Ahmed Al-Khabaz's father was educated as a doctor at Indiana State University, but had been imprisoned due to his religious beliefs when he came back to Iraq.
12 Facts About Ahmed Al-Khabaz
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz was thrilled about the idea of breaking stuff and making new discoveries.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz hacked into computer games like the real-time strategy Warcraft game and the first-person shooter video game, Counter-Strike.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz was admitted to the school's social studies program and transferred to computer science later.
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When he was 20 years old, Ahmed Al-Khabaz was expelled from Dawson College for what the school called as "unauthorized access" offense.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz was initially congratulated for his work with a promise from the school that the system would be fixed.
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When he did not hear from administrators after a few days, Ahmed Al-Khabaz checked if the problem was addressed using Acunetix, which is a program used to analyze the security of web applications.
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The school stood by its decision and cited how Ahmed Al-Khabaz was repeatedly warned to cease and desist but failed to do so.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz opted to launch Outpost Travel, a startup that aggregated peer-to-peer travel accommodations with business partner Ovi Mija, a fellow Dawson College student.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz's company was awarded $200,000 in venture capital, and counted Dave McClure as one of the investors.
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In 2016, Ahmed Al-Khabaz relocated to Boulder, Colorado where he got accepted to the Travelport Labs Accelerator program.
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Ahmed Al-Khabaz has since co-founded a travel tech company, by the name of Stay22, a free accommodations widget for event websites that allow users to view price-coded map of all accommodations in the area where an event is taking place.