# [[Steve Wozniak's Paid Visit To Lebanon]] #Entrepreneurship #Opinion #Economy #Values How did Steve Wozniak's visit benefit the Lebanese entrepreneurs? What did it add to the Lebanese entrepreneurship ecosystem? I'm not sure if such speakers have regional prices, but assuming they don't, Steve Wozniak's 1 hour talk cost BDL ~ 200K .. 200K (Not counting the costs of other A-List speakers) could have pre-seed funded 20 startups at 10K each .. it could have imported several technical experts who can provide hands-on knowledge/expertise to our entrepreneurs. Or simple, it could have funded a whole co-working space for at least a year. 200K could have also sent 100 entrepreneurs to visit Silicon Valley and Apple HQ ! I wish his visit added some value other that the "market positioning" value that BDL is trying to set .. but I doubt this is as important as supporting local startups. What if Steve Wozniak was given the money, under the condition of investing 50% of it in local startups (considering this an emerging market) .. This amount of money is obviously negligible in US or even EU standards .. but when it comes to Lebanon, this is A LOT OF MONEY! Of course, all of the above makes no sense if someone can prove that "no massive galactic amounts were paid to bring in speakers whose talks are already on YouTube" PS. Tony Fadell charges a similar amount of money, but there is a higher chance that he might have discounted that price considering that he is Lebanese and "paying back" to the country .. But there is no way to tell, unless BDL comes out with transparent financial statement. PS2: since many people consider criticism= hate.. I have to clarify that I don't mean it that way. As a matter of fact, I thought that the conference was super awesome. I'd whole heartily give it a 10/10 as a conference. Great panels, lots of valuable content. Originally Shared on: [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/theali/posts/pfbid0yEFqpAfUmPV8wyfjqYGUz3Vd2qw6cy1JFkoC1jPho8rurSY7EN85a7uD1VuiZisXl) November 10, 2016 > [!seealso] Related Thoughts >- [[10 Common Mistakes Among Lebanese Entrepreneurs — And How To Fix Them]] >- [[8+ Lessons to be learned from Blink My Car’s Failure]] ^{Published: November 10, 2016}