Hello! Gabriel and Nadim here. We are consultants based in the Dubai office and have been working for Roland Berger for the past three years, focusing on digital & entrepreneurship. We decided to take on an Entrepreneurial Fellowship, because it offered us a unique opportunity to fully dedicate ourselves to building our startup, SandWalk, with the support of Roland Berger. This level of focused support is rare and has allowed us to register our company in Lebanon as well as participate in various startup programs such as SmartESA, AUB iPARK, and StartMashreq (Flat6Labs).

About SandWalk

SandWalk is a reward-based crowdfunding platform designed to transform how projects are brought to life. Our mission is to empower creators and entrepreneurs by providing them with a platform to secure early sales and customers, validate their ideas, and engage with their communities. Additionally, SandWalk further enables creators by connecting them with service providers to support them throughout their journey.

Reward-based crowdfunding allows you to build projects around your community by offering tangible rewards to your supporters. This helps you engage your audience early on and raise non-dilutive funding.

As we enter the market, the plan is to partner with service providers across the value chain to enhance our platform’s offerings and support project creators with all kinds of services throughout their journey. By collaborating with entrepreneurial entities, we validate product-market fit, ensuring creators have a robust foundation for growth. Additionally, partnerships with niche industry leaders and influencers help us acquire key users and amplify visibility, while our collaboration with governmental entities helps us further promote entrepreneurship.

Current status of SandWalk and progress made during the Fellowship

We encountered several legal and technical challenges along the way, requiring us to be agile in navigating Lebanon’s complex legal landscape. Delays in securing third-party agreements also impacted our initial launch timeline. Despite this, we made significant progress during the Entrepreneurial Fellowship. The ongoing situation in Lebanon has forced us to postpone our official launch until the situation stabilizes. In the meanwhile, we are accelerating our plans to shift toward the UAE market, where we see greater stability and growth potential.

During our Entrepreneurial Fellowship, we finally had the time and resources needed to fully focus on SandWalk. Through Roland Berger, we gained exposure to key projects in both the entrepreneurship and corporate sectors, allowing us to learn valuable lessons in strategy, business development, and critical thinking. This experience enabled us to tackle challenges head-on, refine our approach, and make significant progress toward achieving our goals. Moreover, we are committed to continuing our efforts (on weekends) as we return to our roles at Roland Berger.

Three most important learnings

• Be prepared to fail: Anticipate obstacles and challenges (they won’t stop coming); resilience is key

• Team is everything: Surround yourself with people you trust completely and can rely on

• Validate quickly: Aim to go to market and validate your concept as fast as possible