Journey of An Entrepreneur: Non-Profit to Film Making to “Cattle Launch”

Make sure to read the first part of the series here!

It was time to quit and move on. I was 24.

So I did, and I became a non-profit director. I helped my brilliant friend Saif Omar launch Fawakih, a Qur’anic Arabic program out of DC, initially working in the summer but making the plunge to full time after I left teaching. I started flying around the country doing fundraisers, redesigning our website, etc.

We were growing as an organization, but after a while I felt limited. We were serving a minority (those who want to learn Qur’anic Arabic) within a minority (US Muslims, ~1% of the population). Most importantly, I didn’t feel like I was learning enough, or that I was challenged enough.

It was time to quit and move on. I was 25.

Enter Bilal’s Stand

So I moved on, and I became a film producer. This is probably my craziest move ever, as I knew nothing about the entertainment industry. But my uber talented friend Sultan Sharrief had just gotten into the Sundance Film Festival with Bilal’s Stand but needed a business partner and — with me being half-decent with numbers — asked me to move out to Detroit with him.

It was April 1, 2010. I was young, single, and felt this was one of those pivotal life moments — and I went for it.

I packed up my 2002 Chevy Impala with everything I owned, flew Sultan into Massachusetts, and together we drove the 800 miles to Detroit to start our new life together. If it sounds like we were married, well that’s how startups are! You feel practically married to your co founders!

We rented a 102-year old house in Midtown Detroit, converted the 1st floor to our office and 2nd floor into our living space. We built a small team and began flying Sultan around the country to show Bilal’s Stand and lead discussions around race, privilege, community, and education.

It soon became apparent that I was not cut out for the job. To really make it in Hollywood, you often need to be able to schmooze and lie your way to success. Case in point: we were trying to raise $1 million for our next film, 5 Before 5, and met with a Muslim investor in LA. He was really nice and told us straight up “Hey guys, I’m not going to invest in you. But here’s one of my bank statements, it has a little more than $100,000 in it. Tell people I’m your first investor and present this as proof, then you can get others to follow suit.”

He was dead right. Nobody wants to be the first investor, but if you can show someone else has bought it, you can get them to follow.

But it was unethical to me, and I never did pull out that paper and show it to other prospective investors. And we never ended up raising the money we needed, or making the film.

Despite my failure as a film producer, I found success in the job which ultimately led to LaunchGood: Kickstarter.

At the end of my first year, we were ready to start monetizing Bilal’s Stand. This meant polishing up the movie and producing DVDs, a website to purchase them, cover art, etc. Which also meant $$$.

By then we had tapped out our investors, and in looking for new money a friend from New York recommended we check out this new website called Kickstarter. Today Kickstarter is well-known as the creative crowdfunding platform, but at the time it was just a year old. We were one of the first campaigns in Michigan, and I believe we were the first Muslims to ever use the platform.

We had a surprisingly successful campaign, and I became a big fan of Kickstarter specifically and crowdfunding as a whole. Not only did I see the business potential in it, but I was transfixed on how it was inspiring a new generation of doers in America. Before, if you wanted to make a movie you needed to have a rich uncle, or rich doctor friends, or inside connections to Hollywood studios.

But not with crowdfunding. You could go to your friends, family, and fans with a direct appeal. Suddenly people were launching all sorts of ideas, like the Pebble Watch — rejected by 100 VC’s but able to raise $10+ million on Kickstarter.

I started to think, “What if we had a Kickstarter for the Muslim community? Something that empowered and inspired us, that moved us from a victim mindset to an agency one?”

I also became stagnant in my role as an Executive Producer. I wasn’t able to raise the money to allow Sultan to make his next film. We could arrange tours year round for Sultan without challenge, but that was boring. I felt stuck in Beyond Blue Productions.

It was time to quit and move on. I was 27.

Enter Bizdom.

By 2011 I was serious about starting LaunchGood, but uncertain where to start. In one of my email listservs (MUPPIES) a mentor of mine mentioned he was also interested in the idea, and I reached out seeing if he wanted to partner together on it. Weeks went by, finally I received a reply. After looking into it, they felt the idea was too risky for them (e.g. Holy Land Foundation case) and they were too busy anyway.

So now where do I go?

There was this other opportunity emerging at the same time, Bizdom. Bizdom was Dan Gilbert’s incubator program for entrepreneurs and startups in Detroit. “Idea Generator” was a part-time nights & weekends program with business mentors to help get people like me from an idea to an actual startup.

I had already applied for Bizdom’s Idea Generator with a goal to build an online distribution platform for independent films. We were set to start in the fall of 2011, and I decided to make a pivot: I would enter the program with an idea to start a crowdfunding platform instead.

But it wasn’t LaunchGood, at least not at first.

Enter Catalaunch. (Or “Cattle-Launch”)

Find out what “Cattle-Launch” was in part 3! Never miss a post — subscribe to our blog!

See how we’re celebrating 5 years and check out some of our favorite campaigns here: launchgood.com/birthday