Application in.
No pivots. No side ideas. Just Vektu.
Let’s see if @ycombinator agrees.
#YCombinator #Startups #FounderLife #HealthTech #MENA
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Youssef Kassem
27 posts
Youssef Kassem
@Youssef_7_1
Founder at Vektu | Building healthtech in MENA | Advisor & Consultant | LSE MPA | Writing on startups, politics, economics & technology 📚👨💻🚀
Katılım Haziran 2022
363 Takip Edilen38 Takipçiler
@RaphaelDabadie ☝️☝️☝️ We diagnose and treat chronic conditions online and deliver your medication monthly
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@hthieblot @youssef_7_1 streamlining access to healthcare in MENA
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You just became a VC. You’ve got $1M to deploy.
Who gets your money?
Tag them. Or back yourself.
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@simonsquibb Building the biggest digital health platform in MENA
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Let me fund a dream this weekend!
What’s your dream?
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This is what building looks like!
Shipping day @fdotinc
Wait for our launch in a few days everyone!!!
@hthieblot @stavan @furqanR @dantelentini
#Building #Launching #HealthTech #startuplife #Buildinginpublic #Canopy
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@hthieblot We diagnose and treat chronic conditions online and deliver your medication monthly
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Describe your product in exactly one sentence.
No buzzwords, no fluff, just the core value.
If I can’t understand your business in ten seconds, I’m not investing.
Hit me & i'll be in your DMs
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@iam_elias1
We’re not entering an AI crisis.
We’re entering an incentives misalignment crisis.
Firms are doing exactly what they should do which is optimize for productivity. The problem is that no one is optimizing for demand, income, or market stability.
This gap is how markets could break!
Regulators need to move fast with innovative policies that realign incentives before markets fail.
Right now, that’s not happening
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Economics #PublicPolicy #FutureOfWork #Automation #AIRegulation #Markets #Innovation #TechPolicy
Elias Al@iam_elias1
Two economists just published a mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy. Not might. Not could. Will — if nothing changes. The paper is called "The AI Layoff Trap." Published March 2, 2026. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Boston University. Peer reviewed. Mathematically modeled. The conclusion is one sentence. "At the limit, firms automate their way to boundless productivity and zero demand." An economy that produces everything. And sells it to nobody. Here is how you get there. A company fires 500 workers and replaces them with AI. A competitor fires 700 to keep up. Another fires 1,000. Every company is behaving rationally. Every company is following the incentives correctly. And every company is building a trap for itself. Because the workers who were fired were also customers. When they lose their jobs faster than the economy can absorb them, they stop spending. Consumer demand falls. Companies respond by cutting costs — which means automating more workers — which means less spending — which means more falling demand — which means more automation. The loop has no natural exit. The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income. Capital income taxes. Worker equity participation. Upskilling programs. Corporate coordination agreements. Every single one failed in the model. The only intervention that worked: a Pigouvian automation tax — a per-task levy charged every time a company replaces a human with AI, forcing them to price in the demand they are destroying before they pull the trigger. No government has implemented this. No major economy is seriously discussing it. Meanwhile the numbers are already tracking the curve. 100,000 tech workers laid off in 2025. 92,000 more in the first months of 2026. Jack Dorsey fired half of Block's workforce and said publicly: "Within the next year, the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion." Nobody is doing anything wrong. Companies are following their incentives perfectly. That is exactly the problem. Rational behavior. At scale. Simultaneously. With no mechanism to stop it. Two economists built the math. The math leads to one place. Source: Falk & Tsoukalas · Wharton School + Boston University · arxiv.org/pdf/2603.20617
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@hthieblot Becoming a founder is one of the most irrational decisions a person can make. Only obsession can keep you going when logic says stop!!
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You became a founder.
You quit the 9-to-5. You raised a little money. Everyone called you "brave" over drinks. You spent your nights building and your days pitching "the future," convinced that the next launch would change your life forever.
Then a year passes.
Flatline traction. $0 salary. Your co-founder quit via Slack. Your girlfriend left for someone with a 401k and a "stable" future. Your friends are posting house keys while you’re staring at a bowl of ramen, rehearsing the same tired lies to your parents about why the "big break" is just around the corner.
Is this the end? You start wondering if you made a mistake.
No. You keep telling yourself every founders went through this at some points. But you don’t stop.
Logic says quit. Your ego says run. But there’s a sickness in you that won't let go. You’d rather fail at this than succeed at anything else. You tell yourself it’s just one more launch, one more pivot, one more "yes."
You’re not delusional; you’re committed.
You’ll miss this.
Not the stress, but the electricity. The raw doubt that forced you to grow. The quiet fire of building while the world slept. The pure, unrefined dopamine of that very first user.
These aren't just "hard years", they are the years that forge you. One day, when the bank account is full but the mystery is gone, you’ll find yourself wishing you could feel this hungry again.
They all do.
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This is the real issue.
As venture capital risk appetite declines, fewer bold ideas get funded.
If capital only chases what is obvious, then WHO FUNDS THE FUTURE?
@JayKapoorNYC @fdotinc
#VentureCapital #Startups #VC #innovation #FundtheFuture #Entrepreneurship #Tech
Jay Kapoor@JayKapoorNYC
Venture capital used to be about finding the hidden gems. Now it’s entirely about backing the sure thing. Lesson if you’re raising is that if you’re a hidden gem, start to behave like a sure thing. Else you will stay hidden.
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Founders outside SF learn this quickly!
If you’re building from Cairo, Riyadh, Lagos, or anywhere off the main map, many people won’t “see” it until it’s already obvious.
Build anyway. “NO” just means not in their imagination yet.
#startups #venturecapital #emergingmarkets #Building #Fundraising #Healthtech #Foundersinc
Hubert Thieblot@hthieblot
VC rejection excuses: • • No moat • Big labs will kill you • Too much competition • Valuation is too high • TAM is too small • Get a co-founder • Not enough traction • Your retention sucks Translation: I don’t believe you’ll win. Your reaction: Watch me.
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@rdominguezibar @ycombinator Many still think the next $10B company will be another consumer app.
YC is basically saying the next giants may come from boring sectors: healthcare admin, industrial supply chains, enterprise ops, agriculture.
Unsexy markets. Massive outcomes.
#YCombinator #building #Raising
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Youssef Kassem retweetledi
JUST IN: @ycombinator just dropped its Summer 2026 Request for Startups
15 ideas they want founders to build:
1️⃣ AI for Low-Pesticide Agriculture
2️⃣ AI-Native Service Companies
3️⃣ AI Personalized Medicine
4️⃣ Company Brain
5️⃣ Counter-Swarm Defense
6️⃣ Dynamic Software Interfaces
7️⃣ Electronics in Space
8️⃣ Hardware Supply Chain
9️⃣ Industrial Capabilities in Space
🔟 Inference Chips for Agent Workflows
1️⃣1️⃣ SaaS Challengers
1️⃣2️⃣ Software for Agents
1️⃣3️⃣ Startups Selling to Huge Companies
1️⃣4️⃣ Supply Chain 2.0 for Semiconductors
1️⃣5️⃣ The AI Operating System for Companies
Which one is the next $10B company?
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@aribk24 We r redefining the future of healthcare in MENA. Will DM u with details!
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@briansugar Coming ur way. Curious to know Arthur’s verdict!!!
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Founders. Send me your pitch deck.
The one you're sending to investors right now. The one you've been iterating on for weeks. The one you think is ready.
Arthur will read it. He's our AI partner at Sugar Capital, trained on every email, every meeting, and every deck we've ever seen. He comes back in 90 seconds with a verdict, a score, a steelman, and a pull quote you'll either frame or delete.
Free. Honest. Useful.
Find out what a fund actually thinks when they open your deck:
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@packyM Or he read the list in 2026 and discovered the idea was the easy part. Building the company was everything that came after.
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Mom how did we get so rich?
Back in 2026, your dad read the YC Request for Startups and just built one of the ideas on the list.
Y Combinator@ycombinator
AI has stopped being a feature and started being the foundation. We're excited about a new wave of startups rebuilding software, services, and silicon— and pushing AI into the physical world. ycombinator.com/rfs
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“Capital is abundant” might be the biggest lie told in startups.
Capital is scarce. Highly gated. And Relationship-driven.
I wrote about it:
open.substack.com/pub/youssefkas…
#VC #Startups #Fundraising #Building #VentureCapital #Founders #SiliconValley #SanFrancisco #Tech #SeedStage
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First step of innovation is imitation. Thanks for reminding of the right path @Taherelmoataz
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