Closer Look
Omar Waked
Age: 22
Founded: 2018. Raedam is winding down, with founders evaluating new markets for Raedam tech
Education: Civil engineering degree
What the company did? Provided hardware and software for businesses to enable automated end-to-end support for their operations and enforcement, provided a mobile app that allows users to enter their destination and be guided to parking spots
Accelerators or incubators: Slice of PIE (light-touch version of the normal Portland Incubator Experiment cohort); The CUBE incubator through the Center for Entrepreneurship at PSU; PSU Cleantech Challenge; TIE University Oregon Chapter, and the beta challenge through Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Have you received any outside funding? $2,000 from the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at PSU, $1,500 through the PSU Cleantech Challenge
How did your company come about? I was late to my chemistry final during my freshman year at PSU because it took me over 30 mins to find an open parking spot. I made sure to arrive early and still managed to be late.
Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? Essentially. I am always and have been excited about the idea of being able to identify problems that people face and provide a solution they love.
Entrepreneurship is always about learning and there is always an element of you don’t know what you don’t know. But I’m curious if you have felt any specific challenges around your work because you are still so young and early in your career? The biggest challenge around any of the work that I do is by far networking or finding a way to get in contact with the right person to learn about more aspects of a given problem you are looking to solve. It has been extremely difficult for me to get in contact with people who have insights, run, or manage parking lots or facilities. Other factors such as technical and business knowledge can be easily obtained online. I actually learned most about startups back in high school through YCombinator's online content.
What are you most excited about for your future? I really look forward to finding a problem(s) that I can help in designing a solution to make a significant impact in people's day-to-day lives.
