In this episode, we sit down with Mostafa Amin, Co-Founder & CEO of Breadfast, the Egyptian quick-commerce company that started by delivering fresh bread and became one of the region's most vertically integrated consumer businesses.Founded in 2017 on a deliberately hard problem — a fresh, one-day shelf-life product — Breadfast built the supply chain rather than renting it: its own bakeries and factories, first-mile and mid-mile logistics, 60 distribution centres across six governorates, and private label now making up roughly 40% of grocery sales. The company raised a $50M pre-Series C in February 2026 backed by Mubadala, the Olayan family, Y Combinator, the IFC and EBRD, at a valuation approaching $400M, and was the 39th company ever backed by YC Continuity.Mostafa walks us through the years before any of it worked: the Scouts, an engineering degree he never used, turning down a dollar-paying job offer as a fresh graduate, four failed companies, and the first €25,000 he ever raised. We discuss why he believes experts should never be in the room at the beginning, the 2017 decision to go asset-heavy when no investor wanted to hear it, the three and a half years it took to reach product-market fit, why Gorillas died while others survived, and what it costs to build trust at scale in a market where the infrastructure has to be built before the business can exist. Our Sponsors:Nawy: https://www.nawy.comAmenli: https://www.amenli.comListen on your favorite platformhttps://bio.site/moghamraContact RefaiLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/refaiTIMESTAMPSIn this episode0:00 Intro2:24 Before Breadfast: The Scouts12:22 Engineering, Art & Walking Away21:29 Egyptian Streets & Four Failures24:26 The Support Nobody Sees27:17 What Fundraising Really Means30:03 Why Asset-Heavy in 201740:03 Why Experts Come Last42:19 Reaching Product-Market Fit47:17 Fire Fighting & Covid51:35 The Stages of Scaling55:11 YC, Paul Graham & Rejection59:13 Why Gorillas Died, GoPuff Lived62:16 What Building Global Means65:41 The Biggest Obstacle68:39 Advice & Why Egypt
