People ask me constantly: "When should I start my business?" I always answer with a sentence they find jarring: "You should have started yesterday. Today is the second-best option." Then I tell them about 2005.

Context: What Egypt Looked Like in 2005

When I decided to found a software company at eighteen, the scene was not encouraging on any dimension of what a rational person would call "perfect conditions":

  • Internet infrastructure — we were still on ADSL, capped at 256 kbps at best.
  • Electronic payments — PayPal was not formally available in Egypt, and credit cards belonged to a narrow elite.
  • Startup culture — the word "startup" was unknown; there were no incubators and no venture funds.
  • Family culture — "a software company in Mansoura" was a sentence that drew puzzled looks, not enthusiasm.
  • Personal experience — I was in my first year of university, with no capital and no network.

By any rational measure, the conditions were absolutely non-ideal. By any financial logic, I should have waited five or ten years. Why didn't I wait?

The Reason I Only Understood in Hindsight

I did not know at the time that I was doing the right thing. All I knew was that if I did not start now, I would never start. Life becomes more complicated over time: financial obligations, family responsibilities, a "safe" job that is hard to leave, a mind that grows more conservative with experience. An eighteen-year-old has an asset nobody else has: almost nothing to lose.

A young person doesn't know something is "impossible," so they do it. An older person knows it is "complicated," so they wait.

What Starting Early Taught Me

1. Small mistakes are cheaper than big ones

When I make a mistake at eighteen, I lose two months and a few thousand pounds. When I make the same mistake at forty, I lose years, my spouse's savings, and my professional reputation. Starting early means failing early — and failing early is the cheapest tuition available.

2. Time is your only true edge

Money can be earned. Networks can be built. Experience can accumulate. But last year does not come back. When I look at my journey, I know that everything I built — NASEY, Buy Egypt, everything in between — would have been impossible had I waited for "the right time."

3. Conditions never improve — you do

This is the painful truth nobody tells you: external conditions never become ideal. Markets stay volatile, competition stays intense, the economy stays uncertain. What changes is you — your capacity, your resilience, your judgment. Starting early means self-improvement starts early.

4. Failure is not shameful. Postponement is.

If you start and fail, you have gained the equivalent of a master's degree in experience. If you never start, you carry the weight of "what if" for the rest of your life. The psychological math strongly favors failure over indecision.

The Common Objection: "But I Need Capital"

The objection is real, but it is wildly overstated in 2026. A project that required $100,000 in 2005 can start today for under $1,000: a DigitalOcean droplet at five dollars a month, free or cheap tooling, and organic marketing on Instagram and TikTok.

Ask yourself: do you actually need substantial capital, or do you need the courage to start with less than ideal?

The Other Objection: "But I'm Still in School"

I started in my first year of university and ran the company in parallel for four years. School was not an obstacle. It was a source of smart friends who helped me, and a flexibility of schedule no post-graduation job can offer. A student is in a better position to start a company than an employee, not worse.

The Practical Takeaway

If you are under thirty and you have an idea, do not ask me "when should I start?" Ask me "what is the smallest first step I can take this week?" It might be registering a domain, sketching a landing page, or having ten conversations with potential customers to understand their real problem.

Starting is not a giant leap. It is one small step followed by another small step. People waiting for the giant leap stay in place. People who take the small step this week end up, ten years from now, somewhere the hesitant will never reach.

The most expensive thing you can lose in life is not money — money returns. The most expensive thing you can lose is the years you spent waiting for perfect conditions.