u/DhowCIO

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We are heartbroken by the attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, which took the lives of three members of the community in an act of anti-Muslim hate.

Among them was Amin Abdullah, the mosque's security guard and a father of eight, who stood between the shooters and more than a dozen children and staff in the school inside. Police have called his actions heroic. He saved lives.

We unequivocally condemn this attack and every form of hatred and violence targeting people because of their faith. Houses of worship must be places of safety for all.

A verified LaunchGood campaign has been organized by the Islamic Center of San Diego and CAIR-SD to support Amin's wife and eight children. If you are able, please consider giving:

https://www.launchgood.com/v4/campaign/support_family_of_amin_abdullah_islamic_society_of_san_diego_martyr?src=internal_search_discover_Amin%20abdullah

May his courage inspire us all.

إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعون

https://www.amanolabs.com/

Amano Labs just posted a video yesterday about their $20 hearing aid, and it blew my mind.

The company is building an ultra-low-cost hearing device inspired by the mechanics of the human ear. Traditional hearing aids can cost thousands, often because the product is tied to expensive electronics, clinical fitting, insurance complexity, and legacy distribution. Amano is trying to pull that cost down dramatically with a custom-fit, 3D-printed device focused on mechanical sound amplification.

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The product itself is interesting because it takes the opposite approach of most hearing tech. Instead of starting with microphones, processors, Bluetooth, batteries, and speakers, Amano starts with the ear’s own mechanical design. Their device is described as an ultra-low-cost, 3D-printed sound amplification device, with acoustic tuning around speech frequencies, a machine-learning sizing process to better match the geometry of the user’s ear, and output limits meant to avoid unsafe over-amplification. The bet is that for many people who need basic hearing support, especially as a bridge before full clinical care, a simpler custom-fit acoustic device could solve enough of the problem at a radically lower cost.

Arish & Ramin

What makes Amano more compelling is the team behind it: young technical founders with real urgency, real taste, and a clear obsession with making hearing care accessible.

Arish Shahab is a McMaster iBioMed student who previously won the healthcare category at HackPrinceton for Synovia, an AI surgical planning tool that acted like a “flight simulator for brain surgery.” That alone tells you he’s been thinking at the intersection of healthcare, engineering, and software before Amano.

Ramin Syed came through mechanical engineering at McMaster and originally thought he’d work on cars. Now he’s in San Francisco helping build Amano’s purely mechanical hearing device, with the team testing multiple iterations and preparing pilot deployments.

The third cofounder, Aaron Yu, has been helping push the clinical side forward, framing Amano as a bridge to hearing care for underserved patients through low-cost, 3D-printed sound amplification devices.

The problem is massive as well. WHO estimates nearly 2.5 billion people could have some degree of hearing loss by 2050. In the U.S. alone, tens of millions of adults report hearing loss, but only a fraction of the people who could benefit from hearing aids actually use them.

Amano is still early, and because this touches hearing care, thier validation and success will come from pilots, clinical feedback, safety, outcomes, and regulatory clarity.

But as builders, they're doing everything right: take a massive access problem, strip out unnecessary cost, and build something useful for the people the current system leaves behind.

You can preorder the device on their website for $20. I myself just preordered one for a loved one.

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Basata, the Phoenix-based AI platform automating healthcare administrative workflows, has raised a $21M Series A led by Basis Set Ventures, bringing its total funding to $24.5M. Cowboy Ventures and Sofeon also participated in the round.

Founded by Kaled Alhanafi, former Lyft and Cruise executive, alongside co-founders Chetan Patel and Vivin Paliath, Basata is tackling one of healthcare’s least visible but most painful bottlenecks: the manual work that happens after a referral is sent and before a patient is actually scheduled.

The company’s platform reads incoming referral documents, extracts clinical information, validates patient details, and uses AI voice agents to contact patients, schedule appointments, and handle routine administrative calls. Instead of replacing clinical judgment, Basata focuses on the operational layer drowning specialty practices in faxes, forms, calls, and intake backlogs.

Basata has processed referrals for roughly 500,000 patients to date, including about 100,000 in the last month. The new funding will help the company expand its specialty-specific workflows as demand grows across practices still buried under manual referral and scheduling volume.

I was reading through YC’s latest Request for Startups, and the main thing that stood out is how many categories are opening up again for disruption.

A few areas Muslim founders should be paying attention to:

AI-native services
Companies that use AI to deliver the actual service, not just software. Think bookkeeping, tax, audit, recruiting, insurance, legal ops, healthcare admin, and compliance.

Vertical SaaS
Software built for specific industries with messy workflows. Construction, logistics, clinics, law firms, restaurants, manufacturing, real estate, and back-office operations are all good examples.

Agent infrastructure
Tools that help AI agents actually work: cleaner data, permissions, APIs, workflows, documentation, monitoring, and security.

Healthcare admin
Healthcare is still full of fax machines, manual billing, scheduling issues, prior auth headaches, and broken patient workflows. Huge room for better systems.

Personalized medicine
More targeted care using genetics, diagnostics, wearables, labs, and AI-driven treatment recommendations.

Compliance and regulation tech
Businesses are drowning in rules, paperwork, audits, reporting, and risk management. AI can make this cheaper and faster.

Accounting, tax, and finance ops
A lot of financial work is still repetitive, document-heavy, and painful. Perfect area for AI-native products.

Insurance workflows
Claims, underwriting, brokerage, risk analysis, and customer support all have room for automation.

Legal ops
Drafting, intake, case management, immigration, contracts, discovery, and compliance workflows are still slow and expensive.

Logistics and supply chain
Fragmented, old-school, high-stakes industries where better software can create real value.

Robotics
AI gives robots better perception, planning, and task execution. Warehouses, manufacturing, agriculture, cleaning, and healthcare all become more interesting.

Chips and semiconductors
Hard to build, but one of the most important markets in the world. More founders should be thinking about compute, chips, and infrastructure.

Space
Satellites, launch, earth observation, defense, communications, and space infrastructure are becoming more commercially relevant.

Energy
Grid infrastructure, storage, batteries, efficiency, nuclear, and industrial energy systems are massive markets.

Agriculture and food systems
Farm automation, crop monitoring, supply chains, food production, and ag-finance are all underbuilt.

Advanced manufacturing
Factories, industrial automation, procurement, quality control, and machine operations are ready for better software and robotics.

Muslim founders should be aiming higher in this cycle.

We have people in medicine, law, finance, engineering, logistics, real estate, government, and family businesses. That context can turn into billion-dollar companies if founders utilize their domain expertise and apply it to large, ugly, valuable problems.

The next wave of major companies will be built across AI, software, fintech, healthcare, infrastructure, and frontier tech.

We should be building them, backing them, and owning part of the upside early.

If you're building anyone of these or something equally as disruptive - submit an application here. We'd love to talk.

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https://salaamgateway.com/reports/building-payment-rails-for-2-billion-people

I read a recent Salaam Gateway / DinarStandard / UMMAH report on payment infrastructure for Muslim markets. The numbers are pretty wild, but the bigger point is simple: the Muslim economy is already huge, and the rails underneath it are still underbuilt.

The global Muslim population passed 2 billion in 2023. Muslim consumer spending across key halal economy sectors was about $2.43T in 2023 and is projected to reach $3.36T by 2028. Islamic finance assets were around $4.93T in 2023 and are projected to reach $7.53T by 2030.

OIC economies also represent serious scale. The report estimates OIC GDP at about $9.2T in 2025, roughly 8.3% of global GDP. Intra-OIC merchandise exports reached about $491B in 2024.

So the demand is there. The trade flows are there. The population is there. The capital is there.

The problem is the plumbing.

Cross-border payments are still expensive, slow, and opaque across too many of the corridors Muslim communities rely on. According to the report, the global average cost to send $200 was 6.5% in Q1 2025, more than double the UN’s 3% target. 35% of P2P cross-border payments were delayed more than one business day in 2024. 43% of services hide fees upfront, meaning users often don’t know the final fee, FX rate, or status until the money lands.

That friction shows up everywhere.

A family sending money back home pays more than they should.

A Muslim freelancer in Indonesia getting paid by a U.S. client deals with FX uncertainty, local settlement delays, compliance holds, and limited visibility.

An SME trying to trade across OIC markets runs into legacy banking rails, correspondent bank fees, duplicated KYC checks, and settlement windows that still depend on business hours.

A zakat or sadaqah organization trying to move funds across borders has to deal with transparency, compliance, beneficiary verification, and disbursement issues.

The report frames the first three major use cases as:

1. Cross-border Islamic philanthropy, estimated at a $1.1B market
2. Remittances into OIC markets, estimated at a $215B market
3. Intra-OIC trade payments, estimated at a $494B market

That seems like the right order. Start with giving, where transparency matters and the use case is clear. Move into remittances, where frequency and household impact are massive. Then expand into SME trade, where better rails can directly support economic integration across Muslim markets.

The more interesting point is sovereignty.

From 2011 to 2022, correspondent banking relationships declined by about 30% globally. When fewer banks serve a corridor, costs rise, coverage gets weaker, and smaller payments become less attractive to support. Muslim markets are especially exposed here because so much cross-border activity still depends on external intermediaries.

That means whoever controls the rails controls a lot more than payments.

They control pricing power.

They control data.

They control access.

They control which businesses can operate smoothly and which ones get stuck with friction.

This is why I think “halal fintech” has to grow beyond stock screeners, robo-advisors, and consumer savings apps. Those products are useful, but they sit on top of someone else’s infrastructure.

The bigger opportunity is building the infrastructure layer itself.

Payments. Identity. KYC/KYB. Multi-currency accounts. Cards. Settlement. Merchant acquiring. APIs. Compliance. Eventually banking, investing, and private-market access.

That is how Stripe became Stripe. They started with accepting and moving money, then expanded into business formation, issuing, treasury, lending, tax, and embedded finance. The report basically argues for a similar path, but built around the needs of Muslim markets.

I think that is the more ambitious version of Islamic finance.

Less focus on repackaging existing financial products.

More focus on building the rails that let Muslim consumers, founders, SMEs, charities, freelancers, investors, and institutions move capital with less friction.

A 2B+ person market with trillions in spending should not be this dependent on fragmented external infrastructure.

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Salaam everyone 👋 - Wanted to share something we’ve been building toward for a while.

We’re launching Dhow Horizon Fund I, a $5M early-stage venture fund focused on backing high-upside technology companies with Muslim-origin founders.

The thesis is simple: there’s a lot of serious founder talent across the Ummah, but early-stage capital is still fragmented. Strong Muslim founders are building in massive markets, yet many don’t have access to the right investor networks early enough. At the same time, a lot of Muslim investors want exposure to private markets and founder-led opportunities, but the best deals are usually crowded by the time they become widely visible.

That gap is what pushed us to move from just writing about companies through Dhow Dispatch to actually allocating.

With Horizon Fund I, we’re aiming to build a concentrated portfolio of ~16 pre-seed and seed-stage companies. We’re looking for founders with early traction, large markets, strong founder-market fit, and signs of real differentiation.

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Our focus is broad: AI, robotics, healthcare, biotech, climate, space, fintech infrastructure, industrial automation, core software, and other venture-scale categories. We’re also open to consumer products and brands, including food, drinks, apparel, and lifestyle products, as long as there’s strong early traction and the potential to become a category-defining company.

We’re already plugged into founder communities, accelerators, and early-stage ecosystems across the US and beyond. We’ve also secured our first institutional, value-aligned investment.

On the product side, the Dhow app is already in beta and should be live on the App Store next week. The goal is to bring founders, investors, research, and opportunities into one ecosystem built around community-aligned capital.

Long term, we want Dhow to become infrastructure for Muslim economic ownership: our capital backing our people, our companies, and our future.

If you’re an accredited investor and want to learn more about investing in Dhow Horizon Fund I, feel free to DM me.

If you’re a founder building in line with this thesis, stay tuned. We’ll be sharing details soon on how to pitch us.

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to sell securities. Any offering of interests in Dhow Horizon Fund I will be made only to verified accredited investors pursuant to Rule 506(c) of Regulation D and through definitive offering documents. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal and no guarantee of returns.

https://dhow.app/

A few deals worth watching:

Signit raised a $15M Series A led by Raed Ventures, with STV, Seedra Ventures, Takamol Ventures, and Suhail Ventures participating. Founded in 2021 by Mohamed El-Abbouri, the Saudi company builds digital signature and contract lifecycle management tools for enterprises and government entities.

Fascano closed a $10M investment round with participation from Sayyid Kamel bin Fahd Al Said and Cyfr Capital, in partnership with Future Fund Oman. Founded by Ahmed Al-Kharusi and Murak Al-Muairki, the Oman-based company builds operational tech for hospitality and F&B businesses, helping restaurants and operators streamline backend processes.

Sinai AI raised $1.45M pre-seed led by KAUST Innovation Ventures and DisrupTech Ventures. Founded by Ahmed Kamel, Mohamed El-Shamy, Mohamed El-Shenawy, Hana Malhas, and Abdullah Moatasem, the Egyptian startup is building an AI-native book platform that turns traditional content into interactive, personalized learning experiences.

Tamatem, the Jordan-based Arabic mobile gaming publisher founded by Hussam Hammo, acquired Playable Factory, an Istanbul-founded interactive ad tech platform. Tamatem has published 70+ games, passed 300M downloads, and is now adding more advertising and monetization infrastructure to its ecosystem.

Speedinvest also launched its first MEA-focused flagship fund, backed by Mubadala, Qatar Investment Authority, and EIB Global. The fund will target early and growth-stage startups across fintech, embedded finance, AI, climate, health, and digital infrastructure.

MENA venture is maturing across multiple layers at once. We’re seeing funding in enterprise infrastructure, AI-native education, gaming distribution, food and hospitality software, and regional VC funds backed by major institutional capital.

The next wave of Muslim and MENA-linked founders won’t just be building local copies of Western startups. Many are solving region-specific problems with products that can scale across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the diaspora.

We’re putting together our first $5M micro-fund, and I’m trying to think through LP minimums.

One option is setting the minimum around $10k so we can include more every day accredited retail investors, operators, founders, and angels who could be helpful beyond just writing a check. The obvious tradeoff is that more small LPs can mean more admin, more communication, and more headaches overall.

At what point does letting in smaller checks become a strength because you’re building a real network around the fund, and at what point does it just become a headache?

And if you saw a $10k minimum on a first fund, would that feel thoughtful and accessible, or would it make you question how serious the fund is?

Would love to hear from anyone who has written angel checks, invested as an LP, or raised a small fund before.