management – not counting the Saudi PIF. They have tailor made meetings organised over months beforehand – a real concierge service in the old-fashioned way. And of course we have AI powered Apps with data driven insights, which help our visitors identify the sorts of people they want to meet and we’re seeing many more engagements on that front. So it’s tech enabled but there is also that human personal touch which ensures really meaningful meetings and which I don’t see ever leaving the exhibition trade.
ML – And you’ve got a prize fund as well. How does that work ?
MC – Well almost 200 startups are selected in the first round of this. Our experts on the judging panel include successful serial entrepreneurs. They have a lot of information and advice to give to those startups. But what sets this competition apart is the $1 million prize fund. And unlike other prize funds that ask for equity, we don’t expect anything back in return. The reason is that we genuinely want Saudi Arabia to be seen as a place that gives unusual support in fostering international startups. There’s no hidden agenda. If you win a prize its yours. And that approach has a really good ripple effect; every year more impressive startups are coming from around the world to participate. It’s like, Hey,you got a great idea, you might not be able to get it off the ground that easily in your home country, but we appreciate your idea. Let me tell you what we can offer in Saudi Arabia; first and foremost, amazing facilities for you to be able to incubate your company, and priority access and conditions.
ML – And how do these startups qualify to be at the conference? Have they got to reach a certain level in their development, or will you take just good ideas with potential?
MC – We have startups from different backgrounds, at different stages, and they are selected by a Tahaluf investor team that works across all of our events assessing the quality of the submissions, along with qualified government support. And when it comes to LEAP, we have guys from the national digital transformation program who live and breathe technology. They know the emerging trends and the questions to ask, so they’re also helping to sift the really quality submissions.
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ML – Can you quantify the economic impact of these conferences?
MC – It is substantial. At LEAP last year we calculated it to be at least $508 million in terms of the investments into the event plus the economic impact on tourism. With the event we held in November, called Cityscape, we tracked unbelievable transactions. There was 5 billion dollars worth from just ordinary retail investors putting a deposit down and buying a house or home. On top of that, projects costing $61 billion were launched by the Saudi government. And a figure that we haven’t released before, because it is so large and we wanted to validate it, is that we had MOUs signed between private companies and government entities promising almost $120 billion of future work. That gives you a flavour of how hot the Saudi market is for deploying capital.
ML – What about the actual conference experience itself? Does everyone come away fully up to speed with everything that is happening in the world in their particular area? MC – That’s a really interesting point. I’d love to be able to guarantee it, but the truth is, each event is so massive that no one person has the same experience. It’s not as though everyone is sitting in the same conference room like a classroom at school. The venue is the size of 50 football pitches. We’ve got 17 different tech conference tracks ranging from sports and health to space and AI. Each day sees see a different range of speakers and subjects. With it being that vast with so many exhibitors, a lot of serendipity happens. Some people will have a chance meeting which changes their fortunes for the next dozen or so years. But we do work on the App to try and make the experience more targeted and focused.
ML– How easy or difficult is it to attract the right speakers ?
MC– Well, we’ve got the CEOs and chairmen of Lenovo and IBM, the chairman of Huawei, the CEOs from Zoom, HP and Schneider Electric. So, from a senior decision-making global perspective, business leaders come every year, and really powerful meetings happen on the back of that. Then, from a more niche perspective, we have a team that specifically searches content creators and thought leaders who are not necessarily being showcased much in other conferences. We do our research, and ask who is the most impressive person working in each area at the moment? Who has the biggest budget? Who’s making the biggest impact on this? And all of a sudden you’ve got some completely brand new names who are not on the speaker circuit. There are a lot of those people on the agenda as well as the household names.
ML – And is AI changing the way that LEAP develops and the opportunities that it offers in a major way.
MC – Well, it’s everywhere. Whether you’re a company or an individual, everybody has to be a participant in this. People need to be taught how to use AI for their own benefit. If you know how to use this, if you, understand the commands, the technology and what it’s capable of then it’s going to seriously benefit you. Let me tell you there is not one company here that is not embracing it, involved in it and developing it. There’s not one product that hasn’t been touched by it or indeed improved by it. It’s the only thing that matters at the moment I would say.