Interview with the Executive Magazine: Cedar Triumph in Cyberspace
Overcoming the odds, Lebanese software gurus enter internet eminence
The world’s most popular internet applications, including Yahoo, Google, Facebook and YouTube, share several interesting characteristics. Nearly all were developed by students enrolled in American universities and nearly all were aided by an American venture capital injection to successfully enter the market. Lebanese-born Elie Khoury and Jad Younan have followed more or less the same path, yet with one major difference: they developed their Woopra program in Lebanon. Against all odds, some may argue, as the Land of the Cedars can hardly be described as an IT incubator.
Both Khoury and Younan graduated from the Lebanese American University in Byblos in 2007 with a degree in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, respectively. They spent many hours in class, but they spent many more nights working late on Woopra, a live tracking and analytics service that aims to send market leader Google Analytics into oblivion.
