Endeavor Egypt Selects Timeline’s Ahmed Metwally and Mostafa Hafez as High Impact Entrepreneurs in 2010
April 2010, Cairo- Egypt- Endeavor Egypt, a non-profit NGO supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging global markets, announced that Ahmed Metwally, CEO of Timeline Interactive, and its Cofounder and Technical Director, Mostafa Hafez, were selected as Egypt’s high-impact entrepreneurs at Endeavor’s March’s International Selection Panel. “Timeline raised a few eyebrows among the Panelists”, said Ahmed Ezzat, Endeavor Egypt Managing Director. “These young engineers working out of a Cairo suburb managed to present a worldwide blockbuster million-dollar video game. Timeline is proof that Egyptian entrepreneurs can compete globally.”
The panel was held from March 10th – 12th at Cairo Fairmont Nile Towers, and the reviewing panelists included Time Warner Music’s CEO Edgar Bronfman, Hikma Pharmauceutical’s Ali al-Husry, and Orascom Telecom’s Chairman Naguib Sawaris and CEO Khaled Bichara, among others. This was Endeavor Global’s 33rd International Selection Panel, but the first for Egypt’s relatively new Endeavor office.
“We are honored to be selected” said Ahmed Metwally, Timeline Interactive CEO “Fostering entrepreneurship nurtures a healthy middle class, which is the engine of a solid economy” he continued.
Entrepreneurs are put through a rigorous selection process and for some, an elimination process, before they are selected to go through Endeavor’s International Selection Panels. Entrepreneurs’, and their companies, are selected and judged on their ingenuity, their proven capacity to scale, and their ability to inspire entrepreneurs globally and locally.
Founded in 2005 by Mostafa Hafez, who started developing games at the young age of 14, Timeline Interactive became the first Middle Eastern company to design and produce a mass distributed video game world-wide. With experience as a developer, consultant, and CTO at a variety of start-ups, Ahmed Metwally brought a new level of business savvy and industry perspective when he joined Timeline in 2007.
Timeline is the first and only video game studio in the Middle East certified by Microsoft and Sony to develop games for Xbox360 and Play Station 3. CellFactor, Timeline’s first feature product, sold over 100,000 downloads in 2009. Ahmed and Mostafa believe that among many other credits, Timeline’s past successes and geographic location make it uniquely positioned to grow with the market.