Rahim Fazal, co-founder of SVAcademy in San Francisco, credits getting fired from his job at McDonald’s with a lot of his early success in business.Christopher Katsarov
Rahim Fazal, 36, an initiator of startups and co-founder of SVAcademy in San Francisco, clarifies how getting fired from his first job at McDonald's changed his life.
I think of Canada as a mosaic and the U.S. as a melting pot. I don't know if that was still relevant when I moved to the U.S. in 2006, but that was in my mind. I tried to fit in more than stand out. My name is 'F-A-Zed-A-L.' People have no idea what you're talking about so immediately you stand out; it's pronounced 'ZEE.'
I was born in Vancouver, have wonderful parents. They came to Canada through the expulsion of the Asians in East Africa. That's a big part of my identity, Canadian and Ismaili. You see the immigrant work ethic everywhere in the world. I see it here daily. My parents organized their lives around my sister and I; how they spent their time, I don't know if I would make those trade-offs.
At 16, I was fired from my part-time job. If you want a job, but were fired from McDonald's, who'll hire you? I decided I'd never work in fast food again.
My best friend Husein Kaba and I had the same curiosity which led to complementary roles in the business we started in 2000. When we were young, our parents would drop us to school early because they had to get to work. There were Commodore 64s, so because we were bored, we developed a love for computers, how they work, programming, creating something.
We started the company on a lark, almost led double lives. Because we didn't know any better, nothing deterred us; like playing hockey, if I won a game or didn't, it wasn't end of the world.
We were watching the news – people not more than five years older than us had companies, IPOs. Successful people didn't look, sound, have names or backgrounds like us. We were just going through capers building our business – MailBC, a website hosting and design platform – a secret to our parents. It was such a shock to them. We had 25,000 customers, selling the business while we were in high school [for $1.5-million].
When creating companies, you had to appear bigger. Now, it's almost the opposite – I take pride in having a small high-powered team versus growing up, when I was trying to appear 10 times bigger.
During the business, Husein and I shared experiences, learning skills like how to work with adults, selling, branding, understanding finances, how to interact with customers, conflict resolution, on and on. Skills developed supplemental to education are in high demand, but the market doesn't have an easy way of teaching these to young people. SVAcademy provides that same employer-driven training, helping young people transition into entry-level full-time opportunities that otherwise would require years of work experience, and not just where they can start with a high salary but get high-quality skills, closing that gap between school and work.
My perception of Silicon Valley is rooted in reality, one reason we started SVAcademy; its mindset, lifestyle, opportunity and entrepreneurial ideals rather than geography.
Half our team is Canadian. I connected with a Canadian from Montreal, who had been in the U.S. maybe 25 years. Joel Scott and I got to know each other on different sides of the table and realized we had so much commonality and wonderful energy, rooted in shared values and experiences.
There's a lot of homogeneity here, which is viewed as the gold standard; Ivy League schools, a particular background, knowing particular people, particular internships or work experiences – why there's a movement now in diversity, including gender, race, culture and other differences. I think Canada sees these differences as opportunities, strengths.
Being Canadian is part of the way we'll solve elitism in Silicon Valley.
I'm a big believer in network intelligence and resourcefulness, my advice is to see people as allies in your life and career. With increased automation, the real value in human-to-human connections will increase because co-operating with others will be the areas machines can't help.
One of my favourite books is Sapiens [A Brief History of Humankind] by Yuval Noah Harari – life-changing, phenomenal – about the history of our species, world events that in those moments might have been seen as failures. Now I have this view, failure or success is defined by the period of time you're reflecting on.
This interview has been edited and condensed.