“I would tell the people who start a company now: don’t do it alone!”

This article is part of our series on the journey of entrepreneurship, where we ask startup founders to share with us their hardships and experiences.

Rabih Naja, 24, is the founder of Refugogo, a crowdfunding platform that helps refugees rebuild the business they lost during the war. 

Reporting and writing by Rachel Notteau and Soraya Hamdan
Translation by Nour Chidiac
Editing by MJ Daoud

Rabih Naja, founder @ Refugogo. Photo: Rachel Notteau

The story of Refugogo

“Growing up, I knew I couldn’t go to university. My parents didn’t have the means to pay for college, so after high school, I was supposed to work  in my father’s mechanics company. Still, my parents always taught me to help people in need. 

Because of that, in 2013 I participated to a high school competition : we had to find solutions to the electricity problem in Lebanon. I won !

This competition has changed my life because I won a scholarship to pursue my studies in the university of my choice. I enrolled in engineering in the university of Jeita. 

There in 2017,  I participated to a competition called “Hot Price”.  We had to find a solution to help one million refugees find a job, so we designed a school that offered courses for refugees to help them integrate the job market. We didn’t win, but I eventually decided to leave university before graduating, and focus on doing what I loved most : launching a startup to help Syrian refugees.  I think I always dreamed of becoming a self-made man, to build my life with my own hands and succeed. Thanks to this new competition, I found my passion for creating new projects and giving a helping hand to people in need.

The concept 

I reworked a bit on the original idea and came up with the project of Refugogo, a crowdfunding platform to help Syrian refugees rebuild the business they lost in the war. 

I got this idea after meeting a Syrian man who was selling flowers near Mcdonald’s. He told me that he used to have a cleaning enterprise which was destroyed in the war, and that he needed money to relaunch it so he could return to Syria. This is why I founded Refugogo in June 2017.

Refugogo helps refugees collect money to rebuild their business  through a crowdfunding campaign on our platform.  
The investors who are interested in a project register on the platform and invest a minimum of 100 dollars . 

Where is Refugogo today?

Unfortunately,  Refugogo doesn’t exist anymore, even though the project won 12 prizes. But what I didn’t know when I started was that I had to pay U.S. $500,000 to the Lebanese government to get a crowdfunding platform license. Obviously I didn’t have that money! So, I searched for a license in foreign countries, and I ended up paying 20,000 dollars to get a license from the British FCA. But after waiting for 6 months, the British commission didn’t grant it to me. 

Without the license Refugogo couldn’t exist. I had to close it in the beginning of 2018.

What did you learn from your experience? 

I should’ve done more research because the world of enterprises is very complicated; maybe I should’ve asked around more so I wouldn’t have invested that much money in a project that failed. Since I didn’t have any knowledge of the world of entrepreneurship, I had to learn everything on the job: marketing, finance, capital and shares, investment and banking.  Also, I should’ve gotten to the field to meet more refugees, before launching a startup in a domain that I barely knew. In the end, I didn’t know much at first, neither on the status of refugees, nor on crowdfunding platforms. 

So what would you tell entrepreneurs today? 

The main advice that I would give to people who want to become entrepreneurs is to not do it solo. I founded Refugogo alone, I worked a lot. It drained my energy, I didn’t have time to rest. Mostly, it’s hard to launch a startup alone! I would’ve loved it if someone gave me some advice, I needed people to help me.

So what have you learned about yourself?

Before founding Refugogo, I was very shy. In high school, my classmates rejected me because I spoke too fast, and they didn’t understand what I said. Because of that, I didn’t feel like talking anymore because I was afraid people would make fun of me.
But with Refugogo, I had to work on myself, as I had to pitch my idea. I had to  force myself to talk to people I didn’t know to present my startup. I did it for Refugogo because my project deserved it.
Now, I’m not afraid to talk in front of strangers anymore and I believe in myself again.  

So I don’t regret creating Refugogo! It has changed my life. If I had continued my studies in the university, I would’ve found a job that wouldn’t have made me happy and maybe I would’ve never known that I liked being an entrepreneur.

What now?

I am currently working on  various projects, one of them at the United Nations in Lebanon that I got thanks to Refugogo.

I’m still looking for what I really want to do for a living. I know that I want to work in entrepreneurship, but I didn’t find the right idea yet. I’m not worried, even if I don’t come up with any idea right now, I know that one day I will come up with a great new startup idea, and it will work out!”

Refugogo in brief

Startup creation date: June 2017
Number of employees: 0 (I founded Refugogo alone and a few friends helped me create the platform)
Capital: I got 40 000 dollars from a business owner friend who accepted to invest in Refugogo and had 35% of shares. Thanks to his investment I paid the license (that I didn’t get) and I founded Refugogo.
Enterprise status: C Corp (it’s a type of American enterprise where the responsibility is limited to its shareholders)