

Why I Built This with Yazin Alirhayim
Yazin Alirhayim built a Stripe for the Middle East, and it ended up inside Amazon.
now he has $60k of AI credits to burn, and he's burning them on Tilawa, open-source Quran tech that doesn't make him a penny.
he's our guest for Why I Built This #7, and we can't wait to ask him why this one is free.
🗓 date: tuesday 20th october 2026
🕡 time: doors 6:00pm – 9:00pm
📍 location: Shoreditch, London
we'll go through his story a chapter at a time:
→ White Payments, and how it ended up part of Amazon Payment Services
→ Amal Invest, the halal investing app he took through Y Combinator
→ Tilawa, and what one person can build with AI now
→ the week he posted "failed spectacularly"
→ the time his AI cheated on its own accuracy test by reading the file names
a 35-minute conversation and 15 minutes of your questions, with refreshments and halal food either side.
come for the story, leave with something to build.