Dear friends and colleagues,
You’ve literally blown us away — your generosity with your time has made this what we immodestly consider the largest survey of the most senior members of the Egyptian business community ever undertaken.
We’re closing in on 30,000 active subscribers, to say nothing of the thousands of people who read us on the web and on corporate intranets. You are chairs of companies and c-suite executives. Fund managers and business owners. Egyptian government officials and foreign diplomats. Bankers and consultants. Manufacturers and retailers. Journalists and senior managers. And thanks to some very cool teachers and professors out there, some of you are students.
It is an incredible honour to write you every morning. (Well, except Saturdays. Even the wicked need to rest on occasion.)
Nearly 1,000 of our English readers took the time to answer our first-ever reader survey, giving us a margin of error of +/- about 3%. More than three-quarters of you took time to leave us a qualitative comment — praise and criticism, ideas and suggestions. We’re reading every single one of your replies, and we’ll be in touch with those of you who left an idea (or a question) and an email address starting next week.
This little report is divided into two sections: First, graphs of your answers on the economy. After the graphs — for the fun of it — we have a brief dialogue with an “idealized” reader based on your answers to questions about Enterprise and your qualitative feedback.
About those mugs: We’ll announce the names of the 20 winners of our mug draw on Thursday, and we’ll be in touch with the winners on Sunday to sort out how we’ll deliver you your mugs.
OH, AND ONE MORE THING: As a small token of our appreciation, tap on the download link below if you would like to have a copy of the little sheet we’ve been using since 2014 to track the USD EGP parallel market rate. It’s not a scientific survey, but the trend is the trend. (You’ll want to click the link on your desktop — it’s an Excel file.)
DOWNLOAD THE XLSX
Thank you — each and every one of you — from the bottom of our hearts.
Hadia, Patrick and the entire team at Enterprise.
YOUR THOUGHTS ON BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY
In one (long) sentence: You expect the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, but if the EGP is at USD at 11.51-13.50, you’re fundamentally confident in the future: You’re going to keep investing, and nearly half of you expect to beat your competition over the next six months.
Compared to where we stand today, what’s your expectation of the Egyptian economy six months from now?
“My business will increase its investments in Egypt in the next six months”:
In six months, how well do you think your business will be doing against the competition domestically?
I expect the official EGP to USD exchange rate on 1 January 2017 to be:
A DISCUSSION WITH AN IDEALIZED ENTERPRISE READER
ENTERPRISE: So, two years into this relationship, how are we doing?
READER: Don’t let it go to your head, but you’re fantastic. Enterprise is the first thing I read when I wake up. I think you’re essential, and just about everyone I know who reads you thinks you’re pretty useful, too.
What are we doing well?
You’re consistent, you’re complete and you’re always on time. You sometimes make me crack up, which is a nice bonus. We’re Egyptian, so we laugh at work — why should news about work be boring?
Okay, but what’s not working for you?
The tl;dr isn’t clickable. And what does it mean, anyway?
Too long, didn’t read. Internet slang for a quick summary. And if it’s not clickable for you, I’ll bet you’re reading it on Mail.app or something similar on an iPhone / iPad. They don’t support any of the technologies you can use on the web to make it clickable. It works on our website, though.
What could we do better?
Talk shows. Bring back the talk shows. None of us want to listen to that shouting all night long, but we feel left out when we don’t watch them. And, well, the design could use some improvement to make it more readable. I think it could be a bit shorter, too — I don’t have time to read every word — but my buddy insists it’s just the right length because he has FOMO — he’s afraid he’d miss something if you left more stuff out.
Haader. We’ll work on it. We kind of took a sneak peek at your feedback over the week (read: obsessively and needily clicked “refresh” to see all the nice things you were reading) and saw that. Hence Last Night’s Talk Shows returning off-and-on over the last week. Anything else?
I think a lot of us want more original Enterprise content, like the conference reports and interviews and op-eds. That SODIC series was pretty cool. More of that. More charts and graphs and data, too. Oh, and international news — maybe a short section about that? And some analytical pieces. It strikes me you guys know or think a lot more than you say. Oh, and breaking news alerts. And couldn’t you do a Saturday edition?
We hear you — you’ll like the stuff we have in the pipeline. But Saturdays? No. Our resident nine-year-old would have our head on a pike if we worked seven days a week. Would you pay for Enterprise?
Pay? What? Heck, no.
Not a piaster?
Well, we could swing EGP 125 a month or so. You’re not really going to charge us, are you?
Our sponsors are pretty generous, so no, no time soon. We’ll probably have a paid product for you in the new year, though. Lots of work going on behind the scenes.
Would you ever want to be featured in Enterprise?
Absolutely. My buddy’s business was mentioned and he got lots of positive feedback. Mind if I ask you a question?
Shoot.
How many of you does it take to make Enterprise? And do you ever sleep?
We are many. There’s Hadia — she and Patrick co-founded this thing. She keeps the company afloat, signs the cheques and serves as the better angel of our nature. Among many other things, you also have her to thank for inventing Last Night’s Talk Shows. Patrick does 2:30am-6:05am and some writing late in the afternoon. He seems to always be grumbling about keeping the “voice” of Enterprise consistent. He also seems to spend a lot of time on the phone and in meetings. Bassiouny runs the day shift starting 8am-ish until evening and does a lot of business stuff with Hadia and Patrick. Gaser works 11am until early evening unless the bosses are messing with his schedule. If we ever launch a podcast, you’ll have him to thank. Hana is working on the Morning Edition right now, but she was really hired to work on some super-secret new project, except that Bassiouny is on vacation, so… Hisham is the Lord of the Night, and Yasmin his loyal henchwoman. They’re awake when we sleep, and there would be no 6am product without them. A bunch of people help out with the tech and plumbing, particularly Rafael, Tarek and Magdy. Attia and Ahmed keep us in the black. Then there’s our amazing Arabic team…
As for sleep? Lots of time for that when we’re dead, right?
If you say so. One last question?
Sure.
Would you do the survey again? Maybe monthly or quarterly on business and the economy, and you report the answers back to all of us?
Consider it done. We’ll give the frequency some thought and, if you have any ideas or suggestions, let us know — patrick@enterprisemea.com.
