Shining a light on the web
By Anna Fifield
Published: December 16 2008 20:26 | Last updated: December 16 2008 20:26
When Elie Khoury, a self-confessed “computer guy” since the age of 12, started a website about playing the guitar, he struggled to find an analytical programme to give him timely data about who was looking at his website and what they were looking at.
So there was only one thing for the Lebanese American University computer science student to do: invent one himself.
“From the very first day we launched, we knew it was going to be a big hit,” he says, sitting next to computer screens displaying Woopra, a website analysis programme developed by Mr Khoury, 23, and Jad Younan, 24: Lebanon’s answer to Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The two students collaborating on a software project have received rave reviews in the technology press and been inundated with requests from would-be customers, although the project – now valued at more than $18m – is still only in the development phase.
Woopra – another “silly” Web 2.0 name, Mr Khoury says – allows webmasters to monitor in real time who is visiting their site and track their path through the site.
Demonstrating the product in their office above a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in Byblos, a Mediterranean port city north of Beirut, Mr Khoury brings up the Woopra analytic data for his own blog.
The navy blue “dashboard” looks like a Bloomberg screen, with boxes showing user data and a ticker running along the bottom showing visitor numbers, like share prices, in orange and green.
It shows that someone in Jakarta, who was using the Windows Vista operating system and Firefox 3 as a web browser, conducted a Google search for “how to make shine lines with Adobe Photo*shop”, found Mr Khoury’s website in the search results, and clicked through. The programme can even detect the resolution of the person’s screen, a helpful piece of information for website designers. As he is demonstrating this, Dutch, South African, American and Indian flags appear on the screen, showing new users arriving at the site, along with all their search data.
“This is a live feature – you don’t have to refresh anything,” says Mr Khoury, who, like Mr Younan, is sporting a three-day shadow and constantly has his iPhone at his side. “This is what makes Woopra innovative compared to other analytic tools, where you have to wait 48 hours – and even then, you don’t get all this information.”
The system also allows website owners to tag visitors – such as people who leave their name when commenting on a blog post, or registered users – so they can see when the visitor returns to the site (although the tag will be lost if the user deletes their *cookies, which track search sessions).
Lebanese passports were a stumbling block on Woopra’s journey
Geography has become a problem for the Lebanese entrepreneurs Elie Khoury and Jad Younan.
They both want to remain in their home town of Byblos, in contrast to “99 per cent” of their classmates from Lebanese American University, who are now working in the Gulf. Lebanon, well known for exporting white-collar professionals around the globe, would do well to keep the entrepreneurs.
In order to meet investors, the two have had to spend time in the US. They had not expected the difficulties their nationality would cause.
“We had some problems at the American embassy because we are Arabs. They wouldn’t give us visas so we had to hire a lawyer to work on the documents for us,” Mr Khoury says.
“Then when we were in America, we had problems with investors too, when they realised that we were Lebanese and we would be going back and forth,” Mr Younan adds. “They said maybe there would be wars in Lebanon and we wouldn’t be able to work. They would be more comfortable if we lived in the US.”
For now, they are back in Lebanon, but the two realise they may have to move abroad in order to build the business.
However, after their problems in the US, both are reluctant to move there. Europe, they say, looks more attractive.
“Your visitor can see details about you on your website but now you can see your visitor and the details about them too,” says Mr Khoury, the more outgoing of the pair.
They acknowledge that the system will raise questions about privacy but say it is up to users to act responsibly.
“There are always going to be problems with privacy issues,” says Mr Younan. Mr Khoury quickly jumps in, saying: “This is new but people will get used to it in time, like with social networking. Many people were against it but they ended up making *profiles.”
Woopra was just an idea in Mr Khoury’s head until he met Mr Younan, when both were representing Lebanon at an inter*national programming competition in Morocco at the end of 2006.
“It was so funny because we live so close to each other but we met in Morocco – and I introduced him to my project and this idea,” says Mr Khoury.
Back in Byblos, they started fleshing out the idea in the early months of 2007. Mr Younan had just graduated from LAU in computer engineering and Mr Khoury had one semester remaining in his computer science course.
Mr Younan worked on the server side of the project, preparing the background and infrastructure for Woopra, while Mr Khoury was on the client side, developing the user interface, which he submitted as his graduation project.
Then they managed to cobble together $25,000 from savings and contributions from their families to open their office and start Woopra as a commercial enterprise.
“We were thinking much bigger [than the university project] so we dropped all the code and started again from scratch, thinking about scalability and how we could handle hundreds of thousands of users,” Mr Khoury says.
The new version was ready for a soft launch in May this year and the pair wanted bloggers to try it out. So they contacted some well-known technology bloggers, including John Pozadzides, chief marketing officer of LayerTech, the Texas company whose servers they were renting.
“As soon as we sent those invitations, the bloggers started blogging about it and 2,000 people had signed up within three days. We had to stop registrations and start a waiting list,” Mr Khoury says. “These people helped us make this project because they are big-mouth people.”
The pair had cautiously hoped to have 2,000 testers by the end of the year. The reality far outstripped their expectations: they now have 50,000 people using Woopra without charge on a test basis.
The programme is technically still in the development phase. The pair are hoping to launch it commercially in March, although they admit that the current economic climate is not ideal for starting a new venture.
But they plan to offer Woopra on a subscription basis, with different levels for bloggers, small companies and big enterprises.
Mr Pozadzides quickly became an equal partner in Woopra, investing a significant amount of his own money in the company and registering it in the US. His backing has helped to attract further funds from other private investors. The duo decline to discuss financial details except for the project’s $18m valuation, which took them by surprise.
“It was amazing – I was shocked,” says Mr Khoury, who now carries the title of chief information officer, while Mr Younan is chief technology officer and Mr Pozadzides chief executive officer.
“When our friends hear ‘$18m’ they start asking us: where’s your house, where’s your car?” Both still live at home in Byblos with their parents, like most young Lebanese.
But they are unable to hide their excitement about the money they may make.
“Our goal at the moment is to make it bigger and then to sell it,” says Mr Khoury, who cites Larry Page as his role model. “Of course, we are afraid of competition too. Google may try to buy us – or, worse, to build the software. It is easy for them because they have thousands of engineers.”
“Yeah – that’s the idea,” adds Mr Younan, smiling. “Cashing in.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
FT.com print article 
Shining a light on the web (Lebanese Woopra SLAPS Google analytics) -
21st December 2008
