Creating a Startup: Believing in Your Idea is Just the Beginning
The first challenge for any startup is convincing the first customer. But between the dream, ambition, and reality, the gap is enormous: globally, 95% of startups never make it past the five-year mark. In Tunisia, despite a creative youth, the obstacles are even higher. Bureaucracy, lack of funding, non-convertible currency… the hurdles are numerous, but a few rare tightrope walkers still manage to keep their balance.
Fluoink, for example, was born in a small office in autumn 2022. Four researchers decided to manipulate the invisible: nanoparticles capable of disinfecting surfaces and materials. Very quickly, their first product was ready. But in Tunisia, innovation is not enough. Administrative authorizations turn into a labyrinth. 18 months of waiting. Instead of giving up, they sent a sample to the United States. There, the doors opened: American patent, validation by an independent laboratory, and Saudi investors seduced at the Arab Health conference in Dubai. Fluoink understood that here, survival often rhymes with departure. "Our salvation lies in going international," repeats Ramzi Maalej, co-founder.
Not Dying Twice
Others had to reinvent themselves on the spot. When the pandemic paralyzed the country, Teskerti, Tunisia's first online ticketing platform, found itself without any events to sell. Not a single dinar in revenue. Two years of silence. Karim Jelliti, its founder, remembers that desert crossing: "We were ghosts, but we knew we had to come back stronger." The team regrouped, revised their customer experience, and made digital the heart of their relaunch. Today, Teskerti claims over 500,000 users and triples its pre-Covid revenue.
Those who hold out share a common reflex: abandoning lost battles. Ghazi Saddem, strategy expert and member of the Startup College, hammers this point home to young founders: "If you spend your energy on a market that's too small, without scalability, you'll exhaust yourself." For him, a startup that lasts is a box that learns to flee immobility. Adapting, pivoting, targeting markets that understand its product: that's the real test.
Understanding the Terrain to Survive
For Ghazi Saddem, survival depends on three levers: competitiveness, scalability, and lucidity. "Survival boils down to rapid execution, operational mastery, and customer loyalty." But the ecosystem remains stifling. Kafkaesque tax regulations, exchange laws blocking access to foreign currencies to buy strategic services like AI, and often inadequate support: "90% of programs train but don't act. We recycle methods designed for classic businesses, not for startups that need to scale." Result: many go elsewhere to raise funds.
Certain sectors struggle more: local e-commerce crushed by international platforms, fintech hindered by archaic regulation, and "lifestyle" apps weakened by volatile user behavior. Ghazi Saddem is blunt: "When a startup loses its customers, burns through its treasury, and sees its founder demoralized, it signs its death warrant." To avoid this, he recalls a rule: understanding the difference between growth and scalability. Wanting to launch multiple products at once dilutes everything. "The product-market fit must be validated before spreading out." His advice: pilot locally, scale elsewhere. Test the local market, secure your base, and then seek growth relays where regulatory brakes are fewer. Like Fluoink did by securing its American patent to bypass local blockages.
The True Compass?
"Remaining pragmatic, listening to customers, anticipating warning signs. And, above all, not living in utopia." What Fluoink and Teskerti tell us is that in Tunisia, survival is an equation between lucidity and resourcefulness. The ecosystem remains fragile: complex taxation, limited access to international services, and limited fundraising. Too many young startups confuse speed with precipitation. They disperse instead of growing step by step. The warning signs are always there: cash dwindling without loyal customers, exhausted founder, unclear model.
Surviving five years is not an exploit. It's proof that a startup can jump over walls without losing its balance.
