Waterloo grad joins Facebook with rap startup on the side

Amir Sharif may be a new grad this week, but thanks to Waterloo’s co-op program he’s already worked at startups in Waterloo and Silicon Valley and is looking forward to a full-time position at Facebook.

Sharif says Waterloo’s Velocity Garage got him hooked on the startup scene and two co-op terms at Vidyard, a video marketing analytics company founded by Waterloo engineering alumni, helped him realize his passion for programming.

“I joined one of the best companies I could have joined to get that full experience,” says Sharif. “Because the company was small, they really took me under their wing,”

Sharif, who will graduate with a mathematics degree on Friday, October 24 is currently working on RapPad, a site that helps rap artists write, share, and improve their songs.

His first project, a browser extension that added a suite of features to the popular music streaming website 8Tracks.com, went viral to tens of thousands of people. “When I started getting that kind of feedback from people using something I made, that's when I realized I wanted to do this all the time,” says Sharif.