The Station — Baghdad's First Co-Working Hub for Iraqi Entrepreneurs

The Station opened in Baghdad in February 2018 as Iraq's first dedicated co-working space for entrepreneurs, founded by Mujahed al-Waisi, Muhanned Munjed and Ali Tarik. The facility offered 35 desks at $100 per month, with admission conditional on a business plan review by a selection team — a deliberate attempt to seed a startup culture in a city with almost no prior shared-workspace infrastructure.

Financial backing came from the Al-Handhal International Group and Awad Group, with additional support from the Iraqi Private Banks League, Earthlink, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Germany's GIZ. To keep the space cycling through new founders, companies that grew past five employees were expected to vacate their desks for incoming startups, functioning as an informal graduation rule rather than a fixed-term program.

The Station later added business-accelerator programming (mentorship, branding and investor-readiness support) and, in 2022, partnered with the Founder Institute to link Iraqi founders to an international pre-seed accelerator network. It expanded physically to Mosul, with further branches planned for Basra and southern Baghdad.

Independent, audited figures on graduate companies, jobs created or survival rates are not publicly available, so this remains a lower-evidence case: the record shows sustained operation, diversified funding and physical/programmatic expansion, but not yet a measured outcome trail.

Read the full analysis: https://the-station.iq/