Journey of an Entrepreneur: Meet the Cofounders
Make sure to read parts one, two, and three of the series!
Enter Amany Killawi and Omar Hamid.
Amany was just 19 when we first met. She was an inner city youth organizer and heavily involved with building the Detroit Minds and Hearts Fellowship (DMH): a program that activated youth to become organizers in their own communities.
I was friends with her friends and the founders of DMH, Ameerah Saidi and Khadijah Alasary. They knew of my past success with crowdfunding and had wanted to launch their own fundraiser and asked if I could help. “Of course” I said, and they were the first campaign to be part of my LaunchGood-consultancy-hack.
However, when they assigned one of their younger partners — Amany Killawi — to work with me, I was let down. I thought they had passed me on to one of their interns.
How wrong I was!
Immediately I observed Amany was mature beyond her years (probably even beyond my years!). She’s was a Mighty Mouse!
Super organized, super driven, super sincere — working with Amany was a breeze and together we easily knocked out our goal of $10,000 and had even made it to the front page of IndieGoGo because of the campaign’s success.
I knew right away I wanted her to work with me in getting LaunchGood off the ground. And her values reflected the ones I aspired to in LaunchGood: empowering and inspiring Muslims.
But Amany didn’t see herself as an entrepreneur. She was in school for social work, had a year left until graduation, and was volunteering on the side with DMH, MAS, and doing research with ISPU, which took up all her free time. She wasn’t looking to get involved in a tech company.
But one of my secret powers is my stubbornness. I wasn’t ready to give up that easy.
In the meantime, enter Omar Hamid.
While I was running LaunchGood as a crowdfunding consultancy/WordPress site I continued to build the real platform with our Pakistani developers. For those unfamiliar, a website basically has two parts to it: a frontend (what you see) and a backend (how it works). The Pakistani developers were making the backend, which can be and often is outsourced overseas.
But for the frontend, for what people see and interact with, I knew I needed a designer that understood the true global nature of LaunchGood and could design for it. Someone who really understood what we were trying to accomplish and establish a clear and magnetic brand for LaunchGood. Ultimately LaunchGood is its brand, not technology.
So I found Omar Hamid and everything was perfect, right?
Not exactly. Initially I found a Muslim designer in Europe. This guy is an incredible artist and makes stunning Arabic calligraphy graffiti art, and lucky for me he could do digital design too!
We started designing the website and right away I was stoked! His design was on point, and he came up with the original light bulb mosaic logo we use for LaunchGood. Everything was on track — until he just disappeared.
To this day I’m not sure what happened. I heard he got sick and was hospitalized, but then his brother denied that. A ripoff competitor called Halalfunder launched in Europe at the same time, making me think he ran off with the idea himself, but their design was so poor I doubted he had any involvement.
Whatever the case, I was left with a half-designed website and no designer.
Around this time I came across the most beautiful website for a Muslim organization ever, Elevate Culture (6 years later the website still looks good!). I got to know its founder, Sarah Mostafa, and after inquiring about her web design she began to rave about her designer Omar Hamid. “Chris, Omar is the best web developer out there.”
In hindsight, I would say “Omar is the best designer you could work with.”
He’s not the fastest (sorry Omar) but he is one of the best out there, and his character, his selfless personality, make him leaps and bounds better than anyone I know.
Another thing: Omar is just mahboob — you can’t help but love him!
At first Omar was just hired as a contractor, and we were one of many clients to Alfenn. He did his duty and over the course of the next year polished up our logo and finished the web design.
I thought our relationship ended there; in fact it was just the beginning.
By September 2013 LaunchGood was ready to go. It had been 18 months, but finally the back end was done, the front end was done, the brand established.
But before I could launch, I needed Amany.
I can be very persistent. Through the course of the next 12 months I continued to follow up with Amany. I just knew if she joined, our complimentary skills could turn LaunchGood into a real success.
After she graduated in the spring of 2013 — and LaunchGood was still just a WordPress marketing site — I asked her to join, and she said no and instead spent her summer managing ISPU’s Marriage and Divorce study.
As the summer ended, again I asked her to join LaunchGood. She was hesitant but more open this time. ISPU had offered her a full-time job, with salary and under the mentorship of the sharp Farhan Latif. I was offering her no pay, no guarantees — just a journey and opportunity of a lifetime.
Amany hesitantly accepted, and we split her time. Amany would work for ISPU 3 days/week (Mon/Wed/Fri), and LaunchGood 2 days/week (Tues/Thurs). It seemed like a good compromise; she could still earn a little money and take a shot at building this startup at the same time.
However, a few weeks in Farhan changed his mind, and (correctly) made the decision that she needed to either be all in or out of ISPU.
At first I was really upset — what chance did I have now to keep Amany with me?
The next few weeks were intense as Farhan and I awaited a decision from Amany about what she would choose. We both had several conversations with Amany to sway her to our side. Ultimately, the decision was hers.
After much consideration and reflection, Amany chose to focus on LaunchGood. Later on, she was able to find another part time flexible job that allowed her to keep taking a bet on LaunchGood, but in the meantime, she was fully on board.
Now we just needed a campaign to launch with, something that would convey what LaunchGood was all about.
What was LaunchGood’s first campaign? Find out on Tuesday! Subscribe to our blog!
See how we’re celebrating 5 years and check out some of our favorite campaigns here: launchgood.com/birthday
