Joseph Kibur

High up on a mountaintop in Ethiopia, a young Joseph Kibur lived in a hut, slept on a wooden bed and shepherded goats in a small village that boasted one main water supply — a running river half a kilometre away. “My father’s side of the family was poor; my mother’s side was very poor,” says Kibur, now 33. “But I never forgot my luck.”

Kibur, the co-founder of Canadian web hosting pioneer NetNation Communications Inc., insists he was fortunate despite being raised in the centre of the devastating Ethiopian famine that caught the world’s attention in the 1980s. “The famine killed millions of people,” he explains. “But we lived high up on the mountain, which wasn’t as dry, so we were not as affected.”

Kibur also owes his mountaintop birthplace another thanks for his running abilities. The champion runner who won the 1993 Canadian cross-country championship, explains: “There is something predisposed about Ethiopians to be good long-distance runners.” He supposes it might have something to do with the country’s high altitude — 7,000 feet above sea level.

Now that’s great cardio.

Kibur suggests another, more elemental, reason for the Ethiopian “running culture.”

“Running is one of the few ways that people can leave the country,” he says.

Kibur means both indirectly — by becoming a competitive runner and winning money and athletic scholarships — and literally — as in leaving the volatile country on foot.

“People are getting more and more desperate today,” he says. “I know people who left the country on foot to Sudan and took a boat across the Red Sea.”

Kibur’s journey out of Ethiopia was far less dramatic. It started with a move from the countryside to the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa when he was seven years old. He then left for Canada, with his father, who had earned a university scholarship in chemistry in Montreal.

After Montreal came a move to Toronto, where a teenage Kibur started to train more seriously as a long-distance runner and first met George Gluppe, the coach who would mentor him for the next 18 years.

“As a coach, I always looked for athletes who had certain traits: one, that they were always ready to come to practice; two, when they did come to work out, they were always willing to give their utmost to improve. That was certainly Joseph,” says Gluppe. “As well, I was impressed with his honesty, sincerity and general good humour.”

Gluppe also credits Kibur for his tenacity, which saw him succeed both on and off the track. “He worked very hard at his running and only injury problems kept him from becoming an Olympic-level athlete. And he has displayed the same qualities in his business achievements,” Gluppe says. “Joseph started his first business working in the basement of my house and sleeping on the floor as he worked sometimes all night to get the business of the ground.”

By then, Kibur had moved to Vancouver and had graduated from Simon Fraser University with a focus in science and technology. As soon as he graduated, Kibur knew he wanted to start an internet-related company. With hard work and an ambitious vision, Kibur co-founded NetNation, which was soon named one of Canada’s 50 hottest startups. He and his partners withstood many challenges in the unpredictable technology industry, but they took the company public and earned respect on an international scale, partnering with companies like Microsoft. They sold the company for $10 million US in 2003.

Not bad for a boy from a small Ethiopian village with no computers in sight.

So what’s Kibur been doing since?

“I took some time off to rest and be with my family,” says Kibur. He and his wife, Mahlet Zena, have two young daughters, Rebecca, 2, and Abigail, 1, and another baby expected this February. His wife is originally from Ethiopia, too. They met when he travelled back there, a trip he makes a few times a year. He has even returned to that same mountaintop from his early childhood, an experience that brought back many tearful memories, he says.

That’s one of the reasons why Kibur is now dedicated to helping his homeland through his charitable foundation Unique Projects Foundation (www.uniqueprojects.org). “The charity exists to help people in Ethiopia. It sponsors children of extreme poverty. We want to help them get some stability in their life,” he explains.

His initial thoughts were to open an orphanage, but he realized he could help more children by creating a charity that asks people to sponsor children on a monthly basis. “All the overhead will be paid by me and my wife,” he says. “And the money given by sponsors ($30 per month) will be budgeted for the children for school supplies, food, medications and so on.”

Kibur has also considered helping his homeland by starting a business there. “I wanted to go back, start a business and help my fellow countrymen, but it’s a bad place. In Ethiopia, there has never been peace. In the last five years, we are seeing signs of stability, but there are still lots of disagreement and clashes between people.”

So Kibur has decided to base his business ventures out of Canada. He recently started up another technology firm, this time dealing in online backup systems. Again, this is a fairly new concept, as was web hosting in the 1990s, and Kibur has high hopes for his new company General Backup Systems, Inc.

Now in the throes of its beta testing phase, the concept behind the company is to provide automatic backup services for businesses and individuals via the internet. No CD-ROMs, no hassles — General Backup Systems’ special software will save your company’s data automatically every night and store it in various data centres around the world. Not only does this protect you from loss of data caused by viruses and system failures, but it also avoids the loss of backup disks due to fire, earthquakes and hurricanes.

“We’re allowing people to do this all automatically. That’s something relatively new. And we can let people choose where their backup will be stored — Asia, Europe, North America. I haven’t seen other companies doing that,” he says.

A new baby, a new charity, a new company … Kibur is definitely a man on the move. “I have other ideas always knocking at the door. But they have to wait,” he says.

And what about more children? Will they go for four?

Kibur laughs. “Even if it’s another girl, this one is our last,” he says. “Maybe more companies, but no more babies.”

(Text and Photo Source: The Immigrant Canadian)