After three days of networking and more than 100 panel discussions, workshops and lectures, the 2014 edition of the RiseUp summit drew to a close last week. Three thousand entrepreneurs and investors came Downtown Cairo’s GrEEK Campus in search of new business ideas and opportunities, and those who spoke with Mada Masr said they found what they were looking for.

“We got a lot of connections to investors and people who would implement our technology. The conference also connected us to other enterprises that work in other businesses but could still collaborate with us and help us. Some of the workshops were also really helpful and we learned a lot from attending the event,”  said Lamis Abdel Meguid, the business development manager of soilless farming start-up Agrimatic.

Agrimatic has developed a system that combines hydroponics and aquaculture, using the waste from fish tanks to nourish food crops. Although they cannot call themselves organic because their crops are not grown in the earth, they produce fresh, chemical-free produce year round and use far less water and land than conventional farms.

Abdel Meguid said that Agrimatic didn’t sign any deals or contracts during the summit, but they did come out of it with a lot of meetings to arrange in the immediate future with other companies.

Agrimatic was not the only start-up that came to the conference with a creative solution for a pressing social problem. One of the panel discussions, Social Impact Rising in the Arab World, focused specifically on this kind of business innovation. 

On the panel was Sherif Hosny from Schaduf, a company that creates urban micro-farms. Schaduf invests in the farms, which are operated by poor city dwellers, and buys the produce to sell on. In doing so, they create an income stream for poor families, help build green spaces in the city and provide consumers with healthy produce. 

Some of their products require a sophisticated level of technology to work. For instance, Schaduf provides vertical farms that can cover the walls of tall buildings. In doing so, they both filter the massive amounts of smog in Cairo’s air, and create an attractive green overlay to the city’s worn down facades. 

However, Hosny noted that one problem companies like his face is a slow return on investment when compared to less socially conscious firms.

Technology start-ups also had a major presence at Rise Up. Many of the companies that presented their products during the conference relied heavily on new technology to change and improve people’s daily lives.

From ShareMyRide, a newly started carpooling service aiming to cut down traffic jams and gas usage, to Yomken, a crowdfunding platform for low and medium tech industries, companies were using app and web based technologies to provide solutions for problems big and small.

One tech businesses that made the summit work for them was Sharequity, a brand new equity sharing platform and consultancy company, with CEO Karim Tarek Imam in charge. 

“We used the RiseUp Summit to educate people about crowdfunding and let entrepreneurs know how we can help them to fulfill their dreams. Meeting all these entrepreneurs and hearing their stories and the problems they were facing was a great opportunity to educate and help each other,” Imam said. 

They also netted new contacts and companies who submitted their ideas to their platform, which greatly helped them launch a wider array of products to the public to choose between. Imam also told Mada Masr that many of the entrepreneurs they met helped them improve their own company. 

Other companies focused on providing the physical infrastructure that start-ups need to succeed.

Coworking spaces offer entrepreneurs and freelancers a place to work, while also providing a opportunities to network and meet with like-minded people.

“Everything that delays an entrepreneur from doing their core concept like power outages, no running water and no internet is dragging them behind when competing with the West and Silicon Valley. Coworking spaces fix that,” said David Mournir Nabti, the co-founder and CEO of AltCity a coworking space in Beirut, during a panel discussion on coworking spaces. 

Among the coworking spaces represented at the conference was 302Labs in Nasr City. Manager Mostafa Fayek said was happy with the concept of the conference, but withheld judgment about whether the event would benefit his business.

“We came to meet new people and put our name into the community. Our name will be out there, so we hope that we will see more costumers in the next few months, but we cannot see anything right now. I think it will be great in the long term,” he said.