GeniusFlame

O the irony that the only other post here is taking about my start in Jordan. C’est la vie.

It will be 1 year since I arrived in Jordan on May 8th. I came here to build a new kind of technology company for the region, one that revels in its ability to bring transparency to the cumbersome process of university selection. Looking back at where we stand and all we have done, I’m proud to say to our users, the amazing Edufina team, and our fans, that we have accomplished just that. So now its time for me to move on to my next endeavor. I’ll be wrapping up my role as CEO of Edufina in the next two weeks and handing over a great team to the founders of Edufina, Lisa Kamal and Tamara Khadra.

Taking a look back at what we have accomplished, there are quite a few things I am proud of. Below, in no particular order, are a few:

• Building out a great technical team that took in my pushing for success and blew me away by what I got back, integrating several systems together to form a great platform to build from. Sounds vague? It should be, I can’t give away our secret sauce now can I?
• Launching our first iteration in less than 3 months. I love it when people are shocked and ask me how we did that.
• Forming partnerships with universities throughout Jordan to feature their data. Data is not an easy thing to acquire from traditionally staid industries. I’m proud to say we cracked that nut.
• The dozens of articles and commentaries with our launch, something that was really great with this being the first time I have met most of you.
• Putting together an amazing data acquisition process. Ahmad Adham, our Research guy, really rose to the challenge of sifting through hundreds of books, websites, brochures and others to put together the only database of its kind. No company in the world has the level of data we have on universities in the region.
• Being selected as a Finalist for Arabnet 2011. We were honored to be placed in the great company of all the startups there. The panels were great, and experiences even better.

I could keep going, but I should stop there for fear of my hand patting straight through our teams collective back. I’m extremely proud of Zakwan, Waleed, and Ahmad and all they have done, they have been the heart of the team.

Sadly though, Waleed Asender will also be moving on from Edufina. He was selected in Oasis500′s Wave 4 to be funded and launch his own startup. I’ve been asked if I was ok with Waleed even applying. I honestly couldn’t be happier for him. I have always tried to encourage our team to have an entrepreneurial mindset. Its been in the DNA of our company, and this has been the ultimate culmination of that thought process. Companies encouraging their employees to take the product as their own lead to happier employees and better products. It just works.

As for whats next, I’ve got a few projects I’ll be working on. While I can’t talk about them just yet, stay tuned.

In the words of Barney Stinson: It’s truly been…wait for it…legendary.