Dalia in tokyo

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a first-time founder was to SPEND "Be scrappy" is great advice for most founders, but for first-gen and minority founders, it's often the wrong advice. here's why 👉

@TrustlessState To tackle another angle of absurdity, no American Jew who had family raped, kidnapped, or killed on October 7 or killed by the 1,000s of missiles fired during the Iran war responded by bombing a mosque

> Lebanese man rams a truck into a Detroit synagogue, filled with “a large amount of explosives" > synagogue had a child center with 104 kids at the time > the attacker had lost several family members who died in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last week > BECAUSE THEY WERE MEMBERS OF HEZBOLLAH Very important detail you left out @ABC

This. Is. Amazing!

@TrustlessState I appreciate you so much. I’ll keep saying - thank you for being one of the few voices outside of the Jewish and Iranian communities to care enough to learn, and to be brave enough to share.

For those who don't have their X-algo tuned to such matters There has been an incredible wave of violence against US and Jewish international targets over the last 7 days - Today, A 14 year old girl in Paris was hospitalized after 3 boys attacked her for not observing Ramadan - 2 Days ago, in San Jose USA, there was a violent public assault of a Jewish man eating lunch, after he was overhead speaking Hebrew - Two ISIS-inspired teenagers from Pennsylvania with IEDs tried to detonate them in NYC - Yesterday, Two men fired a gun toward US Consulate in Toronto These are just the 4 recent ones from memory. There are many more - feel free to search the news for yourself. We cannot keep on pretending that this is normal. These is not "oppressed people resisting". These are ideologically motivated attacks, using the cover of Islamophobia, to fight a global war against their enemies. We must speak out, and speak loudly about such things, because silence will only give these people further room to perpetuate further violence

@brandon Half Persian founder from nyc :)

PSA: If you're a Persian founder or VC in NYC, SF, LA, or anywhere else — DM me. I'm organizing a series of events that will lead up to this.

They did not bomb Iran. They waited for Iran’s entire leadership to sit down in the same room and then they bombed Iran. Months of intelligence. Thousands of hours of surveillance and signal intercepts. One variable: the moment the Supreme Leader, the President, and senior military command gathered in a single location at the same time. That moment was 8:15 this morning. Daylight. Every previous Israeli strike on Iran came at night. June 2025 launched in darkness. October 2024 after midnight. Iran’s entire air defense doctrine is built around the assumption that Israel attacks in the dark. Israel attacked in broad daylight because the target was not infrastructure. The target was a meeting. Reuters confirms strikes targeted Khamenei and Pezeshkian. CNN confirms months of joint US-Israeli planning. Israeli officials confirmed the strike hit the location where Iran’s top officials were gathered. Whether Khamenei was moved before the strike or extracted after is the most consequential unknown on the planet right now. If before, someone inside Tehran’s inner circle told Jerusalem when and where the meeting would happen. If after, the strikes hit the room and he survived. Both scenarios are catastrophic for the regime. Because Iran’s leadership now knows three things. Israel knew where they were meeting. Israel knew when they were meeting. Israel knew who would be in the room. And everything we watched over the past month, the F-22s at Ovda, the tankers at Ben Gurion, Al Udeid emptied to zero, 270 transport flights, all of it was the delivery architecture for one precision strike on one gathering. Every future meeting of Iran’s senior leadership now carries one question: does Israel know about this one too. This is not a military operation. This is the destruction of institutional trust inside a regime. Every general who sits with Khamenei tomorrow will wonder who told Jerusalem about today. Every IRGC commander who receives a meeting summons will calculate whether attendance is duty or a death sentence. Every secure facility in Tehran has been proven insecure. In June 2025 Israel killed 30 generals in the opening minutes. That was brute force across dispersed targets. This was a scalpel. One meeting. One moment. Months of patience. Iran fired missiles at six countries in retaliation. Most intercepted. One civilian dead from debris in Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia responded by pledging all its capabilities against Iran. The Gulf coalition that did not exist yesterday exists today because Tehran built it by attacking everyone simultaneously. Israel traded one morning of precision strikes for the permanent destruction of Iran’s command cohesion. That is not a battle. That is checkmate disguised as a first move. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@helloakashm Thanks for the read, Akash :) Would love to hear your thoughts when you do!

@daliakatan The framework is quite compelling. Saved it to read in detail.

I’ve been noticing lately that a lot of products I'm using day-to-day are technically well-designed but still feel... off. My take: we need to stop designing products as tools. Some thoughts for founders and designers: daliakatan.substack.com/p/introducing-…

This is equally hilarious and dystopian af 😂

Another stellar drop from @JaredSleeper 🎯

do you work in product design, architecture, or interior design? I'm prepping the next edition of my newsletter on 🅐🅡🅒🅗, a blueprint for building products. if you're up for a peer review, would love some feedback before I hit publish 🛳️

Every space speaks a language. Whether you’re stepping into a grand cathedral, a cozy café, or a well-crafted app, your body and mind are being quietly guided — how to feel, where to move, what to do next. Architecture has always understood this. Now, it’s time for product design to catch up. My newsletter is an exploration of that idea: what happens when we design digital products the way architects design homes? daliakatan.substack.com/p/designing-an… The first issue is out — subscribe on Substack to get notified when the next issue is published next week.

Here’s what I think will happen in NYC under Mahdami. The free buses and government grocery stores won’t happen, they never do. They sound good during campaigns, but collapse under basic math. You can’t run a city on ideas that cost billions and produce no revenue. The only way to make housing affordable is to build more housing. The free market lowers prices, not regulation. Every time politicians try to control rent or force affordability by decree, developers stop building and landlords stop maintaining. Supply dries up, the quality collapses, and the few properties that remain skyrocket in price. Once landlords can’t make a profit, they sell, lose properties, or walk away. Eventually, the government takes over. Taxes will rise to pay for the promises, and the middle class will be the ones shouldering the burden. The rich will relocate, the poor will depend on subsidies, and the productive class will be squeezed from both sides. Thriving businesses are the foundation of any thriving city. When they leave, everything else follows, jobs, schools, grocery stores, stability. Chicago already proved this. Boeing, McDonald’s, Caterpillar, Citadel, nearly 70k jobs, all gone. Now they’re facing billion-dollar deficits, half empty schools and neighborhoods without grocery stores. I saw someone who lived in a rent-controlled apartment in California put it perfectly, he said his landlord could no longer afford maintenance so the pool was filled with dirt, the floors had soft spots, and the foundation ended up cracking. That’s what overregulation does, it destroys quality. People who voted for this will eventually feel the pain but they won’t blame the policies or the politicians, they’ll blame the rich for leaving. This conversation is always difficult because most people simply don’t understand market dynamics or incentives. In a free society, people act in their own self-interest. If you remove profit and reward dependency, productivity dies and the city with it. If you think things are expensive now, just wait until they’re “free.”

A few friends asked me to address Cuomo’s sexual assault transgressions. Firstly, I really appreciate everyone engaging and sharing concerns—dialogue is all I can ask for. Here’s my spicy take: This feels like a privileged conversation. If you’re barely affording groceries, dealing with neighborhood crime, or facing eviction, your top concern is whether the next mayor can actually do the job. That doesn’t excuse misconduct, but rather acknowledges a hierarchy of needs. The immediate consequences of bad leadership fall hardest on these people. I think Cuomo’s history deserves scrutiny, AND the stakes for NYC’s future are too high to punish the entire city over it. Competent leadership matters. We are the MeToo generation, and we came into the movement with a lot of anger and pain; with that context, it’s understandable that we struggle with the idea of redemption (i.e., cancel culture). But Cuomo is capable and experienced. Perhaps our generation needs to reflect on what it means to give a second chance. We also face a bigger issue: fewer good people are entering politics. We need to fix this long-term. The core question is this: Does punishing Cuomo by electing someone unqualified and risky ultimately punish us? NYC can’t afford symbolic politics at the cost of safety, housing, and food on the table.

This post is for those in NYC still thinking about voting Mamdani, or for Curtis, which is effectively a vote for Mamdani: Questions to ask yourself before voting Mamdani Is he qualified and reliable? -Missed 1/3 of Assembly sessions in 2025 and more roll call votes (231) than any other member. -Passed only 4 bills in 5 years. By comparison, Assembly members like Amy Paulin and Stacey Amato each passed 30+ bills last year alone. -His only other job was working for a small nonprofit for a year. Unemployed for most of his 20s. -No executive experience. Has never managed large budgets, city operations, or teams anywhere near the $100B NYC budget he’d oversee. NYC’s GDP is the equivalent of the world’s 16th-largest country. -When pressed about big measures currently on the ballot, he deflects or says he doesn't have an opinion. Is he unprepared or lacking fluency on key policy issues? Are his policies sound? - Wants to defund the police: Made the “defunding” and “dismantling” of the NYPD a core part of his platform —then claimed he never did. Still targets key public-safety units like the Special Response Group, believes police shouldn’t respond to domestic violence calls, and wants to decriminalize things like misdemeanor and sexual assault. -He has no viable funding plan for “free” buses and grocery stores, as the Governor said she won’t support a tax increase. -But even if she did, his tax policy would drive out top earners: The top 1% currently fund 48% of NYC’s tax revenue. He wants to raise their taxes by an additional 2% but they would leave NYC and take their tax money with them. -Economists overwhelmingly agree his policies are fiscally infeasible and will worsen the housing shortage: Freezing rent for 2.4M tenants would make it impossible for landlords to cover rising costs, and rental stock would drop dramatically (and thus rental prices would actually increase). -Economists also overwhelmingly agree that his policies will hurt the city’s economy — again, NYC has a GDP the size of the 16th largest country in the world -Not to mention legalizing prostitution, building drug injection sites, and making buses free would not make NY feel safer. -Wants to “end the chapter of collaboration between city hall and the federal government” and doesn’t have the support of the state or federal government in his policies (they control funding, not him). Can he be trusted—or is he just a good politician? -Despite the worst attendance of any assemblyman, he gave himself a 30% raise. -Caught on record multiple times contradicting statements to different audiences on topics including defunding the police, his desire to cooperate (or cut ties) with the federal government, legalizing prostitution, free speech, the role Israel-Palestine plays in his politics, and more. -Presents himself as a working-class man, but he comes from a millionaire family, owns property, went to elite private schools, and could afford not to work for most of his 20s. -Centers himself in public moments—like discussing Islamophobia after 9/11 without acknowledging the 3,000 Americans murdered that day. -Promising changes outside of a mayor’s control. The gracious take is that he’s simply ignorant and unaware, or lacks governance literacy; the less gracious one is that he’s intentionally misleading the public. -When pressed on key issues, including current measures on the ballot, he says he does not have a position. Again, perhaps underprepared or lacking in policy depth, or perhaps intentionally not revealing his stance to voters. Does he pass the morality test? -Refuses to condemn terror: Won’t denounce Hamas (yet wants to arrest Bibi), sharia law, nor slogans like “Globalize the Intifada”. -Claims he doesn’t have an opinion on Hamas because it’s not relevant to NYC, yet has publicly stated that Palestinian liberation has been a core part of his platform from day 1, and has made Israel a key focus of his campaign and canvassing efforts, including vowing to shut down zionist nonprofits and close the Technion–NY campus. -Meanwhile, he has stayed silent on other global conflicts where far more people have died. Can he be trusted to keep Jews safe in the largest Jewish city outside Israel? -Over 1,000 NYC rabbis have spoken against Mamdani in the most-signed rabbinic letter in US history, fearing that he is contributing to the rise in antisemitism in NYC. -His anti-Israel stances threaten NYC’s Jewish institutions and make it “acceptable” to target any zionist institution (90% of Jews are zionist). -His obsession with Israel is just that: an obsession. He will deflect when asked about it in a debate, but off-screen, it’s literally all he talks about, and a core part of his assembly and mayoral campaigns both.

@PreislerKa You’re amazing - thank you for being such a steadfast beacon of light 💙

Done.

@moondrencht Wilson

Today, we're proud to launch Wilson to the world – your very own legal superagent. Think Cursor for legal contracts. To celebrate our launch, we're giving away a month of our Pro plan for free -- comment "Wilson" and we will send you a promo code. No waitlist -- try Wilson today!

@manniefabian Unharmed*

@meda_gharib IRGC leaders are not in tunnels embedded under civilian infrastructure :/ Not an equal comparison, though I am with you on tragic civilian deaths in Gaza

So you’re telling me they do have the capability to not kill thousands of civilians with each airstrike. Fooled me