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We publish the Enterprise Morning Edition in English and Arabic from Sunday through Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and political news that will move markets each day. What you’re reading now is our Weekend Edition, which is light on news and heavy on stories to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). The Weekend Edition comes out each Friday at 9:00am CLT. We’re in beta and in English only right now.

Today’s issue includes part one of a two-part series in which we’ll be profiling a handful of compelling, offbeat or simply interesting entrepreneurs who were in Cairo for the RiseUp Summit. We have three long-form interviews this week, including Aurore Belfrage (EQT Ventures), Elmira Bayrasli (Foreign Policy Interrupted), and Khaled Bichara (Accelero Capital). We’ll have at least that many next time, including: Michael Megalli (Indie.biz), Sherif ElRakabawy (Yaoota) and Jared Friedman (Scribd and Y Combinator).

As always, feedback is very welcome at editorial@enterprisemea.com. We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am with our usual roundup.

Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY?

It’s the end of the year and things are supposed to be slow, right? Not in the finance industry, at least, which snapped a nearly three-week news drought yesterday. We’ll have wall-to-wall coverage on Sunday, but to keep you up to speed in the meantime:

• The Central Bank of Egypt decided not to make a decision yesterday on what to do with interest rates. They’ll meet again on Christmas Eve. The CBE has a tendency to make big moves during the holiday period, as they did with the 2012-13 devaluation.
• CIB is in talks to sell CI Capital, its wholly owned investment banking subsidiary, to Naguib Sawiris’s OTMT, which recently bought Beltone.
• LSE-listed Rasmala says it’s going to make a counter-offer for CI Capital, turning it into a bidding war.
• At least three other firms are in play: Sawiris is said to be in talks with the country’s top independent M&A shop, and Pharos is reportedly moving to acquire a “top 10” brokerage and an asset management firm.
• We’re definitely getting USD 1 bn from the World Bank before year’s end, according to International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr, who concluded a three-year, USD 3 bn facility with the institution yesterday.
• The Ismail government is formulating a plan to issue USD-denominated bonds on an annual basis.

The UK finally made public the results of its long-delayed inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday, and while it stopped short of banning the organization, UK Prime Minister David Cameron noted in a statement that “The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism.”
Also yesterday, Israel and Turkey reportedly reached an agreement to normalize relations and reopen their embassies, according to an unnamed Israeli official speaking to Reuters.

Turing CEO Martin Shkreli, infamous for hiking the price of an anti-parasitic drug after his company purchased it by 5,000%, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday over allegations of running a Ponzi scheme during “his time as manager of hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and chief executive of biopharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc.” Shkreli later tweeted that he was released, without further detail. The drug whose price he hiked is a literal lifesaver for some cancer and HIV patients with compromised immune systems. Reports suggest he was released on USD 5 mn bail.

SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

“Slowing emerging markets will create private equity opportunities” because the challenges of the past year could help bridge the gap between buyer and seller expectations on price, “a key factor tied to later performance,” says the Knowledge@Wharton blog in the second part of a two-part branded-content series with EY that looks at private equity in emerging markets. Part one, from earlier this fall, focuses specifically on PE in Africa, while a piece from October looks at private equity in MENA after the school’s MENA conference. Its profile of food-delivery platform Talabat.com — a Kuwaiti startup and the emirate’s answer to Otlob — is also worth checking out. The company sold itself to Rocket Internet for USD 170 mn earlier this year.

“Hopefully after your report, the United States and others will help us rebuild Kobani, not just destroy ISIS.” What does a city liberated from Daesh look like? Destroyed, barren, but desperately looking to rebuild, according to an extensive report by CNN’s Ben Wedeman. Kobani is enjoying some peace now, relatively, but with more than 70% of the buildings there destroyed, more hard work beckons and opportunities for reconstruction are beginning to bud.

What “cured” Jimmy Carter’s cancer? In August, the former U.S. President “announced he had stage IV metastatic melanoma, and that it had spread to his brain. When he first got the diagnosis, he thought he might have only ‘a few weeks left,’ he said. … four days ago, after about three and a half months of treatment, Carter announced that his cancer was gone.” Quartz has a great — and highly accessible — take on immunotherapy.

The best iPhone 6s review we’ve read is also a great travelogue documenting one couple’s low-budget tour of Indonesia.

Meet the woman leading China’s assault on Hollywood: As Jack Ma of Alibaba takes aim at the entertainment industry in general and Hollywood in particular, his troops on the ground will be commanded by Zhang Wei. Hollywood Reporter convinced her to sit down for her first interview since becoming head of Alibaba Pictures, which has Hollywood types a bit wigged-out despite it not yet having made a film. Zhang has been a child star, holds a Harvard MBA and was host of the first show to introduce Fortune 500 bosses to Chinese audiences before joining MA as his head of M&A and business development in 2008. Read: “Alibaba Film Chief Grants First Interview: What China Can Do for Hollywood.”

Watch this short video clip, imagine they’re Egyptian, and you have our future as we brace ourselves for the opening session of the new House of Representatives…

Oftentimes, Banksy and the cult of worship that have sprung up around him are simply tiresome. But on those occasions when he’s both right and relevant? He nails it. From a statement released with his latest mural: “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over USD 7 bn a year in taxes–and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”

If you haven’t done so before, go read “Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule,” the classic 2009 thought piece by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham that helps explain why some people (investors, asset managers, VCs, C-suite folks) thrive on a day packed with meetings, while even a single meeting can ruin the day of a writer, developer, lawyer or accountant.

It’s a master-class in international politics and political reporting at its best. Check out Politico’s “How the Paris climate deal got done: French diplomatic wiles, a ‘high ambition’ coalition and US muscle pave way for a landmark accord.”

Britain’s spy agency wants you — to try its Christmas puzzle, that is. The GCHQ is the U.K.’s signals intelligence agency. Its director’s annual Christmas card this year includes a brain teaser, and they’ve released it to the public, asking that people who enjoy trying to solve it make a donation to a child protection charity.

Need a reminder that nothing in business is permanent? “A hundred years ago more than 1 mn men made their living digging coal from deep beneath U.K. soil. As of today there will be none,” Bloomberg says, reporting that Britain’s last underground coal mine will close today.

Marketing and agency types, take note: Industry bible Digiday’s “How Burberry became the top digital luxury brand” should be near the top of your list of things to read this weekend. A first-mover in an industry that was achingly slow to go digital, “Burberry was early to turn user-generated content into its own social media platform (the Art of the Trench), which it launched in 2009. After that, it has been among the first to test new social media channels and developments: it jumped on Snapchat and Periscope, and tested Instagram’s video ads and Twitter’s buy buttons as they rolled out. At the end of 2014, Burberry upgraded its mobile site, which resulted in its mobile revenue tripling.” And while you’re there, make sure to check out “2016 Year in Preview: Brands will stop trying to be millennials’ cool friend” or download the full 2016 Year in Preview report as a pdf.

Do something good tomorrow: Bag up your old winter clothing and call an Uber. If you’re in Cairo, Uber will send a car over tomorrow (Saturday, 19 December) between 2pm and 8pm CLT to pick up “gently worn jackets, shirts, pants, blouses and any other items of clothing you’re willing to donate.” In partnership with Mashroo3 Kheir, The clothing will go to underprivileged families in the Greater Cairo Area as well as Syrian and African refugees. The nice people at Uber say:

1. Open the Uber app between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. this Saturday
2. Slide over to the “UberKheir” icon and request your pick-up.
3. An Uber will arrive to pick up your gently used clothing and drop off your donation to Mashroo3 Kheir free of charge.

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SPOTLIGHT: It’s the Star Wars roundup you never asked for and may not want

Everyone in Egypt has suddenly been reborn as a die-hard Star Wars fan, so we thought we’d take this opportunity where the interests of some of the nerdier among us here at Enterprise momentarily intersected with the interests of the normals to bring you some Star Wars nonsense.

As we noted in our issue on Thursday, while IMAX screenings were unavailable for Star Wars: The Force Awakens on its opening day on Wednesday in Cairo, the film screened in regular 3D format, a point which went unnoted by Chicken Little.

Our spoiler-free review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens follows; if your eyes cannot handle it, please close them and scroll for a bit.

The following review comes from someone who is not a casual fan, but who has in fact endured a lifetime of persecution for being that into Star Wars.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens review. It was alright, but nothing special. Once again, an artist has demonstrated they always work better under constraints. Give them unlimited resources and they more often than not turn out garbage. For those who have never seen any of the previous trilogies, JJ Abrams has been thoughtful enough to rehash some of them for you in this film. Have you already seen Episode IV: A New Hope, the first Star Wars film made? Then you’ve seen The Force Awakens. It is more or less the same exact film with some new characters simply taking on the roles of the original cast, alongside the original cast for nostalgia and applause and not much else. Visually, the film is excellent, and Abrams has a much better eye than George Lucas did for what does and does not work as CGI, with the former making judicious use of real-world props and filming locations, with only one or two missteps. One of the real tragedies is that the late artist Ralph McQuarrie will continue to get little to no credit or acknowledgement for his enduring influence on even this film, on which he did not work directly, but which relied on some of his unused concept art from the original trilogy.

But how can we give such an unenthusiastic review when nearly every English-language publication is gushing over the movie? Well, not everyone. Scott Mendelson at Forbes sees it the same way we do in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Review: The Empire Strikes Out.

If you want to ruin your whole day you can watch the hour and a half made for television movie/disaster The Star Wars Holiday Special in its entirety on YouTube.

Download and play a computer game without charge over the holidays: If you instead want to ruin your whole life, you can waste countless hours this holiday break (if you’ve got one) playing the absorbing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which has been available to download and play without charge since 2012. The download file size is c.3.5 GB. Knights of the Old Republic even offers players several in-game girlfriends/boyfriends, which is both funny and sad and may or may not be the subject of a future blog post on our part.

The Radicalization of Luke Skywalker: There are some people who are now viewing the Star Wars series differently, seeing some similarities with the current war on terror. For a peculiar bunch, Star Wars is all about Luke Skywalker’s path to Jihadist extremism. “Luke is just the kind of isolated disaffected young man that terror recruiters seek out… Yoda accepts Luke into his religious ‘school,’ teaching Luke Jedi fundamentalism and guerrilla warfare. Like many extremist mullahs, Yoda demands total adherence to his strict interpretation of the Force and seeks to strip Luke of independent thinking. Yoda’s push to radicalize Luke, rob him of an identity, and instill obedience are apparent when at various points he instructs Luke to ‘Clear your mind of questions,’ ‘Unlearn what you have learned’ and, most grimly, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’

WATCH THIS

Policy for improving well being … Individuals not averages: The 2015 economics Nobel laureate Angus Deaton delivered his Nobel Lecture at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University. Deaton spoke about the different perceptions about consumption and measuring and understanding human behaviour, welfare, and poverty. You can watch his whole lecture here. (Run time 37:15)

The trailer of Star Trek Beyond was released this week, and it looks like garbage. (Run time 01:34)

Everything old is new again, or Hollywood is in a perpetual state of creative bankruptcy: A spate of new movie trailers have been released over the past few weeks which rely solely on mining beloved childhood icons of the past few decades, namely:

• X-Men: Apocalypse: Hollywood’s latest theory about the Pyramids: mutants did it. (Watch, running time: 2:33)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (Whatever, running time: 2:25)
• Independence Day 2: You Knew We Would Continue Milking This Thing at Some Point (Watch, running time: 2:21)
• Captain America: Civil War (Watch, running time: 2:25)

READ THIS

Universal health-care coverage is not just possible in rich countries, but in the poorest ones as well, economics Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow and the World Bank’s Apurva Sanghi write. While the UNGA set global goals to end poverty, foster inclusive prosperity, and secure a healthy planet by 2030, Arrow and Sanghi say that the starting point “should assign a high priority to better health – and must leave no one behind,” it is “right, smart, and overdue.” Why start there? Health are survival are basic rights to every individual, but, “unlike other valuable goods, such as food, they cannot be supplied without deliberate social policy.” It makes economic sense too, as healthy people are more financially stable and contribute more to stronger and more prosperous economies. So, how can universal health-care be made possible? Start with utilising technology; in Kenya “an upsurge in telemedicine is enabling rural patients and health practitioners to interact, through video conferencing, with staff in Kenya’s main hospitals – thereby increasing quality of care at very little cost.” Also, use the power of incentives, by paying the private sector based on outcomes, for example. Most importantly, build “resilient health-care systems” including “clean water and sanitation, and roads and infrastructure that enable emergency care and delivery of services.”

Bloomberg’s c.4,400-word profile on 26-year old hacker George Hotz, and his contrarian opinions on a number of issues, is definitely worth a read this morning. “Slavery did not end because everyone became moral… The reason slavery ended is because we had an industrial revolution that made man’s muscles obsolete. For the last 150 years, the economy has been based on man’s mind. Capitalism, it turns out, works better when people are chasing a carrot rather than being hit with a stick. We’re on the brink of another industrial revolution now.” Read The First Person to Hack the iPhone Built a Self-Driving Car. In His Garage

LISTEN TO THIS

It would have been Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday this week. To celebrate, This American Life presented an updated version of an episode aired originally in 1997 about “Ol’ Blue Eyes’” life. “What’s fascinating about Sinatra is how he is so many different people at once, and they’re all on display in this recording: sentimental crooner, cruel woman-baiter, bully, goofball,” host Ira Glass explains. Besides talking about his life, death, and legacy, the show also delves Sinatra’s worst songs. (Run time 01:00:19) Speaking of Frank Sinatra, Esquire magazine’s 1965 15K-word profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is widely considered one of the finest pieces of journalism of all time. Give it a read, then go listen to actor Alec Baldwin interview Gay Talese, the author of the Esquire piece, on his inimitable podcast Here’s the Thing.

The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast asks if Saudi Arabia is to blame for the rise of Daesh. “Many claim that ‘Islamic State’ is the ideological offspring of Saudi Arabia; that the strict form of Islam originating in the Kingdom – and the Saudi state’s aggressive promotion of it around the world – has fostered terrorism.” The podcast resorts to a former recruiter for Al Qaeda, an Islamic law scholar, and a Saudi government official to examine the proposition. (Run time 23:21)

ENTREPRENEURS

Saluting the Crazy and the Naïve

For the past two years Aurore Belfrage (Twitter, LinkedIn), a self-described entrepreneur, angel investor, startup coach, news junkie, social media marketer, speechwriter and ex-scrap dealer, has been doing a roadshow across the Middle East, called “Saluting the Crazy and the Naïve.”

The idea for the unconventional ten-city tour was born out of genuine curiosity. Belfrage, who is half Swedish and half French, has always had an affinity for the region. She lived in Saudi Arabia with her family as a child, and has since been a frequent visitor to the region.

“My roadshow was initially just a fact finding mission. I was once asked what the tech scene was like in the Middle East and I had no clue, so I decided to do this crazy thing and find out,” said Belfrage. “There are a lot of other events like this that are important and strategic so I decided to go for something different. I wanted to entertain and inspire. I also have a very short attention span, so I decided that my event would last for only 2 hours and take place after work for free.”

The 10-city tour, which includes stops in Cairo, Istanbul, Dubai, Amman, Tunis, Erbil, Riyadh, Qatar and Beirut, has attracted thousands of entrepreneurs, some of whom are given time on stage to pitch their ideas in five slides to a panel of investors in an interactive format that involves Belfrage interrupting them to comment, criticize or commend.

“Being able to massage your story and boil it down into something that is crisp and clear to attract not only investors but also media, users, and the entire community is extremely important,” says Belfrage.

The event however starts with a “confession of mistakes” keynote given by Belfrage herself, which goes something like this:

“I raised USD 26 mn and had Niklas Zennström, the founder of Skype, on my board. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, was one of my early investors in Wrapp, the e-gift card business that I co-founded in 2011 — but we build the wrong product, priced it incorrectly, and went into the wrong markets. I cry a little everyday.”

After Belfrage comes clean about her failures, attendees usually join her to share their own war stories.

“The whole idea here is that you can’t build a business without a lot of crap happening. It’s all about how you solve that crap and deal with it. The only real failure is giving up, not the mistakes that you make.”

Belfrage started her career as a scrap dealer Sweden after watching an online promotional video.

“I loved the environmental aspect of the business so I just knocked on the door of one of the largest scrap dealing companies in Europe that was based in Gothenburg, Sweden, asked them for a job — and they gave me a job. In retrospect, I compare it with entrepreneurship. In both you just throw yourself off a cliff and you don’t really know what’s happening — and that’s a good thing because if you did you wouldn’t take that leap. I was an MD at the age of 28 running a blue collar business with mostly men over the age of 55. I made every imaginable mistake, but learned so much in the process.”

Today, Belfrage splits her time between her new startup, EQT Ventures, a venture capital initiative that she is co-founding with Hjalmar Winbladh, the Swedish entrepreneur with whom she previously worked on Wrapp, and angel investing in a portfolio of companies in the Middle East. She also sits on a number of advisory boards and does consulting work for both entrepreneurs and investors in the region.

“Sometimes entrepreneurs blame their general problems on regional structural problems. Wherever you are in the world, it’s a headache. There are of course structural challenges on top of that but I think the market just needs time to mature. In the west, you have an alumni of startups, people who have cashed out and are now entering back into the market as investors and mentors. We have three generations of entrepreneurs. In the Middle East, it’s not like that,” says Belfrage. “The other challenge is capital: It’s out there, but this is a new asset class in the region and investors don’t have enough experience with building a portfolio with that risk profile. That’s why I also do a lot of consulting work on how to be an angel investor. You have to be a mother, a father, a cleaning lady, a shoulder to cry on, a door opener, a cheerleader and, of course, a bank — but that’s the easiest part.”

Befrage’s closing advice for entrepreneurs is: “Start by picking an investor that you like, it’s like a marriage. There will be ups and downs and you need someone who will complement you. Don’t take the cash for the cash.”

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Disrupting Foreign Policy

When Elmira Bayrasli (Twitter, website) resigned from the State Department after a successful run as a diplomat, she left with a big question mark in her mind: Why do male foreign policy experts outnumber their female counterparts as expert commentators on television and in the opinion pages?

With the mindset of an entrepreneur, Bayrasli started blocking out theories on a whiteboard. The more she crunched the numbers, the more she was shocked: It was, she says, as if news outlets lived in the nineteenth century. Bayrasli found that senior women with foreign policy experience accounted for only 24% of op-eds in major U.S. newspapers — and just 22% of television appearances as expert commentators.

“I don’t differentiate between ‘social entrepreneur’ and ‘tech entrepreneur,’” says, “and we should get out of the habit that entrepreneurship is only about technology. Entrepreneurs are individuals who solve problems.”

With that mentality, Bayrasli founded Foreign Policy Interrupted (FPI) with colleague and media veteran Lauren Bohn (Twitter, website). Their goal: Disrupt the media media establishment by training female foreign policy experts and connecting them with top global news outlets.

Working on FPI, an unusual startup in a world where the term conjures “tech” more than it does “human beings, Bayrasli refrains from calling herself a social entrepreneur.

“I think we need to stop using terms like social entrepreneur. It is damaging. It creates this mentality that I can’t make money and I can’t drive a profit,” she says. “You can make a profit while solving a social challenge. We think as a formal business, we have a revenue model, and we can charge people for certain services.”

Bayrasli, a keynote speaker at the RiseUp summit, is no stranger to the entrepreneurship scene in emerging markets. In 2015, she documented her journey with entrepreneurs around the world her book From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places. The book tells the story of innovation outside the narrow confines of Silicon Valley. Bayrasli believes business owners in developing countries face greater challenge than those in the United States.

“They have to work with poor infrastructure and face monopolies from big businesses,” she says. The biggest challenge they face, however, is not the poor infrastructure nor monopolies: It’s enforcing the law. Bayrasli believes that people underestimate how fundamental good governance and the rule of law are as enablers of trust within the business community.

“It is important for any startup because you want to enforce contracts, and be able to protect your ideas. I think competition can happen only in environment where government can guarantee the application of the law,” Bayrasli concludes.

Learn more about FPI on its Twitter feed; on Bohn’s website; or do whatever it is one does to make someone’s posts appear in one’s Facebook feed.

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Can state-owned APIs and an industry association help set things right with Egypt’s startup community?

Khaled Bichara is a fixture of the Middle East’s entrepreneurial scene — a guy who founded one of Egypt’s first-ever IPSs (LinkdotNet), then turned a tech-savvy mindset and great business skills into C-suite positions at major national and global companies. He brought MSN Arabia to the Arab world, ran a national mobile / fixed line / broadband empire in Italy, and led Orascom Telecom Media and Technology as CEO after a stint as Group President and Chief Operating Officer of global telecoms giant VimpelCom.

Now, he’s got a foot in the corporate world and one in the startup game: He’s founder and CEO of Accelero Capital, a late-stage investment firm. And on 1 January, he’ll become CEO of Orascom Development Holding under a six-year agreement with Accelero that will see the company “provide advisory services to assist ODH in implementing an operational and financial turn-around.”

Behind his modern desk in a Nileside office, Bichara says he’s enthusiastic about how Egypt’s startup scene is changing.

“I’m super excited about the amount of momentum and excitement we are witnessing in Egypt recently, and we should leverage this to take the community to the next level,” he said.

One of the biggest barriers to growth, he says, is the relatively unstructured nature of the Egyptian market, which makes it a bit more difficult to make the right decisions when it comes to startups funding.

“We have a hole in on the investment side,” Bichara asserts. “There is funding from angels, incubators and seed-stage startups on one side, and we have acquisitions for ripe companies on the other side. In the middle, we lack funds for companies seeking Series A and Series B.”

The result: Success in early-stage fundraising often doesn’t translate into later-stage success.

The ecosystem in Egypt is still developing, Bichara stresses: “The number of exits is very small, but we can fix our ecosystem.” The starting point is to generate enough knowledge and literature about the startup community in Egypt. Accelero Capital started reaching out to other venture capital firms in Egypt to establish “The Egyptian Venture Investors,” a would-be industry association that can play a role in structuring the market — and educate entrepreneurs about different types of investment as well as structures — both of startups and investments.

The aim, he says, is to pull down the barriers between entrepreneurs and VCs, but it’s been slow to get traction. “So far, we we’ve received mixed reaction from the investment community on the association, but it is still on the table.”

Bichara thinks the government also has a role in supporting the startup “ecosystem.”

“The government can change the laws we use to establish and close businesses, and make it reasonable for the founders to borrow from banks to fund their ventures.” The state could also create new investment opportunities by building APIs for e-government services.

“Imagine if the government made an API for taxes, and another for car licensing. We will have hundreds of startups creating solutions on top of those APIs.”

TECH

Google says it proved the quantum computer it purchased from Canada’s D-Wave Systems really works: Google announced a supercomputer it bought can actually use “quantum physics to work through a type of math that’s crucial to artificial intelligence much faster than a conventional computer.” Hartmut Neven, leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, said that the machine achieved a 100-mn-fold speed-up for a “a specific, carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem.” Tempering expectations, MIT Technology Review says while Google’s results are striking, “they would only represent partial vindication for D-Wave. The computer that lost in the contest with the quantum machine was running code that had it solve the problem at hand using an algorithm similar to the one baked into the D-Wave chip. An alternative algorithm is known that could have let the conventional computer be more competitive, or even win, by exploiting what Neven called a ‘bug’ in D-Wave’s design.”

VICE looks at Why Wall Street Loves — And Should Fear — Google’s New Supercomputer, citing a recent report from Bloomberg that “Goldman Sachs — which has invested in D-Wave Systems — and CME Group, the largest futures exchange, are considering purchasing the USD10 mn quantum computers to get a leg up in the competitive world of Wall Street,” and that “a former official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said he was concerned about traders the potential use of quantum computers for high-frequency trading.”

Wait, what? Google’s supercomputer is being called controversial by some as the results published by Google’s scientists (abstract) have yet to be peer-reviewed, and critics are saying that Google is cherry-picking the conditions where it is pitting its D-Wave supercomputer against conventional computers. New Scientist quotes MIT professor Scott Aaronson as saying “it remains totally unclear whether you can get to what I’d consider ‘true quantum speedup’ using D-Wave’s architecture.”

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• An Egyptian tourism campaign proclaimed #ThisIsEgypt. It backfired. (Washington Post)
• Sawiris looks to acquire CI Capital (Al-Borsa)
• CBC’s coverage of Hekoomty, the government app that will one-day help you navigate government services including driver’s licenses, ID cards, car registrations, and the status of electricity and gas receipts, among others. (CBC)
• The Financial Times’ non-paywalled interactive FAQ on what the U.S. Fed rate decision means (Financial Times)
• Google’s Year in Search (Google)
• From USD 0-100 mn with no sales people. The Atlassian 10 commandments for startups (Business of Software)

ON YOUR WAY OUT

“Three unicorns passed away in the Bay Area last week after an extended battle with a particularly virulent strain of valuationitis,” in remembrance of some start-ups, The New Yorker’s Prabha Kannan writes her Silicon Valley obituaries. “Several venture capitalists delivered the eulogies for the beloved unicorns … While the reception offered some mourners the opportunity to exchange business cards and swap mileage and upgrade stats on their Teslas, others took the time to reminisce about the unicorns’ heyday.”

A Ford dealership forgot to remove a Texas plumber’s decals for a resold pickup truck, the truck ended up in Daesh’s hands, and now the plumber is suing the dealership for USD 1 mn. The plumber had to temporarily shut down his business and leave town after receiving over 1,000 phone calls containing threats of “violence, property harm, injury and even death,” according to CNN, which notes that, generally, Daesh prefers Toyotas.