Labib Rahman

Labib moved to Detroit in August 2014 to work as a product manager for Mason, an early stage startup building android smart phones and tablets, where he was the first employee. His parents, immigrants from Bangladesh who went into debt to send him to Johns Hopkins University, had a different path in mind. They expected Labib, the first person in his family to graduate from college, to parlay his degree in Biomedical Engineering into a high-paying, secure job. Labib's entrepreneurial passion began long before Mason. While in college he co-founded Medella Medical, which worked with various departments at Johns Hopkins to develop a more user-friendly digital health record platform. He also built an android app to help physicians and midwives in the developing world better adhere to childbirth safety guidelines. Eager to help his parents financially, in early 2016 Labib took a well-paying job at an established company, IPC Systems, as a product manager. On nights and weekends he is launching a startup with his brother to connect clothing manufacturers in the US with factories in Bangladesh that use fair labor practices, hoping to use technology to create a more efficient market and drive job growth in Bangladesh where he spent much of his young life. Labib is part of the 2014 Venture for America class.