SURVEY RESULTS

In April 2019, our team sent out a (very unscientific) survey to the local DFW community to learn a bit more about the DFW Muslim Startup scene. The goal of the survey was simply for us to get a general idea of our local community's assets and to determine if the community would benefit from a local Muslim entrepreneurs conference. (We therefore did not develop a survey with proper sampling and data collection methodology, although we did learn that a conference would likely be very helpful for our community!)

Anyhow, here is what we learned:

Survey Results Summary


  • The survey was distributed primarily through WhatsApp and word of mouth. We were very happy with the 144 responses it garnered, and even more pleased that 21 investors (70% accredited investors) were part of the respondents. 

  • When asked what would drive them to attend a potential DFW Entrepreneurial conference in the future, the primarily reason survey respondents gave was to network (39%) and to learn from successful entrepreneurs/mentors (34%).

  • When asked what topics they were interested in hearing about, they mostly wanted to learn about sales/growth strategies (39%), financial/legal help (14%) and finding investors (11%).

  • Investors were primarily interested in Real Estate and Healthcare type investments, although many also expressed interest in investing in Retail, Construction and IT/Software.

    • Entrepreneurs said they were running all kinds of businesses, although there was a concentration in Tech (including consulting, software) (19%), Islamic Lifestyle companies (16%), Education (9%) and Real Estate (7%)

    • It was encouraging to see that entrepreneurs in our community are running real businesses: 86% have 2 or more US based full time employees, and the average company employed 6 US based employees.


Survey Result Details


  • The bulk of the respondents are between 25 and 44.
  • And a healthy amount of respondents were investors! We were pretty pleased about that. In fact, there was 1 investor per every 3.2 entrepreneurs.

Regarding Investors:

  • 70% accredited and 67% have invested more than 25,000 in the past 3 years in an average of 1.9 investments per investor

  • 95% said they wanted to network with other investors and 62% were open to mentoring others

    • Investors were interested in investing in the following kinds of business:

Regarding Entrepreneurs:

  • A total of 56 startups employ 332 US based employees (average of 6 employees per company) of which 254 are DFW based
  • 61% were first time entrepreneurs, the remainder had started an average of 1 company in the past. Of those who ran previous companies, they employed an average of 11 employees at their peak, with the maximum anyone company employed was 65.
  • 66% are working on their startup full-time, 44% part time.
  • 86% have 2 or more full time US Based employees
  • Those who had co-founders vs. those who went solo were almost evenly split (49% had a co-founder, 51% didn't)
  • 94% are interested in meeting other entrepreneurs, 72% are looking for mentors
  • 20% have taken outside investment, 80% have not - of which about half were looking for outside investment
  • The following is a breakdown of the types of businesses of the entrepreneurs who responded to the survey:

    • There is no specific focus on the types of industries they serve:

  • In terms of US based employees: Average: 6; Highest: 65
  • In terms of DFW based employees: Average: 5; Highest: 65
  • Age of the business: Average: 4 years; Highest: 19 years
  • Lastly, in terms of the type of topics respondents wanted to learn more about, sales/growth, legal and finding investors topped the list.

We wanted to thank everyone for responding. Hopefully this will help drive our agenda for our first conference!