[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Manara (YC W21) - Connect Middle East eng...
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Launch HN: Manara (YC W21) - Connect Middle East engineers with
global companies
Hey everyone! My name is Laila and with my co-founder Iliana I'm
building Manara (https://www.manara.tech/). We support software
engineers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to get
great jobs at tech companies worldwide. These companies appreciate
being connected to skilled talent that is diverse and inclusive
(50% of our engineers are women). I grew up in a refugee camp in
Gaza. My dream was to become a Silicon Valley software engineer.
Eventually I hacked my way there successfully, becoming a software
engineer at Nvidia. I like to joke that the hardest part wasn't
escaping Gaza in the middle of the 2014 war, but rather, my first
interviews... which I totally bombed. ;) Once I got to Silicon
Valley, I was surprised at the lack of women. In Gaza, more women
study computer science than men! I was also surprised to learn how
hard it was for companies in Silicon Valley to attract the talent
we needed. During interviews with candidates I'd often think, "I
wish I could hire my friends in Gaza. They'd be great." That's
when I re-connected with Iliana. She and I had met in Gaza when she
was running Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG), the first startup accelerator in
Gaza. Her work was widely covered and has a few threads on HN
including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963. Iliana
asked me "How can we produce more success stories like yours?" I
told her that engineers in the MENA region don't lack talent, but
they lack other ingredients. They're mostly not aware of
opportunities outside their region, and even if they are aware,
they think you have to be a genius to work at a company like
Google. Also, they have no idea what sorts of resumes recruiters
want to see and don't have brand names to put on them. They don't
have referral networks to get their foot in the door. And they're
completely unprepared for the style of interviews that tech
companies go for. As we talked further, it became clear that all of
these problems would be fixable with the right kind of coaching and
support, and that bringing this growing talent pool to the global
job marketplace would benefit both sides (accelerating the success
of global companies, while redistributing wealth to the region).
We developed an approach to address those gaps - and it worked.
Just last week, 67% of the people we referred to Google for
internships made it past the hiring committee (they're now waiting
for their job offers, so if you work at Google and have internship
headcount, let us know!) We've heard Google interviewers say
several times, "This is the best junior engineering interview I've
ever done." I want to emphasize that we are _not_ a zero-to-hero
bootcamp. Manara is a career accelerator for skilled software
engineers at all levels with a focus on junior engineers. Students
learn the technical and soft skills they need to pass interviews
and get introductions to companies with jobs that are either remote
or on-site (in Europe or Canada). We charge an affordable fee to
both candidates and companies, only if a successful match is made.
We focus on MENA (and specifically Arabic-speaking countries in the
region) for a few reasons. On the business side, that's where we're
from and where our connections are, so we understand the dynamics
and have comparative advantage there. Second, the region has a huge
opportunity: the youngest population in the world, 2x more
university graduates than 10 years ago, women studying computer
science at high rates (in some countries more women study CS than
men: 52% in Palestine, 62% in Tunisia, 70% in Qatar), and so on.
Third, it lends itself to scale. Our graduates have a high sense of
affiliation and loyalty to the region, which means that as soon as
we place 1 candidate at a company that's growing, s/he comes back
to us looking for 3 more to hire. But we're not building Manara
just for business reasons; rather, we were motivated to launch
Manara for social impact reasons. The unemployment rate for recent
college grads is ~60%; for women who studied CS, it can be as high
as 83%. It pains us personally to see highly talented friends of
ours struggling to find (meaningful) work. We originally planned to
build Manara as a non-profit, but after _lots_ of research, we
realized that a social enterprise approach would better support our
mission: the pressure of becoming self-sustainable forces sharper
thinking and execution, and will make it possible for us to deliver
this solution at scale. A powerful part of our impact is the
community we are building. Students study in cohorts. Within each
cohort, they compete to see who can solve more coding problems, and
form strong bonds and support each other. Students also meet
volunteers from tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook,
Wayfair, Stripe, etc for mentorship and mock interviews once they
achieve certain milestones (e.g., 100 questions on Leetcode). This
leads to high motivation and retention. It also gives them access
to professional networks like those Americans have when graduating
from universities like Stanford. Often these networks later help
them with their job hunting: just last week, a candidate got an
interview at Uber thanks to a referral from one of our volunteers
who works there. Our volunteers love the chance to use their
professional skills to mentor engineers from untraditional
backgrounds. Several told us that they spent years looking for an
effective way to contribute. One recently wrote to us, "I'm in awe
of the work Manara is doing. I love interacting with my mentee and
providing mock interviews - so thank you for giving me a platform
to be able to support these students." If you're hiring, check out
https://www.manara.tech/hire-engineers. If you'd like to get
involved or join our newsletter, check out
https://www.manara.tech/get-involved. Most importantly, we can't
wait to hear what you think, wherever in the world you might be.
Over to you, HN!
Author : laila90
Score : 68 points
Date : 2021-01-20 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
| tyingq wrote:
| Sounds like a terrific idea. I saw the growth of this sort of
| thing in Argentina and other South American countries once some
| companies started investing time and money there. A fair amount
| of the popularity was attributed to sharing highly overlapping
| time zones with the US. I imagine this has a similar advantage
| for European customers.
|
| You may get some mileage out of talking with Globant
| (https://globant.com) or a similar company in South America to
| hear what their experience was. They have a different model, but
| do a lot of the same things you've outlined.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| amasad wrote:
| At Repl.it, we interviewed interns via Manara and was mind-blown
| by the quality. We've given offers to two and I know at least one
| will be joining us soon. I think Manara has a potential to
| transform the global developer market. Very excited for them!
| laila90 wrote:
| Oh WOW thanks a lot!! We love it when we get multiple offers
| from the same company - extremely excited about our Repl.it
| placements :))
| Jugurtha wrote:
| Hi, Laila. Congratulations on the launch. I'll share this
| (Algiers, Algeria).
|
| One of the problems people here have is getting paid from
| companies abroad. I think it would be good to conduct interviews
| with people who may be having the same problem, and either offer
| a solution or explain it on the website. Many people work as
| freelancers, and the way they get their money is Herculean.
|
| Also, many, especially here, neither are Arab nor identify as
| such [native population and ethnicity before 7th century
| invasions]. Many also do not share the language or other common
| attributes. Therefore, if you're not ethnicity based, but based
| on the "region", I guess North Africa, and Middle East are the
| terms that would work better.
|
| Again, congratulations. There a _lot_ of very talented people in
| these countries who will not work abroad for different reasons.
| Staying not to leave family behind is a very, very, common
| reason. Making remote work easier for them, whether positions or
| ease of payment, is huge.
|
| This is encouraging even for those who are willing to move but
| aren't invited to because they haven't reached the skill level
| required for an employer to incur that cost, and they haven't
| reached the financial level to incur that cost themselves. I
| guess your product hits that niche as well.
| laila90 wrote:
| Hi! Ahlan! Azul! Really appreciate your bringing these issues
| up.
|
| Regarding payments, this has been coming up and we'll need to
| pick your brain as we develop solutions. For now we are
| managing payments for companies that hire remotely by wire
| transferring the funds ourselves. In other words, the companies
| send the money to our US entity and then we do the transfer.
| We've also been looking at https://pilot.co/
| https://www.boundlesshq.com/ and https://www.letsdeel.com/. Are
| you familiar with those? What do you think? Btw Pilot is also a
| YC company that initially planned to be a full-time remote work
| marketplace, but switched to facilitating payments because
| there was such a big need there.
|
| You're right of course that in North Africa (the Maghreb) many
| don't speak Arabic nor identify as Arab. When we call it "the
| Middle East and North Africa," we also get feedback that it's
| inaccurate. I wish there were a better word! We'll keep
| iterating until we get it right.
|
| PS: My co-founder Iliana has spent lots of time in Morocco and
| some in Algeria... and can't wait to go back! She speaks some
| darija... and picked up a few words of Berber. :)
| Jugurtha wrote:
| > _Regarding payments, this has been coming up and we'll need
| to pick your brain as we develop solutions._
|
| My contact information is in my profile. I'll forward to some
| people I know who had several problems with that. The last
| one I talked with worked with a company in the U.K. with the
| restriction the "worker" had to have a bank account in their
| country of residence, not in any other country. Explanations
| on exchange rates below. They know more about this, and know
| more people in that situation.
|
| > _We've also been looking athttps://pilot.co/
| https://www.boundlesshq.com/ and https://www.letsdeel.com/.
| Are you familiar with those?_
|
| Unfortunately, no.
|
| What I also meant by payment problems is the disparity
| between the conversion rates in banks and on the streets. The
| disparity can be huge, so if you wire X euros to someone's
| bank account, it is automatically converted to the local
| currency at rate X and they get Y, when they could get 1.6Y
| or 1.7Y (60% or 70%) more on the streets. A 70% delta is a
| lot.
|
| Some networks have developed to enable people to get the full
| "street value" of their money.
|
| > _When we call it "the Middle East and North Africa," we
| also get feedback that it's inaccurate._
|
| Well, as someone in Algeria, if I were looking for work and
| visited the site and it said: "You're in North Africa",
| that's a fact of geography. It said "Hire the best Arab
| software engineers", I'll think "I'll forward the link to
| Arab software engineers I know since they're specific".
|
| There are a lot of competitions, hackathons, or events that
| use this terminology, and I know many very talented people
| who do not participate because it's not for them. They'd
| rather go to another continent, and they do, where their
| ethnicity is acknowledged than submit a form that contains an
| inaccuracy that perpetuates a denial they've been facing for
| a long time. You are trying to optimize for brevity and
| clarity and you have to put _something_ on the page, and I
| get that. I 'm just saying and I think that you have lived
| through enough exclusion and non representativity that you
| understand that a message on a landing page that excludes you
| defacto kind of stings.
|
| > _PS: My co-founder Iliana has spent lots of time in Morocco
| and some in Algeria... and can't wait to go back! She speaks
| some darija... and picked up a few words of Berber. :)_
|
| Well, I don't need to tell you that you are welcome. Hit me
| up if you are around. You might find the students groups to
| be interesting. In the meantime, I'll float the site around.
|
| EDIT0: I sent it to someone who has a group. They sent the
| following:
|
| > Them: Too bad, I'm an infrastructure engineer.
|
| They're specialized in "Microsoft, VMware, IT
| infrastructures, etc."
|
| EDIT1: Sent it to the admin of a group of around 7.4K
| engineers and technicians (not just software). Some might be
| interested and share it to their networks.
| ilianam wrote:
| Hi, Iliana responding this time. I can't emphasize how much
| we appreciate your feedback! You're totally correct about
| the word "Arab" - we should've caught that and am glad you
| brought it to our attention.
|
| The situation with the exchange rate in Algeria is a real
| problem. Like you said, the banks' exchange rate is much
| lower than it should be. When I was there I spent a day
| with a friend's friend who runs a side business exchanging
| money, so I saw some of what this looks like on the ground.
| I'll reach out now to pick your brain more on this topic.
|
| Thank you again for your feedback & for spreading the word!
| So grateful.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| You're welcome. I just sent the link to someone who can
| be very useful: he has experience working in freelance
| and probably can share many problems from the field. He
| also has lead a youth organization here and placed many
| people in internships and positions in companies all over
| the world, has been around, and has a deeper
| understanding of the several hurdles, from visas to
| payment problems.
| ilianam wrote:
| Sweet! Thank you
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > What I also meant by payment problems is the disparity
| between the conversion rates in banks and on the streets.
|
| This is also a problem where I live (Nigeria).
|
| It's exhausting explaining black/parallel currency markets
| to clients/employers in countries with more stable
| currencies. Way too often I get the knee-jerk reaction that
| I'm doing something shady/illegal.
| ilianam wrote:
| I know, right?! People who haven't experienced it don't
| get it. I think the knee-jerk reaction impacts Nigerians
| especially unfortunately. (My parents used to live in
| Nigeria and when my dad tried to buy something on eBay,
| they froze his account. Later when he lived in Venezuela,
| people were more sympathetic.)
|
| So are there any solutions we should be looking into
| beyond cash transfers / Western Union? Are any startups
| working on this problem?
| Jugurtha wrote:
| filleduchaos, that's a badass handle.
|
| > _It 's exhausting explaining black/parallel currency
| markets to clients/employers_
|
| What's the delta like there between parallel/official
| rates?
| filleduchaos wrote:
| It fluctuates depending on how far up its own behind the
| central bank has its head, but usually isn't _too_ bad -
| it can stretch out to ~1.5x while the official "market"
| is in denial, but usually stabilises at about 1.2x to
| 1.3x depending on currency and source.
|
| I've settled on maintaining a domiciliary bank account
| (denominated in USD) - SWIFT transfers take a few
| business days, but that's not a problem for steady income
| and clients can usually be persuaded to eat or split the
| fees. Plus it's easier to tell people I prefer to receive
| and hold USD than to explain the state of the economy.
| Also WorldRemit recently added same-day direct-to-bank
| deposits of USD in Nigeria-based USD-denominated
| accounts; I've only received money that way a couple of
| times though.
| EamonLeonard wrote:
| Hey! I'm co-founder of Boundless, thanks for the mention :)
| Happy to chat more if you need - eamon@boundlesshq.com.
|
| Congratulations on getting Manara up and running!
| ilianam wrote:
| Thanks so much! Claire McHugh of Axonista was the first
| person who mentioned you to us. You've got a strong
| reputation! We'll reach out :)
| EamonLeonard wrote:
| Ah, good stuff!
| laila90 wrote:
| Would diffidently reach out :)
| mtalantikite wrote:
| "Also, many, especially here, neither are Arab nor identify as
| such."
|
| Came here to say the same -- I grew up in the US, but my family
| is Kabyle and you definitely don't want to call my father Arab!
| laila90 wrote:
| Totally - really appreciate you guys for flagging this.
|
| Edit: edited this now in the text above!
| mtalantikite wrote:
| The whole thing looks great though, really happy you're
| working on this!
| laila90 wrote:
| Aww thank you! It makes us happy to work on this too.
| Interacting with talent in the region is just so
| heartwarming.
| [deleted]
| Amir6 wrote:
| Hey, thanks for sharing your amazing journey! Whats the best way
| to contact you?
| ilianam wrote:
| Hi Amir, this is Iliana, Laila's co-founder. :) You can reach
| us at https://www.manara.tech/contact. If you're seeking to
| hire talent, use https://www.manara.tech/hire-engineers
| instead. Thanks so much for your support!
| maz1b wrote:
| Hey Laila,
|
| Congratulations on the launch. Your story is great and I love the
| premise. I myself am the Founder, CEO + CTO of a medical
| education company working on revolutionizing the future of meded-
| tech in MENA, so in the near future I'll be looking into hiring
| from your platform.
|
| Be well and good luck!
|
| Azib
| laila90 wrote:
| Would love to stay in touch, Azib! What's the name of your
| company?
| fakedang wrote:
| Keeping you guys in mind the next time someone asks me for MENA
| talent. And if I want to hire some myself!
| ilianam wrote:
| Thanks so much! That's interesting that people are already
| asking you for MENA talent sometimes. Under what circumstances
| does that happen?
| [deleted]
| itin wrote:
| I love this because it empowers people in the MENA region to
| establish financial security and grow their careers at global
| tech companies. This will hopefully unlock resources for the
| much-needed entrepreneurship growth in the region
| laila90 wrote:
| Thank you! And totally, the region's entrepreneurship scene is
| growing quickly. Our current YC batch has at least 5 companies
| from MENA. We're excited to be a part of (and unlock) this
| growth.
| aloukissas wrote:
| Oh man, the name is unfortunate. It's slang for "babe" (for
| girls) in Greek. Also the last name of one of the most famous
| erotic comic artists (Milo Manara). Fun times!
| laila90 wrote:
| oh yeah, we've heard about that recently from a Greek friend!
| Thankfully it seems like the Greek language is the only one in
| which our name has a weird meaning (at least so far), and
| hopefully it's not offensive? Manara means "lighthouse" in
| Arabic. We did lots of user testing with various name options
| and this one was most positively perceived in Europe, North
| America, and MENA. Now we just need to get really great SEO to
| show up at the top of search results :)
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