Raising Entrepreneurs

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Young entrepreneur, Rahim Fazal, sold his first business for $1.5 million while still in high school.

The first keynote speaker at this year’s Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour was Rahim Fazal, a dot-com millionaire. Fazal’s journey from McDonald’s worker to a millionaire caught the attention of students.

“You’ve got to be a bit crazy to become successful,” he said.

That attitude drove him to sell his first business for $1.5 million, when he was still in high school. Fazal earned a Master of Business Arts degree just after completing high school.

Fazal’s business ambitions started early in his hometown of Vancouver and have always involved his best friend, Husein Kaba. The two started off with the smallest of jobs: selling hockey cards at flea markets, helping to set up computers and, one year, a topsoil delivery outfit.

“I’ve always been very entrepreneurial,” says Fazal.

These small projects piqued the two boys’ interest in business and would lay the foundation for much bolder plans in the future.

The first came in 1997 while the two were in high school. They worked at a company called Internet Direct, which provided web connection and hosting. While balancing the rigours of the International Baccalaureate program at school, Fazal worked nights and weekends on the business.

By 1998 their new site, MailBC.com, allowed small businesses to create basic websites and e-mail programs. Started with a $500 investment, within a year it had 25,000 customers. “Eventually it took on a life of its own,” Fazal says.

The demands of the growing business meant Fazal had to carry a cellphone and pager, and was constantly being called out of class to provide customer support. “My teacher actually thought I was a drug dealer,” he says.

Fazal had kept the business a secret from his parents, knowing they would force him to shut it down and concentrate solely on school. When a meeting was called with his parents and teachers to discuss his possible “drug dealing,” Fazal had to pick the lesser of two evils: he pretended he was dealing. The sacrifice meant the business could survive.

In 2000, while still in high school, Fazal and Kaba sold their business for $1.5 million. After losing a second business to the tech crash, the two went to college – and Fazal was granted entry into the MBA program at Ivey without having an undergraduate degree, a rare privilege susally only granted to much older people with many years of business experience.

After completing his MBA, Fazal is once more running a tech business, this time with Noah Horton.

Recognizing an opportunity to help companies improve their online marketing capabilities, Fazal and Horton developed a video technology platform that allows companies to build and easily distribute video campaigns to massive audiences on social networks and across the Web. Involver’s technology gives companies the tools to increase customer engagement by having them physically interact with the video campaign, rather than be passive viewers.

“Our goal was to try to create video that really encouraged participation, by building in a call to action,” says Fazal. Recent Involver clients include Puma, which launched a video campaign during the Olympics to support Jamaican sprinter and gold medalist Usain Bolt, as well as microlending site Kiva.org.

“The true entrepreneur is a doer not a dreamer,” Fazal said, concluding his Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour session.

Source: Inc.com, RahimFazal.com, The Online Reporter