Family Dinner Recap: Jihad Esmail ’21

by Elizabeth Savin ’25

On Tuesday, November 10, Residents of The Garage gathered together for Family Dinner. Student founders were able to take time to share their successes and celebrate their failures from the past week. After reflecting on their weeks, students were able to listen to a former member of The Garage, Jihad Esmail ‘21, speak more about his experiences and what he is doing now.

Upon arriving on campus in 2017, Jihad went straight to The Garage in order to learn about how he could become more involved with the entrepreneurship community on campus. Jihad became a part of EPIC and the Launch program. Early in his college career, Jihad founded LinkNote, a company that aimed to find connections between notes you had previously saved and articles you opened in your browser. Although the project was not a success, Jihad learned a large amount about what it meant to be involved in a startup. 

After LinkNote, Jihad began his work as the co-founder of AMA, Authentic Media Association. Jihad spent the next two years of college working on AMA and helping the company grow to what it is today. Through college, Jihad believed that his next step would be a job that related to finance or business. However, through his work with AMA, Jihad was exposed to cryptocurrency and the creator economy. Jihad found himself becoming more and more excited about the numerous possibilities that exist with both NFTs and web 3. After speaking with the founder of Syndicate, Jihad made the decision to switch from the career path of consulting to that of technology and innovation.

Jihad took the time to teach current Residents more about web 3 and cryptocurrency and was happy to answer any questions Residents had. Make sure to keep an eye out on one of the newest NFTs on the market, $Garage.

Elizabeth Savin ’25 is a Manufacturing and Design Engineering major from Wilmette, IL. She is a student aide at The Garage and is excited to become involved in the programs The Garage offers students. Her favorite thing about The Garage is that students have the opportunity to receive hands-on experience with entrepreneurship.