Amin Shaykho
Amin Shaykho is a Syrian-American businessman, speaker and social media influencer. He is the founder and CEO of Kadama, which develops an app connecting students to tutors.
Shaykho has been on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List and also served as a speaker at TEDx events.
Early life and education
Shaykho was born and raised in Seattle, Washington to Syrian parents. He is a first-generation Syrian-American. He attended Lake Washington High School, graduating in 2016.Shaykho also received an associate degree from Bellevue College in the same year. While studying at Bellevue College, Shaykho founded the student club Code for Care, where students built mobile applications for local nonprofit organizations.
Shaykho graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science in 2018.
Career
Prior to founding Kadama, Shaykho worked as a project lead software engineer at Apple. He also did work for Boeing.Shaykho co-developed the app Kadama with Marwan El-Rukby and his brother Dani Shaykho. The app was named after the Arabic word for “service.” It was designed as a multi-services app that connects users with service providers. They launched the app publicly in 2018. It initially focused on housework, then changed focus to tutoring in 2019.
In 2019, Shaykho and his team at Kadama participated in the University of Washington’s Dempsey Startup Competition. They also participated in the Foster School of Business Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship’s Jones + Foster Accelerator the following year.
That year, they also won an award for the best student-led startup from the Northwest Entrepreneur Competition for their work on Kadama.
Shaykho received a Seattle Inno Under 25 Award in 2021.
In 2022, Shaykho and his Kadama co-founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. Shaykho was also featured on the cover of the July/August 2022 issue of the magazine 425 Business.
Shaykho was named to the Business Journal 40 Under 40 Honoree in 2023.