Friday

@arshanmahmad Come through!

This Thursday in South Bay. An exclusive meetup of founders, investors, and experts hosted by @Friday_HQ. If you’re interested in joining for great coffee and conversations, comment “IN” and I’ll send an invite.

A friend of mine couldn't get a single warm intro to a VC two years ago. Didn't know anyone in the game. Cold emailed 80 investors and got 3 responses, all passes. Then one person made one intro. That intro led to a meeting. That meeting led to a check. That check led to three more checks because now he had "social proof." Same founder. Same company. Same pitch. The only thing that changed was one person picked up the phone. He closed his round in six weeks. Last month he made intros for two other founders. One of them just closed their pre-seed. That founder is now helping someone else with their deck. This is how it works. Not because anyone's being noble about it. Because one intro turns into three, three turns into ten, and suddenly you've got a network where people actually get funded instead of cold emailing into the void. The YC mafia didn't become powerful because of the curriculum. It became powerful because the alumni decided that making intros for each other was just what you do. That's what's happening at Friday right now. People funding each other, hiring each other, intro-ing each other. If you're building something, come through. fridayhq dot co

The co-founder of YouTube is Muslim. The co-founder of Venmo is Muslim. The co-founder of Cursor is Muslim. None of them built "Muslim apps." They built products used by hundreds of millions of people. But if you asked most VCs to name a Muslim founder in their portfolio, they'd go quiet. Not because they're against it. Because it genuinely never crossed their mind. VCs love talking about "untapped markets" and "overlooked founders." They write whole blog posts about how the best returns come from backing people everyone else ignored. Then they source from the same 10 warm intro networks they've used for a decade and wonder why their portfolio looks the way it does. The founders I work with aren't asking for special treatment. They're running SaaS companies, fintech infrastructure, logistics platforms, AI tools. Normal startups solving normal problems. They just don't happen to be in your group chat. And that's the thing about networks. You don't know what you're not seeing. You just assume your deal flow represents the full picture. It doesn't. Friday is 3,000+ Muslim founders and investors. 24 companies just finished our accelerator Demo Day. 3,700+ angels actively reviewing deals. These are operators and builders who happen to be invisible to most of the ecosystem, not because they're hiding, but because nobody thought to look. If you're a founder, come pitch us. If you're an investor, come see the pipeline you're missing. fridayhq dot co

Being a Muslim founder in Silicon Valley is a specific kind of lonely. You're in rooms where everyone's talking about their YC batch, their angel checks, their network. And you're thinking about how none of your uncles understand what a startup is, how your parents still ask when you're getting a "real job," and how the founder communities you see don't quite feel like they were built for you. You code-switch. You keep your head down. You build. But you build alone. I know because I lived it. That loneliness isn't just uncomfortable, it's expensive. No warm intros to the right investors. No founder friends who understand the specific weight of building something while carrying a community's expectations. No one to call when your fundraise is falling apart during Ramadan. Friday exists because that loneliness shouldn't be the default. 3,000+ Muslim founders, investors, and builders. YC alumni. HF0 fellows. South Park Commons members. Angel investors writing real checks. A community that actually shows up for each other. If you've been building alone, you don't have to. Join our community. fridayhq dot co

We can undercut every offshore agency on the market by 70%. Not a typo. Most offshore agencies are just middlemen marking up talent you could get direct. We built something different. Our @Friday_HQ Zakat Fund subsidizes the salary on our end. You get the talent at a fraction of what you'd pay anywhere else. Engineers. Designers. Marketers. EAs. Any role. No agency can touch our pricing. Literally none. We're hosting a private webinar this Saturday at 11 AM to show exactly how it works. Limited hires available. If you're hiring, don't miss this to guarantee your spot to hire the best talent at a fraction of the cost. Comment "ACCESS" and I'll send you the link.

We need to build the Muslim Y Comb…never mind.

Can't believe it's been one year since @Friday_HQ Ventures launched, here’s what surprised me (and what I wish founders and new VCs understood earlier): 1) The “team” is the product at seed. At the earliest stage, your real asset is the speed, trust, and decision quality of the people in the room. A great team can pivot the product 3 times and still win. A shaky team can have the “perfect” idea and still lose. 2) Most “red flags” are just… communication gaps. The biggest misses I’ve seen weren’t about TAM. They were about not surfacing the one thing that mattered: - What’s the hard truth you already know about the business? - What’s the constraint right now (distribution, retention, pricing, regulation, team bandwidth)? - What have you tried, and what actually happened? We need the honest bottleneck, not a manufactured story in 30 slides. 3) Valuation matters less than people think (early). Hot take: early-stage founders often over-negotiate the least important variable. The best investors I’ve learned from under-index on valuation and over-index on “Would I back this person for the next 10 years?” If the company becomes real, everyone wins. If it doesn’t, nobody cares that you “won” the valuation debate. 4) “Exit opportunities” are a trap (too early). Trying to predict M&A at seed is like trying to predict your kid’s career in kindergarten. Great founders don’t optimize for an exit. They optimize for building something undeniably valuable. The exits follow the value. 5) A little delusion is a feature, not a bug. The world rarely rewards the “reasonable” plan. Founders need a healthy ability to believe they can bend reality, then do the work to justify it. 6) Volume and iteration beat over-analysis. We used to overcomplicate diligence, spend too long, and pass too often. Now I believe more in the “70% rule”, when you have enough signal, make the call, then support like crazy. Speed is a competitive advantage for founders and investors. 7) The best founders simplify. In the early days, the winning move is usually not a clever strategy. It’s doing the obvious thing with extreme consistency: ship, sell, listen, repeat. And honestly, the most energizing part of this year has been meeting people building in spaces I never would’ve predicted, with levels of grit and creativity that make you optimistic about the future. If you’re building something ambitious and want to be considered for Friday Ventures, application in the comments.

Next in our series with @Friday_HQ Accelerator is B2B sales tomorrow with Sabri Hammad.

@arshanmahmad Can't wait!

We’ve decided to open up our Friday Accelerator talks to the entire community. Register here 👇