The way Saudi entrepreneur Mohammed Aldossary sees it, innovators are animated by the same motivations whether they are in Silicon Valley, the Arabian peninsula or in South Asia: they want to solve vexing problems at scale.

“What excites talent, what excites the community is to go build around those needs,” Aldorassy told the Fortune Global Forum on Sunday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

He is the founder and CEO of SILQ, the result of the merger in April between Saudi business-to-business marketplace Sary, which connects small businesses with manufacturers to buy supplies, and Bangladesh’s ShopUp, which offers similar services.

Aldorassy said the vast majority of companies in Saudi Arabia are small and medium-sized enterprises, but they only account for 9% of bank lending. And that is the k

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