Faten Alweli is the co-founder of Baghdad’s first “Escape the Room,” an interactive puzzle game in which participants follow clues to complete an adventure. We talked to Faten about her inspiration to build an escape room in Baghdad, concerns about starting her own business, and ways her various professional endeavors complement her life as an entrepreneur.
AEI: What gave you the idea to start the first Escape the Room in Baghdad?
FA: In 2015, my family and I played Escape the Room in Amman, Jordan and we loved it. It was one of the most fun and exciting periods of quality time we spent together as family, and from that moment I fell in love with the concept of this game and how it brought us all together away from the struggles of daily life and distractions of social media. As a result, my husband and I started working on the idea of opening an escape room in Baghdad. We later found out that one of our friends was trying to open one too, so we became partners and started to design, build, and promote the game as a one-of-a-kind experience in Iraq for family, friends, and coworkers.
AEI: What was your biggest worry with starting your own business?
FA: We had a lot of concerns, the first of which was financial, as we didn't have any idea of how to raise money or take a loan from a bank and thus had to take the risk of relying on our savings. Second, although security was not a top concern, it affects our working hours as Baghdad can have long holidays with road blocks. Our third concern was business registration, as we did not want to pay a lot of money to register our game as a company in the beginning of its launch. It also did not seem reasonable to pay $5000 just to register it since at the same time we would have any copyrights protection. A fourth issue we had was taxes; although we are considered as a small business, the taxes we were required to pay were really high and we struggled with it. Finally, we had a lot of trouble importing parts of the game because we had to pay extra taxes and wait for long periods of time to receive the parts.
AEI: Can you describe the process for registering your business, and how you overcame any related challenges?
FA: As mentioned previously, we didn't want to pay a lot of money to register our game as a company at its launch given the high price and lack of copyright protection. Until now, we are still only registered as a game shop rather than a company since company registration would require extra fees with no further benefits.
AEI: How does your current work complement your experience of running a startup?
FA: I currently work with the UN and have also worked with Iraqi companies as a business development consultant. As a business development consultant, my growing familiarity with the needs of these companies helped me build various aspects of our own business, including the B2B element, staff team building activities, annual retreats focused on communication and cooperation, and customization of mobile escape game experiences to the needs of companies with whom we work. Since the early days of our launch, we’ve been able to expand our work with local and international NGOs, youth groups, conferences, embassies and entrepreneurial events.