Your World Today

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Kareem; ages 30, 29, and 28, respectively (as of 2007). When Google acquired YouTube, Chad and Steve walked with $326 Million each and Jawed with about $65 Million.

MySpace was founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson & Chris DeWolfe. Two years later in 2005, Tom (then aged 28) and Chris sold MySpace to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 Million.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerburg, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz, each currently 23 years old and pulling an approximate $50 Million in annual revenues from Facebook (2006 estimate).

These are examples of young techies who showed parents around the world that “playing with computers” can be a very profitable “sport” for their kids. (All photos were acquired from Wikipedia.com. Chris Hughes photo from Beet.tv)

And now, among Halifax’s hidden young tech stars, Rami Nasser, age 26, seems to be following in their shoes.

A self-described ‘web entrepreneur’, Rami has a number of online ventures already, the latest of which is a YouTube for science heads.

‘ScienceHack‘ is an online video repository for all things science that has some web communities buzzing with speculation. However, this is not the first venture by Rami to create positive internet chatter. His online whiteboard ‘to-do’ application ‘WorkHack‘ landed him good mention in at least 8 publications and several blogs.

But, who is Rami Nasser? Rami is originally from Syria. He came to Halifax in 1999 to pursue a degree at Dalhousie University. Following his graduation, he decided to strike it out on his own as a consultant. Like many immigrants to Canada, Rami had an ever-present entrepreneurial fire fueling his various ventures.

I asked Rami about what drove him to create ScienceHack. He said it was more of a ‘necessity mother of invention’ scenario. Being a science man himself, he had an overflowing library of bookmarks to science videos online. He first tried to organize these videos in a blog, but that did not work very well. Therefore, he decided to create a site to house all such videos, as he was sure that, like him, there must be others out there who have the same need.

Rami’s web applications are free to use. Like YouTube and other similar web ventures, the revenue model for Rami is based on advertising. The trick now is to drive as much attention to his sites. As a young startup, Rami, like all others, is restricted by a limited marketing budget. However, in a border-less online world, this issue is manageable.

Rami’s main marketing strategy is to utilize the blogosphere to create buzz about his ventures among the right circles. Online social networking has a mushroom effect, and some professional tech blogs have a lot of influence in shaping public opinion about which new internet services fly and which should be disregarded. In this area, Rami has so far managed to create the right kind of attention.

When asked about the advantages or disadvantages of Halifax being the headquarters for his online ventures, he mentions that, given his particular line of work, it would be easier to run things from a city like Toronto. Young techies with entrepreneurial ideas and passion are in short supply in Halifax. Many such ventures require a community backbone of like-minded individuals who are willing to contribute to the success of the project at the grass-root level.

For example, in Toronto, Rami would be able to get together with a group to bounce his ideas off other people like him for feedback, and he will have access to others who might be willing to contribute to his project with complementary skills that he may not have. As you can see from the YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace examples, a group effort is the common theme.

For now, however, Rami is flying solo.

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