100% founder-owned today. No outside capital yet. Four clear ways to back the build, including one that pays you back from revenue without ever diluting the founder. Pick the one that fits you.
Why invest in ChaiTalk
01 · The gap
Every platform 400M Arabic speakers use was designed somewhere else, owned somewhere else, run on servers somewhere else. The Arabic is a translation. The culture is a workaround. The data sits in foreign datacentres. We are the first team building one here, in the language, for the region.
02 · The market
MENA has roughly 200M+ active social media users today. Zero have a native-built platform of their own. Even small share of that audience is a serious business: a single percent is 2M+ daily actives.
03 · The creator marketplace
Comparable regional messaging platforms in East Asia have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to sticker and emoji creators over the past decade, with top creators earning five-figures a month from a single set. MENA has the talent. Nobody has built the marketplace yet.
04 · The ad model
Today the only way for a regional brand to reach our region is through platforms built on surveillance and outrage. We are building the alternative: opt-in brand Pages, pay-per-reach pricing, zero individual targeting. Brands love brand-safe inventory; our audience finally gets ads that do not feel like an attack.
The market
MENA is not a niche. It is the largest social audience on the planet without a regional social network of its own.
400M+
Arabic speakers globally
22
Arabic-speaking countries
200M+
social media users in MENA
0
native-built regional platforms today
Four ways to back this
Each one moves the same project forward, with a different relationship to risk, return, and ownership.
Track A
For angels and small funds who want upside.
You buy future equity at a discount via a standard YC-style SAFE. No valuation set today, just a cap that protects your conversion price when we raise a priced round.
Track B
For investors who want returns without taking equity.
You front capital, we pay you a fixed percentage of monthly net revenue until you have been repaid 2x to 3x your original cheque. After that, the share ends and you keep the upside you earned along the way. No equity changes hands.
Track C
For people who just want the thing to exist.
Not every contribution needs a return. Funds go straight to servers, storage, transcoding, and the tooling that keeps the closed pilot running. You get public thanks (or stay anonymous) and the first TestFlight invite the day iOS lands.
Track D
For engineers and designers who want to help carry it.
ChaiTalk is bootstrapping with a tiny team. If you can ship Flutter, NestJS, design, Arabic copy, or moderation tooling and you want to put your name on something real, we want you. Founding contributors with major sustained contributions earn vesting equity in addition to public credit.
How profit sharing actually works
For SAFE notes (Track A): nothing changes immediately. A SAFE is a future-equity instrument; you do not become a shareholder until ChaiTalk does a priced round (typically the seed round), at which point your SAFE converts to actual shares at your agreed cap. So today the founder still owns 100% on paper; on conversion day, the cap table updates for everyone at once. For revenue share (Track B): zero equity changes hands, ever. The founder retains 100% ownership; you receive monthly cash payouts from revenue until your cap (2x-3x) is met.
Example with concrete numbers. You put in $10,000. We agree on 8% of monthly net revenue and a 2.5x cap ($25,000 total return). Month 1 we make $2,000 net; your payout is $160. Month 12 we make $30,000 net; your payout is $2,400. The share keeps paying every month until your cumulative payouts reach $25,000. After that, your interest ends and you keep everything you earned. No equity, no board seat, just a clean cash relationship.
A SAFE is simpler: no interest rate, no maturity date, just a cap (and optionally a discount). A convertible note is debt: it accrues interest (typically 4-8%) and has a maturity date by which it must convert or be repaid. For first-time investors and small cheques, SAFE is the industry default because the legal cost is near-zero (YC publishes the template free) and the terms are well-understood.
For SAFE: the cap table transparency clause means you see every issuance the moment it happens, the 4-year founder vesting means the founder cannot take their stock and walk, the investor letter cadence means you have ongoing visibility, and board observer rights at $50k+ give you a seat in strategy meetings without a vote. For revenue share: you are repaid from cash so you are not exposed to dilution. For donations and contributions: you are not exposed at all; that is the point of those tracks.
No. We have Egyptian + Korean founders and the team is intentionally global. What matters is whether you ship and whether you understand that this is for a region, not from a region. We will say no to contributors who try to make the product look like the apps it is meant to replace.
Tell us which track you are on and one or two sentences about what brings you here. The founder reads every message himself.