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Is there any hope for startups in 3rd world countries/poor ecosystems to make it?

I'm new here and I love having other founders and entrepreneurs sharing their experiences, cause entrepreneuring is hard, this is awesome.

I run a small startup in Tunisia, a 3rd world MENA country with a struggling economy. I didn't realize the extent of this when I first started the project in 2017, at that time it didn't look like it was getting that much worse.

We've market validated our product (B2C and B2B but majorly C), it gives people value and users love it but because we're operating with a tiny budget, we haven't been able to market to a much wider audience locally. So we kinda stagnated at the barely even level.

Now 4 years and countless startup events, pitches and attempts later, we didn't get any investment and our revenue is still negligible and things look dire. So we're going to go into a pivot, start operating in international markets and expand test some new services. But that's all but a sure shot.

Now, from what I understand, a good supporting ecosystem is very paramount in a startup's success and where we're based at the moment, it's just a frustratingly small, competitive and difficult environment and we just can't make the cut and those who do are extremely rare.

At this point, I'm wondering is it even worth it to continue and would a change of the company's location help ? . It's really difficult to keep operating it and I still don't get a salary out of it. I know there's no real answer to this but I was wondering if any fellow hackers have similar conditions in similar locations or some information about these types of ecosystems that I may be missing.

posted to Icon for group Environment and Climate
Environment and Climate
on October 20, 2021
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