You’ve shared that AptDeco started from your own frustrating experience selling furniture on Craigslist. How did that moment evolve into a vision for a scaled business?

It really did start with me trying to sell my furniture and thinking, “There has to be a better way.” The process felt unsafe, inefficient, and completely unsupported. But what stood out was how universal that frustration was. Everyone had a similar story - which told me this wasn’t a personal inconvenience, it was a structural gap. Furniture is bulky, expensive, and emotional; you need trust, payments, and logistics to make it work at scale.

Coming from the corporate world, we knew how to scale large organizations but getting something off the ground requires a different type of rigor and Y Combinator helped shape how we approached those early days. They pushed us to focus on getting from zero to one and to not be above doing things that didn’t scale. So we did everything ourselves. We talked to our customers constantly, handled issues directly, learned from every transaction, and iterated quickly.

The vision didn’t arrive fully formed. It was built by listening closely, solving one constraint at a time, and slowly building the operational backbone this category was missing. That’s what ultimately made it scalable.

You grew up in Sudan and later pursued engineering and business in the U.S. How has your background influenced your approach to leadership and decision-making at AptDeco?

Growing up in Khartoum, I was surrounded by entrepreneurs. In Sudan, most of the economy is small businesses -  including in my own family. That normalized ownership for me early. If you saw a gap, you built something. It didn’t feel radical but rather it felt practical.

Engineering trained me to think in systems and constraints. At Goldman, I worked on building resilient systems, and that mindset stuck. I’m less interested in hype and more interested in durability. How does this actually work? Where does it break? What needs to exist behind the scenes for this to scale?

Business school added confidence. It pushed me to test ideas before they felt fully formed and to get comfortable with uncertainty.

All of that shapes how I lead: I value resilience over optics, structure over noise, and I make decisions with a long-term lens. Having lived across very different environments, I don’t take opportunity for granted -  and I try to build something that’s built to last.

What’s the best advice you’ve received as a founder, and what advice would you give to your younger self at the start of the AptDeco journey?

The best advice I received was to focus on building a real business - not just momentum. In the early days, especially in venture, it’s easy to get pulled into the narrative: fundraising rounds, press, growth at all costs. But what actually sustains you is strong unit economics, operational discipline, and customers who come back.

If I could speak to my younger self, I’d tell her this will take longer than you think -  and that’s normal. I would also tell her to be more patient with the process and more protective of her energy. Endurance matters. The goal isn’t to win in one year - it’s to build something with real impact for hopefully generations to come. That doesn’t happen overnight.

Do you have one secret to your success?

I don’t think there’s a secret. If anything, it’s staying power.

Building a company for over a decade means you go through multiple cycles - market shifts, capital environments changing, strategy pivots, personal seasons of life. I’ve learned not to overreact to the highs or the lows. I try to stay steady, keep learning, and make the next good decision.

A lot of success looks dramatic from the outside, but from the inside it’s usually consistency. Showing up. Iterating. Taking responsibility when something breaks. And being willing to evolve without losing your core.

Who is a woman you admire?

I’m not someone who points to one single woman — I’ve taken pieces from many, and most of them are women I know personally.

I admire women like Eve Burton and Carla Harris, who I’ve had the privilege of knowing, and who’ve broken barriers at the highest levels while operating with real authority and integrity. I deeply admire my mother and my aunts, who built businesses in environments that were culturally and structurally stacked against women. They didn’t call it “leaning in.” They just did the work — often in male-dominated spaces — and made it feel normal.

And then there are the women I build alongside every day — friends, operators, founders. The ones I text after hard board meetings. The ones balancing ambition and motherhood. The ones navigating real decisions with real consequences. I’ve had a front-row seat to their strength, and that proximity changes you.

To me, leadership is mosaic-like. I’ve borrowed courage from some, steadiness from others, conviction from others. It’s not one archetype — it’s a collective of women who’ve shown me different ways to be powerful, and human, at the same time.