YHack, Yale campus. We were both there, building with different teams, minding our own business.
Then Dharma spotted Rania wearing a YC pullover. Naturally, his first question: “Did you get into YC?”
She said no. She just liked the shirt.
Awkward pause. Recovery attempt: “So... what did you build?”
That one question turned into ditching the hackathon, walking around Yale's campus for hours, and talking about prediction markets, startups, and why every trading tool felt like it was built in 2014.
What followed: months of user interviews. Talking to every prediction market trader we could find. Narrowing the problem over and over until we couldn't simplify it anymore.
The pullover didn't get her into YC. But it might have started a company.