“Mouchawar, a native of Aleppo, Syria, spent over an hour onstage with his cofounders and lead investor, explaining in painstaking detail what it was like to build an e-commerce giant. In 2005, when Souq launched, few in the Arab world were shopping digitally, fewer still were willing to use a credit card online, and examples of successful tech startups were hard to find. Now, Mouchawar underscored to his rapt audience, things were different.” In MIT Tech Review, my friend Chris Schroeder tells a different story about the Middle East (one he is uniquely – maybe too uniquely – qualified to tell): Entrepreneurs Building an Arab Tech Economy.