The Mokhtarzada brothers, Haroon, Idris, Yahya and Zeki, are one super team of dynamic entrepreneurs. After the success of their first company, Webs.com, they set about developing a new project meant to improve people’s control over their finances – Truebill.
This next initiative is a software meant to help users track and cancel their paid subscriptions. Additionally, it makes it easier for people to control their finances and improve their financial health. Truebill has raised $15 million in their funding round in late 2019, and boasts over half a million users.
Montgomery County holds a special place for the Mokhtarzada brothers
All four of the brothers attended and graduated from Montgomery Blair High School and the University of Maryland. Yahya, Idris and Zeki have a background in computer science and mathematics, while Haroon has studied economics, and then law.
So, relocating Truebill’s headquarters from San Francisco to Silver Spring, MD felt like coming home. Their first company, a web-hosting service called Webs, was also founded there in 2001. It grew to 50 million users before being acquired by the marketing company Vistaprint for $117 million in 2011.
Haroon turned serial entrepreneur and angel investor after Harvard Law. Then, he acted as CEO and Chief Product Officer of Webs—the world’s first web-based operating system. Idris and Zeki spent over a decade co-founding and growing this website creation platform. Yahya mentors early stage startups, while Zeki is currently the CTO of Tenovos.
The close-knit family of business-savvy brothers first launched and operated Truebill out of the basement of Idris’ Silver Spring home in 2015. Later, they moved to San Francisco before finally returning.
Mokhtarzada brothers inherit an entrepreneurial mindset
The brothers have a Turkish mother and an Afghan father, who met at the University of Maryland. The couple went to Afghanistan to build a life together. However, tragedy soon struck. Their mother gave birth to her second child, but the doctor who delivered the baby failed to use sterile equipment. After the baby girl died of an infection, the mother vowed not to have another child in Afghanistan. Haroon, who never got to meet his older sister, says that this has led to him spending a lot of time thinking about maternal and infant mortality and using technology for social good.
When Haroon was 3 years old, they fled the Russian intervention in Afghanistan and moved to the US, which felt like “a total reset.” Their parents started a visa and passport procurement firm in their basement, which allowed them to build a comfortable life.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many immigrants wind up becoming entrepreneurs,” Haroon says. “When you come here as an immigrant or refugee, you have no network and fewer job options—so you make opportunities for yourself.”
Truebill helps ignite business growth in Montgomery County
Their own initiative, launched from a basement like that of their parents’, works by organizing transaction activity via a user’s bank account. It finds reoccurring costs that users may not be aware of, and offers quick cancellation options. Yahya states that Truebill is based on a “more holistic view of personal finance,” given the “increasing degree of financial complexity” in modern society, which makes consolidating solutions into one place more appealing.
Besides being home to the brothers, the D.C. area also offers a more fruitful environment than Silicon Valley. Yahya feels like they have “found an untapped market, with very talented engineers working for the government, working in an area of technology that’s not very exciting for them.”
Haroon, on the other hand, concedes that “it was harder to hire than we thought” in Silicon Valley. But, he adds that the relocation makes sense since many current employees live on the East Coast.
“When looking to grow Truebill, Silver Spring was clearly our best choice. Not only is it home, it provides a quality of life that makes it easy to hire the best and brightest to grow the company,” Haroon said in a statement. Montgomery County, in turn, will be supporting Truebill with a $250,000 grant from its Economic Development Fund.
Learn more about Truebill here
