Most first-year undergraduates start the school year eager to find their way. They search for their ideal career path or clubs to shape their future on-campus involvement. 18-year-old Ali Mohammed, however, balances his freshman classes with leading a company catered towards helping equally ambitious young entrepreneurs find support.
The computer science major from Dallas is the founder and CEO of Taskformer. The company connects student entrepreneurs with peers and professionals to help them expand their reach.
“There’s a lot of people who are ‘wantrepreneurs,’” Mohammed said. “They like the idea of being a founder but don’t even know how to start. We want to cut down on that by having an accountable culture.”
Mohammed is no stranger to the solitude that often comes with cultivating a business from a personal passion. With his innovation confined to a small high school lacking in both extracurriculars and funding, he had to design his first nonprofit projects alone and convince corporate sponsors that they were worth funding.
“I had to work hard to create my own opportunities and a big part of it was very isolating,” Mohammed said. “With 45 graduating students, (I) didn’t have a lot of people around (me), and 60% of our students were from low income families so I didn’t see a lot of entrepreneurship.”
Mohammed’s diligence earned results: His early nonprofit RefugeReach garnered enough support to donate $30,000 worth of college textbooks to Dallas-area refugees. He later founded another nonprofit named Awaiken which hosted a “hack-a-thon” sponsored by Hershey’s and Taco Bell, focused on providing solutions to issues facing underserved communities.
Despite such a successful start, it wasn’t until Mohammed began sharing his story on Linkedin that his journey became less isolating. His popular posts resonated with many young startup founders who messaged him seeking advice.
“I realized there’s so many students in the same boat I was in that maybe I should create some type of network where we can all learn from each other,” Mohammed said.
Ronak Reddy, a freshman working with another startup that connects brands that need websites or mobile applications to appropriate web developers, followed Mohammed’s journey on LinkedIn for a year before approaching him at a computer science fair on his first day at UT. Soon after, Reddy joined Taskformer in an advisory role with its founding office after Mohammed reached out to him while recruiting his team.
“It’s really cool to see a dude as motivated as he is and as smart as he is,” Reddy said. “Having that type of connection that I can reach out to for some founding advice, it’s beyond valuable.”
The idea inspired what is now Taskformer’s Future Founders Network, which connects student startup founders with more than 80 industry-leading volunteer mentors from companies like Google, TikTok and Tesla. Taskformer complements this developmental support with its online Student Business Directory that offers easy access to local startups.
Mohammed founded Taskformer during his senior year of high school and quickly started building his network. By the time he started college in August, he had enough support to launch his first initiative on campus: an online startup incubator that would allow aspiring founders to go from an idea to a finished business within 14 days. Gathering mentors and creating business plans with each student, however, proved hectic for him to manage alone.
“It was very painful to be honest,” Mohammed said. “As a student, I have so much more to learn, so for me to direct that was the wrong move at the wrong time.”
He hit the ground running again this fall, but focused on building his support system early through a dependable administrative team. About 1,200 students applied for the internship with Taskformer he promoted on LinkedIn. Mohammed selected just 30 after a thorough interview process.
“The main thing I did differently was get an amazing team that can almost compete with me when it comes to ideas and strategizing,” Mohammed said. “They’re specialized to the point where they can bring their insights to me so we can innovate and be creative.”
The team organized its inaugural Founder Fair on Nov. 18, a social event designed to cultivate personal connections between students and founders while still creating space for them to share their experiences. With only about two weeks of constant promotion, the event attracted dozens of aspiring and established student entrepreneurs to connect over bubble tea from profit share-partner Gong Cha in Dobie Twenty21’s food court.
The event was designed to help new students access Taskformer as the team prepares to announce a new batch of students for its Future Founders Network in the coming months, but team members like business development intern Saleha Patel were also inspired by the ingenuity in the room.
Patel, a sophomore studying computer science, joined Taskformer in September hoping it would expose her to the process of founding a business as she pursued a new entrepreneurship minor. She helped structure the interview process for other interns, and the Founders Fair was one of the first times she saw the founder community she helped build gathered together.
“It’s been nice getting to know other people my age interested in entrepreneurship, and I love the idea of a startup making something new that could be helpful to others,” she said. “I think working with people who have creative brain power that I lack might rub off on me really well.”
Mohammed’s search for good network candidates has been just as intensive as creating his team was. At the start of the fall semester, he researched to create a mass list of student influencers and entrepreneurs on campus. Whenever he spotted one, while grabbing coffee or walking to class, he approached them and pitched how Taskformer would improve their lives.
“From the very beginning, you have to do it in a super inefficient way where you talk to people one-on-one,” Mohammed said. “I learned to be important to the important people.”
CJ McClaskey, a freshman studying computer science who first learned about Taskformer when he met Ali during orientation, had been struggling to find peers that could help guide him as he looked to expand from promoting products for other brands on TikTok shop to pushing his original clothing and other products.
“It was pretty bad until I found (Taskformer),” McClaskey said. “I always said I was going to go to UT, find my group of entrepreneurs and we’re going to lock in. This was exactly what I was looking for.”
Mohammed said the team is having fun promoting Taskformer in different ways like filming Instagram takeovers or traveling together to pitch competitions to earn support that will help the company grow. They are currently building another community at the University of Texas’ Dallas campus and hope to continue expanding to other universities.
“I think creating community where you have everyone helping each other would be an amazing thing,” Mohammed said. “To start every conversation with ‘what are you working on and what are you struggling with?’ The growth is limitless at that point.”
