Amjad Masad

I've always loved programming and understand like how computers work.

But at the same time, I was also always motivated to make money with computers.

And I felt like we're at a moment in time where you can build something

um you can build businesses really quickly ever since like i found the internet and in in the like 90s i i wanted to like build websites to like make money and there was like a bunch of ideas there's a bunch of examples of people making money really quickly there was this idea of like a million dollar home page where someone was like selling pixels and you can like

be Microsoft you can buy like 10 pixels and write Microsoft's logo whatever 100 pixels and so there was this media even at the time it's like okay you can make money online and I was going to the internet cafe because we don't have internet at home so I would like you know scrap whatever money we had

of finding couches or whatever to go pay for like an hour of internet.

And I would sit there and like look at different websites, look at what people are doing, different games, different ways I could like build something that could like make money.

And then the main idea was sitting right under my nose, which is the internet cafe itself.

I was like, well, internet cafes make a lot of money, but they don't use software to manage their business.

Like their business is you go in there, you pay, you know, a buck or two, you get an hour on the computer.

And when you're sitting on the computer, they have to keep track of you.

They're like every hour they look at the clock and they're like, okay, your time is up.

They tap you on the shoulder.

Also, when you're on the computer, you can like install a virus.

You can like delete files.

They can do whatever.

So I was like, okay, what if I built something that secures the system, makes it so that there's like usernames and passwords, makes it so that internet cafes need less employees because once you run out of time, it'll just like boot you out.

So I built this internet cafe management system.

And because I knew it and this is the, I keep coming back to this idea of the way to build businesses, to build things you know about, either trends you're plugged in or problems around you in the world.

So I was 12 or 13 and I spent like, you know, a year or two trying to build this software for another cafes and then went out and sold it and made quite a bit of money from it.