Hussein Fazal is a

serial entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entrepreneu ...

based in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. He is the co-founder and CEO of Super.com, An American technology company. Previously, Fazal co-founded AdParlor, one of the earliest

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

ad optimization companies, later acquired by adknowledge in 2011.

Early life and education

Fazal was born and raised in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. He attended the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, where he earned a

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

degree. Fazal also attended Waterloo's co-op program along with Henry Shi. In 2011, He was accepted into the NEXT 36 program.

Career

Fazal started his career as a

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the province ...

in 2008. Later that year, he along with Kristaps Ronka co-founded AdParlor, a

bootstrapped In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input. Many analytical techniques are often called bootstrap methods in reference to their self-starting or self-supporting ...

and X ad optimization platform. As one of the first companies to focus on performance marketing for

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, AdParlor worked with advertisers to scale their campaigns. The company generated over $100 million in revenue and later in 2011 was acquired by AdKnowledge. In 2016, Fazal co-founded SnapTravel, a conversational AI platform designed to help users book hotels via SMS and messaging apps like

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

. Over time, SnapTravel expanded its offerings, integrating financial tools and retail discounts, and rebranded briefly to SnapCommerce and then Super.com in 2022. In 2024, Super.com was named one of the America's fastest growing companies by

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

. Fazal has written for

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

and ''

Ad Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in ...

.''

Awards and Recognition

* Forbes Fintech 50, 2023. * Entrepreneur of the Year Ontario region, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, 2022. * 30 Most Creative People In Advertising Under 30,

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

, 2012. * 30 Under 30,

Inc. Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business media company founded in 1979 and based in New York City. ''Inc.'' publishes several print magazine issues per year, and is anchored by journalistic content online and on social media, focused on entrepreneurship a ...

, 2011.

References

{{Reflist Living people Silicon Valley people Canadian technology company founders Year of birth missing (living people) Date of birth missing (living people)