Belinda Malwa Batdorf’s entrepreneurial journey began at 20 years old in Lusaka, Zambia, Southern Africa, when she realized there was an opportunity to capitalize on imports due to a lack of industrialization. She briefly worked in television and print advertising after moving to the United States before finding her niche in technology, specifically telecommunications, cloud computing, data center management, business, and SaaS application. When she walked into a data center for the first time, Belinda says “I knew I was home!”. As much as she enjoyed her job, Belinda’s heart drew her back to entrepreneurship. She wanted to build a platform that not only helps businesses but everyone.
When Covid 19 hit, Belinda and Keyvan Berenjian, the HubbleIQ Co-Founders were working on an internet connectivity application helping people navigate internet issues. This application would also empower people to solve their internet and wifi issues. To achieve this, they knew they needed to simplify and consumerize technical instructions so a 6th grader or even grandma could understand them. Belinda’s African background gave her a first-hand understanding of the impact of tech illiteracy. They knew that simplification would make solving technical problems less intimidating. HubbleIQ built a chrome extension and put it in the chrome store for anyone to download for free in early 2020. Months later, the extension was downloaded over 50,000 times by people experiencing internet connectivity issues. Entire schools were downloading it, helping students and families struggling with internet issues after going remote. Covid was showing the impact of the digital divide.
Around the same time, a news article of two young students sitting in the parking lot of a taco bell doing homework because of internet issues at home went viral, Belinda says, “It was heartbreaking!”. Schools couldn’t identify which students were having internet problems to help them, but Belinda and Keyvan knew they could. They decided to pivot into this problem, so HubbleIQ built a dashboard that provides visibility into remote internet issues. Shortly after, schools started requesting help from them. They’re most proud to serve Achievement First, one of the largest charter schools in the USA with 15,000 students and 2000 staff. Achievement First students are mostly black and brown, and the first to graduate high school. Their Director Marques Stewart wanted his students to focus on education, not technology issues. He decided to add HubbleIQ to their information and technology tool kit to help identify and solve internet issues quickly. Marques and his organization were determined to provide students with quality education despite C0vid-19 challenges.
Belinda and Keyvan understood that remote technical issues faced by students and workers go beyond internet problems, so they added device and application performance monitoring to their capabilities, giving organizations the ability to manage the digital experience of remote end-users. Today, HubbleIQ is still committed to its mission of enabling everyone to access their digital opportunities with automated, intelligent, and easy-to-understand technical support. This is why part of their solution provides on-demand self-service tech support. Anyone can download the HubbleIQ chrome extension for free.
Besides achieving all of this, Belinda says it’s not easy to be a black woman immigrant founder in technology, but it’s also not an excuse. She hopes other young ladies can follow their dreams despite any challenges. She attributes her success to her husband and her village of supporters. Belinda is defined not only by her work but also by her role as a mother of two daughters. When she is not working, she spends time in California with her family and friends, taking in new experiences, traveling, listening to music, and running. Learn more about Belinda Batdorf.
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