Hadiyah Mujhid – Talented Engineer uses her Skills to Increase African-American Entrepreneurs
Hadiyah Mujhid from San Francisco, CA, is the founder and developer of Good App Co., a software company that works with organizations to create custom websites and mobile apps to further expand their products and business to consumers. With over 12 years of experience as a software engineer, Mujhid has developed software in many computer science fields from consultant industries to startups. Innov8tiv caught up with Hadiyah and below is our interview.
Q: How did you decide you wanted to go into Software Development?
A: I graduated as an undergrad in 2001 from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. I started as a pre-med major, but dropped it after a year because it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I based my field of study on what was easy for me. I was good with computer science, so I took some courses without knowing what position I would take with my knowledge.
For roughly 10 years, I worked at Lockheed Martin, where I developed software for multiple defense systems, as well as test plans and procedures for unit, multi-box and system testing. After I left, I decided to create my own company, which involved working in the field of Image Semantics. It didn’t succeed, so I shut it down.
Q: What made you decide to start up the Good App Company? What are your responsibilities?
A: For about 6-9 months, I was a member of Thunderbolt Labs, which was a boutique software firm that helps teams build successful software. From there, I wanted to open up my own company where I could build mobile and web apps.
It didn’t take long for me to start a company of my own. The hardest part is finding customers. My first customer was a friend of mine who was shutting down her company. Good App Co. works with other companies and organizations to figure out what type of apps they want made. We’ve made applications for Facebook, web and consumers.
Q: The Black Founders website said that the black demographic in entrepreneurship is underrepresented in the tech entrepreneurship space. Is that what led you to help start Black Founders?
A: You can say that, yes. The T.V. Insight Research Company released a report that stated less than 1% of entrepreneurs were African Americans. Me and another founder, Chris Bennett went to different network events and noticed there weren’t a lot of black people. I and three other people I know started this company three years ago to help increase the number of black entrepreneurs.
Q: Does Black Founders offer classes for people or are they planned events?
A: We offer events and workshops periodically. People can sign up to our mailing list, and we send out e-mails of upcoming workshops, or they can go to the Black Founders webpage and look at our calendar of events.
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