Founder Stories | Samia, Founder, Circle

I'm Samya. My startup is called Circle and it's basically building a platform to try to solve the problem of introducing a social life or integrating a social life into workplaces where people, that's where people spend most of their time. But a lot of people just come into work, sit on a computer and leave and go about doing their own things, sometimes alone. Like it's important for companies for like employee turnover as well. Right. And even productivity here, they're satisfied and they're happier, they're gonna be more productive and more focused. Back in Jordan, I had an online consignment store and that's when I first got introduced into like the tech industry and the entrepreneurship side of myself as well. And I also did work in tech, in marketing, in the tech industry as well. So that's how I first got exposed to tech and to business. And I realized that this is what I wanted to do. And then when I moved back to Vancouver, I decided that it would be a good time to actually think about the place that I want to be and what steps should I take for me to prepare myself to get there. So I learned programming and then when I felt that it was time for me to start step back into growing myself and business side, I decided to take Leap and take it from there more. I feel like, yeah, I wake up every day. I'm passionate about, I think a good way to put it is I'm passionate about problem solving and that's why I also enjoy programming. It's problem solving and I love that, you know, in tech you get to kind of use both sides of your brain. You're like, okay, this is how, this is the problem. How do I go about solving it? And you have all these tools and all this like knowledge and all. And then you just try to put it together and you involve other people. So you're also, you know, it's a social thing as well. It's not just sitting, it's behind a computer or just working on your own. You're interacting with other people and you're actually doing something that's gonna have some sort of impact because you're solving a problem for people. And that's also an amazing part of it. You know, there's a lot of support, whether it's mentorship or just the community. And being around startups and like minded people all day, it is very overwhelming. Like the whole, there's so many things to getting your idea off the ground and you don't know where to start. And there are a lot of resources out there. But that just adds to like how overwhelmed you feel, you're pushed. You have a few days to do this. In five weeks, you're gonna go through the motions of the whole journey of a startup. So even if you, in real life, you might not ever get to that point where you have, you know, that market product fit and you want to scale, at least you've done it. You've done it in the workshop where if you do get to that point in real life, you have done it at least once or have an idea. And I think it helps you also in, you know, it's not as overwhelming or as, not as scary because as an entrepreneur, you are kind of on your own trying to make all these decisions. And so I think there's a lot of value in having to do it as part of a workshop. I would be lost, honestly, because before doing Leap, I had taken the leap out of my full time job as a software developer into, you know, I want to get back in the game. And I had like an idea and I was trying to validate it. I was like applying stuff that I was learning and I felt stuck. And at one point I was like, oh my God, this is way too overwhelming. And even though I was going about doing things and progressing, I felt something wasn't. I didn't know what the next step for me was. And when I came across leap, I'm good at taking in things and learning it in a structured way and then applying it. And the fact that it's a workshop, it's gonna make me do that. I think that just solved it for. Sam.