Web Summit Qatar – 2024: Report by Humayun Kabir , Breshna has won Web Summit Qatar startup competition PITCH, powered by Jusour. Uzbekistan-based financial services company IMAN and UK-based healthcare solutions business Rhazes finished as runners-up.
Hailing from Washington DC, Mariam Nusrat – founder and CEO of Breshna – said moments like these are important in the long-hard journey of a founder: “This kind of visibility is really cool.”
Breshna’s mission is to empower users to create, share and monetise their own video games without prior coding or game-design knowledge. The platform provides its network of 175,000 users with a game-maker editor, an AI-powered text-to-game engine, and a Web3-enabled metaverse.
Noting the quality of her opponents on stage, Mariam said that “even having the honour to share the stage with them, it’s just such a blast”.
“I don’t like to take the founder journey as a sort of Hunger Games approach. I think there’s more to it than that … Every single idea that I’ve heard [during the competition] has left me so deeply inspired.”
Founded two years ago, Breshna has raised “around US$2.5million from investors like Paris Hilton and Randi Zuckerberg,” according to Mariam.
The three finalists pitched to a judging panel consisting of Amin Matni of Jusour, Zach Coelius from Coelius Capital, Soumaya Ben Beya Dridje from Rasmal Ventures, and Rama Chakaki from Transform VC – all heavyweights in the investment and startup world.
The competition was open to ALPHA and BETA startups that had received less than €5 million in funding.
PITCH, powered by Jusour, brings together the world’s leading early-stage startups for a live onstage contest. 40 of the 1,043 startups at this year’s event qualified for the three-day competition, which culminated in Breshna impressing the judges.
Earlier in the week, Web Summit Qatar announced that its first event hosted 15,453 attendees from 118 countries, with 1,043 startups taking part in the startup programme.
The cohort of CEOs, startups, investors, journalists, policymakers and creatives in attendance took part in three days of masterclasses, investor to startup meetings, competition rounds, evening events and Night Summit parties around the most exciting neighbourhoods of Doha.
Meanwhile, Web Summit Qatar played host to His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani – the State of Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs – as he announced a US$1 billion investment into an international and regional VC fund.
Led by the Qatar Investment Authority, the initiative aims to foster innovation and boost the tech ecosystem in the country.